Stephen Hawking’s Philosophical(!) Position on the Uncertainty Principle

 

In a debate called ‘Scientists vs Philosophers’ (on YouTube), the host opens up with this question:

“Why is it that so many physicists are bashing philosophers nowadays?”

Take Stephen Hawking.

As many people (especially philosophers!) know, Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) wasn’t very keen on philosophy and made that clear a couple of times in his later life.

The following is what Hawking himself said on the subject of philosophy:

“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

What’s more, Hawking made the following incredible claim about his own (philosophical!) position:

“Model-dependent realism short-circuits all this argument and discussion between the realist and anti-realist schools of thought.”

So perhaps it wasn’t philosophy simpliciter that Hawking was against; but only philosophy “which has not kept up with modern developments in science”. (Many philosophers themselves have said the same about their fellow philosophers.) As it is, I don’t believe that Hawking was actually being selective about philosophy; though it’s worth raising that possibility.

It’s strange, then, that in his book The Grand Design (cowritten by Leonard Mlodinow) Hawking himself indulges in a fair bit of philosophy.

So here’s a taster of Hawking’s philosophy:

“There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality. Instead we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. This provides a framework with which to interpret modern science.”

Sure, it might have been the case that Stephen Hawking didn’t see his own model-dependent realism as a philosophical position. He might have seen it as a simple description of the methodologies and facts of physics. Yet that too would have been both a philosophical position and also very naïve.

In addition, it’s also worth noting here that Hawking classed himself as “a positivist”. This is what he wrote in his book The Universe in a Nutshell:

“Any sound scientific theory [] should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others… If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.”

The words above make Hawking’s rejection of philosophy even stranger.

As it is, this essay is going to concentrate on Hawking’s philosophical words on on the realism-vs.-anti-realism debate — as it specifically relates to the uncertainty principle.

Firstly, a few words on realism in science.

Realism vs. Anti-Realism

In the following Stephen Hawking mentions “realism”. He wrote:

“Though realism may be a tempting viewpoint, as we’ll see later, what we know about modern physics makes it difficult one to defend.”

Obviously it’s the case that realism is most certainly a philosophical — i.e., not a scientific — term.

On the surface at least, Hawking seems to be taking some kind of anti-realist position. This, by definition, must be as philosophical a position as realism. Yet the fact is that (as it were) practising scientists — and perhaps even theoretical physics — needn’t take any position on the realism-anti-realism debate. They could simply “shut up and calculate”. In addition, most physicists probably never even think about this issue at all. Indeed other physicists would argue that taking a realist or anti-realist position wouldn’t — and doesn’t — make the slightest bit of difference to what they do.

I said earlier that Hawking adopted some kind of anti-realist position. More accurately, however, he adopted what he called “model-dependent realism” (as discussed in the introduction).

So not only did Hawking indulge in philosophy: he even went so far as to concoct his own philosophical theory! (Of course model-dependent realism isn’t entirely Hawking’s work.)

Now for the uncertainty principle.

Hawking on the Uncertainty Principle

Stephen Hawking dug himself even deeper into his own philosophical hole when he discussed the uncertainty principle. He wrote:

“For example, according to the principles of quantum physics, which is an accurate description of nature, a particle has neither a definite position not a definite velocity unless and until those quantities are measured by an observer.”

Some physicists may argue that there’s not much — or even any — philosophy in the words above. Yet that simply isn’t the case.

Firstly, stating that

“a particle has neither a definite position not a definite velocity unless and until those quantities are measured by an observer”

is an explicitly philosophical position. Indeed Hawking didn’t even say that

we cannot know if a particle has a definite position/velocity before measurement.

He stated that

a particle has neither a definite position nor a definite velocity unless we measure such a thing.

That is Hawking’s statement about the ontological situation of x before measurement. In addition, Hawking was saying something about x.

Again, many physicists have argued that (other) physicists needn’t say anything about whether a particle has a “definite position” or a “definite velocity” before being “measured”. Raising that very question (or subject) is itself philosophical. Instead, all scientists really need is the mathematical formalism (including the wave function), the predictions, the experiment itself, the observations, etc.

After all, from a purely scientific point of view, if a scientist can’t know whether the particle has a definition position, etc. before the measurement or experiment, then what scientific purpose does a postulation of “its” previous status actually serve? (This is a point that Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, etc. made in the 1920s and 1930s.)

All this means that when Hawking was being philosophical when he so much as raised these issues. Indeed he offered his own philosophical position on them!

Hawking continued:

“It is therefor not correct to say that a measurement gives a certain result because the quantity being measured had that value at the time of the measurement.”

In the words above, Hawking became even more philosophical. That is, qua scientist, he didn’t need to say anything about what status the “quantity” had before measurement. But he did. Hawking took an explicitly philosophical position on this. That is, he said — or implied — that it is (philosophically) wrong to believe that

“a measurement gives a certain result because the quantity being measured had that value at the time of the measurement”.

On the other hand, Hawking believed that it is (philosophically) right to believe that

“in some cases individual objects don’t even have an independent existence” [i.e., before measurement].

But how could Hawking have known that?

In addition, he would have needed to defend his position philosophically — and many philosophers and indeed physicists have done so.

So the philosophical position may be one (or both) of the following:

(1) We can simply never know what state a particle (or “quantity”) had before measurement.

Alternatively:

(2) It makes no sense at all to believe x had a particular state before measurement.

Hawking seems to have opted for that latter philosophical interpretation when he said that these “individual objects [] exist only as part of an ensemble of many”. This is an indirect reference to the wave function. That is, there is an ensemble of individual objects until there’s an observation — and then we (as it were) bring about a single definite object. (Put differently: until the wave function is collapsed, we have an ensemble of individual objects.)

But note that not only was Hawking doing philosophy, a (quasi?)realist position is also hidden in his words. That is, Hawking did say something about the world (or individual objects) before any measurement. In detail, he wrote:

“In fact, in some cases individual objects don’t even have an independent existence but rather exist only as part of an ensemble of many.”

Thus Hawking believed that there was an “ensemble of many” individual objects (or quantities) before any measurement.

So isn’t the belief that there is an ensemble of many individual objects before measurement just as realist a position as the belief that there’s a definite object in a definite state before measurement?

In addition, isn’t it the case that in order to be consistent, Hawking should have said nothing about this previous state. He should have only talked about (in whichever order) the wave function (or the mathematical formalism) for the experiment, the experiment itself, the predictions, the observations and so on.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Albert Einstein’s Philosophy of Science — Circa 1916

 

i) Introduction

ii) Science is Observation, Induction and Cataloguing?

iii) Intuition and Deductive Thought

iv) Truth

There’s no reason to assume that Albert Einstein’s philosophy of science will be on a par with his physics — at least as it was expressed in his Relativity: The Special & the General Theory (1916). And indeed it isn’t. This means that, in terms of this essay alone, his words have been focussed upon not because of their insight or profundity, but primarily for their historical and philosophical interest.

When referring to Relativity: The Special & the General Theory, Einstein himself mentioned philosophy. Or, more accurately, he wrote that in his book he intended

“to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity [] from a general scientific and philosophical point of view”.

So, in the case of this essay, Einstein’s “philosophical point of view” as it concerns science (rather than, specifically, Relativity) will be concentrated upon.

The following will attempt to show what Einstein thought (at least in 1916) of science (actually, physics) itself. It can therefore be asked if Einstein’s account of science/physics corresponds to what other physicists/scientists thought at the time. In addition, we’ll see what Einstein thought of the layperson’s view of science.

In terms of detail , Einstein’s philosophy of science only takes up three paragraphs in a book of 132 pages (plus a few words on the philosophy of geometry, which will be covered later). And all that’s in one appendix — Appendix III.

In terms of Relativity: The Special and the General Theory itself.

This book began life as a short paper and it was eventually published as a book in 1916. (My English edition dates from 1920; which is the same edition as in the image above.) This book’s aim (to quote Einstein’s own already-quoted preface) was to give

“an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics”.

(Oddly enough, there is a fair amount of mathematics in this book! Far more than you’d see in most — or even all — contemporary “popular science” books.)

Science is Observation, Induction and Cataloguing?

Albert Einstein offered his overall account of what laypersons — and possibly even some scientists — took science to be (at least in 1916).

Firstly, he stressed induction and observation. He wrote:

“From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction.”

The layperson’s basic take on science is that science is essentially inductive. Or at least this is what’s usually believed to be the layperson’s view. The problem here is that most laypersons don’t actually philosophise about science at all. And they rarely — if ever — use the word “induction” or “inductive”. That said, some philosophers tell us that a person may have the concept of a word without actually ever using the word itself. So laypersons may have the concept [induction] without ever using the word “induction”.

What’s more likely is that laypersons stress observations — as do scientists themselves. So Einstein continued:

“Theories are evolved and are expressed in short compass as statements of a large number of individual observations in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws can be ascertained by comparison.”

Thus “individual observations” are often believed to drive the entire scientific show. At least that’s the layperson’s view. But, once again, only empirical research can establish what laypersons actually believe. Yet, anecdotally, this does seem to be the usual position.

Anyway, on this picture of science, scientists go outside and … observe. Alternatively, scientists carry out experiments and then simply observe what happens. According to Einstein’s take on the layperson’s take, scientists collect all their observations together into a large pot (or at the least they collect their “statements” about the observations together), and then they attempt to make sense of them. Or, in Einstein’s own words, scientists extract “empirical laws” from their observations.

In this bald form, it’s hard to know what all that even means.

Clearly, innumerable other factors would be required in order to extract empirical laws from observations alone. And then the situation becomes even more complicated when “general laws” are “ascertained” from those observations and empirical laws.

Einstein was absolutely correct to detect the profound naivety of this view of science. And that’s why he went on to write the following words:

“Regarded in this way, the development of a science bears some resemblance to the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is, as it were, a purely empirical enterprise.”

Thus scientists are (or were) often seen as merely cataloguing nature — or cataloguing their observations of nature. (This is almost like scientific “stamp collecting”; as with - to be a little crude - Francis Bacon (1561 -1626) and his own philosophy of science — see here.) In this way, it was believed that everything can be kept scientifically kosher — or empirical. (The reader might have detected unwritten scare quotes around Einstein's use of the word empirical.)

Of course one can immediately ask why scientists were cataloguing the things they were cataloguing in the first place. Why were they observing those parts of nature and not other parts? Why did they want to “compile[]” the things they compiled and not other things? In other words, there must have been prior factors — above and beyond what it is they observed — that brought about those very same observations.

Einstein himself then explained why this view is both simplistic and naive. He continued:

“But this point of view by no means embraces the whole of the actual process ; for it slurs over the important part played by intuition and deductive thought in the development of an exact science.”

So it’s clear that Einstein wasn’t actually ruling out entirely the layperson’s view of science. This means that observations — and even cataloguing — are indeed part of the story of science. That said, these things, according to Einstein, “by no means embrace[] the whole of the actual process”. And it’s here that Einstein adds “intuition and deductive thought [to] the development of an exact science”.

Einstein also wrote the following:

“The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations [].”

That reference to a “correlat[ion] of a large number of single observations” is a perfect account of some kind of inductive process. For example, from the observation — and then correlation — of a large number of white swans, a subject may (or will ) conclude that “all swans are white”. Alternatively and in Einstein’s case, a scientist may develop a (to use Einstein’s word) “theory” about swans and why they are all white (which may even include natural laws of some kind).

Einstein had also already mentioned “induction” (though in a critical way) when he wrote:

“we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction”.

One may also ask how a scientist “correlates a large number of single observations”. (Alternatively, how someone connects the dots about all swans being white.) After all, if the theory “finds its justification [in the] fact that it correlates a large number of single observations”, one may suggest that theories were already required in order to enable those correlations. In simple terms, already-existing and accepted theories would have been required (or needed) in order to find a new theory. In the white swans case, in order to conclude that all swans are white, the person who concluded that must have already accepted various other things about swans, the colour white, the whiteness of swans, the nature of observations, etc.

Intuition and Deductive Thought

For me personally, Einstein’s stress on what he calls “intuition” and “deductive thought” (in the quote above) is a little odd. Then again, that may simply be because I live in different times and use different jargon about these same issues.

In any case, many philosophers of science today would stress theory here — not intuition and deductive thought. Of course theory is also intimately tied to both intuition and deductive thought.

But firstly, the word “intuition”.

In philosophy and mathematics, that word often has very specific and indeed technical meanings (see here). So one wonders if Einstein used it in that way himself. Perhaps Einstein simply meant “speculation”, “theorising” or “free thought” by “intuition”. That is, all thought that goes above and beyond the observational data. Indeed all the thought that’s also required to make sense of the observations - and even bring about the observations.

So what about Einstein’s “deductive thought”?

Well, in a general and perhaps vague sense, if we have observations (or statements about them), then we can deduce things from those observations. That is, the observations don’t stand on their own. Scientist need to make sense of them. And they can also deduce (not always logically) other things from them.

However, Einstein used the word “deductive thought” because later he says that

“the investigator develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms”.

This is Einstein (provisionally) treating physics as a kind of (pure) deductive logic. That is, instead of premises from which a conclusion can be derived (or axioms in mathematics which lead to theorems), we have observations and/or “fundamental assumptions” which lead to theories. And, in fact, Einstein himself says that “[w]e call such a system of thought a theory”. Of course all this is very neat and tidy and science (or scientific thinking) isn’t really — or always — like that.

Einstein also used the words “the so-called axioms”. And that is a roundabout admission that physics is physics and (pure) logic is logic.

Truth

Einstein’s concludes by saying that if the theory “correlates a large number of single observations”, then “it is just here that the ‘truth’ of the theory lies”. Readers will have noted the scare quotes around the word truth. And this is an extremely important aspect of Einstein’s philosophy of science and indeed of science itself.

The layperson often sees truth as a central goal of all science. Yet many scientists have never seen it in quite the same way. And that’s because truth is a tricky character for scientists.

In any case, elsewhere in Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Einstein explicitly states that in geometry (if not science), truth doesn’t really have any role. Or, if it does, then the truths of geometry are very different to the truths spoken of by laypersons and even scientists.

For example, take Einstein's words on Euclidean geometry. He wrote:

“We cannot ask whether it is true that only one straight line goes through two points. We can only say that Euclidean geometry deals with things called ‘straight line,’ to each of which is ascribed the property of being uniquely determined by two points situated on it. The concept ‘true’ does not tally with the assertions of pure geometry, because by the word ‘true’ we are eventually in the habit of designating always the correspondence with a ‘real’ object; geometry, however, is not concerned with the relation of the ideas involved in it to objects of experience, but only with the logical connection of these ideas among themselves.”

Put basically, Einstein believed that truth in “pure geometry” (like logic) is essentially a matter of convention. (In terms of this stress on conventions — and, indeed, other things — Einstein might have been influenced by Henri Poincaré. They actually met in 1911— see here and here.) Alternatively and as Einstein later says, geometry is a matter of “logical connection[s]” or what can be derived from axioms. What is important here is that geometrical “truth” has nothing to do with what Einstein himself calls “correspondence” or “objects of experience”.

Nonetheless, Einstein later did tell us why laypersons tie both geometry and truth to physics — or at least to the physical world. He continued:

“It is not difficult to understand why, in spite of this, we feel constrained to call the propositions of geometry ‘true.’ Geometrical ideas correspond to more or less exact objects in nature, and these last are undoubtedly the exclusive cause of the genesis of those ideas.”

Einstein’s words above highlight a long-running debate in the philosophy of mathematics. In that debate philosophers have attempted to ascertain which way the temporal and metaphysical arrow points. Thus:

1) From “exact objects in nature” to mathematical “ideas”.

Or:

2) From mathematical ideas to objects in nature (which needn’t be seen as being exact anyway).

However, Einstein concluded by saying that “[g]eometry ought to refrain from such a course” of seeing truth in the same way as laypersons do (i.e., as a matter of correspondence with objects in the physical world).

To repeat: most laypersons (as Einstein has just hinted) do see truth as some kind of correspondence between what people say (or write) and the world (or aspects of the world). For example, the statement “All swans are white” is believed to be true because it is seen to correspond with the fact that all swans are white. (Each italicised word in that sentence presents its own problems.) Of course there are many difficulties with what’s called the correspondence theory of truth which can’t be tackled here. But, in terms of Einstein’s own position, after putting scare quotes around the word truth when it comes to “pure geometry”, he then writes that truth — at least partly — consists in “corresponding” with the “empirical data”.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

What does the statement “The brain produces consciousness” mean?

 

The philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942-) once stated the following words about his fellow American philosopher John Searle (1932-):

“Searle [] claims that organic brains are required to produce consciousness — at one point he actually said brains secrete consciousness, as if it were some sort of magical goo [].”

I don’t know if John Searle actually did say that. (Searle’s own arguments won’t be covered here.) Nonetheless, Dennett’s words perfectly sum up the gist of this essay.

Dennett is right (despite his rhetoric): some philosophers do state such things as “consciousness is produced by the brain”. (Sometimes they use the words “created” or “caused” instead.)

This is problematic for physicalism.

Firstly, stating that “The brain produces consciousness” is an obvious acknowledgement of a distinction between the brain and consciousness. Now that may not be too problematic … or it may be. Whatever it is, a distinction is being made.

So what does stating “The brain produces [causes/ creates] consciousness” actually mean? Or, more abstractly, stating that “x causes y” isn’t very helpful… as it stands. Thus:

1) How does x produce [create/cause] y?

2) Why does x produce [cause/create] y?

Those two questions (I’m not very comfortable with “why-questions” such as 2) aren’t hinting that such claims of (as it were) production or causation can’t be defended . However, they still need to be cashed out.

Again, whatever the answers are, it’s still being acknowledged that y is not x. After all, the poison in a Death Cap mushroom caused the death of Mr Smooth (among various other necessary conditions). Yet that poison and his death aren’t one and the same thing. And, in this case, Mr Smooth’s death can easily be explained. That is, the whys and hows of Mr Smooth’s death are not problematic (i.e., once it’s clear that he’s consumed two Death Caps).

But what about the brain producing (or causing) consciousness?

The Identity Theory (or Type Physicalism)

There are some anti-physicalist philosophers who conflate all types of physicalism with the Identity Theory. That is, they argue that the brain can’t “give rise to itself” or that physicalists “tacitly accept that the brain and consciousness are distinct”.

Some anti-physicalists also ignore non-reductive physicalism too (at least when in a rhetorical mood). And what about the physicalists who’re committed to the emergence of consciousness (see later)?

Yet there are problems with physicalism. There’s even the problem of whether or not physicalism can be squared with emergence or non-reduction.

Take type physicalism again.

(The distinction between type physicalism and token physicalism doesn’t really matter much in the limited context of this essay. And neither does the reality — or otherwise — of multiple realizability.)

The Type Physicalist’s use of the word “correlation” (i.e., as with “produce”, “cause”, etc.) is also problematic. After all, if you state that

“mental event x can be correlated with physical event y in the brain”

then this too seems to make a distinction between mental events and physical events (in the brain). Of course making a distinction between x and y doesn’t necessarily mean that x and y aren’t, in fact, the same thing. And the original identity theorists spent much time explaining this fact (see later).

In any case, isn’t even the Identity Theory sometimes caricatured by anti-physicalists?

Sure, Identity Theorists set up a literal identity between consciousness and the brain. (Actually, it was usually the mind or mental events they had in… mind.) Yet even they acknowledged various distinctions between the brain and consciousness. That is, they acknowledged “first-person” accounts (or to use John Searle’s words again, “the brain from the inside”), the different “senses” which have the same “reference”, etc. But, to them, that still didn’t stop mental events/states from being identical to brain events/states.

In terms purely of sense and reference (to cite just one example).

For Herbert Feigl (1902 —1988) and J.J.C. Smart (1920–2012), the identity between mental events and brain events was seen as being an identity between the referents of the “senses” or descriptions of two different terms or phrases. (As in “the morning star” and “the evening star” both referring to Venus.)

U.T. Place (1924–2000) gave the example of “lightning” and “electrical discharge”. The former and latter words don’t mean the same thing. Yet the statement “lightning is an electrical discharge” is true. Thus Place and others concluded that the statement “mental event x is identical to brain event y” is true — even though the terms on either side of the “equation” don’t have the same sense.

Sure enough, mountains of papers were written criticising this kind of type physicalism. So these positions are extremely problematic — yet so too is anti-physicalism and all the other theories (or philosophies) of mind.

Reduction, Dependence and Emergence

If physicalism is the position that “all facts [] are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them”, then we still have the problematic words “dependent” and “reducible” embedded in that definition. That is, a distinction is still be made between x and y — or between the brain and consciousness (or mind). After all, if you argue that “y is reducible to x”, or that “y is dependent on x”, then surely you can’t also be arguing that x and y are identical. That is, you’re aren’t (literally) arguing that “y is reducible to y” or that “y is dependent on y”.

So what about emergence?

Some philosophers are deeply suspicious of — or sceptical about — emergence. Yet they must realise that most scientists accept that it exists — at least at some level and in some shape or form. More accurately, most scientists accept weak emergence. (Not that many — or even any — scientists use the philosophical terms “weak emergence” and “strong emergence”.) Now saying that many scientists accept emergence doesn’t automatically mean that emergence must therefore exist — let alone that consciousness emerges from the brain.

And even if consciousness does emerge from the brain, then it’s still deemed to be something over and above the brain. (The very word “emerges” obviously shows that.)

Now what is this emergence and how can it be explained?

We can easily and happily accept that without the brain, there would be no emergence of consciousness in the first place — at least not in human beings as they are today. Yet that still leaves such emergence to be explained. More specifically and to accommodate both panpsychism and artificial intelligence (i.e., brains may not be required for consciousness), we can accept that without the brain of human subject S, that human subject would simply have no consciousness. (This is a statement of the obvious to me.) Yet we still need to explain the emergence of consciousness from — see, what does “from” mean? — the human brain of subject S.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Professor Simon Critchley vs. Professional Philosophy… and Analytic Philosophy

 

Professor Simon Critchley (1960-) once stated the following words about professional philosophy:

“Although philosophy, since its inception in Plato, has always been linked to the academy, to more or less formal schools of thought, the professionalisation of philosophy is a recent phenomenon. And I think it’s a lamentable phenomenon.”

This is bizarre. The person — Professor Simon Critchley — who referred to “the academy” and the “professionalisation of philosophy” had been a professional philosopher in the academy for 14 years when he wrote the words above. And, before that, he’d been a student for five or six years.

Did he lament those facts?

Professor Critchley has now been imbedded in the academy since he was 22 years old. That’s for around 40 years. Though, to be accurate, he wrote the words above when he was 42 years old. He’s now 61. That said, he was already a professional philosopher (a professor) when he stated these views.

More specifically, Critchley first became an academic when he became a university fellow at University College Cardiff in 1988 (when he was 28). He was a full professor by 1999. He has also had positions at the University of Essex, the College International de Philosophie, the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität , the University of Nijmegen, the University of Sydney, the University of Notre Dame, the Cardozo Law School, the University of Oslo and the University of Texas. Critchley is also a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School. And, since 2004, Critchley has been professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York.

This seeming lack of self-awareness (though as an adept academic, Critchley could easily rationalise it) is also displayed by “populariser of philosophy” Nigel Warburton (1962-). He too is strongly critical of both analytic philosophy and “the professionalisation of philosophy” generally. Yet Warburton himself has a strong and long academic background.

In terms of detail.

At first Warburton was a pupil at the fee-paying Sevenoaks School; which is one of the United Kingdom’s most expensive schools. He then gained a BA from the University of Bristol and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Warburton was also a lecturer at the University of Nottingham and later joined the Department of Philosophy at the Open University.

So, like so many academics (such as Professor Simon Critchley) and ex-academics, Warburton isn’t afraid of having a go at academics — for being academics (i.e., not for other things). Indeed Warburton himself recognised this when he said that he was once in an

“awkward position as a lecturer because I didn’t feel completely committed to the academic world of philosophy”.

Warburton still spends much of his time interviewing, meeting and writing about academics — that is, professional philosophers. (Warburton’s Philosophy Bites has interviewed Barry C. Smith, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michael Dummett, Tzvetan Todorov, David Chalmers, C. A. J. Coady and many more. Almost — or literally — every one of these is a professional/academic philosopher. I have no problem with this. But I thought that Warburton did.)

So Warburton was a professional academic from before 1994 until 2013 and a student of philosophy before that. Indeed it’s highly likely that his publishers wouldn’t have been interested in Warburton’s popular philosophy if it weren’t for the fact that he’d previously gained a PhD from Cambridge University and also been an academic.

Of course it can be argued (in Critchley’s case at least) that someone can be a professional philosopher and also be critical of professional philosophy. Indeed some people may argue that Critchley is best placed to do so precisely because he “knows what he’s talking about”. But the argument isn’t that what Critchley says is automatically false because he’s a professional philosopher.(Some of what he says may be true.) The argument is that… well, he’s simply a hypocrite.

More relevantly and as will be seen in the following, Professor Critchley isn’t actually a critic of professionalised philosophy at all. He’s a critic of analytic philosophy, analytic philosophers and analytic philosophy departments. On the other hand, Critchley has been full of praise for the professional philosophy that’s been carried out at the places he has taught — and he waxes lyrically especially about the New School in New York. (This is where Critchley now teaches — see here.)

Professor Simon Critchley vs. Analytic Philosophy

Now take these statements from Professor Simon Critchley:

“To a certain extent, this professionalism insulates philosophers from other disciplines and encourages a certain lazy arrogance. What I dislike most about philosophers is the idea that they think because they are smart as philosophers they have nothing to learn from anybody else. You find this repeatedly.”

Which philosophers had Professor Critchley in mind?

He uses the word “philosophers”; yet it’s very clear that he meant analytic philosophers. That’s primarily because these words are embedded in a published interview in which the sins of analytic philosophy and analytic philosophers were the main subject. (Coincidentally, Nigel Warburton was also interviewed for that book and he said similar things — to Critchley — about both analytic philosophy and professional philosophy.)

Clearly Critchley only had his critical eyes on analytic philosophy. For example, he stated the following words:

“Just visit the Eastern Division annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association for an empirical confirmation of this thesis — it’s a meat market!”

The American Philosophical Association is an association of (almost exclusively) analytic philosophers.

So did Critchley honestly believe that there was no equivalent of the American Philosophical Association when it came to continental philosophers and academics like himself? Of course there was! Indeed considering Critchley’s 12 or more different academic positions, he’s been a perfect beneficiary of various continental-philosophy “meat markets”!

(The fact that Professor Critchley uses the gratuitous prefix “empirical” in the phrase “empirical confirmation” just shows how deeply embedded in the academy he was — even then.)

Critchley continues:

“To a certain extent, this professionalism insulates philosophers from other disciplines and encourages a certain lazy arrogance.”

All disciplines are isolated from other disciplines… to some degree. This is true of poststructuralism, literary theory, Critical Race Theory, history, anthropology and the other subjects taught at Professor Critchley’s New School in New York. It’s certainly true of physics, chemistry, etc. In fact it can be argued that that’s partly what makes a discipline a discipline — a degree of isolation from other disciplines.

That said, Critchley may well argue that philosophy should be different from these other subjects. Well, that depends…

Almost every analytic philosopher I know — both throughout the 20th century and today - did have a keen interest in physics, biology, ethics, neuroscience, mathematics, etc. And, more recently, in cognitive science. But Critchley seems to have been arguing (if implicitly) that analytic philosophers weren’t interested in the right things. That is, he stated that philosophers should learn “not just from cognitive scientists”. That hints at the fact that Critchley knew that analytic philosophers were interested in cognitive science — but that’s wasn’t enough for him. Indeed he went on to criticise what he calls “scientism”. This can be interpreted as meaning that the (bad) disciplines Critchley had in mind were the (hard?) sciences. Indeed he told us that

“one thread, and one thread, within contemporary philosophy is scientism”.

Here again it’s clear that Critchley meant analytic philosophy by “contemporary philosophy”. He also failed to realised that many analytic philosophers have been — and still are — strongly against scientism. (Philosophers such as G.E. Moore, Thomas Nagel, Alvin Plantinga, E.J. Lowe, etc.) That’s if the word “scientism” is anything more than a vague term of abuse.

So Critchley wants analytic philosophers to learn from (to use his own examples) “lawyers, historians, anthropologists”. Why these people? It must be because that’s what he and most continental philosophers are interested in. And, in parallel, on the whole they aren’t that interested in physics — or in cognitive science for that matter. This leads me to conclude that it’s not analytic philosophers not learning from other disciplines that irks Critchley: it’s their not learning from disciplines that Critchley himself has learned from. That is, those disciplines which have obvious political use value for (continental) philosophers and academics like Critchley.

Professor Critchley concludes:

“If philosophy isolates itself from other disciplines and from the culture at large it will die [].”

Analytic philosophy doesn’t “isolate[] itself from other disciplines”. Instead, perhaps it doesn’t have close enough relations to the disciplines which Critchley believes it should have relations to (e.g., Critchley’s examples of history, law, anthropology, politics, etc.).

And what does “culture at large” even mean?

All philosophy is part of culture — isn’t it? What else can it be part of? And are all other academic disciplines fully embedded in “the culture at large”? I don’t know what Critchley means by “culture at large”. But I do believe I have an idea what Critchley was getting at. My bet is that he meant that analytic philosophers aren’t (as the cliché has it) “politically committed” or as politically active as many continental philosophers and academics (such as Critchley) have been and still are. (Here is a video interview of Critchley in which he cites a long list of movements and examples of direct action which he claims to have been involved in — see 28 minutes and 57 seconds.) Alternatively, if analytic philosophers have been politically committed, then Critchley may well believe that they've been committed to the wrong political things!

Critchley For Continental Philosophy

Critchley categorically states that

“[a]nd philosophical questions have to be linked to non-philosophical discourses”.

Hasn’t that nearly always been the case for Western philosophy? And wasn’t it also true of analytic philosophy in the 20th century? After all, philosophy about philosophy is surely the Philosophy of Philosophy or metaphilosophy. (Traditionally, there has been more of this stuff on the continent that in the United Kingdom or the United States.) In addition, is the philosophy of science or the philosophy of mind really about philosophy itself? Many analytic philosophers in the 20th century also wrote about politics, aesthetics and ethics — wasn’t all that about what Critchley calls “non-philosophical discourses”?

Readers may also have noted the modal, absolutist and demanding “have to be” — as in “philosophical questions have to be [my italics] linked to non-philosophical discourses”. Do they? Who says so? And why do they say so? Of course demanding that all philosophical questions have to be linked to non-philosophical discourses is itself a philosophical — or, more accurately, a political — stance.

(Here’s a video of Critchley on the cusp of explicitly stating that any philosophy that’s not politically engaged — though engaged in in the correct kind of politics — is basically worthless . Critchley graphically expresses the clichéd and utterly conformist position found among very many continental philosophers — and, of course, among academics like Critchley. It dates back 170 years to Karl Marx himself. This very-self-conscious philosophical and political radicalism — at least as found in certain environments — is now the conservative position and indeed it has been since at least the 1960s — some 70 years ago. In other words, philosophical and political radicalism has been thoroughly entrenched in many institutions and environments for literally decades.)

Critchley then continued:

“It’s almost axiomatic in the continental tradition that philosophy will be linked to things outside itself, whether this is the aesthetic in early Schelling and German romantics, Christianity in Kierkegaard, political economy in Marx, psychoanalysis in Freud, and so on.”

This is odd because Critchley was arguing against 20th-century analytic philosophy when he stated these words. Yet he’s citing three or more pre-20th century examples. That is, there wasn’t really a “continental tradition” when Schelling, Kierkegaard and Marx were writing. Or, at the very least, there wasn’t a continental/analytic split. And it’s that split which Critchley was talking about.

Critchley’s examples are odd too.

Firstly, many analytic philosophers have indeed written on aesthetics. Sure; not as many as those who write about, say, science or consciousness. And analytic philosophers certainly haven’t written about aesthetics in the manner Schelling, etc. have done. Perhaps that was Critchley’s problem.

What about Karl Marx and “political economy”?

Well, firstly Marx didn’t see himself as a philosopher. In fact he explicitly argued against philosophy. As have many Marxists since the 19th century. (This is despite the early-late Marx division and the work of Althusser and others.)

And surely Marx took his words on political economy to be… well, political economy, not philosophy.

So what about Sigmund Freud?

He wasn’t a philosopher... or was he? Critchley may think that he was.

In any case, psychoanalysis wasn’t a “ thing[] outside” Freud’s philosophy — it was what Freud actually created and wrote about. This is like arguing that politics was outside Marx’s philosophy. (If it was philosophy at all — even some Marxists dispute this.) Something similar can be said about Kierkegaard's Christianity. It wasn’t outside his philosophy — it was at the very centre of it.

Conclusion

Just a final few words on the term “continental philosophy”.

Professor Simon Critchley tells us that

“[i]t’s almost axiomatic in the continental tradition that philosophy will be linked to things outside itself”.

Critchley uses the words “continental tradition” — not “continental philosophy” — in the above. Yet he’s used the term “continental philosophy” many times without putting scare quotes around it. Indeed take the single example of the book A Companion to Continental Philosophy, which Critchley edited and contributed to. (In that book he defends the term; although he does note problems with it — as I do and just about everyone does.)

Whenever any outsider criticises “continental philosophy”, continental philosophers and academics often say that “there’s no such thing as continental philosophy”. Then they add that the term “continental philosophy” is “an invention of analytic philosophers”. (Some cite Gilbert Ryle - who used the term in the 1940s — as the chief culprit.) Yet the term “continental philosophy” is also used by those who aren’t critical of continental philosophy. And, in these cases, it’s then deemed okay to use it.

Of course it’s possible that a fan of continental philosophy may criticise the term “continental philosophy” even when positive things are said about it. But, as yet, I’ve never come across this phenomenon.

To sum up. Professor Simon Critchley doesn’t like the fact that apples aren’t oranges. That is, he has a serious problem with professional analytic philosophers not having the same attitudes to philosophy and politics (as well as the same attitude on the relation of philosophy to politics) as professional continental philosophers — or the academics who champion them — do.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]