ConstructivistFoundations3(3)

Volume 3, Number 3 July 2008

ISSN

178

2-34

8X

Volume 3, Number 3

An interdisciplinary journalhttp://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal

July 2008

An interdisciplinary journalhttp://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal

CONSTRUCTIVISTFOUNDATIONS IS

SN 1

782-

348X

The Non-dualizing Philosophyof Josef Mitterer

Editors: Alexander Riegler & Stefan Weber

Special Issue

DESCRIPTION

Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an independent academic peer-reviewed e-journal withoutcommercial interests. Its aim is to promote scientific foundations and applications of constructivistsciences, to weed out pseudoscientific claims and to base constructivist sciences on soundscientific foundations, which do not equal the scientific method with objectivist claims. Thejournal is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of all forms of constructivist sciences, suchas radical constructivism, biology of cognition, cybersemiotics, enactive cognitive science,epistemic structuring of experience, non-dualizing philosophy, second order cybernetics, andtheory of autopoietic systems.

AIM AND SCOPE

The basic motivation behind the journal is to make peer-reviewed constructivist papers availableto the academic audience free of charge. The constructive character of the journal refers to thefact that the journal publishes actual work in constructivist sciences rather than work that arguesfor the importance or need for constructivism. The journal is open to (provocative) new ideasthat fall within the scope of constructivist approaches and encourages critical academicsubmissions to help sharpen the position of constructivist sciences. The common denominatorof constructivist approaches can be summarized as follows.• Constructivist approaches question the Cartesian separation between objective world and

subjective experience;• Consequently, they demand the inclusion of the observer in scientific explanations;• Representationalism is rejected; knowledge is a system-related cognitive process rather

than a mapping of an objective world onto subjective cognitive structures;• According to constructivist approaches, it is futile to claim that knowledge approaches

reality; reality is brought forth by the subject rather than passively received;• Constructivist approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is considered

beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained from;• Therefore, the focus of research moves from the world that consists of matter to the world

that consists of what matters;• Constructivist approaches focus on self-referential and organizationally closed systems;

such systems strive for control over their inputs rather than their outputs;• With regard to scientific explanations, constructivist approaches favor a process-oriented

approach rather than a substance-based perspective, e.g., living systems are defined byprocesses whereby they constitute and maintain their own organization;

• Constructivist approaches emphasize the “individual as personal scientist” approach;sociality is defined as accommodating within the framework of social interaction;

• Finally, constructivist approaches ask for an open and less dogmatic approach to sciencein order to generate the flexibility that is needed to cope with today’s scientific frontier.

For more information visit the journal’s website http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal

ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO REVIEWERS OF VOLUME 3

The quality of a journal can only be maintained by thoughtful, careful, and constructive reviewingof both board members and external reviewers. We thank the following external reviewers fortaking the time to review manuscripts submitted to Constructivist Foundations Volume 3:Marian Adolf, Michael L. Anderson, Stefan Artmann, Stefanie Averbeck-Dietz, Dirk Baecker,Berit Brogaard, Peter Cariani, S. Marc Cohen, Richard Creath, Werner DePauli-Schimanovich,Johanna Dorer, Christian Fuchs, Liane Gabora, Alexander Görke, Gerhard Grössing, Mark L.Johnson, Elvira Knaepen, Matthias Kohring, David J. Krieger, Elisabeth List, Oliver Marchart,Andrzej W. Nowak, Ana Pasztor, Alois Pichler, Arno Ros, Otto E. Rössler, Wolff-Michael Roth,Franc Rottiers, Leslie Steffe, Thomas Steinmaurer, Lea Sugman Bohinc, Rainer Thurnher, JeanPaul Van Bendegem, Gertrudis Van de Vijver, and Jutta Weber.

Submissions are continuously receivedSend all material to Alexander Riegler, [email protected]

ADVISORY BOARDWilliam Clancey

NASA Ames Research Center, USA

Ranulph GlanvilleCybernEthics Research, UK

Ernst von GlasersfeldUniversity of Massachusetts, USA

Vincent KennyAccademia Costruttivista di

Terapia Sistemica, Italy

Klaus KrippendorffUniversity of Pennsylvania, USA

Humberto MaturanaInstitute Matríztica, Chile

Josef MittererUniversity of Klagenfurt, Austria

Karl MüllerWisdom, Austria

Bernhard PörksenUniversity of Hamburg, Germany

Gebhard RuschUniversity of Siegen, Germany

Siegfried J. SchmidtUniversity of Münster, Germany

Bernard ScottCranfield University, UK

Sverre SjölanderLinköping University, Sweden

Stuart UmplebyGeorge Washington University, USA

Terry WinogradStanford University, USA

Editor-In-ChiefAlexander Riegler

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Editorial BoardPille Bunnell

Royal Roads University, Canada

Olaf DiettrichCenter Leo Apostel, Belgium

Dewey DykstraBoise State University, USA

Stefano FranchiUniversity of Auckland, New Zealand

Timo HonkelaHelsinki Univ. of Technology, Finland

Theo HugUniversity of Innsbruck, Austria

Urban KordesInstitut Jozef Stefan, Slovenia

Albert MüllerUniversity of Vienna, Austria

Herbert F. J. MüllerMcGill University, Montreal, Canada

Markus PeschlUniversity of Vienna, Austria

Bernd PorrUniversity of Glasgow, UK

John StewartUniv. de Technologie de Compiègne, France

Wolfgang WinterUniv. of Cooperative Education, Germany

Tom ZiemkeUniversity of Skövde, Sweden

Constructivist Foundations 2008, vol. 3, no. 3 119http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/

The Non-dualizing Philosophyof Josef Mitterer

Edited by Alexander Riegler and Stefan Weber

Table of Contents

Editorial

Alexander Riegler & Stefan Weber

Non-dualizing from Now On? ........... 120

Reconstructing Philosophical Dualisms

Ernst von Glasersfeld

Can Dichotomies Be Tamed? ............. 123

Christian Meierhofer

Continuing Discourses. On the References of Mitterer’s Non-dualistic Concept ....................... 127

Peter Weibel

Tertium Datur. Historical Preconditionsand Ways to Mitterer’sNon-dualizing Philosophy...................134

The Description and the Object in Non-dualizing Philosophy

Stefan Weber

The Object of Description is the Description of the Object So Far: Non-dualism and Beyond .................. 140

Franz Ofner

Action and Discourse. Some Thoughts Concerning a Non-dualizing Conception of Experience .................. 148

Volker Gadenne

The Construction of Realism ............. 153

Non-dualizing Philosophy and (Radical) Constructivism

Josef Mitterer

(Radical) Constructivism – What Difference Does It Make? ......... 160

Siegfried J. Schmidt

So Far – From Now On. Josef Mitterer’s Non-dualistic Critique of Radical Constructivism and Some Consequences ........................... 163

Armin Scholl

Non-dualizing Philosophy and Empirical Research ............................. 172

Karl H. Müller

Non-dualistic? Radical Constructivist? ...................... 181

Non-dualizing Philosophy and Actor-Network Theory

Krzysztof Abriszewski

Notes towards Uniting Actor-Network Theory and Josef Mitterer’sNon-dualizing Philosophy ................. 192

Ewa Binczyk

Looking for Consistency in Avoiding Dualisms ............................. 201

Non-dualizing Philosophy in Feminism and Policy Making

Aleksandra Derra

The Non-dualizing Way of Speaking and the Female Subjectivity Problem ....... 208

Mathis Danelzik

Does Non-dualism Imply an Approach to Power? Non-dualizing Epistemology and the Political ......................................... 214

The Potential of Non-dualizing Philosophy in the Humanities

Sven Grampp

Dualism Still at Work. On Wittgenstein’s Certainty ............... 221

Matthias Kross

Mitterer’s Travels ................................ 226

Martin Staude

Meaning and Description in Non-dualism: A Formalization and Extension ......... 231

Theo Hug

Education towards Truth.Reflecting on a Sentence of Josef Mitterer ....................................... 249

Roland Graf

A Colorful Theory in a Black/White World. Mitterer and the Media: Parallels, Overlaps, Deviations ........... 254

Sibylle Moser

“Walking and Falling.” Language as Media Embodiment ...... 260

The Beyond of Non-dualizing Philosophy

Peter Strasser

It, the Nameless God of Dualism. Some Remarks on St. John, the First Non-dualist, and His Renowned Follower, Josef Mitterer ...................................... 269

Adolf Holl

The Beyond of the Theologians ......... 272

Acknowledgement:

This special issue was generously supported by the Wiener Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Dokumentation und Methodik (WISDOM, Austria).

Cover art:

“Die Erde ist eine Scheibe,” pigment print by Herbert Starek <[email protected]>, Vienna 2005.

VOLUME 3, NUMBER 3

Constructivist Foundations

120 Constructivist Foundations 2008, vol. 3, no. 3http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/

Non-dualizing from Now On?

Editorial to the Special Issue on the Non-dualizing Philosophy of Josef Mitterer

“With the first edition of Kant’s Critique of PureReason (1781) the seeds for the ouster of

metaphysics were sown,an ouster that was vigorously pushed along by

logical positivism in the last century.Josef Mitterer is the proponent of a third

conceptual revision that, if carried out,would thoroughly change the method

and the goals of philosophical investigation.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld, this issue, p. 123

The philosopher

When the Austrian philosopher Josef Mittererhanded out his dissertation

Sprache undWirklichkeit. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Ab-handlung

[

Language and Reality: An Epistemo-logical Treatise

] to some colleagues for feed-back in the late 1970s, the reactions varied be-tween incomprehension, friendly rejectionand a straight “he must be joking.” Disap-pointed by some rather hostile receptions(some even called it a “danger to academic phi-losophy”) he turned his back on academia.Mitterer followed the suggestion of LudwigWittgenstein, who wrote in

Vermischte Be-merkungen

, “The greeting among philoso-phers should be ‘Take your time’,” and did notpublish the book version of his dissertationuntil 1992, under the title

Das Jenseits der Phi-losophie. Wider das dualistische Erkennt-nisprinzip

[

The Beyond of Philosophy: Againstthe dualistic Principle of Cognition

]. In 100 the-ses he developed a non-dualizing epistemolo-gy, which forgoes the categorical distinctionbetween language and reality beyond lan-guage. This book was to become the first in aseries of three. The second volume,

Die Fluchtaus der Beliebigkeit

[

The Escape from Arbitrari-ness

], published in 2001, is a critical assess-ment of the traditional goal of philosophy, i.e.,

truth. The last volume,

Die

Richtung des Den-kens

[

The Direction of Thinking

] is in prepara-tion and will deal with a critique of the object-orientation of epistemological thought.

Josef Mitterer was born in 1948 in the smallTyrolean village of Westendorf, Austria, whichis better known for skiing and tourism. Hestudied psychology, sociology and philosophyin Innsbruck, Linz, and Graz, and spent sometime at the London School of Economics,Heidelberg University and the Inter-universityCentre Dubrovnik. In 1976 he went to studywith Paul Feyerabend at the University of Cal-ifornia at Berkeley where he continued to de-velop his philosophical ideas. In 1978 he ob-tained a doctoral degree from the University ofGraz with a dissertation he wrote with RudolfHaller, entitled

Sprache und Wirklichkeit

[

Lan-guage and Reality

]. After his studies – and dueto the reasons mentioned above – Mittererturned to an entirely different domain, namelytourism, and worked as a professional tourguide in Europe and Asia and later as a man-agement consultant for tour operators in theUnited States and Canada. He condensed hisexperiences in the travel world into the essay

Der König von Frankreich lebt oder die Wirkli-chkeit auf Reisen

[

The King of France is Alive orthe Reality of Travel

], which was republished as

The Reality of Travel

(cf. the contribution ofMatthias Kross in this issue). Since 1990, Mit-terer has been teaching philosophy at the Uni-versity of Klagenfurt in southern Austria.

In 1988 Mitterer published the article

Ab-schied von der Wahrheit

[

Farewell to Truth

] inthe German philosophical journal DELFIN,which was mainly a platform for constructiv-ist thinking at that time. This publicationbrought Mitterer into contact with Ernst vonGlasersfeld and slowly introduced non-dualis-tic philosophy to constructivists. Mitterer’smain thesis in the paper was the idea that de-

scriptions in debate do not fail when confront-ed with objects, but rather fail against new de-scriptions. Constructivists felt addressed. ButMitterer irritated them when he included inhis 1992 book a sharp criticism of the neuro-biological foundations of constructivism, es-pecially of Humberto Maturana, FranciscoVarela and Gerhard Roth. Since then, the sci-entific community has seemed to be uncertainas to whether Mitterer should be labelled aconstructivist or a critic of constructivism. Inthis special issue we would like to clarify thispoint, among others.

According to Mitterer’s own philosophy,we, the editors, did not exert any pressure onthe authors to streamline their contributionsand terminology to a single “true” translation.Therefore the reader should not be surprisedto find a variety of terms referring to Mitterer’sphilosophy. Should “nicht-dualisierende Re-deweise” be translated as “non-dualizingmode of speaking,” “non-dualistic way of talk-ing,” or simply as “non-dualism”? We left it tothe authors to find the terminology that fitstheir intentions best, the intention being tohonor but also critically evaluate Mitterer’sphilosophy across the disciplines.

The contributions

Is Josef Mitterer’s non-dualizing philosophyyet another philosophical flavor, of whichthere are so many in the academic world? Yetanother philosophical trinket that arouses theshort-lived attention of some people and dis-appears quickly thereafter? Yet another dalli-ance without implications either for philoso-phy or for science? We are convinced of thecontrary. For many years Mitterer has steadilybuilt up a reputation as an innovative but atthe same time also very careful thinker. His

Alexander Riegler

A

Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven <[email protected]>

Stefan Weber

A

University of Applied Arts, Vienna <[email protected]>

conceptual

non-dualizing philosophy

EDITORIAL

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 121

EDITORIAL

conceptual


claims have been discussed in various circles,but, unfortunately, this has so far happened inGerman- and Polish-speaking countries only.Meanwhile “take your time” has taken timeand Mitterer celebrated his 60th birthday inJuly 2008, an opportunity we used to gatherconnoisseurs of his work to discuss, for thefirst time in the English language, his achieve-ments and impact. The result is in no relationto the limited spread of his ideas

so far

. We havecollected some 22 contributions covering alarge variety of intellectual terrain and point-ing out the potential impact of his philosophy

from now on

.

Reconstructing Philosophical Dualisms

In the first section three authors try to identifytraces of non-dualistic thinking in the historyof philosophy.

The conceptual analysis of

Ernst von Gla-sersfeld

scrutinizes the notion of dichotomy,which is Mitterer’s main task as well. The au-thor discusses Ogden’s work on dichotomyand concludes with the claim that non-dualiz-ing philosophy is an excellent example of howto counter the tradition of realism.


aims to reproducethe development of non-dualism by drawingsimilarities and associations between Mitter-er’s work, and cultural theories and philoso-phies prior to Mitterer. In particular he pointsout that there are some interesting analogiesbetween Mitterer and the work of James, Rick-ert, Weber, Neurath, Mannheim, and Cecca-to.

Peter Weibel

puts Mitterer’s philosophyinto the historical context of the Austrian phi-losophy of language around 1900 – especiallythat of the work of Stöhr, Wahle, Mauthner,and Wittgenstein. He gives reasons for his the-sis that “Josef Mitterer took the Viennese tradi-tion of language critique as an epistemologicalprinciple to its intellectual conclusion” and de-scribes how the “tertium non datur” could beinvalidated by non-dualism.

The Description and the Object in Non-dualizing Philosophy

In this section three authors are concernedwith the key arguments of non-dualizing phi-losophy and its possible flaws.

Stefan Weber

discusses the core argumentsof non-dualism developed step by step in

TheBeyond of Philosophy

: the object of description

is

the description of the object

so far

. The claimof a priority of an object compared to the in-dication of the object is only possible

after

theindication of the object. This means that wecannot claim that there are objects beyondclaims. Otherwise we get trapped in an infiniteregress.

Franz Ofner

starts with the observationthat Mitterer has not developed a non-dualis-tic concept of action. He suggests that GeorgeHerbert Mead’s theory, in his opinion con-taining a non-dualistic nucleus, may be a wayto implement this missing link.

Volker Gadenne

intends to reconcile real-ism and constructivism and proposes a cau-tious or “fallibilistic” version of realism by tak-ing constructivist criticism seriously andtreating knowledge as a constructive process.He argues that non-dualism is wrong when itsays that a thesis does not fail by means of theobject, but by means of a new thesis. Gadennereminds us that there is experience between athesis and its failure.

Non-dualizing Philosophy and (Radical) Constructivism

Mitterer’s philosophy has always been said tohave close ties with (radical) constructivismdespite Mitterer’s attempts to keep equidis-tance to both realism and constructivism (cf.the brief remark in his text in this special is-sue). Four authors in this section explore thisalleged relationship.

The section starts with one of

Josef Mitter-er

’s texts, translated into English for the firsttime. Mitterer argues that there are more sim-ilarities than differences between realism andconstructivism and that constructivismshould fully abandon the notion of “reality” tobecome more consistent.


explores Mitterer’scriticism of dualistic elements in variousforms of radical constructivism. Schmidt ar-gues for a non-dualistic form of constructiv-ism by drawing on Mitterer’s arguments, butdeveloping his own terminology inspired byHegel.

What are the implications of non-dualiz-ing philosophy for empirical research from aconstructivist perspective?

Armin Scholl

de-velops a striking argumentation for reconcil-ing radical constructivism and non-dualism.He considers both to be similar with regard tothe relationship between theory and empiri-cial research.

With the help of cognitive maps

Karl H.Müller

charts various flavors of the (radical)constructivist approach and how they relateto each other, and shows the importance ofMitterer’s philosophy for radical constructiv-ist (RC) research. He considers Mitterer’swork as a radical critique of the semantic turn.The relevance of non-dualism varies accord-ing to the use of the term “radical constructiv-ism.” Its relevance is significant if RC is viewedas a new epistemology but left marginal if RCis a label for a group of empirical research pro-grams.

Non-dualizing Philosophy and Actor-Network Theory

In Poland, a group of young philosophers hasworked out the links between Mitterer’s phi-losophy and the actor-network theory (ANT)of Bruno Latour et al. Two of them present thedetails of their work in this section.


compares Mitter-er’s non-dualizing way of speaking (NDS)with Latour’s ANT. Despite their different re-spective backgrounds – ANT is a continua-tion of social studies of science situated in thefield of sociology of knowledge while NDS be-longs to the domain of philosophy of lan-guage and epistemology – the author showsthat there is a certain degree of convergencebetween them.

The paper by

Ewa Binczyk

embraces Mit-terer’s criticism of dualistic ways of thinkingand speaking. Starting with Rorty’s neoprag-matism and the so-called strong program ofsociology of knowledge – both of which areshown to entail dualistic inconsistencies – theauthor makes a strong case for an NDS-in-spired anti-essentialism. As in Abriszewski’spaper, Latour’s constructivism is presented asa kin theory to NDS that can be fruitfully ap-plied to empirical research programs.

Non-dualizing Philosophy in Feminism and Policy Making

What are the implications of non-dualizingphilosophy for society and politics? In thissection two authors elaborate on gender andpolitical aspects.

Aleksandra Derra

attends to the problemof female subjectivity. By drawing on Mittererand Latour the author seeks to overcome es-sentialist ascriptions that block furtherprogress in the feminist movement. Accord-ing to the author, only in a non-dualistic ap-

122 Constructivist Foundations

EDITORIAL

conceptual


proach is emancipation able to focus on thesituation of women rather than getting stuckin essentialist definitions.

Mathis Danelzik

addresses a so far com-pletely neglected topic: What are the politicalimplications of non-dualistic philosophy?The author discusses to what extent the im-perative to tolerance follows from a non-du-alistic framework. Finally, he sheds light onthe question of power and social dynamics.

The Potential of Non-dualizing Philosophy in the Humanities

This section features the work of six authorsranging from philosophy to media theory,from pedagogics to the science of art.

Sven Grampp

compares Mitterer’s posi-tion with Wittgenstein’s

On Certainty

on is-sues such as knowledge, doubt, and norms.He argues that Wittgenstein’s pragmatic in-vestigations of certainty point toward a dual-istic worldview “without being a dualist.”Grampp therefore remains skeptical as towhether Mitterer’s view is compatible withWittgenstein’s.

The paper by

Matthias Kross

reminds usof a not well known but highly original paperby Josef Mitterer,

The Reality of Travel

. Kross’contribution links the philosopher’s theoriesto the philosopher’s life. It characterizes therole of the philosopher, and even more, theepistemologist, as a “passenger,” deeply em-bedded in what Arnold van Gennep called“rites de passage.”

Martin Staude

attempts a formal-logicalreconstruction of non-dualizing philosophycombined with the logic of distinction ofGeorge Spencer Brown. Furthermore he aimsat linking the notion of description, central inMitterer’s work, to the sociological and semi-otic notion of meaning. Finally he presents anon-dualistic interpretation of the semiotictriangle.

Theo Hug

investigates the notion of truthin education. By focusing on possible transla-tions of a central statement of Mitterer’s, Hugexplores the relationship between non-dual-ism and contemporary philosophy of educa-tion. He arrives at the conclusion that Mitter-er’s philosophy sets apart a new field of peda-gogical discourse.

Roland Graf

’s contribution deals with me-dia theory and media philosophy. For him,some media philosophers have alreadyadopted principles of non-dualism without a

consistent framework. Therefore, Mitterer’sphilosophy seems appropriate to offeringnew insights into the way that consensus ordissent is manufactured in a world of moreand more mediated descriptions.

Starting with the claim that speaking is aprocess of embodied experience, the objectiveof

Sibylle Moser

is to explore Mitterer’s non-dualizing philosophy via Laurie Anderson’sperformance art in general, and more partic-ularly with reference to her treatment of lan-guage as an “embodied process.” Togetherwith Mitterer, Moser challenges the tradition-al truth-functional views of language andthought exemplified by a work of art.

The Beyond of Non-dualizing Philosophy

In this special concluding section two leadingAustrian intellectuals present their ways oftalking about non-dualism: the philosopherPeter Strasser has delivered a paper that ismetaphysical as well as ironical and the re-nowned Austrian theologian Adolf Holl talksabout the “beyond of the theologians” that wenever can talk about.

Peter Strasser

takes the reader on a fairlysatirical ride seeking similarities and differ-ences comparing the non-dualizing philoso-phy of Josef Mitterer, the idealistic position ofBishop Berkeley and famous passages in thegospel according to St. John. Finally he criti-cizes Mitterer’s position by introducing the“It” as the blind spot of non-dualism, or, asthe author calls it, its “nightmare” (allusionsto Sigmund Freud and Stephen King, howev-er, are purely coincidental…).

Adolf Holl

, finally, known for being a crit-ical voice in the Catholic world, is concernedabout the “beyond of the theologians,” whichis alluded to by Mitterer in his paper from1988.

The impact

This special issue of

Constructivist Founda-tions

features 22 contributions from eight sci-entific disciplines: philosophy, psychology,cognitive science, sociology, media science,pedagogics, science of art, and theology. Itshows that there is an enormous potential todiscuss critically the non-dualistic ideas of Jo-sef Mitterer in cultural as well as natural sci-ences. But it also demonstrates that the criti-

cal reception of the work of Mitterer has onlyjust begun. So of course there are blind spotsin this publication – things you can imaginetoday, but that have not happened so far. Twodialogues especially are desiderata:

[

Non-dualizing philosophy and (quan-tum) physics: There are realist and con-structivist interpretations of quantum ef-fects, but so far there is no adaptation ofthe key arguments of non-dualism in ap-proaching or interpreting quantum phys-ics. What would be the role of the observerof quantum processes in the unity of ob-ject and description in non-dualism?

[

Non-dualizing philosophy and the historyof Austrian epistemology: Does Mitterermark a categorical break with logical em-piricism and Wittgenstein, or are there anypoints of reference? So will we all be non-dualizing from now

on? We strongly believe that Mitterer’s workcontains enough “philosophical dynamite” toshake the foundations not only of philosoph-ical disciplines but also of the humanities, ofnatural sciences, and possibly beyond that: ineveryday conversation situations wheneverwe refer to a reality or to something that is saidto be happening “in fact.”

Acknowledgments

It would have been impossible to realize thisspecial issue without the help of numerous re-viewers who provided constructive criticismthat helped the respective authors to sharpentheir arguments. We would like to thank thefollowing

external referees

: Marian Adolf,Michael L. Anderson, Stefan Artmann, Ste-fanie Averbeck-Dietz, Dirk Baecker, BeritBrogaard, Richard Creath, Werner DePauli-Schimanovich, Johanna Dorer, ChristianFuchs, Alexander Görke, Gerhard Grössing,Mark L. Johnson, Matthias Kohring, David J.Krieger, Elisabeth List, Oliver Marchart, An-drzej W. Nowak, Ana Pasztor, Alois Pichler,Otto E. Rössler, Wolff-Michael Roth, FrancRottiers, Leslie Steffe, Thomas Steinmaurer,Rainer Thurnher, Gertrudis Van de Vijver,and Jutta Weber. Our thanks also go to WIS-DOM for printing a limited edition of thisspecial issue and to the Viennese artist Her-bert Starek who provided us with the coverart, “Die Erde ist eine Scheibe” [the Earth is adisc].


Can Dichotomies Be Tamed?

Dualistic presuppositions

In the course of history there have been sev-eral purges – quiet rather than violent, to besure – in the kingdom of philosophy. Theol-ogy was slowly pushed out after the MiddleAges, and with the first edition of Kant’s

Cri-tique of Pure Reason

(1781) the seeds for theousting of metaphysics were sown, an oustingthat was vigorously pushed along by logicalpositivism in the last century. Josef Mitterer isthe proponent of a third conceptual revisionthat, if carried out, would thoroughly changethe method and the goals of philosophicalinvestigation.

There is nothing stealthy about Mitterer’sattack. It aims at the very foundations ofWestern philosophy.

“At the beginning of philosophy there arenot problems but unquestioned presup-positions.These presuppositions are dichotomousdistinctions (in the theory of knowledgeand the philosophy of language, forinstance, the dichotomies of Language–World, Description–Object, Utterance–Referent, Being–Consciousness, Subject–Object, and others).The attempt to clarify the relationshipbetween the members of these dichoto-mies leads to the problems of philosophy –

the problems of objectivity, reference,identity, external world, and above all tothe problem of truth” (Mitterer 1992,p. 11).

1

He has set his sights on what he calls “dual-istic argumentation,” and that is any discoursebased on dichotomies that are accepted asunquestionable presuppositions and limit, atthe outset, the possible outcomes of any dis-cussion.

In the Foreword to his most recent book,

Die Flucht aus der Beliebigkeit

, he writes:“The dualistic presuppositions steer thepath of thinking towards the domain ofobjects and establish concordance withthem as the goal of thought. The argumen-tation technique of dualistic philosophy isable to produce this concordance for anyconception whatsoever. I try to (re)con-struct how the separation of the two levelsarose as argumentative posits that aretaken for granted prior to any discourse…“I am interested in the construction of thatrelationship which, as a dichotomous pre-supposition, forms the

paradogma

ofdualistic philosophy. This may explainwhy I do not take part in the interdualisticdiscussion (in which my sympathies tendto be on the side of constructivism) andalso why those who see or make no differ-ence between constructivism and non-dualism consider me a constructivist”(2001, pp. 8–9).

Among the dichotomies of dualistic phi-losophy, Mitterer lists what I consider twogroups. On the one hand are those that havereality as one of their terms, on the other, allforms of distinction between language and itsmeanings.

Mitterer’s definition of the term “dualistic”is clearly a wide one. My encyclopedia of phi-losophy tells me that the term was first used forthe separation of the principles of Good andEvil in the Manichaean religion and that it wasadopted by Christian Wolff in the 18th centuryfor the Cartesian split between Mind and Mat-ter. This second meaning is the general onetoday. But a lot of other dichotomies are cus-tomary in our descriptions of our world.

Ogden’s oppositions

C. K. Ogden, who wrote a fascinating littlebook entitled

On Opposition

(1967), collectedseveral dozen of them and analyzed 25 to findthe different ways in which two elements wereopposed to one another. Adopting some of hisideas, I have developed my own criteria forsorting dichotomies (see my “sampler ofdichotomies” in Table 1). In his “HistoricalIntroduction” Ogden draws freely on LudwigFischer’s (1931) survey of what in German iscalled

Naturphilosophie

; some of what hegathered from that author may be pertinentto Mitterer’s approach.

“For Schelling … it is the opposition of‘nature’ and ‘spirit’ which is axiomatic. Helater dwelt on the poles of the prime oppo-sition (Thought–Being, Ideal–Real, Sub-jective–Objective), and introduced thenotion of the

indifference

of these objects,the “total indifference” of Subjective andObjective being “absolute reason” (Ogden1967, p. 28).Ogden then moves to Hegel and explains

that, although dialectical thinking beginswith the opposition of Thesis and Antithesis,it leads to Synthesis, which eliminates the ini-tial dichotomy and produces a higher andmore comprehensive concept.

Ernst von Glasersfeld

A

University of Massachusetts <[email protected]>

R Purpose – The notion of dichotomy is central to Josef Mitterer’s work and he uses the term as a portmanteau. My paper characterizes the specific dichotomies he describes, uses C. K. Ogden’s work on “Opposition” to classify them, and reviews attempts to overcome incompatible oppositions in other disciplines. R Approach – Conceptual analysis in an attempt to show some of the conceptual differences in the various types of opposition. A “sampler” indicates possible divisions. R Findings – From the constructivist point of view, the notion of dichotomy is a complex one and must be divided into separate types, not all of which can be discarded in rational discourse. R Implications – From this author’s perspective, Mitterer’s publications present a powerful stand against the tradition of real-ism and lead one to hope that his next will be a primer of non-dualistic discourse. R Key words – Oppositions, paradoxes, mathematical abstractions, Schrödinger’s cat, ontological agnosticism, Ogden.

epistemological–linguistic

radical constructivism

CONCEPTS


CONCEPTS



Having known Mitterer for some twentyyears, I do not believe that Hegel had much todo with the development of his notion ofnon-dualistic discourse. But Ogden’s accountof Schelling’s suggestion of “indifference” as a

rational gambit is perhaps a useful hint: by“indifference” Schelling intended that theabsolute, a reality prior to being experienced,was not articulated and wholly undifferenti-ated.

The prime form of dichotomous relation,Ogden concludes, is “an opposition, themembers of which are each the condition ofthe other and at the same time are resolvedinto a single datum” (Ogden 1967, p. 32). Ifound this distinction useful and character-ized it by saying that the opposed conceptsentail one another (see Table 1). Among thiskind of opposition, Ogden included “I/Not-I” and “Mind/Body,” and this is an assigna-tion I do not agree with. UnfortunatelyOgden did not include these items in thegroup of two dozen that he analyzed indetail, specifying different

kinds

of opposi-tion. Although he does not say so, I believehe skipped them because the dichotomiessuggested by the “prime forms” are not reallyan opposition, but rather a separation acrosswhich there is no link on the level on whichthe concepts themselves have been con-ceived.

The philosophical blunder

What I have called the first group of Mitterer’sdichotomies are derived from the fatal blun-der in the philosophical tradition that Berke-ley described with exemplary precision:

“… we have been led into very dangerouserrors, by supposing a twofold existence ofthe objects of sense, the one

intelligible,

orin the mind, the other

real

and without themind: whereby unthinking things arethought to have a natural subsistence oftheir own, distinct from being perceivedby spirits” (Berkeley 1950, Book 1, §86;Berkeley’s emphasis). The spurious splitting of experiential

items into what is experienced and what issupposed to “exist” apart from the experi-encer, is what Silvio Ceccato (1951, p. 34)called “

raddoppio conoscitivo”

(gnoseologi-cal duplication). It has, indeed, bedeviledstudents of the theory of knowledgethroughout the millennia. Mitterer’s cam-paign against dualistic thinking constitutes afrontal attack against this misconception.But conceptions that have a history as long asthis one are difficult to eliminate. Yet Mit-terer, as well as radical constructivists, haverecently gained allies partly because mathe-maticians and physicists have begun to movein a similar direction.

SCALAR Neutral Middle

Black White Grey

Hot Cold Tepid

Before After (directional) Now, Here

Up Down (directional) Level

Right Left Straight, Middle

Male Female Hermaphrodite

Good Bad Indifferent

Love Hate „

Desire Aversion (directional) „

Attract Repel (directional) „

BY CUT (conceptually entailing, no intermediate)

To From (directional)

In Out (directional)

Push Pull (directional)

Height Depth (directional)

Half Double

Singular Plural

Debtor Creditor

Borrow Lend

Imply Infer

Subjective Objective

Denote Connote

Sign Signification

BY NEGATION (the negative entailing the positive)

Visible Invisible

Do Undo

Normal Abnormal

I Not-I

CONCEPTUAL DISTINCTION (not entailing)

Heaven Earth

Wave Particle

Mind Body

Experience Reality

Table 1:

Sampler of dichotomies.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 125

CONCEPTS



Mathematical paradoxes

In his recent book

How MathematiciansThink

, William Byers deals at great lengthwith the fact that mathematicians have devel-oped and very successfully use concepts thatcontain a seemingly ineradicable opposition.He proposes a theory that reconciles paradox-ical oppositions by a form of conceptualfusion on a higher level of abstraction. Hedoes not regard this as a form of synthesis, butrather as a deliberate “indifference”.

Among the “impossible” concepts are“zero,” an entity that consists of nothing,“infinity,” an item supposed to be endless buttreated as a closed unit, and the “infinitesimals”of calculus, which involve the irrational transi-tion from very little to a still discrete nothing.The intellectual perturbation that these irre-ducible oppositions generate may trigger an“act of extraordinary creativity” from which“great ideas” are born. “What these leaps of cre-ativity have accomplished goes against theintuition of the culture out of which they arose.This accounts for the resistance the ideas ini-tially encounter” (Byers 2007, p. 297).

Byers summarizes his notion of “greatIdeas” by saying:

“Mathematics is continuously forcingmathematicians outside their initialframes of reference. It is the problematicaspects of mathematics that demand a cre-ative resolution – one that is often com-pletely unexpected and yet, in retrospectcan be seen to be inevitable. These jumpsto a higher viewpoint are not predictable.They cannot be programmed” (Byers2007, p. 301).It seems to me there is a parallel to this

“jump to a higher viewpoint” in the physi-cists” metaphor of “Schrödinger’s cat,” whichhad to be thought of as being both alive anddead – a baffling metaphor introduced toshow the absurdity of interpreting microex-perimental findings in terms of everydayexperiences. Now, however, it may have comecloser the literal description of a phenome-non. Two research teams, one at the NationalInstitute of Standards and Technology inBoulder, Colorado, the other at the Universityof Innsbruck, have been able to catch ions inan electromagnetic trap and to show that theyactually seemed to be in such a cat-like state of“superposition” (Naica-Loebell 2005;Häffner et al. 2005).

2

Ontological agnosticism: A possible answer

Facing a paradox, it is not easy to jump to ahigher viewpoint in order to resolve it. Whennon-Euclidean geometry was first invented,mathematicians fought against it becausethey found it hard to give up the idea thatEuclidean geometry describes space in a

real

world. The notion that there could be severalgeometries seemed unacceptable. Like theparadox of a particle spinning in two oppo-site directions at the same time, the possibil-ity of more than one geometry can be over-come only if one accepts the idea thatmathematical and physical theories do notportray an independent reality but areattempts to order and systematize our expe-rience of a world that is under no obligationto be logical.

As Niels Bohr put it:“We meet here in a new light the old truththat in our description of nature the pur-pose is not to disclose the real essence ofthe phenomena but only to track down, sofar as possible, relations between the man-ifold aspects of our experience” (Bohr1987, p.18)Giving up the quest for a veridical descrip-

tion/representation of a real world makes itpossible to rise to a level of understandingwhere the notion of complementarity candetoxify irreducible paradoxes of humanexperience. It enabled Bohr to overcome thetraditional Subject/Object dichotomy:

“… no sharp separation between objectand subject can be maintained, since theperceiving subject also belongs to ourmental content” (Bohr 1987, p. 96).From this, he says, it follows that “the rel-

ative meaning of every concept, or rather ofevery word,” depends “on our arbitrarychoice of view point” (Bohr 1987, p. 96).Bohr, unlike the contemporary philosophersof language, realized that the notion of refer-ence to objects of a presumed observer-inde-pendent reality was no longer tenable. Thishas monumental consequences for the theoryof knowledge. If the meaning of words cannotbe ontologically grounded, the traditionalquestion of Truth and Falsehood can nolonger be asked. As Mitterer puts it, the func-tion of these two opposed terms is reduced todistinguishing beliefs we share from those wedo not share (Mitterer 2001, p. 105).

This, of course, raises the question of whyone should ever hold on to a belief. For con-ventional thinkers the reason is usually thatthey consider the belief to be true. They havesplit the perceptual situation in the very waythat Berkeley warned against. As Mittererexplains, the very notion of reference as func-tion of language (implied by the dichotomiesof his second group) is a hoax:

“A distinction is introduced (the dualistwould say, presupposed) between the objectof the discourse and the discourse about theobject… This distinction is to enable us toindicate the beyond of the discourse, abeyond where the question regarding thetruth or falsehood of our beliefs can bedecided” (Mitterer 2001, p. 93). The non-dualist does not make such a

split. He has realized that there is no way outof discourse, no way of getting beyond orunder it. A chunk of discourse can be replacedonly by another chunk of discourse; it cannotbe checked against the reality the dualistclaims to be talking about. The radical con-structivist, too, has relinquished the dogmaticbelief that language refers to things, events,and relations of a real world. But words, sen-tences, and texts do refer to something – ifthey didn’t, speaking would be less musical,but essentially not unlike the twittering ofbirds. This constructivist is happy to agreewith Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the

Vorstel-lungsklavier,

a keyboard, the keys of which arewords that call forth re-presentations of expe-riences that the speaking or receiving individ-ual remembers (Wittgenstein 1953, p. 4).

Conclusion

The non-dualistic way of arguing, as I under-stand it, will proceed without resorting toexplicit or implicit suggestions of access to anexperiencer-independent reality. On the onehand, the traditional dualistic view that one orboth items of the dichotomies “Subjective/Objective,” “I/not-I,” “Mind/Body,” and“Experience/Reality” are anchored in a worldthat “exists” prior to being experienced, has tobe eradicated. On the other hand, the secondterm of “Denote/Connote” and “Sign/Signifi-cation” must no longer be understood as refer-ring to “things in themselves.” It does not, Ihope, imply that we cannot talk

about

ideas wewant to use to domesticate our experience.


CONCEPTS



Mitterer is not the first to claim that therecan be no rational exit from the domain of ourexperience; but the way he justifies the claimby a minute analysis of the dualistic methodof argumentation is a new approach and isclearly shaking the philosophical establish-ment.

Notes

1. The quotations from Mitterer are given inmy translation.

2. I have recently had the opportunity tospeak with one of the physicists involvedin the experiments with captive ions and,as I interpret him, he said that an ion as-sumes a specific state only when it is sub-mitted to the measuring procedure. If thisis the case, it would fit well with Schelling’snotion of indifference and with the princi-ples of constructivism.

References

Berkeley, G. (1950) A treatise concerning theprinciples of human understanding.Reprinted in: Luce, A. A. & Jessop, T. E.(eds.) The works of George Berkeley, Vol-ume II. Nelson & Sons: London. Origi-nally published in 1710.

Bohr, N. (1987) The philosophical writings of

Niels Bohr, Volume 1. Ox Bow Press: Woo-dridge. Originally published in 1934.

Byers, W. (2007) How mathematicians think.Princeton University Press: Princeton

Ceccato, S. (1951) Il linguaggio e la tabella diCeccatieff. Hermann & Cie: Paris.

Fischer, L. (1931) The structure of thought.Allen & Unwin: London.

Häffner, H., Hänsel, W., Roos, C. F., Ben-helm, J., Chek-Al-Kar, D., Chwalla, M.,Körber, T., Rapol, U. D., Riebe, M.,Schmidt, P. O., Becher, C., Gühne, O.,Dür, W., Blatt, R. (2005) Scalable multi-particle entanglement of trapped ions.Nature 438: 643–646.

Mitterer, J. (1992) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie. Passagen: Vienna.

Mitterer, J. (2001) Die Flucht aus der Beliebig-keit. Fischer: Frankfurt am Main.

Naica-Loebell, A. (2005) Stabile Schrödinger-Katzen, Telepolis. Retrieved on 30 May2008 from http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21472/1.html

Ogden C. K. (1967) On opposition. IndianaUniversity Press: Bloomington. Originallypublished in 1932.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical investi-gations. Basil Blackwell: Oxford.

Received: 22 March 2008Accepted: 30 May 2008

Ernst von Glasersfeld was born in Munich, 1917, of Austrian parents, and grew up in Northern Italy and Switzerland. Briefly studied mathematics in Zürich and Vienna. Returned to Italy in 1946, worked as journalist, and collaborated until 1961 in Ceccato’s Scuola Operativa Italiana (language analysis and machine translation). From 1962 director of US-sponsored research project in computational linguistics. From 1970, he taught cognitive psychology at the University of Georgia, USA. Professor Emeritus, 1987. Several honorary doctorates. Recent publication: Key Works in Radical Constructivism (2007).(Photo: Peter Gasser-Steiner)

THE AUTHOR


Continuing Discourses

On the References of Mitterer’s Non-dualistic Concept

…ob aber, unabhängig von unserm Vorstellen,irgend etwas ausgedehnt,

ja überhaupt irgend etwas vorhanden sei,ist die Frage und das ursprüngliche Problem.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1986, p.21)

1. Introductory note

A pursuit of truth usually is the result of a tacitconsent to its dichotomic preconditions,namely the correlations between subject andobject, language and world, assertion andreality. However, these dichotomies permitonly limited leeway for epistemological argu-mentation. The object either originates fromthe subject’s imagination or perception, or itexists without any other influences. The firstcase produces an intersubjective discourseand viable consensus between the differentcognitions; the second merely allows for“real” correspondence between cognition andobject. This is the main difference betweenrelativism (or constructivism) and realism.

In his

Structural Analysis of Epistemology

Karl Mannheim discerns three basic terms in

order to deal with these correlations moreprecisely:

“This is how the triadic relation of episte-mology comes about, i.e., the

knower

– the

known

(the cognition or knowledge) – the

to-be-known

. […] Of the three, it is themiddle term that changes most conspicu-ously; in logistic epistemology it is calledobjectivity (the totality of valid proposi-tions), in a psychologistic theory, con-sciousness (the totality of possible experi-ences)” (Mannheim 1953, pp. 58f). Without the known, the relation between

the knower and the to-be-known would onlymatch the ontological subject–object corre-lation. With his triad, Mannheim describesthose two philosophically essential posi-tions:

“Consciousness and being, the self andreality, can stand in the categoreal rela-tions of correspondence and causality, orof inherence and identity. […] The catego-real relation is already specified by way offormulating the problem, and it deter-mines at the same time the distancebetween the correlate terms. Strictly

speaking, the attempt to solve the episte-mological problem only begins at thepoint where we try actually to bridge thedistance in this fashion” (Mannheim 1953,p. 61). Non-dualizing philosophy brings such an

attempt out of the traditional, ontological set-ting, and shows the difficulties of both realismand constructivism.

2. Traces from cultural theory

Some important details on the non-dualisticline of argumentation can already be found inHeinrich Rickert’s cultural theory. Culture orcultural processes are not only observable andclassified by valuations, but even instantiated.Only the description or valuation of culturalprocesses forms cultural truth:

“Die Kulturvorgänge werden wirklichnicht nur mit Rücksicht auf einen Wert,sondern zugleich auch immer mit Rück-sicht auf ein

psychisches

Wesen, das siewertet, betrachtet werden müssen, weilWerte nur von psychischen Wesen gew-ertet werden […]. [The cultural proce-dures really have to be examined, not onlywith regard to a certain value but, at thesame time, with regard to a conscious indi-vidual who values them because values areonly valued by conscious individuals]”(Rickert 1926, pp. 25f).Rickert points out that the valuation of

cultural processes is triggered by a subject, aconscious individual. But the crucial argu-ment here is that a cultural process and its val-uation cannot be separated. Culture has truemeaning as long as the subject is of the opin-ion that this meaning is true. And only if thismeaning is challenged or doubted, will itscoherence and validity be interrupted:

“Der Wert kann erstens an einem Objekteso ‘haften,’ daß er es dadurch zum Gutemacht, und er kann außerdem mit dem


A

University of Bremen (Germany) <[email protected]>

R Purpose – To show the connections and differences between Mitterer’s concept, cul-tural theory, and sociology of knowledge in order to reproduce the development of non-dualizing philosophy. R Problem – Mitterer’s non-dualizing philosophy explicitly places emphasis on the continuation and coherence of discourses. Consequently, it grants an epistemological option that does not focus on the object as the end of cognition and description, but rather as the beginning. This perspective not only helps to overcome fun-damental philosophical problems; it also concedes that the whole concept of non-dualizing philosophy refers theoretical descriptions, on the one hand, to the status of “so far” and, on the other hand, can be described as “from now on.” R Solution – It seems necessary to exemplify obvious and hidden connections to cultural theories, especially those of the early 20th century (i.e., Karl Mannheim, Heinrich Rickert, Max Weber, William James), which predominantly concentrate on the relations between language and object, experi-ence and world. The illustration of those relations should bring out Mitterer’s arguments, as well as how his argumentation can be applied to itself. R Benefits – To explain and avoid the epistemological problems of realism, as well as of constructivism, which emerge within a dualistic perspective. R Key words – subject–object relation, cultural theory, epistemology.

philosophical–epistemological


CONCEPTS


CONCEPTS



Akte eines Subjektes so verknüpft sein,daß dieser dadurch zu einer Wertung wird.Die Güter und die Wertungen lassen sichnun so ansehen, daß man nach der Gel-tung der mit ihnen verbundenen Wertefragt und dann festzustellen sucht, ob einGut den Namen des Gutes auch wirklichverdient, oder ob eine Wertung mit Rechtvollzogen wird. Das tun wir, wenn wirpraktisch zu den Gegenständen Stellungnehmen wollen. [The value can first ‘clingto’ an object so that it is turned into a good.Furthermore, the value can be interlacedwith the action of a subject so that itbecomes a valuation. Both the goods andthe valuations can be regarded in such amanner that one questions the impor-tance of the values linked to them and thentries to decide whether a good reallydeserves its name or a valuation is properlyassigned]” (Rickert 1926, p. 86).The interruption of valuation – and inso-

far of a cultural process as well – serves as areflection on the assessments, descriptionsbeing made so far and their intersubjective ordiscoursive acceptance. Siegfried J. Schmidt,therefore, calls truth an interrupter of argu-mentation:

“Wahrheit als Aussagenverlässlichkeit inGeschichten und Diskursen invisibilisiertdie Kontingenz alles Gewussten und dientals Argumentationsunterbrecher durchdie Legitimität der Bezugnahme auf denStatus quo des gemeinsamen Wissens.[Truth, as reliability of propositions in his-tories and discourses, renders the contin-gency of everything known invisible andacts as an interrupter of argumentation byvirtue of the legitimacy of the reference tothe status quo of shared knowledge]”(Schmidt 2003, p. 128).Truth, as a criterion, is always applied if an

object’s legitimacy is mistrusted. In Rickert’scase, it is the legitimacy of cultural goods andtheir valuation that is called into question.And it is always a change of the valuation thatprovides another truth. Nonetheless, there isa reminder of dualism because Rickert distin-guishes between meaningful culture andmeaningless nature, between “sinnvoller Kul-tur und sinnfreier Natur [meaningful cultureand meaningless nature]” (Rickert 1926, p.25). Thus, there always remains an unde-scribed portion outside the valuating dis-course.

The quality of a cultural process, however,cannot be found somewhere beyond thedescription but is determined by the prelimi-nary features ascribed to it. This is the core ofnon-dualistic thinking, and here, Max Weberplaces emphasis on it as well:

“Die Qualität eines Vorgangs als‘sozialökonomischer’ Erscheinung ist nunnicht etwas, was ihm als solchem ‘objektiv’anhaftet. Sie ist vielmehr bedingt durchdie Richtung unseres Erkenntnis

interesses

,wie sie sich aus der spezifischen Kulturbe-deutung ergibt, die wir dem betreffendenVorgange im einzelnen Fall beilegen. [Thecharacter of a process as a ‘socio-eco-nomic’ appearance is not ‘objectively’linked to it. Instead, it is limited by thedirection of our cognitive

interest

as itarises from the specific cultural meaningthat we assign case-by-case by means ofthe process mentioned.]” (Weber 2002,p. 92) The appearance of a process, in this case as

socio-economic, is the result of a unanimousdecision. It is the cognitive interest that allo-cates meaning and quality to a process, andthat decides whether or not a process isdeemed cultural. At the same time, it isimpossible to make such a decision withoutreferring to previous settings, experiences,and expectations. Every new assessment ordescription of culture is moulded and sche-matized by former assessments and descrip-tions:

“Wer auf dem Standpunkt steht, daß dieErkenntnis der historischen Wirklichkeit‘voraussetzungslose’ Abbildung ‘objek-tiver’ Tatsachen sein solle oder könne,wird ihnen jeden Wert absprechen. […]Und in der Tat:

ob

es sich um reinesGedankenspiel oder um eine wissen-schaftlich fruchtbare Begriffsbildung han-delt, kann a priori niemals entschiedenwerden: es gibt auch hier nur einenMaßstab: den des Erfolges für die Erkennt-nis konkreter Kulturerscheinungen inihrem Zusammenhang, ihrer ursächlichenBedingtheit und ihrer

Bedeutung

. [Who-ever holds the view that the knowledge ofhistoric reality should or could be a depic-tion of ‘objective’ actualities without pre-suppositions will deny its worth. […] Andindeed: one can never decide a priori

if

theissue is a purely intellectual game or a sci-entifically productive conception. Here,

there is also only one benchmark: the suc-cess of concrete cultural appearanceswithin their relation, their causal relativity,and their

meaning

]” (Weber 2002, p. 128). The success of an assessment and of the

awareness of cultural appearances do notdepend on their objective validity, but on thecultural benchmark:

“Today the success of a procedure oftencounts as a sign of its objective validity. Butthe evaluation of successes and failuresdepends on the culture in which theseevents are taking place” (Feyerabend 1987,p. 87).Furthermore, the reciprocal reference

between former description and instanta-neous describing completely abstains fromrealistic dualism. Thus, a process is launchedthat still influences the present cultural andepistemological theory:

“Setzungen und Voraussetzungen bildeneinen autokonstitutiven Zusammenhang,der seine spezifische ‘Wirklichkeit’ durchdie Wirksamkeit der Bezugnahmen fürAktanten entstehen lässt und nicht durchRückgriff auf ein spezifisches ontologis-ches Arrangement in ‘der Realität.’ [Sup-positions and presuppositions form anauto-constitutive nexus, which developsits specific ‘actuality’ through the effective-ness of references for agents and not byusing a specific ontological arrangementin ‘the reality.’]” (Schmidt 2003, p. 33; alsocf. Meierhofer 2006, pp. 49f).Finally, those two references – between

object and description and between formerdescription (

Voraussetzung

) and instanta-neous describing (

Setzung

) – constitute Mit-terer’s non-dualistic thinking.

3. Non-dualizing philosophy and its basics

One of the first concepts that paved the wayfor non-dualistic thinking was WilliamJames’s pragmatism. Because the generationof truthful meaning only takes place within asocial process, it is mandatory

to adhere tocertain rules of discourse and stick to certainmeanings that guarantee consensus:

“All human thinking gets discursified; weexchange ideas; we lend and borrow verifi-cations, get them from one another bymeans of social intercourse. All truth thus

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 129

CONCEPTS



gets verbally built out, stored up, andmade available for everyone. Hence, wemust

talk

consistently just as we mustthink consistently: for both in talk andthought we deal with kinds. Names arearbitrary, but once understood they mustbe kept on. We mustn’t now call Abel ‘Cain’or Cain ‘Abel.’ If we do, we ungear our-selves from the whole book of Genesis, andfrom all its connexions with the universeof speech and fact down to the presenttime. We throw ourselves out of whatevertruth that entire system of speech and factmay embody” (James 1975a, pp. 102f). Nevertheless, a pursuit of truth always

implicates a pursuit of change. The detectionand acceptance of new or different opinionsdisrupts the course of description andenforces an overhaul of previous assertions.This disruption allows for the verification ofnew and old descriptions and opinions:

“Truth may well consist of certain opin-ions, and does indeed consist of nothingbut opinions, tho [sic] not every opinionneed be true. No pragmatist needs to

dog-matize

about the consensus of opinion inthe future being right – he need only

pos-tulate

that it will probably contain more oftruth than anyone’s opinion now” (James1975b, p. 145).Truth, as it were, always claims to be the

actual state of affairs although, while using itfor a convincing argumentation, it oftenserves to legitimate one’s own opinion.

The problem of an object’s description asinvalid, inappropriate, or simply untruearises from the assumption that the descrip-tion does not correspond to a reality indepen-dent of language. Mitterer detects this kind ofunregarded decision as the basis of dualisticarguing:

“Damit wird die Grundlage geschaffen,um Verfahren zu suchen und zu finden,durch die eine oder einige der damit erstmöglich gewordenen verschiedenen Bes-chreibungen der

selben

Objekte von denübrigen Beschreibungen ausgezeichnetwerden können, – als ‘wahr,’ ‘adäquat,’‘richtig,’ ‘zutreffend,’ etc. [The basis isthereby established to search for and findmethods that allow for the marking of thesole or some of the several descriptions ofthe

same

objects which have now beenmade possible and can now be differenti-

ated as ‘true,’ ‘adequate,’ ‘right,’ ‘appropri-ate,’ etc.]” (Mitterer 1992, p. 50).From a non-dualistic standpoint, integrat-

ing a new description or assertion into (scien-tific) discourse means checking whether itscombination with previous descriptions canbe accomplished or not. Neurath explains thisprocedure as follows:

“Wenn eine Aussage gemacht wird, wirdsie mit der Gesamtheit der vorhandenenAussagen konfrontiert. Wenn sie mitihnen übereinstimmt, wird sie ihnenangeschlossen, wenn sie nicht überein-stimmt, wird sie als ‘unwahr’ bezeichnetund fallengelassen oder aber der bisherigeAussagenkomplex der Wissenschaftabgeändert, so daß die neue Aussageeingegliedert werden kann; zu letzterementschließt man sich meist schwer. […]Die Sprache ist für die Wissenschaft wes-entlich, innerhalb der Sprache spielen sichalle Umformungen der Wissenschaft ab,nicht durch Gegenüberstellung derSprache und einer ‘Welt,’ einer Gesamtheitvon ‘Dingen,’ deren Mannigfaltigkeit dieSprache abbilden soll. Das versuchen wäreMetaphysik.

Die eine wissenschaftlicheSprache kann über sich selbst sprechen, einTeil der Sprache über den anderen;

hinterdie Sprache kann man nicht zurück. [If aproposition is made, it will be confrontedwith the entirety of present propositions.If it corresponds to them, it will be affili-ated. If it does not correspond, it will bedescribed as ‘untrue’ and be abandoned,or, the previous complex of scientificpropositions will be changed so that thenew proposition can be integrated. Oneoften decides hardly ever for the latter.[…] Language is essential for science; alltransformations of science happen withinlanguage, not by confronting languagewith a ‘world,’ i.e., an entirety of ‘things’whose diversity language should repre-sent. Trying this would be metaphysics.

The

one scientific language can talk aboutitself, one part of language about the other

;one cannot go behind language]”(Neurath 1981, p. 419).Whether a description is accepted or abol-

ished depends on how conveniently it relatesto the entire complex of propositions. A fun-damental change of this complex is ratheruncommon. In any case, each description and

assessment takes place – as an act of language– within discourse, even if there is a disparitybetween those statements. By confronting adescription with the world, with nature, orsimply with reality, or in other words, byadopting a dualistic position, one attempts toresolve that conflict:

“Wenn eine gütliche Einigung nichtmöglich ist – etwa durch Überredung,Überzeugung, durch den üblichen Aus-tausch und Abtausch von Argumenten –,erfolgt eine mögliche Entscheidung zwis-chen den konkurrierenden Auffassungenmit Hilfe von Instanzen oder Kriterienoder zumindest durch Berufung auf sie.[…] Solche Instanzen können je nach Artdes Konflikts sein: die Natur, die Wirklich-keit, Sachverhalte, die Geschichte oderGesetze. [If an amicable settlement is notfeasible – e.g., by convincing, persuading,by the usual exchange and transfer of argu-ments –, a feasible decision between thecompeting opinions will follow by dint ofinstances or criteria or, at least, with refer-ence to them. […] Such instances,depending on the conflict, can include:nature, reality, circumstances, history, orlaws]

” (Mitterer 2001a, p. 70).From a non-dualistic perspective, such a

conflict is unnecessary simply because theplane of reference has changed. Instead ofrelying on entities or authorities outside thediscourse, truth and reality are merely a cur-rent complex of assertions and propositions:

“In einem nichtdualistischen ‘pursuit oftruth’ werden Auffassungen nicht ver-treten, weil sie wahr sind. Auffassungensind wahr, weil und solange sie vertretenwerden und sie sind falsch, weil undsolange sie nicht vertreten werden. DieFunktion von Begriffen wie Wahrheit undFalschheit beschränkt sich auf die Abgren-zung zwischen Auffassungen, die wir ver-treten und Auffassungen, die wir nichtvertreten. [Within a non-dualistic ‘pursuitof truth,’ views are not maintained becausethey are true. Views are true both becauseand so long as they are maintained, andthey are wrong both because and so long asthey are not maintained. The function ofterms like truth and falseness is limited tothe distinction between views we hold andviews we do not hold.]” (Mitterer 1988,p. 28)


CONCEPTS



As long as certain arguments are main-tained and certain views are held, their truthremains undoubted.

The validity and meaning of those argu-ments and propositions is determined bytheir use. So, Mitterer follows Wittgenstein’santi-metaphysical concept, namely, that themeaning of words and language alwaysinvolves their everyday usage: “

Wir

führendie Wörter von ihrer metaphysischen, wiederauf ihre alltägliche Verwendung zurück. [

We

bring the words back from their metaphysicalto their everyday use again]” (Wittgenstein1984, p. 300). Although this proposal is quiteclose to Mitterer’s initial point, he criticizessome dualistic remains in Wittgenstein’sargumentation. Mitterer, therefore, focuseson the example of a triangle. Wittgensteinargues that a single triangle can offer severalinterpretations, e.g.,

“als dreieckiges Loch, als Körper, alsgeometrische Zeichnung; auf seinerGrundlinie stehend, an seiner Spitze auf-gehängt; als Berg, als Keil, als Pfeil oderZeiger; als ein umgefallener Körper, der(z. B.) auf der kürzeren Kathete stehensollte, als ein halbes Parallelogramm, undverschiedenes anderes. [as a triangularhole, as a solid, as a geometrical drawing;as standing on its base, as hanging from itsapex; as a mountain, as a wedge, as anarrow or pointer; as an overturned objectthat (e.g.) is meant to stand on the shorterleg of the right angle, as a half parallelo-gram and as various other things]” (Wit-tgenstein 1984, p. 530). At the same time, Wittgenstein is con-

vinced that the different interpretations haveno influence on the triangle itself. All inter-pretations correspond to the triangle, buteach of them does so only with regard to onesingle aspect of it. Independently of the cho-sen aspect, each quality remains one singlepart of the ‘complete’ object. This argumen-tation, however, is still related to a correspon-dence theory that Mitterer consistently triesto avoid:

“Eine korrespondenztheoretische Vor-gangsweise kann schon deshalb nichtzielführend sein, weil sich Erfahrungenimmer nur mit Erfahrungen, Beschrei-bungen immer nur mit Beschreibungenvergleichen lassen und nicht mit einererfahrungs- und beschreibungsjenseiti-gen Realität. [An approach based on cor-

respondence theory cannot yield resultsbecause experiences can always only becompared with experiences, descriptionsalways with descriptions, and not with areality beyond experience and descrip-tion]” (Mitterer 1998, p. 114).And according to this non-dualistic per-

spective, Mitterer does not concentrate onthe triangle as an uninterpreted object or onthe relation between the different interpreta-tions of the triangle, but on the fact that even“triangle” is already an interpretation of theobject:

“Wenn wir aber immer nur eine Deutungeiner anderen Deutung gemäß sehen,dann müssen wir auch bereit sein, daraufzu verzichten, als Ausgangspunkt für dieAspekte etwas, vielleicht ein Ding,anzunehmen, das selbst nicht ein Aspektist, das etwas Ungedeutetes ist. [But if wealways see an interpretation only in accor-dance with another, we have to be pre-pared to abstain from presuming some-thing, maybe one thing, as the origin ofaspects, which is not an aspect itself, butwhich is something uninterpreted]” (Mit-terer 1992, p. 25).A similar discrepancy between object and

interpretation, world and experience can befound in Kuhn’s relativistic concept as well.At first, Kuhn argues that a (revolutionary)change of paradigm also changes the world orthe realms of experience, at least within a sci-entific community. Outside the laboratory,however, everyday life continues notwith-standing:

“Examining the record of past researchfrom the vantage of contemporary histo-riography, the historian of science may betempted to exclaim that when paradigmschange, the world itself changes withthem. […] It is rather as if the professionalcommunity had been suddenly trans-ported to another planet where familiarobjects are seen in a different light and arejoined by unfamiliar ones as well. Ofcourse, nothing of quite that sort doesoccur: there is no geographical transplan-tation; outside the laboratory everydayaffairs usually continue as before. Never-theless, paradigm changes do cause scien-tists to see the world of their research-engagement differently. In so far as theironly recourse to that world is throughwhat they see and do, we may want to say

that after a revolution scientists areresponding to a different world” (Kuhn1996, p. 111).A new (scientific) paradigm constitutes a

new (scientific) world by establishing a newmode

of description. But still, there is anobjective world left respectively there remainthe realms of experience, which are specific toa research community, outside of thesedescriptions. The new description differsfrom the old indeed. Yet, every descriptionhandles the stimuli emanating from theobjective world. Mitterer criticizes hereupon:

“Die Reize gehören zur Welt-2, die Reak-tionen darauf, die Daten, zu denen sie ver-arbeitet werden, konstituieren dieentsprechend verschiedenen Welten-1.[…] Das traditionelle erkenntnistheore-tische Para

dogma

einer Unterscheidungund Trennung zwischen dem Objekt derBeschreibung und der Beschreibung desObjekts wird somit in abgeänderter Formaufrecht erhalten: die Welt, die beschrie-ben wird, ist die (objektive) Welt-2 unddie Beschreibung der Welt macht die(Wahrnehmungs-)Welt-1 aus. Die Faktenund die Beobachtungen, die in der vonKuhn kritisierten Auffassung noch zur‘objektiven’ Welt gehört haben, sind jetztauf die Wahrnehmungs- bzw. Lebensweltübertragen worden. [The stimuli belongto world-2; accordingly, the reactionshereupon and the data which are madefrom them construct the various worlds-1. […] The traditional epistemic para-

dogma

of a distinction and separationbetween the object of description and thedescription of the object is thus perpetu-ated in a modified form: the world beingdescribed is the (objective) world-2, andthe description of the world accounts forthe (perceptive) world-1. Those facts andobservations, which were hitherto attrib-uted to the ‘objective’ world and thereforecriticized by Kuhn, have now been trans-ferred to the world of perception andlife.]” (Mitterer 1992, pp. 39f). The scientist, in this respect, only substi-

tutes one way of treatment or interpretationfor another so that different paradigms ordifferent versions of one objective world arecreated: “Faktisch wird er eine Weise derDatenverarbeitung durch eine andereersetzen. [Actually, he will substitute one wayof handling data by another]” (Kuhn 1977, p.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 131

CONCEPTS



410). By criticizing those dualistic reminis-cences, Mitterer also offers his epistemologi-cal alternative:

“Wir gelangen somit zu einem Verzichtauf theorien- und ‘sprachverschiedene’Interpretations- und Bezugsbasen unddamit auf Referenzbeziehungen über-haupt. Die Unterscheidung zwischenTheorie/Sprache und Wirklichkeit/Weltverliert ihren Sinn. [Thus, we reach anabandonment of bases for interpretationand points of reference differing from the-ory and language. The differentiationbetween theory/language and reality/world loses its meaning.]” (Mitterer 1992,pp. 42f.) To waive all external reference bases is,

then, both the beginning and the core of non-dualistic thinking.

One basic announcement of non-dualiz-ing philosophy, therefore, is the mechanismof presupposition and supposition, or

Voraussetzung

and

Setzung

: “Wir sehenTische und reden über Tische als Tische, dasheißt unter Bezugnahme auf die Sinnorien-tierungsvoraussetzungen, die wir in den situ-ationsspezifischen Setzungen […] voraus-setzen. [We see tables and talk about tables astables, i.e., in reference to the presupposi-tions we presuppose […] while making con-text-specific suppositions]” (Schmidt 2005,p. 80). A new description or interpretation(

Setzung

) always refers to previous descrip-tions or interpretations (

Voraussetzung

). Forsuch a non-dualistic concept, a reality or sub-stance apart from the process of updateddescribing is completely irrelevant. Or, asSchapp puts it:

“Wenn man bei der Auffassung davonausgeht, daß eine Wirklichkeit aufgefaßtwird und daß man mit der Auffassungimmer näher an die Wirklichkeit heran-zukommen versucht, bis man eines Tagesdie Wirklichkeit erreicht hat, so wäre esschwer mit dem Einwand fertig zu wer-den, jedenfalls wenn die Wirklichkeit, diedieser Auffassung zugrunde liegt, etwasanderes sein sollte als die Wirklichkeit derGeschichten, in die wir verstrickt sind,oder was wohl dasselbe wäre, als unsereVerstricktheit in Geschichten. [If one actson the assumption that a reality can beconceived of, and that with that assump-tion, one attempts to approach realitymore and more closely until, one day, it

has been reached, it would be difficult tocope with any objections; at least, if thereality at the core of this assumption weresomething different from the reality ofthose histories we have been ensnarledinto, or, what would possibly be the same,from our state of being ensnarled into his-tories]” (Schapp 1965, p. 111). The “ensnarling-into-histories” bars

truth or reality from reaching

beyond thosehistories or contexts.

To delineate the circular mechanism ofcondition and precondition, Mitterer hence-forth uses the terms “speech

so far

” and “

fromnow on

.” He argues: “Nichtdualisierendes ‘Reden über’ istnicht mehr auf das Objekt der Rede ger-ichtet, sondern geht vom Objekt der Redeaus. Über ein Objekt reden heißt die Rede

so far

in einer Rede

from now on

fort-führen. Ein Objekt beschreiben heißt, dieBeschreibung

so far

/ein Objekt/ fort-führen und damit das Objekt in ein neuesObjekt weiterer Beschreibungen zuändern. Das Objekt der Beschreibung ver-hält sich zur Beschreibung des Objektswie die Beschreibung

so far

zur Beschrei-bung

from now on

. [Non-dualistic ‘talkingabout’ is no longer focused on the objectof speech, but comes from the object ofspeech. Talking about an object means tocontinue the speech

so far

by a speech

fromnow on

. Describing an object means tocontinue the speech

so far

/an object/ and,thus, to change the object into a newobject of further descriptions. The objectof description relates to the description ofthe object, in the same manner as thedescription

so far

does to the description

from now on

” (Mitterer 2001a, p.107).The most important precondition for a

new description, then, is the determinationof language, or rather, the determination ofthe semantic relations. The proceeding ofsemanticity actually brings, as Ceccatoargues, objects into existence:

“Prima delle operazioni della semanticità,dunque, né essere o esistere, né cosa, cioèparlare di essere. Ma per la mancanza diconsapevolezza di queste operazioni si èpartiti dai risultati del taglio già effettuatoe ci se è arrestati a questi non quindi comea correlati, ma come a dati di per sé.[Before the operations of semanticity,then, there is neither being nor existing,

nor thing, i.e., speaking of being. Butbecause of the lack of awareness of theseoperations, one has started from theresults of the already accomplished cut,and therefore one has retained them, notas correlates, but as data for themselves.]”(Ceccato 1949, p. 242. Translation byErnst von Glasersfeld, which was pub-lished together with Ceccato’s article.) Speech acts geared towards the common

determinations of being produce the exist-ence of objects. Reality and appearance, cor-rectness and falseness: these concepts, as cat-egories of assessment, emerge out of thefixation of semantic relations and also fromthe analysis of such a determination:

“Realtà e apparenza, correttezza ed erro-neità nascono con la determinazione deirapporti semantici e con l’analisi delladeterminatezza. Nessuna cosa portascritto sopra di sé o si dichiara ‘realtà’ o‘apparenza.’ Anche il solo linguaggio nonporterebbe a parlarne. [Reality andappearance, correctness and erroneous-ness originate with the determination ofthe semantical relations and with theanalysis of the determinacy. No thing hasit written on itself or declares itself to be‘reality’ of ‘appearance.’ Nor would lan-guage (

linguaggio

) alone bring one tospeak of them]” (Ceccato 1949, p. 244;also cf. Weber 2005, p. 99). Thus, for Ceccato as well, reality, or the

correct description of it, is bound to a processof ascribing. The mechanism of suppositionand presupposition,

Setzung

and

Vorausset-zung

, now, governs this process, to the extentthat current judgments or descriptions dis-place previous decisions: “GegenwärtigeUrteile setzen vergangene Urteile außer Kraftund nicht umgekehrt. [Current judgmentsabrogate previous judgments and not theopposite way around]” (Mitterer 2000a, p.245). This also implies, as Feyerabend pointsout, that a non-dualistic process of percep-tion, cognition, and description constantlyevokes several, sometimes competing, solu-tions and alternatives persisting side by side:

“Knowledge so conceived is not a series ofself-consistent theories that convergetowards an ideal view; it is not a gradualapproach to the truth. It is rather an everincreasing

ocean of mutually incompatible

(

and perhaps even incommensurable

)

alternatives

” (Feyerabend 1975, p. 30).


CONCEPTS



The beginning of a successful description,however, is marked by a consensus; andunless there is no incompatible descriptionclash, there is no reason to measure the truthor consistency of the current discourse. Onthe other hand, truth acts as an indicator fora discoursive conflict:

“Wahrheitsansprüche und Irrtumsvor-würfe werden erst dann explizit erhoben,wenn im Diskurs Konflikte auftreten, dasheißt auch: wenn der Konsens zusammen-bricht, der bis dahin bestanden hat. Dis-kurse beginnen nicht mit einem Konflikt,sie beginnen mit einem Konsens. [Truthclaims and error reproaches are raisedonly when conflicts occur within dis-course, which also means: only when thehitherto existing consensus collapses. Dis-courses do not begin with a conflict, theybegin with a consensus]” (Mitterer 1999,p. 494).An important argument in such conflicts

is the appropriate distance between observerand object, judgment and reality. Thoughthere is no overall criterion for that kind ofdistance, the insistence on the correctness ofone’s own distance is typically the only wayout of this dilemma: “Es bleibt uns aber dieMöglichkeit, eine objektive Distanz zwischendem Objekt und unserem Urteil über denUmweg einer Kritik an Auffassungen zu argu-mentieren, die das gleiche Objekt beurteilen.[But there remains the possibility for us toargue for an objective distance between theobject and our judgment by making a detourto critique other opinions that judge the sameobject]” (Mitterer 2001b, p. 31). Finally, every(philosophical) problem – as well as every(alleged) solution to it – is self-made. Thesuccess of a description, an assessment, oreven a scientific ideology, as Feyerabend callsit, is due to certain rules, a certain arguingwithin discourse:

“Such ideology is ‘successful’ not becauseit agrees so well with the facts; it is success-ful because no facts have been specifiedthat could constitute a test, and becausesome such facts have been removed. Its‘success’

is entirely man-made

” (Feyera-bend 1975, p. 44).A non-dualistic perspective, however,

offers an alternate solution by depicting boththe conditions and the traditional, ontologi-cal customs of epistemology.

4. Conclusion

There are certainly traces from cultural the-ory that help to reconstruct the genesis ofnon-dualizing philosophy. The argumentthat the description of culture needs a cultureof description and vice versa launches a circu-lar process independent from an ulterior real-ity. At the same time, with this cohesive andincessant movement, as Hayek expounds, it isimpossible to revise the whole foundation

ofvalues at once because the fundament itself isindispensable for such a reorganization:

“Wir können die Wertgrundlagen unsererZivilisation nie von Grund auf neu auf-bauen, sondern immer nur von innen her-aus entwickeln. Auch das führt zuununterbrochener Bewegung, ja vielleichtim Lauf der Zeit sogar zu einer Änderungdes Ganzen. Aber eine völlige Neukon-struktion ist in keiner Etappe des Prozessesmöglich, weil wir stets das Material ver-wenden müssen, das uns zur Verfügungsteht und das selbst das Produkt einesEntwicklungsprozesses ist. [We will neverbe able to rebuild the value foundations ofour civilisation fundamentally, but canonly ever develop them from within. Thisalso leads to continuous movement,maybe even, in the course of time, to analteration of the whole. But a totally newconstruction is not possible in any portionof the process because we must always usethe material available, which is itself theproduct of a developmental process]”(Hayek 1975, p. 23).Especially against the background of cul-

tural theory, Mitterer’s concept reveals itself,so to speak, as an application of itself. It dealswith several argumentations as its presuppo-sitions, its

Voraussetzungen

; it ties in with aptperspectives, and it declines others. Thus,non-dualizing philosophy functions in accor-dance with the results of its own observationsand findings. It deals with several approaches,which have been outlined in this paper andmust be explored in greater depth elsewhere.Although some references are not explicitlymentioned by Mitterer – namely those to cul-tural theory, pragmatism, or the sociology ofknowledge – the theory reveals itself as adevelopment of earlier standpoints. It is notonly embedded into a context of previous andcurrent descriptions, but congruously offersan epistemic description

from now on

. But

mostly, the criticism developed therebyunveils the difficulties of some commonunderstandings, most notably those of real-ism and (biologistic) constructivism:

“Beide Denkmodelle – das realistische wiedas konstruktivistische – sind Manifesta-tionen einer Argumentationstechnik, mitderen Hilfe beliebige Auffassungen alswahr, falsch oder gescheitert im realistis-chen Fall und zumindest als nichtviabel,gescheitert oder widerlegt im konstruktiv-istischen Fall ausgewiesen werden kön-nen, je nachdem, ob sie vertreten oderabgelehnt werden. Dies geschieht unterBerufung auf eine ‘unabhängige Realität’oder andere Instanzen, die durch die Real-isierung und Universalisierung von theo-retischen Konstruktionen aus der Biologieoder anderen Bereichen erzeugt werden.[Both models of thinking – the realisticand constructivist – are manifestations ofan argumentation technique, with thehelp of which any opinions can be revealedas true, false, or failed in the case of real-ism, or, at least as nonviable, failed, orrefuted in the case of constructivism,depending on whether the opinion is heldor refused. This happens with reference toan ‘independent reality’ or to otherinstances that are created by the realisationand universalization of theoretic con-structs from biology or other domains]”(Mitterer 2000b, pp. 63f).The non-dualistic idea, in contrast, clearly

abstains from a reality or any other universalexplanations beyond discourse. As a result, ithelps to detect argumentative weaknesses intraditional epistemology as well as in con-structivism. Mitterer points to the dualisticimplications in each case. Realists assume oneindependent world whereas constructivistsfirst have to create their world, either individ-ually or collectively.

Both perspectives, how-ever, lose sight of these starting conditions.Conflicting aims, ideas, or interests therebybecome unavoidable. The criteria for thosediscussions, then, assume right, objective, orvalid standards. Mitterer’s non-dualistic con-cept, on the other hand, argues that observa-tions or descriptions only occur within dis-course and that an ulterior reality is notnecessary for their success.

And although Mit-terer does not actually define the term dis-course more closely – it is supposed to indi-cate a rather unspecific, general sphere of

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 133

CONCEPTS



communication – his concept provides, as a

Setzung

made from now on, a favourable res-olution of all those grey epistemological hin-drances.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Eric Scheufler (Univer-sity of Washington, Seattle) for the correctionof the text.

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(3): 229–246.Feyerabend, P. (1987) Farewell to reason.

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line of an anarchistic theory of knowledge.NLB: London.

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Received: 16 March 2008Accepted: 24 June 2008

Christian Meierhofer is a postgraduate in German literature studies at the University of Bremen. His research interests include literary and cultural theory, epistemology, and sociology of knowledge as well as early modern literature. Recent publication: Nihil ex Nihilo (2006).

THE AUTHOR


Tertium Datur

Historical Preconditions and Ways to Mitterer’s Non-dualizing Philosophy

1. There is no tertium non datur; or more precisely, there exists no general validity for tertium non datur

One of the most important principles of epis-temology is the following assumption: anyand every statement is either true or false.Contending that statements are arbitrary,statements cannot be called to account, state-ments have no content or that statements aremeaningless seems to offer an escape fromthe rigorous dictum that any and every state-ment is true or false. This escape valve imme-diately narrows, however, when we realizethat these very contentions regarding thenature of statements are themselves state-ments, i.e., statements about other state-ments. In order to moor oneself within thismaze of statements on statements, epistemol-ogy turns for help to mathematical logic,which has produced a famous principle, theprinciple of the excluded middle. In order toprove that each and every statement is eithertrue or false, logic requires the

tertium nondatur

, i.e., (

∀

x

: A(

x

))

∨

(

∃

x

: ¬A(

x

)). This for-mula tells us: when A(

x

) is a statement con-taining the numeric variable

x

, then either

this statement is always true for every numbersubstituted for

x

or there exists a number tobe substituted for

x

where the statement isfalse. Since we are dealing with a statement ofexistence here, i.e., “there is” or “thereforethere is,” we can see that the tertium nondatur constitutes an ontological principle,because the linking verb “is” – the verb thatlinks subject and predicate – functions as anexistential quantifier. In this context of prob-lems Josef Mitterer discusses in his work, i.e.,how statements concerning sentencesbecome statements concerning existence.

That a statement cannot be valid togetherwith its negation – e.g., “it is raining” and “itis not raining” – can be considered self-evi-dent (

principium contradictionis

). This is alsotrue for statements containing the terms “all”and “to be.” Accordingly, a statement is “true”when it is free of contradictions. This freedomfrom contradiction can, however, also beproven on a purely formal basis. In order toprove a statement’s freedom from contradic-tion, it is not necessary to move beyond lan-guage itself; for a statement A is “false” whenit leads to a contradiction. In order to provethese statements, however, we require the ter-tium non datur, and the tertium non daturmust itself be proven. The mathematicianDavid Hilbert provided this “proof of the ter-tium non datur” in 1931: “Each and every

statement is either true or false. In order toprove this sentence, we require the tertiumnon datur. From the tertium non datur, weconclude: a true formula cannot also be false.If A is false, then ¬A is true. For A v¬A isalways true. In addition, the following is alsotrue: if A is true, ¬A is false. For A & ¬A isalways false” (Hilbert 1931, p. 123).

The critical moment of Hilbert’s proofcomes at the juncture between the statement“A true formula cannot also be false” and thestatement “If A is false, ¬A is then true” – forwhat we see here constitutes the infamous“indirect proof,” even though the argument“For A v ¬A is always true” is convincing.According to identity of indiscernibles, a truestatement cannot be also false. Through thenegation of the true statement A there arises afalse statement ¬A. It is self-evident that thestatement “A or ¬A” is always true, for only Aor ¬A can be valid. However, it is discomfort-ing when this forms the basis for the tertiumnon datur, or when this prohibition is used asan indirect proof. It is clear that we can say“Hans is blond” or “Hans is not blond.” Butwe cannot deduce from the statement “Hansis not blond” that “Hans is brown-haired,”since he could also have white hair. Here theproponent of logical intuitionism, Jan Brou-wer, intervened and showed mathematicalareas where the tertium non datur cannot bevalid, e.g., for statements concerning infinityor concerning certain fixed sets (Brouwer1918). For statements concerning objects thatare not completely disjunct, the inclusive dis-junction “Hans is blond or it is not the casethat Hans is blond” of course makes littlesense. For this reason, Brouwer particularlycriticized statements of the form “If not-A(

x

)is not valid for any

x

, then for every

x

A(

x

) isvalid,” which are derivable from the principleof the excluded third. The combination of ter-tium non datur and indirect proof does not

Peter Weibel

A

Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Germany) <[email protected]>

historical


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R Purpose – Tracing the historical roots of Mitterer’s non-dualizing philosophy in Aus-trian philosophers who studied the relationship between object and language around 1900. R Methodology – Discussing the epistemological relevance of the “tertium non datur” principle and disclosing the mutual influence of early language critics Mauthner, Stöhr, and Wahle, who also anticipated many of Wittgenstein’s later insights. R Findings – Mitterer’s philosophy can be considered the endpoint of the Austrian tradition of language criticism. His non-dualizing approach is a methodological constructivism that does not comply with “tertium non datur.” R Implications – Non-dualizing philosophy can also be applied to media theory. R Key words – Object language, metalanguage, philosophy of language, Gödel, Mauthner, Stöhr, Wahle, Wittgenstein.

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signify finite certainty in mathematics. Thisdoctrine of intuitionism cannot be refuted, inspite of Hilbert’s later “proof” in 1931.

The principle of the excluded middle isapparently only valid in systems determinedfrom the outset by the principle of bivalence –a principle that, however, is not valid for allsystems in mathematics, e.g., the continuumhypothesis in set theory. In set theory with itsreflexitivity (Is the set of all sets itself a set? Isthe set of all sets contained in itself?), we cansee particularly clearly that statements con-cerning statements require the separationbetween the level of object and the meta-level,and between object language and meta-lan-guage. The problem of tertium non daturmust be distinguished from the principle ofbivalence, which states that every statement Ais either true or false. A true statement is freefrom contradiction within its system, a falsestatement leads to contradictions in the sys-tem. We see that the principle of the excludedmiddle, the principle of bivalence and theprinciple of consistency are logically related,in spite of the “discomfort” mentioned thathovers about this particular logical process ofderivation. If I should wish to trace a givenhypothesis through to a contradiction andthen – employing the excluded middle – indi-rectly prove it to be false and the

negated

hypothesis to be true, I require the principleof freedom from contradiction, embedded ina bivalent logical system. This admixture iswhat Brouwer first criticized. Since then,many thinkers have followed him in his criti-cism, especially as numerous indications ofthe incompleteness and undecidability ofmathematical statements have come to lightsince then – most notably, the two famoustheorems of the mathematician Kurt Gödelfrom 1931.

The first theorem of Gödel is: Every for-malized and axiomatic theory free of contra-diction in the realm of arithmetics is incom-plete, i.e., there always exists a statement inthis theory that is true in content but cannotbe derived from the axioms of the theory. Thesecond theorem of Gödel is: It is not possibleto prove the freedom from contradiction of aformalized and axiomatic theory (one that isfree of contradiction), encompassed by arith-metic, using means or tools formalized withinthis theory. In this way, Hilbert’s program ofan axiomatic, formal foundation for mathe-matics, one that would be free of contradic-

tion, was ruined – for there were suddenlyundecidable mathematic sentences and theo-rems whose formal unprovability was for-mally proven.

2. What sort of difference exists between object language and meta-language, between world and language?

Gödel achieved his two famous proofs of theundecidability and incompleteness of thePrincipia Mathematica and related systemswith the help of the method now known asGödelization. In Gödelization statementsconcerning mathematics are assigned aGödel-number, with these numbers then seenas statements in number theory. In otherwords, he built a bridge between object lan-guage and meta-language. This process of pin-ning down differences (or the lack thereof)between object language – statements con-cerning objects in mathematics or in the world– and meta-language – statements concerningthese statements – had its origins in the lan-guage philosophy and epistemology of Viennaaround 1900, origins that we shall now discussthrough examining the language philosophiesof Stöhr, Wahle and Mauthner.

2.1 The beginning of language critique in Vienna around 1900: Stöhr, Wahle, Mauthner

In fin-de-siécle Vienna, transcendental analy-sis came to be replaced by epistemologicalanalysis and interpretation of scientific state-ments, expressions and methods (Mach andBoltzmann), also incorporating nominalisticlogic (the school of Brentano). This epistemo-logical and epistemological-critical analysisnaturally also had an effect on philosophy,which shifted towards logical analysis of lan-guage and language critique. The languagephilosophers of the turn of the century werethe first to define the boundaries of knowl-edge as boundaries of language, an approachlater popularized by Ludwig Wittgenstein inhis

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

. They firstanalyzed (and debunked) the entanglementsof philosophy as problems in language, and

ultimately dealt with problems of existence asproblems in language, separating out state-ments concerning existence from logicalstatements.

Adolf Stöhr (1855–1921) belongs alongwith Richard Wahle and Fritz Mauthner tothe founders of language-critical epistemol-ogy. Stöhr saw himself as a student of ErnstMach and was an opponent of Franz Bren-tano. His anti-metaphysical position, takenover from Mach, had strong language-criticalelements. In his essay

Ist Metaphysik möglich?

[

Is Metaphysics Possible?

] (1916) he deniesperception any possibility of a path to meta-physics: “Three paths lead to metaphysics.The path of creative fantasy, the path of thesuffering heart, and the path of the unfolding(

“rollendes,”

literally “rolling”) word. A fourthpath, the path of epistemology, has provenuninhabitable…the metaphysics of the roll-ing word is the most commonly used path.”According to Stöhr, the metaphysician of therolling word confuses an object with its name,rendering metaphor and concept concrete.Stöhr discusses the difference between objectlanguage and meta-language, but he does sovia the essential problem of the relationshipbetween world and language. In his bridgingof this difference, Stöhr goes so far as to saythat he no longer allows the existence of theouter world as an object for rational state-ments – for him, the world is at best an objectfor the exercise of belief. “Where we speak ofan outer world, metaphysics begins. Anyonewishing to avoid solipsism is already a positivemetaphysician – even if he is convinced of thecontrary.” It is not surprising that the CatholicStöhr nevertheless found an escape from thisbind – by allowing metaphysics to function asa path of belief. “There is no inductive proofand also no deductive proof either for oragainst any given belief.”

In his

Umriss einer Theorie der Namen

(

Outline of a Theory of Names

, 1899), Stöhrargued that a differentiation between subjectand object should be attributed more to lan-guage than to experience. For him, only theworld of language existed. Accordingly, thedifference between world and language is alsoattributable to language, as is the differencebetween subject and object. Meta-languageand object language are therefore elementsonly of language itself and cannot be used toconstruct statements concerning existence inthe world.


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No less radical than Mauthner and Witt-genstein, Stöhr attacks philosophy for confus-ing forms of language with forms of thought.“Non-sense can only be spoken, not thought.We never say ‘Don’t think nonsense!’, but only‘Don’t talk nonsense!’ Nonsense is only possi-ble through language.” Or, “In fact, the historyof logic and a greater part of the history of phi-losophy is the history of a struggle with glos-somorphy and metaphors, the history of abattle between nascent thought and estab-lished speech” (Stöhr 1910, p. 409). Stöhr hereclearly expresses his view that our thought isdependent on language, and that the enslave-ment of thought occurs through language.

For this reason, he also attempted in his

Algebra of Grammar. A Contribution to Mor-phology and Syntax

(1898) to build the basesof a purified formal language, anticipatingCarnap’s

Logical Syntax of Language

(1934). “Die Algebra der Grammatik ist daherauch geeignet, das Denken von demBanne des Unwesentlichen und Zufälli-gen in den Sprachformen zu befreien. Dertheoretische Hauptnutzen einer Algebrader Grammatik dürfte aber darin beste-hen, dass dieselbe die Grundlage einerphilosophisch geklärten Darstellung derFormenlehre und Syntax einer bestim-mten Sprache abzugeben vermag.[The algebra of grammar is thus also suit-able for freeing thought from the limita-tions of unessential and chance elementsin language forms. The chief theoreticaluses of an algebra of grammar should,however, be that they also can supply thebasis for a philosophically clarified mor-phology, and the syntax of a particularlanguage]” (Mauthner 1898, p. 140). In his essay

Outline of a Theory of Names

(1899), Stöhr examined the connectionbetween word and meaning, “…how it is pos-sible, with respect to the psychology of associ-ation, that a word comes to be associated withone meaning. This is relevant both for the his-torical or phylogenetic side of name-givingand for the ontogenetic aspect, relevant forthe learning of names by the child and for theuse of those names after they have beenlearned.” We can see that Stöhr made a dis-tinction between

langue

and

langage

, betweenlanguage and language competency. The alge-bra of grammar assumes all problems of thetheory of names to be somehow alreadysolved.

“Sie behandelt alle Wortstämme ganz gle-ich als ein algebraisches

a

mit ver-schiedenen Indices. Die Stämme mögennun Dinge, Personen, Stoffe, Vorgänge,Zustände, Eigenschaften, Relationen oderwas immer sonst bedeuten. Für die Alge-bra der Grammatik ist der Inhalt derBedeutung von a so gleichgültig, wie dieBeschaffenheit der gezählten Gegenständefür die Technik der Addition und Multipli-cation […] Es sei z.B. ‘

d a

’ die allgemeineBezeichnung für einen abgeleiteten Aus-druck, ungefähr so wie man

f

(

x

) schreibt.Mit der Ableitungsoperation ist dieTätigkeit der Grammatik nicht erschöpft.Die Ausdrücke müssen, ob sie nun abgele-itet sind oder ursprünglich bleiben, zuSätzen aneinandergestellt werden. DieAlgebra der Grammatik vermag nun dieOperation des Satzbaus derart zum Aus-druck zu bringen, dass sie dabei von denEigenarten des Baustiles absieht.[It treats all word roots equally as an alge-braic a with various indexes. The rootsmay now signify things, persons, materi-als, actions, states, properties, relations oranything else. For the algebra of grammar,the content of the meaning is as arbitraryas the content of counted things for thetechniques of addition and multiplication… For instance, we can posit ‘

d a

’ as thegeneral term for a derived expression,somewhat as we use

f

(

x

). But the functionof grammar is not exhausted by this deriv-ative operation. Expressions, whetherderived or original, must be formedtogether into sentences. The algebra ofgrammar may now describe the operationof constructing sentences in such a waythat it can ignore the peculiarities of con-struction style]” (Stöhr 1899, pp. 2–3). Thus, if

a

signifies the minimum unit ofacoustic expression to which a meaning isconnected, several

a

s will be required in theconstruction of the algebraic expression of asentence, in which case the separate meaningsof these

a

s must be distinct. The variety ofmeanings is denoted by indexes such as

a

,

a

',

a

'' or

a

(0),

a

(1),

a

(2), and

a

(3). “Man denke sich nun alle

a

-Ausdrückeeiner Sprache alphabetisch geordnet, undjeden Ausdruck mit einer konstant zugew-iesenen Zahl versehen. Zwei verschiedenlautende Ausdrücke

a

' und

a

'', welche einidentische Bedeutung haben, erhalten gle-

iche Zahlen zugewiesen. Ein

a

, welchesmehrere Bedeutungen hat, erhält so vieleZahlen als Bedeutungen unterschiedenwerden. Wenn

x

diejenige größte Zahl ist,welche in diesem

a

-Lexikon der Sprache Aderzeit erreicht wird, dann ist der alge-braische Ausdruck für ein a mit bestim-mter Bedeutung einer der Ausdrücke zwis-chen

a

(1) und

a

(

x

). Man denke sich nunein alphabetisches a-Lexikon in einerzweiten Sprache B angelegt. Dasjenige

a

der B-Sprache, dessen Bedeutung sich mitder Bedeutung von

a

in der A-Sprachedeckt, wird gleichfalls die Zahl

n

erhalten.[We shall suppose all

a

-terms in a languageto be ordered alphabetically, and eachterm will be given a fixed number. Two dif-fering terms

a

' and

a

'', which have an iden-tical meaning, are assigned identical num-bers. An

a

with a variety of differentmeanings is assigned as many numbers asit has meanings. If

x

is the greatest numberreached in this

a

-lexicon of language A sofar, then the algebraic term for an

a

withone particular meaning is included in theterms between

a

(1) and

a

(

x

). We now sup-pose an alphabetical

a

-lexicon for a secondlanguage, language B. The term

a

in lan-guage B whose meaning coincides with themeaning of

a

in language A will alsoreceive the number

n

” (p. 8). We see that Stöhr advocated a finite stand-

point, a standpoint claiming to be capable ofsupplying all terms in a language and of build-ing all combinations or derivations. In thiscontext, Stöhr’s assignment of numbers tonames or terms is significant, and is mostprobably derived from Leibniz, embodying aswell a rudimentary process of Gödelization –it was used, in fact, by Gödel in the proof ofhis first Theorem of Incompleteness in 1931.The practical applications for translation arealso evident, since it should be possible tochange from one language to another with thehelp of numbers. Stöhr here already takes ona theme W. V. O. Quine later would formulateinto his famous thesis of the “Indeterminacyof Translation” in

Word and Object

(1960). Asunsuitable as Stöhr’s technique may be, theidea of a formal language – in fact, an trulyartificial language analogous to mathematicsand formal logic (e.g.,

a

(

p

(1)

o

(1)

f

(1)

e

(1)

t

(3) = “I shall not do it”) – is formulated sys-tematically and thoroughly, with ground-breaking significance (cf. Carnap and the

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consequences thereof: Kripke 1980, Harris1960 and his student Chomsky 1957).

The Vienna Circle provided another fore-runner (albeit a relatively unsystematic one)to the demasking of metaphysical languageand the denunciation of all forms of meta-physics as illusory in another student ofMach, Richard Wahle (1857–1935). Wahle,too, saw language as a limit set on experienceand as a wall blocking the path to reality. Healso shared with Stöhr and Mauthner a rejec-tion of metaphor and metaphysics. Heaccused philosophy in a language-criticalcontext of “not distinguishing between thefull word and empty word, and propagatingevery kind of inexactitude, mistake, lie, andcunning phrase through the form of abstrac-tion.”

A non-academic thinker who neverthelessfar outdistanced Stöhr and Wahle in hisaccomplishments, significance and influ-ence, Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923), anotheradmirer of Mach, also fell victim to a compa-rable agnosticism as result of his language-analytic philosophy. Mauthner was perhapsthe first thinker in the 20th century whoplaced language criticism at the forefront ofepistemology and analysis and radicallynegated the epistemological function of lan-guage. One consequence of this was thatMauthner, based on his merciless analysis oflanguage in the wake of Mach (whose lectureshe attended in Prague 1872), threw meta-physics and philosophy overboard, consider-ing them mere superstition of words.

Mauthner’s main achievement actuallylies in his subjecting language, as a mediumof knowledge, to a precise nominalistic anal-ysis for the first time. In this capacity, he con-tributed to the founding of linguistics as anindependent science. He casts the generalapplications and validity of language intodoubt, proceeding from the standpoint that“die Individualsprache eines Menschen nie-mals der irgend eines anderen Menschenvollkommen gleich ist, und dass ein und der-selbe Mensch in verschiedenen Lebensalternnicht die gleiche Sprache redet [the individ-ual language of one human being is nevercompletely identical to that of anotherhuman being, and one and the same humanbeing does not speak the same language indifferent stages of life]” (Mauthner 1901–1902, Volume 1, p. 6) The concept of the indi-vidual language was further pursued in the

1920s and 30s – and also in the 50s and 60s –as a subject of separate inquiry. Even the mostabstract, generalized language of conceptscannot deny its perspicuity or its basis in con-crete individual experience: the language ofmetaphysics, for example, is already embed-ded in the language of metaphor even beforeit is uttered. In this sense, language is notmerely a depiction of something, but also ashaper of something – an image of the worldcompelling us to certain trains of thoughtwithout our knowing it. This also sets limitson conceptual language in the service of con-veying knowledge. Accordingly, it can beargued that the structure of thought is essen-tially determined through language. Mauth-ner’s investigations in language philosophyshow to what extent the forms of language arealso forms of thought in the areas of conceptformation and the categorical structure ofconsciousness. “Language and reason existbetween human beings, they are social phe-nomena. Perhaps only in the sense of therules of a game. A critique of reason mustbecome a critique of language. All criticalphilosophy is a critique of language.” Mauth-ner’s critique of language consists of two par-allel but contradictory lines: (a) the charac-teristics of language (its a posteriori, itstransformations) countervene the commu-nication of experience and thoughts; (b) atthe time a thought occurs, it is already pre-formed by the characteristics of language.Thus, Mauthner urges thinkers to silence.Language conceals reality, experience andthought. “Language is a tool incapable ofgrasping reality.”

This doubting of language is not onlycharacteristic of philosophers at the begin-ning of our century, but also of poeticthought. Mauthner’s doubts have had a large,albeit largely hidden effect on the develop-ment of poetry in our century. Mauthnerhimself could not achieve an integration oflanguage scepticism and poetry, aside fromhis

Märchenbuch der Wahrheit

[

Fairy TaleBook of Truth

]. However, the influence of his

Contributions to a Critique of Language

(orig-inally published 1901–1902) was all thestronger on poets contemplating the insuffi-ciency of expression through language. Pas-sages marked in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’scopy of Mauthner’s

Critique of Language

, aswell as his letters to Mauthner, imply that his

Letter of Lord Chandos

, an early poetic expres-

sion of scepticism regarding language andsilence, was influenced by Mauthner, as wellas by Ernst Mach, whose lectures he hadattended.

Hugo Ball became familiar with Mauth-ner’s philosophy of language through twoworks of Gustav Landauer (

Skepticism andMysticism

in 1903, and

Revolution

in 1907),who was actually a student of Mauthner. Bothof these works take on Mauthner’s languagecritique as a basis for a new course of action,the revolution. In Tegel prison, the Sovietrepublican and utopian socialist Landauercame to know Mauthner’s work, later cominginto contact with him and even putting him-self at Mauthner’s disposal as a secretary dur-ing the writing of the three volumes of the

Critique of Language

when Mauthner wasthreatened by blindness.

The world-famous topologist and set the-oretician, Felix Hausdorff, also exchangedcorrespondence with Mauthner and Land-auer. Hausdorff, under the pseudonym PaulMongré, attempted to forge a link betweenpoetry and philosophy – in works such as

Sant’ Ilario

(1897) and

The Chaos in CosmicAssortment

(1898), where he denies the exist-ence of absolute knowledge and claims thewholly arbitrary nature of our view of theworld. The last work Hausdorff publishedunder the pseudonym of Mongré before hefinally turned his full attention to mathemat-ics was most probably his glowing review ofMauthner’s

Critique of Language.

In Hausdorff, Landauer and Ball, we canalready recognize a consequence of Mauth-ner’s critique of language that Mauthnerhimself was not prepared to follow: if knowl-edge of reality is impossible through lan-guage, if language hinders access to thoughtand to experience, then scepticism of lan-guage need not be a dead end – instead, thearbitrariness our world view has thusacquired could lend us the intellectual free-dom to posit reality as we wish, to transformit, to create it anew. Thus, the critique of lan-guage is the beginning of modern construc-tivism.

2.2 Mauthner as a Forerunner of Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein must have known Mauthner’sworks better than he let on. Undeniably,Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language,through its formal-logical basis, its scientific


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and mathematical methods, its analyticdepth and system, has had the greater weightand effect over time. Yet there are a surprisingnumber of similarities between the thinkingof both philosophers, and Mauthner formu-lated many points before Wittgenstein did.For one thing, Wittgenstein adopted the pro-gram “every critical philosophy is a critiqueof language” from Mauthner – his slogan, soto speak – even though he fashioned some-thing new from it: “All philosophy is ‘Critiqueof language’” (Tractatus 4.0031; “but not atall in Mauthner’s sense”). The well-knownladder image at the end of Wittgenstein’sTractatus – “My propositions are elucidatoryin this way: he who understands me finallyrecognizes them as senseless, when he hasclimbed out through them, on them, overthem. (He must so to speak throw away theladder, after he has climbed up on it.)” (6.54)– has its origins in Mauthner: “Should I wishto scale the heights of language critique, themost important occupation of thinking man,I must destroy each rung of the ladder byclimbing on it. If another wishes to followme, he must then build the rungs anew, inorder to destroy them yet again.” Wittgen-stein’s later philosophy also has its roots inMauthner – for instance, Wittgenstein’s the-ory of language game is anticipated inMauthner: “Language, however, is not anobject, it is nothing but its usage, language isthe use of language. Language is merely anillusory value, like a rule in a game, thatbecomes more and more compelling themore players participate, but that does notseek to change or comprehend the world ofreality.” (Wittgenstein later claims that themeaning of a word is its use in a language.)Wittgenstein’s mysticism – “We feel that evenif all possible scientific questions be answered,the problems of life have still not beentouched at all” (6.52) and “There is indeedthe inexpressible. This shows itself; it is themystical” (6.522) – was formulated thus byMauthner: “The core of our knowledge hasnothing to do with language and thinking”or, “That would certainly be the act ofredemption, to exercise criticism in thepeaceful, desperate suicide of thought orspeech.” The suicide of speech as redemp-tion, the silence in which the unsayable, themystical, becomes manifest: “What we can-not speak about we must pass over in silence,”as Wittgenstein wrote.

2.3 Quine’s Word and ObjectThe analytic philosopher, set theorist andlogician W. V. O. Quine, who personally tookpart in the lectures and seminars of theVienna Circle in the 1930s, tackled the dis-tinction between analytic and synthetic sen-tences in his 1951 essay Two Dogmas ofEmpiricism. The truth of analytic sentences,as is known, results from the separate, con-stituent expressions found within them. Thetruth of synthetic sentences originates intheir correspondence with reality. As Witt-genstein wrote in Tractatus Logico-Philo-sophicus: “A preposition is a picture of real-ity” (4.01). Quine showed that not individualsentences, but only theories capable ofempirical verification can be true or false –and that even analytic sentences cannot com-pletely erase the traces of their empirical con-tingencies. For their part, theories can neverbe completely verified, because the truthcontent of statements fluctuates along withthe systems in which they are formulated.Language can only be learned in connectionwith experiences – hence, there can be nostrict separation between language andworld, between Word and Object (1960).There exists a principal empirical indetermi-nacy for the objects we notice and observe,and for the objects that then become words –words that in turn then determine howobjects are observed and what meaning theyhave. For instance, I live to a certain extentfrom those substances to which I assign thename “proteins” on the basis of my analyticcapabilities. What, then, have I ingested?Words or substances? Do these objects existwithout the words? Or are objects trans-formed in accordance with my analytic capa-bilities and names? Quine posited the thesesof the “indeterminacy of translation” and the“opacity of reference”: reality is essentiallyincapable of being investigated, and what wedo know about it is a construction of lan-guage.

2.4 From Wittgenstein and Quine to MittererJosef Mitterer took the Viennese tradition oflanguage critique as an epistemologicalprinciple to its intellectual conclusion. Herealized that this tradition did not actuallyattack the boundaries of language as bound-aries of the world, but instead ran up againsta hidden dualism. This dualism is the central

raison d’être of classical philosophy: the abil-ity to strictly distinguish between Word andObject, between what we speak and thethings about which we speak, between meta-language and object language. The dichot-omy between language and reality, betweendescription and object, between languageand world, between statement and its sub-ject, is the real problem – not the boundarybetween language and reality. ClassicalWestern philosophy is thus a dualistic phi-losophy, based upon a dichotomy betweenlanguage and reality. Mitterer, however, doesnot fall into the ontological traps found inParmenides (“Language is existence”) upthrough Heidegger, but attempts, in the tra-dition of the Vienna School of language cri-tique, to mobilize theories of truth out ofstatements that in no way attempt to deter-mine reality but rather “language-differedreality.” After we have absorbed the lessonthat reality is stronger than thought, andthought stronger than language – i.e., thatnot everything thinkable (as truth) can alsobe (in a proof) formalized (Gödel) and thatnot all realities can be thought – after we havelearned that language corrupts understand-ing and clouds reality, and that the worldencompassed by logic is not always a worldof either/or, of true or false – Mitterer arrivesat his ultimate decision not to become miredin the mysticism of silence or the pragma-tism of action, but rather to recognize andcomprehend the transformability and con-structability of the world through that verynon-dualism.

“The ‘pursuit of truth’ is replaced by a ‘pur-suit of change’” (Mitterer 1992, §97).“What reality consists of, is determinedthrough the course of the descriptions”(§98).“The ‘language-different’ reality is thebeyond of discourse. The descriptionscorresponding to the ‘language-different’reality and thus describing reality ‘as it is’– are exactly those descriptions (or repeti-tions of exactly those descriptions) whoseanticipated results form (or have formed)reality” (§99).Mitterer’s philosophy, in opposition to the

dualistic epistemological principle, is a phi-losophy that renounces the categorical divi-sion between language and language-oppos-ing reality, but that also renounces theagreement between language and reality. It

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historical non-dualizing philosophy

sums up both language-critical and logicalanalyses of the Vienna Circle and its anteced-ents, but also of its successors such as the epis-temological anarchism of Paul K. Feyerabendas well as the radical constructivism of Heinzvon Foerster and Ernst von Glasersfeld. Non-dualistic philosophy defines the world notonly as a sum of descriptions made up untilthe present, but also implies that a newdescription of the subject modifies the objectof description – and even modifies the olddescription. Descriptions compete not withan unknowable reality – this was the classicalcomplaint of language critique – but with newdescriptions. These (on the other hand) are incompetition with the objects describingthem, just as the objects are in competitionwith its descriptions. This mutual competi-tion is more than a mere mutual relativizingin the service of critical-rational epistemol-ogy. Its scope surpasses that of constructiv-ism, which shows us that our knowledge isconstructed. Mitterer’s philosophy shows usthat the objects of knowledge and the descrip-tion of these objects, along with the knowl-edge of these objects, are constructed. Hisnon-dualism constitutes a methodical con-structivism, emerging from the analytic ratio-nality of logical language critique, but alsofrom the intuitionist critique of the excludedmiddle (the tertium non datur). In Mitterer’sphilosophy, we can say “tertium datur,” andthis philosophy is therefore not dualistic.

3. ConclusionThe methodic constructivism of Mitterer’snon-dualistic philosophy shows language andworld as elements of a mutually dependentconstructivity. Language and world are notseparated by a chasm of difference. As meta-language is derived from object language,there exists – in the form of the subject – abridge between language and world. Languageand world overlap more than they diverge.This is why Mitterer’s philosophy is so suitableand attractive for a theory of media that viewsthe world itself as a kind of overlap. This sideof the world world becomes the beyond of phi-losophy when the observed and describedworld emerges from nothing other than thesesame descriptions and observations, which inturn – implemented in the form of technology– transform the world, which then furthertransforms descriptions, observations andtechnologies. It is in fact fortunate that theworld is incomplete, mirroring that good for-tune in the Theorem of Incompleteness. Mit-terer thus belongs to that school of philosophythat may not break the world out of its magicspell, but de-defines it, because the definitionof world – as the word finis (Latin for “end”),embedded in the word “definition,” implies –would mean the end of the world, the defini-tive end, so to speak. It goes without sayingthat a methodical constructivist would do wellto end his text here with the word “end.”

ReferencesAll translations from German are made by theauthor.Brouwer, L. E. J. (1918) Begründung der Men-

genlehre unabhängig vom logischen Satzvom ausgeschlossenen Dritten. Verhande-lingen der Koninklijke Akademie vanWetenschappen te Amsterdam 12(5): 1–43.

Carnap, R. (1934) Logische Syntax der Spra-che. Springer: Vienna.

Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic Structures.Mouton: The Hague.

Gödel, K. (1931) Über formal unentscheid-bare Sätze der Principia Mathematica undverwandter Systeme I. Monatshefte fürMathematik und Physik 38: 173–198.

Harris, Z. S. (1960) Structural linguistics.Chicago University Press: Chicago.

Hilbert, D. (1931) Beweis des Tertium nondatur. Nachrichten der Gesellschaft derWissenschaften zu Göttingen. Mathema-tisch-physikalische Klasse: 120–125.

Kripke, S. (1980) Naming and Necessity. Har-vard University Press: Cambridge.

Mauthner, F. (1901–1902) Beiträge zu einerKritik der Sprache. 3 Volumes. J. G.Cotta’sche Buchhandlung: Stuttgart.


Quine, W. V. O. (1960) Word and object. MITPress: Cambridge.

Stöhr, A. (1889) Umriss einer Theorie derNamen. Deuticke: Leipzig.

Stöhr, A. (1898) Algebra der Grammatik. EinBeitrag zur Philosophie der Formenlehreund Syntax. Deuticke: Leipzig.

Stöhr, A. (1910) Lehrbuch der Logik in psy-chologisierender Darstellung. Deuticke:Leipzig.

Stöhr, A. (1916) Ist Metaphysik möglich? Vor-trag, gehalten in der PsychologischenGesellschaft am 30. Nov. 1913. Sonderab-druck. Barth: Leipzig.

Wittgenstein, L. (1921) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge: London.

Received: 19 May 2008Accepted: 11 July 2008

Peter Weibel studied literature, mathematics, philosophy and film in Paris and Vienna. He wrote his doctoral thesis on modal logic. A former artistic director of Ars Electronica in Linz, he is since 1999 CEO of the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. In 2004 he received a honorary doctorate from the Helskinki University of Art and Design. He is working as a poly-artist, art and media theoretician, and exhibition curator. His publications include Das offene Werk (2007) and some eight volumes he edited with the MIT Press.

THE AUTHOR


The Object of Description Is the Description of the Object So Far:Non-dualism and Beyond

1. The dualism of seeing things and talking about things: Objects and language

The correspondence theory of truth claimsthat the sentence “It’s raining outside” is truewhen in fact it is raining outside. But it’s notonly the correspondence theory of truth thatmakes a distinction between the sentence “It’sraining outside” and the (observable or notobservable) empirical fact that it is rainingoutside. The realist says, “The fact that it israining outside can be observed by us withour senses.” The constructivist says, “The fact[then in the original Latin sense of the word:

factum

= made by us] that it is raining outside

is constructed by us in our brains, determinedby socio-cultural context variables.” Bothrealists and constructivists share a presuppo-sition: that the sentence “It’s raining outside,”differs from observing (= representing orconstructing) rain outside. How could a sen-tence and an observation ever be the same?Our classical logic of perception tells us thatyou observe something (e. g. the rain out-side), and then you to describe it (“It’s rainingoutside”). Evidently you cannot go beyondthat – or you have to leave rational discourse.This is what philosophy has taught us since itsbeginnings: if we forego the distinctionbetween what is said and what is happening,we fall back into irrationality and ultimatelynonsense.

You can find this primordial distinction inontology, epistemology, and philosophy of

language. The distinction has many names:language and reality, thinking and being,words and objects, names and things, signsand referents (please note that the notion of a“concept” or an “idea” in the semiotic triangleadds a third element to this dualism, but doesnot destruct it – triads are extensions of dyads,no more). This basic dualism can be found invarious disciplines and schools, ranging fromsemiotics to phenomenology, from realism aswell as constructivism to symbolic interac-tionist theory and so on. Countless examplescould be given, historically ranging from thepre-Socratics (see Weber 2005, chapter 2.2,pp. 84 ff) up to contemporary philosophy. Iwould like to give some examples in which thedistinction is very obvious – and very obvi-ously unquestioned:

(1) C. K. Ogden presupposes the distinc-tion in his linguistic and psychological analy-sis of oppositions when he writes:

“In Knowledge, we experience immedi-ately and permanently the inter-play ofopposites – such as Thought and itsObject, Ego and non-Ego – with a singlefact such as

green

being divided into twoopposite terms, inner–outer, subject–object” (Ogden 1967, p. 31).This is an analysis of the oppositions that

we already share and view as a basis of ratio-nal discourse, it is not a philosophical reflec-tion on whether these oppositions are oblig-atory and whether there are any imaginablealternatives to them. Silvio Ceccato (1949,1952) followed a different path when hequestioned all starting dualisms in his model,beginning with the core dualism of“knower”/“observer” and “thing to beknown”/“observatum” (for a detailed discus-sion of Ceccato’s critique of epistemologicalstarting dualisms also related to Mitterer, seeWeber 2005, pp. 77–146).

Stefan Weber

A

University of Applied Arts, Vienna <[email protected]>

R Situation – The short history of the reception of the philosophy of non-dualism in science is a history of misunderstandings and cursory reception – the latter especially con-cerns Mitterer’s main work Das Jenseits der Philosophie (The Beyond of Philosophy, which still has not been translated into English). Non-dualism so far is mostly seen either as a kind of constructivism replacing the rhetoric of “construction” with a rhetoric of “description” or as an overall philosophical critique of the use of dualisms, dichotomies or polarities in epistemological contexts. The core arguments of non-dualism are often completely ignored. This paper wishes to discuss them precisely and draw some conclusions. R Approach – Close critical reading of Mitterer’s texts, trying to avoid as many transla-tion gaps as possible. R Findings – Non-dualism reveals the infinite regress of classical philosophy of language: the categorical differentiation between language and the world leads to a systematic contradiction. While non-dualism also helps to deconstruct the pre-tension to speak “about reality” or to claim that “in fact” something is the case in everyday life, non-dualism refrains from giving satisfying answers to the great questions of mankind in the “metaphysical” context: questions of starting points/origins, meanings, causes, and the (implicitness of the) time arrow. R Benefits – The intention of this paper is to stim-ulate a broader discussion – so far limited by language – extending it beyond German and Polish scientific circles. R Key words – Language-object relationship, realism-construc-tivism controversy, Mitterer’s indication of the object (“Objektangabe”), Wittgenstein’s aspect seeing (“Aspektsehen”), arrow of time.

epistemological


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2008, vol. 3, no. 3 141

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(2) W. V. O. Quine starts his reflections on

Word and Object

with the unquestioned dis-tinction between “ordinary things” and“words.” He writes in §1 (“Beginning withOrdinary Things”):

“Linguistically, and hence conceptually,the things in sharpest focus are the thingsthat are public enough to talk of often, andnear enough to sense to be quickly identi-fied and learned by name; it is to these thatwords apply first and foremost” (Quine1960, p. 1).Once again the distinction is the presup-

position of thought, the starting point of anyfollowing philosophical activity, but the dis-tinction itself is not questioned (this is exactlywhat Silvio Ceccato has criticized, in my viewmore radically than, for example, Ernst vonGlasersfeld). I have to add in this context thatJosef Mitterer also puts an end to the notionof a “reference” of words to objects.

(3) F. G. Jünger reminds us of the “obvi-ous” fact that the word and the thing usuallydo not have anything in common:

“Offenbar ist, daß Wörter wie Rose, Hir-sch, Fluß nichts abbilden, daß sie mit derRose, dem Hirsch, dem Fluß nicht diemindeste Ähnlichkeit haben.[Obviously, words such as rose, deer, riverdon’t represent anything, they don’t havethe slightest similarity to a rose, a deer, ariver]” (Jünger 1962, p. 65).The distinction of words and things, of

language and reality or of signs and objectscan also be found in textbooks for nearlyevery discipline. Two examples are given:

(4) From the viewpoint of phenomenol-ogy and hermeneutics, the following authorreminds us of the fact that descriptions, espe-cially those made by natural scientists, do notchange the objects described: “Somitverändert die Beschreibung in der Regel ihrObjekt nicht. [Thus the description does notnormally change the object]”(Weik 2005, p.116).

(5) From the viewpoint of symbolic inter-actionist theory, the next author claims that

one

object (we may suppose: in reality, “outthere”) may have

different

meanings (we maysuppose: in the symbolic sphere of the mind/the observer):

“Ein Objekt kann eine unterschiedlicheBedeutung für verschiedene Individuenhaben: ein Baum wird ein jeweils unter-schiedliches Objekt darstellen für einen

Botaniker, einen Holzfäller, einen Dichterund einen Hobby-Gärtner […]”[An object might have different meaningsfor various people: a tree will at any onetime represent a different object for a bot-anist, a tree feller, a poet and a hobby gar-dener…]” (Blumer 1995, p. 31).(6) Even in the, so far, most advanced form

of constructivism, in the socio-cultural logicof distinction of Siegfried J. Schmidt, thedualism between seeing things and talking

about

things remains: “Wir sehen Tische undreden über Tische

als Tische

… [We see tablesand talk about tables

as tables

…]” (Schmidt2002, p. 7).

The conclusion is clear that the dualism ofwords and objects has been and still is a pre-supposition of nearly every scientific disci-pline and philosophical school – rangingfrom analytical philosophy to psychology,from phenomenology to constructivism.Thinkers questioning this presupposition –such as Silvio Ceccato – quickly becamephilosophical outsiders.

2. An alternative epistemology: Object and description as a unity

For both realists and constructivists, it is notonly clear that the sentence differs from the(represented or constructed) fact the sentencerefers to. It is also unquestioned that the textdiffers from its interpretation(s). For realists,one text causes different interpretations, butthere always exists a “master interpretation”of a text – namely that which the author

really

intended to say. For constructivists, there areas many different interpretations/versions ofa text as there are “cognitive systems” readingit, and once again meaning is constructed onthe occasion of reading a text.

Is it obligatory to make a distinctionbetween what is said and what is happening?And is it obligatory to make a distinctionbetween the text and its meaning? And whatin each case would come first? Realists andconstructivists execute their epistemologicalcombats

within

these basic distinctions: “Wecan never say something and only

therefore

itwill happen,” says the realist (with the excep-tion of a binding command of course). The

realist "knows" things happen in the world,and

therefore

they can be described – in a rightor wrong way. “We

always

say something, andtherefore it happens,” say the radical con-structivist and second order cybernetician.Both play their games within these dualisms;the difference between realists and construc-tivists is the flipped direction of thinking (seeWeber 1996). Realism says, as Heinz von Foe-rster once put it too, that the world comesfirst, and experience (as a representation ofthe world) is the effect. Constructivism (andsecond order cybernetics) says that experi-ence comes first, and the (constructed) worldis the effect. Both – realism and constructiv-ism – are mere ways of speaking, says non-dualism.

The central theses of non-dualism (whichread extremely contra-intuitivly because weall bring along our dualistic world view) canbe formulated in two short sentences:

(I) For non-dualistic philosophy as devel-oped by Josef Mitterer (1992), that which ishappening and that which is said to be hap-pening constitute a

unity

.(II) For non-dualistic philosophy as devel-

oped by Josef Mitterer (1992), the distinctionbetween the text and its interpretation is onlypossible

after the interpretation

.

Explanation of thesis I

In common sense thought and in nearly allcurrently dominant philosophical schools,there is a categorical distinction between thedescription of the object and the object ofdescription: that the word “Africa” differsfrom the continent below Europe seems to beso clear that hardly anybody would ever ques-tion this “fact.” Mitterer argues that this dis-tinction is only possible when we treat ourtacit knowledge making up Africa (that whathas already been said, that what is alreadyaccepted knowledge) as if it is something

beyond all

descriptions (and therefore alsobeyond the word “Africa”). The notion ofAfrica beyond the word “Africa” in dualism(the continent you can fly to, the continentwhere Tangier is in the North and Cape Townin the South etc.) is the sum of what hasalready been contained implicitly when weactivate Africa in non-dualism. But these acti-vations are nothing other than already exist-ing descriptions, in Mitterer’s wording,descriptions

so far

. To speak of Africa (in dual-ism) means to continue the already existing


CONCEPTS

epistemological


description “Africa” (in non-dualism). (§15in Mitterer 1992, p. 57) Whenever you say,“Africa is one of the five continents of theworld,” you continue the description “Africa.”The “fact” that Africa is one of the five conti-nents of the world is not contained in theword “Africa,” it is a following (!) descriptionof the description “Africa,” in any case anextension (and not a verification or a falsifica-tion). It is a description

from now on

in rela-tion to the description

so far

“Africa.”It sounds more than contra-intuitive when

for the first time you are confronted with thisdirection of thinking, but in Mitterer’s philos-ophy, the description of the object and theobject of description fall together – unless youcarry with yourself descriptions of the objectthat you implicitly (and contradictorily) callthe “object of description”

beyond

thesedescriptions. For example, you differ betweenthe word “Africa” and the labeled continentyou can fly to. Then you carry many implicit(already given/hidden but available) descrip-tions within yourself that in sum make upyour object of description Africa

so far

. Thereare many things you don’t know about Africa,to speak dualistically. In dualism, each new,yet unfamiliar (but true) description wouldgo deeper into Africa, would describe Africamore precisely. In non-dualism, each newdescription continues your pool of descrip-tions

so far

, each new description is additionalto the already existing descriptions. Thesedescriptions continuing /Africa/

1

are thedescriptions

from now on

. One can say, “Africacurrently has 900 million inhabitants.” Thiswas unknown to you, so you must see if thisdescription is right or wrong. You can’t do thisby checking Africa beyond all descriptions;you will look for descriptions so far unknownto you continuing /Africa/. (Unfortunately, inthe beginning of the third millennium youwill do this by consulting a search engine suchas Google and then an online encyclopediasuch as Wikipedia.)

A

verification

of a description in dualismmeans in non-dualism that the description(s)

so far

and the new description in questionmake up a new object of description

from nowon

.A

falsification

of a description in dualismmeans in non-dualism that the description inquestion fails by a competing/alternativedescription, which becomes the new descrip-tion

from now on

.

If you prove the description “Africa cur-rently has 900 million inhabitants” to be “ver-ified,” you will accept the new object ofdescription: Africa as a continent that cur-rently has 900 million inhabitants. If youprove the description “Africa currently has900 million inhabitants” to be “falsified,” youwill find an alternative description of thenumber of inhabitants of Africa; the descrip-tion fails by a new one. Thus it is easy (and atthe same time very elaborate) to reconstructPopper’s terminology of “verification” and“falsification” by non-dualism. (This is devel-oped step-by-step in theses 31–50 in Mitterer1992, pp. 69–85 and demands extremely closereading. The most interesting point is thatnon-dualistic logic also works with objectsthat can be observed directly, e.g., with thedescription “this table has four legs.”)

Realists as well as constructivists mightargue, “But where on earth do descriptionscome from, if not from the object? They don’tfall from the sky, do they?” Critics of non-dualism might say that you see (= represent orconstruct) an apple in front of your eyes, andthen you say “apple” (or “Apfel” in German, ora specific variety name, or you say“Klawumpf” if you practice baby talk).Names are arbitrary and contingent, but therelationship between things and names issocially conditioned, says semiotics. (Fornon-dualism, this scenario appears to be toosimple to remain unquestioned by epistemol-ogy.)

Whenever you say, “I see this green fruithere and call it apple,” you already called it“green fruit.” When you called it “green fruit,”you already also called it “it.” Whenever yougo further, you end in an infinite regress if youwant to prove the thing beyond names, saysMitterer. Can you ever go back to “just seeing”the apple, or playing with the apple, withoutever calling or labeling it? No, you can’t, saysnon-dualism. “Look, I am just eating the…”– fine, dear realist or constructivist,

what

areyou eating?

In non-dualism, the distinction betweenan interaction with an object and the descrip-tion of an object (or the description of aninteraction with an object) is only possible

after

the description. But do non-dualiststhen play with descriptions of apples insteadof apples? (See §§25 and 26 in Mitterer 1992,pp. 64 ff) Yes and no, because the description“apple” and the apple form a unity. I have to

repeat, they fall together unless you believeyour object you call “apple” is categoricallydifferent to many already internalized(learned) descriptions that in sum make upan “apple” for you, but then you do not onlyspeak of the description “apple,” but of manymore descriptions – on an implicit level.

The logic of non-dualism can be illus-trated with the help of the following twoexamples. You see a table. You see that thetable has four legs. You say “This table has fourlegs.” (Remember, non-dualism says that thetwo latter sentences form a unity!) You con-tinue your description, “This table alreadyhad four legs before I said ‘This table has fourlegs’.” In non-dualism, this is not a descriptionof the table! The description also cannot beverified or falsified by the table, because thedescription “This table already had four legsbefore I said ‘This table has four legs’” is com-patible with the description “table.” It is a(new) description of a table

with four legs

, of atable which is already described as a table hav-ing four legs.

(I suggest re-reading this paragraph againwith the idea in mind that the object ofdescription and the description of the objectform a unity.)

Please compare the following quote fromMitterer with Schmidt’s quote from above:

“Die Annahme und Voraussetzung einesnoch unbeschriebenen Tisches, der gleich-wohl vier Beine hat, stellt […] denunmöglichen, geradezu unbeschreibli-chen Versuch dar, zu

sagen

, daß der Tischvier Beine hat, bevor jemals

gesagt wird

,daß der Tisch vier Beine hat.[The assumption and presupposition of anot-yet-described table that neverthelesshas four legs marks the impossible, almostindescribable attempt to

say

that the tablehad four legs before it

ever was said

that thetable has four legs]” (Mitterer 1992, p. 66).The second example refers to a triangle

discussed by Ludwig Wittgenstein when heexemplifies the specific modality of percep-tion he calls “Aspektsehen” (“aspect seeing”).Wittgenstein (1984, p. 427) talks about theaspects of a triangle

C

. (In Wittgenstein’stext, the word “triangle” appears followed bythe symbol

C

.) He writes that the trianglecan be seen as a mountain, an arrow, or just asa geometric drawing, etc. Wittgenstein pre-supposes that there is an object

C

called tri-angle (to be more precisely: a content of

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 143

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epistemological


perception

C

and a word for it [“triangle”]),and

then

“aspect seeing” can be observed. Theword and its “referent” in the “real” world arealready there – as well as in symbolic interac-tionist theory as shown above. Mitterer dis-cusses Wittgenstein’s notion of “Aspektsehen”in order to reveal the explicit dualistic think-ing also in Wittgenstein’s late philosophy (see§6 in Mitterer 1992, pp. 23–30).

Mitterer comes to the following firstlycontra-intuitive conclusion:

“Natürlich ist die Versuchung starkanzunehmen, daß da ein Ding, etwas

Ungedeutetes

sei, das gedeutet wird und(dann) dieser Deutung gemäß gesehenwird. […] Wenn wir aber immer nur eineDeutung einer anderen Deutung gemäßsehen, dann müssen wir auch bereit sein,darauf zu verzichten, als Ausgangspunktfür die Aspekte etwas, vielleicht ein Ding,anzunehmen, das selbst nicht ein Aspektist, das etwas Ungedeutetes ist.[Of course the temptation is great toassume that there is a thing, something

uninterpreted

that waits to be interpretedand is (then) seen according to this inter-pretation. […] But if we always see aninterpretation according to another inter-pretation, then we must also be ready toforgo assuming that there is a startingpoint for the aspects, for example a thingthat itself is not an aspect, that itself issomething uninterpreted]” (Mitterer1992, p. 25).

Explanation of thesis II

If you read a text, you can say afterwards, “Iunderstood what has been said,” or you can(in the worst case) also come to the conclu-sion that you didn’t understand anything. Youcan start a discussion about your interpreta-tion of (or failure on) the text with others whohave made their own interpretations. Just tryto imagine

where

the text

beyond all interpre-tations is

when you discuss different interpre-tations “of” the text! The “naked,” bare text,not harmed by any reader or interpreter, the“bare semiotic material,” waiting to be inter-preted – where is it? You may point at the textin the materialistic-physical sense (printed oronline). (Note: If you have not yet read it, youcannot talk about the text and your interpre-tation.)

Here the central argument of Mitterer’sphilosophy is that we have to give up the idea

that the text-as-such is categorically differentfrom all interpretations and particularly priorto them. On the contrary (!), we fabricate theso-called text-as-such to differ it from (the)already existing interpretation(s). It is not thatthe interpretations follow the text, but that thefabrication of a “text” follows the interpreta-tion(s). Semiotic text science might now thinkthat non-dualism is starting to go crazy.

Realists or semiotics will argue, “But thetext was written before any interpretation,wasn’t it?” /The text was written before anyinterpretation/ is a sentence for which the ideaof an interpretation is absolutely necessary: itis an interpretation of the text. Try to postu-late a plain text beyond all interpretations – itwon’t work.

But once again, where do objects (nowequal to descriptions

so far

) come from? Wecan try to answer this question in the non-dualistic framework only after objects =descriptions

so far

of questionable origin arealready introduced. So you can never answerthis question in the framework of dualisticmetaphysics: as soon as you talk about the“reason” of the “existence” of an object, theobject is already given, and together with theobject much metaphysical ballast (“reason,”“existence”) – there is no way to go behind,back or beyond. Here, non-dualism in someway closely relates to Schmidt’s recent post-constructivist dialectics of supposition andpresupposition (see Schmidt 2007) as well asto Buddhist silence on the “great mysteries.”

Mitterer gives an example:You say, “The apple lies on the table.” But

of course the apple did not

start

to lie on thetable when you said the sentence. The appleusually lay on the table already before yousaid, “The apple lies on the table.” This isexactly the next description: “The apple lay onthe table before I said, ‘The apple lies on thetable’.” The first description is “The apple lieson the table.” The second, following descrip-tion is “The apple already lay on the tablebefore I said, ‘The apple lies on the table’.” Thesecond description extends the first descrip-tion that the apple lies on the table.

Whenever you try to assume that there isan object prior to any description, you arecaught in the trap of an infinite regress: youhave to claim that there is an object withoutclaiming that there is an object.

“Dieser infinite Regreß wurde bislangkaum bemerkt, weil das ‘sprachver-

schiedene’ Objekt beinahe allgemein alsDiskursvoraussetzung anerkannt wird.[This infinite regress has hardly ever beennoticed because the object ‘different fromlanguage’ is almost generally acknowl-edged as a presupposition of any dis-course]” (Mitterer 1992, p. 95).So we come to the following conclusions

so far: non-dualism provokes and unsettleswith the assumption that the distinctionbetween the word (and also the concept, thenotion, or the idea) on the one side and thething (the object, the external referent in the“real” world) on the other side is only possi-ble

when the word is already given

. Eachattempt to claim that the world outside isgiven and was given before (the introductionof) language therefore leads to an infiniteregress: we must claim that the object wasgiven before we ever claim that the objectwas given (ibidem). Thus we have to say thatnot only radical constructivism, but also(and mainly!) semiotics turns out to be avariant of common-sense theorization basedon an assumption that is not consistent uponserious reflection.

This basic train of thought developed byMitterer in his main work,

Das Jenseits derPhilosophie

(

The Beyond of Philosophy

), in 100theses, needs a careful and repeated reading.Due to the reason that we have all internalizedthe dualistic mode of differentiating betweenthe visible (or touchable…) world and sen-tences about this world, we tend to deny thedepth that lies (hidden) in Mitterer’s work.Many scientists still see Mitterer as a kind ofconstructivist (although he clearly states thatthere is a crucial difference between construc-tivism and non-dualism) or just as somebodycriticizing dichotomies of any kind.

So the scientific discussion on Mitterer’s

The Beyond of Philosophy

so far has failed toformulate a kind of elaborated critique (ofcourse, according to non-dualism, I do notargue that my following “interpretation” ofthe “text” is the one and only one – I justwould like to offer new descriptions

from nowon

). The crucial point of an elaborated cri-tique on Mitterer’s identification of an infiniteregress in the philosophy of language could bethe following: Mitterer argues that the dis-tinction between the object and the indica-tion of the object (in German: “Objektang-abe”) is only possible after the indication ofthe object. In German, “Objektangabe” is one


CONCEPTS

epistemological


word written together, it can be translatedbadly as “object-indication.”

When we state, “The distinction betweenthe object and the indication of the object isonly possible after the indication of theobject,” this sentence contains at least threefurther presuppositions:

(1) The presupposition of a

time arrow

. Tospeak of something happening “after”another thing needs the presupposition oftime flowing.

(2) The presupposition of a

distinction

between whatever, in this special case betweenthe object and the indication of the object.

(3) (And this is the trickiest point!) Thepresupposition of a distinction between the“indication” and the “object” in order tospeak of the “indication of the object.” Thismeans that when the starting point (the “indi-cation of the object”)

contains

the indicationand the object,

both

dualism and non-dual-ism seem to start with an infinite regress. Theinfinite regress of non-dualism would startwith duality (indeed not constituting a

cate-gorical

difference, but it remains a duality)claiming to be a unity.

We have to read Mitterer carefully to fur-ther investigate into this. He writes:

“Eine Priorität des Objekts gegenüber derObjektangabe kann erst

nach

der Objek-tangabe behauptet werden. Eine solcheBehauptung ist nichts weiter als eine Bes-chreibung des Objekts […][A priority of the object vis-à-vis the indi-cation of the object can only be claimed

after

the indication of the object. Such aclaim is nothing other than a descriptionof the object…]” (Mitterer 1992, p. 98).For Mitterer, the

distinction

between theobject and the indication of the object (as wellas between the object of description and thedescription of the object) was already givenwhen analysing the claim about the possible

priority

of the object vis-à-vis the indicationof the object. So he analyses the

next

descrip-tion: not the distinction itself, but a claim onthe priority of the elements of the distinction.Is the object prior to its indication, or is theindication prior to the object? Maybe he didthis to hide a problem, to escape from an owninfinite regress?

Mitterer says that the object of descriptionand the description of the object form a unity– of the kind that the object of descriptionequals to the descriptions

so far

. If we tran-

scribe this statement to the relationshipbetween the object and the indication of theobject, it would mean nothing other than theparadox that the object and the indication falltogether: the object

is

the indication

so far

.(Maybe this is not a paradox, but the solution,which again demands Buddhist reflection/meditation.) But Mitterer seems to escapefrom this by opening up a new distinction:that between indication and description.

In his – in my opinion – most disturbingthesis he writes: “

Zuerst

wird das Objektangegeben,

dann

kann es beschrieben wer-den. [

First

the object is indicated,

then

it canbe described]” (Mitterer 1992, p. 101).

Did Mitterer replace the categorical dis-tinction between object and description bythe categorical distinction between indicationand description? This point remains prob-lematic, and I think only Mitterer himself canclarify this – or maybe he wanted to leave hisinterpreters alone with another fundamentalriddle.

Furthermore, just as realism and con-structivism can be criticized by non-dualism(and realism and constructivism are seen asvariants of dualism by non-dualism as ameta-position), one can criticize dualism andnon-dualism from a third meta-meta-posi-tion. Please remember the simplifications inTable 1 that illustrate the directions of think-ing in major epistemological positions men-tioned earlier in this paper.

A meta-position above realism and con-structivism argues that the distinctionbetween “world” and “experience” is dualistic– independent from the direction in whichyou model their relationship. This is what

non-dualism criticizes in constructivism. Butcould we also think of a meta-meta-positionabove dualism and non-dualism? This meta-meta-position could argue that both dualismand non-dualism need the presupposition of“object” and “indication” (see Figure 1).Remember that non-dualism, too, needs thedistinction between “object” and “indication”when it argues that the starting point is the“indication of the object.” In non-dualism,the distinction is not categorical (non-dual-ism argues that the object is strangely“inscribed” into the indication), but the dis-tinction remains (and with the distinction,the ideas of “time” and “distinction” as such,as mentioned above).

It seems to be the great (historical) meritof non-dualism to have revealed the inconsis-tent dualism of description and object

cate-gorically different from description

in philoso-phy. But non-dualism also lets our brainsoverheat: we will never be able to give up ourdesire to “go back” to a “beyond” of all dis-courses. And we are in constant search of astarting point, a reason, a driving force of/for/behind the world (even when we understandthe world as the descriptions

so far

).Non-dualism drastically shows us that the

description of the earth as a ball is not “closerto the truth” than the description of the earthas a disc. Was the earth already a ball when, informer times, it was described as a disc?

Which

earth do you mean, asks non-dualism. Andthe answer is, “The earth described as a ball(first description), which was already a ballwhen it was “interpreted” as a disc (seconddescription).” So the earth-as-disc in non-dualism never could have been an earth-as-

Realism:Constructivism:

“The world is the cause, experience is the effect.”“Experience is the cause, the world is the effect.”

Dualism:

Non-dualism:

“The differentiation between the object and the indication of the object is only possible after the object.”(Otherwise you deny the existence of an external world and get caught in a kind of “linguistic solipsism.”)“The differentiation between the object and the indication of the object is only possible after the indication of the object.”(Otherwise you get caught in the infinite regress that you have to claim the existence of an object without ever making this claim.)

Simplified dualism:Simplified non-dualism:

“The object is the cause, the indication of the object is the effect.”“The indication of the object is the cause, the object is the effect.”

Table 1: Simplified directions of thinking in realism, constructivism, dualism, and non-dualism.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 145

CONCEPTS

epistemological non-dualizing philosophy

ball unless it was described as a ball. And, bythe way, where does the description “earth”come from? (See for details Weber 2005)

But what are the consequences of this phi-losophy for everyday life, for everyday prob-lems we are all faced with (the difficulties ofhuman relationships, the search for happinessand a “deeper” sense of life, the contradictionsand magic of birth and death, the perceptionof the past and the future of our universe)? Letme sketch out some speculative consider-ations.

3. Practical applications: From the riddle of the “beyond” to “truths” in Web 2.0If you share Mitterer’s doubt about the cate-gorical distinction between language andreality (that is between descriptions differentfrom objects and objects) and if you are alsoable to share his alternative model of knowl-edge, you can easily imagine that non-dual-ism can be applied everywhere and in everysituation – from everyday life to all scientificdisciplines, certainly in social sciences andhumanities, but also in many disciplines ofnatural science (for more elaborated discus-sions of possible applications of non-dualismsee Weber (1996, 2005) as well as Fleischer(2005). Some scientists and even artists devel-

oped their kinds of non-dualistic theorisationwithout citing the work of Mitterer or with-out drawing similar radical consequences (seefor example Atmanspacher (2003) for themind–matter distinction or the writings ofFranz-Josef Czernin).

The main practical recommendationsMitterer has formulated are:[ Beware of paradigms which often turn out

to be “paradogmas” as Mitterer put it (Mit-terer 1992, p. 18). Paradigms can be para-dogmas because they often postulate thattheir truth is ultimate and ubiquitous (seefor example realism or marxism). So Mit-terer says that he does not want to establisha new paradigm, on the contrary he wantsto prevent the emergence of new para-digms, which are often just fashionablephilosophies that come and go.

[ Beware of truth markers when you speak.Such truth markers are “in fact,” “in real-ity,” “really,” “actually” etc. Whenever youuse such words you want to make sure thatyour description exactly represents a real-ity independent from your description.(The non-dualistic mode of speaking, asMitterer also calls it, is a way of communi-cating that avoids paradigmatic claims andthe usage of truth markers. If you talk withMitterer, you soon will notice that heseems to be the only person in the world sofar who is consequently able to respectthese limitations in everyday conversation.For “ordinary speakers,” including the

author of this paper, it is impossible toescape the dualistic discourse in everydaycommunication.)Mitterer’s ideas are only discussed in some

scientific disciplines so far, for example inmedia theory and economics. Mitterer’s non-dualism is even almost completely ignored inphilosophy. This absence is astonishing. Areason might be the lack of time of the scien-tific community to read texts carefully;another reason might be academic socialisa-tion from the “Matthew effect”: the moreprominent a theory, the more it will be cited;the more it is cited, the more prominent itgets. New and alternative theories can quicklylose out in the age of the scientific attentioneconomy.

When Mitterer says that the primordialdistinction between language and the worldoutside is not how we thought about it in thelast hundreds (and thousands) of years of phi-losophy, he opens the door to further consid-erations: is the apparent “natural” relation-ship of language and things labeled bylanguage the one and only inconsistent pre-supposition of thought, or are we able –inspired by the work of Mitterer – to findmore presuppositions of that kind (which areso basic that hardly anybody ever questionedthem in the history of thought)? Let me mixattempts to answer this question with an out-look on possible further applications of non-dualism:

(1) One big metaphysical presuppositionis the “fact” that we can only remember thepast, but not the future (Peter Weibel formu-lated this in an “ars electronica” paper onendophysics in 1992 – thanks for that greatsentence!). The future seems to be our lastmetaphysical secret after the death of god, asNiklas Luhmann once put it (see Luhmann1989, p. 137). But is this imperative? Non-dualistic philosophy claims to be a philosophyof change (instead of a philosophy of truth),but – as mentioned – cannot satisfyinglyanswer the question of why new descriptionsarise at all. Non-dualists of course cannotsolve this by just saying that the world outside(different from descriptions) has changed. Ifthe world and the descriptions form a unity,the question of the motivation, the drivingforce of any change remains mysterious. Whydon’t descriptions just stay the same? In non-dualism, you cannot indicate one single exog-enous cause for change (exogenous in the

Critique of (non-) dualism?

DualismObject → Indication

Non-dualismIndication → Object

RealismWorld → Experience

ConstructivismExperience → World

more commonalitiesor more differences?

Figure 1: A meta-meta-position above realism, constructivism, dualism, and non-dualism?

© Constructivist Foundations


CONCEPTS


sense of beyond all descriptions). The prob-lem of the time arrow (and therefore of theunknown future) remains the same riddle.The evolution of new descriptions is strangelylinked to the problem of the past (the descrip-tions so far) and the future (the yet-not-known descriptions from now on). The reflec-tion of the time arrow and the apparentimpossibility to “remember” what will hap-pen tomorrow (has happened?) is an impor-tant task for non-dualism and one of its blindspots so far. The question is, “Why is the timearrow and why is change in time a presuppo-sition of our existence?”

(2) Another classical problem of meta-physics is the question of “life after death” oreach speculation about something “beyondspace and time,” maybe this is even the centralquestion of mankind. How would non-dual-ism deal with these topics? Which presuppo-sitions could here be inconsistent? Just thinkof the following contradiction: life after deathmust be a life beyond known space and time,so it’s no life after death. (In the context ofLuhmann’s systems theory, this problem hasbeen brilliantly discussed by the German phi-losopher Günter Schulte, see Schulte 1993.This controversy should also be put on theagenda for non-dualism continuing theaspects developed in Weber’s paper of 2000).

(3) A third aspect is the process of lan-guage acquisition by small children which – inthe context of non-dualism – must be rewrit-ten in central parts. When Jean Piaget writesthat children under the age of 8 do not under-stand the differentiation between word andthing (Piaget 1988, p. 63 – “Sie begreifen dasProblem gar nicht” [“They do not understandthe problem at all”]), we have to rememberthat this is our problem, not theirs. The “prob-lem” can be reformulated in non-dualisticterms: adults differentiate between word andthing. For children, the word “beating” can be“strong” because “it hurts” (ibidem – theword, not the activity of beating). Thisreminds us of the examples given by Mitterer:do we sit on the description of the sofa or onthe sofa? Piaget’s example is: does the word“beating” hurt or the activity? The problemonly arises when we have already differenti-ated between the word and the activity. So allwe can say is that small children might berather lucky to live in their non-dualisticstream of consciousness not spoilt by thedichotomy of language and reality.

Mitterer gives an example in The Beyond ofPhilosophy (also derived from Wittgenstein,but again newly interpreted, see Mitterer1992, pp. 25ff): we cannot seriously say thatthe child sees the cardboard box as a housewhen playing. The child sees a house, andmaybe later a box. An observer might say,“The child sees the box as a house.” Thisdescription marks an “apriorization” of thebox-perception beyond the perceptive worldof small children. Mitterer writes that in a firststep we must confess: “Das Kind sieht meineKiste als sein Haus.” [The child sees my box ashis/her house]” (Mitterer 1992, p. 26).

(4) A fourth aspect is dialogue with hand-icapped people: how would non-dualismanalyze deaf-mute people who cannot speak(with oral languages) and hear, but use signlanguage, see and smell? In which sensualworlds do blind people live? What can sightedpeople say about blindness within the frame-work of a unity of descriptions and objects?This sounds like a difficult and sensitive topic,but the answer so far is rather simple: if onesense is lacking, people with all the senses can-not say anything about this state (in a dualisticsense), and they are also unable to continuethis state (in a non-dualistic sense) becausepeople with all the senses cannot go backbeyond “languaging” (as Humberto R. Mat-urana put it) in the oral way or beyond hear-ing. It must become a topic of non-dualisticresearch as to why communication and co-orientation nevertheless work (with sign lan-guage and/or technical instruments).

(5) And finally, are there (further) limits tonon-dualism, seen in practical aspects? Doesnon-dualism encourage contingency, chaosand the annihilation of well-established dual-istic values in society (such as fact and fiction,original and plagiarism, right and wrong,good and evil, ethical and unethical, etc.)? Isnon-dualism encouraging a world in whichreality and truth become needless or at leasthighly contingent categories – as in the worldof amateurism beyond truth and rumor in thecurrent Web 2.0? Could non-dualism evenserve as a new “basis theory” for the flickeringand unstable realities of Google search, Wiki-pedia consultation and Web 2.0 publicationpractice? In his book The Cult of the AmateurAndrew Keen makes the criticism that Web2.0 moves towards a world beyond truth andlie (Keen 2007). Postmodernist theories, rela-tivism and also constructivism seem to force

this problematic development. It is a task forthe future to elaborate this point in non-dual-istic philosophy. Mitterer’s hope that withnon-dualism our discourses won’t get morecontingent than they already are in the frame-work of the current dualistic paradigm is onlya cold comfort. Meanwhile the world (in theWeb) is changing dramatically. And here isthe question one last time: why is therechange?

4. Conclusions

This paper identified two core topics (as openquestions) for further research in the contextof non-dualism:

(1) The question of a priority of the indi-cation of the object compared to the object ofindication (and the open question of if theindication of the object already “contains” theobject – which would at least not lead to theinfinite regress of dualism, but nevertheless toa strange “mystical” situation oscillatingbetween unity and duality whenever one triesto explore the term “indication of theobject”).

(2) The question of the dynamics, of theemergence of new descriptions. Is non-dual-ism sufficiently able to explain change?

For both points, an anonymous reviewerof this paper suggested cursory solutions:

(1) The question between dualism andnon-dualism is: Is the object prior to its indi-cation or is the indication prior to the object?The reviewer suggested: "There is no priority(in respect of time and in respect of cognitiveprimacy) we can talk about. The achievementwe get in form of non-disputable descriptionsso far of the objects is the result of complicatedand complex procedures combining variouselements, including […] physical, biological,conceptual, social, psychological, historicaletc. None of these elements can clearly be sep-arated from others.” But as soon as thereviewer claims that there is no priority, he isarguing neither dualistic nor non-dualistic.

(2) Another question I discussed here wasthe question of (the cause of) change. Thereviewer stated: “[The d]riving force of anychange will not remain mysterious […] if wetreat the constitution of descriptions assophisticated processes of interactionsbetween the elements I have mentioned [thereviewer refers to the elements cited above –

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 147

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the author]. I would interpret unity in thisbroader understood sense as a combination ofthese factors.” In my opinion, this answer isnot satisfying.

To stimulate a further fruitful debate, letme suggest that these statements do not marksolutions, but just reformulations of the twoproblems identified. To speak along with JosefMitterer, one of the major tasks from now onshould not be the attempt to find a way out ofthese problems, but to see how we got intothem. Both the question of the “beginning” ofany description/indication and the questionof evolving descriptions have a commonname: time.

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by a grant from theKulturabteilung der Stadt Wien, Wissen-schafts- und Forschungsförderung (Scienceand research aid, cultural department of themunicipality of Vienna). Special thanks toHubert Christian Ehalt.

Note

1. In the specific notation of Mitterer, heputs already given descriptions so far in ex-ecution quotes (/…/) instead of citingmarks (“…”). Descriptions from now onare put in normal quotation marks (“…”).

References

All translation from German by the author.Atmanspacher, H. (2003) Mind and matter as

asymptotically disjoint, inequivalent rep-resentations with broken time-reversalsymmetry. BioSystems 68: 19–30.Retrieved from http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/echo4.pdf on 1 April 2008.

Blumer, H. (1995) Der methodologischeStandort des Symbolischen Interaktionis-mus. Second edition. In: Burkart, R. &Hömberg W. (eds.) Kommunikationsthe-orien. Ein Textbuch zur Einführung.

Braumüller: Vienna, pp. 23–39.Ceccato, S. (1949) Teocono or “Of the path

that leads to truth.” Translated by Ernstvon Glasersfeld. Methodos 1(1): 55–69.

Ceccato, S. (1952) Contra Dingler, pro Din-gler. Translated by Ernst von Glasersfeld.Methodos 4 (15/16): 266–290.

Fleischer, M. (2005) Der Beobachter dritterOrdnung. Über einen vernünftigen Kon-struktivismus. Athena: Oberhausen.

Jünger, F. G. (1962) Sprache und Denken. Vit-torio Klostermann: Frankfurt/Main.

Keen, A. (2007) The cult of the amateur. Howtoday’s internet is killing our culture. Cur-rency: New York.

Luhmann, N. (1989) Geheimnis, Zeit undEwigkeit. In: Luhmann, N. & Fuchs, P.(eds.) Reden und Schweigen. Suhrkamp:Frankfurt am Main, pp. 101–138.

Mitterer, J. (1992) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie: Wider das dualistische Erkennt-nisprinzip. Passagen: Vienna.

Ogden, C. K. (1967) Opposition: A linguisticand psychological analysis. Indiana Uni-versity Press: Bloomington.

Piaget, J. (1988) Das Weltbild des Kindes.Klett-Cotta/dtv: Stuttgart.

Quine, W. V. O. (1960) Word and object. MITPress: Cambridge MA.

Schmidt, S. J. (2002) Medien als Wirklich-keitskonstrukteure. Medienimpulse 40: 5–10.

Schmidt, S. J. (2007) Histories & discourses.Rewriting constructivism. Imprint Aca-demic: Exeter.

Schulte, G. (1993) Der blinde Fleck in Luh-manns Systemtheorie. Campus: Frankfurtam Main.

Weber, S. (1996) Die Dualisierung des Erken-nens. Zu Konstruktivismus, Neurophilos-ophie und Medientheorie. Passagen:Vienna.

Weber, S. (2000) Temporalisierte Unbeo-bachtbarkeit: Das Jetzt als Schnittstelleund die Zukunft als Geheimnis. In: Jahr-aus, O., Ort, N. & Schmidt, B. M. (eds.)Beobachtungen des Unbeobachtbaren:Konzepte radikaler Theoriebildung in denGeisteswissenschaften. Velbrück Wissen-schaft: Weilerswist, pp. 29–38.

Weber, S. (2005) Non-dualistische Medien-theorie: Eine philosophische Grundle-gung. UVK: Konstanz.

Weik, E. (2005) Ansätze des Verstehens,Hermeneutik und Phänomenologie. Sec-ond edition. In: Weik, E. & Lang R. (eds.)Moderne Organisationstheorien 1. Hand-lungsorientierte Ansätze. Gabler: Wies-baden, pp. 95–120.

Wittgenstein, L. (1984) Werkausgabe Band 7.Bemerkungen über die Philosophie derPsychologie/Letzte Schriften über die Phi-losophie der Psychologie. Suhrkamp:Frankfurt am Main.

Received: 7 April 2008Accepted: 7 June 2008

Stefan Weber is a media scientist from Salzburg, Austria, with more than 50 publications, including several books, on media theory and philosophy. His postdoctoral lecture qualification is from the University of Vienna, with a habilitation on non-dualism and media theory in 2005. A list of his publications is online at http://www.kfj.at/publikationsliste-stefanweber.htm

THE AUTHOR


Action and Discourse

Some Thoughts Concerning a Non-dualizing Conception of Experience

Introduction: How do new content in descriptions emerge?

Philosophical schools of thought that arebased on dichotomy distinctions – distinc-tions such as language and world or descrip-tion and object – are called “dualizing ways ofspeaking” by Josef Mitterer (1992, p. 49). Hemarks such distinctions as dogmas becausethey are simply presupposed without discuss-ing the problems that arise from doing so.Mitterer characterizes his own thinking as a“non-dualizing way of speaking” (1992, p.55); he does not presuppose a world categor-ically different from language. His justifica-tion for this decision is found in the “indirect”critique to which he exposes the dogma ofdichotomy distinctions and in the makingtransparent of the procedure for establishinga dichotomy between description and object.

Mitterer shows that when there is dis-agreement between participants in a dis-course it is impossible to reach a language-dif-ferent object without getting caught up ininfinite regresses. Such regresses appear whenwe concede that there is an object beyond thedescription and try to distinguish it from thedescription (Mitterer 1992, p. 90) as well as

when we try to show that the language-differ-ent object already existed before it was indi-cated (p. 95). This makes it impossible toreach the other side of the dichotomy unlesswe ignore the infinite regresses and presup-pose, ex-post, our own description as the lan-guage-different object (p. 104). This wayallows us to declare our own description to bethe true one.

Abstention from presupposing a worldcategorically different from language has theconsequence that the object of a descriptionhas itself to be understood as a description.Mitterer calls it “description

so far

” (Mitterer1992, p. 60), whereas a description is the con-tinuation of a “description so far” and, there-fore, becomes the “description

from now on

.”Mitterer’s critique of the dualizing way ofspeaking is convincing. However, his non-dualizing way of speaking leaves us in the darkabout the origin of the new or additional con-tents of descriptions that continue the“description so far.”

The above problem of new contentsbecomes obvious when Mitterer discusses theexample of two persons who decide to exam-ine their contradictory descriptions of a tableas round and square (1992, pp. 80–82).According to the non-dualistic opinion, theexamination cannot be conducted on the

object because the object is “neutralistic” inthe sense that it allows all possible continua-tions, even contradictory ones. One could putit as follows: The “object so far” does not con-tain any conditions that restrict the freedomof further descriptions. Therefore, it is some-what surprising when Mitterer tells us: “Theexamination of the table is conducted byinquiring into what shape it has – if it isshaped round or square or otherwise” (1992,p. 81; my translation). As instances of inquir-ing procedures he lists “ ‘exact’ looking at it,feeling the edge of the table with one’s hands,measuring the diagonals”; he points out that“descriptions are not taken from nowhere,”but are rather “based on inquiries” (1992, pp.81 and 82; my translation).

There arise some questions in this connec-tion. What kind of activity is it to inquire intosomething? What status does action have inthe non-dualizing way of speaking? Whatdoes it mean when we inquire into what shapethe table has?

A possible answer could be that inquiringis an activity different from describing, that is,that we, first, run our hand over the edge ofthe table, feel it as round or square and, then,describe it as round or square. This meansthat experiences as the results of acts aretransformed into contents of descriptions. Isthis answer compatible with the non-dualiz-ing way of speaking? It seems that this is adualistic concept because inquiries and theirresults are conceived of as something which isbeyond descriptions and is only describedsubsequently.

A second answer could be that feeling withhands is itself a specific kind of describing.This answer is definitely compatible with thenon-dualizing way of speaking and meansthat we are continuing the “description so far,”/the table/, in a specific way of describing, thatis, with regard to a certain characteristic of the

Franz Ofner

A

University of Klagenfurt <[email protected]>

R Purpose – The paper aims at examining whether George Herbert Mead’s theory of language is an appropriate candidate for developing a non-dualistic conception of experi-ence and empirical research. R Problem – Josef Mitterer has limited his theory of a non-dualizing way of speaking to criticizing dualistic positions in philosophy and sciences but has not developed a non-dualistic conception of empirical research. To do this, the task is to forego the notion “description” as a remainder category of dualism to develop a new understanding of language. Findings – Mead’s communication and action theory contains a non-dualistic nucleus. His gesture theory of communication allows us to distinguish action and speech and connect them in a non-dualizing way. Further research should espe-cially focus on the relation between immediate and reflective experience in Mead’s work. R Key words – Non-dualism, communication theory, experience theory.

philosophical-epistemological


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2008, vol. 3, no. 3 149

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table. According to this answer, feeling withhands is a linguistic activity producing certainlinguistic contents (characteristics of shape inthis case). However, we have not made anyprogress and did not learn any new informa-tion; for we already knew that describing isadding further description elements to a“description so far,” but we still do not knowwhere the description elements stem from.

Conceiving of actions as descriptionsimplies that an empirical theory of experienceis impossible on a non-dualistic basis becauseconceiving of actions as descriptions meansthat new descriptions are created from lan-guage. In this case we do not get an empiricaltheory of experience but a hermeneutical oneor something similar. A non-dualistic empir-ical theory of experience requires acts that aredifferent from descriptions, but not categori-cally different from them. A further demandis that experiences made within action can be“transformed” into descriptions. However,such a transformation must not consist indescribing actions and their experiences; forin this case descriptions would refer to actionsdifferent from descriptions and we would fallback into dualism. But how can this feat beaccomplished?

The central difficulty of treating the con-nection between description and action in anon-dualizing way is caused by the concept ofdescription. As indirect critique, Mitterer’snon-dualizing way of speaking necessarilytakes up the concept of description, that is, theone side of the dichotomy, and deprives it ofits reference to objects beyond descriptions.The consequence is that, within the non-dualizing way of speaking, descriptions losetheir function of describing objects andbecome continuations of descriptions alreadymade, “descriptions

so far

.” The non-dualisticconcept of description has a critical purposetowards the dualizing way of speaking and itstruth claim, but with their loss of reference,descriptions lose any content and meaning. Ifwe take references from descriptions what dowe mean when we say “table” or “round”?

The non-dualizing way of speaking has theoption of sticking to its negative standpoint,that is, to observe scientific research and togive researchers a rap on their knuckles whenthey neglect to emphasize that their researchresults do not tell the truth but only continuea “description so far.” In this case, the non-dualizing way of speaking does without any

theory of empirical research of its own. A fur-ther, constructive option is to develop a non-dualistic conception of experience andacquiring new knowledge, that is, a concep-tion that allows us to connect describing andacting in a non-dualizing way. To do this,however, the concept of description, which isburdened with the original sin of the dualiz-ing way of speaking, has to be abandoned, andwe have to proceed to a different understand-ing of language.

On the difference between action and discourse

When we say that inquiries are the basis ofdescription we evidently believe that we gainexperience by action, and that experiencesomehow enters into description. In this con-nection the question arises of how descriptionand action differ and what status experienceshave within the two activities of describingand practical action.

Language is the communicative or publicside of discourses. Discourses have, however,an internal or private side, too; it consists inthe experiences that are merged with descrip-tions (such as imagery, emotions, andimpulses to act) and is accessible to the mem-ber of discourse only. As an example let usconsider that a friend of mine tells me abouthis apartment, where we are not currentlypresent and in which I have never been; whenhe tells me that there is a round table in thecorner of the living room then I have certainmental images parallel to his telling. Imagesare not the objects of descriptions but theircontents. We do not describe mental images,but they appear simultaneously with thedescriptions. Images may be broadened orspecified, though not by describing them butthrough descriptions with broader or morespecific contents.

In the same way, practical actions aremerged with experiences such as perceptions,emotions, or impulses. Perceptions made inthe course of actions are not the objects ofthese actions; they appear simultaneouslywith actions or within actions.

As members of discourses and as actors webecome aware of a significant differencebetween description and practical action as

well as between the experiences that are con-nected with the respective activities. This dif-ference becomes particularly apparent whendescription and actions take place simulta-neously.

To make clearer what I mean by that differ-ence I come back to Mitterer’s example ofexamining the descriptions of a certain tableas round or square by inquiring what shapethe table has. When someone tells me “thistable is round” and I simultaneously touchthe table feeling its edge with my hands, thereis a difference to me between the experience Ihave on the basis of the linguistic descriptionand the contact experience of my hands. Usu-ally, mental images as experiences based ondescriptions and perceptions as experiencesbased on actions differ in their intensities.However, the difference of intensity is not theone I am drawing upon, for on the one handwe can intensify our images and reach a greatvividness and on the other hand perceptionscan be slight and vague. The difference I meanis that between the sources of experience, i.e.,between the kinds of activities that parallelthe respective experiences. However intensivethe image merged with the description of thetable as round may be, I can distinguish itfrom the simultaneous experience I have infeeling the table with hands; and I can switchmy attention from the one experience to theother. The same is the case when it is notanother person but myself who is making thedescription, that is, when I am commentingon my own action. The difference in thesources of experience becomes particularlyapparent when there is a difference withregard to the

content

of experience, that is,when what I perceive on the basis of my actiondiffers from what I imagine on the basis ofsomeone’s description.

The problem we are confronted with iswhether we can find a conception that allowsus to maintain the difference between practi-cal action and description but not to conceiveof it as categorical one. In what follows, I wantto discuss George Herbert Mead’s theory ofaction and communication and ask if it can behelpful for elaborating a non-dualistic under-standing of both language and practicalaction and of the different experiences, whichmerges in description and practical action.Mead’s answer may be given in a condensedform as follows: He does not understand lin-guistic utterances as descriptions (speaking in


CONCEPTS



the sense of describing something) but as ges-tures that are the beginnings of acts, whichare, however, not carried out; he understandsmental images as experiences stemming frompast acts that have been initiated by gestures.

Some remarks on Mead’s philosophical approach

I do not claim that the conception of Mead’sphilosophy and social psychology is non-dualistic in its totality, but I think that his the-ory contains some important aspects regard-ing a non-dualistic connection of action,communication, and experience. It is theseaspects I want to take up in treating the prob-lem at hand.

Mead belonged to the circle of pragmatistsaround John Dewey and maintained astrongly naturalistic standpoint. The nucleusof this standpoint is that humans as parts ofnature interact with nature and that experi-ence is nothing other than a phase of thatinteraction process (cf. Mead 1938, pp. 360–361). That is to say, experience is not locatedexternally to nature as maintained in concep-tions of mind as an immaterial substance.This position is influenced by Darwin’s evolu-tion theory. Mead’s references to Darwin arewell-documented by John D. Baldwin (1986,pp. 51–54). If we, in line with Darwin, sup-pose that humans evolved out of the animalkingdom, then what we call conscious activi-ties must have arisen in the course of naturalevolution, too, according to Mead’s argumen-tation (1934, p. 19), and cannot be based onan immaterial mental substance. Conse-quently, Mead does not accept Descartes’dualism of mind and matter; he substitutes afunctional concept of consciousness for theconcept of mental states and intends todevelop a theory of the genesis of consciousactivities.

The rejection of the existence of two sepa-rated worlds, mind and matter, is the non-dualistic nucleus of Mead’s approach. How-ever, it may be doubted whether his method-ological procedure concerning the genesis ofconscious experience meets non-dualisticdemands. To Mead, consciousness is reflexiv-ity, conscious experience is reflective experi-ence; reflexivity is produced by linguistic

activity – through speech we not only addressother persons but we also address ourselves,react to our own behavior and analyze it in thisway (see below in more detail). The problemof conceptualizing reflective experience as theproduct of natural evolution consists in thefollowing: Mead has to presuppose immediateexperience out of which reflective experienceevolves, but the evolution process can only beconceptualized from the standpoint of reflec-tive experience. As I see it, dualism is avoidablein this case only if we can do two things: showthat immediate experience is a phase of ourreflective experience process and take this con-dition into account in inquiring into phyloge-netic and ontogenetic evolution. Mead main-tained the opinion that immediate andreflective experience are two different, thoughnot separated, phases of our experience pro-cess (1934, pp. 347–353), but he made noendeavor to develop his theory on this basis.

The opinion Mead holds on the scientificresearch process is similarly undecidedbetween dualism and non-dualism. On theone hand he thinks that it does not make senseto speak of a world independent from ourexperience. As long as our action works and isnot inhibited, that is in the situation of imme-diate experience, the world and its objects aresimply there and there is no distinctionbetween external and internal; in situations,however, where our action fails or is inhibitedbecause of contrary impulses, there arises, inour perception, a problematic area that weseparate from the external world and ascribeto our subjective experience (Mead 1938, pp.31, 33 and 41). The hypotheses scientists con-struct concerning the problematic area canonly be tested in the world that is simply there,that is, in the world of immediate experience.Therefore Mead writes: “Thus we can neverretreat behind immediate experience to ana-lyzed elements that constitute the ultimatereality of all immediate experience, for what-ever breath of reality these elements possesshas been breathed into them by some unana-lyzed experience” (p. 32). On the other handMead takes the standpoint of an externalobserver when he writes that individuals andtheir environment are in the relationship ofinteraction and mutual determination andthat the experiences of individuals are ele-ments of that relationship (Mead 1934, pp.349–350 and Mead 1938, p. 361). This is evi-dently a dualistic point of view.

A remark on the relation between imme-diate and reflexive experience may be helpfulto further the understanding of the non-dual-istic character of Mead’s communication the-ory. Immediate experience is characterized byimpulsive conduct, where stimulation andreaction are a unity and there is no separationof different elements of experience (Mead1934, p. 348). It is not until problems arise inconduct that the situation falls into differentparts; there starts a process of analyzing anddistinguishing different elements and of relat-ing the different elements to each other. Thus,differentiation is a product of reflective expe-rience. Dewey and Mead repeatedly warnabout the “psychological or historical fallacy”of introjecting, ex-post, elements that are theresults of analysis as independent unities intoimmediate experience (Dewey 1896, pp. 376–377; Mead 1903, p. 102).

Mead’s understanding of language

In what follows I try to summarize Mead’sconception of language and communicationincluded in the book

Mind, Self, and Society

(1934, especially pp. 42–134), which is basedon student notes on his courses on social psy-chology. I want to inquire into two questions.The first question is in what way Mead’s con-ception of language and communication dif-fers from the conception of description that isbased on the idea of reference. The secondquestion is whether his understanding of lan-guage opens a non-dualistic access to actionand experience. I shall not repeat Mead’s phy-logenetic and ontogenetic conception of thedevelopment of communication but restrictmy presentation to the position language haswithin his theory of reflexive experience.

The crucial point of Mead’s language the-ory is communication rather than referenceto objects; and communication is rather coor-dination of actions than the transmission ofdata or characteristics of objects. Mead’s con-siderations of language take gestures as thestarting point. Gestures are the beginningphases of social actions: a gesture stimulatesother persons to carry out a certain action.Mead characterizes this situation by differentterms: gestures initiate actions, they arouseimpulses to act, they elicit the readiness to act,or they stimulate taking certain attitudes. The

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 151

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stimulation aspect of gestures makes up theircommunicative character. To Mead, linguisticsymbols are also gestures, vocal gestures.Their distinctive feature consists in that theycan be perceived by the person who makesthem. Therefore, through speech, an individ-ual stimulates themselves, and not only otherpersons, to take certain attitudes. This self-stimulation sets up the reflective nature oflanguage.

Whoever clenches their fist at someonethreatens to attack them and stimulates themto leave or to give up what they are doing. Avocal threat has the same function and, thus,is a gesture, too – a vocal gesture. Of course,the communicative aspect of gesture is notrestricted to threats, though gestures alwayshave the character of stimulation to do some-thing specific. For instance, talking aboutone’s experiences had on holiday involves thestimulation of the other person to participateby activating similar experiences in them-selves.

According to Mead, objects are the stimu-lations we respond to and we experience inthe context of our actions. The specificresponses to objects are their meanings. Thus,the meaning of a table consists in the sociallyshared use of certain things. The differentsensory experiences had in actions are theperceptual (visual, acoustic, olfactory, flavor-ful, tactile) characteristics of objects. Thus,the use of the word “table” is a gesture that ini-tiates in us a certain set of actions and experi-ences connected with those actions.

As the initial phases of social actions, ges-tures can fulfill their communicative functionof stimulation to actions. However, commu-nication means that the actions initiated bygestures are not carried out. The part of actionthat is not carried out is that which is called“mental image” or “idea”. Images or ideascome from past situations, from experienceshad in past actions; the past experiences acti-vated by a gesture are the meaning of the ges-ture. Thus, we can say that communication ispotential action; potential actions consist inthe experiences elicited by the gestures thatare the initial phases of the originally com-plete action. It is evident that the success of acommunicative act depends on participantssharing common experiences – or in otherwords, participants can communicate insofaras the gestures they use activate the same orsimilar experiences.

Action as the basis of “description”

If we want to maintain the term “description”within Mead’s language theory we need to saythat descriptions are gestures that elicit certainimpulses to act as well as certain experiencesconnected with that act. How does this theoryallow us to connect research activities anddescriptions in a non-dualizing way? Howdoes it enable us to make inquiring activitiesthe basis of descriptions?

The formulation of the inquiring proce-dure (e.g., “my hand is running along the edgeof the table to feel its shape”) is, according toMead’s language theory, a gesture initiating aspecial set of actions and drawing attention toa certain spectrum of sensory characteristics.In addition to that, because of its stimulationcharacter, the gesture elicits past actions thatpursued a similar goal (to find out the shape ofan object by feeling with hands) and arouses,as memory images, the attached past experi-ences. Past experiences allow us to character-ize the current perceptions (that we have, forexample, when touching the edge of a table);that characterization can be provided byselecting those past actions and experiencesthat are similar to the current perception. Thatlinguistic gesture which belongs to the kind ofpast actions selected can be used to specify thecurrent perception, e.g., that kind which led tothe experience “round.” Thus, according to thegesture theory of speech, the “description” ofthe table as “round” is the stimulation: “Ini-tiate those actions that have led to the experi-ence ‘round’!”

In this way, I think, the gesture theory ofspeech allows us to conceptualize actions andthe experiences attached to them as the basisof what Mitterer calls descriptions or the con-tinuation of a “description so far.” Linguisticgestures make it possible to identify currentexperiences with the help of past experiencesor – to put it this way – let us become consciousof them, not, though, on the basis of an imma-terial mind, but rather by initiating pastactions and experiences. Gestures providecontinuity between current and past experi-ences; past experiences enter into currentexperiences. And gestures have a communica-tive function insofar as they stimulate similarexperiences in other persons. It is not possibleto convey current experiences directly to oth-ers; we need to make the detour via common

experiences in past. In tasting wine it wouldnot be helpful to say “This wine tastes of or likeitself”; therefore we normally refer to a famil-iar taste shared by the participants, e.g., thetaste of cherries or blackcurrants; however, thewine already tasted can serve as the “reference”to identify the taste of a new wine; but only oncondition that all participants have tasted the“reference”-wine and reached agreement onits taste.

Past experiences and current experiencesdo not differ from each other in a dichoto-mous way. For, as experiences, they are madeof the same “stuff” and are in a temporal rela-tionship to each other, in accordance withMitterer’s “description so far” and “descrip-tion from now on.” According to Mead, a largepart of our everyday practice consists of habit-ual actions, that is, actions based on schematathat were formed by past experiences and areapplied to current situations. It is superfluousto say that there is no dichotomy differencebetween habitual actions and current actions.

Of special importance for gaining newexperiences are situations where habitualactions are inhibited as shown in the following(cf. Mead 1938, chapter 2, pp. 22–44, andchapter 3, pp. 45–62). Such situations occur ineveryday life; they characterize, however, thescientific research process in particular. Scien-tists are absolutely out to seek inhibitions ofactions in order to resolve them. In Mead wecan find three kinds of such inhibitions. Per-ceptual errors occur when an action alreadyinitiated or started turns out to be unsuitableat a certain point of its carrying out. For exam-ple, we see a human figure from some distanceand decide to go to him to ask him the way, butthen when we have come somewhat closer werealize that it is a tree. A different kind of inhi-bition appears when conflicting tendenciesarise. Mead presents as an instance the “case ofhaving doubt as to the identity of a person justmet” so that we are not sure whether “to greethim as an acquaintance or to treat him as asimple passer-by” (Mead 1900, p. 3). A thirdpossibility of inhibition is unsuccessful action.As an example of this kind of inhibition Meadoffers the research into the causes of yellowfever; before the discovery of the parasite thatis passed on to humans by mosquitoes, yellowfever was supposed to be an infection carrieddirectly from the sick to the well; but quaran-tine turned out to be without effect, whichstimulated the research into the genesis and


CONCEPTS



the course of the disease. Finally, we can alsoconsider contradictory “descriptions,” asmentioned by Josef Mitterer, as a further formof inhibition. Different opinions in compa-nies, political parties, governments, adminis-trations etc can inhibit decision making.

According to Mead, language plays a cen-tral role in resolving action inhibitions. Ouracting is not put together from separate actsclosed off and independent from each other,but is embedded in a complex weave of con-nections. Mead presents a simple example: theimpulse to seat oneself in a chair seen from acertain distance is inhibited for a moment inorder to get close to it; and the sitting in thechair may be related to the intention to hold aconversation with somebody etc. Since speak-

ing potentially is acting, its linguistic symbols,as gestures, allow us to carry out, in our imag-ination, a number of operations that serve tosolve problems:

[

With the help of gestures we can recon-struct the course of our action in imagina-tion and determine that sequence of thecomplex action where the inhibition hasarisen; analyzing action is breaking itdown, identifying the problem and closingit off from the unproblematic actionsequences. Breaking down actions does notintroduce a new kind of dichotomy, thedichotomy between analyzer and what isbeing analyzed, because the analyzer doesnot analyze objects but only his/her ownexperiences.

[

By analyzing and breaking down the com-plex action with the help of gestures, theopportunity is offered to make new per-ceptions and combine them with images ofpast situations and create alternative possi-bilities to act; this is the phase of forminghypotheses.

[

Finally, hypotheses are tested by carryingout the action plans of which hypothesesconsist. The problem is resolved when theinhibition has disappeared and the actioncan be continued.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper is to show that GeorgeHerbert Mead’s gesture theory of languageincludes the potential to develop an experi-ence theory or, more specifically, a theory ofempirical science, in a non-dualizing way. Ofcourse, the argumentation has to be elabo-rated on in more detail, especially with regardto two points: the relation of immediate andreflective experience, and the status of objectswithin this experience theory.

Mead’s communication theory consistsnot in the difference between speech andaction being a dichotomous one, but in theirbeing cast in the same mould. This is thenon-dualistic nucleus of his language theory.Speech is based on gestures and gestures areinitiated, though not completed, acts – inMead’s word “truncated acts” (1912, p. 402);past experience of acts is substituted for thecompletion. In this way speech is bound toaction and, as a counter to that, actionbecomes reflective through speech; the con-sequence is that speech becomes endowedwith a quasi-materialistic touch comparedwith a conception that conceives of languageas something absolute and based on its ownself.

References

All books and journal articles of John Deweyand George Herbert Mead were retrievedfrom http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/ on28 December 2003.Baldwin, J. D. (1986) George Herbert Mead.

A unifying theory for sociology. Sage:Newbury Park.

Dewey, J. (1896) The reflex arc concept in psy-chology. Psychological Review 3: 357–370.

Mead, G. H. (1900) Suggestions toward a the-ory of the philosophical disciplines. Philo-sophical Review 9: 1–17.

Mead, G. H. (1903) The definition of the psy-chical. In: Decennial Publications of theUniversity of Chicago, First Series, VolumeIII. University of Chicago: Chicago, pp.77–112.

Mead, G. H. (1910) What social objects mustpsychology presuppose? Journal of Philos-

ophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods7: 174–180.

Mead, G. H. (1912) The mechanism of socialconsciousness. Journal of Philosophy, Psy-chology and Scientific Methods 9: 401–406.

Mead, G. H. (1934) Mind self and societyfrom the standpoint of a social behaviorist(Edited by Charles W. Morris). Universityof Chicago: Chicago.

Mead, G. H. (1938) The philosophy of the act(Edited by Charles W. Morris with John M.Brewster, Albert M. Dunham and DavidMiller). University of Chicago: Chicago.

Mitterer, J. (1992) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie. Wider das dualistische Erkennt-nisprinzip. Edition Passagen: Vienna.


Franz Ofner PhD in pedagogy, sociology and psychology from the University of Vienna (1984); research worker on various projects on new technologies, organisational and social change, and qualification requirements (1980–1985); member of the University of Klagenfurt since 1985; postdoctoral qualification (habilitation) in sociology of economy from the University of Klagenfurt. Managing editor of the Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie (Austrian Journal of Sociology). Focus of research: the status of communication, power, and social recognition in social theory; industrial relations and the welfare state.

THE AUTHOR


The Construction of Realism

1. Introduction

Constructivism has been developed toaccount for certain results in biology, cogni-tive science, and social science, and to over-come traditional epistemology, especiallyrealism. But what is realism? There are nowthirty or more “realisms” with specificationssuch as “ontological,” “scientific,” “prag-matic,” “structural,” or “direct.” Some of theminvolve assumptions rather similar to those ofconstructivists. Yet they are called “realism,”probably because those who hold these viewswant to emphasize that they aren’t idealistsand believe in something that exists indepen-dently of humans and their minds.

The latter assumption seems to be incom-patible with the idea of a “constructed world.”And this is why many philosophers still havegreat difficulty accepting constructivism assomething anybody could seriously believe.Searle (1999, p. 18), for example, was muchamused when he talked to an ethnomethod-ologist who claimed that the moon could be“created” by talking. Wolterstorff (1987, p.233) wondered whether people like Good-man (1978) could really believe that “stars”and even “worlds” were “made” by us. He

came to the conclusion that a constructivistcould not mean such statements literally; if hedid, “we would question his sanity.”

“So you are saying that tables, chairs, andtrees do not exist at all,” realists often argueagainst constructivism. This however is a mis-understanding since constructivism is differ-ent from idealism (Glasersfeld 1997, p. 249).But realists, too, often get the impression thattheir view has been largely misconceived, e.g.,when it is said to involve “God’s-eye view.”

Adherents of realism and constructivismoften misunderstand each other. Constructiv-ists sometimes attack an old metaphysical the-ory that bears little similarity to the various“realisms” now held. Realists tend to interpretand criticize the idea of “constructing” theworld on realist presuppositions, which ren-ders it implausible from the beginning.

In this situation, it seems rather unfruitfulto engage in the usual polemics, claiming thateither realism or constructivism is to berejected in all its aspects. It is more helpfulfirst to clarify the statements of either side, torule out some misunderstandings, and thento discuss anew some central epistemologicalproblems associated with the realism-con-structivism controversy.

2. What is construction and what is constructed?

Let us first analyze the idea of construction inorder to find out why it is deemed absurd bymany realists. Everybody knows what itmeans to construct a bridge or a road. We canalso construct sentences by combining words,and theories by joining propositions. Con-structivists generalize this idea so that allhuman cognition becomes a “constructive”process. In addition, the concept of construc-tion is used to express the philosophicalassumption that the world we can know is ourconstruction (Glasersfeld 1997). But let usdiscuss this assumption later and first concen-trate on the process of cognition.

When we open our eyes, we get the impres-sion of being in immediate contact with aworld of “outside” objects of various shapesand colors. However, philosophical reflectionand empirical research suggest that thingscannot be as simple: if we have cognitiveaccess to the world at all, it is at least not asdirect as it seems. Mental states such as per-ceptions and thoughts probably depend onbrain states. And brain states are not in directcontact with physical objects. When externalobjects cause central brain states, a lot ofphysical and physiological events happen inbetween. Furthermore, the electrochemicalprocesses in sense organs and the centralbrain processes caused by them are rather dis-similar to the “external” objects. From a psy-chological viewpoint, cognition also appearsto be a rather complex process. It has beendemonstrated in psychological experimentsthat previous knowledge, expectations, andvalues influence what we perceive andremember. Of course beliefs, theories, andconceptual models, which depend on percep-tual results, are also constructions. And sincepeople do not normally form beliefs in isola-tion but in comparison with other people,some philosophers and social scientists speakof “social construction“ (Gergen 1999). Theview presented so far can be summarized bythe following thesis C1:

Volker Gadenne

A

Johannes Kepler Universität, Linz (Austria) <[email protected]>

R Purpose – To develop a realistic view that integrates the idea that knowledge is a constructive process. R Problem – In the controversy between realism and constructiv-ism, both sides have often misunderstood each other. Many realists still consider construc-tivism as a kind of idealism. And constructivists often assume that realists believe they have direct access to things as they really are. It seems necessary to clarify the statements of either side, to rule out some misunderstandings, and then to discuss anew the central epistemological problems. R Solution – A version of realism is proposed that takes into account constructivist ideas and objections. Realism as presented here is not opposed to the idea that cognition is a constructive process. According to this view, reality is some-thing we presuppose in any attempt to attain knowledge though we can never be certain how things really are. Having knowledge amounts to the preliminary judgment that some hypotheses seem to correspond to reality better than others. In addition, it is demon-strated that a constructivist position that reduces the claim to knowledge even further does not solve the problems better but creates new ones. Finally, Mitterer’s non-dualizing view of descriptions is discussed. It is argued that description necessarily presupposes something different from language. R Key words – realism, constructivism, idealism, fal-libilism, self-refutation, description, non-dualizing philosophy.


epistemological realism

CONCEPTS


CONCEPTS



C1: Cognition is a constructive process.

Note that C1 is not in itself an antirealisticassumption. Most scientists accept C1. And Ithink that realists should accept it too. C1does not logically exclude the possibility thatour cognitive states represent facts from anindependent world. However, some peopleconsider C1 as a good reason for accepting thefollowing antirealistic thesis:

C2: The world we can know is a construction.We cannot have knowledge about an inde-pendent reality, a world that exists and isstructured independently of minds.

Constructivists who conceive of theirposition as an epistemological one hold C2.They usually do not present C1 and C2 as dif-ferent assumptions. For our analysis, how-ever, it is important to distinguish C1, whichis based on

empirical results

of various sci-ences, from C2, which is a

philosophical

(notan empirical) hypothesis. I want to stress thatmany human and social scientists who con-sider themselves as constructivists are onlyinterested in C1 (see, e.g., Mandler 1985).

But

is

C1 a sufficient reason for C2? Obvi-ously, C1 does

not logically imply

C2. Thoughthe causal chain connecting cognitive stateswith their physical objects may be rather longand complex, this does in no way exclude thatthese cognitive states present their objectsexactly as they are. I want to stress this pointbecause some people seem to think that theconstructive character of cognition necessar-ily leads to an antirealistic view. This would bea false conclusion. Still, the question iswhether our cognitive states do

in fact

repre-sent real things as they are, and whether wecan know this.

3. Is there an independent world?

Epistemological realism consists of twoassumptions:

R1: There is an independent reality, that is, aworld whose existence and structure is inde-pendent of minds.

R2: We can have knowledge about that inde-pendent reality.

The main reason in support of R1 is thefundamental experience that the world some-times

resists

our attempts to describe andform it. Some of our attempts are successfulwhile others are not. We can repeatedly expe-

rience the fact that we can pass an open doorwhile is not possible to go straight through thewall. I can imagine things and change them inmy mind. By contrast, if I look at this table infront of me I cannot, by mental effort alone,make it bigger or smaller. This experience of“resistance” suggests accepting the existenceof something independent of our minds.There is something beyond consciousness,whatever it may be, that affects our cognitiveefforts and actions by setting constraints.Kant therefore rejected Berkeley’s idealismand accepted that there must be, in additionto phenomena, a world of

things-in-them-selves

. Constructivists do not generally object to

R1. However, they reject R1 if the “indepen-dent world” is taken to be a

ready-made

world, i.e., a world in which it is fixed whichthings exist and which facts obtain. Accordingto constructivism, how the world is dividedinto separate objects, properties, and factsdepends on our concepts. Do realists believein a ready-made world? R1 is not attached toany special ontological categories or assump-tions. Some realists are nominalists, othersbelieve in universals (e.g. Armstrong 1989);some are physicalists, some hold a dualistview. Yet realism requires that the indepen-dent world is

composed

or

structured

someway. The aspects of this structure may beunknown to us, yet the world is assumed tohave its structure independently of minds,concepts, theories, or values.

Constructivists usually object that thisassumption goes too far. Consider, however,the following question: Provided we haveaccepted that something exists that is mind-independent, how shall we conceive of this“something”? Is it sufficient to conceive of itas a structureless being? Or would it be moreconvincing to take it as something that iscomposed or structured a certain way? In mymind, the first assumption is insufficient. Aworld conceived of as completely structure-less or homogeneous could not be the reasonfor our experiencing a manifoldness of thingsand events, and could not explain our experi-ence of constraints. We would then have toconclude that the manifoldness of things iscompletely created by the subject, as assumedby idealism. In addition, we would have topostulate a mysterious connection betweenspiritual subjects, in order to explain the sim-ilarities in their perceptions. In short, the idea

of a structureless world leads back to idealism.Any reasonable view of the world seems torequire that “things are some way,” indepen-dently of minds. Again, this is not to say thatwe can know the real properties of things.Whenever I turn to the apple on this table I seegreen and when I turn to the book on the leftside I see red. Perhaps the properties greenand red do not exist beyond my mind. Yetthings must be

somehow

if the similarities anddifferences in our perceptions have any realsources at all (Gadenne 2001).

There is the theory that objects do not existindependently of conceptual schemes. Con-cepts carve up the world into objects such astrees, apples, and stars. The world as we con-ceive of it depends on culture and language.Sapir and Whorf presented a lot of linguisticfacts to support this view (Whorf 1984).Though the influence of language on thinkinghas been widely investigated, scientists stilldiffer about how the empirical results shouldbe interpreted (Anderson 2001). But let usassume that there were considerable differ-ences between cultures concerning the way

Volker Gadenne is professor of philosophy and theory of science. His research focuses on epistemological and methodological questions, the mind-body problem, and consciousness. Recent book publications include Wirklichkeit, Bewusstsein und Erkenntnis (2003) and Philosophie der Psychologie (2004).

THE AUTHOR

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 155

CONCEPTS



the world is divided into objects, and into cat-egories such as individual things, properties,and facts. Would this cast doubt on the realistassumption R1? I think the opposite is true: ifthere is a culture-dependent selective func-tion of language, this can best be explainedwith the help of R1! For in order to developconcepts and apply them to things, thesethings must already have some properties,similarities, and differences that we are able tograsp. For example, it may depend on humaninterests that we distinguish meadows fromforests. We could have developed totally dif-ferent concepts that do not allow for that dis-tinction. But we could not even

learn

and

apply

the concepts “meadow” and “forest,” ifthe world were a structureless “something”without any observable features. Languagecannot create such features, it can only influ-ence which features we attend to and select inour perception and thinking.

4. It is possible to describe an independent world?

In his books

Das Jenseits der Philosophie

and


Josef Mittererputs forward an argument against the realistassumption that we can refer, with the help ofdescriptions, to things as they really are. How-ever, Mitterer not only criticizes realism butalso constructivism and any “dualistic philos-ophy.” By the latter he means a way of thinkingand talking that presupposes certain dichoto-mic distinctions, e.g., between language andworld, or subject and object. He argues for anon-dualizing manner of thinking and speak-ing. One of Mitterer’s major concerns is touncover and expose the underlying assump-tions of dualistic thinking, including realism.Before exposing his criticism, he gives anintelligible introduction to realism, rich insubtle distinctions. He characterizes the cen-tral assumptions and arguments in greatdetail. I fully agree with this reconstructionand would like to recommend that every real-ist should read it in order to learn some newaspects of this view. I now want to present anddiscuss one of his objections, and deal withnon-dualism in general in section 9.

The question at issue is whether we areable to test a hypothesis about an object in

such a way that whether our hypothesis isconfirmed or refuted depends on the object.For example, someone says, “This table con-sists of plastic” (H1), and someone elseobjects, “This table consists of wood” (H2).Mitterer (2001, p. 96) now goes on to assumethat the first person passes her hand over thetabletop with the result that she gets a splinterin her hand. She now changes her mind, givesup H1 and accepts H2.

Interestingly, however, Mitterer does notthink this change of mind was determined bythe properties of the real table. Here is the cen-tral point of his argument:

“In order to falsify the first hypothesis inthe dualistic sense we have to refer to thatpart of reality the falsification of the firsthypothesis is said to be due to. And this ref-erence is only possible with the help of thesecond hypothesis which is now presup-posed as true […] It is not a table existingbeyond discourse that decides about truthand falsity: one decides about the truth orfalsity of the first description on the basesof the second description which is therebypresupposed as true” (p. 97).Mitterer concludes that the distinction

between an object and its description, whichcharacterizes dualistic philosophy, necessarilyfails. But isn’t a table different from itsdescription? For example, the table may con-sist of wood while the description does not.Here is Mitterer’s comment:

“I can distinguish the table from thedescription of the table by describing it(again) and describing the description ofthe table. However, the object of this (these) descrip-tion(s) is not the table but the table

and

thedescription of the table. We are again in asituation in which we cannot distinguishthe object of the description from thedescription of the object” (p. 98). Mitterer thinks that the person in his

example decides about the falsification of H1on the basis of H2, which is, for that purpose,presupposed as true. However, his examplerather suggests another interpretation: theperson who gives up H1 does not say some-thing like, “H1 is false

because

H2 is true.” Sherather argues as follows: “I just made anobservation (getting a splinter) that contra-dicts H1 but is in accordance with H2.” Thatis, H1 is rejected

because of an experience

and

not

just because of a rival hypothesis that is

presupposed without any empirical evidence.The person accepts H2

after

having made herobservation contradicting H1 and confirm-ing H2.

Moreover, one needs neither H1 nor H2 to

refer

to the table in our example. People canrefer to objects by pointing to them. And ourperceptions are directed to objects before welearn to describe them.

I do not understand why Mitterer thinkswe cannot distinguish descriptions fromobjects. First, we can refer to objects withoutusing descriptions at all. Second,

using

adescription is not the same, and does notimply,

talking about

a description. Let D1 be adescription of a table. Assume we talk aboutD1, on the one hand, and the table, on theother hand, taking them as different things.We therefore use two further descriptions D3and D4, where D3 has D1 as its object, and D4refers to the table. Note that we here

use

D3 torefer to a description, and D4 to refer to thetable (not to a description).

But Mitterer somehow thinks that we arelocked in descriptions: any attempt of goingbeyond our system of descriptions yields fur-ther descriptions. Similarly, philosophershave claimed that there is no way out of thecage of our minds, of language, or of our brainprocesses. Mitterer is not an idealist, and con-structivists are not idealists either. Yet it seemsto me that they were influenced by Berkeley’sfamous argument (see his “Principles ofhuman knowledge,” §23). This argumentruns as follows: in order to conceive or thinkof an object, we have to have it in mind. How-ever, what we have in mind are only ideas;outside objects are, by definition,

not in

ourminds. Therefore, we cannot even think ofoutside objects. We cannot think of some-thing unthought-of.

Though this argument is invalid, it greatlyinfluenced Kant and generations of philoso-phers. The decisive point is that the expres-sion “having something in mind” can meantwo different things. It can mean, first, that acertain sensation or idea is part of a person’smind. In this case, what we have in mind is, bydefinition, some mental state or event. But“having something in mind” also means thata perception or thought is

directed toward

anobject x. And in this case x can either be amental state or an outside object. While anidea is never itself an outside object, it may bedirected toward an outside object. And in the


CONCEPTS



latter sense, we can have an outside object “inmind” though it is not part of the mind in thesame way that an idea is. If these two thingsare confused, one may erroneously concludethat it is logically impossible even to think of,or refer to, mind-independent objects (for amore detailed analysis see Musgrave 1999, pp.177–184).

Of course this does not prove that we canin fact think of mind-independent objects. Itonly proves that the view that we cannot thinkof things outside our minds is not an analyti-cal truth. The opposite view, held by realists,is not an analytical truth either. The questionof whether we can describe and have knowl-edge about an independent world cannot beanswered a priori.

5. Can we have knowledge about an independent world?

R2 states that we can know real objects andfacts. This is the claim mainly criticized byconstructivism. And it is also a claim that hasgiven rise to various misunderstandings.What does it mean to “know” something?According to the traditional view of knowl-edge, it means to have justified true belief.And justification was traditionally under-stood as something that gives a belief cer-tainty (Albert 1968). Having knowledgeabout some real facts then amounts to know-ing these facts with certainty. Now certaintyabout external objects and facts seems to pre-suppose that we have immediate cognitiveaccess to the real things. If cognitive states aresomehow mediated or constructed, there isalways room for skeptical doubt. Only if ourminds were in unmediated contact with real-ity, could we be sure that our cognitive statesgrasp reality as it is. Putnam called this“God’s-eye view” and many critics of realismbelieve that this is what realists have in mindwhen they claim to know how real things are.Again and again antirealists have pointed outthat we cannot have knowledge in this sense,not even in science: scientific theories may beempirically most successful, yet reality mightbe quite different from what these theoriesstate.

To all this realists have to agree. And theyusually do. Of course knowledge is con-

structed in some sense, and mediated by lan-guage. And it can never reach certainty. Nei-ther experience nor reasoning can give aguarantee that a statement is true.

Fallibilism

is now accepted by nearly all philosophers andscientists. It follows from this that humanscannot have knowledge at all, if knowledgeimplies certainty. (By the way, this holds alsofor beliefs about the world as experienced byus, for we can never be sure whether weremember our experiences correctly, andwhat experiences we will have in the nextmoment.) But we

can

have knowledge if justi-fication is understood as something that neednot guarantee truth: according to fallibilisticrealism a belief is justified if it has withstoodserious criticism (Musgrave 1999, p. 324).

As to beliefs about real objects and facts,criticism means critical empirical testing.Most contemporary realists accept some ver-sion of the hypothetico-deductive method.For example, let H1 be the hypothesis, “Theearth is round,” and H2 the former view, “Theearth is flat.” There are many observationalresults confirming H1 and refuting H2. Froma realistic viewpoint, it is, in such a case, justi-fied to assume that H1 is true and H2 is false.

Generally, assume that some question hasbeen raised and one or several hypotheseshave been given as answers. We test thesehypotheses against each other. If we succeedin demonstrating that one of these hypothe-ses, say, H, accounts for the empirical resultsquite well while all others do not, we are justi-fied in adopting H as true. The acceptance ispreliminary, since H may be refuted in furthertests.

Many (but not all) realists hold to the

cor-respondence theory of truth

: A statement is trueif what it states is actually the case; otherwiseit is false. In other words, a statement is true ifthe state of affairs it describes actually obtains.Ideally, whether a statement is true or falseshould only depend on the facts. However,since concepts are never totally precise, it alsodepends on criteria related to human inter-ests. For example, is it true that the earth isspherical? Yes, if the problem at stake is topoint out the falsity of the former view thatthe earth is flat. No, if we are to exactlydescribe the shape of the earth. Many state-ments are only

approximately true

. It isapproximately true that in 2007 the worldpopulation was 6.6 billion. And whether astatement is regarded as true or false depends

on what deviations should count as substan-tial. Even in the exact sciences, we usually dealwith approximate truth. Scientific theoriesoften contain

ideal models

, e.g., “mass point,”“frictionless pendulum,” or “rational person.”But if, for example, planets are described asmass points moving on elliptic orbits, thatcannot be exactly true since no planet is reallya mass point. Yet the statement is approxi-mately true.

What reasons are there in support of R2?The main reason is that some of our assump-tions are empirically and practically success-ful while others are not. My belief that I canpass through an open door but cannot godirectly through the wall leads to an empiri-cally adequate prediction and successfulaction. It seems that this belief somehow cor-responds to the properties of an independentreality.

Science elaborates and deepens ordinaryknowledge. Theories such as those aboutatoms or genes have high explanatory powerand are extremely successful in predictingnew events. They even lead to the discovery ofnew entities and laws. Could such theoriesfunction so well if they did not (approxi-mately) correspond to some real characteris-tics of the world, even if they describe thestructure of things imperfectly and not in fulldetail? Admittedly, empirical confirmation isnot a guarantee of the truth of a theory. Butthis is already taken into account by acceptingthe fallibilistic principle: hypotheses are putforward with the intention to refer to, anddescribe, real things, with the proviso that ref-erence as well as description may fail. Realiststhink it is not necessary to give up the naturalrealistic attitude as long as we are aware of theuncertainty and the limits of human cogni-tion.

Constructivism instead tries to accountfor the constructive character and the uncer-tainty of knowledge, by

changing the object

ofour beliefs and statements: not the real worldbut only the world as experienced is said tobe the object of cognition. This seems to bean even more radical way of dealing with thelimits of human cognition than fallibilisticrealism. But does it lead to a more satisfac-tory solution? We shall see that constructiv-ism gets into trouble just because it is tooradical. Instead of solving the problems evenbetter than fallibilistic realism, it creates newones.

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CONCEPTS



6. Is constructivism self-refuting?

Constructivism has been accused of being

self-refuting

: the assumptions constructivismstarts with are not consistent with the conse-quences accepted in the end. One starts withassumptions concerning the biological andcognitive properties of humans, and the waythey construct their views. If these assump-tions are to be relevant for any epistemologi-cal considerations, they have to be interpretedin a realistic way, that is, as knowledge aboutthe real constructing systems, be they singlepersons, groups of persons, or brains. Butconstructivism denies that we can haveknowledge about real things, including per-sons and brains. Hence constructivism con-tradicts itself since it presupposes realism atthe beginning and rejects it in the end (seeWendel 1990).

Now there are two possibilities for avoid-ing a self-refutation. Constructivists caneither maintain that we cannot have knowl-edge of the real world, not even of the agentsor systems that construct the world they expe-rience. Or they can restrict the constructivistclaim to a class of things that does not includethe constructing agents. It is, for example,coherent to claim that real persons constructmathematical objects, or universals, or “theo-retical entities,” such as quarks.

However, constructivism as a general viewof knowledge cannot solve the problem thesecond way. According to this view, not onlyare electrons and quarks constructed, but alsoperceptual objects such as tables, chairs, trees,people, social institutions, and brains. If wecannot have knowledge about these things asthey really are, how could we have suchknowledge about real persons and their con-structive activities? If stones, plants, and catsare constructions, persons and brains shouldbe constructions, too. Most people have neverseen a brain, let alone the processes happen-ing in brains. And how could we know some-thing about real brain processes or the realsocial behavior of people if we didn’t knowanything about the rest of the real world?

The first possible way to avoid a self-refu-tation does not help either since it under-mines the constructivist position. If what weassume about people, their brains, and cogni-tive processes is not taken as knowledge in therealistic sense, it is hard to see why these

assumptions should be relevant for any epis-temological conclusions. The radical con-structivist Gerhard Roth (1994) discussedthis dilemma in great detail. According to hisview, it is the brain that does the constructionof the world. Roth distinguishes the real fromthe phenomenal brain. The brain that doesthe construction of the world is the real one,not the phenomenal one. The latter is itself aconstruction. Neuroscience can only studythe phenomenal brain while the real brain isunknown to everybody.

Now Roth has to answer the question ofhow he can know the things just stated if wecannot know anything about the real world.Shouldn’t he have to concede that he couldn’tknow it but just assumes it without justifica-tion? However, Roth wants to save some min-imal justification for his theory. He says thathis theory does not claim objective validity ortruth, but “plausibility” and “internal consis-tency” (1994, p. 326). He is right that his the-ory is consistent. But what does it mean thatit is “plausible”? It seems that Roth claims atleast some minimal justification for the storytold above, according to which there is a realbrain that constructs the world. Then, how-ever, Roth assumes to know something aboutthe real brain and his view is a version of real-ism. As a realist, he can keep C1 but shouldgive up C2.

As stated above, local constructivism, thatis, constructivism restricted to a special classof things, does not necessarily get into trou-ble. But general constructivism does. As far asI see, nobody has so far given a convincinganswer to this problem.

7. Does constructivism allow for more freedom?

Some constructivists seem to think that theirview helps people realize that they are free tocreate things and change them if necessary. Bycontrast, realism is said to foster a passive orpessimistic attitude, according to the slogan:“Things have to stay as they are since the con-straints of reality do now allow for anychange.” However, if we realize that the wholeworld is our construction, we should becomeconvinced that we can reconstruct it if wewant to.

The social constructivist Gergen explainsthis with the help of some examples, and he

appears to be rather optimistic: “We mustsuppose that everything we have learnedabout our world and ourselves – that gravityholds us to the earth, people cannot fly likebirds, cancer kills, or that punishment detersbad behavior – could be otherwise […]; wecould use our language to construct alterna-tive worlds in which there is no gravity or can-cer, or in which persons and birds are equiva-lent, and punishment adored” (Gergen 1999,p. 47).

Realism indeed assumes that there are lawsof nature, such as the law of gravity cited byGergen. Since we cannot annihilate or modifysuch laws they do in fact set limits for ouractions. If it is a law that A is followed by B,there will never occur an event of the form “Aand non-B,” and we can by no means makesuch an event happen. However, the laws ofnature allow for many events and changes, sothat we can create or modify a lot of things, ifwe have the technical means to do so. We cantry to create A in order to make B happen.Knowledge about laws is very helpful for thatpurpose. Exactly speaking, any purposivebehavior presupposes some law. If we did notbelieve in laws, we would never use a hotplateor take a plane. Thus it is true that, in a certainsense, laws of nature restrict our freedom ofaction. Yet knowledge about these laws helpsus to render our freedom of action as great aspossible.

Moreover, when it seems that reality setscertain constraints on our actions, a realistneed not consider these constraints as ulti-mate. Since knowledge about reality is fallible,it might turn out that some hypothesesregarded as laws are false. Or it might turn outthat some empirical generalizations don’tdescribe laws but only regularities, holdingunder boundary conditions that could bechanged.

If we now consider again Gergen’s exam-ples, we can say that some of the things heannounces might be possible. That cancerkills would stop to be a regularity if someonefound an effective medicine. That people can-not fly was generally true before they con-structed airplanes, and so on. Note howeverthat humans have managed to do these thingsjust

because

they discovered some laws ofnature, and used them to change reality inaccordance with their goals.

All this is possible on the basis of realism.Is there anything constructivism could con-


CONCEPTS



tribute over and above these possibilities?Gergen suggests that we use our language toconstruct new worlds. Of course language ishelpful for social interaction and necessaryfor scientific research. But does Gergen thinkwe could change the world merely by invent-ing new concepts? We could, for example,eliminate all concepts that refer to cancer. Butwould this really enhance our freedom, orhelp anybody? Does Gergen perhaps believethat we could construct anything? Most con-structivists do not assume this.

It turns out that realism and constructiv-ism do not differ greatly in respect to our free-dom of action. They both agree that manythings can be created and changed. They alsoagree that humans cannot do anything. Andthey agree that we have to find out what wecan do by testing empirical hypotheses andlearning by mistakes. Note also that, from theviewpoint of fallibilistic realism, we have rea-son to ask critically whether hypotheses so farconsidered as laws are really laws, in order toprevent our being restricted or mislead byfalse assumptions.

8. Does realism serve the interests of power?

Some people suspect realism of being in alli-ance with the powerful. With reference toNietzsche and French postmodernism, Ger-gen (1999, pp. 223f.) discusses this “dark” sideof realism, coming to the conclusion that weshould refuse any discourse based on the ideasof truth or reality: when we appeal to “thetrue” or “the real,” we eliminate competingvoices from dialogue and terminate discus-sion. If what we say is deemed “true,” the viewsof the others are disqualified as “false.” Con-cepts like “true” and “real” are used to executepower, to enforce one’s own position, and putdown other positions.

Mitterer, too, thinks there is a relationbetween realism and power. He concedes,however, that philosophers never intended toserve the interests of the powerful when theydeclared the truth to be the aim of science andphilosophy. Nevertheless he believes that, inthe end, those who commit themselves totruth have to appeal to authority. Since realitydoes not itself tell us what is true or false, therealist must try to “personalize” the view ofher opponent, and “depersonalize” her own

view. One does this by saying, “My statementis ‘objective’ and ‘true’, yours is only a subjec-tive, mistaken opinion’” (Mitterer 2001, p.91).

Now I do not doubt that people sometimeshold certain dogmatic views that serve theirinterests. And people have always tried tomaintain their power by oppressing any criti-cism. There is, furthermore, persuasion, prej-udice, and there is deception, even in science.However, I vehemently deny that realism hasanything to do with this.

Is it possible at all to persuade or intimi-date people by using predicates like “true” or“real”? Yes, it is,

if these concepts are used in anantirealistic sense

. Such strategies attributedto realists by Gergen can only be effective if“true” or “real” are predicates that could givea statement justification, and this is exactlywhat realism denies. Assume I say A, and myopponent contradicts. If I now added, “A istrue,” or “A corresponds to reality,” I wouldnot in the least enhance the justification orplausibility of A. According to realism, thestatement “A is true” is exactly as justified as Aitself. In order to convince someone, I wouldhave to give reasons or evidence, e.g., someempirical results in favor of A. The conceptsof truth and reality do not serve to justifystatements but to make clear how certainstatements are to be understood with respectto their relation to the world, namely asdescriptions (and not, e.g., as fiction or joke).Again, people do sometimes try to make oth-ers believe something by saying, “I’m right,”or “What I say is true.” From a realistic view-point, this is persuasion without reason. It isalso true that fundamentalistic schools like todeclare their own doctrine as the “truth.” Butthis not realism. Realism is not responsible forthe misuse of concepts by people who holdirrational thoughts, or who try to persuadeothers by misleading them.

9. Is non-dualism an alternative?

I have tried to present a version of realism thatcan be defended against constructivist objec-tions. This realism is not opposed to the ideathat cognition is a constructive process.According to this view, reality is something wepresuppose in any attempt to attain knowl-edge though we can never be certain how

things really are. Having knowledge thenamounts to the preliminary judgment thatsome hypotheses seem to correspond to real-ity better than others. In addition, I have triedto demonstrate that a constructivist positionthat reduces the claim to knowledge even fur-ther does not solve the problems better butcreates new ones.

The traditional problems of knowledge aredeeply rooted in the idea that there are sub-jects whose mental states are directed towardsobjects. Some philosophers think there issomething wrong with this idea. They havedeveloped a new approach in order to over-come and avoid the difficulties of both real-ism, constructivism, and any “dualistic”thinking. With reference to Mitterer, Schmidt(2003), too, holds a non-dualizing view. I can-not deal here with this approach in detail butwant to make some remarks on Mitterer’s(2000, 2001) non-dualizing philosophy.

“Dualism” here means a way of thinkingand talking that presupposes certain dichoto-mic distinctions, e.g., between language andworld, or subject and object. “In the dualisticway of speaking, descriptions are alwaysdescriptions of

something

, of an object, anevent, a state of affairs, where the

something

the description refers to [...] is different fromthe description, that is, from language” (Mit-terer 2000, p. 55). By contrast, in non-dualiz-ing thinking things are (parts of) descrip-tions: “The object of description is notdifferent from description or language, it isthat part of the description that has alreadybeen performed” (p. 56).

Assume, for example, that we want todescribe the table in the corner. “The table inthe corner” is the description

so far

, thedescription to be continued. This description

so far

is followed by a description

from now on

,say, “The table in the corner has four legs.” Wenow have a new object for an even furtherdescription

from now on

, namely, the newdescription

so far

, “The table in the cornerwith four legs.” The next description mightbe, “The table in the corner with four legs isbrown,” and so on. Any description yields anew object for further descriptions, or rather,it

is

that object. But the descriptions

from nowon

never

refer

to the descriptions

so far

as theirobjects, they rather take them as their startingpoint.

Non-dualizing philosophy dispenses witha “beyond” of statements or descriptions.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 159

CONCEPTS



Here, too, hypotheses are put forward andtested. But tests and arguments no longerrefer to something different from statementsor descriptions. “Views are true because andas long as we adopt them” (2001, p. 105).“Reality” is just “those views accepted at thetime being” (p. 105).

Is this a plausible view? I am sure anybodycan make descriptions the way Mitterer pro-poses: we can formulate a descriptive state-ment and then take it as a starting point for afurther description. We may call our lastdescription the “description so far,” and ournext one the “description from now on.”However, Mitterer does not tell us the wholestory, he leaves out an important point: inorder to proceed as he proposes,

we also haveto refer to objects

, such as tables, which are nei-ther descriptive statements nor descriptions(in the sense of characterizations). Consideragain Mitterer’s example. The description

sofar

, “The table in the corner,” does not itselftell me that this table has four legs, or that its

color is brown. Thus, in order to continue thedescription

so far

, and formulate the nextdescription

from now on

, one has to attend toa

non-linguistic object

, and observe its proper-ties. There is no other way a description couldbe performed. This is at least how people nor-mally conceive of a

description

, in contrast tofiction or fantasy. And I don’t think Mittererwants to propose that we should invent theproperties we ascribe to things.

As to the “dualistic” distinction betweensubject and object, I think it corresponds to afundamental feature of anybody’s experience.When I see something, it seems to me thatthere is an object in front of me. When I thinkof something, I am related to an object differ-ent from me. The mental life of people is char-acterized by

intentional

states, by states ofsubjects directed to objects. These objectsmight be conceived of as real, or phenomenal,or constructed. We cannot by decision or con-vention stop experiencing the world that way.There is one exception. Mystics are said to

have been in states in which they experienceda unity between their own consciousness andthe world. However, even mystics are not nor-mally in such states, and they usually empha-size that such experiences could not bedescribed in words, for the very reason thatdescriptive statements always presuppose thedistinction between objects, and between thespeaker and the world.

Of course not every philosophical theoryhas to deal with the intentional relation. But ifa new philosophical approach suggests givingup the traditional, “dualistic” distinctionbetween subject and object, it has to solve theproblem of how to account for the intention-ality of the mental. Non-dualists will probablyanswer that the view of the mental as inten-tional is itself a construction, like any otherphilosophical hypothesis. But constructionscan be more or less convincing, and it seemsto me that non-dualism is not much in accor-dance with the most fundamental trait ofhuman experience.

References

All translations from German are made by theauthor.Albert, H. (1968) Traktat über kritische Ver-

nunft. Mohr-Siebeck: Tübingen.Anderson, J. R. (2001) Kognitive Psychologie.

Third edition. Spektrum: Heidelberg.English orginal published in 1980.

Armstrong, D. M. (1989) Universals. West-view Press: Boulder.

Gadenne, V. (2001) Metaphysischer Realis-mus und Antirealismus. Logos 7: 14–43.

Gergen, K. J. (1999) An invitation to socialconstruction. Sage: London.

Glasersfeld, E. von (1997) Wege des Wissens.Auer: Heidelberg.

Goodman, N. (1978) Ways of worldmaking.Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapo-lis.

Mandler, G. (1985) Cognitive psychology.Lawrence Erlbaum: Hillsdale NJ.

Mitterer, J. (2000) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie. Third edition. Passagen-Verlag:Wien.

Mitterer, J. (2001) Die Flucht aus der Beliebig-keit. Second edition. Fischer: Frankfurtam Main.

Musgrave, A. (1999) Essays on realism andrationalism. Rodopi: Amsterdam.

Roth, G. (1994) Das Gehirn und seine Wirkli-chkeit. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Schmidt, S. J. (2003) Geschichten und Dis-kurse. Abschied vom Konstruktivismus.

Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.Searle, J. (1999) Mind, language, and society.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London.Whorf, B. L. (1984) Sprache, Denken, Wirkli-

chkeit. Rowohlt: Reinbek bei Hamburg.Originally published in 1956.

Wolterstorff, N. (1987) Are concept-usersworld-makers? In: Tomberlin, J. T. (ed.)Philosophical perspectives 1: Metaphysics.Ridgeview Publishing Company: Atascad-ero, pp. 233–267.

Wendel, H. J. (1990) Moderner Relativismus.Mohr-Siebeck: Tübingen.



(Radical) Constructivism – What Difference Does It Make?

(Radical) Constructivism and (Critical)Realism occupy different positions in therealm of epistemology. The differences areconsidered so grave, that extensive discus-sions hardly ever take place.

Critique is most often limited to standardphrases or simple devaluations stemmingfrom ignorance.

Everybody claims that his own opinionsare presented misleadingly and erroneously,or even that he never held the opinionsaccused of, such as denying reality here ornaive realist views there.

The main objection of the Realist is thatthe Constructivist cannot do without realistpresuppositions. (Niklas Luhmann presentsconstructivism explicitly as a realist episte-mology).

The Constructivist is in reality aRealist

– at least when he tries to put his headthrough a wall he will have to admit it.

1

The Constructivist criticizes above allthe realist assumption of an, at least to someextent, cognizable reality.Our conceptions anddescriptions of realitycan only be compared toother conceptions anddescriptions and notwith reality itself. Thecorrectness, let alone thetruth, of world views cannot be stated. Aworld beyond our senses and concepts is notcognizable. We all construct our own world– but interdependently and in concordancewith others.

In his critique the Constructivist univer-salizes his own principles towards presuppo-sitions valid for realists just the same. Hecannot allow that the Realist perceives andrecognizes the world “in fact” and thereforeis a Realist in his own right. When the worldis 100% the world of my experiences and myliving, when knowledge is no more than aninternal construction of the human subject,then this holds equally well for the Realist,

whether he wants to acknowledge it or not:

The Realist is in reality a Constructivist

.Thus realism becomes a special case of

constructivism, which tries to absolutize itsown construction of reality by setting itequal with an independent reality. The dif-ference between realism and constructivismis reduced from an epistemological distinc-tion to merely a difference in (epistemolog-ical) attitude. But the idea that we all areConstructivists, whether we admit it or not,is based on certain biological, psychologicalor cultural presuppositions; and hence theConstructivist has to face the same objec-tion of absolutization he raises against theRealist.

In their mutual critique, constructivismand realism presuppose each other their ownrespective positions. The Constructivist hashis reality presupposed “realistically” by theRealist and the Realist gets reality constitutedin a constructivist manner by the Construc-

tivist. Both hold that thepractice of science sup-ports their respectiveside. The Realists say thatscientists ultimately pro-ceed in a realist mannerand Constructivists claimthat science is construc-

tivist. Realist interpretations of the practiceof science are as convincing as are construc-tivist interpretations.

Whether scientists see themselves as Real-ists or rather as Constructivists dependsabove all on which philosophy (of science) isin fashion. There is no indication that realist-oriented scientists are more successful thanconstructivist scientists and it makes littledifference for the results of our knowledge-efforts whether they are interpreted as inven-tions or as discoveries. According to von Gla-sersfeld it is only in the last century that “sci-entists have started to realize that theirexplanations of the world rest on concepts

shaped by the human observer and which heimprints onto his experiences”(Glasersfeld1998, p 504) But already long before thisinsight scientists had been doing just whatthey have only now realized that they aredoing.

Von Glasersfeld replaces truth/correct-ness with viability and falsehood/error withnon-viability. (Sometimes expressions like“irrefutable” or “undeniable” serve the pur-pose.) Constructivist concepts, however,carry similar problems to those they aim toreplace. Viable constructions cannot bematched positively with reality. Strangelyenough, a direct contact, a direct confronta-tion with an “ontic reality” becomes feasibleexactly then, when our (therefore?) non-via-ble constructions fail or collapse. Admittedly,the failure of our constructions allows for amerely negative determination of reality,some kind of “Not so!”: “Reality can only bedescribed in terms of the actions andthoughts that have proven unsuccessful”(Glasersfeld 1996, p. 193). Von Glasersfeldsays that “for the Constructivist it is com-pletely irrelevant how the real really is” (Gla-sersfeld 1998, p. 324). But that reality is like awheel which turns nothing may well holdonly as long our constructions are viable anddo not get eliminated through “natural selec-tion.”

The inconsequence exactly then, whenour constructions fail, indicates that con-structivism has adopted the dualistic argu-mentation technique together with the pre-supposition of an at least negativelyknowledge-relevant language-independentreality. But perhaps this inconsequence canbe avoided? A

radical

constructivism couldargue that our (theoretical) constructionscan be checked neither positively nor nega-tively against reality. The sceptic’s argu-ment, recalled so often, should not berestricted to views and ideas that are corrector viable.

Josef Mitterer

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How is failure or refutation of theoreticalconstructs determined? For the success of ourconstructions we are responsible ourselves –is nature, is reality responsible for their fail-ure?

Who determines whether constructionsare viable or not? Reality or

a(nother) theoryabout reality?

Constructivism would becomemore stringent if it decides for the secondoption. This is the option that is applied inscientific conflicts over the viability/non-via-bility of theoretical constructs. The failure oftheories, their refutation, is always statedfrom

other

theoretical positions and as longas these positions have notfailed they are presup-posed to those construc-tions already having failed.This may explain to someextent why theoreticiansare seldom impressed orirritated when their theo-ries are declared a failure by other scientists.

Constructivists often claim that “naturalselection” or even “reality” is like a filterwhich decides on the viability of construc-tions. Perhaps they would be more concise ifthey concede that here decisions are based ona theory of evolution mutated to a presuppo-sition for these constructions.

For a theory to fail or to be refuted meanssimply that it runs counter to the theorywhich states its failure and refutation. Thereare hardly any theoretical constructs in sci-ence – except those not known outside theirholders – that have not been refuted by someother theory. How often has the Theory ofRelativity been declared “refuted” or “failed”or, as the refuters insist, has this theory

actu-ally

been refuted. Darwinists are notimpressed and shaken by the refutations ofCreationists, neither are Creationists viceversa.

In various sciences the strangest views areheld or have been held: that the earth is flat,that humanity is not older than a few thou-sand years, that all cave paintings are fakes,that AIDS is (not) caused by viruses, that theuniverse was created by, with or even in a bigbang, that matter is preferably dark and con-sists of quarks and other (smallest) particlesor simply of energy, that there are black holes,that phlogiston exists, etc. – all these con-structions have worked according to thebeliefs of their constructors or still continue

to do so. Many, if not most, advocates of theirtheories argue for them until the end of theirlife regardless of objections, reprovals, andfalsifications. Often they respond to a refuta-tion of their own theory with a refutation ofthe theory from which they were refuted. Inthe rare case when they give up their theoryin favour of another, they declare the(ir) ear-lier theory as refuted, false or erroneous fromthe basis of an adopted follow-up theory.

Realist, traditional truth-oriented think-ers sometimes claim, as von Glasersfeldpoints out, that constructivism and otherrelated modes of thought with relativistic

tendencies and multipleworlds “are dangerous,because they have nothingto put up against such aber-rations as nazism” (Glaser-sfeld 1998, p. 510). KarlPopper even insinuates thatrelativism leads to anarchy,

lawlessness, and tyranny (Popper 1982, p.106). But realist convictions all the same areno safeguard against holding

and

justifyingarbitrary views. For examples, one doesn’tneed to go to the texts written in a realist jar-gon by creationists such as Morris or Ross oreven those of revisionists and holocaustdeniers such as Faurisson or Butz – perhaps itmay suffice to hint to the support of the Uni-fication Church by realist-oriented thinkerssuch as Eccles, Bartley and Flew.

I doubt that constructivists must be toler-ant “for purely epistemological reasons.”

(Critical) Realists and Rationalists claimthe principle of tolerance for themselves andbase it on the fallibility of the human mind.And why shouldn’t there be dogmatic, intol-erant and ignorant Constructivists just asthere are tolerant and open-minded Realists(even though Popper only preached toleranceand intellectual modesty and von Glasersfeldlives it…).

Both modes of thinking – the realist justlike the constructivist – are manifestations ofan argumentation technique which allowsone to present any arbitrary opinion,depending on whether they are held ordeclined as true, false, erroneous or refuted,in the realist case, and as (not-)viable, failedor refuted, in the constructivist case. Thiscomes along with a reference to an “indepen-dent reality” or some other instances that canbe created through the realization and uni-

versalization of theoretical constructs takenfrom biology or some other science.

The Radical Constructivism of Ernst vonGlasersfeld can be credited at least with notfeeling comfortable at all with this mode ofargumentation and he does struggle with theproblem of how to get rid of a predominantlyobjectivist and realist terminology. This issometimes not easy: “That others don’t haveto see their world so, as one can see one’s own”(Glasersfeld 1998, p. 510) is trivial in the caseof different, subject-dependent worlds. Butwhen the world is the same for someone elseand for me and we “only” see it differently,then “seeing” loses its constructive moment.And when “everything that can be said, seen orfelt can be interpreted differently” – thenagain the question arises whether the same ordifferent objects are interpreted differentlyand then, which of these interpretations areviable and which are not.

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The conflict between a constructivist pro-

liferation of worlds and a realist reductiontowards the one (and “true”) reality needs tobe decided according to preferences drawnfrom presuppositions, which are only imper-ative as long as we make them…

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Both modes of thinking – the realist just like the constructivist – are manifestations of an argumentation technique

Josef Mitterer is an Austrian philosopher. In two books, The Beyond of Philosophy and The Escape from Arbitrariness he developed a non-dualizing philosophy, which forgoes the categorical distinction between language and reality and abandons truth as the traditional goal of our cognitive efforts.

THE AUTHOR


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Brief remark

Constructivism is an answer to the question

how language relates to reality

. Realism isanother answer. This relation forms thedichotomic presupposition of realist and con-structivist discourses and serves as the

para-dogma

of dualist philosophy. I am more inter-ested in the (re-)construction of this relationand hence do not participate in the discus-sions between the various versions of the dual-ist argumentation technique. But although Itry to keep an equidistance my sympathies arerather on the constructivist side.

Notes

Published for the first time in English, this isa translation from German of Mitterer (2001)(revised during translation).

1. The realist attempts often to refute theconstructivist with the help of examplestaken from “everyday-realism” – exactlythat area for which many constructivists(but not von Glasersfeld) suspend theirconstructivism.

2. Terminological difficulties of constructiv-ist theories are, for example, discussed bySchmidt (1998), pp. 567–568.

References

All translations from German are made by theauthor.Glasersfeld, E. von (1996) Radikaler Kon-

struktivismus: Ideen, Ergebnisse, Pro-bleme. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt.

Glasersfeld, E. von (1998) Die radikal-kon-struktivistische Wissenstheorie. Ethik undSozialwissenschaften 9 (4): 503–511.

Mitterer, J. (2001) Der radikale Konstrukti-vismus. ‘What difference does it make?’ In:Die Flucht aus der Beliebigkeit [TheEscape from Arbitrariness]. Fischer:Frankfurt, pp. 120–128.

Popper, K. (1982) Duldsamkeit und intellek-tuelle Verantwortlichkeit. In: Kreuzer, F. &Popper, K. R. (eds.) Offene Gesellschaft –Offenes Universum. Deuticke: Vienna, pp.103–116.

Schmidt, S. J. (1998) Der nächste Schritt.Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften 9 (4):567–569.

Received: 26 May 2008Accepted: 05 June 2008


So Far – From Now On

Josef Mitterer’s Non-dualistic Critique of Radical Constructivism and Some Consequences

I. So far: Mitterer’s critique of constructivism

1. Unmasking dualism

In the early nineties, Josef Mitterer startedto criticise (radical) constructivism on thebasis of his newly developed non-dualisticphilosophical approach. This critique is fun-damental and far reaching because Mittererdoes not attack single constructivist argu-ments but reveals the intrinsic rhetoricalmechanism applied by leading constructivistssuch as Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J.Varela, Ernst von Glasersfeld or GerhardRoth. It is exactly this strategy that he contin-uously applies to unmask all sorts of dualisticthinking and arguing, viz. to reconstruct thedichotomic distinctions presupposed in alldualistic philosophies as argumentative sup-positions (“argumentative Setzungen”).

In my paper I shall present an overview ofthe main domains of Mitterer’s critique andof the line of argumentation he applies to dis-play the crucial weak points in constructivist

argumentation. In my view this topic is ofspecial relevance since nearly all other cri-tiques of constructivism

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until today haveneglected Mitterer’s fundamental and con-vincing arguments.

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“The beginning of philosophy is markedby implicit presuppositions, not by prob-lems”

(Mitterer 1992, p. 11, my translation).Mitterer’s central argument reads as follows:Like all other variants of dualistic philosophy,constructivism, too, neither questions itsbasic presuppositions in terms of allegedlyobjective neurobiological findings nor itsbasic assumption that there

exists

a beyond ofdiscourse (“Diskursjenseits”). Since theworks of Maturana, Varela and their collabo-rators, neurobiological hypotheses such asthe operational closure of the nervous system,autopoiesis as the necessary and sufficientexplanatory mechanism for life, cognitiveconstruction of reality instead of its represen-tation, or the assumption that cognitive sys-tems transform unspecific inputs from theirenvironment into systems-specific states oforder serve as unquestioned scientific knowl-edge from which epistemological conse-quences are directly derived.

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For Mitterer,

this position reveals a naive faith in science,which supports conservative and old-fash-ioned tendencies opposed to critical resolu-tions of this belief in the works of authors suchas William Van O. Quine, Paul Feyerabend orRichard Rorty in the last few decades.

Constructivists, in other words, fail toconstrue the presuppositions upon whichtheir whole theoretical building is based. Inother words they fail to apply their own prin-ciple, viz. that everything is a subject-depen-dent construction, to their own construc-tions.

In Mitterer’s view, constructivists tend to

universalise

their own principles and to pro-scribe all other philosophical approaches justas realist philosophers do. This procedurebecomes quite evident in the constructivistcritique of realistic approaches in philosophy.According to Mitterer, this critique simplymisses the point because since the works ofFeyerabend, Putnam or, most recently, Rorty,such a naive realism, as it is attacked in con-structivist attacks, is no longer seriously advo-cated in the philosophical community.

Regarding the distinction between a con-structed experiential actuality (“Wirklich-keit”) and an inaccessible and unknowablereality (“Realität”) behind actuality, which –according to leading constructivists – has tobe presupposed for epistemological reasons,Mitterer concludes that constructivists stilladhere to a dualistic type of argumentation.The dichotomy between language and a lan-guage-independent world is still preserved atleast as an indispensable cognitive regulativeidea. This dualism becomes clearly evident inor behind the idea of

viability

advocatedabove all by von Glasersfeld. Viability is usedas a criterion deciding the success or the fail-ure of an enterprise. Although, in principle,we cannot recognise “as such” (the objectivereality) we can still experience whether or not


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Universität Münster (Germany) <[email protected]>

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R Problem – Mitterer’s critique of the central argumentations of radical constructivists has been mostly neglected until today. The paper presents and evaluates his criticism and, in the second part, outlines a format of constructivism that tries to draw appropriate consequences. R Solution – In his critique Mitterer explains why the radical construc-tivism represented above all by Maturana, Varela, von Glasersfeld or Roth still remains in a dualistic format. In his view Neurobiology is used in their writings as the indisputable basis for deriving far-reaching epistemological consequences. Therefore constructivism evades self-application. To overcome this serious critique a different approach to con-structivist thinking is sketched that operates without using any biological or psychological theories, tries to avoid dualism, and elaborates Mitterer’s basic argument that the description of an object and the object under description are the same. R Benefits – The paper shows what constructivism can learn from a serious critique and how it can be rewritten in a non-dualistic way. R Key words – dualism, epistemol-ogy, operative fictions, truth, contingency, construction.


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a certain model, a procedure or an activitysucceeds or fails. In other words, the hiddenreality is still regarded as operating as an arbi-ter separating valid from invalid operations inthe actual world.

Mitterer’s analysis of this dualisticdilemma of constructivism reads as follows:Constructivists claim that we are responsiblefor the

success

of our constructions. But whois responsible for their failure? Is it nature orthe reality? In other words: Who decideswhether or not our constructions are non-viable: reality or another theory about reality?Mitterer concludes: “Constructivism wouldbecome much more consequent if it wouldopt for the second variant” (1999, p. 176, mytranslation).

2. Truth

Although constructivists claim that ourknowledge can never be objective, will neverrepresent “the reality,” and as a consequencewill never arrive at “the truth,” their argu-mentation does not differ in principle fromdualistic strategies regarding the problem of

truth

. Maturana e.g., claims as facts that liv-ing systems

are

autopoietic systems and thatnervous systems

are

closed. All other theoriesthat do not fit into this conviction and intothe epistemological consequences derivedfrom it are in fact excluded from the scientificdiscourse by Maturana and Varela. Sincehuman beings who act as observers constructtheir worlds according to their biologicalconstitution, biology is regarded as theappropriate science for disclosing the condi-tions that constitute the observer as a humanbeing. Biology, and that means Maturana’sbiology, is proclaimed as true scientificknowledge and is thus (at least implicitly)universalised. Accordingly, Maturana orRoth repeatedly use expressions such as “thepresent biochemical knowledge allows us tosay…,” “it is a fact that…” or “as any neuro-biologist knows…” – although many neuro-biologists advocate quite different theories.Maturana’s central conviction, viz. that ournervous system is closed, serves as a dogmaticand intrinsically realistic argument fromwhich all epistemological assumptions arederived. That means that, regarding thefounding argument of constructivism, con-structivist thinking is suspended.

Mitterer concludes from this analysis:“…the dualistic truth terminology can

equally be applied as in realist variations ofdualism. One’s own position is deperson-alised, contrasting positions are person-alised” (1992, p. 141, my translation). That isto say: the traditional idea is that truth isimpersonal or objective whereas errors andfalse ideas are personal. The ideas I hold to betrue (otherwise I would not advocate them)are (at least implicitly) placed into a beyond ofdiscourse (they are no longer my ideas),whereas conflicting ideas are explicitlyattached to special people in the discourseitself.

3. Science

For Mitterer it is not surprising that con-structivist constructions of

science

have noselective power. He concentrates his critiqueon Maturana’s criterion of the validation ofscientific assertions (Mitterer 1992, p.131)This criterion, which Maturana equates withthe scientific method, as such consists of fouroperations that must be performed in orderto establish a scientific explanation. The mostimportant point here is the validation of pre-sented experiences in terms of a scientificreformulation of the experience that isaccepted by/in a/the scientific community.

Mitterer argues that Maturana’s criterionneither distinguishes science from non-sci-ence nor does it determine the essential andnecessary feature(s) of science. Maturanaclaims that the members of the scientific com-munity must be able to repeat the respectivevalidation. But this holds true only for thosemembers who already advocate the same sci-entific assertions; otherwise all those asser-tions contested by other scientists – and mostassertions

are

contested – could not be vali-dated. Accordingly, Maturana’s convictionthat scientific assertions are consensual asser-tions, which are only valid in the communitythat produces them, tells us no more than thetriviality that scientific assertions are validonly for those who accept them – and that isto say, those who advocate them themselves.

Finally, Mitterer points out that realist sci-entists are no more successful than construc-tivist ones. And regarding the results of scien-tific endeavours, it doesn’t matter whetherthey are labelled as discoveries or inventions.

4. Objectivity

Regarding the problem of

objectivity

, Mat-urana creates a tricky dilemma. He is con-

vinced that existence is created by all the dis-tinctions that observers apply. It follows fromthis assumption that there exist as manydomains of existence as there are distinctionsapplied by observers. All distinctions createdomains of existence or so-called multiversa.Accordingly, there exist as many truths asthere are versa. The problem of how versa canbe distinguished remains unanswered byMaturana. In his view all versa are equivalent.But who is able to check this assumption? Thiscould only be done by a super-observer whoobserves the versa and multiversa from anindependent position outside; but this idea isinadmissible for a constructivist. Sincenobody has a privileged access to “the reality,”the only way to resolve conflicts between versais the construction of a common versumbased on respect and confidence. Coexistingin the multiversa presupposes consensus, i.e.,common knowledge. Common knowledge,however, can only be achieved by eliminatingdifferences in the course of producing cul-tural uniformity. In other words, in case ofconflict the individual versa are resolved toreach consensus. That is to say, the versa aretransformed into one versum, i.e., a uni-ver-sum. Thus, the differences between versa thatare all interconnected by consensus becomeirrelevant from an epistemological point ofview (Mitterer 1992, pp. 138 ff.)

5. Tolerance

Many constructivists hold the view thattolerance is a necessary consequence of theconstructivist epistemological assumptions.Mitterer questions this argument. He empha-sises that critical realists and rationalists, too,claim a postulate of tolerance simply becausehuman beings fall prey to errors. In additionhe points to the experience that there are dog-matic, intolerant and ignorant constructiv-ists, and tolerant and modest realists (Mit-terer 1999, p. 179.) Finally, Mitterer sums up,the realist as well as the constructivist modelsof thinking are nothing but manifestations ofa technique of argumentation with the help ofwhich arbitrary assumptions can be pre-sented as true or false.

6. Achievements of constructivism

Despite his severe critique of constructiv-ism Mitterer also recognizes an achievementof constructivism regarding epistemology.“This achievement,” he writes, “can be seen in

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a shift of the epistemological interest from theobject of knowledge to the knowledge of theobject, i.e., to the process of gathering knowl-edge” (Mitterer 1992, p. 146, my translation).The object of knowledge is no longer trans-posed into a beyond of the process of knowl-edge gathering; instead it is integrated into theprocess from which it results.

On the whole, however, Mitterer’s critiqueof constructivism is devastating. He says thatconstructivism is not a new paradigm at all. Itis no more than the prevailing fashion amongcompeting philosophical approaches. Thereason for its success can be seen in the factthat after the collapse of progress-orientedconcepts of science initiated by Fleck, Kuhnand Feyerabend, it is very welcome to have abio-constructivism that re-establishes a faithin one’s own activities for which we areresponsible a faith for which we have nothingto fear except self-critique (Mitterer 1992, p.149).

II. From now on: Rewriting constructivism in the light of Mitterer’s criticism

7. Outline of a process-oriented epistemology

In the second part of my paper I shall tryto outline a process-oriented epistemology.My intention is to demonstrate how radicalconstructivism can be rewritten if Mitterer’scritique is seriously taken into consideration.In the last few years I have made two efforts toreact substantially to Mitterer’s critique inorder to establish a non-dualistic variant ofconstructivism (Schmidt 1994, 2007a). Themain ideas of this rewriting will be presentedin what follows.

Mitterer has repeatedly argued that thedescription of an object and the object of adescription coincide. The object of descrip-tion is not different from the description orthe language; instead it is that part of adescription that has already been realised.(Mitterer 1992, p. 56) Objects are descrip-tions

so far

, which can be continued bydescriptions

from now on

. I agree with thisargumentation in principle. Therefore I shalltry to elaborate it in some detail.

One of the main problems in theorybuilding is the problem of the

beginning

. Toavoid the recourse to neurobiology as a seem-ingly evident and objective starting point, Ihave looked for an initial argument that can-not be denied without approving it. My argu-mentation runs as follows: Whatever we do,we do it in the gestalt of a supposition (“Set-zung”): We do something, and not some-thing else, although we could have done so.Every supposition takes a certain gestalt forus and – should we be under observation –also for others: it is a supposition of a specifictype.

As far as we can judge within a lifetime,every single supposition that we are makinghere and now has been preceded by other sup-positions to which we (can) relate more or lessconsciously. All our suppositions to datetherefore form a context of suppositions ingiven concrete situations. We can now refer tothis context by way of memories and narra-tives. This context of suppositions comprisesthe totality of our prior life experiences thatwill, in turn, in every concrete situation affectour future experiences as expectations.

Every supposition makes at least one

pre-supposition

(“Voraussetzung”). As a rule,however, many presuppositions are made ordrawn upon. The nexus between suppositionand presupposition is auto-constitutive asneither can be meaningfully envisaged with-out the other. Supposition and presupposi-tion are, therefore, strictly complementary.The presupposition of a supposition can onlybe observed in the reflexive reference to thesupposition. If one accepts the auto-constitu-tion of supposition and presupposition, thenone also accepts that there can be no presup-position-free beginning – the only possiblebeginning is to make a supposition.

Whether we perceive or describe some-thing, ponder something or become con-sciously aware of something as somethingparticular, we are always executing a seriousgame of

distinctions

. We (and not anyone else)describe (and not explain) something as thatparticular something (and not as somethingelse). In doing so we make use of linguisticresources whose semantic potential and socialacceptance is tacitly presumed and, at thesame time, by this very use confirmed as use-ful or efficient. All this is realised (meaningnothing but that we can envisage or think allthis in this way only, not in any other) as a

happening in a particular situation at a partic-ular point in time, i.e., in a context of suppo-sitions.

Suppositions constitute

contingency

because they must be selective with referenceto other options. As selections they are deci-sions, and only qua decisions do they makecontingency observable. This means thatselection and contingency must be envisagedjointly, they constitute each other, they arestrictly complementary.

Every supposition, according to the logicof the present argument, requires a

positinginstance

that is affirmed by the very act of sup-position. In the case of cognitive suppositions(e.g., perceptions), we call the positinginstance consciousness.

Consciousness

oper-ates on all levels by means of reference throughthe auto-constitutive interdependency of sup-position (consciousness of something) andpresupposition (without consciousness nosomething). The presupposition of a supposi-tion can only be observed (posited) as such byway of reflexive reference and thus it repeatsthe game of supposition and presupposition.It is only by virtue of reflexivity that referencescan be recognised and communicated. Con-sciousness is the irreducible condition fordealing with consciousness, and reflexivity isthe condition for becoming aware of con-sciousness.

Reference or relationality as the principleof consciousness, reflexivity allowing refer-ence to presuppositions, the community-forming imputations of such relations in oth-ers, and the selective auto-constitution of thecontext of supposition and presupposition,seem to be the elementary principles or“mechanisms” driving all our actions andmaking them accessible to observation andinterpretation. In the following I shall seek toexplore where an application of these elemen-tary mechanisms leads us in the developmentof our theories.

Consider an example. We observe ordescribe something in our environment asyoung, thus more or less unconsciously mak-ing use of the semantic distinction young/old.This distinction as a supposition must neces-sarily be presupposed because otherwise wecould not in our act of judgment decidebetween young and old. But what do we referto when observing, describing and judging?In our example it is age. It is obvious that thedecision for one side of a difference (e.g.,

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young) presupposes the unity of the differ-ence young/old (i.e., age). If I do not possessthe semantic category age, then I cannot dif-ferentiate it into all the possible shades of lin-guistic meaning between “very young” and“very old” and remain unable to perceive anddifferentially name something as old or asyoung. Differences, therefore, mark intercon-nectedness rather than exclusion. The opera-tive use of one side of a difference keeps theunclaimed other side on hold, as it were.

8. Models for realities

In order to specify my argumentation sofar I introduce three concepts: categories,semantic differentiations, and distinctions.

Categories, in the theoretical conceptiondeveloped here, mark societally relevantdimensions of meaning in our language ofdescription, e.g., age, sex, power, possessions,kinship, food, or clothing. Categories may bedescribed as nodes in a network of categories,which attain distinctness and semantic profileby virtue of their difference from other cate-gories (age vs. appearance vs. health etc.).Without such a difference even categories“cannot make sense,” and so we must againconclude that there must be a unity of the dif-ference between categories that organises thebasically infinite diversity of categories in anetwork, thus permitting selective reference.Furthermore, I consider it plausible to assumethat this network has developed and provedits mettle in a society’s history of problem-solving and environmental adaptation, andthat it can therefore co-orient the actions ofthe members of the society because it remainspractically unchallenged, although it can cer-tainly be observed to change on a long-termbasis. I call this network, i.e., the unity of thedifferences between categories, a

model ofreality

, to be understood as a model

for

reali-ties.

The reference to categories is differenti-ated through action and communication andthus concretised into a smaller or largernumber of semantic differentiations of thecategories, e.g., binary or n-ary ones (dead/alive, but also freezing/ cold/tepid/warm/hot). Semantic differentiations are

processes

,dynamic arrangements, which must contin-ually be generated anew; they are not invari-ably fixed entities. They render categoriesdescribable by breaking down the unity of thedifferentiations or differences, i.e., the cate-

gory, into distinguishable semantic supposi-tions. In the process of semantic differentia-tion, the semantic potential of categories is,as it were, operationalised for concrete pro-cesses of cognition and communication.

Whenever a particular supposition ismade, i.e., a (symmetrical) semantic differ-entiation is transformed into an (asymmetri-cal)

distinction

(“a pretty young girl” and not“an ugly old man”), then – more or less con-sciously – one option is selected from thepool of available semantic differentiations,which gains its semantic valency by virtue ofthe difference from the other possibilities ofsemantic differentiation: young, pretty, andgirl “make sense” by exploiting the implicitbut unobserved difference from old, ugly,and man, with reference to the categories age,appearance and sex. In this sense, supposi-tion and presupposition are mutually auto-constitutive and confirm each other in everyprocess of supposition: suppositions operateon the basis of presuppositions; presupposi-tions orient the meaning attribution of sup-positions. Consequently, categories can bedescribed as the unities of the differencebetween semantic differentiations and dis-tinctions.

9. Operative fictions

These reflections also make clear whycategories and semantic differentiations asapplied by agents in their distinctions anddescriptions can only meaningfully bedevised as cross-temporal and cross-individ-ual: solely on this condition can they sociallyco-orient agents as autonomous decision-making systems, because every agent is con-vinced that all the others rely on the samepresuppositions in an identical or at least suf-ficiently comparable manner. We simply can-not envisage an alternative to this uncon-scious transference of individual cognitivedevelopments onto others. We are thereforefully justified in our belief that the worldmust appear pretty similar to all the others,and that they themselves also share this con-viction of ours. This mode of reflexivity of thecollective expectation of collective expecta-tion (expectation of expectation) I call col-lective knowledge, which can be specified as

operative fiction

(Schmidt 2001). It is fictivebecause nobody can look into other agent’sheads; nevertheless it works rather reliablybecause agents act

as if

all others disposed of

the same knowledge and applied it in theirdescriptions. This argumentation is based onthe important difference between subjectiv-ity and subject-dependency. That means thaton the one hand the construction of patterns,schemas and meanings is subject-dependent:it happens in the respective cognitivedomains in a systems specific manner. Butthis hypothesis does not at all imply that theconstruction of orders in the broadest senseis merely subjective or even arbitrary.Instead, subjects make use of cross-individ-ual knowledge and strategies acquired duringthe process of socialisation.

In my view this argumentation overcomesthe Maturana dilemma discussed in §7.Whereas Maturana tries to homogenise themultitude of individual versa by consensus

post festum

, I try to establish a partial prag-matic compatibility of subject-specific con-structions of worlds (= cognitive autonomy)via a compatibility of the mechanismsapplied and the language-specific categories,semantic differentiations and distinctions(= social orientations).

Categories and semantic differentiationsbecome effective in controlling actions onlyas soon as supposition-competent instances(called “agents”) actually apply these orienta-tion options in concrete contexts of actionand communication for purposes of refer-ence, i.e., for distinctions and designations.Thus they enact agent-related suppositionsin temporally and spatially concrete situa-tions (which I call

histories

and

discourses

tocover verbal and nonverbal activities as well)and thereby exploit these semantic presup-positions. The complementary interdepen-dence between suppositions and presupposi-tions, therefore, calls for agents that activatethis connection and keep it going.

Suppositions and presuppositions forman auto-constitutive nexus of mutual depen-dency that produces its specific “reality”through the effectiveness of the references foragents, and not through an appeal to a spe-cific ontological arrangement in “the reality.”

Finally, the constitutive interconnectionbetween suppositions and presuppositionsalso decides the

constellations

of observation.Observers of the first order (everyday agents)enact suppositions without conscious refer-ence to their presuppositions. Second-orderobservers set in motion processes of observa-tion in order to observe the presuppositions

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of the suppositions made by first-orderobservers, their own presuppositions func-tioning as blind spots. Observers of the thirdorder observe the presuppositions of second-order observers with the help of their blindspots etc. This hierarchical arrangement inno way implies an ascending scale of increas-ing quality, but simply identifies directions ofobservation as they are practised in everydaylife, in scientific research or in the philosophyof science.

10. Culture programmes

In what follows I intend to elaborate theidea of a reasonable mediation between cog-nitive autonomy and social orientationreferred to in §16.

Models of reality, as models

for

possiblerealities, have been described so far as struc-ture-oriented, i.e., static semantic networks.They become operative in action only whenthere is a programme learned and experi-enced by all agents during their socialisationthat permits the socially prescribed realisa-tion of potential forms of reference to catego-ries and semantic differentiations as concretesuppositions of distinction, i.e., that permitssituation-specific selections from amongstthe possible relations between suppositionsand presuppositions. These concrete realisa-tions necessarily combine cognitive, affec-tive, and moral components. As selections,such suppositions of distinction (or, in Mit-terer’s term: all descriptions) are contingent;and this

contingency

is inevitable becauseevery supposition simultaneously demandsand admits of the choice of a particularoption against the sense-constitutive back-ground of all the excluded possibilities.

The programme of societally practised orexpected references to models of reality, i.e.,references to categories and semantic differ-entiations, their affective charge and moralweighting, and equally the programme ofadmissible orientations in and by the modelof reality of a society, I call

culture

or

cultureprogramme

. It obeys the principle that theconsciousness of the agents links itself to cul-ture as the dynamic arrangement for refer-ences to models of reality, and that it thusenacts itself. In other words, culture emerges,so to speak, through descriptive activities ofagents who follow the rules and practices ofsense production, acquired in the process ofsocialisation and deemed socially relevant.

This train of thought makes clear thatmodels of reality and culture programmescan only be envisaged in

strict complementa-rity

. As all categories that are embodied inlanguages of description could in principlebe connected with all other categories (anontological exclusion rule is not in sight), weneed rules of selection and combination aswell as criteria of compatibility in the form ofa presupposed culture programme that effecta permanent reduction of the multitude ofrelations and thus produce given realities ascontingent selections out of infinite diversity.It is only as the unity of the differencebetween contingent selection and infinitediversity of observables and unobservablesthat a given reality gains processual identity.

Sense

can, in the context of this course ofreasoning, be described as the permanentindividual experience of the success of theapplication of culture programmes, or as thesocially successful management of

differenti-ation and distinction

by agents. I.e., it is a pur-poseful action in semantic space that must bepresupposed for every supposition if senseexperience and sense attribution for individ-ual agents are to remain at all possible,socially transferable and compatible. How-ever, sense must also be “made” by way of anarrangement of references. This means thatsense is not proposed here as an all-ground-ing basic category but as the both presup-posed and concomitant interpretation of theprocess of supposition and presupposition.

These deliberations about culture as aprogramme were intended to make clear that“culture,” in the theoretical scenario underdiscussion, does not feature as an observableentity “existing as an object.” Culture as aprogramme realises itself in concrete actions,as performed by agents in the form of

offers ofoptions and schematisations of options

forpurposes of reference to the model of reality,which is imputed to be obligatory for all theagents of a society, who make use of preciselythese functions and expect all the otheragents to proceed

grosso modo

likewise. Suchoffers and schematisations may be modified;but any new design will again work as a

pre-scription

– in keeping with the logic of theculture programme. As a programme for thecreation of orderly arrangements and refer-ences, which solidifies itself in orderlyarrangements and references and

qua

reflex-ivity functions as an operative fiction inte-

grating cognitive autonomy and social orien-tation, cultural programmes serve asgenerating mechanisms for all the phenom-ena that the agents of a society characterise

ascultural phenomena

in the broadest sense. Ina nutshell: without the functioning of the cul-tural programme in situation-specificactions of agents, nobody could know whatcultural phenomena “are” and how they arerecognised and evaluated.

To sum up: “culture” is described here as a

discourse fiction

. In other words, “there is” noculture as a sum of phenomena, but we needit as a programme in order to be able to gen-erate, observe, describe and evaluate what wedeem cultural phenomena. Every theory ofculture is therefore necessarily a form of cul-tural

practice

(i.e., programme application),and descriptions of culture always indicatecultures of description. Every observation of“culture” is, at the same time, a kind of

shap-ing

it by applying the culture programme.The chosen approach also helps to make

the everyday concept “society” more precise.

Society

can now be specified as the unityof the difference between the respectivemodel of reality and the respective cultureprogramme. This specification enables us,furthermore, to make clear all talk of the irre-ducibility, inaccessibility, indescribabilityetc. of “society” and of “culture” in such a wayas also to categorise what is called “society” asan operative

discourse fiction

. This impliesthat “society,” too, is not designated as anobservable entity existing as an independentobject in a beyond of discourse. On the con-trary, society is constantly

realised

by way ofthe actual exploitation of models of realityand culture programmes through agent-spe-cific suppositions and presuppositions in his-tories and discourses.

The categories, as units of the differencebetween semantic differentiations and dis-tinctions, may remain conscious or may bemade conscious as a kind of foil

behind

allsuppositions. In the observation of the sec-ond order, therefore, all the options of theculture programme appear to be contingentdue to their selectivity, but also changeableand malleable, if new programme compo-nents are successfully implemented as pre-scriptions and other components are re-val-ued. Contingency is thus not seen here asgroundlessness but as the presupposition formobility and creativity.

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11. Scientific research: Systematic problem solving

Mitterer has rightly criticised Maturana’scriterion for scientific research. In the follow-ing I try to develop a plausible conception ofscientific research. My proposal does not reston the separation of arts and sciences, or ofhard and soft sciences, but takes as its startingpoint the descriptive distinction “scientific vs.non-scientific.” The initial hypothesis is a fol-lows: In scientific and non-scientific behav-iour and communication, our central pur-pose is to have experiences and solveproblems, such activities being emotionallyand normatively geared simply because wehave a body and live in a society. The differ-ence between the two kinds of experience andproblem-solving lies primarily in the

explicit-ness

and the

repeatability

of operation, and itsregulative parameters. In other words, the dif-ference lies in the strategic change of the pointof observation and description from first-order to second-order and (occasionally)third-order observations. The specific char-acter of scientific problem solving in its broadsense may be expressed by the formula:

sys-tematic problem solving by means of explicit(= operationalised

and

repeatable) procedures.

To follow this specification, certainrequirements must be met. These are, how-ever, not to be regarded as norms prescribedby a philosophy of science, but as pragmatic

preconditions

for solving problems in anexplicit way by means of procedures that haveproved their worth in past practice. First,there must be a systematically ordered con-ceptual framework for the constitution ofphenomena and problems: in brief, anexplicit theory as a conceptual strategy forproblem solving. To meet the criterion ofexplicitness, the logical structure of this the-ory must be apparent and its central conceptsmust be defined or demonstrable by exemplar(= postulate of specialist terminology). Onlyon such a basis may one expect the theory tobe used in an intersubjectively replicable andcontrollable way.

As soon as the problems, whose solution isconsidered relevant by a community of inves-tigators, have been explicated theoretically, anoperational procedure must be found thatspecifies all the steps leading to the expectedsolution of the problems (= methodologicalpostulate) as well as the point where the prob-lem may be considered solved. Methods are

means to decide between acceptability andunacceptability, which are not to be under-stood as objective values, but as regulativeideas with reference to specific decision crite-ria established in a scientific community.They force the observer to move to the level ofsecond-order observation. Only on the basisof such explicit interrelating of problems,problem-solving strategies, problem solu-tions and their communication, does theproblem-solving procedure become applica-ble and testable intersubjectively. And onlythen does it become possible to assess itspotential applicability to other problem-solv-ing contexts (= postulate of applicability).

The requirements of scientific problem-solving described so far are furthermoreessential both for the teaching and learning oftheories, and for the interdisciplinary co-operation that aims at the reasonable interre-lation of research projects rather than produc-ing a patchwork of isolated studies conductedon mutually incompatible theoretical andmethodological premises. They may not onlyhelp to secure the continual recruitment ofhigh-quality professionals, but also improvethe ability to promote permanent learning aswell as the transformation of one’s stock in co-evolution with other disciplines. Both aspectsare, as one may have become aware in themeantime, neither self-evident nor trivial.

If we advocate the view that “empirical”does not refer to “the reality itself” and tofirst-order observation (= immediate obser-vation that does not observe its criteria of dis-tinction and description) but refers to theproduction of

facts

in the sense of logical,pragmatic, mental and social

stabilities

thatare regarded and treated as independentobjects by means of theoretically andmethodically controlled procedures. Thekind of intersubjectivity resulting fromempirical research is again not guaranteed “byreality in itself” but will be considered valid aslong as its effects on scientific communicationremain stable. It will end as soon as it fails tostand up to subsequent second-order obser-vations or to alternative theories.

Consequently from the framing remarksmade up to this point, an answer to the ques-tion of what characterises

scientific empiricalresearch

may be based on two fundamentalassumptions:

[

Since the systematic question of empiricalevidence is a question of second-order

observation, the question of scientificempirical research must accordingly beposed on the level of the relationshipbetween first-order and second-orderobservation.

[

If we link the distinction “empirical vs.non-empirical” to social criteria of experi-ence and its practical results, then scientificempirical research must also be subject tothe sociality/culturality – and thus contin-gency – of knowledge. Indeed, as Mittererputs it, the viability of our theories is notdecided by reality but by another theory.As I mentioned above, the results of sys-

tematic problem-solving operations areacceptable (or valid) as soon and as long asthey preserve their position in relevant scien-tific discourses, in other words, as long as theyremain

consensual in the respective discourses.

The criteria for establishing consensuality areas yet undebated pieces of evidence and con-victions, which serve as stop signals to inter-rupt justification processes. Examples of suchcriteria are deep rooted convictions regardingbasic dimensions of human experience andstructuring of reality such as continuity,coherence, cause and consequence, structur-ation in time and space, and so on.

“Consensus” is used here very deliberatelyas an observer term describing that state of ascientific discourse where no objection israised against a certain framework of knowl-edge. This reading of “consensual” excludesinterpretations that define this concept interms of “intersubjectivity” or correspon-dence of cognitive systems in “powerless com-munication” (sensu Jürgen Habermas).

12. Talking about truth in discourse

Mitterer (1992, p. 110) has called theoriesof truth a “disguise of club-law.” So what canbe said about truth in a revised constructivistframework?

“Truth” is characterised here as the unityof the difference true/false, i.e., as a result ofdescription and ascription. Truth, as state-ment reliability in histories and discourses,renders the contingency of everything knowninvisible, and serves as the interrupter ofarguments by virtue of the legitimacy of thereference to the status quo of shared knowl-edge. Moreover, there is the requirement that,following the conclusion of an argument, arenewed corroboration of truth can bedemanded any time, which should not, as a

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rule, be refused. In other words, querying ispart of the dignity of the truth discourse; it is,as it were, its morality.

This basic mechanism will now be furtherelucidated.

True can only be what can also be false,Peter Janich (2000) emphasises. Correspond-ingly, truth refers to elements of discourse, tostatements, assertions, and arguments, butnot to objects and matters of fact. By labellingstatements and assertions as true, we intendto solve temporarily both the starting and thefinishing problem in communication pro-cesses and discourses. Instead of undertakinga futile attempt to start with absolute primor-dial reason, we inevitably begin by fallingback on already existing consensual knowl-edge, i.e., by recourse to knowledge that hasbeen confirmed cognitively and is sharedcommunicatively, and has therefore alreadybeen labelled as true. And we can, on theother hand, terminate our arguments andtheir justifications as soon as we have reachedan (explicit or implicit) consensus throughthe discourse in corresponding histories. Inother words: Since we cannot, for simplepragmatic reasons, infinitely continue to har-bour doubts, we must be able to interrupt theregress of justification arising from ourdoubts in a consensually acceptable way, andthis interruption must be accorded highsocial reputation so as not to be shrugged offas pure wilfulness. Both conditions are suffi-ciently fulfilled by the concept “truth.”

13. Truth as ascriptionTruth is ascribed to statements and sys-

tems of statements if we, on the basis of thestate of our knowledge and, consequently, onthe basis of successful previous experiences,see good reasons to consider them as true. Thesort of knowledge one can appeal to withoutobjection in an argumentatively connectiblecontext is the sort of knowledge that is held tobe true knowledge. (This is why knowledge,according to Niklas Luhmann, is always asso-ciated with an implicit claim to truth.) Truthalways, correspondingly, carries an (at leastimplicit) time-index: statement p is true if pconforms with our present unquestionedknowledge so far. And truth refers to sociallydifferent sets of knowledge and rules of attri-bution of the predicate “true”: p is true for allthose who, in their own histories and dis-courses, refer to the same kind of knowledge,

and who attribute this reference to all others.In other words, truth is enacted as the func-tioning reflexivity of knowledge evaluation indiscourse. As with “culture,” we could sayhere: “The truth” does not exist, but we needtruth ascription as an indispensable control-ler of discourse. Truth constitutes the identityof a community of scientists or philosophers.

A statement designated as true represents,correctly and reliably, our state of knowledgequa cognitively interpreted experience. Inthis sense – i.e., not from within itself – it isevident, and can therefore be formulated incorresponding statements and assertions, asif it were independent of time and agents. Forthis reason, the designation “true” functionsas a powerful discourse instrument for itsuser and may easily lead to the belief thattruth is something one can possess, and is“not just” a discourse controller.

Statements and assertions take place indiscourses embedded in histories. They areenacted, i.e., belong to the category “action,”and can as such succeed or fail, reach or missgoals. Like all actions, they follow actionschemata and are acquired communally inthe course of socialisation(s). Assertions, asactions, Janich (2000) maintains, are not onlydependent on comprehension but also onagreement, something that is decisive for thetruth of an assertion. Janich, therefore,defines truth as assertoric success, assertingbeing not just a mere talking description ofthe world, but a means of the organisation ofcommunal praxis, whose truth is endorsed bythe successful accomplishment of the actionsinitiated in its course. Like identity andmorality, truth is also a product of attribu-tion, requiring the agreement of the partici-pants involved in the relevant attributionprocess, and is certainly not just an attitudeopen to choice that can be individually cho-sen or rejected.

The communicatively realised operationof the assessment of a description, explana-tion or interpretation as “true,” as a rule, clan-destinely brings about the tacit elimination ofthe observer, a situation expressed succinctlyby an aphorism of the Austrian writer FranzJosef Czernin: “Truth: that which forbids us tothink, whenever we assert something, that weare mentioning ourselves at the same time.”For this same reason, discourses about thetruth of truths should be consistently con-ducted from the perspective of an observer of

the second order, so that contingency is nec-essarily rendered visible.

Truth, according to a dictum of Heinz vonFoerster, is the invention of a liar. That is tosay: truth, as a category of discourse, is onlyneeded whenever theories are contested ordoubts arise, whenever we feel cognitivelyunwell, whenever actions fail. Truth is a crea-ture of conflict, a category of the observer ofthe second order. Because we cannot tell our-selves the truth, as the German writer R.Walser once pithily noted. So our doubts areusually cast upon the statements of others,and from the conflict between our and theirbeliefs, our own beliefs, as a rule, emerge vic-torious – because we hold them to be true.The strategy behind all this has beenexpressed by Mitterer in the formula (alreadyquoted above) that truth (like morality) is de-personalised, and falsehood is, by contrast,personalised: “the truth” is always on ourside; “false” is always the statements of theothers. And as all those who can and mayadvance claims to truth in discourse, whichcan be discursively realised, possess at leastreputation if not power, it becomes clear thattruth, beside morality, functions as an impor-tant mechanism of socio-cultural differentia-tion.

14. Truth as communicative qualityIn an observer- and process-oriented,

non-dualist argumentation, as developedhere, the attribution of the category “true/truth” is, consequently, seen as a discoursestrategy that helps to determine the commu-nicative quality of statements, i.e., their suc-cess in action – not, however, their congru-ence with something existing outsidethemselves, as in most of the correspondencetheories of truth. “Communicative quality”may here refer to quite different things,depending on the discourse: discursive suc-cess (connectibility), usefulness, degree ofassent, force of conviction, authenticity, evi-dence, conformity, coherence, consistency,etc. The emphatic concept of truth, as pro-moted by dualist philosophies, appears to beespecially attractive because it is evidentlyconcerned with power and the rejection ofdialogue and responsibility – from scienceand religion to politics, education, and part-ner relations. Whoever holds the view thatone can be “in possession of the truth,” how-ever, commits a twofold mistake: they assume

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that truth is something existing in itself, i.e.,something independent of time and person;but at the same time they postulate the abilityto claim possession of this somethingthrough time- and person-dependent histo-ries and discourses, and thus escape the con-tingency of histories and discourses by enter-ing a “discourse of the other world” (in thesense of Mitterer).

In a non-dualist discourse, truth does notfigure in the singular or as an entity, but onlyin the plural and in the adjectival form of theapplication of the difference true/false. Therecent attempts by many authors to tie truthonce again to experiences of perceptual evi-dence, are therefore expressly rejected here,because perception is seen here as a process ofreference by observers, and not as a represen-tation of reality.

15. Truth: The cognitive and the communicative aspect

The handling of the truth attribute can bedifferentiated into cognitive and communi-cative aspects.

In cognitive processes, we treat statementspractically as true for as long as the process ofmeaning construction by means of the semi-otic materiality of the statements is neitherirritated nor interrupted. The presumptionof truth is enacted here as an experience ofimmediate evidence. As long as the cognitiveprocess of order creation is running undis-turbed, the question of truth does not arise;we approve what we receive. If the process isinterrupted, then we raise the question bycommunicating with ourselves, as it were,whether and why we are convinced by themeaning construct that we have assigned tothe statement within the context of our avail-able knowledge, or whether we can envisage ascenario that can support our belief (e.g.,documents, methods of proof, statements bywitnesses, experiments).

In communicative processes, too, asalready stated, the question of truth does notarise as long as the process is not interrupted,and statements, assertions or arguments arenot called into question or subjected todoubt. Here the recourse to true statementsfunctions as an interrupter of legitimation,which restores the connectibility of commu-nication. The ascription of truth realises itselfhere as a decision scenario, in which those

knowledge constellations or decision prac-tices are adduced that, at the given state of dis-course, are accepted without protest.

This proposal rests on the following argu-ment. If truth is not designed in the mode ofcorrespondence relations (reality and knowl-edge, statement and object), but as the cogni-tively and communicatively efficient strategyof the invisibly contingent treatment of con-tingency, then it can be specified, from theobservational perspective “discourse,” as thesuccessful communication, stabilisation, andregress interruption that permits communalaction; and from the observational perspec-tive “history,” as the social assessment of anaction as a viable problem solution, in thesense of a successful coupling with the envi-ronment in a social context. In both cases, inhistories as in discourses, the goal is actionsuccess. If there is – as Janich (2000) alsoemphasises in his reflections on truth – anindissoluble interdependence betweenactions and assertions, then successful actionbecomes the definiens of “action-truth.”Assertions intended to serve as instrumentsof successful problem solutions must be true,if they are to be suitable for the organisationof communal praxis. The lack of action suc-cess renders assertions false; for assertions, astrue speech, function as a summons in theorganisation of communal activity.

Truth as a strategy of contingent contin-gency treatment, integrates cognitive, affec-tive and moral aspects. Unquestioned accept-able knowledge permits cognitive andcommunicative operation, and allows for apositive pleasure–pain equilibration (in thesense of Luc Ciompi 1997). To command trueknowledge is emotionally satisfying. Ineveryday life – apart from special forms ofcommunication such as humour or advertis-ing – it is morally expected (however coun-terfactually) that every agent always speaksthe truth – white lies are the utmost in excus-able counteraction. And scientists, in partic-ular, are under high moral pressure to createand spread true, and only true, knowledge,unless they want to risk losing their reputa-tion. Conversely, in fulfilling this expectation,they gain both cognitive and emotional satis-faction as well as social recognition.

Finally, if we realise the contingency of allour suppositions and the operative fictioncalled truth, we cannot escape the claim for

tolerance. The problem here is that the reali-sation of contingency can only be achievedfrom a position of second-order observation.But how can this observing competencespread among at least a majority of peopleworldwide? (For details see Schmidt 2007b).

Nevertheless, the upshot of this insight,“the finality of provisionality,” is therefore aconsoling, a mitigating formula that, how-ever, would be incomplete without its con-verse, “the provisionality of finality” – and forthis transient kind of finality we need iden-tity, morality and truth.

Notes

1. See, e.g., the 36 analyses of von Glasers-feld’s philosophy in Ethik und Sozialwis-senschaften 9 (1998), where no singlereference to Mitterer’s critique can befound.

2. The very few exceptions are Schmidt(1994, 2007a) and Weber (2005).

3. Janich (1992, pp. 33 ff) argues in a similarway.

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Siegfried J. Schmidt was born in 1940. He has been university professor at the universities of Karlsruhe, Bielefeld, Siegen and Münster for philosophy, linguistics, literary studies and media studies from 1971 to 2006 and is now professor emeritus. Recent publication: Histories & Discourses (2007).

THE AUTHOR

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ReferencesCiompi, L. (1997) Die emotionalen Grundla-

gen des Denkens. Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht: Göttingen.

Janich, P. (1992) Die methodische Ordnungvon Konstruktionen. In: Schmidt, S. J.(ed.) Kognition und Gesellschaft. Suhr-kamp: Frankfurt am Main, pp. 24–41.

Janich, P. (2000) Was ist Wahrheit? Eine phi-losophische Einführung. Beck: Munich.

Mitterer, J. (1992) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie. Wider das dualistische Erkenntnis-prinzip. Edition Passagen: Vienna.

Mitterer, J. (1999) Die Flucht aus der Beliebig-keit. Drava Verlag: Klagenfurt.

Schmidt, S. J. (1994) Kognitive Autonomieund soziale Orientierung. Suhrkamp:Frankfurt am Main.

Schmidt, S. J. (2001) Operative fictions. Thefabric of societies. In: Schram, D. & Steen,G. (eds.) The psychology and sociology ofliterature. John Benjamins: Amsterdam,pp. 443–457.

Schmidt, S. J. (2007a) Histories & Discourses.Rewriting constructivism. Imprint Aca-demic: Exeter.

Schmidt, S. J. (2007b) Kontingenz in Globali-

sierungsprozessen. Wie werden wir künf-tig mit kulturellen Konflikten umgehen?In: Balgo, R., Lindemann & Schildberg, H.(eds.) Pädagogik im Zeitalter globalerKonflikte. Carl-Auer: Heidelberg, pp. 16–37.


Received: 7 February 2008Accepted: 20 June 2008


Non-dualizing Philosophy and Empirical Research

Introduction

Empirical methodology in social sciences notonly consists of methodological rules but isalso based on epistemological premises,although these premises are usually notreflected in practical empirical research. It isKarl R. Popper’s “Critical Rationalism” thatcan be regarded as the most influential philo-sophical approach to modern empirical socialresearch. This analytical (and normative)approach combines epistemological realismwith the prescription of methodological rulesand standards, which are still common sensein social sciences. One of the most strikingfeatures of critical rationalism is a doubledualism resulting from epistemological real-ism and from the methodological relation-ship between theory and empirical research.Both sides of scientific knowledge arerestricted to clear-cut rules: theory has to beexplanatory and rational in the sense that

only empirically observable statements aboutreality are allowed within science. Empiricalresearch follows methodological rules andserves as realistic test for scientific theory,which means that empirical methodology isused to reflect the real world in contrast to sci-entific laws, which derive from theory.

A non-dualizing philosophy cannot agreewith this double dualism and has to challengeboth the epistemological realism and thedualism of theory and empirical observation.As a consequence, non-dualizing philosophyhas to define the status of empirical researchwithin science. What is the relevance ofempirical research for theory testing and the-ory building if empirical research and empir-ical observation cannot be considered to be anindicator of the real world but are discourse-related and discourse-dependent? The prob-lem is striking, as a simple circular relation-ship between theory and empirical research isnot an adequate description of how scientific

knowledge develops. The philosophical solu-tion to this problem can only be to distinguishbetween theoretical and empirical observa-tion without considering both sides as oppo-site or dual entities.

This article aims to show the consequencesthat non-dualizing modelling of the relation-ship between theoretical and empirical obser-vation has on the development of scientificknowledge. Therefore, (1) I critically recon-struct the contribution of non-dualizing phi-losophy to the relationship between theoryand empirical research. (2) Arguing from aconstructivist point of view, I will challengeMitterer’s equidistant attitude towards bothepistemological realism and constructivism.This critique is based on the argument thatthe constructivist and the non-dualizing per-spectives do not differ substantially withregard to the relationship between theory andempirical research. (3) In a third step, I willshow the consequences of non-dualizing phi-losophy for empirical research, which StefanWeber has worked out with the help of JosefMitterer’s non-dualizing approach. (4) Addi-tionally, I will present some constructivistthoughts on this relationship, which I thinkare reasonable within non-dualizing philoso-phy as well as constructivist frameworks.

Some remarks on constructivism as a way of thinking

In this article I will treat (radical) constructiv-ism as a system of epistemological ideas andarguments or as an epistemological discourserather than as different authors’ positions andperspectives. Unfortunately, constructivistdiscourse sometimes seems confusingbecause many labels are used to distinguishbetween several sub-discourses, such as radi-cal constructivism, social (or cultural) con-

Armin Scholl

A

University of Münster (Germany) <[email protected]>

R Purpose – Explaining the relationship between theory and empirical research within the research process. The main motivation is to show that non-dualizing epistemology and constructivism have approximately the same ideas to explain this relationship. R Problem – Josef Mitterer criticizes constructivism as a dualizing epistemology and “overlooks” that non-dualizing philosophy and constructivist perspectives are similar with regard to the relationship between theory and empirical research. R Methodology – (1) Reconstruction of non-dualizing argumentation, (2) non-dualizing implications for the description of the relationship between theory and empirical research, (3) comparison of non-dualizing implications for the relationship between theory and empirical research with constructivist implications for this relationship. R Solution – Finding a position on the description of the relationship between theory and empirical research that fits both epistemologies, i.e. non-dualizing philosophy and con-structivism. If we discard the critical rationalist idea to falsify theory with the help of empir-ical research (which reflects reality), we better conceive the relationship between theory and empirical research as a permanent and mutual refinement, stabilization and irritation. R Implications – With the help of non-dualizing argumentation, constructivists have to clarify their position towards the relationship between theory and empirical research, par-ticularly towards the choice of methods and the interpretation of the results; and non-dualizing epistemology can profit from constructivist second-order argumentation. R Keywords – theory, empirical research, second-order observation, epistemology, methodology, methods.

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structivism, second-order cybernetics, etc.For the purpose of this article, it is not neces-sary to take these differences (entirely) in con-sideration but to apply the common idea(s)behind different constructivist (or related)approaches to the relevant question of thisarticle: the relationship between theory andempirical research. As constructivist philoso-phers have not written much about this rela-tionship, I will try to imagine what might be a(radical) constructivist perspective on thistopic. Of course, there are significant differ-ences between Humberto R. Maturana’s con-structivism base on a biological foundation,Heinz von Foerster’s second-order cybernet-ics, or Schmidt’s socio-cultural approach, butI consider them less important in the contextof my comparative argumentation on con-structivism and non-dualizing philosophy.All of these approaches primarily challengerealistic epistemology and, at least in an indi-rect way, the predominant realistic founda-tion of empirical research and methodology,too.

If we look at constructivism from a histor-ical perspective, more recent works can beregarded as correcting inconsistent argumen-tations without abandoning the constructiv-ist paradigm or epistemology. Even SiegfriedJ. Schmidt’s “farewell to constructivism” (cf.Schmidt 2003) expresses an ironic semanticrather than a substantial turning away fromconstructivism. Schmidt has developed aneven more advanced position within con-structivist discourse and, in my opinion, onethat is more truly “radical“, whereas thefounders of “radical constructivism” are oftennot as radical as they claim to be or asSchmidt’s approach actually is.

As a consequence, I am interested in thepotential of the constructivist epistemologyas a whole rather than in specific positionsheld by certain constructivist authors and inconstructivist subdiscourses. Therefore, thefollowing elaborations reflect my interpreta-tions of the constructivist epistemology andits consequences for empirical research.Although this point of view is abstract andreductionist with respect to the various, dif-ferent constructivist positions andapproaches, it should be suitable for present-ing fundamental reflections on the topic.Within this strategy of argumentation I inter-pret Josef Mitterer’s non-dualizing approachas a necessary correction of constructivist

inconsistencies rather than as a completelydifferent epistemology. This is also howSchmidt (2003) treats non-dualizing ideas: ifconstructivism aims to be radical and to giveweight to its arguments, it should be non-dualizing or at least incorporate non-dualiz-ing suggestions. Therefore it is necessary firstto reconstruct non-dualizing argumentsabout the relationship between theory andempirical research.

Critical reconstruction of non-dualizing philosophy

In the preface of his major book, Josef Mit-terer expresses the main aims of his philoso-phy. He is not interested in questions such as“What is the case?” or “What are we able toknow?” or “How are we able to know?” (Mit-terer 1993, p. 13), but in questions about thepragmatic, practical, communicative, argu-mentative, or power-related consequences ofa dualizing way of speaking, particularly inthe case of argumentative conflicts (pp. 14f).Mitterer’s position is that of a critique of lan-guage or the use of language, particularly ofthe dualizing way of speaking. His philosophytakes no account of differences between lan-guage and other bases of interpretation of theworld and abandons differences such as the-ory/language or reality/world completely (pp.42f).

Non-dualizing philosophy can be (notmust be!) interpreted within three dimen-sions, which Mitterer himself does not use inhis text but which can help to better under-stand his philosophy and its consequences forthe relationship between theory and empiri-cal research (cf. for the following interpreta-tion Mitterer 1993, §§25–28). The mainaspect of his approach is the dimension of

time

. Every description of an object is adescription so far, which can be continued as(further) descriptions from now on. The sec-ond aspect is that of the inherent

logic

. Theobject of the description and the descriptionof the object must not be separated in order toavoid the dualization of description andobject. As I understand Mitterer, he does nottalk about a dialectical relationship betweenknowledge (description) and matter of fact(object) or any other relationship (e.g. con-

struction, reflection, etc.). A third aspect isthe

social

dimension: describing objectsoccurs within discourses, and the identity andbackground of the participants in the dis-course are relevant to the outcome of contro-versial or consensual descriptions.

In the following I will try to reconstructMitterer’s position towards the relationshipbetween theory and empirical research (cf.Mitterer 1993, §§32–50). The common basisfor a (scientific) discourse is not neutral (orobject-related) but “neutralistic,” whichmeans that there is a consensus about thedescriptions so far (§37). From now on, theremay be differences in (further) descriptions ofthe object, but the common sense so far can-not be declared an arbiter, whether descrip-tions from now on are true or not (§§38–40),because the description(s) so far fit(s) differ-ent and even controversial descriptions fromnow on (§44). The decision of whether adescription of an object is true or not impliesa certain theory of truth (§§42–43). If a par-ticipant in (scientific) discourse claims thefailure of a description that is opposite to hisown description, he cannot only state the dif-ference between both descriptions but alsohas to give reasons why his description is bet-ter, truer, and more adequate than the oppo-site description (§45).

Within scientific discourse the researcherlegitimates his position, or the truth or cor-rectness of his description, with the help of(scientific) procedures that must be commonsense within the scientific community (Mit-terer 1993, §46). According to a dualizingepistemology, the procedure of science itselfproves whether the description fits (corre-sponds to) the object or not (§47). In a non-dualizing sense the test of a description can-not be carried out with the help of the object(itself), but starts from the object of thedescriptions so far (§48). The failure of adescription of an object is neither caused bythe object itself (and its attributes) nor bygiven descriptions so far because they do notgo back to descriptions that exist already butanticipate new ones. These new descriptionsdo not fit the so-called failed description.Instead, they must have been developedtogether, must fit description A, and cannotfit the alternative or opposite description B(§50). To declare a description false does notultimately require reference to an externalreality but “occurs” within the discourse of


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concurrent descriptions.

1

Within the frameof a dualizing epistemology, verification/via-bility or falsification of a description is due toa reality beyond the discourse (§50). In a non-dualizing epistemology there is no need forthis inference, and, I would add, from theviewpoint of a constructivist epistemologythere is no need for the assumption of a realworld outside the discourse, either.

From a non-dualizing perspective, it is notpossible to approximate a descriptiontowards an object. Even basic or rudimentarydescriptions of objects are not “closer” to theobjects themselves than evolved or theoreticaldescriptions, because all kinds of differentdescriptions are discourse-related and cannotrepresent a world outside of the discourse(Mitterer 1993, §63).

2

Therefore, Popper’sassumption that (basic) empirical or protocolpropositions are approximately correctdescriptions of objects must be rejected.

The non-dualizing alternative is this: arudimentary common-sense description(“indication”) of an object can be seen as aneutralistic (not neutral!) basis of descrip-tions so far for further descriptions to bedeveloped and continued from now on. Nei-ther neutralistic descriptions so far nor newdescriptions from now on are related to the“same” object. There is no difference betweenobject and description(s); there are only dif-ferent descriptions and therefore differentobjects of descriptions (Mitterer 1993, §§69,72). If the rudimentary descriptions of anobject are seen as adequate descriptionswithin a discourse, they constitute the objectof descriptions. As long as this primarydescription is successful, it is the basis for new,further descriptions. The relationshipbetween the rudimentary descriptions orindications of an object and the followingdescriptions are dynamic and depend on theprocess of the (specific) discourse (§72). Ifthere is no consensus about the rudimentarydescriptions, the discourse itself changes intoa meta-discourse, a reflective discourse, etc.(§73). This is a relevant clarification, as boththeory and empirical research are based onneutralistic descriptions so far (and not onobjects with an identification of their own).

3

Striving for knowledge or truth in dualiz-ing epistemology implies a preference for cor-respondence of propositions or descriptionswith reality, objects or with a given system ofpropositions over deviations, which are

treated as false descriptions (Mitterer 1993,§94). In a non-dualizing way of speaking, cor-respondence or coherence cannot be a crite-rion for truth. Instead of a pursuit of truth(that results in invariance, standstill andmaintenance of the status quo), non-dualiz-ing philosophy prefers a pursuit of change(§97).

“Reality in a non-dualizing way of speak-ing is the ‘way things are at the moment’,the achieved positions in discourse, thedescriptions

so far

which cannot be con-tinued, changed or developed (yet). Theconsistence of reality is determined by the

course

of descriptions” (Mitterer 1993,§98, my translation

4

).

Critique of non-dualizing epistemology

There are several aspects of non-dualizingphilosophy that I do not agree with, althoughmy critique is not fundamental. In the follow-ing, I will argue that non-dualizing philoso-phy is not as different to constructivism as itseems to be in the light of the great distanceMitterer keeps towards constructivism.

Although the term dualism or dualizingphilosophy is central for Mitterer’s approach,there seems to be confusion between theterms dualism and dichotomy (cf. Mitterer1999, §10). According to a distinction madein empirical methodology, variables withonly two categories are dichotomous (dis-junctive) variables, whereas polarized scaleswith more than two categories are dualisticbut gradualized variables. As I understandMitterer (with the help of Stefan Weber), thefocus of the non-dualizing argumentation is acritique of dichotomous concepts (cf. Weber2005, p. 335). Thus, theory and empiricalresearch may be considered dualistic in rela-tionship but not necessarily dichotomous inthe

structure

of their relationship. Siegfried J.Schmidt (1998, p. 115) prefers to characterizetheory and empirical research as a complextotality that can be observed under twoaspects (theory and empirical research).Empirical research can be considered as theinterface between theory and “object,” whichincludes the data (or facts) generated with thehelp of theories, hypotheses and methods ofobserving the object (cf. Weber 2001, p. 176).Again, there is no need to refer to an outside

object because the data (or facts) are a prod-uct of empirical research. However, theoryand empirical research are different modes ofdescribing objects.

My main objection to Mitterer’s non-dualizing critique of constructivism is its fun-damentalism. Reading Mitterer’s criticalstatements of constructivism and realism, Iget the impression that he sets out his ownnon-dualizing approach as equidistant fromboth the epistemologies he criticizes: con-structivism and realism.

5

However, most ofthe aspects criticized seem to be true for real-ism but not for constructivism (in all its fac-ets). Mitterer’s critique of constructivismoften uses Ernst von Glasersfeld’s position asa substitute for (and as typical of) construc-tivism as a whole (cf. Mitterer 1993, p. 125;Mitterer 1999, p. 171; appendix 2). Althoughvon Glasersfeld invented the notion “radicalconstructivism,” his approach is not radicalbut epistemologically rather moderate, asreality is considered an unknown entity of itsown which can falsify theoretical or practicalconstructions. This position is not equivalentto Maturana’s position, as the failure of a cer-tain construction of reality can also be inter-preted as a failure of (communicative) accep-tance in the discourse about the constructionof one’s reality.

6

Mitterer (1993, p. 145) then criticizes Mat-urana’s biological foundation of constructiv-ism: Constructivist philosophy presupposesthat the nervous system must be closed(instead of open towards a world outside). Asthis assumption cannot be validated in a real-istic sense, the fact that the nervous system isclosed or open does not contribute to theargumentation of constructivism at all. Thisis exactly the position Schmidt (1994, 2003)adopts, when he puts his constructivist phi-losophy on a cultural basis (without any ref-erence for the biological assumptions).

7

Many of the criticized premises of dualistphilosophy seem to be typical only for a real-ist’s standpoint. Reading Mitterer’s books, I getthe impression that non-dualizing philosophycomes much closer to constructivist thinkingthan to realistic positions, even if these realisticpositions are “critical” (as it is in the case of so-called reconstructivism) rather than “naïve”(as can be said about a simple positivism). Iwill try to support this impression with somearguments about the constructivist perspec-tives on truth and other concepts.

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Mitterer’s denial of truth as a trial to findevidence outside (scientific) discourse fol-lows the same logic as Heinz von Foerster’sargumentation: “Truth is the invention of aliar,” is the title of his long interview withBernhard Pörksen (von Foerster & Pörksen2004). Like Mitterer, von Foerster denies anynotion of truth, either as correspondencewith reality or as consistency within scientifictheory. Von Foerster’s aim is to diminishtruth completely, as it separates humanbeings into those who are right and thosewho are wrong and this separation is a lieitself (cf. von Foerster & Pörksen 2004, p. 29).Similar to Mitterer, von Foerster primarilylooks at the consequences that claims of truthhave. Both insist on the position that claim-ing the truth leads to fatal consequencesincluding even war (cf. von Foerster & Pörk-sen 2004, pp. 30ff).

Mitterer’s argumentation seems to suggestan identity between the use of language andits meaning, which may cause a reification oflanguage.

8

Mitterer criticizes contructivists’use of “reality” and “viability” as dualistremainders of constructivism. But perhaps“reality” in a constructivist sense does notmean the same or is not used the same way asit does/is in a realistic sense. Of course Mit-terer would or could assume another dualismhere – caused by dualizing the use of languageand its substantial meaning.

9

However, thedifference between different usages of thesame semantic (here, “reality”) can also bemodelled within a non-dualizing pragmaticframework because different usages (of thesame linguistic expression) indicate differentcommunicative claims within (epistemologi-cal) discourse.

For a realist, reality or objects are the arbi-ters of whether our theory is true or not.From a constructivist perspective, reality is aconstruction deriving either from a compu-tation by our nervous system (biological orpsychological reality) or by communicativeprocesses within a (scientific, religious, eco-nomical or public) discourse (social reality).Mitterer reconstructs the constructivist posi-tion as a two-step epistemology: first,descriptions constitute the object, then, afterthe constitution of the object, this object canbe interpreted in different ways (cf. Mitterer1993, §71). I do not agree with Mitterer’sassertion that constructivism (he uses theterm idealism in this thesis) fundamentally

distinguishes between constitution andinterpretation. A radical constructivist per-spective can be called radical because it isprocess-oriented, which means that everyconstitution is a construction (interpreta-tion) and vice versa. Otherwise, we would bebetter to call this position reconstructivism,which is a moderate kind of realism ratherthan (radical) constructivism. With regard tothe scientific value of “reality,” a constructiv-ist argumentation would not even agree thatthe “constructed reality” has the power todecide whether a theory is true or not.

10

Instead, constructivists talk of a second-order observation because participants of adiscourse have come to the conclusion thatthey have achieved a consensus about theory-driven first-order observations. Mitterer’stechnique of observing (scientific) discoursescorresponds with the constructivist conceptof second-order observation.

11

Mitterer’s main practical goal seems to beto show the hidden assumptions of dualizingdiscourse and the power mechanisms work-ing within dualizing discourses (cf. Mitterer1999, §13). If I am right, a constructivist sec-ond-order observation and a constructivistepistemology have the same goal. As a conse-quence, the difference between non-dualizingphilosophy and constructivism seems to beoverestimated, at least in a practical sense,when doing empirical research. Either radicalconstructivists are non-dualists themselves orthey follow a dualizing argumentation of akind that does not have the same fatal conse-quences that a realistic dualization has. In thelatter case, Mitterer’s argument that there is afundamental difference between dualizingand non-dualizing philosophy should betoned down because the differences withindualizing philosophy are too big to ignore (asMitterer does). These differences within dual-izing philosophy interfere with the main dif-ference between non-dualizing and dualizingphilosophy so it would be better to gradualizethe differences between dualizing and non-dualizing philosophy and not dichotomizethem.

As a consequence, I want to show that bothnon-dualizing philosophy and constructiv-ism come to the same conclusions about thepragmatics of empirical research. Mitterer’sstrong argument that philosophy cannotescape arbitrariness is “true” in a logic sense.From a socio-logical perspective, both society

and science can theoretically be modelled associal systems and thus try to reduce arbi-trariness with the help of rules and norms. Inthe following paragraphs I want to show howthis mechanism works in the case of the rela-tionship between theory and empiricalresearch. Mitterer’s non-dualizing epistemol-ogy is very helpful for this argumentation buta constructivist epistemology is helpful too(unlike a realistic perspective).

The relationship between theory and empirical research in non-dualizing philosophy

It is to Stefan Weber’s merit that he draws con-clusions from non-dualizing philosophy forthe practice of empirical research. Instead ofthe usual dichotomies of theory vs. practice,theory vs. empirical research or theory vs.method(ology), Weber (2000, pp. 71ff) sug-gests a mutual constituency of four scientificcomponents: theory, method(ology), empiri-cal research and practice. Although he followsconstructivist definitions of the four compo-nents, he maintains distance from both real-ism and constructivism with regard to therelationships between these four compo-nents. Scientific reality emerges from the cir-cular, process-related, dynamic and contin-gent relationship of theory, methodology,empirical research and practice.

12

Weber’s main suggestion for practicalempirical research is to separate fundamentalepistemological propositions (such as “realityis constructed by observers”) from empiricalhypotheses on trends. Dichotomous conceptssuch as self-reference vs. external reference,autopoiesis vs. heteropoiesis, autonomy vs.heteronomity, etc., result in binary ontologi-cal schemes and should be replaced by gradu-alized empirical concepts. Gradualizationdoes not neglect dualization but replaces fixeddescriptions so far (“mass media construct areality of their own,” “social systems are auto-poietic,” etc.) with empirical descriptionsfrom now on (“mass media descriptions ofreality are more or less constructed or authen-tic,” “social systems are more or less autopoi-etic or heteropoietic,” etc.). Gradualizationcan also be understood in a time-relatedsense: autopoietic systems have not always


CONCEPTS



been autopoietic but have emerged from soci-ety in a historical process (cf. Weber 2000, pp.79–88; Weber 2005, pp. 333ff).

These replacements decrease the gapbetween abstract and logic-driven theory andempirical research because theoreticalhypotheses including gradualized conceptsbetter match empirical research than abstractor logic concepts, which cannot be tested. Asa consequence, the revised understanding oftheory (which, by the way, comes very close toPopper’s understanding of rational hypothe-ses) cancels the dualism between theory andempirical research and guaranties equality forboth modes of description. This distinctionbetween a philosophy of thinking and empir-ical practice of observation is suggested notonly for constructivism but also for non-dualizing philosophy (cf. Weber 2005, p. 338,p. 343).

Practical goals of a non-dualizing sciencewould be a de-dualization or de-dichotomi-zation of binary positions in many scientificdiscourses. Although even non-dualizingphilosophy includes the logic of distinctions,these distinctions do not reinforce dualismsin the sense of dichotomies (cf. Weber 2005,pp. 351f).

Although I agree with Weber’s attempt tobuild a bridge between (abstract) theory and(concrete) empirical research, I am afraid thatWeber’s solution leads to a new problembecause there is now a new gap betweenabstract or logic-driven theories (such as phi-losophy or theories of society) and empiricalhypotheses. Should we, therefore, abandonconstructivist logic?

Some of the abstract and logical concepts,such as self-reference, autopoiesis, autonomy,etc., can be considered a starting point forempirical observation. If I want to observe asocial system, I have to assume that this sys-tem can be observed as a system. Therefore, Iwill observe it from the starting assumptionof autopoiesis (unless I observe an object thatcannot be considered a system but that mightbe any other kind of object).

13

When carryingout empirical research I may come to the con-clusion that the autopoiesis of the systemobserved is not a strict one but one that has tobe gradualized because the structure of thesystem is determined by many internal andexternal factors. My suggestion comes downto a dual use of the concepts “autopoiesis,”“self-reference,” etc., and I think this is not

very far from Weber’s concept of gradualiza-tion (cf. Loosen, Scholl & Woelke 2002).

However, there are terms or concepts thatcannot be used in an empirical sense. One ofthese terms is “construction.” Mitterer andWeber criticize that the way of speaking of“construction” is just “a façon de parler”because everything is a construction. Theyignore the constructivist distinction betweenfirst-order observation and second-orderobservation. In everyday life we are realistsand do not doubt that our observations rep-resent the object/world/reality observed as itis. It is only second-order observation thatobserves that an observer has observed theobject/world/reality. Only from this perspec-tive do we consider an observation construc-tion. But the term or concept of constructionis not the opposite of (correct) representationbecause all representation does strictly relateto an observer. It is not possible to state aproposition about correct or false representa-tion.

The relationship between theory and empirical research in constructivism

In the following I will try to explain myunderstanding of constructivist epistemologywith regard to the relationship between the-ory and empirical research. These elabora-tions base on the position Schmidt (1998) hasdeveloped.

First, theory is not conceived of as narrow,as it is in critical rationalism. From a criticalrationalist’s point of view, theory has to berational before it can be tested with the helpof empirical research. Rationality of a theorymeans that all hypotheses derived from the-ory can be tested empirically. As a researcherI have to legitimate the rationality of myhypotheses in advance. From a constructivistperspective, the rationality of a theory or ofhypotheses is a product of scientific discourseand not its presupposition because the rela-tionship between theory and empiricalresearch is contingent. Maybe a theory cannotbe tested empirically so far, but it is possiblethat either theory or empirical methods willbe developed in a way that this theory can betested from now on.

Empirical research operates with facts(objects made) rather than with data (objectsgiven). It stabilizes scientific observation bydepending on methods and methodologicalrules that are valid (so far) and acceptedwithin the scientific community (cf. Schmidt1998, pp. 124ff). Stabilization also includesreduction of complexity and trivialization(sensu Heinz von Foerster) (cf. Schmidt 1998,pp. 125ff, pp. 140f). Probably Mitterer wouldsuspect a kind of dualism behind the notions“complexity” and “trivialization”, a kind ofsubstratum of reality. In fact, complexity andtrivialization do not relate to a real world out-side the (scientific) discourse, but character-ize the comparison of two descriptions: a sci-entific description resulting from empiricalresearch and a non-scientific descriptionresulting from interviewees in an interview orfrom a text in a text-analysis. As both inter-viewees’ responses in an interview and textualinterpretations in text analyses or contentanalyses are contingent, a specific scientificinterpretation is only one possible interpreta-tion from many other possibilities. If a con-structivist uses the terms “complexity,”“reduction” or “trivialization,” he need notrefer to an object as a substratum (surrogate)of the “real world” but to the comparison ofseveral possible descriptions. Scientificdescription is just one of these and is deter-mined by methodological rules that are, asabstract rules, consensus in scientific com-munity.

Introducing theory into the process of sci-entific knowledge makes the argumentationeven more complex. According to Schmidt,who characterizes theory and empiricalresearch as two sides of a coin or two aspectsof a complex totality, there is no theory with-out elements of empirical evidence and noempirical evidence without a theoreticalframework. Indeed, it is only theory thatmakes empirical observations possible. The-ory consists of more abstract propositionsfollowing certain rules (e.g. rules on howhypotheses have to be formulated or estab-lished). Empirical research consists ofdescriptions that are much more detailedand concrete (less abstract), although theyfollow certain rules (e.g. methodologicalrules written down in textbooks or knownfrom scientific experience). Both theory andempirical research result in (different kindsof) description of an “object,” which in sci-

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ence is a subject or topic rather than anobject.

In critical-rationalist philosophy, empiri-cal research is an arbiter of theory (of propo-sitions in the form of hypotheses). This viewpresupposes that empirical research refers toan object itself. Although even realists do notthink that empirical observations immedi-ately reflect reality or objects in reality theysuppose that rudimentary descriptions of anobject are “closer” to the object itself thanadvanced, theoretical, abstract descriptions.Mitterer criticizes that this assumption can-not be founded but only be presupposed asgiven. Consequently, empirical observationsor descriptions are also descriptions of anobject (although different kinds of descrip-tions rather than theoretical descriptions)and therefore cannot be used for falsification.Despite Mitterer’s sceptical attitude towardsconstructivism, his philosophical position fitsthe constructivist position with regard to therelationship between theory and empiricalresearch.

I will try to work out this argument.Accepting a theory or hypothesis is a questionof consensus within the scientific community.This consensus includes several elements.First, the researchers have to refer to the sametools, methodological rules and their applica-tions. Then, the researchers have to refer tothe same subject or matter of interest. Fur-thermore (and probably not finally), theyhave to accept that the theoretical hypothesisraised matches empirical research on thishypothesis. Disagreement may occur if themethod used is controversial, if the hypothe-sis is not accepted as a rational proposition, orif the method used is supposed to be unsuit-able to test the hypothesis under question, etc.In sum, scientific consensus is related to therelationship between theory and empiricalresearch and may include both verificationand falsification of the hypothesis by empiri-cal results. There is no need for correspon-dence or coherence in a logical or ontologicalsense because consensus is a matter of thesocial procedure of doing scientific research.Schmidt (1998, pp. 152ff) has pointed out this“action-related” understanding of (doing)empirical research is from a constructivistpoint of view, which I think entirely fits thenon-dualizing position because it avoidsreferring to a world beyond (scientific) dis-course. It would be a misleading interpreta-

tion if an action or discourse approach wasassumed to prefer consensus and standstill todisagreement and change. Both results arepossible.

We have to go one step further to describean alternative understanding of the relation-ship between theory and empirical research tothe classical understanding, which attributesto empirical research the role of an arbiter ofwhether a theory is true or false. The criticalrationalist’s understanding of the relationshipbetween theory and empirical research ischaracterized by the preference of logicaldeduction to logical induction. We start witha hypothesis and try to find out (with the helpof empirical research) whether it is true (pro-visionally or so far, not definitely and not forever) or false. Qualitative methodologistshave often challenged this view as only half ofthe “truth” and as not typical or even not rel-evant for actual research procedures. Theyprefer an inductive (or abductive) logic,which does not start with explicit but withvague hypotheses that will become moredetailed, more complex and better adapted tothe data in the course of empirical research. Inthis view the research process is not linear butcan be described as a spiral leading to betterunderstanding of the phenomenon (subject,object, topic, problem etc.) under study. Thisseems to be a typical constructivist view ofresearch and scientific discourse. But there isa danger of dualization within this argumen-tation, too. Again, the data (empiricaldescriptions) are characterized to be closer toreality (beyond scientific discourse). Theterm often used for that is “authenticity.”Interviewees’ responses to open questions(within in-depth-interviews rather than stan-dardized interviews) or text interpretations(within hermeneutical text analysis or quali-tative content analysis) seem to be more real-istic, more valid, or nearer to the meaningconstructed by the interviewee or by the text.

From a constructivist perspective, thisargumentation is misleading, as we do notknow if there is an original perspective(description) of the interviewee, the text, etc.or if we can reconstruct it. What we do knowis that we include interviewees and texts intothe process of empirical research to gain (fur-ther) scientific knowledge and discourse.Siegfried J. Schmidt (1998, pp. 155f) charac-terizes the scientific discourse as a self-expli-cation including external references. Thus the

term “external references” does not mean theassumption of a world outside and beyondthe discourse but the self-referential and self-perturbing mechanisms. Self-referentialityand external referentiality are two sides of acoin, two kinds of strategy for carrying outdescriptions of objects (within scientific dis-course).

The practical difference between qualita-tive and quantitative methodology is theobserver’s visibility within the research pro-cess: a qualitative methodologist (in his/herrole as interviewer, text-analyser, participantobserver, etc.) is gradually more visible than aquantitative methodologist (cf. Pörksen2006, p. 107). Pörksen argues that theobserver’s status can neither be eliminatedfrom a research procedure nor from researchprocess as a whole. Thus, particularly quanti-tative methodologists who rely on a realisticepistemology are wrong with regard to theirrole within empirical research. The introduc-tion of an observer to the process of empiricalresearch seems to be an ontological decisionin itself. From a non-dualizing perspective,we better express this matter of fact like this:The (self-) description of a qualitative or con-structivist methodologist as a visible observercorresponds to and defines the observer’s rolein the research process as more subject-related. As a consequence, the quantitative orrealist methodologist is right when heneglects his (active) role as an observer in his(self-) description but constitutes this role assubject-independent with the help of his(self-) description. Scientific discourse itselfdecides whether the observer’s role in the pro-cess of empirical research is an issue of rele-vance for the validation and interpretation ofthe empirical results or not.

14

What are the consequences for a construc-tivist understanding of methodology andmethods, then? Bernhard Pörksen (2006, pp.105–118) asks some important questions aconstructivist has to answer when doingempirical research and discusses differentanswers to these questions: (1) Do methodsand methodological tools have to be changedaccording to the epistemology or methodol-ogy preferred? (2) Do the results of empiricalresearch have to be interpreted in differentways according to the epistemology or meth-odology? (3) Can methods of different episte-mological and methodological origins andbases be combined?


CONCEPTS



Although the answers to these questionsare debated controversially, I prefer a positionthat I think is closer to the non-dualizing epis-temology than the opposite position. As therelationship not only between theory andempirical research but also between theoryand methods or methodology is contingent, itis not possible and not necessary to draw strictconclusions from epistemological stand-points for the use of methods and method-ological tools. On the other hand, this rela-tionship is not an arbitrary one. The answersto the questions raised above are no-yes-itdepends: (1) Constructivists do not have todevelop their own methods and tools ofmethodology. Of course, they can applymethods that are developed from the perspec-tive of a realistic epistemology if (2) they keepthis realistic origin in mind and interpret theempirical results obtained from these meth-ods within the constructivist epistemology.However, it is reasonable to evolve methodsthat were established within a realistic episte-mology towards constructivism.

15

3) Quali-tative methodology seems to fit constructiv-ism, quantitative methodology seems to fitrealism. A combination is possible if the epis-temological differences are ignored pragmat-ically or if the results of this combination areinterpreted within constructivist epistemol-ogy (cf. Loosen, Scholl & Woelke 2002; Scholl2008a, 2008b).

In sum, the debate of the epistemologicalorigins of and consequences for methodologyand methods is a second-order debate, whichin practical empirical research does not play arole unless there is a methodological debateabout the application of methods or the inter-pretation of the empirical results. From anon-dualizing perspective, this debate can bedelegated to a meta-discourse within science.This meta-discourse regulates the relation-ship between theory and empirical researchand between theory and methods. An inter-pretation of these relationships that satisfiesboth non-dualizing epistemology and con-structivism can be the description of what isgoing on (and not what should be going on)in the research process.

Specifying empirical research by differen-tiating between qualitative or open researchmethodology and quantitative or standard-ized research methodology reflects the pro-cess of refining. Following a qualitative accessto research practice implies keeping as much

complexity of the phenomenon observed aspossible to the first stages of the research pro-cess (data inquiry) and reducing complexityin the later stages of the research process (dataanalysis). Within the framework of a recon-structivist epistemology, this openness to thephenomenon under study is often misunder-stood as a more authentic approach, althoughit only means a higher degree of complexityand refinement at the beginning of theresearch process, but one that will be reducedand abstracted at the end of the research pro-cess (cf. Scholl 2008a).

Following a quantitative access to researchimplies reducing the complexity of observa-tion immediately at the beginning of theresearch process by standardizing the meth-odological rules and tools of methods, whichleads to a less refined mode of observation. Inthe analytical stages of the research process,complexity is refined by the use of complexstatistical tools. Standardizing methods isoften misunderstood as a necessary and suffi-cient condition for comparison betweenresearch objects, e.g. respondents within sur-veys or observation units within observa-tional methods (cf. Scholl 2008b).

Conclusion

Non-dualizing epistemology is a challenge forboth of the opposing epistemologies, con-structivism and realism. However, I haveargued in this article that most of the non-dualizing criticism of these epistemologies isrelevant for realistic epistemology becauseconstructivism and non-dualizing philoso-phy have more in common than non-dualiz-ing philosophy and realism or constructivismand realism. Thus, I challenge the claim of theequidistance of non-dualizing philosophyfrom constructivism and realism. Recon-structing Mitterer’s argumentation, particu-larly his position towards the research processand the relationship between theory andempirical research, shows that non-dualizingphilosophy should not only be used as a cri-tique of constructivism but can also be usedto clarify constructivist positions. Mitterer’s“exaggerations” of the difference betweennon-dualizing philosophy and constructiv-ism are probably caused by the variety of con-structivist approaches, including lots of inter-nal differences.

The general idea of this article is thatempirical observation refines and adjusts the-oretical observation. Doing empiricalresearch in comparison with theoretical state-ments implies a permanent check and balancebetween abstraction and concretion. Themutual relationship between theory andempirical research is characterized by stabili-zation

and

by irritation or perturbation. Thisshould be consistent with non-dualizing andwith constructivist considerations.

In sum, we can learn from non-dualizingphilosophy that the relationship between the-ory and empirical research is not a kind ofmutual validation to get better knowledge ofa world outside but the relationship couldbetter be characterized as refining observa-tion and balancing abstraction and concre-tion of scientific observation. The gradualiza-tion of complexity best describes thisrelationship.

Armin Scholl studied communication science in Mainz and Münster. Between 1989 and 1994 he worked on research projects in journalism, communication research and methodology at the University of Münster. From 1994 to 1998 he was Assistant Professor at the Free University of Berlin. Since 1998 he has been an Associate Professor at the University of Münster. Scholl wrote his dissertation thesis on Reactivity in the Research Interview (1993) and published a textbook on surveys and interviews (2003) as well as several articles on methodological issues.

THE AUTHOR

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 179

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Notes

1. It should be mentioned that in a non-du-alizing way of speaking the notion of falsi-fication cannot claim the same logicalstatus as it does in critical rationalism, al-though in the case of controversial de-scriptions of an object, it is almostinevitable to talk of “true” and “false”statements within a discourse. The at-tributes “true” and “false” should not beunderstood in a strict logical sense, as theyare products of a discourse or debate andnot the result of necessary qualifications ofa (theoretical) statement with the help ofcriteria beyond this discourse (such as ob-ject, reality, etc.).

2. According to Mitterer, this criticism doesnot only concern realistic philosophy butalso constructivist or idealistic philosophybecause it does not matter whether the ob-ject is given before its description or is pro-duced by language (cf. Mitterer 1993,§66).

3. Mitterer’s position, in this case, resemblesa theory of autopoietic social systems,which assumes that the scientific system(or discourse) is autonomous and self-ref-erential. The system’s relationship to (ob-jects of) its environment is characterizedby a system-determined construction ofthe objects in its environments (cf. Luh-mann 1990). According to Mitterer theobjects have no independent identity butare already (so far) described with the helpof the system’s language.

4. “Die Wirklichkeit ist in der Nicht-duali-sierenden Redeweise der ‘letzte Stand derDinge’, die erreichten Diskurspositionen,die Beschreibungen

so far

, die (noch) nichtfortgesetzt–verändert–entwickelt werden(können). Worin die Wirklichkeit be

steht

,wird durch den Verlauf der Beschreibun-gen bestimmt” (Mitterer 1993, §98).

5. There is only one exception: with regard tothe analysis and problematization of dual-istic presuppositions, Mitterer labels him-self a constructivist (cf. Mitterer 1999,§21).

6. However, I entirely agree with Mitterer’scritique of Maturana’s principles of scien-tific explanation (cf. Mitterer 1993, pp.131ff). Maturana’s criteria fail to distin-guish between scientific and non-scientif-ic explanations. They only show that

science is a kind of social system (accord-ing to Niklas Luhmann’s theory of socialsystems) with its own code for decidingwhich explanations can be called scientificand which cannot. Obviously such sys-tems are self-referential, and the borderbetween the scientific system and its envi-ronment is a matter of social processes, in-cluding mechanisms of social influences,power, etc. (cf. Luhmann 1990).

7. In his critique of constructivism even Mit-terer (1993, pp. 146f) admits that thechange of perspective from the object ofknowledge to the process of developingknowledge is much closer to a non-dualiz-ing epistemology than to a realistic posi-tion. I do not know whether Mittereraccepts Schmidt’s turn to a new construc-tivism that tries to react to non-dualizingobjections and to integrate non-dualizingargumentation (cf. Schmidt 2003). It isWeber (2005, pp. 231ff, pp. 298ff) who stilldetects passages in Schmidt’s book that heconsiders as ontological remainders inSchmidt’s argumentation. Obviously,Schmidt’s constructivist philosophy andMitterer’s non-dualizing philosophy donot merge entirely.

8. Weber (2005, p. 266, footnote 7) arguesthat is almost impossible to develop a non-dualizing way of speaking without invent-ing an artificial language (examples arepresented on p. 293, footnote 22). If a par-ticipant in a discourse uses words like“probable” or “presumable” (instead of“obvious” and “evident”), is he then anon-dualist? Or the other way around: arewords such as “evident”, “obvious” etc. re-ally (necessary or sufficient) indicators fora dualizing way of argumentation or arethey simply habitually used words? Doescommunication (pragmatic aspect) mergeinto language (semantic aspect)?

9. Pörksen (2006, p. 101, footnote 235) offersa didactic explanation for a sometimes in-consequent use of language: Maturana’saim is to make people who are not used tothinking in such unusual terms and con-cepts understand the constructivist posi-tion.

10.Weber (2005, p. 284) supports Mitterer’sthesis of a fundamental difference betweennon-dualizing philosophy and construc-tivism when he points out that viability isa criterion used to decide whether a (new)

description fits a constructed reality,whereas non-dualizing philosophy com-pares or confronts old and new descrip-tions. New descriptions of an object resultin new objects described; they are notmere constructs. If we understand viabili-ty as a communicative criterion it onlymeans that discourse participants agreewith their constructions. Thus, construct-ed reality in a constructivist sense is a de-scribed/discussed reality, which comesvery close to non-dualizing descriptions ofobjects. Furthermore, viability signifi-cantly differs from truth, as two (or evenmore) different perspectives may both(all) be viable constructions. Eventually,viability, in contrast to the criterion oftruth, does not necessarily serve as a strictcriterion for excluding other perspectivesthan those already accepted as viable.

11.However, Weber (2005, p. 267) insists onthe difference between the constructivistconcept of second-order observation orthe logic of a blind spot and Mitterer’s con-cept of suspicion of a false observation(“Falschwahrnehmungsverdacht”), whichmeans that every new observation is sus-pected to be false or illusionary. Weberprefers Mitterer’s concept to the con-structivist concept of the blind spot be-cause it is entirely free of ontologicalpresuppositions. But is this argumentsuitable for a fundamental critique ofconstructivism or is it just a way of usinglanguage differently?

12.Again, Weber’s concept of an auto-consti-tutive relationship is similar and compara-ble with a constructivist or a system-theoretic position, although Weber postu-lates a difference.

13.Weber (2000, pp. 82f) denies that startingassumptions, like definitions, should im-ply autopoiesis because whether a systemcan be characterized as autopoietic or notshould be open to empirical research.Avoiding circular argumentation is neces-sary within critical rationalism, which de-scribes the process of research as linear.But Weber himself conceives empirical re-search as an auto-constitutional process.Theory and empirical research cannotstrictly be separated. Weber’s solution ofstarting with the assumption that a socialsystem can be defined as a “form” within a“medium” just shifts the problem of fo-


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cussing the observation: What are the bor-ders of a form? What do I observe if Iobserve the form (of what)?

14.Methodological arguments about the ade-quacy of either quantitative or qualitativemethodology within empirical researchoften start with the subject-object rela-tionship. This dualism need not be re-stricted to subject vs. object but can also bereferred to different cultures (researcher’scultural background vs. research object’scultural background) or to the differencebetween a scientific system and its fo-cussed environment, etc.

15.I cannot elaborate this argument here asdeveloping methodological tools in detailis a practical matter (cf. Görke 2006;Moser 2004).

References

Foerster, H. von & Pörksen, B. (2004) Wahr-heit ist die Erfindung eines Lügners.Gespräche für Skeptiker [Truth is a liar’sinvention. Conversations for a sceptic].6th Edition. Carl-Auer-Systeme: Heidel-berg.

Görke, A. (2006) Objekt oder Relation? DerJournalist als Personenkonstrukt: Vor-schläge für eine alternative Operational-isierung journalistischer Selbstauskünfte(Object or relationship? Journalist as per-sonal construct: Suggestions for an alter-native operationalization of journalists’self-assessment. Unpublished paper pre-sented at the workshop on “Theory andempirical research on journalism” inMünster, Germany, 16–18 February 2006.

Loosen, W., Scholl, A. & Woelke, J. (2002) Sys-temtheoretische und konstruktivistischeMethodologie (System-theoretical andconstructivist methodology). In: Scholl,A. (ed.) Systemtheorie und Konstruktivis-mus in der Kommunikationswissenschaft[System theory and constructivism in

communication science], UVK: Konstanz,pp. 37–65.

Luhmann, N. (1990) Die Wissenschaft derGesellschaft [The science of society].Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Mitterer, J. (1993) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie. Wider das dualistische Erkennt-nisprinzip [The beyond of philosophy.Against the dualizing principle of knowl-edge]. 2nd Edition. Passagen: Vienna.

Mitterer, J. (1999) Die Flucht aus der Beliebig-keit [The escape from arbitrariness].Drava: Klagenfurt.

Mitterer, J. (2000) Aus objektiver Distanz.Notizen zum richtigen Abstand. Für S. J.Schmidt so far and from now on [From anobjective distance. Notes for the right dis-tance. For S. J. Schmidt so far and fromnow on]. In: Zurstiege, G. (ed.) Festschriftfür die Wirklichkeit [Festschrift for real-ity]. Westdeutscher Verlag: Wiesbaden, pp.243–248.

Moser, S. (ed.) (2004) Konstruktivistisch for-schen. Methodologie, Methoden,Beispiele [Doing research in a constructiv-ist way. Methodology, methods, exam-ples]. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften:Wiesbaden.

Pörksen, B. (2006) Die Beobachtung des Beo-bachters. Eine Erkenntnistheorie der Jour-nalistik [Observing the observer. Anepistemology of journalism]. UVK: Kon-stanz.

Schmidt, S. J. (1994) Kognitive Autonomieund soziale Orientierung. Konstruktivis-tische Bemerkungen zum Zusammen-hang von Kognition, Kommunikation,Medien und Kultur [Cognitive autonomyand social orientation. Constructivistremarks about the relationship betweencognition, communication, media andculture]. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Schmidt, S. J. (1998) Die Zähmung des Blicks.Konstruktivismus – Empirie – Wissen-schaft [Taming of the view. Constructiv-ism – empirical research – science].

Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.Schmidt, S. J. (2003) Geschichten and Dis-

kurse. Abschied vom Konstruktivismus.Rowohlt: Reinbek. English translation:(2007) History & Discourses. Rewritingconstructivism. Imprint Academic:Exeter.

Scholl, A. (2008a) Qualitative methodology.In: Donsbach, W. (ed.) The internationalencyclopedia of communication. Vol. IX.Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford (UK), Malden(MA), pp. 4053–4059.

Scholl, A. (2008b) Quantitative methodology.In: Donsbach, W. (ed.) The internationalencyclopedia of communication. Vol. IX.Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, pp. 4067–4073.

Weber, S. (2000) Was steuert Journalismus?Ein System zwischen Selbstreferenz undFremdsteuerung [What controls journal-ism? A system between self-reference andheteronomy]. UVK: Konstanz.

Weber, S. (2001) Kommunikation über Kom-munikation. Zur wechselseitigen Konsti-tution von Theorie, Praxis, Empirie undMethod(ologi)en in der Kommunikation-swissenschaft [Communication aboutcommunication. About the mutual con-stitution of theory, practice, empiricalresearch and method(ology) in communi-cation science]. In: Hug, T. (ed.) Wiekommt Wissenschaft zu Wissen? Band 3:Einführung in die Methodologie derSozial- und Kulturwissenschaften [Howdoes science attain knowledge? Volume 3:Introduction to the methodology of socialscience and cultural studies]. SchneiderVerlag Hohengehren: Baltmannsweiler,pp. 170–179.

Weber, S. (2005) Non-dualistische Medien-theorie. Eine philosophische Grundle-gung [Non-dualizing media theory. Aphilosophical foundation]. UVK: Kon-stanz.



Non-dualistic? Radical Constructivist?

Reconstructing radical constructivism

In 1992 Josef Mitterer published the very well-written essay


(JP),which has been viewed by prominent formerradical constructivists such as Siegfried J.Schmidt (2003, especially pp. 92ff) as a newmanifesto for radical constructivism.

“Radical constructivism” has become alabel that, like “happiness,” means contempo-raneously different things to different people.There was a time when there was constructiv-ism as a radical artistic movement that startedafter 1919 in the Soviet Union and that hadlasting effects on the German Bauhaus. In thewritings of Heinz von Foerster and the Biolog-ical Computer Laboratory (BCL), the term“radical constructivism” does not appear untilthe dissolution of the lab in the 1970s. Therewere no inside or outside descriptions of the

BCL work as radical constructivist up to 1976,the date of the final termination of the BCL. InBeer’s books the word “radical constructiv-ism” can nowhere be found as a self-descrip-tor, although Beer uses an interesting cogni-tive map for relevant approaches and personsin the field of self-organization and manage-ment cybernetics (see, for example, Beer1994b, p. 570). Gordon Pask, probably one ofthe most radical thinkers and engineers, neverlectured on or described radical constructiv-ism in any detail. Instead, Pask propagated astill extremely interesting research programunder the name of conversation theory (see,for example, Glanville & Müller 2007). Hum-berto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Vareladeveloped their autopoietic program withoutreference to radical constructivism. Even in1987, in the German edition of the

Tree ofKnowledge

(Maturana & Varela 1987), one willsearch in vain for the combination of thewords “radical” and “constructivism”.

Who, then, invented the term “radical con-structivism” as a group label, as a new inter-and transdisciplinary paradigm and as anintellectual and seemingly homogeneouspost-modern movement?

In 1974 Ernst von Glasersfeld credited JeanPiaget as the core person for a new approachto learning, which von Glasersfeld termed“radical constructivism.” But in his 1974 arti-cle Jean Piaget was placed in central positionand not von Foerster, Watzlawick, Varela orothers. In 1981, Paul Watzlawick edited thevolume

Die erfundende Wirklichkeit

(whichwas translated as

The Invented Reality

threeyears later) with the subtitle

Contributions toConstructivism

. Here, von Glasersfeld andvon Foerster are presented at the beginningwith von Glasersfeld’s

Introduction to RadicalConstructivism

and von Foerster’s

Construct-ing a Reality

. However, in Watzlawick’s bookone finds contributions by Jon Elster and byRupert Riedl, too, who would have been verymuch opposed to being classified as radicalconstructivists. Thus, Watzlawick’s bookcould not be the tipping point in the rapid dif-fusion of radical constructivism.

In my view, it would be exceedingly diffi-cult to determine a single event or occurrenceas crucial or decisive for the diffusion of thegroup label “radical constructivism.” Rather,“radical constructivism” was invented in theGerman-speaking world in the course of the1980s through a homogeneous flow of events,through self-propagations, especially by vonGlasersfeld, and through publications, lec-tures, workshops, conferences or mediareports, which were very much supported bythe fact that the new group members kneweach other very well and interacted intensivelyabout their scientific work.

1

An important step in the construction ofradical constructivism was, for instance, thepublication of three volumes with articles byMaturana (1985), von Foerster (1985) andvon Glasersfeld (1987). These three books

Karl H. Müller

A

Vienna Institute for Social Science Documentation and Methodology <[email protected]>

R Purpose – Josef Mitterer’s essays are considered to be important philosophical advancements of radical constructivism. The main purposes of this paper are, on the one hand, to structure the RC landscape and, on the other hand, to investigate the relations of Mitterer’s work to radical constructivism in particular and to philosophy in general.R Findings – In this short essay focusing on Mitterer’s Das Jenseits der Philosophie, I would like to stress two major points. First, Mitterer’s book should be considered as one of sev-eral contemporary variants of a radical critique of the semantic turn in the philosophy of science that has taken place since the mid-thirties with the works of Rudolf Carnap, Carl G. Hempel, Hilary Putnam, Alfred Tarski and others. Second, it is by no means clear how to determine the relevance of the new semantic critique for the present and future cogni-tive status of radical constructivism. The degree of relevance depends crucially on the use of the term “radical constructivism.” If radical constructivism, as I will argue, is seen as an umbrella term for a group of empirical research programs, then, by sheer necessity, the relevance can be marginal only. If, however, radical constructivism is viewed as a special form of philosophy of language and/or as a new epistemology, then the importance of Josef Mitterer’s approach must be judged within the context of available functional alternatives. R Implication – An immediate consequence of this article lies in a renewed emphasis on advancing an empirical research agenda for radical constructivism and in an effective down-sizing of radical constructivism as a philosophical perspective. R Key words – Cognitive maps, research programs, varieties of constructivism, varieties of dualism/non-dualism.

historical–philosophical

second order cybernetics

CONCEPTS


CONCEPTS



were published in German under the guid-ance of Siegfried J. Schmidt and brought thesethree authors to the attention of a German-speaking audience for the first time.

In 1987 Schmidt himself edited the book

The Discourse of Radical Constructivism

(Schmidt 1987), which comprised Maturana,Varela, von Foerster, and von Glasersfeld aswell as a group of German authors who con-centrated their work on special aspects of rad-ical constructivism. Equally importantly, the1987 volume contains a long introductoryarticle by Schmidt on radical constructivismas a new paradigm for interdisciplinary dis-course. In this overview, radical constructiv-ism appears as a coherent design that wasjointly generated by the work of Maturana andVarela in the domain of biology and by vonFoerster and von Glasersfeld in the area of cog-nition and philosophy.

2

Adding to the stream of events, in 1984

Niklas Luhmann published his

Social Systems

(Luhmann 1984), which contained very fre-quent references to von Foerster, Maturanaand Varela and which raised interest in thesethree authors in the sociological or social sci-ence community.

By the early 1990s, radical constructivismhad gradually emerged in the German-speak-ing parts of the world as a common label thatvon Glasersfeld persistently used as a self-description and that was also used as a self-description by other radically constructedgroup members of radical constructivism.

3

Two important points must be emphasized.On the one hand, the process of homoge-

nization of radical constructivism towards asingle paradigm was accompanied by a grad-ual drift towards the philosophical domainand by a successive marginalization of theinhomogeneous empirical research agendas.Both for the speakers of and for the listeners toradical constructivism a gradual convergenceoccurred towards a new philosophical para-digm with post-modern undertones, directedagainst realism, against ontology or againsttruth and addressed to the observer and to theempowerment of the observers as world-gen-erators or world-producers.

On the other hand, highly importantauthors and groups not included in this diffu-sion phase of radical constructivism, such asAshby, Beer or Pask, were no longer consid-ered part of the radical constructivist coregroup and their “family resemblances.” Even

Jean Piaget, although the unquestioned heroin von Glasersfeld’s 1974 article, moved intothe periphery of radical constructivism.

Whenever one speaks of radical construc-tivism, especially in the German-speakingworld, one should be aware, in a weakly self-referential mode, that this movement itselfwas the product of a radical construction thatbrought together a group of empirically oper-ating and philosophically minded scientists,working in the United States, in Europe and inLatin America, under a unifying and seem-ingly attractive brand name.

In this article, a new term will be used,namely the concept of the radical constructiv-ist set or RC set. The RC set comprises a groupof heterogeneous research programs that hada “visionary leader” at their organizingcenter

4

and that were developed from the late1950s and 1960s onwards. The RC setincludes, in alphabetical order, W. RossAshby, Stafford Beer, Heinz von Foerster,Ernst von Glasersfeld, Humberto R. Mat-urana, Francisco J. Varela & Ricardo Uribe,and Gordon Pask. In the 1980s and 1990s,Dirk Baecker, Peter Hejl, Ranulph Glanville,Niklas Luhmann, Gerhard Roth, Siegfried J.Schmidt, Paul Watzlawick and many othersmade significant additions and contributed,thus, to a rapid diffusion of significant partsof the RC set under the label of radical con-structivism.

The descriptions so far have led to a bifur-cation point. From here onward, this essaywill follow along two different paths. The firstway, which can be described as the internalroad, gives a short description of Mitterer’s JPin the domain of contemporary philosophy.The second trajectory, the external one, willpresent maps of different program versionswithin the RC set and will assess the relevanceof Mitterer’s perspectives for the entire RC-group. It remains, then, for the reader, Mit-terer or the author included, to decide and todetermine the degree of relevance of Mit-terer’s pragmatic turn for the field of philoso-phy proper.

The internal way

The internal road leads to the contemporaryarena of epistemology, philosophy of lan-guage, philosophy of mind and other philo-sophical sub-regions such as ontology or

modal logic. Topics to be addressed along thisway include the scope of Mitterer’s approach,the wider context of his work and, finally, thedegree of relevance within the present philo-sophical arena.

Turning to Mitterer’s JP essay from theyear 1992, one of the most impressive pointsis the period of its production, whichoccurred between 1973 and 1978 at the Uni-versity of Graz. At that time, radical construc-tivism had barely been invented and, formyself, I was stunned and fascinated at thesame time to listen to Mitterer’s new way oflanguage-thinking in the philosophical semi-nar rooms of the University of Graz.

5

But already in the 1992 introduction to JP,Mitterer points to substantial changes in thecognitive landscapes after 1978 and he men-tions Paul K. Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman,Francois Lyotard, Humberto R. Maturana,Richard Rorty, Heinz von Foerster or Ernstvon Glasersfeld as important co-workers inthe de-construction of semantics and of thephilosophy of language as we knew it. Alongthe internal way, I will not attempt to presentan overall evaluation of Mitterer’s newapproach, but I want to stress three fairlyobvious points, two of them related to theearly construction period, the third one con-nected with the issue of non-dualism andwith the scope of Mitterer’s approach in gen-eral.

The first argument stresses the consider-able advances within the philosophy of lan-guage in general and within the semanticturn in particular, especially in the lastdecades. Contemporary versions of seman-tics have been able to accommodate and toadapt to the pragmatic critique that hasswept the semantic stage, especially in the1960s and 1970s. And this implies that thecurrent versions have become far moresophisticated than the early referentialsemantics. Taking Scott Soames’s

Age ofMeaning

(2003, see also Soames (2007)) bothas a historical account of the last fifty yearsand as a potpourri of contemporary semanticframeworks, Soames basically argues that thepragmatic turn, despite its early successesduring the 1960s and 1970s, has run intomore and more internal difficulties and hasbeen brought to an end through the analysesof Donald Davidson and, above all, SaulKripke. Due to these new cognitive inputsone can see, in parallel, a revival of semantics

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 183

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and, following Soames, an effective downsiz-ing of pragmatic aspirations.

The second point consists of a quickreminder that Mitterer, aside from theauthors mentioned by him in the introduc-tion, is by far not an isolated iconoclast or alonesome prophet in a dualistic desert withonly temporary and partial companionshipfrom Nelson Goodman or Richard Rorty. Iwant to introduce just such another powerfulnon-dualistic tradition in American philoso-phy, namely the tradition from Wilfried Sell-ars (2002, 2007; Seibt 2007) to Robert B.Brandom. Taking Robert Brandom’s work,especially his

Making It Explicit

(1994) and

Between Saying and Doing

(2008) as anothernon-dualistic reference point,

6

one finds ahighly sophisticated terminological and logi-cal machinery that is used within an overallrecursive design.

In the online version of hisJohn Locke Lectures from 2006, Brandomcharacterizes his approach in the followingway:

“My aim in these lectures is to present anew way of thinking about language, spe-cifically about the relations betweenmeaning and use, or between what is saidand the activity of saying it. To that end, Iwill introduce a new metatheoretic con-ceptual apparatus, and develop it throughapplications to a number of sorts of locu-tion that have, properly, been the focus ofintense philosophical interest: logical andsemantic vocabulary, indexical vocabu-lary, modal, normative, and intentionalvocabularies. The concerns that animatethis enterprise arise from a way of thinkingabout the nature of the general projectpursued by analytic philosophy over thepast century or so, and about its epic con-frontation with Wittgensteinean pragma-tism” (Brandom 2008a, p. 1).Moreover, Brandom does not view a dual-

istic semantic perspective and a non-dualisticpragmatic approach as mutually exclusivealternatives, but sees them as complementaryand as necessary parts in a larger whole. Bran-dom starts from a non-dualistic pragmaticframework and brings in, recursively, addi-tional vocabularies in a triadic and self-gener-ative manner. It would clearly go against thescope of this article to compare Mitterer’s andBrandom’s non-dualistic approaches, so Ileave it up to the reader to decide whether anon-dualistic approach is covered best or

preferably by Mitterer’s JP or by availablealternatives such as Brandom’s past andpresent work.

7

The third argument along the internalpath centers on the question “Which kind ofdualism?” On closer inspection it is not onlypossible, but even necessary to distinguishbetween at least three different forms of dual-ism/non-dualism.

The first kind can be qualified as semanticdualism/non-dualism and this form is basedon the dichotomy of language and world,description and object, sign and referent, etc.In view of the subtitle of Mitterer’s book

Against the Dualistic Knowledge-Principle

onewould assume that JP is not primarily con-cerned with the dualism of descriptions ofobjects and objects of descriptions. But Mit-terer addresses this form of dualism and seeshis non-dualistic position almost exclusivelyin the semantic domain, although at times hewrites about the dualism between the worldand our knowledge of the world (JP, pp. 21,59).

The second form of dualism/non-dualismcan be characterized as linguistic dualism andis based on the deep structure of languages.Languages that are based on a dual splitbetween noun-phrase and verb-phrase can bequalified as dualistic languages. Here, Ben-jamin Lee Whorf and his linguistic relativityprinciple become central. Whorf does noteliminate linguistic dualism but places lan-guages in a wider context and dualistic lan-guages alongside other non-dualistic forms.At some point, Mitterer criticizes Whorf forhis semantic dualism, but does not discuss theissue of linguistic dualism. Nevertheless, it isstill an open issue whether non-dualistic lan-guages could lead to different types of logicand mathematics or to different groups ofphysical theories about space, time andmotion.

The third form of dualism/non-dualism isfirmly rooted in the philosophy of the Greek-Western tradition from its very beginningsand can be classified as epistemological dual-ism. Epistemological dualism means a funda-mental separation between at least two kindsof knowledge and runs under various distinc-tions such as, in a classical differentiation,

doxa

and

episteme

, objective and subjectiveknowledge, confirmed and unconfirmedknowledge, etc. The most consequential non-dualist protagonist in the third domain is, of

course, Parmenides who, in his poem

OnNature

, states that thought and being are thesame. Similarly, radical scepticism in the Pyr-ronic tradition can be viewed as another vari-ant of epistemological non-dualism by plac-ing all forms of knowledge on the same fallibleor unfounded basis. Later forms of epistemo-logical non-dualism question the differentia-tion between subject and object or betweenthe object of knowledge and the knowing sub-ject. Still other versions of epistemologicalnon-dualism can be captured by the meta-phor of Neurath’s boat or by his aphorismthat science does not operate in any deepstructure, because everything is situated at thesurface-level only.

Upon a closer look, epistemological dual-ism is not in the program of Mitterer’s theater.The main arguments in JP are focused on thedualism/non-dualism between language andworld. Only in his discussion on Maturanadoes Mitterer deal with epistemology andontology, because this is the consensualdomain between Maturana’s philosophicalwork and Mitterer’s philosophical replies. Butin almost all instances in Part I and Part II ofJP, Mitterer writes consistently about asemantic non-dualism or monism and doesnot address other non-dualistic issues thathave some family resemblance to the seman-tic dualism/non-dualism distinction.

And this, in turn, leads to a preliminaryanswer to the first question in the title of thepaper.

Non-dualistic? – Yes, in the semanticdomain; no, in other arenas.

The external road

The external road leads to the fields of radicalconstructivism, broadly conceived as the RCset of empirical research programs. Here, theguiding questions will focus on the cognitivedistances between Mitterer’s approach andthe RC set, on potential heuristic guidelinesfrom JP for different empirical research areas,on the relevance of JP for particular RCapproaches or on the overall importance of JPfor the RC set. The discussion along the exter-nal way will be probably more diversified andwill culminate, in contrast to the previous sec-tion, in a preliminary assessment of the over-all degree of relevance of Mitterer’s radicalpragmatic turn for the entire RC set.


CONCEPTS



In a first move, the RC set will be presentedin a detailed way through an operation calledcognitive mapping (see, for example, Müller1998 or Holenstein 2004). These maps offer atopological, two-dimensional view ofresearch topics and their cognitive distances.In the following pages, a series of cognitivemaps will be outlined that produce symbolicrepresentations of various elements in the RCset. Likewise, Mitterer’s approach will bemapped as well in order to determine thedegree of its cognitive closeness or its linkagesto other components in the RC set.

Initially, the mapping will start with vonGlasersfeld and his version of radical con-structivism (RCG, see, for example, Glasers-feld 1997a and 2007). For the RCG mapping,as well as for the subsequent mappings, it willbe useful to differentiate between three differ-ent areas of radical constructivism, whichcomprise radical constructivism:

Area I

– an empirical research program

Area II

– a special variant in contemporaryphilosophy and in the history of philoso-phy. Here, the cognitive environment con-sists of the state of the art in areas such asepistemology, ontology, truth-theories,and of authors such as Robert Brandom(2000, 2004), Mario Bunge (1977, 1979,1983a,b), Nicholas Rescher (1994, 1998,2001), and others.

Area III

– a meta-narrative for the post-mod-ern condition. It is composed of contem-porary discussions on postmodern condi-tions in a wide variety of fields, mostly out-side the domains of philosophical sub-dis-ciplines. As typical authors for Area III onecan name,

inter alia

, Zygmunt Bauman(2000) or Jean-Francois Lyotard (1984).Normally, Areas I to III are only weakly

inter-linked whereas RCG and other pro-grams in the RC set

8

establish strong connec-tions between them. And it is probably due tothe permanent re-combination of these threearenas that RCG has been open to a cascade ofdifferent interpretations, including mypresent one. Moreover, one can show that vonGlasersfeld plays in these three different loca-tions simultaneously, even within a singlearticle.

9

Turning to Area I of the cognitive map, vonGlasersfeld’s RCG is organized as an empiricalresearch program with all the necessary ingre-dients of research programs. Figure 1 showsthe typical modules or building blocks forempirical research programs such as a theoret-ical core (TC), a set of methods, models andmechanisms (MMM) linked to the theoreticalcore, the embeddedness of TC and MMMwithin a wider background knowledge (BK) aswell as a class of paradigmatic examples, i.e.,applications of the theoretical core and ofmethods, models and mechanisms on observ-able or actually observed processes.

10

Shifting to the theoretical core, the main

building blocks of RCG are adapted mostlyfrom Jean Piaget. Basically, RCG in Area I usesPiaget’s action scheme approach with assimi-lation and accommodation as the two maindynamic operations. The class of relevantmethods, models and mechanisms of RCGreflects this theoretical core and comprises a

series of Piagetian models for the cognitiveformations of fundamental concepts such astime, objects, identity or moral judgements.Moreover, the MMM-class contains instru-ments for conceptual analyses that have beendeveloped by von Glasersfeld in his coopera-tion with Silvio Ceccato. Turning to the appli-cation side, one can find at least three paradig-matic examples of RCG, namely chimpanzeecommunication and the construction ofYerkish language, the formation of numericalconcepts in children and, finally, concept for-mation in the education of physics.

11

RCG inArea I took place mostly between the 1960sand the 1980s, after von Glasersfeld enteredthe United States, although his earlier workwith Silvio Ceccato served as an essential pre-paratory or latent phase for RCG as a researchprogram. Table 1 lists several importantbuilding blocks for the theoretical core as wellas for available models and methods of RCGin Area I.

Area II consists of two large segments, onebeing the history of philosophy, and onebeing contemporary philosophy, composedof areas such as epistemology, ontology, phi-losophy of science, logic, ethics and the like.With respect to the history of philosophy,RCG associates itself with a small philosophi-cal tradition that includes various forms ofscepticism, due to its negation of an objectivereality or objective knowledge, variants ofidealism (Berkeley, Kant) because of theactive involvement of the human mind or sol-itary thinkers such as David Hume or Giam-battista Vico, who is applauded for theacknowledgement of the active role of thehuman mind in structuring experiences. Pro-ceeding to the right-hand side of Area II inFigure 2, RCG can be characterized as a nega-tive ontology, as yet another variant of an evo-

Module Main characteristics

Conceptual Analysis Operational analysis of conceptsComparative operational analysis across different languages

First-Order Models Models of the observer (scientist)

Second-Order Models Models for the behaviour of observed groups

Piaget’s Theory (Static) Equilibration of schemes

Piaget’s Theory (Dynamic) Assimilation and accommodation of schemes

Table 1:

The main building blocks for RCG in Area 1.

…A1 A2 An

TC

BK

MMMTheoretical

Core

Background Knowledge

Methods, Modelsand Mechanisms

Applications

Figure 1:

The building blocks of empirical research programs.


2008, vol. 3, no. 3 185

CONCEPTS



lutionary epistemology

12

and as a philosophyof language that is pragmatic in nature.

For RCG, Area III has become increasinglyimportant over the last two decades. Here,RCG sees itself as an intellectual avant-gardethat tries to accomplish what David Humeprovoked in Immanuel Kant, namely anawakening from dogmatic slumber or, morespecifically, from realist daydreams.

Figure 2 summarizes the overall organiza-tion of RCG with the help of a cognitive mapwith three different areas. In Area I, RCG hasbeen placed in the upper left-hand corner,which is due to the fact that Area I of the mapis constructed with two explicit dimensions: avertical one for micro-macro levels

13

and ahorizontal one for degrees of formalization.

14

Area II exhibits a 0/1 dimension only, differ-entiating between the history of philosophy(left side) and contemporary philosophy(right side). Area III contains, once again, twoexplicit dimensions, a vertical one for degreesof diffusion and a horizontal one for concep-tual complexity (low/high). RCG in Area IIIhas been mapped with a high degree of diffu-sion and with a relatively low degree of con-ceptual complexity.

Continuing the cognitive mapping opera-tions with von Foerster as another importantmember of the RC set, von Foerster developeda vision for a new type of living research onliving systems under the heading of second-order cybernetics (SOC).

15

In 1988, Foerstercompared the attempted

coup d’etat scienti-fique

with an unusual form of reverse demoli-tion:

“Everywhere, in the United States too, theoldest and most beautiful houses havenowadays been demolished and insteadsteel and glass-skyscrapers with 36 storiesare being constructed. I want to emphasizethe reverse process. I start with a 36 storysteel and glass-skyscraper and demolish it.But I am not building a baroque castleinstead, but something completely differ-ent: maybe a cockchafer, maybe an ant col-ony, maybe a family” (Foerster 1988, p. 20,my translation). In short, the established scientific method

with its emphasis on laws, physics and logicor, metaphorically, on glass and steel, is to bereplaced by a

Scienza Nuova

of living systemsand an associated epistemology of living sci-ence. More specifically, von Foerster points totwo new elements that lie at the centre of SOC

and that are needed to bring about this funda-mental paradigm change, namely a new typeof logic as well as new forms of algorithmic orformal description-devices (for more details,see Müller 2007a). Together with state-deter-mined machines, cognitive tiles or, alterna-tively, non-trivial machines, these two ele-ments formed the central triadic SOC-group,With respect to SOC research designs, gener-ative relations, triadic closures and autologyformed a second group. Finally, the unity ofcognition thesis, cognitive tiles and sensory-motor double closures constituted a third

SOC group with respect to the new theory ofcognition.

16

Figure 3 summarizes the mainbuilding blocks for SOC with a total of ninebuilding blocks and a multiplicity of triadicrelations.

Subsequently, Figure 4 presents radicalconstructivism à la von Glasersfeld (RCG)and von Foerster’s second-order cybernetics(SOC), as well as their distribution across thethree main areas. In the course of the 1980sand 1990s, von Foerster addressed somephilosophical issues directly, although alwaysin a brief and sketchy nature, which can be

…

Area I

Area II

Area III

RCG/SOCWorld view

RCGHistory ofPhilosophy

RCG/SOCContemporary

Philosophy

C/PRCG

Degree of FormalizationLow High

Degree of Conceptual ComplexityLow High

Low

High

Diff

usio

n

Macro

Micro

Contemporary PhilosophyHistory of Philosophy

A1 A2 An

Figure 2:

A cognitive map for Glasersfeld-style radical constructivism (RCG).C/P: Ceccato, Piaget.



CONCEPTS



Core Modules

Resea

rch

Desig

ns

Theory of Cognition

CTCognitive

Tiles

LFLaws ofForm

TRTriadicClosure

TSTessel-ations

GRGenerativeRelations

DCDouble

Closures

UCUnity of

Cognition

AUAutology

RLRecursiveLanguage

classified, nevertheless, as Area II-contribu-tions. Additionally, he developed a consider-able number of aphorisms or

koans

that canbe located in Area III in the same position asRCG. Von Foerster’s aphorisms

17

becamevery popular and were immediately under-stood by people with heterogeneous back-grounds from science or from other domainssuch as coaching, family therapy or manage-ment consulting.

In Figure 5, two other important researchprograms from the RC set are mapped withinthe two-dimensional mapping space withthree different areas. In general, Beer used theorganization of the nervous system and com-plex geometry to design his viable systemsmodels for the study of socio-economic orga-nizations (Beer 1994a, b, c, e). Pask had avision of a new theory framework for learning

and communication under the name of “con-versation theory” and a clear focus onmachine-supported learning and teachingprocesses (Pask 1975a,b, 1976). Aside from anew research focus on machine learning andorganization, some of the significant differ-ences between RCG and SOC on the one handand Beer’s management cybernetics (MBB)and Pask’s conversation theory (CTP) on theother are the following:

Turning to Figure 5, both Beer and Paskcould be qualified as implicit philosophers,being rather reluctant to address genuinephilosophical issues in Area II. They werewriting on epistemology in the empiricalrather than the normative domain and theywere publishing almost exclusively outsidephilosophical journals and mostly for non-philosophical communities. Therefore, the

circle for MCB and CTP is drawn with dottedlines. Additionally, Beer and Pask, despite aglobal and universal resonance (both wereconstantly engaged in modern arts anddesign, for example), did not build substan-tial links to postmodernism or postmodernphilosophy. Pask’s

Microman

(1982, withSusan Curran), Beer’s

How Many Grapes Wentinto the Wine

(1994d) or his

Designing Free-dom

(1994f) remain still highly readablebooks which, however, have never been nearto becoming postmodern classics.

The mapping of the RC set could, in prin-ciple, continue with maps for Maturana orVarela

(Maturana & Varela 1980, Varela1979), who over the years drifted consider-ably apart in their emphasis on Area I andArea II research. But the mapping so far is suf-ficient for three general assessments of the RCset in general.

The first important point for me is that themaps of the RC set point to a rich and diversi-fied research agenda that was focused on ahighly interrelated network of topics, com-prising brain-design, cognition, learning, liv-ing systems and organizations as central net-work nodes. This research agenda, especiallyin the 1960s and 1970s, produced a high out-put of new networks of relations, of new per-spectives and of new insights. However, for avariety of reasons

18

this period of high cogni-tive growth could not be sustained from the1980s onwards.

Second, since the early 1980s, considerableadvances have been made in the area of braindesign, cognition, learning, living systems,and organizations outside the RC set andmostly without reference to the RC set. Stateof the art publications on the history and onthe contemporary status of brain design, cog-nition, learning, living systems or organiza-tions hardly ever refer to articles by or to per-sons behind the RC set. In 2008, the RC set inits Area I work has practically stopped havinglasting or tangible effects on current researchin brain design, cognition, learning, livingsystems or organization studies. (However, anew neurophysiologically-inspired discipline“neuroconstructivism” has appeared in themeantime, see Mareschal et al. 2007).

Third, the permanent re-combinations ofnew networks of conceptual relations, newtheoretical insights on cognition, on the orga-nization of the nervous system or on livingsystems in general, with new research designs

Figure 3:

The main building blocks of second-order cybernetics (SOC).


2008, vol. 3, no. 3 187

CONCEPTS



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CONCEPTS



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JP

generated, almost as a by-product, a rich rep-ertoire or a

surplus

of paradoxes and counter-intuitive examples for the broad scientificmainstream. Beginning in the 1980s, this richrepertoire became more and more central,especially in the lectures and articles by vonFoerster or von Glasersfeld, and the underly-ing research agenda gradually vanished fromthe scene.

Within this overall context, Figure 6 pro-duces a map of Mitterer’s JP together withradical constructivism à la von Glasersfeld. JPis placed obviously in Area II, with a link toArea III and no links to Area I.

In terms of cognitive distances, Figure 6shows in a direct way that Mitterer’s JP comesclosest to the writings of von Glasersfeld onproblems in contemporary philosophy.

19

Inother words, Mitterer contributes to the dis-course of radical constructivism in the philo-sophical domain. Through his radical andnon-dualistic pragmatism Mitterer improves,most probably, the philosophical tool-box ofradical constructivism, especially becausevon Glasersfeld, at times, mixes epistemolog-ical dualism and semantic dualism. Mitterer,however, is clearly operating in the domain ofsemantic non-dualism and argues against the

dualistic constructs of language and reality, ofdescription and object, of sentences andpropositions and the like. Similarly to RCG,also JP is engaged in a cautious flirt with post-modernism, and small parts of JP

20

add to thepost-modern discourse of radical construc-tivism.

However, despite the closeness of Mit-terer’s JP to von Glasersfeld in Area II andArea III, there are no family resemblances orlinks between JP and von Glasersfeld’sresearch agenda in Area I. So far, no JP ele-ments can be identified that can be used asguidelines or a heuristic for empiricalresearch in biology, the cognitive sciences orany other empirical science for that matter.The clear distances between JP and the empir-ical research program of von Glasersfeld canbe generalized for the entire RC set. Aspointed out earlier, the core issues for theempirical research programs of the RC setwere focused on brain-design, cognition,learning, living systems and organizations.Thus, the relevance of JP for each of these top-ics must be considered as marginal at best orsimply as non-effective. Mitterer’s JP plus hissubsequent writings (see, for example, Mit-terer 2001) and the empirical research pro-grams of the RC set play in different cognitiveenvironments and it would even be unreason-able to expect any significant inputs andeffects from a purely philosophical essay inthe right-hand side of Area II on to Area I.

The marginal relevance of Mitterer’sapproach for the RC set can be supported bya second line of argument. The basic issuesand problem-domains in Area I, namelybrain-design, cognition, learning, living sys-tems and organizations, are nowhere to befound or discussed within the context of JP. Itis highly interesting to note that Mitterer’s cri-tique of Maturana is situated exclusively inArea II and Mitterer is very careful to dealwith the philosophical aspects of Maturana’soeuvre and to leave his biological writingsoutside this debate. Thus, it becomes so obvi-ous that from an Area I perspective JP is situ-ated in the hereafter of empirical research,and that from an Area II-view the empiricalaspects of the RC set remain irrelevant for thepursuit of Mitterer’s semantic non-dualism.

And this, in turn, leads to a definite answerto the second question in the title of the paper.

Radical constructivist? – In the context ofthe RC set, no.

Figure 6:

Mapping Mitterer’s JP and Glasersfeld-style radical constructivism (RCG).


2008, vol. 3, no. 3 189

CONCEPTS

historical–philosophical second order cybernetics

ConclusionsThe conclusions of this article can be drawnin two ways.

First, this article can be seen as an attemptto assess the merits of Josef Mitterer’s JPapproach as a philosophical program whiledrawing attention to the fact that RC as itdeveloped during the 1960s and 1970s wasexplicitly research-driven and only implicitlyphilosophical. In recent decades, much of theRC work has become explicitly philosophical

and not even implicitly relevant for researchissues.

Second, in the light of the descriptions sofar, one of the concluding continuations fromnow on can be couched in a very short dialoguebetween the title of this paper, or the reader forthat matter, and the author of this article:

Non-dualistic? – Yes, in the semanticdomain; no in other arenas of non-dualism.

Viably non-dualistic? – Maybe, althoughviable alternatives to Mitterer’s non-dualismabound. Radical constructivist? – Yes, but

only in a very special version of radical con-structivism as a philosophical or post-mod-ern perspective exclusively.

Radical constructivist in a broadersense? – With respect to the much widerresearch side of RC, the answer is negativebecause one cannot find new inputs or tangi-ble designs for the core issues and problems ofRC research.

And what are the central RC researchproblems? – Brain design, cognition, learn-ing, living systems, organizations.

AcknowledgementsSpecial thanks go to Michael Eigner (WIS-DOM) for the production of the diagramsand to Ranulph Glanville and Albert Müllerfor intensive discussions.

Notes

1. Due to the initiative of Ernst von Glasers-feld, an autobiography of radical con-structivism was even being fabricated asHow We Invent Ourselves (Foerster & Gla-sersfeld 1999).

2. It is interesting to note that in the bibliog-raphy of Siegfried J. Schmidt’s overviewon radical constructivism he cites mostfrequently a group of German authors:Hejl (6), Roth (6) and Schmidt (9)), fol-lowed by radical constructivists such asvon Foerster (2), von Glasersfeld (4), Mat-urana (2) and Varela (3). Equally interest-ing, Piaget is cited only once and Ashby,Beer or Pask are not to be found in the bib-liography.

3. See, however, Heinz von Foerster (2001, p.241) who expressed his strong mental res-ervations against the term “radical con-structivism” by saying, “I don’t want to beassociated with constructivism. I have noidea what constructivism means” (mytranslation).

4. On the importance of visionary leaders,see, for example, Hollingsworth & Holl-ingsworth (2000).

5. This is another way of saying that Mittererand I have known each other for morethan thirty years. More importantly, wehave developed an intensive co-operationin organizing conferences, workshops and

lectures on the topic of radical construc-tivism in Vienna, especially in relation tovon Glasersfeld and von Foerster. Thisspecial issue is also an occasion to thankJosef Mitterer for his tireless efforts inhelping and promoting RC perspectives.

6. It is interesting to note that Mitterer him-self speaks of two possible paths of a non-dualistic approach, which, following Gil-bert Ryle or Clifford Geertz, could be clas-sified as thick and thin approaches. A thinapproach such as Mitterer’s uses only asmall number of key terms, whereas athick approach is context-sensitive anddevelops the non-dualistic frameworkwith a rich vocabulary and a sophisticatedlogical machinery. (Mitterer 1992, p. 17)

7. I would like to point very briefly to a largenumber of unresolved issues for JP. Forobvious reasons, in the non-dualisticmode, too, distinctions are needed to dif-ferentiate between, say, the word “Hegel”as a collection of letters {E, G, H, L} andGeorg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel who be-came Professor of Philosophy in Berlin in1818 or between the historical circum-stances of Hegel’s early development andthe overall structure and organization ofHegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807.So far and until now, Mitterer’s descrip-tions have not provided any pragmaticclues or guidelines for pragmatic distinc-tions. Mitterer’s “The object of the de-scription is the description of the object” issimply question-begging in this respect.

8. In the introduction to his essay on Mat-urana, Mitterer points to the delicate andself-supporting structure of Maturana’sbiological work and his philosophicalstudies. In a variation of a dictum by Im-manuel Kant, Maturana’s philosophical

explorations without his biological studieswould be empty and Maturana’s biologi-cal studies without his accompanying phi-losophy would be blind.

9. A detailed example, analyzing von Gla-sersfeld’s Introduction to Radical Construc-tivism has been given in Müller (2007b).

10.As a relevant selection from the philoso-phy of science literature, see Balzer,Moulines & Sneed (1987), Donovan,Laudan & Laudan (1988) or Sneed (1979).

11.These three paradigmatic examples havebeen taken from Glasersfeld (1997b),which presents a short autobiographicalsketch.

12.For more details and for the principalcomponents of RCG in Area II, see, onceagain, Müller (2007b).

13.The vertical dimension of Area I differen-tiates between micro-analyses at the levelof the neural organization and macro-studies at the level of the observable be-haviour of actors.

14.The horizontal dimension of Area I sepa-rates research programs with relativelylow degrees of formalization (left side)from approaches with a high degree of for-malization and modelling (right side).

15.According to von Foerster (2003, p. 302)the term “cybernetics of cybernetics” goesback to the year 1968 where this conceptwas invented jointly with Margaret Mead.

16.On the theoretical elements of von Foer-ster’s theory of cognition within a SOCcontext, see von Foerster & Müller (2003).

17.Particularly popular aphorisms werestatements such as “Truth is the inventionof a liar”, von Foerster’s ethical imperative(“Act always as to increase the number ofchoices”), his aesthetical imperative (“Ifyou desire to see, learn how to act”), his


CONCEPTS


therapeutic imperative (“If you want to beyourself, change!”) or “The listener, notthe speaker, determines the meaning of astatement.”

18.Each of the research programs in the RCset entered a period of stagnation and de-cline, due to the age of the program lead-ers, due to the non-availability of followerswho could continue the current work, dueto funding difficulties, due to health prob-lems or due to political changes. Each ofthe programs in the RC set has its own andits specific history of decline.

19.It should be added that the position ofSchmidt’s Histories and Discourses (2007,HDS) would be identical to JP in Figure 6although the linkages would be different.In the case of HDS, linkages can be pro-duced from HDS to a new and non-con-structivist type of media and communica-tion research in Area I.

20.It is sufficient to point to some passages inJP, especially in the preface (p. 14) and to-wards the end of Part II (pp. 107ff) whereMitterer plays with JP not only in the se-mantic, but in the post-modern theatre aswell.

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und Kognitionswissenschaft. KulturelleWurzeln und Ergebnisse. Heinz von Foer-ster gewidmet. Second enlarged edition.Springer: Vienna, pp. 229–242.

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Foerster, H. von & Glasersfeld, E. von (1999)Wie wir uns erfinden. Eine Autobiogra-phie des radikalen Konstruktivismus. CarlAuer: Heidelberg.

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Received: 29 March 2008Accepted: 02 July 2008

Karl H. Müller is head of WISDOM, Austria's infra-structural centre for the social sciences, co-ordinator of the new research program RISC (Rare Incidents, Strong Consequences) at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and president of the Heinz von Foerster Society. His main research interests range from issues in complex modelling within the social sciences and from interdisciplinary analyses of innovation processes in science, technol-ogy and economy to the history and the cur-rent potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research, to the frontiers of second order cybernetics and radical constructivism or to the newly emerging risk-potentials for con-temporary societies in general. His recent publications include Advancing Socio-Eco-nomics (together with J. Rogers Holling-sworth and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth) (2002), An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Labora-tory 1958–1976 (2007, together with Albert Müller), Gordon Pask: Philosopher Mechanic (2007, together with Ranulph Glanville), and The New Science of Cybernetics. Towards the Evolution of Living Research Designs, 2 volumes (2008).

THE AUTHOR


Notes towards Uniting Actor-Network Theory and Josef Mitterer’s Non-dualizing Philosophy

1. Introduction

his two remarkable books, Josef Mit-terer (1996, 2004)

1

sketched ametaphilosophical approach called “non-dualizing philosophy” or “non-dualizing wayof speaking” (NDS), which manages todescribe most of (or the whole of) the philo-sophical tradition and contemporary philos-ophy in terms of dualizing way of speaking.

2

Mitterer’s proposition deserves thoroughdiscussion, since no other philosophicalaccount was able to grasp the philosophicalfield so deeply with such simple conceptualtools. As a result, Mitterer’s books usuallyprovoke two kinds of reactions: 1. “He mustbe joking” (Mitterer 1996, p. 6), 2. “There issomething in it, but what was said is notenough.” If I was to choose, I would takeoption number two: I am sure “there is some-thing in it,” and that NDS needs some inter-pretational elaboration and extension. But Iam also certain, that there is much more incurrent NDS than it is assumed in optiontwo. Interpretational elaboration and exten-sion mean that NDS needs some work similarto coloring samples in order to make themvisible under a microscopic lens: one has toapply NDS to, at least, some traditionalphilosophical problems in order to notice allthe advantages of NDS. This cannot be done

without some interpretational actions. Thus,having such a methodology, I would like tostructure my argument as follows: I start witha brief sketch of NDS, than I move to themain part of the text, juxtaposing NDS withactor-network theory (ANT). One of mymain claims is that the deep structural simi-larity between NDS and ANT naturally leadsto uniting them. Such is my interpretationalextension. Finally, I indicate only some of theproblems that could be tackled or even solvedby NDS that is extended in this way. At thevery least it would be able to reformulatethem in its own terms.

1. The non-dualizing way of speaking (NDS)

When writing a text like this, aiming at inves-tigating convergences between NDS and ANT(I hope the reader is not irritated by the abbre-viations yet), you have to introduce NDS verybriefly. The shortest possible introductionboils down to a quotation from Mitterer’s

TheBeyond of Philosophy

(or

Beyond

for short):

3

“The canon of core problems in philoso-phy, especially in epistemology, has notchanged much since Plato. Problems havesurvived the attempts to solve them.There are no problems at the beginning of

philosophy. There are only unproblema-tized assumptions.Those assumptions consist of dichoto-mous distinctions (in epistemology andphilosophy of language these are, forexample, language-world dichotomy,object-description dichotomy, object-proposition dichotomy, being-conscious-ness dichotomy, subject-object dichot-omy, and others)” (Mitterer 1996, p. 3).Philosophy that is grounded in those

dichotomous distinctions and that formu-lates philosophical problems starting withthem, is called by Mitterer a “dualizing way ofspeaking” or just “dualizing philosophy.”

In

The Escape from Arbitrariness

(or

Escape

for short), he names common features ofdualizing philosophies: dualizing (dualisticassumptions), truth orientation, and direc-tion of thinking, which means object-ori-ented thinking (Mitterer 2004, pp. 11–13).Having introduced the first one in the quota-tion above, I shall briefly elaborate the secondand third ones. According to Mitterer, truthorientation in dualistic philosophy is relatedto the necessity of philosophical controver-sies, which stimulate searching for techniquesthat would enforce one’s own account thusweakening opponents’. The essential part ofthe techniques strives against arbitrariness bymoving towards truth (or Truth) and at thesame time pushing all the opponents’ alterna-tive accounts towards arbitrariness. Truththeories are thus vaccines for dualistic philos-ophy against arbitrariness and contingency,and reaching truth would be a warranty ofsuccessful escape from arbitrariness (Mitterer2004, §10 in the introduction).

The third feature, object orientation, isalso easy to comprehend with relation tophilosophical controversies. When reachingdisagreement, dualizing philosophers try to


A

Nicolas Copernicus University, Torun (Poland) <[email protected]>

In

R Purpose – To show the convergences between Josef Mitterer’s non-dualizing way of speaking and actor-network theory. R Methodology – Comparative analysis of Mitterer’s non-dualizing philosophy and actor-network philosophy. R Findings – Pro-found convergences between the two accounts may lead to a unified account that could redefine traditional philosophical problems. R Benefits – The paper extends the range of Mitterer’s non-dualizing philosophy and actor-network theory enabling both to face new problems. Among them, extended non-dualizing philosophy may undergo empirical investigations. R Key words – so far descriptions, from now on descriptions, dualism, actor-network theory.

philosophical


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2008, vol. 3, no. 3 193

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philosophical


select only one of the competing descriptionsby referring to an object outside the discourse(Mitterer 2004, §10 in the introduction).

Given this, the idea of a non-dualizing wayof speaking seems to be very simple. Its pur-pose is to describe how a dualizing way ofspeaking emerges and proceeds (see Mitterer1996, introduction). It is emphasized that it isto be a “philosophical description” or “criticalinquiry” in a traditional, Kantian way

4

(inquiry into possibility conditions), and notsome kind of historical analysis.

5

The first aimof NDS is to throw light on dualizing assump-tions, therefore NDS itself should be free fromthem, thus the name: “non-dualizing way ofspeaking” or “non-dualizing philosophy.”

On the pages of

Beyond

, Mitterer proves tobe very skillful at demonstrating how a dual-izing way of speaking is embedded both inrealistic (objectivistic) accounts, and also inanti-realistic (relativistic) accounts. Quotesfrom works of Thomas Kuhn, the late LudwigWittgenstein, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and Wil-lard van Orman Quine are taken to forcefullydemonstrate dualizing assumptions (Mit-terer 1996, introduction). Regardless of theway one evaluates the NDS project, how Mit-terer proceeds is highly respectful. He neverfalls into attacking a weak, straw opponent ofoversimplified philosophies. Conversely,instead of taking easy targets from objectivisttexts, he rather picks sophisticated textualconstructions to extract and demonstratedualizing assumptions.

Yet, in turn, the very elaboration of NDSwas so short and sketchy that many questionsneed to be posed and numerous issues dis-cussed.

6

To make a long story short: NDSviews any investigation as a movement fromone description to another, and then to thenext one. Any description accomplished iscalled a “description

so

far

,” and its continua-tion, a “description

from now on

.” To use Mit-terer’s example of a teacher asking a studentabout the capital of Austria: dualism woulddescribe this situation as speaking about anobject, here, the capital of Austria (object ori-entation). NDS views it as giving the

so far

description “the capital of Austria” in order tomove to a continuation, some

from now on

description, e.g., “Vienna.” Yet a student couldanswer, “Zurich.” A dualizing way of speakingwould view this as giving a false answer(truth-orientation), while a NDS philosopherwould say that the very continuation is

wrong: a description, “the capital of Austria,”does not entail a description, “Zurich.”

As stated before, NDS seemed to generatea bunch of problems. One of them was itsrelation to “reality,” and the issue of the “real-ity-description” relation (I use dualistic termsto demonstrate the problems in an ultimatelyclear way). The concept of “description”seemed to be a troublemaker (Is the wholeworld equivalent to a gigantic text, since onespeaks only about descriptions?). And also,dualizing philosophy is always at hand, andthat seemed too easy to be true, too alarming:it looked as if the whole of philosophy, all theschools and paradigms and thought styleswere doomed in the abyss of dualizing philos-ophy.

7

Some of those who heard my confer-ence speeches on NDS asked about the point,plausibility and legitimacy of elaboratingNDS, since we used to be very much intodualizing philosophy. Indeed, we know it verywell, and we have elaborated it to a certaindegree. Why then change one’s ways? The listof problems could be even longer, and I thinkall of those mentioned above could be solvedor resolved. And then the only way to do thatis to elaborate NDS further. I think that suchan elaboration, the one that fits perfectly, isANT, which has arisen in science and technol-ogy studies, mainly in the works of BrunoLatour, Michel Callon, and John Law. I do notpromise that by the magic power of this ANT-NDS union, I am going to solve all the prob-lems mentioned, but let me take the first steptowards that.

8

Radical constructivism appears to be oneof the main inspirations and contexts for Mit-terer’s idea of NDS. In short, radical construc-tivism claims that a system (mind, society) isepistemologically closed

9

and is not able totranscend its own experiences (Riegler 2001,pp. 5–8). As Alexander Riegler claims, themind (i.e., cognitive system) is an epistemo-logical solipsist. This thesis was applied andelaborated in various fields (communicationtheory, biology, sociology, cultural studies,psychotherapy, group therapy, cognitive sci-ences, etc.). Given this, it may be tempting toview NDS as a more radical radical construc-tivism, as an attempt to solve some of its inter-nal problems by pushing certain ideas further.For example, when Mitterer says that even indualizing philosophy we are not able to movebeyond descriptions, one may interpret thisas: Radical constructivism was not radical

enough in emphasizing the epistemologicalclosure of a system. Michael Fleischer, forinstance, views NDS as belonging to a non-dualistic trend in constructivism togetherwith Siegfried Schmidt’s works (see Fleischer2005, pp. 18–39). Bernhard Pörksen pro-posed in a conference discussion that wedeploy NDS as transcendental constructiv-ism, that is, an account that investigates thepossibility conditions of constructivism.

I think that if Mitterer’s NDS starts fromradical constructivism, then it will arrive atsomething else. It is a distinct, original philo-sophical account. And, I believe that is thereason why it is structurally similar to ANT,and why they both look so promising. Andthis hope is what I am going to infect thereader with.

2. Convergences and similarities

Here, my main claim is: There are a numberof profound convergences between NDS andANT, which stem from analogous theoreticaldecisions made, respectively, in differentfields with different conceptual tools (e.g.,concepts, conceptual relations, methods, the-oretical backgrounds). Certainly, there aremajor and minor similarities there. The list Ipresent in this section is brief, but I would notdare to say that it is complete.

2.1 Dualizing no more

While Mitterer analyzes dualizing philosophywith NDS, thus making a criticism in the tra-ditional sense, ANT refutes thinking in termsof primary and secondary qualities (Latour1999b, 1999d). It is the same move done withdifferent concepts and terms.

In §4 of

Beyond

, Mitterer says the follow-ing:

“The critical part of the book is directedtowards a still-discussed idea of a given,discourse-independent and language-independent outside world that is mir-rored or reflected in language. I am alsointerested here in ideas of a merely non-language or ‘different-from-language’world, which could be called ‘sculptor the-ories,’ ‘chaos theories’ or ‘stream theories.’These theories are grounded in a simplescheme, which one may typically find onthe very first pages of books written by


CONCEPTS

philosophical


primary qualitiesnon-language world

secondary qualitieslanguage

readeradvocates and followers of the theo-ries. And then the scheme is usually moreor less abandoned.There is a presupposition of a disorderlyworld, a chaos, a stream of things. Thenthis, at first,

non

-language, presupposedworld is populated by human beings withtheir language, and they put it in order. Theinitially unshaped world is turned, bymeans of language, into a shaped world.This process depends certainly on the effi-ciency and range that we ascribe to a tool,i.e., language.

Then

it is not a non-language world, butjust a ‘different from language’ one – youcan hardly say what it looks like withoutour intervention. And the more languageparticipates in world shaping, the moreyou cannot say anything about it.Thus a degree of relativism can be deter-mined. And sometimes it goes as far as say-ing that different epistemological accountsare matched by different worlds” (Mitterer1996, §4).Further on, he says:“Various

framework

relativisms suspendthe part of the cognitive activity of lan-guage-reality dichotomy that deals withthe very construction of a framework”(Mitterer 1996, §6).In the beginning of §4, Mitterer speaks of

objectivistic splitting up, resulting in two

domains: the non-language world and lan-guage that allegedly reflects the former. This isjust a version of dualizing philosophy. Then,we have another version, which views the non-language world as at first a disorderly, undi-vided whole, which is then processed by themeans of language so that it ends up as theworld-as-we-know-it. Language is here aframework that we are imprisoned in. WhatMitterer emphasizes is the common structureof those different versions of a dualizing way ofspeaking.

On the other hand, Bruno Latour refers tothe same structure of thinking, when usingsuch traditional philosophical terms as pri-mary and secondary qualities. They appear inthe context of the common views of scienceand the contribution of science studies. Hesays:

“Primary qualities define the real stuff outof which nature is made, particles, strings,atoms, genes, depending on the discipline,while secondary qualities define the waythat people subjectively represent this sameuniverse” (Latour 1999b).“[T]hey [the secondary qualities – K. A.]only divide us into multiple points of view,which may be subjectively relevant but areobjectively (in the traditional sense) irrele-vant” (Latour 1999b). “We will end up with a world made up of asubstrate of

primary qualities

– what sci-

ence sees but the average human misses–above which subjects add

secondary quali-ties

that exist only in our mind, imagina-tion and cultural accounts” (Latour1999d).Although the terms used in the quotations

above are “primary qualities” and “secondaryqualities,” the structure that Latour describesnonetheless remains the same as in Mitterer’sdualizing philosophy. How does this happento be? Look at Figure 1.

Primary qualities in Latour’s argumentoccupy the same locus as the non-languageworld in the paragraphs quoted from Mitterer.Then, secondary qualities correspond to lan-guage. It is easy to translate between differentphilosophical vocabularies based on the samepattern as long as we stick to the hint that theprimary qualities correspond to “the world”or “object” and the secondary qualities corre-spond to “the agent” or “subject.” Thus onemay choose to complete the pattern withterms from the analytical philosophy of lan-guage (proposition, language, state of affairs),with constructivist terms (constructing ofrepresentations, unknown world), with termscoming from the Kantian tradition (phenom-enon, thing-in-itself) or any other account.

Finally, it does not matter which terms youchoose to complete the pattern with, whetherthey be primary and secondary qualities (asLatour says) or non-language reality and lan-guage (as Mitterer puts it). The importantthing here is the very pattern of various formsof dualizing philosophy, and that they both(Mitterer and Latour) reject it (on differentgrounds).

2.2 Networks of associations

Rejecting one way of thinking usually leads tosome positive cognitive offer. Both accounts –ANT and NDS – primarily are, above all, somekind of such intellectual, cognitive offer. Thus,one may suppose some sort of monism ifreferring only to the rejection of dualizing phi-losophy. Yet this seems be misleading whenused unproblematically, without further anal-ysis, because of the well-established philo-sophical tradition of the term. Instead, itwould be better to focus on how ANT andNDS reinterpret cognitive practices in con-trast to dualizing philosophy.

While rejecting the non-language objectdescribed inside discourse, Mitterer intro-duces a procedure of moving from one

Figure 1:

The most common way of viewing science, according to Bruno Latour. Science remains in touch with the primary qualities thus experiencing the real outside world, while the secondary qualities refer to the social, cultural or individual excess imposed on the real world as a result of the activities of human agents. Yet dualizing philosophy has the same structure. Human agents remain “imprisoned inside” language, which together with the non-language world creates the imprisoning framework. Whether you are a relativist or a objectivist (both are dualists) depends entirely on how much power you attribute to each side. A relativist would say: “We know nothing about the non-language world (0%), except that it is there, but everything comes from language (culture, group, mind etc.) (100%).” While an objectivist would say: “We know a lot about the outside, non-language world (say 70%), thanks to science, but there are also essentially language (cultural, group, mental, etc.) phenomena (30%).” The more objectivist you are, the more you grant to the non-language world, and

vice versa

.


2008, vol. 3, no. 3 195

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philosophical


description to another, from the

so far

descrip-tion to the

from now on

description. I men-tioned this when discussing the example of astudent answering the question concerning thecapital of Austria (see Mitterer 1996, §§14–19).

Generally speaking, it is possible to graspany cognitive activity in terms of generatingsome new

from now on

description, somealternative

from now on

description or as acontroversy between different descriptions.Mitterer does not elaborate this argument, butthis can be easily done: for instance, an analystmay check whether the very movement fromone description to another is justified. ANTcalls this phenomenon “a trial of force” or “atrial of a connection/association” (Latour1987, p. 78).

If one could view the cognitive practicesfrom “above,” then what would become visibleare the number of descriptions and move-ments among them, including conflicts andcontroversies about descriptions and move-ments, which themselves take the shape ofdescriptions and movements. I would say thatwhat we have here is the network of descrip-tions generating new descriptions, connectedwith movements.

On the other hand, ANT speaks of fabricat-ing, stabilizing, sustaining and breaking thenetworks of heterogeneous connectionsamong various entities, usually called “actors”or “actants.” An actant is any being that acts,and acting means nothing but changing otheractants (Latour 1987, pp. 83–84, 89–90;Latour 1999a, pp. 122–123). To be precise,connecting is much more important in theANT account than constructing a network. Atleast this is the way Latour tends to speakabout these things.

10

Similarly, NDS does notdescribe any network of descriptions. It ratherfocuses on moving from one description toanother. Nevertheless, the global end productis a network of associations. I put an emphasison that, because this is crucial for distinguish-ing between dualizing philosophy, and ANTplus NDS. There is a network on the one hand,and two ontological domains on the other.There are relations on the one hand, andessences on the other.

11

There is relationalontology on the one hand, and dualism on theother.

12

However one could have a single legitimatedoubt about the notion of “description.” Herethere are both a problem and a convergence,therefore, I move to the next section.

2.3 Descriptions and articulations

Viewing cognitive practices as constructingthe network of heterogeneous connectionscould be acceptable even for someone who isnot an ANT or a NDS theorist, since s/he takesinto consideration that what happens in theordinary course of research amounts to aseries of attempts to collect and bind togethersamples, their descriptions, measurements,the comments and opinions of our dear col-leagues, quotations, our own opinions andviews, methodological problems, money run-ning short, stubborn instruments etc. Cer-tainly, that is not ANT, but a proper steptowards it.

Things are different with the term“description.” When speaking of cognitiveprocesses as generating new descriptions, onemay ask: And those are descriptions of what?Descriptions are defined as somethingbelonging to language, so what about non-language things (such as the HIV virus, forinstance)? Are we back in dualizing shoes?

In my opinion, there is only one plausiblesolution to that problem – a redefinition of“description.” Since dualizing philosophy isrejected, “description” cannot refer solely tothe language domain. It is so important and soawkward that it requires careful analysis and aproper solution. So I postulate the change: weneed to redefine description as referring notsolely to language, but as a much more univer-sal process, for instance a sort of Derridian

writing

. But the rest of this is for a differenttext, on a different occasion.

Nevertheless, there is a similarity betweenANT’s networks of associations among vari-ous actants and NDS’s networks of descrip-tions. There is a shortcut to elaborating thisthat avoids the description-as-referring-solely-to-language problems. It goes throughthe notions of proposition and articulationintroduced by Latour in his

Pandora’s Hope

asone of the metaphors for scientific practice,and used later on in a model of collectivedynamics in

Politics of Nature

(see Latour1999a, pp. 140–144; Latour 2004). By the way,I am afraid that “proposition” and “articula-tion” may seem obscure and hermetic, at leastmore than “actant” or “association.” Brieflyspeaking, let us define “proposition” as theequivalent of “actant,” and “articulation” asthe equivalent of “association” (or “connec-tion,” “delegation,” “translation” etc.). Whenusing these terms, one would say that a prop-

osition associates with another one by articu-lating it. For example, Pasteur articulatesmicrobes, Alexander Riegler articulates con-structivism (for instance in the text men-tioned above), Stefan Weber articulates thenon-dualizing theory of media, and I myselfarticulate Mitterer’s account, who in turnarticulates NDS.

That is why I assume that “articulation” inANT is the equivalent of “description” in NDS.The first defines cognitive practices as generat-ing successive articulations, while the seconddefines it as fabricating successive descrip-tions. What piece is missing in the picture?Only this: NDS requires a concept or an ideathat would match ANT’s “proposition.” But,honestly, this lack is due to the fact that NDS isstill in its early stages, still under construction.Besides, NDS was invented as a small toolboxfor analyzing dualizing philosophy, thus thelack is nothing but a program of analysis to bedone.

I repeat, NDS speaks of generating succes-sive descriptions, and ANT of articulations.Now it is time to focus on words like “generat-ing,” “fabricating,” and “constructing.”

2.4 Dynamic and change

In the introduction to the Polish edition thatopens

Escape

, Mitterer writes:“

The escape from arbitrariness

is a contri-bution to the

‘philosophy of change’

” (Mit-terer 2004, p. VII).Indeed, Mitterer emphasized movement

from one description to another one even ear-lier, in his

Beyond

. The interesting thing waschange, not a description. Furthermore,changes occurred while redefining everydaycognitive practices in NDS terms; before thatit was hardly visible. Dualizing philosophysticks to change of beliefs against an intelligi-ble world (in realist dualisms) or unintelligibleworld (in constructivist dualisms). Here, NDSis located closer to constructivism. Realistaccounts could refer to the correspondencebetween the results of cognitive processes andstates of affairs (e.g., correspondence betweena given proposition and a relevant state ofaffairs); while constructivist accounts thatspeak about unintelligible reality have toemphasize the internal dynamic and change ofthe cognitive results. NDS takes just one morestep further but it also remembers the internaldynamic of cognition. Yet the step is crucial,because rejecting the so-called “other side of


CONCEPTS

philosophical


discourse” equals elimination of a sharpboundary between ontology and epistemol-ogy. And this, in turn, is better elaborated byANT.

ANT rejects the epistemology/ontologydistinction, since any cognitive change (epis-temological domain) is a change of a collectiveworld (ontological domain) (Abriszewski2006; de Vries 1995; Latour 1999a, pp. 92–98,113–115, 145–146). Science and scientificpractices (lab research, text writing, gettinggrants, etc.), which are the basic ANT researcharea, are viewed as the main sources of changesin a collective life (Callon, Law & Rip 1986, p.4; see also models of scientific practices inLatour 1987, pp. 145–176, and Latour 1999a,pp. 80–112). And even the very processes inwhich representations are constructed do notmove ANT at some other level or domain (e.g.,knowledge domain) but mean only fabrica-tion of the new actants (actors). ANT is notinterested in idealized models of the con-structing of representations (focused on leap-ing between world and language), but itempirically studies long processes of meticu-lous fabrication of chains or networks of rep-resentations described by the notion of a “cir-culating reference” (Abriszewski 2006;Abriszewski 2007; Abriszewski & Afeltowicz2007; Latour 1999a, pp. 24–79).

And yet again, ANT, similarly to NDS, doesnot look too much at networks; it ratheremphasizes all the actions resulting in con-necting the actants (translations, delegations),in destroying such connections or in testingtheir durability.

In short, ANT and NDS are convergent intwo ways. First, they both emphasize changeand dynamic rather than that what undergoeschanges. They are focused on movements –from one description to another one, fromone actor to the next. Second, the general pic-ture that emerges shows the world of constantchanges, permanently reshaping. There is nodoubt, one may find more similar philosoph-ical accounts to those two, at least in thatrespect. But, regardless of the need to do suchcomparative work in the future, there mightbe one small problem here, called “irreduc-tions.”

2.5 Irreductions

Such is the title of one of the most difficult ofLatour’s works.

13

Yet what is at stake here isquite easy. As Latour puts it: “nothing by itself

reduces to anything else” (Latour 1988a,section 1.1.1). Switching to NDS jargon: no

from now on

description emerges naturallyfrom a

so far

description. Switching back toANT: no association that connects actors isobvious, even the humblest of translationsneeds effort, even the smallest transformationhas to be paid for.

Thus, any global change is a result of somecollective effort.

This is more thoroughly studied in ANT.One of the results of this study says that thereis no such thing as a natural border betweenscience and its context (Latour 1983; Latour1999a, pp. 109–112). Yet, referring to NDS,one may view

Escape

as an attempt to study theirreductions and the ways of blurring them,for the principle of irreduction is nothing butthe principle of arbitrariness. If a philosopherwants to escape from arbitrariness, which iscarefully studied by Mitterer in

Escape

, then hesurely tries to blur the principle of irreduction,exchanging it for some local necessities. Hewould like to say that some

from now on

descriptions are arbitrary, but there are somethat are not. If the principle of irreduction inNDS says that no description generatesanother one by necessity, then a phantom ofarbitrariness appears on the horizon. Then thephilosopher needs techniques of escape fromarbitrariness, of reducing it and refuting it.

When speaking of arbitrariness, it is neces-sary to add another comment: neither ANT,nor NDS fall into praising some absolute arbi-trariness. That would be a misunderstanding.By emphasizing arbitrariness, they try to focuson the effort needed in movement from onedescription to the next one, or when connect-ing various actors. Obviously, there are somelocal necessities and constraints here. Butwhat does that mean? Only this: that if youstudy an object (create a

from now on

descrip-tion starting with a

so far

description), say sci-entific practice, then you do not apply inadvance any theory of, for example, what isscientific, and not. An ANT researcher is notallowed to apply any prior theory; s/he shouldjust follow the actors, which means that localnecessities are identified by the actors them-selves and them only.

2.6 Infra-level

This leads to another similarity between ANTand NDS. The latter aims at describing dualiz-ing philosophy by critical entering into philo-

sophical problems. Not solving them, not justdescribing them, NDS wants to find a wayleading to them (Mitterer 1996, p. 4). Mittereruses the same methodology when he outlinesthe mechanism of arbitrariness and truth the-ories as means of escape from it (Mitterer2004).

ANT is similar when it investigates scien-tific practices - for instance, when studying theemergence of circulating references, whichaim at mobilizing resources from the world.Briefly speaking, a circulating reference refersto a network that is fabricated while movingfrom an initial question (Is the Amazon forestshrinking? How does my brain work? How isit that the same HIV virus causes differentkinds of AIDS in Africa and North America?)to the final stack of data (often with numbersand figures) that are used in a scientific report.ANT itself does not so much mobilizeresources and construct circulating referencesin that way, but it describes how sciences man-age to do that. It follows them step by step,mapping their smallest moves (Latour 1988b).Thus opponents sometimes accuse ANT ofnot using this or that scientific theory as aphilosophical ground, which absolutelymisses the point. It is not about grounding intheory, it is about following the connections inthe same way, as NDS is about following thedescriptions.

In short, both ANT and NDS prescribeproceeding on an infra-level. In both ANT andNDS, an analyzer is not at the same level aswhat s/he analyzes. S/he aims at describing themechanisms of what s/he analyzes. S/he is likea car mechanic slipping under a car. And thisleads to the last of the major similarities, ifboth have the same perspective, do they see thesame things?

2.7 Scientific/philosophical controversies

The general similarity in the outlines of scien-tific and philosophical controversies stemsfrom summarizing some minor similarities inthat matter.

Mitterer says:“[T]he possible settling of a controversybetween competing theories results fromusing some instance or criteria or at least byappealing to them” (Mitterer 2004, § 90).The instances used may vary, these could

be: “nature, reality, states of affairs, history orlaws.” Then Mitterer adds: “Some of the

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 197

CONCEPTS

philosophical


instances are mute, but they all have autho-rized representatives (…)” (Mitterer 2004,§91). This means, that the controversy doesnot involve instances themselves but only dif-ferent analysts who invoke them. The winneris the one who is able to invoke them more effi-ciently, and fabricate better documents forthat.

ANT similarly says that those involved inscientific controversies are spokespersons.These are spokespersons who strive to settle acontroversy between competing accounts(Latour 1987, pp. 70–74). In this way, Pasteuris a spokesman for anthrax, and Talcott Par-sons is a spokesman for social structure. In thesame manner, it is not that the AIDS “infec-tion” account competes with the AIDS “intox-ication” account, but it is their spokespersonswho are involved in the controversy, for exam-ple Robert Gallo, Peter Duesberg (and manyothers). They all aim at being better and moretruthful spokespersons.

Reality, that is, the instances mentionedabove, is represented in controversies byauthorities (Mitterer 2004, §91). ANT, in turn,emphasizes that these are allies (includingauthorities) who help in making any new actor(an innovation) more real; briefly speaking,they help to construct reality (Latour 1987).

Mitterer says that it is “difficult to separatepower, law, authority and truth” in scientificcontroversies (Mitterer 2004, §92). ANT sim-ilarly says that participating in controversies isexpensive, and relies on mobilizing resourcesand allies by various means: lab research, rede-fining of classics of the field, putting moremoney into the research, writing negativereviews of competing books, articles and grantapplications etc (Latour & Woolgar 1979, pp.105–150; see also the already-mentionedmodels of scientific practice: Latour 1987, pp.145–176 and Latour 1999a, pp. 80–112).

Both ANT and NDS point out that partici-pation in a controversy often involves tremen-dous costs (Mitterer 2004, §25) because run-ning a laboratory, having your pollers paid,buying new equipment, and even purchasingbooks are expensive (Latour 1987, pp. 145–176 and Latour 1999a, pp. 80–112).

Mitterer says that truth claims do not solvea controversy, something more is needed,something like a fundament or an instancethat may be referred to (Mitterer 2004, §§90–91). According to ANT, the result of a contro-versy depends on which party can afford to

enlist more resources, powerful allies andwhich of the competing parties’ resources andallies could be weakened, counter-recruited orjust made useless.

It is said in

Escape

that “discourses do notstart with a conflict, but with a consensus”(Mitterer 2004, §127). In the same way, ANTpoints to black boxes and stabilized networksof relations, which act as a whole (see Callon &Latour 1981, p. 285; Latour 1987, p. 35 onblack boxes; see Abriszewski 2005 on initialconsensus and black boxes).

One way of enforcing an account, as Mit-terer puts it, is depersonalizing it (Mitterer2004, §§128–134). There is a big differencebetween saying “I see a similarity betweenANT and NDS.” and saying “There is a pro-found convergence between ANT and NDS,”or even saying “The structural similarity ofNDS and ANT has been scientifically proved.”But when viewing the competing account, youmay use a reverse of that trick: “John Doe is notable to notice the similarity between NDS andANT because of his prejudices.” Personalizingreduces an account to someone’s personalmind games. Thus the account loses its seriousstructure, turning into a sort of individualflight of ideas.

ANT presents the (de)personalizing ofaccounts and propositions as an element of awider concept of modalizing of statements. Aninitial statement may move towards fact or fic-tion depending on positive or negative modal-izations (qualifications) (Latour 1987, pp. 22–26; Latour & Woolgar 1979, pp. 75-86).

Finally, Mitterer says that it makes no dif-ference if you are a realist or a constructivistwhen it comes to the results of a research pro-cess or an investigation (Mitterer 2004, §6 ofappendix 2). Latour notices that Pasteur, in hisscientific practice, is a bit of a realist and a bitof a constructivist, depending on the situa-tion, and that it does not seem incoherent(Latour 1999a, pp. 127–133).

3. Fusion

It should be clear now that NDS and ANT aresignificantly mutually convergent. The veryconvergence refers both to certain individualclaims and to the whole structures of thinking.Both reject the dualizing way of speaking,offering some alternative instead. Both arerelational and anti-essentialist, and have the

network as their global model (or topology).However, both are reluctant to speak of net-works, since both prefer to study the makingof descriptions/connections than to focus onstatic network-like end products. Bothemphasize that connections (or moving fromone description to the another) are contin-gent, and reductions are “unnatural” (irreduc-tion principle). Both try to study cognitivepractices, that is network-building practices,from the outside.

All these convergences are good reason tomake a fusion of both ANT and NDS, one thatbrings to mind an ordinary zipper used injackets. Both sides of a zipper need to matchbut cannot be identical, in order to workproperly. And the zipper itself connects twodifferent sides, so they are united in makingsomething new (for example, a jacket thatprotects from the wind).

NDS and ANT are both parts of the zipperhere. The fusion of them would be better thanmutual translation of key concepts because itmay give us something else, because the twoaccounts offer two different domains. Bothrepresent different fields of research, differentmethods, questions and results. ANT operatesin the area of science and technology. NDSoperates in philosophy. ANT is a contempo-rary form of empiricism, NDS is critical in thebest, traditional meaning of the word. ANTsays: “follow the actors,” NDS says “study theconditions of the possibility of philosophy.”

What connects them – the point of firstcontact in the zipper – could be the notion ofa description redefined in the way I proposedearlier.

4. Not hostile, but a takeover

The aim of this text was to open a possibilityto unite NDS and ANT, and make a single andwide style of thought. I hope it could be fruit-ful as a philosophical perspective, as a meth-odology, and just as a way of thinking. Thesimplest next step would be to redefine tradi-tional philosophical problems thus answeringthem anew. And this seems to locate us in abroad field.

Let me point out just three possible areasof such a redefinition, picked up contingently.And the contingency is justified, since with-out a systematic plan of research, a wider


CONCEPTS

philosophical


sketch of a united account, there is no chancefor systematic problem-solving with itsintrinsic logic.

The united account may pose the questionof truth anew. This would omit efforts todefine truth in dualizing terms of a relationbetween two ontological realms (correspon-dence) or as an internal problem of one ofthose realms (e.g., coherence, consensus) or asany mutation of them. Instead it could definethe problem in terms of heterogeneous, many-sided relations constructed and stabilizedamong many different actors, or as a makingof moves among different descriptions. Thiswould avoid a dualizing way of speaking andcould use some of the intuitions of the tradi-tional truth theories at the same time.

The united account also brings a new per-spective for the problems of interpretation.Interpretation, in terms of NDS, could bedefined as any

from now on

description, andthe interpreted text as a

so far

description.Thus, the questions one may ask are concernedwith the desired destination, rather than withbeing truthful to the point of departure.

The united account could also help to viewdifferently parts of the history of philosophy.I undertook a couple of such attempts - forexample, reinterpreting Berkeley as a non-dualizing philosopher, and the prevailinginterpretations of his works as examples ofimposing dualism on a non-dualizing way ofspeaking, which leads to contradictions andabsurdities (Abriszewski 2000). I alsoattempted to redefine the doubts of the tradi-tional, Greek skeptics in terms of NDS, whichgives them a different epistemological per-spective than the usual one (Abriszewski2007). In this way, instead of having doubtsabout a leap over two domains described bydualizing philosophy, they just have doubtsabout the practice of dualizing. This way ofinvestigation becomes all the more importantwith reference to research done by Andrzej P.Kowalski, who has described a phenomenoncalled “pre-philosophical thinking” or “meta-morphic thinking,” presenting a sort of thenon-dualizing way of thinking in historicalterms. He says that people departed frommetamorphic thinking gradually. And theprocess could be studied by investigating thesuccessive, historical layers of our culture(Kowalski 2001). From this perspective, aquest for the traces of non-dualizing thinkingwould equal searching for the big alternative,

an Other of our culture. But if dualizingthinking is associated with writing, as Kowal-ski claims, than what about the claim repeatedby McLuhan, de Kerckhove and others, sayingthat our civilization is presently undergoing acrucial transformation from a culture basedon writing to a culture based on electronicmedia (see, for example, de Kerckhove 1995)?And, following this path, it could be that anew culture would require a new philosophy,and this time a non-dualizing one.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to allthose who, through discussions, participatedin preparing this paper. These are: Josef Mit-terer, Barbara Kotowa, Andrzej W. Nowak,Bernhard Pörksen, Stefan Weber and PawelZeidler.

Notes

1. As there are no English translations ofMitterer’s books, I used Polish editionsthroughout my text as a basis for transla-tions. I also refer to them, and not to theoriginal, German editions (Mitterer 1992;Mitterer 2001). The good thing about thetechnical part of Mitterer’s books is thatthey are structured into numbered sec-tions, so regardless of the language, mostof the references can be easily traced.

2. In this text I use as synonyms “non-dual-izing way of speaking/thinking,” “non-dualistic philosophy,” and “non-dual-ism,” although there seems to be a smalldifference between “dualistic,” and “dual-izing.” The former describes somethingdone and consisting of two different ele-ments, the latter describes something inthe making. The difference is clear in thePolish language, although it is subtle.However the distinction is not importantin this text, so for better ease I use them assynonyms and most of the time I use theshorter expressions, rather than the longerand more precise ones.

3. Although, as indicated earlier, there are noEnglish translations of Mitterer’s books,for the comfort of the reader, I use Englishtranslations of the titles. I translate

DasJenseits der Philosophie

(Mitterer 1992,1996) as

The

Beyond of Philosophy

, and

DieFlucht aus der Beliebigkeit

(Mitterer 2001,2004) as

The

Escape from Arbitrariness

.Such translations were used by Josef Mit-terer in discussions about his books. By theway, Polish translation of the first bookhas a slightly different title, which roughlytranslated would be:

The Other Side of Phi-losophy.

4. I described NDS as a critical project in myreview of the Polish edition of Beyond phi-losophy (Abriszewski 1999).

5. I would view some of Andrzej P. Kowalski’sworks as investigations concerning the his-torical emergence of dualizing philosophy.In one of his remarkable books, he de-scribed pre-philosophical thinking and theemergence of philosophical thinking (i.e.,dualizing philosophy) in terms of succes-sive cultural layers (see Kowalski 2001).

6. For example, the “Torun group” tried forsome time to deploy what could be called“contents of experience” or “reality” in-

Krzysztof Abriszewski is an assistant professor and a deputy head of the Department of Philosophy of Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He was trained in sociology and philosophy. His research interests include social theory and social philosophy, cultural philosophy and cultural theory, and sociology of knowledge. Recent publication: Poznanie, zbiorowo , polityka. Analiza Teorii Aktora-Sieci Bruno Latoura [Cognition, collective, and politics. Analysis of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory] (2008).

sc

THE AUTHOR

´

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 199

CONCEPTS


side NDS. However, most of our interpre-tations returned to a dualizing way ofspeaking.

7. This argument arose many times whenev-er I presented NDS to philosophical con-ferences and lectures.

8. Further steps require collective work, yetthere is a hope for this with this issue of CF.Besides, there is a number of scholarswhose efforts aim at elaborating NDS: Jo-sef Mitterer is focused on his third book onNDS, Stefan Weber applied NDS to mediastudies (Weber 2005), and the same courseof research is visible in the Wroclaw group(Marek Graszewicz, Dominik Lewinski,Maurycy Graszewicz); in Torun, a col-

league of mine, Ewa Binczyk, worked onNDS in the context of a concept of “refer-ence” and Stanley Fish’s interpretive com-munities. Compared to that, my resultsare much more insignificant, for I appliedNDS to the history of philosophy (to rein-terpret George Berkeley’s immaterialism,and to redefine the problem of skepticism– Abriszewski 2000 and 2007), and also toinvestigate the practice of fabricating thecirculating reference (Abriszewski & Afel-towicz 2007).

9. Epistemological closure of a system meansthat all representations of the outside real-ity are constructed inside the system. Thisdoes not equal saying that a system is not

related in any way to its environment orthat the environment itself is a system’sconstruct (ontological solipsism).

10.Latour never liked the term “network” toomuch. He preferred to speak of associa-tions. He explains it in On Recalling ANT(Latour 1999b).

11.On Mitterer’s and Latour’s antiessential-ism see Binczyk (2005a, 2005b).

12.Such opposition has been used for sometime in power studies, see Abriszewski(2001), Foucault (1995), pp. 74–92, andStaniszkis (2004).

13.Irreductions is the second part of Latour(1988), pp. 153–238, but it is often re-ferred to as a separate work.

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Received: 29 Mach 2008Accepted: 24 June 2008


Looking for Consistency in Avoiding Dualisms

First, a brief introduction

The article presented below tries to answervery simple questions: How far can philoso-phy travel while avoiding dualism? In whichdirection should the itinerary be built forsuch a risky journey? During this narration,before the rejection of dualism can be morecarefully explored, a short rethinking ofessentialist inclinations, strongly present inWestern thought, will prove to be indispens-able.

First, as a point of departure, the text pre-sented here sketches Josef Mitterer’s consis-tent criticism of dualism and his daringrejection of it. As the Austrian philosopherclaims, the dualizing techniques of speakingfabricate and assume the existence of a veryimportant figure – referred to as

the otherside of the discourse.

It can take many inter-esting, sometimes even surprising, forms:objective reality, negative causal pressures, avague resistance, or some empirical contentto be organized within the conceptualframework. The text portrays selected fea-tures of this decisive instance and also con-siders an alternative, non-dualizing mode of

speaking, created by Mitterer and depictedin his books.

In the second and the third and the fourthparts, the text presents the incarnations of

theother side of the discourse

that appear in threeperspectives: 1) Richard Rorty’s neopragma-tism; 2) the strong program of the sociologyof knowledge and 3) radical constructivism.The text does not create complete pictures ofthe conceptions used in it. The analysis willonly examine selected possible philosophicalconsequences of the concessions to dualismthat are visible in the standpoints mentionedabove. Finally, the last fragment of the textdepicts Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory(ANT) – which is rooted in the tradition ofthe social studies of science and technology.ANT can be interpreted as one of the mostinteresting extensions of Mitterer’s postu-lates. The text claims that the reason for this isa fact, that actor-network theory is a very con-sistent antiessentialist research program forstudying the dynamic of change (and this is aconceptual, social and ontological change

atthe same time

).

The other side of the discourse

,and thereby causal pressures are redefinedhere as relational effects of certain efforts, astransitory results of the processes of stabiliza-

tion. Through the use of Latour’s constructiv-ism, the argument will depict Mitterer’s non-dualism as an inspiration for creating fruitfulempirical (non-speculative) research pro-grams. Such programs could prove to be use-ful, especially for diagnosing the contempo-rary and rapid transformations of the globalreality.

Mitterer’s meta-philosophical comments – laconic, but relevant

The crucial notion of this text –

the other sideof the discourse

– derives from a fascinatingand elegant book written by Josef Mitterer,entitled in the original German

Das Jenseitsder Philosophie

(Mitterer 1996). The bookportrays the contingent status of our deepestphilosophical assumptions. At the beginningof the text, we read that Western philosophyand also Western common thinking originatefrom the basic assumptions of dualism. Theso-called

dualizing mode of speaking

, under-stood simply as a set of practical rules of con-versation and argumentative techniques insituations of conflict, assumes and creates theontological difference between the object andits description, between the world and lan-guage. The philosophical problems of theexternal world, truth, objectivity, identity andreference (as the problem of a mysterious gapbetween language and reality) arise as simpleside-effects created by the dualizing practicesof communication. They come into beingwhen we futilely try to clarify relationsbetween two poles of the assumed dichotomy:

this side

and the mysterious

other side of thediscourse

. Unlike many deep, hidden and fragile

philosophical objects of inquiry, the dualizingmode of speaking (as well as its drawbacks)

Ewa Binczyk

A


R Purpose – The text searches for possible uses of a daring postulate to reject dualism, formulated by Josef Mitterer. Furthermore, it explores the inconsistencies of dualism and its remnants in three projects: Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism, the strong program of the sociology of knowledge, and radical constructivism. The final aim of the argument is to demonstrate that a very interesting incorporation of Mitterer’s postulates is possible, and that it must take the form of a consistent antiessentialism. At this point the article presents Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory. R Findings – The article underlines the specific role of the so-called other side of the discourse – which, according to Mitterer is fabricated by the dualizing mode of speaking. Such an instance is a priori essentialized and it plays a crucial role as a tool for settling arguments. The text traces the role of this instance in the concepts mentioned above. R Benefits – Through the use of Latour’s constructivism, the text indicates that there exists a fruitful empirical (non-speculative) research program, which was projected in accordance with Mitterer’s postulates. R Key words – criticism of dualism, antiessentialism, neopragmatism, strong program of the sociology of knowledge, radical constructivism, actor-network theory.

philosophical


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can be empirically noted and described byhistory, anthropology, philosophy of lan-guage, theory of speech acts, or even mun-dane sociology of communication. I believethis to be an important methodologicalresearch advantage of Mitterer’s reconstruc-tion. As a result, this kind of view can beinspiring in many domains.

As the Austrian philosopher suggests, inthe process of socialization individuals inter-nalize rules and norms of dualism as obviousand overwhelming. They are forced to con-struct descriptions according to these rulesand norms and, often being corrected by oth-ers, they enter into discourses utilizing dualiz-ing modes of expression. Additionally, thedualizing mode of speaking has a history. Wecan probably reconstruct the social/concep-tual transformations in which dualizing tech-niques emerged, stabilized, were institutional-ized, and became more and more obvious,rooted, and unproblematic. Inspired by Mit-terer’s remarks, I have attempted in my bookto develop an anthropological model of thearchaic, pre-referential use of language and itsgradual disappearance (Binczyk 2007).

In a very simple way, as described by theAustrian philosopher, the dualizing mode ofspeaking creates

the other side of the discourse

.This other side plays the important role of theindependent instance that can settle anydebate or argument in philosophy, but also inpolitics or ethics.


is obviously not a part of the discourse itself,but exists as an object of reference that is per-petually pinpointed, determined, character-ized, specified, and articulated. As a result, itcan possess many different faces, such as theonly God in a monotheistic religion, theobjective reality in scientific argumentations,or the essence or nature of things within everytype of essentialism. Frequently, this extraor-dinary instance is given

a priori

. It is

essential-ized

and, in effect, cannot be subjected to anydiscussion or transformation. It becomesimmune to any criticism.

Allow me to make a short digression here.I will use the term “essentialism” as referring toa standpoint that assumes the existence andthe cognizability of the essences of objects.Essences are ahistorical and invariable. Theydetermine the identity of objects. It is possibleto express them in definitions. For example,things possess their essences objectively, inde-pendently of the way in which human beings

relate to them.

When we reject the assump-tions of essentialism, we obtain an antiessen-tialist or relational perspective. Instead of ask-ing essentialist questions, we describeconditions, functions and historical processes,in which results gradually emerge and will beseen later as objective, stable, independent,and essential. Essences become historical,transitory results of the processes of stabiliza-tion. Of course, from a traditional point ofview, they are no longer essences. In this newframework, the difference between ontologi-cal and epistemological questions is under-mined. There is no point in assuming theexistence of objects that have not yet been rec-ognized, placed in networks, or described.Ontological postulates and conjectures playtheir role as artifacts of epistemic practices.

The specific instance of

the other side of thediscourse

within the dualizing mode of speak-ing is strongly believed to be independent andsomehow responsible for the adequacy ofdescription. Moreover, it appears, along withthe monistic presupposition, that there is onlyone adequate response to every question. Butof course, being mute, this decisive instanceneeds professional spokespersons that canspeak in the name of it. When

the other side

becomes the only God, we hear theologianspromulgate; when it becomes objectivenature, we see and hear scientific experts whospeak in the name of facts. It would be aninteresting and fertile study to trace histori-cally how certain groups or individualsbecome authorized to speak or “take the floor”as professional representatives of

the other side

.In this context, the nature of representation inan epistemological and in a political sense canbe seen from a new perspective. This kind ofproject in respect to the origin of both the sci-entific and social representation was realizedby Shapin and Schaffer (1985) and com-mented on by Latour (1993).

What is sometimes surprising is that

theother side of the discourse

can function as a kindof camouflage, especially in radical or con-structivist conceptions, which I will discussmore carefully below. Constructivist stand-points often assume that a context aroundevery cognitive system must be ordered insome way, if we are to admit that cognition ispossible.


takeshere a form of clearly negative resistance, givenpreviously every interpretation, underdeter-mined, elusive and difficult to describe. It

plays no decisive epistemic role, but still it isassumed to be necessary.

According to Mitterer, the rejection ofdualism is possible in the form of the so-called

non-dualizing

mode of speaking.

On one hand,the status of this alternative is simply didacticand auxiliary – it helps to reconstruct themechanisms of the dualizing argumentativetechniques, but also to localize its drawbacksand blockades. On the other hand, the

non-dualizing

mode of speaking

has an importantpractical or even political role to play. It mightbe useful to overcome essentialist blockades ofcommunication. We can also read about it inMitterer’s second book,

Die Flucht aus derBeliebigkeit

(Mitterer 2001), and I have com-mented on it in my own writings (Binczyk2005).

Within this alternative proposition, thevery dichotomy between description and theobject of description becomes problematic.The object of description is redefined as a“description so far,” that has already beenmade. To continue the process of describing isto propose a “description from now on.” Thereis no categorical ontological differencebetween them. In the traditional, dualizingmode of speaking, objects of description areunchangeable and unquestionable. They arelocalized metaphorically “outside” the dis-course. However, as Mitterer accurately pointsout, it is impossible to indicate or to pinpoint(beyond any form of describing) an objectitself, or its properties, or essence, or identity.If we agree upon the possibility that humanknowledge is fallible, changeable, and not ulti-mate, then those essentialized objects becometransformed into specific artifacts.

Let me explain at this moment that theidentity ascribed to the object of description isnot stable when we try to avoid dualism – itcannot be essentialized. Every new descriptionthat is articulated changes the object, whichbecomes the final result of the process ofdescribing. The purported reality is inter-preted here as the “achieved positions of a dis-course.”

Let me make one last comment on Mit-terer’s position. The non-dualizing matrixsketched above has interesting practical conse-quences. A conflict does not apply here to theobject, but rather it proceeds between two (ormore) alternative descriptions. To solve such aconflict, we need to reformulate the discoursewhile proposing new “descriptions from now

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on.” Beyond dualism, communication willstep forwards for future consensus, ratherthan backwards to appeal to

the other side of thediscourse

, only to prove that one side of a con-flict is ultimately right. As we can observe, afterthe rejection of essentialist blockades, it is pos-sible to conduct human negotiations freely inmany directions. Such a gesture would allowsocieties to avoid deadlocks and idle debates.The discussion would prove to be open, con-tinuous, and politically productive. Oppo-nents would be free to describe together, tochange their knowledge together, possiblysearching for a better starting point for nego-tiation, or better basic descriptions to createfurther narrations.

Once again on Rorty’s clever dodges

In Richard Rorty’s neopragmatic conception,human knowledge, language and also scienceare conceived in a deeply antiessentialist way.Knowledge, for this philosopher, is a result ofsocial practices aimed at the formulation andthe justification of beliefs. Simultaneously, thecriteria for the best description and the bestjustification are always historically contingentand socially shaped. Rorty’s naturalistic Dar-winism encourages us to interpret beliefs orvocabularies as tools that should be assessed interms of the particular purposes they mayserve. This author abandons the philosophicaltradition that interprets language (and knowl-edge) as a mirror that represents reality.Within this tradition, such categories as corre-spondence, representation, truth, or realismwere frequently used. Rorty proposes insteadto view sentences as mere instruments thatgovern our practical actions, and that coordi-nate human behavior in an everlasting effortto cope with reality.

Of course, according to the Americanthinker, no description is absolute, final, orprivileged. By the use of words we have nodeeper access to the intrinsic nature of objects,other than by the simple manipulation ofthem. As a result, any philosophy should beprojected only in a nominalist way – as pro-posing contingent descriptions legitimatedethically or politically.

Consequently, and in accordance with hisantirepresentational perspective, Rorty alsoredefines empirical science as a set of practices

invented to predict and control certain aspectsof the environment. The practical success ofscience is not a sufficient reason to claim thatthis activity should be epistemologically priv-ileged. Science serves transitory purposes andsolves transitory problems. The presumptionthat it represents adequately the nature of real-ity, that it gives us the ultimate and objectivetruth is not sufficiently justified. It is rather awish or intuition.

Nevertheless, Rorty’s spectacular anties-sentialism seems to be inconsistent. First of all,in its point of departure, it is mainly epistemo-logical, not ontological. According to this phi-losopher, only our statements about objects,not objects themselves, are relational andnominalist. Rorty’s specific inconsistencybecomes visible when we analyze closer therole of the notion of causality within his posi-tion. For this philosopher, people and theirenvironment are related causally. According toRorty, our beliefs are justified holistically onlyby other beliefs, but they are caused by theobjects in reality (cf. Brandom 2000, p. XV).This means that the environment can causallydetermine the success or failure of our actions.But causal relations cannot be representedunambiguously and ultimately by humanknowledge that is fallible. Causality can bedescribed in different ways, at different times,and for different purposes. By itself naturedoes not distinguish the classifying schemethat is correct. Due to the problem referred asthe “underdetermination of the empiricaldata,” it is impossible to discriminate preciselywhat was derived from human conceptualschemas and what was derived from natureitself. Rorty writes:

“We shall reject the idea that Nature hassettled on a single input–output functionthat, incarnated in each member of ourspecies, enables us to represent our envi-ronment accurately. For that idea requiresthat Nature herself has divided up thecausal swirls surrounding these organismsinto discrete inputs, and has adopted a par-ticular input–output function as distinc-tively Hers” (Rorty 1995, p. 299).In spite of quite a radical decision, inspired

by Donald Davidson’s articles, to reject thedualism between a conceptual schema andempirical content, Rorty still claims someform of rudimentary dualism. He tacitlyadmits that there is an important differencebetween elusive causal relations and descrip-

tions of causality, formulated by humankind.That is the difference between the ontologicaland epistemological domains. Descriptions ofcausality are entirely institutionalized throughthe human practices of categorizing, describ-ing, articulating, and interpreting, but not thecausality itself. In this connection, causal pres-sures remain epistemically elusive, but theyare pressures nonetheless.

Obviously, causality plays the role of theindependent

other side of the discourse

inRorty’s philosophy. Mitterer briefly describesthis inclination in Rorty’s thought in his sec-ond book, in point 13 (Mitterer 2001). Refer-ring to the category of causality, Rorty assuresus that his vision is not a kind of antirealism.But even if such an instance as causality makesno discernable difference to human descrip-tions or conventionally shaped beliefs, it stillplays its role of some very important ontolog-ical assumptions that constitute dualism.

Tiny weakness of the strong program of the sociology of knowledge

The famous “strong program of the sociologyof knowledge” was formulated and supportedmainly by two representatives of the Edin-burgh School: Barry Barnes and David Bloor.They proposed four methodological princi-ples for numerous case studies and largerresearch projects carried out in the interdisci-plinary field that connected the sociology ofknowledge with the history of science and thesocial studies of science and technology. Theseprojects were created to study

simultaneously

the context and the content of knowledge.They were principles of: 1. causality, 2. impar-tiality, 3. symmetry and 4. reflexivity. Theyadvocated the following: 1. Sociology of knowledge should examine

the various conditions and causes ofknowledge, and those causes can have mul-tiple forms, not only natural, but also cul-tural;

2. While studying both successful and unsuc-cessful theories, beliefs and theses, sociol-ogy of knowledge should stay impartial;

3. Sociologists of knowledge should use sym-metrically and consistently the same typesof explanation for any kind of belief – hav-ing true or false status, known as justified


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philosophical


or unjustified; their causes of credibilityshould be interpreted as of the same type;

4. The methodological program presented bythe Edinburgh School must be applicableto the sociology of knowledge itself.The Edinburgh School epistemological

solutions, especially the crucial implicationsof the principle of symmetry were widely dis-cussed as relativistic. Incidentally, the sameaccusation was formulated about Rorty’sstandpoint. While writing about knowledge,British sociologists, similarly to the Americanneopragmatist, prefer a metaphor of adapta-tion to that of representation. The reason isthat we can easily admit that there is more thanone possible way to adapt successfully to theenvironment. The same cannot be easilyagreed upon regarding the representation.The model of cognition included in the strongprogram contains the following elements: 1. Reality – understood as a causal factor –

which is unfortunately impossible to ver-balize in an unambiguous way. It isdepicted as a large, complicated sequenceof information that needs to be categorizedby humans.

2. Different, irremovable determinants ofcognition: biological, psychological, lin-guistic, contextual, and social. All of thosedeterminants make knowledge possible. Ifwe want to build a complete, scientificmodel of cognition, we should not excludethem as irrelevant or dangerous contami-nants.

3. Knowledge as a final result: verbalizedbeliefs that are conventional, linguistic,institutionalized, and holistically underde-termined by the reality and also by the pre-vious beliefs and theoretical assumptions. In the context of this paper, the most inter-

esting issue is the specific role of the reality ornature in the Edinburgh model. On one hand,as the authors admit, their position can becalled “materialistic” (Barnes, Bloor & Henry1996, p. 200), so the role of the environment iscertainly taken into consideration within thisperspective. Any classification, or recognitionof similarities or differences proceeds on thebasis of a complex infinite supply of informa-tion generated by nature.

But, on the other hand, knowledge isdefined here as a collective system of beliefs.Bloor and Barnes indicate that the

a priori

,theoretical component of empirical knowl-edge originates directly from the conventions

of a society. Cognitive determinants of allkinds mentioned above co-determine the con-tent of knowledge at all possible levels. Theyintervene in every phase of the cognitive pro-cesses. From this perspective, and in spite ofthe fact that there exists some kind of resis-tance, it is not possible to isolate its influence,neither while analyzing the content of ourdescriptions, nor while studying the very pro-cess of cognition.

The participation of the determining fac-tors mentioned above does not mean thathuman knowledge is arbitrary. We cannotremove biological, conceptual, or metaphori-cal instruments and mechanisms to cognizemore adequately. On the contrary, they makeknowledge possible, and due to them, allhuman cognition is located both in the con-text of reality and in the context of social prac-tice. As a result, knowledge turns out to bepractically successful and can always beassessed according to the norms and criteriapresent in every community. They assume theexistence of the criteria of rationality, but thestatus of those criteria is not believed to be uni-versal or ahistorical.

In the Edinburgh School texts we can findinteresting descriptions of the history andprocesses of stabilization of such elements ascategories, assumptions, criteria, ways of rea-soning, schemas of classification, and more.Researchers associated with this area depictprocesses in which some theories or assump-tions have gradually been objectified.

According to Barnes and Bloor, humanreasoning is conventionally and sociallyrooted due to the role of many presupposi-tions given

a priori

due to the previous expec-tations and routine patterns of interpretation– all the hidden impacts that influence what isimportant and that guide human attention.They are visible even in perceptual and induc-tive habits of individuals. British sociologistsdistinguish in this respect between individual,biologically determined, inductive suscepti-bilities and inductive reasoning, which is cul-turally articulated and shaped. In thismoment they introduce the same rudimen-tary dualistic opposition that was used byRorty: between the ontological and epistemo-logical domains. On one side, which is distantand elusive, they localize inductive suscepti-bilities; on the other side, they place descript-able inductive reasoning that is situated insidea human discourse.

One more issue: Radical constructivism and


Radical constructivism is the third stand-point analyzed in the text that remains visiblyagnostic towards traditional epistemologicalquestions. I will briefly illustrate this featureusing as examples the conceptions of Ernstvon Glasersfeld and Niklas Luhmann. Bothauthors stay epistemologically skepticaltowards


. Never-theless this special instance plays a certainrole in their formulations of constructivism,which needs to be shortly discussed in thispaper.

Instead of analyzing

knowledge

that is astable result, radical constructivists ask aboutthe dynamic processes of

knowing

, emergingfrom the multiple interactions of the organ-ism (or system) with the environment. Radi-cal constructivism is projected as a matrix forstudying mechanisms of cognition that leadto adequate behavior or fitting. The mainfunction of cognition in this context is notrepresentation, but viability.

During the history of its interactions withthe environment, an organism organizes itsexperiential world and at the same time itorganizes itself. An observer arises graduallyfrom the processes of relating and differenti-ating. In other words, the observer cannot beseparated from the processes of observing.Networks constituting organisms are modu-lated and transformed by environmentallyinduced perturbations.

Radical constructivists underline that anyknowledge is possible only by the previousintroduction of distinctions. But all distinc-tions are internal operations of a cognitivesystem. Differences, regularities, identitiesand similarities are produced internally. AsLuhmann reminds us: only closed systemscan know; cognizing organisms are informa-tionally closed.

As a result, radical constructivism com-prehends reality not as an objective,unchanging, independent structure, butrather as a result of a subject’s active produc-tion of distinctions. Even the notion of cau-sality is reinterpreted in this framework as theconceptual invention or habit of the observer,which serves to organize experience.

Theother side of the discourse

takes a specific form

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in this context – it becomes a result of cogni-tion, an internal construction, intertwinedwith the system’s cognitive activity. Withinthis solution

the other side

is not essentialized.Yet we have to admit that radical construc-

tivism maintains

the other side

as a specificsource of negative constraints. It becomes vis-ible when we take into consideration the evo-lutionary-rooted notions of viability and theenvironment. An organism is motivated toact (also cognitively) in an adequate way dueto the perturbations and constraints of theenvironment. The environment plays a deci-sive role, it gives some kind of negativeinstructions – it merely eliminates organismsif they are not viable. Luhmann writes explic-itly about some non-arbitrariness of knowl-edge, which is understood as the evolution-arily-controlled selectivity of the process of asystem’s transformation (Luhmann 1990, p.77).

At the same time,

the other side of the dis-course

as a sphere of negative constraints staysepistemically elusive: it cannot be responsiblefor the adequacy of description. As Glasers-feld writes: “The nature of constraints is inac-cessible to the constructing subject becausethere is no way of telling whether a failure isdue to a flaw in the constructive operating orto an obstacle in the ontological world” (Gla-sersfeld 1992, p. 7). In fact the “obstacles”cannot be ultimately localized or demon-strated. The negative instance of externalreality cannot be represented: “There is anexternal world, which results from the factthat cognition, as a self-operated operation,can be carried out at all, but we have no directcontact with it” (Luhmann 1990, p. 64).

In the framework of radical constructiv-ism, human knowledge cannot claim unique-ness: no matter how viable the cognitive solu-tion might seem, it can never be regarded asthe only possible one. This reformulation sig-nificantly resembles Rorty’s view. The envi-ronment is so rich that it is possible to con-struct a lot of epistemic alternatives. The onlylimitations are previous constructionsbecause new conceptual structures should becompatible with those already existing. Alex-ander Riegler comments on this topic: expe-riences of a subject are connected to eachother, they form a network of hierarchicalinterdependencies (Riegler 2001, p. 7). Weread: “Once a certain path is taken relatingexperiences to each other in a particular man-

ner, the mind uses previous constructions asbuilding-blocks for further constructions”(Riegler 2001, p. 8).

It seems that Mitterer’s project can beinterpreted by radical constructivists asrightly formulated. It explicitly localizes adualistic basic distinction between descrip-tion and the object of description. Yet distinc-tions are unavoidable during the processes ofknowing: “The impossibility of distinguish-ing the distinction that one distinguishes withis an unavoidable precondition of cognition”(Luhmann 1990, p. 73).

Let me make one last comment. Unfortu-nately, such standpoints as radical construc-tivism analyze cognition mainly in the indi-vidual context. (By the way, the same can bestated about enactivism, which conceptual-izes cognition as effective action.) Yet humancognitive activity is a collective, multidimen-sional phenomenon. We need to take this intoaccount, especially observing the practicalsuccess of human knowing, incarnated incontemporary science and technology.Human cognition is enriched through collec-tive coordination and language, through theuse of instruments, laboratories, and things.This is why I think that theories such as enac-tivism or radical constructivism can be fruit-fully supplemented by actor-network theory,which will be discussed in the last part of myarticle.

Latour’s amazing reformulation

The specificity of ANT lies in the fact that itwas intentionally projected as a peculiar,agnostic methodology to describe mainly thedynamic processes of change and stabiliza-tion (in every domain). As a result it has deeprelational and antiessentialist connotations.Latour’s research focuses on the emergence oftechnological innovations, scientific discov-eries, controversies and their multidimen-sional dynamic outside laboratories. As aresult, actor-network theory turns out to be agreat instrument for diagnosing the global,uncertain, changeable, contemporary condi-tions of reality and society. ANT is able to playa role of a new social theory, a new epistemo-logical standpoint, or a new kind of programfor studying science. The originality of thisview lies mainly in its clear and expressive

antidualism, which is able to be incorporatedinto empirical case studies.

To explain the features mentioned above,let me follow from the beginning the decisivepolemic between Latour and Bloor over therole of nature in epistemological models(Bloor 1999a, 1999b; Latour 1999). Blooruses an example from the history of science,of a controversy between Pasteur and Koch.According to the British sociologist, they pro-posed two different conventional, theoreticaldescriptions of the same elusive, but resistant,substance in their laboratories. Of course,Bloor introduces a distinction that wasalready mentioned in the text, i.e., a distinc-tion between two domains: the ontological,underdeterminated one and the epistemolog-ical, which is articulated by humans and co-determined by various factors in the processof cognition.

But for Latour no such instance of resis-tance – such as an elusive substance in a labo-ratory that simply “plays a role without mak-ing a difference” – is needed, and especially itshould never be essentialized. If we do notposses any neutral vocabulary that is able tosettle the controversy between Koch and Pas-teur, we cannot admit that those two scien-tists gave us only two alternative descriptionsof something that only

we

are able to describecorrectly. We do not know if it really was thesame “grayish substance.” Instead of answer-ing questions before the study, it is better tofollow the controversy and the very processesof stabilization in both laboratories.

The French thinker in this step does notprivilege ontology over epistemology. Thisauthor resists focusing only on the epistemo-logical domain, leaving ontology to the scien-tific vote. One of the possible reasons for thisis that his standpoint is a meta-redescriptionand includes as its subject of research the areaof contemporary science.

The other side

, which took in the contro-versy mentioned above, a form of a grayishsubstance, does not play a decisive role.Instead, in the framework of actor-networktheory, each element of the two hybrid net-works built in the laboratories of Koch andPasteur is able to play an important settlingrole and make the difference. Causal pres-sures are present in this model, but they areredefined as dispersed over networks. Theindependency and objectivity of any factor is,for Latour, always a result of the previous sta-


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bilization of associations. The resistance canbe also redefined as the cost of disassemblingthe network. Pasteur, for example, creates anetwork where we have not only a grayishsubstance in his laboratory, but also otherimportant political, institutional, cognitive,and material elements. By a successfullyintroducing a microbe and a vaccine to ourworld, Pasteur, in fact, transformed thewhole of French society, its institutions,human habits and knowledge, materials,farms, hygienists’ practice, and many otherfactors.

To understand this position, crucialnotions of

network, actor

and

actant

shouldbe characterized briefly. First of all, let meclarify that networks are not ontologicallyspecified, but heterogeneous (the same canbe said about actors). Networks are: “simul-taneously real, like nature, narrated, like dis-course, and collective, like society” (Latour1993, p. 6). A very good example of such ahybrid network is the ozone hole, which is“too social and too narrated to be truly natu-ral […], too full of chemical reactions to bereduced to power and interest; […] too realand too social to boil down to meaningeffects” (Latour 1993, p. 6). Actor or actant isdefined as a transitory stabilization of a partof a given network. Latour often prefers thenotion of an actant, to avoid the anthropo-logical connotations of the first category. Ofcourse, we can articulate or localize theessences of actants, but only as some contin-gent effects of the historical processes of sta-bilization. Moreover, for each case, complexnetworks can be traced and studied, but theyare not essentialized either.

The massive production of new associa-tions is being performed by humankind allthe time. We domesticate the environmentthrough the work of fabrication and articula-tion. People simultaneously try to exert prac-tical control and to understand some rela-tions or phenomena. This is why they buildand maintain associations between them-selves, things, and narrations. Those effortsare continuously stabilized, materialized inartifacts, institutions, objectified norms, rep-licable solutions and technological systemsthat are more and more predictable.

Many philosophers and sociologists havebeen simply focused in their research only onone sphere – a sphere of stable results, such asready-made, objective natural facts, socialrelations, ideological trends, innovations, orpolitical functions. But all of those objectsmust historically and gradually arise as recog-nizable and real. As it turns out, there existsan extremely interesting area to explore, con-taining processes in which the shapes of ourworld constantly emerge. And, as Latourunderlines, only an agnostic methodologywill prove to be effective enough to depicttheir mechanisms impartially.

As actor-network theory indicates, in thecontext of a scientific or technological prac-tice, we encounter the resistance of things thatare called, in this perspective, not only “act-ants,” but also “non-humans” or “quasi-objects.” “Things” are always understood inaccordance with modernist, ontological,dualistic assumptions. They are presented aspassive, independent, ontologically given andstable. Non-humans are interpreted byLatour in a completely different way – as his-torical, hybrid, being able to act, taking differ-ent possible forms: of natural/factual objects,discursive, controversial phenomena, or thehypostases of social relations.

As we can see, even the very issue of theagency of matter is problematized in actor-network theory (Latour 1999, p. 125). In eachcase, we can search for the resistance of a non-human with whom scientists negotiate in thelaboratory to check its competencies foraction. But we should prepare ourselves forthe possibility that, during a closer study, anyf/actor may disperse into a network of rela-tions. All objects are seen here as complexrelations, locally stable and institutionalizedas independent. As a French sociologistwrites, during experimental laboratory work,actants achieve new competences and theytransform themselves into new beings. Forexample, during Pasteur’s practice, microor-ganisms become visible, autonomic, real, butPasteur, who articulated them, also gainednew competencies. His position was trans-formed as well. The ontological status of agiven actant (be it a new scientific object, suchas an epidemic, a dangerous virus, a discov-

ery, a new problem of inquiry such as the eco-logical crisis, or a technological, legal, institu-tional innovation) can be assessed only whenthe process of fabrication is finished and con-troversies are closed.

At this point the text will stop. Followingthe actor-network theory, we tried to explorehow far it is possible to travel while avoidingdualism. The text attempted to demonstratehow to build a perspective in which

the otherside of the discourse

is radically redefined tothe point where it seems to be almost elimi-nated. An important condition of such anundertaking was to stay consistent in anties-sentialism. Beyond the presuppositions ofessentialism

, the other side of the discourse

wasredefined as a transitory result of stabiliza-tion.

Ewa Binczyk obtained a PhD in philosophy at the Nicolas Copernicus University. She is the author of two books entitled Sociology of Knowledge in the Bible, published in 2003, and A Picture that Captivates Us. Contemporary Views of Language in the Face of Essentialism and the Problem of Reference, published in 2007. In 2005 she received a Scholarship for Young Researchers from the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP). From 2006 to 2007 she participated in the Fulbright Scholarship Program as an exchange professor in the United States.

THE AUTHOR

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 207

CONCEPTS

philosophical


References

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Bloor, D. (1999a) Anti-Latour. Studies in His-tory and Philosophy of Science 30 (1): 81–112.

Bloor, D. (1999b) Reply to Bruno Latour.Studies in History and Philosophy of Sci-ence 30 (1): 131–136.

Binczyk, E. (2005) Josefa Mitterera ucieczkaod esencjalizmu. Er(r)go 10: 187–194.

Binczyk, E. (2007) Obraz, który nas zniewala.Wspólczesne ujecia jezyka wobec esenc-jalizmu i problemu referencji. Universitas:Krakow.

Brandom, R. B. (ed.) (2000) Rorty and hiscritics. Blackwell Publishers: Malden MA.

Glasersfeld, E. von (1992) Das Ende einergrossen Illusion. In: Fischer, H. R., Retzer,

A. & Schweitzer, J. (eds.) Das Ende dergroßen Entwürfe. Suhrkamp: Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 85–98. Englishtranslation “The end of a grand illusion”retrieved from http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/EvG/ on 1 October 2005.Page numbers refer to downloaded docu-ment.

Latour, B. (1993) We have never been mod-ern. Harvester Wheatsheaf: New York.

Latour, B. (1999) For David Bloor… andbeyond: A reply to David Bloor’s “Anti-Latour.” Studies in History and Philoso-phy of Science 30 (1): 113–129.

Latour, B. (2004) Politics of nature. How tobring the sciences into democracy. Har-vard University Press: Cambridge MA.

Luhmann, N. (1990) The cognitive programof constructivism and a reality thatremains unknown. In: Krohn, W. & Küp-pers, G. & Novotny H. (eds.) Selforganiza-

tion. Portrait of a scientific revolution.Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 64–85.

Mitterer, J. (1992) Das Jenseits der Philoso-phie. Edition Passagen: Vienna.


Riegler, A. (2001) Towards a radical construc-tivist understanding of science. Founda-tions of Science 6: 1–30.

Rorty, R. (1995) Is truth a goal of enquiry?Davidson vs. Wright. The PhilosophicalQuarterly 45 (180): 281–300.

Shapin, S. & Schaffer, S. (1985) Leviathan andthe air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and theexperimental life. Princeton UniversityPress: Princeton NJ.



The Non-dualizing Way of Speaking and the Female Subjectivity Problem

I see feminist philosophy as the activity aimed atarticulating the questions of individual gendered

identity with issues related to political subjectivity,the production of knowledge, diversity,

alternative representations of subjectivity andepistemological legitimation.

(Braidotti 2003, p. 198)

1. Through Mitterer’s theoretical landscape: Introductory remarks

There is a certain tone of fear in the philosoph-ical claims in which philosophers realize thatthere exist many different theories concerningthe same problem. There is also a certain toneof apprehension when it is shown that in factalmost anything can be said about a givenmatter. As Josef Mitterer points out, a lack oflimits (

Beliebigkeit

) is seen as the biggestenemy of philosophy and it is quite often usedas a rhetorical weapon against conceptionsone disagrees with (Mitterer 2004, point 5).

Philosophy is supposed to be about truth, andit is supposed to be equipped with tools thatcan help us find it. Hardly anyone mentionsthat philosophical methods haven’t been cho-sen merely with a view to achieving this aim,but rather are the result of the local context,that is the result of our intellectual develop-ment, emotional growth, university we havegraduated from, professors we have beeninfluenced by, questions we have been askedduring our PhD examinations, etc. Mittererinsistently and rightly reminds us that we arethe philosophers of a certain time in historyand of a certain culture, socialized in specificways of thinking that too often are treated aseternal and unchangeable. It has been alsoemphasized by many feminist thinkers thatour knowledge is situated and that all our the-ories are standpoint theories (Haraway 1988;Harding 1991, pp. 11, 119). I owe a lot to thesethinkers. Additionally my philosophical debtsshould be paid mainly to Mitterer’s idea of anon-dualizing way of thinking and BrunoLatour’s understanding of emancipation,which I will try to elaborate in what follows.

Mitterer openly speaks about his aim ofdoing philosophy. He underlines that he isinterested in analyzing non-problematizedestablishments that are made, so to speak,before rational discourse and that are the mainsource of eternal philosophical problems. Hewants to unmask the argumentative figuresthat make the dualistic way of arguing possibleand hence to weaken its power and influence(Mitterer 2004, §13). Of course, Mitterer’sown considerations are not free of premisesthat are not discussed in his argumentationprocess: there are some where we can quiteeasily read another meaning between the lines.According to one of them, diversity is betterthan unity; according to another, dualisticphilosophy results in debates that end withstalemate situations, which seems to be cogni-tively fruitless. Dualism is not cognitively cre-ative. Many philosophical theories, such as thetheories of truth, aim at equalizing, surveyingand putting all positions on the same level. Itis something we would like to avoid in theoriesthat are supposed to be creative in construct-ing more or less effective solutions to specificproblems. We want to develop ideas and pro-pose theories while being maximally aware ofthe assumptions that we are taking forgranted. These two specific features – the the-oretical awareness of the presence of the cul-tural foundations of our theories and the ideaof tracing their implicit assumptions – arewhat makes Mitterer’s philosophy so attractiveto me. What is more, and what is of interest tome here, this methodology seems to work forfeminist theories dealing with the subjectivityproblem, such as, for example, Judith Butler’sperformative conception of the subject andRosi Braidotti’s nomadic conception of sub-jectivity. They are attempts in which one triesto avoid understanding subjectivity as a given,essential,

sui generis

entity that can bedescribed once and for all. The impossibilityof formulating a traditional theory of the sub-ject, where the subject is treated as an entity

Aleksandra Derra

A


R Problem – The underlying assumption of all feminist theories is that in order to achieve our emancipatory goals we have to resolve the so-called female subjectivity problem first. That is, we have to answer the question of what is (is not) the nature/essence/main feature of being a woman. The debate about where and how we should look for that essence seems to be endless and it still continues in contemporary feminist theories. This stalemate blocks the initial political and social power of the whole feminist movement. It also seems to contradict the idea that philosophy can serve practical purposes, which was a driving force behind feminist theories as such. R Solution – While analyzing contemporary fem-inist theories we can discover that they are dualistic with respect to the cognitive situation. Using tools taken from Josef Mitterer’s philosophy and the idea of emancipation developed by Bruno Latour, I want to consider the idea of avoiding stalemate situations in discussions on female subjectivity. I claim that this strategy can be more effective in achieving certain practical goals that are important from a feminist point of view. R Benefits – We are able to show that the aim of our theoretical activity is not to agree about what a woman is and what kind of woman we are going to emancipate, but rather to define which problems should be solved in order to improve the situation of women. We just have to learn how to formulate the description from now on of initial matters of concern that is acceptable to all those involved in a given dispute. R Key words – (anti)-essentialism, identity, feminism.



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having a certain foundation, comes from adetailed analysis of the validity of such philo-sophical categories as subject, identity, origin,nation, mother tongue, etc. (Braidotti 1994,introduction; Butler & Salih 2003, p. 9). Thesubject was always confronted with the objectin the history of philosophy, and as such it hasalways been described as a thing (entity,essence, idea), as something that is founded insome stable, non-negotiable, cognitively arbi-trated ground (in nature, or society or/andculture and so on). In all such views, dualistdistinctions have played the most importantrole (real [the world]/discursive [language],stable [nature]/fallible [culture], rational[male]/emotional [female]). I read Butler andBraidotti as thinkers who want to show thatone can do philosophy of the subject withoutthe entire theoretical machinery of distinc-tions at which Mitterer points while describ-ing dualism. According to them, one can thinkabout subjectivity as a process, which is not athing, which is not stable and constant andimmune to all cultural surroundings. In thatsense, certain anti-essentialist feminist theo-ries can be interpreted as concrete illustrationsof Mitterer’s general idea of a non-dualizingway of thinking.

Like dualists in philosophy, thinkers in tra-ditional feminism do not admire the lack oflimits in formulating theories because theirbasic aims are political (Beauvoir 1989, Millett1970). They prefer to see feminism as a con-crete, stable and non-negotiable call for equalrights for female and male members of a soci-ety. In this view, it is not a theoretical project(in other words, it is not so much about truth,though we may sometimes see it in this way),but rather a political movement that has a the-oretical background (hence it is very muchabout freedom). It began as a utopian socialmovement fueled by the idea of achievingintellectual and existential liberation for allwomen. It can be understood generally as aproject to reintroduce female subjectivity inevery area of human identity, for we have toknow who all these women are that we aregoing to liberate. There are plenty of theoriesdealing with the female subjectivity problem,but in a sense they are monolithic about theiraim, while being quite pluralistic and sophis-ticated about the methods and ways ofdescribing the female subject. To trivialize,one can say that what is common to every fem-inist theory trying to solve the problem of

female subjectivity is their aiming at emanci-pation. The crucial thing is, however, how oneunderstands what emancipation means. It isalso important because it entails how the rela-tionship between theory and practice will betreated, in what sense and how the theoreticalresults will be useful in solving certain practi-cal problems (e.g., how a given theory of jus-tice will help with improving the situation ofthe payment gap between men and women).In order to show how Mitterer’s idea of a non-dualizing way of thinking can be helpful inavoiding stalemate situations in the philo-sophical discussion on female subjectivity,and in order to show how it can help in gettingrid of theory/practice dichotomy, I will intro-duce Latour’s understanding of the category ofemancipation.

According to Latour, we should under-stand emancipation not as a synonym of

free-ing from bonds

, but as a synonym of

being well-attached

(Latour 2005, p. 218). To put itbriefly, we can say that we are more free to actwhen we are more deeply connected to all pos-sible chains of relations, associations and con-nections of whatever sort. More free in thesense that we are situated in a way that makesmore of our actions possible and more of themeffective. For Latour the history of our civiliza-tion can be written with the use of the meta-phor of moving toward a higher level ofattachments, which makes us able to act inwider areas. If we want to be more free, wehave to interfere more (as in the case of savingthe environment in its natural form: if we wantto save more, we have to make more interven-tions in the ecological systems). This view ofemancipation is political since the politicaland the epistemological are seen as tightlyconnected here. According to Latour, if wewant to know how politics functions, we haveto look at knowledge acquisition. Such a senseof emancipation also helps us to understandour current situation in the contemporaryworld (Latour 2008). Let me just underlinethat the last claim is truly crucial to the wholefeminism project. What are the consequencesfor female subjectivity if we treat emancipa-tion in the way Latour proposes? First of all, itis no longer the case that establishing femalesubjectivity is a necessary condition for eman-cipation. What seems to be more important isthe creation of new connections in which fem-inist postulates can emerge and root into prac-tice. Hence the emancipatory goal of the

whole feminist project should be to re-formu-late women’s problems in a way that allowsthem to be established as important mattersthat must be solved here and now, for the sakeof everyone who can support it. Secondly,since the connections in Latour’s view are cre-ated from various elements (human, non-human, theoretical, practical, material, sym-bolic), there is no prior point of departure.That is to say, we can no longer claim that fem-inism is a theoretical project with practicalaims, for the theoretical and the practical can-not be clearly separated here. Putting utopianideas into practice requires the presence ofrevolutionary concepts and metaphors, butalso things, lobbies, a suitable time in history,and technological innovations (to name onlya few) that put in place certain configurationsand relations that can sustain and preserveactions and the influence of these ideas. Inorder to avoid stalemate situations in the fem-inist discussion on female subjectivity we haveto concentrate on the possibility of actionrather then on establishing theoretical framesfor that subject. Actions and temporary solu-tions that can be applied here and now seem tobe of more importance, and in that sense,Latour’s view on emancipation complementsMittere’s call for doing philosophy withouttotalities framed in dualistic distinctions.

2. The female subjectivity problem: Useful utopias serving practical results

I find the task of elaborating female subjectiv-ity one of the most important tasks of thewhole feminist project. This very task can betreated as a non-problematized establishment(in Mitterer’s sense) of all feminist theoriesdealing with female subjectivity. In almost allfeminist theories, subjectivity has been usuallyunderstood as a notion that should be re-thought and re-formulated in order to serveemancipatory and political goals (Butler 1990,p. 5). In other words, in order to formulate thebasis for building female subjectivity we haveto change the way we have been dealing withsubjectivity as such in our philosophical,sociological and psychological theories. Thistheoretical step is treated as a necessary condi-tion for achieving practical results. So far, so


CONCEPTS



good, but it gets quite complicated and moredifferentiated when it comes to decidingwhere to look for the essence of the female.There are too many overly complex andsophisticated feminist theories of female sub-jectivity for them to be analyzed in detail here.Nevertheless, I can use them as good examplesto illustrate some of Mitterer’s basic claims.

One of the main features of dualistic phi-losophy are dichotomous distinctions: be-tween language and reality, opinion and ob-ject, and between knowledge and the object ofknowledge, to name only a few (Mitterer 2004,§10). It is important to note here that not alldistinctions make our thinking dualistic. It iscrucial that one of the sides of such opposi-tions plays the role of the arbiter in all possiblecognitive disputes (reality, object etc.). Hence,when tracing feminist theories, one has to becareful with regard to any dichotomies that areused there. In many feminist theories the va-lidity of such distinctions as male/female, pri-vate/public, rational/irrational is criticized,but it is not the case that the usage of all ofthem makes our philosophy dualistic. As Mit-terer points out, in order to solve any givenphilosophical problem or to provide a conclu-sive argument to our opponents, we refer tocertain instances. These instances are: nature,reality, the state of affairs, history and law.(Mitterer 2004, §91). In the feminist theoriesthat I call essentialist, we will refer respectivelyto biological capacities (nature: for exampleShulamith Firestone, Mary Daly), psychologi-cal tools and social position (history, law: forexample Nancy Chodorow), and a metaphys-ical sense of female body and mental equip-ment (reality: for example Simone de Beau-voir, Mary O’Brien). These instances aretreated as certain fundamentals in which fe-male subjectivity is grounded, and we are sup-posed to be able to present them in our theo-ries (Marshall 1994, pp. 104–107). All essen-tialist theories can be interpreted as theoriesdirected at the object of discursive practices(of describing, characterizing, presenting, de-fining, etc.), for they treat subjectivity assomething that waits somewhere to be pre-sented in our theory – to be presented properlyin accordance with the accepted methodology.

Historically speaking, one can see thatthere is also a second group of thinkers dealingwith female subjectivity, namely anti-essen-tialists (nominalists, constructivists) (Alcoff1988). It can be rightly observed that an anti-

essentialist tendency dominates in contempo-rary feminist theories. It results from theobservation that subjectivity (which is inter-esting for feminist purposes) is always some-thing real, embodied and surrounded bythings and environment (situated) and as suchrequires us to look around at the features thatshape its dynamic construction. It also makesuse of the postmodern critique of the tradi-tionally understood rational subject. Oneaspect of such a critique has its roots in thepragmatic approach to solving concrete prob-lems rather than formulating and re-formu-lating certain theories (Young 1997, p. 17). Itwould mean that to theorize about femalesubjectivity in fact does not help to build andre-build real female identities, so we shouldlook for other ways to highlight the difference.These feminist theories are often very sensitiveto location, the positionality of the (female,knowing, acting) subject, and historical andcultural conditions of certain emerging ideasabout female subjectivity. In other words, theyusually take into account the fact that womenare born in a certain place and time; that theybelong to a certain social class, state, national-ity; that they have such and such a profession,etc. Proceeding from more general andabstract categories (subject, rationality) tomore concrete ones (like the color of skin orthe social class) in formulating conceptions offemale subjectivity, forces thinkers to take intoaccount the social and cultural facts that weretraditionally excluded from philosophicalthinking. It results in treating theory as an areathat is supposed to deliver certain solutionsthat will be useful in solving concrete practicalproblems. It should be noted that the abovementioned distinction between essentialismand anti-essentialism in feminist theories sim-plifies the view of a great number of theoriesdealing with female subjectivity. When weconsider particular conceptions, it will occurthat the distinction may not be so easy tomake. One can be an anti-essentialist and amaterialist at the same time (like MoniqueWittig) or one can postulate the existence ofessences while being a deconstructionist (likeLuce Irigaray; Fuss 1990, p. 26). Looking atfeminist theories on a general level, however,we can show that the discussions on the femalesubjectivity problem can be rewritten as a dis-cussion on the method of formulating an ade-quate theory of female subjectivity (Bordo1990, p. 142). The method can be chosen when

some general questions have been answered.The first one is: is establishing the female sub-ject crucial to emancipatory goals of femi-nism? The second one can be formulated asfollows: is female subjectivity founded on anystable and radical grounds? The answer to thesecond question divides feminist thinkers intotwo already-mentioned groups: essentialists(those who answer “yes”) and anti-essential-ists, constructivists (those who answer “no”).These two groups, as Mitterer points out, usu-ally formulate their claims in a dualizing man-ner. They just differ in the assumptions thatare used in order to win cognitive battles. Thenegative answer to the second question canlead to the philosophical proposal in which weare trying to avoid the pitfalls of dualism. Itcan result in re-formulating not only the tra-ditional way of understanding the role of thesubject but also the very idea of emancipation,and in formulating conceptions in which wewill be able to describe only certain processesof becoming subjects and reflect how theyinfluence always-changing human practicalactions. I will try to show that under certaininterpretations, Braidotti’s and Butler’s theo-ries can be read as such trials. These trials areanti-essentialist for sure, but they try to escapefrom the trap of being committed to one sideof the dichotomy between the realist and theconstructivist (anti-realist).

There are two theoretical strands that canbe observed among anti-essentialist feministtheories dealing with the female subjectivityissue. The first strand, well represented byBraidotti’s work, can be characterized by itscall for

nomadizing

, that is to say opening thetheoretical area to many varied modes ofthinking about subjectivity and structuring ofthe self – to understand identity as a complex,dynamic, unstable entity that is constantly re-worked according to the cultural, political andhistorical surroundings (Braidotti 2003, p.196). In a way, we are supposed to continuedealing with female subjectivity, but its under-standing has to be radically changed. First ofall, she treats the notion of “difference” as themost important one in describing sexual sub-jects and sexual identities, as difference lets uscatch the features that allow us to make dis-tinctions and distinguish one from the others(Braidotti 1994, pp. 146–172). She proposes toanalyze the difference on three levels, each ofwhich has to be taken into account in describ-ing female subjectivity. The first level of sexual

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 211

CONCEPTS



difference concerns the differences betweenmen and women, where Braidotti wants tocriticize universalism and masculinity implic-itly treated as a pseudo-universal in our cul-ture. She also fights against the idea of other-ness as devalorization (Braidotti 1994, p. 159).On the second level of sexual difference, shetakes into account the differences amongwomen emphasizing the very fact that the gen-eral notion of a woman refers to differentkinds of women, different experiences and dif-ferent identities (p. 162). The third level, themost interesting one for me, applies to the dif-ferences within each woman, where issuessuch as the multiplicity in one’s identity,unconscious elements of identity, levels ofexperience, living memory and imaginaryrelationship to class, race, age and sexualchoices play a vital role (p. 165). It is obviousthat in such a nomadic perspective one cannotformulate traditional theories of female sub-jectivity and provide the definition or evendescription of women, because all answers arevalid only in a certain context and only for awhile. Generalization is forbidden here and aconstant multiplication of complexity is rec-ommended. Nomadism as a concept provides“shifting locations for multiple femaleembodied voices” (p. 172). There is no placefor philosophical totalities here (such asnature as such, the world in itself, etc.), forthey are not useful in describing livingwomen. What is needed is a reformulation ofthe theory in such a way that it can touch onthe elements that have traditionally been situ-ated on the practical side. Including the men-tioned levels in the discussion of female sub-jectivity is clearly a step towards praxis whileaiming at emancipation. In the second strand,represented by Butler’s approach, we can iden-tify a call to abandon the whole female subjec-tivity problem with respect to its totalizinggestures. In other words, describing the femalein any way will always end with a univocal viewof female subjectivity that will not embracemany concrete, existing women. When Butlerclaims that the coherence of such categories asgender or sexuality is culturally constructedon a discursive level by stylized acts of repeti-tions, she seems to turn away from the dichot-omy between language and reality. She seemsto suggest that on the cognitive level, we canspeak only about discourse and its conse-quences, nothing else and nothing more. Inher book

Gender trouble

, however, she contin-

ues to speak of subjectivity and identity usingthe same old methodology in which the meta-phor of constructing is built against the meta-phor of something that is ready-made (see therole of the matter). When she underscores that

sexuality

or

gender

are not real and that they donot exist on the level most people would call

reality

, she refers to the notions connectedwith something non-discursive. Its existencehas to be assumed and accepted as a non-problematized establishment. Trivially speak-ing, when we claim that the essence of femalesubjectivity exists and when we claim thatthere is no such thing as the essence of femalesubjectivity, we use the same method of think-ing surrounding the formulation of theories:we refer to the instance, which can no longerbe disputed. Such an attitude results in an end-less discussion on the acceptable methods ofdealing with the female subjectivity problem,which does not help to formulate or solve anyconcrete problems for women, which thereception of Butler’s work clearly shows. It isfair to add that Butler changed this perspectivein her book

Bodies that matter

, where shewants to escape both from radical constructiv-ist and essentialist approaches to subjectivity(Butler 1993, p. 8). She argues that on the onehand the subject cannot be treated as a stablenotion or ready-made entity that has its uni-versal natural or cultural grounds, and on theother hand it cannot be a pure construct madeby someone’s choice. Rather, she shows thatthe subject is an effect of a long, changeable,complex process of repetitions and performa-tive reiterations of norms (pp. 12–13).

It can be rightly shown that there is some-thing utopian in the idea that philosophicalstatements can change anything in the realworld, or that feminist views on females canchange anything in the actual situation ofwomen in the contemporary world. However,this claim can be accepted only if we assumethat the distinction between theory/language(philosophy) and something that is outsidethe language (reality) applies. FollowingLatour and Mitterer, I have been trying toconvince the readers that the idea of the pos-sibility of putting all elements that take part inhuman knowledge production into twogroups (language vs. reality) is a hopeless taskto fulfill. Following Mitterer’s ideas, we canclaim that philosophy can be understood asan activity of constructing and re-construct-ing certain totalities that consist of many dif-

ferent elements – words and things being justsome of them. Both Braidotti and Butler showthat it is cognitively more fruitful to describefemale subjectivity as a process, action, per-formance played on many various levels andwhose features can be negotiated and re-negotiated according to the aims we have inmind while using them – especially if our aimis emancipation.

3. Beyond the female: From descriptions

so far

to descriptions

from now on

Mitterer claims that we can escape from allconflicts in philosophical theories (hence par-ticularly in feminist theories as well) byremoving those descriptions

from now on

thatcause the conflicts, and start once more fromsomething more initial, start, so to speak,from the beginning (Mitterer 2004, §156). Inother words, we do not have to establish whatwe have in common, the values we share,which are the most important aims of ourtheoretical activity.

More initial

does notmean

more basic

or

more rudimentary

in asense that we have to dig for deep, commonlyshared, metaphysical assumptions that haveto be made and widely accepted among us. Itmeans, rather, that we can establish a new, ini-tial ground, that can be shared from now onin the process of conversation. Is a non-dual-ist way of practicing philosophy possible at allin a practical sense? Can we survive withoutinvestigating the traditionally philosophicalsubjectivity problem at all? I will try toaddress these questions in this section.

As is suggested by Latour’s idea of emanci-pation, Braidotti’s nomadism, Butler’s perfor-mative subject, Donna Harway’s concept ofcyborg and the notion of affinity of beliefs(Harway 1985), in order to achieve politicalgoals in the feminist project, one does not haveto start by establishing what “the female” is.One does not have to convince all participantsof the dispute that her view on female subjec-tivity is a kind of a description so far, and assuch is the only instance we can refer to at themoot points. Following Mitterer’s way ofarguing, we can investigate the possibility ofgiving up the idea of adducing undisputableand settled instances, like nature, culture or


CONCEPTS



history. Assuming that we will be able todevelop a language that could qualify for anon-dualist way of thinking, we can start byfixing those concrete problems concerningwomen that we all agree are the most urgent tosolve. We should therefore leave aside the gen-eral, disputable problem of female subjectivityabout which nothing seems to be possible tosettle once and for all. To put it simply, let mediscuss the example of equality statistics inEurope. Looking only at European statisticsconcerning gender equality, one can easily seethat, generally speaking, women are less inde-pendent economically, that there are morerestrictive gender stereotypes about them, thatthey are victims of domestic violence in manymore cases etc. (Report on Equality 2008). Letme present two possible scenarios in which wecould try to explain this situation and try tofind clues as to how to change it (if we decidethat it should be changed). Let us consider forexample the payment gap that discriminatesagainst women. Firstly, we can claim that it isnatural (biological) that women are alwaysmore committed to the domestic life of theirfamilies and that even when they undertakeprofessional careers, in practice they are lesseffective than men when doing the same job.Hence, there is nothing wrong about the pay-ment gap. Secondly, we can recall a long his-tory of increasing male power in our cultureand the history of the law-making masculinityand argue that it has been always connectedwith financial independence and economicaldomination. In this case, the payment gaplooks like a logical consequence of the wholementioned process and as such would not bepossible to change in a short run. Both scenar-ios are not helpful in providing tools forchanging this situation. They are not, becausethey operate with instances such as nature ormale power in order to convince us of thevalidity of their explanations. These instancesrefer to very old, general and abstract philo-sophical notions, which are not clear at all,hence are not candidates that have the neededexplanatory power. Also, in these scenarios wedo not ask how such totalities as nature andmale power emerge on a more detailed level –on the level of all possible events, connections,technological innovations, ideas and meta-phors that had to be used in order to establishtheir obviousness (taking into account the socalled theoretical and practical elements). Wedo not ask what kind of “becoming a subject”

would be needed in order to start changing thewhole structure that supports the system inwhich the payment gap is possible. It seems tome that only when we treat the female subjectas a forming entity in progress (followingBraidotti’s or Butler’s ideas) will we be able tobuild a common ground from now on – theground that will be temporarily useful untilnew experiences of particular women, newlevels of knowledge about female subjectivityand new changes in living women’s attitudestowards their aims are taken into account. Onsuch grounds, solving concrete problems likethe right to be on the pro-choice side, to havethe same income as men when doing the samejob, or to have the right not to be a mother andwife are more crucial and important thanestablishing what the female or the male is.

Is it justified to talk about solving the prob-lems of women when we have not finallyestablished what being a woman is? Let me useWittgenstein’s famous analogy with the beetlein the box to answer this question. Let us imag-ine that we all have boxes with somethinginside which we call

a beetle

. Nobody can lookin anyone else’s box and what is more, nobodycan even look inside her own box. But we alltalk about the beetles, we describe what thesebeetles look like, how they behave, how theyshould be treated etc., simply trying to deducewhat we can from all possible available symp-toms we deal with while we have these boxes.We use the word “beetle” in a sensible way andwe can build a community to solve the beetleproblems without looking inside and check-ing what a beetle is, or checking if the beetlesin the different boxes look the same or not. Tosimplify, we can act with beetles without for-mulating theories about their nature. In asense we tacitly assume that there are suchentities and that they have certain characteris-tics, but it is not so important for our task. It iseven possible that all our boxes are empty andit will not change anything for our daily activ-ities. The same holds for our case. We do nothave to agree on who a woman is, and how sheshould build her identity in order to talk aboutwomen’s problems. In order to achieve somepolitical aims, we need to be loyal to otherwomen, but we do not have to build this soli-darity on the basis of a commonly sharedunivocal female subjectivity (Butler 1990, pp.14–15). As is the case with all analogies, thebeetle analogy cannot be taken too far, either.I do not want to suggest that there is a

thing

such as female subjectivity and though as aproblem it has to be put aside for the timebeing, it should and can be elaborated in thefuture. I would prefer to change the descrip-tion so far, which can be detected from femi-nist theories dealing with the identity and sub-jectivity problem. The description so far couldbe summarized in the following way: talkingabout the rights, emancipation, freedom, lib-eration, etc. of women forces us to talk aboutthe subjects we are mentioning here. It isrequired by the old tradition of philosophy inwhich theories, conceptions, discourses, dis-cussions and arguments always refer to some-thing. Something which is other-thing, onto-logically distinct from everything that resideson the level of language. Such roots can bedetected in almost all feminist theories con-cerning female subjectivity. If we cannot agreeabout the status of the female, let us start fromsomething more trivial and less abstract, suchas, for example, the question of suffering andpain experienced by women that I know andobserve in my closest environment. Referringto common sense notions can help us see thatwe validate certain actions or need for actionsthat have to be done in order to reduce the suf-fering. Maybe I will share some observationswith my colleague in the department I work,with a saleswoman from whom I buy breadand milk every day, with the neighbor I livewith in the same building. Probably we do nothave in mind the same kind of the female sub-ject, we do not share the same discourse inwhich we could elaborate the identity categoryas such, our dialogue is not general, abstractand sophisticated enough to be a good startingpoint for formulating a theory. But it can be agood starting point to go beyond the female inthe direction of drawing the description

fromnow on

, concerning the problems all the mem-bers of the whole discussion would like tosolve.

4. Conclusion

I see philosophy as an area of human intellec-tual activity whose force lies in the ability toproduce and construct new, powerful meta-phors that can change current and stabilizedways of thinking and acting, thus as the way inwhich our world evolves. I also believe that wecan change something exactly because we usethe notion of the world as a rhetoric tool hid-

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ing the very fact that it covers many different,often contradictory, elements coming fromvarious sources (the material, the mental, thebiological, the symbolic, the abstract, the sci-entific, the technological and so on). I proposeto consider Mitterer’s philosophy as an initialinspiration for a new constructivism or a newdirection in the constructivist trend, under-stood in a way that has been lucidly presentedby Latour in one of his works (Latour 2005, pp.88–93). Both Latour and Mitterer emphasizein a different way that valid constructivism isnot social or cultural constructivism. Firstly,because social constructivism is just the oppo-site of naive realism, and they are both dualis-tic notions. Secondly, because a philosophicaltotality such as “the social” does not cover ahomogenous, stable, unchangeable, ready-made entity or object that is easy to grasp.Constructing is better understood as a diffi-cult, painstaking process of formulating

descriptions from now on

; work that has to bedone by using complex machinery of varioustools (such as symbols, artifacts, ideas, things,technological innovations, cultural stereo-types, common sense opinions – among manyothers) – the work that we have decided to doin order to avoid a stalemate situation and inorder to solve some painful problems of ourtime and interests. As Latour teaches us, whensomething is constructed, it means it is bothartificially created and true, real and objectiveat the same time. Its origin and history can bedocumented but it does not change the factthat it remains an acknowledged and objectiveresult obtained by collective human ingenuity(Latour 2005, p. 89). It applies to all possiblefacts in any area of science. It applies also to thenotions, categories and terms we analyze andre-work in philosophy. Such an understand-ing of constructing can be found in some the-ories of female subjectivity, and marrying itsideas with inspirations taken from Mittererand Latour seems to be cognitively useful forthe emancipatory goals of feminism. As Butlerputs it: “[Construction is] a process of reitera-tion by which both “subjects” and “acts” cometo appear […]” (Butler 1993, p. 9). In thisview, however, philosophy cannot be treatedas a set of conclusively elaborated theories, inwhich answers and questions have been statedonce and for all; rather, it has to be seen as aflow, as an unfinished process of human activ-ity, in which new and old metaphors can

freshly appear. I believe that philosophy soconstrued could help to understand andchange our situation in the information age. Itcould also contribute to achieving the emanci-patory aims of the feminism movement.

References

Alcoff, L. (1988) Cultural feminism versuspost-structuralism. The identity crisis infeminist theory. Signs (3): 405–436.

Beauvoir, S. (1989) Second sex. Vintage Books:New York.

Bordo, S. (1990) Postmodernism and gender-skepticism. In: Nicholson, L. (ed.) Femi-nism/postmodernism. Routledge: NewYork, pp. 133–142.

Braidotti, R. (1994) Nomadic subjects:embodiment and sexual difference in con-temporary feminist theory. Columbia Uni-versity: New York.

Braidotti, R. (2003) Feminist philosophies. In:Eagleton, M. (ed.) Feminist theory. Black-well: Oxford, pp. 195–215.

Butler, J (1990) Gender trouble. Feminismand the subversion of identity. Routledge:New York.

Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that matter. On thediscursive limits of “sex.” Routledge: NewYork.

Butler, J. & Salih, S. (eds.) (2003) Judith Butlerreader. Blackwell: Oxford.

Fuss, D. (1990) Essentially speaking. Femi-nism, nature and difference. Routledge:London.

Haraway, D. (1985) A manifesto for cyborgs.Socialist Review (80): 65–108.

Haraway, D. (1988) Situated knowledge: thescience question in feminism as a site ofdiscourse on the privilege of partial per-spective. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599.

Harding, S. (1991) Whose science? Whoseknowledge? Thinking from women’s lives.Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY.

Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the social. Anintroduction to actor-network theory.Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Latour, B. (2008) “It’s development stupid!” orHow to modernize modernization?Retrieved from http://www.espacestemps.net/document5303.html on 15 June 2008.

Marshall, B. L. (1994) Engendering moder-nity. Feminism, social theory and social

change. Polity Press: Oxford.Millett, K. (1970) Sexual politics. Doubleday:

New York.Mitterer, J. (2004) Ucieczka z dowolnosci.

Oficyna Naukowa: Warszawa.Report on Equality between women and men

(2008) Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/publications/2008/keaj08001_en.pdf on 26 March 2008.

Young, I. M. (1997) Intersecting voices:Dilemmas of gender, political philosophyand policy. Princeton University Press:Princeton.


Alexandra Derra has been an academic lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun since 1999. From 2005–2006 she was visiting fellow at the Centre for Logic and Analytic Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven. Her doctoral degree is based on the work A Wittgensteinian category of use in contemporary theories of meaning and was the result of her philosophical fascination for the philosophy of late Wittgenstein. Her research interests include Anglo-Saxon contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of science, as well as theories of language developed in cognitive science and the problems of subjectivity in contemporary feminist theories.

THE AUTHOR


Does Non-dualism Imply an Approach to Power?

Non-dualizing Epistemology and the Political

What about the politics of non-dualism?

When I think of Mitterer’s work, I rememberthe first time I read the passage on theories oftruth in

Die

Flucht aus der Beliebigkeit

(Mit-terer 2001, pp. 82–85). I was and am struck bythe unique straightforwardness with whichMitterer demonstrates the self-referentialityand incommensurability of theories of truth.This passage represents philosophy at its bestand I admire Mitterer’s ingenuity as well asthe clarity with which he poses his ideas.However, other people are better qualified tovalue Mitterer’s merits as a philosopher, andthis task shall be left to them. Instead, thisarticle will appreciate Mitterer’s workthrough a critical discussion of the one area ofhis writing in which I feel to be able to raise

questions that hopefully will be interesting forMitterer himself and readers: his pragmaticjustification of non-dualism. This justifica-tion could be twofold: philosophical andsocial. I will not engage in the philosophicaladvantages, although I think that a good casecan be made to try to dispense with the philo-sophical problems that have dominated West-ern philosophy from its start. (Mitterer 2001,p. 21). I will rather concentrate on the socialbalance of non-dualism compared to dual-ism. What does Mitterer propose as the pur-pose of non-dualistic interventions and whatkind of politics – specifically uses of truthclaims and debunkings of truth claims – doeshe suggest to non-dualistic thinking people?

This topic is central to all theories that donot rest the justification of their theories onclaims of “being true.” Although most of the

theoreticians in question would agree on thestatement above and put forward socialadvantages as justification of their theories,the issue of pragmatic justification – of theadvantages of abandoning the concept of“truth,” so to speak – has often been trivialisedand has not received adequate attention in myopinion.

Mitterer gives the replacement of the “pur-suit of truth” with “the pursuit of change” asone reason for non-dualism (Mitterer 1992,p. 110). Therefore, I will analyse Mitterer’sevaluation of the effects of dualistic and non-dualistic thought and discuss its soundness.In doing so, Mitterer’s position will be contex-tualised with that of other philosophers andpolitical theorists that have dealt with theproblem of how to cope strategically with theinsight of the impossibility of objectiveknowledge.

The article sets out to discuss the followingquestions: How, in Mitterer’s opinion, doesdualistic thought regulate discourse? How, inMitterer’s opinion, does non-dualisticthought regulate discourse? Are there differ-ences? Does Mitterer propose anything inregard of using and debunking truth claims indiscourse? If so, what does he propose? AreMitterer’s propositions sound?

On the effects of dualistic thought

Many of the theoreticians that have broughtforth criticisms of the epistemology of realismhave also criticised the assumed social impli-cations of realism. Quite serious charges haverepeatedly been levelled against the effects ofrealist thinking and realists themselves. Heinzvon Foerster may serve as an example when hesays that the concept of objectivity is the most

Mathis Danelzik

A

Justus-Liebig-Universität, Gießen (Germany) <[email protected]>

R Problem – The question of the moral and social effects of non-dualism has not yet been clarified to the necessary extent. The relation of truth claims, power and violence has been simplified; critical questions of non-dualist practises have not yet been addressed. R Approach – By discussing relevant philosophy and political theory, this paper draws the attention of non-realists towards the issues of power, conflict and discourse rules and asks to rethink the issue of the pragmatic justification of non-realist epistemology. R Findings – (1) Constructivists, as well as the non-dualist Josef Mitterer, are critical of the discursive effects of truth claims. Yet, neither constructivism nor non-dualism solve the power issues that are ascribed to realism by constructivists and dualism by Mitterer. Even if participants abstained from truth claims in discourses, many of the power issues would still be prevalent. (2) The question arises of whether a practical difference between non-dualism and dualism exists. (3) There is a tendency in constructivist and non-dualist theory to regard any form of influence on others as illegitimate. This tendency is not sound. Instead, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate power is necessary in non-dual-ism as well. R Implications – Constructivist and non-dualist theory need to scrutinise statements about the moral implications of the respective theories and to emphasise power issues not solely by extrapolating from epistemology, but by acknowledging the social dynamics of discourses and conflicts. Non-dualist social scientists could contribute to the discussion through empirical analyses of the effects of the use and the debunking of truth claims. R Key Words – hegemony, power, moral, strategic essentialism, relativism, tolerance.

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ingenious strategy invented to avoid respon-sibility, and that it should come as no surprisethat constructivism is less popular than real-ism, given that the epistemology of construc-tivism necessarily implies the embracing ofresponsibility. He goes on by stating that arealistic position causes an outlook on theworld defined by fear and relationshipsbetween human beings that follow the logic ofdominance and regulation (Foerster 2006, p.44). He also relates the phenomenon of war tothe notion of truth and alleges that realiststurn into dangerous beasts as soon as theythink they have found the truth (Foerster1998, p. 30). This may be called a very bleakevaluation of the social effects of realistthought.

It is not the distinction between construc-tivist and realist epistemologies that Mittererregards as crucial, but rather the more basicdistinction between dualism and non-dual-ism. Mostly, it is assumed that epistemologydeals with the question of how human beingsgather knowledge of the world. However,non-dualistic positions do not operate withthe dichotomy of a reality independent fromlanguage and observers on the one hand, anddescriptions, experience and observations onthe other. Non-dualism differs from con-structivist theories in the sense that thoseconstructivist theories that make use of a con-cept of viability or assume a biological brainas a non-constructed foundation or thatspeak of creating a world through languageare considered as dualistic by Mittererbecause they still operate on the above-men-tioned dichotomy. Thus, to apply the termepistemology to Mitterer’s theory may bequestionable, but the term will be used to sig-nify miscellaneous theories that deal with theconcept of truth and truth claims. AlthoughMitterer proposes a different fundamentaldistinction between theories than von Foer-ster’s, to analyse this distinction in terms ofthe social effects of the two options is no lessworthwhile. It is important to do that in orderto illuminate the pragmatic justification ofMitterer’s theory. Would he agree with vonFoerster’s statement, if “realistic thought”were replaced by “dualistic thought”?

One does not find such strong vocabularyin Mitterer’s work as one finds in von Foer-ster’s. Mitterer does attribute negative effectsto dualistic thought though: he alleges thatdualistic thought aspires to stagnancy and the

perpetuation of the status quo and calls theo-ries of truth an epistemological camouflage ofthe rule of force (Mitterer 1992, p. 110)because they are supposed to defend, shieldand immunise positions (p. 111). On variousoccasions in his work, he stresses that truthclaims cancel each other out unless a new pro-cedure of observation is introduced that maylead to a new description of the object in ques-tion

from now on

(Mitterer 1992, p. 79; Mit-terer 2001, p. 24). If such a new procedurecannot be found, the dispute cannot be trans-formed in a consensus without use of power(Mitterer 1992, p. 136). Since most of our dis-courses – one may add, all societal relevantdiscourses – happen in unequal power rela-tions, the “pursuit of truth” becomes prob-lematic for Mitterer (Mitterer 2001, p. 101).This is the case because in the dualistic mode,the prevailing position does not present itselfas simply that – prevailing in a specific socialconstellation – but rather claims to be tran-scendent and justified by a beyond of dis-course. That is why he accuses dualistic posi-tions of immunising themselves. Thejustification of prevailing positions is given by“authorities” that get ascribed a privilegedposition to judge conflicting positions byreality itself or some sort of viability under-stood as pre-discursive entities that decideabout the truth and falsehood of statements(Mitterer 1992, p. 78; Mitterer 2001, p. 70). Ina wonderful paragraph, Mitterer sarcasticallycomments that those authorities that in dual-istic thought are seen as merely announcingthe result of the “reality” check, just happen tobe the ones involved in the dispute in the firstplace (Mitterer 2001, p. 24). Again, the sameholds true for framework-relative theoriesthat abandon universal truth (e.g., collectivis-tic relativism), but replace it with a relativecriterion that regulates discourse in the sameway that universal truth does (Mitterer 2001,p. 57).

It is this analysis that makes Mitterer suchan instructive read for social scientists. He isafter all – and among other things of course –a theoretician of techniques of hegemony. Hemakes a very powerful case against dualismand describes the role of authority in beauti-fully plain words. However, I also see prob-lems with his characterisation of the effects ofdualistic thought. He mentions that the prin-ciple of truth in dualistic thought aligns dis-courses to aspire to consensus but at the same

time impedes actual consensus because ofmutually excluding truth claims (Mitterer, p.88). However, he – in my opinion – simplifiesthe difference between the logic of a givenposition that motivates and prescribes rulesof behaviour, and the systemic effect thatemerges on the meso level from the interac-tion of the variety of those positions in anygiven discourse. Because of social dynamics,stagnation and perpetuation of the status quoare not inherent characteristics of dualisticthinking, but just one possible outcome,depending on specific discourse constella-tions. Firstly, universalised truth claims alsoserve as powerful narratives for social change(Weber 2005, p. 306), as the histories of thelabour movement and the feminist move-ment have shown. It therefore does not lead tostagnancy necessarily. Secondly, while it isimpossible to evade power in discourse, I donot think that it is correct to see the regulativefunction of the concept of truth just as a cam-ouflage for the rule of power. It can functionlike that. But if the pursuit of truth has beeninternalised properly by the individualsinvolved, it operates in two additional ways.Individuals enter discourses with the motiva-tion to improve their own position and maybe willing to be open-minded, thoughtful andresponsive in order to get to that beyond ofdiscourse and leave all the “bias” behind. Theymay also refrain from violence because theybelieve in the superiority of their argumentand that it eventually will be convincing to theinvolved parties. Thirdly, there are liberaldualists that get along with each other despitedissent. Liberal dualists react to the problemof various truth claims that cancel each otherout by internalising a high level of tolerancefor other positions and a low level of insis-tence on one’s own metaphysical rightness. Itis only some issues that are regarded as soimportant that the value of toleration ceasesto make dissent socially acceptable. Only inthese instances does non-symbolic violenceoccur. As further analysis will show, it is ques-tionable whether non-dualism has differenteffects.

It is hardly possible to judge the impact ofdualistic thought on a great scale, because itwould involve establishing dubious causalconnections. Being unable to evaluate, we arestuck with analysing the logic of the two waysof thought and extrapolating from them,which will be continued in the next section. I


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agree with Weber (Weber 2005, p. 306) thatthe evaluation of the effects of dualisticthought would most likely be more ambigu-ous than that given by Mitterer and, of course,by von Foerster.

In this section it was my intention to showthat dualistic thinking may not have as bad arecord as Mitterer suggests. Nevertheless,Mitterer avoids the trap that von Forester fallsinto. Von Foerster’s position is self-contradic-tory in the sense that the strong language heuses delegitimizes realists (who would wantthe company of someone whose outlook onthe world is one of fear and who is only able tohave relationships ruled by domination?),while at the same time blames realists for del-egitimizing their opponents through the“beyond the discourse” trick. Mitterer’s posi-tion does not do that.

On the effects of non-dualistic thought

In Mitterer’s earlier work, it is suggested thatnon-dualism implies an embrace of responsi-bility because non-dualists have to decidewhether to change their attitudes withoutreferring to a beyond of discourse. This is putin contrast to the alleged denial of responsi-bility in dualistic thought (Mitterer 1988, p.28). In Mitterer’s main publications (1992,2001) the term responsibility does not appearanymore. Similarly, the term “pursuit ofchange” cannot be found in

Die Flucht aus derBeliebigkeit

(2001), but appears prominentlyon the finishing pages of

Das Jenseits der Phi-losophie

(1992). I am not able to decidewhether that fact suggests a shift of Mitterer’sposition regarding the pragmatic justificationof non-dualism or is merely due to the differ-ent foci of his books, given that the ethics ofnon-dualism are not Mitterer’s main interest,but rather a topic that is touched upon.

Mitterer clearly is critical of universalisticethics, and when he says that the splitting ofthe universal framework into different frame-works inhibits or at least complicates the dis-crediting of deviant positions (Mitterer 1992,p. 126), he seems to favour relativisticapproaches. However, he also problematizesthe positions normally pitted against univer-salism, namely collectivistic relativism (oftencalled cultural relativism) and individualisticrelativism. In another brilliant passage that

anticipates the discourses of identity politics,he states that collectivistic relativist positionswithin their framework work just like univer-salistic approaches. Since there is no neutralway of defining the frameworks themselves,the question of a position’s belonging to aframework can only be determined by thesubordination of all parties to a dominantinterpretation of the borders of the frame-works, which again includes the power issuethat was the critique of universalistic posi-tions in the first place (Mitterer 1992, p. 54).One could therefore come to the conclusionthat Mitterer is a supporter of individualisticrelativism. However, he does not spare thisposition from criticism either. In a critique ofMaturana’s point that individuals have onlythemselves as a reference for their morals, hestates that just one of the disagreeable effectsof individualistic relativism is that the moralprinciples only self-referentially point tothemselves, therefore creating a conservativefeedback that eliminates the possibility ofchange in one’s own moral principles (Mit-terer 1992, p. 128). In other words, if one eval-uates one’s own moral principles using one’sown moral principles, the result of that eval-uation is easy to foresee.

All of the three critiques regarding univer-salism, collectivistic relativism and individu-alistic relativism are well founded. I do notknow if Mitterer would subscribe to any ofthese three positions or would proposeanother position that is missed in my analy-sis. But given the premises of his work, Iwould regard individualistic relativism as theone fitting his theory best. One has to bear inmind that the first two positions are criticisedas conceptually flawed, while the critique ofindividualistic relativism is one of undesir-able consequences, not of implausibleassumptions.

But could Mitterer’s argument of a con-servative self-referentiality in individualisticrelativism not also be considered a flaw of allnon-dualistic variants? Is the inertial reac-tion of self-referentiality not the result of thelack of an internalisation of the pursuit oftruth in the sense that non-dualists have noincentive to engage in discourse while dual-ists may be motivated to listen to people andlearn in order to get to the truth? And is it notalso an argument against the premise thatabandonment of the concept of truth wouldspark a pursuit of change? Contrary to

Weber’s view, the intention to change a statusquo does not seem to be a necessary conse-quence of abandoning the concept of truth(Weber 2005, p. 292) and a “pursuit” of iner-tia seems equally reasonable.

Analogically, are regimes of truth not nec-essary to align individuals to a certain degreeso that the probability that they can agree ona procedure to produce a description

fromnow on

becomes higher? In his media theory,Weber gives the example of media contentthat is proved or disproved not by a realityitself, but by indicators such as police statis-tics; that is, indicators that all involved partiessee as authoritative (Weber 2005, p. 320). Iagree with that view. But I am not sure whatcriterion could be given by non-dualists toargue in favour of a certain indicator such aspolice statistics and against others such asintuition or astrology.

Richard Rorty is reported to have said(replacing “art” with “truth” in a MarshallMcLuhan quote): “Truth is what your con-temporaries let you get away with.” But ifeverybody within a discourse internalisedonly such a procedural criterion, with whatwould people get away with, and why? Howwould the discourse be organised? Andwould we be happy about the ways such dis-courses would go? These are not trivial ques-tions to me and it does not seem clear-cutthat non-dualism wins out over dualism inthe effects of everyday discourses.

On different agendas: The ironic, the unmasking and the situational approach

The goal of my previous analysis of theambiguous effects of dualistic and non-dual-istic arguments was to show that adoptingnon-dualism as the most convincing episte-mological option (as I do) does not necessar-ily imply that one favours the exposure ofmetaphysical truth claims as erroneousunconditionally. My aim was to demonstratethat the question is political in the broadsense in which Chantal Mouffe understandsit (Mouffe 2007, p. 16). It is a question ofdealing with the potentially antagonisticcharacter of the engagement of humanbeings with each other that has normative

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and strategic aspects and that can be dis-cussed independently from the issue of thesoundness of the epistemological theory ofnon-dualism.

Before I have a look at Mitterer’s workregarding the politics of non-dualism, I willmap out different agendas that can be associ-ated with non-realistic epistemologies; IanHacking distinguishes different agendas bytheir political impetus (Hacking 2002, pp.39–40). Two of them are of particular impor-tance here. Hacking defines the ironic posi-tion as the belief that X is a contingent resultof social processes and that X may change oneday, but that for the time being cannot be dis-pensed with (p. 40). The unmasking agendaon the other hand strives to dispense with Xthrough the strategy of “unmasking,” whichis not so much about denying ideas anddeclaring them wrong, but aims to corrodeits credibility by exposing the social func-tionality of an idea (pp. 87–88). Related to theprevious analysis, the ironic position wouldrather be convinced of the potential func-tions of “truth” and fear a disintegratingeffect of non-dualistic thought, while theunmasking position evaluates the effects theother way round.

Can Mitterer’s attitude towards truth anduniversalism be related to one of these agen-das? As Weber correctly says, Mitterer clearlyhas no intention to embrace an unmaskingattitude towards all distinctions and ideas. Inthat case, only silence and meditation wouldbe left (Weber 2005, pp. 241–242). Butregarding the concept of “truth,” he seems tohave an unmasking agenda. He proposes thatthe non-dualistic way of speaking is – amongother things – about exposing the attempt tosecure statements through truth claims bythe dualistic way of speaking (Mitterer 1992,p. 110). He also explicitly says that it is hisgoal to make the tricks of dualistic speechtransparent and thus to weaken their effec-tiveness (Mitterer 2001, p. 21). It can there-fore be safely concluded that he prefers theunmasking agenda regarding truth.

I would like to introduce a third agenda tothe scene: The situational approach does notgenerally decide between ironic and unmask-ing strategies, but decides to make use of bothof them on different occasions depending onthe specific context of the interventionintended. It works analogically to what Stier-lin says about psychotherapeutic interven-

tion, when he says that in psychotherapeuticpractice it is often the task of the therapist tosoften intransigent convictions, but thatthere are also schizophrenic constellations, inwhich everything seems to be fluent andanchorless and the task becomes to hardenconvictions so that decisions can be madeagain (Stierlin & Pörksen 2002, p. 206). Inpostcolonial theory, this agenda is promi-nently associated with Gayatri Spivak, whointroduced the concept of “strategic essen-tialism” (Spivak 1988, p. 205) as a way ofdealing with identity politics. Given thedilemma of being in need of a narrative thatwould unify and bring solidarity amongoppressed people, but at the same time beingstuck in a cultural vocabulary that has servedto oppress the same people in the first place,Spivak proposed the idea of strategic interac-tion with such vocabulary. Although strate-gic essentialism has been criticised for thefact that the strategic essentializer has nocontrol over the concepts essentialized oncethey enter the discourse (Butler 2003, p. 20)and Spivak has abandoned the term due toreasons negligible in this context (Danius,Jonsson & Spivak 1993, p. 35), such a con-text-dependent approach is appealing tothose undecided as to the effects of using/debunking truth claims.

Does it make a difference? On the question of practical irrelevance

So far, different assessments of the effects ofdualism and non-dualism have been dis-cussed. What has been presumed so far is thatthe decision in favour of one of the two epis-temological options influences oneself andeveryday discourses. In this section, this pre-sumption will be scrutinised.

Ian Hacking self-reportedly coined “theironic agenda” after Richard Rorty’s use ofirony in

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

(Rorty 2004). But when it comes to “truth,”Rorty, by Hacking’s definition, does notadopt an ironic position. He does not claimthat the concept of truth cannot be dispensedwith for social reasons. Rather the opposite,he proposes a change to a vocabulary thatwould stress self-creation and that would

express the futility of the longing for a realitybeyond one’s own descriptions. However,Rorty does not think that adopting a non-metaphysical stance would in fact changeone’s politics. One of his preconditions is thatthe insight into the contingency of one’s con-victions will not stop the convictions regulat-ing one’s actions (the same position is held bySchmidt 2003). Some of those convictions,Rorty goes on, will still be worth dying for(Rorty 2004, p. 306). This is an interestingstatement as it carries a sense of antagonismremarkably absent in most of the construc-tivist and non-dualist literature. One canread a lot more about the embrace of respon-sibility (as in von Foerster and the early Mit-terer), an imperative to tolerance (Schmidt2003, p. 127), and love (Maturana & Pörksen2002) than one can about conflict, power andviolence.

Do these claims go along with each other?Namely, the first claim that convictions willregulate the actions of non-dualists just asthey would if they were thought of asgrounded in a “reality,” the second that someof them might still be worth dying for, andthe third that non-dualism implicates animperative for tolerance?

To answer that question one has to illumi-nate the issue of motivation, something I findSiegfried J. Schmidt especially useful for.Schmidt stresses that individuals are emo-tionally invested in the moral principles theyhold and that moral principles are automati-cally evaluated morally as well. One’s moralprinciples are – for the time being – necessar-ily morally right, otherwise one would nothold them (Schmidt 2003, p. 119). Thisthought is similar to passages in Mitterer.Speaking about the apparent possibility oferring, Mitterer adds: How else would onedescribe an object if not with the descriptionsone claims to be valid? With descriptions onedoes not claim to be valid? (Mitterer 2001, p.47, also p. 88). This observation has twoeffects: firstly, it gives a new perspective onquestions that von Foerster calls undecid-able. Undecidable questions are those thatare not answerable by a predefined set ofrules. In Thomas Kuhn’s terminology, unde-cidable questions are the opposite of puzzles.While puzzles have rules and a solution,undecidable questions lack those rules. Yet,within the individual, undecidable questionshardly appear as undecidable. They already


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meet a certain preference internalised by theindividual. For example, either an individualis amoral – in this case, there is no preference,reason or incentive to become moral – or anindividual has a specific morality, but in thiscase the undecidable question of whether ornot to be amoral or moral does not appear.The self-referentiality of convictions plays aprominent role once again. Secondly, even ifone does not assume one’s convictions to betrue in the dualistic sense, one still is asdependent on them as if they were, becauseone needs hypotheses about one’s environ-ment as well as normative standards. That iswhy Schmidt says that a non-dualist is not arelativist. One’s convictions suspend the con-tingency of the options at hand, howevercontingent they themselves may be (Schmidt& Pörksen 2002, pp. 176–177). That does notimply that those convictions may not changeover time, but once internalised, they fulfilthe function of distinguishing acceptablefrom unacceptable behaviour and build rulesof how to react to such behaviours at anygiven moment. But given this description, isit possible to rescue the claim that either con-structivism or non-dualism imply an imper-ative to tolerance?

Humberto Maturana maintains thatclaim. He distinguishes between toleranceand respect. To him, tolerance is a temporarysuspension of inhibition of another individ-ual’s behaviour, even a temporary suspensionof the elimination of the other (Maturana &Pörksen 2002, p. 47). To Maturana, toleranceis a symptom of a realist position. He pits tol-erance against respect, by which he meanswhat the authors mentioned earlier under-stand by tolerance. Respect is to Maturana asymptom of constructivism. Tolerance inMaturana’s sense implies the inability to beempathetic, respect implies a real interest inthe other’s way of thinking and accepting hisor her basic legitimacy (p. 47). Again, as invon Foerster’s quotes mentioned earlier, Mat-urana uses the most pejorative vocabulary todescribe the outcome of realism. Such accusa-tions delegitimize realists and are thereforeself-refuting in the sense that they exemplifywhat non-realists accuse others of doing,namely devaluing one’s opponent. Especiallyin the light of the arguments presented in thispaper, constructivists should avoid fallinginto such rhetorical traps, since they are in noway substantial to constructivist positions.

However, when further questioned, Mat-urana answers that non-realists that enter-tain the maxim of respect may – in con-sciousness of their responsibility – endcooperation or even take up arms to engagein violence if the other tries to create a worldone feels unable to live in. But he adds thatrespect would remain nevertheless. That dif-ference in intention or perhaps just in phras-ing the moment of violence may be insignif-icant. The imperative to tolerance(respectively respect) adds up to nothingmore than the toleration of other ways ofthinking and behaving until one really doesnot feel to be able to accept that deviance. Ofcourse, that is a statement anybody, no mat-ter what epistemology they adhere to and nomatter how fundamentalist or narrow-minded they are regarded as being by others,can subscribe to. To rescue the claim of amoral advantage of non-dualist epistemol-ogy, one could try to argue that non-dualisminherently tends to enlarge the amount ofconvictions and behaviour one does not feelan obligation to oppress in one way oranother. I would counter that argument bypointing out that to increase the number ofbehaviours and convictions one does not feelan obligation to oppress is not a good or badthing per se. Rather the limit of acceptablebehaviour is determined by our contingentmorals once again. That is exactly how theconservative feedback of moral attitudesworks. Tolerance, limits of tolerance, vio-lence, rules of discourse, limits of free speech,and so forth seem not to be determined, noteven be influenced by the epistemology optedfor, but ruled by the principle of the contin-gent emotional investment in beliefs, moralprinciples, and discourse rules that arededuced from them: “Here I stand; I can dono other.”

The argument developed in this sectionmay imply the practical irrelevance of dual-ism and non-dualism. However, the argu-ment of practical irrelevance not only contra-dicts the imperative to tolerance, but is alsomutually exclusive with the thesis of disinte-grating effects of non-dualism on discoursesthat have been analysed earlier. Since it is myintention to open up different angles for fur-ther debate of the practical implications ofnon-dualism, this tension will be left unre-solved in this article.

On power and hegemony

The last issue that should be considered whenspeaking about the pragmatic justification ofnon-dualism is the implicit simplificationthat equates the use of truth claims withpower in discourse per se. Heinrich Popitz(2004) distinguishes four different phenom-ena of power: the power to kill and hurt,instrumental power that steers behaviourthrough positive and negative incentives,authoritative power that shapes preferences,and the power to shape the natural environ-ment. Given the reasoning of the article sofar, the first three phenomena of powerwould likely be prevalent in non-dualisticdiscourses as well. The fourth can beneglected in our context. The incommensu-rability of two non-dualistic worldviews andsets of behaviours can amount to a violentconflict, as we have seen in Maturana’s exam-ple. Nevertheless, some authors that criticisethe effects of realism even dismiss convincingsomebody else as an illegitimate action (Mat-urana & Pörksen 2002, p. 49). The reasons forthat are incomprehensible to me, because thesecond and third phenomena of power aremechanisms to decide a conflict below thelevel of physical violence or a way to alignindividuals to a set of principles and behav-iours so that conflict does not arise so fre-quently and so fundamentally. And attempt-ing to convince someone, understood as theattempt to align somebody else to one’s wayof life by earnestly describing one’s prefer-ences and reasons to enact such a lifestyle,would be less invasive than those forms ofpower.

Given the threat of the physical elimina-tion of one another, instrumental power,authoritative power and attempts at convinc-ing would likely be elements of discoursesamong non-dualists. All these phenomenacan be executed without truth claims. Theuse of truth claims is just one way to exercisethose forms of power and therefore is not tobe taken as the issue of power itself. Addition-ally, symbolic violence, understood here asharm caused by descriptions

so far

, worksthrough distinction pragmatics, not throughthe metaphysics of a discourse, and no authormentioned in this paper regards the aban-donment of distinction pragmatics as desir-able or even possible. But if discourses solely

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 219

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entertained by non-dualists were still struc-tured through popularity and authority, onewould performatively exert influence on oth-ers, even if one abstained from truth claims(for both the performativity and the sym-bolic harm aspect see Butler 2003 and Butler2006, respectively).

Thus, the issue of power is more pervasiveand ubiquitous than perceived by the litera-ture criticising the effects of realism, which isin danger of developing a blind spot for theexecution of power that is not based on truthclaims. Two political theoreticians – ChantalMouffe and Ernesto Laclau – have writtenextensively on the inevitability of power andhegemony from a non-realist perspective,which they call post-foundationalism. Bypost-foundationalism, they mean theacknowledgment of the uselessness of theassumption of a beyond of discourse andthus subscribe to a non-dualist position.Their work therefore is able to enrich thedebate on the moral and social effects ofdualist and non-dualist positions.

Mouffe states that it is impossible to reacha consensus that would not simultaneouslyexclude or inhibit other options (Mouffe2007, p. 19). This impossibility is not basedon the use of truth claims, but on the inter-nalisation of positive and negative senti-ments towards certain political goals andgroup identities. The possibility of antago-nistic (mutually excluding) preferences istherefore also inherent in the post-founda-tional situation. This possibility is what shecalls the political (p. 16). From these pre-mises, which have been argued for in thispaper as well, it follows that any societal orderis political and inhibits, excludes or oppressesother ways of organising society. This is whatMouffe calls hegemony (pp. 25–26). Thesame holds for competing concepts on a lessgeneral level than the societal order. ForMouffe, the task of democratic politics is notto try to eliminate the possibility of antago-nism in some sort of post-conflict unity. Sheaccuses Beck and Giddens of adhering tosuch an idea and states that it would increasethe probability of an antagonistic clash sinceit has no concept of how to deal with poten-tially antagonistic positions (pp. 48–49). Sherather regards it as the task of democraticpolitics to transform as many potentiallyantagonistic constellations as possible intowhat she calls agonistic conflict (pp. 29–30).

In the vocabulary of Mitterer, an agonisticconflict is one in which the involved partiesshare a basic consensus on the rules of con-flict that stops short of physical violence andsecures the freedom to advocate one’s hege-monic project. Antagonistic conflict lacksthat consensus. To my understanding, ago-nistic conflicts would involve Popitz’s secondand third forms of power and would not beable to ensure that the first form of powerwould not occur. On the contrary, democ-racy in Mouffe’s view is itself a hegemonicproject (what else could it be?) that can bedrawn into antagonistic constellations if itscontingent basic principles are opposed. Inthis case, the use of physical force is not ruledout by Mouffe (2007, p. 158).

Ernesto Laclau offers similar views toMouffe’s and, once again, some of Mitterer’sideas can be found as well. To Laclau (2007b,pp. 74–75), hegemony is an incarnation of aparticular position as the universal one, thusagreeing with Mitterer in the diagnosis ofdualistic reasoning. That incarnation is nec-essary for society. Laclau therefore proposesan ironic position in Hacking’s sense. He, justlike Mouffe, thinks that any theory of powerin democratic societies has to be a theoryabout legitimate and illegitimate executionsof power. According to both authors, theelimination of power itself is impossible,because antagonistic constellations betweencontingent ways of life cannot be categori-cally circumvented. Thus, the exercise ofpower is inevitable and the authors proposethat the distinction between legitimate andillegitimate power therefore is inevitable aswell when a non-dualist perspective isadopted (Laclau 2007a, p. 162).

Hegemony and power as such are thusstripped of the negative connotations thathave been ascribed to them by differentauthors described in this paper. Only specifichegemonies, power structures and uses are tobe criticised from that standpoint. If thesesuggestions are correct, the differences indualist and non-dualist discursive practisesregarding the issue of power are less markedthan commonly assumed by both sides of theepistemological debate. Furthermore, thesphere of the political seems to be governedby social principles of internalisation of sen-timents through socialisation and the logic ofsocial dynamics rather than determined byepistemological choices.

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued from three differ-ent angles. The first angle was the attempt toscrutinise the suggested social benefits of non-dualism, and aimed at animating a discussionon the value and the dangers of the concept oftruth as a discourse regulator. It also asked fora more detailed vision of non-dualistic prac-tices. The second one questioned the assertedimperative to tolerance of non-dualism byfocusing on the psychic processes of motiva-tion and decision making. The third angletried to do the same, but argued on the level ofsocial dynamics that arise from the interactionof different positions and strategies.

In closing, I want to map out my intentionsin writing this article. Firstly, I hope to havehonoured the outstanding contributions ofJosef Mitterer by engaging critically with hiswork. And hopefully I was able to produce atleast a few ideas of interest to the honouredparty and the reader.

Theoretically, the issue of the social effectsof non-dualism seems to be more importantthan the rather modest attention it receivesfrom constructivists and non-dualists today. Icall for an emancipation of the issue of thepolitical from the issue of epistemology.Although a discussion of the political ema-nates from epistemological reasoning, ananalysis that tries to determine the politicalonly by discussing epistemology falls short ofthe former’s complexities. Especially, non-dualistic and constructivist social scientistscould contribute to non-dualistic discourse byconducting empirical research of the effects ofstrategic uses of truth claims and debunks oftruth claims in various discourses. Thoseinsights would be very helpful towards estab-lishing a more profound evaluation of dualismand non-dualism.

I also intended to argue for a more sophis-ticated analysis of the concepts of power, vio-lence and authority by constructivists andnon-dualists. The rash denouncement ofthose concepts and even of the process of con-vincing may create a serious lack of awarenessof theoretical issues and one’s own practices.The devaluing rhetoric towards realists byMaturana and von Foerster may serve as anexample for symbolic violence and antagonis-ing speech that contradicts the main points ofthese well-meaning authors. In my opinion,the arguments I have brought forward show


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that power issues are inevitable, but that thevery old distinction of legitimate and illegiti-mate power is still crucial in non-dualistthought, however contingent and contestedany notion of legitimacy may be. There is sim-ply no alternative but to make that distinctionand struggle with each other in the interpreta-tion of what is legitimate and what is not.

Acknowledgement

I want to thank Simon Cooke for his kind cor-rections and suggestions.

References

Butler, J. (2003) Das Unbehagen derGeschlechter. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt amMain.

Butler, J. (2006) Haß spricht. Zur Politik desPerformativen. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt amMain.

Danius, S., Jonsson, S. & Spivak, G. C. (1993)An Interview with Gayatri ChakravortySpivak. Boundary 20(2): 24–50.

Foerster, H. von & Pörksen, B. (1998) Wahr-heit ist die Erfindung eines Lügners.Gepräche für Skeptiker. Carl-Auer:Heidelberg.

Foerster, H. von (2006) Entdecken oder Erfin-den. Wie lässt sich Verstehen verstehen? In:Foerster, H. von (ed.) Einführung in denKonstruktivismus. Piper: München, pp.41–88.

Hacking, I. (2002) Was heißt “Soziale Kon-struktion?” Zur Konjunktur einer Kampf-vokabel in den Wissenschaften. Fischer:Frankfurt am Main.

Kuhn, T. S. (1969) Die Struktur wissen-schaftlicher Revolutionen. Suhrkamp:Frankfurt am Main.

Laclau, E. (2007a) Gemeinschaft und ihreParadoxien: Richard Rortys “LiberalesUtopia.” In: Laclau, E. (ed.) Emanzipationund Differenz. Turia + Kant: Vienna, pp.150–173.

Laclau, E. (2007b) Was haben leere Signifi-kanten mit Politik zu tun? In: Laclau, E.(ed.) Emanzipation und Differenz. Turia +Kant: Vienna, pp. 65–78.

Maturana, H. R. & Pörksen, B. (2002) VomSein zum Tun. Die Ursprünge der Biologie

des Erkennens. Carl-Auer: Heidelberg.Mitterer, J. (1988) Abschied von der Wahr-

heit. Delfin XI: 23–29.Mitterer, J. (1992) Das Jenseits der Philoso-

phie: Wider das dualistische Erkennt-nisprinzip. Passagen: Vienna.


Mouffe, C. (2007) Über das Politische. Widerdie kosmopolitische Illusion. Suhrkamp:Frankfurt am Main.

Popitz, H. (2004) Phänomene der Macht.Mohr: Tübingen.

Rorty, R. (2004) Kontingenz, Ironie und Sol-idarität. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Schmidt, S. J. (2003) Geschichten & Diskurse.Abschied vom Konstruktivismus. Miteinem Vorwort von Mike Sanbothe.Rowohlt: Reinbek bei Hamburg.

Schmidt, S. J. & Pörksen, B. (2002) “Wirbeginnen nie am Anfang.” In: Pörksen, B.(ed.) Die Gewissheit der Ungewissheit:Gespräche zum Konstruktivismus. Carl-Auer: Heidelberg, pp. 166–188.

Spivak, G. C. (1988) In other worlds. Essays incultural politics. Routledge: New York.

Stierlin, H. & Pörksen, B. (2002) “DieFreiheit, das Neue zu wagen.” In: Pörksen,B. (ed.) Die Gewissheit der Ungewissheit:Gespräche zum Konstruktivismus. Carl-Auer: Heidelberg, pp. 189–210.



Mathis Danelzik has studied communication, politics and philosophy at the WWU Münster, Germany, and graduated with an M.A. in communications, culture and media from Coventry University, UK. He currently is a Ph.D. fellow at the International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at the JLU Giessen. The Ph.D. thesis is concerned with strategies and dilemmas of culturally sensitive and participative campaigns against female genital cutting. His first contact with the work of Josef Mitterer came through studies with Siegfried J. Schmidt at the Institute of Communication Studies in Münster and has shaped the author's outlook ever since.

THE AUTHOR


Dualism Still at Work:On Wittgenstein’s Certainty

From its seeming to me – or to everyone –to be so, it doesn’t follow that it is so.

What we can ask iswhether it can make sense to doubt it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969), §2

In his posthumously published book

On Cer-tainty

(1969), Ludwig Wittgenstein offered avery attractive solution to problems that du-alism cannot deal with very well. It is a solu-tion that differs in many ways from the solu-tion Mitterer gives with his non-dualism (seeMitterer 1992). To put it bluntly: Wittgen-stein’s pragmatic investigations of certaintyshow how to allow dualistic worldview with-out being a dualist. From this point of view,Wittgenstein’s concept of certainty can alsobe taken as an alternative to Mitterer’s non-dualism.

1

In this respect, Wittgenstein’s con-

cept can be accepted as a problem-solvingmodification of (radically) constructivist ef-forts because (radical) constructivism faces anumber of problems. Mitterer does not ceaseto confront constructivists with one of them.He criticizes them for adopting constructiv-ist concepts on the one hand, but on the othersticking to a fundamental paradigm of real-ism, which is a dualist position (see Mitterer1992, pp. 115–149 or Mitterer 2001, pp. 120–128). Mitterer also describes more recenttendencies in philosophy that are similar toradical constructivism, which he refers to as“post-analytic neopragmatism” (Mitterer1992, p. 16).

2

Indeed, Mitterer finds somepositive aspects in these post-analytic posi-tions, as they have smoothed the way to mov-ing away from dualistic positions. These po-sitions, however, have – analogously to (rad-

ical) constructivism – not entirely overcomedualism

3

or might, as, for example, in thecase of Richard Rorty, unjustifiably considerepistemological questions obsolete (Mitterer2001, p. 21).

4

Contrary to this opinion, thistext wishes to show that it would make senseto orient towards a “post-analytic neoprag-matism” that includes a repositioning of con-structivist standpoints. To me, a “post-ana-lytic neopragmatism” seems very attractivein this context, which can be placed in the tra-dition of Wittgenstein and, especially, has topick up his pragmatically-oriented analysisof language games to create an epistemologi-cal base. Thus the present text intends to leadthe constructivist discourse not in a non-du-alistic direction but in a pragmatic one. It isnot, however, a “pragmatization of construc-tivism,” that is shown here, but Wittgenstein’sepistemological groundwork, which mayserve such a pragmatization.

The bottom line of Wittgenstein’s analysisis fundamentally different from the traditionalepistemology according to Plato. Wittgen-stein, however, gives a completely differentanswer to epistemological problems. In theview of Plato’s tradition you can justify a beliefaccording to the facts of the world and accord-ing to the reasons that are given for the believ-ing. From that point of view, knowing some-thing for sure means that somebody has goodreasons to assume something and that thisassumption corresponds with the reality of theworld. Thus the bedrock of certain judgmentsis a world that is independent from one’s ownviews and judgments (Gabriel 1998, pp. 20–25). Wittgenstein instead thinks that, beforeyou can have good reasons to believe in X or todoubt X, there is a

reasonless

certainty thatcomes first and presents what might be goodreasons to believe, doubt or know. This cer-tainty is not situated in an independent worldand does not have good reasons.

“But I did not get my picture of the worldby satisfying myself of its correctness; nor

Sven Grampp

A

Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen <[email protected]>

R Problem – A dualistic position faces considerable problems as Mitterer, inter alia, clearly pointed out. Mitterer not only wants to name these problems, but to provide a genuine alternative with his non-dualism. However, this non-dualistic alternative also con-tains severe problems. Thus this text suggests preferring Wittgenstein’s concept of a prag-matic investigation of language-games to Mitterer’s non-dualism in order to tackle the problems of dualism. R Solution – With recourse to Wittgenstein’s pragmatic investiga-tion of language-games, a fundamental problem of dualism can be solved. With the concept of certainty, Wittgenstein succeeds in avoiding an ontological grounding in an independent world – or, as Mitterer would put it, the assumption of a “beyond of discourse.” At the same time, the assumption of an independent world as a concept that provides a basis for our language-games is maintained on an epistemological level. This assumption, however, is not maintained as a phenomenon that requires to be substantiated but as a certainty that is constitutive for language-games and does not need to be substantiated. Such a concept is suitable for preventing epistemological operations such as knowledge, doubt, giving rea-sons, etc., from being made void, without having to provide an ontological basis for them. R Implications – Wittgenstein’s point of view therefore provides an attractive alterna-tive to Mitterer’s non-dualism. By getting rid of the “beyond of discourse,” Mitterer’s non-dualism faces the problem of not being able to explain how we can manage to understand epistemological operations within our language-games without referring to a “beyond of discourse.” From this point of view arises the consequence that it would make sense to analyze language-games from a pragmatic standpoint rather than to keep on honing non-dualistic vocabulary. R Key words – dualism, pragmatic analysis, certainty, skepticism, language-games, Wittgenstein vs. Mitterer.



CONCEPTS


CONCEPTS



field of possible reasoning

field of possible doubting and mistaking

languagegame certaintyUx Ux–y Uy […]

do I have it because I am satisfied of its cor-rectness. No: it is the inherited backgroundagainst which I distinguish between trueand false.The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythol-ogy. And their role is like that of rules of agame; and the game can be learned purelypractically, without learning any explicitrules” (Wittgenstein 1969, §§94f).Again, that certainty does not come from

an independent world beyond anythingwhatsoever . It comes from what Wittgensteincalls

language-games

and what we could call

descriptions

so far

to show the similarity toMitterer’s project (see Mitterer 1992, pp. 260–265). It is just a certainty that someone learnsin language-games that are embedded in asocial field and that are exchangeable. The(certain) objects are given only with thedescriptions/language-games; they are notindependent and therefore they are exchange-able within the descriptions/language-games.

Wittgenstein’s position is not merely arejection of a realistic point of view; it is alsoa rejection of a skeptical position becausebefore there can be doubt, there must be cer-tainty. Without certainty we cannot under-stand what doubt could mean. And thus Witt-genstein argues that philosophical skepticismtakes practical doubt, which requires goodreasons, as theoretical doubt of everything,without good reasons. But this theoreticaldoubting of all things is different to the doubtwe learn in language-games and so in Witt-genstein’s point of view it is a misleadingusage of the expression “doubt.”

“The idealist’s question would be some-thing like, ‘What right have I not to doubtthe existence of my hands?’ (And to that

the answer can’t be, ‘I know that theyexist.’) But someone who asks such a ques-tion is overlooking the fact that a doubtabout existence only works in a language-game. Hence, we should first have to ask,‘What would such a doubt be like?’ Wedon’t understand this straight off”(Wittgenstein 1969, §24).I will attempt to clarify this point of Witt-

genstein’s concept with a diagram (Figure 1)followed by a corresponding example.

At the basis of the language-game lies thecertainty (C) that can be expressed in sen-tences such as, “The earth is a globe,” “In myhead there is a brain,” or, more universally,“Physical objects do exist.” And here the cer-tainty plays the role of an

a priori

proposition,or, as Wittgenstein puts it, certainty plays therole of a “

logical proposition

” (Wittgenstein1969, §51, my emphasis). It is important tounderstand that the indicated sentences donot describe

timeless

and

spaceless

a prioris

.And that is a big difference from traditionalepistemology. The sentences merely describecertainties

within

specific language-games.And in principal, there could be many differ-ent language-games with different logicalsentences that are

incompatible

even betweenthemselves. And even in a single language-game, the basic certainties could also changeby and by (Wittgenstein 1969, §96).

But back to the specific of the certainties:they are fundamental not just for our basicknowledge (for example “The earth is aglobe”), but are also are essential for our

epistemic norms

, which regulate our approachto the world. These epistemic norms define atleast the possibilities and the limits withinwhich reasoning, knowledge, doubt and mis-take can ever make sense. But the epistemic

norms themselves are

not

in the field of rea-soning, doubting and mistaking. They cannotbe doubted within the language-game. There-fore to doubt the epistemic norms is a mis-leading application of the role that doubtplays in language-games (Wittgenstein 1969,§§237–242).

To be more specific, I will give an example.Standing in front of a statue in an ancientmuseum, person A might say to person B,“This statue is made of marble.” So there is aclaim of knowledge U

x

which is expressedimplicitly. Then, person B might ask in reply,“Are you sure?” (He might guess that thestatue could be made from a special kind ofwood resembling marble.) In this case, a

prac-tical

doubt is expressed. And person A mightanswer, “Yes I’m quite sure. The statue is hardand plain and cold.” So the claim of knowl-edge is reasoned (U

x–y

). Person B could keepon asking, e.g., “How do you know that?” Andperson A could answer, “I was here just a weekago and I touched the statue with my hand.”So U

x–y

becomes a claim of knowledge U

y

andis reasoned by U

y–z

. If person B were to askafterwards, “What is a hand?” we could imag-ine that B, for example, is Chinese and there-fore does not know the English word “hand.”Person A could explain to him with an indi-cating gesture that “this part of the body iscalled “hand” in English.” The sentence “Thispart of the body is called “hand” in English,”is expressed here with a claim of knowledgethat is reasonable (for example B may look itup in a dictionary; he may ask other people,etc.). It is an utterance that shows how a refer-ence was standardized. And B can give evi-dence of the utterance by looking it up in thedictionary.

Now imagine the case that B looks in a dic-tionary and finds out that what A calls a“hand” is described as an “arm” in there. Per-son B would then ask other people and itwould turn out that in a certain place in Can-ada, where A used to live, people call “hand”in their dialect what the Standard English lan-guage would refer to as “arm.” Person B thenwould come up to person A and tell him aboutthe difference and give him good reason totrust him (the dialect). Then afterwards Acould decide whether he should modify hisreference. Please note that in our example thediscussion is about an explanation of theword “hand” and not about whether a handexists or not (Wittgenstein 1969, §412). It is

Figure 1:

The field of certainty (according to Kober 1993, pp. 149–150). Ux, Uy:utterance and quantum of utterances, respectively, formulated inter alia with claim of knowledge. Ux–y:Ux reasoned/justified qua Ux–y.


2008, vol. 3, no. 3 223

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perfectly clear to person A that there existsuch things as “hand” or “arm,” even if he wereto modify his references.

If we now assume that person B is a skep-tical philosopher, he probably would ask,“How do you know that there is a hand?”(Here he does not ask for adequate or inade-quate references. He asks instead whether Acan be sure of the existence of a hand or anyphysical object anyway). Then A would notunderstand him and would, for example,raise his hand and point at it. Every proof Agives for the existence of the hand will be nomore certain than the certainty of a handbeing there at all. (For example, A does notprove the existence of his hand by looking athis hand so that afterwards he will be morecertain of its existence). In this case it seemsthere is neither reasoned nor even reasonablecertainty. Person A would say, “We refer tothings in this manner, we act in this way,” andso on.

Through conventions, person A acquiredthe certainty that his hand exists. Within asocial field he grew up with the certainty thatthere was a hand. Before there can be anydoubt at all, preceding certainties are requiredthat are uncircumventable and that first andforemost set the norm for an expression suchas “hand” corresponding to something exis-tent in the world. Moreover, in that way, it isetablished that there must be an accordancebetween an expression and the world; andwhat “according” even means is also stan-dardized (Wittgenstein 1969, §203).

Education does not work in such a waythat someone tells a child, “You have twohands and you can trust me that they are apart of the physical world and my descriptioncorresponds with the laws of nature.” Insteadthe child learns the meaning of a word bypractical uses (e.g., “Give me your hand.”).And thus the child develops a comprehensionof how something could correspond with acertain expression. By using expressions suchas “Give me your hand,” “This is a tree,” etc., itoriginates through what we can call a “

logicalcontainer

” (Wright 1986, p. 178; my empha-sis) for possible utterances (for example, thelogical container “There are physical objects,”Wittgenstein 1969, §§35–36). That logicalcontainer is the uncircumventable

and

unrea-sonable certainty.

But back to the example. Person A will notgive up his certainty of the hand (or at least an

arm) being there. And he will not accept anydoubt concerning that certainty because itwould not be not meaningful and would be,in a practical context, senseless. Concerningthis certainty, he cannot make a mistake eventhough the certainty is not reasonable. Sofrom Wittgenstein’s point of view, there is anunquestionable field that is linked to the lan-guage-game about the statue. And if person Bdoubts this certainty, he spoils the language-game and thus even the possibility of a discus-sion about the statue. Because to be able tospeak about the statute, A and B must accept,and, moreover, must have internalized cer-tainties such as “hands exist,” and “you can tellthe material of a statue by touching it withyour hand.”

With that example, I would like to showthat certainty modulates and constitutes afield of possible reasons, knowledge, doubtsand mistakes. In this respect, epistemic norms

are certainties because they regulate the dif-ferent epistemic operations such as doubtingor knowing. And therefore they regulate con-ditions for possible utterances in a language-game. Without certainty, it is not possible toknow or to doubt. Without the epistemicnorms of certainty, you would neither know

how

nor

what

to doubt and know. But the cer-tainty itself cannot be known or doubted andcannot be well-founded, just believed. “At thefoundation of well-founded belief lies beliefthat is not founded” (Wittgenstein 1969,§253).

In my opinion, it is obvious that Wittgen-stein’s concept of certainty has many things incommon with Mitterer’s non-dualism. Tome, Wittgenstein’s rejection of traditionalrealism, especially, seems very close to Mit-terer’s view. Like non-dualism, Wittgensteinemphasizes that it does not make sense tothink about an access to a world beyond andindependent of descriptions and language-games respectively. Only through language-games can you learn the meanings of “hand,”“world,” “truth” or, let’s say, “according tosomething.” Only

after

the constitution of aspecial language-game is it given

from now on

that the world was given millions of years

before

.

5

And as in non-dualism, the objects ofthe world are not just beyond and indepen-dent from the description; they can be modi-fied, too. When the language-game changes,the

a priori

propositions change as well. Andlike Mitterer, Wittgenstein also says that theremust be a basic consensus or, let’s say, a com-mon certainty so that people have the oppor-tunity to offer some new descriptions andperform some common investigations to gen-erate the next basis for new descriptions etc.(Mitterer 1992, pp. 70–71).

But at this point, the first differencebetween Mitterer and Wittgenstein occursvery clearly. For Wittgenstein, the consensuslies so deep in social practice and social educa-tion that no one can overcome it. For Wittgen-stein, what you take as the basis of the investi-gations is not a matter of decision. ForMitterer instead, it seems that it suffices thatpeople can

decide

what should count as thecommon basis for their investigation and whatshould not (Mitterer 1992, pp. 71–74). Thesedifferences lead us to at least three main differ-ences between Mitterer and Wittgenstein. Iwill focus on these differences because thatway I can formulate a criticism of non-dual-

Sven Grampp obtained a Ph.D in media and theater science in 2008 with a dissertation on the printing press as historiographical ref-erence in media theory. His research inter-ests include media philosophy, media and boredom, history of blanking. After been a member of the collaborative research centre “Norm und Symbol” at the University of Konstanz, he has been working since 2006 as a research assistant at the Institut of Media and Theater Science at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.

THE AUTHOR


CONCEPTS



ism from (my interpretation of) Wittgen-stein’s point of view. And thus I hope to show– at least sketchily – an alternative to the non-dualistic philosophy. In order to have a clearstructure, I will put it in the form of theses.

Thesis #1: There are limits to continuing alanguage-game and a description, respectively.

Mitterer says that you need a necessarybasic consensus to carry on with anotherdescription. But this basic consensus

cannot

be an example of the decision as to whether anew description is adequate or not acceptable,or wrong or right (Mitterer 1992, pp. 72–73).The people involved can

decide

to agree upona common test procedure for the new descrip-tion so they are able to build another objectfor another description and so on.

6

In con-trast, Wittgenstein argues that there is nodecision to agree upon a common test proce-dure. The test procedure already exists beforethere is a decision and limits the possibility ofa new description. The limits - of whether adescription is adequate or not acceptable,wrong or right - are not given from the worldbeyond the decisions but from the epistemicnorms of the language-games that build thebasis for the test procedures and thereforeuniversally form the basics of what it means tobe adequate or right.

That does not mean that there is no possi-bility to change the language-games and theepistemic norms (with new descriptions). Butsomeone has to show how the new descriptioncan be integrated into the worldview. Other-wise I will say he is mad, or at least think it, orthat the worldviews are too different to com-prehend (Wittgenstein 1969, §§611–618).Think, for example, of the statement that theaxiom of the excluded contradiction is not agood basis for our mathematical operations.Someone has to show that there are good rea-sons for this, which we can understand in prin-ciple from the basis of our epistemic norms;one may think of Gödel’s incompleteness the-orems. Or think, closer to home, of the argu-ments the non-dualist Mitterer gives againstdualism.

7

In Wittgenstein’s concept, you cantake more than one sentence as the basis of anew description (unlike what Mitterer’s exam-ples suggest). There are many certainties andepistemic terms that surround and give a basisto new descriptions (Wittgenstein 1969,§225). This kind of holism implies that, on theone hand, many things can change when a newdescription is accepted. For example, if it were

proved that water does not normally condenseat 212° Fahrenheit, it would imply not just amodification of thinking about water, butmany changes in thinking about physicaldynamics as well (Wittgenstein 1969, §§292–293). On the other hand, not everything willchange with a new description. So the object ofa description, for example the Aristotelian lawsof logic, might change with a new description,for example Gödel’s incompleteness theo-rems. But

not

every logical norm

and not

everyepistemic norm will change from this. ThusWittgenstein’s concept of certainty andepistemic norms should not mistaken for whatMitterer calls an “independent base of opera-tion” (Mitterer 1992, p. 73); it is, nevertheless,the “local content” where arguments andhence new descriptions can fail

with

reasons.And so there are – unlike what Mitterer sug-gests – limits to a new description.

Thesis #2: You can formulate a universaldoubt; but this is-a misleading use of the rolethat doubt plays in our language-games.

You need some things that are certainbefore you can doubt something. And youneed reasons for doubting just as you needreasons for knowing. That is the way our lan-guage-games are played. But if you doubteverything, as the skeptical position implies,just because you can do it logically, then youuniversalize doubt without having a good rea-son. From that point of view, skepticism ismerely a misleading use of the expression“doubt.”

To some extent, Mitterer’s non-dualismalso takes this misleading skeptical position.Indeed, Mitterer does not say – as Descartesputs it for example – that there could be a

deusmalignus,

who deceives us about the world orabout logical laws. But he does say that everycertainty that is given by dualism is obsolete.And if these certainties are obsolete, then wehave no point of truth, adequateness etc.From that point of view, Mitterer is a skepticalphilosopher, and so we can reply to him as wecan reply, with Wittgenstein, to every skepti-cal philosopher, “Before you can doubt some-thing (for example dualism), you need someepistemic norms that are certain. Otherwise itis just a misleading use of the epistemic norm“doubt.”

Thesis #3: The dualism of object anddescription is an uncircumventable certainty inour language-games and does not need, or,more precisely, cannot have any explanation.

Unlike a traditional skeptical philosophy,non-dualism does not say that things mightbe different to what anybody seems to know.Instead, Mitterer insists that you cannot proveif something is given before a description: thedifference between the world and the descrip-tion is just given within the description. Andthus it is misleading to speak of a world inde-pendent from descriptions (Mitterer 1992,pp. 97–101). In order to clarify this point ofview, Mitterer does not take the epistemicnorm in a misleading way. On that point, hegives good reasons for the doubt that therewould be a world beyond and independentfrom the description. He points out veryclearly that dualism itself would get into aninfinite regress if it were to prove the indepen-dence of the world from the description (Mit-terer 1992, pp. 90–91). But if we understand-dualism in the way Wittgenstein puts it, thisargument fails because from that perspectivethere is

no need

to prove the independence ofthe world. Or more radically, you cannotprove the independence of the world becauseit is a part of our certainties and thus a part ofour “logical content.” Incidentally, we havelearnt that certainty in our language-games.And if the only reason against it is that dual-ism goes in an infinite regress, than this is justa misleading understanding of the concept ofcertainty. The certainties of our language-games are reasonless – and so it is the certaintythat an independent world exists. From thatpoint of view there is no necessity to intro-duce a non-dualizing mode of speaking asdescribed by Mitterer in order to replace thedualizing mode of speaking. Until now, thedualizing way of speaking has just beenfounded in the wrong way, or more clearly, ithas been considered foundable and requiringfounding respectively.

8

The result of Wittgenstein’s point of viewthat he offers in

On Certainty

contains at leasttwo curiosities. Firstly, dualism fails when itcan be proved and succeeds when we leave itunproved. Secondly, there cannot be a worldindependent from language-games, but insome (our) language-games, there is a cer-tainty that an independent world exists. Sodualism still works, but not in a traditionalway. Wittgenstein’s strategy goes beyond thedifference between dualism and non-dualismto some extent, hence also beyond the differ-ence between dualizing and non-dualizingmodes of speaking. His point of view turns

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 225

CONCEPTS



against both the

ontological

claim of dualismthat there is an independent world andagainst the

epistemic

claim of non-dualismthat there is no independent world beyonddescriptions. Consequently, this leads not to adevelopment of a non-dualistic mode ofspeaking, but much more simply to a

prag-matic

analysis of

uses

of expressions andepistemic norms. Nothing else can be done.

“On the other hand, a language-game doeschange with time” (Wittgenstein 1969, §256).

Notes

1. Mitterer himself refers to Wittgenstein, butin a quite different way than how I will tryto do so in my paper. He criticizes the pointof view concerning the problem of seman-tic reference that Wittgenstein offers in his

Philosophical Investigations

(1971). But thisis a completely different subject than theconcept of certainty. In the passage of the


to which Mit-terer refers, Wittgenstein deals with a se-mantic-reference problem. With theexample of the so-called “duck-rabbit,” apicture that can be seen as either a duck ora rabbit, Wittgenstein tries to explain thatsomeone can see, understand and describesomething in quite different ways - in thiscase even as a duck or a rabbit (see Witt-genstein 1971, p. 309). Mitterer criticizesthat position, because Wittgenstein – de-spite his relativization that phenomena indifferent contexts lead to different percep-tions and understandings – assumes that acommon basis is given

beyond

the descrip-tions (Mitterer 1992, pp. 23–29). So in thiscase, Wittgenstein’s position operates withthe more or less unreflected relation of anindependent world and the semantic inter-pretation of this world. In

On Certainty

Wittgenstein don’t write about semanticinterpretations of “something,” instead hethinks about the possibilities to consoli-date this “something”

within

or

dependenton

language-games, respectively. Insofar asMitterer’s critique of Wittgenstein hits onwhat is perhaps a basic problem of the


, it does not hiton the central point of

On Certainty

.Hence, I do not want to refer to Mitterer’scritique on Wittgenstein.

2. Mitterer refers in this context, inter alia, toWillard Van Orman Quine (Mitterer1992, pp. 30–31), Thomas S. Kuhn (Mit-terer 1992, pp. 37–41), and also Wittgen-stein (Mitterer 1992, pp. 23–29). For thepost-analytic theory discourse in the con-text of a semantic holism see, for example,Bertram et al. (2008).

3. More precisely, from Mitterer’s point ofview the whole history of philosophy is theinternalization of the dualizing manner ofspeaking and therefore a project to affirma dualistic world picture by suggesting thata

contingent

assumption, i.e., that there isa basic categorical dualism between lan-guage and world, between subject and ob-ject etc. (Mitterer 1992, p. 11), is an

uncircumventable

and necessary one.

4. In this context it is also worth mentioningRobert B. Brandom. His work counts aspostanalytic philosophy or, much morespecifically, as normative (neo-)pragma-tism. See Bertram et al. (2008), p. 223.

5. For the concept of the dynamic relationbetween description

so far

and descrip-tions

from now on

, see Mitterer (1992), pp.96–101. And for a very clear reconstruc-tion of that concept, see Weber (2005), pp.260–265.

6. For a clear description of this, see the dia-gram in Weber (2005), p. 264.

7. See, for example, the “good reason”against dualism. Mitterer shows veryclearly that the assumption that the worldis independent from and given before ourdescriptions leads to a

regressus ad infini-tum

(Mitterer 1992, p. 90).8. This is not about confronting Mitterer’s

non-dualism with some ontological re-mains that have simply not been thrownoff yet. Mitterer’s standpoint is not that ofa radical skeptic who wants to convince usof the alleged

fact

that nothing exists or thateverything could be just a dream, no morethan he claims that everything could just bea construct. His point of view is – just toemphasize it once more – that the worldcannot be conceived prior to and indepen-dently from the description. To justify thisfact he suggests using a non-dualizing styleof speaking instead of the dualizing one(see Mitterer 1992, pp. 60–101). Neverthe-less are there two problems that remainunsolved. Firstly, it is not clear what would

replace the epistemic norms such as“knowledge” and “doubts”, which are verytightly and most probably even constitu-tively linked to the dualistic idea (see

thesis#2

). To express it more simply: how wouldone be able to make oneself understand-able if the dualistic paradigm fell? Second-ly, Mitterer misjudges the role that isplayed in our language-games by the dual-istic certainty of the independence of theworld. He believes that he can discredit thedualistic style of speaking by giving goodreasons for its inability to be substantiated,but that is exactly what has been made un-necessary by Wittgenstein’s concept, and itresults from a wrong idea of the way cer-tainties are created (see

thesis #3

).

References

Bertram, W., Lauer, D., Liptow, J. & Seel, M.(2008) In der Welt der Sprache. Konse-quenzen des semantischen Holismus.Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Gabriel, G. (1998) Grundprobleme derErkenntnistheorie. Von Descartes zu Witt-genstein. Schöningh: Stuttgart.

Kober, M. (1993) Gewißheit als Norm. Witt-gensteins erkenntnistheoretische Unter-suchungen in “Über Gewissheit.” DeGruyter: Berlin.




Wittgenstein, L. (1969) On certainty. Editedby G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright.Basil Blackwell: Oxford.

Wittgenstein L. (1971) Philosophische Unter-suchungen [Philosophical investigations].Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main. Originallypublished in 1953.

Wright, G. H. von (1986) Wittgenstein. Suhr-kamp: Frankfurt am Main.



Mitterer’s Travels

osef Mitterer is, among various callings, aphilosopher of travel. His friends know

this from direct reports and conversations;others will find it amply demonstrated in hisshort essay on “the reality of travel” (Mitterer1996, henceforth WR).

Granted, some ofMitterer’s colleagues may have overlookedthe essay, which in any case does not comeacross as especially learned or philosophi-cally specialized. His examples come fromconcrete experience as a tour guide, servingas a basis for general reflections over the pre-carious relationship of human beings to thereality that surrounds them and that theyhave nonetheless created. Initially, then, theessay casts some amusing light on the banal-ities of modern package tours:

“After a very warm morning in the VaticanMuseum Betsy Harter steps up to me in anexcited state: ‘I didn’t see the Mona Lisa.’ – ‘Mrs. Harter,the Mona Lisa isn’t here, it’s in Paris, in theLouvre.’ – ‘But you told us we’re going tosee the Louvre.’ – ‘Yes, but we’ll see theLouvre when we get to Paris, today we’re inRome and we’ve looked at the Vatican andSistine Chapel.’ – ‘The chapel was beauti-ful, but I’m a Baptist and if I had knownwe’re not going to see the Mona Lisa, Iwould have stayed at the hotel.’ We’re going to take in the Louvre upthrough the Mona Lisa; if it is not too full,

we’ll also include the Winged Victory andVenus de Milo” (WR p. 156, originalEnglish-language dialog edited by JoelGolb).But below the surface, such accounts

quickly become paradigms of Mitterer’sphilosophical approach. For in the tourists’manifest ignorance regarding the visit’shighlights, their crassly false judgments anddilettantish interpretive efforts, what isrevealed is not so much a cultural or humanflaw within this particular group as a philo-sophical factor of greater resonance – a fac-tor meriting acknowledgment, certainly notdismissal:

“We cultivated middle-class Europeansshare most experiences of the packagetourists from overseas as little as their gen-eralizations and blanket judgments –unless we’re speaking of the weather orother ‘culture-free’ impressions. We criti-cize the fact that the package tourists onlyperceive reality in an abridged, distorted,and falsified form, that they don’t experi-ence the land and people as they reallyare…The distortion and falsification of realitythrough the tourists’ perspective is noth-ing else than the difference from our ownperspective – the discrepancy

from theknow-it-all standpoint that grounds

ourcritique” (WR p. 158, my translation).

Philosopher of viability

To speak along with Josef Mitterer, the phi-losopher: in the end we can only say whatand how the world is from our own perspec-tive, even if we believe we’re saying how it isin reality, without our assistance. In hisdescription of travel, Mitterer puts what hehas presented to colleagues in books such as


(1992) and

DieFlucht aus der Beliebigkeit

(2001) to the testof praxis; and it would seem that it passes thetest. For as we will see, one particular fact –highly confusing philosophically but all toofamiliar on an everyday, shoulder-shrugginglevel – reveals itself precisely in the context oftravel: namely, that the travel-account oftentells us more about the traveler than theplaces he or she has seen. This fact is philo-sophically confusing because especiallymodern travel is perceived as a flight beyondthe customary, as a breakthrough into theother, as an opening up of the distant. Thislonging, and its fulfillment, are expressed asboth spontaneous rapture and animatedreports about what has been experienced.But at the same time, travelers remainentirely with themselves, integrating theirexperiences, as strange as they may be, intotheir own worlds. They undertake their voy-ages from longing for the unfamiliar, the(entirely) other, but this is then transformedinto the entirely familiar, the selfsame.

This doubling can clarify why travelingfascinates Mitterer to such a high degree. Histhinking centers on a process of exposing tothe external world on interfaces, projections,and encounters. It is well known that Mit-terer is an epistemological non-dualist, andthus a thinker of being en route,

par excel-lence

: where other than in today’s tourismcan someone bring his entire daily house-hold over cultural borders without payingany duty? Where else is he at once so self-cen-tered and so abandoned as abroad? Whereelse can he reveal himself so recklessly as heis than when encountering the exotic “other,”safely ensconced in organized tourism’s

Matthias Kross

A

Einstein Forum and University of Potsdam (Germany) <[email protected]>

J

historical


ESSAY

R Situation – Josef Mitterer is, among other callings, a philosopher of “traveling con-cepts” As a leader of various travel groups, he has collected a rich range of material for the adventure of traveling – and has drawn conclusions from that material for his non-dualistic cognitive theory. R Findings – In Mitterer’s view, despite all longings for the “other,” the “strange,” and despite all “self-forgotten expansion of horizons,” in our encounter with the new we always remain systemically bound to our constructions of age and ego. Every putatively authentic encounter is crammed with “constructivist” preconditions. R Implications – Whereas in pre-modern times the voyage was understood as a “wan-dering between worlds,” Mitterer’s epistemology offers us an appropriate framework for the particularities of modern tourism – and with them, for a modern self-understanding in face of the foreign and strange. R Key words – constructivism, post-metaphysical epistemology, traveling concepts.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 227

ESSAY

historical


housing? The modern traveler – that silhou-ette of

homo viator

– is the ideal object forphilosophical fieldwork of Mitterer’s sort.For the tourist already moves by definitionalong a dually structured discursive inter-face: a locus where two discourses perceiveeach other as occupying “the other world,”and that on their encounter pose the ques-tion of how that “otherworldliness” is consti-tuted. When traveling, we always travel intothe heart of Mitterer’s philosophy.

It should be no secret that this philosophyemerges from a reflective modernity, meta-physically-religiously dissonant

and cer-tainly not suited for arbitrary application toother historical epochs and cultural spheres.What it

is

eminently suited for is circumam-bulating around a group tourism oftenlooked down on or ridiculed and compre-hending it as a tense field comprising bothdynamism and stasis: an enthused move-ment outward into what is estranged fromthe familiar and known; and a simultaneousadherence to

the same familiar and known.Those scorning such groups of tourists

have misunderstood the philosophical pointof tourism in a basic way. In mass tourismMitterer discovers an essential quality ofmodern human beings, achieving its expres-sion in a markedly non-dualistic experientialstance. As is well known, dualism as a philo-sophical paradigm was introduced by Des-cartes; we can thank Mitterer for pointing tothis way of describing human interactionwith the world as anything but

clare et dis-tincte,

rather being, on the contrary, distort-ing and misleading.

Inspired by Mitterer’s analysis of latetwentieth century group tourism, I wouldnow like to consider two (seventeenth andnineteenth century) engravings, in order toassemble some philosophical arguments forthe same non-dualism to one particular end:showing that from the seventeenth centuryonward, it has determined our sense of traveland what we can experience en route. In thisframework, the arguments, it is hoped, willhelp us understand

the sluggish figure of ourown age’s group tourist as a late demonstra-tion of the virtues of constructivism – andwill thus illuminate the concept of

viability

introduced by Ernst von Glasersfeld.

ForMitterer’s trans-dualistic thinking, that con-cept is central despite his well-grounded cri-

tique of its epistemological paradoxes in theappendix to his

Die Flucht aus der Beliebig-keit

. Freed from its cognitive-theoretical bal-last, the concept of viability in fact precisely

demarcates the “between” around which thetwo poles of touristic activity, as analyzed byMitterer, oscillate: the search for the strangeand the discovery

of one’s own.

Figure 1:

Francis Bacon:

The Great Instauration

(1620), frontispiece.


ESSAY

historical


Bacon, or the philosopher as travel guide

For a very long time in Europe, travel was byno means viewed as a cheerful setting out forboth new shores and an expanded personality.Roaming through distant and alien realms wasreserved for warriors and the banished. An

oath or the

oistrakismos

, the ban or proscrip-tion, forced a voyage away from home, pil-grimage, or entering service for foreign mas-ters. Superfluous population groups were sentfar off on colonizing migrations; climaticchange imposed new homelands.

If any positive aspects were to be found inlong-distance travel, this had to be in the con-text of return. Despite all wanderings, Odys-seus always voyages

homeward.

The prodigalson comes back as well. As presented plasti-cally in Augustine and Boethius, early Chris-tianity’s

homo viator

wanders through thisworld’s vale of tears before finally returninghome to the Lord. Moses leads his people forthout of Egypt to a new homeland in the prom-ised land – but as that appellation implies, ondivine orders and not from wanderlust. In thissense, the children of Israel are themselves ledback to the Lord.

A profound shift in mentality only set inwith the late medieval voyages of discovery: adevelopment necessitating a philosophicalreevaluation of travel.

If we consider the frontispiece of FrancisBacon’s

Instauratio Magna

(

Great Instaura-tion

), we can gain a sense of the new spirit ofthe great sea voyages. Naturally these voyageswere not undertaken simply for their ownsake, but from a mix of curiosity and the desirefor plunder, avarice and a will to discover theworld. But the frontispiece also depicts ahappy return – the ship in the foreground isnot setting forth but magnificently glidingback to safe harbor, under full sail. Taken fromDaniel 12:4, the frontispiece’s motto,

Multipertransibunt et augebitur scientia

(in the KingJames version: “Many shall run to and fro, andknowledge shall be increased”) signifies that

the sciences will flourish

when human beingstake up the risk of adventurous sea-voyage andare rewarded with a happy homecoming.

Already in the High Middle Ages, the

Hanseatic League had

Navigare necesse est,vivere non est

(“to sail is necessary, to live is

not“) as its motto: both ferocious and defiant,it evokes the extremity of risks and trials fac-ing the age’s merchant-seamen in their questfor treasure. (In rather more muted form, thisis also evoked in the motto of the BremenHanse still visible on the portal of the city’s oldmerchant house, the Schütting:

Buten un bin-nen: wagen un winnen

– “outside and inside:risk it and win.”)

Since Bacon, the same principle applied tothe proliferation of the sciences. Here as well,since his

Great Instauration

, what countedwas voyaging outward, opening oneself toconcrete otherness, the complex alien. Fol-lowing millennia of a metaphysical top-downview of the world, with his avowal of induc-tion, Bacon – the philosophical travel-guide –initiated his early modern contemporariesinto the cognitive worm’s-eye perspective.Surrounded by individual things, flight overthings would no longer be possible, the hori-zontal line receding in proportion to thedetermination to close in upon it. Tellingly,through the Pillars of Hercules, the frontis-

piece opens our gaze out to the infinitely wide

horizon; it

does not move from the rockingship to a safe harbor-mole. Behind the hori-zon, there’s further movement to a “beyond”that we know exists but that lies hiddenbehind the water’s edge.

Flammarion’s wayfarer

I would like to now consider a famous wood-cut by Nicolas Camille Flammarion, includedin his popularizing book on the atmospherepublished in Paris in 1888 (since it stylisti-cally cites late medieval images, the woodcuthas actually itself often been thought old).This work contrasts sharply with the frontis-piece to Bacon’s book, offering a graphicallyhighly charged idea of arrival whose locuswould never be frequented on a trip with

Bacon.

Flammarion in fact depicts a MiddleAges in which our gaze can move past ourown world to a view of divinely ordained cos-mic harmony.

Figure 2:

Nicolas Camille Flammarion:

L'Atmosphère. Météorologie populaire

(1888), p. 163.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 229

ESSAY

historical


The caption beneath the woodcutdescribes its contents thus: “A medieval mis-sionary recounts that he found the pointwhere heaven and earth touch.” Produced inthe age of positivism, the woodcut was thusmeant as a caricature of the medieval way-farer’s doltish world-view: naïve in the notionthat things are so; but in that conceptualframework, plausible in the notion that thewalking-staff itself penetrates the bell ofheaven. Nevertheless, the idea being ridiculedhere is a constitutive element of the dynamicof travel: the expectation of really meetingthat for which we are underway, the other, thebeyond. Expectations are meant to be ful-filled, edifices visited and illuminated; theexplicative stream must flow. If we wishedsimply to stay put on our own estate, neveropening ourselves to the other, setting outwould have no sense.

In this manner, Flammarion’s woodcutthematically addresses a feeling of inadequacyattached to the concept of travel prevailing inBacon’s age. Voyaging inductively meansnever being satisfied with the results of thevoyage. Tossed into the realm of small things,the experience of the other recedes from uslike the horizon to which our gaze opensthrough the Pillars of Hercules. No one hasdescribed this with as much existential conci-sion as Martin Heidegger (1977): caught inour vagabond being-in-the-world, we cannotreach the horizon. One element in the signa-ture of Bacon’s epoch is never being able tostick one’s head through the bell of one’s ownworld. To use one of Wittgenstein’s images, weare caught in the glass fly-trap of our ownworld-view, unknowingly orientated aroundour own being – our

Sein –

in its

Da,

its“there.” We are always seeking it en route, butbecause we are trapped in the “there” and thuscan never reach the beyond, unavoidablyalways land short.

Within the logic of being, the motif ofreturn is thus always ambivalent in Bacon’sepoch. The voyager indeed returns laden withriches; but in his chase after individual details,he will have brought back no new world –rather a collection of trophies with which hecan decorate his own old world, never trulyrearrange it.

Among philosophers, Martin Heideggermost profoundly explored the structure ofBacon’s receding horizon: of the moment ofloss of being on the part of human beings

thrown into the world and wandering aroundin it. For Heidegger, even with the most dis-tant voyage to the end of this world, the lackof contact with one’s own being – that beyondlying outside the everydayness of being-in-the-world – cannot be corrected (Heidegger1977). On the contrary: the being opened upthrough the voyage, although this may indeedinvolve pursuit of the call of that being lying“beyond,” will render Bacon’s world evenmore invincibly hermetic. For his part, Flam-marion’s peasant of early modernity resem-bles Wittgenstein’s metaphysician who suc-cumbs to the illusion of venturing into thebeyond but ends up bruised from runningagainst the horizon’s border, returning thento his own world. Our being is indeed alwaysa setting forth in the world, because, speakingwith Heidegger, it is a search for “beingbeyond.” But in our Baconian world, we canbe promised no arrival on other shores, butrather a return to our point of departure. Ourvoyage is purposeful and without purpose.

Mitterer’s travels

To be sure: in view of the technical-logisticinfrastructure of modern travel, today’sgroup tourist appears like a pyknic descen-dant of the once so athletic migratory tribes-man. Nevertheless, even in the pre-stampedroutines at work in current mass wanderingthrough one after another country, the oldmotif of the search for something beyond, theeffort to push one’s head through the shell ofone’s own world, remains urgently present.Precisely in the wake of the collapse of the reli-gious-metaphysical world-view, the touristhas to

really

seek out his desired place with hisbody, his entire being, all his preset notions, inorder to return to himself at and through theplace.

This ambivalence on the interface betweenone’s own and the other,

ego–alter

and

alter–ego,

constituting the dualism of the other’sother-worldliness through encounter andopposition, is what motivates Mitterer’s ideaof the

viability

of our worldly circumstances.Naturally he himself is traveling and observ-ing with all the others, thus acting as a

con-structing

agent in the field of events. Likeeveryone else, he is subject to the discursiveframework of Bacon’s age of voyage. At thesame time, he does enjoy a privilege: as an

observer of the events who is able to re-con-struct the constructions of which they arecomprised in a very essential way. And pre-cisely because he is a re-constructionist, hecan perceive that a Flammarionian motif infact guides the Baconian expedition’s partici-pants: they hope to encounter a world that isat once accessible on an inner-worldly leveland “other-worldly.”

1

Matthias Kroß is a researcher at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. He studied history, political science, and philosophy in Marburg and Berlin. In 1993, he received his doctorate at the Free University of Berlin with a dissertation on Klarheit als Selbstzweck. Ludwig Wittgenstein über Philosophie, Religion, Ethik und Gewißheit. His research interests focus on the philosophy of logic and language, and on the cultural and intellectual history of the 20th century. He has written extensively and edited works on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Recent publications: (editor): Ein Netz von Normen: Ludwig Wittgenstein und die Mathematik (2007); (with G. Abel und M. Nedo): Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ingenieur – Philosoph – Künstler (2007); (with U. Arnswald and J. Kertscher): Wittgenstein und die Metapher (2003); (with H. J. Schneider): Mit Sprache spielen: Die Ordnungen und das Offene nach Wittgenstein (1999). Since 2006, he is co-editor of Wittgensteiniana, a study series of Wittgensteinian philosophy.

THE AUTHOR


ESSAY

historical


As a philosopher of

reflected

modernism,he can observe the ways in which the playcomprised both of confirming other-world-liness and of dualism dovetails with

the gameof discursive construction; and how thatgame in turn dovetails with that of referentialother-worldly constitution. He knows thatwe cannot arrive behind the mirror, but thatin any event we repeatedly discover ourselvesin the mirror.

Mitterer’s countryman Ludwig Wittgen-stein described philosophy as a voyage to thelimits of language. He explains in the fore-word to his

Logical-Philosophical Treatise

(2001b) that he hopes to furnish thoughtwith a

border

. Like Josef Mitterer later, hewished to be understood as a philosophicaltour-guide and traveling companion. In theforeword to his late work, the

PhilosophicalInvestigations

(2001a)

,

he writes that histraveling landscape is that of language withits many largely incalculable paths – or thatof a Wittgensteinian “ancient city: a maze oflittle streets and squares, of old and newhouses” (Wittgenstein 2001a, §18) full ofnooks and crannies through which he strolls.As an outcome of both philosophers’ travels– hence a starting point for those that follow– we find the insight that, as Wittgensteinwrote in his

Tractatus

, the

world is all that isthe case.

But what, in fact, is the case? Both

Wittgenstein and Mitterer know that in theend whether what is the case is simply adatum or a construction must remain unde-cided. That constitutes the unreachable bor-derline of

any

conceptual horizon. Whowould be able, Mitterer asks in his travel-essay, to conclusively answer the question of“what reality… is in reality?” “To offer suchan answer,” he observes, “we have to desig-nate reality as it (‘really’) is, represent it inour discourse. And such a designation alwaystakes place with the help of one’s own viewsor with the help of the views and conceptionswe share with experts and authorities” (WR,p. 158, translated by Joel Golb)

The voyage continues – but from now onwe at least have a better sense of what we’rereally doing.

Note

1. Unlike Georg Simmel’s (1908) “strang-er,” the traveler and his philosophicalcompanion try very hard to avoid the ex-perience of being treated

as

strangers bynot trying to adapt themselves to the cul-ture of the guest country. The experiencedtourist knows very well that such an effortwould be of no avail.

References

Flammarion, N. C. (1888) L’Atmosphère.Météorologie populaire. Hachette: Paris.

Heidegger, M. (1977) Sein und Zeit [Beingand time]. Heidegger Gesamtausgabe,Volume 2. Klostermann: Frankfurt amMain. Originally published in 1927.

Mitterer, J. (1996) Die Wirklichkeit des Rei-sens. In: Schneider, U.-J. & Schütze, J. K.(eds.) Philosophie und Reisen. LeipzigerSchriften zur Philosophie 6: Leipzig, pp.151–159.



Simmel, G. (1908) Exkurs über den Fremden.In: Simmel, G., Soziologie. Untersuchun-gen über die Formen der Vergesellschaf-tung. Duncker & Humblot: Berlin, pp.509–512.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001a) Philosophical Inves-tigations. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.Originally published in 1953.

Wittgenstein, L. (2001b) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge: London. Orig-inally published in 1961.



Meaning and Description in Non-dualism: A Formalization and Extension

If we cast Marx’s 11th Feuerbach thesisin terms of Mitterer’s non-dualism,

we would have to reformulate it as:“The philosophers have

interpreted

the worlddifferently and therefore

changed

it.”

1. Introduction

The non-dualistic philosophy, elaborated byMitterer (e.g., 1992, 2001) and continuedespecially by Weber (e.g., 2005) is an innova-tive, radical, and inspiring approach withgreat theoretical potential. Since the non-dualistic philosophy does not view itself as a

Paradigma

in the sense of a

Paradogma

, itsdescriptions “so far” explicitly invite furtherdescriptions “from now on” that may change,extend, or specify the original descriptions“so far.” Consequently, this invitation is not,paraphrasing Mitterer (1992, pp. 109f), aninvitation to truth and maintenance but aninvitation to change and extension. The

present article gladly accepts this invitationby tackling three problems or particularitiesof the non-dualistic philosophy “so far.”

Firstly,

what is a description?

Surprisingly,non-dualism’s key term

description

hasremained rather unclear and rudimentarythus requiring a more explicit and detailedconceptualization. In addition, the term

description

is largely disconnected from rele-vant neighboring terms of other disciplines,especially from the sociological and semioticterms

meaning

,

sense

,

category

, or

signified

.Consequently, it has not been possible to con-struct or profit from a potential compatibilityand connectivity between these terms andtheir larger theoretical or disciplinary con-texts. A solution to these problems, shown insection 2, lies not only in connecting the term

description

to the term

meaning

by emphasiz-ing their semantic-pragmatic similarities, butalso in proposing a common, elementary, anddistinction-theoretic definition of both termsas

meaning-description

.

Secondly,

how can non-dualism be formal-ized?

Even though Mitterer has given a sub-stantive-philosophical account, a logicalreconstruction and a formal notation of non-dualism still need to be developed. A solutionto this shortcoming, shown in section 3, is touse the definition of

meaning-description

insection 2 as the basis for the elaboration of anon-dualistic formalization and notation. Thiswill be done by deducing non-dualism fromdualism through the operation of re-entry.

Thirdly,

how can non-dualism be extendedto new domains?

Non-dualism has barely ven-tured outside its philosophical-epistemologi-cal homeland, so there are hardly any exten-sions and applications to other disciplinesand fields. One possible answer to this prob-lem, proposed in section 4, is to extend thenon-dualistic formalization in section 3 to thesemiotic triangle.

2. Description and meaning as a category

2.1 The relation between description and meaning

Non-dualism’s key term

description

may befruitfully connected to one of sociology’s andsemiotics’ key terms, namely

meaning

.

1

From a linguistic perspective, the terms

description

and

meaning

have several seman-tic-pragmatic

similarities

because in everydaylanguage they often convey the same messageand are frequently used in the same way:

(1) As in dualism, common sense consid-ers both terms to be categorically

distinct fromobjects

. The term object is used here as ageneric term that comprises such terms asreality, the world, actions, material things,events, facts, external referents, etc. Typicaldualisms are hence: description vs object,meaning vs reality, description vs world,meaning vs action, etc.

Martin Staude

A

Free University Berlin <[email protected]>

R Problem – The article seeks to tackle three problems of Mitterer’s non-dualistic philosophy. Firstly, the key term description remains not only rather unclear and rudimentary but also isolated from relevant neighboring terms and theories of other disciplines. Secondly, a logical reconstruction and formal model of non-dualism is still lacking. Thirdly, there are hardly any extensions of philosophical non-dualism to non-philosophical disciplines and fields. R Findings – The three main findings of the article are based on the abovementioned problems. Firstly, the non-dualistic term description will be connected to the sociological and semiotic term meaning by emphasizing their semantic-pragmatic similarities. Moreover, a common and distinction-theoretic conceptualization of both terms will be proposed. Secondly, a non-dualistic formalization and logical reconstruction will be elaborated by deducing non-dualism from dualism using the operation of re-entry. Thirdly, the non-dualistic formalization will be applied to the classical semiotic triangle, resulting in the elaboration of a non-dualistic semiotic triangle. R Benefits – The aforementioned findings have two possible benefits. Firstly, the compatibility between the terms description and meaning makes philosophical non-dualism connectable to social science approaches, especially to sociology and semiotics. This may be an important avenue for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization and co-operation. Secondly, the formalization and logical deduction may help to clarify and explicitize non-dualism’s main arguments and implicit assumptions. R Key words – meaning, description, category, re-entry, semiotic triangle, perception, signifier.

philosophical–semiotic


CONCEPTS


CONCEPTS



(2) Consequently, the terms

description

and

meaning

are used in everyday language ina

transitive

or

referential

manner because theynecessarily refer to and are oriented towardsan object. Put in linguistic terms, they requirea direct object such as the verbs

to invite

or

toraise

. Frequently, the word

of

fulfills this tran-sitive or referential function as in

the meaningof flowers

or

her description of Marseille

.(3) Descriptions and meanings are often

portrayed as

immaterial, mental, or unobserv-able

, which distinguishes them from objects.For example, the description of Marseille as

aFrench city

and the meaning of flowers interms of

love and emotionality

are usuallyviewed as psychic concepts or abstract repre-sentations that are not directly tangible bysensory perception or measuring instru-ments.

(4) Both terms are usually seen to be

sub-jective, personal, or idiosyncratic

, i.e., bound toand determined by a specific actor or system.For instance, the description

the Gulf War isillegal

can only stem from society’s legal sys-tem and the meaning of flowers in terms of

love and emotionality

may only be valid forone particular person but not for another.

(5) Accordingly, everyday reasoning por-trays descriptions and meanings as

contin-gent, multiple, and changeable

because eachactor or system may make and unmake her orits own descriptions and meanings. Forexample, Henry gives the description orattributes the meaning

the table is round

,whereas for Maria

the table is nice

. Andtomorrow Maria may change her descriptionto

the table is ugly

.(6)

Language

is seen to be the prototypicalmedium in which descriptions and meaningsare formed. Especially complex descriptionsor meanings are based on words and signs,e.g., the description of Marseille as

a blue-skied but crime-ridden French city

or themeaning of a look as

a subtle and warm invi-tation

.

2

From a linguistic perspective, these are sixsemantic-pragmatic

similarities

between theterms

meaning

and

description

– as used andconveyed in everyday language. In the samevein, both terms exhibit some semantic-prag-matic

differences

that I will not, however,address here because they are not crucial tothe following discussion.

3

Based on this com-parison, I have found that the semantic spacesof the terms

meaning

and

description

are nei-

ther completely identical nor completely dis-joint, but they are partially overlapping, i.e.,both terms share many similarities but alsoexhibit some differences (similarly to otherterms such as

dog

and

cat

). Within the overlapzone, the terms

meaning

and

description

are infact indistinguishable (similarly to the words

dog

and

cat

, which are indistinguishable intheir semantic overlap zone of

animal

and

usually kept as pet

).In this view, description and meaning are

“two sides of the same coin” – their distinc-tion and differences are relevant from oneparticular perspective, e.g., the perspective ofthe “heads-or-tails player” who is only inter-ested in the “sides of the coin”, whereas theirdistinction and differences are irrelevantfrom another perspective, e.g., the perspec-tive of the “bank-account holder” who is onlyinterested in the “coin” itself. In a similar vein,my argument is that the semantic-pragmaticdifferences between

meaning

and

description

,i.e., the non-overlapping parts of theirsemantic spaces, are irrelevant for the follow-ing discussion of non-dualism. Instead, myfocus will be almost exclusively on the seman-tic-pragmatic similarities between

meaning

and

description

, i.e., the overlapping parts oftheir semantic spaces. This argument is basedon two hypotheses: Firstly, the semantic over-lap between both terms is so large that thesemantic non-overlap can be disregarded andis hence irrelevant. Secondly and most impor-tantly, even if the first argument is invalidatedor rejected, I argue that it is only the semanticoverlap that is relevant for the following dis-cussion of non-dualism so that the semanticnon-overlap plays no crucial role and is henceirrelevant. Due to this relative irrelevance ofthe differences between and non-overlap ofthe terms

meaning

and

description

, I will con-sequently use both terms synonymously andinterchangeably in the remainder of this arti-cle (or I will use the compound

meaning-description

).An important advantage of focusing on

the semantic-pragmatic similarities betweenboth terms while disregarding their differ-ences is to make non-dualism’s findings andits key term

description

both

connectable to

and

compatible with

sociology’s and semiot-ics’ findings and their key term

meaning

. Thisconnection and compatibility is advanta-geous for both “parties”, i.e., one the onehand, for non-dualism, and on the other

hand, for other disciplines or theories such associology and semiotics: Firstly, each partymay profit from the other party by tappinginto the other party’s theoretical sources so asto provide itself with new resources and letitself be beneficially irritated by the otherparty’s arguments. Secondly, the particularadvantage for non-dualism is that it mayincrease its scope of application and validity –not only by being extended and translated toother disciplines and theories outside itsphilosophical homeland, but also by beingconcretized and filled with more empirical orpractical contents provided by other disci-plines and approaches.

2.2 A definition of description and meaning

Let us now turn to a possible definition of bothterms. Instead of an ontological, substantial-ist, or essentialist conceptualization, I proposea formal, structuralist, or distinction-theo-retic conceptualization inspired by SpencerBrown (1969).

The beginning of Spencer Brown’s logico-mathematical calculus can be reconstructed asfollows. In a first step, a

distinction

or bound-ary is drawn in an unmarked space, which cre-ates two separate sides that are

symmetrical

. Ina second step, an

indication

or marking ismade of only one side of the distinction,whereas the other side is left unmarked so thatthe two sides of the distinction become

asym-metrical

. These two steps are summarized bySpencer Brown’s claim that “we cannot makean indication without drawing a distinction”(1969, p. 1), that is, an indication logically pre-supposes a distinction. For example, in a firststep, one may draw a circle on a blank sheet ofpaper so that two equal spaces come intobeing, namely the inside and outside of the cir-cle, and in a second step, one may indicate orshade only the inside of the circle, while ignor-ing or not shading the outside of the circle.According to Jokisch (1996, p. 87), this assym-metrization of the symmetry, i.e., the indica-tion of and preference for only one side of thedistinction, is important because it guaranteesthe connectivity to and continuity of subse-quent operations.

Spencer Brown’s approach has raised sev-eral questions and problems leading to con-troversies and refinements. Accordingly, I willbase my conceptualization of the terms

description

and

meaning

on an aspect of his

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 233

CONCEPTS



M MELSE

approach that is less controversial but moreconsensual and that is less refined but morefundamental: the final outcome of the secondstep where a state of an asymmetrical distinc-tion prevails.

4

I propose the following stipulative defini-tion:

A description or meaning denotes “some-thing particular”, which is marked or indicated,so that it is automatically distinguished from“something different” or “all the rest”, whichremain unmarked or ignored.

To render thisdistinction or relation clear, I notate the“something particular” by the symbol

M

andthe “something different” as well as the “all therest” by the subscripted symbol

M

ELSE

. Theindication of

M

logically presupposes the dis-tinction between

M

and

M

ELSE

. Consequently,Krämer argues that whenever a distinction ismade, meaning is produced (1998, chapter3.2) and Schmidt holds that descriptions arealways distinctions (Setzungen) (2003, pp. 25–32, 55). Put in linguistic terms, a descriptionor meaning is a category, namely M, because aframe or border is set up that separates M fromMELSE and that unites M in itself as an ownidentity. Figure 1 depicts this argument.5

Whereas M as “something particular” is bydefinition always bound and formed, MELSE as“something different” is also bound andformed, but MELSE as the residual “all the rest”is boundless and formless. Accordingly, Fig-ure 1 depicts M as a clearly bounded andformed rectangle. When speaking about theconcrete content of a particular M, I use thenotation M = |…|, where the vertical lines area shorthand or symbol for the rectangle. Incontrast, Figure 1 depicts MELSE deliberatelysomewhat ambiguously: On the one hand,MELSE as “something different” is bound andformed, which is shown by the written nota-tion MELSE instead of a blank space. On theother hand, MELSE as “all the rest” is boundlessand formless, which is shown by the diffuseand amorphous blank space instead of a rect-angle.

For example, in a conversation a speakercommunicatively indicates “something par-ticular” such as M = |OBEDIENT|, so that sheautomatically excludes “something different”such as the antonym MELSE = |DISOBEDI-ENT| and “all the rest” such as MELSE =|FLOWERS|, |TO SING|, |THE TABLE ISROUND|, |MARSEILLE|, |SUBTLE|, etc.

This conceptualization of M as a categoryis a common denominator of non-dualism’sterm description and of sociology’s as well assemiotics’ term meaning – rendering bothterms compatible and connectable.7

The conceptualization of meaning anddescription as category M applies to a contin-uum of cases, including the following twopoles:

2.3 Rudimentary, intuitive, vague categoriesAt one pole there are M that are extremelyrudimentary, intuitive, simple, unspecific, orvague knowledge. This includes Mitterer’s(1992) non-dualistic term rudimentarydescription or object indication such asM = |TABLE|. This also includes Wierzbicka’s(1996) semantic primes that are elementaryand universal meaning components shared byall natural languages and constituting a kind oflexicon of human thoughts, e.g., |TO FEEL|,|NOT|, |YOU|, |BECAUSE|, or |GOOD|.

Often such M are not or cannot easily belexicalized into words or linguistic expres-sions: For example, when Pavlov’s bell-condi-tioned dog hears the bell ring, it instinctivelyactualizes the rudimentary meaning M =|FOOD|; a driver on a highway suddenly acti-vates the vague description M = |PAYATTENTION!|; a Buddhist monk in medita-tion actualizes the intuitive feeling of M =|WELLBEING|; or in terms of Gestalt psychol-ogy, a baby looking at its surroundings makesout a particular M = |GESTALT|. These exam-ples show that such rudimentary or intuitive Moften relate to the semantic field of sensoryperception – a point also noticed by Saeed(2003, p. 33).

This begs the question: Are these kinds of Malways linguistic, i.e., based on language? Non-dualism’s answer “so far” is yes (Mitterer 1992,pp. 56–62; Weber 2005, pp. 18, 252, 324). Inorder to make the discussion more excitingand to test out another route, my answer fromnow on is no – trying, nevertheless, not to fallback into dualism. My answer is twofold:

Firstly, the examples given above were notdescribed live by the first-order actor or experi-encer in situ, e.g., by the dog, the driver, themonk, or the baby, but they were and canonly be re-described retrospectively by a sec-ond-order observer or analyst ex situ, e.g., byme who can only re-describe the described.Re-description, as in these cases, implies lan-guage use. Consequently, the observer can-not not use language, i.e., he must use lan-guage and words such as food, pay attention,wellbeing, or gestalt, so that his M are neces-sarily and always linguistic (especially whenwriting an article). However, linguistic ele-ments such as words or punctuation marksare but a special subtype (hyponym) of a cat-egory (hypernym). Accordingly, the actor orexperiencer herself can make live descrip-tions in situ that are not linguistic, but cate-gorial – i.e., not based on language but on cat-egories. On the one hand, of course, sayingthat M may be non-linguistic is itself a lan-guage-based M, namely M = |M MAY BENON-LINGUISTIC|. For example, Weberargues that images and sounds are not dis-tinct from language because they are them-selves language-based categories, namelyM = |IMAGES| or M = |SOUNDS| (2005, p.324). But on the other hand, these are M ofthe observer and not of the actor.

Secondly, non-dualism’s stance may beled ad absurdum by pushing it to its extremeconsequences. Non-dualism “so far” consid-ers M to be always based on language. Thispresupposes that the M-maker actually uses– and is in principle able to use – language,i.e., words, grammar, syntax, etc. But babies,baboons, and bacteria do not use language.They would thus be unable to produce anyM. But M are necessary for cognitive pro-cesses such as thinking, knowing, wanting,or remembering. Lacking any such cognitivecapacities, babies, baboons, and bacteriawould consequently be unable to communi-cate, to learn, or even to survive! Despite mydeliberate exaggeration, it seems clear thatnon-dualism “so far” is rather unclear aboutthe relation between language, communica-tion, and M – and, therefore, needs to pon-der this relation further. My proposition isthat actors – including babies, baboons, andbacteria – operate on the basis of categoriesthat may sometimes take the special form oflinguistic categories. Language is thus but asubtype of category, just as language is a sub-

Figure 1: Description or meaning M as a category.6



CONCEPTS

philosophical–semiotic non-dualizing philosophy

type of communication. The Language ofThought hypothesis supports such a view.8

Instead of a substantialist conceptualizationthat considers a category’s ontological statusto be always linguistic, I prefer a formal anddistinction-theoretic conceptualization thatdoes not specify a category’s ontological sta-tus, e.g., whether it is a linguistic structure,a mental representation, objective knowl-edge, logical form, a material-physicalentity, etc.

Chandler emphasizes the limits of lan-guage by remarking that words often fail us inadequately representing certain experiences,e.g., smell, touch, etc (2002, p. 3). Eventhough I agree that language may fail toexpress an experience, categories do not failbecause a rudimentary, intuitive, or vague Mis always activated in terms of some category,e.g., the actor spontaneously knows “some-thing particular” such as M = |I SMELLEDTHAT…| instead of “something different”such as MELSE = |I HEARD THAT…|, or sheintuitively knows M = |I LIKED THE SMELL|instead of MELSE = |I DIDN’T LIKE THESMELL|. In conclusion, description andmeaning M is category-bound, but not neces-sarily language-bound.

I hope to have shown that a category-based approach to description and meaningdoes not entirely exclude or reject a language-based approach, but includes and transcendsit by bringing the focus down to a more fun-damental and general level: This is the level ofcategory M vs MELSE, whose ontological sta-tus remains open and undetermined.Accordingly, a language-based approach todescription and meaning may become inte-grated as a special and limited case into amore elementary and comprehensive cate-gory-based approach.

2.4 Linguistic, elaborated, complex categoriesAt the other pole of the continuum there areM that are highly linguistic, word-bound,elaborated, or conceptually complex. Twosubtypes may be distinguished:

Firstly, rudimentary M may be combinedsyntagmatically so as to create a compoundM. For example, the four individual rudimen-tary descriptions M = |THIS|, M = |TABLE|,M = |TO BE|, and M = |ROUND| may becombined to form the complex descriptionM = |THIS TABLE IS ROUND|.

Secondly, Saeed notes that complex mean-ings often involve whole theories or culturalcomplexes, such as M = |MARRIAGE| orM = |RETIREMENT|. These meanings are lexi-calized in a particular word, namely marriageand retirement, but there are numerous mean-ings that are not lexicalized such as M = |ATOOL FOR COMPACTING DEAD LEAVESINTO GARDEN STATUARY| (2003, pp. 33f).

Consequently, complex M depend onwords and language in order to be conveyedand understood. From the point of view of lan-guage, “language is the system of meaning parexcellence; it cannot not mean, and all of itsexistence is in meaning” (Lévi-Strauss 1945, p.58). From the point of view of meaning, mean-ing is not necessarily language-bound, as I haveshown in section 2.3, but it must be stressed,however, that the prototypical resource andprincipal source for making meaning is lan-guage (Halliday 1993, p. 113). Language hencebecomes not only a prototypical medium foractivating M in general, but is inevitable foractivating elaborate, precise, or complex M.

2.5 ConclusionAn important conclusion from the precedingsections is that descriptions or meanings, interms of M as category, are crucial for andomnipresent in communicative and psychicsystems. Several authors and approaches havecaptured similar ideas:

The cognitive linguist Lakoff argues:“There is nothing more basic than categoriza-tion to our thought, perception, action, andspeech. Every time we see something as a kindof thing, for example, a tree, we are categoriz-ing. Whenever we reason about kinds ofthings – chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions,any kind of thing at all – we are employing cat-egories. Whenever we intentionally performany kind of action, say something as mundaneas writing with a pencil, hammering with ahammer, or ironing clothes, we are using cat-egories” (1987, pp. 5–6).

Ethnomethodology and the sociology ofknowledge argue that actors apprehend situ-ations, behavior, and other actors by puttingthem into typifying categories, e.g., M = |IT’SA JOKE| or M = |HE IS AN ENGLISHMAN|, soas to grasp their meaning, to understandthem, and to normalize them. This normal-ization by means of categorization especiallyoccurs when such situations, behaviors, oractors seem to be strange, abnormal, or

incomprehensible – such as those provoked inethnomethodological breaching experiments(Joas & Knöbl 2004, pp. 233–234; Berger &Luckmann 1966, chapter I.2).

And finally, for sociological systems the-ory, meaning (Sinn) – or in my terminologyM – is the universal medium in which bothpsychic and communicative systems operate(Luhmann 1984, chapter 2).

3. Dualism’s re-entry creates non-dualismIn this section, I briefly review the central argu-ments of dualism and non-dualism as pre-sented by Mitterer (1992, 2001). This is neces-sary to convey subsequently how non-dualismcan be formally deduced using a re-entry oper-ation of dualism into itself. Even though Mit-terer has already given a substantive-philo-sophical explanation of non-dualism, aformal-logical explanation still needs to bedeveloped. In so doing, I propose a formalizednotation of non-dualism that may help clarifyand refine non-dualistic terminology.

Mitterer compares dualism and non-dual-ism by means of the distinction betweenobject vs description, or synonymouslybetween world vs meaning. Dualism and non-dualism conceptualize the second side of thedistinction almost identically, namelydescription or meaning, whereas they radi-cally differ in their conceptualization of thefirst side, namely the object or world. Hence,the dualism-vs-non-dualism debate is con-cerned primarily with the object or world.

3.1 DualismAccording to Mitterer, dualism presupposesor produces a dualistic distinction, which Inotate as DDUALISM, with two sides: The firstside of DDUALISM is the object, a generic termthat comprises such terms as world, reality,action, referent, event, thing, or fact. I notatethe object or world by the symbol W, forinstance W = the table or W = this. The sec-ond side of DDUALISM is the description ormeaning, notated by M, of the object or worldW, for instance M = |THE TABLE IS ROUND|or M = |THIS REMINDS ME OF MY CHILD-HOOD|. Dualism’s distinction is thusDDUALISM = W vs M, which has numerouslexical surface variations depending on thetheory and discipline.9

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Within the distinction DDUALISM = W vsM, both sides are considered to be mutuallyexclusive and distinct, i.e., the object of thedescription is distinct from the description ofthe object (Mitterer 1992, p. 39). Figure 2shows the ontological difference between Wand M by depicting W as a white rectangle andM as a shaded rectangle.10

Note that in Figure 1 a particular M is dis-tinguished from MELSE, i.e., M vs MELSE. Con-sequently, there is an ontological homogeneityin the sense that there are only meanings andtherefore they all have the same ontologicalstatus. However, in Figure 2, the distinction Wvs M implies that there is an ontological heter-ogeneity because meaning and world have dif-ferent ontological statuses. Within this dis-tinction, W is prioritized and apriorized withrespect to M because W is the fixed startingpoint and exists before there are any M. Inother words, W is independent of and existsprior to M. Consequently, M is always second-ary, belated, and hence oriented towards W.

This may be expressed formally by thenotation M(W), i.e., a meaning of the world, adescription of an object, reality interpreted assomething specific, an object described assomething particular. The words of and as pre-suppose that W and M are ontologically dis-tinct, e.g., in Mitterer’s example someonegives a description of the table or interprets atriangle as an arrow (1992, p. 23). Conse-quently, it becomes possible to produce differ-ent or contradictory M of the same W, e.g.,Saint-Exupéry’s (1943, pp. 87f) little princesees the W = stars as M(W) = |STARS|, butthe businessman interprets the W = stars asM(W) = |WEALTH|. Due to their distinctnature, M is not and can never be W, even if Mapproximates W.

According to Mitterer, dualism comes intwo versions – realism vs constructivism –because both versions presuppose or use thedualistic distinction DDUALISM = W vs M. Thedifference between realism and constructiv-ism resides in the way they conceptualize therelation between W and M: Whereas realismfocuses on W and analyzes W’s role in the cre-ation of M, constructivism focuses on M andstudies M’s role in the constitution of W (1992,pp. 11–12, 49).

3.2 Non-dualismMitterer considers dualism with its dualisticdistinction DDUALISM = W vs M to beoptional and avoidable, but not a necessaryand inevitable prerequisite. Instead of pre-supposing or using DDUALISM, Mitterer notonly ignores and circumvents DDUALISM, buthe also succeeds in deconstructing and unify-ing DDUALISM. His main arguments run as fol-lows (1992, pp. 89–98):

Dualism asserts that W as such is distinctfrom and free of M, formally notated as thedistinction between W vs M. However, non-dualism argues that this assertion is inconsis-tent because in formulating this assertion, Wis already indicated by an M, namely byM = |W AS SUCH IS DISTINCT FROM ANDFREE OF M|, formally notated as the unity ofthe distinction M = |W vs M|. For example, ifI assert that an object such as my apple as suchis undescribed and without meaning, I auto-matically describe the apple as M = |MYAPPLE AS SUCH IS UNDESCRIBED ANDWITHOUT MEANING|.11

At time t1 dualism asserts that W existsbefore there are any M of it. This may be for-mally notated by W before M. However, non-dualism argues that this assertion can only bemade after there is an M at time t0, e.g., afterthere is at least an indication of W by meansof a rudimentary M at t0 such as M = |W|.Formally notated, before one can say or thinkM = |W BEFORE M| at t1, one has to say orthink at least M = |W| at t0. For example,before I can assert at t1 that the apple existsbefore I make a description of it, it is necessarythat I use at t0 the rudimentary meaningM = |APPLE|, so as to be able to formulate att1 the above assertion M = |THE APPLEEXISTS BEFORE I MAKE A DESCRIPTIONOF IT|. Before a particular M, there is no pre-M or M-free stage where dualism’s uninter-preted W prevails: going back to previous

stages or digging deeper into the world, Witt-genstein can never reach W’s bedrock wherehis “spade is turned”, because he will onlyreach W’s indication, namely an M such as arudimentary description.

The same argument applies to sensory per-ception, which is usually seen as a relation ormedium between the subject or actor and theobject or world. According to Mitterer (2001,p. 35) and Weber (2005, pp. 33ff, 259f, 317–332), dualism argues that there is anunbridgeable distinction between perceptionvs M, more precisely, between the perceptionof the W vs the M of the perception of the W,and that perception is temporally prior to M.However, the same non-dualistic counter-arguments as above can be advanced: Dual-ism’s argument is a distinction and conse-quently a description, namely the unity of thedistinction M = |THERE IS AN UNBRIDGE-ABLE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PERCEP-TION vs M| and M = |PERCEPTION IS TEM-PORALLY PRIOR TO M|. Moreover, dual-ism’s argument about the perception of W isa description, namely M = |THE PERCEP-TION OF W|. For example, in dualism’s per-ception I see a big W, but dualism’s allegedlyM-free visual perception is already M-laden,namely M = |I SEE A BIG W| and this M con-tains various rudimentary M, e.g., the subjectof perception is indicated as M = |I SEE A BIGW| instead of MELSE = |YOU SEE A BIG W|,the mode of perception is described as M = |ISEE A BIG W| instead of MELSE = |I TOUCH ABIG W|, the property of the object is catego-rized as M = |I SEE A BIG W| instead ofMELSE = |I SEE A SMALL W| and finally, theobject itself is indicated by M = |W|. Conse-quently, the perception of an object and thedescription of the perception of an object areontologically identical, i.e., perception and Mform a unity. All of dualism’s assertions turnout to be category-based M.12

There is an interesting analogy betweennon-dualistic description and linguistic nega-tion. The starting point is an object W such asan apple. In linguistics, in order to carry outthe operation of negation N, i.e., negating ordenying the existence of an object W, forexample N(W) = This is not an apple orN(W) = He has no apple, W must necessarilybe indicated by an affirmation A, for exampleA(W) = apple. Hence, negation N is only fea-sible and possible by using a previous affirma-tion A. Consequently, a negated object N(W)

Figure 2: Dualistic distinction DDUALISM = W vs M.


M

W

DDUALISM =


CONCEPTS


M

W

DDUALISM =re-enters

presupposes an affirmed object A(W). In non-dualism, in order to be able to talk or thinkabout W, for example |WHERE IS THEAPPLE?| or |THE APPLE IS RED|, W must nec-essarily be indicated by a description M, forexample M = |APPLE|. Hence, W is onlythinkable and discussable by using a previousM. Consequently, an object W presupposes adescription M. Summarizing both approachesit may be said that for an object W to exist or tobe negated, it must necessarily be indicated by adescription M. I conjecture that this parallelbetween the non-dualistic approach to theexistence of objects and the linguisticapproach to the negation of objects is notaccidental but is structurally closely linked.13

In conclusion, non-dualism holds thatdualism’s W is only accessible and existent asM, that is, by being indicated, categorized, ordescribed as some kind of category M. Otherauthors and theories have expressed similarideas: systems theory holds that the “world isonly accessible as meaning” (Krämer 1998,chapter 4); the theory of interpretative con-structs argues that an action is and exists onlyas a description or interpretation (Lenk 1978,pp. 292–314); symbolic interactionism as-sumes that “an object is anything that can beindicated or referred to” so that objects aredefined in terms of meanings for a particularactor (Blumer 1969, pp. 11f); and, especiallyfor sorcerers, “reality, or the world we allknow, is only a description” (Castaneda 1972,p. 8). To illustrate these arguments: There isno marriage without the actors having theidea of marriage and there is no murder with-out the actors knowing the meaning of amurder (Pharo 2004, p. 259). The prerequi-site for describing, knowing, interpreting,

thinking, or speakingabout W is thus the in-dication of W by meansof a rudimentary cate-gory M. Similarly,Schmidt argues thatonly by means of catego-ries and distinctions cansomething be thought,perceived, and de-scribed as something(2003, pp. 31f, 95). If Wis not indicated by M, Wcannot be described,known, interpreted,thought, or spoken

about because it is unclear what the thoughts,descriptions, knowledge, interpretations, orcommunications exactly refer to. Without in-dication, all is included and nothing is ex-cluded.

Consequently, the W is an M, namely |W|.The world is but a semantically indicated,described, categorized, or signified world, i.e., ameaning that is marked as the world – in asimilar sense that attribution theory consid-ers causes to be psychically or communica-tively attributed causes, i.e., descriptions thatare marked as causes. The world is a descrip-tion, but a special description that describesitself and is marked as the world, i.e., as“something particular” that everyday lan-guage, the dominant discourse, or the com-mon sense label as having the prototypicalproperties and attributes of the world.

3.3 Re-entryIn this section, I elaborate a more formalizedreconstruction and logical deduction of Mit-terer’s non-dualism. Even though neverexplicitly declared, Mitterer’s implicit strat-egy of deconstructing and unifying DDUALISMmay be reconstructed as a re-entry.14

Mitterer has cogently shown that W is onlyaccessible by M, so that W is but a special M.This justifies the dualistic distinctionDDUALISM = W vs M re-entering as a wholeinto one of its two sides, namely into M andnot into W. Figure 3 shows this re-entry.15

There are two results of this re-entry,namely the non-dualistic unity and the non-dualistic distinction. In the following, I dis-cuss both results in this sequence.

(1) The non-dualistic unity is depicted inFigure 4.

Figure 4 shows that dualism’s distinctionDDUALISM is but a meaning, namely |DDUAL-

ISM|, or synonymously, dualism’s distinctionbetween W vs M is itself but an M, namely |Wvs M|. Moreover, during the re-entry process,a distinction has been transformed into a unity:The dualistic distinction DDUALISM = W vs Mhas been transformed into the non-dualisticunity UNON-DUALISM = M(W vs M). There isnow a monism of M.16

On the one hand, this is because the firstside of the dualistic distinction DDUALISM =W vs M, namely W, is theoretically ignored orleft unused. Note that dualism’s W, depictedin Figures 2 and 3 as a white rectangle, nolonger appears in Figure 4.17

On the other hand, this is because the sec-ond side of the dualistic distinction DDUAL-

ISM = W vs M, namely M, is exclusivelyemphasized. Within the formula M(W vs M),the M is dominant and monistic because itsstructural position in the formula shows thatit entirely determines and governs its sub-script (W vs M).

A sociological translation of this non-dual-istic unity UNON-DUALISM = M(W vs M) maylook like this: M as such are unavoidable, nec-essary, and omnipresent, so that any psychic orcommunicative attempt to reach dualism’s Wnever leads directly to W but only to M, whichmay then be semantically indicated as W.

Figure 3: Re-entry of DDUALISM = W vs M into M.


M

UNON-DUALISM = =

M

W M = M(W vs M)DDUALISM

Figure 4: The non-dualistic unity.


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Luhmann arrives at a similar conclusion(1984, chapter 2, 1997, chapter 1.III). On theone hand, meaning as such, i.e., as a generalmedium, is universal, inevitable, and non-negatable for all communicative and psychicoperations, so that it is impossible to reject itor not to use it. Even the sentence M = |THISIS SENSELESS|, the term M = |NONSENSE|,the invented word M = |FULCIBY|, Chom-sky’s allegedly meaningless M = |COLOR-LESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY|, orM = |IT HAS NO MEANING| are meaning-“full” because they use categories. For exam-ple, the category M = |MEANINGLESS| is dis-tinguished from the antonym categoryMELSE = |MEANINGFUL|, so that this distinc-tion itself M = |MEANINGLESS vs MEAN-INGFUL| is a category and hence meaning-“full.” On the other hand, meaning as a par-ticular form is avoidable and negatable, sothat it can be rejected or left unused. However,a concrete meaning can only be rejected andleft unused in exchange for accepting andusing another concrete meaning. For exam-ple, a speaker in a conversation may choosenot to talk about the meaningM = |OBEDIENT|, but to activate instead themeaning M = |CREATIVE|. Or she may nottalk at all, but then she would still use a mean-ing by activating M = |SILENCE|. In analogyto communication theory’s axiom of the“impossibility of not communicating” (Wat-zlawick, Beavin Bavelas & Jackson 1967, chap-ter 2.2), one might argue for the impossibilityof not making M. Consequently, Mittererargues that the object of the description andthe description of the object form a unitybecause both are descriptions (1992, p. 56).18

(2) The non-dualistic distinction is pro-duced by spelling out the non-dualistic unityM(W vs M) into MW vs MM. This is shown inFigure 5.

A distinction as such is maintained, but thedualistic distinction DDUALISM = W vs M istransformed into the non-dualistic distinc-

tion DNON-

DUALISM = MW vsMM. The generaldistinction betweenobject vs descrip-tion, or betweenworld vs meaning,is not abandonednor does it remainon a primary level,

but instead, becomes integrated and sub-scripted into the larger non-dualistic unitywithin which it figures as a secondary andqualifying level.

A sociological translation of the non-dual-istic distinction DNON-DUALISM = MW vs MMmay read as follows: The distinction madeand to be made is between different types ofM, that is, between an M that semanticallyauto-describes it(self) as W – namely MW –and an M that semantically auto-describesit(self) as M – namely MM. Accordingly, twonotational changes are made:

Firstly, dualism’s W is substituted by non-dualism’s MW. For example in dualism, the lit-tle prince sees W = stars, but in non-dualism,the little prince gives the description MW =|STARS| in contrast to “something different”or “all the rest” such as MELSE = |EARTH|,MELSE = |SUBTLE|, MELSE = |TO SING|, etc.Or, in dualism, the little prince is sure to“wahr”-nehmen (i.e., “truly” take in, “truly”perceive) W = stars and he thinks that thebusinessman interprets the stars asM(W) = |WEALTH|, whereas in non-dual-ism the little prince gives the descriptionMW = |STARS| and the businessman gives thedescription MW = |WEALTH|. At this point,there may be a similarity between non-dual-ism and constructivism: Both the little princeand the businessman give descriptions ormake constructions that are unequal in thatthey may be differently connectable, viable,appropriate, robust, etc, but they are equal inthat they have the same ontological status asdescriptions or constructions and not asobjects, world, things, or reality.

Secondly, dualism’s M(W) is substitutedby non-dualism’s MM. For example, in dual-ism Henry sees W = flowers and interpretsthem as M(W) = |LOVE AND EMOTIONAL-ITY|. In non-dualism, Henry gives the inter-pretation MW = |FLOWERS| and interpretsthis interpretation in terms of MM = |LOVEAND EMOTIONALITY|.

In summary, MW is a meaning-descriptionthat semantically auto-describes it(self) asworld-object and MM is a meaning-descriptionthat semantically auto-describes it(self) asmeaning-description. This argument can bemade clearer by using and explaining theconcepts of first-order observation and sec-ond-order observation (Foerster ed. 1981;Luhmann 1993a) and of auto-description andallo-description (Luhmann 1997, chapter 5;Kieserling ed. 2003).19

The starting point is the expression MW orMM are meaning-descriptions M that semanti-cally auto-describe them(selves) as world-object W or as meaning-description M. I willproceed in three steps:

Firstly, I substitute the symbols W and Mby the more general symbol X so that X = Wor M.

Secondly, from the first-order perspectiveof a particular description or observer, thisdescription or observer is X:

I am X.Thirdly, from the second-order perspec-

tive of another description or observer, suchas a particular theory or a linguist, thingslook different. On the one hand, as for thecontrast between be vs auto-describe, the sec-ond-order description or observer cannot saythat the first-order description or observer isX but that this first-order description orobserver auto-describes it(self) as X. On theother hand, as for the contrast between X vsdescription, the second-order description orobserver cannot say that the first-orderdescription or observer is X but that this first-order description or observer is a description.To put both arguments together, a second-order description allo-describes the first-order description as a description that auto-describes it(self) as X:

|I ALLO-DESCRIBE YOU AS A DESCRIP-TION THAT AUTO-DESCRIBES YOU(RSELF) AS “I am X.”|For example, since I substituted the sym-

bols W and M for the more general symbol X,let’s now look at the specific case of X = W:

From the first-order perspective, W issuch-and-such, e.g., I am the world, I am priorto and distinct from meaning, I am an object, Iam independent of subjective knowledge andwill, I am constraining and external to theactor, I am material and tangible, I am objec-tive, I am difficult or impossible to modify,etc.20

Figure 5: The non-dualistic distinction.


DNON-DUALISM = MW = MW vs MMMM


CONCEPTS


M

Mlevel (2)

Wlevel (3)

Mlevel (2)

Wlevel (3) MM

level (1)

MW

dualistic distinction

DDUALISM = W vs M

non-dualistic unity

UNON-DUALISM = M(W vs M)

non-dualistic distinction

DNON-DUALISM = MW vs MM

Figure 7: Dissection of Magritte’s painting.


Figure 6: Magritte’s 1931 painting “La Belle Captive.” With kind permission of VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 239

CONCEPTS


However, from the second-order perspec-tive such as non-dualism or sociology, this Wauto-describes it(self) as W, e.g., it portrays orpresents itself as |I AM THE WORLD|, |I AMPRIOR TO AND DISTINCT FROM MEAN-ING|, |I AM AN OBJECT|, |I AM INDEPEN-DENT OF SUBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE ANDWILL|, etc. In other words, the second-orderdescriptions allo-describe the first-orderdescription as a meaning-description thatauto-describes it(self) as world-object. Thatis, non-dualism functions as a second-orderobserver giving allo-descriptions of first-order observers’ auto-descriptions. WhereasW auto-describes it(self) as non-M = W, thesecond-order descriptions allo-describe W asM that auto-describes it(self) as non-M = W.Accordingly, W is an M but a particular Mbecause it auto-describes it(self) as non-Mand thus as W, namely MW.

The status of a particular M either as MWor as MM is not a priori fixed or predeterminedbecause it depends on the perspectiveadopted by the observer whether shedescribes the M as world-object or as mean-ing-description. Also, the status of a particu-lar M either as MW or as MM is not eternallyconstant and unalterable because an observermay change the status of an M within an utter-ance or a conversation. For example, Mariaand Henry watch a scene from a movie. Mariamay give the description MW = |SOMEONEWITH A GREEN JACKET| and then interpretsMM = |A POLICEMAN|, but Henry may givethe description MW = |A POLICEMAN| andthen interpret MM = |DANGEROUS|.Depending on the observer, |A POLICEMAN|is categorized as meaning-description MM byMaria because she considers the policeman tobe the interpretation of a prior object,whereas |A POLICEMAN| is categorized asobject-world MW by Henry because he con-siders the policeman to be the object of a sub-sequent interpretation.

In summary, the re-entry of the dualisticdistinction DDUALISM = W vs M into M yieldstwo results: Firstly, UNON-DUALISM = M(W vs

M) denotes the non-dualistic unity of M. Sec-ondly, DNON-DUALISM = MW vs MM denotesthe non-dualistic distinction between M auto-describing it(self) as W and M auto-describ-ing it(self) as M. In section 2.2, I proposed theconceptualization of meaning and descrip-tion in terms of category M vs MELSE, whereasin this section, I propose the conceptualiza-

tion of the non-dualistic distinction MW vsMM. Comparing both conceptualizations, it isobvious that they are not only compatible, butthat MW vs MM is but a special and deducedcase of M vs MELSE. This suggests that the dis-cussion so far is internally consistent.

3.4 An artistic illustrationTo render non-dualism’s abstract formulasand theoretical arguments more concrete andintelligible, I portray a visualization of non-dualism using one of Magritte’s surrealistpaintings shown in Figure 6.21

Let us dissect the painting non-dualisti-cally. Three different levels can be distin-guished: (1) The level of Magritte’s paintingitself and as a whole, embedded within thetext of the present article. (2) The level of thepainting embedded within Magritte’s paint-ing, i.e., the canvas put on the easel anddepicting some houses and a horse pulling acarriage. (3) The level of Magritte’s paintingthat is neither (1) nor (2) but that depicts the“real world” of the large field and pasture, thebig tree, some houses and people. Figure 7gives an analytical overview.

On the left side, Figure 7 shows the dualis-tic distinction DDUALISM = W vs M becausedualism only takes two of the abovemen-tioned levels into account, namely level (3) asthe “real world” of the large field and pasture,the big tree, some houses and people (shownas a white rectangle), and level (2) as the can-vas put on the easel and depicting somehouses and a horse pulling a carriage (shownas a shaded rectangle).

In the center, you can see the non-dualisticunity UNON-DUALISM = M(W vs M) becausenon-dualism argues that dualism has ignoredlevel (1) as the level of the painting itself andas a whole, embedded within the text of thisarticle: Firstly, level (3) as W is only accessibleby using level (1) as M, i.e., you can onlydepict, indicate, think, or speak about W byusing an M because without level (1) therewould not even be Magritte’s painting in thisarticle. Secondly, the distinction betweenlevel (3) and level (2) is only depictable byusing level (1), i.e., the dualistic distinctionmust necessarily be indicated by the non-dualistic unity of the dualistic distinction. Butsince level (1) is but a painting, it corresponds– just like level (2) – to M (shown as a shadedrectangle; there is no longer a white rectan-gle). Consequently, the dualistic distinction

W vs M can only be a description, namely |Wvs M|.

On the right side, Figure 7 depicts the non-dualistic distinction DNON-DUALISM = MW vsMM, which emphasizes that – from the per-spective of level (1) – there are only descrip-tions, namely two different descriptions: adescription that semantically auto-describesit(self) as world, i.e., MW, and anotherdescription that semantically auto-describesit(self) as description, i.e., MM.

3.5 Descriptions up to now and from now onIn this section, I turn to temporal and proces-sual aspects of descriptions and meanings.Dualism and its distinction DDUALISM = Wvs M are rather static and synchronic. But evennon-dualism and its distinction DNON-

DUALISM = MW vs MM were depicted in theprevious discussion in such a static and syn-chronic manner. However, Mitterer’s originalnon-dualistic version (1992, 2001) doesaccount for temporal and processual aspects.

The starting point is the non-dualistic dis-tinction between MW vs MM. Even though thisis not Mitterer’s original terminology, but mymodified formalization, it can still be con-nected to his original terminology. MW andMM are two stages in a temporal process:

The first stage is MW, which is an indica-tion of the world by means of a rudimentarydescription. Mitterer calls this stage thedescription so far, which I find more conve-nient to call the description up to now.22 It isthe existent description that has already beenmade and that prevails up to the present. Inotate this formally as MW = … , whichis shorthanded into MW = –|…–| .23 From anon-dualistic perspective, dualism’s W is anM, namely MW: The object of the description –dualism’s W – is the description up to now –non-dualism’s MW (Mitterer 1992, pp. 56–62). For example, in a discussion among car-penters, Henry communicatively introduceshis object of description by indicating it asMW = –|THIS TABLE–| . The indication of theobject by means of a rudimentary descriptionup to now constitutes the base and startingpoint for further and more complex descrip-tions in the second stage.

The second stage is MM, which is the con-tinuation of the previous description MW bymodifying or adding something new to it.Mitterer calls it the description from now on. It


CONCEPTS


MW = –| THIS TABLE –|

MM = |– IT’S ROUND |–

MW = –| THIS TABLE IS ROUND –|

MM = |– IT’S NICE |–

MW = –| THIS TABLE IS ROUND AND NICE –|

time

1

2

3

4

5

actors

Henry

Brian

Henry

is the description that has not yet been madeand that still remains to be made. I notate thisformally as MM = … , which is short-handed into MM = |–…|–. The description ofthe world or of the object is the descriptionfrom now on, which follows and continuesthe description up to now. In dualism, themeaning or description is directed toward andrefers to the world or the object, whereas innon-dualism the meaning or descriptionstarts from and continues the world or object:Since the world is, as shown in the first stage,but the description up to now, the descriptionfrom now on starts from the description up tonow by continuing it (Mitterer 1992, pp. 56–60). In other words, MM is a description-start-ing-from-and-continuing-a-previous-descrip-tion. Resuming the above example of the dis-cussion among the carpenters, Henry’s de-scription up to now, MW = –|THIS TABLE–| ,is taken up and continued by Brian who addsthe description from now on, MM = |–IT’SROUND|–.

These two stages taken together, i.e., thedescription up to now MW and the descrip-tion from now on MM, come to constitute anew description up to now. For example,Henry’s MW = –|THIS TABLE–| and Brian’sMM = |–IT’S ROUND|– come to form the newdescription up to now, MW = –|THIS TABLEIS ROUND–| . This new description up to nowcorresponds to the first stage, which I havealready presented above, so that it serves as a

starting point for further and new descrip-tions from now on. For example, Henry mayresume the new description up to now,MW = –|THIS TABLE IS ROUND–| , by addinga new description from now on, MM = |–IT’SNICE|–. Once again, both preceding descrip-tions taken together, i.e., the new descriptionup to now and the new description from nowon, come to constitute another new descrip-tion up to now, MW = –|THIS TABLE ISROUND AND NICE–| . And so on. Figure 8reviews the previous argument.

This leads to one of non-dualism’s princi-pal arguments: Since objects are description-sensitive and description-dependent, theobject of description is – by means of thedescription of the object – modified anddeveloped into a new object of furtherdescription. In the above example, the objectconstantly changes: first there is a table, thenthere is a table that is round, and finally, thereis a table that is round and nice. Put differ-ently, the world or reality is but the latest stateof affairs, the attained discourse positions, thedescriptions up to now (Mitterer 1992, pp. 57,60f, 67, 104, 110; Weber 2005, pp. 282, 318ff).

It is in this sense that the reformulation ofMarx’s 11th Feuerbach thesis, given at thebeginning of the article, is to be understood.Marx’s original thesis is “The philosophershave only interpreted the world differently,but the point is to change it.” This thesis isdualistic because “to interpret the world” is

distinct from “to change the world.” In con-trast, a reformulation of Marx’s thesis couldbe “The philosophers have interpreted theworld differently and therefore changed it.”This reformulation is non-dualistic because“to interpret the world” is identical with “tochange the world.” Any new interpretationfrom now on changes or extends the interpre-tations up to now and consequently the worldup to now.

With regard to this argument, there is aninteresting parallel between speech act theoryand non-dualism. In speech act theory (Searle1969), some speech acts and utterances areperformative or declarative in that they simul-taneously perform a particular action orautomatically declare a particular state ofaffairs – instead of only describing or pre-scribing a particular action or state of affairs.In short, words change the world in that theuttering of words logically entails the changingof the world. For example, if a priest in a mar-riage ceremony says to Maria and John Ihereby declare you to be husband and wife, hiswords automatically change the world,namely from a previous “world withoutMaria and John’s matrimony” to a subse-quent “world with Maria and John’s matri-mony.” A similar but more explicit and radicalreasoning can be applied to non-dualism. Alldescriptions and meanings are performativeor declarative in that they simultaneously per-form a particular action or automatically

Figure 8: Non-dualistic process of descriptions up to now and from now on.


2008, vol. 3, no. 3 241

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declare a particular state of affairs. In short,descriptions change the world in that themaking of a description logically entails thechanging of the world. For example, if a jour-nalist reports that MM = |–A NEW AIRPORTWAS BUILT|–, his words automaticallychange the world, namely from a previousMW = –|WORLD WITHOUT THIS AIR-PORT–| to a subsequent MW = –|WORLDWITH THIS AIRPORT–| .24

Figure 8 may be used to draw a furtherconclusion. Since descriptions may be seen asoperations (Weber 2005, pp. 351f) and sincea system is composed of successive opera-tions, the sequential series of descriptionsdepicted in Figure 8 consequently constitutesa system. In this case, the series of successivedescriptions up to now and from now on con-stitutes a communicative system in the formof a conversation between Henry and Brian.The conclusion is that descriptions or mean-ings as such are autopoietic, reflexive, recur-sive, or self-referential because a particular Malways continues or categorizes a previous M,thus forming a system of descriptions… M^ M M … or more precisely… –|M–|^ |–M|– ^ –|M–| ^ … or even more pre-cisely … ^ –|MW–| ^ |–MM|– ^ –|MW–|^ … Put differently, interpretations followprior interpretations and descriptions con-tinue previous descriptions in Mitterer’s non-dualism (1992, pp. 25, 56); statements are fol-lowed by statements in discourse theory;“meaning always refers again to meaning andnever from meaning to something else” inLuhmann’s systems theory (1984, p. 96);interpretations can only be made of otherprior interpretations in Gidden’s doublehermeneutic (1993) as well as in the interpre-tative turn (Bohman, Hiley & Shusterman1991, pp. 7–10); and the semiotic principledeclares that “a sign cannot be reduced oranalyzed into any combination of thingswhich are not themselves signs” (Goddard1994, p. 7).

4. A non-dualistic semiotic triangleIn this section, I apply the non-dualisticapproach to the semiotic triangle so as to elab-orate a non-dualistic semiotic triangle. Thegoal is simply to extend the non-dualisticapproach to new domains of inquiry so as to

show that non-dualism can be fruitfullyapplied and used outside its philosophical orepistemological homeland. I will first brieflyjump back to dualism and then turn to non-dualism.

4.1 Dualistic triangleWithin the dualistic distinction DDUAL-

ISM = W vs M, the W stands for a conglom-erate of such terms as world, object, sensoryperception, real-world event, material thing,sensation, concrete action, reality, etc. Itseems fruitful to divide this conglomerateinto two parts, which results in the elabora-tion of the classical, i.e., dualistic, semiotictriangle. That is, W is split into (1) some con-crete entity of the world, often called the refer-ent, which I notate as R, and into (2) somemode of perception or presentation of the refer-ent R or of the meaning M, often named thesignifier, which I notate as S.

This distinction between the referent Rand the signifier S is neatly summarized byJames’ statement that the word dog does notbite (1911, p. 85) and visualized by Magritte’sfamous painting La trahison des images sub-titled Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not apipe, 1929). For example, the referent couldbe the real-world object R = the Eiffel Towerand one of its signifiers could be the visualsight of S = I see a photo depicting a big metalthing or the acoustic sound of S = '7if{l't7U{r. Similarly, the meaning could beM = |A SMALL ANIMAL WITH FEATHERSAND A BEAK THAT CAN FLY| symbolizedby a signifier in the form of the written Span-ish word S = pájaro.

The justification for splitting W into Rand S can be found in semiotic theory:

With regard to R, semiotics and especiallyPeirce’s conceptualization clearly acknowl-edge the world- and non-meaning-characterof R because it is seen as a concrete and realobject, action, event, or exemplar in theempirical world outside the semiotic sign(Chandler 2002, pp. 20, 32–36, 58f; Eco 1976,pp. 58–62).

With regard to S, semiotics casts the signi-fier too in terms of world and non-meaning.The signifier is the material-physical form ofR or M, directly apprehendable by sensoryperception, that manifests itself to the actor(Chandler 2002, pp. 18f). Perception andsensation themselves are, as shown in section3.2, usually conceptualized as distinct from

and prior to meaning and description M.Accordingly, perception and sensation – interms of the relation between the referent orobject R and the actor or subject – is clearlyseen to belong to the level of W and not to thelevel of M.

Moreover, sometimes it may be ambigu-ous whether “something” of the world orreality W is a referent R or a signifier S. Forexample, a pair of scales may either be seen asa referent R = a pair of scales in that it is a sub-ordinate real-world exemplar of the exten-sion of the superordinate meaningM = |TECHNICAL DEVICES FOR WEIGH-ING OBJECTS OR PERSONS| or it may beseen as a signifier S = a pair of scales in that itsymbolizes the meaning M = |LAW|. Ambi-guity as such is only possible if the twoambiguous “somethings” stem from thesame source or level. In the case of the ambi-guity between R and S, this same source orlevel that both belong to is the ontologicallevel of W.

Since S and R are two manifestations of W,W is consequently replaced by S and R:Instead of the dyadic model W vs M, we getthe triadic distinction S vs R vs M. In looseanalogy to Cottingham (1985), dualism isthus transformed into “trialism”, which is theclassical semiotic triangle as depicted in Fig-ure 9. Note that both the dualistic and the tri-adic model remain within the realm of dual-ism because an unbridgeable ontologicalheterogeneity is assumed between M(depicted as a shaded rectangle) on one sideand on the other, W and its component partsS and R (depicted as white rectangles).

This semiotic triangle is but one particu-lar version among many, which have –depending on theory, discipline, and epoch –denominated and conceptualized differentlythe three angles of the triangle.25

4.2 Non-dualistic triangleI now apply non-dualism to the classicaldualistic triangle. In section 3.3, I explainedthe conversion from the dualistic distinctionDDUALISM = W vs M into the non-dualisticunity UNON-DUALISM = M(W vs M) and intothe non-dualistic distinction DNON-DUAL-

ISM = MW vs MM. An analogous conversioncan be applied to the semiotic triangle: inthese formulas, W can be replaced by itscomponent parts, i.e., the signifier S and thereferent R.


CONCEPTS


non-dualistic unity

M

S R

UNON-DUALISM = M(S vs M vs R)

non-dualistic distinction

MM

MS MR

DNON-DUALISM = MS vs MM vs MR

M

First, we obtain the non-dualistic unityUNON-DUALISM = M(S vs R vs M), which impliesthat the whole classical dualistic triangle is buta meaning or description.

Second, we obtain the non-dualistic dis-tinction DNON-DUALISM = MS vs MR vs MM,which implies several aspects: The signifier isalways a semantically indicated signifier,namely MS, i.e., a meaning that auto-describesit(self) as signifier. The referent is always asemantically indicated referent, namely MR,i.e., a meaning that auto-describes it(self) asreferent. The meaning is always a meaningsemantically indicated as meaning, namelyMM, i.e., a meaning that auto-describes it(self)as meaning, that is, a meaning that continuesa previous meaning that itself has been seman-tically indicated as signifier MS, as referent MR,or as meaning MM.

Figure 10 shows this non-dualistic trans-formation of the dualistic triangle. Note thatthere are no longer any white rectangles,which previously indicated the level of W orits component parts S and R. Instead, there areonly shaded rectangles so that meaning M, assuch, has become monistic.26

The non-dualistic transformation of thesemiotic triangle is accomplished. To summa-rize: According to non-dualism’s second-orderallo-description of the triangle’s angles, theangles are meanings M (non-dualistic unity),but according to the angles’ first-order auto-description of themselves, the angles are eithersignifier S, referent R, or meaning M (dualisticdistinction). Combining second-order allo-description and first-order auto-descriptionleads to the conclusion that the triangle’s anglesare meanings that semantically auto-describe

them(selves) as signifier MS, as referent MR, oras meaning MM (non-dualistic distinction).

In the following paragraphs, I briefly allo-describe how the triangle’s angles auto-describe them(selves). From an intuitive andcommon sense perspective it may sound oddto say that the triangle’s angles auto-describethem(selves) but from a second-order andnon-dualistic perspective, the angles aredescriptions and therefore they can, and evencannot not or must, deliver auto-descrip-tions:

(1) The referent auto-describes it(self) as aconcrete entity or exemplar of the world orreality that is distinct from and prior to themeaning and the signifier. It views itself asbeing rather independent of subjectiveknowledge and will, constraining and exter-nal to the actor, often material and tangible,observable, objective or at least intersubjec-tive, and difficult to modify. Typically, the ref-erent auto-describes it(self) as an object, anaction, an event or situation, a Durkheimiansocial fact, a person or actor, etc.27

(2) As already explained in section 2.1, themeaning auto-describes it(self) as distinctfrom the referent and the signifier; as transi-tive or referential; as immaterial, mental, orunobservable; as subjective, personal, or idio-syncratic; as contingent, multiple, or change-able; and as prototypically language-based.Typically, the meaning auto-describes it(self)as interpretation, signification, sense, con-strual, reading, construal, understanding, etc.

M

W

dualism’sdyadic model

M

S

dualism’striadic model

R

transformation

Figure 9: Dualism’s dyadic model transformed into dualism’s triadic model.


Figure 10: Non-dualism’s triadic model.


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(3) The signifier auto-describes it(self) asthe mode of perception or presentation of thereferent or of the meaning, as the material-physical form of the referent or meaning, thatis directly and intersubjectively apprehend-able by sensory perception. The signifierstands for something different than itselfsince it always symbolizes a meaning or refersto a referent.28

Here is a brief example of the relationbetween the three angles: the written Frenchword MS = |AMOUR| or the perception ofMS = |I SEE HIS RED ROSES| are meaningsthat auto-describe them(selves) as signifiers;they symbolize MM = |A STRONG FEELINGOF CARING ABOUT AND LIKING SOME-ONE| that is a meaning that auto-describesit(self) as meaning; it refers to the particularcase of MR = |HENRY LOVES MARIA|, whichis a meaning that auto-describes it(self) as ref-erent.29

5. Conclusion

The goal of the article has been to tackle threeproblems or particularities of non-dualism“up to now” by proposing specific solutions“from now on.”

The first problem was the lack of anexplicit and detailed conceptualization of thekey term description as well as its isolationwith regard to neighboring terms and theirtheoretical-disciplinary contexts. The solu-tion proposed in section 2 consisted of con-necting the term description to the sociologi-cal and semiotic term meaning byemphasizing their semantic-pragmatic simi-larities. Both terms were subsequently con-ceptualized as a category by means of the dis-tinction M vs MELSE. This procedure allowedboth terms to be used synonymously in termsof meaning-description. It was also shown thatmeaning-descriptions, alias categories, can belocated on a spectrum with two extremepoles: on the one hand, rudimentary, intui-tive, and vague categories, and on the other

hand, linguistic, elaborated, and complex cat-egories. The advantage of the terminological-theoretical compatibility between the termsdescription and meaning was to make philo-sophical non-dualism connectable to socialscience approaches, especially to sociologyand semiotics. This may be an important ave-nue for interdisciplinary cross-fertilizationand co-operation. The common denomina-tor and theoretical springboard for suchendeavors would be the key terms descriptionand meaning – including derivative or seman-tically neighboring terms such as category,language, signifier, discourse, sense, text, etc.

The second problem was the lack of a log-ical reconstruction and formal model of non-dualism. The solution offered in section 3 wasto deduce non-dualism from dualism byusing the operation of re-entry. In so doing,the dualistic distinction DDUALISM = W vs Mwas transformed into the non-dualistic unityUNON-DUALISM = M(W vs M) – which empha-sized the monism and inevitability of mean-ing-descriptions as such – and into the non-dualistic distinction DNON-DUALISM = MW vsMM – which distinguished between meaning-descriptions that auto-describe them(selves)as object-world and meaning-descriptionsthat auto-describe them(selves) as meaning-descriptions. Moreover, it was argued that thenon-dualistic distinction may be viewed interms of the temporal distinction betweenpreceding meaning-descriptions “up to now”–|M–| and subsequent meaning-descriptions“from now on” |–M|–. The advantage of thisformalization and logical deduction is that ithelps to clarify and explicitize non-dualism’smain arguments and implicit assumptions aswell as to assess non-dualism’s internal con-sistency and integration.

The third problem was the lack of exten-sion of philosophical non-dualism to non-philosophical domains and fields. One possi-ble solution proposed in section 4 was toextend the non-dualistic formalization to theclassical dualistic semiotic triangle. The resultwas the elaboration of a non-dualistic semi-

otic triangle based on the triad MS vs MM vsMR, that is, meaning-descriptions auto-describing them(selves) as signifier-percep-tion, meaning-descriptions auto-describingthem(selves) as meaning-description, andmeaning-descriptions auto-describingthem(selves) as referent-object. However,apart from the semiotic triangle, non-dual-ism may be fruitfully extended to and used ina wide array of disciplines, theories, andfields. Among these, interpretive, linguistic,and discursive approaches in the social sci-ences may be particularly sensitive to non-dualism’s focus on description, meaning, andlanguage.

Martin Staude is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Having grown up in East Germany and with the high school diploma in the bag, I set off for the UK and USA to work and study. This trav-eling and the Castaneda books got me interested in other cultures and languages. So I began to study social anthropology and economics at the Freie Universität Berlin. My areas of interest were economic prac-tices and structures in different societies as well as development processes and foreign aid, but also questions of methodology and epistemology. Field research and intern-ships took me to Mexico, Senegal, Venezu-ela, and France – and sometimes to the hospital. The title of my M.A. thesis was Cof-fee Production and Commercialization: Deci-sion Making among Indigenous Peasants and Rural Merchants in Oaxaca, Mexico. Work-ing on my Ph.D. thesis, I became fascinated with sociology, linguistics, and semiotics, which revealed new worlds to me. The working title of my Ph.D. thesis is Meanings and Meaning Fields: A Theoretical Outline from Semio-linguistic Sociology Through the Example of Power and Law.

THE AUTHOR


CONCEPTS


Notes1. Semantically similar terms to description

and, especially, to meaning are: sense, Sau-ssure’s signified, signification, concept,connotation, interpretation, Peirce’s in-terpretant, construal, understanding,idea, gist, typification, notion, categoriza-tion, definition, reading, discourse, narra-tive, statement, enunciation, utterance,text, word, speech, representation, model,classification, knowledge, systems theo-ry’s semantics, constructivism’s second-order reality, labeling theory’s label, or at-tribution theory’s attribution. However,to keep the terminology simple and coher-ent, I will stick with the terms descriptionand meaning.

2. Other examples for descriptions, as pro-posed by non-dualism, include: table, thistable is round, the earth is older than hu-manity, Africa, Africa is one of the five con-tinents, this is a triangle (Mitterer 1992) orthe minister’s resignation, the denial of anaccused person, a low suicide rate in the re-gion, the Gulf War, image, sound (Weber2005, chapter 6.1).

3. Without aiming at a comprehensive oreven exhaustive analysis, I will, neverthe-less, present some of the semantic-prag-matic differences between the terms mean-ing and description. Consider the sentencesthe description of the flower and the meaningof the flower. (1) The term description ap-plies rather to those objects whose proper-ties are easily observable and visibly on thesurface, e.g., the description |THIS FLOW-ER IS RED|, whereas the term meaning ap-plies rather to those objects whose proper-ties are difficult to observe and hidden insomething deep, e.g., the meaning |THISFLOWER REPRESENTS LOVE|. (2) Fol-lowing from the preceding argument, theterm description has a realist connotationevoking the notions of truth, neutrality, andimpersonality. Therefore, the description ofthe flower |THIS FLOWER IS RED| can betested and examined to determine its truth,appropriateness, or acceptability. In con-trast, the term meaning has an idealist con-notation evoking the notions of subjectivity,multiplicity, and creativity. Consequently,the meaning of the flower |THIS FLOWERREPRESENTS LOVE| cannot be examinedor tested to determine its truth, appropri-

ateness, or acceptability. On a more generallevel, it may be said that the term descrip-tion refers rather to statements that are con-text-, observer-, and use-independent,whereas the term meaning refers rather tostatements that are context-, observer-, anduse-dependent. For example, the descrip-tion |THIS FLOWER IS RED| is supposed tobe valid or appropriate in all or many con-texts, for many observers, and in many uses,e.g., for a child or adult, in Algeria or Vene-zuela, in communism or capitalism, for aman or a woman, etc. In contrast, themeaning |THIS FLOWER REPRESENTSLOVE| is supposed to be valid or appropri-ate only in a particular context, for a partic-ular observer, or in a particular use, e.g.,only for Sidney Miller but not for MariaSmith, only in Germany but not in Mongo-lia, only for an adult but not for a child, etc.It is in this sense that the sentences the de-scription of a meaning and the meaning of adescription are to be understood. (3) Theterm description suggests that an actor orsystem can voluntarily and intentionallymake, change, or abandon a particular de-scription such as |THIS FLOWER IS RED|,which – after an examination of the flower– may be changed into |THIS FLOWER ISBROWN|. In contrast, the term meaningrather implies that actors attribute mean-ings involuntarily and often cannot inten-tionally change their meanings. For exam-ple, if I think that |THIS FLOWER REPRE-SENTS LOVE|, I intuitively attribute thismeaning without there having been a ratio-nal choice so that I cannot easily change itinto another meaning such as |THISFLOWER REPRESENTS FAMILY|. (4) Theterm meaning often implies a pragmatic, so-cial, or concrete message for the immediatefuture, which the term description does not.For example, if two people have a date andone gives the other a flower as a gift, the gift-receiver’s meaning may be |THIS FLOWERREPRESENTS HER LOVE FOR ME ANDHER WILLINGNESS TO BEGIN A SERI-OUS RELATIONSHIP WITH ME|, whereasthe description |THIS FLOWER IS REDAND COMES FROM HOLLAND| usuallydoes not have such a direct and pragmaticrelevance for the immediate future.

4. I will not elaborate on the controversiesabout and refinements of Spencer Brown’sapproach. However, the following two as-

pects seem particularly relevant for a non-dualistic approach: (1) The state precedingthe first step, that is, the state before the dis-tinction or boundary has been drawn, e.g.,unmarked state and unobserved world?(Weber 2005, pp. 40–45), or the “begin-ning of the beginning”? (Jokisch 1996, pp.70–80). (2) The process during the secondstep, that is, the making or creation of thedistinction or marking, e.g., the role of theobserver, symmetrical vs asymmetricaldistinction, distinction and indication asone or as two operations, absence of oper-ations, constitution as one or two distinc-tions? (Jokisch 1996).

5. In a similar vein, Simmel (1903) argues thatthe frame, i.e., the recursive and loop-shaped border of a painting, has two func-tions: firstly, to distinguish the paintingfrom the surrounding world, and secondly,to integrate the painting into a coherent en-tity. The frame proclaims that in its insidethere is a world on its own that is not in-volved in the movements of the world out-side the frame. The conceptualization of de-scription and meaning as M vs MELSEresembles similar approaches: In sociologi-cal systems theory, meaning is seen as theunity of the distinction between actuality,i.e., the form of meaning as the used and ac-tualized meaning, and potentiality, i.e., themedium of meaning as other potential butnon-actualized meanings (Luhmann1993b, p. 63, 1997, chapter 1.III). My con-ceptualization, however, is more funda-mental in that it leaves open whether thecategory M is actualized or potential. In lin-guistic semantics, the conceptualization ofmeaning as category or concept is one of thestandard approaches (Löbner 2003, chap-ter 2.1 and Frawley 1992, chapter 2.6). ForLöbner, meanings are descriptions and de-scriptions are categories. More precisely,the meaning of a word or sentence is a de-scription of the entity or situation to whichthe word or sentence refers and which al-lows this entity or situation to be distin-guished from another, e.g., the meaning ofthe word dog is the general description of adog as distinguished from a cow (2003,chapter 2.1). Structural semantics even ar-gues that a meaning (or seme) does not havean existence on its own and can only be de-scribed in relation to something differentthan itself (Greimas 1966, p. 103).

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6. The illustration may suggest a realist read-ing in that the M are “out there”, pre-exis-tent, observer-independent, like ready-made parcels, so that they can be discov-ered and transmitted. However, from aconstructivist perspective, Foerster arguesthat “the world contains no information”(Foerster & Pörksen 1998, pp. 97f) andLuhmann adds that “information doesnot occur in the environment, but only inthe system itself” (1990, p. 99). In accor-dance with such a constructivist reading,the conceptualization of M allows that ob-servers or systems “create” and “con-struct” the M, e.g., by drawing thedistinction or boundary at differentpoints, by inventing a single M’s contents,by combining several M, etc. Despite thisconstructivist reading, it is inevitable thatobservers use or produce M and it is obvi-ous that most rudimentary M are sociallyor cognitively standardized and intersub-jective due to sedimentation in language.

7. Similarly, in philosophy of art criticism itis often argued that – for works of art – de-scription and interpretation (or in my ter-minology: meaning) are indistinguishableand concurrent (Shusterman 1988, p. 403;Seigfried 1990, p. 590).

8. The language of thought hypothesis stemsoriginally from Fodor (1975). It arguesthat cognition, i.e., thoughts and thinking,is distinct from and consequently possiblewithout any natural spoken language. In-stead, cognition is based on an innatemental language, called Mentalese, whichis distinct from any natural spoken lan-guage but structured like a natural spokenlanguage. Mentalese is a symbolic systemof representational tokens or proposition-al attitudes such as S desires that P or S be-lieves that P. Mentalese can not only befound in humans but also in other species.I take these arguments to support my con-ceptualization of M as category, firstly be-cause the mental symbols, tokens, andrepresentations such as S, P, desire, believe,etc are but categories, and secondly be-cause the Mentalese-categories are not re-stricted to the human species.

9. Among the most important variations ofDDUALISM are: reality vs definition of realityas exemplified by the sociological ThomasTheorem; thing vs meaning as embodied insymbolic interactionism’s premise that

“human beings act toward things on thebasis of the meaning that these things havefor them” where “things” may be physicalobjects, actions, other human beings, in-stitutions, encounters, etc (Blumer 1969,p. 2); social structure vs semantics in socio-logical systems theory (Luhmann 1997,chapter 5); reality vs discourse in discoursetheory; object vs interpretant in Peirce’sSemiotics; first-order vs second-order reali-ty or real vs constructed reality in construc-tivism; or perception vs interpretation incommunication theory. See also Mitterer(1992, 2001) and Weber (2005, p. 271).

10.A similar illustration can be found in We-ber (2005, p. 274).

11.Interestingly enough, internal inconsis-tencies, such as those found in dualism,can also be found in pragmatic everydaylanguage use. For example, the idiom itgoes without saying that X is inconsistentbecause the semantic meaning of this idi-om, i.e., it does not need to be said that X(because X is so self-evident or clearlytrue), contradicts the pragmatic meaningof the idiom, i.e., the speaker actually doessay that X (because X is not so self-evidentor clearly true).

12.Even dualistic approaches in psychologyand linguistics argue that perception is cat-egory-based. For example, in an experi-ment scientists established an analogcontinuum of phonemes ranging fromone extreme [du:] to the other extreme[tu:]. Then a large and continuous num-ber of phonemes in between these two ex-tremes were played to people, whosurprisingly grouped each phoneme clear-ly and unambiguously in either the ex-treme [du:] or in the other extreme [tu:],but not in between both extremes. Hence,the continuous physical variation of thephonemes (the “in between”) sharply con-trasts with the discontinuous mental cate-gorization of the phonemes (the “either-or”) (Bassano 1995, pp. 413f).

13. A structurally similar argument is made insystems theory on the basis of the distinc-tion between communication vs silence:Luhmann argues that society is made ofcommunications, whereas society’s envi-ronment is not made of communicationsbut of silence. But Luhmann immediatelyrecognizes that even the characterizationof society’s environment as “silence” is a

communication because “silence” is notan operation that takes place in society’senvironment, but “silence” is an operationthat takes place within society and societymerely projects “silence” to society’s envi-ronment (1989, pp. 16f). Let us apply thisreasoning to non-dualism on the basis ofthe dualistic distinction between meaningvs world: conversation and thought aremade of meanings M, whereas the worldW is not made of meanings M. But eventhe characterization of W as non-M or M-free is an M, namely M = |THE WORLDW IS NOT MADE OF MEANINGS M|.The exclusion or negation of M, i.e., sayingthat W is not or does not contain anymeanings M, presupposes the inclusion oraffirmation of M, i.e., saying that M = |WIS NOT OR DOES NOT CONTAIN ANYMEANINGS M|. If one wants to exclude ornegate M (in Luhmann’s terminology: Mas form), one must include and affirm M(in Luhmann’s terminology: M as medi-um). If one wants to indicate or refer tosome non-M, one must use M. Strictlyspeaking, non-dualism’s refutation of du-alism seems to be mainly based on logicaland linguistic considerations because du-alism is shown to exhibit logical-semanticinconsistencies and presuppositions.

14.A re-entry is a formal mathematical oper-ation, originally proposed by SpencerBrown (1969) and later employed in con-structivism and systems theory. Considerthe following example: Firstly, there is anentry in the sense of drawing a distinctionin an unmarked space, e.g., the moral dis-tinction between good and bad, formallyD = good vs bad, which may be interpret-ed as it is a good action or it is a bad action.Secondly, there is a re-entry in the sense ofre-introducing the original whole entrywith its two sides into itself, namely intoonly one of its two sides, e.g., into good.The original entry D = good vs bad re-en-ters into good, so that the new post-re-en-try entry is D = good (good vs bad), whichcan be interpreted as it is a good action tosay “it is a good action or it is a bad action”or alternatively it is a good action to distin-guish between good actions and bad actions.

15.Weber (2005, pp. 210ff) uses a similar re-entry (and re-exit) operation. He does not,however, apply it to the dualism of W vsM, but to the dualism of W vs me-subject.


CONCEPTS


Consequently, he arrives at different re-sults, namely at the dualism of matter vsmind (re-entry into the me-subject) andthe dualism of nature vs culture (re-entryinto the W).

16.A monism denotes a state in which a dis-tinction or symmetry is intentionally de-distinctionized and de-symmetrized toonly one side of the original distinction orsymmetry (Weber 2005, p. 237).

17.Since non-dualism dispenses with dual-ism’s W, the question appears: What hap-pens to W and what can be said about Won a theoretical-analytical level? There arethree similar approaches: (1) Saeed’s “lin-guistic solipsism”, which leaves out and ig-nores reality-external questions of the on-tological existence of some non-linguisticoutside world W. Instead, it turns inwardtowards language to focus only on lan-guage-internal questions. For example, in-stead of discussing the relation between themeaning M = |DOG| and the real dogsrunning around in the world, it discussesthe relation between the meaningM = |DOG| and other meanings such asM = |BITCH| or M = |ANIMAL| (2003, pp.45f, 50). Frawley (1992, p. 20) agrees:“Meaning cannot be strictly what an ex-pression refers to in the world. What mat-ters is the way the world is presented, the pro-jected world, the world construed.” (2) We-ber’s “non-dualistic agnosticism”, whichneither asserts nor denies the existence ofthe world but simply adheres to an agnosticwe don’t know (2005, pp. 282, 308). Mitter-er explicitly proposes ignoring and aban-doning DDUALISM, renouncing any kind ofW, and not presupposing or producingany W (1992, pp. 13, 42f, 80). In a similarvein, Saussure’s semiological model fo-cused on the signifier and the signified,largely excluding the level of W, in contrastto Peirce with his triad of representamen,interpretant, and object. If the existence ofdualism’s W were denied, the result wouldbe solipsism’s ego solus ipsus. Foerster dem-onstrated the internal logical inconsistencyof solipsism with his “gentleman with thebowler hat” (1973, fig. 20). (3) Another op-tion is to be silent about W because“whereof one cannot speak, thereof onemust be silent”, as Wittgenstein argued.But even then, Zen-Buddhism has manyteachings that “speak about being silent.”

18.The idea of unity between W and M or theidea of W being M has been captured insimilar but less explicit ways by other au-thors: hermeneutic universalism assumesthat meaning is universal because “inter-pretation is the only game in town” (Fish1980, pp. 350ff); semantic anthropologyholds that “language is reality” (Ardener1982, pp. 11f); Lenk’s slogan for his inter-pretationism is interpretari necesse est(1991); Allport argues that cognitive cate-gorization as an interpretative process isunavoidable (1954, p. 20); and distinctiontheory claims that the world is homoge-neous in that it consists exclusively of cog-nitive distinctions (Jokisch 1996, p. 95).Consequently, non-dualism is not alonein its radical stance and may tap into thesetheoretical sources to resource itself.

19.A short review of these concepts, basedprimarily on Foerster and Luhmann,seems appropriate. First-order descriptionsare realist and ontological because they aremade by an observer describing a pre-sumed external object, e.g., |THE TABLE ISGRAY|. Second-order descriptions are moreconstructivist because they are made by anobserver describing another observer andher first-order descriptions, e.g., |THE DE-SCRIPTION “THE TABLE IS GRAY” USESTHE COLOR CODE BUT NOT THE LE-GAL CODE AND IS MADE BY A COL-OR-BLIND WOMAN WHO COULDCONSEQUENTLY NOT MAKE THE DE-SCRIPTION “THE TABLE IS GREEN”|.Second-order descriptions seek to de-scribe the characteristics of the first-orderobserver and description, e.g.: What aretheir blind spots? What communicativecode is used? Who is the observer? etc.Auto-descriptions (Selbstbeschreibungen)are internal descriptions that a social orpsychic system produces to present itsown unity, operations, and intentions,e.g., Henry may describe himself by saying|I AM A KIND AND JUST MAN|. Auto-de-scriptions are always part of the system it-self they are describing, so that thedescribing system and the described sys-tem are identical. Synonymous or similarterms for the verb to auto-describe could beto describe itself, to portray itself, to presentitself, etc. Allo-descriptions (Fremdbe-schreibungen) are external descriptionsthat a system produces of another system

to present this system’s operations and in-tentions, e.g., Maria may describe Henryby saying |HENRY IS A KIND BUT UN-JUST MAN|. Allo-descriptions are not partof the described system, so that the de-scribing system and the described systemare distinct. Allo-descriptions may befirst-order or second-order descriptions.Usually, auto-descriptions and allo-de-scriptions diverge.

20.Already at this point, it is obvious thatthese dualistic sentences are logically in-consistent: How can W make descriptionsat all? How can W be distinct from de-scription if at the same time it manifests it-self only in descriptions? etc.

21. Similar versions of this painting or struc-turally similar photos are sometimes to befound on the cover of constructivist books(e.g., Foerster & Pörksen 1998). Providedthat one agrees to consider constructivismto be a type of dualism and hence in con-tradiction to non-dualism, it is funny orstrange to see that the same image is used tosymbolize or support different hypotheses,namely constructivism and non-dualism.

22.Firstly, because description up to now goeslexically and aesthetically better with itscounterpart description from now on sinceboth expressions comprise three littlewords and contain the important wordnow. Secondly, because the word now bet-ter conveys the idea that the temporal ref-erence point is the now, up to which orfrom which on descriptions may connect.

23.My usual synchronic-static notationM = |…| is thus transformed into the tem-poral-processual notation M = … orsimplified M = –|…–| . The idea behindthese notations is as follows. The verticallines | symbolize the present now, left ofwhich is the past and right of which is thefuture. The horizontal arrows , or, sim-plified, the horizontal lines –, symbolizethe temporal movement: either a move-ment from the past up to the present now,as in the case of the description up to nowM = … or simplified M = –|…–| ; or,as will be seen in the next paragraph, amovement from the present now to the fu-ture, as in the description from now on M =

… or simplified M = |–…|–. Instead,Mitterer (1992, 2001) uses a different no-tation, which I find less clear, namely /…/for the description up to now (i.e., so far)

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 247

CONCEPTS


and “…” for the description from now on.This distinction between a synchronic-static notation M = |…| and a temporal-processual notation M = –|…–| or M =|–…|– will be convenient: In arguments inwhich time and process plays no impor-tant role, I can use the synchronic-staticnotation, and in arguments in which timeand process do play a vital role, I can usethe temporal-processual notation.

24.A similar argument can be found in othertheories. In discourse theory, objects canbe modified by discourses, i.e., if the dis-course changes, the object loses its oldidentity and adopts a new identity, the ob-ject transforms into another object (Jäger2001, pp. 92ff). In symbolic interaction-ism, “objects are the product of symbolicinteraction”, “out of a process of mutualindications common objects emerge”, and“objects […] must be seen as social cre-ations – as being formed in and arising outof the process of definition and interpreta-tion as this process takes place in the inter-action of people” so that “people are form-ing, sustaining, and transforming the ob-jects of their world” and “objects have nofixed status except as their meaning is sus-tained through indications and definitionsthat people make of the objects” (Blumer1969, pp. 11ff). And in semiotics: “Theworld as we know it is merely its currentrepresentation” (Chandler 2002, p. 205).

25.For example: (1) The lower left angle of thesignifier (a term from Saussure) corre-sponds to Chomsky’s surface structure, toPeirce’s representamen, to Luhmann’smessage (action) or Mitteilung(shandeln)in his three-stage communication model,to Ogden & Richards’ symbol, to Searle’sexpression, to Beacon’s word, or to Morris’sign vehicle. (2) The upper angle of mean-ing corresponds to Saussure’s signified orconcept, to Chomsky’s deep structure, toPeirce’s interpretant, to Carnap’s inten-sion, to Ogden & Richards’ thought, to Pot-tier’s seme, to Heger’s noems, and tocommon sense’s sense. (3) The lower rightangle of the referent (a term from Ogden &Richards) corresponds to Carnap’s exten-sion, Peirce’s object, Morris’ denotatum,and to Husserl’s thing.

26.My goal here was simply to re-conceptual-ize the ontological form of the triangle’s an-gles, in the sense that each angle is first of

all a meaning M and secondly a particulartype of meaning such as MS, MM, or MR.The goal was not to re-conceptualize thetheoretical content of the angles as otherscholars have done, e.g., Saussure’s dyadicmodel of signifier vs signified, Peirce’s tri-adic model of representamen vs interpret-ant vs object, Gotthard Günther’s trivalentlogic, Johannes Heinrichs’ or Nina Ort’sreflexive-logical semiotics, Aristotle’s orAlgirdas Greimas’ tetradic square of oppo-sites in semiotics, Paul Franceschi’s hexa-dic model, etc.

27.In a similar way to how non-dualism con-siders the referent to be a description thatauto-describes it(self) as referent, seman-tics and semiotics consider persons or ac-tors to be semantic actants or semanticroles: Persons and actors are not seen asontologically existent and concrete enti-ties in the non-linguistic outside reality,but they are considered to be semantic cat-egorizations insofar as communications(e.g., fairy tales, discourses, texts, etc) por-tray and classify the different participantsin an event according to their actorialfunction. For example, in the sentencesJohn cleaned the house with the broom orThe climate kills many people with its torna-does, John and the climate occupy the se-mantic role of the agent, the house and themany people occupy the semantic role ofthe patient, and the broom and the torna-does occupy the semantic role of the in-strument. Other semantic roles include,for instance, giver, receiver, benefactor, op-ponent, subject, hero, villain, source, theme,experiencer, location, goal, etc (see Saeed2003, chapter 6).

28. It seems fruitful to conceptualize the sig-nifier in terms of the linguistic notion ofevidentiality as the “linguistic coding ofepistemology” (Chafe & Nichols eds.1986). Given a particular knowledge of ameaning or a referent such as MR = |ITRAINED|, one might ask: How is the evi-dence for or the source of this knowledgelinguistically marked? How is the mode ofcoming to this knowledge indicated? Thiscorresponds to the function of the signifieras indicating the mode of perception orpresentation of the meaning or referent.For example, the source of the knowledgeof MR may be indicated as MS = |I SAWTHAT…|, MS = |SHE TOLD ME

THAT…|, MS = |I SMELLED THAT…|,MS = |I INFERRED THAT…|, MS = |EV-ERYONE KNOWS THAT…|, MS = |IHEARD THAT…|, etc.

29.There is a further advantage to combiningnon-dualism with the semiotic triangle: Itwould be possible to systematically theo-rize the different relations and processesbetween the three angles within one trian-gle or between several triangles by usingthe distinction of description up to nowand from now on. For example, the pro-cess –|MS–|^ |–MM|–, or –|MR–|^ |–MS|–,or –|MM–|^ |–MR|–, etc. Such processesappear under labels such as semasiology,onomasiology, intension, extension, etc.

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Education towards Truth?

Reflecting on a Sentence of Josef Mitterer

Die Erziehung zur Wahrheit ist immer dieErziehung zur Wahrheit des Erziehers.

Mitterer (1983), p. 273

he work of Josef Mitterer offers manypoints of contact and connecting factors

for epistemological, methodological, ethical,theoretical and also empirical questions. Inmy contribution, I want to focus on one sen-tence that relates to both education and phi-losophy. The sentence, quoted in its Germanversion in the epigraph, struck me right awaywhen I heard it for the first time during a talkthat Josef Mitterer gave in Innsbruck in theearly ’80s. From then on, it has not lost itsinspiring character for me.

Even though it is not unusual in the con-text of philosophy to think and to write abouta sentence over a long period of time, I wantto mention briefly Mitterer’s style of writing.In contrast to common trends in the aca-demic world – such as publish or perish,working for evaluation and career, thinkingwith a stop watch and imparting instant

knowledge, valuing media presence morehighly than thoughtful content, or puttingfinancial success before critical thinking –Josef Mitterer rather rethinks a sentence thor-oughly before writing it down and rethinksand rewrites it again before publishing it. Theresults of his judicious and sober-mindedstyle has led to extensive paraphrasing andtranslations, and sometimes his work hasbeen (mis)used by quoting his work withoutgiving credit to the author (Mitterer 1992, p.19).

(1) First of all, how can the German sen-tence “Die Erziehung zur Wahrheit ist immerdie Erziehung zur Wahrheit des Erziehers”(Mitterer 1983, p. 273) be translated intoEnglish? As far as I can see, there is not just onetranslation. One could say, “Education fortruth is always education for the truth of theeducator.” Another option is the following:“Education towards truth is always educationtowards the truth of the educator.” There is atleast a third version: “Education of truth isalways education of the truth of the educator.”

Each of these translations places an emphasison different aspects. “For truth,” for example,focuses questions about it in moral or imper-ative terms, whereas “towards truth” suggestsvarious kinds of aiming for or directing totruth. “Of truth,” however, tends to imply thatthere is more a concrete truth at hand that hasto be promoted in concrete ways. In recentemail correspondence with me, Mitterer him-self tended to favor the translation “educationtowards truth is always education towards thetruth of the educator.” In my view, this trans-lation points up an emphasis on bringingsomething in line with truth (whatever theconcept, context and content of truth maybe).

(2) If we interpret the German version lit-erally, half of the content seems to be missingbecause of the gender-related wording. Howabout the multitude of cases of “the truth ofthe educatress” or “the truth of the govern-ess”? Well, Mitterer is interested in the generalrelevance of “education towards truth” abovegender-specific or other special aspects of“education towards truth.” Moreover, lookingat the various contexts and examples Mitterer(1992, 2001) discusses in his books, his way ofexpressing himself is not only a philosophicalkind of “undoing gender,” in terms of beingsensitive to different structures of relevance,but also a kind of skepticism about

all

claimsof omni-relevance of single categories or dis-tinctions. In other words, in “truth of the edu-cator” both “truth” and “educator” are used asplaceholders for all sorts of strong beliefs,guiding themes, verities, trueness, rightness,etc. and for all kinds of caregivers – child oradult carers, educators, educatresses, legalguardians, parents – teachers, stakeholders,bosses, authorities, legitimatized speakers orself-authorized players (Mitterer 2001, p. 67).The terms can be used figuratively and themeaning varies, depending on history, con-text, and situation.

(3) The fact that Mitterer uses the terms“always” and not “sometimes,” “now and

Theo Hug

A

University of Innsbruck (Austria) <[email protected]>

T

philosophical–educational

philosophical constructivism

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R Purpose – So far, the work of Josef Mitterer has not been widely recognized in philos-ophy of education, even though it offers many points of contact not only for epistemolog-ical and methodological questions but also for empirical and educational issues. Among these points of contact there is an outstanding sentence (see motto), which can be taken as a starting point for conceptual considerations in philosophy of education. The article takes this sentence as a hub for some corresponding investigations.R Methodology – The article seeks to make progress in these investigations through reflecting on Mitterer’s sentence in ten steps, beginning with translational aspects and end-ing with questions of power relations and inconsistency. The arguments are made through (a) reference to concepts that are currently being discussed in philosophy of education and constructivist discourses, (b) through contrasting various conceptualizations, and (c) through discussion of selected examples. R Findings – The article proposes a translation of Mitterer’s sentence that may be from Mitterer. It points out several similarities with and differences to positions related to (presumed) positions of Mitterer. Furthermore, it shows innovative options for argumentations in educational philosophy on that basis. R Benefits – The contribution sounds out some interfaces between Mitterer’s philoso-phy and current debates in philosophy of education. It contributes to differentiated under-standings of Mitterer’s sentence and it opens up a new field of discourse. R Key words – philosophy of education, philosophical constructivism, contextualism, non-dualistic philosophy, politics of truth, governmentality.


CONCEPTS



again,” or “from case to case” attracts atten-tion. Is this related to a logical or pragmaticnecessity? Elsewhere, he uses the term “also”,saying “Education towards truth is always alsoeducation towards the truth of the educator”(Mitterer 1992, p. 14). It seems that educationtowards truth

necessitates

education towardsthe truth of the educator. Even if educationtowards truth is not only but also educationtowards the truth of the educator, an inescap-able connectivity is postulated here.

(4) The way this relation is formulatedreminds me of Maturana’s starting point forthe use of language:

“Everything said is said byan observer to another observer that could behimself”

(Maturana 1978, p. 30).

So, if some-thing is said, willy-nilly, so to say, it is said byan observer on the basis of his or her perspec-tives and distinctions. This understandingpoints to a necessary relation known asobserver theorem in constructivist discourseand not to an optional relation. Even thoughMaturana and Mitterer do not characterizethemselves as constructivists, they seem totake coactive relations as points of departurein both cases – the case of everything saidbeing said by an observer and the case of edu-cation towards truth. As I understand thesetypes of relations, they correspond to con-crete structures at a definite time. The neces-sity does not refer to a specific content in thesense of strictly deductive arguments, eventhough we can observe certain probable infer-ences, for example when educated peopletend to tell the truth of their educators andeducatresses. So, in the long run, the chancesof education towards truth increase as long asthere are no strong contrastive experiences;and an observer may easily have the impres-sion of necessary inferences and coercedresults.

(5) The sentence “education towards truthis always education towards the truth of theeducator” may lead to the assumption thatMitterer has an intentional understanding ofeducation in mind and that he is thinking ofthe classical pedagogical motif of the pupilwho autonomously does what others wanthim or her to do. In fact, some examples hediscusses deal with children, pupils, teachers,students, professors and popes (Mitterer2001, pp. 66–68), and, at least partly, theseexamples seem to follow instructional under-standings of upbringing or learning, and edu-cational concepts of goal-oriented influence,

preparation for “real life,” or acquring thecompetencies for adult life. But if we take acloser look at the arguments and examplesprovided (pp. 66–75), we can easily see thatMitterer is thinking of wider concepts of edu-cation, too. For example, distinctions learnedduring early childhood or the use of expres-sions in everyday life are commonly referredto as contextual or developmental aspects interms of socialization processes. So, the sen-tence does not refer to a special concept ofintentional education but is rather open tovarious concepts of education, socialization,and enculturation. Mitterer’s critique of thewidespread “objectifying mode of speaking[objektierende Redeweise]” (Mitterer 1978,pp. 3–4) speaks for this, especially.

(6) Concerning purposeful attempts atdirect exertions of influence on the dispositionof others, these are often announced in insti-tutions’ programmatic statements. For exam-ple, on the website of the College of Educationat Madonna University, which is “dedicated toproviding high quality courses and programsfor persons interested in becoming teachers,”we can find the following paragraph: “As anindependent Catholic institution, the Univer-sity remains committed to its belief in the spir-itual, educational and service-oriented mis-sion, education for truth, goodness andservice. The College of Education explicitlyworks to develop teachers who care abouttheir students and our nation's schools. Fac-ulty members nurture students through care-fully planned instruction and thoughtful aca-demic counseling.”

1

Of course, there are moresecularized versions, too, such as the Truth InEducation program of the University ofAlberta, which also is an institutional memberof the Center for Academic Integrity.

2

Here wecan find the following programmatic state-ment: “Without Academic Integrity, an educa-tional institution would suffer complete fail-ure. At the University of Alberta, our toppriority is to maintain the integrity of thedegrees we offer. To that end, we have createdthe Truth In Education program. It is designedto promote integrity in all educational activi-ties, including learning, teaching, research andcommunity events.” So, what difference doesit make? And how about the widespread mixesof all sorts of -isms in the academic world,whose agents and exponents call for scientificwork at the cutting edge of all developmentsand at the same time often act like exponents

of dogmatic churches? Do educational institu-tions suffer complete failure if they don’t com-mit themselves to values such as integrity,honesty, and responsibility?

Well, on the one hand, Mitterer agreeswith such commitments too, and every nowand then he highlights harshly cases of aca-demic

Betrayers of the Truth

(Broad & Wade1982). On the other hand, he wants to pointto those versions of problem-creating in thename of truth that think of themselves assolutions to a problem. Let me present anexample. Nowadays a lot of money is spent inmany institutions on plagiarism detectionsoftware, without taking much notice of theproblems in understaffed departments orchanging learning cultures. The chances ofsolving related socio-cultural problems bymeans of software technologies are not good,as experience shows. Needless to say, jitteryplagiarism hunters are not much of a help,either, at least when they follow weakly-reflected programs of self-realization in theservice of unconscious motifs rather thandeliberate thinking or wisdom.

(7) Does Mitterer’s sentence express ananti-pedagogical position? Is it meant ratheras a rejection or negation of education than acreation of a new positive educational model“beyond truth”? Well, Mitterer does not char-acterize his positions as “anti-pedagogical.”On the other hand, there are affinities, or atleast compatibilities, with anti-pedagogicalorientations, for example, in terms of ques-tioning authorities, openness to future devel-opments, and voting for a pursuit of change(Mitterer 1983, p. 276). Anti-pedagogicalapproaches have been characterized differ-ently. As Smeyers and Marshall write:

“As knowledge can no longer be claimed tobe applicable to a rapidly changing future,it is argued, the justification of presenteducational activities is called into ques-tion. For some philosophers of educationthis suspicion evolves into a full condem-nation of all pedagogy” (Smeyers & Mar-shall 1995, p. 31). I do not think that Mitterer would agree

with a condemnation of all pedagogy. Iassume he would rather problematize truth-oriented and also fundamentalist versions ofit, as well as versions claiming validity any-time and everywhere.

(8) So far, the sentence comes across as acondensed form of critique of different ver-

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 251

CONCEPTS



sions of education towards truth. In thissense, there is a clear core of the argument thatfeatures a certain ambiguity and manifoldoptions of literal and figurative applications.Accepting that, we may ask if there is a corre-sponding argument for

education withouttruth

in the sentence being discussed in thisessay. Among others, Friedrich Nietzsche,Richard Rorty and Jean-François Lyotardhave brought forward arguments for educa-tion without truth: Nietzsche with his radicalquestioning of the value and objectivity oftruth; Rorty arguing for the strengthening ofsolidarity and consensus; and Lyotard withhis critique of “grand narratives” and univer-salist claims and his brilliant in-depth investi-gation of disagreement. Since Mitterer differ-entiates his positions from all philosophicalpositions that talk of objects differently fromthe language that describes the objects (Mit-terer 1978, 1992, pp. 21–22, 2001 pp. 16–20),his sentence cannot be simply subsumedunder a collection of postmodern perspec-tives of education without truth. At the sametime, he would not follow the widespread cri-tique of such perspectives in terms of arbi-trariness, irrationalism, or unrealized sup-port of neo-liberal ideologies.

It’s quite obvious that he would not sharethe critique of Alexandra Deligiorgi (1998)either, when she says:

“In summing up, both Rortyan edifyingphilosophy and Lyotardian mathesis – per-spectivistic in their pragmatist (Rorty) ornon-pragmatist (Lyotard) scope – seem tobe incompatible with reflective reason onlybecause their perspectivism is used as a steptoward justification and legitimation of adhoc and circumstantially formed schemesand patterns regulating all possible socialpractices. Such contingent and circum-stantial schemes defined within the frame-work of extracognitive procedures, func-tion blindly, given that they take no noticeof the fundamental convention that bindsthe human condition with the quest fortruth as the theoretical basis of evaluatingjudgments guiding decisions and prac-tices” (Deligiorgi 1998, p. 4). Although one might characterize Mit-

terer’s philosophy in terms of “hyperperspec-tivistic prisms”

3

he would rather take Deli-giorgi’s conclusion as a typical example ofeducation towards truth if not as backslidingto a kind of modern scientism. She argues

“that post-modern perspectivism and theindividualistic or collectivistic logic whichnurtures its scope can be transcendedthrough the construction of hyperperspectiv-istic prisms based on a logic of interrelationanimated by the interdisciplinarian spirit pre-vailing in the field of modern science. This lat-ter serves as the leading thread for the founda-tion of a new canonicity which, withoutlosing its historical and cultural character, canmake claims to truth and validity of generalacceptance” (Deligiorgi 1998, p. 1).

So again, what difference does it make if itis not about homogeneity eliminating differ-ences or heterogeneity eliminating similari-ties? I think that it is very likely that Mittererwould use the same argument here that heuses when looking at situations where we lieand infringe bids of truth: “If we told the truthunder all conditions, we would probably endup in a mental institution or in jail” (Mitterer2001, p. 66).

(9) As far as I can see, Mitterer’s core argu-ment is quite in line with Frieda Heyting’s cri-tique of the problematic role of ideals in edu-cation, especially of if they should be “passedon” in educational processes (Heyting 2004a,pp. 245–246). Is it also in line with her consid-erations about the problems of justification inthe context of post-foundationalist conceptsof social sciences (Heyting 2001, van Goor etal. 2004)? Both Mitterer’s non-dualistic phi-losophy and post-, non- or anti-foundation-alist approaches in philosophy of education(cf. also Smeyers & Peters 2006) question thefoundationalist procedures in rationalist,transcendentalist, and empiricist traditions.Both criticize the distinction between found-ing and founded utterances, implying a “ver-tical” relation between them, and both ask forreconsideration of justification procedures.Furthermore, both deny any epistemologicalprivilege for a certain position, which impliesa conception of “horizontally” structuredknowledge, and both attach importance todiscursive and contextual aspects as well as toaspects of temporality. Mitterer puts anemphasis on the distinction of descriptions“so far” and “from now on” (Mitterer 1992, p.72), and Heyting defends historical dimen-sions and thinks of justification as a two-sidedprocedure in which every justifying proposi-tion can only work as such for the time being(Heyting 2001, p. 259). Although both posi-tions search for ways beyond certain founda-

tions and arbitrary allegations, and althoughboth result in an open, context-sensitive, dis-cursive, and learning-oriented view of justifi-cation with similar social practices, we shouldnot overlook the different modes of referenceto non-dualist philosophy, in the case of Mit-terer (1992, pp. 49–86; 2001) and to a criticalreading of philosophical constructivism, con-textualism, and systems theory, in the case ofHeyting (1992; 2001, p. 253; 2002; 2004b).

(10) In a similar way, some parallels couldbe made with reference to current debates ongovernmentality in educational sciences andeducational philosophy (Weber & Maurer2006; Bilstein et al. 2007, pp. 204–206). Forinstance, the search for new concepts and anew language of education that “articulateswhat is at stake in the care of oneself today”(Bilstein et al. 2007, p. 206) is in compliancewith the problematization of educationtowards the truth (of others). Jan Masscheleinand Maarten Simons look forward to “cre-ative acts” of forming new techniques andpractices to govern oneself, locating theirefforts in the context of governmentalitystudies as follows: “Within a broader perspec-tive, these creative acts can be connected to an‘ethics of de-governmentalization’ and cancontribute, more precisely, to a ‘governmen-tality of ethical distance’” (Bilstein et al. 2007,p. 206). But on the whole, the differences out-weigh similarities, such as the abstract level ofargumentation, awareness of power relationsor the focus on critique rather than on designproposals. This is, to a lesser extent, owing tothe fact that contemporary governmentalitystudies refer to the work of Michel Foucault

4

and not to non-dualistic philosophy. Itbecomes obvious in view of the re-localiza-tion of the question of truth in terms of a crit-ical ontology of the present which “refers to akind of truth-telling and true knowledge thatcuts into our educational present and how welive the present” (Bilstein et al. 2007, p. 205).Finally, Masschelein and Simons think ofteachers as “truth-tellers for others” in thesense that “e-ducational truth-telling takescare of others by opening up spaces to takecare of oneself and to verify one’s life (Bilsteinet al. 2007, p. 205). In so doing, the analyticalpotentials under the auspices of Foucault arepruned and finally turned into moral stances.In other words, the concept of de-govern-mentalization emerges as concept of re-gov-ernmentalization on other levels.


CONCEPTS



Mitterer tries to avoid such traps andshortcomings. Moreover, he does not showthe way out of the “escape from arbitrariness”(Mitterer 2001) of truth-oriented philosophyand education. Rather, Mitterer suggests dis-engaging from the search for truth. He showsthat philosophy and education towards truthboth try to avoid arbitrariness by creatinggeneral or universal (“non-contingent”) pre-suppositions on the basis of contingentassumptions. By contrast, his intention is “tomake lines of argumentation, tricks, andprinciples of the functioning of dualisticmodes of arguing transparent and therebyweaken them” (Mitterer 2001, p. 21).

These reflections on Mitterer’s sentence“education towards truth is always educationtowards the truth of the educator” show itsconnectivity to some other approaches in phi-losophy of education but also show its origi-nality. I read it as an invitation to furtherinvestigations and elaborations on educa-tional perspectives based on Mitterer’s non-dualist philosophy, the more so as there is aneed for contemporary analysis of relatedforms of education towards autonomy,democracy, regard, respect, or towards tech-nology . One may say that in all of these cases,problems of self-referential paradoxes are notsolved or are not solvable. But who says thatwe have to think of these problems in terms ofAristotelian syllogism or modern forms ofbivalent logic first and foremost? If onereduces thinking to the discourse of classicallogic, one might rely on Epimenides’ paradoxand remind us of his statement, “All Cretansare liars.” Is it a self-suspending statementsince he came from Crete himself? Is Mit-terer’s statement a self-suspending statementin the sense that he tells the truth and there-fore is educating towards (his) truth himself?Or is he lying and therefore his statement is

meaningless? In my view the constellation isquite similar to Epimenides’ constellation.The self-referential paradox arises when oneconsiders whether the truth is actually spokenand when one remains in the context of biva-lent logic and does not take a tertium daturinto account. But if we read Mitterer’s workcarefully we are not tempted to stick to biva-lent logic or Aristotelian syllogism. We arerather encouraged to think of all domains ofknowledge and practices in terms of the“craft” or “art” that Aristotle has valued. Evenif today’s discussions focus on new forms ofwhat he called theoretical wisdom or science(

epistêmê

) and practical skills (

technê

), he alsoappreciated intuitive understanding (

nous

)and practical wisdom (

phronêsis

). Especially, concepts of situated skillfulness

and sagacity, context-sensitive intelligenceand practical wisdom (

phronêsis

) seem to beunderestimated today. And this is how Iunderstand Mitterer’s discourse: bringingtogether and thinking across these differentdomains of knowledge and practices in orderto overcome descriptions so far or keep themfor the time being (In Mitterer’s books thereis no “either – or”, no categorical rejection ofarguments for keeping or for overcoming).Mitterer probably would agree on the“Incommensurability of scientific and poeticknowledge” (Glasersfeld 1997). But at thesame I think that his philosophy also aims atthose spheres where poetic and scientificknowledge meet.

In the same vein as von Glasersfeld, Mit-terer offers thoughts and concepts and doesnot try to proselytize to others or to establisha new paradogma. With his work and theprosperous way of living his philosophy, heshows fruitful ways of dealing with the rela-tion between the reality of experience and theexperience of reality. Although he does not

explicitly formulate a philosophy of educa-tion or media theory, and although I do notknow an explicit statement of his that refers to“Rashômon” (Akutagawa 2006),

5

he seems tohave found viable ways of dealing with theRashômon problem, if not solutions to epis-temological and ethical problems related to it(cf. Boyd 1987). But this may be discussed onanother occasion.

Notes

1. Retrieved from http://www.madon-na.edu/pages/collegeofeducation.cfm on28 January 2008.

2. Retrieved from http://www.uofaweb.ual-berta.ca/TIE/ on 28 January 2008.

3. Deligiorgi takes the philosophy of Rortyand Lyotard as examples of one-sided ap-proaches (or “prisms”). In her view, one-sidedness “facilitates cynical or nihilistic

relativisation of values of truth, justice orfreedom and leads to their gradual weak-ening and elimination” (Deligiorgi 1998,p. 6). She argues for a multi-sided prism ofhyperperspectivism that is based on theideas of interdisciplinarity and interrela-tion and that can function as a theoreticalmeasure against cynical or nihilistic ten-dencies: “Both interdisciplinarity and in-terrelation are interwoven together withhyperperspectivism; this latter as a

telos

of-

fers them an epistemological ground of le-gitimation, being itself the outcome of theattempt of historico-critical, reflective andevaluative reason to overcome perspectiv-istic approaches” (p. 6). This critical rela-tivistic spirit should help us to get beyondperspectivistic approaches to hyperper-spectivism, which acts as the “leadingthread in the search for truth” (p. 6).

4. With the concept of “governmentality”Foucault aims at a new understanding of

Theo Hug is associate professor of educational sciences at the University of Innsbruck and coordinator of the Innsbruck Media Studies research group. His areas of interest include media education and media literacy, e-education and microlearning, theory of knowledge and philosophy of science. He is particularly interested in interfaces of medialization and knowledge dynamics as well as learning processes. Some of his recent work is focussing on instant knowledge, bricolage and didactics of microlearning.

THE AUTHOR

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 253

CONCEPTS



power beyond the problematic of consen-sus, will or conquest. He writes, “The rela-tionship proper to power would nottherefore be sought on the side of violenceor of struggle, nor on that of voluntarylinking (all of which can, at best, only bethe instruments of power), but rather inthe area of the singular mode of action,neither warlike nor juridical, which is gov-ernment” (Foucault 1982, p. 221). Fou-cault advocates a concept of power thatfocuses on various forms of social controlin disciplinary institutions (for example,

schools or hospitals) as well as on differentforms of knowledge in contrast to wide-spread conceptualizations of power in thesense of hierarchical, top-down power ofthe state. Accordingly, the concept of“government” is not limited to state poli-tics alone. It includes a wide range of con-trol techniques that apply to a variety ofphenomena, from one’s control of the selfto the “biopolitical control” of popula-tions. So, Foucault defines governmental-ity as the “art of government” in a widesense that includes organized practices

(mentalities, rationalities, and tech-niques) through which subjects are gov-erned, and that is linked to relatedconcepts such as biopolitics and power-knowledge (Foucault 2006a, b). Mitterer’sand Foucault’s philosophy do not have alot in common, but

grosso modo

, they havean interest in “politics of truth” in com-mon.

5. See also “Rashômon” by Akira Kurosawa,Remastered Edition 2008 (DVD, subti-tled) Triad Productions LLC (Org. 1951)or other filmed versions.

References

All translations from German are made by theauthor.Akutagawa, R. (2006) Rashômon and seven-

teen other stories. Penguin: London.Bilstein, J., Ecariu, J., Keiner, E. & Wimmer,

M. (2007) Macht in Bildungsprozessen.In: Brumlik, M. & Merkens, H. (eds.) Bil-dung, Macht, Gesellschaft. Beiträge zum20. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaftfür Erziehungswissenschaft. Barbara Bud-rich: Opladen, pp. 203–215.

Boyd, D. (1987) Rashômon: From Akutagawato Kurosawa. Literature/Film Quarterly 15(3): 155–158.

Broad, W. & Wade, N. (1982) Betrayers of thetruth. Simon and Schuster: New York.

Deligiorgi, A. (1998) Education without truthin postmodern perspectivism. Paper givenat the Twentieth World Congress of Phi-losophy, in Boston, Massachusetts fromAugust 10–15, 1998. Retrieved from http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/Cont-Deli.htm on 28 January 2008.

Foucault, M. (1982) The subject and thepower. In: Dreyfus, H. & Rabinow, P.:Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralismand hermeneutics. Harvester: Brighton,pp. 208–226.

Foucault, M. (2006a) Geschichte der Gouver-nementalität. Bd. 1: Sicherheit, Territo-rium, Bevölkerung. Suhrkamp: Frankfurtam Main.

Foucault, M. (2006b) Geschichte der Gouver-nementalität. Bd. 2: Die Geburt der Biopo-

litik. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.Goor, R. van, Heyting, F. & Vreeke, G.-J.

(2004) Beyond foundations: Signs of anew normativity in philosophy of educa-tion. Educational Theory 54 (2): 173–192.

Glasersfeld, E. von (1997) The incommensu-rability of scientific and poetic knowledge.Methodologia 17: 1–7. Retrieved fromhttp://www.oikos.org/vGknowl.htm on28 August 2006.

Heyting, G. Frieda (1992) PädagogischeIntention und pädagogische Effektivität.Beschreibungsformen und Perspektivender Pädagogik. In: Luhmann, N. & Schorr,K.-E. (eds.) Zwischen Absicht und Person.Fragen an die Pädagogik. Suhrkamp:Frankfurt am Main, pp. 125–154.

Heyting, G. F. (2001) Feste Begründung oderarbiträre Behauptung? Zum Rechtferti-gungsproblem in einer nachfundationali-stischen Sozialwissenschaft. In: Hug, T.(ed.) Wie kommt Wissenschaft zu Wissen?Volume 4. Schneider Verlag Hohengehren:Baltmannsweiler, pp. 246–260.

Heyting, G. F. (2002) Das Repräsentations-phantom. Zur sozialen Wirklichkeit vonBedeutung. In: Hug, T. & Walter, H. J.(eds.) Phantom Wirklichkeit. Theoreti-sche Annäherungen an Wirklichkeitsver-ständnisse. Schneider Verlag Hohengeh-ren: Baltmannsweiler, pp. 40–51.

Heyting, G. F. (2004a) Beware of Ideals inEducation. Journal of Philosophy of Edu-cation 38 (2): 241–247.

Heyting, G. F. (2004b) Relativism and thecritical potential of philosophy of educa-

tion. Journal of Philosophy of Education38 (3): 493–510.

Maturana, H. R. (1978) Cognition. In: Hejl, P.M., Köck, W. K. & Roth, G. (eds.) Wahrne-hmung und Kommunikation. Frankfurt:Peter Lang, 1978, pp. 29–49. Retrievedfrom http://www.enolagaia.com/M78bCog.html on 28 January 2008.

Mitterer, J. (1978) Sprache und Wirklichkeit.Eine erkenntnistheoretische Abhandlung.Doctoral theses at the University of Graz.

Mitterer, J. (1983) Die Hure Wahrheit – auchDuerr ein Zuhälter? In: Gehlen, R. & Wolf,B. (eds.) Der gläserne Zaun. Aufsätze zuHans Peter Duerrs “Traumzeit.” Syndikat:Frankfurt am Main, pp. 265–277.



Smeyers, P. & Marshall, J., D. (eds.) (1995)Philosophy of Education: Accepting Wit-tgenstein’s Challenge. Kluwer: Dordrecht.

Smeyers, P. & Peters, M. (eds.) (2006) Post-foundationalist themes in the philosophyof education. Festschrift for James D. Mar-shall. Blackwell: Oxford.

Weber, S. & Maurer, S. (eds.) (2006) Gouver-nementalität und Erziehungswissen-schaft. Wissen – Macht – Transformation.VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften: Wies-baden.



A Colorful Theory in a Black/White World

Mitterer and the Media: Parallels, Overlaps, Deviations

Introduction

The parallels between Ludwig Wittgensteinand Josef Mitterer are manifold and obvious,consisting of rather formal (numbering of theparagraphs) as well as similarly laconic stylesand even the “left out portion” of their mainworks. To be clear, this is not to introduce apanegyric passage right at the beginning ofmy essay but merely to refer to a methodolog-ical difficulty that could be pointed out in oneway or another. For media philosophy and theinfluence of


(Mit-terer 1992) in that discipline, it could be use-ful to read that small, but radical book, just aswe already are accustomed to reading the

Tractatus

. The main reason for this interpre-tation lies in an important fact: Mitterer doesnot mention the media at all and the widersense of his remarks on communication restsburied between the lines because his mainpurpose was to introduce non-dualism andits logical implications. That indirect meth-odology besides, Mitterer and the media are a

combination of great potential, sharing morethan their alliteration. While the possibilities,insights and limits of a non-dualizing way ofthinking about the media were excellentlyelaborated in

Non-Dualistic Media Theory

(Weber 2005), media philosophy as a wholestill tends to neglect the non-dualistic conceptand does not include it in its own framework.

This seems surprising enough, as the mainquestion – which ontological status do per-ceptions have: whether we made them on ourown, or via fabricated world views – should beof common interest. And that concept of ourunderstanding of the world indeed has a pro-found impact in a world where a great part ofinterhuman exchange of meaning – to avoidthe superlative “most of it” – gets transferredvia various media channels.

To start with a personal reading experi-ence, what struck me most about non-dual-ism was the versatility of the seemingly slightchange in looking at objects and/or theirdescriptions in language. Obviously Mit-terer’s epistemology offers more than meets

the eye, another point of similarity to Wit-tgenstein’s thinking. In both cases, we cannottrack back all the sources of their thoughtsexplicitly, even though both authors convinc-ingly conclude long lasting debates in philos-ophy and, in consequence, shake the funda-ments of the discipline itself. In any case, theyat least sharpen the borderline between whatcan be said about the world and where non-sense begins.

With analytic philosophy as a basis, Mit-terer’s work forms a systematic and ambitiouseffort to show that Ayer’s notion about the lin-guistic, non-factual nature of the proposi-tions of philosophy has to be considered forany proposition: “[T]hey do not describe thebehaviour of physical, or even mental,objects; they express definitions, or the formalconsequences of definitions” (Ayer 1967, p.57). The legacy of analytic philosophy – givenMitterer’s introduction via comments onWittgenstein (Mitterer 1992, pp. 23–30) – isradicalised when he no longer draws any lim-iting line between propositions of Science andmetaphysical sentences. However, twothoughts, implicitly already present in Ayer’sbook, are also of importance to non-dualisticthinking, especially concerning its effects onmedia-philosophy: the question of defining/describing, which is clearly time-bound andtherefore socially variable, and the “formalconsequences,” which root our actions inthese no-longer-simple theoretical (inter)personal linguistic questions.

Seeing versus viewing

In the following pages, I will firstly concen-trate on this second consequence and itsimplications for film theory. This is the factthat Mitterer considers every description of

Roland Graf

A

University of Applied Sciences, St. Pölten (Austria) <[email protected]>

R Purpose – To show that the idea of non-dualistic thinking is of great value for some of the core problems of media philosophy (which often lacks the radical approach of Josef Mitterer’s concept). R Methodology – Non-dualistic philosophy, introduced by Mitterer, has a lot in common with other thinkers’ discontent with the traditional way of describing the subject-object relation. Their differences and the impasses of phenomeno-logical, structuralist and psychoanalytic media theory shall be examined to show whether and to what extent non-dualism could do better. R Findings – As sociologists and some media-philosophers are already adopting some principles of non-dualism without a real framework, non-dualistic thinking offers a new insight into the way that consent/dissent is manufactured in a world where most descriptions are given in a mediated (i.e., non-inter-personal) form. R Implications – If we re-establish the personal freedom of gathering knowledge individually instead of “getting nearer to the truth,” the way of looking at the escapist power of media also has to be reinterpreted. The early distinction between Lumiére-like “documentation” (= truth) and Méliès-like “fiction” (= perception open to alternatives) could be another dualism, which should be expurgated by the application of Mitterer’s concepts. R Key words – structuralism, film-theory, psychoanalysis.

philosophical


CONCEPTS

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 255

CONCEPTS

philosophical


an object as constitutive of another descrip-tion (Mitterer 1992, p. 99). This observationnot only shows the parallel efforts of phenom-enological and psychoanalytic theories ofexplaining the triangle between object-description-depiction in filmic representa-tions but also transcends these concepts,which are still stuck in a dualist world-view.Films were chosen as my first subject. Mittererobviously does not speak about them: hisfavourite examples, in a rather Platonic tradi-tion, are apples or tables. Nevertheless non-dualism must also be useful for explaining“reality” in media (its content); otherwise,these descriptions must form a category oftheir own, consisting of a kind of second-order reality, totally different from (spoken)communication, as non-dualism so aptlyexplains. Besides this logical reason, the his-torical turn, marked by the last century’s rad-ical rethinking of our way of regarding theworld, started with the possibilities of filmand transcended the normal way of looking.Whereas the rather technical way of looking atprinted media did not produce a very fruitfulphilosophical output due to their merelytopologic (i.e., spatial) link to events, thephantasmic and deliriously coloured movingpictures influenced many thinkers.

Phenomenological approaches towardsthe media share one important characteristicwith non-dualistic philosophy, the highesteem for individual knowledge and its everchanging potential.

1

The work of Mitterer notonly offers a “beyond” of dualism, but alsoestablishes the freedom to hold individualviews. In opposition to an old tradition ofconsequently devaluing the own mind, whichstrives to understand the object world butnever can succeed due to its own being in theworld, non-dualism offers a tactic wherebythe (sensual) perception does not change butits value is added to by the decoding individ-ual himself.

The difference, on the other hand, lies inthe prominent core term of Phenomenology,the “kinaesthetic horizon,” which bears agreat similarity to the way we watch movies.Knowledge becomes carnal

2

knowledge inHusserl’s writings (an idea later forming thecornerstone of Maurice Merleau-Ponty1966) and thus the pre-theoretical founda-tion of any communication, discourse oreven science.

3

The body, rediscovered as afoundation of knowledge, reaches deep into

our grammar (Fellmann 2006, pp. 52–53), inwhich transitive verbs show a direct interac-tion, whereas oblique cases indicate reflec-tion, showing indirect relations to the object,wishes, possibilities and so on. On an artifi-cial horizon, let’s say a projection in a cinema,we loose the carnal sphere or, at least, aretricked by the camera’s viewpoint, whichdoes not cover the whole perspective (e.g., inan important shock effect in horror-films,when attacks come from objects outside thepicture).

The two basic ways of film-making, differ-ent in their way of depicting real or non-existing sets, can be named after the twoFrench pioneers; they show a early distinc-tion between Lumiére-like “documentation”(= claiming to show the truth) and Méliès-like “fiction” (= offering a perception open toalternatives). Film has always been regardedas a media presentation in dualist form,showing things that exist, while not showingreality outside. The outside half of the moviesin most film theories therefore were treatedas an important, determining part of the pic-ture show. Structurally, we feel cinema as asuspension of reality, like other escapistmedia that provide us with insights outsideour spatial everyday experience. Analyzingthe concrete example of “King Kong and thewhite woman,” Noel Carroll (2006) pointedout the ontological difference between a walland the great wall on “Skull Island”:

“Es ist mir nicht möglich, meinen Körperauf die Mauer auszurichten […] DerRaum, in dem sich die Mauer befindet, istzwar durch den Film optisch erreichbar,aber phänomenologisch von dem Raumabgetrennt, in dem ich lebe.[It is impossible to focus my body on thatwall … The space, in which the wall is sit-uated, can be reached optically by the film,but phenomenologically it is cut off fromthe room, in which I live]” (Carroll 2006,p. 159). Images in the film are projections before

the eye of the beholder, but not always at eyelevel; uncanny experiences are projected bythe cinematic technique.

Therefore, various theories from Hus-serl’s Phenomenology (elaborated as film-theory by Merleau-Ponty) up to

Z

i

z

ek’sinterpretation of film as the spectator’s phan-tasm of alternative world view (

Z

i

z

ek 2001)circle among the changing “truths” via differ-

ent conditions of perception. Psychoanalyticfilm-theory, especially following Lacan’s con-cept of the “point de capiton” or “quiltingpoint” shows the impasse of symbolic andpsychological understanding of the interac-tion between the signifier (film) and the sig-nified (world). Deleuze’s claim that the con-tinuity of a movie is the main difference fromthe photographic image (Deleuze 1989, pp.117–118) and the time axis responsible forour updating of knowledge, called “glisse-ment” in Jacques Lacan's reflections on film(Lacan 1997), coincide with the core of non-dualism, the temporal dimension. Further-more,

Z

i

z

ek’s use of Lacan’s concept locatesthe “wound” of the system exactly in themoment between the “up to now/from nowon,” but remains blind to the categorical dif-ference between the temporal frame, whicheliminates the “real” outside language (syn-onymous with desire in Lacan's view), andthe possible “realities” going/gone by. Therefutation of linguistics – which always seemsguided by the own desires and hegemonialinterference of the super-ego – and the intro-duction of a small but crucial link to the“real,” which guides our communication as amighty but absent entity, show the problemof hegemony, which always dispenses withindividual freedom and determines our reac-tions. Although the changing of filmic actionis rightly ascribed to time lapsing, the “pointde caption” has a rather static but clearly tem-poral function that gives the individual thepossibility to reconsider the pictures seen“retroactively and prospectively” (Lacan1997, pp. 267–268). This dialectic changebetween

Retention

and

Protention

, to useanalogous phenomenological terms for thetemporal analysis of our perception, offers asimilar concept to that which Husserl had inmind. His metaphor for media content is thevanishing single note in a melody:

“Jeder Ton hat selbst eine zeitliche Exten-sion, beim Anschlagen höre ich ihn alsjetzt, beim Forttönen hat er aber einimmer neues Jetzt, und das jeweilig vor-ausgehende wandelt sich in ein Vergangen.Also höre ich jeweils nur die aktuelle Phasedes Tones, und die Objektivität des ganzendauernden Tones konstituiert sich ineinem Aktkontinuum, das zu einem TeilErinnerung, zu einem kleinsten, punktu-ellen Teil Wahrnehmung und zu einemweiteren Teil Erwartung ist.


CONCEPTS

philosophical


[Each sound itself has an extension intime. Its beginning I hear as a ‘now,’ whileas continuing tone it has an ever-new now,and the respective prior turns into a past.So I hear only the current phase of thesound, and the objectivity of the entirepermanent tone constitutes in a continu-ing act, of which one part is remembrance,its smallest, punctual part is perceptionand another part, expectancy]” (Husserl1966, p. 23).Every piece of content of the serial media,

acoustic or visual, always has a clear temporalstructure

4

running parallel with the listener’sor spectator’s own life-time. Our understand-ing, therefore, also has to be gradual in timebut it does not necessarily bring us closer tothe truth “outside” the media. How this grad-ual accumulation of knowledge in a mediasurrounding is done may be observed bylooking at the possible ramifications of thestoryline in a movie. Here, the spectator alsokeeps in mind the narrative possibilities,which have not actually been updated by thepresentation on the screen. His “own film”consists of potential turns not (yet) seen andof course of his personal viewing habits(attention, knowledge of genres, regularity offilm consumption, etc.). As – in a non-dualiz-ing way of speaking – every description is onlyof concern “up to now,” every new filmicexperience adds up to the viewers’ ownunderstanding of the media system, not onlyits staging in various movies and theirapproach towards reality, but also its self-ref-erential attitude towards tradition.

Constructing versus comparing

In this respect, this parallel between the phe-nomenologists and Josef Mitterer in how theylook at the role of media also gives us a clue forthe answer to the categorical question aboutnon-dualism. I would, indeed, regard non-dualistic epistemology as a form of construc-tivism. The obvious reason has already beendescribed in the individual’s constructing ofreality, which shall also be explained in moredetail in its temporal character later on.

The “reality so far” that is offered to mediaconsumers does not simply introduce a kindof radicalized constructivism, but also givesthe possiblity that object, description and /

reality/

5

fall together. For me this seems to bethe main (but slight) difference between con-tructivist approaches and non-dualism. Theradical constructivists’ idea of the viability ofour knowledge – derived from media, imagi-nation or own experiences – in non-dualisticconcepts is no longer the guaranteeing factorof our perception. Besides, in a strict sense,this distinction would also lead to anothersort of dualism – constructed mind vs. worldof object. Temporal concepts – or more pre-cisely, the temporal status of the individualdescribing – are more important. Not how wewill act, but when we act makes a difference.As everything seems to be permanently mor-phing, non-dualism also offers circularmovement in the “quality” of understanding.Given the examples of babies or very old peo-ple, it was hard to explain on what kind ofknowledge their constructed world viewswere grounded. A priori definitions weredenied, so the

autopoiesis

of the brain to a cer-tain extent resembles a “creatio ex nihilo” (orits extermination in the case of the aged). Incontrast, vanishing definitions – as Mitterer’stemporal concept proposed – or graduallychanging insights may not only be explainedby non-dualistic thinking, but in my opinionare the very core of it. The structure of know-ing something in non-dualism is probablyconstructivist, the way of sometimes knowingthings is certainly Mitterer’s original idea.

We also find an argument ex negativo forthe family resemblance between constructiv-ism and non-dualism: if one did not under-stand Mitterer’s thoughts as a constructivistattempt, we would only shift the alien deter-mination from external factors (“reality”) tothe act of communication itself. Shifting thetruth criteria (the power of defining) from theworld of objects into the realm of languagedoes not itself solve the problem of a hierarchyof realities. They only become another cate-gory. If the success and quality of communi-cation is judged only by its consequences i.e.,provided by antagonism between individualsin a group, as Habermas (1981) proposed inhis

Theory of Communicative Acting

, the con-cept of consent replaces individual stand-points:

“Dieser Begriff kommunikativer Rationa-lität führt Konnotationen mit sich, dieletztlich zurückgehen auf die zentraleErfahrung der zwanglos einigenden, kon-sensstiftenden Kraft argumentativer Rede,

in der verschiedene Teilnehmer ihrezunächst nur subjektiven Auffassungenüberwinden und sich dank der Gemein-samkeit vernünftig motivierter Überzeu-gungen gleichzeitig der Einheit der objek-tiven Welt und der Intersubjektivität ihresLebenszusammenhangs vergewissern. [This notion of communicative rationalitybrings in some connotations that essen-tially go back to the the central experienceof the unifying, consent-manufacturingforce of argumentative speech, in whichdifferent participants overcome their ini-tially only subjective views and – due to thecommunity of rationally motivated con-victions – make themselves sure about theunity of the objective world and inter-sub-jectivity of their relationship to life at thesame time]” (Habermas 1984, p. 605). In contrast my understanding of non-

dualistic thinking not only accepts individualrudimentary descriptions (Mitterer 1992, p.92) as necessary for beginning a dialogue, butalso as legitimate, without giving them aworse ontological status, or – as Habermasimplicitly does – calling them irrationalbecause they are not validated by commonconsent. Information, knowledge and, byconsequence, intelligence itself are deter-mined by the individual

Lebenswelt

and socialhabits and cannot be measured by an absolutepoint of view.

Mitterer’s philosophy, on the other hand,and its distinction between descriptions “sofar” and “from now on,” easily makes clearthat only our description has changed andtherefore nothing has happened to the worldoutside. The camera-angle, as a source ofknowledge, only offers greater refinement toour descriptions, but has no unlimited free-dom to show us things completely unknown.If I do not have a description “so far,” evennegativity to it makes no sense: pictures in aweird, non-depicting way can only functionas a sense-breaker if they are radically differ-ent from the descriptions we are accustomedto – within the medium and outside of it, inthe “real world.” Once again, there is a clearparallel to the subject and its role in Husserl’swritings. The clear difference is that in non-dualism the sphere of our natural perceptiondoes not limit information to the concept of

Lebenswelt

:

it still forms a constitutive ele-ment of communication – and also a stimulusto carry on exploring the world – as the some-

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 257

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times rather vague, but only-available hori-zon of individual “reality so far.”

In our perception of the other(s), animportant question for post-Husserlian phe-nomenology (e.g., Lévinas, Ricœur), we onlysense its/their contextual representation(Waldenfels 2002, pp. 155–156). In otherwords, if we can communicate about the oth-ers’ uttering, they have to be, at least tempo-rarily, present in our field of perception. Wecan only deal with descriptions that are withinthe world, or the alternative would only con-sist of a use- and senseless meta-dialogue withno consequences for the individual life – everydialogue in such a world would be a private-language-argument.

In terms of communication, the funda-ment of any concept of society therefore restson the differences between our descriptionsof the world and the partial intertwiningbetween them. We only find the other in ashort moment of shared intimacy in com-munication, as a kind of reacting horizon forour own being in the world, but also foreverdifferent from us and our world-view – “[…]l’un séparé de l’autre par l’intervalle oul’entre-temps de la différence que la non-in-différence n’efface pas [… one separatedfrom the other by the interval or inbetweentime of the difference, which the non-in-dif-ference cannot erase]” (Lévinas 1993, p.214). This adds up to the practical (to avoidthe word “political”) dimension of Mitterer’simportance for media philosophy. As all ourdescriptions are done from within the world– an idea not unfamiliar with phenomeno-logical concepts – there are only descriptions(= individual knowledge

) so far

and

fromnow on

. There is no absolute truth to bereached gradually (metaphorically speaking,by stepping up), but in time we can graduallymove on, which also allows cyclical “move-ments” of our knowledge, e.g., backlashes,regression – a good argument against ideo-logical media theories and their linear mod-els.

Neither total subjectivity, which woulddestroy any communication (etymologicallygoing back to the Latin “cum,” meaning“together with”) and thus only leave constantmisunderstanding, nor the universalisationof knowledge, whose absolute position facili-tates totalitarian views and dogmatic posi-tions of any kind, are a feasible explanationfor our way of talking. This distinction, the

idea of a temporal difference between ourindividual perception and articulation of theworld, guiding our sharing of meaning, wasintroduced by Husserl. The temporal dimen-sion of communication as a new paradigm,which I firmly connect with Josef Mitterer’swork, has already formed an important partof the synchronicity implicit in the concept of

Lebenswelt

. Tension between “I” and “you,”both in their attitude towards the world andtowards one another, can only be eased in ashared moment, the basis even of divergingsentences “from now on.”

Mitterer introduced “a-chronic” as a per-manent state of perception and communica-tion, meaning by this a gain in individual free-dom, which, as a consequence, may even bedeviant compared to a global social scale, or,at least, the tolerated level inside a certainsociety. The concept of “Jemeinigkeit,” thepersonal conditions of existence and knowl-edge that forms a key part in Heidegger’s anal-ysis of death (Heidegger 1986, p. 240),changes in non-dualism from a metaphysicalconstruction and transcendental projectionto the essence of our understanding of media,language and the world as a whole.

Tagging versus the absolute

Coming to the end of this brief essay inhonour of Josef Mitterer, it might be useful togive an (imperfect) overview, of what mightbecome of non-dualism if its ideas are dis-cussed by a broader (non-constructivist)audience. Although this might temporarilymean introducing another dualism – theo-rists outside and inside non-dualism – I hopeto give some glimpse as to the discipline andresearch fields that are fruitful, even in their(up to now) dualist approach. At the sametime, in order to broaden the perspective andto stick to the limitations of this publication,I will look at two reasons only – a sociologicaland a technical one – why the critique on tra-ditional thinking, started 16 years ago, still hasa future in various contexts.

First, Mitterer’s way of looking at ontologyhas a sympathetic lack of ideology (maybeone reason for its lack of global review).Therefore, some of the crucial points aboutmedia production versus consumption,stressed in Marxist theories about “powerless”

consumers of media (cf. Rossi-Landi 1974;more subtly, Hall 1980), simply disappearwhen treated with this concept, which deniesan absolute and super-individual truth.

Critically one might object that I am onlytalking about the ontological status of percep-tions we do not directly make ourselves butonly know by hearsay (= media), and nottheir political (ab)use. Of course, sociologicalproblems will not simply disappear by usingnew descriptions, but mediated communica-tion loses its defining power when it is onlyone source of our everchanging descriptions.In fact, the changing and contradicting pre-sentations in newspapers, TV and the internetare at best a mirror of the functioning of ourown mind: truth only prevails as long as thereis no new issue, breaking news or update, sothat the “true” report has to be revised,changed or denied. In that respect, mediaconsumption always means a strong selfrefer-ential reading of our own non-dualistic pos-sibilites of knowledge. The example of verbal“truth markers” – such as “in fact,” “in reality,”“you are wrong, because” – in TV discussions(Weber 2005, p. 266) shows this relativity oftruth in the media, which tries to camouflageitself as the only possible world view for aslong as possible.

In looking at the interpersonal communi-cation of our perceptions, there is an interest-ing comparison between the political hege-mony as described by Foucault’s discourse-theory, and the rather apolitical epistemologyof non-dualism. As the French philosopherput it elegantly, the world is no collaborator –“Il faut concevoir le discours comme une vio-lence que nous faisons aux choses, en tout cascomme une pratique que nous leur imposons[We have to design the discourse as a violencethat we do to things, in any case as a practicethat we impose on them]” (Foucault 1971, p.55). This does not necessarily mean that weare forced to listen only to the defining dis-courses, backed by strong (social or material)means, which itself is only another way ofdualist describing; it could also be seen as anapproach to use communication itself as aemancipatory tool. As there can be no heretics– if we non-dualistically deny orthodoxy – thequestion arises of whether sociology under-stands the importance of the social exchangeof descriptions better than philosophersdescribing the “real world of objects” as anideal in a transcendent sphere.


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philosophical


Quite recently Anton Amann (2008) bidfarewell to the remnants of sociology’s dualis-tic concepts in the political sense. Media andtheir “doctrinary power” (Amann 2008, pp.15–17) decide how we see things, whereas thefacts are always “socially constructed”(Amann 2008, p. 16) and do not mirror orrebuild real objects, not even in mental ormetaphoric images. There is also a strongobjection against the worth of any hierarchi-cal organisation of information. In otherwords, we do not have “corporate wording”for the whole world – not even for the corpo-rate world, as I argued some time ago (Graf2005). In the World Wide Web and the blogo-sphere the creation of new descriptions, eveninvoluntarily, happens all the time, and – as asubversive tactic – undermines the one, offi-cial, favoured “truth”:

“

Now we can see for ourselves that knowl-edge isn’t in our heads; it is between us. Itemerges from public and social thoughtand it stays there, because social knowing,like the global conversations that give riseto it, is never finished

”

(Weinberger 2007,p. 147).Therefore, looking at the Internet, which

nowadays seems to attract much more onto-logical interest than film, the significance ofMitterer’s thinking will perhaps be even morestriking. In studying the “social web,” DavidWeinberger (2007) tried to analyze, philo-sophically, what kind of status

tagging

, thetechnique behind successful online business-models such as Flickr, Amazon or Wikipedia,has. Using cybernetic classification he devel-oped a model of how we organize our knowl-edge in time so we can find things again. Start-ing from real things to meta-data(= descriptions), separating informationabout objects from the objects themselves,

6

everything changes when machines interferewith the way we look for things:

“Content is digitized into bits, and theinformation about that content consists ofbits as well. […] The third order removesthe limitations we’ve assumed were inevi-table in how we organize information”(Weinberger 2007, pp. 17–18). Even if we do not share cyber-theoretician

Howard Rheingold’s enthusiasm, that “[…]

the ability to tag and search extends humanknowledge the way mathematics and thealphabet did” (Rheingold 2007, p. 117), tech-nological progress converges

signifiant

(tag-ging) and

signifié

(described object). This hasvarious implications, not only that of theseemingly nonsensical notion that man-made abstract descriptions in coded lan-guages, that are only readable by machines,are not only tags but gatekeepers to informa-tion and literally to objects. From that pointof view, the online search for a certaindescription of the world, let’s say a non-fic-tion book, becomes an ontological

matry-oshka

.

7

Our search starts with a vaguedescription of that certain description that weare looking for. This /content of book/ cannotalways be properly argued, but there are othercriteria for whether the /book/ we choose willbe a viable solution to the scientific problemwe need it for. Exactly that criteria as well associal links – such as Amazon’s phrase “cus-tomers who bought the article also…” – orthe probability that heavily sought after booksalso will be useful for me, matter for our deci-sion. It is not exactly the more we know, thebetter (being the main criteria in dualistview), but the more different items of knowl-edge and viable solutions we have. Statistics, apicture of the cover and written reviews bycustomers plus an abstract rating systemseemingly offer us a better impression thantwenty reviews would have done.

Conclusion

Whereas a physical object could only be foundat one place a time, but described in variousways (just think of the difficulties of filinglibrary books in a catalogue), the descriptionsnow add up to the “object” itself and becomepart of it. The only variable criterion is time:passing time, which changes descriptions andenriches the archived media, and the time Iam willing to spend on a subject. It is legiti-mate to stay on the surface, if this makes sensefor the moment, as long as the user has con-trol over the important three components offree communication: channel, code and cir-cumstances of decoding (Rossi-Landi 1974, p.

252). Exactly this freedom has been abne-gated by classical media theory, and in non-dualism comes back not only as a media-related phenomenon but as the essence ofevery epistemology.

For some of us, it did not take technologi-cal devices to make the structures behindpublic construction of meaning visiblebecause we already thought of media as anon-dualistic describing system. The otherscan still retreat with a small, but not outdated,volume from 1992 and read their Mitterercarefully. Non-dualism may not be the “uni-fied theory” that media theory dreamed of fora long time, but its approach solves a lot ofproblems, affecting any (re)construction ofthings that happen.

Roland Graf studied psychology, philosophy, Latin and pedagogics in Vienna. The long-standing journalist works as a lecturer at the University of Applied Science in Sankt Pölten, Austria, teaching semiotics, media theory and philosophy of the media and marketing. He is also one of the external Austrian evaluators for the European programmes for teaching adults (GRUNDTVIG) and for promoting mobility of learners (Leonardo). Currently he is working on his Ph.D. thesis in philosophy, A Phenomenology of Viewing.(Photo: Michael Baumgartner)

THE AUTHOR

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 259

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Notes

1. For Husserl, we have to get rid of the worldas our system of perception first throughthe phenomenological operation or “ep-oché,” in order to find it later again “inuniversaler Selbstbesinnung [in universalself-reflection]” (Husserl 1963, p. 161).

2. The individual body also acts as part of asocial community, shared by other bodily-determined individuals: “Die menschlicheGeistigkeit ist ja auf die menschliche Phy-sis gegründet, jedes einzeln-menschlicheSeelenleben ist fundiert in der Körperlich-keit, also auch jede Gemeinschaft in denKörpern der einzelnen Menschen, welcheGlieder dieser Gemeinschaft sind. [Thehuman mind is founded on the humanphysis, every single human soul-life isbased on physicality, therefore every com-munity is founded on the bodies of the in-dividual people who are members of thiscommunity]” (Husserl 1995, pp. 21–22).

3. Husserl was afraid, that we could not over-come our grammar, not even in Science:“Eine objektive Wissenschaft vom Geiste,eine objektive Seelenlehre, objektiv in demSinne, dass sie den Seelen, den personalenGemeinschaften Inexistenz in den For-men der Raumzeitlichkeit zukommenlässt, hat es nie gegeben und wird es nie ge-ben [There has never been an objective sci-ence of the mind, an objective theory ofthe soul, objective in the sense that itgrants the souls, the personal communi-ties, inexistence within the forms of timeand space – and it will never exist]” (Hus-serl 1995, p. 65).

4. In fact the direction of the “time-arrow”even can be reversed; reality then comesafter the media-image, probably done forthe first time in Georges Méliès’ “live-broadcast” of the coronation of EdwardVII, shown the very night of the ceremony(9 August 1902), but in fact producedlong before, starring a French waiter as the

British king. Digital media of course tech-nically add many possibilities to this kindof artificial pre-cognition, as Stefan We-ber pointed out, describing the recon-structed computer-images of a kidnappedAustrian girl, which later looked exactlylike the “un-real” photos (Weber 2006, p.59).

5. Mitterer (1992) introduced the graphicnotation – /word/ – to signal a rudimen-tary description.

6. The rising complexity of the system,caused by the introduction of this new in-dividual meta-level is also described bythe familiar categories of first, second andthird order: “A code on this second-orderobject, the catalogue card, points to thephysical place where the first-order photois stored in the back room” (Weinberger2007, p. 18).

7. The famous Russian wooden doll, hidingmore figures of the same sort, but differ-ent sizes inside.

References

All translations are made by the author.Amann, A. (2008) Nach der Teilung der Welt.

Logiken globaler Kämpfe. SociologicaVolume 12. Braumüller: Vienna.

Ayer, A. J. (1967) Language, truth and logic.17th Edition. Victor Gollancz: London.Originally published in 1936.

Carroll, N. (2006) Auf dem Weg zu einerOntologie des bewegten Bildes In: Liebsch,D. (ed.) Philosophie des Films. Grundla-gentexte. KunstPhilosophie Volume 5.Second Edition. Mentis: Paderborn, pp.155–175.

Deleuze, G. (1989) Das Bewegungsbild. Kino1. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Fellmann, F. (2006) Phänomenologie. ZurEinführung. Junius: Hamburg.

Foucault, M. (1971) L’ordre du discours. Gal-limard: Paris.

Graf, R. (2005) Branding subversion, person-alising media. “Busting and blogging” in aglobal media context In: TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 16.Retrieved from http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/15_1/graf16.htm on 2 March 2008.

Habermas, J. (1981) Theorie des kommunika-tiven Handelns, Volume 1 and 2. Suhr-kamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Habermas, J. (1984) Erläuterungen zum

Begriff des kommunikativen Handelns. In:Habermas, J., Vorstudien und Ergänzun-gen zur Theorie des kommunikativenHandelns. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main,pp. 571–606.

Hall, S. (1989) Encoding/decoding. In: Centrefor Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.)Culture, media, language: Working papersin cultural studies. Hutchinson: London,pp. 128–138.

Heidegger, M. (1986) Sein und Zeit. 16th Edi-tion. Niemeyer: Tübingen. Originallypublished in 1927.

Husserl, E. (1963) Cartesianische Meditatio-nen und Pariser Vorträge. HusserlianaVolume I, edited by Stephan Strasser. Mar-tinus Nijhoff: Den Haag.

Husserl, E. (1966) Zur Phänomenologie desinneren Zeitbewusstseins. HusserlianaVolume X, edited by Rudolf Boehm. Mar-tinus Nijhoff: Den Haag .

Husserl, E. (1995) Die Krisis des europäischenMenschentums und die Philosophie. BeltzAthenäum: Weinheim.

Lacan, J. (1997) Das Seminar, Buch III (1955–1956): Die Psychosen. Quadriga: Wein-heim/Berlin.

Lévinas, E. (1993) Dieu, la mort et le temps.Grasset: Paris.

Merleau-Ponty M. (1966) Phänomenologieder Wahrnehmung. De Gruyter: Berlin.


Rheingold, H. (2007) How we know and whywe act. strategy + business 47: 112–117.

Rossi-Landi, F. (1974) Sprache als Arbeit undals Markt. Second Edition. Carl Hanser:Munich.

Waldenfels, B. (2002) Paradoxien ethnogra-phischer Fremddarstellung. In: Därmann,I. & Jamme, C. (eds.) Fremderfahrung undRepräsentation. Velbrück: Weilerswist, pp.151–182.


Weber, S. (2006) Die Beliebigkeit von Quellenund Zitaten. Verweist die Berichterstattungüber Natascha Kampusch auf ein zuneh-mendes Problem im Journalismus? Medi-enimpulse. Beiträge zur Medienpädagogik58: 59–64.

Weinberger, D. (2007) Everything is miscella-neous: The power of the new digital disor-der. Times Books: New York.

Z

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ek, S.

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(2001) Die Furcht vor echten Trä-nen. Krzysztof Kieslowski und die “Naht-stelle.” Volk und Welt: Berlin.



“Walking and Falling”

Language as Media Embodiment

The know-how of speaking

Josef Mitterer approaches language in a waythat consequently defies simple dualisms suchas the ontological distinction between lan-guage and world, between a linguistic state-ment and the object it refers to. According toMitterer, a dualistic point of view inevitablyraises the question as to whether a linguisticdescription accords with the object itdescribes. Thus, dualistic reasoning addressesthe mediation of nonverbal experience withlinguistic description. A speaker has to medi-ate experience A (e.g., an object she perceives)with experience B (e.g., a linguistic statementabout the perceptual qualities of the object).If a speaker equates experience A to B then thetruth of the statement is derived from theidentification (correspondence, etc.) of A andB. If a speaker equates B to A, then the truthresults from the coherence (viability, etc.) ofstatements B about A. Yet, in both cases thecorrectness of the mediation is based on thebelief that the separation and thus the dual-ism between the statement and the object areinevitable. In Mitterer’s view proponents ofboth positions are stuck in truth-claims of

their description and hold a fundamentallystatic point of view that “extends the presentposition of judgment into the past andfuture” (Mitterer 2001, p. 53). Moreover, bothpositions are directed towards the objectrather than towards the embodied process ofspeaking, which seems to be irrelevant to thequality of mediation.

So far

, my understanding of Mitterer’snon-dualistic alternative to the dualistic sep-aration of language and world reads as fol-lows

:

linguistic reality is a process, which fun-damentally depends on different perspec-tives, that is, on different experiential posi-tions and the mediation between differentdescriptions of experience. The mediation ofdifferent articulations of experience estab-lishes a temporal difference and therefore isheld responsible for both the proceduralnature and the semantic openness of realityconstruction. In this paper I will elaborate –

from now

on

– the final statement of Mit-terer’s book


: “In der Rhetorik geht es darum, ein Publi-kum von beliebigen Auffassungen zuüberzeugen. Zum Unterschied davon gehtes in der dualistischen Argumentations-technik und Philosophie darum, ein

Publikum (Leser, Hörer, Diskurspartner)von der Wahrheit zu überzeugen. DieserUnterschied kann nicht oft genug betontwerden…[Rhetoric aims at persuading an audienceof any assumption. Contrary to rhetoric,the dualistic technique of argumentationand philosophy aims at convincing anaudience (reader, listener, discourse part-ner) of the truth. This difference cannot beemphasized often enough…]” (Mitterer2001, p. 119).In Mitterer’s view it is rhetoric, the art of

realizing language through figures of speechand significant

forms

of speaking respec-tively, that seems to allow for a non-dualisticmediation between different points of view.Thus, the key to communication is not whata speaker says but

the way she speaks,

theknow-that of language cannot be separatedfrom the know-how-to-speak: “

Während

ichden Tisch beschreibe, während ich über ihnreflektiere, kann ich zwischen dem Beschrei-ben des Tisches und dem Tisch nicht unter-scheiden [

While

I am describing the table,while I reflect on it, I cannot distinguishbetween describing the table and the tableitself]” (Mitterer 2001, pp. 97f). Since differ-ences – between individual experiences, cog-nitive worlds, and social contexts – are atstake in any act of articulation, speakinginevitably implies a moment of persuasion,a transgression of boundaries between aspeaker and a listener. Accordingly, Mittereremphasizes that social conflict is the sitewhere the battle for truth is fought (p. 85).The communication of conflict makes obvi-ous that the ways in which a speaker articu-lates her position are as important as whatshe speaks about. It is the

sensual

aspect ofcommunication, the material design of lan-guage, that challenges the attention andstimulates or disrupts the exchange of differ-ent views between speaker and listener. In hisconstructivist media theory Schmidt formu-

Sibylle Moser

A

LOOP. The Institute for Systemic Media Research (Austria) <[email protected]>

R Purpose – This paper aims to mediate Josef Mitterer’s non-dualistic philosophy with the claim that speaking is a process of embodied experience. R Approach – Key assumptions of enactive cognitive science, such as the crossmodal integration of speech and gesture and the perceptual grounding of linguistic concepts are illustrated through selected performance pieces of multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. R Findings – The analysis of Anderson’s artistic work questions a number of dualisms that guide truth-oriented models of language. Her performance pieces demonstrate that language is both sensually enacted and conceptually reflected through the integration of iconic signing (e.g. sound play, dance) with symbolic communication. Moreover, Ander-son’s artistic practice demonstrates that media such as voice, gesture and recording tech-nologies realize different forms of embodied language. R Benefits – Media aesthetics in the vein of embodied cognition can overcome a number of the dualisms that inform ana-lytical philosophy of language, linguistics, and communication studies, such as perceptual/conceptual meaning, iconicity/symbolicity, emotion/cognition, body/technology and voice/script. R Key words – language, embodiment, media, aesthetics, performance art.

cognitive–media aesthetic

enactive cognitive science

CONCEPTS

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 261

CONCEPTS



lates this insight into the genuinely materialnature of communication as follows:

“Kopplungsprozesse laufen ausschließ-lich über die

Materialität

der Kommuni-kationsmittel, da Sinn nur innerhalb vonSystemen (nämlich als Prozeßresultat)entstehen kann. Materialitäten aber kannman nur koppeln und nicht hermeneu-tisch ineinander übersetzen. Folglichmüssen die Materialitäten all das enthal-ten, was eine systemspezifisch bewertbareAnschlußfähigkeit von Medienangeboteneröffnet; denn wir gehen kognitiv wiekommunikativ mit der Materialität vonMedienangeboten um, nicht mit Sinnoder Bedeutungen.[Since meaning can only emerge withinsystems (namely as a result of a process),processes of coupling take place exclusivelythrough the

materiality

of the means ofcommunication. Yet, materialities canonly be coupled, they cannot be translatedinto each other hermeneutically. Conse-quently, materialities have to comprise ofeverything that opens media offers to a sys-tems specific connection; for we cognitive-ly and communicatively deal with the ma-teriality of media offers, not with mean-ings or semantic reference]” (Schmidt2000, p. 28).

1

Thus, in neglecting the material form oftruth-claims, the situated enactment of lan-guage remains the blind spot of dualistic dis-course. In philosophy, this blind spot nor-mally takes the graphic form of printed textthrough which meaning seems to be substan-tiated independently of the writer. Accord-ingly, Mitterer notes that objections againstthe truth of a statement most often are raisedagainst printed texts and rather seldomappear in the “incarnated” (“leibhaftige”)form of a conversation between philosophicalopponents (cf. Mitterer 2001, p. 101). Areflection on the material conditions of ver-bal articulation would move the presump-tions of their truth claims from the metaphys-ical “beyond discourse” (“Jenseits desDiskurses”) right into the immediate pres-ence of speaking. Consequently, in a non-dualistic perspective the success of linguisticcommunication is a question of the

aesthetics

of articulating a text

here and now.

In what follows, I will sketch two keyaspects of the

aesthetic know-how

of speaking

that undermine dualistic views on language.

Drawing on arguments from

enactive cogni-tive science

(McGee 2005), I will show howkey ideas on the embodiment of cognitiontranslate into the media aesthetic observationof language and the procedural enactment oflinguistic meaning. Varela, Thompson andRosch have defined embodied cognition pro-grammatically as follows:

“By using the term ‘embodied’ we mean tohighlight two points: first, that cognitiondepends upon the kinds of experience thatcome from having a body with varioussensorimotor capacities, and second, thatthese individual sensorimotor capacitiesare themselves embedded in a moreencompassing biological, psychological,and cultural context” (Varela, Thompson& Rosch 1991, p. 173).Both aspects, the bodily dimension of

meaning and the contextualization of mean-ing through body, psyche and culture stand insharp contrast to the tenets of the “concep-tual-propositional theory of meaning”(Johnson 2007, pp. 8ff) that guides the dual-istic discourse questioned by Mitterer. WhileMitterer’s focus lies in communications inthe tradition of analytical philosophy, thecognitivist idea that “sentences get theirmeaning by expressing propositions, whichare the basic units of meaning and thought”(Johnson 2007), underlies a number of dual-istic misconceptions of language in other dis-ciplines, such as Saussure’s distinction of lin-guistic system (langue) and individual use(parole) and Chomsky’s distinction of inter-nal language (competence) and external lan-guage (performance) (Krämer 2002, pp.98ff). Furthermore, the cognitivist assump-tion of disembodied propositions relies onthe distinction between

percept

and

concept,

which is perpetuated in media theoreticaldistinctions such as

sensual

voice and disem-bodied script

(McLuhan 1997; Ong 2002). Inorder to question these dualisms, I will dis-cuss the kinesthetic and metaphorical enact-ment of language by a selection of artisticworks of multimedia performer LaurieAnderson. I will introduce

gesture and meta-phor

as often-neglected dimensions of speechand argue that a focus on gesture empiricallysupports Mitterer’s objection against thedualistic separation of linguistic descriptionand the object described. I will furthermoreshow that metaphoric reasoning re-translatesthe object of truth-claims, the conceptual

meaning of statements, into the bodily expe-rience of the world.

By drawing on Anderson’s artistic practiceI follow Johnson’s hypothesis that “the pro-cesses of embodied meaning in the arts arethe very same ones that make linguisticmeaning possible” (Johnson 2007, p. 207).This insight becomes most palpable in self-reflexive (post-)modern art forms that raiseawareness of the perceptual and emotionaleffectiveness of linguistic signs. Multimediaperformer Anderson, a contemporary of Mit-terer who celebrated her 60th birthday lastyear, therefore excellently suits the goal ofdemonstrating the aesthetic embodiment oflanguage. In many of her digital art works sheproduced in the late 1970s and 1980s, parallelto the emergence of “second-generation cog-nitive science” (Lakoff & Johnson 1999, pp.77ff), she has emphasized the sensual natureof human communication, both enactingand reflecting on the embodiment of lan-guage through artistic performance. In viewof and by listening to a selection of Ander-son’s works I will finally argue that the non-dualistic implications of embodied cognitioncoincide with the idea of

intermediality

asoutlined in the media theories of MarshallMcLuhan, Niklas Luhmann and SybilleKrämer. In line with Mitterer, these authorsdemonstrate that the relation between adescription and the object described can beinterpreted as the temporal mediation of dif-ferent forms of experience. Consequently, Iwill concretize the embodiment of languageas

media embodiment,

thereby focusing onthe fundamentally non-dualistic nature ofthe process of mediation itself.

Walking and falling

In her piece

Walking and Falling

(1981), ashort vignette from the 8-hour performance

United States I–IV,

Anderson poignantlyrecites a simple short text (Figure 1). Her rec-itation is accompanied by a minimalist elec-tronic melody, which is rhythmized throughrhetorical pauses and sounds as if it werecaught in a continuous fade out. The wayAnderson enacts the text is precisely what thepiece is about. The lyrics, performed bymeans of a fragile-sounding melody and into-nation, deal with the permanent threat of los-ing balance in walking. Thus, Anderson


CONCEPTS



enacts her verbal articulation notonly as a means of conceptual under-standing but also as a means of

iconicpresentation

. The way she enacts thelinguistic signs resembles perceptualqualities of what they refer to. More-over, in the recording of

Walking andFalling

on her famous album

Big Sci-ence

(1982) she opens the recitationwith the lines “I was looking for you /but I couldn’t find you” thereby asso-ciating the threat of falling with therisk of unsuccessfully addressing thesocial other.

Walking and Falling

operates ondimensions of language that oftenremain neglected by analytical phi-losophy, linguistics and communica-tion studies. By implying a rhetorical“you,” Anderson indicates the socialrelatedness of verbal articulation. Byturning language into a sound gesture, thepiece explores the interdependence of move-ment, perception and conceptual interpreta-tion. By associating and integrating differentexperiences such as walking, sounding andspeaking, Anderson’s piece introduces meta-phor as a mode of signification that goesbeyond the traditional understanding of met-aphor as an exclusive means of poetic lan-guage. Qualities such as these normallyremain unobserved in philosophical and sci-entific discourses that investigate the appro-priateness of linguistic descriptions. Mostoften the discussion of intermodal meta-phoric association and social mutuality inlanguage has been left to disciplines in thehumanities such as literary criticism or polit-ical philosophy. Yet, since, for example,authors discussed in poststructuralist dis-course such as Kristeva, Cixous and Bachtinhave focused on the bodily dimensions of lan-guage mainly through the hermeneutics oftextual interpretation, “most of the Continen-tal discussions have proceeded without takinginto consideration scientific research on cog-nition” (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991, p.150). In contrast, media aesthetic studies inthe vein of enactive cognitive science take intoaccount research results from cognitive lin-guistics and the evolutionary study of lan-guage. From a dualistic perspective, these dif-ferent disciplinary approaches might appearas mutually exclusive options. In my view,Mitterer’s philosophy suggests not only over-

coming the divide between the two cultures(Snow) but interpreting the exchangebetween different theoretical descriptions asan intellectual opportunity. Accordingly, Iwill show how a non-dualistic understandingof language can benefit from findings ofenacted cognitive science.

Language as movement

In focusing on movement (“you are walk-ing”), implicit knowledge (“and you don’talways realize it”) and the dynamic relationbetween cognizing system and environment(“you are falling and then catching yourselffrom falling”), Anderson’s piece draws on anumber of key topics that have been associ-ated with the term


.

Itis the moving body as portrayed in her perfor-mance text that appears as a medium of expe-rience by authors such as Francisco Varela,Humberto R. Maturana, Mark Johnson,George Lakoff or Raphael Núñez. In

Walkingand Falling

Anderson succinctly demon-strates by aesthetic means the basic experi-ence of walking upright under the conditionsof gravity. She both perceptually shows andconceptually reflects on the freeing of handand mouth through upright locomotion as asalient condition of linguistic articulation(Jäger 2001; Leroi-Gourhan 1993). Andersonseems to reenact the act of walking and fallingacoustically by means of her vocal chords,

whose specific vibration enables her toenunciate the sound of language in ahesitantly and yet proceeding fashion.Moreover, she simulates the act of bal-ancing through the dynamics of musicthat changes between strong and weakfrequencies in the background. Indoing so, she demonstrates in a sensu-ally comprehensible, aesthetic fashionthe cybernetic process of regainingtemporary stability through the com-pensation of perturbations. In pre-senting the simultaneity of walkingand falling, she establishes the com-parison of different experiences as thecognitive operation through which theworld comes into being.

Anderson suggests that the practiceof movement works especially wellwhen performed “without realizing it.”While speaking and performing she

cannot permanently be conscious of the con-ditions of speaking and performing. Accord-ingly, Johnson notes on the sensorimotorknowledge of balancing, “It is cruciallyimportant to see that balancing is an

activitywe learn with our bodies

and not by grasping aset of rules or concepts” (Johnson 1987, p. 74).Although the practical know-how of coordi-nated movement depends on training andexperience, it does not require explicit knowl-edge of algorithms or rules. Similarly, Mittererpoints out the impossibility of distinguishingbetween the process of description (the know-how) and the object of description (the know-that) at one and the same moment. Ander-son’s enactment of vocal technique thereforeshows that linguistic expression encompassesnon-conceptual dimensions, which ratherpresent the know-how-to-articulate thanpropositional states of the world.

Von Glasersfeld has argued pointedly inthe tradition of Piaget that sensorimotorbehavior and perception mutually defineeach other (Glasersfeld 2002, pp. 150ff).Accordingly, Anderson elaborates on theintrinsic co-evolution of perception andaction through movement in many of herworks. In her piece

Drum Dance (1986)

shewears a jumpsuit whose inside is wired withcomputer sensors that translate tactile stim-uli into drumbeats (Figure 2). Whenever shetouches her ”second skin” she produces vari-ous drum-sounds (snare, bass drum, claps,etc.), which in turn inform her rhythmic

Figure 1:

Walking and Falling

(1981).

You’re walkingand you don’t always realize it,but you’re always falling.With each stepyou fall forwards slightlyand then catch yourself from falling.Over and over you’re falling.And then catching yourself from falling.And this ishow you can be walkingand fallingat the same time.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 263

CONCEPTS



body movement. The interplay of move-ment, (self-)touch, and acoustic stimulationappears as a precisely timed choreographythat enacts Anderson’s electronicallyextended body as an instrument of self-refer-ential transformation. Thus, like a media aes-thetic echo of Mitterer’s non-dualistic modeof reasoning, Anderson demonstrates that wedo not bring forth the world through tran-scendental foundations but through imma-nent modification. As Mitterer points out,truth-claims are usually grounded in somemetaphysical instance that lies “beyond” thediscourse in which the claims are raised. Thisinstance most often is the (always alreadydescribed) object as such that provides thegrounds or presumption on the basis ofwhich descriptions are judged (e.g., reality;evolutionary necessity). Anderson illustratesthat in losing this ultimate ground of descrip-tion, the interrelatedness of subject andworld becomes apparent: objects such as theinstrumental body become the subjects ofexperience and vice versa.

In Glasersfeld’s constructivist model oflanguage, the cybernetic feedback mecha-nisms exemplified through Anderson’s piece,lay the ground for creative comparisons ofexperience that result in the construction ofcognitive schemas through assimilation andaccommodation. Following Saussure’s dis-tinction of signifier and signified, von Glaser-sfeld argues that linguistic signs result fromthe association of acoustic schemas with con-ceptual schemas (Glasersfeld 2002, pp. 130f).The child learns to associate sound imageswith socially accepted experiences and con-cepts respectively. The meanings of linguisticexpressions then emerge from the coordina-tion of conceptual schemas in individual cog-

nitive domains through social control. In fol-lowing Saussure, von Glasersfeld thusemphasizes that linguistic meaning emergeswithin the mental realities of individuals,thereby abandoning the idea of the externalreferent. Yet, similarly to Saussure he neitherfocuses on the effects of perceptual qualitiesof sound images nor does he explore the sig-nificance of the sensorimotor enactment ofspeech. By ignoring the sound image andfocusing on conceptual schemas instead, vonGlasersfeld implicitly perpetuates the dualis-tic division of body and mind in linguisticreasoning.

In view of Anderson’s performances itbecomes obvious that gesture, that is signifi-cant bodily motion, is crucial to linguisticcommunication. While the piece

Walkingand Falling

operates on acoustic gestures, theperformance of

Drum Dance

enacts the mov-ing body as a meaningful sign. In

White Lily

(1986)

,

a piece which reflects the nature oftime, Anderson synchronizes the lines “daysgo by / endlessly / endlessly pulling you intothe future” with movements of her arm (Fig-ure 5). As the gestural variety in her workshows, gesture can either be realized visuallythrough the hands or through the modula-tion of sound in speech and music. Accord-ingly, a number of authors have pointed outthe intrinsic interdependence of speech andgesture

(

Leroi-Gourhan 1993; Iverson &Thelen 1999; Núñez 1999, p. 43; Roth 2002;Gallagher 2006, p. 107ff.). Most of theseauthors draw on McNeill’s studies on theinterdependence of gesture, language andthought. The “temporal anatomy” (McNeill2005, p. 29) of gesture synchronizes the mov-ing body with the meanings expressedthrough speech. This temporalized enact-

ment of gestures becomes most evident in“beat gestures” which rhythmically punctu-ate and emphasize segments of speech. Buteven in more elaborate forms of iconic, deic-tic and metaphoric gestures, gesture strokescoincide with the prosodic emphasis ofwords. Accordingly, Iverson and Thelenargue that the self-organization of speechand gesture is based in rhythmic movement(Iverson & Thelen 1999, p. 27). Crossmodalrhythmization plays a key role in the firstsocial interactions of human beings. The first“proto-conversations” between caretakersand babies are enunciated in a rhythmicallymodulated fashion accompanied by highlyexaggerated facial expressions and gestures(cf. Dissanayake 2000, pp. 34ff). Thus, thefirst verbal communication takes on a“proto-rhetorical” expressive form that laysthe ground for artistic expression and focuseson the modes of speaking rather than thepropositional content of words. The struc-tured modification of voice and body move-ment in the poetics of baby talk both evokestrong feelings of pleasure, marking the firstverbal articulations as a primarily emotionalform of communication. As the word e

mo-tion

indicates, there is a motoric quality toemotional states. Emotions literally move theemoting organism, which in turn behaves/moves according to emotional states (cf.Sheets-Johnstone 1999).

This fundamentally emotional nature ofthe “imagery-language-dialectic” (McNeill)leads us right back into the center of non-dualistic reasoning. Empirical studies on thecrossmodal interdependence of speech andgesture vividly illustrate that the objectdescribed (the conceptual meaning) cannotbe separated from the process of description

Figure 2:

Feedback of perception and action in Anderson’s

Drum Dance (1986,

video stills).


CONCEPTS



(the integration of movement and significa-tion). Moreover, they show that Mitterer’sfocus on linguistic description can beextended beyond the analysis of conceptualmeaning. The gestural dimension of speechimplies that in language cognition cannot beseparated from emotion (Johnson 2007, p.279). The process of speaking can thereforenot be refined to truth-finding discourse buthas to be interpreted as a multisensory bodilyarticulation in the service of social contactand self-expression: “To the speaker, gestureand speech are not only ‘messages’ or commu-nications, but are a way of cognitively exist-ing, of cognitively being, at the moment ofspeaking” (McNeill 2005, p. 99). Apparently,there is

motivation

in signing (Brier 2008, pp.310f), and, moreover, there is a

quality

tospeaking that makes the speaker and the lis-tener feel meanings, like being touched (ornot), or being persuaded (or not) by a state-ment. “[…] an affective tendency

is

, asVygotsky states, an ultimate ‘why’ of languageand thought (and, we add, gesture)” (McNeill2005, p. 149). Verbal articulation, the“description” in philosophical discourse, thusimplies a number of non-conceptual mean-ings that resist being measured against truth-claims. In moving their audiences by means ofartistic devices based on the protoaestheticqualities of language, multimedia artists suchas Laurie Anderson draw on this emotionalpower of speech.

Language as metaphor

Yet, complex cultural phenomena such asAnderson’s artistic performances cannot suf-ficiently be described and explained in termsof emotional movement only. As a mediaschema rooted in the aesthetic developmentsof the late 1960s, artistic performance ishighly self-reflexive both in terms of concep-tual reflection and in the bodily awareness ofthe performer, thereby demonstrating thatartistic processes operate way beyond thedualism of concept and feeling that informsphilosophical aesthetics in the vein of Kant(Johnson 2007, p. 216). Anderson’s visual andsonic movements figure as cultural signs in apostmodern performance piece enacting andrelating various media in the tradition of thehistorical avant-garde. The analysis of thecommunicative meaning of her artistic“behavior” therefore requires a semiotic anal-ysis that takes into account perceptual andreflexive dimensions of signing alike.

Another example of Anderson’s worksfrom the 1980s, the performance

White Lily,

will serve as a case in point for the integrationof perception and the cultural construction oflinguistic meaning.

White Lily

opens with aprojection of a computer-animated figurerunning on the spot accompanied by a mini-malist electronic melody (Figure 3)

.

Ander-son emerges out of the dark-ness dressed in a white suit,her body’s silhouette dupli-cated by a shadow play on thecanvas behind her. She mim-ics the movement of the figurein the animation while recit-ing a softly-spoken and yetdistinct short poetic text (Fig-ure 4) that deals with hermemory of a film sequence byfilmmaker Rainer WernerFassbinder. Reenacting a dia-logue between two charactersfrom the film, she accompa-nies her speech with punctu-ating gestures of her rightarm. While her hand movesup and down when articulat-ing “days go by / endlessly,” itpoints backwards when sherecites the line “pulling youinto the future.” The recita-tion ends with the projection

of the central symbol of the narrative, thewhite lily, appearing in the left hand of the fro-zen silhouette of her body projected as a stillimage. The last sequence renews the com-puter animation of the moving figure, slowlyfading it out until only the music can be heardin the darkness.

Obviously, a multimodal performancetext such as Anderson’s simply constructedand yet opaque story about the one-armedman cannot be read in propositional termsonly. For what does she mean by expressionssuch as “days are pulling you into the future”or by the claim that a white flower would rep-resent the fact that “days go by”? And whywould she point backwards when talkingabout the future? Yet, on the other hand,Anderson’s piece is quite simple in terms oflexical choice. Expressions such as “days goby” can be encountered in everyday languageas well. From this view, the assumption thatlinguistic metaphors “are intended to pointbeyond experience to a world of imagination”(Glasersfeld 2002, p. 135) seems to be short-sighted. As Danesi has argued convincingly, inVico’s view, metaphor is a basic mental facultythat cannot be refined to poetic language onlybut permeates linguistic practice as a whole.Metaphor then does not figure as an excep-tion to human cognition but seems to be therule (cf. Danesi 1993, p. 76). Accordingly,

Figure 3:

Intermedial Relations in

White Lily

(1986, video stills).

Figure 4:

Conceptual Metaphor

TIME

IS

MOVEMENT

in

White Lily

(1986).

What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed manComes into the flower shop and says:What flower expressesDays go byAnd they just keep going by endlesslyPulling youInto the future?Days go byEndlesslyendlessly pulling youInto the future.And the florist says:White Lily.

2008, vol. 3, no. 3 265

CONCEPTS



Anderson’s interplay of iconic and symbolicsigning in

White Lily

reflects on the commonsense expressed through everyday metaphorsof time.

A number of authors, some of themassembled under the umbrella term

enactivecognitive science,

have pointed out the powerof metaphor in the construction of concep-tual meaning. According to Lakoff andJohnson’s well-known theory, metaphoroperates by means of mapping or projectingexperiential domains onto each other. Expe-riences associated with a perceptually-basedsource domain, such as, for example, salientqualities of the moving body, are projectedonto a conceptual target domain, such as, forexample, the conceptual understanding oftime. This projection is realized throughimage schema, which are rooted in the situat-edness and corporeality of the cognizing sys-tem. Image schemas such as

CONTAINER

,

SOURCE

-

PATH

-

GOAL

,

CENTER

-

PERIPHERY

or

ITERATION

(cf. Lakoff & Johnson 1999, p. 35),organize subjective experience with regard tothe structural and operational features of sen-sorimotoric interactions into patterns (cf.Johnson 1987, p. 28ff.). They serve as the basisfor primary metaphors that can be detectedthroughout the world in cultural variations.

The theory of conceptual metaphor sug-gests that the performance

White Lily

exploresthe primary metaphor

TIME

IS

MOVEMENT

,which is based on the projection of sensorim-otoric spatial experience onto the subjectiveexperience of time (cf. Lakoff & Johnson1999, p. 52; Núñez 1999). Time is analyzed interms of qualities that are derived from theexperience of movement in space. The struc-ture of this primary metaphor can be realizedin different ways depending on whether itappears to be time-based or ego-based (cf.Núñez 1999, pp. 46ff). In the time-based vari-ant, speakers assume the existence of objectsmoving horizontally and sequentially in onedirection, the movement being directedeither forwards or backwards. The ego-basedvariant provides this schema with an observerstandpoint. Experiences are interpreted rela-tive to an observer, who can be conceptualizedas either static or dynamic. The static ego-based variant applies to Anderson’s line “daysgo by endlessly”: days can be interpreted asobjects, passing by the observer and movinghorizontally, ”facing” forwards. The dynamicego-based interpretation of the primary met-

aphor

TIME

IS

MOVEMENT

lies at the heart ofAnderson’s line “endlessly pulling you into thefuture.” The narrator marks a dynamic stand-point, which moves through time as a land-scape towards the future.

So far,

the theory of conceptual metaphorhas been substantiated by a number of lin-guistic and neuroscientific studies (Johnson2007, pp. 160ff). The theory provides a strongargument for the embodiment of language inthat it defies a simple separation of sensoryexperience and conceptual abstraction.Moreover, it deepens the understanding ofthe crossmodality of speech and gesture,thereby refuting the idea that the linguisticand sensorimotor domains of informationprocessing are organized as neatly separated,domain-specific cognitive modules. Sinceperception permeates language by means ofcrossmodal image schemas – as multimediaperformances vividly bring to mind, kines-thetic schemas can occur in musical melodyas much as in visual performance and vocalarticulation – linguistic meaning seems toemerge from sensorimotor experiences asmuch as from generalizing abstraction: “[…]image schemas are not to be understood aseither ‘mental’ or ‘bodily’, but rather as con-tours of what Dewey called the body-mind”(Johnson 2007, p. 139).

The integration of body and mind realizedthrough the metaphoric nature of languagebecomes most evident in Anderson’s reinter-pretation of the concept of time through themetaphoric use of words and gestures (Figure5). While the Western tale of enlightenmentwould have it that human development andknowledge progress in a linear and teleologi-cal fashion, the multimedia performanceexplores the possibility that time is a circularmovement. Thus,

White Lily

serves as a vividexample of Mitterer’s idea that descriptionsdo not refer to objects such as “essential time”but rather to metaphorical descriptions oftime that have been made

so far.

Anderson’sgesture as well as the line “pulling you into thefuture” counterbalance the linear forwardmovement expressed through the line “daysgo by.” In doing so, Anderson questions a pre-sumption inherent to the conceptual meta-phor that time moves along a path in front ofthe observer, thereby “rendering the invisiblevisible” (cf. McNeill 2005, p. 48). As an alter-native, she offers a crossmodal description oftime

from now on,

which opens the experience

of time and change respectively to a new con-ceptual understanding. So far, as long as timehas been interpreted as a sequentially movingobject, it seemed to progress; whereas fromnow on, when time is reinterpreted through agesture pointing backwards and described as“pulling you into the future,” temporal expe-rience converges in the present.

As von Glasersfeld argues in the vein ofPeirce, the emergence of a new conceptualschema such as “time is a circular movement”relies on the creativity of abductive inference,which enables the cognizing system to con-nect seemingly diverse experiences throughthe construction of similarities (Glasersfeld1998). In contrast to the dualistic assumptionthat similarities define objects independentlyof their description, the generative dynamicsof schema formation suggests, “if anything,the similarities are a result of experienced cor-relation” (Johnson 2007, p. 197). Thus,abduction allows for a creative descriptionthat relies on the comparison of descriptionsso far with descriptions from now on. Abduc-tive inference takes the form of a prospectiveargument that reads as follows: “if time wereto operate like a backwards-moving humanbody, a lack of progression and a focus on thepresent would be a matter of cause.”

The non-dualistic implication of the the-ory of conceptual metaphor becomes evenmore evident when integrated with Peirce’sconcept of iconicity. While many structuralistauthors focus on the conventional and arbi-trary nature of symbols only, thinkers in thevein of embodied language emphasize theintegration of iconic, indexical and symbolicsigns (Ruthrof 2000; Sebeok & Danesi 2000;McNeill 2005; Brier 2008). This integration

Figure 5: “Pulling you into the future.” Crossmodal metaphors in White Lily (1986, video still).


CONCEPTS

cognitive–media aesthetic enactive cognitive science

becomes most apparent in artistic multime-dia performances, which aside from conven-tional meanings work both with the reflectionon the perceptual qualities of signs and thepresence of the performing body. Similarly toWalking and Falling, Anderson’s piece WhiteLily enacts iconic sound play based in pho-netic figures of speech such as assonance,alliteration and anaphora. On the other hand,the piece introduces the white lily as an arbi-trary symbol employed in religious discoursesof origin and death. In doing so, Andersonillustrates that signs can be both iconicallymotivated and conventionally constructed.Moreover, the gestural counterpart of Ander-son’s vocal recitation, which is duplicated by ashadow projection, points to the speakingperformer as the source of articulation. Theartistic demonstration of the fact that anyspeech act figures as an index illustrates thatMitterer’s distinction between descriptions sofar and descriptions from now on points to thesituatedness of the speaker. Any verbal articu-lation inevitably requires a temporal and spa-tial location of the speaker whose statementrealizes the moment before and after her cur-rent description. Putting the traces of enunci-ation as a shadow on the stage, Andersonforces her audience to take notice of the hereand now of performing.

Iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity donot designate mutually exclusive options butcan be integrated as different dimensions ofreference in one and the same sign (cf.Ruthrof 2000, p. 96). In drawing on the mul-tifaceted references of linguistic signs, artisticpieces such as White Lily disprove the struc-turalist assumption that language consists inarbitrary symbols only, a disembodied viewthat defines linguistic meaning as a system ofcognitive distinctions that take on arbitrarymaterial forms. In doing so, artistic forms ofexpression vividly extend the analysis ofmeaning beyond a focus on propositionalmeaning only.

Language as intermedial relatednessSo far, Anderson’s performances have illus-trated the embodiment of language with theenactment of verbal signs through voice andgesture, thereby equating the embodiment ofexperience to non-technical bodily media-

tion. Yet, Anderson’s performances aregrounded in the application of complex tech-nologies that range from all sorts of soundrecording and editing to audiovisual technol-ogies. Accordingly, Mitterer’s focus on theprocess of description, the know-how ofspeaking, implies the operational knowledgeof speakers as much as the means of theirdescriptions. In dualistic reasoning, technol-ogies are most often theorized in contrast tonon-artificial nature, which figures as the ulti-mate ground of experience or, in Mitterer’swords, as the “beyond discourse.” Yet, in thenon-dualistic view of embodied cognition,tools of linguistic discourse by no meansabandon or replace the feeling body butrather extend and confine (“scale”) its rangeof experiences (cf. Hirose 2002). In her operaMoby Dick (1999), for example, Andersonextends her acoustic latitude through the“Talking Stick,” a wireless instrument foraudio recording and replay. In moving thestick with her arms her body fuses with theiconographic multimedia space. Thus,Anderson’s know-how-to-apply her digitalgadgets effectively extends her performancebody in such a way that it enlarges the rangeof possible interactions with her environ-ment. Her artistic practice overcomes thedichotomy of nature and culture as much asof body and technology.

Anderson’s relation of body and commu-nication technology takes the metaphoricform of “experienced correlation” outlinedabove. Media practices such as vocal recita-tion and sound recording are compared andrelated to each other, defining each otherthrough enacted differences and similaritiesbetween possible forms of expression (cf.McLuhan 1997, p. 26; Schmidt 2000, p. 194).This intermedial comparison is crucial notonly to media practice but also to the culturaldescription of media practice. It seems no ac-cident that media philosophy originates in afundamental dichotomy, namely in Plato’spraise of the authenticity of speech, which heputs in sharp contrast to the estranging effectsof script. Most proponents of the TorontoSchool of Communication, McLuhan amongthem, have hypostasized voice into the (para-dox) medium of bodily immediateness. Theyassociate oral communication with the sup-posed otherness of “children, women and col-ored persons” (cf. McLuhan 1997, p. 17),sharply contrasting the irrational “oral” mind

with the propositional clarity of the printedknowledge of modern white man. Thus, thefirst media-theoretical distinction of speechand script entails a number of dualisms suchas body and mind, archaic and modern soci-ety, and, furthermore, female and male gen-der.2

Obviously, communication technologiesmost often serve as ideologically charged met-aphors for cognition and communicationalike. The mind is described in terms of digitalarchitectures as much as the computer isdescribed in terms of the print-dominatedidea of the archive. Neural processes aredescribed as like the one-way transmissions ofa telegraph (McGee 2005, p. 23), as much asthe Internet is described in terms of neuralnetworks. Media prophet McLuhan notedlucidly, “All media are active metaphors intheir power to translate experience into newforms” (McLuhan 1997, p. 57). The idea thatmedia retranslate experience meets with Mit-terer’s non-dualistic credo that descriptionsdo not relate to objects as such but to alreadyexisting descriptions of objects. Likewise,many constructivist thinkers such as Schmidtor von Glasersfeld have emphasized thatexperience can only be mediated throughmediated experience. The creative dimensionof cognition relies on the ever-new contextu-alization of interpretative forms of experiencesuch as cognitive schemata. As Anderson’sperformance shows poignantly, the experi-ence of verbal and gestural signs is mediatedthrough the sensorimotor structures of thehuman body. Speech may therefore already betermed as the media embodiment of languagein that it mediates the process of embodiedperception with the social construction of lin-guistic signs. As Krämer has pointed out, there-contextualisation of experience throughmedia is responsible for the generativedynamics of human knowledge:

“Menschliche Kreativität besteht nichteinfach darin, gottesebenbildlich ‘etwasNeues zu schaffen’ (creatio ex nihilo),sondern das, was wir vorfinden, in neueZusammenhänge zu übertragen unddamit auch anders sehen und/oder andersgebrauchen zu können. ‘Veränderungdurch Übertragung’ ist hier die Maxime.[…] Intermedialität ist eine epistemischeBedingung der Medienerkenntnis.[Human creativity does not simply consistof creating, in the image of god, ‘some-

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thing new’ (creatio ex nihilo) but to trans-fer the things we encounter to new con-texts, thereby also enabling us to see and/or use them in a different way. ‘Changethrough transferal’ is the dictum in thisregard… Intermediality is an epistemiccondition of media knowledge]” (Krämer2003, p. 82).Similarly, Luhmann’s distinction of

medium and form as contingent sets of“loosely and fixed coupled elements” (Luh-mann 1990) elaborates on the connectionbetween intermediality and creativity. Themedium as a set of loosely coupled elementsbears the structural complexity of a wide vari-ety of expressive possibilities, which arereduced to meaningful forms in the actualrealization of communication. From theunlimited possibilities of sounds, for exam-ple, words are selected; the unlimited possi-bilities of words are reduced to sentences, andso forth. Accordingly, art forms figure asselections of the formal possibilities of artisticmedia. The medium then is not an essentialsubstance to which a form is applied, but itrather figures as an experiential field for thepotential enactment of cognitive and com-municative distinctions. The crucial point ofLuhmann’s media theory is the fact that thedistinction between medium and form istemporal and can be distinguished in turn.Forms can turn into media and media canturn into forms. A final view on Laurie Ander-son’s Drum Dance will illustrate this transitivenature of media embodiment.

Anderson’s Drum Dance reduces the infi-nite number of possible movements to thesignificant kinesthetic form of her dance.Depending on the focus of description,Anderson’s body or the sociocultural space ofcultural distinctions defined by her perfor-mance can appear as a medium. On the onehand, Anderson’s body figures as a medium ofsensorimotor selections; on the other hand,the kinesthetic form of her dance is selected inthe medium of artistic performance. Thus,Anderson’s body operates as a medium at theboundaries of perception and communica-tion; it is located inside as much as outside theperformer. The body is inside her in that itembodies physical space through felt move-ment. It is outside in that this kinestheticembodiment brings forth a domain of social

interaction in which Anderson’s moving bodyfigures as a cultural sign. Body, technologyand the cultural form of artistic performanceare retranslated into each other, breakingmeaning through a kaleidoscope of mediaand their respective forms.

McLuhan and his followers neglected thedynamic nature of intermedia relations andtherefore assumed a dualistic dichotomybetween bodily-based speech and disembod-ied print. Yet, as can be learned from Mit-terer’s philosophy and Anderson’s artisticwork alike, the distinction between mediatedexperiences can be distinguished throughnew mediations, thereby changing into thetemporal description of a mediated experi-ence so far. What appears as a defining charac-teristic of bodily mediation at one point maywell be observed in recording technologies ata later point and vice versa. Anderson’sprinted performance texts operate on so-called oral stylistics based in rhythm and ico-nicity. Complementary, acoustic recordingsof her oral texts are based on temporal andspatial manipulations associated with print.Whenever media metaphors such as “the oralmind” are grounded in dualistic media ontol-ogies, dichotomist media stereotypes are theconsequence. The intermedial relatednessand the simultaneous occurrence of nonver-bal, verbal and technological forms of com-munication defies a model of linear develop-ment but suggests the co-evolution of variousmedia of linguistic embodiment instead (cf.Schmidt 2000; Jäger 2001).

Conclusion

Josef Mitterer’s philosophy teaches us to focuson the temporality of linguistic descriptionand to critically examine dualistic presump-tions that underpin the truth-claims of verbalstatements. When re-examining the notion ofconceptual meaning (“the object of descrip-tion”), the material embodiment of language(“the process of describing”) comes to thefore. Accordingly, Laurie Anderson’s artisticmultimedia work resonates in many-voicedways with Josef Mitterer’s non-dualistic phi-losophy. In focusing on the rhythms of lan-guage Anderson transgresses the dualism ofperceptual and conceptual meaning and the

neglect of iconicity in linguistic analysis. Inintegrating gesture and speech she overcomesthe dualism of body and mind inherent to thedualism of emotion and cognition. Finally, inextending the body through digital gadgets,Anderson puts the dualism of body and tech-nology into question. Anderson’s personalstatement, “My work is always about commu-nicating,” (Goldberg 2000, p. 6) echoes thenon-dualistic nature of the media embodi-ment of language. While making communi-cation the object of her artistic work, Ander-son always already communicates.

Notes

1. Schmidt uses Luhmann’s term “Sinn,”which has been translated as “meaning” inthe English edition of Luhmann’s opusmagnus Social Systems (Luhmann 1995).Luhmann’s notion of “Sinn” refers to theselection of information in a self-referen-tial social or psychic system and thereforefundamentally differs both from Frege’s“Bedeutung” (meaning), which addressesthe object a terms refers to and from“Sinn” (sense), the subjective cognitivemeaning (“thought”) of a term.

2. For a canonical overview of the dualismbetween orality and literacy see Ong(2002).

Sibylle Moser has a PhD in comparative lit-erature and media studies from the Univer-sity of Vienna. She had visiting fellowships at the Institute for Empirical Research in Media and Literature (LUMIS) in Siegen and at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technol-ogy in Toronto. Her research interests include cognitive aesthetics, empirical stud-ies in literature and media theory. In 2006 she received a three-year grant for a project on the aesthetic use of language in art from the Vienna Science and Technol-ogy Fund (WWTF). In 2007 she founded LOOP. The Institute for Systemic Media Research in Vienna with Katharina Gsöll-pointner. Homepage: http://www.sibyllemoser.com

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Warner reprise video. Warner Bros.Brier, S. (2008) Cybersemiotics. Why infor-

mation is not enough! University of Tor-onto Press: Toronto.

Danesi, M. (1993) Vico, metaphor and theorigin of language. Indiana UniversityPress: Bloomington/.

Dissanayake, E. (2000) Art and intimacy. Howthe arts began. University of WashingtonPress: Seattle.

Gallagher, S. (2006) How the body shapes themind. Clarendon Press: Oxford.

Glasersfeld, E. von (1998) Scheme theory as akey to the learning paradox. Invited paperpresented at the 15th Advanced Course,Archives Jean Piaget, Geneva, 20–24 Sep-tember 1998. Retrieved from http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/paper.html on 24 May 2005.

Glasersfeld, E. von (2002) Radical construc-tivism. A way of learning and learning.Routledge-Falmer: London/New York.1995

Goldberg, R. (2000) Laurie Anderson.Thames & Hudson: London.

Hirose, N. (2002) An ecological approach toembodiment and cognition. Special Issue:Situated and embodied cognition. Cogni-tive Systems Research 3 (3): 289–299.

Iverson, J. M. & Thelen, E. (1999) Hand,mouth and brain: The dynamic emergenceof speech and gesture. In: Núñez, R. &Freeman, W. J. (eds.) Reclaiming cogni-tion. The primacy of action, intention andemotion. Imprint Academic: Thorverton,pp. 19–40.

Johnson, M. (1987) The body in the mind.The bodily basis of meaning, imaginationand reason. University of Chicago Press:Chicago.

Johnson, M. (2007) The meaning of the body.Aesthetics of human understanding. TheUniversity of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Jäger, L. (2001) Sprache als Medium. Über dieSprache als audio-visuelles Dispositiv desMedialen. In: Wenzel, H.(ed.) Audiovisua-lität vor und nach Gutenberg. Zur Kultur-geschichte der medialen Umbrüche.Kunsthistorisches Museum: Vienna, pp.19–42.

Krämer, S. (2002) Sprache und Sprechenoder: Wie sinnvoll ist die Unterscheidungzwischen einem Schema und seinemGebrauch? Ein Überblick. In: Krämer, S. &König, E. (eds.) Gibt es eine Sprache hinterdem Sprechen? Suhrkamp: Frankfurt amMain, pp. 97–125.

Krämer, S. (2003) Erfüllen Medien eine Kon-stitutionsleistung? Thesen über die Rollemedientheoretischer Erwägungen beimPhilosophieren. In: Münker, S., Roesler, A.& Sandbothe, M. (eds.) Medienphiloso-phie. Beiträge zur Klärung eines Begriffs.Fischer: Frankfurt am Main, pp. 78–90.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophyin the Flesh. The embodied mind and itschallenge to western thought. Basic Books:New York.

Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1993) Gesture andspeech. MIT Press: Cambridge MA. Orig-inally published in 1964.

Luhmann, N. (1990) The medium of art. in:Luhmann, N. (ed.) Essays on self-refer-ence. Columbia University Press: NewYork, pp. 215–226.

Luhmann, N. (1995) Social systems. Trans-lated by John Bednarz Jr. with DirkBaecker. Stanford University Press: Stan-ford.

McGee, K. (2005) Enactive cognitive science.Part 1: Background and research themes.Constructivist Foundations 1 (1): 19–34.

McLuhan, M. (1997) Understanding media.The extensions of man. With a new intro-

duction by Lewis H. Lapham. The MITPress: Cambridge. Originally published in1964.

McNeill, D. (2005) Gesture and thought. Uni-versity of Chicago Press: Chicago.


Núñez, R. (1999) Could the future taste pur-ple? Reclaiming mind, body and cogni-tion. In: Núñez, R. & Freeman, W. J. (eds.)Reclaiming cognition. The primacy ofaction, intention and emotion. ImprintAcademic: Thorverton, pp. 41–60.

Ong, W. J. (2002) Orality and literacy. Thetechnologizing of the word. Routledge:London. Originally published in 1982.

Roth, W.-M. (2002) From action to discourse:The bridging function of gestures. SpecialIssue: Situated and embodied cognition.Cognitive Systems Research 3 (3): 535–556.

Ruthrof, H. (2000) The body in language.Cassell: London.

Schmidt, S. J. (2000) Kalte Faszination. Me-dien, Kultur, Wissenschaft in der Medien-gesellschaft. Velbrück: Weilerswist.

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Sheets-Johnstone, M. (1999) Emotion andmovement: A beginning empirical-phe-nomenological analysis of their relation-ship. In: Núñez, R. & Freeman, W. J. (eds.)Reclaiming cognition. The primacy ofaction, intention and emotion. ImprintAcademic: Thorverton, pp. 259–277.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1991)The embodied mind. Cognitive scienceand human experience. MIT Press: Cam-bridge.



It, the Nameless God of Dualism

Some Remarks on St. John, the First Non-dualist, and His Renowned Follower, Josef Mitterer

As to the very beginning of the wor(l)d,there is a widespread misunderstanding. Itsays that there was a big bang more thantwelve billion years ago. This big bang, called“Big Bang,” is conceived – somewhat meta-phorically – as a huge explosion of a very, veryhot something that quickly became energyand matter, which, after a very, very long cool-ing-off period while the universe expanded,were also eventually described as energy andmatter.

But how could this be? Time doesn’t existin itself. Of course, you may say, “The world isolder than I am.” Yet be aware, the world isolder than you are because, and only because,there is someone – in our example you your-self – who looks, somewhat metaphoricallyspeaking, at the world and says: “Oh, look atthe world! It is older than I am!” That is inter-esting, isn’t it? For if there were no one whowould observe/describe the world as beingolder than she herself – the observer/describerwho (as we presuppose for reasons of demon-stration) observes/describesthe world as being older thanshe herself – then the worldcouldn’t be older at all; andbesides, it couldn’t be eitherolder or younger. Since inany case we would have to ask: “Being older oryounger from what point of observation/description?” and the answer would alwayshave to be the same: “There is no such apoint!”

What, however, does this mean? If theworld were in a state of being neither youngernor older, then the world, so it seems, couldn’texist at all, could it? No, it couldn’t. For lookat yourself: If you couldn’t, at least in princi-ple, be older or younger than something else,then this would be the best proof that youdidn’t exist. And now look at the very begin-ning of the world. Imagine the very beginningof the world as a cosmological state that

couldn’t be either older or younger thansomething else, especially someone whocould – at least in principle – observe/describethis state of the universe as being younger orolder than she (the observer/describer) her-self. Can you imagine such a non-observable,un-describable state?

I bet you can’t. Since the very beginning ofthe world depends on the existence of thebeginning of the world. But the existence ofany beginning depends on thetime at which there is some-thing that comes into exist-ence, for instance the so-calledBig Bang. However, time itselfcannot come into existence without anyobserver/describer who could, at least in prin-ciple, observe/describe that something beginsto happen. Sounds somewhat trivial, doesn’tit?

There are trivialities that hide abysses, andas the biblical saying goes,

abyssus abyssuminvocat

(Psalm 41), “deep calleth on deep.”Therefore, you have to beaware of the following paradoxthat indicates, so to speak, anontological abyss: First therehappens –

bang!

– the begin-ning of the world. Yet at this

time, there obviously cannot be some kind ofnatural observer/describer who would beable, at least in principle, to observe/describethe beginning of the world (“Bang!”). For nat-ural observers/describers will come into exist-ence not earlier than billions of years after thevery beginning of the world. Secondly, as weknow today, billions of years after the begin-ning of the world there will be, in fact, observ-ers/describers who are able, at least in princi-ple, to describe the beginning of the world.Assume they say, for instance: “The worldhappened to begin more than twelve billonyears ago.” Now you may ask: “And the onto-logical abyss? Where’s the abyss?”

Here’s the abyss: What about the descrip-tion saying “The world happened to beginmore than twelve billion years ago”? Howcould this description be true? Time doesn’texist in itself. Time is bound to the existenceof some observer/describer. Sure, in ourpresent time, there are more than enoughobservers/describers. And it’s true thathuman beings already existed some hundredthousand years ago, though they didn’t know

anything worth mentioningabout the universe. But noteven such dumb people werearound at the beginning of theworld because back then there

were no people at all. Now, what follows fromthat? It’s obvious, isn’t it? It follows – you maybelieve it or not – that in the beginning of theworld there couldn’t have been any time at all.Therefore, there couldn’t be a beginning,either. It follows that if there is a world at all,it cannot have begun as yet. However, sciencetells us that there is, of course, a world andthat it had a beginning – the very beginning ofour world being called (and described as) the“Big Bang.”

To solve the paradox of the very beginningof the world one has to reject dualistic ontol-ogy. Dualistic ontology requires, on the onehand, observer-neutral facts whose existencewould be independent of any describer and,on the other hand, descriptions being true orfalse depending on whether they adequatelyor inadequately represent observer-neutralfacts. The correspondence theory of truth hasto be totally abandoned. It is a myth. For itmakes us believe that there could be a worldindependent of description – a “wordlessworld”, so to speak.

Therefore, we have to follow the path to anon-dualistic worldview as is nowadays out-lined by Josef Mitterer; but as is usually thecase with paths, some steps must be taken inthe right direction. Let us say our goal will

Peter Strasser

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University of Graz (Austria) <[email protected]>

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Can you imagine a non-observable, un-describable state?

There are trivialities that hide abysses


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have been reached as soon as we have recog-nized that every world that could possiblyexist must be a description-based or, evenmore explicitly put, description-born world,ranging from all of the descriptions made

sofar

to all of the descriptions to be made

fromnow on.

Let us assume there is adog called “Fido” and, atthe time being, Fido is sit-ting on his mat. Now wehave to ask: How does thedualistic worldview recon-struct this very, very simple fact? Answer: Itsays that there is, on the one hand, Fido sittingon his mat and, on the other, the possibility ofa true description of this very, very simple factsaying “Fido is sitting on his mat.” But is thistrue? Can Fido be sitting on his mat without,at least in principle, being described as sittingon his mat? The unsophisticated dualist says:“Sure, why not?” But take a more sophisti-cated view of the situation! If the dualist saysthat there is the very, very simple fact –namely Fido sitting on his mat – then she

does

make a description, doesn’t she? Of course shedoes. For in stating the very, very simple factthat Fido is sitting on his mat, she says thatFido is sitting on his mat. Otherwise shecouldn’t say that there is, in her opinion, avery, very simple fact that is, speaking inunsophisticated dualistic terms, completelyindependent of its being or having been orgoing to be described.

Yet given the non-dualistic view, whatabout the truth of the meta-fact we are refer-ring to by talking about “the very, very simplefact that Fido is sitting on his mat”? Considerthe fact: “Fido is sittingon his mat.” And nowconsider the meta-fact:“There is a very, verysimple fact consisting ofFido sitting on his mat.”Does this latter descrip-tion not imply that thereis a fact independent of its being or havingbeen or going to be described? No, it doesn’t!It doesn’t at all. For the meta-fact, “a fact beingexistent independent of being described”doesn’t exist in itself.

Like the phenomenon of time, facts thatare said to be independent of an observer/describer depend nonetheless on their beingdescribed (or having been described or going

to be described) as description-independent,or not description-based, facts. From that fol-lows that Fido can only sit on his mat if thereis or has been or is going to be a descriptionsaying that Fido is sitting on his mat. WhatFido is doing outside the framework of his

description-based worldseems to be, from the sophis-ticated non-dualistic view-point, one of those typicalpointless questions that alltoo often are asked in philos-ophy. For this question is

metaphysical and, therefore, void of sense.There is no ontologically transcendent Fidothat would be sitting on his not description-based mat.

In the history of philosophy, there are, ofcourse, some famous non-dualistic doctrinesto be found. Take for instance the well-knowndoctrine of Bishop Berkeley: It says that thenotion of an outer world that would be reallyindependent of being perceived is an ugly,misconceived idea. InBishop Berkeley’s view,only our perceptions arereal. There is no ontologi-cal gap – or should I sayabyss? – between the realworld and its state ofbeing perceived. The subjective contents ofour perceptions

are

the real world. This isBishop Berkeley’s idealistic main point, whichis at the same time the non-dualistic point ofhis philosophy. But now we have to attend toanother point: Bishop Berkeley naivelyaccepts the distinction between the purelysensory contents of our perceptions and our

perception-basedknowledge that is theresult of conceptualizingand describing thepurely sensory contentsof our perceptions. Nodoubt, Bishop Berkeleyaccepts, within his ideal-

istic framework, the correspondence-theoryof truth.

Seen from Mitterer’s sophisticated non-dualistic view, Bishop Berkeley’s idealism is –what else? – the consequence of another mis-leading worldview that leads to a somewhateccentric form of dualism. Take for instancethe so-called Antipodeans, a word used byBishop Berkeley to refer to the funny inhabit-

ants of Australia and New Zealand. As long asyou stay in the Northern hemisphere you can-not perceive Australians, can you? Neverthe-less, we are prepared to concede that theAntipodeans exist in the full sense of theword. Of course, says Bishop Berkeley, theyexist in the full sense of the word insofar asthey are continuously represented in themind of God. God’s mind contains all of theperceptions and ideas, whether factual or pos-sible, from the very beginning to the very end,whatever could be considered to be the verybeginning and the very end of all things everbeing perceived and thought of. According tohis somewhat extravagant doctrine, BishopBerkeley asserts to us (and asserts to himself)that if he were traveling to the opposite side ofthe globe, he would finally have perceptionsthat would reveal to him the realAntipodeans.

At the opposite side of the globe, my per-ceptions would be completely independent ofthe descriptions I would write down to

inform my fellows athome about theAntipodeans’ funnyappearance, life and cul-ture. My descriptionswould logically imply thatthe Antipodeans exist in

the full sense of the word. From this follows,then, that the subjunctive description “If I hadtraveled to the opposite side of the globe, Iwould have perceived the real Antipodeans”(though, in reality, I was staying at home,somewhere in good old Europe) is true if andonly if there is a finite, well-formed, andcoherent complex of perceptions (or, respec-tively, ideas) in God’s infinite mind concern-ing the appearance, life and culture of theAntipodeans. This is interesting, isn’t it? Forthe subjunctive description’s truth dependson something that is completely independentof the description itself, namely the percep-tions and ideas represented in God’s infinitemind. This is a provoking case of dualisticontology. It must be rejected without mercy,given Josef Mitterer’s sophisticated view ofhow real things can be really real. Mitterer’sview is that things can be really real only byhaving been described

so far

and/or coming tobe described “from now on”.

But now we have to ask a further question,which must not be taken lightly: Bishop Ber-keley believed in God’s existence. He was a

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For the meta-fact, “a fact being existent independent of being described” doesn’t exist in itself

To solve the paradox of the very beginning of the world one has to reject dualistic ontology

From now on, all of the perceptions and ideas embedded in God’s mind have never been anything other than descriptions so far

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devout believer in the Catholic Credo. ThisCredo entails, according to the Holy Father –who doesn’t ever lie, does he? – the only andabsolutely true belief. Therefore, how could itbe that such a virtuous thinker as Bishop Ber-keley should have delivered such philosophi-cal nonsense to his devoted auditors? Andmore than that, we have to face the followingchallenge: How could a true believer likeBishop Berkeley hold such a shamefully erro-neous opinion about God’s mind that is thedreadful consequence of a dualistic hodge-podge?

Calm down, dear reader, for the rightanswer is: Bishop Berkeley couldn’t and there-fore hadn’t! (

Weil nicht sein kann, was nichtsein darf,

as the Germans say, quoting their

Weltweisen,

world-class sage, Wilhelm Busch:“If something mustn’t be so, then it can’t beso.”) Since Josef Mitterer’s non-dualistic pro-cedure is based on his non-dualistic world-view, the wicked description that referred toBishop Berkeley’s allegedly dualistic philoso-phy must only be identified as a wickeddescription “so far.” Then the way will be openfor transforming the wicked description,which has been true so far, into a description“from now on”. The description from now onwill be – according to Josef Mitterer’s sophis-ticated version of non-dualism – true fromnow on. From now on, correspondingly,Bishop Berkeley can be said to have said thecontrary to that which he was said to havebeen saying as yet. If this revelation happens –and why shouldn’t it? – then the right answerto the question of how Bishop Berkeley couldhave held a heretic opinion about God’stotally non-dualistic mind will be as clear asspring water: “From now on, he hadn’tbecause he couldn’t!”

This is a happy end, isn’t it? By changingthe description of Bishop Berkeley’s philoso-phy (from “so far” to “from now on”), BishopBerkeley’s philosophy has changed, too, andalong with Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy,dualism has disappeared like morning-mistunder the rising sun. From now on, all of theperceptions and ideas embedded in God’smind have never been anything other thandescriptions so far and from now on.

And here we go! We are at the very heartof Mitterer’s non-dualism: It is the post-mod-ern version of the famous opening lines of the

Gospel according to St. John. These lines are,as everybody knows, about the very begin-ning of the world:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.The same was in the beginning with God.All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing madethat was made.In him was life; and the life was the light of men.And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.(John 1,1–5.)There it is! From now on, we are entitled to

say that there is St. John’s & Josef Mitterer’snon-dualistic credo that we can believe inwithout being enslaved by superstition andsubmitted to fetishes. For there is, from nowon, an ingeniously updated version of St.John’s opening lines as they appeared in theKing James Version:

In the beginning was the Description so far and from now on, and the Description was with God, and the Description was God.The same was in the beginning with God.All things were made by the Description so far; and without the Description so far was notany thing being described from now onthat had been described so far.In the Description so far and from now on was life; and the life was the light of men.There is nothing more to say, is there?

There isn’t. However, one frightening ques-tion remains: What about the darkness?Remember:

And the light shineth in darkness;and the darkness comprehended it not.

Wheredoes this darkness come from? It obviouslydoesn’t come from the light, because the light“shineth in darkness”. Without darkness,there would be no light at all. This is interest-ing, isn’t it? For it proves that the light whichis not comprehended by the darkness needsdarkness to enlighten the world. And since theworld is, from its very beginning on, nothingbut the light that is called “the Word”(St. John) or “the Description so far and fromnow on” (Josef Mitterer), we have to be awarethat there is something that not only cannot

comprehend the light but also cannot becomprehended by the light itself – this non-comprehensible something is neither adescription so far nor a description from nowon.

This something, St. John’s Darkness, is thedeepest source of all things, the whole beingas well as the whole non-being. It is the all-pervading, all-embracing nightmare of St.John’s & Josef Mitterer’s non-dualistic credo.It is, in one word, the nameless God of dual-ism. It is the It.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Eugenia Lamont for revisingmy text and Christian Hiebaum for makingsome helpful suggestions.

Received: 18 January 2008Accepted: 28 May 2008

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17

18

19

20

Peter Strasser teaches philosophy and philosophy of law at the University of Graz. He is author of several books dealing with topics in the fields of epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and criminology. Recent publications: Dunkle Gnade. Willkür und Wohlwollen (2007); Warum überhaupt Religion? Der Gott, der Richard Dawkins schuf, München (2008); Gut in allen möglichen Welten. Der ethische Horizont (2008).

THE AUTHOR


The Beyond of the Theologians

The ‘Beyond’ of the theologians,” to whichJosef Mitterer alluded in a footnote

1

in his1988 essay “Farewell to the truth,” can beunderstood as an offer of ultimate self-percep-tion – albeit with a high conflict potential.

To demonstrate this, it suffices to pull upthe well-known passage from the Confes-siones of Aurelius Augustinus, whichascribes a restless heart to mankind: “Tuexcitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nosad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donecrequiescat in te” (1934, Confessiones 1,1,1).According to the translation of the “Biblio-thèque Augustinienne” (1962): “C’est toi quile pousses à prendre plaisir à te louer parceque tu nous a faits orientés vers toi et quenotre coeur est sans repos tant qu’il ne reposepas en toi.” This, at least, avoids translatingthe

requiescat

of the original in the indicativepresent tense, as it is the case in the Germantranslation: “Es ist dein Antrieb, dass dich zuloben erquickt, weil du uns zu dir hinerschaffen hast, und unser Herz kommtnicht zur Ruhe, bis es ruht in dir” (Perl1964).

2

Augustinus’s

requiescat

is difficult to trans-late because it opts for the present conjunctiverather than the more obvious future tense.The choice between faith (

fides

; in Augustinus

fundatissima fides

) and hope remains sus-pended.

To go one step further, exactly this matterof fact found its expression in the Proslogion[Discourse on the Existence of God] ofAnselm of Canterbury in the frequentlyquoted formulation: “Nisi credidero, nonintelligam [Unless I first believe I shall notunderstand]” (1962, p. 84), or, respectively, inthe originally intended title of the treatise:“Fides quaerens intellectum [Faith seekingunderstanding].”

At first sight, the act of faith, which is sup-posed to provide thinking with a direction, ispresupposed to include a beyond by the invo-cation of God in the first chapter of the trea-tise. However, this is accomplished by choos-ing words with a mournful rather thanconfident effect: “Amaricatum est cor meumsua desolatione [Mournful turned my heart in

its desolation].” One has to keep in mind thathere is an author at work who was spendingseveral hours in the monastic choir stalls everyday. That is to say, the beyond of this monktheologian of the High Middle Ages provesproblematic at second sight precisely becauseit cannot be experienced: “Numquam te vidi,Domine Deus meus, non novi faciem tuam[Never I have seen you, Lord, my God, yourcountenance I do not know].” What Anselmdid subsequently in order to gain terra firmaagain, i.e., to formulate his famous ontologicalargument [for the existence of God], is wellknown in the history of philosophy.

If, however, the Proslogion is read as belles-lettres, then in the text there is a sort of unrestat work, which is also characteristic of the“tearful book” of the Confessiones. In thebeyond of the theologians, after all, one mayweep.

Notes

1. In translation, this footnote reads as fol-lows: “The ambiguity of the expression‘

the beyond of discourse

’ is intended. It in-cludes the extra-linguistic reality of the re-alist, the constructed/constituted reality ofrelativists and constructivists, and a cer-tain closeness to the “Beyond” of the theo-logians that is not unwanted. God as animpartial judge between good and evil andReality as objective judge between trueand false have more in common with eachother than the need for their representa-tives to pass and carry out their judgments

within

our discourse and our lives. In thecase of God, theologians, including thepope, may serve as such representatives, asmay leading scientists or Nobel prize win-ners when it comes to reality” (Mitterer1988, p. 28, translated by the editors).

2. “You arouse us so that praising you maybring us joy, because you have made usand drawn us to yourself, and our heart isunquiet until it rests in you” (Augustine1991).

References

Augustin (1962) Bibliothèque Augustinienne.Desclée de Brouwer: Paris.

Augustine (1991) The Trinity (Translatedfrom the Latin by Edmund Hill O. P.) In:The Works of Saint Augustine: A NewTranslation for the 21st Century I/5. NewCity Press. Hyde Park, NY.

Augustinus (1934) Confessiones (Edited byMartin Skutella). Teubner: Leibzig.

Canterbury, A. von (1962) Proslogion. Latei-nisch deutsche Ausgabe. FriedrichFrommann: Stuttgart.

Mitterer, J. (1988) Abschied von der Wahr-heit. Delfin XI, 6 (3): 22–29.

Perl, C. J. (1964) Dreizehn Bücher Bekennt-nisse. Mit Anmerkung von Adolf Holl.Schöningh: Paderborn.

Received: 20 May 2008Accepted: 30 May 2008

Adolf Holl

A

Independent writer

“

theological


ESSAY

Adolf Holl is an Austrian theologian and writer. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1954 and was Chaplain of the University of Vienna and a lecturer in its Department of Catholic Theology. After publishing a deviating doctrine in his 1971 book Jesus in Bad Company he was suspended first from his teaching and and later from his priestly duties. Holl has written more than 20 books, including The Left Hand of God (1999), with a total of 650.000 copies sold.

THE AUTHOR

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