Transcendental Epistemologies and Their Benevolent Detractors
Actually written APRIL 30, 2005 -
The central question in epistemology has inspired many transcendental (beyond sense perception) answers, to the extent that “transcendental” seem to be the only answers available. Pragmatists, seeing transcendental answers as rationalizations in the service of malevolence, reject the very question at its root as being too dangerous. “Shut up. Bond with us and stop philosophizing.”, they beg.
Perhaps it is well established that any answer to the question of how a mind can have a veridical grasp of existence will necessarily appear transcendental, even if it is not. This necessary appearance condemns all answers. The pragmatist has a point.
Suppose one answer is not transcendental, but only appears so. And suppose this answer, by appearing so, is used as a rationalization for malevolence, just as with all the others. It may make sense, then, to throw this baby out with the bathwater in the name of benevolence.
And could such a true, yet dangerous, answer exist?
Perhaps so. The answer offered by Objectivism may be such an answer.
The Objectivist answer is contained in what they call the “form-object distinction”. It is the Form that explains all the relativistic, inner appearances of things. And when one strips away all the Form stuff, one is left with the true object of consciousness: identity. The trouble is, identity appears transcendental. Identity without Form is without sensory stimulus and therefore seems ethereal, mystical, beyond sense. Of course, it takes some imagination to separate Form from Identity, and even that fact is part of the problem. That which imagination makes apparent must seem all the more transcendental.
Transcendental though it appears, it also has a basis in experience quite divorced from Form.
I can attest to this as I remember being about 8 years old, likely in the backyard of my friend’s house in Santa Cruz, looking possibly at something like a tree. In a reflective mood, I thought about my own consciousness and about existence, what they mean. It occurred to me that consciousness was the “grasp” of existence. I felt amazed that this tree had something called “existence” and that I experienced it in my mind. No, more like the tree was its existence (its Identity) and that my mind “miraculously” experienced it. I just sat (or stood) there amazed at this – amazed that existence was there all around me (all over – everywhere) and that I felt it in my mind. The experience had no sensory qualities. It had no shape, no color, no temperature, no depth (except infinity-like and omnipresent), no time (except for the duration of my focus on it). Yet it was not a thought either. It came to me distinctly as an object about which to think, more like the fundamental thing without which one could not think.
It is perhaps telling how this story seems similar in tone and word usage to a story told by a theist explaining how they experience God, or a zen practitioner explaining how they experience nirvana. All these stories have a mystical feel to them. And so you see how my childhood experience of Identity without Form (a precedent for my later becoming a realist), makes the Objectivist answer appear just as transcendental as any other mystical answer. My claim to feel pure existence is like a claim to feel God or nirvana.
Well, the Objectivist answer, whether or not it is or seems transcendental, is part of a larger philosophical system that I do find dangerous, potentially malevolent. Objectivists seem to use their answer in rationalizing a libertarian society without regard for its potentially malevolent consequences. Pragmatists have my sympathies here.
Ok. But are the pragmatists any better? They beg us to stay away from the question and its transcendental answers so as to deprive us the absolutist material needed to rationalize our malevolence. Is this option any less malevolent? Maybe. But the pragmatist agenda seems to go further than just “don’t go there”. The agenda includes “come here and bond with us.” What if we don’t want to bond with you? Are you going to force us? Maybe. Pragmatists do whatever they want and can get away with. Just like we all seem to do. It’s not beyond a pragmatist to rationalize some fascist agenda. They just do it differently, by referencing some kind of “togetherness ideal”. If you ask me, a prohibition on transcendental answers to some epistemological questions won’t by itself make the world more benevolent. I don’t know for sure. But I’m still worried about rationalizations for malevolence no matter the stance on such questions.
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