Poststructuralism and Deconstruction as Forms of (Linguistic) Idealism

The British academic and literary critic Catherine Belsey wrote a book called Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. That book doesn’t mention either (historical) idealism or (20th century) linguistic idealism. Perhaps Belsey would have seen such a mention as being out of place in an introductory book. However, this essay argues that linguistic idealism is at the very heart of poststructuralism. Indeed, Belsey’s own (very positive) words about poststructuralism show that to be the case.

Catherine Belsey (left). Top to bottom: Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Lacan. These three figures are extensively featured in Belsey’s book.

[See my next essay, ‘Linguistic Idealism as a Weapon of Poststructuralist/Postmodernist Politics’.]

(i) Introduction

(ii) Linguistic Idealism?

(iii) Saussure’s Linguistic Idealism?

(iv) Is the World Created By Language?

(v) Conclusion: Poststructuralism’s Linguistic Idealism and Politics

This essay is largely based on an extremely positive account of poststructuralism by the academic and literary critic Catherine Belsey (who died in 2021).

In her book Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction, Belsey waxes lyrically about literally all the theorists and philosophers she personally associates with poststructuralism. Oddly enough, Belsey includes the Stalinist Louis Althusser (who she had a soft spot for — see note at the end of this essay) and the self-described “communist” Slavoj Žižek (see ‘Why I am a communist but NOT a socialist’) under the poststructuralist banner. In other words, Belsey doesn’t just mention Althusser and Žižek in passing.

Belsey’s book is easy to read, as well as being entertaining. So it’s unlike the other books I’ve read on the subject of poststructuralism. Indeed, these books are often as hard to read as poststructuralism itself…

Yes! I’m happily and openly admitting that the other books on poststructuralism I’ve tried to read are ̶f̶a̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶v̶y̶,̶ ̶d̶e̶e̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶e̶s̶o̶t̶e̶r̶i̶c̶ ̶ for me to understand.

So that’s the main reason why I’ve relied on Belsey’s book.

Again, Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction is easy to read and entertaining. However, it will be argued that it’s also flawed —at least from a philosophical point of view.

In critical terms, even most introductory books take some time to make clear what at least some of the criticisms of the philosophers and theorists discussed are. However, this isn’t the case with Belsey’s book.

So literally every theorist and philosopher Belsey associates with poststructuralism (including Barthes, Kristeva, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Althusser, Žižek and Lyotard) is given an extremely-positive spin.

Now Belsey’s omnipresent positivity toward all poststructuralists (at least the ones she discusses) can’t simply be because her book is a “very short introduction”.

Indeed, it isn’t.

Catherine Belsey was clearly (some kind of) poststructuralist herself.

A younger Catherine Belsey.

This positivity is shown throughout Belsey’s book, as well as in her other publications, and the institution she ran.

Belsey chaired the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University from 1988 to 2003. And Wikipedia tells us that her book Critical Practice (1980) “was an influential post-structuralist text in suggesting new directions for literary studies”.

In any case, it’s crystal clear that Belsey was very far from being a non-biased commentator on poststructuralism.

Linguistic Idealism?

“NLI is a philosophical position []. Language does not represent the physical world but is the world itself.”

Some of the explanations and definitions of linguistic idealism are as vague as Catherine Belsey’s own hints at it (as we shall see).

For example, we have the claim that linguistic idealism is “the thesis that the world is a product of language”. (Here we see the vague words “product of”, which can be interpreted in many ways.)

We also have less vague — and, correspondingly, less radical — accounts, such as writing about Hegel’s “emphasis on the importance of linguistics in shaping cognition”. Indeed, this passage (from a paper called ‘Transcendental Versus Linguistic Idealism’) continues in the following manner:

“This view — linguistic idealism — redirects philosophy’s search for origins away from transcendental faculties and toward the history not of what we can know but of what we can say: toward the evolution of our basic words.”

That first sentence (at least as it stands) needn’t be taken as a commitment to linguistic idealism at all…

However, we need to establish what linguistic idealism is in the first place before we can say that such selected passages are — or are not — examples of linguistic idealism.

Similarly, the continued passage above needn’t be taken as an account of linguistic idealism either — even though it contains the words “linguistic idealism”! Thus, is the Wittgensteinian phrase “what we can say” (not “what we can know”) really any kind of commitment to linguistic idealism?

Well, yes and no.

It depends, again, on how we define the term “linguistic idealism” or what we take linguistic idealism to be.

So why is the term “linguistic idealism” used in this essay?

This term is used primarily because it’s the most suitable term available.

Thus, that’s not to say that readers need be entirely happy with it. What’s more, it’s certainly the case that poststructuralists themselves wouldn’t have liked it as a description of what it is they offered…

The main reason for that would be that idealism (in all its forms) is a historical Western position. (It can can be found in non-Western traditions too.) Yet poststructuralists are (or were) against the Western tradition.

Thus, simply gluing the word “linguistic” onto the word “idealism” wouldn’t have been acceptable to a poststructuralist (especially a philosopher like Derrida). Furthermore, poststructuralists would never have dreamed of classing themselves as any kind of idealist…

Indeed, many (even most) poststructuralists didn’t even use the term “poststructuralist” about themselves. (“The play of the sign” goes on.)

Belsey herself tells us that Slavoj Žižek “rejects the label ‘poststructuralist’ (energetically)”.

Why is that?

It’s because he

“associates it with Derrida and what he sees as an exclusive and probably frivolous preoccupation with the signifier”.

In detail.

Poststructuralists set out to trump the entire “Western tradition”. (As stated, idealism has been prominent in non-Western traditions too.) Thus, using the word “idealism” about their own position/s was always out of the question.

All that said, this is the position of poststructuralists themselves on the term “linguistic idealism”. So there’s no reason why people who aren’t poststructuralists should accept such denials. In other words, simply because poststructuralists deny that they are linguistic idealists, then that doesn’t also mean that they aren’t linguistic idealists.

So perhaps a little context will help here.

Idealists (linguistic or otherwise) have often pitted themselves against realists. (Less often, and usually in the context of analytic philosophy, realism is itself pitted against anti-realism.)

Catherine Belsey herself recognised that poststructuralists (Lyotard in this instance) have pitted themselves against philosophical realism.

Lyotard

Firstly, she tells us that Jean-François Lyotard's “target” was “realism”.

Why did Lyotard target realism?

Belsey continued:

“Realism, [Lyotard] claims, reaffirms the illusion that we are able to seize hold of reality, truth, the way things ‘really’ are.”

Lyotard (as expressed by Belsey) went even deeper when he argued that realism “protects us from doubt”. In Belsey’s words:

“[Realism] offers us a picture of the world that we seem to know, and in the process confirms our own status as knowing subjects by reaffirming that picture as true. Things are, human beings are, and, above all, we are just as we have always supposed.”

It must now be said that — traditionally — idealism was a philosophical position on (as it’s often put) “the nature of reality”. Thus, even if poststructuralists are idealists of some kind, then their idealism may still only be a small part of their poststructuralism…

However, it can also be seen as being a large part of poststructuralism!

Indeed, linguistic idealism can be seen as being the primary source of nearly everything else in poststructuralism (as this essay will now attempt to show).

Saussure’s Linguistic Idealism?

Ferdinand de Saussure

Some readers will be aware of how important Ferdinand de Saussure was to the poststructuralists who came after him.

Yet the thing about Saussure was that he rarely discussed political, ethical or social issues. What’s more, he wasn’t a philosopher: he was a linguist. Prima facie, then, it may seem hard to directly connect him to either poststructuralists or to poststructuralism...

But don’t worry about that.

Catherine Belsey herself does the connecting for us.

Basically, Belsey shows us how important Saussure was to poststructuralists.

But, more relevantly, Saussure’s very own (possible) linguistic idealism is at the heart of this issue...

Linguistic idealism?

Well, Belsey put Saussure’s position in this way:

“Meaning, Saussure proposed, did not depend on reference to the world, or even to ideas [about the world or things].”

Belsey also told us that “[f]or him, meaning resides in the sign and nowhere else”.

On the face of it, the statement (to change the tense)

Meaning does not depend on reference

is remarkable.

Thus, some readers may wonder about Belsey’s words “did not depend on”.

What do they mean?

Few philosophers have claimed that language or “meaning” is entirely dependent on reference. (Referentialists like J.S. Mill came close to this — see here. See also ‘Direct reference theory’.) So if Belsey was arguing that, then she was arguing against her own straw target.

In any case, from Belsey’s words alone, it would be easy to conclude that Saussure believed that meaning (or language) does not depend on reference at all! Indeed, if this isn’t the (radical) thesis that Belsey was offering us, then most alternatives would be purely mundane, and not something that would be controversial.

The same questions arises for the statement “meaning resides in the sign and nowhere else”. Rather that disagreeing with it, it’s hard to understand exactly what this means.

It’s true that few — very few — philosophers have come close to arguing that meaning itself can be found in “the world” or in referents. (According to John Heil, some philosophers believed that “words are connected to things [] by ‘outgoing’ chains of significance guided by the agents’ thoughts (‘noetic rays’)”, see ‘Noetic’.)

But, again, the erasing of the world and/or reference entirely is another thing…

Unless they aren’t being erased in Belsey’s philosophical scheme.

However, if they aren’t, then her position stops being radical, and starts being (as already stated) mundane. And if it truly is mundane, then Belsey wouldn’t be writing about it. After all, lots of mundane positions that provide a (as it were) middle ground between reference (or the world) and language have been offered in the 20th century (as well as before) by people who aren’t poststructuralists (e.g., by analytic philosophers and by many others).

So surely Belsey is offering us much more than that.

In any case, Saussure’s (possible) linguistic idealism was taken further.

Take the French painter and sculptor Georges Braque (who isn’t quoted or mentioned in Belsey’s book), who once wrote:

“I do not believe in things, I believe only in their relationship.”

And now take French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan (who is quoted and mentioned in Belsey’s book), who wrote:

“It is the world of words that create the world of things [].”

Some readers may deny that this is linguistic idealism in the sense that Lacan at least acknowledged “the world of things”.

Or did he?

Well, there was nothing to stop Lacan from arguing that things are simply a product of “the world of words”. (Professor Donald Hoffman and other contemporary idealists stress that things are the product of the world of consciousness — or consciousnesses in the plural.)

Again, and as with Belsey, if Lacan simply opted for the idea that things are a factor of words, yet things aren’t themselves words, then that would have been a (fairly) mundane position. Yet Lacan wouldn’t have liked to advance any mundane position. Thus, this linguistic idealism interpretation seems feasible here.

If we return to Saussure.

Many of Saussure’s ideas can be agreed with.

For example, his stress on the (rather obvious?) relation of words to other words, the nature of linguistic “systems”, “difference”, etc. However, Catherine Belsey’s account of Saussure’s position (i.e., as one which calls for the complete erasing of reference or the world) is another thing entirely.

So perhaps Saussure and Lacan didn’t want to erase reference or the world — even if Belsey did.

Perhaps they had a more subtle take on this matter.

Is the World Created By Language?

Catherine Belsey tells her readers that “few issues are more important in human life” than language. In detail:

“[L]anguage and its symbolic analogues exercise the most crucial determinations in our social relations, our thought processes, and our understanding of who and what we are.”

This, of course, contains an element of rather obvious truth.

So it’s where Belsey went next that’s of interest.

Firstly, Belsey eases her readers in gently by simply saying that “language intervenes between human beings and the world”.

So at least the world is recognised here.

Belsey continues:

“Poststructuralism proposes that the distinctions we make are not necessarily given by the world around us, but are instead produced by the symbolizing systems we learn.”

Admittedly, Belsey plays down her own poststructuralism and the radical nature of poststructuralism in two ways in that passage.

Firstly, Belsey uses the words “are not necessarily” in order to downplay the (well) absoluteness of poststructuralism’s claim. Yet those three words are a gratuitous addition which don’t seem to play any role. That’s because there’s no not necessarily about this poststructuralist position. Poststructuralists do believe that our “symbolizing systems” (not “the world around us”) produce our “distinctions” and the world.

Secondly, Belsey writes about poststructuralism (in the passage above and elsewhere) in the (as it were) third person (as in the words “poststructuralism proposes”). However, it’s crystal clear that she was, if not an outright poststructuralist herself, then someone who was extremely positive toward poststructuralism.

The idealist idea (which Belsey herself would simply class as poststructuralism) is expressed (poetically) again in the following passage:

“Both the signifier and the image are on the same side of the glass, if glass it is. Here language is not a window onto the world.”

So if language is not a window onto the world, then surely Belsey believed this:

Language is a window onto language.

Here again, this isn’t a stress on both sides of the divide: language and world. Instead, there is the explicit statement that “language is not a window onto the world”.

So isn’t Belsey’s position a clear erasing of the world?

Alternatively (using a word that Belsey uses elsewhere), isn’t this an erasing of reference?

In more concrete and colourful terms, even wheelbarrows are deemed to be linguistic items by Belsey. As Belsey herself put it:

“On this reading, the red wheelbarrow of this poem issues from language, not from the world of things.”

Admittedly, Belsey did say (in the third person again) that this is a poststructuralist “reading” of a poem by William Carlos Williams called ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’.

Again, we have a problem with the words “this poem issues from language”.

As with all the other quoted passages from Belsey, it’s hard to know how to (well) read her words when they only hint at linguistic idealism (specifically the words “issues from”).

In one obvious sense, of course a poem written in words “issues from language”. (It issues from the words used within it.) Yet, as before, Belsey must have meant more than that. She surely meant something philosophically outré.

So, in effect, Belsey believed that this poem is exclusively about language.

(One reason Belsey gives for her idealist conclusion is that, to her, the poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ doesn’t seem to be about “any real farm”.)

For if she didn’t mean that, then any other philosophical (i.e., not aesthetic and interpretive) reading of this — or any other — poem would probably be fairly mundane. However, if it were mundane, then it wouldn’t be poststructuralist. In other words, Belsey didn’t what to be taken to be simply stating the obvious.

Instead, Belsey was offering a position which can be taken to be an expression of linguistic idealism.

That said, it’s hard to understand (even from Belsey’s own reading) why it should be concluded that this poem isn’t about a wheelbarrow and other things, rather than being purely about language.

Sure, language, metaphor, analogy, interpretation, imagination, “intertextuality” (or “citationality”), etc. may well play their part in the reading of this and of all other poems. However, why conclude that this poem isn’t about “the world of things” at all?

Indeed, even Belsey’s own reading of this poem doesn’t warrant this idealist conclusion.

Conclusion: Poststructuralism’s Linguistic Idealism and Politics

Jacques Derrida’s book Spectres of Marx has been called his “political turn”. This can be disputed.

It’s of course the case that at least some defenders of Catherine Belsey, and defenders of poststructuralists generally, will argue — or will they? — that the detailed arguments which justify this erasing of things and the world are offered elsewhere. (Alternatively, such people may say that there are arguments which show that there isn’t any actual erasing of things or the world in poststructuralism.)

The thing is, the arguments just aren’t offered in Belsey’s own book.

Sure, this book is only an introduction. However, I would argue that there aren’t any (or at least there aren’t many) arguments anywhere else either…

That may be explained by the fact that many poststructuralists have explicitly (well) argued against argumentation (as well as stressed “lived experience” and “radical change”, not argumentation or debate).

Finally, I just mentioned radical change in parenthesis.

Linguistic idealism is mainly a means to an end for poststructuralists. (This is certainly true of Catherine Belsey herself.)

That end is political.

Basically put, the acceptance of linguistic idealism (i.e., as found in poststructuralism) is a perfect vehicle for advancing various political causes and goals.

[Incidentally, this strongly parallels how spiritual idealists employ idealism to advance various “spiritual” causes and goals.]

Thus, for poststructuralists, linguistic idealism isn’t really (or isn’t only) a philosophical thesis which stresses the primacy of language (or “discourse”). It’s a thesis that’s been used — via the focus on language — to advance radical political change. This political interpretation of poststructuralism is, of course, strongly at odds with the critical readings of both poststructuralism and postmodernism which have been offered by many Marxists. (This will be covered in my next essay.)

So as a quick taster of what’s to come later, here are a few more lines from Belsey’s book.

Firstly, Belsey tells us that Lyotard mentioned those people who “lamented the impossibility of truth”. Lyotard, on the other hand, “rejoiced in the freedom this impossibility conferred”.

Why did Lyotard rejoice in this impossibility of truth?

Belsay continued:

“Postmodernism celebrates the capability of the signifier itself to create new forms and, indeed, new rules.”

And all that will be the subject of my next essay on Belsey’s Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction.

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Note

From a poststructuralist perspective, this is odd. It’s odd considering Louis Althusser’s penchant for rigid ideologies, oppressive states, and his complete loyalty and obedience to a — communist — political party. (See ‘Althusser, ideology, and Stalinism: A response to Andrew Ryder’ and ‘Althusser and Stalinism’.) Still, it isn’t really a surprise that supporters of Althusser play down his Stalinism. (Some of his fans even play down his Stalinism by playing up his Maoism — see here). Still, it seems very odd — or is it? — that a poststructuralist like Catherine Belsey should not only spend so much time on Althusser, but do so in exclusively positive terms.

(*) See my next essay, ‘Linguistic Idealism as a Weapon of Poststructuralist/Postmodernist Politics’.

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Donald Hoffman’s Mathematical Models of “Conscious Agents”

The cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to how deeply mathematical he believes his own philosophical idealism to be. More relevantly, and perhaps more fairly, Hoffman believes that his notion of a conscious agent is deeply mathematical.

The mathematical extracts in this image all come from a single paper — Donald Hoffman’s ‘Fusions of Consciousness’. They are a very small selection of the maths in that paper.

In his paper Objects of consciousness, Donald Hoffman writes:

“Thus the formalism of conscious agents provides a complete framework for computationally rigorous models of perception and cognition, and a rigorous solution to the so-called combination problem of consciousness, i.e., the problem of combining conscious experiences and conscious subjects [].”

Hoffman also states that his work provides “a precise hypothesis that, of course, might be precisely wrong”. He continues:

“We can explore its theoretical implications in the normal scientific manner to see if they comport well with existing data and theories, and make predictions that are novel, interesting and testable.”

So in what way is Hoffman offering a “precise hypothesis”?

And a precise hypothesis of what?

Hoffman’s Technicalese

One of Donald Hoffman’s many “mathematical models”… or graphs.

In his paper ‘The Origin of Time in Conscious Agents’, Hoffman writes:

“Informally, a conscious agent has six components, as illustrated in Figure 1. A conscious agent has a space X of possible conscious experiences and a space G of possible actions it can take.”

Although Hoffman does use the word “informally” at the beginning of this passage, readers should still ask questions about his choices of numbers, scientific terms, symbols, etc.

Now, informally or not, why six components? Why not seven, one, or two million? (It’s of course possible that Hoffman will concede that his choice of six is arbitrary.)

And what, exactly, is “space X”?

Are readers told what exactly space X is when Hoffman goes on to write that it’s a space “of possible conscious experiences”?

Again, what kind of space is this?

[Bear in mind here that Hoffman believes that “spacetime is doomed”, and he uses this idea to advance his idealism.]

And what are possible conscious experiences?

Indeed, even if space X is an abstract space, is this abstraction related to anything physical? (Since Hoffman is an idealist, this may be a silly question.)

Similarly, what is “space G” (i.e., not “space X”)?

Again, does it help that Hoffman goes on to say that space G is “of [the] possible actions [a conscious agent] can take”?

What are possible actions? And how does Hoffman know anything about what possible actions a conscious agent “can take”?

Of course, if the entity Hoffman calls a conscious agent is entirely his own invention, then it must also be entirely down to Hoffman to tell us which actions it can take, how many “components” it has, etc.

So is all this entirely Hoffman’s invention?

In other words, are these “mathematical models” of things which Hoffman himself has invented?

Hoffman’s mathematical model (or graph) of… what?

Tom McFarlane put Hoffman’s position in this way:

“Hoffman provides a precise mathematical definition of a conscious agent in terms of a set of experiential states X, a set of actions G, and maps that relate these to each other and to states of an objective world W (which itself is composed of conscious agents). The maps can be understood as defining the structure of perception P, decision D, and action A. Based on this definition, he constructs models of interacting conscious agents and derives predictions from those models.”

All that doesn’t help either.

[I’ve used McFarlane’s account because it’s much easier to understand than Hoffman’s own words.]

Apart from the fact that some readers may be deeply suspicious of all these references to a “mathematical definition”, as well as the use of the symbols X, G, W, P, D and A, we still aren’t told what a conscious agent is.

So does this “set of experiential states X” run free of a conscious agent? Do they (as it were) belong to a conscious agent? Are these events or actions of a conscious agent?

Again, all this doesn’t tell us what (as it were) underpins this set of experiential states X…

Perhaps nothing underpins experiential states X.

Exactly the same can be said about the words “a set of actions G”.

Surely set of actions G can’t run free of this conscious agent. Aren’t “actions” what this conscious agent does? So what is it, exactly, that’s carrying out these actions? And what is the relation between the conscious agent and this set of actions G?

More broadly, what is the rationale for this seemingly arbitrary set of experiential states X and set of actions G? Why are these two “sets” focussed upon, and everything else excluded? (Why do both sets contain the members they do contain, and not other members?) Indeed, why does Hoffman use these terms from mathematics at all?

How does this “mathematical model” (or graph) have any relation to anything scientific, physical or even metaphysical? How does this model help? What does it tell us?

Finally, in the following passage (which is very hard to grasp), Hoffman provides us with yet more letters, numbers, symbols, mathematical terms and graphs:

“It perceives the world W via a perceptual map P, decides how to act via a decision map D, and acts via an action map A. The maps P, D, and A can be thought of as discrete communication channels. An integer N keeps track of the number of discrete messages transmitted over P. Figure 1. [] Definition 1. A conscious agent, C, is a six-tuple C = ((X, X), (G, G), P, D, A, N)), (1) where: (1) (X, X) and (G, G) are measurable spaces; (2) P : W × X → [0,1], D : X × G → [0,1], A : G × W → [0,1] are Markovian kernels; and (3) N is an integer…”

… And so on and so on.

Almost everything said abut the passages already commented on can now be said about this passage.

So let’s leave it there.

Conclusion

All the entities and terms in Hoffman’s philosophy are largely his own invention (even if to some extent based on existing scientific entities and terms). None of it has been made available to any scientists outside his own inner circle. Yet Hoffman is characterising a philosophical theory — a personal and speculative philosophical theory — as a scientific theory.

Compare this with another speculative philosophical theory: panpsychism.

On the whole, panpsychists don’t do what Hoffman does.

Panpsychists don’t claim that panpsychism itself a scientific theory — or even that it is scientific. It’s true that some (even most) panpsychists claim that their own brand of panpsychism doesn’t “contradict anything in physics” or that it’s “compatible with physics”. (As are all — or most — metaphysical theories.) However, they don’t claim that panpsychism itself is science or scientific.

Hoffman, on the other hand, at best says that his idealist speculations are scientific in nature. At worse, he claims (if sometimes implicitly) that it’s actual science. (He even refers to predictions, etc.)

So how does Hoffman attempt to make his (idealist) philosophy scientific?

That should be clear by now.

Hoffman attempts to make his (idealist) philosophy scientific primarily by using graphs, symbols, numbers, and terms from mathematics and physics, and then using and fusing all of them to advance his idealist philosophy.

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(*) See my ‘What Is a Conscious Agent? Donald Hoffman, Please Tell Me’.

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Rupert Sheldrake’s “Heretical” Caricatures of Scientists and Science

In Rupert Sheldrake’s book, The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God, there’s a passage about science and scientists which encapsulates Sheldrake’s own serious problems with both. It’s also, it will be argued, full of caricatures and gross exaggerations.

Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (who was born in 1942) is a very controversial figure.

He’s an English author and parapsychology researcher. Sheldrake is now primarily known (at least in scientific circles) for his “conjecture” of morphic resonance, which has been strongly criticised by scientists and by many others. Indeed, it’s often been classed as mere pseudoscience.

Yet Sheldrake is indeed a scientist.

He’s worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University, been a Harvard scholar, a researcher at the Royal Society, and a plant physiologist.

Sheldrake has also done work on precognition, telepathy, and the psychic staring effect. Consequently, he’s been described as a “New Age” theorist.

Now for a few words on Rupert Sheldrake’s book The Rebirth of Nature.

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The Rebirth of Nature is interesting. It’s very well written, easy to understand, and, oddly enough (at least to me), not in the least bit pretentious. (This is in marked contrast to other books written by people who’ve similar views to Sheldrake.) It’s also very interesting in terms of its neat little histories, as well as its informative capsule-form accounts of various aspects of science.

Where this book is controversial is in its philosophical additions. It’s also problematic because of its large use of bizarre analogies (see note 3), as well as its free and easy — often postmodern - interpretations of religion and history.

[Sheldrake relies on “postmodern theologians”, etc. for some of his views. See note 1.)

More broadly, it may be useful to place the passage focussed upon in this essay within the context of Sheldrake seeing himself as a scientific “heretic”.

To be fair to Sheldrake, that word was originally used (very critically) about Sheldrake by someone else. However, it’s safe to say that Sheldrake has now clearly and happily adopted this designation for himself. (See here.)

John Maddox

The word “heretic” was used by the theoretical chemist, physicist and science writer John Royden Maddox in response to Sheldrake’s book A New Science of Life, which was published in 1981. Maddox’s 1981 editorial (in Nature) is called ‘A book for burning?’.

Now clearly the word “heretic” and the title “A Book for burning?” are well over the top. That said, Maddox did conclude that the book should not be burned.

[Maddox’s piece also appears to have been part of a series called ‘A book for burning’. See more information in note 2.]

Yet I still have serious problems with Maddox’s rather intemperate and authoritarian remarks.

For example, Maddox later said (in 1994, some 13 years later) that he still thought that

“it is dangerous that people should be allowed by our liberal societies to put that kind of nonsense into currency”.

This is outrageous stuff.

It’s not the use of words like “nonsense”, “pseudoscience”, etc. that I have a problem with. (See some examples of Sheldrake’s bizarre statements in note 3.) It’s the highly-objectionable words “it’s dangerous that people should be allowed by our liberal societies to put that kind of nonsense into currency”.

No wonder Sheldrake has such a negative attitude toward science and scientists with people like John Maddox shouting at him. However, this is all that’ll be said on the Maddox-Sheldrake controversy here.

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In any case, in this essay I shall break the aforementioned passage from Sheldrake down, and tackle each part separately.

But, firstly, it’s worth stating it in full:

“To this day, scientists pretend that they are rather like disembodied minds. Unlike other human activities, science is supposed to be uniquely objective. Scientific papers are conventionally written in an impersonal style, seemingly devoid of emotions. Conclusions are meant to follow from facts by a logical process of reasoning, such as that which might be followed by a computer, if machines with sufficient artificial intelligence could ever be constructed. Nobody is ever seen doing anything, methods are followed, phenomena observed, and measurements are made, preferably with instruments. Everything is reported in the passive voice. Even schoolchildren learn this style, and practise it in their laboratory notebooks: ‘a test tube was taken…’

“All research scientists know that this process is artificial; they are not disembodied minds, uninfluenced by emotion.”

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Do Scientists Believe They Have Disembodied Minds?

Rupert Sheldrake — looking very disembodied.

“To this day, scientists pretend that they are rather like disembodied minds.”

No scientists I’ve ever read or come across has pretended that he/she is a disembodied mind. (Obviously, this is a partly anecdotal view.) So readers can guess that what Rupert Sheldrake must have meant is that this is the implicit (or subconscious) position of (all? most? many?) scientists. Alternatively, this supposed pretence is a consequence of what scientists do explicitly (or actually) believe and say…

Still, there’s still no direct (or literal) pretence from scientists that they’re “like disembodied minds”.

Many scientists (as it were) get around all this with the distinction they make between science itself and (flesh and blood) scientists. However, some critics of science and postmodern philosophers have argued that this distinction is a fake — largely because they see it as an idealisation.

Philosophers attempt a similar job with their own distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification.

It can be suspected that Rupert Sheldrake will be aware of these two distinctions. However, it can also be assumed that he doesn’t really buy them — at least not unquestioningly.

In other words, is this simply Sheldrake’s interpretation of what scientists believe? Indeed, even if (most? many? some?) scientists do believe that they have a monopoly on what people call “the objective facts”, then that still wouldn’t entail a commitment to believing that their minds need to be disembodied in order to access those objective facts.

What’s more, if the minds of scientists were truly disembodied, then gaining access to data, facts, experimental results, etc. would be a very tricky business indeed.

Perhaps, then, it’s pure rhetoric (or poetry) to argue that scientists “pretend that they are disembodied minds”.

Sheldrake continued:

“All research scientists know that this process is artificial; they are not disembodied minds, uninfluenced by emotion.”

Some readers can partially agree with Sheldrake here. In other words, there is indeed a certain degree of artificiality involved in academic writings and in science generally.

And that’s a good thing… Or at least it is in specified cases.

Thus, it’s not that scientists “pretend”: it’s that this artificiality is productive and it makes sense. In other words, it just wouldn’t benefit anyone to read feelings and emotions displayed in papers, etc. Sure, it may benefit a psychoanalyst, psychological researcher, people like Sheldrake, or someone who just wants to wallow in other people’s feelings. However, what point would it serve in scientific papers?

Moreover, outside science, emotions and feelings are expressed all the time, and often in an extreme manner. This is certainly the case in the domains of religion, politics, art, etc.

Is that a good thing?

Indeed, even if the expression of one’s feelings and emotions is a good thing in politics, religion and art, would it (automatically) be a good thing in science too?

Sheldrake then tackled the very specific case of what he called “scientific papers”. He wrote:

“Scientific papers are conventionally written in an impersonal style, seemingly devoid of emotions. [] Everything is reported in the passive voice.”

[See the non-ironic article ‘Academic writing tips: How to use Active and Passive voice’.]

Isn’t this true of nearly all academic work?

Isn’t it the case that almost all academic papers and academic books are “written in an impersonal style, seemingly devoid of emotions”?

And isn’t that the case for many (or at least some) good reasons?

Would it be a fruitful or a good thing that “emotions” or feelings were fully displayed in scientific papers?

This may depend on how much emotion Sheldrake believes should be displayed by scientists. A lot of emotion? Just a bit? About as much as Sheldrake himself displays in these passages, and in the rest of his book?

Indeed, would it benefit anyone to parade and express their feelings in response to other people parading and expressing their own feelings?

What’s more, what, exactly, is the alternative to this “impersonal style”, and would it be a good thing to adopt it in scientific papers?

Sheldrake then had more to say on the scientific style:

“Even schoolchildren learn this style, and practise it in their laboratory notebooks: ‘a test tube was taken…’.”

So would Sheldrake prefer the following? -

I erotically placed the sample into a beatific test tube. This event in my life filled me with wonder. And, all the while, I simply knew that doing this would advance my own career, as well as change our deeply corrupted mechanistic society.

This isn’t to deny that there is such a thing as academese. Indeed, I myself have problems with it. (See my essay ‘Why (Many) Analytic Philosophy Papers are Pretentious and Hard to Read’.) However, some readers may still wonder what Sheldrake would want to put in its place.

Perhaps Sheldrake doesn’t want to put anything in its place.

Perhaps what he says is purely descriptive. Indeed, to some degree at least, it is.

Sheldrake on Scientists’ Naive Philosophy of Science

“Conclusions are meant to follow from facts by a logical process of reasoning, such as that which might be followed by a computer, if machines with sufficient artificial intelligence could ever be constructed.”

This passage is Sheldrake’s caricature. It’s what he believes (all? most? many?) scientists take science to be.

It needn't be denied here that at least some defenders of science have put it in his way — or in similar ways. However, they too would be using caricatures. (Many of these positive — but naïve — caricatures of science don’t come from actual scientists.) However, I just don’t believe that most — or even many — scientists think in this simplistic way.

Technically, I doubt that many scientists would use a phrase like “follow from facts”. Perhaps they may say “follow from the data”, “follow from the evidence”, or even “follow from the experiments”. However, the word “fact” isn’t a scientific technical term. It’s more often used by philosophers or, more relevantly, laypeople. (There have been many definitions of “fact” which philosophers have offered us.)

What’s more, many scientists acknowledge that before any “logical process of reasoning”, the (to use Sheldrake’s other word again) “facts” too have (as it were) come about because of theory and prior processes of logical reasoning.

In any case, if scientists really believed that science were just another form of deductive logic (“such as that which might be followed by a computer, if machines with sufficient artificial intelligence could ever be constructed”), then what would be the point of the tests, falsifications, verifications, etc. of their theories? Indeed, what role would experiments play in science?

Again, if everything in science simply followed from the facts in a logical way, then science would be a purely deductive system.

Yet hardly any scientists have thought of science in these terms.

So is this simply Sheldrake’s caricature?

Here’s more from Sheldrake on the idea that scientists implicitly or explicitly see science as (some kind of) deductive system:

“Nobody is ever seen doing anything, methods are followed, phenomena observed, and measurements are made, preferably with instruments.”

Sure “methods are followed” in science. However, that’s methods in the plural. And the methods which are followed are often questioned, and even, at times, entirely rejected.

To be fair to Sheldrake, he did concede that “phenomena [are] observed”. So readers can suppose that in a purely deductive system phenomena and observation would play no role. Still, Sheldrake almost implies that “scientists” believe that phenomena are essentially the given (see ‘myth of the given’), and once they’re given, then the deductive process can begin. However, and as already stated, most scientists don’t believe that phenomena (or facts) are simply given. Not only that: they don’t see what follows as being a purely deductive process either.

As for Sheldrake’s words “measurements are made, preferably with instruments”.

It’s as if Sheldrake is implying that scientists believe that science has no role for theory. (This is, basically, a Baconian/17th century position on science.) This is astonishing because the word “theory” is used all the time in science, and not only in theoretical physics and theoretical biology — in all the sciences.

Again, this actually seems like a layperson’s view of science, not a scientist’s view of science.

And it certainly isn’t the view of science of Sheldrake’s pluralised “scientists”.

So since Sheldrake’s take on what scientists believe is such a caricature, then perhaps (again) he’s really talking about what laypeople believe about science. However, in the context of his strong criticisms of science and scientists generally, this can’t be the case.

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Notes

(1) Rupert Sheldrake seems to have relied a fair amount on the American “postmodern theologian” David Ray Griffin. (Three of Griffin’s books appear in the bibliography.)

Griffin himself attempted to build a bridge between what he called modernity and postmodernity. He offered his readers — and others - “postmodern proposals” to solve the conflicts between religion and science. And, in 1983, Griffin established the Center for a Postmodern World and also became editor of the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Philosophy.

More relevantly, just like Sheldrake, Griffin had many negative things to say about what he called “mechanistic science”. Indeed, Griffin’s book The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals (1988) even has a title which is very similar to a couple of Sheldrake’s own books, including the 1990 publication focussed upon in this essay (i.e., The Rebirth of Nature).

(2) ‘A book for burning’ wasn’t even John Maddox’s own title! (See Martin Gardner’s ‘A book for burning’ in which he tackles Spontaneous Human Combustion, by Jenny Randles and Peter Hough.) What’s more, Maddox’s editorial on Sheldrake is only four paragraphs long.

(3) Quotes from Sheldrake’s The Rebirth of Nature:

“Everywhere we look in the realm of nature we find polarities, such as electrical and magnetic polarities. These can, if we like, be modelled in terms of gender [].”

“If the fields and energy of nature are aspects of the Word and Spirit of God [].”

“[] even crystals, molecules and atoms are organisms.”

“Mythic, animistic and religious ways of thinking can no longer be kept at bay. Nothing less than a revolution is at hand.”

“ [T]he fields of modern physics play many of the same roles as souls in animistic, pre-mechanistic philosophies of nature.”

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