SCIENCE OR PHILOSOPHY? A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON -Complied by Olabode Olaonipekun
A scientific assumption may prove to be inexact or even erroneous. But it is still knowledge, not faith, because the assumption was based on evidence, even though this was insufficient. That does not mean we should reject any judgment the reasons for which we do not know. Having thought it over and checked it thoroughly, we must establish whether it may be considered true or untrue. Refusing to control one’s thoughts, blindly following sudden hunch, common prejudices, or even books is a false path in knowledge. To quote an example, Science, is not blind faith in conclusions picked up from book, but views at which one must arrive after weighing and thinking over thoroughly what one has read comparing the conclusions with the proofs and satisfying oneself that the conclusions have been proved beyond any possible doubts. Science will become an empty word, a mere signboard, and a scientist a mere boaster, if all the knowledge he has acquired pedantically “the cut and-dried conclusions he had acquired, without putting in a great deal of serious and hard work and without understanding facts he should examine critically…”. The building of science, requires “the really enlightened elements for whom we can vouch that they will not take the word for the deed….”.
Let us assume that we put the fundamental question of philosophy to one who has never heard of it before, and let us assume that he will say at once: “Certainly, matter is primary and consciousness is secondary”. The important thing then is to see how that person will prove his assertion and disprove the opposite idea. If he fails, we shall have to admit that it is faith, and not knowledge, on his part. It may even seem to him that no argument can generally be adduced in favour of idealism, so that there really is nothing to disprove, while the truth of materialism is so obvious that it needs no proof. Actually, however, every philosophical doctrine gives definite reasons for its conclusions. If one is seeking knowledge rather than faith, one needs to sort out the conclusions and arguments furnished by different philosophical trends.
Materialism vs. Subjective Idealism:
Here is the substance of one such doctrine: we have merely three types of knowledge: (1) that which we hear, see, feel by touch, etc., i.e, our sensations; (2) that which we conceive by reason of memory or imagination, i.e, our conception; (3) we also know ourselves, having an awareness of “self”, of “spirit” which is capable of sensing, remembering, feeling and dreaming. We have a notion of objects solely because we see or smell or feel them, i.e., because we perceive them physically. Without this ability, we would know nothing about the external world. When we see something round, yellow-red on one side and dark-red on the other, feel a smooth rounded surface and perceive a specific smell, we know about this particular object. Thus an apple is nothing but a combination of sensations. Likewise, all objects we observe in the room, street, field or woods, i.e., all external or material things, are combination of visual, tactile and other sensations. All we know about such things are our impressions of them. These impressions exist only in the mind. Men, however, regard a visual or other sensation as a likeness of image of an external thing. What they proceed from is that unless we acknowledge the existence of sensible things outside us, it is impossible to explain how sensations arise. Yet, when we dream we feel sensations, although the things and events we are dreaming of exist only in the mind. Therefore, to explain sensations it is not at all necessary to assume that things have an objective existence. As we need not assume this to explain dreams, so we need not assume it to explain what we feel in our working hours.
This doctrine which holds that everything commonly regarded as material exists solely in the mind of the subject (man) is called subjective idealism, as distinct from objective idealism which holds that the primary source of being is not man’s consciousness but consciousness without man, some objective spirit independent of human consciousness, we have just stated the reasoning of the subjective idealist George Berkley (1685 – 1753), who wrote: “…all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind…” his teaching boils down to two points: (1) outside consciousness there is nothing, and (2) to exist is to be perceived; what nobody perceives does not exist. The doctrine conflicts with the materialist proposition that (1) apart from and independent of the mind there are objects which produce sensory reactions in us, and that (2) sensible objects exist even when they are not perceived by the senses.
But let us see what Berkeley, the most significant exponent of subjective idealism, has to say further. Asserting that notions emerge and are dropped solely at man’s will, Berkeley wrote: “But…the ideas actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will.”
In this Berkeley was perfectly correct. But from his words it follows that outside the mind there exist things which, acting on our eyes, ears, etc., cause sensations. In other words, sensations (which are phenomena of consciousness) entirely depend on the objects which cause them and which exist independently of the mind, i.e., on material objects. That it is indeed so has been established by natural science. Lenin wrote: “…outside us, independently of us and of our minds, there exists a movement of matter, let us say of ether waves…which, acting upon the retina, produce in man the sensation of a particular colour. This is precisely how natural science regards it… This is materialism: matter acting upon our sense-organs produces sensation.”
Thus scientific evidence and the facts which Berkeley himself has to acknowledge prove the truth of materialism but even after recognizing the independent existence of the source of sensations Berkeley remains an opponent of materialism. Defending religion, he addresses the materialists thus: “…I assert as well as you that, since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without, in a being distinct from ourselves….But then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being. I will have it to be spirit, you Matter…”
Thus to prop up faith in the primacy of spirit, Berkeley has to forego both logic and science and have resource to god. Yet, while he asserts that god exists, he gives no proof of his existence-god is absent from the list of knowledge with which Berkeley opens his discourse. After promising to present philosophical knowledge the truth of which has been demonstrated, he presents us with a proposition to be taken on trust.
Yet, as he maintains that god is an independent source of sensations, Berkeley acknowledges by the same token that something which exists outside and independently of mind produces sensation; that the object producing the sensations exist whether or not it is perceived. Thus, this philosopher does, in fact, unwittingly disprove subjective idealism.
What then, according to Berkeley himself, made him accept that “without a mind” there is something whose existence does not depend on us, and this something produces sensations in us? It was, above all, the indisputable fact that sensations arise and disappear independently of “the mind”, unlike notions which we can usually evoke in the mind jest when we like. This difference between sensations and notions is a fact which conflicts with subjective idealism. To be consistent, a subjective idealist would have to deny that sensation results from causes which are outside, and are independent of, the mind. That is just what many contemporary subjective idealists do. Rudolf Carnap, for instance, wrote that the line between sensations and notions is “rather arbitrary”.
This assertion in contrary to fact. For example, I can imagine myself, if I like, basking in the sun on the beach. But I cannot-however much I may like to-make my body feel warm with the sun or make my eyes see the surf. Transformation of that which we can conceive into that which we can see and feel does not depend on arbitrary choice. There is only one conclusion to be made from this, namely, that subjective idealism, which denies that the sensations we experience have a material source existing outside the mind, conflicts with the facts conclusively established both by science and experience.
No one in his right mind would deny that illusion and reality are two different things. How to tell dreams from reality, facts from fancy? The common way is to regard whatever exists solely in the mind as illusion; and whatever exists outside the mind (irrespective of whether or not it is perceived), as reality or fact. Berkeley rejects this method of telling between seeming and being and claims that the objects and events we observe when awake exist merely in the mind in just the same way as those we dream about. No one subscribe to the view that fact and fancy are the same thing. So Berkeley declares that his philosophy too has a method of distinguishing illusion from reality-by comparing notes with other people. The sensation most of them regard as fact is fact, and the one regarded otherwise is illusion. Nevertheless Berkeley himself says that the majority may be in error and often are. Most people denied for thousand years that the earth is round and believed that the sun moved around the earth.
Surely opinion polls would not do as a method of differentiating between seeming and being. Still, neither Berkeley nor his successors found any other. Some of them even thought it quite unnecessary to make such surveys because, they said, there was practically no difference between illusion and reality. The subjective idealist Ernst Mach (1838-1916) cited the following: a pencil partly submerged under water seems broken, and this is called an illusion. But Mach was of a different opinion. He wrote: “It makes practical, but not scientific, sense to speak of illusion in such instances. Nor does the oft-repeated question whether the world is real or whether we have merely dream it up, make any sense from the scientific point of view. Besides, weirdest dream is a fact as good as any other”.
What Mach means by a “scientific point of view” is utterly unacceptable to science because the object of science is to penetrate through what seems to what actually is. It is easy to imagine what will happen to a scientist (or anyone for that matter) who will take guidance from Mach’s doctrine, for he will fall into every pit scattered along the path of the rainbow-chaser and wishful thinker.
Our sensations are all we know about an object, says Berkeley, and consequently “…the object and the sensation are the same thing”. Thus the basic premise of Berkeley’s subjective idealism rests on the assertion that we know nothing at all about things saved through our sensations of them. Yet we know that a commodity has its value, which is however, impossible to perceive in senses. We know that light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometer a second, which man can neither see nor even imagine. A radio transmitter emits waves whose properties have been thoroughly studied even though they cannot be perceived by the sense. And so ad infintum.
Berkeley’s doctrine leaves out a most important part of human knowledge-concepts or abstract ideas. Berkeley denied their existence, reducing knowledge entirely to sensations and notions. Such a theory, which rests on the denial of concepts, is incompatible with genuine science.
Now let us presume that objects are merely combinations of sensations. Then the earth, with everything and everybody in it, is a combination of sensations. It follows then that each of us is the only person in the world while all others are mere sensations. That is solipsism. Berkeley and most of his successors concede that other people also exist, i.e., they reject solipsism. Bertrand Russell, the modern idealist philosopher, remarked: “As against solipsism it is to be said, in the first place, that it is psychologically impossible to believe, and is rejected in fact even by those who men to accept it. I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.” And no wonder. It is hardly logical for one who would be the sole being in the world to be surprised that nobody else should claim that distinction. Yet another subjective idealist, Carnap, writes that the very question as to whether other people exist is impermissible in philosophy. Nor is it fortuitous, for subjective idealism immediately leads solipsism. After all, there are but two possible answers. One may either acknowledge the truth of subjective idealism or agree that every one of us is the only person in existence; or one may acknowledge, with the materialists, that there are other people too and subjective idealism has not a leg to stand on. There is no third answer. Human experience and science alike prove that materialism is correct and knock the bottom out of subjective idealism.
aterialism vs. Objective Idealism:
We find a different form of idealism in the teaching of its classical exponents, such as Plato (428/427-347 B.C.) in ancient Greece, and Hegel (1770-1831) in Germany. These philosophers recognize that nature exists independently of mind. According to their reasoning, we perceive with our senses individual objects of which the world consists, but sensory experience yield only superficial knowledge such as even little children can have. Sensory experience does not give us ultimate knowledge of the essence of things. Man can have sensory experience of colour, smell or taste. Recollection of these perceptions will bring specific objects to his mind. Yet, that which makes common to them and makes them what they are, i.e., their essence, can neither be perceived by the senses nor imagined.
Even in Plato’s time science was not confined to sense-data. After all, sensory experience and notions tell us merely what isolated, transient, accidental objects look like. Science, however, seeks to understand their essence. This requires that one should be aware of the common, stable and lasting qualities which are at the basis of and manifest themselves in isolated, contingent facts and things. Briefly, to conceive what the things the world consists of really are. One must form a concept of them.
The object of sense-perception or representation is a specific individual thing, e.g., the isosceles triangle drawn in my notebook. The object of thought, on the other hand, is the essence (the essential, principal properties) of all triangles which have ever existed or will ever exist, fixed in the concept of “triangle”. It does not make the slightest difference to the nature of a triangle what material it is made from, what size or colour it is, and so on. The individual features differentiating the innumerable triangles there are in existence are equally of no significance. Yet every triangle must possess all the features of the triangle as such, constituting its essence which is always the same, whatever happens to its innumerable individual expressions.
Thus, all material things as perceived by the senses are external manifestations of the essence of the given things while their essence is the root, the inner source of phenomena- that to which they owe their existence. Sensible material objects exist objectively, outside consciousness. Yet that is but the external aspect of reality. The basis of the material phenomena comprising the world is the eternal essences, which can neither be created nor destroyed, of individual external phenomena.
What are these essences in Hegel’s view? The essence of a triangle does not depend on its material, size or colour. The essence of all triangles is what is common to all of them, viz., that every triangle is a closed straight-lined figure forming three angles. It is impossible to see or even imagine the essence of a triangle, since one can imagine only things which can be perceived by senses. The triangle I can imagine may be drawn in chalk on a blackboard or in pencil on white paper, but nobody can imagine a “triangle in general”. It is not a material object, not even a visual representation, but an abstract idea, i.e., a concept. Essence (heat as such, plant as such, and speed as such) becomes comprehensible through thought alone. Does this not suggest that at the basis of all reality there is thought which man can mentally perceive but which exists, without ever appearing or disappearing, independently of whether or not it has been grasped?
From this Hegel drew the conclusion that the true basis of the world, which exists outside consciousness and which we investigate, is concepts or ideas, while all material objects and facts are products and manifestations of ideas. Whose ideas? Since they embrace the whole world they must clearly be the ideas of some “spirit” which Hegel calls “world spirit” or the “absolute idea”. According to Hegel, the “absolute idea” and the world are identical. Nature is the “other-being of the absolute idea”, and “we should … speak of nature as a system of unconscious thought, as fossilized intelligence” and of man as the “conscious idea” (unlike animals, let alone plants and minerals). Like every material object, man is a manifestation of the infinite spirit which is at the basis of the world, but a manifestation possessed of consciousness, of the “finite spirit”, and able to think and grasp the essence of things, or concepts, and conceives the world as the thought process of the world spirit. Consequently, the “world spirit” knows itself as a spirit, and the “world ideal” thinks of itself through man. Hegel wrote of his philosophy that it was a “representation of God in his eternal being prior to the creation of nature and a finite mind”.
That is the gist of objective idealism which holds that the world is based on the impersonal spirit, the “absolute idea” rather than on man’s individual consciousness.
The starting-point of objective idealism is that we know the material world outside the mind through thought, by forming concepts of the essence of things. Therefore thought is a means of knowing the essence of things, and this knowledge is the concept of their essence. This is an obvious deduction. The objective idealists, however, say: if we know the essence of things by thinking and forming concepts, then the world outside the mind must consist of concepts, not of objects. But is that logical? If our knowledge of the essence of things is a concept, it does not follow at all that the essence of things is a concept. Concepts exist in the mind while both the essence of things and the things themselves exist independently of it. Consequently, unlike concepts, which are ideal, the essences of things, as well as the things themselves, are material. The essence of the triangle existed when men knew nothing of it, and even when men were not there at all. As for the concept of the triangle, it emerged when men attained a high enough standard of knowledge. It is plain that the material essence of things is primary while the idea or the concept of it is secondary. Consequently, logic attests the truth of materialism and the unsoundness of objective idealism.
The objective idealists argue that the real world comprises isolated objects, each having a beginning and an end, while the ideal world comprises abstract concepts which have neither beginning nor end, i.e., are eternal. But while each thing is indeed finite, we cannot say this of the real world as a whole. Every material object springs from other objects (otherwise it would have to spring from nothing). It cannot disappear altogether-as it disappears itself, it gives rise to other material things. Consequently, the real world has neither a beginning nor an end, it is eternal. Certainly the world of concepts shares the fate of mankind which has evolved the concepts and is using them. Yet mankind came into being at a definite point of time, nor did Hegel himself allow it any eternal existence. We know when the concepts “patrician”. “fief”, “factory”, “electron”, etc., emerged and when the concepts “epicycle”, “phlogiston”, etc., were dropped. Concepts are mutable and temporal. They emerge at particular stages in the progress of human knowledge and are refined and amplified. Nature, which is infinite, is primary, and its conscious reflection-the world of concepts, which are finite-, is secondary.
In objective idealism, the consciousness of the “infinite world spirit”, which existed prior to the creation of nature and of any “finite mind”, i.e., man, is considered to be at the basis of the world. But, first, although it is not at all unusual to observe a person without consciousness (eg., in a dead faint, under ether, and so on), nobody has ever met consciousness without a person. Second, even granting the impossible and conceding that consciousness can exist separately from its material source; can it be allowed that nature is the product of this consciousness? The realization of an idea indispensably requires the presence of certain material phenomena (present even before its realization). Basically, it proceeds by way of transforming material phenomena into other such phenomena emerging in the process. Material phenomena are never a product of nothing. These are facts proved by science and experience. No objective idealist has ever been able to disprove them or produce a single piece of evidence to show that nature has been created out of nothing by a bodiless spirit. Only one who sets reason and science at naught can believe such things. “To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of science”, to make it “actual knowledge – that is what I have set before me,” Hegel wrote. In truth, however, Hegel, like Berkeley, turns his back on scientific knowledge and embraces religion.
Just as there are subjective idealists who do not believe in god, so are there objective idealists who say god does not exist. But is it possible by deleting the word “god” from a philosophical doctrine to prevent idealism leading to religion? This is how Lenin answers the question: any form of idealism holds nature to be secondary, derived from intelligence. Yet, to produce nature, one must exist independently of it. “That means that something exists outside nature, something which moreover produces nature. In plain language this is called God. The idealist philosophers have always sought to change this latter name, to make it more abstract, more vague…” That, however, changes nothing. The idealist solution of the fundamental question of philosophy conflicts with scientific knowledge, with human reason and experience, and therefore any idealist doctrine, even one whose supporters reject religion, objectively clears the way for religion.
There is something else subjective and objective idealism have in common. All existence, Hegel taught, whether nature (“fossilized”, unconscious thought) or human consciousness 9thought knowing itself as thought), is thought. The essence of objective idealism is the identification of being with thinking. And the subjective idealists hold all existence- both nature and man’s consciousness- to be the subjective experiences of the human spirit. Hence both the objective and subjective idealists are unanimous in reducing all existence- that commonly termed material and that commonly termed ideal- to consciousness or in identifying matter with thought. As a result, any form of idealism contravenes such patent facts as, for instance, that my thinking of a ticket for a performance at the theatre and the ticket itself are two different things. Hard as I may try to persuade the usher that the thought of a ticket are the same thing, he will never let me in just for thinking of the ticket.
In everyday life people start from the conviction that all their perceptions, notions, ideas and concepts of things depend on the things themselves, not the other way round. After all, things exist even when we have no notion of them. Hence people in their daily lives naturally share the materialist point of view. They do not usually, however, stop to think why they should share it; they take it for granted. What, then, is the difference between this practical materialism and philosophical materialism? By comparing the arguments for and against philosophical materialism we have learned that the materialist answer to the fundamental question of philosophy is no rash prejudgment but an inference that necessarily follows from all that science has found out about nature, about men and their thinking- in a word, from human experience as a whole.
We shall now examine two important scientific proofs of the materialist answer to the fundamental question of philosophy.
Science of the Earth’s Past and the Fundamental Question of Philosophy:
No evidence of perception or thought ever being discovered in inanimate objects, science regards life as the first indispensable requisite of consciousness. When did life emerge on earth? Different sciences have helped find the answer to this question. Physicists, for instance, have found that by measuring the number of the first and last terms of the radioactive series of uranium, action-uranium and thorium and the amount of helium present in minerals and rocks one can make a fairly accurate estimate of the age of geological deposits. Using this method geologist has established not only how old the earth’s crust is (almost 4,000 million years) but also the duration of individual geological epochs. By examining various layers of the crust, geologists and paleontologists have found that no life, not even the simplest, existed before 3,000 million years ago.
Microbiological research has shown that micro-organisms which are the oldest living things on earth are incapable of sensation, let alone thought. They possess only irritability. The study of fossilized animals (paleontology) shows that over hundreds of millions of years animals gradually became more complex until, in the Tertiary period (from sixty-nine million to one million years ago), mammals appeared, including the higher animals capable not only of sensation but also of perception and conception. Nevertheless, consciousness, the ability to think, is found only among humans. And analysis of the products of radioactive decay found in the layers of the earth’s crust which contain the fossilized bones of the hominids, man’s immediate ancestors, attests that man’s separation from the animals took place from five to one million years ago.
If the Earth with all that is on it is the product of sensations and ideas, then whose sensations and ideas, then whose sensations and ideas were they during the thousand million years that there was yet no life on earth? The idealists fail to answer this question in the context of knowledge. “Natural science positively asserts,” Lenin wrote, “that the Earth once existed in such a state that no man or any other creature existed or could have existed on it. Organic matter is a later phenomenon, the fruit of a long evolution. It follows that …..matter is primary and thought, consciousness, sensation are products of a very high development.” Thus the only alternative is either the modern natural science or materialism that necessarily follows from it or idealism and the consequent denial of the elementary truths firmly established by science.
Physiology of the Brain and the Fundamental Question of the Philosophy
Now let us turn to the physiology of the brain. Investigation of higher nervous activity has proved that the cerebral cortex has specialized areas where sensations are produced when impulses resulting from the simulation of sense organs (the eye, the ear. etc.) are transmitted to them by afferent nerves. If one of these areas (in the back of the head) is destroyed, the result is blindness, and if another area located at the temples is injured, the sense of hearing is lost. Destruction of certain areas in the context renders a person unable to perceive an object as a whole, although colours will still be perceived. There are areas (or, rather, points) in the cortex whose stimulation by electricity arouses vivid recollections, and so on. The brain sharply reacts to oxygen deficiency. The slightest drop in the blood supply to the brain gravely affects its function, causing a sudden suspension of consciousness.
Science has incontrovertibly proved that sensations and ideas depend on the normal functioning of an intricately organized material organ- the brain. In other words, consciousness depends on particularly organized matter (the brain) which does not depend on consciousness. Natural science “inflexibly holds that thought is a function of the brain that sensations, i.e. the images of the external world, exist within us, produced by the action of the things on our sense-organs”. Subjective idealists, on the other hand, hold that anybody, the brain as well, is a combination of sensations, from which it follows that the brain is a product of consciousness rather than consciousness the product of the brain. Therefore the subjective idealist Avenarius, just as Mach, openly rejects the findings of natural science, asserting that “the brain is not an organ of thought” and that notions and sensations are not functions of the brain. By this token, Lenin observes, he “denies the most elementary truth of physiology”. Here again we must choose between the facts firmly established by physiology, and thus materialism, and idealism which makes one deny what has been proved in the physiology of the higher nervous activity.
In defence of Philosophy,
Read: (1) http://www.independent.com/news/2012/may/07/defense-philosophy/
(2) http://www.mel-thompson.co.uk/Philosophy%20of%20Science2.htm
