Pointless Knowledge

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                                                Pointless Knowledge

 

 

God is said to be omniscient: he knows everything. There is nothing he doesn’t know, no matter how minor or inconsequential. I think this poses a problem for God’s existence, because some knowledge is pointless—and nothing about God should be pointless. It is sometimes noted that God knows about little things as well as big things—a daisy in a field as well as a king on his throne. This little knowledge may not be useful to God, but it shows his tender regard for all of creation and his attention to detail. Still, it cries out for explanation: why bother to know every last thing just for the sake of it? None of us would find that a worthwhile project, even if it came easily. What’s the point of knowing every single detail of the universe?

            Consider the position of particles within planets. There are true propositions stating the relative positions of particles within different planets: a certain particle inside Mars is so many millions of miles from a certain particle inside Earth. There will be many billions of propositions like that. God knows all of them, just as he knows the moral condition of your soul. Presumably all these propositions are at the forefront of his consciousness, since there is no back of it. What is the point of having such knowledge? These propositions are neither useful not interesting; they record utterly mundane facts. You would kill yourself rather than memorize even a tiny proportion of them. So why does God take the trouble to know them all? There is no point to it—except to live up to his reputation as omniscient. He could delete this knowledge from his data banks and sacrifice nothing of value. It is a waste of divine resources as well as a blot on God’s sublimity—like hearing that he has a billion hands he never uses. If God is truly omniscient, then he has a huge amount of pointless knowledge.  [1]

            In the human case we have no time for pointless knowledge; it is certainly not thought to be valuable. Knowledge must either be useful or inherently interesting, but not every fact about the universe is useful or interesting—some things are just not worth knowing. If the bore is someone who insists on telling you things that are not worth knowing, then God is primed to be the supreme bore (though I imagine he would refrain from unloading all his pointless knowledge on you). Rummaging through God’s mind in search of epistemic nuggets would yield an awful lot of junk. Omniscience guarantees the possession of junk information. But this is not how we like to think of God: we like to think of him as discerning, discriminating, superbly intellectually equipped, and interesting to know. He is not the repository of vast quantities of dullness. He is not the Encyclopedia Britannica of pointless epistemic clutter. Someone who has memorized the phone book is not an ideal of epistemic virtue, but God has memorized every phone book in the universe (and everyone’s gas bill and tax return too). Literal omniscience just isn’t anything to write home about. It isn’t cool.

            When you think of God’s omniscience you think of his complete knowledge of yourself and that strikes you as interesting (other people, not so much). There is a point to it, a very personal one. But you forget about all the boring pointless knowledge God is condemned to contain by dint of his omniscience. This doesn’t fit your image of God as glorious and scintillating. He begins to seem like a weirdly obsessive accountant. This is why omniscience puts pressure on the traditional concept of God when pushed to the limit. There is a tension in God’s being—between his splendor and sublimity, on the one hand, and his undiscriminating appetite for information, on the other. He is like the greatest mind in the world obsessed with TV trivia. Vast tracts of God’s mind are of no interest whatsoever. Nor can any rationale be given for this compulsive recording of banality, except that if it were not so God would not live up to his reputation as omniscient. What would be lost of God’s essential being if we stipulated that he falls short of complete omniscience, limiting his knowledge to the interesting and worthwhile? Would we think less of him if he failed to know about one daisy or the position of a single atom? I don’t think so—I would prefer God to be less than omniscient. Surely he cannot be interested in everything he knows. But then I don’t believe in God as traditionally conceived.

            The concept of pointless knowledge is also relevant to the question of the value of knowledge. I submit that pointless knowledge has no value, in which case knowledge as such is not a basic good. Useful and interesting knowledge has value, to be sure, but some knowledge is utterly pointless—just not worth having. We are better off without it given that all knowledge requires the use of scarce resources. It is knowledge it would be good to destroy, so as not to use up cognitive space. To put it differently, many facts are not worth the time of day. Some knowledge adds to the value of the mind that possesses it, but there is a lot of potential knowledge that adds nothing of value—that may as well remain unknown. Someone who searches for knowledge indiscriminately is doing nothing worthwhile; and someone who stores all knowledge without regard for its value is equally misguided. This is why God cannot really be omniscient—because he is not misguided. He sees no point in pointless knowledge.

 

Col

  [1] The idea of an omniscient God was crafted when the true extent of the universe was not known. At that time it was reasonable to suppose that everything in nature had some human relevance, but this kind of anthropocentrism is no longer viable. Now we are invited to accept that God possesses a huge amount of humanly irrelevant knowledge. I doubt that if we were devising a concept of God today we would sign on to total universal omniscience, but we are saddled with the idea by earlier conceptions. We should reject the idea, which shows that the earlier definition of God is no longer defensible. That is, there is no God as traditionally conceived. 

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Plurality and the Big Bang

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Plurality and the Big Bang

 

 

It is said that the big bang created space and time—they did not exist beforehand. Thus something existed (a “singularity”) before space and time existed; and it was some sort of empirical particular not an abstract entity. It is generally conceived as superhot plasma not yet differentiated into elementary particles. Now adjoin that idea to the Kantian principle that space and time are the basis of individuation for empirical particulars: there can only be a well-defined plurality of particulars if there is a spatiotemporal manifold in which these particulars are arrayed. Then we get the result that the universe at the time of the big bang was a singularity in this strong sense: it was, and could only be, a single unified entity. The conditions for plurality were not met in that early state of things: metaphysical monism prevailed of necessity. The big bang fragmented reality, taking it from unity to multiplicity, by dint of space and time. It created division. It gave the world parts. It allowed particulars to exist apart from each other.

            So one thing we know about the universe before the big bang is that it was devoid of plurality. It was as the metaphysical monists conceive of reality today: a seamless whole. Some philosophers have thought that Kant’s noumenal world must be a unitary world, given that it is not subject to the categories of space and time (the conditions for plurality not being met in that world). Others have speculated that all minds must be fundamentally identical given that the mind is not a spatial entity (for what could their distinctness consist in but spatial separation?). Well, if the universe issued from a big bang that created space and time, then it too must have existed in a unitary form—as a single undifferentiated entity. We can therefore deduce that there had to be a singlesingularity: there could not have been a plurality of singularities each spawning a totality of discrete particulars. For these would have to exist separately in space and time, given that spatiotemporal separation is the ultimate basis for individual distinctness, and space and time did not exist until the big bang wrought them. The universe could not have resulted from a pair of singularities—no universe could, by Kant’s principle. They would have to be separated in space (if simultaneous) but there was no space at the onset of the big bang. Accordingly, there was just one big bang, and there had to be: the singularity was necessarily singular.  [1]

            This is a substantive piece of knowledge—a significant cosmological theorem. We know very little about the state of the universe before the big bang, but we do know that it was unitary in a very strong sense—there was no existing plurality of empirically particulars. Metaphysically, the universe was one. Plurality was a later offshoot of this underlying oneness—an emergent property rooted in a more basic reality. We might even say that reality is fundamentally singular, cosmologically speaking. Maybe the singularity comprised a unified field of force lacking particulate structure—not even consisting of matter in the sense we now conceive of it. Material plurality is a late development, a contingent offshoot: au fond the universe is undivided power (energy, oomph). This is a fact worth knowing, providing an insight into the nature of the universe before it was fragmented by that early explosion. There was an abrupt transition from the One to the Many—plurality emanating from unity. An undifferentiated whole shattered into pieces as space and time took shape. The old cosmic unity was gone: now the universe was a collection of separate particulars existing at a distance from each other. Before the big bang there was no room (literally) in the universe for distinct particulars–everything had to be jammed inextricably together as a single seamless entity. It is doubtful that we can even conceive of this reality, except in the most abstract and metaphorical terms, given that our minds have evolved to cope with a world of spatiotemporal plurality: but its general structure follows from basic cosmological principles. In creating space and time the universe brought forth plurality from unity. It broke the bonds of being. It changed the metaphysical structure of reality.

 

  [1] Of course, nobody doubts that there was just one big bang as a matter of empirical fact; but what we have here is a proof that this had to be so.

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Platonic Pragmatism

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Platonic Pragmatism

 

 

The pragmatic theory of truth has this going for it: it recognizes that truth is something with value. Truth is something we ought to pursue and hence has a normative aspect. It is good to believe what is true and bad to believe what is false. Truth is a desirable property of belief. As William James says, “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief” (1907). It is contradictory to say, “We ought to believe what is true but truth is not a good thing”. Any theory of truth that fails to acknowledge the normative character of truth is defective or at least incomplete. Thus the classic correspondence theory fails to meet this condition: for what is so good about correspondence? If correspondence is a type of isomorphism, what is desirable about isomorphism? Sameness of form is not ipso facto a good thing: objects can share their form without this being something they ought to do (crystals, mice). If truth were just correspondence, it would be normatively neutral, not the desirable trait we take it to be (much the same can be said about coherence). Truth cannot reduce to a property or relation that bears no trace of the normative; it must have some type of goodness built into it. This seems like a solid insight on the part of the pragmatist and a cogent criticism of other theories. Call it “Convention G”: any adequate theory of truth must reveal truth as an inherently normative property, i.e. an instance of the Good. It must be something about which we (rightly) care.

            The pragmatist, having identified this requirement, goes on to give an account of what the goodness in question consists in; and it is an account both natural and dubious. The goodness of truth is simply the way it conduces to human flourishing—the way it leads to a satisfying life. Truth is what contributes to human happiness: believing what is true will make us happy not sad. This is because true beliefs enable us to satisfy our desires more successfully than false beliefs. The farmer with true agricultural beliefs will reap a better harvest than one who has false agricultural beliefs. We will dress more comfortably for the weather if we have true beliefs about the state of the weather. A stockbroker with true beliefs about the market will make more money than one who has false beliefs. We can express these facts by saying that true beliefs have good utilitarian consequences; indeed, we could call this type of pragmatism “the utilitarian theory of truth”.  [1] The truth is what maximizes utility (so it has a lot in common with the right as a utilitarian conceives it). Truth is good because self-gratification is good—good food, nice home, stimulating company. Truth is good for the same reason other things are good: it leads to pleasure, satisfaction, happiness. We can all agree that these things are good; well, truth is just one among the engines of human gratification. The pragmatist thus invokes ordinary human goods and identifies the goodness of truth with these goods.

And this is a very natural move: what else could constitute the goodness of truth? But it is also a move that has generated criticism: for surely not all true beliefs maximize utility—for example, grief will be the result of believing truly that a loved one has just died. Sometimes truth requires us to face harsh realities; the happiness-producing belief may be the false belief. And what about true belief in a society ruled by propaganda, as in George Orwell’s 1984? In Orwell’s dystopia true belief leads inevitably to Room 101 (and we know what happens to you there). Isn’t the pragmatic theory a recipe for wishful thinking, conformity, and slavery to the passions? We want to protest: you could believe the truth and it lead to absolute disaster—it would still be the truth! Sure, truth often leads to utility, but not as a matter of definition, not as a matter of essence. A belief can be true even though it fails to maximize utility. Additionally, a belief can be true though it has nothing to do with desire satisfaction, as with abstract theoretical beliefs. The pragmatist has therefore failed to explain the nature of truth in terms of human goods of the standard sort. Is it then an incorrect theory?

            But didn’t it seem to rest on an important insight—the normative nature of truth? Here we need to separate two things: (a) truth as a type of good and (b) the utilitarian theory of goodness. We can have (a) without (b). Consider Plato’s account of truth in which truth is essentially connected to goodness and beauty: for Plato, believing the truth is contemplating the sublime world of forms, chief among them the form of the Good. This makes for an elevation of the soul: communion with the perfect and eternal. This is not a matter of appetites and bodily needs, quite the contrary. Plato accepts that truth is a type of good but he doesn’t identify the good with desire satisfaction. For him, the good is contemplating the forms, and that is what true belief enables one to do. This will lead to a special higher form of happiness—the happiness of rational contemplation, roughly. There is thus room for a Platonic form of pragmatism: true belief is belief that leads to rational happiness, i.e. contemplation of the forms. This kind of happiness (soul elevation) is consistent with many kinds of ordinary unhappiness. A person may be destitute and yet in rational contact with a higher reality (Diogenes, for example): his believing is good even though it does not mitigate his material deprivations. If there are goods beyond the basic goods, then a Platonic pragmatist can appeal to these goods to explain the nature of truth.  [2] We ought to pursue truth because of thesegoods not those identified by your typical American pragmatist, focused as he is on creaturely wellbeing. Truth is essentially connected to the Good and the Beautiful, according to Plato; so these notions can be invoked to inject a normative element into truth. We can thus be Platonic pragmatists not American-style pragmatists. At any rate, such a combination of views is logically consistent and not unattractive.

            We need not agree with Plato’s view of truth in order to appreciate the architecture of his position. Truth is a good thing, but its goodness does not consist in desire satisfaction but in something more rarified—the “good of the intellect”. Truth is an intellectual good not an appetitive good; it is superior to falsehood as a condition of the intellectual faculties. It may not be easy to specify the nature of this kind of goodness, though it commands intuitive acceptance, but it offers a way to agree with the basic insight of pragmatism while avoiding the standard objections to it. There is something “pragmatic” about truth in the sense that it conduces to a human good—an intellectual good—but it is not a matter of maximizing non-intellectual wellbeing. The good of truth is not the good of satiety, safety, and prosperity; it is the good of understanding, insight, and judgment. More grandly, it is the good of intellectual receptivity to reality—a kind of self-transcendence. It is the very opposite of slavery to the passions, subjection to our own needy animal nature; it opens the self to what lies beyond it. Classic pragmatism puts the human self at the center of the search for truth, identifying truth with the satisfaction of basic human needs; Platonic pragmatism puts the aim of self-transcendence at the center of the search for truth, identifying truth with the intellectual good of apprehending reality impersonally, without regard to its ability to satisfy our needs. It is both the opposite of classic pragmatism and yet a version of its basic insight, viz. that truth must be connected to goodness in order to be what we intuitively take it to be. Platonic pragmatism thus has the virtues but not the vices of classic pragmatism.

 

  [1] Pragmatism is a consequentialist theory of truth that emphasizes human happiness. Formally, it resembles utilitarianism with respect to moral rightness: the right act is the one with the best utilitarian consequences. Thus utilitarianism might be characterized as “moral pragmatism”. The two doctrines have a similar form, though one concerns rightness of action and the other concerns truth of belief. Were the pragmatists influenced by the utilitarians?

  [2] Another traditional conception of truth provides a direct link between truth and goodness, namely the idea that in knowing the truth about the world we come to know God’s mind. If God created the world according to his own nature, then insight into the world is insight into God’s nature, and that is in itself deemed good. Thus truth is valuable because knowledge of God is valuable; such knowledge may even enable to live better lives by God’s standards. Again, this is a kind of “pragmatism” that does not appeal to the idea of human desire as the good that truth serves, instead invoking a “higher” type of good.

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Physics and the Physical

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Physics and the Physical

 

 

It sounds reasonable—indeed tautological–to say that physics is about the physical, as psychology is about the psychological. But that is not clearly true. Consider Newton’s physics: it includes not only physical things in the ordinary sense but also space and time—as well as gravitational force. That last item raised eyebrows at the time owing to its “occult” nature (it wasn’t “mechanical”), but the first two items also raise questions. Are space and time physical? Intuitively they are not, but the question is clouded by lack of clarity about the meaning of the term “physical”. They certainly contrast with chunks of matter in a number of respects, according to Newton: they lack mass, they are not solid and impenetrable, they don’t move around, they can’t be sensed, they are not made of atoms, they have no shape, and they are infinite and eternal.  Space and time contrast rather sharply with matter—they are, if anything, immaterial. Yet they are essential to the way physics understands the world; in particular, they are how motion is defined, i.e. translation of place over time. Newton was not himself a materialist, believing both in the soul and in God, so he had no materialist scruples about accepting this capacious ontology: he had no wish to keep physics physical. He was not a physicalist about physics. Someone claiming to reduce the mind to physics, say, would not be a physicalist under this conception of physics, i.e. someone who believes only in physical things. In physics we have material bodies as well as space and time (and force), the latter not being physical in the sense applicable to material bodies (mass, solidity, motion, etc.) We could say that, for Newton, the world of physical things exists within a larger world of non-physical things. And these things are not just trivially non-physical (as radiation may be said to be), but fundamentally different in nature from what is physical. The physical thus exists against a background of completely non-physical things. If anything, space and time belong on the side of God, not on the side of matter (consider their infinity and eternality)—at least as Newton sees things.

            It is understandable that a physicist with empiricist and physicalist tendencies will balk at Newton’s ontology, because he includes realities that are non-physical and imperceptible. A positivist will be suspicious of such things (see Mach), especially one who wants physics not to stray from the physical. Einstein was just such a physicist: he had decided positivist sympathies and he wanted to find a “physical meaning” (his phrase) for such terms as “time” and “space”. Accordingly, in the special theory of relativity he replaced talk of time with talk of clocks—physical objects in space. No more superordinate time dimension marching on in splendid isolation from the physical world; instead there are just physical clocks and their readings. He physicalizes time; or he eliminates it in favor of clocks. As a result we get the familiar but still startling “discoveries” of special relativity, such as the relativity of simultaneity and “time dilation”. These claims are all really about the behavior of clocks in various conditions of motion. Clocks are finite, perishable, mutable, physical things, unlike the Newtonian time dimension. Motion is understood as change of position correlated with different clock readings, with each object assigned its own clock in Einstein’s thought experiment. There are thus as many “times” as there are assigned clocks, and hence “time” has not the absoluteness we might expect—or better, there are just clocks in this model with time itself eliminated from consideration.

            What about space? What “physical meaning” can we give to space? The first thing is to do is make motion relative: objects only move relative to other objects not in relation to absolute space. Thus we replace the impalpable Newtonian spatial dimension with perceptible physical objects—nothing non-physical in the picture. Movement through space becomes change of position relative to a chosen physical object, as time becomes the changing behavior of clocks. Time and space, as Newton understands them, drop out, to be replaced by relations among physical objects. Hence we have physicalism about physics. Moreover, in general relativity space comes to have some of the characteristics of matter: instead of being fixed and unchangeable, it acquires the ability to bend, as steel rods may bend. Note that space doesn’t bend in space, as if there is some extra spatial dimension behind the curvature of space; rather, space simply is the collection of all such curves. Just as what we call “time” is regarded as a collection of clocks, so space is regarded as a collection of (gravity-induced) bends—which brings space much closer to matter than it was under the Newtonian conception. Only something physical in nature can literally bend, so we have brought space into the physical arena. The old Newtonian dualism of space and matter has been replaced by a quasi-monism of bendable being. Indeed, one might wonder how space can be curved, with corresponding causal powers, unless it is a form of matter (of an etiolated kind, to be sure). Thus Einstein physicalizes space in the general theory as he physicalized time in the special theory. Now physics has become comprehensively physical under the new dispensation. All this might sound counterintuitive and confused, but it is the result of ruthlessly physicalizing the Newtonian system. To put it differently, this is what you get if you insist on finding “physical meaning” for the terms of standard pre-Einsteinian physics–you distort their meaning beyond recognition. What implications there might be, or not be, for the nature of matter, motion, space, and time, as they exist in nature, is very much left an open question; one might suppose, none. We have simply stopped talking about one thing (motion through space over time) and started talking about something quite different (clock readings of events in varying relative positions). Likewise, instead of referring to gravitational effects in space, we describe space as itself curved: light rays bend in space near massive bodies because space itself curves like a physical thing; it isn’t that space remains unchanged while things move differently through it. These are all physicalizing tendencies designed to free physics from the ontological heterogeneity of classical Newtonian physics. They result from adopting physicalism about physics. No doubt this tendency reflects empiricist assumptions, given that the physical is deemed perceptible; so Einstein’s style of physics results from Newton’s physics put through the sieve of empiricism. Otherwise put, it changes the subject.  [1]   

            Can we conclude from this that physics would look very different if it was never subjected to the physicalizing tendencies in question, themselves an offshoot of empiricist epistemology? It appears that we can. Let us imagine a world like the world Newton describes except that we stipulate that there are no physical objects in this world, i.e. no objects with mass, solidity, or perceptibility. There are, however, things that move through space over time—a bit like neutrinos, perhaps. Compared to our weighty solidities these hypothetical things are not material at all—they are wispy penetrable things. They exist in a universe of absolute space and time, which themselves are not physical. There are no sentient beings in this universe, and there are no clocks or observers of any kind. Nevertheless, there are laws of motion, mathematically expressed—let’s say Newton’s laws. Then there is in principle a physics of this world, with forces and equations governing these forces. In this world physics is entirely, not merely partially, non-physical (whatever quite the notion of the physical comes to—I have stipulated possessing mass and solidity for present purposes). That is, there is a science of motion for this world, tailored to the entities it contains; whether there is anything physical is beside the point. So physics is not essentially about the physical as such; it is about motion in space over time.  [2] The label “physics” is therefore misleading in that it suggests that the science in question deals essentially with what is physical (compare “psychology”). We might want to rename it “motion science” or some such. Indeed, our actual physics contains entities often deemed non-physical (in some sense) such as fields of force and certain massless particles. Newton’s physics dealt with the motions of material bodies, but his general framework is not necessarily tied to that ontology. By contrast, Einstein’s conception of physics ties it firmly to the physical, even to the point of physicalizing time and space—or, more accurately, replacing them with surrogates deemed more “meaningful”. I think this was a mistake, but I haven’t attempted to argue that here; my aim has been rather to set out the underlying methodological and metaphysical issues more perspicuously than is usual. The relationship between physics and the physical is actually quite contentious; certainly, we must not assume that what physics deals with is ipso facto physical in any well-defined sense.  [3]  

 

Colin McGinn

  [1] Here I am influenced by some unpublished work of Randolph Lundberg, though I don’t attribute my conclusions to him.

  [2] If we borrowed from Descartes the notion of an immaterial substance, we could specify a world that contains such entities in a state of motion governed by laws. The science of these motions would still be physics.

  [3] We may note that, according to the OED, the word “physic” was used in the Middle Ages and later to refer to medicine, and that it comes from the Greek phusis meaning “nature”. Thus it did not originally connote the idea of corporeal matter. It is certainly not analytic that physics is the study of corporeal matter, which is why it can include what is not material. It was Einstein who edged physics towards the physical, in our modern sense, with his insistence that we find “physical meaning” for terms like “space” and “time”. Under “physical” in the OED we find “relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete”. This is the sense that Einstein surely intended, though he says little to clarify his meaning. Very likely he was just taking over Mach’s positivist critique of Newton.

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Philosophy Defined

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Philosophy Defined

 

 

It is an embarrassment to philosophers that they cannot define their discipline. It makes them look like shady operators. I propose to alleviate their embarrassment by offering a succinct definition of philosophy.

            If you ask a physicist what physics is about, he will say that it is about physical reality, and you will learn what physics is. If you ask a psychologist what psychology is about, she will say that it is about the mind, and you will learn what psychology is. Similarly for geography, astronomy, botany, history, etc. But if you ask a philosopher what philosophy is about, you will not get such a straightforward answer—instead you will be subjected to vague mutterings about our conceptual scheme or incipient science or language or Being. You will rightly protest: “But what is it about?” The other disciplines can tell you what sector of reality they concern, but philosophy seems not have a specific sector to call its own—it seems to include both everything and nothing. This is theoretically unsatisfactory and bad PR. Every discipline is defined by the properties and relations that constitute its subject matter, but philosophy seems like the odd man out—the exception to the rule. What sector of reality does it take as its own? Don’t say “all sectors” because that is merely mystifying, and makes it look like it is all the disciplines added up, which it certainly is not.

            It used to be said, perhaps a touch defensively, that philosophy is about concepts (or possibly the language in which concepts are expressed): it deals with the property of having a concept and with relations between concepts. The trouble with this answer is that it makes philosophy sound like psychology, and as a consequence not about the world beyond the mind. We need to say what it is about concepts that renders them of philosophical relevance. The answer might be returned: the analysis of concepts. Again, that is not entirely on the wrong track, but what kind of analysis? Isn’t analyzing psychological entities just more psychology (compare psychoanalysis). Similarly if we prefer to talk about language: what then makes philosophy differ from linguistics? What kind of analysis characterizes philosophy? The obvious answer is logical analysis. But this formulation describes the method of philosophy not its subject matter (imagine a physicist saying “physics is about the analysis of matter”). I propose that we make the obvious amendment: philosophy is about logical reality—as physics is about physical reality. That is the sector of reality with which philosophy is essentially concerned—the logical sector. The use of the word “reality” in this style of answer is intended to contrast the concern of the practitioner with such things as the concerns of a fiction writer: the scientist is concerned with reality not fantasy (like the science fiction writer). So the philosopher, being a sober factual type, is concerned with a certain part of reality—the part I am calling “logical”. Thus when asked what philosophy is about the philosopher can answer simply, “Philosophy is about logical reality”—as physics is about physical reality, psychology is about mental reality, history is about historical reality, etc.

            Of course this short answer will not put an end to all questions, just as the comparable answer for other disciplines may well prompt further questions. We will need to say what we mean by “logical”, as the physicist needs to say what he means by “physical”. The correct answer, though not perhaps the best pedagogically, is that logical reality consists of all the relations of entailment, consistency, and inconsistency that exist. An example might help: the philosophical problem of free will concerns whether free will logically implies determinism or indeterminism. Thus we have compatibilists and incompatibilists debating the logical relations between free will and these other concepts. Some say free will rules out determinism, some say the two are compatible, and some say that free will logically implies determinism. Philosophy therefore differs from psychology and physiology when it comes to acts of will, being concerned with a logical question. Here are some other examples chosen more or less at random. Does the mind entail the body or are the two logically separable? How are sense experience and material objects logically related? Is knowledge logically compatible with non-conclusive evidence? How are mind and behavior logically related? Are truth and meaning logically connected? Do descriptive propositions ever entail ethical propositions? Does identity of reference entail identity of sense? Do modal propositions entail the existence of possible worlds? Do general terms logically imply abstract universals? Does death entail the end of the soul? Does survival of persons require identity through time? Are causation and constant conjunction mutually entailing? These questions are the stuff of philosophy and they all concern what I am calling logical reality; so our definition of philosophy looks to be on the right lines.

            There can be different theories of logical reality: some say it involves concepts, some say it is a matter of words, others say that it is about reality itself (this is my position). Never mind: philosophy is about whatever logic is about. Note that I am adopting a very broad notion of logic here—certainly not restricted to standard propositional and predicate calculus. Logic in the broad sense includes any type of consequence relation—entailment in the most capacious sense (but it has to involve necessity). What is important is that this sector of reality exists and can be studied. In addition to physical objects, psychological subjects, biological forms, historical epochs, and geological strata, there is a realm of logical relations along with their relata (whatever we determine these to be). Let’s adopt for the nonce full-blooded realism about this sector: there is an objective mind-independent logical reality into which we can inquire.  Like other regions of reality it can be difficult to penetrate, presenting puzzles and mysteries, and be capable of leading us up the wrong track (some have said that our ordinary language distracts us from its actual nature). So we might want to preface our answer to the question of what philosophy is by remarking, “Well, there is something called logical reality, which is a genuine part of what there is, though there are debates about its nature…and philosophy studies that”. It might help to soften the inquirer up by saying a few words about mathematics or even logic itself (i.e. the subject of a typical logic course). But don’t spend too long on these preliminaries, just blurt it out without hesitation and in a confident no-nonsense voice: “Philosophy is the study of logical reality”. This should obviate the shady operator suspicion and pave the way for a healthy and fruitful discussion.  It is also entirely accurate.

            One nice feature of this definition is that it does justice to the breadth of philosophy: philosophers talk about everything, though from a specific point of view. For everything has entailments, logic being universal. For instance, if you are investigating the logic of identity, you will be dealing with everything that exists, since everything is self-identical. This gets philosophy a reputation for being “abstract”, dubiously airy-fairy: but you should resist this idea. Philosophy has a perfectly solid subject matter, given that logical reality is real: entailment is as real as the things it relates. We investigate it by employing the faculty of reason, not the sense organs, but that doesn’t detract from its reality (compare mathematics). Reasoning is the method whereby logical relations are exposed. There is thus no objection to rephrasing our definition as follows: “Philosophy is the study of rational structure”. Logic deals with what is rational, so philosophy is concerned with the domain over which rationality operates. I prefer the blunter “logical reality” for reasons of rhetoric, but “rational structure” can be offered as a useful gloss (but beware of its psychologistic connotations). In any case, the general conception is consonant with the generality of philosophy. But this is not an indication that philosophy has no subject matter to call its own, only that its specific subject matter extends over all of reality (in this sense philosophy is a “higher-order” discipline). We might picture philosophy as lying alongside the other sectors of reality studied by the various disciplines, so that we have such philosophical topics as philosophy of history, philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics, philosophy of knowledge, etc. It is not that philosophy somehow includes these other subjects (it is not history, psychology, physics, etc.); rather, it studies the logical relations into which these various subject matters enter. It studies, for example, the logical relations between physics and biology or history and psychology (as well as logical relations existing within those disciplines).       

            What are the paradigms of philosophy as so conceived? I hesitate to single certain philosophers out because that may suggest a tendentious picture of the discipline, but Frege and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus make good examples. Consider Frege’s apparatus of sense and reference, of objects and functions, and Wittgenstein’s vision of reality as a logical space fixed by logical language. The world is depicted as a logical structure into which we may inquire. At the other extreme we have Hegel’s dialectical theory of the logic of history, or Sartre’s investigation of being and nothingness (consciousness entails a “nothingness at the heart of being”). Husserl’s Logical Investigations deals with the logical structure of mental acts. Grice’s work tells us that conversational implicature does not entail logical implication. Quine assures us that a behaviorist view of meaning entails indeterminacy. Kripke contends that names don’t imply descriptions. Rawls argues that justice entails fairness. And so on. A philosopher is always concerned with what follows from what, and what does not follow. Problems arise when reflecting on our knowledge of the world—logical problems—and we strive to solve these problems by reasoning. We try to get a clear view of logical reality (whether bewitched by language or not).

            Philosophy so understood is not confined to mere description. It can be revisionary, even radically so. There may be hidden implications that undermine parts of common sense or even science. There may be lurking paradoxes that call whole areas of thought into question. Such is the way of skepticism: if we examine the logical nature of knowledge we see that it is inconsistent with many of our knowledge claims—it implies certainty where none is to be had. Truth may turn out to entail its own negation, as in the semantic paradoxes. Modality may imply an unacceptable metaphysics. So logical reality may diverge from the way it seems to us in common sense, requiring revisions in our conceptual scheme (maybe free will turns out to be impossible given its entailments). Logical reality may be difficult to discern, and not what we expect: so there is nothing quietist about this conception of philosophy.

            If philosophy is about logical reality, it is centrally about linkages—its focus is on connection. It wants to know how things hang together, or fail to. It is always interested in how things are related, joined or disjoined. But it is not concerned with physical or psychological linkages, but with logical linkages. In the philosophy of free will, for example, the concern is less on free will itself as on how it is related to determinism (or indeterminism)—how are these things linked? Likewise we want to know about the linkage between mind and body—whether the mind logically precludes emergence from the body or not. So philosophical acumen largely consists in the detection and articulation of such logical linkages—in seeing what follows and does not follow. That’s what you’ve got to get good at. That’s what you’ve got to be interested in. The philosopher is a linkage enthusiast, an artist of logical connection (scientist too).

            It is tediously repeated that philosophy used to include the sciences till they found their independence, and that the rest of philosophy will eventually go that way, disappearing up its own success. But if what I have said here is correct, this will not happen; and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the subject to think that it will. For philosophy is concerned with the linkages that constitute logical reality, and no other discipline is so concerned. Just as logical reality will never collapse into other areas of reality, so philosophy will never be replaced by the disciplines that study those other areas.  [1]

 

C

  [1] This essay is meant to complement my Truth By Analysis: Games, Names, and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2012).

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Philosophy As Biology

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Philosophy as Biology

 

 

In the 1960s linguistics took a biological turn with the work of Lenneberg and Chomsky.  [1] Language was held to be genetically fixed, a species universal, just like the anatomy of the body. It is a biological aspect of human beings, not something cultural or learned, more like digestion than chess. Language evolved, became encoded in the genes, and is present in the brain at birth. Since linguistics is properly viewed as a branch of psychology, according to these theorists, this means that part of psychology is also biological, not something separate from and additional to biology. But then it is reasonable to ask whether more of psychology might fall under biological categories; and succeeding years saw psychology as a whole taking a biological turn. Many of our mental faculties turn out to have biological origins and forms of realization in the organism. Indeed, learning itself must be genetically based and qualifies as a biological phenomenon: what an animal learns is part of its biological nature, not something set apart from biology. True, what is learned is not innate, but many things are not innate that are part of the natural life of the organism (e.g. a bee’s knowledge of the whereabouts of nectar). Dying by predation is not innate but it is certainly biological. Biology is the science of living things, and living things learn as part of their natural way of life. In any case, psychology turned from cultural conditioning to biological naturalism; it became evolutionary. How could it not given that minds evolved along with bodies? The mind of an organism is part of its nature as a living thing; it doesn’t exist outside the sphere of biology (as the soul was supposed to). The organism is a psychophysical package.

            The basic architecture of language is thus a biological architecture. Syntax is an organic structure; the lexicon is a biological system too. When we study these things we are studying the properties of an organism, just like its other biological properties. They had an evolutionary origin in mutation and natural selection, and they have a biological function (probably to enhance thought, as well as serve in communication). One of the organs of the body, the brain, serves as the organic basis for language, as the heart serves as the basis for blood circulation. So linguistics (descriptive grammar) is not discontinuous with biology but part of biology.  [2] It had conceived itself differently, perhaps out of a feeling that language raises us above the level of the beasts, but in these post-Darwinian times it should be relegated to biological science. Freud had made similar moves in affective psychology; the biological school in linguistics was moving in the same general direction. This broke down the old dualism and established the study of language as a department of biology, even when it came to the fine structure of grammar.

            This is an oft-told tale (though still not without its detractors), but it has not yet colonized the entire intellectual landscape. Recently there has been a movement to classify consciousness as a biological phenomenon: it too is innately determined and biologically functional. Organisms have consciousness the way they have blood and bile—as a result of biological evolution and bodily mechanisms. It is not something supernatural, an immaterial infusion. That certainly seems of a piece with the biological naturalism that has dominated psychology in recent decades, but does it go far enough? Can’t we also announce that phenomenology is a branch of biology? That is, the systematic phenomenology of Husserl is really a form of biology: the very structures of consciousness are biological facts. Husserl doesn’t suspend the natural sciences (the epoche); he promotes one of them. Phenomenology is the study of a biological aspect of the human mind (and bats have their phenomenology too), just as linguistics is the study of a biological aspect of the human mind (and bees have their language too). When Sartre characterizes consciousness as nothingness and explores its modalities he is doing biology, because consciousness is a biological phenomenon—evolved, innately programmed, functional, and rooted in tissues of the body. To be sure, it is not reducible to other biological facts (such as brain structures); it is a biological fact in its own right. But it is a biological fact nevertheless—part of the life of a living thing. Its essence is nothingness, as the essence of the heart is pumping and the essence of the kidneys is filtering. It has a certain natural architecture, established by the genes, in both humans and animals. We certainly don’t choose its essence. In so far as consciousness exhibits universals (intentionality, qualia, transparency), those are biological universals, like the universals of human grammar. Phenomenology thus belongs with psychology as a branch of biology. Biology deals with living things–as opposed to physics, which deals with non-living things—and the mind is an aspect of life. Husserl could have cited Darwin (correctly understood): The Origin of Species of Consciousness. This is not biological reductionism, simply the acknowledgment that biology extends beyond the body. It is not that religion takes up where biology leaves off.

            I take it I am not shocking the reader unduly. Isn’t this all part of our current secular scientific worldview? Biology by definition encompasses the life sciences, and linguistics, psychology, and phenomenology are all parts of the life sciences. Speaking, thinking, and experiencing are all modes of living—what living things do (some of them). They are, as Wittgenstein would say, aspects of our “form of life”, part of our “natural history”. Maybe we need to expand our conception of biology beyond the typical curriculum, but it is not difficult to see that these aspects of our nature properly belong to biology, broadly conceived (certainly not to the physical sciences). However, I now wish to assert something that may strike readers as pushing it just a bit too far: philosophy too is a branch of biology. I don’t say this because I think philosophical questions reduce to biological questions; I say it because of the methodology of philosophy. We hear about the “linguistic turn” in philosophy—using the study of language as a means of arriving at philosophical conclusions about ground-floor questions. But given the biological turn in linguistics this implies that philosophy has already turned into a branch of biology. Language is a biological phenomenon and it is held to be the foundation of philosophy, so philosophy is based on a sub-discipline of biology. If the logical form of sentences is deemed central to philosophy, then it is the form of a biological entity that is in question. Logical form, like syntax, is an aspect of an evolved and biologically based entity—the architecture of a biological trait of humans. If speech acts are deemed central, then this aspect of living things will assume methodological importance—as opposed to acts of reproduction or respiration or excretion. The combinatorial power of language has rightly received considerable attention, but this too is an evolved biological trait. The biological turn in linguistics combined with the linguistic turn in philosophy together imply the biological turn in philosophy.

            But what if we reject the linguistic turn? What was it a turn from? Mainly it was a turn from a more direct investigation of concepts. But investigating concepts is also investigating a biological phenomenon. Let me put it bluntly: a concept is a living thing. A concept is like a cell of the mind (and note that biological cells were so called because of their resemblance to the living quarters occupied by monks). Concepts are the units that make up thoughts and other mental states, as words make up sentences. Concepts have functions, they evolved, and they are rooted in organic structures of the brain. So when we study concepts philosophically we are studying entities as biological as blood cells or enzymes. We scrutinize these things for their philosophical yield, not for their contributions to biology as such, but they are still biological entities. To be sure, we are interested in their content not their physiology, but having content is just another biologically fixed fact about them. Even if you think concepts are acquired by abstraction, they are still entities that exist in the context of a living organism (like big muscles or manicured nails). Conceptual analysis is the dissection of a biological entity; it is not the examination of a disembodied abstract form. There might be such forms, but they must be reflected in the natural traits of organisms at some level. We have no trouble recognizing that an animal’s concepts are biological forms; human concepts are not different in kind. Bee philosophers can reflect on their bee concepts (or turn their attention to bee language), and human philosophers are in the same case—reflecting on their biologically given traits.  [3] How they do that must also be rooted in biology, but the important point is that thinking is a biological fact; and in so far as philosophy concerns itself with “the structure of thought” it is a biological enterprise. The results don’t concernbiological matters, as opposed to matters in the world at large, but the method involves surveying a certain class of biological entities. Analyzing a concept is analyzing a living thing—as much a living thing as any organ of the body. Our intellectual faculties are indisputably aspects of our life as organic beings, and concepts are just their basic components—as cells are the basic components of bodily organs. It follows that philosophy is (a branch of) biology. Philosophy could be called conceptual biology.

            I want to emphasize how biological concepts are. First, they arise through the evolutionary process (though we have little understanding of how this happened). Second, they are manufactured during embryonic development as a result of genetic realization (or if you think they are acquired later, it is by biological means, e.g. abstraction). Third, they have a biological function—to enable thought, which enables rational action. Fourth and crucially, they must be realized in some neural mechanism that enables them to have their characteristic features, chief among which is their combinatorial powers. The neurons must be able to hook up with other neurons so as to produce complex thoughts; and this hooking up must respect the logical relations inherent in thought (it’s not just a matter of brute aggregation). There must be a physiology of thinking, and specific to thinking. So concepts cannot somehow float above the biological substructure; they depend upon it. Presumably this implies some sort of hidden structure to concepts analogous to the hidden structure of the cell (nucleus, mitochondria, etc.) Concepts are biological through and through. So if they are what philosophy investigates philosophy is up to its ears in biology. It would be different if philosophy could pursue its interests without recourse to concepts, say by simply looking at the extra-conceptual world, but that idea is hopelessly wide of the mark. And even if you think that someparts of philosophy require no reference to concepts, much of it clearly does (the parts that expressly analyze concepts, in particular). Philosophy is thus one of the life sciences and should be understood as such. There are the sciences of the inorganic world—physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology—and there are the sciences of the organic world—zoology, biology, genetics, biochemistry: and within this broad grouping linguistics, psychology, phenomenology, and philosophy fall into the latter category. As I say, this is no form of biological reductionism or determinism, simply a taxonomic observation. It is making explicit what has been implicit since the time of Darwin.  [4]

            I want to end with a point about mathematics. The kinship between mathematics and philosophy has long been recognized; in particular, the status of mathematics as a non-empirical conceptual inquiry makes it similar to philosophy. So is mathematics also a department of biology? Well, if we view it as investigating the implications of basic mathematical concepts it presumably is, for the same reasons philosophy is. Mathematical concepts are products of evolution too, and they must have an underlying physiology. They too are living things. To the extent that mathematical concepts are part of the subject matter or method of mathematics, that subject is also fundamentally biological. Suppose mathematical ideas are innate, just as the classical rationalists supposed; then they must have evolved by mutation and natural selection, become genetically encoded, and matured in the individual organism’s brain to become the conscious entities we now know. Investigating these concepts is thus an exercise in biological exploration—discovering what these evolved traits have hidden in them. How they evolved we don’t know, but if they did evolve then mathematics is another kind of life science, mathematics being part of human life. The concept of number, say, is part of our evolved form of life (quite literally). Counting is like speaking—a human universal. Mathematical theory is the spelling out of the mathematical concepts we inherited from out ancestors.

 

  [1] See Eric Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (1967) and Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (1968), and many other works.

  [2] The work of Ruth Millikan is also an instance of the biological turn in linguistics and psychology, to be set beside Lenneberg and Chomsky. The biological concept she emphasizes is function as distinct from innateness. 

  [3] No one would doubt that the study of bee language belongs to biology (zoology to be precise), but it took some persuasion to get people to accept that human language is part of human biology (zoology). If bees had philosophers it would be clear enough that these philosophers are studying a biological phenomenon—bee language or bee thought. Is it that there is resistance to the very idea of human biology?

  [4] In retrospect we can see the work of Locke and Hume (among others) as a form of human biology: they undertook a naturalistic study of the human mind, turning away from scholastic essences and the like. If they had known about Darwin, they might have welcomed the biological naturalism inherent in his work.

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Philosophical Economics

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Philosophical Economics

 

 

Economics tells us that an economic transaction involves the sale (or exchange) of “goods and services”. This phrase invites conceptual scrutiny. It is notable that an evaluative term is used to describe the commodities sold: goods are good.  [1] Services also are inherently valuable: you don’t perform someone the service of executing or robbing him (disservice, yes). What kind of good do goods possess? Not a moral good, evidently, since you can’t sellsomeone a moral act or benefit—that would nullify the morality of it. There are no shops where you can go and purchase a moral favor or pay for a moral obligation to be met. Moral goods are trans-economic. Altruism is not a commodity to be bought and sold, on pain of not being altruism. No, goods in the economic sense are goods forsomeone: an economic good is good for its recipient—it does the recipient some good. Thus food, furniture, flowers, and phones: they are purchased because of the personal benefits they afford. But are they really distinct from services? Aren’t all goods imbued with service? Typically, they are manufactured, or at least harvested or mined—they involve skilled human labor. They are not independent of human work, but an expression of it. So they are shaped by “service”, unlike volcanoes or seas or trees (unless cultivated). I would say that all economic goods involve service in this sense; they are not just lying around for anyone to pick up (why pay for them then?). Goods imply services. But what about vice versa? A service is a type of human action with a certain result deemed desirable—say, a massage or a waiter bringing food. But don’t these involve goods? The goods would be muscular therapy and relaxation via pressure, or food being on the table. A teacher supplies the good of information while performing the service of teaching.  A lawyer provides the good of contracts. A doctor provides the good of health by prescribing medicine. Something worthwhile results from the service provided: these are the goods we purchase. A service is no use unless it produces a tangible good. So services involve goods. If someone provides you the service of fixing your fence, he has at the same time given you something good—an intact fence. There is no separating goods and services; there is no essential duality here. There are not two types of entity in an economic transaction, but a mixture of the human act and natural raw material. Conceptually, we could unite goods and services under a single heading—say, “products”. People sell products of different types, which might be called “goods and services”. Goods come modified by service, and services are mingled with goods.

            What is it that we are ultimately purchasing when we engage in an economic transaction? What is it that we desire when we hand over money? Is it other people’s actions and the physical things they produce? No, what we are purchasing are states of mind—that is the point of the whole transaction. If actions and things had no impact on our state of mind, we would have no interest in buying them. We buy things for pleasure, security, pride, company, joy, excitement, comfort, satisfaction, etc.  [2] That is what we are ultimately purchasing—goods and services are just the means to achieve these desirable states of mind. Economic value is psychological value. We could summarize this list by saying that we are buying happiness (though this concept is obscure and includes many disparate psychological states). And what do we offer in return? We hand over money obviously, but why does the vendor want our money? To buy happiness, of course: money is what we use to buy goods and services that produce (we hope) happiness. So we buy happiness by offering happiness in return (this is even more obvious when bartering is involved). An economic transaction is thus an exchange of (hoped for) happiness, i.e. psychological states deemed desirable. An economic system, such as capitalism, is a means of generating and exchanging happiness. Goods and services are happiness-vehicles, external means to an internal end. The price of a product is ultimately determined by the happiness it can produce in the purchaser. The entire material substructure is a just a means to allocate happiness through economic activity. The basic commodities are states of mind. The speech act that defines economic exchange is: “I will give you this happiness if you will give me that happiness”. The thing about goods that is good is precisely their effect on mental states—they improve psychological wellbeing. For example, if I exchange with you a guitar for a surfboard, I have traded one sort of happiness for another, giving you happiness in return—the happiness associated with a guitar or a surfboard. There would be no point in the exchange otherwise. Thus economics is psychology in a very direct sense—it is trading in mental states.

            Interestingly, no animals operate with an economic system, despite having quite sophisticated mental abilities (such as mind-reading). Animals don’t buy goods and services from each other, though they may exchange goods and expect favors in return. The concept of money is alien to the animal mind. Presumably humans developed economies at some specific period of history, where there was none before. How that happened is shrouded in mystery, but clearly it requires sophisticated social consciousness. When do children begin to understand economic exchange? Economies are biological adaptations with biological payoffs and must have arisen by mutation and natural selection. Perhaps we have an innate economics module in our brain (“the economic gene”). It sits next to our theory of mind module. It requires a tacit understanding of how minds work and how they relate to the material environment, as well as an appreciation of evaluative concepts. Economic transactions now constitute a large part of human interactions, and they shape the way we think of others (perhaps too much). We are always thinking of how to improve our state of mind by entering into economic exchanges with other people, which requires thinking about their state of mind too. We monetize the mind—put a price on it.

            It is useful to keep these points in mind when running a business. We need to remind ourselves of what we are really buying and selling—what the true meaning of the phrase “good and services” is. It isn’t the object as such that is important but its effect on the consumer—what good it will do for the consumer, psychologically speaking. It is the meaning of the product that matters. And it isn’t just what is really good for the customer that counts but what the customer believes is good: if the customer doesn’t think that something genuinely good is really good, he or she will not buy it. This is why persuasion is always part of a functioning economy. Savvy advertisers know this very well, so they draw attention to the psychological benefits to be derived from a particular product—not its physical characteristics. A successful business must therefore be psychologically astute and psychologically attuned. It should also have a clear philosophical understanding of what it is up to.

 

  [1] We speak of “dry goods” but we don’t speak of “wet goods”. Why?

  [2] We also buy things to protect our lives, but we only value our lives because of the states of mind they make possible.

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Phenomenological Ignorance

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Phenomenological Ignorance

 

 

We can’t know what it’s like to be a bat. This is an instance of a more general truth: no one can grasp the nature of experiences that are radically different from their own. We can grasp the nature of experiences similar to our own, but we can’t grasp experiences that are qualitatively different from ours. We are ignorant of phenomenological facts that diverge from our own. Bats can know what it’s like to be a bat, and so presumably can dolphins, which employ a similar echolocation sense; but beings that have no such sense are in the dark about the experiences involved. It is the same story for the congenitally blind: they can’t know what it’s like to see—as the deaf can’t know what it’s like to hear, or the pain-free to understand what pain is, or the nasally challenged to appreciate smells, or the emotionless to know what anger is. In the realm of the phenomenological there are sharp constraints on what is knowable and by whom. You can’t even know what it’s like to experience red if you have only experienced blue. This is an epistemic limitation—a limitation on what can be known, understood, or grasped. It is not an absolute limitation—a reflection of the intrinsic nature of the fact in question—since it can be overcome by creatures that happen to participate in that fact; it is a relative limitation—X can’t be known by Y (though it can be known by Z). It isn’t universal ignorance but creature-relative ignorance.

            The question I am concerned with is why such ignorance exists: what is its explanation? We have a kind of extrapolation problem: how do I move from knowledge of my own phenomenology to knowledge of the phenomenology of others? It appears that I can do this when there is similarity, but not when there is (radical) difference. My ability to extrapolate is blocked by dissimilarity. The question is why such extrapolation limitations exist. To see the problem let us review some cases in which there are no such extrapolation restrictions. Consider geometry: are we limited only to knowledge of shapes we have encountered? Are alien geometries incomprehensible to us? We have certainly not experienced all possible polygons, so what about those that lie beyond our geometrical experience? Here the answer is obvious: we are not so limited. To simplify, suppose a person never to have experienced rectilinear figures but only curvilinear ones, so that he has never seen a triangle (say). Does that mean he can’t understand what a triangle is? No, it can be explained to him perfectly well and he will thereby understand the word “triangle”. So while we can’t grasp a type of experience we have never encountered in ourselves, we can grasp a type of geometrical figure we have never encountered in the perceptible world. We can extrapolate in the latter case but not in the former. We don’t have acquaintance-restricted knowledge in geometry, but we do in phenomenology. There are gaps in our understanding where experience is concerned, but not where shapes are concerned. It is the same for animal species: you don’t need to have seen an elephant to know what an elephant is (or a bat). Elephants can be described to you, pictured, and imagined; and they don’t need to be similar to animals you have seen with your own eyes. You know what an animal is and you understand what kind of animal an elephant is by description. But you don’t know what kind of experience a bat has even though it has been described to you (based on echoes, having such and such brain correlates, etc.). Also: suppose you had never heard of odd numbers, having been brought up only to deal with even numbers. That would not prevent you grasping the concept of an odd number once someone explained it to you. There are no irremediable gaps in our grasp of numbers analogous to the gaps in our grasp of phenomenology. Likewise, our knowledge of astronomy is not limited by the extent of our acquaintance: we grasp the concept of remote and alien galaxies without ever experiencing them. But our general concept of experience doesn’t enable us to fill in the gaps in our acquaintance with experience: we can’t say, “Oh, bat experience is simply this” and feel that we know what we are talking about. Our knowledge of phenomenology is thus gappy in a way our knowledge of other things is not. We can’t use a form of induction to extrapolate to types of experience that we have not ourselves directly (introspectively) encountered. The question is why. And the question should seem pressing, because the epistemic limitation is so anomalous and local—in general, there are no such limitations on knowledge.  [1] It is surprising that we don’t know what it’s like to be a bat.

            We must canvas some putative explanations. One possible explanation is that experiences concern the mind, while the other cases I mentioned concern the non-mental world. But this explanation is inadequate because (a) some facts about the mind are not so limited and (b) there are facts about physical objects that are subject to the same limitation. I can understand what beliefs you have even though they are quite alien to me—their odd content isn’t an obstacle to my knowledge; and I can’t grasp a color that I have not seen if it is different from any I have seen. Color blindness will result in color ignorance, even though colors are perceptible properties of physical objects; but my unfamiliarity with crazy conspiracy theories isn’t an impediment to my knowing what weird belief is in question. So the epistemic limitation we are interested in isn’t just a reflection of a general truth about knowledge of the mind versus knowledge of non-mental things. But even if it were such an instance that would not answer our question, because that question would now shift to the more general question: how come we can extrapolate about things outside the mind but not things inside the mind? What is the source of that difference?

            A more promising suggestion is that the realm of experience is simply less homogeneous than the realm of the physical (to speak loosely), so that it would involve greater cognitive leaps to extrapolate across this realm. Geometry is about essentially similar things while phenomenology includes very diverse things. But by what criterion is bat experience so different from (say) visual experience while circles and squares are deemed essentially similar? The concept of similarity will not bear this kind of weight. Some people have urged that bat experience is not really all that different from ours: it is a type of auditory experience for one thing, and for another it has many of the properties of visual experience (a distance sense used to navigate and locate objects in space). These points may be conceded while still insisting on the alien character of such experience: but then how are triangles and circles to be supposed more similar? One loses one’s grip on what notion of similarity is at issue here. There is really no objective basis for distinguishing the cases; the difference arises rather from our mode of knowledge in the two cases. The phenomenological realm is not objectively more diverse than the geometrical realm (or the mathematical realm or the zoological realm); it is rather that our method of knowing somehow differs—we find it easier to extrapolate in the one case than the other. But why is that?

            Along the same lines it might be said that we are actually just as limited in geometry as we are in phenomenology, because geometry also includes extreme knowledge-blocking diversity. Thus non-Euclidian geometry might be said to differ dramatically from Euclidian geometry—as radically as bat experience differs from human experience—so that it is impossible to extrapolate from one to the other. Accordingly, we don’t really grasp non-Euclidian geometry, just as we don’t grasp non-human phenomenology. Since there is then no epistemological asymmetry between the cases, there is nothing to explain—no epistemological anomaly to account for. Alien geometry is as incomprehensible as alien phenomenology (and the same might be said for such things as irrational numbers or alien types of animal). The weakness of this position is that it is by no means clear that there is any epistemic limitation attending the allegedly alien types of fact. We do grasp non-Euclidian geometry (and irrational numbers and the platypus). So the epistemic asymmetry still exists in undiluted form. The puzzle thus persists as to what the basis of the asymmetry might be: why is it harder to know one thing than the other? What makes alien phenomenology peculiarly recalcitrant to understanding?

            Here is a completely different approach: alien phenomenology is like alien language. Humans are born with a specifically structured language capacity that prepares them for the particular languages they will encounter, but it is not suitable for the acquisition of languages with a different kind of structure. The human language faculty will not work to produce knowledge of alien grammars—as it might be, non-discrete elements that combine according to quite different grammatical principles from those of natural human languages (no recursion, for example); or don’t combine at all. It is dedicated and differentially structured, not an all-purpose learning device. If you place a human infant in a linguistic environment that is radically alien, she will not end up with knowledge of the language in question. Suppose bats were to speak such a language: the human child would not come to know its grammar and speak it like a native upon exposure to that language. Linguistic knowledge is thus subject to epistemic limitation as part of its innate character. At best a person might laboriously decipher the grammar of a radically alien language and speak it awkwardly and unnaturally—rather as someone might develop an abstract and unintuitive conception of bat experience. So the suggestion is that the reason we don’t grasp bat phenomenology is that our innate phenomenology module isn’t designed to extend to types of phenomenology that are alien to our own. That is, our innate knowledge of phenomenology is restricted to types of mind whose phenomenological “grammar” matches our own. It is not that alien grammars are objectively more difficult or complex than human grammar; it is just that there is a bias built into the human language module that favors one type of grammar over others. From an evolutionary point of view, it is important for us to have a solid grasp of our own minds (“theory of mind”), so we are genetically equipped with such knowledge; but there is no biological reason to have a solid grasp of bat minds, so lacunae there are acceptable. It is not as if there has been natural selection operating on humans to improve their grasp of bat psychology! Human phenomenological knowledge is domain-specific and geared to our environmental niche, so it is simply not designed to cover bats and their ilk.

            This theory of phenomenological ignorance has the look of what we are seeking, but it might be wondered whether it is strong enough to deliver the epistemic limitation that apparently exists. In the language case, as noted, it is possible in principle for us to overcome our innate bias and acquire knowledge of the grammar of an alien language, albeit laboriously; but is it possible in principle to come to know what it’s like to be a bat? Isn’t that limitation a lot harder to overcome? I don’t know the answer to this: I don’t know whether intensive training, especially during the sensitive periods of child learning, could yield intuitive knowledge of bat phenomenology. Certainly, given that the experiential modality is auditory, the building blocks are there, and maybe training in echo-navigation in the first few years of life could produce a sense of the structure and operations of bat experience (hearing aids would help). So the obstacle may not be insurmountable. Also, we can surely imagine beings that can’t overcome their linguistic bias and so can’t learn an alien language even in principle. So the cases might not be as all-or-nothing as they seem at first sight. The idea of an innate phenomenology module certainly seems intelligible enough, and it delivers an explanation of the puzzling asymmetry I have noted. Just as we have an innate module for our belief-desire theory of mind, so we have an innate module for our phenomenological theory of mind. We could have been born knowing what bat experience is like, as we are born knowing what human experience is like; but actually we aren’t and that produces the epistemic gaps in question. Our knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, and zoology is different, not being based on a selective module like the language faculty (or not as selective); but our knowledge of phenomenology is sharply constrained and not easily overcome (if at all). We are not, as they say, plastic when it comes to phenomenology.

            Notice that according to this theory it is not really correct to suppose that our knowledge of phenomenology is based on our acquaintance with our own experience. That is an empiricist theory of such knowledge analogous to empiricist theories of knowledge of the external world (we possess concepts by abstraction of properties from perceived particulars). But the nativist theory of phenomenological knowledge holds instead that we have such knowledge independently of acquaintance with our experiences. We know what experiential types are without any such operation of acquaintance and associated abstraction, but innately. So the problem isn’t that what we abstract from own experience doesn’t fit the experience of bats, but rather that we are not innately equipped with a faculty of knowledge that includes the knowledge in question. In short, we don’t know bat psychology innately. No doubt acquaintance plays a triggering role in the production of phenomenological knowledge, but it doesn’t play an originative role (as with other innate knowledge systems). Maybe even producing actual bat experience in us wouldn’t itself be sufficient to acquire knowledge of the nature of bat experience, because that requires the cooperation of an innate faculty of phenomenological knowledge geared to bat experiences, which is absent in humans. In any case, an empiricist theory of phenomenological knowledge is by no means to be assumed (if it’s false generally, why should it be true here?).  [2]

            I want to emphasize not so much the proposed solution as the problem it is designed to solve. We know there are phenomenological facts in the world with a nature we can’t grasp, though other beings can; this poses a problem of explanation. The case looks very different from other types of knowledge. It is a non-trivial question why this is so, raising some deep issues. It challenges conceptions of knowledge that have been long entrenched, notably how we know the nature of our own experiences. How exactly do I know what pain is, or experiences of red, or anger?

 

  [1] I don’t meant there are no other limits to knowledge, just that there are no limits of the kind we find with respect to phenomenology, i.e. extrapolation problems across a single domain.

  [2] It is an interesting fact that an empiricist theory of phenomenological knowledge is attractive even to people who are skeptical of an empiricist theory of knowledge of physical objects. I’m not sure why this is—is it because it is easy to conflate experience with knowledge of experience? In fact, actual bats may not know what it’s like to be a bat simply because they lack this kind of introspective knowledge, despite possessing the corresponding experiences.

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