Jacques Derrida: Every Concept Deconstructs Itself

 

i) Introduction

ii) Deconstruction and Self-Reference

iii) The Concepts Used to Fight Injustice

iv) Conceit and Deconstructive Play

v) Christina Howells vs. “Analytic” Accounts of Derrida’s Work

A few words of warning to begin with.

One problem with this essay is that it’s an account of Jacques Derrida from a person who’s mainly influenced by analytic philosophy. What’s more, the main quotes used in this piece are taken from an analytic philosopher. That said, I have read (some of) Derrida’s papers/books and I’ve even written essays on them. The problem remains, however, is that I never felt that I understood what was being said. Perhaps that’s because — at least in some cases — nothing was being said.

(See the final section of this essay for more on my philosophical bias regarding Derrida.)

Deconstruction and Self-Reference

[In the following, I shall use the word “concept” in its everyday non-philosophical sense. In technical philosophy, a concept is seen to be the “semantic content” of a natural-language word, an abstract object, something in the brain, something in the mind, etc.]

When characterising Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), the philosopher Howard Dainton (paraphrasing Gary Gutting, who was sympathetic to Derrida) states one of Derrida’s (“under erasure”) p̶o̶s̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ in this way:

“[E]very concept deconstructs itself.”

The self-referential problems here seem almost too obvious to point out.

Does the concept/idea [every concept deconstructs itself] also deconstruct itself? Or, more accurately, do the concepts used to advance the position that every concept deconstructs itself also deconstruct themselves?

If they don’t, then why don’t they do so?

And if they do, then where do we go from there?

Similarly, does the position (using the words of Howard Dainton again) that

“contradictions can never be avoided”

also involve contradictions which can never be avoided?

If it doesn’t, then why doesn’t it do so?

And if it does, then where do we go from there?

But let’s be more specific and concrete about these often poetic and oracular phrases from Derrida.

Of course Derrida probably never said that “every concept deconstructs itself” in such a simplistic — or clear! — manner. That said, if you Google the words “every concept deconstructs itself” and “contradictions which can never be avoided” you will find dozens or even hundreds of quotes from both Derrida himself and references to those who have (positively) interpreted him as holding precisely these positions. (See here and here.)

Despite stating all that, this may simply be an analytic philosopher’s misreading of deconstruction. Ironically enough, Derrida himself claimed that “all readings are misreadings” (see here). Yet, at the very same time, many devotees of Derrida feel very strongly about certain (mainly political) misreadings (see here) — as did Derrida himself! In any case, misreadings of Derrida may be of the kind that Professor Christina Howells warns her fellow academic experts against (see final section).

So if these ways of putting Derrida’s position are too simplistic (or simply too clear), then are there better ways of putting them?

Of course if Derrida did believe that every concept deconstructs itself (even if he never actually used the words “every concept deconstructs itself”), then you can bet that any (as it were) more faithful way expressing his position (say, as expressed by a follower of Derrida) will be difficult to understand. That is unless one is an academic devotee of Derrida. And even if one is a devotee of Derrida, then there’ll still be no guarantee that any two such people will agree on their readings of Derrida. In fact, they often don’t!

What’s more, if every concept deconstructs itself, then perhaps agreement — or even mutual understanding — is impossible.

The Concepts Used To Fight Injustice

When deconstruction was fully played out (or taken to its various philosophical conclusions), Derrida often didn’t like the resultant readings of his work. More broadly, Derrida had problems — in his later years especially — with the philosophical freedom deconstruction was supposed to allow. (Or was it? Or wasn’t it? Or both? Or neither? Or…?) Basically, Derrida clearly believed that at least some concepts did not deconstruct themselves.

This is where politics inevitably enters the equation.

For example, do the concepts used to fight racism, sexism, fascism, capitalism and injustice deconstruct themselves?

These political isms have been mentioned because they’re precisely the political isms most poststructuralists, etc. fought against using Derrida’s deconstructive weapons.

Surely if every concept deconstruct itself, then these concepts must do so too.

These political underpinnings of deconstruction are mentioned to highlight a problem. And that problem was graphically pointed out by Thomas A. McCarthy. This is how he put it:

“Deconstruction can hardly give voice to the excluded other. The wholesale character of its critique of logocentrism deprives it of any language in which to do so.”

And that’s the primary reason why Derrida didn’t — and perhaps couldn’t — even hint at anything directly (rather than tangentially) political — at least not until his (explicit) “political turn” in the 1990s. Hence the prior obscure, ineffable and (it can be easily argued) pretentious prose.

This is McCarthy again:

“It is [] merely by accident that his writings contain little analysis of political institutions and arrangements, historical circumstances and tendencies, or social groups and social movements, and no constructions of right and good, justice and fairness, legitimacy and legality?”

McCarthy believes that Deconstruction and/or post-structuralism attempted to “liberate the Other”. The problem is that there’s an indefinite number of Others. And many Others are also at mutual odds with each other. Yet surely only a shared language — the language that deconstruction rejected or deconstructed — can help liberate any given Other.

More particularly, isn’t it the case that the words ‘legality’, ‘legitimacy’, ‘fairness’, ‘justice’ are very good examples of transcendental signifieds — at least according to Derrida’s own book (or “text”)? Thus Derrida’s only interest in philosophical words or concepts (until the 1990s) was to violently deconstruct them. If he hadn’t done that, then his whole enterprise would have self-destructed (if not deconstructed) itself.

In the end, however, Derrida’s politics did trump his philosophy when he more or less (re?)embraced Marxism and made some very logocentric statements about, for example, (platonic!) Justice (see here). And he did so largely in response to what he took to be various (political) misreadings(!) of his own work.

More specifically, Derrida only started to wax lyrically — and explicitly — about Karl Marx, Justice, etc. late in his life. For example, when he wrote his Specters of Marx in 1993 — some 40 or more years after he first started writing philosophy.

This was Derrida’s “political turn”.

(Many of Derrida’s followers and admirers have stated that politics or “Ethics” imbued all his work from the very beginning.)

Now take the words of Professor Simon Critchley when he tackled Derrida’s (supposed?) relativism. He said:

“[]Derrida, who is always perceived as a relativist. []In Derrida’s later work, we see him moving more and more explicitly towards a defence of a normative universalism, and a belief in the undeconstructability of justice, as he puts it, which is an overarching value that cannot be relativised.”

Is the above a misreading? Indeed, what would make it either a True Reading or a misreading?

But what of Derrida himself?

In Specters of Marx, Derrida gave a very-positive appraisal of both Karl Marx and Marxism. For example, Derrida wrote:

“The name of New International is given here to what calls to the friendship of an alliance without institution among those who … continue to be inspired by at least one of the spirits of Marx or of Marxism. It is a call for them to ally themselves, in a new, concrete and real way… in the critique of the state of international law, the concepts of State and nation, and so forth: in order to renew this critique, and especially to radicalise it.”

So did misreadings of Derrida also include the concept that every concept deconstructs itself? Of course if every concept deconstructs itself, then Derrida (as already stated) could never have stated that “every concept deconstructs itself” simply or clearly. Instead Derrida “played with the sign”. That is, he played philosophical games… Until, that is, he realised the negative political effects of deconstruction’s free-for-all play. (This is something that Marxists and others on the Left were keen to point out about Derrida’s work; as well as about the work of various postmodernists.)

(Derrida one wrote this: “To risk meaning nothing is to start to play.”)

So, again, where does that leave the concepts used to fight racism, fascism, capitalism, sexism and injustice generally?

More specifically, does the concept [deconstruction] deconstruct itself?

If it doesn’t, then why doesn’t it do so?

And if it does, then where to we go from there?

Derrida might well have “argued” that the concept [deconstruction] does indeed deconstruct itself — in order to prove his point. On the other hand, he did (more or less) argue that the concept [deconstruction] isn’t a concept at all! That, to many, was simply Derrida playing another one of his philosophical games again.

Again, do the concepts used to fight racism, fascism, sexism, capitalism and injustice also deconstruct themselves? More specifically, would Derrida have ever “interrogated” those political activists who freely used many (logocentric) concepts (i.e., from Western philosophy) to further leftwing political goals and causes? Or did Derrida only interrogate those selected bad concepts used by the philosophers, politicians and laypeople he had political problems with? (Derrida and his followers often used the word “interrogate” — see here.)

As a politically committed individual, it would have been very difficult philosophically, and very problematic politically, for Derrida to ever have argued that the concepts used against racism, fascism, capitalism, sexism and injustice deconstructed themselves because that would have rendered these concepts — as well as the activists who used them — politically impotent had they acted on his words. Yet, of course, Derrida never did argue that. Instead, Derrida only had other concepts in mind — (politically) bad concepts.

(Bad concepts such as [truth], [logic], [objectivity], [logos] [God], [nationalism], [race], [universality], [reason], [profit], etc.)

Conceit and Deconstructive Play

Why would a philosopher or anyone else (to quote Howard Dainton again)

“play with the conceits that lie in the interstices of concepts”

in the first place?

Moreover, perhaps deconstructive gameplaying makes

“straightforward rational discourse impossible [because] one can only play with the conceits that lie in the interstices of concepts”.

Would someone’s reasons for indulging in deconstructive play themselves involve self-deconstructing concepts and contain essential contradictions? Thus how could such a philosopher have any moral, political and/or philosophical reasons (or motivations) to do anything at all if every concept deconstructs itself? Again, would that include concepts used against racism, fascism, capitalism, sexism, injustice and also used to defend deconstruction itself?

So what is all this deconstructive play really about?

What is its goal?

Many would argue that it’s primary goal is (or was) political.

Yet that partly backfired — at least on my own reading of Derrida’s strongly negative reactions to some (political) misreadings of his own work.

To repeat: how could deconstruction have had any goals at all if every concept deconstructs itself? So perhaps Derrida and his followers believed that some concepts don’t actually deconstruct themselves. Only politically bad concepts do.

Christina Howells vs. “Analytic” Accounts of Derrida’s Work

As stated in the introduction, the problem here is that this is an account of Jacques Derrida using quotes from from an (English) analytic philosopher.

But is that really a problem?

According Professor Christina Howells (of the University of Oxford) it certainly is. For example, she says that

“there is a risk of [analytic philosophers] transforming [continental] philosophers into something they’re not, and making them say something they weren’t saying”.

Why is that? Howells says it’s because

“we’d loose much of the specificity that way, and you could we be left with banality”.

Howells then goes on to say that

“when you extract from a long elaborated discussion a kernel which is then acceptable to analytic philosophy, whether it is about being with others, or about what Derrida might mean by différance, if he were prepared to express it quite differently, you’ve lost too much”.

So what happened to The Death of the Author? And what about Jacques Derrida’s “interpretative play” and there being “no outside-text” (il n’y a pas de hors-texte)?

In any case, I had no choice but to rely on writers like Dainton because I simply don’t understand much deconstructive and/or poststructuralist prose — at least as it is advanced from the inside.

Let me repeat that:

I don’t understand most of what is said by these academics and philosophers.

And that’s the case even after attempting to do so for a long time. Now that may simply be because I’m plain thick. Either that or I haven’t embedded myself deeply enough, and for long enough, in this academic milieu. That said, my current cognitive situation (along with many other educated people as regards Derrida) is what it is.

So where do we go from here?

Is there a midway position between the critical positions adopted by some analytic philosophers and Derrida’s own tribal academic devotees?

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

German Infinity and Egalitarian Plants: The Political Use of Science

 

i) Introduction

ii) Philip Goff & Pascual Jordan on the Politics of Plants

iii) German Mathematics

iv) Stephen Jay Gould on Evolutionary Progress

v) Science for the People

vi) Professor Elizabeth S. Anderson

vii) Conclusion

I came across the following incredible — almost surreal — passage written by a (London) Times correspondent who was writing in the 1930s. (It’s quoted in Andrew Hodge’s brilliant book Alan Turing: The Enigma.) The passage goes:

“A number of mathematicians met recently at Berlin University to consider the place of their science in the Third Reich. It was stated that German mathematics would remain those of the ‘Faustian man’, that logic alone was no sufficient basis for them, and that the German intuition which had produced the concepts of infinity was superior to the logical equipment which the French and Italians had brought to bear on the subject. Mathematics was a heroic science which reduced chaos to order. National Socialism had the same task and demanded the same qualities. So the ‘spiritual connexion’ between them and the New Order was established — by a mixture of logic and intuition [].”

I’ll comment in detail on this passage later. However, the first thing it brought to mind was the English philosopher Philip Goff and his political interpretations of recent experiments on plants.

Philip Goff & Pascual Jordan on the Politics of Plants

Professor Philip Goff offers us political and philosophical (i.e., panpsychist) interpretations of the experiments and research on plants carried out by the ecologists Professor Monica Gagliano and Professor Suzanne Simard. He makes all sorts of political claims about plants which just so happen to perfectly square with his own (prior) politics.

And that’s what the Nazis did with mathematics in the 1930s (at least according to the passage above), what the Radical Science Movement did in the 1960s/70s and what various activists are doing today.

Take Goff again. He says (of Suzanne Simard’s research) that

“[t]he mycorrhiza structures allow for a complex system of egalitarian redistribution”.

And, elsewhere, Goff writes:

“[H]uman societies social harmony is possible only when they are united by strong ties of kinship. No such prejudice exists among trees. Even across species there exist networks of reciprocal support. In summer, the birch trees help out the fir trees by passing along carbon, especially to the fir trees that are shaded from the sun. In winter, there is reciprocation: when the birches are leafless, the firs provide much needed carbon support.”

Of course the words “egalitarian redistribution” are taken from the human political domain. Indeed Goff himself — coincidentally enough — is strongly in favour of egalitarian redistribution in the human world and has written about it in newspapers and in his own blog. (See Goff’s article ‘Our Glastonbury U2 protest was a call for an ethical tax’, written for the Guardian newspaper.)

It’s worth mentioning here the well-known theory that exactly the same data, evidence or experiment about — or on — x (in this case plants) can be used as ammunition to advance just about any political position. (See underdetermination of theory by data/evidence.) Indeed, historically, this has often been done. (Think about how some 19th-century Darwinists and 20th-century fascists relied on the animal world to advance their politics — see later sections.) More specifically, Goff’s own talk of “quid pro quo relationship[s]” in the plant world could even be used to advance political positions which are diametrically opposed to his own.

This basic distinction between theory/experiment/data and interpretation goes all the way down to, for example, the distinction between the mathematical formalism/s of quantum mechanics and their interpretations.

So now let’s compare Goff’s words to the words of German physicist and Nazi (at least at this time) Pascual Jordan.

Pascual Jordan

Pascual Jordan (1902–1980) at one point interpreted biology through a Nazi lens. Take this passage:

“We know that there are in a bacterium, among the enormous number of molecules constituting this … creature … a very small number of special molecules endowed with dictatorial authority over the total organism; they form a Steuerungszentrum [steering centre] of the living cell. Absorption of a light quantum anywhere outside of this Steuerungszentrum can kill the cell just as little as a great nation can be annihilated by the killing of a single soldier. But absorption of a light quantum in the Steuerungszentrum of the cell can bring the entire organism to death and dissolution — similar to the way a successfully executed assault against a leading [führenden] statesman can set an entire nature into a profound process of dissolution.”

Is the above any different to interpreting plant behaviour through a leftwing lens?

(See also Soviet/communist Lysenkoism here and Stephen J. Gould later.)

German Mathematics?

If someone is extremely politically committed to a specific ideology or political movement, and is a diligent activist, then he/she may well interpret almost everything politically. (This is similar to what happens with religious fundamentalists.) And, of course, that everything will include science.

So it’s no surprise that the German National Socialists of the 1930s did this.

Just as recent activists and political theorists have classed maths as “white supremacist” (see here), so the Nazis believed that “German mathematics would remain those of the Faustian man” and suchlike. The Nazis wanted a Germanic maths; just as some activists today want maths to serve cotemporary political projects. But of course maths can be neither Germanic nor ideologically correct. Of course it can be pushed or interpreted in such ways — but it makes little sense to that maths itself is.

The passage above (from the 1930s Times) tells us that

“logic alone was no sufficient basis for them, and that the German intuition which had produced the concepts of infinity was superior to the logical equipment which the French and Italians had brought to bear on the subject”.

This contains some well-rehearsed points and distinctions in the philosophy of mathematics or in metamathematics.

For example, there was once a long-running debate as to whether maths is a part of logic or logic is a part of maths (see here). It just so happens that these Nazi mathematicians believed — in broad terms — that French and Italian mathematicians had focused on the logic of maths and their fellow Germans had focussed on intuition (see here). Indeed, culturally and historically, these 1930s Nazis might well have been correct. That is, perhaps the Italians and French did focus on the logic of maths and not on (Germanic) intuition at that time.

These German Nazi mathematicians can be criticised from a realist/Platonic angle too. (What nationality takes a specifically realist view on maths?) That is, a realist/Platonist would never argue that any nation could “produce the concepts of infinity”. People can only gain access (say, via “direct insight” or intuition) to infinity and then make use it. To realists and to many others, infinity isn’t created — it is discovered. Sure, the concept (or concepts) of infinity isn’t the same as infinity itself. But it’s still the case that its not a very realist/Platonic position to stress the production of the concepts of infinity.

That said, perhaps mathematical realism is actually a national phenomenon. So what about anti-realism?

And do the “concepts of infinity” serve right-wing or left-wing politics?

These German mathematicians also said that maths is a “heroic science which reduced chaos to order”. Is that statement any more or less political than the poststructuralists, etc. who’ve argued against the “mathematising of experience” or “the urge to reduce society to mathematics”? (Arguably, though, these are positions against the applications of mathematics, not mathematics itself.) Indeed many contemporary theorists have themselves stressed this negative aspect of maths — how mathematicians attempt to order everything. Then again, New Agers, mystics and “spiritualists” (who would deem themselves to be miles away from the Nazis) have also emphasised “intuition” against “cold logic” and “reductionism”. Indeed these Nazi mathematicians themselves used the words “spiritual connexion” to refer to what they were doing. Yes; Nazi spiritualism was quite a big thing at one point.

Now Take the case of Stephen J. Gould.

Stephen Jay Gould on Evolutionary Progress

American palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould pointed out that various scientists had put “right-wing”, “racist”, “capitalist”, and even “fascist” slants on various evolutionary and biological data.

And what did Gould do in response?

He often put a Leftist/Marxist slant on evolutionary and biological data.

Take Gould’s case against evolutionary “progress”. This was infused by his leftwing politics. But that’s not a surprise because he was a self-described “Marxist” (see here) who was part of the Radical Science Movement.

Gould’s position is so overladen with political (as it were) concern and Marxist theory that he treated many of his opponents as no less than straw targets. Basically, Gould believed that any belief in evolutionary progress is always politically dangerous — and that position infused many of his arguments. (Many other commentators — both positive and negative — have connected Gould’s views on punctuated equilibrium to his Marxism too— see here.)

Take this highly political and rhetorical passage from Gould:

“[E]volution has been saddled with a suite of concepts and meanings that represent long-standing Western social prejudices and psychological hopes, rather than any account of nature’s factuality.”

More relevantly, Gould concluded:

“Most pernicious and constraining among these prejudices is the concept of progress [].”

Many have said — in defence of Gould — that “facts are facts” and it simply doesn’t matter about his politics. True; but Gould’s political glosses or interpretations of those facts (as with those quotes just given) are not themselves (scientific) facts. (Ironically, those sympathetic to Gould have also freely admitted that his politics influenced his science; but, of course, in an entirely positive way — see here from www.marxists.org.)

The other problem here is that hardly any — if any — contemporary biologists or evolutionary theorists believe that evolution has an “inherent drive” (whatever that is!) towards “progress”. (They might have done on the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century.) And they don’t do so because it’s almost impossible to see evolution is such a personified or reified way. That is, evolution can’t be seen as a single abstract entity or as a single whole. Thus evolution can’t go in any single direction — either toward progress or toward simplification (or even toward stasis).

So it’s not as if there is a single biologist or evolutionary theorist who isn’t fully aware of the many species that haven’t “progressed” at all in millions of years (e.g., crocodiles, velvet worms, cow sharks, lice, horseshoe crabs, cockroaches, etc.). Such biologists and theorists are also aware that evolution can move in the direction (which is a kind of personification itself) of simplification — as with certain kinds of parasites .

But why do these widely-accepted facts rule out progress for some species in some situations and in some respects? Of course the word “progress” is loaded and needs to be defined. However, the problem is that Gould took the word “progress” in a entirely political way and then he simply assumed that other biologists and evolutionary theorists were using that word in his own political way too. (This was a kind of psychological projection on Gould’s part.)

So take Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins — who Gould often attacked and vice versa (see here) — argued that there is a

“tendency for lineages to improve cumulatively their adaptive fit to their particular way of life, by increasing the numbers of features which combine together in adaptive complexes”.

More relevantly, Dawkins concluded:

“By this definition, adaptive evolution is not just incidentally progressive, it is deeply, dyed-in-the-wool, indispensably progressive.”

Ironically, Dawkins agreed with the broad gist of Gould’s argument on evolutionary progress. However, he simply saw exceptions to — and qualifications of — it. In other words, Gould’s political stance against progress in evolution turned out to be as simplistic and generalised as the the positions (many not actually held by any professional biologists) he was against.

Of course if someone says that Gould’s position is essentially political, then someone else may say that Dawkins’s own counter-position is political too. Except that Gould actually admitted that politics infused all his science (see here). Dawkins, on the other hand, never made any explicit connections, is not a “fascist” or “racist” (though many on the Far/Marxist Left believe he is) and is in fact a political liberal, anti-racist, etc. Of course these facts about Dawkins’ politics obviously don’t automatically stop his position on evolutionary progress from being political in some way.

Science for the People

It’s often the case that some of those who speak out against the political nature of science don’t do so because they believe that science should be apolitical: they do so because they believe that science should be political in the correct ways.

Take Science for the People and the Sociobiology Study Group in the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Jay Gould — again — was a member of these two groups. So too was Steven Rose — an important member of the Socialist Workers Party (see here); and Richard Lewontin (“the Marxist geneticist”).

The Socialist Workers Party’s Steven Rose, speaking out against capitalism and “capitalist science”.

These two groups didn’t want to make sure that scientific theories were apolitical or that scientists kept out of politics. They wanted to make sure that scientific theories and scientists were political in the correct (i.e., Marxist) ways. And, as Marxist groups, they tied much science to racism, capitalism and imperialism.

(See ‘Radical Science and its Enemies’, by Steven Rose and Hilary Rose.)

Thus it was no surprise that the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR) grew out of this atmosphere of scientific intolerance. This group attacked another scientist Stephen Jay Gould had serious problems with — E.O. Wilson (see here). In detail, just before Wilson gave a talk, the microphone was taken over by members of INCAR. They chanted:

“Racist Wilson you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

Then these same activists rushed Wilson and poured a pitcher of ice water over his head.

Professor Elizabeth S. Anderson

Now take the case of Professor Elizabeth S. Anderson and a paper she wrote in 1995.

When I first began reading Anderson’s paper it seemed to be — at least in part — highlighting and criticising the political nature of both scientific theory and the political and technological uses of science. However, it turned out that it wasn’t the political use of science Anderson has a problem with. It’s the political use of science by scientists and governments with incorrect politics.

In terms of her technical detail, Professor Anderson isn’t simply arguing that political and ideological (to use her own terms) “value judgements” and “background assumptions” exist in all scientific theorising. Anderson is also making the political point that there are many politically-incorrect value judgements and background assumptions which underpin scientific theorising. In addition, scientific theories are often applied in ways that (to her at least) are politically objectionable.

This means that Anderson’s paper is just as much a work of politics as it is a work of epistemology or of the philosophy of science.

So if Anderson is correct to argue (which she does indirectly and in academese) that politics and ideology pervade all scientific theories, and that she additionally argues (again, often indirectly) that such politics and ideology should be politically acceptable (to whom?), then scientific theory (alongside epistemology and philosophy of science) effectively becomes a political battleground. Despite all that, it’s probably the case that Anderson believes that this scientific theory/politics “binary opposition” is false and political battles within science have always occurred anyway.

Professor Anderson, then, basically advances the position that all science is inherently political. (Historically, this was also the position of both the Nazi and Soviet states — see ‘Ideologically Correct Science’.) Thus it follows (to her at least) that epistemologists, philosophers of science and political activists (or at least those who share her own politics) must try their hardest to make sure that all science is both politically acceptable and ideologically correct. In that sense, then, Professor Anderson is no different to the Nazi mathematicians, Pascual Jordan and Stephen J. Gould.

Conclusion

There’s usually an element of truth in all these politicisations of science. Indeed they probably wouldn’t even get off the ground in the first place if that weren’t the case.

So, in Philip Goff’s case, the experiments he cites were probably scientifically kosher and carried out under strict conditions. (The tests may even be capable of being repeated.) However, what is relevant is how these experiments have been politically interpreted by Goff and others.

The same goes for Germanic mathematicians of the 1930s. Sociologically and historically it might well have been the case that Italian and French mathematicians (at that time) pursued different elements of maths — and did so in different ways - to German mathematicians, Yet is that a question of mathematics itself or merely one of culture and history?

Of course some activists and philosophical theorists will take this maths/culture binary opposition to be naïve.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Is Not Idealist in Nature

 

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics — and even quantum mechanics generally — has been both loosely and strongly associated with the philosophical position of idealism (see here).

Of course there are almost as many varieties of idealism (from subjective idealism to absolute idealism to pluralist idealism) as there are idealists. So this isn’t the place to run through all of them. In any case, the kind of idealism I have in mind will become clear in this essay itself.

So take as an example the following passage (written in 2005) from Harry Nielsen:

“ Almost unbelievably perhaps, [the academics who developed quantum mechanics] chose to interpret the strangeness of quantum behaviour by denying the existence of physical reality. And as a standard textbook interpretation of quantum mechanics, physicists have been taught for the last 80 years that physical reality therefore only exists as a result of the act of observation. This is the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, developed in the late 1920’s by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. To quote Heisenberg: ‘I believe that the existence of the classical ‘path’ can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The ‘path’ comes into existence only when we observe it’.”

Of course the above doesn’t actually mention “idealism” — yet the general gist seems to be that the Copenhagen interpretation is idealist (or at least subjectivist). And it isn’t at all odd that this writer thought this way about this interpretation of quantum mechanics.

So it’s important to stress that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is not idealist. Or at least the Copenhagen interpretation itself can be interpreted as not being idealist. That said, it is difficult to explain why that’s so. Indeed not many physicists — or even philosophers — have fully clarified why that is so.

Finally, there are stronger arguments which assert that quantum mechanics — if not the Copenhagen interpretation itself — is entirely subjectivist in nature. Yet there are clear differences between subjectivism and idealism. Indeed Harry Nielsen’s words above can be interpreted as only claiming that the Copenhagen interpretation is subjectivist, not idealist.

Various philosophers (such as Karl Popper) have also argued against those who claim that quantum mechanics is subjectivist , let alone idealist (see Popper here).

Arthur Mach’s Position

It is therefore convenient that there’s a short and simple passage (as quoted in Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery) from the Austrian physicist Arthur March (1891–1957) which perfectly clarifies this issue.

Firstly, Arthur March makes an explicit anti-idealist statement. (It’s not clear if that was his main intention — indeed it probably wasn’t.) He wrote:

“Naturally nobody is so mad as to assert that a body ceases to exist the moment we turn our backs to it [].”

(March was referring to quantum bodies such as particles; not cups, trees or human beings.)

An idealist, on the other hand, would argue that

a body ceases to exist the moment we turn our backs to it.

And that’s because, to an idealist, “a body” — and everything else — only exists in the individual mind or in some kind of collective mind. Thus it does indeed cease to exist when “we turn our backs to it”. (Unless, that is, it still exists in the mind of God — as with Bishop Berkeley immaterialism, in some other being’s mind or in a collective mind.)

Arthur March, on the other had, stated that it is “mad [] to assert” that idealist position. Yet March did preface that phrase with the following words:

“One may say perhaps without fear of being misunderstood [] that for the physicist a body has reality only in the instant in which he observes it.”

It’s worth noting the phrase “for the physicist”.

This isn’t an expression of a philosophical view or even of a layperson’s position. As a physicist, March was speaking entirely qua physicist.

So even though it may be problematic to stress observation alone, this is still the stress of a physicist qua physicist. And, almost by definition, a physicist is only concerned with the observations of — and experiments on — a (in March’s word) body.

Thus March, qua physicist, stated that the

“[body] does cease, in the moment, to be an object of inquiry for the physicist”.

Why is that? It’s

“because there exists no possibility of saying anything about it which is based on experiment”.

March’s statement above is true by definition. That is, what comes before the experiment can’t actually be part of the experiment. Or if someone does “say[] anything about it”, then what he says can’t be based on the experiment and is therefore not itself physics. Indeed even the mathematical formalism and/or the wave function required for the experiment has nothing to “say” about any bodies before the experiment.

The wave function has just been mentioned.

Thus the standard interpretation of the wave function is that — in itself — it has no physical interpretation. It is purely a mathematical function. A tool. Something physicists use to do things with. Of course it can then be given a physical interpretation.

Take the Schrödinger equation.

This doesn’t tell us what the wave function is — other than in purely mathematical terms. The physical meaning of the equation — i.e., what entities, etc. are posited — is a product of the interpretation of quantum mechanics the physicist adopts.

And even when physicists do “guess” at the (as it were) before-observation, that too is only a use of the wave function; which, again, is a large abstract mathematical object made of smaller mathematical objects.

So, basically, Arthur March, qua physicist, wasn’t interested in what might have been the case before the experiment. And, presumably, he wasn’t that interested in what was the case — i.e., in the experimental area — after he took off his white coat and packed up his bags to go home. Alternatively, if he was interested in both the before and after of the experiment, then it was as a philosopher or a layperson, not as a physicist.

Conclusion

As hinted at in the introduction, it is at least partly understandable that some people see the Copenhagen interpretation as idealist. In the passage in the introduction, for example, Harry Nielsen quoted Werner Heisenberg. So I’ll help Nielson’s cause along by also quoting Heisenberg stating the following:

“[A]n ‘objective’ physics in this sense, i.e. a sharp division of the world into object and subject has indeed ceased to be possible.”

Such passages from Heisenberg and others have provided grist to the mill for various idealists, mystics, New Agers and whatnot. Yet even here (on my reading of idealism at least) an idealist simply can’t make any distinction at all between “object and subject”. (Of course it is possible that the word “object” can be defined in such as way that it squares with idealism.) That’s because (to an idealist) literally everything is in the individual’s (or experimenter’s) mind. (Either that, or everything is in a collective mind or in the mind of God.) In other words, there is simply no object in idealism — we only have a subject or subjects.

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