Philosophy of Science

W.V.O. Quine famously remarked that “philosophy of science is philosophy enough” (Mind, Volume LXII, Issue 248, October 1953, p. 446). It is not, however, through philosophy of science that most undergraduates come to philosophy: and on the internet, there is an incredible obsession with ethics and politics, as though it is possible to form judgments about human behavior on the basis of reading “Great Books” or by internalizing the concepts related in these books by “Great Thinkers.” I think this is complete and utter bullshit.

Value theory, of which ethics, politics and jurisprudence are examples, can provide great personal enjoyment. Reading history, and the thoughts of people famous enough to have been passed down, can be interesting, and it can provide some insight into how they conducted themselves, and how one might conduct himself in similar circumstances. The problem, however, is when this is divorced from a proper scientific apparatus.

Let us consider the concept of a “Great Book” or a “Great Thinker.” What is it? In scientific terms, there is a neurological apparatus, a brain, and it has an evolved conception of greatness, which it applies to various persons and things. In this sense, greatness is a quality that is superimposed over physical reality by the brain; scientifically, we could likely, if we had a large grant and lab, quantify the specific regions of the brain concerned with perceptions of greatness, just as we can with disgust, love, hate, etc.

The value-theory driven philosopher, however, goes further: he does not go “oh, some individuals have evolved brains that, when probed with Dante’s Divine Comedy agree it is a great book.” The value-theory driven philosopher , taking value-theory as “first philosophy,” will attempt to concoct an abstract notion of greatness that is observed or perceived by the individual who makes such a judgment. In this way, the judgment of the value-theory driven philosopher will externalize all of his own individual judgments, the products of his own particular organic being, onto abstract nouns: in art onto Beauty; in law onto Justice; and so on and so forth.

This is a dangerous habit; psychoanalytically, we can see it as a childish desire to avoid responsibility. Rather than stating that “I judge this book to be great,” there is a woolly-headed, and self-aggrandizing view, that, while the reader himself may not be Great, he has at least internalized enough of Greatness, and its being, into himself, to recognize Great Books and Great Thinkers. The unstated premise is that he, if not Great himself, at least recognizes the objective reality of Greatness. In such an individual, his Greatness is subsidiary, but still, he is “Great” enough to recognize “Greatness.”

The problem with the scientific view is that it does not provide enough opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Whatever he scientist perceives, he is aware, if he is cognizant of the last several centuries of scientific progress, that his perceptions are rooted in his physical being, not in his physical being’s ethereal perception of abstract qualities like greatness. A good diagnostic test, in my view, for this sort of pettifoggery is the question of colour: do objects have colours, or is colour merely a perception that exists only within the individual. Can someone be “wrong” about the colour of an object?

Scientifically, the answer is no: objects reflect wavelengths of light, which are not colours. These wavelengths of light propagate, strike the retina and produce the sensation of colour, which is not uniform in all subjects. Take two “shades of green.” Some individuals can distinguish them, and to some, they appear identical. The value-theory driven individual will insist that the individual who is “more discriminating” is “correct” and that the other individual is “missing something,” because, as it were, he cannot perceive the correct distinction involved with “greenness.” To him, it all appears to be a flat, non-hierarchical matter of different retinal and neurological formations.

Of course, we could say that distinguishing certain shades of green might have some evolutionary value, but this mistakes evolution for a teleological process. The value mgiht be that, let’s say in a forest ecosystem, a leaf-eating animal needs to avoid some leaves that are poisonous, and they are distinguishable by their particular colouring. Therefore, the animal that can perform this sort of discernment is “better evolved” and has a “greater” capacity to secure nutrition, therefore it reproduces with more frequency; the animals that cannot distinguish those leaves eat them and drop dead before reaching reproductive maturity.

The scientist, however, will apply the same method to the judgment that evolution’s end is reproduction: he will, in his lab, with some grant money, do brain-scans on the individuals who believe reproduction is the telos of animate existence, and go “oh, they are configured in such and such a way, where those who do not share this belief are configured in another way.” This, of course, infuriates the Philosopher of Greatness, who insists that there must be some normative hierarchy to the activities we undertake in the world: fame, fortune, reproduction, beauty, there must be something that drives those of us with the refined sense to perceive it, and are we not fortunate not to be among those poor fools who don’t see what is Great? Are we not fortunate to be those who can see, and are we not more fortunate to be those who can see multiple shades of Green?

This sort of view does not mean it is impossible to assert something is Great, or Green, but when one does, one is merely giving witness to one’s perceptions; it is nothing about which there can be a controversy, except in a relative sense. There can be no objective discussion about what the “Great Books” are, nor about who the “Great Thinkers” are. So, if I assert that Cotton Candy ice cream is a “Great Flavor,” all I am doing is expressing my own taste, and, as the Great Writer Laurence Sterne wrote some hundred years ago in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:

—De gustibus non est disputandum;—that is, there is no disputing against HOBBY-HORSES

Of course, it is tongue in cheek that I call Laurence Sterne a “Great Writer.” It is not something I would argue, except ironically, or for a sort of sport, as and against anyone else. However, there is a sort of darkness to my view, I will admit, for those individuals who are more inclined to value theory, uninfluenced by philosophy of science, will on the neurological/cybernetic account of value-theory I have given, be unable to be argued out of their position, for, their position is not based upon having a neurological system that operates scientifically, nor is there much evidence that arguments can really shake the foundations of someone who enjoys value theory.

Now, of course, I began this article by calling “bullshit.” All this means is that I think it does not map up with the neurological configuration that I call scientific, and that many others call scientific; but this is because we have asserted science to be a method with a particular process: the neurological realization of science is a brain constituted to use scientific procedures for making decisions. Consider Heidegger:

“If we want to grasp the essence of science, we must first face the decisive question: Should there still be science for us in the future, or should we let it drift toward a rapid end? It is never unconditionally necessary that science should be at all. But if there should be science and if it should be for us and through us, then under what condition can it truly exist?” (Heidegger, Martin. Self-Assertion of the German University, 1930)

Thus, science is not unconditionally necessary; it is simply the self-assertion of those who call themselves scientists, and, indeed, in the qualitative sense, there is no priority to their self-asserted denotation, in abstracto. It is simply a way that like minded (or perhaps like-brained) individuals identify the method by which they approach reality. This method has no particular priority; but it is still possible to distinguish the method from other methods, on an objective basis.

We may close with Linnaeus:

Linnaeus provides us with an understanding of science as geometrical and visual. Science is not the auditory, or narrative, or even lexical process of ascribing abstractions to bodies. Indeed, the lexical enters into science only as a sort of filing system, as a peculiar name is necessary to point out what has been determined. The “first step of wisdom” is to distinguish bodies by “marks imprinted upon them by nature.” There are, in this sense, no marks of greatness, except in the sense that one body might be larger than another; there is no abstract, metaphysical Greatness, no spirit: “amidst the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order is visible.”

And by this Linnaeus means greatest in the sense of that which most accurately determines the names of bodies, which, therefore, allows us to index our knowledge of those bodies. In this system, nothing is lost if instead of saying a body is such and such color, we simply say it reflects wavelength N. And so we are quite capable of scientifically categorizing the neurological states of people, using a geometrical method: to hold a value is to have a specific neurological formation, which is amenable to geometrical analysis.

And if we are wont to produce hierarchies of neurological formations, that, too, is reducible to a certain geometrical configuration. Many will attempt to confuse you with words, without explaining their geometry: if it is not something you can touch, it still has a geometry, but it inside of you: the greatest order is visible, if only you figure out where it is!