Against ideology

As we watch economies fail and societies move into the more advanced stages of dysfunction and dissolution, there is a lot of political finger-pointing going on. Blame is typically assigned in such a way as not to upset one’s preferred political or economic narratives.

Targeting ideological enemies necessarily entails a labeling process. The terms used are normally vague and abstract but loaded with emotional content – positive for terms designating “us”, strongly negative for terms designating “them”. Though the abstractness of the terms in question may confer a veneer of intellectual seriousness, the communicational dynamic remains purely rhetorical. Meaning is reduced to connotation, the various “isms” and so on merely providing convenient ways of encapsulating ill-defined sets of attachments on the one hand and aversions on the other.

Political ideologies are real is the sense that they affect the way people interpret history and current events and motivate action but, incorporating as they inevitably do political myths and simplifying abstractions, they are quite useless as analytical tools. This is not to say, of course, that terms like fascism, corporatism, socialism, capitalism, etc. – qualified to distinguish different forms where necessary – cannot be a useful shorthand when they are used descriptively and in historically informed ways.

The trouble is, such terms are rarely used like this. More often than not they are used rhetorically: as tribal markers, as weapons of ideological combat.

I do not have a particular ideological position to which I am committed or which I am promoting. This is not for want of trying to discover or build one. After much study and thought, I have come to the conclusion that this desire to choose or construct a preferred ideology is ill-conceived.

It is quite unnecessary to have some kind of explicit social blueprint in mind. Better not to, in fact (for all sorts of reasons, most of them relating to the contingent and context-dependent nature of social and cultural interactions).

Part of my Ph.D. thesis was focused on the revival in the 1930s of the principles of economic liberalism and their development and application during the post-WW2 era. The broad aim of the self-styled “neoliberals” – mainly European thinkers – whose work I was writing about was to offer an alternative to totalitarianisms of the left and the right. This is a goal with which I was (and still am) sympathetic. But, as I say, I have come to believe that no abstract system or ideology is adequate to deal either with questions of ends (which involve crucial moral choices) or means. How is an abstract system supposed to mesh with the complexities of an historically evolved and evolving social structure? The old joke has the Irishman telling the stranger who asked for directions, “Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” It matters – a lot – where you happen to be.

Liberal institutions developed within – and were dependent on for their proper functioning – cultures which had certain common features. A certain kind of culture and a certain level of trust and moral attainment are prerequisites for liberal values and institutions to thrive. Those conditions no longer apply in the societies with which I am most familiar.

More on culture and language

I recently set out some of my basic beliefs and assumptions about what there is and about what makes a person.

"Biology and culture. Culture and biology. That’s not all there is, but – with the inorganic world within which biological organisms evolved and within which they exist – that’s enough to make a human being..."

And, in a recent podcast, I talked about Gottlob Frege's beliefs and assumptions about life and language, views which I endorse to a large extent. Frege saw human thought and language in fundamentally organic and holistic terms.

 

I am adding here a few general thoughts on culture and language. My sense is that these various fragments are compatible with one another and form (potentially at least) a more-or-less coherent whole.

Language is probably the most basic cultural element for two reasons: it bridges biology and culture in ways that other cultural elements do not; and it is the foundation or at least a sine qua non for the development of many other cultural forms and practices, from religion and politics to mathematics.

Culture is undoubtedly real but a culture is impossible to define in a precise way. The same applies to language and languages. Just as each of us deploys a unique linguistic system (idiolect) which is different in various ways – scope and details of lexicon, aspects of syntax, pronunciation, etc. – from the linguistic systems deployed by others within our language group, so each of us embodies a unique cultural mix.

This idea obviously relates to the idea of individualism and, I think, justifies taking individualism seriously as a potential way of dealing with social problems related to various kinds of identity politics and stereotyping.

Degrees of overlap vary between individuals but, because cultural elements are so diverse, there is no single measure of commonality. Some cultural elements are easily isolated and compared but most are not.

Take language. Though the idiolect notion is (in my opinion) central to any truly scientific approach to language, for practical purposes it is useful – necessary in fact – to distinguish between languages or dialects. This inevitably involves abstraction and simplification – but then so does most of our ordinary, day-to-day thinking.

Religion is another fairly clearly identifiable cultural element, at least in the sense that the churches and sects and religious movements of the modern world can be defined and demarcated in both social and doctrinal terms. Complications arise, however, when you start to look at how participating individuals envisage and justify their participation. Congregations may be gathered together physically, but each individual will have a unique perspective on what they are doing and why.

I am conceding that identifying and drawing cultural distinctions within certain defined areas is not only possible but inevitable and necessary. But defining and drawing these distinctions is difficult to do in a rigorous way. And, if one is talking about a culture in a general sense, that task becomes well-nigh impossible.

The notion of a national culture is particularly problematic. Where there can be said to be such a thing, it is of necessity imposed and artificial – in contrast to regional cultures, for example, which are shaped over long periods of time by local conditions and practices.

Generally, it makes more sense to talk of national myths and ideologies rather than national cultures, I think. Perhaps if one is looking at a fully-fledged totalitarian state in which the natural course of cultural history has been totally blocked or perverted by a central authority, leaving the population with no other culture than that which has been imposed upon them by their ideologically-driven overlords, you could talk about a national culture. But, even in such cases, pockets of resistance will inevitably arise, complicating the picture.

Ideology and political myth, I am saying, need to be distinguished from (and are always in tension with) the more spontaneous and organic forms of thought and action which derive from the activities of small groups, families and individuals pursuing their personal goals.

On the scope and limits of science

Attempts to express a comprehensive personal view of the world are doomed to failure. Each of us has a view of the world; some such views are more developed and plausible than others. But language (even supplemented with other modes of expression) is simply not equipped to articulate the complex and shifting set of values and beliefs which creates and lies behind the way a particular individual sees and interprets the world.

What we can do is to express our views on and reactions to particular topics and particular things. What we can’t do is to tie it all together and articulate the whole, even in general terms.

There are a number of ways of looking at this. You could see it in terms of underlying logical coherence, for example. If a view of things had such coherence, it could be articulated accurately and concisely, at least in general terms. (1) But, given the fact that conscious reasoning constitutes only a minuscule portion of cognitive activity, there is no reason to expect – and every reason not to expect – that a person’s outlook on the world, with all its implicit value assessments, etc., would have anything like the degree of underlying logical coherence which would be necessary for its satisfactory articulation in linguistic terms.

Another way of looking at this is in terms of frameworks. A particular context is always required to provide a foundation for any statement or claim, and there is no general or generic context to which we can appeal. The broader the context, the less we can usefully (or even meaningfully) say. The danger here is that one gets lost in virtually meaningless abstractions and generalizations.

The most powerful forms of self-expression via written language are literary, and good writing in a literary sense is marked by specificity and concreteness and attention to the details of lived experience. Generalized claims and abstractions play only a minor role.

The impulse to express a comprehensive view has traditionally manifested itself in religious and philosophical contexts. But, as ways of understanding the world, modern scientific disciplines (including historical disciplines) have largely replaced religion and traditional metaphysics. You want to know about some specific thing? Go to the experts. Unfortunately, there are no experts to go to if you want answers to substantive questions about values or about the significance of human life, for example.

Individually we need to be committed to a set of values and beliefs in order to live. There is a huge range of possible belief and value systems, but an individual’s social and cultural environment narrows the possibilities somewhat. Beyond embracing the best available cultural elements (as one sees them) and applying principles of practical wisdom and commonsense, there is not a lot more one can do, other than ensuring that – as far as possible – one’s beliefs are compatible with scientific and scholarly knowledge.

It has become clear over time that scientific, empirical, formal and analytical methods represent the only reliable ways we have of building an objective or value-neutral communal knowledge base. Unlike our culturally-driven (and so values-driven) individual perspectives, this knowledge base is not only able to be articulated, it only exists to the extent that it has been articulated. It is necessarily public knowledge. (I use the word knowledge, but all claims are subject to challenge within the context of the disciplinary processes involved.)

Even here, however, the knowledge in question does not constitute a single thing or a unified structure, and so cannot be expressed concisely or in a unified way.

The term “edifice” is sometimes used to describe our communal knowledge base, but this metaphor is very misleading. In fact, it seems to me that one of the most significant things about human knowledge which the history of science and rigorous scholarship clearly demonstrates is its diverse and distributed nature. It is something of an irony therefore that champions of a scientific view of the world so often fall into the trap of seeing knowledge in unified terms.

Otto Neurath, who represented what might be called the radical wing of the logical positivist movement, was for many years the most prominent promoter of the notion of the Unity of Science. He clashed repeatedly with moderate figures in the movement such as Louis Rougier who strenuously rejected the notion, seeing in Neurath’s campaign an attempt to promote a creed, a new orthodoxy. Neurath’s view was an updated version of well-known 19th-century attempts to create a scientific socialism, and it was quite as censorious and illiberal as traditional religious orthodoxies, if not more so.

The attempt to promote a scientific creed continues to this day, of course, driven by a combination of arrogance and ignorance of intellectual history. But there is a difference between having a basically scientific view of the world and making science into some kind of creed or orthodoxy.

Things have changed in the arts and in non-scientific intellectual circles in recent decades, but not so long ago many of the greatest writers and artists and non-scientific thinkers had a very positive view of science, or at least accepted the general findings of mainstream science and rigorous scholarship. This is sometimes forgotten, partly because many of these writers and thinkers are currently out of fashion but partly also because the scientific or science-accepting side of many currently fashionable thinkers (Nietzsche comes to mind) is being downplayed.

As I see it, the fruits of science and scholarship belong to us all even though, as individuals, our actual knowledge is necessarily limited. Strangely enough, practicing scientists and scholars – because of the extreme degree of specialization which is required today – are no more likely to have a satisfactory general understanding than the interested observer, and the amateur will often have more time and energy than the specialist to devote to wide reading and to considering the implications of what is known.

I still have a very high regard for leading thinkers in scientific fields, especially fields (like physics and biology) which deal with fundamental questions of the natural world which have a bearing on how one sees or conceptualizes human life. But the more one reads their popular books or blogs or listens to interviews or to panel discussions, the more obvious it becomes that the special insights of scientific specialists rarely go beyond the scope of their areas of expertise.

For most purposes, of course, specialist expertise is not required, and useful or interesting conclusions can be drawn from very basic kinds of knowledge. Such arguments and elaborations may (and should, in my opinion) still be rooted in a view of the world which respects the findings of mainstream science and other rigorous forms of intellectual inquiry, but any argument involving matters of human significance (and so human values) necessarily goes beyond science and our empirical knowledge base more generally.

Some such elaborations have been developed with a view to expressing in a systematic way a particular view of the world. These (if my thesis is correct) cannot succeed. I have in mind, in particular, the sort of metaphysical systematizing which was in vogue in Europe, especially during 19th century.

Under the influence of thinkers such as Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege, more analytic and narrowly focused approaches gradually came to prominence and largely replaced traditional metaphysics. This analytical strand of philosophical thinking was very different in nature to almost all philosophical thinking before it in that it sought to bring academic philosophy more into line with scientific, formal and rigorous empirical disciplines; in other words to separate once and for all philosophy as an intellectual discipline from more traditional notions which saw philosophy as (at least potentially) providing guidance for living. Both Frege and Russell saw themselves as men of science (in the old European sense of the term). Russell was particularly scornful of the idea that academic philosophy should deal in any way with what was (and still is) popularly known as a “philosophy of life.”

In his intellectual autobiography Russell described the sense of freedom and liberation that accompanied his rejection of the idealist metaphysics which dominated the intellectual world in which he grew up for a more empirically-based view of things. The case I am making here is very much in line with a Russellian view. (2)

A great strength of Bertrand Russell as a thinker is that he was always aware of the way our personal values play into our thinking. Much of his published work is journalistic and opinionated. Arguably his views on education and some social questions were quite misguided. His views on power and politics still stand up, I think. But my point is that he drew a clear distinction between his serious philosophical work (from which he sought entirely to exclude his personal values) and the rest.

My focus here, however, is not science or the nature of philosophy, but rather on the relationship between science (broadly interpreted) and human values. Any attempt to articulate a value-driven point of view takes us beyond a purely scientific or rigorously scholarly space, albeit not entirely beyond the reach of scientific and scholarly expertise.

Even in the realm of rhetoric and persuasion, where personal values hold sway, the compatibility of any given position with mainstream science and rigorous scholarship remains an important litmus test. If a position or point of view fails the test, it can be excluded from consideration. But – fortunately or unfortunately – the bar is fairly low here, and the test in question lets through a vast array of mutually incompatible points of view.

The perspective I am putting forward is based in part on a particular interpretation of recent Western intellectual history. Certain thinkers have influenced me more than others, and any elaboration or defense of these ideas would necessarily involve the historical aspect: arguments about particular thinkers and about the relative merits of different ways of identifying and framing the main questions. (3)

Nonetheless, let me try to sum up my key points in purely non-historical terms. As individuals we slowly develop (or allow the ambient culture to develop for us) a general perspective or view of the world. Such a perspective cannot be fully articulated or satisfactorily summarized. It could be seen to express itself (via words and actions) in countless choices. These choices are practical and action-oriented rather than theoretical. They are responses to particular situations. Whereas individual perspectives can never be articulated holistically, values-based points of view on particular issues (which are driven in large part by an individual’s general perspective) can be articulated. They may be falsifiable, but are not amenable to positive scientific or academic validation.


NOTES

1. There may be a parallel here with the way complexity is conceptualized in algorithmic information theory, i.e. in terms of the compressibility of strings or other kinds of data structure. Data can usually be compressed (to a greater or lesser extent), but arbitrary random data cannot.

2. I am also drawing on Karl Popper’s general views on knowledge and falsifiability. Many of Russell’s and Popper’s specific views have been called into question, of course, and/or developed in various directions. Russell (at least) welcomed this. He saw himself as having made his significant contributions relatively early in his life and looked to others (initially to Ludwig Wittgenstein, and later to the logical empiricists) to move things forward. It is often asserted that the logical positivist movement 1) failed and 2) deserved to fail because the core insights of its main representatives were profoundly misguided. I question both of these judgments. Some of the ideas which drove the logical positivists were misguided. I mentioned Neurath’s ideologically-driven approach, for example. But the basic principles and perspectives on the scope and nature of human knowledge expressed in the writings of more moderate figures within the movement (like Moritz Schlick, Hans Reichenbach and Louis Rougier) are sound, and I am optimistic that they will survive – at least in modified forms which reflect ongoing changes in the scientific and intellectual landscape.

3. Also, it is obvious that the general perspective on knowledge which I have been discussing (and defending) has social implications. Historically speaking, it has, by and large, been associated with anti-totalitarian social philosophies, and this is no accident. I would want to claim (though I am not attempting to make the case here) that such a perspective is naturally compatible with traditional liberal values and – if not strictly incompatible with – at least not supportive of extremist politics, either of the left or the right.

[This essay was first published under the title Self-Expression, Knowledge and Valueat The Electric Agora.]

The trivial isn't necessarily trivial

[Recently posted to my Google+ collection, Language, Logic, Life.]  At one point in John le Carré's early classic, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Alec Leamas, a British secret service agent, is staying on the Dutch coast, waiting for an important and fateful meeting. His thoughts turn to a woman who had looked after him when he had became ill in a rented room in London. Liz had been a member of the Communist Party in Britain and so technically opposed to Leamas's cause.

"... At about eleven o'clock the next morning [Leamas] decided to go out for a walk along the front, bought some cigarettes and stared dully at the sea.

"There was a girl standing on the beach throwing bread to the seagulls. Her back was turned to him. The sea wind played with her long black hair and pulled at her coat, making an arc of her body, like a bow strung towards the sea. He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England: it was the caring about little things – the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread for the seagulls or love, whatever it was he would go back and find it ..."

Le Carré seems to be suggesting that the real meaning of life is not to be found in causes and grand designs but in the mundane, apparently pointless details of ordinary life. It is very tempting to go along with this line of thinking.

Isaiah Berlin and passionate thinking

In my latest essay at The Electric Agora, entitled Passionate Thinking [you will find this and more material in my new (May 2016) Google+ Collection, Social and Political Reflections], I deal with the question of social and political values, briefly sketching out my own (changing) attitudes and alluding to the views of Isaiah Berlin.

Interestingly, Berlin started out as an analytic philosopher but was never really at home in that tradition of thought. He tends either to be ignored or scorned by most people I know, and it's entirely possible that he was somewhat overrated during his lifetime.

In a very amusing piece which I link to from my essay, Christopher Hitchens notes that he responded to claims that he was overrated by saying: "And long may it continue."

Good-humoured, witty, self-deprecating, very knowledgeable in certain areas and almost alarmingly articulate, Berlin was certainly a class act.

I think he was more than this, and his characteristic forthrightness was, if not a form of courage then at least the mark of a genuinely passionate thinker.

He was asked about the meaning of life not long before his death. His reply:

"As for the meaning of life, I do not believe that it has any: I do not at all ask what it is, for I suspect it has none, and this is a source of great comfort to me — we make of it what we can, and that is all there is about it. Those who seek for some deep, cosmic, all-embracing, teleologically arguable libretto or god are, believe me, pathetically deluded."

Such forthrightness is refreshing (though I personally don't see where the "comfort" is coming from).

The problem with much discourse in the humanities today is not only that is it not forthright or compelling, but that it is profoundly uncritical and conformist: ideologically driven but not ideologically engaged. Closed off, in other words, to other possibilities.

From my piece at The Electric Agora:

"[A]s there is no privileged cosmic libretto, so there is no privileged social or political one. Berlin's kaleidoscopic vision reflected this conviction also.

He was a complex man and [...] thinker. [...] Always opposed to fanaticism and revolutionary violence, he was fascinated by certain 19th-century radical thinkers (e.g. Herzen, Sorel). He was also a Zionist of sorts, but he distanced himself both from the secular zealots and their Orthodox counterparts. His vision was clearer than theirs, and his loyalty was ultimately to a broader constituency.

Loyalty is at the heart of things, both in personal and political life. The crucial question is: loyality to whom, or to what?

To certain values, first of all, I would say, values which one typically sees as being embodied in certain individuals or groups. What I have realized is the tenuousness of the link between values (which persist) and the individuals and groups with which these values are – often quite arbitrarily – identified.

I'm not saying that social ideals can exist in the abstract, apart from actual individuals and actual groups. But any such identification should never be more than provisional. There is a world of difference between taking sides in an ideologically open manner, which involves keeping one's critical senses alive, and taking sides in a merely political or social way so that the party or the nation or a particular ideology or ideologue becomes the cause."

Egos, ideology and science

Massimo Pigliucci has caused another stir by further distancing himself from the skeptic and atheist groups within which he originally came to public prominence, and by renewing his criticisms of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins in particular.

The trigger for his recent article was the publication of an initially private exchange on a political matter between Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky. Pigliucci criticizes Harris's behaviour (not without some justification) and sees it as typical of the so-called 'new atheists' who, in his eyes, are no longer serious intellectuals but rather publicity-seeking cult leaders. Or that's the general gist of it.

This whole business is confusing and not very edifying: the issues are obscured by personal sniping and perceived snubs, etc. It seems, for example, that one of the main targets of Pigliucci's wrath, Richard Dawkins, has not only been publicly dismissive of Pigliucci but also rude to him in person!

All this squabbling wouldn't matter but for one thing. At the heart of most of these disputes are important ideological and scientific questions -- and mixing the two is a recipe for disaster.

For example, Dawkins and Pigliucci are on the opposite sides of a debate about evolutionary theory: Pigliucci is firmly on the side of those who are committed to a so-called 'extended synthesis' -- basically replacing the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis with a much less gene-centred model. But the whole debate seems to be ideologically driven (as indeed it has been for decades, at least since the heyday of Stephen Jay Gould).

In my only published comment on Massimo's recent piece, I spoke in general terms about my concerns and made a reference to Chomsky (whom Massimo clearly sees as a role model, at least in terms of his politics).

I wrote (in part):

"... It's always a pity when partisan politics gets mixed up with science. (The science inevitably gets compromised.)

And it's also a pity when partisan politics-talk gets mixed up with science-talk. It can be great fun, of course -- reassuring, ego-boosting, etc... But unfortunately confusion tends to reign and this sort of discourse is not worth a lot in the scheme of things.

Chomsky is unusual (and admirable) in this respect: he maintains two distinct public personas and (unlike a lot of linguists, social scientists, etc.) keeps his politics quite separate from his work in linguistics. No hidden or half-hidden political agenda as far as I can see in his scientific work. (The universalist assumptions are upfront and not implausible.) Moreover, if you go to a Chomsky lecture -- or read an article by him -- on a linguistic topic, you're not likely to encounter any gratuitous political asides."

On semi-hidden agendas and the misuse of Gödel's theorems

An old friend of mine, a philosophy PhD with a background in literature and theology, told me that it was the work of Kurt Gödel which had drawn her to philosophy. She, like many others (including myself at one stage), saw his famous theorems as vindicating a non-reductionist and perhaps even religious view of the world.

I don't think this view is correct. A mythic narrative has been built up around Gödel's work which needs to be treated with great skepticism. Certainly his work could be seen to have decisively undermined one aspect of the so-called Hilbert program, but what reason was there to think it likely that a formalized version of arithmetic could be complete or have the necessary resources to prove itself consistent in the first place? And why does this matter so much anyway (except perhaps to mathematicians who might have been seeking a certain kind of certainty or security or self-containedness for (fundamental parts of) their discipline)?

I concede that there are many deep and interesting questions which work by Gödel and others (Turing, Church, Post, et al.) opens up in metamathematics, computer science and other areas. But I question its relevance (or at least its direct applicability) to general human questions.

I say these things to give a sense of my general stance and it is not my intention here to elaborate or defend a comprehensive point of view. Rather, I just want to sketch out my reaction to some posts at Scientia Salon by Marko Vojinovic whose PhD is in theoretical physics but whose interests appear to be largely philosophical. In January a two-part essay of his appeared which uses Gödel's work in what I see as an inappropriate way. [Part I here and Part II here].

Initially I was going to write a more harshly anti-Vojinovic piece but, rereading the pieces and some comments and responses I have tempered my original views somewhat. On a personal level, I think I would like Vojinovic. He writes well and engages readily with his critics, often in a disarming way. He is clearly intelligent and knowledgeable and interested in interesting things.

Nonetheless it remains crystal clear that he has a (not particularly hidden) agenda. In fact his contributions to SciSal (including comments on posts by others) could be seen to provide (further) evidence in support of points I have made in the past about (sometimes hidden) ideological or religious agendas lying behind much philosophical discourse.

The basic pattern is a common one. One has a fundamental view of how things are which one has arrived at for unknown, obscure or unknowable reasons, and one deploys one's intellect and knowledge of science, maths, logic, etc. (i.e. one's expertise) to make a case for or defend the plausibility of one's intuitively held views.

On one level, this sounds fine. And it is fine. Conjectures and refutations. Popper et al.. We can't escape it. Much of science and philosophy and ordinary argument is like this, and that's okay.

But there's a continuum involved (or a multitude of personal continua). My point is that if religion and maybe some other kinds of ideological commitment are too strongly involved the whole process becomes problematic.

Certain aspects of my own personal history give me an insight into these issues. I used to be religious and, just like Duhem (a classic case if ever there was one), I felt that I had an epistemic head start on others because I knew that the true theories of science etc. had to be compatible with my beliefs and, plainly, many popular theories and interpretations were not. Moreover, I was strongly motivated to argue my case (for obvious reasons). I even saw a career in academia (in philosophy, for example) as a possible way of promoting these ideas (and doing good, because the ideas were good and true).

When you are getting too close to the apologetics end of the continuum, expertise is deployed merely to serve the argument. And, as every high-school debater knows, any intelligent person can make a plausible-seeming case for any half-plausible proposition. In the light of these facts and, given the overwhelming amount of stuff out there which might call for our attention, lines just have to be drawn.

It's a personal thing, where one draws the line. I would exclude Pierre Duhem but include Popper (say) – despite the latter's belief in an essential truth underlying religion and his commitment to (something very like) Cartesian dualism – in my personal list of thinkers worth reading for not purely historical reasons.

So where does Marko Vojinovic's work lie on this continuum which runs from careful, exploratory argument to polemics and apologetics? His writing (at least at Scientia Salon) tends to the latter end of the spectrum, I would say. The essays are certainly tendentious.

In a September article at SciSal, he argued against determinism but his argument relied on so many contested assumptions that, even if his reasoning was valid, the soundness of the argument was far from assured. Vojinovic also claimed somewhat surprisingly – and very revealingly – that his conclusions "open[ed] the door for the compatibility between the laws of physics on one side, and a whole plethora of concepts like free will, strong emergence, qualia, even religion – on the other. But these are all topics for some other articles..."

Then, early in January, the two-part essay on reductionism and emergence appeared, with even more extravagant claims in the final paragraph, claims which one sympathetic commenter interpreted as "a tactical error".

Here is the final paragraph in its entirety:

"Giving up the idea of reductionism essentially amounts to accepting strong emergence as a fundamental property of Nature — a physical system might display behavior that is more than the behavior of the sum of its parts. Proponents of reductionism might find this at odds with their favorite ideology (physicalism, naturalism, atheism, etc.), but there are actual examples of strong emergence in Nature, the arrow of time being the most prominent one. It would be interesting to see how many people would actually agree to change their minds when faced with this kind of approach, as giving up reductionism generally weakens the arguments that a physicalist may have against dualism, a naturalist against the supernatural, an atheist against religion, etc. Philosophy teaches one to keep an open mind, while science teaches one to appreciate the seriousness of experimental evidence. When these two combine to demonstrate that certain parts of a physicalist/naturalist/atheist belief system are just unfounded prejudices, even downright wrong, it would be interesting to see how many people will actually give them up. After all, these are precisely the people who boast about both open-mindedness and the scientific method, and invoke them to criticize dualists/supernaturalists/theists. Now they are challenged with giving up one of their cherished beliefs, and I would like to see how truly open-minded and scientific they can be in such a situation."

Overall it seems clear that Vojinovic's philosophico-religious preoccupations have led him to deploy some very idiosyncratic definitions of key words and to make false (or at least very misleading) claims, claims which he has sometimes backed away from when challenged in the comments section – like the claim that his concerns were ontological rather than merely epistemic. (How can Gödel's work be used to make ontological claims if it is all about what we can know and what we can prove within the context of a formal system?)

I agree with those who call into question Vojinovic's use of Gödel's work (and in general the appropriateness of applying Gödel's ideas to scientific theories) and who talk about the red herrings, etc. which the author's use of Gödel has generated.* Gödel's results are specifically about what we can know and prove within certain strictly formal contexts, i.e. it's not about normal scientific thinking. You can axiomatise certain theories, sure, but such formal structures are entirely provisional from a scientific point of view and subservient in the end to empirical considerations.

In his enthusiasm to make his case, Vojinovic even appears to misrepresent Gödel's basic claims. He writes in a comment: "The moral of the [sic] Gödel’s theorem is that there is a difference between truth and provability, in a given axiomatic system. … Gödel’s theorem establishes the existence of statements that are (a) unprovable within a given axiomatic system, and (b) also “true” in that axiomatic system, given any notion of truth the axiomatic system may be compatible with."

"No," replies one commenter, "there is only one notion of truth in an axiomatic system. That is, provability from the axioms. Yes, there are unprovable statements in ZF [Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (in effect, first-order logic enhanced to encompass arithmetic: Gödel's original paper referred to Russell and Whitehead's system)]. Such a statement will be either undecidable or provably false. An undecidable statement is true in some models of ZF, and false in others. Gödel proved the existence of undecidable statements in ZF, assuming consistency of ZF. Those statements have a metaphysical interpretation in which they are true, but they are certainly not true in ZF, as Gödel proved that there are models of ZF in which they are false."

Conclusion: "Almost everything Marko says about Gödel is wrong."

Hyperbole perhaps. But the main point is that Vojinovic overreaches by trying to apply Gödel's findings to a hypothetical axiomatised 'final theory'. Science is never about certainty in the way logic or pure mathematics is about certainty – and doesn't aspire to this kind of certainly. This simple fact, I think, undercuts Vojinovic's whole argument.

Sure, the validity of arguments on scientific questions matters, but the primary focus is not on validity (as it is in logic, etc.) but on soundness. The axioms, in other words, must all be 'true' – and this is something we can never affirm with absolute confidence. They are always going to be provisional and revisable (in the face of new evidence); and the formal system or theoretical context in which they are embedded is likewise always going to be provisional, even if it functions successfully as – and so is thought to represent – a 'final theory'.



* "... Marko wants to prove that Weinberg’s reductionism is wrong. There are several problems. If Goldbach’s conjecture turns out to be undecidable, then why would that have any physical implications? And if it did, then some physical experiment ought to decide it, thereby eliminating the issue as any impediment to reductionism. So there is no actual connection between Gödel and reductionism, except to confuse readers with red herrings." [From Part II comment thread.]

Ideology and science

Science is not – nor can it be, in fact – immune to ideological influences. Sometimes such influences may have a positive effect, but it would be naive to believe that such factors do not have the potential to cause distortions also.

Scientists, like anybody else, need to be motivated and often this involves them seeing their own research as defending or furthering broad convictions they might have about human nature or the world in general.

There are many cases of great scientists whose major contributions to science were largely inspired by what we now see as utterly false assumptions. Copernicus and Newton might both be seen as examples of this, their discoveries as it were transcending the flawed intellectual matrix – or worldview – within which the theories were framed.

The institutions and practices of modern science are not designed to screen out personal biases and unwarranted assumptions so much as to ensure that published conjectures and theories and experimental results are exposed to rigorous testing and assessment procedures. The system works pretty well on the whole, encouraging intellectual rigor while not excluding the human element – imagination, creativity, etc. – which is essential for innovative thinking.

Areas such as evolutionary biology and the human sciences are particularly prone to ideological influences.

I have previously hinted at such influences in the case of research into linguistic development and evolution, notably in relation to the work of Michael Tomasello and his colleagues who seem to be adamantly opposed to certain formal approaches to the study of language. I am following up on this, and will have more to say in the future. (James Hurford's views appear to chart a sensible middle course, and are looking very plausible to me at the moment.)

And I have recently come across another example of ideology apparently driving scientific judgment and interpretation.

Last week Massimo Pigliucci published a list of his 'best' research papers on biological topics. It's clear from this list (and another on his Curriculum Vitae) that Pigliucci had from the beginning of his research career a special interest in defending and promoting the notion of phenotypic plasticity – the property of the genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to different environments.

In just about all the cited papers – most involving experiments with plants – the power of environmental factors to alter features of the organism are emphasized. A cursory look at the abstracts certainly suggests that the researchers (the papers are collaborative efforts) are highly unsympathetic to any approaches which could be construed as tending in the general direction of what has sometimes been characterized as genetic determinism.

Which is fine. It's only to be expected that researchers will approach such issues with strong opinions, and a degree of adversarial debate and discussion can be productive. In the end, the weight of evidence usually settles disputes, and the controversies then move on to other areas.

So I am not questioning the scientific value of Pigliucci's work – the scope and nature of phenotypic plasticity is clearly a topic of considerable interest.

But it is interesting to juxtapose his research interests in biology with his published comments about human intelligence.

In another of his recent blog posts, Pigliucci claims that environmental – cultural, in fact – factors are solely responsible for differences in patterns of involvement by males and females in different research areas. Genes don't have anything to do with it, apparently.

"[T]he fact," he writes, "that there are fewer women than men in a given field is likely the result of a large number of cultural factors (no, I don’t think it has anything at all to do with “native” intelligence, Larry Summers be damned)."

A commenter makes the point that "the greater variance of male intelligence is well established", and that genetic factors are obviously involved. The greater variance of male intelligence in this context means essentially that there is a greater proportion of individuals with very high intelligence amongst men than amongst women (and also a greater proportion of individuals with very low intelligence).

It is not impossible that some purely environmental explanation for this pattern could be found, but the evidence, even if it is not conclusive at this stage, certainly points to an at least partly genetic explanation. So the fact that Pigliucci seems to have a very strong disinclination to accept that genetics is significant here clearly goes beyond the science and points to a prior ideological commitment.

The emotional tone of his references to Lawrence Summers may not strengthen but certainly doesn't weaken my case. "I can't stand the bastard," Professor Pigliucci notes in a comment.

Pigliucci's strong ideological and moral convictions – which no doubt played a part in his decision some years ago to shift his focus from science to philosophy – may be able to be explained largely in terms of cultural factors.

But I just can't help thinking about Massimo's (hypothetical) monozygotic twin who was raised by a Swedish family. Did he too follow a scientific career? Does he have a penchant for bow ties? Is he a religious skeptic? Does he too have strong views on political and social questions? And what is his attitude to Lawrence Summers, I wonder?

The adjective not the noun

I – and others – have been reflecting lately on the concept of political conservatism, and these reflections have prompted some inchoate – and totally non-partisan – meta-thoughts on the problems of political ideology which I have set out below.


One assumption behind most reflections on conservatism (or on any political ideology) is that it is desirable to have a consciously worked out (personal) political philosophy. And the assumption behind this is that it is possible somehow to assess alternatives in a rational manner and arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. This latter assumption – on which the value of the whole exercise depends – I am beginning to doubt.

When you reflect on these matters, you have to start somewhere. And where you start will be somewhat arbitrary, though it may well be in part determined by your values.

For example, you may want to maximize equality; or you may be more concerned with individual freedom; or order, or one of any number of other ideals or goals.

My starting point – reflecting perhaps the importance I place on a scientific view of the world free of metaphysical and religious baggage – would be the social nature of human identity.

Even those who think they have totally rejected the idea of a soul still cling, I believe, to a version of this idea. It is a natural belief for us to have, and I still feel it in myself.

Take this simple thought experiment. A human body could, presumably, be grown in a laboratory, nourished and exercised to develop muscles, etc. But, if it were deprived of all normal social interactions, linguistic and other cultural input, the brain would not develop normally and this body, though apparently perfectly formed and healthy, would not, as a result, constitute a person. It would not have a human identity, or human awareness. What rights would it have, if any?

This idea of a living human body with a radically undeveloped brain (due to the withholding of social inputs during development) is – to me at any rate – slightly shocking and confronting. It tells us something about ourselves: that our sense of self, our human identity comes just as much from without – from a particular social and cultural milieu – as from within. The social matrix within which we grow is an essential component of our individuality and our very humanity. We never were and can never be 'self-contained'.

This fact has implications for any social or political philosophy. I won't try to spell out the implications here, except to say that such a view is fatal for all forms of atomistic individualism.

Values, as well as often determining the starting-point for one's basic thinking about politics, also play a part in determining the direction of the argument. And this basic notion of the social self could clearly be developed in either a progressive or a conservative direction. The choice seems to depend on taste or predilection.

Which leads me to wonder whether developing such thoughts and arguments is worthwhile (other than for polemical or similar purposes).

Moral, social and political reflections and arguments move in a linear fashion like language. In fact, the thoughts only really crystallize when spoken or written down. But, clearly, this linear process does not do justice to our deepest values which are multidimensional. Arguably, such a process cannot represent our values accurately, much less enable us to assess or justify them.

We can, of course, describe, catalogue and consider the various political outlooks which others have elaborated and defined, seeing them as more or less internally consistent and competing frameworks. But, unfortunately, all these frameworks are – necessarily – highly simplified conceptual structures which are inadequate not only as models for how the (social and political) world works (or could work), but also as representations of the actual political beliefs and values of individuals and groups.

They are arguably post hoc rationalizations, and their main function, you could say, is to faciltate the formation of, and deepen solidarity within, social and political groupings. Part marketing tool, part reinforcement mechanism.

What I am saying essentially is that such frameworks are inevitably inadequate as serious belief systems.

But, though the various –isms are no good, the adjectives from which they derive do real and important work. So I think one can still usefully talk about conservative approaches to social, political and other questions, and distinguish them from, for example, liberal (or progressive) approaches.

Increasingly I see these matters in terms of individuals having – due mainly to various genetic and developmental factors – different psychological profiles and personality traits. These differences can, of course, be mapped and defined in different ways, but something like a conservative/progressive or conservative/radical contrast will, I think, continue to be a feature of models of human personality and cognition.

Science, philosophy, ideology

Previously I have discussed* the implications of studies which indicate that a person's basic political (and religious) orientation is influenced greatly by genetic and early developmental factors. We generally only engage in political or religious debate because we have strong ideological or religious convictions, and those convictions set the general tone and direction of our contributions. Rationality comes in only later - to help us elaborate and defend that general position which feels so true to us (but strangely not to our antagonists).

These facts (as I take them to be) are rather inconvenient. It takes all the fun out of argument if one feels obliged to be skeptical towards one's own deeply felt convictions!

But on the plus side, it allows one (I believe) better to understand what is really going in much ideological, religious and philosophical debate.

In my previous post on this site, I touched on these issues, suggesting that platonists and anti-platonists in the philosophy of mathematics may be caught up in a debate which is superficially rational but ultimately driven by non-rational factors - deep convictions similar to religious or political convictions.

If progress is to be made in any of these areas, I think there has to be an acceptance that we are less rational than we would like to think; and so we need to depend more on scientific methods (which incorporate mechanisms to counter individual biases etc.), and less on convictions (or the elaborate arguments which we have built upon them).

A boring conclusion, I know. Especially for those of us who have strong convictions and a taste for argument and debate about the big questions.

Within the (rather ill-defined) area of philosophy, history certainly seems to indicate that arguments and debates are most fruitful (albeit somewhat constrained) when the dividing line between philosophy and science is blurred or non-existent, and most pointless and futile whenever philosophy is disengaged from science.

I recognize, however, that we are inveterately ideological creatures**, and there will always be a role for those who can identify, articulate and criticize the ideological frameworks we inevitably create and seek to live by.

Could this be what will replace the bits of philosophy which are not swallowed up by the various sciences: the scientifically-informed critique of ideologies?


* For example, here and here.

** There are problems with the term 'ideology', I know. I am using it in a very broad sense to mean something like a system of beliefs involving values and prompting certain forms of action, often in concert with others who share the ideology and sometimes in opposition to those who don't. It may be that I would do better to speak of us being inveterately tribal. 'Ideology' may be just the intellectual's (way of rationalizing) tribalism.

Timothy Gowers and the philosophy of mathematics

Following on from my previous post, here are a few more thoughts on the philosophy of mathematics and on Timothy Gowers's views.

On rereading his talk, I thought the section on what it could mean for 2+2 to equal 5 in an alien world to be too clever by half and ultimately unconvincing. (Gowers virtually concedes this himself, so why include the material in a short talk?) It reminded me of Wittgenstein's equally unconvincing (to me) arguments about deviant forms of counting.

And then there is Gowers's politics, including his role in the campaign against the scientific publisher, Elsevier. (Wittgenstein too had strong moral and social convictions - including a conviction that ideas should not be 'owned' - but, unlike Gowers, he was, so far as I know, never an activist.) I am not aware of Gowers speaking anywhere of his general ideological or political position. I would guess that his views are left-leaning, but I don't know for sure, and I don't know what effect (if any) his general political and moral views might have had on his views on the philosophy of mathematics.

Which brings me back to the main point of the previous post: there seems to be no objective way of deciding on the truth or otherwise of the many and various options within the philosophy of mathematics. So when someone shows a strong commitment to a particular view, I wonder whether extraneous factors - such as ideology - might be playing a role.

I should also say something about neo-Meinongianism, having raised the topic in my previous post. Needless to say, it's complicated, but the general gist of it is something like this. Neo-Meinongians think that you can make statements about mathematical objects (like numbers) without being committed to believing they exist. They would claim that the statement that there are infinitely many prime numbers is literally true even though numbers may not exist as such. This view is based on the (I think) plausible idea that expressions like 'there is' or 'there are' are used in various ways and do not necessarily entail any ontological commitment.

As I understand it, (non-neo) Meinongianism is supposed to countenance gradations or different kinds of existence or being, whereas neo-Meinongians claim that certain uses of expressions such as 'there is' involve no ontological commitment.

In fact, Gowers makes a somewhat neo-Meinongian point in his talk, endorsing Rudolf Carnap's distinction between internal and external questions, only the latter (possibly) involving ontological commitments. So, on this view 'there are two senses of the phrase "there exists". One is the sense in which it is used in ordinary mathematical discourse - if I say that there are infinitely many primes I merely mean that the normal rules for proving mathematical statements license me to use appropriate quantifiers. The other is the more philosophical sense, the idea that those infinitely many primes "actually exist out there". These are the internal and external uses respectively.'

Or again, Gowers writes: 'One view, which I do not share, is that at least some ontological commitment is implicit in mathematical language.'


I'm not sure where I stand on all this. I have doubts about the worthwhileness of much of what goes on under the designation of 'philosophy of mathematics', but see some issues which seem real and important. Though I am certainly drawn to the position outlined by Gowers, I am acutely aware that this general orientation may be, like general religious or political predispositions, largely a function of inherited or early-environmental factors.

It seems to me that platonistic or anti-platonistic intuitions lie behind most philosophical work in the area. But what are these intuitions worth if they are in large part the result of arbitrary genetic and developmental factors?

The fact that little progress has been made in answering apparently real and interesting questions in the philosophy of mathematics and related areas suggests to me that the standard, traditional philosophical approaches are somehow flawed. Or perhaps the questions are ill-conceived, based on an inadequate understanding of the intellectual disciplines in question.

In fact, the advent of digital computers and new ways of conceptualizing information and information processing is changing the way we see mathematics (and much else besides). As new ways of doing and looking at mathematics and science emerge, questions that once seemed meaningful and important may no longer seem so.