Husserl in Context: British Empiricism or Continental Metaphysics?

Philosophy as it developed in central Europe can perhaps be understood by contrasting it to philosophy as it developed in western France and the British Isles.

The philosophers in the heart of the continent were certainly familiar with skepticism. By the early twentieth century, they were skeptical about, e.g., whether the impressive and highly formalized achievements of mathematical logic offer any substantive content. It would be an oversimplification to categorize England as the home of skepticism and the continent as the home of robust metaphysics.

Britain had its own system-builders, e.g., F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet. Nonetheless, different trends are discernable between Britain and central Europe, and these trends encourage historians of philosophy to venture generalizations.

Central Europe had its own skeptics, too, but Julian Roberts writes:

This skepticism, however, has been more characteristic of philosophy in the Anglo-American realm and in France than it has of German thinking.

One need only to think of Locke’s reference to ‘essence’ as “something, I know not what,” or to think of Hume’s scrutiny of causation and of the self. Likewise, the reader will recall Descartes resolving to set aside all previous knowledge as dubitable and begin anew from nothing, and recall Voltaire embracing a minimalistic deism and attacking sacred text. Skepticism is clear in these examples.

Further east on the continent, however, even radical views which could have been the outcomes of skepticism were instead embraced as the outcomes of metaphysical reasoning. Examples might be Schopenhauer’s idealism or Heidegger’s alleged atheism.

Even logic, a rather austere region within philosophy, becomes a rich garden of metaphysics in the hands of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who start with algebraic principles and find them to the source of nearly everything. Julian Roberts writes:

Thinkers in Germany and Austria, where indeed modern mathematical logic largely originated (together with the Vienna Circle’s highly influential nominalism), have remained far more optimistic about the chances for a generalized critical project. The most prominent anti-transcendentalist in Germany was, of course, Heidegger. But Heidegger is not particularly representative. In particular, a rigorous transcendentalism which embraces the challenge of mathematical logic has also produced crucial work. Husserl was the progenitor of this tradition (though ‘phenomenology’ as such was a failure, as we shall see); and its contemporary representatives are to be found, for example, in the so-called Erlangen school. Habermas, though better known than they, is in fact one of their major beneficiaries.

Julian Roberts calls Husserl’s phenomenology a ‘failure’ because Husserl at first hoped to build a system on the foundations of pure logic, but then encountered, as noted above, that despite its technical rigor and despite the strength of its impressive formal structure, logic is ultimately empty, delivering no content in terms a metaphysics, epistemology, or other branches of philosophy.

Husserl engaged extensively with Frege and with Frege’s work, and was willing to populate his ontology with words, their meanings, and their referents as three separate categories. “Husserl represents another side to” Frege’s “developments.”

“But his early attempt to rationalize time and space is comparable,” Julian Roberts asserts, “with what Kant called Leibniz’s ‘intellectualizing of appearances’ and has the same weaknesses.”

The later Husserl (the Husserl of the ‘life-world’) overcompensated by lapsing into what is an almost relativist position, at least as it stands.

The most interesting continuation of the Husserlian project appears in the constructivism of the Erlangen school, and in Habermas’s appropriation of related themes.

Philosophers after Husserl pursued “attempts to rescue transcendentalist aspects of the Husserlian project, and also” seek “to vindicate (against Habermas) the thought that although there may be aspects of human practice that are ‘unprethinkable’, intersubjectivity is, in the end, a rational tribunal.”

The term ‘unprethinkable’ is used by Heidegger (Unvordenkliche) to indicate the unpredictable and dynamic nature of meaning. For Heidegger, it is as if words have an unforeseeable career: their uses, semantic fields, and effects changing over time and in various circumstances.

Yet Husserl falls into broader patterns which link him with patterns of philosophy in France and England. Frederick Copleston writes:

Several philosophers have tried to make philosophy properly scientific by taking as a point of departure an unquestionable datum or proposition. Descartes was one of them, Husserl another. And the transcendental Thomists join the company. Even if however it is allowed that the attempt to develop a presuppositionless philosophy is legitimate, the question arises whether idealism does not result if the subject is taken as the basis of all philosophical reflection.

Copleston argues that Husserl’s famous ‘bracketing’ drove him into some form of idealism:

Husserl’s approach led him eventually into the development of an idealist philosophy.

Copleston cites Sartre’s critique of Husserl. Sartre asserted that Husserl would ultimately end up with solipsism: “In Sartre's opinion Husserl cannot escape solipsism.”

Ultimately, a broad survey of any philosopher’s work runs the danger of degenerating into painting in very broad strokes — in this case, with words like ‘empiricism’ and ‘skepticism’ and ‘phenomenology’ and others. This is the perennial problem of doing the history of philosophy with constructs instead of with the close reading of a given author’s texts. Finally, these broad constructs begin to collapse into one another, and into the temptation to pose questions like ‘isn’t phenomenology simply a form of empiricism?’ and ‘doesn’t idealism necessarily lead to solipsism?’ Such questions, and their answers, have less and less content.

Although this exploration of secondary literature is interesting, the close reading of primary text is the surer and better way: instead of reading about Husserl, the reader will be better served by reading Husserl.

Extinction as the Default Fate: Concerning the Ubiquity of Selective Pressure

Throughout the history and prehistory of our planet, countless species have become extinct. There are many reasons for extinction, but most of them can be lumped together as changing habitats.

Any change in a habit will introduce selective pressure.

As a concrete example, consider the activity of beavers in North America. In a savanna or in a forest, beavers will construct a dam across a small creek or stream, and thereby create a small pond.

The populations in this ecosystem will change almost immediately. The numbers and types of fish, waterfowl, and trees will change.

As the beaver’s pond ages, it can gradually turn into a larger lake, or it an fill in with sediment and become a swamp. In either case, the populations of flora and fauna will change again.

The changes brought about by the beavers will mean that numerous individuals belonging to these various species will die.

This is merely one example of the many different ways in which a habitat can change, and thereby exert selective pressure on the populations in that habitat. But not only can numerous individuals die when habitats change. When changes are large enough and numerous enough, entire species can become extinct.

Aside from beaver activities, there are other ways in which habitat change: solar activity, volcanic activity, changes in the earth’s magnetic field, etc.

These factors, and many others, cause extinction, as David Wallace-Wells writes:

The earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, each so complete a wiping of the fossil record that it functioned as an evolutionary reset, the planet’s phylogenetic tree first expanding, then collapsing, at intervals, like a lung: 86 percent of all species dead, 450 million years ago; 70 million years later, 75 percent; 125 million years later, 96 percent; 50 million years later, 80 percent; 135 million years after that, 75 percent again.

A small cluster of microbes, which can travel hundreds of miles by clinging to a bird or to a bit of driftwood, can introduce diseases into regions, and quickly wipe out an entire species — or several species.

These forces are non-anthropogenic. The vast majority of extinctions happen without any human influence. The natural forces of selective pressure are much more ruthless than the effects of human activity.

The earth’s atmosphere changes spontaneously, again without any human intervention. Both the climatic temperature and the carbon dioxide levels have demonstrated their ability to vary wildly. Of the mass extinction events which have regularly happened throughout the planet’s history,

all but the one that killed the dinosaurs involved climate change produced by greenhouse gas. The most notorious was 250 million years ago; it began when carbon dioxide warmed the planet by five degrees Celsius, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane, another greenhouse gas, and ended with all but a sliver of life on Earth dead.

The direction of causation between extinction events and climate change is not always clear: in some cases, an extinction event may have caused the climate change; in other cases, climate change may have caused the extinction event.

In any event, these events were non-anthropogenic.

The chances of any one species becoming extinct are high; the chances of it surviving over the long run are low. Survival should be seen as an exception; extinction is the norm.

Viewing earth’s past on a geological time scale, it is clear that climate change, CO2 levels, and extinction events happen spontaneously and sometimes independently over the millennia. It is clear that in the past and in the present, they can and often do happen non-anthropogenically.

Every Species Was Once an Invasive Species: Concerning the Ubiquity of Selective Pressure

The efforts to identify, and slow the progress of, so-called “invasive species” have occupied the time and energy of botanists, zoologists, park rangers, and good-hearted volunteers over the last several decades.

Who would not want to protect the presumed “native species” from these invaders?

Two aspects of such invasions should be made explicit. First, such encroachments are usually not anthropogenic. Second, such incursions are inevitable.

Species were invading each other’s habitats long before humans had the ability, by means of long-range travel, to accidentally or knowingly introduce alien plants and animals into new domains. Insects clinging to driftwood can cross oceans. Fish eggs on the feet of waterfowl can travel from one inland lake to another.

If a species is originally confined to one habitat, then it is certain that it will one day either go extinct, or it will find its way into another habitat — and thereby become an invasive species. A microbe or a plant originally found in Africa will, sooner or later, arrive in Asia, Europe, or the Americas — or it will become extinct.

The species which now seem to be the native species in a given domain, whether it’s a North American grassland or an Asian rainforest, were once invaders. There was a time when those species were not to be found in that place. The arrival of those flora and fauna into the current location had nothing to do with humans.

In a tendency analogous to entropy, all the species eventually swirl in slow-motion around the globe. Every species is an invasive species, and by the same token, every species is a native species.

It is also inevitable that the vast majority of these species will eventually become extinct, and this again will not be an anthropogenic process.

Any effort to stop or slow invasive species may be aesthetically productive, but the judgment about which species has the right to be in a particular habitat is at best unclear, and the efforts to stop such invasions will ultimately fail.

Archaic Greek Religion: Its Inability to Hold Adherents Fostered the Birth of Philosophy

One important preliminary question, when examining the archaic Greeks, and even more so when examining pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, concerns the relationship between the Greeks and their religion.

It is common among historians to treat archaic Greek religion - and Classical Greek and Hellenistic Greek religion - as a matter of personal belief. This approach to ancient Greek religion is perhaps influenced by the effects of Jesus, which began around 35 A.D.

To retroject this approach to religion onto 700 B.C., or onto 500 B.C., is anachronistic.

Instead of seeing archaic Greek religion as analogous to religious belief as manifested over the last two millennia, as analogous to medieval and modern conceptualization of Judaism or Islam, it is perhaps more accurate to see archaic Greek religion as a cultural or societal reference point instead of a personal faith.

By way of comparison, the archaic Greeks may have treated their gods in the way in which twenty-first century people treat figures like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, like Darth Vader or Yoda, like Uncle Sam or the Energizer Bunny.

In sum, the archaic Greeks may not have ‘believed’ in their gods in the way in which twenty-first century people believe in Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, or Abraham — in God, Yahweh, Jehovah, or Allah.

The small ‘g’ in the archaic gods may denote that the ancients did not have a personal belief in their deities in the way in which medievals, moderns, and postmoderns have a personal belief in their God.

Even a scholar of the rank of Eduard Zeller may have fallen prey to the temptation to think of archaic Greek religious belief as analogous to the Christian faith as manifested in European culture.

Zeller seems to credit archaic Greek religion with properties that fostered the birth of philosophy. It might have been more accurate to credit the archaic Greeks with a lack of religious belief that fostered the birth of philosophy.

In this text, Zeller seems to credit Greek religion with qualities that nurtured philosophy, whereas it was perhaps the Greek lack of religion that fostered philosophy:

Die Religion der Griechen steht, wie jede positive Religion, zur Philosophie dieses Volkes theils in verwandtschaftlicher theils in gegensätzlicher Beziehung. Was sie aber von den Religionen aller andern Völker unterscheidet, ist die Freiheit, welche sie der Entwicklung des philosophischen Denkens von Anfang an gelassen hat.

Perhaps, when he alludes to the ‘freedom’ which archaic religion gave to its followers, and to their development of philosophical thought, Zeller is correct. But he is perhaps incorrect when he sees archaic religion as in any way related to philosophy.

As Nietzsche wrote, it is precisely in the break with archaic religion that philosophy is born: in the break with mythology. In this case, ‘mythology’ means narrative as explanation — and therefore includes true myths as well as false ones. But archaic religion was essentially mythic: it used narrative as explanation.

By contrast, the birth of philosophy yielded explanation without myth. The first philosophers — Thales, et al. — were not necessarily more ‘true’ than the archaic religion, but they were more rational.

For these purposes, the ‘archaic’ era in Greek history can be understood as lasting from approximately 800 B.C. to approximately 480 B.C.; being a construct and not a concrete bit of data, such an “era” cannot have clear or precise beginning or ending points.

The loose grip — the lack of personal faith — which the archaic Greeks had on their mythological religions had the same salutary effect that the tight grip — the profound personal engagement — which the medieval Christians had on their faith. The Greek lack of faith and the medieval surplus of faith both nurtured philosophical thought.

The pantheon of archaic deities and demigods served primarily to fuel poetry, painting, storytelling, sculpture, and other arts. Their ubiquity in literature and archeological findings should not mislead the modern student into thinking that the archaic Greeks incorporated these gods intimately into their inner lives.

The archaic Greeks did not relate to their gods in the personal way in which twenty-first-century people relate to Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, or God.

The relationship of the archaic Greeks and their gods was probably like the relationship between twenty-first-century people and figures like Batman, Spiderman, Charlie Brown, and Snoopy.

Neuroplasticity and Mind Control: Dissociative Thought on a Cellular Level

Two fields of study have made great progress in the last half-century: the understanding of the physical structure of the brain, and the understanding of the mechanisms of thought control.

The advances in knowledge about neuroplasticity are exemplified in, e.g., a book titled Mindsight by Daniel Siegel.

The progress in explaining the techniques of thought reform have been explored by scholars like Louis West, Robert Jay Lifton, Edgar Schein, and Steven Hassan.

The reader is now in a position to make connections between these two different fields of study.

For the present purposes, the terms ‘thought control’ and ‘mind control’ and ‘thought reform’ and ‘unethical influence’ and ‘undue influence’ and ‘controlling relationships’ are taken as nearly synonymous, if not entirely so. To avoid, to the extent possible, the use of the word ‘brainwashing’ is perhaps wise.

The interaction between neuroplasticity and thought control can be imagined in this way: consider how people ordinarily learn numbers and the skill of counting. Small children, around the age of two or three years old, are taught to count by repeating, along with a teacher or parent, “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven” over and over again.

The process of learning to count is not only a mental process, but a physical one as well. Neural pathways are being created, and are being reinforced so that they become default pathways.

Later in life, in a math class, students will be taught alternative forms of counting, like “two, four, six, eight” or “one, three, five, seven.” But the “one, two, three, four, five” pattern will remain dominant. That pattern will remain the default pattern for reasons which are physical, not mental. The pattern of counting numbers is stronger because it has been built into the brain: pathways have been created, reinforced, and strengthened.

Each time a person says, “one, two, three, four,” that pathway is strengthened. People are continually counting all types of things in all types of situations in daily life. The occasions on which one counts “two, four, six, eight” or “one, three, five, seven,” are relatively rare.

An ordinary adult will, then, have a cellular structure in the brain which corresponds to counting.That’s why people can count automatically, while not thinking about counting, and while thinking about something else.

If some evil genius decided to mislead a group of people about the nature of numbers, he could form a group, in which people spent large amounts of time chanting together: “one, two, three, four, eight.”

In addition, he would isolate his group, as far as possible, from any situation in which they’d hear the correct pattern of counting.

At first, the members of the group would find this odd. They’d ask lots of questions, and need to be persuaded to explore this new way of counting. The evil genius leading the group would need to articulate rationalizations for this new way of counting.

The more experienced members in the group - those who’ve already been counting in the new way for some period of time - might encourage or cajole the newcomers to try this new way. They might explain how their lives are better because they count this way.

The veteran members of the group could reward the newcomers emotionally, applauding and praising them when the count in the new way. Likewise, failure to count in the new way could meet with expressions of disapproval.

Although counting “one, two, three, four, eight” would feel odd to the newcomers, each time they did it, a new neural pathway would be strengthened. It would feel odd for a long time, but each time, it would feel a tiny bit less odd.

Likewise, the old neural pathway of counting the correct way would suffer from disuse, and eventually grow a tiny bit weaker.

Even if there were some lingering doubts on the cognitive level about the new way of counting, on a behavioral level it would eventually feel less odd, normal, and finally automatic.

Thus, in an everyday situation, prompted to count, the newcomers would get to the point which they automatically responded “one, two, three, four, eight” without thinking.

They might eventually grow suspicious of those who count correctly.

This example strives to show how a pattern which seems wrong and counterintuitive can eventually, despite initial doubts on the part of the newcomer, become thoroughly ingrained in the mind.

The next step would be working out the logical implications of the new pattern. Any task of daily life which required counting would have to be reimagined.

In reality, there are no evil geniuses hoping to change the way in which the human race counts. But there are evil geniuses hoping to instill various political and spiritual doctrines into the minds of innocent people. They do this by building and reinforcing neural pathways.

Even newcomers who are skeptical, who doubt the aberrant doctrines which the evil genius wishes to implant into their consciousness, will find that their skepticism does not prevent the new patterns from being built in to their synaptical structures.

So it is that a belief - what seems behaviorally to be a belief - can be instilled into someone’s mind without consent or full awareness. This principle lies behind some forms of successful advertising as well as behind the more sinister forms of mind control.

Understanding that the implanted belief is a physical structure also hints at therapeutic options to help the individual who is recovering from thought control.

A Philosophical Classic: Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Truth Claims

Throughout the history of philosophy, certain themes recur regularly. Various philosophers in various eras return again and again to perennial topics.

The relationship between certain types of psychological determinism and ethical responsibility is one example. A typical formulation goes something like this: if an individual is determined, logically and temporally prior to his acting, in a way beyond his control or awareness, then when he acts, he cannot be morally responsible for his action.

This formulation is, of course, one of many, and is often used in introductory philosophy classes to begin a discussion.

A second textbook example looks at the relationship between determinism and truth claims. If an individual is in certain ways determined, what does it mean for that individual to utter, or write, a truth claim? Does his lack of freedom in making assertions affect his belief in his own truth claim? Should it affect our evaluation of his truth claim? Was he able to examine the proposition, and alternative propositions, before expressing it?

A third exemplar is a mixture of the first two. What is the relationship between the ability to be morally responsible and the ability to make truth claims? If both are called into question by determinism, then what is the common element in both?

Such classic investigations can be found in Greek antiquity, in contemporary philosophy, and at many points in between.

Overeager Claims about Self-Replication: Thinly Disguised Speculations about the Origins of Life

A perennial question in the philosophy of science addresses the origin of life. The natural sciences themselves investigate this question, but the philosophy of science ponders both the methods of such investigations and any results.

One aspect of this question is exploring the possibility of self-replicating molecules. Is it possible that there could be a chemical compound which somehow reproduces itself?

This history of science admits of a number of “holy grail” quests, some of which have plausible claims to success, like the search for metallic hydrogen, and others of which have failed spectacularly, like attempts to isolate samples of phlogiston or aether. Other “holy grail” quests include the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) or the possibility of life outside of planet Earth.

Historically, such quests often trigger hasty claims, which must then be retracted. Such is the case with self-replicating molecules.

With barely-suppressed fanfare, an article titled “Oligoarginine peptides slow strand annealing and assist non-enzymatic RNA replication” appeared in June 2016. The authors wrote of “self-folding” molecules and the “self-assembly” of compounds.

The core motive of such research is the unstated subtext that self-reproducing non-living chemical structures could eventually lead to life.

Living structures reproduce themselves routinely. Non-living structures have never, so far, been observed to reproduce themselves.

The question for the philosophy of science is whether it is possible, even in principle, for a molecule to self-replicate.

The empirical question searches for instances of self-replication. The a priori question asks if such a thing is at all possible.

In any case, the particular publication mentioned above was retracted in October 2017. The article and its retraction both appear in the journal Nature Chemistry, edited by Stuart Cantrill. It was not the first, and will not be the last, overeager announcement of progress toward the discovery of a self-reproducing compound.

More promising than the observational task is the theoretical question. Without examining any particular chemical structure, the philosophy of science can ask what would be required to demonstrate the plausibility of the idea of a self-replicating molecule in general. Which general principles of covalent bonding, of ionic bonding, or of chemical reactions, etc., would indicate that it is at all possible, in principle, for there to be a self-replicating molecule?

It would be a mistake to confidently predict any outcome to this search - such predictions lead to retractions like the one mentioned above, made by Tony Jia, Albert Fahrenbach, Neha Kamat, Katarzyna Adamala, and Jack Szostak.

The fewer triumphalist claims on behalf of self-replicating compounds, the better.