On Empiricism

What if empiricism had never been invented? It wasn’t invented till the seventeenth century: there is no trace of it in Plato and Aristotle, or their followers. It took a long time till philosophers got round to it; and it originated only in England not as a world-wide trend. It came from nowhere. Two individuals were responsible: John Locke and David Hume (Bishop Berkeley is a separate case). Locke believed in the tabula rasa conception of knowledge and held that all ideas derive from sense experience. Hume rejected the first doctrine but subscribed to the second. That doctrine proved to be of the essence. There were gaping holes in it from the start: the missing shade of blue, the problem of a priori knowledge, the inadequacy of mental images as an account of concepts, the lack of a coherent theory of abstraction. But I won’t go into these failings; my question is historical. Empiricism was a particular movement at a particular time and place; it wasn’t a universally accepted time-tested discovery. It went against the grain. It might never have existed. In a close possible world, empiricism never was invented—no Locke and Hume. Suppose this to be so: how would the course of philosophy look? It was a bad theory—what if we just delete it from history?

It took hold, we know that. It dominated English-speaking (and other) philosophy up until quite recently. Apart from John Stuart Mill and company, it shaped much of early twentieth century philosophy, overtly so. Russell was an empiricist. Logical positivism harked back to Hume (as Ayer explicitly stated). Husserl saw himself as a follower of Hume, as did Mach and Einstein. Knowledge was widely thought to be based on sense experience alone. True, there were dissenting voices, but they didn’t depart much from empiricist orthodoxy. Quine spoke of the dogmas of empiricism, but he still tied knowledge to the senses, now physically conceived (empiricism without experience). Husserl refined the empiricist conception of experience, but still clung to it. Ordinary language philosophy rejected the empiricist theory of meaning and concepts (ideas, images), but it still stuck to the observable phenomena of speech—what we hear rather than what we see (linguistic empiricism). It never abandoned empiricist epistemology in favor of rationalist epistemology. It celebrated common sense. The only examples of real resistance were Frege and Wittgenstein (early and late)—though even Wittgenstein followed the empiricist theory of necessity and the revolt against metaphysics. It was Frege who repudiated the whole empiricist worldview, notably in his attack on Mill’s theory of arithmetic, but also in his account of meaning. I can’t think of another major philosopher of this period who so clearly broke from the empiricist tradition. It was taken as a given. Strawson had empiricist leanings, as did Carnap, Ryle, Austin, Davidson, and others already mentioned; certainly, none of these advocated a return to rationalism. Chomsky did, but he is not a philosopher and never attacked the empiricist theory of a priori knowledge head-on. Despite its flaws, then, empiricism held sway throughout the twentieth century, though with minor modifications.

But I have not yet answered my question: what would philosophy have looked like if empiricism had never been invented? It is hard to say, because empiricism became so deeply entrenched. Frege never developed a general anti-empiricist philosophy, taking in ethics, philosophy of mind, and the nature of scientific knowledge (and non-scientific knowledge). I suspect ethics would have looked very different, because not in thrall to the empiricist theory of knowledge. Metaphysics would have been less stifled and apologetic. Philosophy of logic and mathematics might have been more central. But the main thing I think is that the mysterian viewpoint would have been far more salient, even orthodox. For the truth is that empiricism provided an impression of explanation of puzzling phenomena—a false impression, but an impression. It explains (allegedly) the origins of knowledge (concepts and whole propositions): it all comes from sensory experience. Nice and simple. Classical rationalism provides no real explanation—implanted by God is no explanation.[1] The empiricist explanation is also vaguely mechanistic: ideas causally derive from impressions; impressions cause ideas. This is supposed to be a law of nature, somewhat similar to Newton’s force laws: impressions have the power to produce ideas, as massive bodies have the power to produce motion (“ideational force”). What other explanation do we have? Empiricism gives us a natural science of knowledge formation: it is a matter of copying, imprinting. If this explanation is false, what do we put in its place? The mysterian answer is that we don’t know; so, it’s either a bad theory or no theory at all. Many people prefer a bad theory to no theory. What is clear is that in the historical absence of empiricism the mysterian position looms into view: knowledge is a mystery. I believe that much knowledge is innate, but I don’t think this is really an explanation of the origins of knowledge—for how does such innate knowledge come to exist in the first place? Empiricism explains origins (or purports to), but rationalism does not. In our alternative intellectual history, then, the focus is on resolving the mystery, or accepting it as insoluble.  Empiricism purported to be the science of the mind analogous to Newton’s science of body, but it just isn’t a very good science. It is a kind of faith, whistling in the dark.

Let me put it even more bluntly: empiricism is a terrible theory cooked up by a couple of smooth-talking British blokes three hundred years ago, leading to the mess that was logical positivism.[2] That was repudiated in short order, but only minor amendments were made. We would have been better off without it. It still exercises a malign influence (particularly on scientists who are easily taken in by bad philosophy). But the alternative, supposing empiricism historically subtracted, is an absence of explanation, leading to a reluctant acceptance of mystery. Maybe the mystery would have been solved by now without the distraction of empiricism, or maybe it would not. In either case we would have been closer to the truth. A wildly speculative (and false) theory was converted into a dogma, and we have been living with the consequences ever since. The main dogma of empiricism is the doctrine that knowledge has anything essentially to do with experience.[3]

[1] I discuss this in Inborn Knowledge (2015). Exactly how is innate knowledge coded into the genes? It is—but how? And how did it evolve? This is close to the puzzle of the innate lexicon, emphasized by Chomsky.

[2] Moreover, Hume was badly misrepresented as more simple-minded than he was, as recent scholarship has demonstrated. A.J. Ayer’s interpretation of him was wide of the mark. We have been subjected to centuries of simplistic undergraduate Hume. Things are far more difficult than that.

[3] I haven’t tried to demonstrate this here, but I have written about it elsewhere (as have others). The essential point is that the deliverances of sense are never sufficient to generate knowledge, and are not always necessary for knowledge. Knowledge is a separate faculty from sensation; the former is not reducible to the latter. Also, sensation is a lot more complex than was traditionally recognized—more “cognitive”. Empiricism isn’t even true of the senses!

Deficiencies of Trump

As a qualified psychologist, I would like to state my opinion of Trump’s mental health (for want of a better term). Is he aware of his ethical and intellectual deficiencies (also athletic)? Some may say that he is not—that he is self-deluded. My own theory is that he is keenly aware of his deficiencies of character and mind. He knows quite well that he is intellectually impoverished and morally bankrupt—how could he not? It is quite obvious. He doesn’t read, he is uneducated, and he is illogical. He speaks moronically (“We love pope!”). He also knows he is self-centered, vindictive, and morally vacant (Melania will have told him). He is too lazy and spoiled to do anything about it. Nor does he need to. This is why he hits out at anyone that makes him look inferior, intellectually or ethically—which is most of the world. He needs sycophancy because disagreement leaves him embarrassed at his own deficiencies. He even hates taller people. Money partially makes up for it, but he feels insignificant when in the company of richer men. He has, in short, a massive inferiority complex. He likes to win because winning trumps (!) superiority. Losing just reminds him of his evident deficiencies.

This diagnosis is fairly common. But I want to add a dimension not remarked upon—his athletic limitations. It is well known that he cheats at golf, though he is by all accounts a reasonable player. I was interested in his tennis, having seen a photo of him in tennis gear (not a pretty sight). As it happens, there is video of him on Youtube hitting briefly with Serena Williams at some sort of event, wearing a suit and no shoes. He has obviously played a fair amount, but he is devoid of any real ability. I think he must have had lessons at some point, judging by his strokes. He has great trouble keeping the ball in, and his foot movement is non-existent. He tries to hit hard, however, as if to overcome the opponent by brute force not skill. There is no grace, no style; he is a tennis philistine. And he knows it: he knows he is a lousy tennis player, despite his best efforts. He just doesn’t have what it takes. It’s like his ethics and intellect—startlingly limited. Abnormally stunted. He just isn’t any good at things, and he is well aware of it.

Anatomical Philosophy

Philosophers have not shown much interest in anatomy, whether they be analytical or phenomenological, linguistic or empirical-scientific. Nor have psychologists, with the exception of Freud (oral, anal, and genital). I propose to rectify this. Of course, anatomists and physiologists have shown such an interest, but they have focused on dissection and functional studies, relevant to medicine, not psychological, phenomenological, and conceptual issues. I intend to map and describe broad features of human anatomy and articulate their human significance—this is to be an essay in lived anatomy. I am not much concerned with the physical properties of the organs of the body, or how they contribute to survival, but with how we experience our anatomy—consciously, conceptually. What does our anatomy mean to us? How does it impress us? How does it determine human psychological nature? Not how the organs of the body keep us alive, but how they figure in our lives. This is to be a study in anatomy as seen from the inside (“subjective anatomy”).

It is said that the human body contains 78 separate organs, or more depending on how an organ is defined. These organs can be listed and named. It’s quite a hodge-podge—arbitrary to the point of nausea. Can’t we divide things up more meaningfully? Some effort is made to do this by describing organ systems; I will follow this path. I therefore announce that our anatomy falls into five broad categories, corresponding to the head, the chest, the belly, the genital-excretory organs, and the limbs. I call this five-fold anatomy: five zones or regions of anatomical division. We all know what these involve (we all have bodies). In (or at) the head we have the brain and sense organs, tightly clustered: we are keenly aware of this bodily location and of the organs that dwell on the head. We might think of this area as phenomenologically central—where we are. The chest holds the lungs and heart, which function together; the lungs breathe, the heart pumps blood. We are more aware of our lungs breathing than of our heart beating, though the latter can become a central focus. The belly houses the stomach, which processes food—a vital element of life. The belly produces characteristic sensations, as in hunger and satiation. Take a step down and we reach the organs of reproduction and excretion, which are notoriously adjacent to each other; they too have their characteristic sensations. That’s the terminus of the trunk, the body proper—from crown to anus, so to speak. Attached to this thick trunk we have the four limbs: these take the form of slender protuberances. The limbs allow movement—locomotion and object manipulation.  We are well aware of their activities, being both visible and constantly active. So, my suggestion is that these are the five main sites of human anatomy, corresponding to five types of human activity: mental activity, respiratory and vascular activity, digestive activity, excretory and reproductive activity, and bodily movement activity. They are discrete (though interconnected) and each has its own psychological profile. The question then is what characterizes these five regions, philosophically.

I will consider intentionality, consciousness, action, and physicality. Intentionality is mainly focused in the head area: perceiving, thinking, willing, remembering. These are mental states with well-defined intentional objects (sometimes non-existent); this is a familiar story and has been the main focus of philosophical inquiry. In the chest area intentionality is greatly reduced: breathing and pumping have no intentional objects to speak of—the lungs and heart are not the objects of these activities. We can feel breathing in the chest, or blood being pumped, but these are not of anything: the lungs and heart are not about something outside themselves (or inside them). The stomach too is felt as in the body, but its actions are not directed towards objects, unlike the actions of the brain. The mouth presents itself as tasting food, but the stomach does not. The same is true of the organs of excretion and reproduction: they aren’t about anything. We are not aware of them as intentionally directed, because they aren’t. The limbs are different, especially the hands—they can be said to denote and express, like the face. They have intentionality. So, some of our anatomy is expressive-intentional and some is not, or only primitively so. There is no language of the lungs, heart, stomach, and genitals; but there is a language of the mouth and hands—they are perceived as communicative (the stomach keeps to itself, except for the odd involuntary rumble). Anatomically, intentionality is confined to the head and hands.

Consciousness is not so confined—consciousness is felt as widely distributed (from face to bowels). But its degree varies: we are more conscious of our eyes and mouth than of our lungs and stomach. Much of the activity of the bowels is completely unconscious; not so our hands. We leave most of the body to its own devices, only peripherally aware of what it is up to, but this is not true of the mind-brain—that is, the anatomical part involved in perception and thought. These are aspects of the brain organ, and we are well aware of those aspects. Most of our body goes about its business unconsciously, though we get glimpses of what is going on; but the business of the brain involves mental activity and we are aware of it. We are conscious of the body as a whole, but not very conscious; the brain’s mental activity is very conscious, by contrast. The question of action is more complex: what kind of action do the five bodily zones engage in? This complicates the philosophy of action considerably. Clearly, the agent acts intentionally and we can attribute this to the brain; but do the lungs act in this way, or the stomach, or the bowels? Most of this is automatic, as we say, but sometimes the will steps in—as in holding one’s breath. We can’t do this with the heart, but we can with the bowels to some degree. Thus, we are more or less in control of our anatomical regions—very in control of our hands but much less so of our bowels. We know what is voluntary and what isn’t. This affects our relation to our body. Then there is the question of physicality: do we feel some parts of the body as more physical than others (in some sense of “physical”)? Does the head area feel less physical than the belly area? We often speak of the body as something separate from the head, so the stomach is more of the body than the head is. Isn’t excretion felt as more physical than breathing? We do seem to talk this way: we recognize grades of physicality within our overall anatomy. Air is traditionally associated with the soul; not so feces. And doesn’t the disgust response apply differentially to different regions of the body? The higher up the less disgusting: the mouth is less disgusting than the anus, the heart is less disgusting than the stomach, the stomach is less disgusting than the intestines. The five zones thus vary along several dimensions; together they constitute the lived anatomical world of humans (other animals will have their own anatomical idiosyncrasies). It’s like branches of government: each has a job to do and each has its distinctive characteristics. Anatomy is not homogeneous–physically or psychologically.

Let’s get more scientific(-sounding): I wish to assert, with maximum scientific pomposity, that we have a penta-morphic anatomical phenomenology. You have heard of the pentapod—the five-limbed creature that uses its tail in locomotion (e.g., the kangaroo), and the pentaradial starfish; well, now we have to add the penta-morphic anatomical phenomenology of the typical human animal. We have five kinds of anatomical structure each with its own specific psychophysical nature. The mind has its own anatomy usually described as consisting of perception, reason, memory, emotions, etc.; the body too has some broad subdivisions, corresponding to spatial location, function, and phenomenology. An adequate anatomical taxonomy will recognize five different categories of organ, as articulated above. Every day we live with these five categories; they are part of our human nature as a psychophysical animal. We are psychologically heterogeneous andphysically heterogeneous.[1]

[1] The body is typically conceived by philosophers (and scientists) as a homogeneous machine, i.e., mechanistically. Anatomy is thus like the structure of a crystal or mountain. But this is to forget that the body exists for the conscious being whose body it is—it has a particular first-person appearance, mode of presentation. It seems a certain way to its possessor. This deserves careful description. We need to suspend the scientific standpoint (to paraphrase Husserl).

Neuropolitics

I quite like the idea of neuropolitics, despite its air of science fiction. I don’t like the idea of neuroethics or neurophilosophy or even neuropsychology, but I see a point to couching political discourse in neurological language. What is the unit (the ontology) of political discourse? It goes by various names: men, people, human beings, sentient creatures, individuals, souls, persons, selves. These are not always co-referential or analytically pellucid, but one catches the drift. We are talking about you, me, him, her, they, etc. Can we be more exact, more scientific? Well, a very decent suggestion is that all these, in so far as they impinge on politics, ultimately go back to the brain: for the brain is the organ of the mind, selfhood, character, the psyche—and that is what has ultimate value. We could have a polity composed wholly of disembodied brains, so long as personhood is preserved, but a politics of bodies sans brains is pointless—psychologically null zombies. Political issues concern, in the end, functioning brains (living, feeling brains). So what, you may say, what difference does it make?  What political problems would be solved or mitigated by adopting a neurological perspective? How would our politics be improved by going neuropolitical?

The answer is that brains are detached from the outer shell in which they are housed: they don’t reflect the body or the position of that body in the world. You can’t read off a person’s size, shape, race, nationality, wealth, education, etc. just by perusing their brain. All brains look alike (all human brains). There are no black brains or white brains, no fat brains or thin brains, no beautiful brains or ugly brains—unlike with bodies. The brain is a great equalizer (I am talking about its physical appearance). Thus, no discrimination based on brain appearances is possible: the brain of Marilyn Monroe looks much the same as the brain of Louis Armstrong—nor do they sound any different. It would be hard to be prejudiced in favor of one of them and against the other, based on optical appearances. There would be no color prejudice in a society of brains in vats, or pulchritude prejudice, or weight prejudice. Everyone would be treated equally based on physical appearance; discriminations would have to reflect less palpable features, such as quality of character or mathematical ability. Brains don’t invite irrational groundless discrimination. Behind every face there is a brain just like yours, constituting the essence of the person. We don’t normally think of this in our personal interactions, but it is salutary to remind ourselves of it. Politically, it is the objective truth. Brains are what politics is ultimately all about—the things with rights, obligations, citizenship, equality, authority, moral status. The body politic is a body of brains.

In a way this is unfortunate, because our image of a person is shaped much more by the face than the brain. We don’t even see the brain in the ordinary course of events. Nor is the brain deemed attractive or expressive or relatable. It has no name, no social identity. It would be different if brains were visible and revealing; then their centrality would be evident. Neuropolitics would be the order of the day. Laws would be about them, policies geared to them; they would be the primary units of political discourse. As it is, they don’t even have the benefit of verbal cache—the word brain is not an attractive word. It doesn’t do justice to what it describes. In Latin we have cerebrum, in Greek encephalo (“in-head”), in French le cerveau, in Italian ingegno, in Finnish aivot. There is nothing warm and cuddly about these. We could try calling it the self-hub or the person-crux, but these don’t really cut it; we are stuck with a distinct lack of linguistic glamor. Brains are just not aesthetically pleasing to us. The heart has a much better public image. Perhaps an artist could undertake a series of brain works designed to lift brains to a new plane of visual appeal—introducing us to the brain afresh (“The Brain of Mona Lisa”). We need celebrity brains on magazine covers—brain paparazzi, PR campaigns.

How do animals fare under neuropolitics? I think it is clear that speciesism is fueled by the animal body: their bodies are not like ours (to the naked eye). They are hairy, scaly, feathered, quadrupedal, slimy. But their brains are not that different: when you look at a picture of an animal brain its affinity to the human brain is evident, startlingly so. All brains have much the same basic architecture (not surprising given the facts of evolution). We would not be so inclined to speciesism if we had animal brains constantly in our thoughts: never mind the body, look at the brain! The brain is the seat of the soul, and their brains closely resemble ours. They also differ among themselves to a degree, correlated with their psychological powers; these anatomical differences can be used to justify differential treatment. Apes and lizards are not identical mentally. I think, then, that a brain-centered animal politics will help animals in their quest for political freedom. The brain is always the best measure of a creature’s natural rights, because it is closely correlated with the animal’s mental faculties. The mind is not visible and is hard to detect, but the brain is the concrete symbol of the mind—you can get your teeth into the brain. A politics arranged according to brain structure will be an improvement over our current body-centered approach. Here is my political slogan: Make the World Brainier![1]

[1] To what extent is this essay tongue-in-cheek? Less than you might think. The culture can change. Words matter. Ideology is conceptualization.