In order to be able to expend on the suffering, we address ourselves to Christian thinking which, since two millennia and pre-eminently gives a central place to suffering. First of all, we have to distinguish between suffering and thought concerning suffering. Considering the priority of action on thought, we can conclude that for instance egocentrism can be conquered only by conquering egoism first. The same thing holds in authentic Christianity: “In this I will recognise you as my children, that you love each other”. There has not been written: “that you know you have to love each other”. Secondly, we can also think about suffering without realising ourselves its reality, so that this way of thinking is rather a kind of a game. The one who did not experience suffering, cannot think about it in a relevant way. Moreover: the experience of suffering determines the relevance of thought as it is, for our absolute limitations (suffering and death) are the ultimate criteria for our actions (of which thinking is a specific form).

But what is suffering? The reality of suffering is undeniable because each being experiences not to want it. As a consequence, also the reality of the will is undeniable.

This fact implies that in the case the guilt for the suffering is being ascribed to sin, we may not make the mistake to identify the sinner with the victim (- what yet does happen indeed for instance in Hinduism, for in that conception each person has to expiate his own sins (karma)): because the term ‘for the sake of’ only concerns the victim for the sake of whose welfare is being suffered.

For as a matter of fact we do not suffer because of the stone that felt on our head, yet it is the other’s lovelessness that hits us. It is for the sake of Love that we renounce revenge and for the sake of Love we principally will not set bounds to the other’s freedom in order to avoid that he should harm us - we must offer our other cheek in order to give him the opportunity to participate in Love, and to do so necessarily in freedom.

As we can oppose suffering to pleasure, even so we can oppose it to joy; painlessness or pleasure and joy are two essentially different states of affairs. It is heroic to brace ourselves against our own pain, but as well it is cowardly to make ourselves insensible for the suffering of others. Pain is a physical matter (for instance: a disease), or a matter of the intellect (for instance: a misunderstanding), but remorse concerns the soul: in that case one has been wanting the evil, one has acted against the ethical law, one has neglected one’s duty to make a choice. Persevering action in this way, one does not act ‘rightly’ or ‘wrongly’, for the will is not submitted to human knowledge. Though such a man kills for himself everything that reaches above knowledge, inclusive of his own will. Everything that overcomes him and everything he does, he will disclaim repudiate and impute it to circumstances: he considers the criminal as a victim of his environment or illness, and in doing so he reduces the good to the ‘healthy’, the ‘allowed’ or the ‘rightful’, thus seeing over the head that such a criteria ultimately have no grounds at all. He replaces punishment by treatment and education by training, for he accepts that man is not able to will and, as a consequence, has no responsibility for his acts. Again, hereby he forgets that nothing else but responsibility can offer the ultimate ground to the action, also in the case that this action concerns his specific judgement, namely that the human being should not be responsible for his action. So, again we deal with a contradiction.

Opposite to this stands the man who is prepared to accept the responsibility for his acts. The value of this way of action is not submitted to the criterion of ‘rightness’: here it concerns an act that enriches the agent’s world. He accepts the challenge and the risk to fail. Such a man is constructive and open towards the world and towards his fellow-man. He assumes the existence of the will and the will-power, and also the perspective on a better world; there is a way to perfection, an aim. His world of striving (which is his soul) is not a superficial appearance, but it is the signification of existence itself. As the visibility of the world is being derived from the factuality of our eyes, the ethical dimension is being derived from the human willingness to accept responsibility for his actions.

Now, this willingness to accept responsibility is nothing else but the willingness to exist, which means: not to reject reality. As the fellow-man is suffering, I do not respond to this reality by killing him (as is being done in the case of abortion and euthanasia), for this cannot be an answer towards the living suffering people. Now the only possible responsibility contains the acceptance of responsibility for the suffering one, through which we deal in the hope that has been given to him in doing so.

(2°) The (materialistic) identity theory identifies movements of the soul with physical states of affairs or processes. Also this theory Shaffer does reject, for it has no meaning wanting to localise mental processes, for instance in the brain.

Let us remark that already processes and, in consequence, also physical processes, are as little physical as the existence of time: to this is being needed a perceiver with a memory. Describing the body as being physical, and accepting that it is submitted to transformations, one implicitly accepts that the not-physical aspect (namely the transformation) causes the physical one. In stead of starting from matter and doubting the existence of the spiritual, one could start with the same evidence from the spirit and doubt the physical. None of both the starting-points brings an explanation for the ‘mind-bodyproblem’. So it is of no meaning to take serious a strictly distinction between body and soul.

(3°)Psycho-physical interactionism proposes that conditions of consciousness can be caused by physical conditions and the reverse. This approach is being split up into two further approaches: (a) psycho-physical parallelism, which denies a direct mutual causality between body and soul: in there, there should not be any correlation but the one which is factual for instance concerning two clockworks going parallel time. (b) epiphenomenalism, which only acknowledges the physical causing the mental, but not the reverse: mind is a ‘by-product’ of the physical. Due to former remarks (see (1°) and (2°)), also this approach has to be rejected.

The fact that it is thinkable that everything could exist without any consciousness has nothing to do with its sense. Supposing that everything that exists would be without consciousness, its sense would be lacking. Yet just because its sense is being given to it, the meaningful reality cannot be another one than the reality we accept by accepting responsibility for it - and we are obliged to do so, on the strength of the factuality of our consciousness. We can deny this factuality towards third persons, for it is improvable; yet never we can deny it towards ourselves, and in here lays the forcing power of ethics, transcending the knowable and the provable. In this sense, our soul is both the producer and the product of the ethical.

The subject is not reducible to an interval or a Gestalt in an ‘objective’ whole or on a screen. How can we make ourselves understood the irreducibility of the subject? For instance, we must accept the existence of self-murderers, for suicide nevertheless is a problem, whilst at the same time the self-murderer by definition cannot exist: spontaneously we identify him with his act, which means: with the one who has the intention to suicide. And it is also because of this intention that the bereaved ones must suffer. By now, this suffering is being wanted by the bereaved ones, namely as a consequence of his acknowledgement of the fellow-man being a free subject. Here we deal with a manifestation of the transcendent soul in the priority of the acknowledgement, of the intention or, shortly, of the act on the objectivated subject.

Moreover, the soul is not a prisoner of the body: each one can identify himself with others, and choose for that kind of actions that are good for those others, for their bodies and their souls. The thesis, testifying to malevolence, that each behaviour ultimately has egoistic motives, is, in addition, contradictory: it takes it for granted that one cannot do anything else but considering the fellow-man as a middle. Yet, A loving B, it makes no sense to suppose that factually they love themselves by the means of the mutual other, for if that were true, they would never sacrify themselves to their mutual ‘middle to please themselves’. For the sacrificing of one’s self implies the disappearance of one’s self. By now, exactly the self-sacrifice is characteristic for Love.

By definition, unhappiness is what no one wants. Though it can be the case, and the unhappy one is responsible for it, because he neglected the objective order which obliges him to make the choice between different possible acts: the one who does not accept the law that eating sweets causes tooth decay, probably will have to conquer the tooth pains he refuses. Yet it becomes really problematic in the case in which an unhappy accident matters for which no one in principle is responsible. This is the problem of the ‘objective evil’: in the case of, for instance, a nuclear disaster, or a catastrophe, not directly subjective activities can be said to be responsible for. As a consequence arises the question: is the human being responsible for actions (or: neglects) which he could not foresee the results of? In other terms: is the human being responsible for token risks? This problem becomes still more urgent in the case in which the actor and the victim are different individuals.

Our answer is, that, at least, it is being made possible for us to accept responsibility for past actions. For only the acceptance of our imperfection makes corrections possible by which we are able to improve our condition. So the objective guilt can be seen as an invitation to accept responsibility voluntary, which gives us at once the chance to the further appropriation by ourselves of our existence. For there cannot be talk of an ‘objective evil’ as long as one does not face an ‘objective good’ simultaneously.

Accepting the responsibility for a past action which caused unforeseen accidents, we in fact lift up this happening to the level of acts: in doing so, we modify the past - not the facts, but the whole happening whereof these facts are mere components. And this happening overbends our past, our present and our future; our ethical activity is capable to change the meaning (/the sense) of happenings and so to change their essence. The Sein ultimately is being determined by the Sollen. It now will be clear that the ‘objective evil’ is a fundamental condition for it.

The imperfect state of the world (- i.e.: the suffering of the fellow-man) gives to the human being the chance to accept the responsibility for his existence - in other terms: to guaranty his existence on bail of himself. For now this implies a continuous activity with a striving character: the main point of this activity is laying in the striving itself, which is a belief, a thrust which rises up above the world of the so-called factual, as the life of our bodies conquers death by its continuously breathing. The striving (for perfection) conquers the fact (of imperfection) as the respiration (of life) conquers the dying (of the material body). In this way the (timeless) good submits the natural self-indulgence (which though is being condemned to death) in the ethical acting which, as a matter of fact, transcends the temporary.

Ethics are possible on the condition that we have the freedom of the will at our disposal. The one who contradicts the existence of it, will argue that ‘freedom’ in fact is the result of external conditioning. But this opponent must know that also his judgement, as has been formulated here, must be considered as a result of conditioning and so it cannot have any truth-value.

Further on, it has no sense to speak about freedom apart from the subject: the question whether the world-on-itself (which means: apart from whichever perceiver) is being determined, is as senseless as is the question whether the world apart from any perceiver were visible. There is no visibility without the seeing, as there is no freedom or lack of freedom without man.

On its turn, the concept of ‘subject’ is only relevant in the light of the act of acknowledgement. The acknowledgement of the fellow-man contains my acknowledgement of his freedom. And this implies at once my responsibility concerning the freedom of the fellow-man, for unless I consider myself as being responsible, I do not acknowledge.

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I am not aware of the chalk that I use to write with until the moment that it breaks, so Heidegger says. This is also true with respect to reality itself: only its problematic character makes reality ‘visible’. This problematic character of reality becomes concrete in suffering. Only because reality makes us suffering, we can get aware of it. Our pain is our only sensitivity to reality as it is.

My pain is my sense to reality and it is my self. At the same time, in my pain, the whole reality develops itself as an alarming dilemma, an invincible struggle, a torment of Tantalus or Sisyphus, a true condemnation. My ego, the reality and the relation between those two, as a matter of fact are compressed into pain, just like the universe has been compressed into one single point the moment before it exploded in the Big Bang.

The only way to escape from this condemnation, is to accept pain being our teacher: pain obliges us to develop in a specific direction. It is pain that teaches us that fire is hot. It is pain that brings to us all knowledge of reality. Our whole conception concerning reality we are obliged to pain. We get aware of an order external to us. We also learn to value this order, because we have to comply with it - if we do not do so, we will suffer and die.

Physical pain teaches us that fire is hot; it is our teacher of physics. Now there is also an order external to us, which has a super-natural character, while it shows itself in the fact of the supernatural pain, named: ‘guilt’ or ‘remorse’. Also with respect to this reality, the thesis of Heidegger holds. As the physical pain makes us aware of a natural order external to us, and of our body by which we participate to that nature, so the pain of our souls makes us aware of the supernatural order which is external to us, and of our soul, by which we participate in the supernatural.

It is true that no one can prove to another one that he feels pain, for pain is known only by introspection. Though this does not mean that the fact whether one has pain or not, should be a mere illusion. Nor, and for the same reason, someone is able to prove whether he is happy or not, whereas also in this case the happiness or the unhappiness is not a mere illusion. The fact that a man can spend his last precious hours adjusting an old guilt, indicates the presence of an almost spontaneous believe in a reality which, aside from all mortal things, is not submitted to time.

Higher than the reality of pleasure and pain, stands the reality of happiness and unhappiness. The self-indulgence and the fear for pain are natural strivings, which do not deal with the super-natural striving for happiness: the striving for happiness subordinates self-indulgence and fear for pain; it curbs the natural strivings.

Everyone knows that the good makes happy and the evil makes unhappy. The essence for the good and the evil lies in the presence or absence of good intentions; this means that good and evil are a matter of the will. One can make errors regarding his knowledge, but he cannot do so regarding his will. For that reason no unhappy man can appeal to the erring.

Happiness is by definition what we want; unhappiness is what we do not want. So the question arises how it can ever be possible that someone obviously has wanted what he cannot be wanting.

For the realisation of unhappiness, the existence of time is a condition. In choosing for sweets today whilst in revolting against tooth decay tomorrow, one denies the law that eating sweets and having healthy teeth are mutually incompatible. One who on the contrary acknowledges this law, is being forced to make a choice. So the primordial law is the obligation to choose. The unhappy one is the one who denies this primordial obligation to choose: he rejects the external order and, in doing so, he ruins himself. So the unhappiness results from the denying of one’s own heteronomy.

So the ability to carry the order of law is a higher power than the power of the will, as, in analogy, the power of the will is a higher power than knowledge, and knowledge is higher than sense-awareness. This is, once again, an application of Heidegger’s thesis: as knowledge arises out of the problematic feelings, so the will arises out of the problematic knowledge, and out of the problematic will arises the ethical acting or the acting according to the (will of) the law.

Let us now return to our conception concerning reality and let us consider successively the world of death matter, the world of life and, at last, the reality of ethics. The ordaining principle that we recognise in the world of matter is causality. We stress that here we have to deal with the induction of a concept inherent to the (higher) world of life, to the (lower) world of death matter. The basic principle that we recognise in life, is the striving principle. Again we have to deal with induction, namely the induction of a concept inherent to the (higher) ethical world into the (lower) world of life. Obviously, a world can only be described or understood from the viewpoint of a world that transcends the former. For, as Mannoury notices: the flame does not enlighten itself. Considering this datum, we can make some specific conclusions concerning our conception of reality.

First of all, let us consider causality. When, in external reality, we see certain events taking place repetitively and in a specific succession, we conclude that the former events cause the latter ones. Yet this conclusion is not right. For using the verb ‘to cause’, we factually use a concept out of our Lebenswelt: in that case we think about ourselves as being acting subjects. We induce this acting into the external world: in doing so, we consider and describe things in the external world as if they could act or ‘cause’. But in fact this cause is being induced into the external by the subject. So it is only relevant to speak about causality on the condition that the subject has the freedom to choose the condition by itself. Thus there is talk of induction when I say that the rain makes me wet, whilst on the contrary I can easily say: “When it rains, and I do (or I do not) use an umbrella, then I do (or I do not) become wet”. The law: “The rain makes wet” is only in force as the second term of an implication in which the acting subject is situated in the first term. Naming the latter law “metacausative”, we can say that metacausation necessarily has an epistemic character. So knowledge is not knowledge of the world, but it is knowledge of a conception concerning the world (which is part of the world and which interacts with it). To be formulated in a correct way, a law has to obtain the subject in the way mentioned. Thus we can see that acting is the link between thinking and being. The world of the ontic sphere can be approached by the epistemic sphere. To be in force, a law requires my (possible) awareness of it, for the validity of a law only exists by the force of subjectivity.

Yet also the description of the reality of ethics requires a concept which transcends the mere moral domain. The essence or the sense of duty and law are not being comprehended but by Love. Let us declare this first.

Kant says that we cannot state anything about the thing on itself (Ding an Sich), though we may suppose that the thing on itself exists, we may act as if it is a fact because otherwise we could not think about the world. This is Kant’s ‘transcendental idealism’.

Now it is our thesis that the thing on itself exists conditionally: it exists as a consequence of an acknowledgement. Though only in an indirect way this acknowledgement concerns the thing on itself. In the first place we have at our disposal the possibility to acknowledge the fellow man as a human being-on-itself or as a subject that is equivalent to us. We nevertheless can remain solipsistic, or we can consider the fellow man as mere employable either, yet we can also acknowledge the fellow man. In doing so, we take into account the other in our acting, as we do take into account ourselves in our acting. Only on that condition the thing, or the whole world, appears to us as a function of our acknowledgement of the fellow man. More than just out of necessity, we can employ things in order to give an expression to our love to the others (and to God), and it is in that sense that we acknowledge the existence of (the value of) things and of the world.

This acknowledgement does not exist unless it manifests itself, which means: unless it is principally demonstrable that it is not being conditioned by an external influence. Because Lucifer, representing the intellect, ascribes Job’s devotion to the mutual rewards he gets for it from his Creator, God cannot do anything else than granting Lucifer’s request to punish Job for his devotion. Only on the condition that despite this punishment Job stays devote, he really gives evidence of a non-conditioned love. True love manifests itself only on the condition one persists in it, notwithstanding the martyrdom it causes.

Let us make clear in another way how values can be the fundament of truths and facts. Kant says that we may not lie, because if everyone would be lying, it would become impossible to lie. This is the ‘categorical imperative’. Yet we can produce also another, more strictly reason for this imperative: the general mendacity would provoke the end of language itself: for language obtains its only reason for being from the speaking of truth. In this way, our whole reality is being constituted by valorisation.

The human being looks at the world by the means of eyes that have been built up by his own world. The world is a construction, made out of already existing, natural elements. Though, what is new on it, does not exist in the world of nature: to a bird, a house means nothing but a rock and our words are nothing more than meaningless sounds. Our world has a meaning only to us, it exists only to us. In analogy, man can see these aspects of nature only in so far as they can be considered to be attributive to his world: he looks at nature as if it was nothing but a construction, his own world alike. Though this is a mistake in thinking, for nature on its turn has not been constructed out of elements that come from elsewhere again. Against this mistake, Augustinus, Kant, Spinoza and Gödel warn us: they claim the strictly difference between what has been created (what has been made out of nothing) and what has been constructed (what has been constructed out of already existing things).

Carnap submits the meaningfulness of propositions to their experimental verifiability. Positivists implicitly require this principle to be appropriated to the whole of reality, whilst an experiment can only concern what is constructable - by man. In physicalism we find an exponent of this mistake.

Rejecting on the contrary nature to be a construction, two possibilities remain: either nature is causa sui (its own cause) - and that is Spinoza’s conception -, or it has been created, which means: made out of nothing. We believe in the latter theory. The question is now how we can imagine ourselves the latter possibility.

Bach creates his Matthäus-Passion by the help of pen and paper. He gives a form to matter. Matter is the vehicle of this information without being conscious of it. This information has not any meaning unless it is given to a subject with sensory perception, memory and a specific apprehension. Without this subject, the information simply does not exist. There exists no Matthäus-Passion without an observer. The Matthäus-Passion is a gift from the one subject to the other, and it cannot be thought of in another way, because it does not exist without any receptor. The Matthäus-Passion comes out of nothing and it does not mean anything. But as a gift it comes to life.

Similarly, reality on itself is nothing: unless as a gift, it comes to life. A gift, from God, to humanity.

By his Matthäus-Passion, which expresses Bach’s own being, the beloved composer has given himself to us. Bach did not succeed in it but by maintained efforts, self-sacrifice and distress. His gift is a sacrifice. By his work, Bach has sacrificed himself to us, his fellow men. In this way Bach has proved that we do exist for him: he has acknowledged us.

Similarly, the gift which is reality is the sacrifice of Someone, expressing the being of that Person, and proving in this way that this Person acknowledges us, or loves us.

Heidegger says that I am not aware of the chalk I use to write with until the moment it breaks into pieces. Consciousness is born out of problem. Our attention towards reality is awakened by its problematic character. Reality causes pain. In fact, there exists no living being that does not try to avoid pain. Pain obliges our development to go into a specific direction. We learn to maintain specific values, and on them we fund our truths, and our conception concerning reality.

By nature we evaluate pain in a negative way. Nevertheless Bach tortures himself with respect to the writing of his Matthäus-Passion. One has to conclude that there must exist something more valuable than painlessness. This more valuable thing is the sacrificing of one’s self to the others. While only by the sacrifice of one’s self - and this is Love - death can be conquered. Now sacrifice can only exist in being passed; it obliges man to pass it, and so it conquers mortality. Our immortality lies in our willingness towards Love, which makes us true human. There is no severer punishment for man than condemning himself by renouncing his chance to participate in humanity.

Reality expresses Gods being which is Love. We can participate in it by following the given path.

Problems awake our attention, and we get conscious of something that exists external to us. By solving problems, we develop our consciousness and our conception concerning reality, which is our knowledge. Our knowledge is based on valuations and, as soon as a certain level is being reached, these valuations have the character of ethical acts. Eventually our conception concerning reality depends on how we do act as ethical subjects. If we follow the path of Love, then, in Love, our conception concerning reality will coincide with reality itself.

The claim for applicability of Carnap’s logic-positivistic criterion of experimental verifiability of the whole of reality, in fact disguises the physicalistic conviction that reality should be (re)constructable. We question the relevancy of certain worldviews based on physicalism, using Etienne Vermeersch’s work as a model. To start with, information theory only can be a relevant model for an anthropology if considered between specific limitations. For one has to accept a severe distinction between the information tool and the subject. Purpose-mindedness, need, introspection, creativity, freedom, communication, justice, sense, and not at least life are some of the subject’s attributes which ultimately never can be ascribed to the machine, the sophisticated it may be. When one though neglects this discrepancy between man and machine, one gets inevitable contradictions. The body is and remains the ultimate parameter of the world. Information is only present by means of the subject. Each need, and consequently also the need for knowledge, is absent in the machine. Rationality as an automatism is a false thought, as is mechanical creativity, freedom or (passive or active) artistic sense. A description of reality as a construction gives an unilateral, poor and incorrect perspective with an extremely limited declaration capacity.

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In order to declare the idleness of this statement, we will now consider this question from three different perspectives. First of all we will demonstrate this definition to be not exclusive and incomplete. Secondly we will render problematic the concept of “redundancy”. Thirdly, we will demonstrate that beauty unjustly is being reduced to a proportion. Further on, we will defend our statement, that each attempt to reduce beauty to a mere epistemic question, is an absurdity.

Concerning our first perspective, we notice that the set of objects corresponding to the physical definition of beauty, also concerns things which have nothing to do with beauty, whilst there are also beautiful things which do not correspond to this definition; moreover, this definition fails to focus the essence of beauty. Suppose that I am attending lectures. Then I can consider a lot of things in it being redundant, for instance the illustration-material. I can also consider nothing of it all being redundant because what seems to be redundant, in fact should be a constituting factor due to the transmission of information. For each information is an information-for-someone. Repetitions of a leading theme in a piece of music can hardly be considered to be redundant, for these structural variations situate the leading theme in a specific context that creates the wealth of the music.

But let us now consider two persons, the first being one head bigger than the second, and ask ourselves, as Plato did, whether the being bigger of the first is being caused by his head, whilst the rest of his body is redundant in that perspective. For sure that is not the case. One can talk about the size of things, mentioning the suitability of this specific abstraction, yet ‘the’ size does not exist as well as ‘the’ number does not exist if one cannot count things. So, the beauty of something is an abstraction as well and it is being constituted by concrete things that are not redundant at all, for their elimination should make such an abstraction impossible.

In the third place: stating that beauty is an equilibration between information and redundancy, Vermeersch constructs this statement based on his ‘theory of forms’. Here we try to demonstrate that this definition unjustly reduces beauty to a question of information. Thereupon we affirm that beauty neither can be reduced to a question of forms.

Let us accept that EMS’s are ‘carriers’ of forms. And let us notice first that it cannot be relevant to speak about ‘forms’, except on the condition that there is a ‘recognition of forms’ within the subject. The necessity of this ‘recognition of forms’ is being acknowledged by Vermeersch.

Accepting in analogy information as the ‘carrier’ of beauty, we must also realise that discussing beauty cannot be relevant unless on the condition that there is a recognition of beauty within the subject.

In other terms: accepting forms to be real things, we also have to accept (1°) that the substrate is real; (2°) that the subject is real, (3°) that the recognition of forms by the subject is real. More precisely: the existence of forms has to be thought of as being relative to the existence of the substrate, the subject and the recognition of forms by the subject.

Accepting that beauty is real, in analogy with the precedent we must accept the factuality of the form, the subject and the recognition of beauty by the subject as being real. More precisely: the existence of beauty has to be thought of as being relative to the existence of the form, the subject and the recognition of beauty by the subject.

In doing so, we can make a little calculation and state that: beauty exists on the condition that also the substrate, the form, the subject, the recognition of forms by the subject and the recognition of beauty by the subject does exist.

Notice: for initially we distinguished between the form and the beauty, we never will be allowed to make a relation between the recognition of forms and the recognition of beauty. In other terms: unless each form is being named ‘beautiful’, the form and the beauty are essentially separated, and so are the recognition of forms and the recognition of beauty.

When, according to Vermeersch, we should reduce the recognition of beauty to the recognition of a balance between information and redundancy (or: desinformation), we analogously have to reduce as well the recognition of forms to the recognition of a balance between what is matter and what is non-matter (or: form).

Yet notice that in doing so, we necessarily again have to distinguish between these two manners of recognition of equilibrium. On the one hand, the subject is being supposed to be able to distinguish between matter and non-matter (- this is the recognition of forms -) and, on the other hand, the subject is being supposed to be able to distinguish supplementary between the recognition of forms, namely the distinction between informational and non-informational forms.

In order to be able to do so, beneath the recognition of forms, also the recognition of information is being required, for there is no other way to distinguish between forms that give information and forms that do not do so.

Considering this, we can conclude that already forms and bits of information are essentially different things. Aiming to distinguish additionally between beautiful bits of information and not-beautiful ones, according to Vermeersch’s theory would signify (1°) the ability to distinguish between forms which give information and forms which do not do so, and that is the ability to recognise information and, (2°), the ability to distinguish between beautiful bits of information and not-beautiful ones, and that is the ability to recognise beauty. We never will be allowed to make a relation between these two concepts.

Consequently, it is impossible to declare beauty by the theory of information, even as it is impossible to declare information by the theory of forms.

In other terms: the step from ‘form’ to ‘information’ cannot be made by the presupposition of the recognition of forms. For the recognition of forms can do nothing more but distinguishing between what is a ‘form’ and what is not. (- By the way: this separation exists by the force of an abstraction-process made by the subject; only by induction some reality can be presupposed to respond it; in other terms: in reality matter (non-form) and form are mutually interwoven and this unity is an ontic priority, comparable with the unity of space-time, whilst only in thought time and space have a separated existence). To be able to make the step from ‘form’ to ‘information’, one has to presuppose the presence of the subject’s ability to recognise information. In analogy, the step from ‘information’ to ‘beauty’ cannot be made, unless one presupposes the subject’s ability to recognise beauty.

Hence, our double conclusion: in the first place we eliminate the possibility to define beauty by the theory of information (for this theory does not yet contain the concept of ‘beauty’, namely as the ability to recognise beauty). Moreover, we eliminate the ability to base a concept of information on a theory of forms (which not yet contains the concept of ‘information’, namely as the ability to recognise information).

In doing so, we hope to have demonstrated as well that the philosophical problem that also Augustinus had to fight, namely our incapacity to declare how any knowledge of reality can be possible without the intervention of God, cannot be solved by the theory of forms, nor by the theory of information, nor by aesthetics relying on it either.

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“To understand something actually means to be able to construct that thing”, - thus sounds a device of Vermeersch’s physicalistic anthropology. For the physicalist believes that everything and, as a consequence, also the human being, consists of EMS (Energetic-Material Substrates), he also believes that the human being is, at least principally, (re)constructable.

Now it looks as if the act of rendering problematic specific things (- and, as a result of rule (1), this also consists that other specific things are not being rendered problematic or are accepted as they are) is an evidence. But we notice that an evidence always is an evidence in relation to a subject. So I can consider insects to be problematic and destroy them by using a poison, but in their turn, these insects consider the poison to be problematic and make themselves immune to it. In this way we come to formulate our second rule: declarations (and, consequently, also the actions by which things are being rendered problematic or are being accepted) always are subject-related.

Eventually we can also mention the critical moment within micro-reductionism, namely the evidence of the fact that the ultimate building-stones of reality are condemned to stay undeclared and thus problematic, by force of the essence of declaration as it is. This critical moment has been described already avant-la-lettre by Thomas Aquinas as the first cause or the unmoved mover.

Now one can derive from this that science relies on what could be named “the ethical act”. So we state the ethical act to be prior to science as it is. In other terms: each scientific activity is being based on ethical acts. Scientific activity essentially is ethical activity.

The statement that the understanding of things is being found on the ability to construct them, does not hold still because of another reason, namely the essential provisionality of the epistemic, contrasting firmly with the absolute definitive character of the ontic. Out of which follows the human being to be principally not (re)constructable.

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E. Vermeersch accepts Wittgenstein's thesis that a sentence is true as soon as three conditions are fulfilled: (1) something in reality must correspond with the predicate of a sentence; (2) something in reality must correspond with the subject of the sentence; (3) with the syntax of the sentence, a concatenation of real things must correspond.

Now Vermeersch makes the following statement to define the human being: he reduces his subjectivity to an object (a machine) and states: “I am a subsystem of a bigger system”. Let us now examine the conditions demanded in order to examine if (1) the “I” does exist; (2) “a subsystem of a bigger system” does exist; (3) the “I” and the “subsystem of the bigger system” are one and the same thing. The second condition is a convention I can ascertain myself of. The third condition is an equality propounded by Vermeersch’s own theory. The first condition, at last, has to be accepted on penalty of the falsification of the statement made by Vermeersch, containing that I am a subsystem of a bigger system. In other terms: Vermeersch’s statement is true on the condition that a real “I” is corresponding with the term “I”. Yet this real “I” has to be accepted as an evidence if one wants to make true statements about it. For as soon as one defines “I”, one again has to deal with sentences of which the truth-value will be dependent from the question whether they do fulfil to these three conditions or not, due to Vermeersch’s theory itself. It is clear that one can go on in this way infinitely, without ever have proved the truth-value of the statement in question.

For now it is clear that the physicalistic statement cannot be considered as being correct but on the condition that first the “world” is being identified with the “world of physics”. In this way, for instance, we could consider the world of music and suppose that a pianist is performing a sonata of Beethoven in a concert-hall with five hundred souls. On the occasion of a second performance, let us replace the pianist by a pianola and the five hundred souls by five hundred chairs. Well then, regarding the mere physical happening concerning the world of sounds, both performances are identical. Though, in the latter case there cannot be talk of music, for the world of music is not the physical reality as it is being perceived by dogs, for instance. The world of music is only present with the presence of the human being who is its creator, and who is aware of it. His creation demands matter and energy but does not coincide with it for its essence is situated in its form, which means: in its sign value.

The world of music does not coincide with the physical reality of sounds, yet without this physical reality the world of music cannot be produced. So, does this actually imply that the world of music should be less real and less valuable than the physical reality?

In order to make things clear, let us compare these two statements: (1) Nitrogen atoms are necessary for the human being, though the human being is far more important than this atoms; (2) A specific physical reality is necessary in order to make music, though music is more important than this physical reality. So, a physicalist, describing how a flutist performing a piece of music is performing operations which cannot be declared by the mere force of matter and energy, in fact a posteriori does ascribe an energetic-material pattern of causality to this complex of operations, yet the intentional aspect of these operations is being overlooked.

The existence of consciousness, which means: the existence of that what does not coincide with its object whilst it though has knowledge of it, is essential for the existence of the human being and of his world. The construction of a machine that would have awareness is impossible for it has to be composed out of mere objects.

The physicalist’s statement, namely: that in the world there exists nothing else than matter and energy, can imply two things, namely: or it implies that also extern to the world something can exist, or this statement contains superfluous information. We exclude the latter possibility and do concentrate on the former: in that case this proposition will imply a distinction between, on the one hand, “to exist” and, on the other hand, “to exist in the world”. So only this possibility rests, that the term “world” signifies in this case: “reality”. For it is impossible that something should exist without existing really, and this is the case by force of the fact that “to exist” means: “to exist in reality”.

Concerning the physicalist’s statement (- namely: that in the world nothing else exists apart from matter and energy), it is clear that it cannot be relevant but on the condition that a criterion of truth is being accepted. Yet in that case (- which is: the case that “the world” is being replaced by “the world of physics”) the statement becomes tautological.

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E. Vermeersch proclaims: “A consequence of Spinozism, yet not made by Spinoza himself, is the following. Proclaiming that the material world as well as the spiritual world is a full expression of the Divine, one suggests that the Divine is being expressed in the material world in a complete way. So, one can conclude that the ‘spiritual’ attribute is superfluous and that reality (Divine) can be considered as being nothing else than an unending material world”.

We explained earlier in what way the individual act of making a choice actualises exactly that possibility which is being demanded from the individual by the extern reality - the problem; we also did explain how this happens on the penalty of the destruction of the individual. By this means, at the same time, and in an implicit way, we did define in terms of the Darwinist mechanism of selection, the individual anticipation of thinking. Let us explain first what we must understand by this.

In ethology, the behaviour of lower species of animals is being explained as an unreasoned and mechanical one, although it appears to be very ingenious: in there, the efficiency of behaviour is being ascribed to a natural process of selection. Let us name this natural selection a ‘selection by the group’ and, in analogy, let us name the anticipation or the reasoning a ‘selection by the individual’. In the case of a selection by the group, the inefficient reactions are being wiped out, not by the individual animal but by the whole set of differently reacting animals. In analogy, by anticipating or thinking in that way, one is doing nothing else than making selections: the individual reacts rationally (- in other terms: it anticipates as it whips out the inefficient reactions.

Notice now that none of both the processes of selection have their source in the individual or in the group: the generation of a choice by an individual, as well as the selection of the very best action within a group, are being forced from the individual or from the group by the external.

Comparing the selecting nature with a labyrinth now, we make sure that it is the labyrinth that is determining for what passes it and what does not. But this means that the out-come of the passage through the labyrinth was determined from beforehand, just as the result of the correct reasoning is being determined by its premises. Therefore the ‘explanation’ of nowadays world and man in terms of natural selection, in fact is not an explanation, but a postponement of the problem. No matter whether man is being modelled out of clay or out of nature: as the clay is not responsible for the shape which comes out of it, so dead stuff is not responsible for the labyrinth which is being modelled out of it and which has not been able to generate something else than what came out of it indeed.

The argument of the existence of ‘accident’ or ‘chance’, in which an accidental happening is being defined as “a happening which escapes from causality” does not fit; until something will have been proven, one must accept that the case we do not perceive causal chains is being provoked by the shortage of our capacity of perception or by the shortage of our theory and not by the absence of causal chains. For concerning one and the same reality it is impossible to accept that some things would be subjected to causality while other things would not.

Let us consider the Darwinist process of natural selection again, and let us suppose in order to make things clear that only one description of the situation each moment of time would satisfy in order to give a full representation of the actual situation, and, at the same time, the differentiation from the one moment to the other would be a realisation of only one of the two possibilities (which, on that very moment, would not yet have been realised). Thus we get a simple schedule, representing a binary tree whereby each nod splits itself repetitively into a new fork.

Let us name the nods by the help of a series of natural numbers, their length representing the moment of time. Then we get this schedule:

Nothing does oblige us to follow the ‘right’ direction, yet if we do not do so, we will never reach the aim. Let us now suppose that whichever choice should bring one towards the aim: in that case the possibility to reject one’s own freedom would be absent. So, the existence of the aim requires the possibility for us to reject the aim. In other words: participation in the final aim requires specific obligations from the participants.

A lever does not lift: it is the subject that makes this action happen, while using the lever as an expedient. In the same way the subject uses the sign as a carrier of the meaning. The sign itself does not carry any meaning (and consequently is not a sign) unless ‘by order of’ (/ ‘by adjudication of’) the subject. Without the subject, a lever is not a lever and a sign is not a sign. Without the subject there is no meaning at all in the sign. And an information system is not a subject.

The physicalist claims that the presence or the absence of consciousness in robots constructed by man would be no more verifiable than it is in third persons. If one at least refuses solipsism and keeps some common sense, one should not doubt this.

Factually, machines transform energy and matter, but they do not have any need to execute energetic-material transformations. The human being, on the contrary, does have this need: it transforms energy and matter out of its own need, and in the perspective of this very difference, machines can be considered as transformers of energy and matter in view of human needs. The human need thus executes these transformations with the help of the body as through the use of tools. Machines are tools: they take over functions from the human body but they do not take over needs. Asserting that an engine has a need for fuel, one must remember that there can only be talk of ‘needs’ in view of the human being. The engine itself does not bother about the fuel.

In this very case, the function of the action is satisfaction of needs, and because a machine cannot have needs, the function of the action of a machine does not exist. So the machine does not ‘act’; things just ‘happen’ to it.

And then this ethical problem remains: suppose that a man has been reconstructed perfectly. In that case he should be at the same time an object (namely: the possession of the constructor) and a subject, which is counterfactual to the conditions of reality.

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Physicalists like to compare man to a machine, and subsequently they accept that man can be considered as a machine that is only a little more complex than the machines we have produced until now. So, principally man should be constructable. The ethical consequences of such a theory are far-reaching: the robot earns respect as soon as Turing’s expert judges as such. At the same time the human being itself degrades to the level of the machine: physicalists believe that a human being essentially is nothing more than a (very complex) machine.

In doing so, physicalists overlook some fundamental things. Until now we gave some general remarks on the basic intuitions of physicalism. We will now elaborate this question a little more.

If one nevertheless complies with the consideration that physical interaction between transmitter and receiver has to be labelled as ‘communication’, than one must consider all natural processes to be ‘communicative processes’, as we noticed before. The concept of communication then loses its content.

Thus, if one still wants to distinguish between communicative and non-communicative processes, it is clear that one has to come up with an adequate criterion. Because the physicalist rejects the subject (- the human being) as the criterion (- remember Vermeersch's speaking of “the mutual communication between machines”), he has to indicate a criterion within the world of objects, more specifically within the world of natural objects (- for there is no such thing like objects of culture without human beings). Now it is evident that chaos cannot offer any criterion, for it does not even allow different objects or entities, for there is no such thing like an object without the presence of a subject.

On the contrary and as has been noticed before, each machine has to be considered as an instrument, a tool of a subject, a part of nature that by human interpretation (or action) becomes an extension of one or more physical operations (- muscle-power, sensory activity, brain-activity etcetera) of the subject.

The theory of information says “that the measure of information of a message depends on the measure of our uncertainty about the condition of the source and that this uncertainty depends in the first place on the number of possible choices that can be made”. For example: ”when our source only contains a small number of signs, our uncertainty about the choice of the message is not very strong; for in that case we can expect beforehand our guess to be right. When a large number of possible messages occurs, our chance to guess the right one decreases”.

On the contrary, we can prove by a counter-example that this uncertainty is independent from the number of possible choices one can make.

Suppose an American receiver expects a message consisting of one single sign, let it be the sign “+” or the sign “-”, concerning the atomic bombing on Hiroshima. At a given moment, a message that contains one single sign reaches him, yet because of a failure by the communication-system, he gets the sign “x”. The receiver can interpret this sign in only two different ways; still, his uncertainty is maximal.

The theory of information replies to this objection in this way: “As soon as we measure the quantity of information by its importance, we deal with a mere subjective situation. It is safer to arrange that we will consider the quantity of a message only as a function of its probability. (...) One might think that this is a narrow point of view, but in fact it is the only one which, for the time being, permits an objective criterion and it is sufficiently intuitively acceptable to judge it to be valuable”.

Inherent to physicalism is micro-reductionism, which reduces the mind to a biological process, and biology to physics. The universe would be built (- and here again we find this dangerous reduction of creation to a mere construction! -) out of elements which form more complex wholes. The objects coming to existence in that way are being divided into eight levels: on level zero we find the logical-mathematical objects, on level one, the quarks or the most elementary building-stones of reality, and so it goes on via atoms and molecules until, at the end, at the seventh level, we get the groups of pluricellular organisms, and on level eight, their products. Vermeersch admits that there exists a parallel between, on the one hand, the levels mentioned and, on the other hand, the generality of the theories about the objects situated in the corresponding levels, and the number of descriptions of the structure in relation to the types of objects. In the first parallel there is a direct proportionality, in the second parallel there is an inverse one.

Let us notice that such a division relies upon the degree of generality with which one considers these objects. In other terms: by considering the objects in view of their generality, one creates, through this specific perspective, the levels 1, 2 or 3. On the other hand, by considering the objects in view of the discovering of specific structures, one creates, just by that specific view, for instance the levels 5, 6 and 7. In other terms, it is tautological to admit that one can ascertain that for instance with the levels 0 to 3 more general theories and less descriptions of structure in the concerning science should correspond, meanwhile for instance with the levels 5 to 7 more descriptions of structure in the concerning science do correspond. In still other terms: the fact of the generality of the theories and of the specificity of the descriptions of structure is not following from the levels, but the existence of the levels in fact relies on the way one is considering the existing things. Expressed in still another way: drawing one’s attention to what things have in common, one creates the levels 0 or 1. Drawing one’s attention to the mutual differences between things, one creates for instance the levels 5, 6 or 7.

According to micro-reductionism, the existence of man is unnecessary for the existence of whatever else. In other terms: the human being is the most contingent being.

Now the micro-reductionist asserts that the elements of the universe put themselves together to more complex units, all the time. In this perspective, the human being still is a fairly complex unity. Considering him as being contingent, one must also judge the laws that effected him out of more elementary particles, and equally one must judge these more elementary particles as they are. Going on in this way, down to the more elementary, one must judge eventually nothing to be necessary. Yet if nothing is necessary, this pair of concepts ‘necessity-contingency’ becomes irrelevant.

If one considers on the contrary the human being as a necessary being, one must also consider the human products, containing the theory of micro-reductionism, to be necessary. Yet a necessary theory cannot consider man as being contingent without considering itself at the same time as being contingent. So this supposition results into a contradiction and must be considered as an absurd one.

Subsequently, let us examine the thesis that the existence of man is not necessary for the existence of some other thing. True enough, micro-reductionism neglects the existence of goals, but at the same time it is even so true that everything has a reason of existence, and so all levels (which antecedent to humanity) are necessary for all levels they produce. But then one must accept also that eventually something must be necessary for the existence of quarks. Since at this point quarks are hypothetical constructions, their condition of possibility consists of nothing else but human consciousness. From this follows that man is not the most contingent being, for he is necessary for the existence of quarks ànd for everything quarks are necessary for. In other terms, this is not about necessary and contingent things in reality but about necessary and contingent suppositions of things in reality, which means that only necessary and contingent suppositions have relevance in this context.

Now let us consider the concept ‘accident’ more in general. One speaks about ‘accident’ when an event occurs that deviates from the predictions of a theory. But it is clear that by reasoning in that way, one is guilty to induction. The fact that I am unable to predict an event by the hand of my ordering theory, does not give me the right to name this event ‘accidentally’. My reasoning would be correct only by saying that in such a case my theory is incomplete. For a fact is necessary because of its factuality. The only thing I can say about an unpredictable event is, that in fact it is incompatible with my prediction, and that its unpredictability is not accidentally, for it results from the incompleteness of my theory. In other terms: accepting the incompleteness of my theory, I will also have to recognize the necessity of an unpredicted event, and, as a consequence, I cannot consider this event to be ‘accidental’. Later we will give an application in connection with the Darwinist theory of the process of selection.

Kant already wrote that we can only understand nature to the degree to which we would be able to construct it by ourselves. The significance of this proposition may not be underestimated: we are not able to (re)construct nature, for nature itself is not a construction. Because all the things we construct by our hands and plans are made out of elements we find in nature, we are inclined to believe that nature itself is the result of such a process of construction. Giving in to this inclination, we are arguing by induction. Suppose we should analyze a tree into material components, we would find as a result a whole of different elementary particles such as water, carbon and others. In fact, this tree is not at all the result of a construction of such elementary particles, and reconstructing these particles would never result into a new tree. For our analysis has been limited to the material analysis of one specific tree. Everything beyond this, cannot be analyzed any more, and this fact excludes each imitative reconstruction. But first of all, reconstruction is impossible because a tree, and more generally nature as a whole, is not a construction. For instance, a parrot is able to imitate a human expression, but the essence of an expression, namely its sense, cannot be comprehended by the parrot, which makes its achievement irrelevant. The parrot only repeats sounds. And exactly in his reckless belief concerning the reconstruction of creation, man equals such a talking parrot, unaware of his grotesque attitude. Man with his mechanical world-view is comparable to the deaf musician who is unable to have the slightest feeling for his own performance as a result of his own deafness: to him, the playing of music is hard labour, something comparable to the operating of a very complex machine. As a matter of fact, physicalists now believe that nature is such an absurd orchestra without noise, and they believe so only because they are unable to hear.

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In fact, it suffices that we prove the irrelevancy of the applicability of Carnap’s verification principle to the reality as a whole, in order to be able to declare the basic intuitions of physicalism and its rejection of metaphysics to be invalid. Blinded by recklessness, yet the physicalist is not someone to come easily to an understanding with. So we will have to meet him on his own territorial, and we will try to question his thesis from the inside.

To begin with, Vermeersch’s basic intuition, namely: that the knowledge about the ‘knowing subject’ can teach us more about the knowledge of the ‘knowing subject’, is strikingly evident. For is not also the knowledge about, a knowledge of the ‘knowing subject’? So this intuition says little more than that knowledge benefits from knowledge.

Concerning the pursued description of the knowing subject in terms of the mechanical, first of all two remarks must be made. In the first place, an information-system is not a knowing subject: it derives its sense from the (working) human: a pair of tongs does not pinch by itself and neither does an information-system do anything by itself: in both cases, it is their agent who carries out the act. Secondly, the presupposed knowledge concerning the act of knowing is in its turn submitted to the problem of self-reference: there is a fundamental discrepancy between information and the act of knowing: without the act of knowing, a text does not give any information.

Additionally, it may be remarked that this is also valid in the case that this information holds that there is a structural equivalence between the thing and its concept: in his theory of forms, E. Vermeersch puts the case that structural equivalence is a material matter. But we claim that structural equivalence is a sort of information, and so it cannot exist until it is being known - by a subject.

Man reduces the in se neutral reality to an instrument, and he does do so by bestowing sense upon it and by transforming it into his own world. He does this for his own sake: he wants to live and to raise the quality of his life. Nevertheless, our world is nothing but a ‘superficial’ phenomenon: an animal is unable to distinguish it from the rest of the landscape: to an animal our houses mean nothing but rocks; manifestations of our language are nothing to them but sounds. No creature can see further than to where it reaches. Our instruments, and especially our own world, have no other existence but their ‘function for us’: the simplest lever alike, they all exist out of natural laws that we took advantage of in order to enlarge our grasp on reality. Obviously this applies to both our information- and communication-tools: they have no self, no needs and as a matter of course they have no need to communicate.

The world is visible, soil can be walked on, rain is wet and the wind is cold: the attributes of things, especially the attributes of our instruments, are related to our bodily being, which is necessarily our ultimate parameter. A book, like a machine, derives its functionality or its being from the acts of writing and reading. Further more, we describe an information-system by concepts derived from our own information-processing activity: the terms “sender” (or: “transmitter”) and “receiver” are nothing but more general terms for “speaker” and “listener”, or “writer” and “reader”. As tools are modelled on the human body (because they are extensions of the body), the information-system is modelled on human communication.

Nevertheless, we can verify by experiment that the reliability of an expert is not at all evident. Turing’s computer is a trompe l’ oeil. Even today the legendary Tijl Uilenspiegel has hypocrites applauding empty canvases. And we remember the suspicious death of Van Meegeren after he had confessed to be the author of a painting, experts thought to be by Vermeer.

No machine can properly take the initiative to create whatsoever. But exactly this initiative, this specific purposefulness, is of essential importance in relation to the act.

On the other hand, the musicians in an orchestra performing the Brandenburg Concertos have only a technical part in this creation: in this quality they merely operate as the composer’s instruments; though Bach is physically absent, these musicians are directed by him; the subjectivity of the performer is not of fundamental importance because the performer can be replaced by another one. However, the irreplacebility of the musician applies only to his willingness to function as a mere instrument of the composer. As a consequence, no one can judge the aesthetic qualities of the performer when he performs in a correct way an unknown piece of music. For this performer may be someone who perfectly governs the technical skills that can be imitated by a programmed pianola. By the way, it seems that education nowadays is perfectly satisfied by teaching this kind of acrobatics: for the solving of problems via problem-solving programs that must be learnt before, cannot be properly called ‘problem-solving’: this way of action is nothing but the mere application or execution of programs - a way of action that ignores creativity, out of a fundamental distrust in the human person and a misplaced trust in l’ homme machine...

Franklin’s lightning conductor makes firewood of all former theories, for the ability to ‘create’ something implies the complete understanding of that thing, according to Vermeersch.

The urgency of praxis confirms indeed that each resolution of a problem makes the problematisation itself redundant. Nevertheless, the ability to make a thing does not necessarily imply the full understanding of that thing.

In conclusion we notice that the physicalist accepts that thoughts arise from the activity of the brain. Here, he seems to forget that the ‘certainty’ he relies on to explain thought, is less certain than the act of thinking itself: for the activity of the brain supposed to produce thinking, does not come to us but by thinking itself: the activity of the brain is in the first place a matter of thinking , as is the existence of a chair (- see: Kant’s Ding an sich). But just as we cannot judge about the existence of the chair, we cannot do so about the existence of the activity of the brain either. That the brain activity has to be presupposed in order to give a physicalistic explanation of thinking, is all we can say for certain; put otherwise: the brain activity is hypothetical and subordinated to thought itself.

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Sometimes, the metaphysical question concerning the ultimate ground of being has been restricted to the mere technical question concerning its ultimate building-stones. This is a mistake, because reality is not a construction. Kant says that we can only understand nature to the extend in which we are able to construct it by ourselves; which means, properly, that we are unable to understand nature, because we cannot (re)construct it (H. de Vos 1968: 63). Spinoza distinguishes between what is causa sui (God, Nature) and things that have an exterior cause (Spinoza 1974). Also Gödel distinguishes between the creation of something (- out of nothing) and the construction of something (- out of something else which already has been created) (H. Wang 1996: 14: "Gödel distinguishes creation, in the sense of making something something out of nothing, from construction or invention, in the sense of making something out of something else"). Concerning these important warnings, Kant, Spinoza and Gödel have been preceded by Augustinus, who criticises the unbelievers: "Thus, forsooth, [they reason] from their carnal familiarity with the sight of craftsmen and house-builders, and artisans of all descriptions, who have no power to make good the effect of their own art unless they get the help of materials already prepared. And so these parties [i.e.: the unbelievers] in like manner understand the Maker of the world not to be almighty, if thus He could not fashion the said world without the help of some other nature, not framed by Himself, which He had to use as His materials" (Augustinus 1999: II, §2). Even in the case that God created things out of something (- e.g.: 'clay', 'matter unseen', 'matter without form'), He has been the creator of it - thus says Augustinus.

Apart from art and ethics, we can say that all man-made things are tools, or: extensions of our physical bodies. Our world is an instrument: it is our common, extended body. From nature we recruit the raw material or the elements for that instrument.

Because our world is a (man-made) construction, we tend to conceive nature in the same way: we tend to see nature as a construction that we can break up into elements in order to build up our world with them. But this is a mistake. Nature in its turn has not been built out of elements that have been retrieved from still somewhere else. Where we do believe so, we conceive ourselves as potential (re)constructors of nature, or as Gods.

Carnap disapproves of metaphysics for the reason that its propositions are not experimentally verifiable. But the claim of applicability of this principle to the whole of reality, actually veils the conviction that reality can be (re)produced. In Logical Positivism, in Physicalism and in Micro-reductionism, we deal with the misconception Augustinus, Kant, Spinoza and Gödel warn against: the misconception in which man sees himself as God. He is not God, says Spinoza, because he is not causa sui.

By our conception, reality finds its foundation in its destination: all the ‘lower’ things come out of the ‘higher’ wherein they have their reason and their ultimate sense of being. It is our conviction that only in this way, a satisfactory ‘explanation’ of reality as a whole can be obtained.

Opposed to this conception stands the nowadays as successful as it is malicious conception concerning reality by physicalism, the newest form of materialism, in which things have been turned upside down. Materialism did not understand the cautious words of mentioned philosophers.

Physicalism is principally a part of atheism, because atheism accepts coincidence while denying any form of teleology: it rejects a priori the question of sense and pretends to find satisfaction in a reductionistic know-how about micro- and macrocosm, which in fact are conceived as if they were nothing more than an accidental happening. It is ethically irresponsible that physicalism leaves man orphaned. In this text however, physicalism will get our attention in the perspective of its cognitive irresponsibility.