POSTMODERNISM AND VEDÂNTISM

Nuclear Physics: Science or Speculation?

Fascinating and suggestive though they may be, the late advances of nuclear physics actually venture into realms where neither reason nor experience can follow them adequately. When high energies physicists speak of entities having neither mass nor spin nor energy, like neutrini; when they posit other entities that cannot be observed at all; when they simply refer to even other entities, that 'exist' either as particles or as waves depending on whether or how one is observing them, we can hardly say that they are 'making science' - we can hardly say what they are making at all. If that is 'science', it is not the settled body of evidence and explanations that we intend when we think of ‘science’; it is a conjectural one, a speculation, a bundle of hypotheses; for its very propositions and wording escape the purview of man's speech and representation. For this reason, the theories and observations of such a science are clearly unsuitable for backing ideas and insights taken from the Shruti (the body of ancient Hindu scriptures), however tempting and marketable this operation may be.

The problem with science is now a semantic one, one of meaning, as words lose all connection with experienceable 'reality', therefore language -that is based on a system of metaphors- becomes vague and baffling.  As beyond certain values of energy and dimension the possibility of both observing and metaphorising ceases (owing respectively to the limits of senses and of language), the distinction between science and not-science becomes uncertain. Positive science, as it were, has come to a railhead. It has become like a river after the end of its two banks: it is not a river any longer. We run short of phenomena because nothing more appears distinctly, definably. The very platform, or basic assumption, on which science and common sense are construed, falls in - this platform being the paradigm whereby a subject observes an object which is phenomenally and ontologically independent from the subject and the act of observation and the instruments used for the observation. More generally, as we have stressed, Mâya's basic pattern of reality, based on the mind-matter dualism and a certain idea of mind and matter, is collapsing.

A remarkable and paradoxical implication of this collapse is, that it affects even the representation, definition, meaning of that very experiment, from which the physical outcomes derive, that bring about that collapse, because those representation, definition, meaning  include the representation of some men -the researchers- endowed each with a thinking consciousness, communicating with the other consciousnesses by means of physical organs, and operating a machinery (particles accelerator, fog chamber) made of solid matter -unlike the researchers' mind-  through which, using their bodies and sense organs -also made of solid matter- they produce and observe phenomena in the physical word.

That is, on the basis of the experimental outcomes we have to rethink the concept of experiment and experience.

Yet one should not overlook the positive, scientific gain of this (and others) 'railheads', which consists non only in having worked ourselves free of some errors and illusions, but also in having ascertained and charted a limit, a border, of a given method of producing knowledge. Borders, edges, indeed make up shapes, Gestalten, meaning.
 

Analytic Philosophy and Mysticism

The English and American philosophy was dominated for two decades, from the early '30's on, by a movement originated in the 20's in the Vienna Circle, that has been called Logical Positivism or Logical Empiricism. Among the most famous exponents of this movement we can mention, beside Ludwig Wittgenstein, its father, A.J. Ayer and B. Russel.

We owe Wittgenstein the fundamental remark that statements, or propositions about reality (not those consisting in orders or entreaties or puns), are not necessarily either true or false, but also either meaningful or meaningless (in German sinnlos, literally 'nonsensical'). A meaningless statement is one that is neither true nor false. More exactly, statements can be either meaningless or meaningful; only the meaningful one can be false or true.
Therefore, when facing a proposition, the first thing to do, after ascertaining that it is a statement, is check for its meaning.

The Principle of Verification or Principle of Verifiability states that a given statement is meaningful only if it can be verified at least in principle and on the basis of objective, publicly available knowledge.

If it cannot be thus verified, it is devoid of significance or is an ejaculation, command, curse or the expression of something private, subjective, like an emotion. Such is the case with a statement like: "I really enjoyed this dinner."

For an instance, the following proposition is meaningful: "It is raining"; it is true if it is raining, false if it is not. The following metaphysical statement is, conversely, meaningless: "God is a reality in itself, beyond the phenomenon, the appearance." Metaphysical propositions (see Glossary), that cannot be empirically verified, are therefore, according to Logic Empiricism, devoid of meaning. Also meaningless -because they cannot be experimentally verified- are all ethical and esthetical propositions, all statements on values.

It ought to be carefully marked that science, knowledge consist in meaningful propositions only.
We shall not discuss in detail the concept and technique of verification. Suffice to remind the reader that the principal means of verification is experiment and that experiment supplies verification (or falsification) of hypotheses not by disclosing the causative process (how the variable x causes the effect y) but by producing a number of experimental outcomes (wherein x is followed by y at a certain ratio between zero and 100%) that enables us to statistically calculate the chance that x is followed by y. If the chance is significant -and there are mathematical proceedings to establish that- then it is conventionally concluded that y is significantly correlated to x; which is translated into the common, layman’s terms: ‘x causes y’. But this is a mere inference. The experiment, the verification, is not about causation of an event by another, it is about chance of association of an event with another.
 

Many statements are conditionally unverifiable, that is, they could become verifiable if clarified and semantically defined or completed. If I say: "The acoustic stimulus elicits a fear response in the cat", my statement, in order to be tested for truthfulness, has to be clarified: "What acoustic stimulus was that? What are its frequency, intensity, and duration? What was it experimentally associated with? How do we describe 'fear response' in objective, physiological and behavioural terms?" Only once these points have been adequately clarified, we can take a number of cats and set up an experiment in order to verify whether my statement matches with reality or not.

There are consequently two kinds of meaningful statements that can be true or false:
a) logical or analytical statements, which are based on logic (logic includes mathematics); and
b) empirical (or a posteriori synthetic) statements, which are based on experience, on facts (we are not tackling here the problem of the a priori synthetic statements).

Logical statements are correct (true) when they respect the rules of logic; their being true or correct does not entail, thus, that the things or beings they speak about are existing, nor that they can make any statements such as “ x positively exists” or “y positively has the properties p1, p2, p3”. Hence, they can add nothing to what we know about what exists. Take for an instance "Tomorrow it will either rain or not." This proposition is a truism, it adds nothing to our knowledge of facts because there are only two possibilities - rain and not rain- so one of the two must come true, and the proposition will always be true, it is indifferent to facts; but, for the selfsame reason, it can add nothing to what we know about facts.

Philosophy thus is no more a science of the existence, or the existent; it is a science of propositions, of language, whose object is analysing verbal communication, clarifying expressions, and detecting violations of logical rules.

Logic is the science of necessary inference that rules relations between sentences as well as transformation and combination of sentences, based on operators such as 'if', 'then', 'or', 'either-or', 'at least one', 'all of' etc. It is a science of relations between signs, symbols, and propositions of same or different levels of complexity. It is not a science of relations between entities. Likewise, accountantship is the science of values and relations, it can ascertain whether a corporate return is made correctly or not, but it cannot ascertain whether it is truthful, whether the declared value of the merchandise in the storehouse is true or not.
Thus it could say that 'This corpse is living' is incorrect, a priori false because it is contradictory, given that the linguistic definition of 'corpse' is 'a no longer living human body' and is therefore incompatible with the predicate 'is living'; but it will not be concerned with ascertaining whether the body is dead or alive, human or not human; or whether it exists at all. This is the task of empirical investigation or science.

The fundamental problem of logic is that it is ultimately based on indemonstrable axioms, enunciated and assembled by some fellows, which constitute the basis of all rules, and that have to be accepted through the intuition of the impossibility to negate them. The most important of axioms is the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), stating that A is A and is not Non-A; or that, given a statement and its negation, only one of these can be true, and both can be false. To deny this principle implies denying to be denying it. If I say, "I deny that any thing is itself" I imply that my very denying that is no denial but affirmation. This appears to many to be an ultimate argument in favour of the objective necessity of this principle. But this necessity lies within the principle itself, presupposing it: it presupposes that self-contradiction is self-disqualifying. Other principles, such as the excluded middle (PEM), appear to be even less absolute. PEM says that, given a statement and its negation, at least the statement or the negation is true. By combining PNC and PEM we have PED, the principle of exclusive disjunction, stating that, given a statement and its negation, one of these is true and the other is false.
Well, in the light of the principles above, what is of the propositions constituting the language of religious scripts and people? Are they statements? Are they meaningful? Are they logically correct? I intend statements like 'God exists', 'God loves us', 'The good ones will go to Paradise, the evil ones will go to Hell', or "When all longings are dismissed, which are found in heart and soul, Then the mortal becomes immortal, in this life attains the goal", “Verily, this generation will not pass ere all these things will happen”, “We are immortal souls”, “God is one and threefold” and the like, including all statements using the world ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual’, which hardly lend themselves to verification.

The question requires a preliminary distinction. Some of such statements are inherently contradictory, logically incorrect, like “God is one and threefold”. Most of them, constituting the bulk of scripts like the Shruti, the Bible, the Talmud etc., are conditionally unverifiable; that is, most of them are semantically indefinite (what is meant by 'God'? and by 'good'? and by 'goal'?) and therefore one cannot even say whether they are of the first kind (logical) or the second (empirical). They should be treated as meaningless till definition is provided - which in many cases is not possible unless one interprets very freely the literal text.

Indeed, the largest part of theology aims at giving a logical definition, interpretation, construction and consistency to the allegedly revealed scripts. The rest of theology has always been busy with the need of adapting the same interpretation to ever changing social and political conveniences. Thus, ponderous commentaries on holy scripts have been produced by all religions: Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica, Shankaracarya wrote his Commentary on the Brahmasutra, and so on.

In some cases, there is no question: if someone said “Verily all these things will happen ere this generation passes”, and then many generations pass but no such things happen, we are obviously facing a meaningful, empirical and false statement.
In the cases where a complete and clear definition is given, the statements appear partly logical, partly empirical; so we have firstly to ascertain whether they can be verified; then we have to verify them.

Let us consider some cases:

a) Suppose that the statement 'God exists' is clarified as follows: 'God is the being possessed with all perfections, all positive attributes; because existence and eternity are positive attributes and belong in perfection, then God must exist and be eternal.' This is a logical statement -the famous ontological proof of God’s existence by Saint Anselm- and can be verified and found incorrect. It is incorrect because one thing is stating that the concept of one such being must include the idea of existence (but the concept of any being must that) - which is obvious; and a different thing is mistaking the concept of such a being for the effectual existence of such a being.

b) Imagining that a clearly empirical statement like "Chanting two hours a day «Hare Rama» develops insight and serenity" could be sufficiently defined as regards the terms 'insight' and 'serenity' -say, by singling out wave patterns in the brain cortex that are specific of 'insightfulness' and 'serenity'- then you can set up an experiment by which you can ascertain whether that is true or not; yet, the verification will be a strictly naturalistic one and will legitimate no inference pertaining to the posited supernatural level on which the chanting of mantras assumedly affects people; it is apt to being overturned by possible different results of future experiments; besides it will bear solely on the objective phenomena that we assume to be related to the feeling of insightfulness and serenity, and cannot possibly confirm the subjective side, the feeling itself. Therefore, it is a short-reaching demonstration.

c) 'If one dies with a finger dipped in the Ganga, one goes automatically to Brahmloka.' This empirical statement requires preliminarily the definition of Brahmaloka in order to be verified; then, imagining that you have provided the demonstration of the existence of both Brahamloka and of a life after death, you have to set up an experiment in order to verify that when a human being dies with a finger dipped in the Ganga river he goes straight to Brahmaloka. So you will have thousands of dying persons transported to -say- Varanasi and drawn up along the ghats, one third of them with a finger dipped in the Ganga, another third with a finger dipped in a glass of Coca-Cola, the remaining third with both hands well dry, and wait until they pass over. But what will you do next? Will you dip a finger in the Ganga to and blow your brains too, hoping to reach Brahmaloka and see whether all those of the first group are there waiting for you, whilst only a part of the other two groups -the control groups- have reached Brahmaloka, as your proposition predicts? No, you are not permitted to take your life to fly off to Brahmaloka, because that would infringe the principle under which verification must be effected on the basis of publicly available information only, and you cannot expect us to kill ourselves in order to reach Brahmaloka and effect the necessary survey of those among the experimental persons who have got there.

d) If the sentence "God created the universe" is clarified as follows: "God, the being possessed with all perfections, all positive attributes, at some moment in time, created out of nothing all the material things, the energies and the minds that exist," then a whole array of questions of different logical levels arise, beside verifying whether 'God' exists:

- because God already existed when he created the universe, the latter was not created out of nothing after all, was it?

- is the idea of creation out of nothing not a contradictory one, since nothing can possibly come out of nothing?

- is the idea of creation itself not a contradictory one, since under the principle of non-contradiction the existent can never have been or become inexistent?

- is the idea of a perfect, absolute being creating more beings compatible with the assumption of the perfection of that being?

- is the assumption of the existence of such things as matter and time, logically correct and proved?

Thus, the creationist statement above could give rise, and actually gave rise in the course of history, to countless questions and debates in the West and in the East. It proves, indeed, far too complex for a proper verification. Which does not make it more or less truthful. It simply leaves it in its manifest uncertainty.

e) “We actually witness facts (a child’s death, a blatant injustice) that seem to contradict the absolute doctrine and be inconsistent with God’s goodness and justice; yet they only appear so to us owing to the limits of our consciousness; but if you consider that God is absolute and has unlimited consciousness and his design is imperscrutable, you realise that they can be reconciled both with him and the absolute doctrine.” Suchlike arguments, based on the infinity and imperscrutability of God, are not false, but meaningless. Indeed, they cannot be verified even because they can, in that way, explain anything that happens. Nothing, no possible event, could ever disprove them.

By positing and absolute, imperscrutable God, you can reconcile, on principle, anything with anything else. This is a precious psychological aid for coping out existentially in a cruel, foul world and society. Want of evidence of life after death, outrageous injustice, arbitrary cruelty, misdemeanour and contradictions, even overt evil doing and lies by the holy institutions can be reconciled and valued as good if we posit that they are part of an imperscrutable, mysterious design of God’s Grace or Lila.

Concluding on this subject, we can say that

- the largest part of the propositions contained in the Shruti are not statements but invocations, praises and so on; they are not aimed at supplying the reader with knowledge, but rather at acting upon his mind - they are tools, not treatises;

- therefore, they need not be semantically clear and logically consistent;

- most of the statements are not verificable according to the method above

-because they refer to an alleged reality situated beyond experience (they are metaphysical),

-because they can only be experienced privately, subjectively;

-and/or because their meaning is unclear; that many of them allow for alternative interpretations;

-that the logical implications of alternative interpretations often are incompatible with each other (dvaita-advaita, for an instance);

-that in many cases, even if the propositions are more or less legitimately translated into logical terms, their content is far too complex for being adequately analysed according to a system of logic.
 
At any rate, we should bear in mind that the purpose of the Shruti is not furnishing us with a scientific or logical theory or explanation of reality, but a practical one: moksha, liberation, through the elevation of our consciousness.
 
 

The Limits and Decline of Analytic Philosophy

Logical Empiricism declined as it met with inner as well as outer difficulties and contradictions. We will mention two of them. In the words of Ian T. Ramsey's article 'Philosophy and Religious Language':
"Firstly, the Principle of Verification, no matter how formulated, tends to undermine itself. The Principle of Verification is neither a principle of logic or mathematics, nor a verifiable statement of common life or science. Consequently it is meaningless, or at most the expression of an attitude or preference etc.

"Secondly, it rules out much of what would ordinarily be regarded as good science. Scientific theories are not verifiable: they always go beyond their experiential base, otherwise they would be useless. At the most, they are falsifiable. Thus Karl Popper.”

Popper, in view of the practical difficulty of verifying a large number of propositions constituting accepted axioms or results of science, proposed to replace the verification principle with one of falsification: propositions are only then ‘sinvoll’, when you can devise a situation that might prove them false. A proposition like “god created the universe” is thus meaningless, because you cannot imagine a situation where something happens that may disprove this statement.
Yet, as the author remarks, “even this is naïve. Every research program of any significance in science commonly has a core of theory, which is all but unfalsifiable [Ramsey clearly means “all but falsifiable”]; it is only on the periphery that falsification regularly happens. In practice, one is as likely to criticise the experiment as to critique the theory, particularly as there are always all kinds of background assumptions at work in both. (Thus Imre Lakatos.) Developed science tends to come in paradigms, and, while within a paradigm things are pretty ordered and logical, the same thing cannot be said about transitions between paradigms. (Thus Thomas H. Kuhn.)"

Within the limits above, Logical Empiricism is definitely a valid tool for testing prepositions for their nature and consistency. It is of precious avail for detecting nonsensical and meaningless sentences and arguments as well as incorrect wording. If we can recognise, preliminarily, whether a text we are occupied with consists in statements or in something else, we can spare unnecessary work and disputations. Therefore, a preliminary examination in the light of the principles expounded above of any script that one is going to study should never be omitted.
 

Communication, Contents and Containers

Furthermore, and more generally, Logical Empiricism makes us aware, especially in the light of the difficulties in complying with its logical criteria, how unable we are to make clear statements and give them a proper proof, how vague and imprecise our propositions are, how uncertain and feeble the theories and the demonstrations that we use, even in the scientific field, not to speak of the religious and metaphysical. But this is, in practice, no problem.

Indeed, the object of communication is mostly not conveying information, knowledge - it is eliciting desired behavioural responses by aptly affecting the audience, attuning them to us, inducing them more or less durably into a required emotional mood or cognitive mode, reframing their representation of reality and, why not, cheating. Therefore, the lack of precision, clarity, and definability is not a hindrance but an asset. Communication consist not only and not necessarily of contents, of data. It also consists of containers. If you analyse it, you will find that the most effective, professional, effect-centred communication -such as propaganda, advertising, sermons, psychotherapy or even ordinary persuasive talks- is made up chiefly of content-free or almost content-free containers, of lullingly pleasant, artfully vague sentences -to use a term coined by Milton Erickson- and captivating speeches, whose very voidness induces a subhypnotical state of mind, a lowering of critical defences,  a softening up of the mental attitude, which is instrumental to the eliciting of the desired response. Artfully vague speech, rich in containers that suit anyone, stimulate the listener, his fantasy, and is never disprovable -it does not clash with his convictions-, hence it captivates and makes credible he who uses it. Anyone who is free of forejudgements against the involved communicator feels he is listening to things matching with his ideas; therefore, implanting negative forejudgements, creating derogative stereotypes, fostering irrational hostility is of paramount importance for propaganda. It is a way to immunize one’s ‘flock’ against adversary propaganda. After the professional communicator has administered some amount of irrefutable, palatable containers and some amount of plausible, captivating statements, he has established rapport and trust, he can start the introduction -by means of pseudo-logical arguments ant techniques that cannot be illustrated here- of relevant contents, such as distorted or concocted representation of matters of facts, orders, values, inhibitions, that he wants to implant into his client, patient, market, electorate.

Just some instances of this kind of artfully vague communication: "Do you support our servicemen in Iraq?" (aimed at eliciting consensus to the government-willed occupation of Iraq by exploiting the sense of solidarity to our servicemen risking their lives in that country). "What does this idea remind you of?" (aimed at pleasing the counterpart and centring his attention onto himself, thus diverting it from the suggestions that you wish to implant into him).

"I feel that the experiences that you have been making over the last months are very significant to you and that you really wish to tell me about them; the very fact that you are here now suggests that." (this encourages to speak about oneself and endows whatever one wishes to say with the dignity of an assumed significance in that he deems that you are really interested in listening to it).

"The difficulties of dialogue in contemporary families is the cause of severe dissatisfaction and troubles, which often affect the weaker, I mean the children, and sometimes end up in tragedy." (a generic truism, where every listener is lured to accomodate his own personal experience and problems, thus becoming involved and interested, although nothing has actually been said).
A simplified application of Neurolinguistic Programming to the field of persuasive, deceitful communication combining verbal meaning and cunningly elicited psychophysical responses, is the following. Suppose you want to seduce a girl who actually loves her boyfriend and is tuned to him. "One girl I met at a party casually mentioned her boyfriend in conversation.  I said to her, "You know, I'm really curious about something... about your boyfriend, what about him first attracted you?" She started telling me what it was about her boyfriend that first attracted her.  She said, "Well I wasn't attracted to him AT FIRST, but it was just the way he... and the way he... and..." This is important, because she's giving you step-by-step instructions on EXACTLY how to seduce her! I then asked her, "When you first fell in love with this person what exactly did you feel?"
No matter what she says, she'll lightly go into that state of first falling in love as she accesses it in her mind - with YOU causing the good feeling in her.  I asked her, "Where did that feeling start?" She told me in her chest (they'll usually say in their throat or stomach). Then I asked her, "From your chest, where did it go it next?" She told me it went down to her tummy. I said, "Now let me get this straight... I was actually talking to a friend of mine last week and with her when she feels she's attracted to a person she said it starts in her throat, but for you it starts here in your chest..." I touched her chest.  "And then down to your tummy right," I said tracing my finger down to her navel.

I've now just elicited HER particular process of becoming attracted and then LED her through it by tracing the path of that feeling with my finger (and anchored that incredible feeling to me finger as I touched her).  In effect, I created the experience of "becoming attracted" for her as I traced the feeling with my finger along her skin - all with the excuse of, "Now let me see if I got what you said straight." I finished up with, "It's kind of weird that way... how you just become attracted to someone like that... as if it just explodes inside of you when it hits your tummy... but things like that can just happen and in my opinion you should never try to fight something like that."
(Derek Vitalio,
Learn the Science of Seduction).

Paradoxically, even because those kinds of manipulative communication are most persuasive, they contribute a large deal to the formation of socially shared paradigms and tenets - of accepted knowledge, worldview, values, and assumed 'science'. And because manipulative communication techniques and knowledges are of extreme value both for politics and business, the research and the applications in this field are conducted, developed, tested kept under strict confidentiality by big corporations and government, which makes them even more hazardous for our cognitive freedom. The study and practice of yoga as a means to enhance and deepne on’es awareness and to clear and disentangle our mind, is therefore extremely important in order to preserve or restore that freedom.
 
 

Western Science as Constructed Paradigms in T. Kuhn's View.

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution is a milestone in the still ongoing epistemological revolution, that deeply and dramatically affects the understanding and the epistemological rating of the Vedic Sciences in the scientific literature, practice and divulgation, as we will see in the following paragraphs. Indeed, it is due to the side effects of this epistemological revolution that we are experiencing a revival of the interest and belief in those disciplines and subjects. Therefore, that revolution also accounts for the interest in books like this and probably for your own interest in Indian traditional studies.

It would be beyond the purpose and the subject of this book to examine extensively the theories that make up the postmodern approach to the problem of knowledge and the nature of science; yet, an outline of Thomas Kuhn's and Paul Feyerabend's theories will be of great help, for it can introduce the reader almost instantly into the core of their theories.

As regards Kuhn's ideas, I have selected the following outline worked out by Prof. Frank Pajares of the Emory University on the basis of Kuhn's crucial book The Structure of Scientific Revolution. The numbers between brackets refer to the pages.

"A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs (p. 4).
These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice" (5).

The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs exert a "deep hold" on the student's mind.

Normal science "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like" (5)-scientists take great pains to defend that assumption.

To this end, "normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments" (5).

Research is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (5).

A shift in professional commitments to shared assumptions takes place when an anomaly "subverts the existing tradition of scientific practice" (6). These shifts are what Kuhn describes as scientific revolutions-"the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science" (6).

New assumptions (paradigms/theories) require the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the re-evaluation of prior facts. This is difficult and time consuming. It is also strongly resisted by the established community.

When a shift takes place, "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed [and] quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory" (7)."

As you will have noticed, the central issues of Kuhn's theory and observation are ones of social psychology: the reputedly objective bases of scientific knowledge, the criteria establishing what is proved and scientific and what is not, the very assumption that there is a special, 'noble' body of knowledge different from ordinary believes in that it is qualitatively superior, are exposed as a camouflage of subjective, social-psychological factors quite similar to the ones that form the buyer's and the elector's choice: need for consistency, for group recognition, suggestion, fear of being left alone, learned inabilities (as I introduced them in Chapter One) etc.

Thanks to Kuhn's approach, we are thus proceeding towards a unified theory of man's conviction (and delusion), unifying science, advertising, propaganda and -why not- religion.

Resuming Pajares’ outline, in Chapter Two, The Route to Normal Science, Kuhn "describes how paradigms are created and what they contribute to scientific (disciplined) inquiry.

"Normal science "means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice" (10).

These achievements must be

-sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity and

-sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners (and their students) to resolve, i. e., research.

These achievements can be called paradigms (10).

"The road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous" (15).

"The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science" (12).

Students study these paradigms in order to become members of the particular scientific community in which they will later practice.

Because the student largely learns from and is mentored by researchers "who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models" (11), there is seldom disagreement over fundamentals.
Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice (11).

A shared commitment to a paradigm ensures that its practitioners engage in the paradigmatic observations that its own paradigm can do most to explain (13), i.e., investigate the kinds of research questions to which their own theories can most easily provide answers.

"It remains an open question what parts of social science have yet acquired such paradigms" (15). [psychology? education? teacher education? sociology?]

Paradigms help scientific communities to bound their discipline in that they help the scientist to

-create avenues of inquiry.

-formulate questions.

-select methods with which to examine questions.

-define areas of relevance.

-[establish/create meaning?]

"In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant" (15).

A paradigm is essential to scientific inquiry-"no natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism" (16-17).

How are paradigms created, and how do scientific revolutions take place?
Inquiry begins with a random collection of "mere facts" (although, often, a body of beliefs is already implicit in the collection).

During these early stages of inquiry, different researchers confronting the same phenomena describe and interpret them in different ways (17).
In time, these descriptions and interpretations entirely disappear.
A preparadigmatic school (movement) appears.

Such a school often emphasizes a special part of the collection of facts.
Often, these schools vie for preeminence.

From the competition of preparadigmatic schools, one paradigm emerges-"To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted" (17-18), thus making research possible.
As a paradigm grows in strength and in the number of advocates, the preparadigmatic schools (or the previous paradigm) fade.

"When an individual or group first produces a synthesis able to attract most of the next generation's practitioners, the older schools gradually disappear" (18).
Those with "older views . . . are simply read out of the profession and their work is subsequently ignored. If they do not accommodate their work to the new paradigm, they are doomed to isolation or must attach themselves to some other group" (19), or move to a department of philosophy (or history).

A paradigm transforms a group into a profession or, at least, a discipline (19). And from this follow the

-formation of specialized journals.

-foundation of professional societies (or specialized groups within societies-SIGs).

-claim to a special place in academy (and academy's curriculum).

-fact that members of the group need no longer build their field anew-first principles, justification of concepts, questions, and methods. Such endeavors are left to the theorist or to writer of textbooks.

-promulgation of scholarly articles intended for and "addressed only to professional colleagues, [those] whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed and who prove to be the only ones able to read the papers addressed to them" (20)-preaching to the converted.
(discussion groups on the Internet and a listerserver?)

A paradigm guides the whole group's research, and it is this criterion that most clearly proclaims a field a science (22)."

The above illuminates and, in a way, formalises the central role of the sharing a given system belief (paradigm) as a structuring factor for organisations. Far from being impersonal demonstrations, sciences appear as something that is socially constructed. And even because it is the offspring of a socially binding, emotion-handling function, science tends to be swayed from its declared aims of objectivity and neutrality.
 
 
 

Planned Paradigm Construction in Churches and Propaganda

This constructivist approach is confirmed by the observation of the behaviour of churches and their flocks. Churches, cults, sects industrially construct beliefs. Their business is actually belief farming. The process in analogue to that of construction of  (lay) science and technology, but dramatically intensified, not seldom pushed to grotesque or tragedy and frequently even planned, preordained by masterminding leaders.

 As Parmenid said, “Nothing can be known and believed at the same time.” That is: either you know something, or you believe it; believe implies non-knowledge, doubt. And Thomas Aquinas rightly defined faith “tendere in unam partem contradictionis cum formidine alterius partis”, that is, the believer is one who does his best to consider as true the tenets of his faith and to flee or deny the awareness that the same tenets are not proved and that things could be otherwise than he believes. Consequently, all religious organisations are busy with supporting this effort of their respective believers by reinforcing the sentiment of truthfulness of their belief and dimming the perception of doubt. They achieve this by having their believers group together and perform prescribed acts, that is, emit behaviours -both verbal and non verbal- that express faith and deny doubt; nobody is encouraged to communicate his doubts. In this manner, every single believer experiences all around him a choir of behavioural confirmations of the group faith and no voice of doubt. His faith is no longer alone facing doubt, it is backed by the massed support of the group of his fellows, in whose ceremonial action he also engages. And this support is reinforced by the fact that, generally, the same fellows are emotionally important to the believer - are his kinfolk, friends, relatives, and neighbours.

The recipe for constructing a cult or sect is as follows:

Work out a system that has suggestive responses to the basic existential needs of people (reassurance against death, helplessness, solitude, ignorance);

Instruct your votaries to engage in a set of collective practices whatever, better if they lower the threshold of consciousness (like insufficient nutrition or sleep, paroxystic dances and chants) declaring that they bring about purification, access to the divine, and so on;

Teach them to use a special jargon, with many concepts, words and idioms that are peculiar to your cult or sect and are not understood by the general population;

Teach them to despise and reject some parts of their emotional and physical life, thus inducing conflict and guilt;

Tell them that their faith and practices make of them special, pure, different beings, ought to stay separate from ordinary, profane people, and bond within your community only, or else they would be swayed or contaminated.

In a short time, your community will be ready to accept as pure science and plain fact any paradigms and theories that you wish them to believe in (remember Jonestown, Waco and Aum Shri Rinkyo?). You have created ‘a local science’, thanks to the fact that group action creates group identity, group ‘reality’ and group differentiation.

Quite the same psychological principles apply to the establishing of the confidence of the general population (a fair word for ‘populace’) in the institutions and their officially maintained ‘reality’ and ‘truths’ - particularly concerning the legitimation of power and policies. These proceedings have been unveiled by Jaques Ellul in his momentous essay Propaganda, deeply analysed by Noam Chomsky in his later books (in particular, Manufacturing Consent and Understanding Power) with special regard to media propaganda. I have discussed them in a more psychological key in my previous essay Le Chiavi del Potere, Koinè 2003. See also, for the application of the principles above to thought mastering by religious leaders, William Sargant’s Battle for the Mind and Denise Winn’s The Manipulated Mind. The Age of Propaganda by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson explains how most convictions and general assumptions on reality are the outcome of subconscious processes, which can be skilfully influenced and swayed basically with the same techniques for ecclesial, political and commercial goals. It also provides extensive instructions for how to set up and consolidate a cult and a faith.

This literature, whose principles are profusely applied in every sort of persuasion strategy for creating convictions on reality in the propagandees, and consequent action, anticipated constructivism in showing how convictions about reality originate and are maintained.
 
 

The Vicissitudes of Paradigms

Back to Kuhn’s main work, the social role of paradigms marks their fates, as described in Chapter Three:
 "When they first appear" writes Pajares "paradigms are limited in scope and in precision... ... Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise. This is achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions, and further articulation of the paradigm itself. In other words, there is a good deal of mopping-up to be done. Mop-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. Mopping-up is what normal science is all about!  This paradigm-based research (25) is "an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies" (24). "

 Chapter IV explains how clashing evidence and experimental outcomes that contradict to established and shared paradigms are suppressed, censored or dispensed of as failures by scientific literature and the academic institutions.
 
 

Kuhn's Theory of Revolutions in Science

 Chapter VI to VIII describe the process of the breaking down or changing of paradigms as due to supervening novelties in the factual realm (discoveries) or the theoretical realm (inventions). This process is always a conceptual as well as a perceptual one - that is, it has to defeat the resistance opposed by the expectation, which explains how the crisis of a paradigm induces a loosening and retooling of the methods of research.

Chapter IX expounds striking functional and structural analogies between a scientific revolution and a political one, in that both substitute an old system with a new one whose legitimating principles are incompatible with those of the previous. During the change-over process, we observe the forming of differentiated, competing groups in the population and a period of interregnum or void of power. The adoption of mutually inconsistent paradigms and values by such groups leads to the failure of political negotiation and peaceful problem-solving and consequently the conflict breaks out.

The outcome of the conflict is decided also by an array of factors, including the power of suggestion exerted by the contending views.

"The reception of a new paradigm often necessitates a redefinition of the corresponding science" (103).

 To resume Pajares’ epitome of Kuhn’s essay:
“Old problems are relegated to other sciences or declared unscientific.
Problems previously nonexistent or trivial may, with a new paradigm, become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement.

Consequently, "the normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before" (103). "

 We shall go no further in the discussion of the contents of this momentous essay by professor Kuhn. We will rather focus onto the positive process of the creation of a new system of thought as described by the other and probably better known herald of postmodern thought, Paul Feyerabend, in his celebrated work Against Method.
 
 

Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method

This is probably the most popular essay of the whole lot of postmodern literature. The author himself provides us with a sufficient outline of his thought in the form of an articulated summary index that is partially reproduced below:
“Science is an essentially anarchistic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
This is shown both by an examination of historical episodes and by an abstract analysis of the relation between idea and action. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

For example, we may use hypotheses that contradict well-confirmed theories and/or well-established experimental results. We may advance science by proceeding counter-inductively.

The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory. Hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual.

There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.

No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.
... ...
Thus, science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without having ever examined its advantages and its limits. And as the accepting and rejecting of ideologies should be left to the individual, it follows that the separation of state and church must be supplemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution. Such a separation may be our only chance to achieve a humanity we are capable of, but have never fully realised.”

The 18th and last chapter draws the consequences of the changes of perspective entailed by the above arguments.

“Case studies such as those reported in the preceding chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only 'rule' that survives is 'anything goes'.

The change of perspective brought about by these discoveries leads once more to the long-forgotten problem of the excellence of science. It leads to it for the first time in modern history, for modern science overpowered its opponents, it did not convince them. Science took over by  force, not by argument.”
 
 And further on:

"These features, which emerge from case studies no less careful and detailed than those of Lakatos, refute the assumption that science and myth obey different principles of formation (Cassirer), that myth proceeds without reflection (Dardel), or speculation (Frankfort, occasionally). Nor can we accept the idea, found in Malinowski but also in classical scholars such as Harrison and Cornford, that myth has an essentially pragmatic function or is based on ritual. Myth is much closer to science than one would expect from a philosophical discussion. It is closer to science than even Horton himself is prepared to admit."

Horton maintains that there are qualitative differences between myth -that dreads any new idea and discovery that can contradict it and is socially protected against them- and science - that, being sceptic and essentially open, welcomes such ideas and discoveries.

"A field study of science itself shows a very different picture.

Such a study reveals that, while some scientists may proceed as described, the great majority follow a different path. Scepticism is at a minimum; it is directed against the view of the opposition and against minor ramifications of one's own basic ideas, never against the basic ideas themselves. Attacking the basic ideas evokes taboo reactions which are no weaker than are the taboo reactions in so-called "primitive societies." Basic beliefs are protected by this reaction as well as by secondary elaborations, as we have seen, and whatever fails to fit into the established category system or is said to be incompatible with this system is either viewed as something quite horrifying or, more frequently, it is simply declared to be non-existent."

"But the fields are even more closely related. The massive dogmatism I have described is not just a fact, it has also a most important function. Science would be impossible without it." 'Primitive' thinkers showed greater insight into the nature of knowledge than their 'enlightened' philosophical rivals did. It is, therefore, necessary to re-examine our attitude towards myth, religion, magic, witchcraft and towards all those ideas which rationalists would like to see forever removed from the surface of the earth (without having so much as look at them - a typical taboo reaction)."

The justification for the special treatment of science, for adopting it as official, neutral knowledge by governments -namely, its being guaranteed as reliable by a qualitatively distinctive method- is false because the distinctiveness, the excellence of its method is now proven false.
The real justification behind the false one is the factual power of science and technology.
Power, and the ability to produce profit, are thus the ultimate source of legitimation.

Paradoxically, there are cases where 'superstitious practices' have yielded good results:
"When the Communists in the fifties forced hospitals and medical schools to teach the ideas and the methods contained in the Yellow Emperor's Textbook of Internal Medicine and to use them in the treatment of patients, many Western experts (among them Eccles, one of the 'Popperian Knights') were aghast and predicted the downfall of Chinese medicine. What happened was the exact opposite. Acupuncture, moxibustion, pulse diagnosis have led to new insights, new methods of treatment, new problems both for the Western and for the Chinese physician. "

“Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge.”

 If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes have more detailed classifications of animals and plants than contemporary scientific zoology and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physicians (while the pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (Voodoo), they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the pyramids; Polynesian travels)... ... “

“True, there were no collective excursions to the moon, but single individuals, disregarding great dangers to their soul and their sanity, rose from sphere to sphere to sphere until they finally faced God himself in all His splendour while others changed into animals and back into humans again.”

“Numerous inventors built 'impossible' machines. Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted.”

Thus illuminated, we have a mission now: “... ... let us free society from the strangling hold of an ideologically petrified science just as our ancestors freed us from the strangling hold of the One True Religion!”

“A mature citizen is not a man who has been instructed in a special ideology, such as Puritanism, or critical rationalism, and who now carries this ideology with him like a mental tumor; a mature citizen is a person who has learned how to make up his mind and who has then decided in favour of what he thinks suits him best.”

Feyerabend’s theory is not only intriguing but it also effectively demystifies sciences or, more precisely, the scientific method, in that is reveals how arbitrary, relative and biased it is. It also opens scientific research and technology to contributions and inputs from others forms of knowledge and practice.

From a critical point of view, Feyerabend’s theory of the ‘similarity of all forms of knowledge - anything goes’ shows many a foible.

Firstly, just like about all theories about theories, one could ask: “Does  this theory apply it to itself?”

If it does not, Feyerabend should to submit valid reasons for that, especially because that would imply that his theory is the only strong, distinctive knowledge in a scenario of weak knowledges.
If it does, then it places itself at the same level as the other theories and cannot claim to be ‘stronger’ than them or able to set rules or define principles that govern them, as Feyerabend’s theory intends to do. Furthermore, it cannot, without a contradiction, prevail on, nor even object to, a theory that contradicts it - it cannot be epistemologically stronger than a theory that avers the opposite of what Feyerabend’s theory states.

Likewise, if we stay within the logic of Feyerabend’s theory and consistent with the principle ‘anything goes’, we should be prepared to concede that also the opposite of 'anything',  or the other than 'anything', goes. We should namely be prepared to accept also those pre-scientific systems of knowledge, such as most religious systems and some political ones, which not only reject the 'anything goes' principle but also claim -each of them claims to be the sole depository of truth and virtue and consequently tends to sideline or even, like Islam, suppresses all the others, and this claim, this intolerance are not marginal, but essential to its identity.  Hence, an antinomy arises: the 'anything goes' principle, if implemented consistently, entails its own suppression.

If taken under the light of Logical Empiricism and assessed according to its principles, as we have just expounded them, Feyerabend’s ideas will thus appear of rather limited logical meaning, although they retain a considerable social and political influence, as we shall see in the next chapter.
 
 

Relevant implications and reflections

Concluding, we can observe that epistemology, or the reflection on how and whether knowledge is attained, once more discovers what is not cognisable and how we cannot cognise rather than methods for truth.

Mark that Feyerbend’s theory means:
“(What is called) science is epistemologically so weak as (what is called) non scientific doctrines and practices.”

It does not mean nor imply:
“(What is called) non scientific doctrines and practices are so strong as (what is called) strong science, or even stronger.”

Postmodernism downrates science to the methodological weakness of alternative doctrines, and not vice versa. It levels down the epistemological stand of the former to that of pre-scientific knowledge; it does not do raise the latter to the dignity of science based on a valid, distinctive method.

Pre-scientific doctrines generally enunciate their own fundaments and method for attaining knowledge. Generally, they claim that they are based on absolute, divine revelation that was handed down from generation to generation, and then compiled in a script, or the like. The all-conquering introduction of positive applied science discredited and sidelined that knowledge as a bundle of undemonstrated myths and superstitions.

It is self-evident that the recognition of the methodological weakness of science, that is its inability to ultimately demonstrate its tenets, does not entail that that knowledge is now demonstrated and validated as it was deemed to be before science came and exposed that pre-scientific knowledge was undemonstrated. It remains undemonstrated.
 
 

Postmodernism and Psychology

Just like other Western sciences, psychology rests, or used to rest, on the dichotomy of reality, the dualism constituting what we term Mâya's basic pattern of reality.

As you will know, there are many psychologies in that not only they are differentiated by their respective fields (for an instance: advertising psychology, political psychology, psychology of cognitive processes, psychology of psychic disorders etc.), but above all because psychologists advocate different and often mutually incompatible methods and basic assumptions.

Just for an obvious instance, behaviourist psychologists were set to adopt objective, scientific, strictly experimental procedures, ruling out non only self-observation (which is subjective, private and therefore not verifiable), but the very assumption that there is a mind, a consciousness, thought; and this even because mind, consciousness and thought cannot be observed objectively and publicly, according to the principle of scientific positivism. This entails that the intuitive method of -say- psychoanalysis, being based on a number of unobservable entities like the ego, super-ego, id, unconscious, drive, etc., is illegitimate.

Psychoanalysis as such is currently altogether discredited as a ‘science’ (and, to a lesser extent, as a therapy). But above all it is a remarkable and significant instance of a pure paradigm, that is, of a paradigm that has established itself and persists resting on its intrinsic suggestion only, as it completely lacks experimental (scientific) confirm and the very scanty evidence available is not conclusive (E. Poli - P. Cioni, Modelli di malattia e operatività in psichiatria, 101 ff.). This would be normal for a religious paradigm, but it is noteworthy for a paradigm that represents itself as scientific. Such pure paradigms, paradigms without legs, as it were, are in the most cases found in religious systems, based on revelations; psychoanalysis seems to be, instead, a pure paradigm based on the psychological effect of its specific purport and science-like garb, language and metaphors.

Nevertheless, most psychotherapists, especially in Europe, are still psychoanalytically oriented -mainly due to a now fading scientific repute and to the fact that psychoanalysis is popular and sells. Actually, psychoanalysis, in its many schools, has no real method for proving its theories and there is no evidence that it has a therapeutic efficacy; yet, it still fascinates millions titillating their fantasy and arousing all sorts of expectations, like a sort of religious game. Acknowledging this only adds to the glamour of psychoanalysis.

James Hillman was, so far as I know, the first to speak frankly of it as a myth. Latterly, in his article "Notes On White Supremacy, Essaying an Archetypal Account of Historical Events", he tackles the issue of postmodernism in peculiar, deep-going key, in that evokes some of the fundamental problems of philosophy and, particularly, the noumenon and cognitive solipsism.
"The seventeenth century is gone and the twentieth departs. Styles of reflection reflect styles of centuries. Though Jung's formula, reflection equals consciousness ... may still hold, we have come to imagine reflection differently. "Post-modern" they call it. Leaving the twentieth means leaving the modern mode of reflection defined as bending back and away from the object toward interior subjectivity where images are formed that 'refer' in some way or another to the object. Yet to bend back and away in favor of the mind's deliberations and interpretations retreats from the other, the very ground on which reflection depends. So how do we know that what's going on in reflection refers to what's out there?

“Faced with the paradoxical isolation of its reflections, modern consciousness invented the referent, insisted that its observations were indeed about the other, that its reflections truly reflected something literal, opaque, outside itself - the referent. But modernism could not escape the white of its own eyes: to be conscious was to be separated from and utterly untainted by anything but itself. Here lay the paradox requiring the scientific method, ever refining its objectivity to reach beyond the solipsism intrinsic to its style of reflection.

“For whiteness is supremely solipsistic, like the perfect child or Aristotle's God needing no friend, like the calm smooth anima, self-satisfied, its delusions self-consistent, resting in a unified field on a coherence theory of truth. Extraversion, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, projection itself - each shows the obsessive-compulsive agony of the white mind trying to get out of itself, desperately seeking the obscure object of its desire. A solipsistic history repeating the same moralistic shibboleth: Love thy neighbour; do unto others; connect, only connect, relate, relate...”

Thus, postmodern thought reaches another railhead: in order to be consistent with its non-dogmatism, it has lost the outer object. An object has therefore to be sourced from within. The consciousness finds out to be alone in the middle of its own theorising, whilst in order to know, it needs an object. In this predicament, a well-known myth is activated: the myth of the Purusha.

“As modern psychology recognized this double delusion - that its reflective consciousness does not really require another and that this consciousness really does refer to another - it had to divide the mind. It had to invent the unconscious [as the Rig Veda says: eko’ham, bahu syam: I am one, let me be many] in order to remind consciousness that it could never be as white as it wished. The "discovery" of the "unconscious" came as a late stage of modernism, indicating its decline by turning its projective roots back onto itself. The "discovery" was actually a self-discovery, a backhanded welcoming of reflective consciousness's own delusional base, turning the delusion into
irony and joke, a way to look back over its own shoulder, to reflect its own downfall, to become "post." It forced white consciousness out of its supremacy, saying to it: "You can't know what you are talking about," asking, "What are you referring to?" And though post-modernism loves to deny the referent, this move does not deny what's out there. It does deny that consciousness is the way to it. Modern consciousness as white consciousness cannot get there, and what it finds is always dead. Having walled itself in, it blames it on the wall. (And how it listens for signals, pining for life somewhere in space!)

To deny the referent is merely to state that what's out there is not knowable as referent or ever to be referred to as referent - tied to my consciousness for its significance, as if on its own each thing were a dumb wall, irredeemably unconscious, signifying nothing. Rather, to deny the referent affirms the thing. What's there is a first class act an sich, playing dead to elude projections; a sparky, flickering thing with its own rights, proving its mercurial freedom by escaping every frame of reference into another and another, sheltered by its friends, other things, among which it lives its life and into whose company I may be allowed as a thing among things asleep by the wall.

“Formerly, reflection meant placing an event against a background - systematic schema, symbolic meaning, mythical topos. Post-modern reflection displaces, shatters the confident prism, meaning untied to references, dislodged from backgrounds and structures, allowing new falls, free falls. Falling from the heaven of white certainty, out of the arms of the opposites. Through the looking glass and into the images. "Raising consciousness" now requires an abaissement du niveau mental; Lucifer, the has-been star, now guides the epistrophe because the way down is the way up.”
“Modern consciousness now suffers its own uncertainty principle, pressed to recognize that all its reflections do not extend beyond the prism, the prison, of its own unconsciousness, no matter how expanding the universe, how luring the moon.

No other place now for the unconscious except inside the act of reflection so that psychic consciousness in this time of the fall can be defined only ironically as self-reflexive, where reflection refers to the many-eyed ways each act of consciousness is supremely multiple and thereby supremely self-limiting, inevitably, humiliatingly projective and indestructibly destructive, or (let us say) supremely unconscious."

These unnecessarily contorted arguments draw our attention to a very simple fact: the postmodernist criticism of paradigms remains incomplete, and therefore it incurs inconsistency, in that it fails to develop into cognitive idealism, that is, to analyse the dogmatist, realistic paradigm underlying all other paradigms - the paradigm presupposing both the existence and the phenomenal presence of a reality (object, matter, other, Not-I) outside the mind (subject, thought, consciousness, I). This problem remains dormant so long as we concern ourselves with naturalistic facts and topics, but it arises whenever we try to analyse and rationalise the idea of consciousness and self-consciousness. Consciousness is the consciousness of what? Of a material object outside it? This is impossible so far as the object is, by definition, both external and non-mental. Then, maybe, of a representation of that object? But if consciousness is a consciousness of internal representations, ideas solely, then on what grounds

a) should and could the external, non-ideal, material object be maintained?

b) should and could be posited that consciousness derives its representation of the assumed external and material object from this same object?