Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

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Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

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metaphysical theory but to clear up conceptual confusions – to show the fly

the way out of the fly bottle.

Eastern Materialism

This historical survey has been concerned with Materialism in Western

philosophy. On the whole, Materialism is contrary to the spirit of both Indian

and traditional Chinese philosophy, though the Carvaka school of Materialists

flourished from the 6th century BCE until medieval times in India. Mention

should also be made of the strong naturalistic tendency in Theravada

Buddhism, as also in certain schools of Chinese philosophy that exalt ch’i

(“ether” or “material force”) above principle and mind.

Substantive Issues in Materialism

Reductionism, Consciousness, and Brain

The main attraction of Materialism today is the way in which it fits in

with a unified picture of science – a picture that has become very plausible.

Thus, chemistry is reducible to physics inasmuch as there is a quantum-

mechanical theory of the chemical bond. Biology is mainly an application of

physics and chemistry to the structures described in natural history (including

the natural history that one can explore through powerful microscopes).

Increasingly, biological explanations resemble explanations in engineering, in

which material structures are described and then the laws of physics and

chemistry are used to explain the behavior of these structures. (In the

biological case, of course, these structures are often dynamic in the sense that

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their molecules are continually being replaced.) Through the influence of

neurophysiology and also cybernetics (the science of information and control,

which can be applied also to artificial automata), scientific psychology is also

fitting well into the same mechanistic scheme. The recalcitrant residue

appears in the phenomena of consciousness. Here mental events seem, indeed,

to be correlated with physical events; but, if the mental events are not the very

same as the physical events, one is left with apparently ultimate (or

irreducible) physical-mental laws that do not fit happily into unified science,

and one is thus faced with a situation unlike that of the rest of science.

Looking at science generally, one expects ultimate laws to relate simple

entities, such as fundamental particles. A physical-mental law, however,

would have to refer to something very complex – a brain process involving

perhaps millions of neurons, with each neuron being itself an almost

fantastically complex entity. There would be a multitude of physical-mental

laws, which would look like excrescences on the face of science. Because they

would not fit into the network of scientific laws, Herbert Feigl has called them

“nomological danglers.” To get rid of these danglers is one of the chief

attractions of Materialism. Of course, an immaterialist might assert that

mental entities exist and also that there are no physical-mental laws. But it

might be hard for him to reconcile this position with the empirical evidence;

and in any case he would be faced with the problem of how to distinguish the

free exercise of such anomalous physical-mental interaction from mere chance

behavior.

The development of computers and other devices to take over much of

the more routine sort of human behavior has led to attempts on the part of

scientists and technologists, such as the American M.L. Minsky, to develop

real artificial intelligence. So far, the success that these scientists hoped for

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has not been achieved. An American linguistic theorist, Noam Chomsky, has

argued on the basis of his theories of generative grammar that the brain is

quite unlike any already-understood type of mechanism. Indeed, any

physicalistic Materialist must certainly concede that there are very deep

problems about the brain, which apparently can no longer be thought of as a

bundle of conditioned reflex mechanisms or the like, as it often has seemed to

be to many psychologists. The physicalist can stress, however, that the

investigator’s ignorance need not lead him to assume that he will never be

able to find an explanation of intelligence and of linguistic abilities in terms

consonant with his present notion of a physical mechanism. (There is also the

possibility that physical laws not yet discovered might be needed to explain

the workings of the brain. So long as these turned outto be basic laws of

physics, such discoveries would not imply a shift to emergentist Materialism.)

Logic, Intentionality, and Psychical Research

Some philosophers, such as the Oxford philosopher J.R. Lucas, have

tried to produce positive arguments against a mechanistic theory of mind by

employing certain discoveries in mathematical logic, especially Gödel’s

theorem, which implies that no axiomatic theory could possibly capture all

arithmetical truths. In general, philosophers have not found such attempts to

extract an antimaterialist philosophy from mathematical logic to be

convincing. Nevertheless, the problems of mechanizing intelligence, including

the mathematical abilities of human beings, do pose unsolved problems that

the Materialist is obliged to take seriously.

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Perhaps the most common challenge to Materialism comes from

philosophers who hold that it cannot do justice to the concept of intentionality,

which Franz Brentano, a pre-World War I German philosopher, made the

distinguishing mark between the mental and the nonmental. (A related

objection is that Materialism cannot do justice to the distinction between

behavior and mere bodily movements.) Brentano held that mental events and

states somehow point toward objects beyond themselves (or have a

“content”). Many contemporary philosophers agree with Brentano that purely

physical entities cannot have this property. If it is said, for example, that

punched holes on the tape of a computer can refer beyond themselves in the

way that thoughts do, then it is commonly replied that, in themselves, the

holes on the tape have no reference or content – for this belongs only to the

thoughts in the mind of a person who reads the tape. The Materialist reply

may be to argue, however, that there is a fundamental unclarity in the very

notion of intentionality (this is roughly Quine’s position) or else to argue that

purely physical systems can, after all, possess intentionality.

The alleged spiritualistic and other phenomena reported in psychical

research are sometimes adduced against Materialism. The Materialist,

however, can well afford to postpone discussion of these phenomena until

such time as they are accepted by the general scientific community, which on

the whole still remains sceptical of them.

At present, there are reputable philosophers who accept Materialism, and

there are also reputable philosophers who either reject it as false or hold that it

is not the business of a philosopher to propound any sort of metaphysical

system. Perhaps Materialists are still in a minority; but at any rate there is

much less tendency than there was a generation ago for this type of theory to

be thought philosophically naive.

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Phenomenology

In the 20th century, Phenomenology is mainly used as the name for a

philosophical movement the primary objective of which is the direct

investigation and description of phenomena as consciously experienced,

without theories about their causal explanation and as free as possible from

unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions. The word itself is much

older, going back at least to the 18th century, when the Swiss-German

mathematician and philosopher Johann Heinrich Lambert applied it to that

part of his theory of knowledge that distinguishes truth from illusion and

error. In the 19th century the word became associated chiefly with the

Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807; Phenomenology of Mind, 2nd ed., 1931),

by G.W.F. Hegel, who traced the development of the human spirit from mere

sense experience to “absolute knowledge.” The so-called Phenomenological

movement did not get under way, however, until early in the 20th century. But

even this new Phenomenology includes so many varieties that a

comprehensive characterization of the subject requires their consideration.

Characteristics of Phenomenology

In view of the spectrum of Phenomenologies that have issued directly or

indirectly from the original work of the Austrian-born German philosopher

Edmund Husserl, it is not easy to find a common denominator for such a

movement beyond its common source. But similar situations occur in other

philosophical as well as non-philosophical movements.

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Essential Features and Variations

Although, as seen from Husserl’s last perspective, all departures from

his own views could only appear as heresies, a more generous assessment will

show that all those who consider themselves Phenomenologists subscribe, for

instance, to his watchword, Zu den Sachen selbst (“To the things

themselves”), by which they meant the taking of a fresh approach to

concretely experienced phenomena, an approach, as free as possible from

conceptual presuppositions, and the attempt to describe them as faithfully as

possible. Moreover, most adherents to Phenomenology hold that it is possible

to obtain insights into the essential structures and the essential relationships of

these phenomena on the basis of a careful study of concrete examples supplied

by experience or imagination and by a systematic variation of these examples

in imagination. Some Phenomenologists also stress the need for studying the

ways in which the phenomena appear in men’s object-directed (“intentional”)

consciousness.

Beyond this merely static aspect of appearance, some also want to

investigate its genetic aspect, exploring, for instance, how the phenomenon

intended – for example, a book – shapes (“constitutes”) itself in the typical

unfolding of experience. Husserl himself believed that such studies require a

previous suspension of belief in the reality of these phenomena, whereas

others consider it not indispensable but helpful. Finally, in existential

Phenomenology, the meanings of certain phenomena (such as anxiety) are

explored by a special interpretive (“hermeneutic”) Phenomenology, the

methodology of which needs further clarification.

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Contrasts with Related Movements

It may also be helpful to bring out the distinctive essence of

Phenomenology by confronting it with some of its philosophical neighbours.

In contrast to Positivism and to traditional Empiricism, from which Husserl’s

teacher at Vienna, Franz Brentano, had started out and with which

Phenomenology shares an unconditional respect for the positive data of

experience (“We are the true positivists,” Husserl claimed in his Ideen zu

einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie [1913;

“Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy”]),

Phenomenology does not restrict these data to the range of sense experience

but admits on equal terms such non-sensory (“categorial”) data as relations

and values, as long as they present themselves intuitively. Consequently,

Phenomenology does not reject universals; and, in addition to analytic a priori

statements, whose predicates are logically contained in the subjects and the

truth of which is independent of experience (e.g., “All material bodies have

extension”), and the synthetic a posteriori statements, whose subjects do not

logically imply the predicate and the truth of which is dependent on

experience (e.g., “My shirt is red”), it recognizes knowledge of the synthetic a

priori, a proposition whose subject does not logically imply the predicate but

one in which the truth is independent of experience (e.g., “Every color is

extended”), based on insight into essential relationships within the empirically

given.

In contrast to phenomenalism, a position in the theory of knowledge

(epistemology) with which it is often confused, Phenomenology – which is

not primarily an epistemological theory – accepts neither the rigid division

between appearance and reality nor the narrower view that phenomena are all

that there is (sensations or permanent possibilities of sensations). These are

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questions on which Phenomenology as such keeps an open mind – pointing

out; however, that phenomenalism overlooks the complexities of the

intentional structure of men’s consciousness of the phenomena.

In contrast to a Rationalism that stresses conceptual reasoning at the

expense of experience, Phenomenology insists on the intuitive foundation and

verification of concepts and especially of all a priori claims; in this sense it is

a philosophy from “below,” not from “above.”

In contrast to an Analytic philosophy that substitutes simplified

constructions for the immediately given in all of its complexity and applies

“Ockham’s razor,” Phenomenology resists all transforming reinterpretations

of the given, analyzing it for what it is in itself and on its own terms.

Phenomenology shares with Linguistic Analysis a respect for the

distinctions between the phenomena reflected in the shades of meaning of

ordinary language as a possible starting point for phenomenological analyses.

Phenomenologists, however, do not think that the study of ordinary language

is a sufficient basis for studying the phenomena, because ordinary language

cannot and need not completely reveal the complexity of phenomena.

In contrast to an Existential philosophy that believes that human

existence is unfit for phenomenological analysis and description, because it

tries to objectify the unobjectifiable, Phenomenology holds that it can and

must deal with these phenomena, however cautiously, as well as other

intricate phenomena outside the human existence.

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Origin and Development of Husserl’s Phenomenology

Basic Principles

Phenomenology was not founded; it grew. Its fountainhead was Edmund

Husserl, who held professorships at Göttingen and Freiburg im Breisgau and

who wrote Die Idee der Phänomenologie (The Idea of Phenomenology, 1964)

in 1906. Yet, even for Husserl, the conception of Phenomenology as a new

method destined to supply a new foundation for both philosophy and science

developed only gradually and kept changing to the very end of his career.

Trained as a mathematician, Husserl was attracted to philosophy by Franz

Brentano, whose descriptive psychology seemed to offer a solid basis for a

scientific philosophy. The concept of intentionality, the directedness of the

consciousness toward an object, which is a basic concept in Phenomenology,

was already present in Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte

(1874): “And thus we can define psychic phenomena by saying that they are

those phenomena which, precisely as intentional, contain an object in

themselves.” Brentano dissociated himself here from Sir William Hamilton,

known for his philosophy of the “unconditioned,” who had attributed the

character of intentionality to the realms of thought and desire only, to the

exclusion of that of feeling.

The point of departure of Husserl’s investigation is to be found in the

treatise Der Begriff der Zahl (1887; “The Concept of Number”), which was

later expanded into Philosophie der Arithmetik: Psychologische und logische

Untersuchungen (1891). Numbers are not found ready-made in nature but

result from a mental achievement. Here Husserl was preoccupied with the

question of how something like the constitution of numbers ever comes about.

This treatise is important to Husserl’s later development for two reasons: first,

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because it contains the first traces of the concepts “reflection,” “constitution,”

“description,” and the “founding constitution of meaning,” concepts that later

played a predominant role in Husserl’s philosophy; and second, because it

reflected two events – (1) a criticism of his book by Gottlob Frege, a seminal

thinker in logic, who had charged him with confusing logical and

psychological considerations, and (2) Husserl’s discovery of the

Wissenschaftslehre (1837; Logic and Scientific Methods, 1971) by Bernard

Bolzano, a Bohemian mathematician, theologian, and social moralist, and his

view concerning “truths in themselves” – which led Husserl to an analysis and

critical discussion of psychologism, the view that psychology could be used as

a foundation for pure logic, which he clearly felt to be no longer possible.

In the first volume of Logische Untersuchungen (1900-01; Logical

Investigations, 1970), entitled Prolegomena, Husserl began with a criticism of

psychologism. And yet he continued by conducting a careful investigation of

the psychic acts in and through which logical structures are given; these

investigations, too, could give the impression of being descriptive

psychological investigations, though they were not conceived of in this way

by the author. For the issue at stake was the discovery of the essential

structure of these acts. Here Brentano’s concept of intentionality received a

richer and more refined signification. Husserl distinguished between

perceptual and categorical intuition and stated that the latter’s theme lies in

logical relationships. The real concern of Phenomenology was clearly

formulated for the first time in his Logos article, “Philosophie als strenge

Wissenschaft” (1910-11; Philosophy as Rigorous Science, 1965). In this work

Husserl wrestled with two unacceptable views: naturalism and historicism.

Naturalism attempts to apply the methods of the natural sciences to all

other domains of knowledge, including the realm of consciousness. Reason