Physicist Paul Davies’s Faith in His Idea That Science is “Founded on Faith”

The following essay is a response to Paul Davies’s op-ed article ‘Taking Science on Faith’, which was published by the New York Times. The word “faith” (at least in this context) seems to have become almost (to use a word which Davies uses) meaningless. Indeed, it’s often used as a rhetorical gimmick. On the other hand, it’s much harder to use the word “faith” rhetorically against religious people or monotheists because they often use that word to refer to their own stances on what it is they believe.

(i) Introduction

(ii) Is Science “Founded on Faith”?

(iii) Paul Davies’s Rhetoric?

(iv) Paul Davies and the Absurd Universe

(v) Conclusion

Paul Davies’s article is an old one. It was published in 2007. It was also published by Edge-org under the same title. That publication included ten responses from a group of scientists called The Reality Club. The responders included Jerry Coyne, Nathan Myhrvold, Lawrence Krauss, Scott Atran, Sean Carroll, Jeremy Bernstein, PZ Myers, Lee Smolin, John Horgan and Alan Sokal. (These responses, and Davies’s original article, can be found here.)

I decided not to read any of these responses until I’d finished my own response to Paul Davies’s article. I did that because I didn’t want to be too influenced or dependent on what these scientists had written. However, I did later come to note that it was odd that all the responses are negative (or critical) in nature. (Not all the responses are equally negative.) So you’d have thought that Edge-Org (or its founder and editor John Brockman) would have included at least one positive — even if only mildly so — response to Davies’s article.

In any case, Davies himself responded to the responders, and I didn’t read that either until after I’d finished my own response.

Is Science “Founded on Faith”?

There’s a big problem with the central idea in Paul Davies’s article.

If the word “faith” is applicable to all domains, then there’s virtually no point in using that word at all. That said, Davies didn’t apply the word “faith” to all domains in his article: he applied it only to science and religion. Yet surely any reliance on faith is less likely in science than in all other domains. Indeed, isn’t that (as it were) faithlessness deemed to be a central feature of science?

Clearly, Davies doesn’t believe that.

Thus, the word “faith” (at least in this and in similar contexts) seems to have become almost (to use a word that Davies himself often uses) meaningless. It lacks any semantic content. Indeed, it’s often used as a simple rhetorical gimmick. On the other hand, it’s hard to use the word “faith” rhetorically against religious people or monotheists because they use that word to refer to their own stances on what it is they believe.

Basically, then, Davies’s use of the words “faith in science” is an example of a tried-and-tested technique which many critics of science (along with critics of materialism/physicalism and evolution) employ on a frequent basis.

To put it in its most simple form.

If a scientist, “evolutionist” or atheist accuses a religious or “spiritual” person of x, then the latter will accuse the former of being x too. Thus, we have lots of critics who’ve accused scientists, materialists, evolutionists and/or atheists of having “faith” in materialism, evolution and atheism… or, in Davies’s case, faith in science. Indeed, some people have also claimed that science, atheism, evolution or materialism “is a religion”.

This happens at a lot at infant and junior schools. That is, when a little kid accuses another little kid of being x, then that other little kid accuses the accuser of being x too. Indeed, the author and businessman Deepak Chopra is a very good example of one of the people who adopt this strategy

Yet it can be argued that few religious or spiritual persons, New Agers, etc. genuinely do believe that science, materialism, atheism or evolution is literally a religion or that people “believe in” science, materialism, atheism or evolution purely on faith. Of course, it must be admitted that there will be exceptions to this in that at least some scientists, materialists, atheists or evolutionists will use science, materialism, atheism or evolutionary theory as a literal substitute for religion. Yet these comparisons between religion and people’s commitment to science, materialism, atheism and/or evolution are often so vague, tangential and rhetorical that, in most cases, I doubt that these claims are even believed by most of the people who actually state them.

Still, to claim that scientists, materialists, atheists and evolutionists have faith in what they believe (or that “science is founded on faith”) is extremely useful and it scores many ideological and psychological points. It will also help sell books, articles, etc.

More particularly, Davies tells us that

“both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe”.

Davies believes that the claim above is clear. (Davies writes: “Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith.”) So does Davies have faith in his idea that science is founded on faith?

In terms of detail.

It doesn’t follow that because one has no direct evidence for something (or that something hasn’t been observed), then believing in that something simply must be “founded on faith”. What’s more, it may not even be a case of believing in x: it may simply be a case of provisionally accepting x. (Unless, that is, these two phrases are taken to be synonymous.) On the other hand, religious people and monotheists (on the whole) don’t provisionally accept sacred texts, central doctrines, moral rules, the existence of God, etc. — they believe in these things. Indeed, they often take them to be categorically true.

It can be freely admitted that there are all sorts of things that non-religious people have no direct or indirect evidence for (or which we haven’t observed), but which they accept as being the case. However, can we also deem such provisional acts of acceptance to be (to use Davies’s words) founded on faith?

For example, no one can observe the historical past, the contents of other minds, numbers, the inner core of the Earth, etc. We may have indirect evidence for some of these things. However, the beliefs which most people (especially scientists) have about them still aren’t founded on faith. (Testimony is important in some — or even many —of these and similar cases.) Unless, that is, the word “faith” is being used so broadly and, perhaps, indiscriminately, that it hardly has any purchase.

All that said, some philosophers have indeed argued that most people do have (some kind of) faith in, say, “other minds”, numbers, the past, etc. (i.e., even when the word “faith” isn’t often used by such philosophers). That said, I don’t believe that Davies has these kinds of philosophical cases in mind.

So what do scientists have faith in?

Davies claims that scientists have faith in

“the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too”.

Why does Davies believe that scientists believe “in the existence of something outside the universe”? More clearly, why must an “unexplained set of physical laws” be outside the universe? Has Davies logically and/or philosophically deduced that this is what scientists must (unconsciously?) believe? Alternatively, does Davies think that this is the consequence of what it is scientists do believe?

A logical (or otherwise) consequence of believing a set of things may not itself be believed. Thus, there’s little evidence that all, most or even many scientists (or physicists) believe in the existence of something outside the universe. (Unless the Platonic realm of mathematics is outside the universe — as we’ll see later.)

Another problem is that Davies often uses rhetorical and poetic words and phrases.

Paul Davies’s Rhetoric?

Paul Davies’s rhetorical and poetical words/phrases muddy the water. That is, they simply don’t help. What’s more, in this particular debate at least, words like “meaningless”, “absurd”, etc. are often thrown around like confetti.

That said, this isn’t an argument against using poetry and rhetoric in prose about science, philosophy, religion, etc. (It’s probably virtually impossible to bypass such things anyway.) And it can be freely admitted that the kind of scientists Davies is arguing against sometimes use equal amounts — or even more — rhetoric and poetry. (Jerry Coyne is a good example.) The point is that readers and writers should always be aware that rhetoric and poetry can be very unhelpful because they’re designed to tap into the readers’ emotions (as well as sell books, etc.). And, as stated, they can also muddy the water.

[Some people argue that “colourful prose” actually enables understanding when it comes to scientific and philosophical matters.]

So now take this passage from Davies:

“You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed.”

Why did Davies use the word “meaningless”? Indeed, why did he write the words “jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed”?

If the universe isn’t “meaningless”, then it must be meaningful.

Yet that doesn’t help either because we now need to know what a meaningful universe is.

So what is a meaningful universe?

Davies does (kinda) explain what a meaningful universe is elsewhere in his writings. (Primarily in his book The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?, also called Cosmic Jackpot.) However, he doesn’t really do so in his article for the New York Times.

In that sense, then, Paul Davies can be compared to the author and strong critic of science David Berlinski. (The two share many views on the subjects tackled in this essay.) Thus, what the biologist Jerry Coyne (who was mentioned a moment ago) wrote about Berlinski can also be applied to Davies. Thus:

“Science has no answers to ‘The Big Questions’ like ‘why is there something instead of nothing?’ (the answer that ‘it was an accident’ is fobbed off by Berlinski as ‘failing to meet people’s intellectual needs’, which of course is not an answer but a statement about confirmation bias); ‘where did the Universe come from?’; ‘how did life originate?’; ‘what are we doing here?’, ‘what is our purpose?’, and so on. Apparently Berlinski doesn’t like ‘we don’t know’ as an answer, but as a nonbeliever I’d like to know his answer! He has none; all he does is carp about science’s ignorance.”

However, Davies isn’t an outright contrarian like David Berlinski. He’s also a fine physicist and writer. What’s more, Davies’s philosophical analyses and questions have much more meat in them than anything Berlinski has ever offered the public. Indeed, Berlinski often comes across as being all about contrarianism, literary style and politics. Davies, on the other hand, does use rhetoric, but he doesn’t exclusively rely on it.

To get back to Davies’s own rhetoric.

Davies also tells us that when “he was student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits”. That’s clearly false. The laws couldn’t have been off limits because they’re at the heart of all physics.

So Davies must have meant the following:

Philosophising about the laws of physics was off limits.

Davies must have known that because he also told us that philosophical questions weren’t deemed to be “scientific question[s]” by the scientists he had in mind. He also claimed that other scientists (perhaps some of the same ones) believed that “nobody knows” the answers to his philosophical questions.

He may be right about all that. It depends…

Davies also used the word “absurdity”.

Paul Davies and the Absurd Universe

Davies wrote:

“If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.”

Again, why use the word “absurdity”? (Davies also used the words “reasonless absurdity”.)

The word “absurdity” (or “absurd”) is used all the time in this debate about the nature of the Universe and our relation to it. However, it’s very easy to view it as being rhetoric or poetry.

The word “absurd” can be defined as “extremely silly” and/or “ridiculous”. Thus, it would be silly and ridiculous for Davies to say the laws of nature (or the universe’s “order”) is extremely silly or ridiculous when viewed in the way Davies is arguing against.

So perhaps Davies had something else in mind.

Take the existentialist position on “absurdity” as the Universe “having no rational or orderly relationship to human life” (see here). Yet it can be presumed that Davies would say that this isn’t his position either. That’s primarily because he doesn’t like the term “anthropic” because it focuses (too much?) on human beings and their own relation to the Universe.

[In his book The Goldilocks Enigma, Davies wrote: “The term is an unfortunate misnomer, because ‘anthropic’ derives from the same Greek root as ‘man’, and nobody is suggesting that the principle has anything to do with humans per se. [] The British astrophysicist Brandon Carter, who first use the word in this context, once remarked that had he known the trouble it would cause, he would have suggested something else — the ‘biophilic’ principle.”]

Indeed, since existentialists have just been mentioned, I can’t help thinking that Davies’s take on the absurd (or on absurdity) chimes in very well with what absurdist playwrights and authors (see here) had in mind way back in the 1950s. To them, absurdity is the “condition in which human beings exist in an irrational and meaningless universe”. What’s more, in this irrational universe, “human life has no ultimate meaning”.

Ironically, it can be argued that the Absurdists were simply embracing religious ways of thinking. And, in parallel, Davies believes that the nature of the Universe is indeed absurd if what he believes is false. This means that the absurdists and/or existentialists embraced absurdity. Davies, on the other hand, is attempting to find an alternative to it. That is, he is searching for the Universe’s meaning.

Perhaps, then, Davies’s word “absurdity” is a simple synonym for “unreasonableness” or “reasonlessness”. Indeed, that may chime in with his position because he uses these words too.

Yet the word “absurd” isn’t often used as a simple synonym of “unreasonable” or “reasonless” — and Davies knows that.

[I personally don’t believe that absurdity should be either embraced or rejected. The word “absurdity” simply isn’t useful or accurate in this context.]

Davies use of the word “absurdity” can also be tied in with his broader position on monotheism and its equally unacceptable (to him) alternatives.

Conclusion

Paul Davies’s overall aim is to offer us a cosmological alternative to both (religious) monotheism and absurd atheism. He writes:

“It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence.”

Then, immediately, Davies offers his own alternative:

“The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.”

More clearly, Davies says that “the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency”. This clearly rules out any reliance on a monotheistic (or even Deistic) God. Yet many scientists, philosophers and others see Davies’s position as one which simply masquerades as not being religious or monotheistic. In other words, his detractors claim that Davies smuggles monotheism and religion back in through the back door…

That’s not a surprising position to take when seen within at least certain contexts. That’s primarily because “design arguments” have, after all, been used by theologians and religious scholars for centuries. (See ‘The Fine-Tuning Design Argument’ from the Discovery Institute, which classes all the positions which reject fine-tuning and the reality of design as “atheistic”.) Of course, Davies doesn’t believe that his arguments rely on God’s design. Yet, arguably, the long tradition which emphasises design is what Davies is attempting to update with new science and even new data.

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What is Information and Its Relation to Consciousness?

The word “information” has many different uses and definitions in the sciences and philosophy. Most of these differ strongly from how laypersons use the word. Some physicists define (or use) the word to make it the case that information needn’t be (in John Searle’s terms) “observer-relative”… In terms of information and its relation to consciousness. Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi believes that consciousness (or experience) simply is information — at least as it is processed by animal brains and even by non-biological “systems”.

Giulio Tononi

The American mathematician, electrical engineer and cryptographer Claude E. Shannon (1916–2001) backed up the words above when he wrote the following:

“It is hardly to be expected that a single concept of information would satisfactorily account for the numerous possible applications of this general field.”

More particularly, the way that some (i.e., not all) physicists define (or simply use) the word “information” (as will be shown later) will make it the case that information need not be, to use the philosopher John Searle’s term, “observer-relative”. On Searle’s own definition, then, the word “information” is defined to make it the case that information must be — or always is — relative to persons (or to minds).

As just hinted at, the most important point to realise is that minds (or observers) are usually thought to be required to make information… information. However, information is also said to exist without minds (or observers). Thus, some (perhaps even many) physicists argue that information existed before there were human minds, and it will also exist after human minds have disappeared from the Universe. (See ‘Why information is central to physics and the universe itself’.)

All this, of course, raises lots of semantic and philosophical questions.

So it may help to compare information with knowledge.

Knowledge requires persons, minds and/or observers. Yet information may not do so.

So it’s certainly the case that some physicists don’t see information in the everyday sense. More particularly, such physicists see such things as particles and fields in informational terms. As for thermodynamics: if there’s an event which affects a dynamic system, then that too can be read as being informational input into the “system”. (In this case, that change can be represented — or modeled - as being a computational system.)

What’s more, in the field called pancomputationalism, (just about) any thing (or at least any object) can be deemed to be information (as it were) concretised. Thus, pancomputationalism ties in very strongly with John Wheeler’s well-known position on information.

John Archibald Wheeler on Information

The theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) believed that everything we discover (at least in science or, perhaps, only physics) is about bits of information. Indeed, Wheeler believed that an object (or what he called an “information-theoretic entity”) is derived from (our?) information. Technically, this is a transformation which Wheeler called “it from bit”.

Thus, we don’t have an “it” (i.e., a physical object) until we firstly have a “bit” (a unit of information).

In more concrete terms, Wheeler once wrote the following words:

“An example of the idea of it from bit: when a photon is absorbed, and thereby ‘measured’ — until its absorption, it had no true reality — an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world, and, at the same time, that bit of information determines the structure of one small part of the world. It creates the reality of the time and place of that photon’s interaction.”

Wheeler seemed to be arguing that a photon literally gains its “reality” when it’s “absorbed”. Thus, if a particular photon gained its reality only when (or after) it was absorbed, then it mustn’t have had any reality before that absorption.

Surely we can now conclude that there simply was no photon before the absorption!

Basically, then, Wheeler stressed that the absorption can be seen in informational terms. That is, when the photon was absorbed, then “an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world”. In other words, only when the photon was absorbed could “we” (i.e., experimental physicists) gain information about it. Before that, the photon had zero reality because such physicists had zero information about it.

Here it may be helpful to note a problem with both pancomputationalism and Wheeler’s position as it’s summed up by physicist Christopher Fuchs. As presented by science writer Philip Ball, we have the following argument:

“Fuchs sees these insights as a necessary corrective to the way quantum information theory has tended to propagate the notion that information is something objective and real — which is to say, ontic. ‘It is amazing how many people talk about information as if it is simply some new kind of objective quantity in physics, like energy, but measured in bits instead of ergs’, he says. ‘You’ll often hear information spoken of as if it’s a new fluid that physics has only recently taken note of.’ In contrast, he argues, what else can information possibly be except an expression of what we think we know?”

That passage can be read as arguing that stuff (as it were) gives off information, rather than stuff actually being information in and of itself. Yet (as already stated) this conflicts with what some philosophers and physicists believe. That is, they believe (as Fuchs himself seems to put it) that information is in no way mind-dependent. That is, they believe that information is information regardless of minds, persons, observers, experiments, tests, etc.

It seems that Fuchs is (at least partly) at one with John Searle in rejecting this reification of information.

Thus, information may well become (what Searle calls) information-for-us for such physicists. However, it’s still regarded as information before it became information-for-us.

Now, the way Integrated Information Theorists (see ‘Integrated information theory’) use of the word “information” receives some (or even much) support in contemporary physics.

So what about consciousness and its relation to information?

Giulio Tononi on Information (Integrated Information Theory)

We can cite the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi (1960 — ) as an example of someone who believes that consciousness (or experience) simply is information. Or, perhaps more accurately, information as it’s processed by brains and non-biological “systems”.

Thus, if that’s a statement of identity, then can we invert it and say this? -

information is (=) consciousness

Yet Tononi believes that consciousness doesn’t equal just any kind of information. However, any kind of information (embodied in a system) may be conscious (at least to some degree).

Indeed, according to Tononi, the mathematical measure of that information (in an informational system) is symbolised by φ (phi).

Technically, not only are systems more than their combined parts: those systems have various degrees of “informational integration”. Thus, the higher the informational integration, the more likely that system will be conscious.

Interestingly, Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist and machine learning researcher Max Tegmark (1967 — ) uses IIT to distinguish conscious matter from other physical systems such as gases, liquids and solids. Indeed, he virtually replicates Tononi when he tells us that consciousness is dependent upon “the information, integration, independence, dynamics, and utility principles”.

The problem (if it is a problem) with arguing that consciousness (or experience) is information, and that information is everywhere, is that (as has just been said) even very simple objects (or “systems”) instantiate (or contain) a degree of information. Therefore, such basic objects must also have a degree of consciousness. Or, in the language of Integrated Informational Theory (IIT), all such objects (or systems) have a “φ value”. (This value is the measure of the degree of information — therefore consciousness - in the system.)

Clearly, then, we’ve entered the territory of panpsychism here.

Not surprisingly, Tononi’s position does seem to tangentially touch on panpsychism (i.e., even if his position isn’t identical to many panpsychists). That said, Tononi’s has written conflicting things about this particular philosophical ism.

For example, he has written the following:

“Unlike panpsychism, however, IIT clearly implies that not everything is conscious.”

What’s more, most IIT theorists and experimentalists emphasise complexity and integration, and they also focus almost entirely on biological brains.

So how can these facts square with panpsychism?

Thus, linking IIT to panpsychism seems — at least at first sight — to be all wrong.

Giulio Tononi himself has little time for the purely philosophical theories of consciousness. Indeed, he has argued that they “lack predictive power”.

Despite all that, IIT has it that even basic objects have a nonzero degree of Φ, which (again) is Tononi’s unit of measurement for consciousness (see here). This would mean that consciousness is almost everywhere — if only to a rudimentary degree (as with the “proto-experience” of panpsychists).

In any case, the argument that IIT is not a kind of panpsychism is at odds with what the philosophers David Chalmers and John Searle believe. They do take IIT to be a form of panpsychism. (See here and here.) What’s more, the German-American neurophysiologist and neuroscientist Christof Koch (Tononi’s co-worker) has even claimed that IIT is a “scientifically refined version” of panpsychism.

To slightly change the subject.

The philosopher Searle (again) has a problem with the overuse of the word “computation”.

John Searle on Information and Computation

John Searle (1932 — ) cites the example of a window as a (to use David Chalmers’ words) “maximally-simple” computer. Searle writes:

“[T]he window in front of me is a very simple computer. Window open = 1, window closed = 0. That is, if we accept Turing’s definition according to which anything to which you can assign a 0 and a 1 is a computer, then the window is a simple and trivial computer.”

Searle’s basic point is that just about any thing (or at least any object) can be seen as a computer.

Indeed, Searle believes that computers are everywhere .

So does a window contain (or instantiate) information?

By that I don’t mean the information that may exist in a window’s material and mechanical structure. (According to the physicists discussed at the beginning, a window — being a physical object — must contain information.) I mean to ask whether or not a window has information qua a technological device which can be both opened and shut.

Yet Searle believes that a window is only an example of information-for-us.

Searle has more to say about information. He writes:

“[Koch] is not saying that information causes consciousness; he is saying that certain information just is consciousness, and because information is everywhere, consciousness is everywhere.”

Searle concludes:

“I think that if you analyze this carefully, you will see that the view is incoherent. Consciousness is independent of an observer. I am conscious no matter what anybody thinks. But information is typically relative to observers. []

“[] These sentences, for example, make sense only relative to our capacity to interpret them. So you can’t explain consciousness by saying it consists of information, because information exists only relative to consciousness.”

David Chalmers’ Thermostat as an “Information-Theoretic Entity”

The philosopher David Chalmers (mentioned in parenthesis earlier) tells us that “information is everywhere”. He also informs us about the difference between “complex information-processing” and “simpler information-processing”. (This distinction is relevant when discussing panpsychism.)

I suppose that in the case of a thermostat (which Chalmers cites as an example of an object which carries out simple information-processing), we can take some guesses as to what (its?) information is.

Basically, heat and cold are bits of information. However, are heat and cold information for the thermostat? Indeed, does that even matter?

Or is it the case that the actions (or cases of processing) which are carried out on the heat and cold (by the thermostat) constitute information? More likely, perhaps it’s the physical nature of a thermostat (its mechanical and material innards) that constitutes its information.

In any case, Searle has something to say on thermostats too. He writes:

“I say about my thermostat that it perceives changes in the temperature; I say of my carburettor that it knows when to enrich the mixture; and I say of my computer that its memory is bigger than the memory of the computer I had last year.”

This means that this is Searle’s way (as with Daniel Dennett) of taking an intentional stance towards thermostats. That is, we can treat them — or take them — as intentional (though inanimate) objects. We can also take them as as-if intentional objects.

On Searle’s view, then, the as-if-ness of windows and thermostats is derived from the fact that these inanimate objects have been designed to (as it were) perceive, know and act. However, this is only as-if perception, as-if knowledge and as-if action. Indeed, it’s only as-if information. Thus, such things are dependent on human perception and human knowledge. Yet such as-if perception, knowledge and action require real — or “intrinsic” — intentionality. This means that Chalmers’ thermostat and Searle’s window have a degree of as-if intentionality, which is derived from (our) intrinsic intentionality.

Finally, despite all these qualifications of as-if intentionality, Searle still believes that as-if intentionality is “real” intentionality.

Conclusion: Is it All About Semantics?

Perhaps all the above mainly boils down to the various and many definitions and uses of the word “information”.

To repeat. The way that some physicists define (or use) the word “information” will make it the case that, in John Searle’s terms, information need not be “observer-relative”. On Searle’s definition, on the other hand, the word “information” is defined to make it the case that information must be — or always is — relative to persons (or minds).

Is there anything more to this debate other than rival definitions?

Perhaps not much more.

However, there is one vital distinction to be made here. If information (or at least information-processing by brains and systems) also equals consciousness or experience, then information not being dependent on human beings (or on their minds) makes a big difference. It means that such information is information regardless of what human beings observe or think. It will also mean that information can exist in non-biological systems regardless of what human beings observe or think.

This (again) is basically (at least) part of the panpsychist view. However, the physicists just mentioned (i.e., those who accept that information need not be observer-relative) don’t necessarily also accept that information (or information-processing) is the same as consciousness or experience. Indeed, most physicists do not accept that.

To sum up, then. This essay has outlined the following three basic positions:

1) Information is relative to observers. (John Searle’s position.)

2) Information exists regardless of observers. However, information (or its processing) isn’t equal to consciousness or experience. (The position of some physicists and philosophers.)

3) Information exists regardless of observers. Information (or information-processing) is also identical (or equal) to consciousness or experience. (Arguably, Chalmers’ and Tononi’s position.)

Whatever position one adopts (even if one rejects all three), it’s fairly clear that the nature of information can’t be ignored by either physicists or philosophers.

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Intertextuality: Philosophy About Philosophy

When it comes to many students of philosophy, it can be said that much of the process of learning the discipline can — or does — involve the emulation and even outright imitation of philosophers’ (academic) prose styles and even the imitation of their actual philosophical content. Indeed, students — and perhaps some professional academics — find it hard to distinguish between referencing philosophers’ work and actually being entirely parasitical upon it. This often means that such people are effectively caught in intertextual traps.

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” — A.N. Whitehead (see source here)

The first thing to state here is that the title of this essay has little to do with what’s called metaphilosophy (or the philosophy of philosophy). That’s because this discipline involves conscious philosophising about (or the analysis of) the nature of philosophy from what can be deemed to be a higher-order perspective. (Hence the prefix meta.) On the other hand, the intertextual philosophy featured in this essay is largely an unconscious affair.

The neologism intertextuality itself was coined by the literary critic, semiotician and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (see here). However, let the literary theorist and semiotician Roland Barthes (1915–1980) offer his own take on it (which, admittedly, isn’t strongly tied to my own positions and examples):

“Any text is a new tissue of past citations. Bits of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc. pass into the text and are redistributed within it, for there is always language before and around the text. Intertextuality, the condition of any text whatsoever, cannot, of course, be reduced to a problem of sources or influences; the intertext is a general field of anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks.”

In technical terms, intertextuality can (but need not) involve outright plagiarism, quotation, parody and pastiche. However, all these terms imply a writer’s (or student’s) conscious relations to what it is that he or she is plagiarising, quoting, etc. In terms of the philosophers discussed here, this isn’t the case (at least not in the main). So their kind of intertextuality has nothing to do with, for example, allusion. That’s mainly because allusion is, again, a conscious (usually literary) strategy or device.

The notion of intertextuality hasn’t really been applied (at least not often) to philosophy — especially not to 20th century analytic philosophy. In fact, it’s usually found within the context of literature. (As already seen in terms of the earlier references to Kristeva and Barthes.) However, as we’ll now see, the notion of intertextuality can be applied across the board.

Intertextual Films

My own personal awareness of intertextuality came about when watching mainstream films. (Thus, “intertextuality” is a fancy word for something which many people have noted.) In this case, I noted how derivative (mainly Hollywood) films are. More particularly, one can easily see how so many films are based (or even parasitical) upon other films. (This can be seen in the dialogue, stories, dress, music, characters’ phrases, dialects, overall production, camera angles, etc.) Some good examples of this include the “cockney gangster genre” (satirised in the film ‘Cockneys vs Zombies’), Hollywood films about the New York Mafia and serial killers, “action films” and even news/current affairs programmes (check out the satire The Day Today).

So, in that sense, these examples are films about films.

The director and writer Quentin Tarantino once used that phrase to refer to his own work. Yet Tarantino is simply more honest and explicit about what he’s doing when he writes and directs his intertextual films. (See ‘Let’s Get Into Character: Role-Playing in Quentin Tarantino’s Postmodern Sandbox’.)

However, it must be noted that all this certainly isn’t a reference to “films about films” in the strict sense in which some films have literally been about other films. (See also ‘The Trouble With Films About Films’.)

So, as stated, many films are essentially films about films. That is, many films are intertextual.

Intertextual Philosophy

When it comes to (mainly) students of philosophy and young professional philosophers, it can be said that much of the process of learning the discipline can — or does — involve the emulation and even outright imitation of philosophers’ (academic) prose styles. However, this often even applies to the emulation and imitation of actual philosophical content too. When this is obvious and blatant, it’s sometimes called patchwriting. (This can verge on outright plagiarism.) Indeed, philosophy students up to PhD level, and some young professional philosophers, can find it hard to distinguish between (oblique or direct) references to philosophers’ work and actually being entirely (to put it strongly) parasitical upon it.

All that said, patchworking isn’t really what is featured in this essay. That’s because the kind of intertextuality discussed here comes about because the philosopher is so immersed in certain (philosophical) texts that there’s no deliberate imitation or patchwriting going on at all. However, there may indeed be unintentional imitation or patchwriting involved in his or her written work.

[Many professional — i.e., academic — philosophers patchwork their own previous work. Sometimes they don’t even change the passages they reuse. Indeed, I’ve done this myself — if only in small detail — in this very essay. However, whether or not this self-quoting can be classified as patchworking is debatable. It certainly can’t be classed as plagiarism.]

Wannabe Philosophers

At the other extreme, there are some philosophers (especially “wannabe” philosophers) who would like to flatter themselves with the view that their own philosophical positions and ideas have (virtually?) come out of their very own thin air. Such people hold the view that their personal philosophies and worldviews are entirely original… or at least very original. (This has also been the case with a fair number of “classical” composers, rock/pop bands, amateur physicists, etc.)

It can be asked, then, where would the novice (as it were) aprioristic philosopher get his terms, concepts and tools from. Isn’t it the case that he wouldn’t have the vocabulary to philosophise in the first place without intertextual help? And isn’t it also the case that he or she wouldn’t even feel the need to ask philosophical questions at all without the spur of preceding philosophy?

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), who’s often seen as being a truly original philosopher, is of help here.

Derrida (in his essay ‘Violence and Metaphysics’ ) once stated (to paraphrase):

The aprioristic philosopher would still think or speak Greek.

The French philosopher himself admitted to being a (what he called) “Jew-Greek”. That is, Derrida claimed that he lived in a “house” which had been built for him by (religious) Jews and Christians, as well as by (pagan) philosophical Greeks.

What’s more, it isn’t only students of philosophy and young professional philosophers who write philosophy about philosophy or who continually bounce off other philosophers’ texts.

Take the (arbitrarily-chosen) cases of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer.

Some Examples of Intertextuality From Philosophy

Where did Kant’s (as it were) Kantian problems and questions come from? Didn’t they largely come from other philosophers?

More clearly, Kant wouldn’t have been a Kantian without the impasse between rationalism and empiricism, as well as the scepticism of David Hume. Similarly, Schopenhauer wouldn’t have been a Schopenhauerian without Kant and the work of the German Idealists (among other things) who came before him.

Of course, some philosophers (like the wannabes earlier) have seen themselves as being aprioristic philosophers. That is, they didn’t only take a position on the a priori within philosophy; but also an a priori position toward philosophy itself. That is, such philosophers believed that the best way to do philosophy isn’t to read as many philosophical texts as possible — or even read any texts at all. Instead, the best way to do great and original philosophy is simply to think and reason independently of all texts. (Arguably, Ludwig Wittgenstein took this view — at least at times. See this account. As did Martin Heidegger.)

As for intertextuality as it applies to contemporary philosophers.

Take the analytic philosopher William G. Lycan’s medium-length paper ‘The Continuity of Levels of Nature’. This paper includes fifty-two references to other philosophers’ texts. And, in addition, take Jaegwon Kim’s ‘Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept’, which has fifty-one such references. This kind of (as it were) manic referencing is more or less the norm when it comes to papers published in analytic philosophy journals. (One can suppose that this is taken to be a display of the philosophers’ research skills.)

So what about philosophy students, rather than professionals?

It can be said that when a student of analytic philosopher thinks about, say, (what’s often called) the nature of mind, all he primarily does (in crude terms) is read about what, randomly, David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett have said on it. This must mean that he too may well be caught in his own intertextual trap. (Of course, it’s unlikely that any student of mind would rely on only two philosophers.) Indeed, all a student’s responses, reactions and commentaries on the nature of mind may be largely intertextual in nature.

Thus, when students study philosophy at university, it seems that the reading of a multitude of texts (along with research generally) often seems to be far more important than independent thinking and reasoning…

Yet this certainly isn’t entirely a bad thing!

And that’s primarily because (as just noted) aprioristic philosophers aren’t really aprioristic philosophers at all. What’s more, those who see themselves this way often produce very poor philosophy.

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