Jim Blaut wrote:
Think of the way we vilify or ignore Dewey. Russell. Whitehead. Mead. The positivists. Etc. These folks represent the main line of thinking in philosophies that are friendly to science and are to one degree or another materialist (although the word of course scared them). Nor are these philosophers somehow anti-humanist and anti-subjective.
This misinterprets Whitehead. Like Marx's, his ontology is alternative to and radically inconsistent with the "materialist" ontology that has dominated science since the 17th century. In elaborating it, he provides a systematic critique of this "scientific materialism" in all its forms (including the Darwinian form embraced by Lewontin, Levins and Gould). Scientific materialism is "anti-humanist and anti-subjective" where we mean by an ontology that is "humanist" and "subjective" one having logical space for the conception of human being as a being capable of the kind of self-determination expressible by Hegel's ideas of a "will proper" and a "universal will."
Specifically Whitehead is, as I've many times indicated, an adherent of the doctrine of relations as "internal." Among other things he points to the implications of this doctrine for "logic" and "language" mentioned in my previous e-mail.
In all this his ontological beliefs contrast sharply with Russell's (as Russell himself indicates). Here are some passages from the two of them which include consideration of the implications of the doctrine for language, logic, arithmetic and counting.
"So far, this lecture has proceeded in the form of dogmatic statement. What is the evidence to which it appeals?
"The only answer is the reaction of our own nature to the general aspect of life in the Universe.
"This answer involves complete disagreement with a widespread tradition of philosophic thought. This erroneous tradition presupposes independent existences; and this presupposition involves the possibility of an adequate description of finite fact. The result is the presupposition of adequate separate premises from which argument can proceed.
"For example, much philosophic thought is based upon the faked adequacy of some account of various modes of human experience. Thence we reach some simple conclusion as to the essential character of human knowledge, and of its essential limitation. Namely, we know what we cannot know.
"Understand that I am not denying the importance of the analysis of experience: far from it. The progress of human thought is derived from the progressive enlightenment produced thereby. What I am objecting to is the absurd trust in the adequacy of our knowledge. The self-confidence of learned people is the comic tragedy of civilization.
"There is not a sentence which adequately states its own meaning. There is always a background of presupposition which defies analysis by reason of its infinitude.
"Let us take the simplest case; for example, the sentence, 'One and one makes two.'
"Obviously this sentence omits a necessary limitation. For one thing and itself make one thing. So we ought to say, 'One thing and another thing make two things.' This must mean the togetherness of one thing with another thing issues in a group of two things.
"At this stage all sorts of difficulties arise. There must be the proper sort of things in the proper sort of togetherness. The togetherness of a spark and gunpowder produces an explosion, which is very unlike two things. Thus we should say, 'The proper sort of togetherness of one thing and another thing produces the sort of group which we call two things.' Common sense at once tells you what is meant. But unfortunately there is no adequate analysis of common sense, because it involves our relation to the infinity of the Universe.
"Also there is another difficulty. When anything is placed in another situation, it changes. Every hostess takes account of this truth when she invites suitable guests to a dinner party; and every cook presupposes it as she proceeds to cook the dinner. Of course, the statement, 'One and one make two' assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstances are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyse this notion of 'unimportant change.' We have to rely upon common sense.
"In fact, there is not a sentence, or a word, with a meaning which is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered. The essence of unscholarly thought consists in a neglect of this truth. Also it is equally the essence of common sense to neglect these differences of background when they are irrelevant to the immediate purpose. My point is that we cannot rely upon any adequate explicit analysis.
"The conclusion is that Logic, conceived as an adequate analysis of the advance of thought, is a fake. It is a superb instrument, but it requires a background of common sense. ...
"My point is that the final outlook of Philosophic thought cannot be based upon the exact statements which form the basis of special sciences.
"The exactness is a fake." (Whitehead "Immortality" in Essays in Science and Philosophy, pp. 72-4)
"A metaphysical proposition - in the proper, general sense of the term 'metaphysical' - signifies a proposition which (i) has meaning for any actual occasion as a subject entertaining it, and (ii) is 'general,' in the sense that its predicate potentially relates any and every set of actual occasions providing the suitable number of logical subjects for the predicative pattern, and (iii) has a 'uniform' truth-value, in the sense that by reason of its form and scope, its truth-value is identical with the truth-value of each of the singular propositions to be obtained by restricting the application of the predicate to any one set of logical subjects. ...
"We certainly think that we entertain metaphysical propositions; but, having regard to the mistakes of the past respecting the principles of geometry, it is wise to reserve some scepticism on this point. The propositions which seem to be most obviously metaphysical are the arithmetical theorems. I will therefore illustrate the justification both for the belief, and for the residual scepticism, by an examination of one of the simplest of such theorems: One and one make two.
"Certainly, this proposition, construed in the sense 'one entity and another entity make two entities,' seems to be properly metaphysical without any shadow of limitation upon its generality, or truth. But we must hesitate even here, when we notice that it is usually asserted, with equal confidence as to the generality of its metaphysical truth, in a sense which is certainly limited, and sometimes untrue. In our reference to the actual world, we rarely consider an individual actual entity. The objects of our thoughts are almost always societies, or looser groups of actual entities. Now, for the sake of simplicity, consider a society of the ‘personal’ type. Such a society will be a linear succession of actual occasions forming a historical route in which some defining characteristic is inherited by each of its predecessors. A society of this sort is an ‘enduring object.’ Probably, a simple enduring object is simpler than anything which we ordinarily perceive or think about. It is the simplest type of society; and for any duration of its existence it requires that its environment be largely composed of analogous simple enduring objects. What we normally consider is the wider society in which many strands of enduring objects are to be found, a ‘corpuscular society.’
“Now, consider two enduring objects. They will be easier to think about if their defining characteristics are different. We will call these defining characteristics a and b, and also will use these letters, a and b, as the names of the two enduring objects. Now the proposition ‘one entity and another entity make two entities’ is usually construed in the sense that, given two enduring objects, any act of attention which consciously comprehends an actual occasion from each of the two historic routes will necessarily discover two actual occasions, one from each of the two distinct routes. For example, suppose that a cup and a saucer are two such enduring objects, which of course they are not; we always assume that, so long as they are both in existence and are sufficiently close to be seen in one glance, any act of attention, whereby we perceive the cup and perceive the saucer, will thereby involve the perception of two actual occasions, one the cup in one occasion of its existence and the other the saucer in one occasion of its existence. There can be no reasonable doubt as to the truth of this assumption in this particular example. But in making it, we are very far from the metaphysical proposition from which we started. We are in fact stating a truth concerning the wide societies of entities amid which our lives are placed. It is a truth concerning this cosmos, but not a metaphysical truth.
“Let us return to the two truly simple enduring objects, a and b. Also let us assume that their defining characteristics, a and b, are not contraries, so that both of them can qualify the same actual occasion. Indeed, having regard to the extreme generality of the notion of a simple enduring object, it is practically certain that – with the proper choice for the defining characteristics, a and b - intersecting routes for a and b must have frequently come into existence. In such a contingency a being who could consciously distinguish the two distinct enduring objects a and b, so as to have knowledge of their distinct defining characteristics and their distinct historic routes, might find a and b exemplified in one actual entity. It is as though the cup and the saucer were at one instant identical; and then, later on, resumed their distinct existence.
“We hardly ever apply arithmetic in its pure metaphysical sense, without the addition of presumptions which depend for their truth on the character of the societies dominating the cosmic epoch in which we live. It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the fact, that ordinary verbal statements make no pretence of discriminating the different senses in which an arithmetical statement can be understood.
"There is no difficulty in imagining a world – i.e., a cosmic epoch – in which arithmetic would be an interesting fanciful topic for dreamers, but useless for practical people engrossed in the business of life. In fact, we seem to have been only barely rescued from such a state of things. For amid the actual occasions located in the wilds of so-called ‘empty space,’ and well removed from the enduring objects which go to form the enduring objects which go to form the enduring material bodies, it is quite probable that the contemplation of arithmetic would not direct attention to any very important relations of things. It is, of course, a mere speculation that any actual entity, occurring in such an environment of faintly coordinated achievement, achieves the intricacy of constitution required for conscious mental operations.” (Whitehead, Process and Reality [Corrected Ed.], pp. 197-9)
"I began to develop a philosophy of my own during the year 1898, when, with encouragement from my friend G.E. Moore, I threw over the doctrines of Hegel. If you watch a bus approaching you during a bad London fog, you see first a vague blur of extra darkness, and you only gradually become aware of it as a vehicle with parts and passengers. According to Hegel, your first view as a vague blur is more correct than your later impression, which is inspired by the misleading impulses of the analytic intellect. This point of view was temperamentally unpleasing to me. Like the philosophers of ancient Greece, I prefer sharp outlines and definite separations such as the landscapes of Greece afford. When I first threw over Hegel, I was delighted to be able to believe in the bizarre multiplicity of the world. I thought to myself, 'Hegel says there is only the One, but there really are twelve categories in Kant's philosophy.' It may seem queer that this was the example of plurality that specially impressed me, but I am concerned to report the facts without distortion.
"For some years after throwing over Hegel I had an optimistic riot of opposite beliefs. I thought that whatever Hegel had denied must be true. He had maintained that there is no absolute truth. The nearest approach (so he maintained) to absolute truth is truth about the Absolute; but even that is not quite true, because it unduly separates subject and object. Consequently I, in rebellion, maintained that there are innumerable absolute truths, more particularly in mathematics. Hegel had maintained that all separateness is illusory and that the universe is more like a pot of treacle that a heap of shot. I therefore said, 'the universe is exactly like a heap of shot.' Each separate shot, according to the creed I then held, had hard and precise boundaries and was as absolute as Hegel's Absolute. Hegel had professed to prove by logic that number, space, time and matter are illusions, but I developed a new logic which enabled me to think that these things were as real as any mathematician could wish. I read a paper to a philosophical conference in Paris in 1900 in which I argued that there really are points and instants. Broadly speaking, I took the view that, whenever Hegel's proof that some thing does not exist is invalid, one may assume that the something in question does exist - at any rate when that assumption is convenient to the mathematician. Pythagoras and Plato had let their views of the universe be shaped by mathematics, and I followed them gaily.
"It was Whitehead who was the serpent in this paradise of Mediterranean clarity. He said to me once: 'You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.' I thought his remark horrid, but could not see how to prove that my bias was any better than his. At last he showed me how to apply the technique of mathematical logic to his vague and higgledy-piggledy world, and dress it up in Sunday clothes that the mathematician could view without being shocked. This technique which I learned from him delighted me, and I no longer demanded that the naked truth should be as good as the truth in its mathematical Sunday best.
"Although I still think that this is scientifically the right way to deal with the world, I have come to think that the mathematical and logical wrappings in which the naked truth is dressed go to deeper layers than I had supposed, and that things which I had thought to be skin are only well-made garments. Take, for instance, numbers: when you count, you count 'things,' but 'things' have been invented by human beings for their own convenience. This is not obvious on the earth's surface because, owing to the low temperature, there is a certain degree of apparent stability. But it would be obvious if one could live on the sun where there is nothing but perpetually changing whirlwinds of gas. If you lived on the sun, you would never have thought of counting because there would be nothing to count. In such an environment, Hegel's philosophy would seem to be common sense, and what we consider common sense would appear as fantastic metaphysical speculation." (Bertrand Russell, "Beliefs: Discarded and Retained", in Portraits from Memory, pp. 40-2)
Russell then goes on to admit, however, that he never abandoned his atomism.
"I am persuaded that the world is made up of an immense number of bits, and that, so far as logic can
show, each bit might be exactly as it is even if other bits did not exist." p. 42
By the way, the feminist economist Julie Nelson is now arguing that a realistic economics has much to learn from Whitehead's ontology. See her recent essays "Confronting the science/value split: notes on feminist economics, institutionalism, pragmatism and process thought" (Cambridge Journal of Economics 2003, vol. 27, pp. 49-64) and "Once more, with feeling: Feminist economics and the ontological question" (Feminist Economics 9(1), 2003, pp. 109-18).
Ted
