Darwinism, Pragmatism and Metaphysics. Or - James, Darwinism and the Concept of Concept 1. Liat Lavi. 1. Opening Remarks

Transcription

1 Darwinism, Pragmatism and Metaphysics Or - James, Darwinism and the Concept of Concept 1 Liat Lavi 1. Opening Remarks My main concern in this paper is to examine the philosophical implications brought about by Darwinism. More particularly, I wish to look into the way in which Darwinism is to affect our treatment of concepts. The discussion will be limited to the pragmatist perspective on the issue, and will focus on the thought of William James. In the following section I will discuss certain philosophical implications drawn from Darwinism. My main thesis is that Darwinism radically changes our view, not only of the natural world, but also of certain metaphysical issues. In the 3 rd section I discuss Darwin s influence on James, and the way in which James applies the Darwinian evolutionary model to concepts. In the 4 th section I put forth a problem that arises when Darwinism is applied to concepts. The core of the argument is that in order to take in Darwinism we must (at least implicitly) commit ourselves to scientific realism, but the application of Darwinism to concepts and theories seems to pull the rug from under the very scientific realism that is required for its own grounding. I further suggest that James manages to see this problem not as a paradox but as a tension that is to be preserved, and that he is able to do so by presenting his unique version of scientific realism. A final preliminary note the idea that Darwinism entails consequences crucial for philosophy appears in the writings of both classical pragmatists and neo-pragmatists. It appears in Peirce 2 and Dewey 3, and more recently, in writers as Joseph Margolis 4 and Huw Price, who suggested that Darwin [is]the rock on which we [pragmatists] stand 5. Still, it is my view that the Darwinian revolution in philosophy did not take place, or at least, that the consequences of Darwinism were not fully taken in (not even within the scope of neo-pragmatism). 1 Thanks are due to Yuval Dolev, Tamar Levanon and Ohad Nachtomy for reading and providing insightful and most valuable comments on previous versions of this paper. 2 Peirce bases his concept of ideal convergence of knowledge on Darwinian themes (in my view succumbing to a teleological and misguided reading of Darwin), see his The Fixation of Belief, Popular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877), He also takes Darwinism to the extreme, by applying it to cosmology and forming his Tychism. 3 See: John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought (New-York: Henry Holt, 1910). 4 Joseph Margolis, Pragmatism s Advantage (Stanford: Stanford Uni. Press, 2010). 5 Huw Price, "Will there be blood? Brandom, Hume, and the genealogy of modals", Philosophical Topics, 36.2 (Fall 2008): 87-97, on p

2 1. Why Darwin Matters Darwin was accused of placing the world at the hands of chance. This is clearly a misguided interpretation of his theory, though he was himself concerned with this possibility 6. Needless to say, his theory crumbled some major theological tenets - the idea that man was directly created by God, the idea that man is a different kind than animal, the idea that the world is 5000 years old, and the concept of intelligent design. Darwin showed that the complexity and harmony found in the natural world, that appears as design can happen by itself (i.e. without a designer) and through the seemingly neutral medium of time. But did he? What we actually find in Darwinism is a peculiar dialectics of contingency and necessity. Variations (or in more contemporary terms, mutations) happen for no special reason, they are highly contingent. But survival is reserved for the fit. The environment may vary or change, but it has a compulsory force upon the development of the species. In the Darwinian framework, it is not a coincidence that we are able to breath and process air, and that air is what surrounds us on this planet, though it is the result of chance, of a lucky variation. But boy was she lucky! If it hadn t been, it wouldn t have survived, WE wouldn t have survived. The lucky ones survive - those most fitting to a certain environment at a certain point in time. The term necessity is loaded with philosophical significance, and it is therefore crucial to clarify its use in the context of the present discussion. Darwinism does not speculate on the origin of being. It does not attempt to answer the perplexing question how did all this come to be. Instead it takes as its departing point a state where something already is. From this point onward, that something (and anything that later becomes) has some (but not complete) compelling force on what is to become. This is to say that contingent variations do play a crucial role in the abovementioned dialectics, but they are balanced with some compelling force (that which selects them), resulting in a process that is not arbitrary or random in any full sense of these words. In fact, the dichotomy between species and environment is itself jeopardized. The species are imbedded in the environment and make for both the cause and caused in this play of time. This, I will suggest, also implies a shift in the way we account for causality. In the Darwinian world picture, causality is highly environmental; trying to isolate any specific factor (e.g. a specific character of the organism or a specific change in the environment) may be useful to a degree, but is inherently lacking. Causal and descriptive accounts are subject to a holism, and since our means of description are limited and partial, every causal account we give is inexhaustive. It is as though our accounts carry with them the shadow of the untold, of the unaccounted for. The holism Darwinism puts forth means that any reduction (in the technical sense) is reductive (in the normative sense). Moreover, Darwinism marks a new way of regarding biology as a determining factor in shaping us humans. Man is no longer treated as an intellect that so happens to be situated in a physical body. Rather, our bodies shape us, and they include a perplexing but far from unique organ our brain. This organ, like any other organ of our body is again the result of this dialectic play of chance and necessity, found in evolution. 6 See: John Dewey, The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, in ibid. pp

3 When Darwinian biology takes the fore as the paradigmatic science for philosophy, thus replacing physics, the philosophical status assigned to change is radically modified, and this shift bears deep influence on the way we are to conceive not only of the natural world, but of our conception of knowledge. This is the main point that Dewey is making in his The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy. The conception of eidos, species, a fixed form and final cause, was the central principle of knowledge as well as of nature. Upon it rested the logic of science. Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a permanent end that realizes itself through changes, holding them thereby within the metes and bounds of fixed truth. Completely to know is to relate all special forms to their one single end and good: pure contemplative intelligence 7. Dewey goes on to say that with Darwinian biology at its center, philosophy is called upon to change its own self-perception, to relinquish the quest for the constant and unchanging, for essences, substances and the eternal in general, and to turn its attention to change and transformation. As Joseph Margolis rightly notes in his Pragmatism s Advantage, The philosophical advantage of admitting the full import of the Darwinian achievement is nothing short than breathtaking: it sweeps out Aristotelian essentialism and teleologism and Kantian transcendentalism at a stroke! Margolis further connects Darwinism and Hegelian Historicism, a connection that is highly suggestive, not only because in both the historicist and the biological account processes take shape in time, but also because of the dialectic nature of the development that exists in both accounts. Last but not least the shift from the fixed to the changing is complemented by a shift from the identical to the varying. The priority traditionally assigned to the fixed and identical is called to question because Darwinism teaches us that variance is the engine that drives evolution. In platonic terms, there would never be the horse if it wasn t for all the varying, defective individual horses, not only in the conceptual sense (the so called species is in fact a reductive description of a group of individuals), but also in the factual sense the horse would never have evolved if it hadn t been for the numerous accidental variations. 2. Jamesian Implications of Darwinism Darwin's profound influence on James is most evident in James Principles of Psychology 9, where he often refers to Darwin's Origin of Species 10, Descent of Man 11 and Origin of the Emotions 12, as well as to 8 7 Ibid. p Joseph Margolis, Pragmatism s Advantage (Stanford: Stanford Uni. Press, 2010). 9 Already in a letter of March 9, 1968, James writes to his brother Henry, referring to a book by Darwin: "I slung it yesterday, and breath at last free The more I think of Darwin's Ideas, the more weighty do they appear to me." In: William James, Essay, Comments and Reviews (Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1987), p In PoP II (1890), p. 343 James goes as far as comparing Darwin's discovery of the survival of the fittest to Newton's discovery of the law of squares. For a more complete account of James interest in Darwinism, dating already to his student years and first papers published in 1865, see: Matthew Crippen, William James on Belief: Turning Darwinism against Empirical Skepticism, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Volume 46, Number 3 (2010):

4 his Animals and Plants under Domestication 13. He enthusiastically embraces Darwin's principles of adaptation and of accidental variation 14, and rejects Lamarckian theory 15, long before it became a consensual stance. Though the Darwinian influence is more clearly manifested in his early writings, it seems to stand in the background of his later writings as well 16. The main Darwinian insights that are of importance here are: (1) the role of contingency in shaping existence (making teleological explanations non-exhaustive); (2) Seeing man as an environmentally shaped organism, and as part of the animal kingdom; (3) The central role that practical interests play in shaping the organism. James also challenges the distinction between percepts and concepts. On his account, percepts are themselves normatively grounded. This is made clear in his Principles of Psychology, where he speaks of the way in which our percepts provide for varied, and even chaotic sensory data, but this data is soon organized in such a way that certain parts of it are considered real, while other parts are regarded as 17 derivative. In a way you could say that the sensory data is conceptualized already, long before theoretical or abstract concepts kick in. Concepts are thus not entirely man made. Some surely are, but others are imbedded in our perception. Furthermore, our brain, which is taken to be the central host of our concepts, is physiologically structured in a certain given way. To this day it is still not clear how much of our conceptual scheme is hard wired, and what parts of it are acquired, and surely the same was the case in James time, but it is also clear that something, some patterns or structures are in fact hard wired, and that these structures allow for the complexities exhibited in our thought and praxis. We said that our brain and sensory organs are already conceptualized. We also said that these organs have evolved through the dialectic play of evolution. The result is that concepts also evolve in time. This is true not only of the concepts that are involved in perception, but also of the more abstract concepts that appear in culture and language, I have [in Great Men and Their Environment] tried to show that both mental and social evolution are to be conceived after the Darwinian fashion, and that the function of the environment properly so called is much more that of selecting forms, produced by 18 invisible forces, than producing of such forms 10 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859). 11 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871). 12 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872). 13 Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: John Murray, 1868). 14 See PoP II, p. 626, 684. See also James' "Great Men and their Environment,' originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1880, and republished in The Will to Believe and other Assays (London: Longman's Green and Co., 1897). 15 Ibid, p For instance, in the VoRE (1902), pp. 293 and 333, James is explicitly applying Darwinian notions. 17 A discussion that bears extreme and surprising resemblance to the normative account of perception provided by Merlau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception. 18 PoP, vol II, fn on p

5 It is important to note here, that James' application of the Darwinian model in the case of concepts is NOT metaphoric 19. Rather, James clearly suggests that he is putting forward a factual hypothesis. Such is the case, for example, when he discusses the evolution of the concepts of common sense, in the 5 th lecture of Pragmatism: Common sense appears thus as a perfectly definite stage in our understanding of things, a stage that satisfies in an extraordinarily successful way the purposes for which we think.but when we look back, and speculate as to how the common-sense categories may have achieved their wonderful supremacy they may have been successfully DISCOVERED by prehistoric geniuses whose names the night of antiquity has covered up; they may have been verified by the immediate facts of experience which they first fitted; and then from fact to fact and from man to man they may have SPREAD, until all language rested on them and we are now incapable of thinking naturally in any other terms. (Emphasis in bold is mine L.L) We have seen reason to suspect [the concepts of common sense], to suspect that in spite of their being so venerable, of their being so universally used and built into the very structure of language, [their] categories may after all be only a collection of extraordinarily successful hypotheses (historically discovered or invented by single men, but gradually communicated, and used by everybody) by which our forefathers have from time immemorial unified and straightened the discontinuity of their immediate experiences, and put themselves into an equilibrium with the surface of nature so satisfactory for ordinary practical purposes that it certainly would have lasted forever, but for the excessive intellectual vivacity of Democritus, Archimedes, Galileo, Berkeley, and other excentric geniuses whom the example of such men inflamed. Retain, I pray you, this suspicion about common sense. It is important to note that for James, common sense concepts are contingent and apt for critical examination, but are at the same time regarded as discoveries, not as fabrications. They are discoveries because they not only determine the world we live in (As in Kant), but are also useful, they lead to successful and beneficial experiences, and are thus fitting to our world in the Darwinian sense, they survive because of their fitness. When examining these concepts in retrospect it is quite difficult to say which were just lucky, and which were lucky because they were fitting. Which are peculiarities that 20 serve no purpose, and which actually fit, and serve our practical interests. James is consistent throughout his writing in treating concepts with equal doses of respect and suspicion. Respect is due for concepts are useful and fruitful, they emerge from experience and are immersed back into it. Suspicion is due because concepts also have a concealing effect. They hide the features of experience that do not succumb to them. They limit perception itself. In his William James on Belief: Turning Darwinism against Empirical Skepticism Matthew Crippen emphasizes the non-biological aspects of human adaptation, as they appear in James. The core of this 19 As seems to be the case with Rorty. 20 In the Principles of Psychology this distinction appears in James in terms of Aesthetic vs. Practical preferences. 5

6 claim (or rather focus) is that James sees humans as differing from other organisms in maintaining language, belonging to a community and holding values in a way that excludes them from the strictly biological realm. The social facts allow for their survival in spite of actually not fitting in the pure biological sense. This approach emphasizes the way in which: Social affections and intelligence alter the survival formula so that individuals may survive, even though [they] be ill-adapted to the natural outer environment (p. 899). Such individuals include [t]he story-teller, the musician, the theologian, and others who receive a livelihood in return for satisfying wants of their community wants, James urges, that are pure social ideals, with nothing outward to correspond to them (p. 899). The same trend appears also in Margolis, who stresses the way in which the human species transcends the biological realm through culture and history: Darwin s longitudinal picture of the emergence of a gifted species (Homo Sapiens) provides the essential ground for a deeper conceptual innovation that has still to be fully grasped: the idea of a creature that is naturally artificial, a hybrid of biological and cultural development whose second nature competences evolve in tandem with biological maturation but cannot be explained in biological terms alone or primarily The entire process is completely sui generis, unmatched anywhere in the animal world: the achievement of a creature whose hybrid nature is its own history, causally efficacious in immeasurably powerful and unpredictable ways 21 Though the human species is far from being the only species that communicates, lives in shared communities, makes and uses tools, and operates for goals that exceed the individual s survival, it would be foolish to deny that it is a unique species in many ways, and that it is less subject to biological determination that other species. Still, one should be careful not to put too much emphasis on this transcendence of the biological. When we conceive of the human species in strictly cultural terms, we are likely to slide down the slippery slope that leads to relativism 22. If we are to avoid it, we must keep in mind the fact that we are nevertheless biological beings, organisms, and that our biological structure was by and large predetermined when language and culture made their first appearances 23. The most important point in my view, the one in which James excelled more than any other thinker, is taking this dialectical structure seriously, and avoiding the understandable tendency to position oneself at one of its opposing corners not to become a materialist, and at the same time not to become a relativist. Not to assume that humans are governed by biology, and not to assume that we are governed by cultural contingencies. 21 Margolis, ibid. pp In my view, this is the fault that leads Rorty s account of neo-pragmatism into the quarters of relativism. In his account culture and language not only take precedence over biology, but biology is simply taken out of the picture. I am mainly referring here to his account in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni. Press, 1989). 23 At least in the sense that much of our biological structure appears already in animals that predate us. 6

7 3. Metaphysics I spoke of certain implications that Darwinism bears on philosophy. Some of these implications should be characterized as metaphysical. Such are the belief in change as the governing force in the development of the world including us humans, and such is the dialectic conception of the way in which concepts are acquired and maintained. But Darwinism as a philosophical ground bears additional metaphysical implications that add to this already complicated picture. Darwinism in my view bears metaphysical implications in two distinct directions, the one is that which was discussed in the previous sections the consequences that accompany or result from Darwinism if we are to commit to it. The complementary part of the picture is that in order to ever accept Darwinism we already must commit ourselves to certain metaphysical conceptions; the most central among which is (some form of) scientific realism 24. We thus find that the relationship between science and philosophy itself changes science is required for the grounding of certain, quite central, philosophical tenets, and at the same time science depends on certain philosophical tenets for its own grounding. This point seems quite obvious- if we do not accept scientific realism, if we do not take Darwinism to describe a genuine, concrete state of affairs, then we have no reason to let it seep into our philosophical framework. So when we do commit to Darwinism, we (at least implicitly) 25 also commit to some form of scientific realism. But what form of scientific realism? Here the plot thickens. It would seem that Darwinism applied to concepts and theories, as in James, pulls the rug from under the scientific realism that is required in order to accept it in the first place. I suggest, following James, that the only way to avoid seeing this quandrum as a contradiction is to maintain it in the form of a deep tension. (Not surprisingly) this tension has the same structure as the one described as resulting from the application of Darwinism in the case of concepts it is a tension between contingency and necessity, and it results in a version of scientific realism that is at once trusting and suspecting, strong and weak. 24 Is Scientific Realism a metaphysical stance? It appears that it is, since science cannot provide its own grounds. It should be noted however that scientific realism can also be stated in linguistic\logical terms, as suggested in Wittgenstein s On Certainty. I am nevertheless doubtful that this bypass actually allows us to avoid the metaphysical nature of the issue at stake. 25 Huw Price and David McArthur maintain that pragmatism is to be understood primarily as metaphysical quietism. See: David Macarthur and Huw Price, "Pragmatism, Quasi Realism and the Global Challenge", in: New Pragmatists, ed. Cheryl Misak (Oxford: Oxford Uni. Press, 2007), ; David Macarthur, "Pragmatism, Metaphysical Quietism & The Problem of Normativity", Philosophical Topics, vol. 36, 1 (2008): I quoted earlier Huw Price s saying that Darwinism is the rock pragmatists stand on. It is clear then that in my view the metaphysical implications brought about by Darwinism and for Darwinism, make his metaphysical quietism quite untenable. It seems to me that more than being quiet about metaphysics, Price and MacArthur are oblivious of its central role in pragmatism. In my view their move is reminiscent of the move Baron Munchhausen makes when he pulls himself out of a swamp by his own pigtail. See in this regard Hilary Putnam s reply to MacArthur in: Hilary Putnam, "Reply to David Macarthur", European Journal of Analytic Philosophy vol. 4, 2 (2008), 47-49, p

8 The weak part of this attitude towards science is the most obvious. Seeing science as contingent, as a form of applicable storytelling, leads to distrust in its ability to provide a genuine account of reality. We all know how the distrust in science as representation led Rorty, following Kuhn to relinquishing the concept of truth as correspondence and to some form of relativism 26. It is also the case that for each and every one of the pragmatists (classical pragmatists and neopragmatists alike), a central characteristic of knowledge is fallibilism. Theories, beliefs and truths are all apt for revision and alteration. This seems to put scientific theories (and methods!) on shaky grounds. James holds this suspicion towards science, but balances it with a deep belief in science s truthmaking faculty, so as to maintain the tension and provide for the scientific realism that is sought 27 after. Here s how James concludes the 5 th lecture of Pragmatism: Ought not the existence of the various types of thinking which we have reviewed, each so splendid for certain purposes, yet all conflicting still, and neither one of them able to support a claim of absolute veracity, to awaken a presumption favorable to the pragmatistic view that all our theories are INSTRUMENTAL, are mental modes of ADAPTATION to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world-enigma? (Emphasis in bold is mine L.L) We find in this quote mostly the suspicion, the undermining of scientific theories, but we also find the Darwinian dialectic manifested in the use of the term adaptation. It is this adaptation that binds the theories to reality, and is the form of their development. Space and time do not allow me to go too deep into James pragmatic theory of truth, and review the different formulations it takes in his different writings. The main points that are crucial for the present discussion are that James treats truth in processual terms, as an event in time, as holistically structured, and as varying (in my view, not so much in degree as in character). Truth is humanized, and it is thus placed in the world, so that it is also subject to the worldly evolutionary dialectics. For a belief to serve our interests so as to become 'good' or 'true', it has to stand two tremendous trials that of fitting harmoniously into our belief system, and that of adapting to the 'environment', that is, standing the resistance that the world shows. 'truth' here is also a dynamic process, and so our candidate belief has to withstand not only the trials of the past, but also those of the future, that constantly come our way in the flow of experience. 26 Rorty himself rejected descriptions of his theory as leading to relativism, but suffice is to say for the present discussion that it was in fact quite often regarded as leading to a form of relativism, as was Kuhn s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Rorty s central views in this regard are found in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (esp. chapters 1-2). In regards to Rorty s reply to the charge of being a relativist, see Rorty s Putnam and the Relativist Menace, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 90, No. 9 (Sep., 1993), pp On James belief in the competence of science as a mechanism for truth-disclosure, see: Charlene Haddock Seigfried, William James s Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 8

9 Far from relinquishing the concept of truth (as Rorty recommends), James insists on reformulating it. He also insists on using correspondence in describing it. He reformulates the concept of correspondence but insists on maintaining it and preserving it as a central tenet in his account of the way truth is formulated. 'REALITY' IS IN GENERAL WHAT TRUTHS HAVE TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF. and the FIRST part of reality from this point of view is the flux of our sensations. Sensations are forced upon us, coming we know not whence. Over their nature, order, and quantity we have as good as no control. THEY are neither true nor false; they simply ARE. It is only what we say about them, only the names we give them, our theories of their source and nature and remote relations, that may be true or not. (Emphases in the original) James insists on a strong world-experience relationship, in which concepts stem from and terminate in sensory experiences. It is also important to stress in this respect his anti-dualistic approach, so as to make clear that the world that is referred to here is far from being an external world.rather, the 'world' includes human activity, and cannot be separated from it, for The trail of the human serpent is over everything 28. The strong world-experience relationship serves as the metaphysical grounds for empiricism and the empirical sciences. It surely does not lead to a naïve belief in their descriptive powers, but it serves as a strong opposition to any renouncement of their deep relations to the world. It takes into account their shortcomings and partiality, but insists on their utility and veracity. 4. Conclusions, or rather Notes for Further Discussion The concept of concept is an incredibly useful one. It allows for what most philosophers are doing namely, conceptual work. It is paradoxically far more useful than what I have suggested in this paper in the name of Jamesian pragmatism that can be summed up as something like it s complicated. My account uses terms as dialectics and tension that would certainly not please the analytical ear. The discussion is also lacking in two respects that I want to put forward: a. The discussion is to be supplemented by a more complete treatment of James truth theory, including an analysis of the concept of convergence as it appears in James thought, and a discussion of his views on the justification that is required for doubt. b. It is also required to develop the way in which naturalism could be held so as not to entail materialism. It is my view that this question, which stood at the heart of James thought (though quite often implicitly), can only be resolved by proposing an ontology that makes space for meaning. 28 Pragmatism, 2 nd Lecture. 9

10 I remarked in the opening section that I think the Darwinian revolution in philosophy did not occur. I am not able to fully justify this stance, but I would like to note some of the factors that I think led to this state of affairs: 1. Logical Positivism rejected metaphysics and influenced neo-pragmatism in this respect. The result being that many neo-pragmatists avoid the metaphysical questions that arise in respect to their Darwinian commitments. 2. Disciplinary commitments seem to force upon us certain boundaries, separating between Philosophy, Biology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, and so on and on. This results in Philosophy often regarding the historical, the contingent and the changing as belonging to other disciplines. (What better way is there to offend a philosopher than to suggest that what he is doing in fact belongs to the field of psychology?) 10