Are the questions “Why is water wet?” and “Why does the physical give rise to experience?” bogus?

The philosopher Valerie Hardcastle tackles the mysterian’s questions, “Why is water H₂O?”, “Why is water wet?” and “Why couldn’t water be XYZ?”. Gordon Park Baker once stated that “the unexamined question is not worth answering” and that “questions, just as much as assertions, carry presuppositions”. So can we apply Baker’s words to this mysterian’s questions?

(1) Introduction

(2) Valerie Hardcastle’s Chat With a Water-Mysterian

(3) Bogus Questions?

(4) Is This Water-Mysterian Really a Materialist?

(5) Water = H₂O

(6) Modal Imagination

This essay is primarily about Valerie Gray Hardcastle’s analysis of what she calls a “water-mysterian” and the latter’s philosophical position on water’s constitution and wetness. (This analysis is found in Hardcastle’s paper ‘The Why of Consciousness: A Non-Issue for Materialists’, which was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.)

The American philosopher Valerie Gray Hardcastle discusses the views of a water-mysterian because such a person is meant to be equivalent to a (well) consciousness-mysterian (see ‘New Mysterianism’). That is, mysterianism about water is supposed to be analogous (or simply comparable) to mysterianism about consciousness. Hardcastle’s example of water is, therefore, simply used to get the point across.

To show that all this is really about consciousness, on a page after all the quotes used from Hardcastle in this piece, she explicitly tells us that we have

“a good reason to think that the mind is nothing more than activity in the brain”.

More relevantly, Hardcastle tackles the water-mysterian’s questions, “Why is water H₂O?” and “Why is water wet?”.

Thus we can now rewrite Hardcastle’s words directly above:

We have a good reason to think that water’s wetness is nothing more than H₂O or the activity of H₂O molecules.

Hardcastle does indeed raise some interesting points. However, she may not be entirely fair to her opponents or correct on everything she says. What’s more, Hardcastle mightn’t have been fair to this fictional water-mysterian (or mysterians generally). Indeed, the term “water-mysterian” may itself be deemed to be a (as “postmodern” academics put it) rhetorical trope.

Valerie Hardcastle’s Chat With a Water-Mysterian

Valerie Hardcastle sets up a fictional discussion with the water-mysterian with these words:

“Let us return to the example of water being wet. Consider the following exchange. A water-mysterian wonders why water has this peculiar property. She inquires and you give an explanation of the molecular compositions of water and a brief story about the connection between micro-chemical properties and macro-phenomena.”

This water-mysterian even fully accepts the science (or chemistry) of water. Or at least Hardcastle has her state the following:

“Ah, she say, I am a materialist, so I am convinced that you have properly correlated water with its underlying molecular composition. I also have no reason to doubt that your story about the macro-effects of chemical properties to be wrong. But I still am not satisfied, for you have left off in your explanations what I find most puzzling. Why is water H₂O?”

The water-mysterian then indulges in some modal philosophy, which is strongly in hock to the (vast) philosophical literature on this subject. She finishes off with this passage:

“Why couldn’t it be XYZ? Why couldn’t it have some other radically different chemical story behind it? I can imagine a possible world in which water has all the macro-properties that it has now, but is not composed of H₂O.”

Bogus Questions?

The basic point which Valerie Hardcastle is making above (at least as I see it) is twofold:

(1) Just because a question can be asked (or simply framed), then that doesn’t mean that it can be answered. 
(2) Just because a philosophical question can be asked (or framed), then that doesn’t mean that it has any meat to it.

It can be suspected, however, that Hardcastle is actually opting for point (2), not both (1) and (2).

The problem we have here was once summed up by the American-English philosopher Gordon Park Baker.

In his ‘φιλοσοφια: εικων και ειδος’ (which can be found in Philosophy in Britain Today), Baker wrote:

“We should [] make serious efforts at raising questions about the questions commonly viewed as being genuinely philosophical. Perhaps the proper answers to such questions are often, even if not always, further questions!”

Indeed, all sorts of philosophical questions have been deemed to be profound, deep and worthy of serious thought. However, perhaps it’s just as important — and indeed just as philosophical — to ask questions about these questions (i.e., not simply to attempt to answer them). Or as Gordon Baker put it:

“The unexamined question is not worth answering.”

Baker then added the following words:

“To accept a question as making good sense and embark on building a philosophical theory to answer it is already to make the decisive step in the whole investigation.”

It’s now worth saying that there’s no need to use the word “nonsense” about the questions considered in this piece. So arguing that a particular question simply assumes that there’s an answer (or that a question can’t be answered at all), for example, isn’t a point about logical grammar (or logical form) or to claim that it’s nonsense.

[The word “nonsense” wasn’t actually used — by philosophers in the 1930s and beyond — in its everyday sense: it usually had a precise technical meaning and usage.]

Another problem is summed up by Gordon Baker:

“Questions, just as much as assertions, carry presuppositions.”

This is especially true in philosophy.

The relevant type of questions which need to be noted here are the following:

1) Why does the chemical composition of water give rise to water’s wetness?

2) “Why do physical processes give rise to experience?” (David Chalmers’ question.)

Just because a question is grammatical and even makes (some kind of) sense, then that doesn’t mean that it’s a philosophically (or otherwise) legitimate question.

To back this up, let’s use an adaptation of a well-known surreal sentence from Noam Chomsky and simply turn it into a question. Thus:

Why do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?

As stated before, one obvious “presupposition” to a question is that there’s an answer — or at least a possible answer — to it.

So what (to use Baker’s word) “presuppositions” are hidden in the following questions? -

(1) Why is water H₂0?

(2) Why is water wet?

(3) Why couldn’t water be XYZ?

So can the same kind of point be made about this well-known question from the Australian philosopher David Chalmers? Namely:

“Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?”

As stated in the introduction, Chalmers’ question is quoted because Valerie Hardcastle is actually using the case of water as an analogy: she really has consciousness-mysterians in mind.

Is This Water-Mysterian Really a Materialist?

It seems odd that Hardcastle's fictional water-mysterian should class herself as a “materialist”. So I suspect that Hardcastle classes her as a “materialist” simply to get her point across.

That point is that this water-mysterian is a materialist purely and simply because she accepts literally all the science about water’s chemical composition.

That isn’t materialism.

So in the water-mysterian’s (or Hardcastle's) words, she is

“convinced that [the scientist has] properly correlated water with its underlying molecular composition”.

Indeed, she has

“no reason to doubt that [the scientist’s] story about the macro-effects of chemical properties to be wrong”.

However, this water-mysterian also believes that there’s still something which is over and above the science: the wateriness of water!

But is there?

This debate connects to a larger issue.

Water = H₂O

One main focus in this larger debate has been on the differences between water’s “microscopic” (or “microstructural”) properties and its “macroscopic” properties. Added to that (though related to macroscopic properties) is the emphasis which has inevitably been made on our phenomenological (or phenomenal) experiences of water.

Thus, it seems to be the phenomenal experiences of water which Hardcastle’s water-mysterian focusses upon.

However, does she also take these (as philosophers put it) phenomenal feels to be intrinsic to water (or H₂O) itself?

Thus, partly because of these distinctions, one immediately wonders what more this water-mysterian would want after being being given

“an explanation of the molecular compositions of water and a brief story about the connection between micro-chemical properties and macro-phenomena”.

What more could there possibly be to this story?

Unless the (as it were) remainder is how water feels to human beings (i.e., how water feels wet, tastes, looks, etc.).

But that wouldn’t be a chemical story about water itself.

Instead, it would be a more general story about H₂O and its effects on the physiological and sensory systems of human beings, as well as on human minds. Thus, it wouldn’t really be about water’s wetness as it exists separately from minds or experiences — that’s if water can be deemed to be wet in this context.

What’s more, when this fictional water-mysterian (or Hardcastle!) says that the chemist has “properly correlated water with its underlying molecular composition”, this clause is a little problematic.

In one sense, water isn’t correlated with its “underlying molecular composition”: it is its underlying molecular composition!

Yet in terms of Saul Kripke’s a posteriori necessity, when it comes to our knowledge of water’s phenomenal properties and their relations to the underlying molecular composition (or structure) of water, then such correlations are indeed made. That is, even though water = H₂O, it still doesn’t follow that we could know that simply by examining water’s phenomenal properties or even by analysing water in any other (non-chemical) ways. (Conceivably, chemists might have got things wrong about water’s chemical constitution.)

So what we know about water is indeed correlated with its underlying molecular composition. Yet, in another sense, you can’t literally correlate water with H₂O with H₂O with water. Thus such correlations must be between what we phenomenally experience and know, and water’s underlying molecular composition.

Yet water’s wetness is water’s being H₂O.

Or is it?

Hardcastle’s water-mysterian then makes much of her own powers of imagination. So now let’s tackle that.

Modal Imagination

In the following passage, the water-mysterian puts her case for the importance of what can be called modal imagination:

“Why couldn’t it be XYZ? Why couldn’t it have some other radically different chemical story behind it? I can imagine a possible world in which water has all the macro-properties that it has now, but is not composed of H₂O.”

It can be seen that this water-mysterian relies a hell of a lot on the fact that she can (to use her own word) “imagine” various things. Or, to put that another way, she relies on possible worlds.

That said, the water-mysterian relies on possible worlds because she can imagine possible worlds (as well as their nature and what occurs in them). So, in at least some instances, possible-worlds-talk is utterly dependent on imagination — or at least on (as philosophers usually put it) conceiving possible worlds, their nature and what occurs within them.

Yet what does it mean to claim that water “could [] have some other radically different chemical story behind it”?

Could it?

More relevantly, what, exactly, is this water-mysterian imagining?

Surely it’s the case that in order to imagine that water is XYZ (i.e., rather than H₂O), then wouldn’t this mysterian need to do more than simply invent (or simply use) the letters XYZ? And wouldn’t she also need to do far more than simply ask, “Why couldn’t it be XYZ?”? Wouldn’t she need — at the least — to tell us something about XYZ itself? That is, wouldn’t she need to tell us at least something about XYZ’s chemical nature and its resultant “macro-effects”? In other words, we’d need an

“explanation of the molecular compositions of [XYZ] and a brief story about the connection between micro-chemical properties and macro-phenomena”.

Surely, then, it simply isn’t enough to state that you imagine XYZ or ask, “Why couldn’t it be XYZ?”. After all, if all we’ve got are the letters XYZ, then she’s not really imagining anything at all. Basically, so far there’s nothing scientific, empirical or even metaphysical about her claim. Indeed, even her acts of modal imagination may be completely empty. In other words, perhaps there’s simply no meat on what she states.

Of course, mountains of papers and articles have been written about possible worlds, the powers of conceiving (or imagining), etc. by philosophers. However, it’s not clear if any of that vast literature would answer these questions.

But that’s another story.

***********************************

My flickr account and Twitter account.

Ludwig Wittgenstein on the Arithmetical Statement “2 + 2 = 4”

The philosopher Michael Dummett called Ludwig Wittgenstein a “full-blooded conventionalist” and even an “anarchist” when it came to his philosophy of mathematics. Other philosophers — mainly Wittgensteinians — strongly reject these accusations. Nonetheless, convention — obviously! - plays a part in mathematics.

Firstly, it must be said that that it’s hard to tie all of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s positions and comments on mathematics together into a single ism. (Not that putting a philosopher in a neat and tidy box is of supreme importance.) And that may not simply be because Wittgenstein’s views are “so deep”. It may partly (or even largely) be because Wittgenstein’s prose style makes things very difficult. And it may also be because Wittgenstein is believed to have contradicted himself at various places — even during the same “period”.

Of course, it would be up to me to demonstrate all this with mountains of textual exegesis, which many Wittgenstein-obsessed writers and philosophers have indeed endlessly done over the decades (i.e., in order to advance their own hermeneutics of Wittgenstein). (See ‘Taking Wittgenstein at His Word: A Textual Study’ by Robert Fogelin.)

Conventionalism

The word “conventionalist” will be used in this essay. This is how many philosophers — and others — have seen Wittgenstein’s (“late”) philosophy of mathematics. (See ‘Convention’.) That’s certainly how the philosopher Michael Dummett (1925–2011) saw Wittgenstein’s philosophy of maths. Indeed, Dummett used the rhetorical words “full-blooded conventionalist” and even “anarchist” about Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

Dummett expressed Wittgenstein’s position in this way:

“What makes a [mathematical] answer correct is that we are able to agree in acknowledging it as correct.”

Yet Dummett’s very own verificationism seems (at least to some extent) conventionalist in nature. (See ‘Verificationism’ and ‘Dummett’s Verificationism’.) So perhaps all this is largely a dispute regarding the semantics of the term “conventionalism”.

That said, Dummett’s words (directly above) about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics may not be entirely about (mere) convention. After all, there also needs to be some kind of agreement about (what are taken to be) mathematical truths — otherwise we’d be in the situation in which an individual mathematician could have his own truths about his own mathematical statements, and even his own individual ways of establishing such truths.

So there must be some form of intersubjectivity involved here.

And in order to achieve that, conventions will be at least part of the story.

Of course, many Wittgenstein experts dispute the categorisation of “conventionalist”. (The Wittgenstein acolyte P.M.S Hacker regards it as blasphemy — see here.) That’s partly because disputes on “what Wittgenstein really meant” are legion.

Yet such experts can cite Wittgenstein’s own words to back up their positions.

For example, in Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (which is largely made up of posthumously-published lectures, etc.), we have this:

“Mathematical truth isn’t established by their all agreeing that it’s true.”

As well as the following from the same book:

“[I]t has often been put in the form of an assertion that the truths of logic are determined by a consensus of opinions. Is this what I am saying? No.”

So Wittgenstein-was-not-a-conventionalist philosophers may well have a point — as we shall soon see.

The Arithmetical Statement “2 + 2 = 4”

What does Wittgenstein’s general position on mathematics amount to?

To make things simpler: what about Wittgenstein’s take on a single arithmetical statement - say, “2 + 2 = 4”?

Firstly, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between a reading of a mathematical statement in terms of the (simply put) conventions it abides by, and what that statement actually means.

So is it the case that the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is taken to be true entirely because of the conventions we use?

It certainly the case that the symbols in that arithmetical statement are conventional. That is, we needn’t have used the symbols “2”, “+”, “4” and “=”. (Other cultures have different numerals and symbols for numbers.) We could just as easily have used the symbols and words “flip”, “flop”, “@” and “Kripke”.

So what about the meaning of the statement “2 + 2 = 4”?

On a simplistic, naive or even political reading, someone may say that the meaning of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is the following:

Our society, at one point in history, decided that ‘4’ is the sum of ‘2 + 2’.

Of course this must mean that “our society” must also have decided what the word “sum” means and also what the symbols “+”, “=” and “2” mean. (That’s only if individual symbols can have a meaning outside of their statemental/sentential — and larger — contexts.)

In any case, Wittgenstein himself expressed a very simple argument against this position.

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein wrote the following:

“Certainly, the propositions ‘Human beings believe that twice two is four’ and ‘Twice two is four’ do not mean the same.”

The meaning of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” can’t literally be, “Our society, at one point in history, decided that ‘4’ is the sum of ‘2 + 2’” (or anything similar to that).

Those words are, after all, a description of symbol-use, historical and sociological facts, etc. And such descriptions may also include facts and views about why, when and how Western culture made these decisions about these symbols.

In any case, the statement “Our society, at one point in history, decided that ‘4’ is the sum of ‘2 + 2’” could be applied to any arithmetical or mathematical statement. Or, more accurately, the clause “Our society, at one point in history, decided that […]” could be applied to any statement.

So those words (or facts) can’t be the meaning of this particular mathematical statement. That is, talk of symbols, conventions, history, etc. won’t tell us about a particular mathematical statement.

Platonism and the Techniques of Mathematics

Wittgenstein offered a position on mathematical statements which may (repeat: may) seem conventionalist. Indeed, Wittgenstein’s anti-Platonism can appear to go in a conventionalist direction.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics can also be seen as going in a sociological, psychological and even (as some have argued) “anthropocentric” direction. (None of these things automatically contradict conventionalism.)

Yet Wittgenstein himself went way beyond mere talk of convention.

For example, Wittgenstein wrote:

“The proposition is grounded in a technique. And, if you like, also in the physical and psychological facts that make the technique possible.”

Technique?

Well, Wittgenstein himself provided an everyday example of this. He wrote:

“I say to, ‘You know what you’ve done so far. Now do the same sort of thing for these two numbers.’ [] Now everybody is taught to do it — and now there is a right and wrong. Before there was not.”

If Wittgenstein was arguing exclusively against mathematical Platonists, then surely it can’t be said that such people would have disagreed with his words directly above. (As ever with Wittgenstein, that depends on how his words are read or interpreted.)

Few mathematical Platonists — or few people — would deny that mathematics is “grounded in a technique” (or in techniques in the plural) — even if that technique is itself grounded in an abstract Platonic realm. That is, even if a Platonic realm does exist, then mathematicians and laypersons will still require techniques, skills, symbols, conventions, particular psychological states, etc. in order to (as it were) access that realm.

Moreover, who’d argue that these facts about mathematical technique/s would constitute the “sense” (or the meaning) of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” — or the meaning of anything else in mathematics for that matter?

Again, few mathematical Platonists or anti-conventionalists would deny that conventions — and what Wittgenstein called “practices” — are required when it comes to communities of mathematicians or even the many laypersons who use mathematics. And, again, it’s hard to believe that anyone believes that the facts about techniques, psychological states, symbol-use, etc. constitute the meaning (or sense) of “2 + 2 = 4”.

Of course, all this will depend on what, precisely, Wittgenstein meant by the word “sense”. Indeed, it will also depend on what Wittgenstein took other philosophers to have meant by that word.

Yet it’s clear here that Wittgenstein did believe that at least some philosophers did take the technique (as it were) behind the statement “2 + 2 = 4” to be the sense.

So all this must also mean that, on a Wittgensteinian reading, the statement “2 + 2 = 4” must also be grounded in a technique.

And that technique will also be grounded on the adder’s knowledge of the symbols, how he was taught arithmetic, etc. It will also depend on his or her psychology, psychological states, etc…

But so what?

Again, why would a mathematical Platonist — or anyone else — deny all that?

So who was Wittgenstein arguing against?

Perhaps Wittgenstein’s conclusion to the passage above answers that question. He continued:

“But it doesn’t follow that its sense is to express these conditions.”

These words seem to go against any purely conventionalist reading of Wittgenstein’s position. That is, obviously mathematical conventions exist. However, there is — or must be — more to the story of mathematics than that.

More particularly, the sense of the statement “2 + 2 = 4” isn’t merely about conventions, symbols, techniques, psychological sates, “rules”, historical facts, etc.

Yet strangely enough, Wittgenstein himself used the word “proposition” in the third-to-last passage above.

So what is a (mathematical) proposition?

Mathematical Platonists — and others — will make a distinction between the (abstract) proposition itself (say, 2 + 2 = 4) and everything else. Indeed, even Wittgenstein himself said that the proposition “is grounded in a technique”. That too hints at a separation between the proposition itself and the (later?) technique (plus everything that’s part of that technique).

Yet Wittgenstein didn’t actually believe that the statement “2 + 2 = 4” is about a proposition (or that it “states a proposition”). That is, the symbolic statement “2 + 2 = 4” doesn’t tell us about (or refer to) the abstract reality that is (supposed to be) 2 + 2 = 4 (or 2 plus 2 equalling 4).

Conclusion

In general terms, Wittgenstein appeared to conflate (or perhaps simply distinguish) convention and intersubjectivity with (mere) “opinions” and “convictions”. In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, for example, he wrote:

“The agreement of people in calculation is not an agreement in opinions or convictions.”

So, instead, Wittgenstein focused on psychological habits, empirical regularities (i.e., the objects we count, things generally, etc.) and, indeed, on a “form of life”. In other words, Wittgenstein characteristically believed that mathematics isn’t about “agreement in opinions or convictions”: it’s about a form of life.

************************************

Note: What is a Statement?

The word “statement” was used many times in the essay above. That word was used instead of “proposition”. Yet some philosophers use the word “statement” as a synonym of “proposition”. That is, they argue that “different sentences can express the same statement”. Other philosophers say: “Different sentences can express the same proposition.” Thus, in that sense, a statement is taken to be as abstract as a proposition.

In the essay above, however, statements are taken to be natural-language sentences — or grammatical “strings” of symbols — which are either true or false. That is, statements aren’t taken to be abstract objects or entities in the mind or brain.

Of course all this is complicated by the fact that three (not two) distinctions have been made in philosophical literature. That is, distinctions have been made between sentences, statements and propositions.

A statement has been taken to be a sentence that’s either true or false. This conception of a statement is roughly identical to the position on a proposition. However, a statement has also been seen as the “semantic content of a meaningful declarative or descriptive sentence”. And so on and so on.

Einstein’s Brain: Does Size Matter?

There’s been a lot of excited and curious talk about Albert Einstein’s brain over the decades. Or, more correctly, there’s been a lot of talk about the size of Einstein’s brain. So does size matter?

Clearly, there’s often been the following underlying assumption when it comes to the many (often silly) discussions of the size of Einstein’s brain:

big brain = big intelligence

It may seem logical to assume that a big brain means a big intelligence… That’s until one starts to use one’s own intelligence to think about this issue.

The other extreme position is that it’s all down to how each brain is actually (as it were) used by its owner. Relatedly, it’s also said to be down to the environments in which each brain finds itself (e.g., parental surroundings, relative wealth or poverty, influence of peers, society, culture, etc.). However, this way of looking at brains may go too far as well.

So, like the endless nature versus nurture debate, it may not be a case of either/or. That is, it may not all boil down to having a big brain or all boil down to how that brain is used. That said, it may not be 50/50 either. (It may not be any other decipherable proportion.) In other words, it may be very difficult to distinguish how important brain size (as well as other aspects of the brain) has been from the environmental factors (along with how brains are used) which have impinged on that brain.

Let’s return to the size of the brain.

In the animal kingdom, some creatures with large brains are (or sometimes may simply seem) dumber than some creatures with smaller brains. Susan Blackmore (in her piece ‘Why aren’t animals with larger brains more intelligent than us?’), for example, sums up this position with these words:

“Bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes how you use it is more important than what you’ve got. There are two reasons. First, brain structure is more important than brain size, and human brains with their highly folded and complicated cortex can do things no other brains can.”

So it all depends on a hell of a lot more than merely the size of the brain.

Yet the size of a brain must surely be relevant!

[See the article ‘Do bigger brains make smarter carnivores?’, which answers its own question: “Yes.”]

Indeed, the stress on the size of the brains of Homo sapiens (i.e., you and I) and other animals has been very apparent over the years in biology, neuroscience and evolutionary theory. However, note here that all this has been about the size of the brain of different species (including Homo sapiens), not the size of the brain of individuals within each species.

The New Scientist on Einstein’s Brain

This essay began as a gut reaction to a New Scientist book in which there’s an aside (i.e., it appears in a box next to the main text) on Albert Einstein’s brain.

It would be silly to be too critical of a mere aside in a book which has ‘Einstein’s Relativity’ (i.e., not ‘Einstein’s Brain’) as a subheading. (The book is called Where the Universe Came From.) In other words, the words were written by a writer on physics (or by an actual physicist), not a writer on neuroscience (or an actual neuroscientist). Still, this boxed section captures some of the (possible) mistakes one often finds when Einstein’s brain is discussed… as it often is!

Firstly, this section (in the aforementioned book) tells us that Einstein’s brain was “initially something of a disappointment, being slightly smaller than average”.

These words sum up the large brain=large intelligence assumption of so many people.

Yet this section also states the following:

“A 1999 study showed that Einstein’s parietal lobe, the area of the brain associated with mathematics and spatial reasoning, was 15 per cent wider than in a normal brain.”

[Did this writer mean “average brain” by “normal brain” in the second quote?]

If this study — as well as other studies — was a comparison of Einstein’s brain with average (or “normal”) brains, then it wouldn’t have been a comparison with the brains of other scientists (e.g., those who also did lots of mathematical and spatial reasoning). So although Einstein’s parietal lobe might have been “wider” than the average person’s (or at least the very-limited number of brains also studied in this example), then it might not have been wider than the brains of other physicists or mathematicians.

Now another question can be asked here.

Did Einstein’s parietal lobe become wider as a result of such “mathematics and spatial reasoning”, or did it actually enable Einstein to excel at spatial reasoning and mathematics in the first place?

Indeed, what about both possibilities?

Perhaps Einstein’s brain became wider as a result of his extensive spatial reasoning, etc., and it might also have been wider from birth.

This becomes relevant in light of another New Scientist comment:

“The researchers also noticed a large knob on his motor cortex, representing Einstein’s early practice playing the violin.”

One wonders if there are also “large knobs” for excessive masturbation, knitting, kicking people’s heads in, reading Medium every day, etc. That is, surely not every excessive and/or specialised activity has its own (well) knob in the brain.

Indeed, the very idea of a large knob “representing Einstein’s early practice playing the violin” seems too (as it were) particular.

If Einstein had a large knob for (or as a result of) playing the violin, then did he also have a large knob for (or a result of) playing bowls? (Let’s just pretend that Einstein played bowls every day.) Unless, that is, Einstein’s large knob didn’t only “represent” violin-playing: it might also have represented (or perhaps neuro-physically underpinned) the playing of any musical instrument — and indeed other cognitive activities too. Perhaps this large knob in Einstein’s brain represented some kind of “music module” which was only contingently expressed in terms of playing the violin.

What’s more, even though many neuroscientists and philosophers accept the existence of what they call “modules” (see ‘Modularity’ and ‘Modularity of Mind’), they don’t also believe that modules exist as physical knobs (or at precise locations) in the brain. Holistically speaking, modules may not be instantiated in particular areas (or parts) of the brain at all.

[To see another perspective on this, see ‘The Brain Is Not Modular: What fMRI Really Tells Us’.]

Other Studies of Einstein’s Brain

There are lots of odd things about Einstein’s brain.

Then again, odd things can be found in literally every other brain.

So all this will at least partly depend on the word “odd”, as well as on context and comparisons.

Take the position of neurologist Terence Hines of Pace University.

He’s critical of most of the studies of Einstein’s brain. He believes that they're flawed. (Some “studies” have been based solely on photos of Einstein’s brain!)

Terence Hines also argues that all human brains are “unique” in their own ways. That is, if you take a random brain and then study it, then you’ll find that it’s different from other brains (i.e., in either large or small ways). Thus, Hines is suspicious of the many wild jumps from the (possibly) unique features of Einstein’s brain… to his genius.

Of course, not many other brains have been studied and discussed in so much detail.

In terms of that detail.

One study (‘The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein’) had it that Einstein had no parietal operculum in either hemisphere. (This finding has been, rather predictably, disputed — see here.) Another study had it that Einstein’s brain showed an enlarged Sylvian fissure…

An enlarged Sylvian bloody fissure! Wow!…

Seriously, so what?

And so on and so on.

So what does all this data (even if accurate) actually mean?

As Professor Laurie Hall (of Cambridge University) put it about a single study of Einstein’s brain (i.e., which linked part of Einstein’s brain to some characteristic of his intelligence or “genius”):

“To say there is a definite link is one bridge too far, at the moment. So far, the case isn’t proven.”

It’s also notable how often words like “may” are used in these studies of Einstein’s brain.

Specifically, take this passage from Professor Sandra Witelson (as published in The Lancet):

“This unusual brain anatomy [e.g., the missing part of the Sylvian fissure] may explain why Einstein thought the way he did.”

We also have this from Dr. Dahlia W. Zaidel:

“The larger neurons in the left hippocampus imply that Einstein’s left brain may have had stronger nerve cell connections between the hippocampus and another part of the brain called the neocortex than his right.”

Thus, we keep seeing phrases like “it could be”, “it may be”, “it’s possible that”, etc. in these studies of Einstein’s brain. That said, these phrases occur all the time in scientific studies. So surely that means that they’re not always (or necessarily) suspect in nature.

What’s more, it’s precisely because Einstein’s brain became such a sexy subject that some critical researchers have picked up on what’s called unconscious bias and impartial research.

Simple flaws have also been detected in many of the studies of Einstein’s brain…

That said, there are probably flaws in all scientific studies.

Now add to all that the phenomenon of publication bias, which is often blatant when it comes to Einstein’s brain.

The most frequent and obvious case of such bias is that scientific — and most definitely newspaper — publications will get excited about the differences between Einstein’s brain and the brains of mere mortals like the readers of this essay. Yet they’ll also ignore any data which shows us how similar Einstein’s brain was to the average brain — that’s if there even is such a thing!

My flickr account:

Was Bishop Berkeley a Constructivist, an Idealist, an Empiricist or an […]ist?

The 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley can be deemed to be a scientific constructivist, an idealist or an empiricist. So is Berkeley one or none of the above? Indeed, does it matter which label we attach to him?

Readers will note how Bishop Berkeley’s ideas seem very contemporary in resonance. Indeed, 21st-century idealists like Donald Hoffman, Bernardo Kastrup, etc. are harking back to George Berkeley — at least to various degrees. Then again, perhaps it can be argued that Berkeley himself was harking back to even older philosophical traditions.

So George Berkeley can be seen as an idealist, empiricist or an instrumentalist. Of course, some of these isms can be upheld together at one and the same time. Others can’t.

In any case, some readers may get annoyed with all these isms. And because of this plethora of labels (as with many other debates on “dead philosophers”), it’s probably best to simply discuss what George Berkeley actually believed and not spend too much time attempting to squeeze him into a neat and tidy retrospective box.

All that said, and in respect to the title of this essay, Berkeley can indeed be seen as a scientific constructivist (or at least as a proto-scientific constructivist).

Is George Berkeley a Scientific Constructivist or an Idealist?

That’s primarily because constructivists argue that science consists in “mental constructs” which have the purpose of explaining and describing measurements and experiences (or observations) generally. Yet, and noting the abundance of isms just mentioned, this too reads like a simple description of empiricism. In fact, it certainly squares well with — and here we go again — constructive empiricism.

Where scientific constructivism may differ from what Berkeley himself believed is its emphasis on the idea that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientific communities. This is a (partly) sociological angle that doesn’t seem to completely ring true in Berkeley’s 18th-century context.

That said, Berkeley mightn’t have had a problem with this sociological position. Indeed, he even argued as much himself in various places (if in his own 18th-century prose style). For example, Berkeley once stated the following:

“[M]athematical entities have no stable essence in the nature of things; and they depend on the notion of the definer. Whence the same thing can be explained in different ways [].”

Oddly enough, Berkeley-as-idealist (i.e., rather than Berkeley-as-empiricist) can be deemed to be more radical than 20th-century scientific constructivists. That’s because, on one reading at least, constructivists are said to believe that the world is actually independent of human minds. However, they also believe that our knowledge of the world (somewhat obviously) is not. And that’s because our knowledge of the world is said to be a “social construction”.

Arguably, Berkeley-as-idealist might have scoffed at such a distinction because talk of “the world itself” is (to quote Ludwig Wittgenstein) “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism”.

[Some claims about social, scientific and other kinds of “social construction” seem banal and/or truistic. For example, saying that the English language, a motorway, money, or even a particular sexual kink is a social construction is a statement of the bleeding obvious.]

Now let’s turn to Berkeley’s philosophy of physics.

Berkeley on Newton and Intrinsic Properties

George Berkeley was certainly very interested in physics. Indeed, his first published book was on physics — An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709). More specifically, much relevant material (in relation to this essay) can also be found in Berkeley’s Philosophical Commentaries (1707–1708), in which he discusses Isaac Newton’s Principia.

In broad terms, George Berkeley believed that physics doesn’t provide us with any (as it’s been put) “true insight” into the nature of the world.

Thus, Berkeley pre-empted the position of panpsychists like Philip Goff who often tell us that physics has nothing to say about what they call “intrinsic properties”. Indeed, Newton himself believed that physics only mathematically maps the actions, relations and correlations of bodies with mass — yet it has nothing to say about the forces themselves. That is, physics (at least at that time) had nothing to say about what forces actually are.

All this is almost to deem physics as being (another ist!) behaviourist in nature. That is, in Newton’s day, physics took a behaviourist stance on physical phenomena, rather than on human beings and other animals. In other words, physics was — and perhaps still is — about the behaviour of bodies and forces (i.e., or the behaviour of bodies when subject to forces).

In more concrete terms, Berkeley made a distinction between the mathematics involved in describing gravitation and refraction, and the (as it were) real nature of gravity and light. Here again, the maths simply describes the effect of forces (e.g., gravity and light) on bodies. It doesn’t tell us what gravity and light are.

Now, to use the terms of contemporary analytic philosophy, it can be said that Berkeley believed that the terms (for example) “action”, “attractive force” and “impetus” had no referents. However, we do know that bodies move and that they move in very-specific ways in very-specific situations (or conditions).

Yet all this didn’t mean that Berkeley also believed that we should eliminate such terms. He still believed that such terms are useful. It’s just that they don’t refer to anything.

So, for all that, the mathematics of physics can be perfect when it comes to descriptions and predictions. (At least in can be if the physicist gets his sums right.)

To sum up: Berkeley believed that the whole of Newtonian mechanics is simply a “set of equations” and nothing more. Newton, on the other hand, believed (at least according to Berkeley himself) that there’s more to physics than mere equations.

Berkeley on Occult Qualities

Berkeley’s position on physics (or at least on Newtonian physics) — as mainly expressed in his De Motu (1721) — was (proto) instrumentalist in nature. Indeed, it even retrospectively chimes in with Bas van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism.

At least on some readings, then, Berkeley believed that science is essentially all about the description and explanation of the regularities, which are discovered primarily through experiment and observation. Indeed Berkely himself once wrote:

“[T]o be of service to reckoning and mathematical demonstrations is one thing, to set forth the nature of things is another.”

[The very notion of observation is problematic on an idealist reading, if not on an empiricist reading.]

On a broadly instrumentalist reading, then, scientific theories are “useful fictions”. These useful fictions, nonetheless, do explain the data. Indeed, on some positions, such theories can even be taken to be true. (Perhaps primarily because such theories have nothing to say about intrinsic properties, noumena, “nature itself”, etc.)

Berkeley even went so far as to argue that forces are “occult qualities” which “expressed nothing distinctly”.

This is hardly a surprising position (at least in retrospect) for a 18th-century empiricist. After all, you can’t see, touch, smell or whistle gravity or any other force known to 18th-century physics.

Berkeley put it more technically than that when he stated that

“something unknown in a body of which they have no idea and which they call the principle of motion, are in fact simply stating that the principle of motion is unknown”.

Simply put: motion is known. However, what causes motion isn’t known. Again, Berkeley goes further. He states an empiricist position in which those who

“affirm that active force, action, and the principle of motion are really in bodies are adopting an opinion not based on experience”.

Berkeley then advanced a position that may seem more akin to idealism (if to subjective idealism) than to empiricism. That is, Berkeley believed that forces are the products of what he called the “soul”. Therefore, forces are “incorporeal thing[s] [which] do not properly belong to physics”.

My flickr account: