Christopher Peacocke: Sensations and Concepts

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The conceptual nature of experience (as derived from sensations) is supposedly shown by an example from the philosopher Christopher Peacocke, as seen in the main image above.

This suggest that concepts (of columns, in this instance) are determining our experiences.

Readers may immediately suspect that there must be at least some people who do indeed see four rows, rather than three columns. In other words, there’s no obvious reason why we shouldn’t see four rows.

This may also have something to do with the spacing of the dots, and the wideness of the gaps between the columns. Thus, the gap between the columns is wider than the gap between the individual dots. This may lead most viewers to see three columns, rather than four rows.

Christopher Peacocke’s point, however, is that the sensations alone don’t determine the experience. Indeed, on this picture, if it were just a question of sensations alone, then it wouldn’t actually be an experience. (Experience is often said to be “under an aspect”.)

The same applies to another example from Peacocke.

One person may see the object which we call a “sphere”, though not (as it were?) apply the concept [sphere] to it. Another person will indeed apply the concept [sphere] to that very same object.

On the other hand, and more likely, most people won’t actually apply the concept at all. That is, the concept will belong to the object from the beginning. In other words, many subjects non-cognitively experience a sphere as a sphere. A person without the concept [sphere], on the other hand, will still either apply a concept to the sphere, or a concept will belong to the sphere.

In the technical details of contemporary analytic philosophy.

Peacocke himself says that “sensational properties do not determine representational content”. On this picture, then, concepts must be part of the story too.

Peacocke does go on to say that “grouping properties [i.e., the arrays into columns not rows] are sensational rather than representational”. Peacocke admits that the array example

“seems to suggest that we are concerned with representational, not a sensational, property: the concept of a column enters the content”.

The problem is (in Peacocke’s argument) that “grouping [is a] sensational property”. Surely grouping (in this example) will rely on sensations, although sensations alone won’t entirely determine the grouping. Thus, Peacocke is making a distinction here between grouping and sensations. Indeed, he’s saying that grouping isn’t conceptual (or “representational”).

On this particular aspect, Peacocke doesn’t go into detail. He does say, however, that in “switches of aspect the sensational properties [remain] constant”.

Martin Davies and Colin McGinn

The British philosopher Martin Davies spots a dualism in Christopher Peacocke’s position.

Davies says that (in Peacocke’s story) there’s

“a sensational (non-representational) substrate upon which the representational superstructure [] is erected” .

Or

>) Representational superstructure

>) Sensational (non-representational) substrate

As with Ned Block’s notions of “access-consciousness” and “phenomenal-consciousness”, Davies quite happily accepts “non-representational properties of experience”, but “without embracing the idea of a sensational substrate”.

The British philosopher Colin McGinn also characterises the position represented by philosophers like Peacocke. He states that they accept

“prerepresentational yet intrinsic level of description of experiences: that is, a level of description that is phenomenal yet noncontentful”.

Perhaps the problem is that Peacocke thinks in terms of “protopropositional content” — i.e., nonconceptual content. This is almost — or indeed literally — an acceptance that content prior to “propositional judgement” can’t be conceptual. In that case, then, propositions (almost literally?) must make (or determine) concepts. That is why protopropositional content is nonconceptual content. However, if we don’t accept an entirely linguistic basis for concepts, then we needn’t believe in Peacocke’s non-conceptual content.

Davies points out that Peacocke is happy to accept the conceptualisations of “sensational properties”. He says that Peacocke shows us examples of

“pairs of experience with the same sensational properties but different representational properties”.

Yet Peacocke also shows us

“pairs of experiences with the same representational properties but different sensational properties”.

Does all this show us that these “different sensational properties” are nonconceptual?

It seems to hint at the fact (or possibility) that sensational properties aren’t representing anything.

[The other cases cited by Peacocke are based on technical empirical psychological research on subjective experience, which is difficult to comment upon.]

Peacocke, however, appears to make a mistake. He says that a person

“waking up in an unfamiliar position or place [will have] minimal representational content”.

Mental or cognitive unfamiliarity doesn’t entail a lack of conceptual content. That’s because the person waking up will still conceptualise his unfamiliar position or place.

So perhaps this example only displays Peacocke’s linguistic (or propositional) bias.

Of course, the person waking up may not be able to describe the position or place very well, or form “propositional judgements” about it. However, that may be irrelevant to conceptual and/or representational content.

According to the British philosopher Michael Tye, when the place or position becomes “rich” with “representational content”, then this may simply be a case of applying “descriptive labels [] to the array”. Propositions and propositional judgements are simply additions to the conceptual content which already exists.

Tye also says that

“computational routines [propositional judgements] process this activity and assign an appropriate descriptive term”.

Some readers may believe that Peacocke’s propositional (or linguistic) bias causes problems for various of his positions. However, it can be doubted that Peacocke would actually deny his linguistic (or propositional) bias. To Peacocke, the bias itself wouldn’t cause problems in his eyes. It’s simply part of the reality of conceptual experience.

[The British philosopher Peter Geach was explicit about his propositional — or linguistic — bias vis-à-vis concepts and mental content. See his Mental Acts and Their objects, which was published in 1957.]

According to Michael Tye again, “phenomenal content” is by definition nonconceptual . And he too offers us us his own dualism between “phenomenal content” and belief. We have (a)

“A content is classified as phenomenal only if it is nonconceptual and poised [for use by the cognitive centres].”

against (b):

“Beliefs [] lie within the conceptual arena, rather than providing inputs to it.”

This is almost foundationalist in that “phenomenal content” is seen as input to be worked upon later (if only a split second later).

Beliefs, on the other hand, are outputs.

Indeed, if this is truly foundationalist, then a) above would be the Given.

It certainly seems foundationalist when Tye makes the epistemic point that phenomenal content is “poised for use by the cognitive centres”. That is, phenomenal content comes (epistemically) before such use.

Yet Tye makes the point that phenomenal content is still “representational”.

How can this be?

How can something represent “that there are such and such co-instantiated locational and nonlocational features” without concepts?

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Note:

At least some of what has been said in the above will be relevant to the Rabbit–duck illusion, which was made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Is Phenomenal Consciousness Non-Conceptual?

You can hear a church bell and not hear it as a church bell. That is, concepts may not be applied to the sounds you hear. Similarly, you can see a fridge; though not see it as a fridge. Your visual sensory receptors are stimulated by the light-waves from the fridge and eventually such data enters consciousness; though you haven’t applied the concept [fridge] to the fridge.

Are these examples of experiences in the strict sense?

It could be the case that while these sensory stimulations are entering consciousness, the mind is applying concepts to other things instead. So the sensory input from the fridge or the church bells are, as it were, in outer consciousness. The sensations or perceptions aren’t experiences in that the mind doesn’t infer anything from the church bell or the fridge (they're not “poised for reasoning”, as Ned Block puts it). The sensations are cognitively impotent and irrelevant.

Nothing is derived from the sound of the church bells or the sight of the fridge because they're not heard as church bells or seen as a fridge. Indeed no concepts are applied. They're certainly not an epistemological “given” because there's no cognitive awareness of the sensations or perceptions. These sensations - not experiences - can't be the ground for inferences, knowledge or anything. They are, ultimately, vacuous. The sensations from the fridge or the church bells aren't accompanied by a higher-order thought to the effect that there's any cognitive application of concepts to the sensations.

The terms of the trade have it that the sensation of hearing the church bells (though not as church bells), and seeing the fridge (though not as a fridge), are examples of “phenomenal consciousness without access-consciousness” (according to Ned Block).  “Access-consciousness” (AC) includes the application of concepts to “phenomenal consciousness”(PC). Phenomenal consciousness alone isn't experience or awareness.

John Searle clarifies things a little here (1990). He says that we can call the fridge or the church-bell sensations (not his examples) examples of “peripheral consciousness”. I wouldn’t also use Searle’s “inattentiveness” because there may have been no reason why we should have been attentive to the fridge or the church bells. They may, however, be in “peripheral consciousness”.

A better example than the church bell and the fridge would be someone saying to you, “I’m going to kill you right now!”. The sound-waves from this person’s voice will eventually enter your consciousness as phenomenal consciousness; though you don’t take the words in. (That’s why it’s pure phenomenal consciousness.) You'll have no knowledge of the sentence’s meaning. All you may have are the sensations: their phenomenal non-cognitive reality. This example may be an example of peripheral consciousness and, this time, perhaps also inattentiveness. Though it wouldn’t be an experience and therefore not the basis of reasoning. (I'm willing to concede that at some lower level of consciousness the sentence’s meaning could have been taken on board in a manner which is vaguely similar to what happens with blind-sight.)

The example of “I’m going to kill you right now!” can’t be compared to, say, driving on autopilot. If there were genuinely no access-consciousness or awareness of the ins-and-outs of driving, then such a person would crash. However, if you'd applied concepts to - or been access conscious of - the utterance “I’m going to kill you right now!” (presuming it was a real threat), then you'd have done something about it. Therefore the auditory sensation of “I’m going to kill you right now!” was indeed non-conceptual; though not an experience. Alternatively, driving on autopilot is – partly – a conceptualised event and therefore an experience: if an inattentive experience.

I can quite happily accept phenomenal consciousness as something distinct from conceptual experience without allowing non-conceptual experience or, alternatively, phenomenal consciousness without concepts.

Jennifer Church cites an example of putative non-conceptual phenomenal consciousness. She writes:

“Consider the example of a noise that I suddenly realise I have been hearing for the last hour. Block uses it to show that, prior to my realization, there is phenomenal-consciousness without access- consciousness…” (1995)

The above doesn’t go against the necessity of conceptual experience because such phenomenal-consciousness wouldn't be experience in my (or Kant’s) sense. It would be peripheral consciousness (Searle) or perhaps it would be in what can be called outer consciousness. However, Church even denies (or doubts) the possibility of true peripheral consciousness or phenomenal-consciousness without access-consciousness. She continues:

“…it seems that I would have accessed it [the noise] sooner had it been a matter of greater importance – and thus…it was accessible all along. Finally, it is not even clear that it was not actually accessed all along insofar as it rationally guided my behaviour in causing me to speak louder…”

If my “I’m going to kill you!” example earlier is a possibility, then Church’s arguments may go too far and don’t work for my example. My example is pure phenomenal-consciousness. Church, therefore, doesn’t give us an argument against the independence and purity of phenomenal-consciousness from AC. She gives us an example of something which may appear at first to be independent and pure PC; but which in fact isn't. She says that she would have “accessed the noise sooner had it been a matter of greater importance”, which gives the game away. Not even Ned Block would accept that scenario as independent and pure PC. This would, I think, simply be a case of Searle's inattentiveness. Similarly, Church says that all along she was speaking loudly. So clearly the noise was AC; though not the center of her attention. Her example doesn't, therefore, work as an argument against independent and pure PC.

What about Block himself?

For a start, I’m not quite sure what Block means by “aware” in his “You were aware of the noise all along” (1992). It seems to be an idiosyncratic usage of that word. However, the implication must be that concepts (of some shape or form) were applied - or belonged - to the noise all along: otherwise how would he have known that it was a noise before he was AC of it at noon? If he wasn’t applying concepts, then how did he know it was a noise before such a realisation? The atomic concept [noise] is just as much a concept as the molecular concept [the noise of a drill]. The atomic concept [drill] may have been applied to the atomic concept [noise] at t², but at t¹ the atomic concept [noise] was still applied (or belonged) to the noise (vis-à-vis Ned Block himself). Consequently, how could it have been pure and independent PC of the noise if all these assessments are correct?

Indeed Block himself (a paragraph later) comes up with an alternative way of describing this putative before-noon pure and independent example of PC: “P-consciousness without attention.” I would say, perhaps only as a paraphrase, PC with inattentive AC; which doesn’t rule out AC and, therefore, the deployment of concepts. To use Searle’s term, the noise before noon was “peripherally conscious”; though not an example of pure and unadulterated PC.

Block does say that although PC and AC are distinct, they often (or always?) do occur together. Block’s example of “P-consciousness of the noise” and “A-consciousness of it” isn't quite as clearly defined as he thinks (in the noise example, that is). It now remains to be seen whether the conceptual experience before noon does actually entail – limited – AC (in Block’s sense).

Strangely enough, while writing the above there was a noise outside my flat. I didn’t pay attention to it. I was inattentive. It was in peripheral consciousness (or in my topographical outer-consciousness). However, I knew all along that it was a noise. Indeed I knew it was a car alarm. If the car alarm’s noise had seamlessly turned into a woman’s scream (if you can imagine such a thing), I would have been attentive to the scream. This simply means that a different concept [a woman’s scream] was applied or belonged to a seamless change to another noise: the car alarm. The car alarm’s noise was no less conceptual, only the concept [a woman’s scream] would make me attentive; whereas the concept [a car alarm] made me indifferent.

Perhaps concepts are applied (or belong) to all noises. Therefore all noises are AC for Darwinian reasons. If we didn’t deploy or notice what kind of noises the sounds were (or apply or notice their conceptual content), we wouldn’t be ready for an unexpected attack or suchlike. We'd be unprepared. That’s why I would notice the woman’s scream and seemingly ignore the car alarm. If car alarms were infrequent, I wouldn’t ignore them either. The fact is, however, I didn’t ignore the car alarm completely: I was simply inattentive.

Prima facie, PC on its own can’t be conceptual. Could we say that “what something is like” is conceptual? Would that even make sense? The same may be true of PC states like hearing, smelling, tasting and the having of pains. All these seem non-conceptual – at first. They aren't about anything in and of themselves. (Alternatively, we could say that they aren’t representational or intentional.) Some philosophers call these things “intrinsic”. The idea of a pain (say, a toothache) as conceptual seems strange. Similarly with the smell of beer. However, there’s nothing to stop concepts being applied to them. Or, more likely, these phenomenal properties may come along with conceptual baggage. We can still accept that PC is distinct. A toothache has a feel - a “what it’s like” - that’s hard to describe in words. However, concepts are applied (or sometimes come with) pains. These concepts aren’t always descriptions.

For example, [a toothache] is itself a concept made-up of two atomic concepts [tooth] and [ache]. The first concept [tooth] isn't descriptive of pain; though the concept [ache] is. We could ask what sort of concept or description it actually is. It’s not much of one. It’s not descriptive like “The King of France”- it’s a single concept. It’s like a pointer to what it’s like without actually describing what it’s like. It’s also like a name or noun and unlike a definite description or ostensive definition. The concept [ache] may get its identity from non-linguistic comparisons with other previous toothaches or other aches. It would be an imaginative rather than a linguistic concept.

Block writes:

“Even pain typically has some kind of representational content. Pains often represent something (the cause of the pain? The pain itself?) as somewhere (in the leg).” (1992)

Similarly with smells, tastes, sounds, sights, etc. They aren't intrinsically conceptual. They're indeed distinguishable from AC or concepts. However, they come with concepts and concepts are applied to them. Therefore PC states become the objects of concepts. (Or PC properties do.) Block says that “P-consciousness is often representational”. Representations are conceptual. Concepts make-up representations. Representations are intentional – they're about something.

References

1) Block, Ned, 'Begging the Question Against Phenomenal Consciousness' (1992)

2) Church, Jennifer, 'Fallacies or Analyses?' (1995)
3) Searle, John, 'Who is computing with the brain?' (1990)

Kant & Hume on the Nature of God

 

According to Kant, God is experience- or evidence-transcendent. In this sense, he quite agreed with Hume.

Kant also believed that Hume thought that “we apply only ontological predicates (eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence)” to God. What Hume required were “properties which can yield a concept in concreto”. The ontological predicates, according to Kant, were “superadded”. That is, predicates such as eternity, omnipresence and omnipotence aren't intrinsic properties. They are, if you like, simply God's abilities and powers. What Hume wanted is a “criterion of identity” (to use a 20^th century term) for God's nature, not simply descriptions of His abilities and powers.

It’s as if someone were to describe a rose by saying that “it delights people and is an emblem of love”, instead of saying that roses are "red, physically constituted by certain natural materials and give off a sweet pungency". Hume was asking:

What is God? I don’t want to know His powers or what He does.

Kant would have said that God's intrinsic properties are beyond us because such properties can only be given in experience. This prompts the question: Aren’t the properties of omnipotence, omnipresence also given only in experience? Isn't part of God’s essence, as it were, the fact that He is beyond experience? Not only that: part of God’s essence (for Kant) is that He is beyond experience. If we wanted more than this, we would be, Kant said, guilty of “anthropomorphism”. This is what many theists were guilty of in Kant's day (as well as later).

In a sense Kant sympathised with Hume’s deism and sided with him against theism and all other “anthropomorphisms”. Theism, or at least anthropomorphism, is for crude God-lovers who somehow project their own properties or attributes onto God (as Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud were later to elaborate upon). However, despite what's been said, Humean deism is going too far... or so Kant thought. Kant’s view of deism is unequivocal. He says, “nothing can come” of it. Not only that: it “is of no value” and “cannot serve as any foundation to religion or morals”.

So whereas theism is too human (Nietzsche's “all too human”), deism is too anti-human. Kant therefore attempted, as ever, to find some kind of middle way between the two extremes.

Kant was unhappy with anthropomorphism (therefore theism?). We mustn't “transfer predicates from the world of sense to a being quite distinct from the world”. The end result of Kant’s vision of God is therefore quite unequivocal. We must

“acknowledge that the Supreme Being is quite inscrutable and even unthinkable in any determinate way as to what it is in itself”.

God is, therefore, another noumenol being.

Kant again agreed with Hume who thought that it's wise

“not to carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond the field of all possible experience”.

However, Kant had a problem with this dogmatic attitude towards reason itself. He thought that Hume shouldn't “consider the field of experience as one which bounds itself in the eyes of our reason”. Reason therefore comes to Kant’s rescue again. Reason can take us beyond “all possible experience” and give us the means to understand, if not know, God Himself (in this instance). Indeed Kant called Hume’s dogmatism towards reason “scepticism”. And Kant, yet again, attempted to find “the true mean between dogmatism…and scepticism”.

Kant reiterated why he thought that we can transcend experience. He said that experience

“does not bound itself; it only proceeds in every case from the conditioned to some other equally conditioned thing”.

However, experience’s

“boundary must lie quite without it, and this is the field of the pure beings of the understanding”.

Of course it's reason which takes us to these “pure beings of the understanding”. It's also natural theology, via reason, which takes us beyond “the boundary of human reason”. It “looks beyond this boundary to the idea of a Supreme Being”.

Yet again Kant shows us that there's an illusive bridge between the offerings of experience and that which is beyond experience. He concedes

“that reason by all it’s a priori principles never teaches us anything more than objects of possible experience”.

This doesn't mean that

“this limitation does not prevent reason from leading us to the objective boundary of experience, viz., to the reference to something which is not itself an object of experience but must be the highest ground of all experience”.

Kant concedes that reason “does not, however, teach us anything concerning the thing in itself”. So what does reason do? It “only instructs us as regards its own complete and highest use in the field of possible experience”. Reason takes us beyond possible experience; though only into the field of conjecture, supposition and speculation. It doesn't give us absolute knowledge of what lies beyond the boundaries of possible experience. It does, though, show us the boundaries themselves and what may lie beyond them.

Kant was clear that it's metaphysics itself that takes us beyond the bounds of possible experience. He said that pure reason is compelled “to quite the mere contemplation of nature, to transcend all possible experience” and to “endeavour to produce the thing…called metaphysics”.

Metaphysics frees “our concepts from the fetters of experience and from the limits of the mere contemplation of nature” and allows us into the “field containing mere objects for the pure understanding which no sensibility can reach”. It's in passages like this that Kant shows us how far removed from the tenets of empiricism he was; despite the fact that he, in certain senses, fused empiricism and rationalism. The empiricists believed that there's no knowledge beyond experience. Kant agreed. However Kant also believed that metaphysics took us beyond experience into the realm of “pure beings” which, nevertheless, couldn't be known. It was these flights of fancy that traditional empiricism was against. Indeed later 20th century empiricists - the logical empiricists - thought that it's precisely these Kantian flights of fancy (even if they didn't claim to give us knowledge) which resulted in metaphysics itself becoming “meaningless” or “nonsense”.

Kant did indeed strike a balance between extreme rationalism (which has no time at all for experiences or the senses) and extreme empiricism (which equally has no time for anything which is putatively beyond sense experience). Kant himself criticised Plato for floating off into the ether because he had no solid moorings in the world of sense. However, Kant also accused hard-core empiricists (such as Hume) of being “sceptics”.

Was it the case, then, that Kant was between a rock and a hard place? Or, as David Lewis once put it, was Kant “between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of scepticism” (in his paper 'Elusive Knowledge' of 1996)? Does it indeed make sense to talk about what lies beyond sense experience? Equally, doesn’t empiricism (in its extreme forms) annihilate the very practice of metaphysics and, ultimately, all philosophy?

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*) All the passages from Kant are taken from his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (the Paul Carus translation of 1902).

Kant on Analytic & Synthetic Judgements

 

According to Kant, analytic judgements are made up of subject and a predicate. The predicate expresses nothing which isn't already contained in the subject.

Take this analytic judgement:

         “All bodies are extended.”

Here the subject is “all bodies” and the predicate is “(are) extended”. Within the subject is contained the concept [extended]. According to Kant, “I have not amplified the concept of body, but only analysed it."

Now take the following:

      “All bodies have weight.”

Here the subject is again “all bodies” and this time the predicate is “have weight”. This judgement is synthetic because the predicate “have weight” isn't contained in the subject “all bodies”. This predicate, therefore, “amplifies” rather than “analyses” the subject.

We now have two terms which sum up what's just been written:

       “explicative judgement” – adds nothing to the subject = analytic

       “ampliative judgement” – increases the given cognition = synthetic

In what way do we know the analytic judgement to be true or false? We know it a priori. Take this judgement:

       “Gold is a yellow metal.”

The concepts involved in the judgement above are empirical in nature. However, the statement above, according to Kant, can still be known to be true a priori. The reason for this is that, again, the predicate “yellow metal” adds nothing to the subject “gold”. According to Kant, we “require no experience beyond our concept of gold”. Yellowness (as it were) is contained in the concept [gold]. That means that the statement can be known to be true a priori.

Arithmetic

According to Kant, arithmetical judgements are all synthetic and not analytic, as was commonly thought in his time (e.g. by Hume). However

         7+ 5 = 12

is still knowable a priori; though it's nevertheless synthetic. Arithmetical statements are a priori “because they carry with them necessity, which cannot be obtained from experience”.

Why isn’t the above a mere analytic judgement such as “a = a”? Why is it synthetic and a priori? After all

         7 + 5 = 12

basically means

        12 = 12

which is a tautology of the kind

        A = A.

And

        7 + 5 = 13

would be a contradiction of the kind

    12 = 13

or

     A = B

Why does Kant think that 7 + 5 = 12 is a priori as well as synthetic? This is how Kant himself puts it:

“The concept of twelve is by no means thought by merely thinking of the combination of seven and five…”

Kant continues:

“…analyse this possible sum as we may, we shall not discover twelve in the concept.”

We can't find the concept [12] within the concept [7 + 5]. What more do we need? According to Kant:

“We must go beyond these concepts by calling to our aid some intuition corresponding to one of them, i.e., either our five fingers or five points…”

This is very difficult to grasp without an explication of the notion of intuition. However, it's the intuition itself that's synthetic. Therefore the “five fingers or five points” needed for the intuition are derived from experience. Therefore they're synthetic (or the experience is). The judgement is synthetic a priori. To use Kant’s terms, the concept [12] is an “amplification” of the concept [7 + 5].

What about geometry?

Geometry

Take the following principle of geometry:

            “A straight line is the shortest path between two points.”

According to Kant, that statement is a synthetic judgement. Though it's also knowable a priori. It's relatively easy to see why the above is knowable a priori, but why is it also synthetic? Kant says:

“The concept of the shortest is therefore altogether additional and cannot be obtained by any analysis of the concept of the straight line.”

The concept [shortest] isn't contained in the concept a [straight line]. Or, more accurately, the concept [the shortest path between two points] isn't contained in the concept [a straight line]. Here again, according to Kant, “intuition must come to aid us”. Presumably here the (empirical) intuition is this:

           a------------------------------------------b

That is, a straight line between two points.

Kant then summarises all the above. He calls synthetic a priori judgements “apodeictic”; just as we would call an analytic judgement “apodeictic”. Such judgements are apodeictic because the predicate is already contained in the subject. However, unlike a pure analytic judgement, such as

             “All bodies are bodies.”

we need a “necessarily present intuition” which supplies the synthetic part of the judgement or statement. Unlike the above analytic statement,

      

“the predicate [12] belongs to this concept [7 + 5] necessarily indeed, yet not directly but indirectly by means of a necessarily present intuition”.

Kant went beyond the mere empirical synthesis of perceptions. He thought that there is a priori synthesis too. When perceptions are synthesized a priori, they are given, according to Kant, “universal validity”.

 

E.O. Wilson’s Ethics isn't Ethics (Is isn't Ought)

Did the biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson “derive an ought from an is”?… Or did he ignore the ought entirely?

“Thus at least man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his most persistent impulses. The imperious word OUGHT [my capitals] seems merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a rule of conduct, however it may have originated.”

— Charles Darwin (From his Descent of Man — the actual passage is here.)

[Note: I wrote this essay some years ago (hence the square brackets) and would probably write it in a different way today. I even contemplated adding a question mark at the end of the title. That said, I don’t have any big problems with anything within it. Indeed, if I did have problems with it, then there’d be no point in publishing it here on Medium.

So to make things clear. I have no serious problems with evolutionary theory, applying the sciences to non-scientific issues, etc. In fact, broadly speaking, I’m a naturalist. So I have a lot of sympathy with the following passage from Daniel Dennett:

“If ‘ought’ cannot be derived from ‘is,’ just what can ‘ought’ be derived from? Is ethics an entirely ‘autonomous’ field of inquiry? Does it float, untethered to facts from any other discipline or tradition? Do our moral intuitions arise from some inexplicable ethics module implanted in our brains (or our ‘hearts,’ to speak with tradition)?”

That quoted, when it comes to ethics, I do believe that there are complications… as will hopefully be shown in the following essay.]

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Edward Osborne Wilson (1929 — 2021) was an American biologist and naturalist.

Wilson was a humanist laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and a New York Times bestselling author.

Wilson was widely recognized as one of the most important scientists of his generation. He received more than 150 awards and medals. (Several animal species have also been named in his honour.)

Finally, Wilson has been called “the father of sociobiology”. He also been called “the father of biodiversity” for his environmental advocacy. More relevantly to the following essay, his ideas on ethics and religion have been praised, criticised and much discussed.

E.O. Wilson’s Naturalised Ethics?

It’s not surprising that someone who believes in (universal) historical and scientific consilience should have believed that ethics is a suitable subject for for scientific scrutiny.

(Consilience: “the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can ‘converge’ on strong conclusions”.)

So how did E.O. Wilson explain science’s relatively new-found interest in ethics? Wilson argued:

“The objective meaning of ethical precepts comprises the mental processes that assemble them and the genetic and cultural histories by which they evolved. Those who think that an is/ought gap exists have not reasoned through the way the gap is filled by mental process and history.”

This is a very interesting passage from Wilson. For example, what on earth do the words “the objective meaning of ethical precepts” mean?… Actually, it’s fairly clear what Wilson was getting at. Still, it’s just an odd use of the words “the objective meaning of”. In addition, Wilson even appears to completely misunderstand the “is/ought gap”…

Either that, or he simply dismissed it!

If Wilson did dismiss it, then good arguments and reasons would need to be given for such a dismissal.

In any case, clearly Wilson was putting a purely descriptive position on “ethical precepts”, not a normative one. Perhaps it follows (at least to some people) from this that it’s not ethics at all! Instead, it’s simply the scientific study of human ethics…

Wilson might well have dismissed that just-stated distinction.

In more detail, Wilson’s position can be seen as being purely scientific (which may not be a bad thing). That’s primarily because of statements such as the following:

“[E]thical precepts comprises the mental processes that assemble them and the genetic and cultural histories by which they evolved.”

Thus these passages are about what we (whoever “we” are) take ethical precepts to be — not what ethical precepts are or what they should be…

Again, Wilson might well have taken these distinctions to be entirely bogus.

So all this is similar to what naturalised epistemology is to traditional epistemology. Here, instead, we have (what seems to be) a naturalised ethics. However, if ethics is intrinsically normative, then perhaps it can’t ever be (fully) naturalised. (Yet no doubt natural phenomena can — and will — still come into the equation.)

Isn’t ethics about how we should live, not how we do live?

In that sense, then, Wilson’s position isn’t ethics at all. It’s the scientific (i.e., biological, neuroscientific, psychological, sociological, etc.) study of human ethics.

More concretely, if Wilson believed that ethics is the study of the “genetic and cultural histories by which [ethical precepts] evolved”, then we can’t do anything about such causal aetiologies of our ethical standards and principles. That’s obviously because such things have already happened. Therefore this is simply a causal account of what we believe and do in the ethical sphere.

Perhaps the study of the “mental process that assemble [our ethical precepts]” isn’t itself in the domain of ethics. Isn’t it the domains of the sciences?

The Is-Ought Gap

Moreover, how is the is/ought gap (or is-ought problem) bridged simply by reasoning about this “mental process and history”?

All this is still the realm of the is and was, not the ought.

Just because we can fill in the gap (as Wilson put it) between the original causes of our beliefs and principles and the beliefs and principles themselves which followed, that alone doesn’t take us into the normative (or from the is to the ought) — even if the gap is filled with “mental processes and history” or whatever else. By filling in the causal gaps between causes and their effects (ethical precepts in Wilson’s book), then we still don’t take the ethical from the is to the ought (or from the descriptive to the normative).

So it seems very unclear why Wilson believed that the is/ought gap has been bridged or “filled’.

How will acquiring knowledge of the causes of our ethical precepts tell us whether or not our precepts are the right or the wrong ones? The causal or scientific facts of genetics (or whatever scientific data we can find) may help us understand why we hold our ethical precepts; though not why we should still hold them.

The English philosopher, writer and journalist Julian Baggini (1968 — ) sees some of these problems too. He writes:

“The idea here seems to be that ethical precepts — for example, the incest taboo — have their roots in particular genetic and cultural histories. It is clear that understanding such histories will be a useful tool in making ethical judgements. What is less clear is that this is a way out of the is/ought problem. After all, I ask [Wilson], are there not circumstances in which we will do well to struggle to behave in ways that might seem contrary to our natural instincts, as, for example, with respect to ethical precepts rooted in a mistrust of strangers or in aggression responses?”

We will indeed learn much from the aetiology of the incest taboo. However, we won’t learn whether or not that taboo is right or wrong from studying its “roots in particular genetic and cultural histories”. This knowledge, of course, may indeed help us in other ways. It will tell us, for example, that the taboo wasn’t passed down from heaven or that it’s not a non-natural precept which we somehow “intuit”. What’s more, all that scientific knowledge may — or will — indeed have an affect on our “ethical judgements”. However, that knowledge will not, at least not on its own, determine the conclusions of our ethical judgements…

So what will?

Wilson seemed to be arguing that we can indeed derive what we ought to do from what is (or what was) the case. That is, if something is genetically and/or culturally inscribed, then it must be a correct ethical precept.

But that clearly doesn’t follow.

Our natural instincts, for example, may be bad instincts. As Baggini puts it when he argues that

“we will do well to struggle to behave in ways that might seem contrary to our natural instincts, as, for example, with respect to ethical precepts rooted in a mistrust of strangers or in aggression responses”.

Of course certain natural instincts may also be good instincts. So it just depends…

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