The way to find Ding’s Coffee was to locate Kuan Alley and Zhai Alley and then walk around in the area until you spotted the right courtyard. Nell didn’t know the area and the closest Ding’s on Google was in Singapore. Had they only exchanged phone numbers, but she didn’t want to ask and Patricia hadn’t thought about it. For a moment she was frantic and finally overcame her reluctance to talk to other people. As it turned out, Ding’s Coffee was less than 50 meters away. How cruel fate can be.

Patricia was waiting in the middle of the yard. 10.15, so 15 minutes late. Hopefully it would take more than that to turn her new friend away.

P: “Nell, oh God, I completely lost my course yesterday! And I forgot to give you my phone number. I forget things when I try to think.”

Nell melted on the spot.

N: “Can’t we possibly get you back on course, you think? Yesterday I was revisiting my old notes too. I remembered how I often had to resort to hastily jot down the key points to keep up with the teacher. I promised myself that I later would return and rethink it all, but, you know. When do we ever.”

Patricia stacked food on her plate in piles. Nell noticed her lips were moving. She was obviously rehearsing the salient points leaving little room for motor control nor attention, which gave Nell a nice opportunity to guide her through the menu without interrupting Patricia’s stream of thoughts.

False consciousness

N: “Which text did you start with?”

P: “Initially I continued with ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’. It was difficult to get a grasp of what they were on about. But when the topic crossed Neo-Kantianism as a supposedly particularly horrid example of a bourgeois theory, I had to divert attention…”

N: “… never change philosopher midstream!”, she laughed.

P: “But I did! And that just led to more difficulties. Now I’m certifiably stupider than ever!”

N: “Yesterday we talked about the social aspect of science. Remember that a sociologist in general and a Marxist in particular will understand a person to be an individual with a set of ideas that are basically foreign to him or her. Ideas and meaning and knowledge make up a system we inherit from our surroundings and learn from childhood. Educated or inculcated, depending on point of view.”

P: “Yes, that’s where we left off. H & A was fitting the institution of science inside the larger set of society’s institutions.”

N: “And what do they say about the scientist’s own idea concerning science and his or her work?”

P: “They say that rather than seeing his trade as a special kind of production, he sees it as a quest for the intrinsic order of the universe. Rather,”

[…] the real social function of science is not made manifest;

P: “This self-image obscures the reality of scientific activity.”

Even if therefore the division of labor in the capitalist system functions but poorly, its branches, including science, do not become for that reason self-sufficient and independent.

N: “Very good. So in exploring this mismatch (as the Marxists would see it), between the sociological reality and this story about science as uncovering the truth and order of the universe, what do they say?”

P: “They use the old Marxist term »false consciousness«.”

N: “Marxists refuses to attach any deeper significance to any ideal, any theory other than its socially regulating influence.”

P: “Which is exactly why Marxism felt so corrosive: It aims to dissolve the glue of shared belief that unifies the masses around shared values.”

N: “Exactly. Today that becomes most apparent when socialism clashes with, not religion as such, but religion when it provides the foundational truths on which society can rest. For instance protestantism in USA, which is what you saw in those conservative articles.”

P: “And as an example of such false consciousness, they pick a Neo-Kantian direction know as the Marburg School. I read what they wrote, and compared with an article about the school at Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.”

N: “And that didn’t go well?”

P: “I don’t know. I feel like I have to choose which side I want to be on. It’s like the two positions cannot coexist. And in a funny way, it suddenly felt like H & A were basically playing the same game as the Marburg school! The Neo-Kantians also talk about an approach to culture, I mean knowledge comes from culture, they reject abstractions as having a reality in itself.”

Nell pondered for a moment.

N: “Okay, I have some notes on the school. Please allow me some time to read up on them.”

P: “Hold it right there, Nell! About psychology … I …”

Patricia was fighting with words. It must have been a stalemate, because she completely failed to formulate a sentence.

N: “I know the feeling. Like they try to pull out the rug from underneath each others’ feet, right? Like they all accuse each other of being victims of a psychological self-deceit.”

P: “Exactly! The Neo-Kantians try to get away from the psychologism of speculative metaphysicians. And the Marxists try to get away from the ruling class consciousness which is itself a kind of psychologism. But the Marxists are trying to get away from the Neo-Kantians and their social class-constructed idealism as well.”

N: “Yes. If you say: We have to understand the brain in order to understand thinking, then it is psychologism.”

P: “This quote here is even more problematic. The Neo-Kantians specifically focus on science as a product of culture! So in essence the exact same as H & A.”

Because they saw the achievements of science as one of the most significant aspects of modern culture, a good portion of their writings concern the philosophy of science.

N: “Of course they all have the luxury of looking back in time to an earlier philosophy. Look at the fights:

• Idealism versus empiricism (Kant)
• Idealism evolves into naturalism and metaphysics (Hegel, later philosophers)”
• Neo-Kantianism versus naturalism
• Socialism versus Neo-Kantianism.

Here, see my notes:"

N: “I would imagine that this statement here could have caused some alarm when you read it:”

The a priori principles that make possible some part of human culture are again not interpreted psychologistically: they are not features of the minds of individual subjects, they are not discovered empirically, and their necessity is not grounded in the empirical fact that they are universally accepted. These a priori principles are parts of culture—they are its fundamental norms or laws.

As the sentence progressed layering contradiction upon impossibility, Patricia squirmed and in the end yelled out.

P: “What is he talking about?!!”

Almost startled at the strong reaction, Nell thought about the poor girl. She was trying to read philosophy and stay sane at the same time.

N: “You see why A & H simply disregards the whole philosophy as false consciousness? Neo-Kantianism must strike a materialistically trained mind as absurd.”

Patricia looked sad, somehow. Like she was realising her position in the world was due to a limited intellect, rooted in a biological limitation that would never change.

Nell met her eyes and smiled warmly showing her the most sensitive side of herself.

N: “It is not as crazy as it sounds.”

P: “Philosophers always do that! Build a concept by simply stating a long list of what features do not apply. Like a riddle. It is up to our imagination to come up with something that fits.”

N: “Shush shh.. look here: There is nothing out there that guarantees universality of observations and laws, okay? It can be observed and learned about through experiment. That moves such laws closer to the scientist. But it is not in the scientist’s head - that would be tantamount to psychologism. So the law moves outward again. Where do the laws of causality exist? In the culture! Between the universe and our private psychology. They are part of the cognitive apparatus, our universal laws of existence which happen to be contingent on historical development. And yes, perhaps that is even a bit Marxist.”

P: “… that’s probably why I ended up trying to understand why H & A was disagreeing with the Marburg School.”

N: “Their method differs. And the method now has become everything. There is nothing out there!, there is just facts and empirical laws here. The a priori has no existence as anything else but culturally bound laws of reason. But as such they are solid. The way to discover those laws are through a method. And likewise, as we shall see later, the Critical Method advocated by H & A is also a world view through a method.”

N: “See how elusive the notion of the transcendental is? How it seems like it cannot find a place in the universe?”

P: “Oh this isn’t the first time a philosopher has expressed something ultimate or sublime by ’not talking about it, only hinting’. It seems to be everybody’s preferred pastime.”

N: “In all fairness, on this occasion, if we try to follow their fingers, it neither points up or down. Transcendental in this regard seems to be something akin to ‘just out of reach’, you know, painted on the glasses, except it isn’t a figure. See here:”

“Experience” is virtually equated with mathematical natural science, and a paradigm “experience” is Newton’s law of universal gravitation.

N: “They say it, they mean it: Our experience of reality owes a lot to the meaning of reality, which is about knowledge, which again comes from science, resting upon principles of objectivity. In other words, Newton’s calculations changed the order of the universe. The a priori changed accordingly. This becomes a problem if you try to imbue a priori with the notion of existence as a real object. In other words, if by the transcendent object you really perceive a ’thing’, just very far away. It is not a real thing far away. It is a transcendent thing that could be just around the corner, if it only knew how to exist as a real thing. It is not an it.”

When I know the law, I’ve moved from appearance to reality, from subjectivity to objectivity. If there is no such law, then there is only appearance, and I cannot speak about an independent object and its properties.

P: “Appearance is not experience. Without laws, no experience, because we need a priori knowledge, which requires both scientific inquiry and philosophical work.”

N: “You got the hang of it. "

Patricia felt the vibrant air of pure speculative thinking.

P: “How can they say that they want to get away from speculative metaphysics and then dream up a view on thinking that seems far more speculative than anything I’ve ever heard about? Our experience is guided by a thing which is not a thing, it grows when we think, it acts as a constant in science, it changes with culture, and we can only arrive at it by a process which is not part of normal science.”

N: “Look, I understand your grievances. It sounds like this is - as you so eloquently put it before - just another case of defining something from what it is not. On their idealism, they say something like this:”

P: “Good, so like in the science fiction movies, their philosophy is made by a material unknown to man. I’m happy for them.”

N: “Do you agree with H & A that this is a class related mindset?”

P: “That is a completely different discussion. Perhaps tomorrow. My head is spinning.”

It was now noon and the air was already damp. Patricia allowed herself to be silent for a brief period. Nell went to the bathroom and walked a bit around on the gangway afterwards, looking down into the courtyard. The tourists and the natives seemed to care little for these kinds of speculations. The sun warmed their bodies and it all felt so physical.

She went back to Patricia.

N: “That was a struggle. Are you happy so far?”

P: “That was merely a detour! Would you mind if we stopped now? I would like time for these thought to sink in.”

N: “Absolutely. Do you want to go around town and not talk about philosophy.”

P: “I’m not sure I will be very good company. Sorry, I just feel a little funny in my head. I need to figure out what to think of these eggheads.”

Nell couldn’t help feeling a little bit rejected. Patricia was nice company, and Nell was frankly tired of being a tourist herself. She told herself that she was getting homesick and yearned for intelligent and sensitive company. And she wanted that company to be Patricia. That nice, simple girl in front of her, reminding Nell of herself twenty years earlier with nobody to help her get onto the right track.

She put on her coat and prepared for the sad walk into the fray of tourist life.

P: “Wait a second… Something just struck me. You remember that conservative article from yesterday? The one about »Critical theory, its opposite, held that there were no universal truths and man could not be objective.«?

Since H & A singles out bourgeois philosophy like the Marburg School, it must mean that the conservatives long for ideas exactly like the ones we are struggling with right now. But that just can’t be! It has taken an enormous amount of effort just to figure out what the idea of universal truth and objectivity even means! It doesn’t add up”.

A sudden spell of hope besieged Nell. Just one more little teensy stroke of luck.

P: “I’m not at all done with this topic. I’m sorry, Nell, you have been so truly helpful so far. Can I possibly ask for just a little more time, please? I promise to read as fast as I can! This is the first time in my life that I feel like I know even the slightest little bit more than everybody else.”

Nell almost pitied herself when she felt a tear in her left eye. She quickly hid that fact. She was trembling in her coat, but it didn’t show.

Afraid Patricia could hear her quavering voice, she just nodded enthusiastically and gave Patricia the most innocent embrace she could imagine. And even so it reeked of physicality.

And luck would have it that Patricia noticed nothing.

P: “Oh thank you, thank you! Let’s meet here tomorrow. I want to drift around and look goofy for the rest of the day.”

•P•A•R•A•D•O•X•