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PhilosophyPhilosophy 1.) Kuhn vs. Popper - Steve Fuller - Explores problems flowing from the heirarchical structure of modern science 2.) Agentive phenomenal intentionality and the limits of introspection - Terry Horgan - Suggests that modern discussions of mental determinism may be slanted. 3.) The sense of self in the phenomenology of agencies and perception - Hohwy, J. Kuhn vs. Popper Steve Fuller Icon Books (2003) ISBN 1 84046 468 2 This book highlights the divergence between two philosophies of science, emphasising dissent from the popular views of Thomas Kuhn, by those who dislike his argument for predominant paradigms, and who prefer the approach of Karl Popper. The latter considered that we could always do better in terms of scientific enquiry, as opposed to the Kuhnian approach of relying on the predominant paradigm. Popper favoured a process of scientists challenging what the majority of both the public and scientists thought, regardless of unpopularity. Modern epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is seen by Popper, as a face-saving exercise to support official expertise. Present day students of epistemology seem to be concerned with the question of who they should believe. The answer to this question appears to be a reinforcement of the natural aristocracy of the scientific establishment. Popper saw official scientific bodies and the scientific establishment as to some extent a corruption of the scientific ideal. He related to the ideal of a critical and rational approach to all aspects of life and study, as it had come down to us from the ancient Greeks via the Enlightenment. Kuhn regarded the scientific ideal as being whatever the dominant paradigm happened to be. The author views this approach as being an abnegation of intellectual responsibility. Kuhn had a rather narrower view of science as a knowledge enterprise, and those who followed Popper were disturbed by Kuhn’s support for an authoritarian tendency in science. For Kuhn, science begins with the adoption of a paradigm, based initially on exemplary research that comes to form a blueprint for future research. This involves common patterns of work and common standards for deciding disputes. What Kuhn refers to as ‘normal science’ is merely a process of fleshing out the dominant paradigm, or as Kuhn himself calls it, ‘puzzle solving’. This deliberately emphasises the constrained nature of normal science. The image of the heroic individual scientist, promoted by accounts of well known individuals, such as Galileo and Einstein, is exposed as a myth. Most scientists are narrow specialists working within a dominant paradigm. Only when a large weight of anomalies accumulates against the paradigm does a paradigm crisis occur. Scientist are seen as lacking a regular procedure for changing their paradigm. Moreover, after a paradigm shift occurs, history is rewritten to make the new paradigm look like the logical out growth of all previous research. With Kuhn the idea of timelessly true propositions is replaced by historically entrenched practise and paradigms. Kuhn saw the dominant paradigm as monopolising the means of intellectual reproduction, and especially the way in which the new generation learnt about the state of knowledge. Kuhn himself compared this to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. New paradigms eventually succeed because they are taught to a new generation, and students who support them are promoted to positions of authority. However, within any one generation, scientists are not taught to be intellectually flexible. Scientific arguments are seen as being more likely to sway the views of interested lay people, or newly arrived students than established scientists. The elite and the paradigm are viewed as having important social/political consequences. The scientific elite has proprietary rights over a segment of reality. A minority has exclusive access to information that relates to everyone. What is universally true is not universally known to be true. Scientific knowledge thus becomes an instrument for concentrating power. Kuhn and Popper agreed that at any given time particular paradigms would dominate particular areas of knowledge, but whereas Kuhn regarded this as the basis of stability, Popper saw it as something to be overcome, with scientists ideally producing a proliferation of theories. Kuhn’s view is seen by the author as backward looking, basing views on established authority, while Popper’s is more forward looking towards a continual improvement in knowledge. Popper saw this as a process of indoctrination, and Kuhn as a fellow traveller of religious and political indoctrination. While Kuhn is seen as supporting the idea of an elite preserving its paradigm, Popper, viewed this as a moral failing, and wished for science to be more publicly accountable, hence his principle of falsifiability, which defined a theory as unscientific, if there was no experiment that could falsify it. Thus the claim that the bones of dinosaurs were placed in the fossil record by the Devil is unscientific, unless one can suggest an experiment that could falsify such a claim. This is a somewhat counter intuitive conclusion, meaning that it is the very capacity to be proved untrue that renders a theory scientific. Popper saw the logical process of deduction as a tool for compelling scientists to test general claims in particular circumstances, notably the circumstances of experiments or observations. This is the falsifiability principle in action. At any stage, the general claim might be falsified, or at least put in question, by a particular experiment. Popper regarded this as the core of the scientific ethic. The opposite side of this coin was that any proposal was scientific, if it was capable of being falsified, however objectionable it might be to the prevailing paradigm. Popper saw science as too important to be left to the discretion of scientists, particularly as science was becoming more important for society as a whole. The involvement of science in society increased the risk of science becoming corrupt. It is suggested that the importance of science in relation to public policy and economic development may be degrading it as a form of intellectual inquiry. By contrast, Kuhn regarded the hallmark of a science as something in which the community of enquirers set its own standards for recruitment and evaluation of research. Popper criticised this system for lacking constitutional safeguards. There was insufficient emphasis on falsification of theories. There is a suggestion that in a dominant paradigm system, experiments are biased towards the dominant theory, and that there is a greater burden of proof on the less dominant view. The paradigm approach may not only bias experiments, but may prevent examination of the direction of research relative to its goal. Research programmes may continue by default, because of vested interests, rather than because they are the best line of enquiry. The peer review process is a principle way of enforcing the paradigm, and filtering out inquiries that go beyond the paradigm, with the ‘peers’ tending to form an inner elite. Popper conceived of science in terms of a dialectical engagement with one hypothesis pitted against another, while Kuhn’s paradigm approach discouraged criticism except when the paradigm had reached a state of crisis. Popper’s supporters take Ptolemaic astronomy as an example of a paradigm that was allowed to stand on the basis of authority despite contradictions that arose from it. The author views the present ascendancy of paradigms as a reversion to the less questioning nature of pre-modern science, concerned only with making science work in narrow areas, and cordoning scientists off from foundational matters. The author goes on to criticise the role of modern philosophers relative to science. He sees modern philosophers as under-labourers for scientists. Philosophers such as Popper promoted an ideal of science, against which they could measure what scientists were actually doing. More recently, philosophers’ only function has been to clarify the concepts of the dominant paradigm, and to defend them from any criticism. Kuhn is seen as being the crucial figure in the philosopher’s transition from critic to under-labourer. It is now not seen as a philosopher’s role to question the direction or aims of science. Popper regarded scientific enquiry and democratic politics as twin aspects of what he referred to as the ‘open society’. His most famous book was entitled ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’, and harkens back to the democratic experiment in ancient Athens. At its best, this society regarded openness to criticism and change as a personal ethic and civic duty. The villain of this particular scenario is Plato, whose main view of progress was said to be one of irreversible steps towards a certain outcome, referred to as historicism, as opposed to an open and reversible process of trial and error. Kuhn is sometimes seen as endorsing historicism as part of normal scientific training, in which students absorb a view of the past as an inevitable progression towards the present. Popper viewed these two approaches to science and knowledge from a sociological point of view. Many organised religions and also Plato stand accused of stratifying society according to degrees of knowledge, while in contrast an open society attempts to break through the various layers of myth and institutional dogma. Popper paid a great deal of attention to the nature of Athenian democracy. He put to one side the modern criticism that this democracy only involved a part of the male population, and instead concentrated on what he views as its positive aspect. This was that the citizens were in a position that what they said would not rebound on their financial position. This contrasts rather painfully with the position in modern science, where promotion, funding, publication in peer-reviewed journals and achieving tenure all tend to be linked to not stepping out-of-line. Popper considered that rationality and free enquiry requires specific social and material conditions, which do not appear consistent with career pressures to stay within a particular paradigm. This problem is highlighted in Lee Smolin's 'The Trouble with Physics: The rise of string theory, the fall of science and what comes next'. In this Smolin criticises the ability of string theorists to monopolise promotions and funding in physics, to the exclusion of alternatives, despite the increasingly problematic nature of the theory's propositions. Kuhn’s view is seen as having come to predominate in science and philosophy of science during the last generation, with most of those involved in science uninterested in criticisms of the now predominant view. The evils of Kuhn’s consolidation of the position of the dominant paradigm might be argued to be all around us in modern science, with consciousness studies notable as a prime victim of the paradigm. It could be argued that because a Newtonian paradigm continues to dominate science outside of physics, and especially philosophy of science, consciousness studies has failed to make any sensible progress, because it has proved impossible to describe consciousness in terms of Newtonian science. The particular hostility directed towards quantum approaches to consciousness can be seen as a mere hounding and ridiculing of something outside, or on the edge of, the paradigm, without however, there being much attempt to marshal serious arguments against the proposition. More worrying for the future vitality of science might be evidence that this hounding is not confined to admittedly speculative ideas such as quantum consciousness, but can target quite mundane propositions in areas such as medicine. Agentive phenomenal intentionality and the limits of introspection Terry Horgan Dept. of Philosophy Univerity of Arizona The article discusses whether the experience of being an agent is compatible with determinism. Horgan remarks on tension between four acceptable claims relative to subjective experience. 1.) Phenomenal or subjective experience is narrow. 2.) The phenomenal or subjective character of experience is nearly always intentional, i.e. it is about something. 3.) Subjective experience contains the most fundamental type of mental intentionality. 4.) Introspection does not reliably generate answers to questions about phenomenal content. It is suggested at the beginning that experience is narrow, in the sense that it does not depend on anything outside the head of the experiencer. Phenomenal experience is intentional in that, it is about how the world is. Mental intentionality is constituted by its phenomenal or subjective character. Phenomenal character, described as ‘what-it-is-likeness’, is directly present in the mind. However, it is not possible to answer philosophical questions about the nature of subjective experience by means of introspection. The author also addresses the nature of the ‘agentive experience’ or sense of agency, that is the experience of ‘what-it-is-likeness’ in doing something, or in taking an action. The author asks, whether or not such a sense of agency is compatible with the scientific orthodoxy that human actions are deterministic. Horgan opposes ‘externalism’, which is the view that all mental intentionality is based on connections, which may be historical or social, between the agent and its environment. His view is that phenomenal consciousness constitutes those aspects of mental life that ‘it is something-it-is-like’ to experience. Phenomenal consciousness, in his view, is not really dependent on anything outside itself. Phenomenal intentionality, firstly, includes the ‘what-it-is-likeness’ of being perceptually involved in a world of objects, having a range of properties and relations, this including one’s own body. Secondly, there is the phenomenology of agency, the ‘what-it-is-likeness’ of controlling one’s own body, as it interacts with its environment. Thirdly, there is cognitive phenomenology, the ‘what-it-is-likeness’, of consciously as distinct from unconsciously, having attitudes, wishes and thoughts. The concept of mental intentionality rests on mental reference to properties and relations, such as shape and size, constituted by phenomenal experience alone. The author also refers to judgmental intentionality, ‘what-it-is-likeness’ as referring to more sophisticated or organised thinking. Horgan suggests that it is important to give greater attention to the ‘something-it-is-likeness’ of the experience of action with a self in a body. He goes on to discuss the ‘satisfaction conditions’, i.e. what is required of the environment, the body and the self, for a sense of agency to arise. He notes that this question, and indeed phenomenology of agency as a whole, has received little attention in recent philosophy. Horgan looks at basic forms of behaviour, for instance, raising your hand. He points out that this experience is not just a passive matter of seeing your hand being raised, but is the experience of this motion being your own action. The hypothetical alternative experience of your arm acting of its own accord would be very alien. Nor does normal experience constitute simply willing something, and then passively experiencing the action. Instead, it is the experience of the ‘what-it-is-likeness’ of the self as a source of motion. There is also often purposiveness, a ‘what-it-is-likeness’ to act on purpose. With more deliberative or considered action there is also the ‘what-it-likeness’ of considering an action. Even where there is no deliberation, such as in the process of opening one’s own front door, there is still a sense of purposiveness. In some cases, the action is not fully conscious, but is still accessible to consciousness. In still further cases, such as in fast-action sports, the action may not even be accessible to consciousness. Another feature of the phenomenology of doing something on purpose is the sense of voluntariness, the awareness of it being up to you to perform an action, or of having the option to perform the action in some other way. Horgan remarks that this experience of freedom of choice receives less attention than it deserves in the philosophical literature. He notes that academic attention is often focused on ‘effort of will’, although he himself sees this as only a small part of voluntariness. Horgan also discusses motivation for action. Reasons are experienced as inclining one to an action, but not necessitating it. Agentive phenomenology is seen as presentational, i.e. like perception, rather than judgmental, i.e. like thought. Horgan asks what the ‘satisfaction conditions’ of agentive phenomenology are, and whether they are compatible with determinism in human behaviour. The idea that human behaviour is deterministic gives rise to what Horgan refers to as the ‘agent-exclusion’ problem, i.e. the idea that it is not possible for the subjectively perceived agent to have any influence on the physical world. This idea assumes that people are not agents of the sort they appear to be. Horgan argues that introspection cannot deal with the question of whether agentive experience is, or is not, deterministic. He regards this lack of accessibility as a central feature of the agent exclusion problem. He claims that there are facts about neural mechanisms that cannot be introspected, because they are not the object of any subjective experience. The answer cannot be introspected, because it depends on non-introspected facts, i.e. the neural mechanisms. Thus Horgan takes the view that it is impossible to decide the question of determinism in human behaviour by means of introspection, and further cautions that the types of reasoning that have been applied to the question unduly slant the odds against the possibility that behaviour is not deterministic. The sense of self in the phenomenology of agencies and perception Jakob Hohwy Dept. of Philosophy Monash University April 2007 When modern philosophy tries to deal with consciousness and the related issues of agency and the self, it can often seem that while there may be some valid discussion, the essential point as to what consciousness is, and how it arises, is missed. Hohwy’s paper is very much a case in point. In discussing the self, Hohwy distinguishes the ‘minimal’ self, which is defined as the feeling that there is a ‘me’ or ‘mineness’ that is experiencing an event, from the ‘narrative self’, which is the record of memories going back to early childhood that gives a sense of continuity to the self. Hohwy uncontroversially points out that the sense of self includes or produces an ability to distinguish the results of our own actions from other events in our environment. Similarly in planning actions, the sense of self may help to distinguish between things that may be impacted by our actions, and things that won’t. In terms of perception of objects and events, it is relevant to distinguish, as distinct from the mind, those things that are outside the body, and have for practical purposes a real external existence. This perceptual experience also needs to be seen as relevant to the same self that executes actions within the perceived environment. The self can be seen as an anchor, without which we would lose track of our body, and the distinction between external objects and the mind. Although not mentioned by the author, it is notable that in states of altered consciousness this distinction between the mind and the external world can indeed be lost. The self is also seen as being related to a comparison between motor commands for actions and the actual outcome of those actions. These actions are distinguished from third party or inanimate activity in the environment. The self that is involved in bodily actions is not necessarily connected to the much more enduring narrative self. The actions are suggested to be produced as a result of cognitive predictions of the likely outcome of a choice of possible actions. This also involves the self being projected into anticipations of the future. At this point, the paper touches on the question of preference for particular actions, the conscious emotional impulse that can decide between two or more courses of action, all of which may have varying rational arguments in their favour. This might seem to be leading us towards the key issues of the self and consciousness, and the inter-connected role of choice, emotion and consciousness, but disappointingly, Hohwy veers away from these central topics. Recent brain scanning studies lead to the suggestion that the medial prefrontal and parietal areas of the brain are important with respect to the generation of a sense of self. These areas are relatively deactivated during the type of task that is described as ‘absorbing’. It is further suggested that this absorption may militate against looking at a new hypothesis, once an initial one has been formed. In his summary, Hohwy admits that that the sense of self is hard to make explicit, and he also admits that while classical computers are capable of making the kind of predictive calculations, as to the likely outcomes of actions, that he talks about, they are nevertheless, not considered to be conscious. He concludes his paper by merely saying that in systems that are otherwise conscious, predictive models might provide a basis for the narrative self and the sense of ‘mineness’ in immediate experience. This is not, in itself, implausible, but after sixteen pages of fairly dense material, it is frustrating to find that there is no underlying theory of consciousness, and that we are left in Hohwy’s words with ‘a system that is otherwise conscious’. This despite early references to a reductionist approach that allow us to expect that the author is going to come up with a reductive explanation of the self and consciousness. |
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