Distorting history

Bharath Vallabha used to be a regular contributor to The Electric Agora. He returned recently with a piece about how, in his view, some of the central and most polarizing debates of post-World War 2 academic philosophy were the product of a misreading of intellectual history. Both Gilbert Ryle and Richard Rorty were extremely influential and both gave a false picture of Descartes' thought and the Cartesian tradition more generally.

Here is Bharath on Rorty and Ryle and how his own views have changed:

[Rorty] went from being a Princeton philosophy professor and president of the APA to basically decamping to literature departments. He was right about problems with the direction of analytic philosophy, but it was a mistake to connect that criticism to Descartes et al.. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is no more a careful study of Descartes than Ryle’s Concept of Mind was... I think Rorty was reading a lot of what was wrong with analytic philosophy back into early modern philosophers. This kind of reading back led to Rorty being polarizing, because he was lumping together 300 years of thinkers in a way that divorced them from their historical context.

To be honest this is a new thought for me. For longest time I was on the side of Rorty and Ryle against early modern philosophy of mind and as it carried over into analytic philosophy... Rorty’s book says more about Rorty’s struggle with professional philosophy than it does about Descartes and Kant. It seems strange to me now that there is some special conception of mind common to Descartes to Nagel even given the vast differences in context of what being a philosopher is between them. My thought is if we let go of this kind of generalizing over centuries to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys, would be easier to listen to each other – in ways for example Rorty and his Princeton colleagues couldn’t do. And in ways current traditionalists and social justice warriors now can’t, because both are wedded to historical generalizations.

On binary thinking:

Resentationalism versus Pragmatism, and fitting historical figures into those categories, forces a binary choice at every turn, in the present and in the reading of the past. There is then no way to rethink the terms of the debate. However, if one sees historical figures with new eyes and with greater openness to historical context, new, more productive conversations are possible.

I agree with this entirely. Like Bharath, I favour more historically-oriented approaches. And I too have only recently come to realize the extent to which Ryle was misrepresenting Descartes. Rorty distorted history also. He was worse than Ryle, in my opinion, because he let politics intrude into his professional work, and also because of his anti-science bias.

Despite his criticisms, Bharath made it clear that he values the writings of Rorty and Ryle (if not the work of their followers). I am less positive. Though I give credit to both Ryle and Rorty for their stylistic power and the thought-provoking nature of their best work, my reservations outweigh my sympathies.

I share Ryle's secular outlook and his commitment to an apolitical approach to academic work. But, in my opinion, any attempt to carve out a sacrosanct space, distinct from the sciences, for an academic philosophy of mind is fatally flawed.

In terms of general outlook, however, I am definitely further away from Rorty than I am from Ryle. I am close to the former on one matter only, as far as I can tell. I am sympathetic to his disillusionment with and drift away from academic philosophy.

Rorty's roots were in literature (his father was a poet) and I understand that he took comfort in his final illness reading the likes of Swinburne rather than philosophical works. (Martin Heidegger – another master of historical distortion – followed a similar trajectory.)

A few thoughts on intellectual history, abstraction and values

Terms like “pragmatism” as it applies to philosophy and the history of ideas – most isms really – are intrinsically vague and useful only to the (necessarily limited) extent that they help to bring out persistent or more fleeting strands or commonalities in thinking within or across populations.

Even the views of individuals are often difficult to fathom and characterize accurately. That these views generally change over time, from book to book, from article to article, from diary entry to diary entry, makes the task even harder.

Nor is any one thinker’s work privileged over another’s. Judgments on the intrinsic merits of individual works or of the merits of particular thinkers are very difficult to make in an objective manner.

But individual thinkers can be readily assessed according to the compatibility of their views with the findings of contemporary and subsequent scientific and scholarly investigation. Certain thinkers can also be shown to have been more influential than other thinkers. Unfortunately there is very little correlation between these two vectors. Sometimes it seems that an inverse correlation between compatibility with science and personal influence applies.

In my view, there is no grand narrative and no abiding canon. We find ourselves with respect to the history of ideas – just as we do with respect to any and every aspect of this relentlessly evolving world – in the midst of complexities which can only be satisfactorily “simulated” or modeled by the reality that is generating them. The best we can do is make marginal notes.

One of Louis Rougier’s early books was called En marge de Curie, de Carnot et d’Einstein: études de philosophie scientifique. Marginal notes, you could say, by a marginal figure.

Rougier’s works are not on anybody’s essential reading list today. He made some bad career moves and got pushed aside, but he was a rising star in the 1920s and a very influential figure in the 1930s. You want to pigeonhole him? Not possible, I’m afraid.

Rougier was aware early on of the thought of William James (whom he read in translation). It was James’s version of pragmatism that he singled out for attack as a young man, but which arguably was not all that far from his own developing views. As Rougier himself often pointed out, intellectual history can be seen as a dense network of ironies and contingencies.
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There is another angle to this. It relates to the nature of language. I see natural language as something that evolved for specific reasons and which is well suited to certain uses (e.g. storytelling and facilitating and coordinating social interactions of various kinds) and not so well suited to other uses. In particular, I am wary of the dangers of using abstract concepts in a relatively unconstrained way as often happens in theology and philosophy.

Common concrete nouns involve abstraction. There is no instance of a dog that is not also a particular animal of a particular breed or mix of breeds; or of a table that is not of a particular type and size and shape and color etc.. Such words, however, are clearly both semantically constrained and useful. Common abstract nouns are also useful as a sort of linguistic shorthand.

The trouble is that we have a natural tendency to hypostatize concepts and this has led, variously, to myth, ideology, philosophical puzzles and the elaboration of metaphysical systems.

Mythic elements in our thinking are unavoidable. Likewise ideology to an extent. Our brains just naturally generate value-laden narratives. Beyond this we are, as language users, committed to certain rudimentary metaphysical assumptions associated with grammatical structures that can lead to philosophical puzzles or pseudo-problems. But the deliberate construction of free standing or self-contained metaphysical systems is something else again.

Arguably myths, ideologies and metaphysical systems (unless the latter are closely tied to science) lack any real connection to non-human reality. Many metaphysical systems fail even to connect to human reality in any significant way.

Within science, abstractions are necessarily constrained. They play their assigned roles within, and take their meaning from, theories. The abstractions are constrained by the theories, and the theories are constrained by the rules and protocols of the discipline in question and ultimately by empirical evidence.

The formal sciences take us further from natural language than empirical science generally does. Abstractions in mathematics and logic take their meaning from, and so are constrained by, the rules of the systems involved. They are, as it were, contained within the system. What Rudolf Carnap referred to as “external” questions about these concepts are misguided and ultimately meaningless.

I would not want to commit too strongly, however, to a distinction between the formal and the empirical. Many developments point to a blurring of the distinction. For example, pure mathematical structures have long been known to play important roles in modeling physical reality. And, of course, the rapid development of computers and artificial intelligence is changing the nature of mathematics, arguably moving it closer to empirical or applied science. Algorithmic information theory is a case in point, focused as it is both on practical problems and on deep questions concerning the fundamental nature and limitations of computation and mathematical thinking (i.e. on metamathematics).
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Moral, social, political and aesthetic values and convictions can be described but ultimately cannot be derived or justified scientifically. Moreover, discursive reason cannot be applied in any really comprehensive or extensive way to normative questions without creating drastic distortions and oversimplifications. Discursive reason operates on one level; values on another.

Whenever I read a philosophical text on normative questions which is framed in terms of arguments mounted in standard philosophical style I rarely get beyond a couple of paragraphs before a move is made which appears unmotivated or to which I object for one reason or another. Historical approaches make more sense to me, especially when they are (or aspire to be) purely descriptive.


[This piece is an extract (slightly modified) from an essay of mine which was published at The Electric Agora.]

The two Noam Chomskys

Noam Chomsky must enjoy making himself unpopular. His extreme (and extremely polarizing) political views are well-known.

I once sat down with one of his political tracts with a genuinely open mind, prepared to give it a go. But all I saw after devoting several hours to the book was anger and rhetorical posturing. I just couldn't figure out where he was coming from.

As I learned later, his attitudes are at least in part explained by his family background. Chomsky grew up in left-Zionist circles. His father was a distinguished Hebrew scholar and both his parents (his mother was more radical than his father, actually) were followers of the views of the essayist Asher Ginsberg. Writing under the name Ahad Ha'am, Ginsberg rejected purely political Zionism and promoted the idea of Jewish cultural and spiritual rebirth. By his early teens, Chomsky had embraced anarchism. He later identified with anarcho-syndicalism, working as an activist for various radical causes, often in association with radical Christians, whose spiritual and moral motivations for political action were similar to his own.

But what of the pioneering linguist? This side of Chomsky interests me, largely because I was taught by one of his students, and adopted many of his linguistic ideas. It matters to me whether (or to what extent) these ideas reflect reality.

So I have begun doing a bit of reading to see what Chomsky is currently saying and how this relates to the current state of research. This interview/article by Yarden Katz is a good place to start, though Chomsky's broad-brush references to intellectual history (Galileo is a big favorite of his) are not totally convincing. Linguistics is not physics, and it's conceivable that there is nothing there to understand in the way early physicists came to understand the principles of classical mechanics.

People generally draw a clear distinction between the two Chomskys, the political activist and the linguist. The former is generally characterized as progressive and radical and the latter, once radical, is now seen as conservative or even reactionary.

In fact Chomsky's scathing attacks on the trend to base research projects in linguistics and the cognitive sciences on Bayesian probability do make him sound like a bit of an intellectual reactionary. But the real issue is whether there is truth in his criticisms.

Bayesian probability is a topic I don't know enough about to write about, but this piece by a graduate student working with Bayesian methods in conjunction with traditional syntactic theory, seems very balanced and makes Chomsky's strictures on Bayesian approaches look a bit simplistic.

The main point I want to make, however, is that the two Chomskys may have more in common than meets the eye. One can see similarities in patterns of argumentation and thought between the political thinker and the linguist. One may also be able to trace some of Chomsky's basic convictions regarding the nature of human thought and language (as well as his political convictions) back to childhood influences.

If you read reports of his talks to linguists*, it's clear that Chomsky is deeply involved in the academic politics of research funding and concerned with the survival of linguistics as a distinct academic discipline, as well as with defending his status and reputation. These academic-political preoccupations (like any political preoccupations) encourage polarized thinking. What counts in the end is one's own side winning, not objective truth. (After all, the winners write the history books, including the intellectual histories.)

Whatever his motivations, Chomsky certainly exhibits a tendency to see things in terms of dichotomies, and is something of a past master of the straw man approach to dealing with challenges.

What, though, of the ideas that are being fought over? This, after all, is where the real interest lies. Does Chomsky's general view of life impinge on (and perhaps distort) his ideas on language and the mind?

The drivers of our thinking are always deep and obscure. Chomsky's longstanding moral (and, indeed, spiritual) preoccupations would, in my view, be likely to have had a profound influence on the way he sees the human mind, as well as reinforcing his views on the status of reason and intellectual intuition.**

I am really only starting to explore Chomsky's cultural and spiritual background, and I may return to these themes in the future and try to make a stronger case. There is much that remains obscure (the extent and nature of his secularism, for example).

I also need to do a bit of homework on some of the topics discussed in the interview. Frankly, I have sometimes found Chomsky's writings on language and thought, and Chomskyan linguistics in general, to be somewhat unclear or opaque, almost arbitrary in fact. I think this probably reflects Chomsky's commitment to a form of rationalism which is quite at odds with my fairly mundane empirical assumptions.

The interview is usually an easy form of discourse to follow and understand, ideal for introducing difficult thinkers to a wider audience, but Katz's interview with Chomsky remains – to me at least – obscure in parts. And I don't think Katz is to blame.

At first, I was confused by Chomsky's comments on Mendel. On the face of it, the case of Mendel argues for the power of statistical approaches, especially at a time when the basic science is undeveloped. But Chomsky's point – essentially that Mendel was aspiring to a deep understanding, and sought significance in the patterns he observed – is a fair one.

However, his arguments in favor of unification but against reduction in the sciences are less clear to me.

Chomsky's allusion to the case of chemistry not reducing to an older physics because the older physics was wrong seems – in the context of what he is arguing – a bit puzzling. Would not this example argue for having more tolerance for statistical and practical approaches which at least are dealing with reality rather than relying on prematurely postulated grand explanatory theories?

Chomsky himself says that cognitive science is at a primitive stage. 'Pre-Galilean', he calls it, but, as I said, I doubt that the comparison with classical mechanics is all that useful.

A more appropriate comparison for what Chomsky has been trying to do these past decades might be Einstein's doomed attempt during the last decades of his life to create a grand unified theory of physics.

Chomsky's thoughts on the origins of human language are very speculative. In fact, his account of a hypothetical individual in a group of non-thinking individuals 'getting language' (through a genetic mutation), and so being able to think, sounds quite far-fetched. (Chomsky, reasoning in a strangely a priori manner, sees language as an internal thing rather than being essentially communicational.)

There is, however, a lot of truth in what he says about science and intellectual fashion, and, yes, about language also.

I am aware that there are deep and serious questions about word order and context-free grammars and so on at issue here about which I have said nothing. Chomsky has made significant contributions to the application of formal language theory to linguistics, and influenced research directions profoundly. Just because other approaches may currently be in vogue does not mean that the work he inspired was misguided.

I suspect that, as our understanding of natural languages (and natural language processing) improves, many of the principles and insights developed by linguists working in the tradition he pioneered will be vindicated (and incorporated, one way or another, into truly effective natural language processing algorithms). But many of the key questions, both philosophical and practical, appear at this stage to remain unresolved.

Finally, a few thoughts on science and history.

Chomsky was asked by Katz about the importance of the philosophy of science and said it may be an interesting area but it doesn't contribute to science. What he considers valuable is the history of science. And he tries, as we have seen, to apply lessons from the history of science to emerging disciplines such as the cognitive sciences.

Though I am skeptical of some of the lessons he purports to derive, it's clear that a knowledge of the history of one's discipline – and the history of ideas in general – can allow one to put current research and current ideas into some kind of perspective.

Such knowledge is a part of the general culture a scientist might have, rather than a core component of his or her expertise. It's an optional extra, scientifically speaking.

Some people are just more interested in fitting their knowledge into a narrative than others, even sometimes preferring to learn their mathematics, physics, psychology or whatever in part as history.

Others have no interest in history or historical approaches which they see as a waste of time. And so they would be for them.

People have different ways of seeing things, that's all: different strengths, different ways of learning, different aspirations for understanding.

But the odd thing is, for all his talk about history, Chomsky strikes me as a basically – and profoundly – ahistorical thinker.

His fundamental insights within linguistics focus almost exclusively on the synchronic rather than the diachronic aspects of language, and aspire, in effect, to an abstract rationalism.

And look at the nature of his political work, which is perceived as extreme not just by conservatives but also by mainstream progressive thinkers. A true historical sense would have at least mitigated the free-floating and self-generating logic of his polemics.

In fact, you could make a case that his main concern with history is to mine it for debating points in order to advance his causes, defend his theories, and, by extension, to cement his own position in the narrative of science.

But it can't be denied that Chomsky still retains a certain aura, a certain iconic status. This is due, I think, not just to his achievements, but to an unrelenting seriousness, to a rare combination of intellect and passion.



* This hostile account of Chomsky's performance at an invitation-only event in London last year (by the distinguished linguist Geoffrey Pullum) is very revealing.

** It's worth mentioning in this context that, unlike most social scientists and, perhaps, curiously (given the rigorously abstract and scientistic tenor of his work in syntax and related areas), Chomsky takes literary art seriously and respects the value of the writer's insight into society's moral and psychological complexities. But, again, this becomes much less surprising in the light of his early exposure to (and continuing interest in and respect for) Hebrew literature.

Apparitions

In David Berlinski's world, the great mathematicians and logicians of times past are alive and well, and make regular appearances in the here and now. Leibniz comes late one night to sit by Berlinski's desk and discuss his curious notion of an encyclopedia of human concepts, "his lush old-fashioned wig proving irresistible to my cats, who have come creeping from their tower to bat at it."*

And Gottlob Frege [1848-1925] somewhat surprisingly team-taught logic with Berlinski at an unnamed California college at an unspecified point of the later twentieth century:


Our classes were always well attended because logic was a prerequisite for an engineering degree, and they were, I must say, well received, Frege and I both receiving excellent if somewhat innocent standardized student evaluations, any number of students somehow saying the same thing, that while Mr. Berlinski should learn to match his ties and suits, Mr. Frege is very nice. No wonder they never complained about his clothes. Frege would dress severely, no matter the sunshine, which even in February seemed to light up every corner of the campus, wearing the same black frock coat and batwing collar that, no doubt, he had worn in Germany. You must imagine the man at the blackboard, the thick German chalk in his fingers, his back always toward our students and the logical symbols going up and down the board, the steps separated, when necessary, by heavily drawn lines.


Is Berlinski romanticizing the intellectual figures of the past in his literary fantasies? No doubt he is. But then perhaps Frege and other pioneers of logic were indeed special, and alive to the wider implications of their work in a way most contemporary logicians are not. This may be because they were wrestling with big ideas rather than merely technical elaborations of those ideas. Peter Smith has recently made the point that today's more 'advanced' logic is less philosophically interesting than the more basic stuff (in effect the work of the great pioneers).

Berlinski was taught logic by the legendary Alonzo Church, and so has in my mind a certain reflected glory, a certain aura, as he is a link to a great age of human thought. Like an old colleague and friend of mine who was taught by Willard Van Orman Quine, a fact which - quite irrationally - made me very forgiving of his many personal failings.**

One last quote...


Sometime in the fall after the spring in which Frege and I had taught logic together in California, my great friend, the logician DG took his life. He had loved someone a great deal and for a very long time, and when it was over he had only logic left and logic was not enough. He was cremated in Colma at the insistence of his wife; I watched as the conveyor belt took his coffin toward the winking red lights; there was a roar from far away as the gas-fired jets ignited, and two hours later, I was given a plain wooden box with his ashes.

I took the box with me to one of those sparse California hills, which are covered with chaparral and a few scrub oaks standing in copses.

I was about to scatter the ashes when I noticed that Frege had joined me. He was dressed, as always, in black. I opened the box and let the salt-smelling wind carry the ashes far away.

Frege looked into the middle distance. I thought he would remain silent.

"I always come for my own," he said, just before vanishing himself, leaving me alone with the smell of wild sage.




* All quotations are from Berlinski's The Advent of the Algorithm (Harcourt 2001).

** In truth, he is a good and intelligent man. (Hello John!)