Reply to the response to Entry 317

Your passage
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‘The main premises for Schopenhauer's philosophy of will and representation are similar to the main premises supporting the proposition viz., from Schopenhauer's standpoint all conscious knowledge is representational, and that there is a will or thing-in-itself behind all existing things, and similarly, from the committee's standpoint, all conscious knowledge is representational, and there is a basis, essence, or life-force behind all existing things. (Note, the difference between will and basis appears insignificant since they both refer to the essence or kernel of life.) However, the important difference between the positions is that Schopenhauer views the thing-in-itself as the "whole" of all life, or as he says, "[The thing-in-itself] is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole." (The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1, Translator E.F.J. Payne (1969, Dover Publications) p. 110)’

Reply
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We agree on the representational perspective which from The World as Will and Representation (hereafter referred to as WWR) standpoint is mainly due to Kant's "Critique of Pure reason" wherein the how of our reasoning and its limitations are analyzed. I do not know from where the committee’s position on this matter comes from. If indeed it is Kant's critiques then we are on the same page and we can proceed further.

Whereas, the committee's position is that based on the necessity of reason, there is a basis behind all existing things, and that it is inexpressible whether the basis refers to the whole of all life or not viz., no necessity exists that the basis has to be the whole of life. This subtle difference in position is important because it acts as the fork between the positions in which Schopenhauer's theory leads down a path to self-knowledge and knowledge with absolute truth-value, and the committee's position leads to epistemically limited knowledge including self-knowledge.

Reply
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It is the committee belief that any philosophy which wants to answer this should be on the "necessity of reason" by which I believe of course that reason is the primary tool of the philosopher. Now whether reason itself is the highest court therein we differ for it is the position of WWR that reason evolved as a tool for the guidance for our individual will. Philosophy as life itself will fail to fall into our reasoning categories since as the great idealists have demonstrated. It is to be understood as experience and thought and hence the paucity for "proof" in the sense of mathematics/physics in philosophy neither should philosophy's aim to answer all possible questions once and for all for in such a sense it would just be impossible.

It is only by an examination of ourselves and the world we live in through the use of our own reason that we will understand life.

Your question ....

‘Further, it does not follow how the thing-in-itself can truly know itself from itself, which means that its knowledge of its dimensional forms cannot truly reflect itself viz., the innermost essence of the dimensional forms is the thing-in-itself, and therefore in order to truly know the forms the thing-in-itself must truly know itself, which would be in contradiction with itself. ("being-known of itself contradicts being-in-itself")’

Reply
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Christopher Janoway in the Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (Pg. 163) quotes Volume 2 of the WWR

"the question may still be raised what that will which manifests itself in the world and as the world is ultimately and absolutely in itself; in other words what it is quite apart from the fact that it manifests itself as will or in general appears that is to say is known in general. This question can never be answered because as I have said being-known of itself contradicts being-in-itself and everything that is known is as such only phenomenon".

What the above passage is referring to is our inability at the level of the principle of sufficient reason to comprehend the absolute nature of the thing-in-itself in totality.
So too the question of "why the will wills" will remain an impenetrable barrier for our reason evolved as a tool to aid in our survival and the perpetuation of the species.
The intellect's only function as nature intended is to serve the blind master's (will's) incessant purpose of willing. This is the relationship the intellect stands in relation to the will. The secondary byproduct of the reason engaged in objective contemplation and presenting works of creation be it art or science or music is indeed contrary to the primary purpose for which nature had intended it for. The ontological primacy of the will over the subservient intellect is the edifice on which this philosophy is founded. Even a single exception to this rule brings the structure crumbling down. The meaning of the exact WHAT and WHY of the will will forever remain unknown to the phenomenal questioner for it exists in a realm that is inaccessible to the intellect.

We can merely infer the presence of the will in ourselves and in nature in countless ways but can never completely grasp its contents. From ourselves can we truly understand nature and not vice versa for we ourselves are nature's highest self-expression.

The subject and object exists in this curious complementarity. One without the other does not exist. No will, No world, nothing.

Maybe the whole of nature is not will but what is the prime mover in nature that essence of all beings and if we establish that it indeed is the will together with a myriad of other constituents clothed in a infinite variety of forms then the work is done. When the theory is extended to the whole of nature it no way meant that the will is nature but that the in core of all of nature the primary and essential component universally present without exception is the will. This is the main reason why the WWR was presented to the world.

Your question
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‘What Schopenhauer fails to realize is that his a priori knowledge of the relationship between stimulus and sensation of sensory receptors or the pressing of the trigger and flying of the bullet is based on experience because the fundamental basis for all conscious knowledge is experience or representation, otherwise there is no basis to know something a priori viz., a priori knowledge is contingent on already having representational knowledge. In other words, an individual cannot have non-experienced knowledge simply come to him or her, because there would be no basis for the a priori knowledge. Hence, there is no pure, absolute a priori knowledge as Schopenhauer appears to be implying....’

Reply
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Aren't we forgetting Kant here?

Your passages
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‘So an individual who is not conscious of him or herself, while being absorbed completely into an object can attain the pure, objective knowledge of the will,

AND

Schopenhauer turns to the gradation of the sufficiency of reason, and the flawed concept of pure objective knowing, without establishing a connection between reason and objectivity to the thing-in-itself. Sure, according to Schopenhauer the thing-in-itself is the basis for everything existing, but that does not mean that reason or gradated levels of objectivity can be the means for attaining true self-knowledge. If anything since our conscious perspective is representational in nature, and subject to the law of causality, we must conclude that the only connection is that the thing-in-itself is the basis for reason and objectivity like anything else existing. Moreover, the thing-in-itself's perspective is subject to representation from its relationship to dimensional forms, which can be established by the inexpressibility of the thing-in-itself, and expressibility of the dimensional forms. Further, it does not follow how the thing-in-itself can truly know itself from itself, which means that its knowledge of its dimensional forms cannot truly reflect itself viz., the innermost essence of the dimensional forms is the thing-in-itself, and therefore in order to truly know the forms the thing-in-itself must truly know itself, which would be in contradiction with itself. ("being-known of itself contradicts being-in-itself") Therefore, Schopenhauer has not more reasonably shown that by the thing-in-itself abolishing the phenomenal will, it can attain through reason and objectivity true self-knowledge.’

Reply
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You have assumed Platonic idea = thing-in-itself (will).

Let us start by describing what the Platonic idea is Pg. 172 of Volume I (Book III) of the WWR

Let us suppose that an animal stands in front of us "The animal has no true existence but only an apparent one a constant becoming , a relative existence that can just as well be called non-being as being. It is all one and the same if this animal or its progenitor of a thousand years ago ; also it is here or in a different country ....all this is void and unreal and concerns only the phenomenon; the idea of the animal alone has true being and is the object of true knowledge. Plato would have said thus.

Kant would be saying the same this way "This animal is a phenomenon in time, space and, causality which are collectively the conditions a priori of the possibility of experience residing in our faculty of knowledge not determinations of the thing-in-itself.

Combining them we say

In order to bring Kant's expression even closer to Plato's we might also say that time, space and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by virtue of which the one being of each kind that alone really exists manifests itself to us as a plurality of homogeneous beings always originated anew and passing away in endless succession.

What is the relationship of the Platonic idea to the will? What is its relationship to the phenomenon?

Idea and the thing-in-itself (will) are not one and the same. Idea is the immediate and adequate objectivity of the thing-in-itself which itself is the will -the will in so far as it has not become representation

i.e. Platonic idea is necessarily object a representation and precisely but only in this respect is it different from the will.

And here Schopenhauer points out the error in Kant which assumed the representation as being-object of his thing-in-itself. Instead he should have taken being-object-for-a-subject as the first and most universal of all phenomenon.

The aesthetic method , the creation of all art is knowledge of the object not as individual thing but as Platonic idea, in other words as persistent form of this whole species of things and the self-consciousness of the knower not as individuals but as pure will-less subjects of knowledge the conditions under which two constituent parts appear always united was the abandonment of the method of knowledge that is bound to the principle of sufficient reason, a knowledge ,that on the contrary is the only appropriate kind for serving the will and also for science.

Thus we see the delineations of knowledge in Schopenhauer's theory , the one transcending the principle of sufficient reason and bound to the platonic idea that creates art , the one bound to the principle of sufficient reason that is the scientific method.

But the above two kinds of knowledge is NOT what leads us to the denial of the will...

Pg. 410 of Volume I of WWR says

"If however it should be absolutely insisted on that somehow a positive knowledge is to be acquired of what philosophy can express only negatively as denial of the will, nothing would be left but to refer to that state which is experienced by all who have attained to complete denial of the will and which is denoted by the names ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God and so on. But such a state cannot really be called knowledge since it no longer has the form of subject and object; moreover it is accessible to one’s own experience and cannot further be communicated."

SL February 8 2002

Response:

You identify a number of arguments Schopenhauer uses to construct his theory of world as will and representation. We will evaluate these arguments according to their consistency and soundness.

You begin by arguing that the "necessity of reason" is not the highest court of judgment, but the "philosophy of life" is, defined as "an examination of ourselves and the world we live in through the use of our reason". Or in your other words, "the ontological primacy of the will over the subservient intellect..." However, the major flaw with this position is that we apparently cannot know anything, including will, except from what we reason viz., all we can know is what we know, thereby what we reason. So the ontological primacy of will does not stand, because we must first reason its primacy in order for it to consciously exist and we know within limits that it does, and therefore, it does not follow that the "philosophy of life", a conscious, reasoned phenomenon, can precede the necessity of reason and we know that it does. Idealism cannot overcome the primacy of reason, because idealism itself a conscious phenomenon is a product of our reasoning at some level.

Your next main argument and probably the most significant in terms of your challenge, is the claim that Schopenhauer’s conception of will or thing-in-itself refers only to the essence of all of nature viz., "the primary and essential component [which is] universally present in all beings", and not the whole of nature. However, even with the will defined this way as the universal innermost essence, it still refers to the whole of nature, because there is nothing outside of the will itself, which means that the will defines everything within a whole of itself. Yet it does not follow how the will itself through dimensional forms of itself can truly know itself, because "being-known of itself contradicts being-in-itself". (The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2 (1958, The Falcon’s Wing Press) p. 198) In our view, Schopenhauer faces a fatal theoretical problem because he needs the concept of whole to establish a ground for knowledge with absolute truth-value, and yet the concept of whole leads to contradiction when it is used to explain the attainment of knowledge with absolute truth-value.

Barring the epistemic limitation on the concept of whole, Schopenhauer turns to a priori knowledge as a means to avoid representational knowledge, in order to have any hope of attaining knowledge with absolute truth-value. In defense of a priori knowledge, Schopenhauer says as you quote, "... animal is a phenomenon in time, space, and causality which are collectively the conditions a priori of the possibility of experience residing in our faculty of knowledge..." We find this quote to be an interesting example because Schopenhauer is looking at the conditions for conscious experience, thus trying to get outside of them--through a priori knowledge. Has he succeeded? Can we know the condition of time, space, and causality for conscious experience a priori viz., without any experience connected to the knowledge? Within limits Schopenhauer is correct, but is he absolutely correct as in pure a priori knowledge? What would be the basis for a priori knowledge without any experience? Where does the knowledge come from? We conclude based on the necessity of our interaction with the external world in order for us [human beings] to exist and the necessity of interactional input in order for us to consciously know, that the notion of unlimited a priori is less sound than limited a priori knowledge viz., there cannot be a priori knowledge without a basis of experience at some level. You could argue that fundamental experience and a priori knowledge occur simultaneously, but that would leave the question of where pure a priori knowledge comes from. If you revert to ex nihilo as in the case of Sartre's theory of consciousness (Entry 298), then your position runs aground because due to the causal nature of our perspective, something coming from something else is more reasonable than something ex nihilo. If you do not revert to ex nihilo, then you must concede a representational component to a priori knowledge. Either way the notion of pure a priori knowledge is refuted within the bounds of more reasonableness.

Schopenhauer then turns to aesthetic method, in which in a moment of pure objective observation, the knower loses complete consciousness of him or herself, so that the knower and known blend into one, with only pure will left. Yet as we ask in our response to Entry 317, what is the connection between objectivity and will itself? How do we know that objectivity in an aesthetic moment truly captures the will itself, especially when we do not truly know the will itself? Also, how can we completely lose conscious awareness of our individual will (or identity) and still be conscious?

Because the will itself is apparently inexpressible, and we need some sense of individual identity in order to be conscious, we do not see how a sound case can be made equating the knowledge attained from highly focused aesthetic observation to the will itself. The mere fact that an observation is taking place establishes a subject and object, without which there is no observation. Also, it does not follow how something consciously known can truly capture something that is apparently beyond our consciousness. But if we examine further, Schopenhauer is relying on a priori knowledge and will as the whole of nature in the aesthetic moment, and yet as we have already shown, both concepts of a priori and whole are problematic in terms of explaining the attainment of knowledge with absolute truth-value. So in the aesthetic moment, regardless of our degree of focus or absorption into an object, barring complete absorption because then we would cease to be focusing or even existing, we are left with representational knowledge, rather than pure will as knowledge.

In an attempt to salvage his theory, Schopenhauer turns to states of "ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God and so on" to establish grounds for complete denial of [individual] will, and yet as Schopenhauer concedes "such state[s] cannot really be called knowledge since they no longer have the form of subject and object... accessible [only] to one’s own experience and cannot further be communicated." So what are we left with? Experiences we cannot really know, and yet how can Schopenhauer know the experiences are in a state of non-separation of knower and known? As in the case of Buster Price’s entries (308, 310) on this very topic, Schopenhauer would have to assume something he cannot truly know with no grounds of support other than his opinion about something he cannot truly know. His position amounts to a completely ignorant assertion, which is contradicted by the necessity of reason that consciousness is defined by the separation of knower and known (or subject and object). Experience without conscious awareness of it is no experience. (Experience is a conscious phenomenon.) Schopenhauer’s only possible way out is to separate experience from knowledge of experience, while at the same time have experience entail knowledge of itself, but this approach results in the separation of knower and known. Even if it did not, which we do not think is probable due to need for separation between experience and knowledge of it, and what Buster Price calls the "block", Schopenhauer would still face the problem of equating knowledge inherent in experience with will itself.

In short, for the various contradictions with Schopenhauer’s concepts of whole, a priori knowledge, and holistic experience as applied to the attainment of knowledge with absolute truth-value, we think that Schopenhauer’s theory of world as will and representation more reasonably falls short of showing that we can truly know who we are.

321. Entry:

"After rereading Ken Bell's entries regarding the proposition ‘we cannot truly know who we are, in part or in whole, and be who we are at the same time,’ it occurred to me that the following formal logic expression may capture what Ken is saying (Ken Bell’entries (1-36) start at Replies 1-5):

If x = myself
b = being
c = consciousness

then the expression:

[E(x) (b(x) = c(x))] = 1

This could be written out in ordinary language as:

‘I (myself) am who I am (being) while I know who I am (conscious), in whole to myself (certainty = 1), at the same time.’

Or, if expressed in terms of ‘we’, then substitute ‘I/myself’ with ‘we’.

However, if said by someone other than oneself, the formal equation changes to:

[E(x) (b(x) = c(x)]) = 0

...which means that the result is total uncertainty = 0.

This is so because for another person, this ‘self-knowledge’ is impossible to know directly.

However, given the nature of human beings that we have the ability of language and of communicating our ‘being’ into the consciousness of another, then fuzzy logic takes over, and the result of the formal logic above will equal some probabilistic value between 0 and 1; the closer they are in agreement, the closer they get to 'one', whereas if there total disagreement, or miscommunications, the closer they get to 'zero'. (I.e., killing another human being has a zero value, whereas loving another has a closer to one value.)

Therefore, the only way for the proposition above to be true would be from a self-referential perspective, where it equals one, and it is fuzzy at best from any one else's persopective, or of zero value."

Ivan Alexander February 11 2002

Response:

In regard to Ken Bell’s 36 entries, we do not think he is looking at the individual as a whole onto itself, but as part of an incomplete interconnected whole viz., we cannot know one thing without knowing its interconnected relation to another thing ad infinitum, as Ken Bell says in Reply 36,

... Just as the stream sinks into the earth only to emerge from the cliff face miles away, so we see seemingly discontinuous events as somehow relating to a whole. Certainly, one may investigate any set of data to reveal correlations and propose a hypothesis to explain them, but this doesn't form the basis of any direct statement of the phenomenon in question. With this in mind, it is understood that we must in some way actually experience a thing to have any direct knowledge of it. Since the nature of experience is unknowable (in that "newness" is the word we give to the "moment to moment" unfolding of reality), that which we consider "reasonable" must constantly be challenged by our perceptions.

As in the old aphorism "hindsight is 20/20" we can rationalize every bend and turn along a trodden path, but this doesn't tell us what’s ahead. Any path is the interplay of an organism’s movement and the relative non-movement of an environment. The path is not a function of the organism OR the environment, it is a function of the organism AND the environment, and as such represents a superposition of each. Further, since the path is likely to be referenced again, we may consider it (from the organism’s perspective) as part of the environment, and (from the environment’s perspective) as an extension of organisms. Therefore a degree of self-reference is required to come to a more complete understanding of what a path actually is.

Through this reasoning, its easy to see that the dichotomy between subject and object is in fact an illusion of causality, and no single perspective can give a complete description. We are not our thoughts, just as we are not our actions. I agree that in saying 'we are the universe in action'... (From Reply 36)

What Ken Bell assumes is that the things we know are part of a greater interconnected whole which we apparently can never know. Yet it does not make sense how we can know something with "complete understanding" without knowing it as a complete interconnected whole, because the interconnections determine the thing we want to completely understand. So according to Ken Bell’s position on interconnectedness, we are left with no complete knowledge of things themselves or their interconnections. Rather, we are left with epistemically limited knowledge of all things. Therefore, we do not think Ken Bell would make the individual a whole onto itself viz., being and knowing in whole to the individual itself, and with a certainty value of "1". (Bell would make the individual an incomplete whole with a certainty value of less than "0".)

To justify the definition of individual as whole with a certainty value of "1", you claim that the individual has "direct" knowledge of itself. But how is the knowledge direct, when the individual as part of interconnected relations cannot truly be known? Sure a healthy individual has access to its inner consciousness, but how does that access result in direct knowledge viz., knowledge devoid representation? You turn to the individual as a whole onto itself, but what grounds do you have to view the individual as a whole onto itself, especially in consideration of the interconnectedness and interdependency of things, and the law of causality which defines what we know?

In consideration of Arthur Schopenhauer (Entries 317, 320) viz., the will or thing-in-itself as an all-encompassing whole made up of dimensional forms including consciousness, you could establish the individual as a whole onto itself, and consciousness as a dimensional form, but you face the problem as Schopenhauer does of more reasonably showing how the individual or thing-in-itself can truly know itself without contradicting itself ("being-known of itself contradicts being-in-itself" (The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2 (1958, The Falcon’s Wing Press) p. 198)), and as mentioned, you face the problem of establishing the individual as a thing-in-itself.

Entries 316-319 Entries 322-324