CRISTO RAUL.ORG '

READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

CONTEMPORARY EAST EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

Chapter III.

Epistemology, Ontology, and Logic

10.

Igor Hrusovsky

Being and structure

The question of objective existence in-itself, of the existence of reality in-itself, of the independence of being from consciousness, is an epistemological question. The reifying of fully determinate and hence “characterized” entities, i.e. of empirical objects or facts, implies that they occupy a definite position in a given system. The question of Being in-itself, i.e. of the transcendence of the uncharacterized cosmic totality, can only be posed in terms of the epistemological polarity of objective being—subjective consciousness.

What leads one to accept the transcendence of being? To put it succinctly: analysis, confrontation, the organization of the data of consciousness, experience, praxis, all provide answers to the question of whether these data, quite apart from their subjective component, testify to Being beyond the limits of consciousness or hint at an independent reality beyond the immanent world of conscious experience.

Our acceptance of the transcendence of being makes it easier for us to interpret and systematize the data of individual consciousness. Our concrete picture of the world gains further depth from the cognitive experience of others. Hence, I have an empirical as well as a practical basis for preferring the hypothesis of realism to that of solipsism.

Of course, I can have identical experiences in a conscious state and in a dream. But once I have become aware of the origin of such dreams, I know perfectly well that I am dealing with a mere dream-reality. Furthermore, we are familiar with the occurrence of group hallucinations; and therefore even collective convictions must be accepted with reservations, and consistently with the totality of our systematically ordered experiences. During the early stages of human evolution, the conditions of human life were enormously oppressive and a source of bitter disappointment and emotional upheaval for the individual. Accordingly, the human subject began to separate itself off from the uncompromising object. In a similar way, the child begins to distinguish his own ego from external reality, once the awareness dawns that objects continually frustrate his will.

Philosophically, the problem of the transcendence of Being must be kept separate from that of its nature. In principle, the epistemological question of Being-in-itself (the existential referent), i.e. the question of the existential independence of the objective world from consciousness, must be distinguished from the ontological question about the determination of being by means of philosophical categories. Consequently, the existential nature of the object must be distinguished in principle from the empirical question. Independently existing reality is in no sense formless. A completely chaotic reality would remain incomprehensible to the knower. The specific reality of the object is expressed through its structural and dialectical relationships. The qualitative specification of each object is determined by the concrete character of its inner structural articulation, along with its essential external relationships. If we want to know what a particular object or event is, we must direct our attention to its characteristic structural features. In the final analysis, the whole world in-itself is a system of relationships and oppositions in every variety and form. Every object that exists can be understood or conceived only on the basis of the reciprocal relationships of its components and its total context of time-space conditions. These relations alone are rationally, discursively, cognitively, and intellectually conceivable.

The intellect is, of course, the organ that comprehends relations, connections, and functions. Empirical categories express in a specific manner the structural, functional, dynamic, and dialectical relations of the actual. Intellectually, we can grasp the structure of reality with constantly greater articulateness and adequacy, and our expression of its various forms can become indefinitely more exhaustive and relevant; but we still remain always within the limits of a particular network of conceptual relationships.

Though knowledge undoubtedly starts from the intuitive material transmitted by the senses, it reproduces objective reality not in an unmediated way but abstractly. It is worth noting that science forsakes its sensuous (anschaulichen) character more and more in its theoretical phases, and develops in complete abstraction from the levels of sensory phenomena. Nevertheless, modern science expresses the profoundly dynamic structure of the world much more adequately than any of those immediate (anschaulichen) forms of cognition which are suited only to grasping the surface reality of experience. Thus, any attempt to grasp an actual fact without conceptual tools is unthinkable, since it will then unavoidably appear not as fact but merely as perceptual experience. Only if I can analyze it conceptually (i.e. apperceive it) will its empirical content be made clear. But to ignore the epistemological problem runs the risk of reifying or objectifying sensory experience. Philosophy has only gradually freed itself of this snare.

When we want to denote the dialectical unity of those basic features of the object which give it its relative permanence and its distinctness from other objects, and, at the same time, when we wish to distinguish this unity from mere sensory qualities, we are speaking of the category of quality. Thus, every quality is the expression of the specific character of a definite object, it expresses its lawful composition, i.e. the system or structure of its internal relations and of those laws that are necessary to explain its status as an object. Of course, the various qualitative determinations of the cosmic whole intermingle and modify one another in innumerable ways. Objects and facts are only the relatively constant nodal points of the reciprocal and conflicting activities of a reality qualitatively infinite and manifold. No objects, and none of their basic characteristics, are completely isolated from still more fundamental determinations they are never fully defined simply in terms of themselves. However, any act of cognition is relational, since only a fully rational relationship is one which is logically grounded. Many philosophers are of the opinion that the components or relata cannot themselves be grasped by means of the relation, and hence are indefinable. Still, knowledge is relational, and our concepts grasp the several regions of objective reality in their specific structural or systematic configuration in a rational manner, more or less adequately.

What we at any time treat as unanalyzable components (and thus as the most fundamental elements of a given concrete substance) in the course of scientific development always turn out to be structurally differentiated. If I may cite the testimony of the physicist Weisskopf, high-energy physics has shown that protons and neutrons have a definite structure, and that the nucleus is not as simple as once appeared. This structure and the internal dynamics of the nucleus reveal quite unexpected and novel features, which structurally have little in common with the entities known up to this time. The dialectic of scientific development proves that there is no ultimate substance in objective reality. This means that when we speak of the fundamental (and thus undifferentiated) elements of a concrete object, we speak only from the standpoint of a definite substantial level, hence, of only relatively stable elements. The properties of the element are functionally related to a physical point of departure, which itself is determined by the dialectico-structural organization.

As praxis makes clear, there is a dialectical correspondence between any conceptual system of empirical cognition, and the empirical reality itself. It is more and more apparent that we must distinguish between the metaphyscial and empirico-structural way of conceiving substance. As the history of scientific knowledge shows, our conceptual reproduction of objective reality is constantly gaining in adequacy, even while remaining specific and merely approximate. The question of metaphysical substance must be recast as an issue involving concrete relationships. In science it is pointless to speak of the concept of any other ontological substance than the empirico-structural. Substance is the structure of the constitutive concrete relationships of the object. The substance of an object is the product of its fundamental aspects and components, the unity of their reciprocal relationships, substantial categories, as for example, thing, body, element, etc., cannot be conceived apart from attributive categories which express the characteristic properties of the actual object. Attributive categories constitute the content of substantial categories, they give them concreteness.

The ontological nature of reality is comprehensible only through empirical predicates. The character of reality can be grasped in its proper specificity (even though never fully exhaustively) through the cognitive techniques of empirical science. In my work Probleme der Hoetik (1948), I drew attention to the fact that, so far as empirical reality is concerned, it is at least as differentiated as the regions of empirical knowledge. In confirmation of this assertion, the Czech philosopher J. L. Fischer goes even further, insisting that the scope of objective differentiation is indefinitely wider than we can ever do justice to in our acts of knowing. We presume that it is this fact which underlies the development and continual radicalization of empirical science. What does Being-in-itself, Being in general mean? We can answer this question only in terms of the epistemological relationship knowledge-being. In ontology, no less than in the particular sciences whose object is the comprehension of the character, properties, and laws of objective reality, there is simply no other knowledge than the empirico-structural. As Carnap so aptly expressed it, the propositions of trans-empirical metaphysics have no cognitive meaning whatsoever.

Objective reality as a whole is coextensive with the structure of the universe. Its components are reciprocally interconnected in relationships of contradiction, as are the categories of philosophy. The determination of each category is defined by its relation to all other categories. Philosophical categories express the most basic and universal aspects of reality as a whole. Each category reflects a definite, particular aspect of the universe. In the hierarchy of the total system of knowledge, philosophy represents a high point, since it conceptually reproduces reality as a whole. This means that in a scientific philosophy all relations and interconnections are internal. The total perspective makes itself felt even when we (as philosophers) are investigating only a particular segment of reality.

At any given level of universality in our knowledge, we can be pursuing either philosophy or some regional science, depending on whether we take as our goal the deeper penetration of a philosophical problem on the basis of some regionally restricted discipline or a particular scientific problem in terms of philosophical categories.

Ontology as a philosophical discipline, i.e. as the universal science of the universal character of Being, worked out on the basis of the most universal philosophical categories, can be no different, in principle from those regional sciences which have as their object the characterization of qualitatively limited Being. Philosophy and the special sciences together represent the total structure of knowledge. External, independent reality is the source of all concrete cognition. We grasp the proper, immanent character of objective reality with the specialized tools of knowledge in the course of the endlessly self-correcting process of science. During the process, we discover, from time to time, new features of objective reality, forms of being to which we had never given our attention.

Since the ontological richness of objective reality can never be exhaustively and definitively translated into cognitive and discursive categories the validity of empirical statements must always have a probabilistic character. It can be stated with perfect justice that, as a result of the noetic inexhaustibility of the objective properties of reality, our acts of cognition are always open-ended. Some thinkers would distinguish philosophy from science precisely on the grounds that philosophy's problems are never completely solved. But this is equally true of science. (We are, of course, concerned in both cases with statements about objective reality, not with the analytic propositions of logic or mathematics.)

We never know the objects of the external world in their original, unmediated form, and so empirical knowledge mirrors reality only in a merely specific way, i.e. concrete acts of empirical cognition correspond in specific ways to empirical reality. Whatever the degree of adequacy of this correspondence, we achieve it by praxis, by scientific experiment, and by the steady accretion of knowledge. There is probably no need to recall here that, beneath the surface of empirical reality, we assume an indefinite terrain over which we only gradually achieve mastery, which we hope to reach through all the complex, dialectical turns of empirical knowledge.

As we have seen, the level of our concrete acts of knowing is sufficiently high to serve as an adequate pre-condition for integral experience. It must be adequate, if science is to come into a constantly more complete and comprehensive possession of actual facts. Even though with every critical advance in science we have to keep revising even those fundamental theories which presumably hint at the truth about empirical reality, nevertheless we are coming closer and closer to an adequate knowledge of the world.

When I assert that external reality is the ultimate source of all concrete knowledge, I mean to imply that the dialectical process of knowledge, praxis, transforms this reality, gaining a gradual articulation of the “thing-in-itself” making it a “thing-for-us”, i.e. into an object that can be cognitively grasped. Being as such, i.e. the “thing-in-itself”, has no determination whatsoever, and on that account, can have no conceptual correlate. The object, which we gradually assimilate in the course of the cognitive process, acquires first of all the attribute of materiality. Time and space determinations apply from the outset to the empirical world, to the qualitative level of Being, matter; not however, to Being as such.

Matter is the philosophical category which designates the totality of empirical reality. In the early stages of the history of knowledge, we attach the label materiality to whatever it is which gives rise to our unfolding empirical knowledge. The ontology of naive realism is identical with the way things appear. In the process of scientific abstraction the human subject gradually detaches itself from the concrete objects of perception and grasps empirical facts (material objects), e.g, according to the non-sensuous models of micro-particles, which, nevertheless, do have an effect upon us and upon the physicist’s instruments.

A structure is a composite whose elements and components preserve an equilibrium in accordance with a definite law of reciprocal interrelations and oppositions. As far as two terms structure and system are concerned, many philosophers hold that they are synonymous, while others make a distinction between them. Personally, it has been my opinion for several years now that it would be best to reserve the concept system for ideal or notional systems; and use structure for the material object-in-itself. Nonetheless, material structures might be treated as systems, if the elements of the system were taken to represent the essential features of the structure. Research into the structure of the material object can easily suggest the construction of a system, or the systematizing of the object in such a way that we line up in systematic order those special features of the object we take to be essential at any given qualitative level.

The properties of a definite, significant, and essential component or segment of an object are determined not only by the componental function, i.e. immanently, but in a special way by the total structural unity. This holds also vice versa of the components in determining the character of the totality in question. If the alteration of a component has a transforming effect on the other components, as well as on the structure of the whole, then it is an essential component in the full sense. A structural component which is also essential fulfills a definite function in the totality, one that is co-determined both by the qualitative peculiarity of the component itself and by the totality. Therefore, the specific features of a particular component are brought out by their functional relationship to a given whole. Consequently, the functions of the various structural components reciprocally influence and condition one another; for example, the functions of the same chemical compound are quite different in their non-biological (i.e. chemical) and their biological (i.e. biochemical) structures.

We can further assert that the privileged position of the whole in relation to the parts is only a relative and conditional one. The specific character of every objective whole is in this way fully dependent both upon its components and their functions and upon their characteristic structural composition.

But this picture of harmony in the world structure needs to be completed by a look at its less harmonious side. Objects are only relatively stable, and there are no definitive and unchanging essences. Thus, we speak of a dynamic, rather than a static stability of structure. In this connection, the well-known theoretical biologist, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, employs the phrase “the fluid equilibrium of an open system”. Such a dynamic stability of equilibrium is conditioned both by the dialectical composition of the structure and by the various functions and processes.

The most important factor in every essential change of qualitative transformation of the real object is its inner tension of opposing forces. The unity of the immanently opposed properties of the object expresses its structure from the standpoint of the changes it can undergo, its organization, its inner dynamics, perhaps even its developmental history. Such, in brief outline, is what a dialectico-structural interpretation of the essence of an object might look like.

A special problem for the dialectico-structural approach to objective reality is presented by the open system, i.e. one which interchanges matter and energy with its environment for the purpose of self-regulation. The example here par excellence, is the living organism.

I should like now to make some attempt to work out a definition of the concept of structure. Through this concept we express the unity of lawful relations, functions, causal, and dialectical interconnections of the object, i.e. the unity in the midst of its inner complexity. The concept of structure is therefore the expression of the contradictory unity of the necessary and thus essential relations and laws of the object, and not of a merely mechanistic grouping of laws. The specific character of the object, its structure, is not the result of its separate features taken in isolation from one another, but of their functional and reciprocal contradictory unity. The whole is in no sense the mere sum of its parts, but has, besides, specific, integrating properties. According to Bertalanffy, problems of highly variable interaction, of organization, of hierarchical arrangement, of differentiation, of counter-entropic tendencies, of goal-directed processes, demand conceptual instruments that are appropriately specific, not merely the tools of physical science.

It is often asserted that structure is an inherent property of material reality, i.e. of the empirical object. But we should not let it escape our notice that alongside the material there are also mental structures, i.e. ideological and theoretical ones. Theoretical structures grow out of and underlie developmental changes in a dialectical interplay of theory and praxis of theoretical and material structures.

Analogously, though in a specifically quite different way, we may speak of the aesthetic attitude to reality. Speaking of the aesthetic attitude to reality, it is quite clear that dominant aesthetic values and norms are structures. They are conditioned by time and class, they are contemporary, they exist in a social community, and they are changeable Every artistic product must have the basic capacity to stimulate an immaterial, aesthetic correlate in the subject. Aesthetically we speak quite naturally of coming in contact with reality purely and simply, for in relating ourselves to artistic reality it is precisely this aesthetic dimension in the contact which is dominant, and which simply overwhelms the other functions.

In my book Engels as a Philosopher (1946), I worked cut the following formulation: the whole world is a system of real relations, which reciprocally inter­penetrate, are organically interconnected; and which, further, interact in a definite and specific way anytime a particular change takes place or a particular phenomenon is to arise or disappear. The world which presents itself as a dynamic structure is a network of permanent potentialities, all with manifold, fluctuating intensities and forms. Actual reality is thus a structure of interconnections and conditions, i.e. a dynamic structure, pregnant with movement and dialectical tension, in which the various concrete phenomena continually change, arise, and disappear. Objective reality, whether looked at in terms of its structure or its variety and changeability, has no absolute boundaries. For this reason, an adequate grasp of an actual event is possible only by taking into consideration the entire complex network of reciprocal relations among the separate components of reality.

Furthermore, the well-known physicist, D. Bohm, recently stated in this connection that objects cannot be treated as things having an independent existence at any moment. There is a reciprocal interpenetration and fluctuation even among the qualities of the existing thing. If the internal and external relations and contradictions within each object, event, process, and development interpenetrate, reinforce, and interweave with one another, even this immanent, inner dialectic is not to be taken as absolute and cut off from the dialectic of external objects. It is linked to them in any number of lawful ways on a higher level. The inner dialectic of a definite, concrete phenomenon is, therefore, only relatively independent and immanent. In the final analysis, the same kind of immanent dialectic is found at the level of the superstructure as we just now observed within the narrow bounds of individual structures.

In my book, Strukturation und Apperzeption des Konkreten (1966) I particularly emphasized that it was illegitimate to make absolutes out of the external (heteronomous) and the internal interconnections and relations of components and structures. A more narrowly limited structure (e.g. an organ of the human body) can be distinguished from a more broadly determined one (e.g. the human organism as a whole) only in a relative sense. In the first place, the organ in question, its function and its self-development are all internally determined by a specific, dialectical principle, in terms of which the organ is conditioned and stimulated by external relationships. In this way, the outer environment indirectly determines and modifies the qualitative status of the particular organ or object. The several regions of actual being are, therefore, never completely autonomous. Every sphere of reality (e.g. in the cultural area) is interrelated with every other structure in the total, cultural superstructure, in accordance with any number of different laws and modalities. If one region changes, the other sectors echo this shift in quite specific ways since the whole network of reciprocal relationships is affected.

The existence of a particular whole is determined by the coherence of its inner structure in such a way that the mutual relations of its components are more explicit and more powerful than their connections with external factors. As a recent remark of Bergsonian inspiration puts it, either the weakening of internal cohesiveness, or the intensification of external forces can result in a loss of definition and the consequent destruction of the individual whole, either by fragmenting into smaller entities or by assimilation into another, higher level totality. What in one connection appears as internal can in another context be seen as external. When we assert that the external relations of any particular super­structure appear to be internal, the assertion is verified in those cases especially where those relations are necessary for the superstructure, i.e. part of the very law of its being; so that without them the larger structure loses its self-identity. Essential external relations and conditions are simultaneously internal or immanent organizing factors in the dialectical totality of the superstructure: they are the regulative laws of the “contradictory” self-development of a complex totality.

Totalities interpenetrate and mingle reciprocally with one another; they are relational. We speak, therefore, of the many-faceted structure of a particular concrete totality and of the multi-dimensionality of the whole of objective reality.

An objective and practical delimiting of the inner relationships of a given object determines, finally, how we are to approach it theoretically, i.e. what methods we are to use in researching it. For example, sociology investigates social phenomena as components of the social structure, i.e. it uses a method that is specifically different from that used by jurisprudence, ethics, or philosophy. But since no scientific field is entirely autonomous, each must take into consideration in the course of its own development, the structural laws of other disciplines especially the related ones (e.g. sociology must be aware of history, psychology, etc.), and also the broad regulative principles of the overarching theoretical discipline, viz. scientific philosophy.

The views of several Soviet philosophers are in fundamental agreement with our conclusions. As a concrete example, we cite V. S. Tiukhtin. On the basis of the structural approach, he feels that a thorough revision is needed in our interpretation of philosophical categories, since the interpretation is fundamentally erroneous, based as it is on traditional qualitative-phenomeno logical (descriptive) speech-forms. It is transparently necessary to re-evaluate the content of the categories and laws of the materialist dialectic on the basis of the systemic-structural approach (or principle), which works throughout all scientific disciplines. Tiukhtin makes the further point that the category of interaction between the structural elements is the basic starting-point for the re-interpretation of all the other philosophical categories. In his opinion the potential equivalence of the concepts element and system consists in the fact that a particular system can function as an element or a sub-system in a larger system, that those elements which appear within the framework of the system as homogeneous are manifestly complexly articulated in their own inner reality, and, on the basis of their micro-analysis, can even look like micro-level systems themselves.

In principle, this means that the specific features of each element are essentially determined by the interaction of elements. Also in harmony with our point of view is Tiukhtin’ contention that the cognition of the qualitative particularity of an object involves laying bare its specific structure.

According to Tiukhtin, the category of causality can be adequately interpreted only on the basis of structural interaction. He also devotes special attention to the categories of content and form. To remove structure from the category of content, Tiukhtin argues quite properly, means depriving the category of content of any real meaning. When the structure is transformed, a new object comes into being, and, consequently, content changes also. The category of form is therefore to be conceived in the sense of authentic Marxism as a mode of existence of an object.