Gilbert Ryle’s No-Nonsense Account of Ludwig Wittgenstein

The following essay is on Gilbert Ryle’s account of the life and work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as found in the article ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’. This was published in 1951, the year of Wittgenstein’s death.

Gilbert Ryle

One gets the feeling that the English philosopher was somewhat annoyed by the (what can only be called) Wittgenstein Worship which existed when he wrote this article, and for some time before too. That said, Ryle did admire the Austrian philosopher, and was even inspired by him. What’s more, Ryle’s work of the early 1930s is said to have anticipated the “late” work of Wittgenstein.

Gilbert Ryle started off with a critical passage in which he mentions the problem with many of Wittgenstein’s followers at the time (i.e., 1951). He wrote:

“Philosophers who never met him — and few of us did meet him — can be heard talking philosophy in his tones of voice; and students who can barely spell his name now wrinkle up their noses at things which has a bad smell for him.”

It seems hardly possible that anyone, let alone more than one philosopher, could be heard talking philosophy in Wittgenstein’s own tones of voice. However, many of Wittgenstein’s early acolytes were young men, so perhaps that makes it rather less surprising. Of course, many other philosophers, over the years, have also elicited similar embarrassing tendencies from their followers.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein Worship was especially peculiar when one bears in mind certain facts about Wittgenstein’s life and works. This too is commented upon by Ryle in the following passage:

“Besides the *Tractatus*, he published only one article. In the last twenty years, so far as I know, he published nothing, attended no philosophical conferences; gave no lectures outside Cambridge; corresponded on philosophical subjects with nobody and discourage the circulation even of notes of his Cambridge lectures and discussions.”

These facts about Wittgenstein’s life do much to explain Wittgenstein Worship. One should note, for example, that Wittgenstein had only one book published in his lifetime, and that book was obscure and mystical to many. It can also be seen that he kept himself philosophically clean by restricting himself to only certain circles. (Wittgenstein once claimed to have never read much philosophy.) Current professors of philosophy and other academics, on the other hand, (to exaggerate a little) publish articles every other month, attend a conference every two weeks, give lectures all over the place, and would like everything they ever wrote to be published. And that’s why such people don’t have the mystical charisma and other-worldly charm that Wittgenstein had.

What about Wittgenstein’s work, specifically the Tractatus? Ryle wrote:

“[T]he *Tractatus* is, in large measure, a closed book to those who lack this technical equipment. Few people can read it without feeling that something important is happening, but few experts, even, can say what is happening.”

It can easily be argued that Wittgenstein became such a fashionable philosopher precisely because his Tractatus is a “closed book”. Indeed, it is to some extent a closed book even to those people who do have the “technical equipment”. (Hence, the often-used phrase: “You have misunderstood Wittgenstein.”) It’s also odd that even those who lack the technical equipment still “feel[] that something important is happening” when they read the Tractatus. So why is this the case? It can be suggested that it’s Wittgenstein portentous and mystical prose style that brings forth the feeling that something important is happening.

It’s worth saying here that Ryle wasn’t the only philosopher to make these kinds of critical remark. For example, take the words of Irving M. Copi:

“What one holds to be of greatest significance in the Tractatus will depend in great measure upon one’s interpretation of that work and one’s assessment of the correctness of its doctrines.”

Now for the words of Rudolf Metz:

“It is for the ordinary reader a book sealed with seven seals, of which the significance is only revealed to the most esoteric devotees, and which, as it seems to us, embodies a very peculiar combination of rigorous mathematical and logical thought and obscure mysticism.”

Ryle on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

Of course, Ryle also discussed Wittgenstein’s actual philosophy in his article ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’.

For a start, what’s been called “anti-philosophy” didn’t actually begin with Wittgenstein. According to Ryle: “Late in the nineteenth century Mach had mutinied against this view that metaphysics was a governess-science.”… And then we reach Wittgenstein’s own era. Ryle continued:

“By the early 1920s, this mutiny became a rebellion. The Vienna Circle repudiated the myth that the questions of physics, biology, psychology or mathematics can be decided by metaphysical considerations. Metaphysics is not a governess-science or a sister-science. It is not a science at all. [ ] Philosophy was regarded as a blood-sucking parasite; in England as a medicinal leech.”

Ryle then gave a concrete example of a real problem with metaphysics:

“The classic case was that of Einstein’s Relativity principle. The claims of professors of philosophy to refute this principle were baseless. Scientific questions are soluble only by scientific methods, and these are not the methods of philosophers.”

This “classic case” even inspired Richard Feynman’s well-known harsh and dismissive words about philosophy and philosophers. Feynman claimed, among other things, that “a surprisingly large number of philosophers, not only those found at cocktail parties [believed that] Einstein’s theory says all is relative!”. (Feynman wrote these words some 12 years after Ryle’s own words, and some 55 years after Einstein first published his work on Relativity.) It’s worth saying here that even today a contemporary philosopher, E.J. Lowe, believes that metaphysics trumps physics in that if the metaphysical positions and criticisms stand against scientific theories (or are true), then science must give way. [E. J. Lowe’s position — at least when it came to to certain issues, such as the nature of spacetime - can be seen in his chapter ‘Metaphysics’ in The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy. It’s of course been the cases that other scientists, if few of them, have also offered their criticism of Einstein’s Relativity, perhaps under the inspiration of their own philosophies and other philosophers’ views.]

Ryle then commented on something which characterised the philosophy of Wittgenstein in both his Tractatus period and in his late works. It’s here that Wittgenstein became metaphilosophical again. In this metaphilosophical mode, Wittgenstein, in the words of Ryle, “now avoid[ed] any general statement of the nature of philosophy”. He did so “not because this would be to say the unsayable, but because it would be to say a scholastic and therefore an obscuring thing”. Finally:

“In philosophy, generalizations are unclarifications. The nature of philosophy is to be taught by producing concrete specimens of it.”

Sure, but isn’t the statement “Generalizations are unclarifications” itself a generalisation, and thus an unclarification? (One would guess that there’s a hidden universal quantifier hidden in that statement.) As for “any general statement of the nature of philosophy”, how many times have readers heard or read the statement, “Philosophy is…” (Philosophy is this or that.) Indeed, how many times have readers read the statement, “Consciousness is…” Etc. Some philosophers, and nearly all philosophical amateurs, constantly say x is y without argumentation or evidence. Thus, the philosophies of such people often become a long list of (often prophetic) statements delivered without pausing for breath. Alongside this is the general vice of over-indulging in generalisations which, again, make such philosophies prophetic and rhetorical. Wittgenstein believed that philosophical generalisations were “unclarifications” — and they were unclarifications precisely because they were generalisations. Instead of “general statement[s]” which may well titillate and excite, Wittgenstein suggested that we “produce[] concrete specimens” of what it is we’re trying to argue and say. Indeed, this approach is more accurately found in the Philosophical Investigations than it is in the Tractatus. That said, because Wittgenstein often focussed on concrete specimens (or examples), sometimes it’s hard to catch the general drift of his philosophising. In simple and critical terms, Wittgenstein’s philosophy often tends to jump from subject to subject because he concerned himself with the particular, rather than with the general.

Nonsense!

Most students of philosophy will be aware that Wittgenstein and the logical positivists often used the words “meaningless” and “nonsensical” to refer to certain metaphysical and other kinds of statements. What many people don’t also realise is that these words were used in a technical and stipulative manner, not necessarily as rhetorical devices. Thus, many philosophers and lay people have been offended by having their statements — and corresponding beliefs — categorised as “meaningless” or “nonsense”. Ryle himself is helpful here in that he clarifies these issues in a simple manner. He wrote:

“In Wittgenstein’s *Tractatus* this departmental conclusion is generalized. All logic and all philosophy are enquiries into what makes it significant or nonsensical to say certain things. The sciences aim at saying what is true about the world; philosophy aims at disclosing only the logic of what can be truly or even falsely said about the world. This is why philosophy is not a sister-science or a parent-science; that its business is not to add to the number of scientific statements, but to disclose their logic.”

Of course, the word “significant” is just as much in need of an explanation, as well as a justification, as the words “meaningless” and “nonsense”. However, the explanation for these technical and stipulative terms is made clear by Ryle in his article. In simple terms, only the sciences can say truthful (or false) things “about the world”. Any other seemingly-factual statements, especially metaphysical ones, are deemed to be meaningless or nonsense. They’re deemed to be so because although they have the surface grammar of being fact-stating sentences, they are not so…

But we must bite the bullet here.

If metaphysical and other statements are meaningless or nonsense because they can’t be either true or false, then the kind of philosophical statements (or sentences) which “aim[] at disclosing only the logic of what can be truly or even falsely said about the world” must be meaningless or nonsense too. And that, of course, is one of the well-known conclusions Wittgenstein made in his own Tractatus. (Philosophy doesn’t “add to the number of scientific statements”, it only “disclose[s] their logic”.) This meant that, to Wittgenstein, philosophy can never be a science.

Some readers may now be wondering what is “the logic” of such scientific and non-scientific statements. In very simple terms, that’s already been explained in that the logic of scientific statements is that they are empirical sentences about the world, and, thus, they can be verified by observation. The logic of metaphysical statements, on the other hand, is that they aren’t empirical sentences about the world, and, thus, they can’t be verified by observation.

A Selective Retrospective on Ordinary Language Philosophy

 

The following is an essay on various good, bad and commonplace examples of ordinary language philosophy.

J.L. Austin (1911–1960)

In 2003, the American philosopher Hilary Putnam offered his own not-entirely-critical retrospective on the same subject. Indeed, he offered some examples of “traditional” philosophical locutions which ordinary language philosophers would have deemed to be suspect:

“The fact that we never speak of ‘directly perceiving’ and ‘not directly perceiving’ in everyday language in the way that traditional epistemologists do was a sign that something was really quite wrong with the traditional philosophy of perception, something already noticed in the eighteenth century by Thomas Reid, by the way. Reid sounds very Austinian when he fulminates against the strange ways philosophers talk about perception. I think that’s a corrective one should apply to one’s own thought.”

It’s no doubt true that the phrases “directly perceiving” and “not directly perceiving” are somewhat contrived (i.e., regardless of one’s philosophical position on this) — but so what!

The problem with Putnam’s position above is that it may not (or will not) allow philosophers any leeway to say anything new because that would be bound to go against the dictates of “everyday language”. Would we say the same kind of thing to poets when they use a strange metaphor — that they too are going against everyday language? (Herbert Marcuse’s and Jacques Derrida’s criticisms of ordinary language philosophy will be mentioned later.)

In addition, the very fact that philosophy is an academic discipline (that is, a specialism) surely means that it’s bound to say novel things in novel ways. Indeed the American philosopher Richard Rorty, for example, argued that it’s the duty of philosophers to say strange things in strange ways. [See here.]

Was J.L. Austin a Conservative Philosopher?

Jacques Derrida, and Herbert Marcus before him, categorised the ordinary language philosopher J.L. Austin as a “conservative philosopher”. In my own view too, he was. However, both Marcuse and Derrida meant it as a criticism which was somewhat equivalent to calling someone a paedophile. However, it needn’t be critical. It simply depends.

The following oft-quoted passage best sums up Austin’s conservatism:

“Thirdly, and more hopefully, our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetime of many generations: they surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you are I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon — the most favoured alternative method.”

Taken at face value, there are obvious problems with that passage. For one, how can it be known that

“our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetime of many generations”?

Say that Austin wrote this a hundred or a thousand years before he actually did write it. Would it have still been the case that “our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing”? Not all men have access to all distinctions and connections. Some men make distinctions and connections which are at odds with other men. And is it really the case that each generation of “ordinary men” reach the limit of all “sound” and worthwhile distinctions and connections?

In addition, the distinctions and connections made may be false, and yet they still (to use Austin’s word) “survive”. More precisely, Austin mentioned “the long test of the survival of the fittest” — yet many evolutionary theorists will tell you that truth is often not needed when it comes to survival. For example, many religious beliefs are obviously false, yet they may be conducive to survival in various circuitous ways. Moreover, false “commonsense” beliefs may also be conducive to survival, and the “fittest” may believe more falsehoods than the weakest.

Finally, it doesn’t seem out of the question that (at least sometimes) the connections and distinctions philosophers “think up in [their] arm-chairs of an afternoon” are truer, more correct, or even more useful than those thought up by what Austin calls “men”.

J.L. Austin is Boring

Many commentators have found Austin’s philosophy to be boring or almost pointless. Thus, it’s no surprise that the American philosopher Thomas Nagel said that “J.L. Austin was fascinated by many details of language for their own sake”. So here’s an example of that:

“‘It was a mistake,’ ‘It was an accident’ — how readily these can *appear* indifferent, and even be used together. Yet, a story or two, and everybody will not merely agree that they are completely different, but even discover for himself what the difference is and what each means.”

Perhaps it was the Austinian tradition that made that sad person complain about “split infinitives” when the newsreader announced the shooting of Pope John Paul II. In other words, Austin’s kind of analysis can lead to mere pedantry, rather than philosophical insight.

In any case, do many — or even any — people deem the phrases “It was a mistake” and “It was an accident” to be literal synonyms? I doubt it. Perhaps, then, Austin wasn’t claiming that people believe they are synonyms. However, they still go on to use them interchangeably. Moreover, can using these phrases interchangeably really lead to any serious consequences? It can be supposed that they could do in various contrived scenarios in which people really do believe that they’re literally synonymous phrases.

Austin is also well-known for bringing in the notion of a “speech-act”. He did so primarily because he claimed that philosophers (at least the ones he was concerned with) believed that sentences are only used to state facts or describe states of affairs… Philosophers, surely, couldn’t have believed that. After all, even analytic philosophers or German “system-builders” must have used phrases such as “Shut that door” or “Shut the fuck up”. Instead, didn’t such philosophers simply focus on fact-stating sentences for various philosophical and logical reasons?

Logical Form

It’s often said that the primary ordinary-language position was that “philosophical problems are largely a product of the misuse, or misconstrual, of language”. (This was basically Ludwig Wittgenstein’s position at one point in his career.) Of course, it’s hard to decipher what that could even mean without doing a lot of background reading.

Prima facie, any claim that language is “misuse[d]” or “misconstru[ed]” is surely suspect, and that applies just as much to ordinary-language philosophers as it did to the “early Wittgenstein” and Bertrand Russell. According to the ordinary philosophers, philosophical discourse is misused and misconstrued when it moves too far away from ordinary language. On the other hand, according to the tradition the ordinary philosophers reacted against, language is misused or misconstrued because ordinary folk don’t understand what it is they’re actually saying.

So why is “everyday usage” or, alternatively, “logical form” something that should be obeyed… in all circumstances? More strongly, language can only be misused or misconstrued according to a prior philosophy or ideology. In other words, only through the prism of that philosophy or ideology is language misused and/or misconstrued.

All that said, I believe that J.L. Austin was right about the early-20th-century concern with logical form.

Firstly, let Bertrand Russell speak for himself:

“Some kind of knowledge of logical forms, though with most people it is not explicit, is involved in all understanding of discourse. It is the business of philosophical logic to extract this knowledge from its concrete integuments, and to render it explicit and pure.”

The logical form was supposed to be there all along — underneath or behind everyday expressions. Thus, it was the philosophers job to dig deep and discover the logical forms of everyday and of (prior) philosophical expressions.

Now take this passage from Russell:

“The fact that you can discuss the proposition ‘God exists’ is a proof that ‘God’, as used in that proposition, is a description not a name. If ‘God’ were a name, no question as to existence could arise.”

W.V.O Quine (for one) had no problem at all with the naming of non-beings or non-existents. (Non-being and non-existence aren’t the same thing.) In his 1948 paper, ‘On What There Is’, he dismissed Russell’s position. (Quine, however, put Russell’s words in the mouth of McX and used the name “Pegasus” rather than the name “God”.) Quine wrote:

“He confused the alleged named object Pegasus with the meaning of the word ‘Pegasus’, therefore concluding that Pegasus must be in order that the word have meaning.”

So was Russell misled by grammar and metaphor, as the late Wittgenstein might well have argued? (Admittedly, Russell didn’t often use the words “underneath” and “behind”. However, he did use such words as “extract this knowledge”.)

Personally, I don’t have much time for Russell’s argument about the logical forms underneath or behind everyday expressions. It seems to have the character of a philosophical stipulation. (As with the logical positivists’ use of the word “meaningless”!) It’s primary purpose was logical and philosophical. (At that time, Russell was reacting to the, as Quine later put it, “ontological slums” of the Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong.) However, this semantic philosophy (as stated) simply seems like a stipulated (or a normative) position designed to solve various perennial philosophical problems.

Are Insects and Plants Organic Machines?

 This essay asks the following question: Are insects and plants organic machines? It does so in the contexts of Robert Kirk’s semi-mechanistic position and Philip Goff’s panpsychism.

The British philosopher Robert Kirk (as found in his paper ‘How is Consciousness Possible?’) uses the term “pure stimulus-response system” to refer to the behaviour of a fruit fly. The panpsychist Philip Goff, on the other hand, doesn’t even see the behaviour of plants in such mechanistic terms. Indeed, his position on trees particularly seems to be obviously (at least to me) anthropomorphic.

The position of the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose (on the complex behaviour of paramecium) is also discussed. Whether Penrose’s position is another example of panpsychism is open to debate. (Penrose himself throws various spanners into the works.)

Weighing Machines and Plants

Robert Kirk argues that a weighing machine “can do nothing with the information” it receives from the inputs — i.e., things placed on the scale. However, the machine does react differentially to different weights. Thus, “it gives us information we can use”. Yet, more relevantly, this machine “cannot assess its situation, and it cannot initiate or control its behaviour”. It is, according to Kirk, a “pure stimulus-response system”.

Is a weighing machine pretty much like a plant in these respects?

The panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff thinks not.

Although a plant can be seen as a “pure stimulus-response system” (even if biological), Goff chooses to see things differently. He writes:

“[W]e now know that plants communicate, learn and remember. I can see no reason other than anthropic prejudice not to ascribe to them a conscious life of their own.”

It’s important to note here that Goff doesn’t use the words “communicate”, “learn” and “remember” metaphorically (or loosely). He really believes that plants have a “conscious life of their own”. Yet plants may be similar to weighing machines in at least the respects so far discussed.

In Kirk’s own terms: does a plant “asses its situation” or “initiate or control its behaviour”? A plant certainly behaves differentially to different external conditions — as does a weighing machine. But does it initiate or control its behaviour? Yes, but only in the strict and limited sense that every plant of the same species does so in the same way. And if every plant responds in the same way to the same external conditions (or stimuli), then is it correct to say that it initiates or controls its behaviour? Semantically, or in terms of stipulation, perhaps it is.

Similarly, does a plant “asses its situation”?

Again, yes, but only in the same way that every other plant of the same species does so. So, in identical conditions or with identical stimuli, all plants of a given species (to use scare quotes) “behave” or “respond” in the same way. However, if there are any slight differences, then that will be because there are slight differences in the environment which haven’t necessarily been noted.

Computers, garden sensors, piano strings, weighing machines, etc. respond to stimuli is specific ways. So too do plants.

So does biology make a difference here?

Next comes the possibility of interpreting the behaviour of plants in human-like terms. And that’s precisely what Philip Goff does. He writes:

“The mycorrhiza structures [between tree roots and fungi] allow for a complex system of egalitarian redistribution.”

We’ve already seen that Goff believes that plants “communicate, learn and remember”. And it can be concluded that all his interpretations must surely be based on the physical behaviour of plants, not on any access to their (to use Rudy Rucker’s terms) “inner lives”.

Monica Gagliano on Pea Plants

Philip Goff then cites an experiment by Professor Monica Gagliano. He writes:

“In order to set up a similar scenario with her pea seedlings, Gagliano put a pea plant at one end of a Y-shaped tube, so that it could grow in either of two directions, left or right. In one direction was the seedling’s ‘food,’ in the form of blue light. In normal circumstances, the pea seedlings will instinctively grow toward where the light was last present. However, Gagliano tested whether the seedlings could associate the sound of a computer fan with the presence of the blue light, by repeatedly placing the noise at the end of the tube where the blue light was located. Upon repeated trials, she found that just as Pavlov’s dogs had salivated at the sound of the bell, so the pea seedlings grew toward the noise of the computer fan. In both cases, a sound that was initially meaningless to the organisms had come to represent dinnertime.”

Plants don’t need to hear sounds or see light. Despite that, they can still be causally affected by both sound and light.

More particularly, isn’t it the case that the seedlings in this experiment would have also been causally affected by the sound of a computer fan? So rather than the seedlings “associat[ing] the sound of a computer fan with the presence of the blue light”, they might have simply been causally changed by the sound of the fan instead of the blue light.

So where does Goff’s supposition of association come from?

In more detail. Light is a wave and sound is also a wave — both with very determinate physical natures. Thus, the seedlings might have moved toward the sounds of the computer fan because — in many respects — they were like the waves of blue light. This means that the sound waves of the fan must have causally impacted on the seedlings, just as the light waves had done so previously.

So there’s no (immediate?) need to talk of “meaning”, “association”, “value”, etc. — as both Goff and Gagliano do.

To repeat: might the sound waves (from the fan) have had a similar causal impact on the seedlings as the waves of (blue) light had previously done?

[See the BBC’s ‘Light and sound — reflection and refraction’.]

Goff must also know that even non-biological (i.e., artificial) objects display “movement” in response to their environments.

Take computers and other electronic devices.

Such entities change or move in (causal) response to that which is external to them. Yet, oddly enough, Goff himself doesn’t believe that computers are — or even can be — conscious. Indeed, he spends some time in Galileo’s Error saying so — if only implicitly. (At the very least, Goff seems to be sympathetic to John Searle’s well-known Chinese Room argument.)

Despite focussing on Goff’s panpsychist position on Gagliano’s experiment, it seems that Gagliano herself is a panpsychist… of sorts. (Perhaps that’s why Goff noted her experiments in the first place.)

For example, Gagliano states (as quoted by Goff) the following:

“‘If the plant is imagining its dinnertime arriving, based on a simple fan that is associated to the light, then who is doing the imagining? Who is thinking here?’”

It’s clear (even if only from Goff’s own words in Galileo’s Error) that Gagliano already had reasons to believe — or hope — that she’d find the results she found. (See Fudge Factor and Experimenter-Expectancy Effect.) After all, according to Goff himself, she actually set up a “similar scenario” to Ivan Pavlov’s well-known experiments on dogs in order to see if her pea seedlings would behave in the same — or in a similar — manner to dogs.

Roger Penrose on Paramecium

In a similar (though far from identical) vein are the words of the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose. Of all animals, Penrose actually cites the case of the single-celled paramecium. He writes:

“For she [a paramecium] swims about her pod with her numerous tiny hairlike legs — the cilia — darting in the direction of bacterial food which she senses using a variety of mechanisms, or retreating at the prospect of danger, ready to swim off in another direction. She can also negotiate obstructions by swimming around them. Moreover, she can apparently even learn from her past experiences [].”

One can detect certain anthropomorphic words and phrases here too.

For example, “retreating at the prospect of danger”, “negotiate obstructions, and “learn from her past experiences”. That said, these words are probably (or possibly) used because it will have been very hard to think of any alternatives.

In any case, can’t the paramecium “darting in the direction of bacterial food”, “retreating at the prospect of danger”, “negotiat[ing] obstructions” and “learning from her past experiences” all be explained mechanistically? (Penrose himself uses the words “which [the paramecium] senses using a variety of mechanisms” about a paramecium.)

Penrose then discusses the paramecium in the specific context of panpsychism, as well as in the context of the possible lack of importance of neurons when it comes to consciousness. He writes:

“If we are to believe that neurons are the only things that control the sophisticated actions of animals, then the humble paramecium presents us with a profound problem.”

Finally, Penrose asks his readers a question:

“How is all this achieved by an animal without a single neuron or synapse? Indeed, being but a single cell, and not being a neuron herself, she has no place to accommodate such accessories.”

Penrose answers his own question by focussing on the relevance of cytoskeletons and microtubules. He writes:

“It is the cytoskeleton’s role as the cell’s ‘nervous system’ that will have the main importance for us here. For our own neurons are themselves single cells, and each neuron has its own cytoskeleton!”

More relevantly:

“Does this mean that there is a sense in which each individual neuron might itself have something akin to is own ‘personal nervous system’?”

Yet Penrose does indeed qualify his stance with the following words:

“[I]t must also be the case that the detailed neural organization of the brain is fundamentally involved in governing what form that consciousness must take. Moreover, if that organization were not important, then our livers would evoke as much consciousness as do our brains.”

Despite all the above, Penrose is at his most (well) panpsychist when he concludes:

“[S]uch (putative) non-computational processes [i.e., in the brain] would also have to be inherent in the action of inanimate matter, since living human brains are ultimately composed of the same material, satisfying the same physical laws, as are the inanimate objects of the universe.”

Robert Kirk on the Fruit Fly

Let’s now move up a few evolutionary levels and tackle the fruit fly.

Robert Kirk writes:

“Much of the behaviour of many insects seems to conform to that pure stimulus-response pattern.”

However, Kirk immediately qualifies (or questions) this position when he tells us that “since even the fruit-fly is able to find its way home, it is capable of learning”. Thus, to Kirk, a fruit fly “is not a pure stimulus-response system in my sense”.

Some readers may wondering if being “able to find its way home” stops a fruit fly from being a stimulus-response system. After all, even its reactions to new environments may still be “hard-wired”. In other words, different environments elicit differential responses which are also machine-like.

For example, roses “act” differentially in different environments. More specifically and obviously, a plant may flower more in one environment than a plant of the same age and species in a different environment.

Kirk also writes:

“[F]lies are hardwired so that if their feet break contact with a surface, their wings are automatically caused to buzz; and if their feet make contact with a surface, their wings are automatically caused to stop buzzing. Similarly, if their feet are in contact with a surface and that surface emits certain chemicals, the fly’s mouth-parts are caused to go into action. (With luck, the surface will be decaying meat.)”

It can be asked how the experts on flies actually know all this. More relevantly, how does Kirk himself know that the fruit fly’s responses are automatic? Even though there are — obviously — hardwired elements to both a fruit fly’s body and its responses, there still may be a remainder which takes it beyond responding automatically. That said, it can be strongly doubted that this is, in fact, the case.