See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/323425484

Applied Philosophy

Book · February 2018

CITATIONS READS
0 1,187

1 author:

Garret Thomson
College of Wooster
16 PUBLICATIONS   8 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Well-being and the good life View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Garret Thomson on 27 February 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 APPLIED PHILOSOPHY

Preface 1

PART I: THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Chapter 1 Law 6
Chapter 2 Economics 17
Chapter 3 The Social Sciences 42
Chapter 4 Psychology 58
Chapter 5 Cognitive Science 83

PART II: THE NATURAL SCIENCES

Chapter 6 Quantum Physics 102

Chapter 7 Macrophysics 114
Chapter 8 Evolutionary Biology 132
Chapter 9 Biology 151

PART III: SOCIETY

Chapter 10 Education 163

Chapter 11 Business 179
Chapter 12 Design 198
Chapter 13 Environmental Ethics 206

PART IV: BACK TO PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 14 Social Relevance of Philosophy 237
Chapter 15 Dogmas of Logical Positivism 246
Chapter 16 Post-Modernism 257
Conclusions 273
Bibliography 278

1
 0
Preface

This introduction to philosophy is significantly different from most. It is dedicated to the philosophy
of other disciplines, such as that of economics, of law, of biology, of the social sciences, of psychology,
and design. I wrote this book as an exciting way of showing philosophical thinking at work. My intention is
to reveal why such thinking can be so fascinating, and to demonstrate the power and problems of
philosophy in resolving fundamental theoretical questions.
Also, I wrote this book to provide a broad overview of many areas of knowledge. It gives a taste of
many subjects, and helps the reader to appreciate many interconnections between different disciplines that
otherwise might have escaped his or her notice. As a result of these two characteristics, this book should
have several pedagogical advantages as a text for introduction to philosophy classes and a special kind of
interest for the general reader.

Regarding Philosophy
Philosophy has an intimate relationship to other disciplines because of the character of understanding.
Often, in order to better understand the natural world, human beings and society, we need to examine
critically our ways of thinking, and develop new concepts. Understanding has a self-reflexive aspect. Since
one of the main functions of philosophy is to elucidate concepts, it ought to help in the general quest for
knowledge and to be closely related to the other disciplines.
This point has challenging implications for the academic discipline of philosophy itself. First, it
means that philosophical thinking is not confined to philosophy departments. We can find practitioners of
philosophy in every academic discipline and outside of academia. Every discipline or field of knowledge
has to study its own ways of understanding. Physicists think about the concepts of physics in order to
improve them. Designers try to understand the nature of design. Reflective and critical thinking leads every
field of knowledge to its own meta-discipline, i.e. to the study of itself, and so to the process of
philosophical thought. In this way, university philosophy departments cannot claim exclusive rights on
philosophical thought.
Second, the broad conception of philosophy also means that the academic subject cannot be confined
to the history of ideas and to the grand metaphysical, epistemological and ethical problems that often form
the staple diet of students. In fact, many academic philosophers are doing interesting work in inter-
disciplinary research. They recognize that philosophical tools can help to provide new cross-boundary
comprehension and to help dissolve the walls between departments.
Furthermore, this is an exciting period of change in many disciplines. For example, economists are
beginning to advance alternatives to the neo-classical tradition. In biology, the relatively new concept of

2
self-organizing systems may provide an alternative to more traditional mechanistic approaches. Psychology
has been going through some radical changes since the 1960s when the limitations of strict behaviorism
became more apparent. Physics has been in perpetual revolution since the beginning of the 20th century.
Environmental ethics is a relatively new discipline that hardly existed before the 1960s. Since these
changes are in part conceptual, philosophers want to participate in the creation of new models of
understanding. I discuss some of these paradigm changes in the conclusion, as well as in the relevant
chapters.
I would like to correct three misunderstandings that may arise from this introduction. First, the
broader conception of philosophy does not mean that the more traditional philosophical problems have
little worth or interest, and that they are a remnant from the past. Rather, it means that philosophy can be
and is much more. The problem is that often students and the general reader do not have the opportunity to
see much of this other side of philosophy, and this is one of the reasons for this book.
Second, although every branch of knowledge has a philosophical aspect, not every academic is a
philosopher. For example, many economists are not concerned directly with the conceptual issues regarding
their subject. Their research is focused towards a specific set of empirical questions or problems, and their
discipline provides the relevant methods and tools for resolving them. Much the same can be said of the
other branches of knowledge. A biologist studying the neurotransmitters in the brains of insects may not
have much taste or time for seriously considering the implications of his or her work for consciousness. In
most areas of knowledge, specific empirical studies have precedence over general theoretical questions.
Thirdly, this last point rectifies the idea that philosophy is the king or queen of all disciplines. On the
contrary, the kind of philosophy examined in this book is almost entirely parasitic on the work done in
other disciplines. Philosophy usually consists in reflection on practice, and it would hardly exist without the
work of the practitioners of other fields and without the practices of everyday life.

Concerning the Other Disciplines

As well as providing a new kind of introduction to philosophy, a book like this one should be
interesting to the general reader who is curious about the conceptual questions in different areas of
knowledge. Through this work, one can learn a little about many disciplines or at least, have a glimpse of
their theoretical framework and problems. Sometimes, many appetizers can be as satisfying a meal as a
single main course dish.
I have adopted an argumentative approach in this work, selecting important and interesting debates in
each field and arguing for a position with regard to each of them. I have tried to avoid giving only a survey
of each area, as tends to be done in encyclopedias of philosophy. A more polemic approach reveals the
critical nature of philosophy, and it should provoke the reader to think through the issues for him or herself.
Furthermore, this approach helps us to appreciate better how a philosophical analysis of one field of
knowledge can have implications for others. It helps us see inter-disciplinary connections.
Furthermore, this should be an important aspect of this book for philosophy students, who sometimes
learn philosophy in one context and do not appreciate its implications for other fields, especially ones in
which they are not encouraged to think. For example, one would not expect introductory courses in biology
to present philosophical problems in the field, except in a very cursory way, because such courses are
intended to introduce the student to biological knowledge and investigation rather than to conceptual
thinking about biology. The same point applies to most of the other disciplines. Learning a discipline and a
subject such as biology is difficult enough, without the added complication of abstract philosophical
problems. Yet, despite this, one of the major aims of many educational institutions is to encourage students
to think and question for themselves.
Additionally, the argumentative nature of the book may be of value to the more advanced students of
other disciplines who are aware of the theoretical problems in their major area of study, and who are taking
an introduction to philosophy course. Often, such students fail to make the connection between the
conceptual questions in their chosen major and the kind of thinking they learn in an introduction to
philosophy class, where they study classical texts. This work should help them make this connection.
Furthermore, the book will introduce them to related questions in other fields.

3
 This book could have contained many other chapters. For example, it could have included sections on
the philosophy of history, of mathematics, of computer science, linguistics, literature, chemistry, geology,
music, and international relations, as well as others.

Back to Philosophy
The final two chapters return to philosophy, but in the interests of interdisciplinary understanding. In
universities today, there is a general polarization between those academics, typically natural scientists, who
have a broadly logical positivist view of their work, and those who advocate a more postmodern view,
typically those working in the humanities. Many, though by no means all, academics fall into one of these
two camps. It is difficult to imagine two philosophical approaches that are more opposed to each other. As
a result, teachers and students of the natural sciences and humanities sometimes find it difficult to
encounter common ground and vocabulary. Therefore, I thought that it would be appropriate and useful to
critically examine both approaches in the final section of this book.

Acknowledgements
I am obviously indebted to the works of many other thinkers and writers in different fields. These
debts are not adequately reflected in the suggested readings at the end of the book. Therefore, I would like
to signal the works that I have found especially useful in constructing this book. For Chapter 1, I have
relied on Dworkin’s Law’s Empire and David Adams’ Philosophical Problems in the Law. The chapter on
economics is indebted to Daniel Hausman, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics. I have also
used parts of my own works, Needs and On the Meaning of Life. Chapter 3 borrows ideas from various
works by Martin Hollis and Daniel Little’s Varieties of Social Explanation, and Chapter 5 from various
authors in Bechtel and Graham’s collection, A Companion to Cognitive Science, as well as the works of
Andy Clark. For Chapter 6, I have found very useful David, Z. Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and
Experience, and Peter Kosso’s Appearance and Reality. The chapter on macro-physics is indebted to the
works of Nancy Cartwright and to the books on chaos by Stephen Kellert and Peter Smith. For Chapter 8, I
am indebted to the collection edited by David Hull and especially the works of Gould, Dennett and Sober.
The chapter on education owes a lot to Nel Noddings’ Philosophy of Education, and that on business
management to Russell Ackoff, Creating the Corporate Future and Arie De Geus, The Living Company.
The chapter on design is especially indebted to the works of R. Buchanan and Victor Margolin. For the
chapter on environmental ethics, I am in debt to Thomas Hill, Autonomy and Self Respect and Joseph Des
Jardins, Environmental Ethics. I have freely used parts of my earlier work, On the Meaning of Life in
Chapters 8 and 12.
I have received very useful comments and help from Professors Martin Gunderson, Henry Kreuzman,
Victor Margolin, Adrian Moore, Phil Turetzky, Ramzi Addison, Mark Wilson and Allison Wellington. Prof
Peter Bauman read the whole book in an earlier draft and made many very useful comments.

4
 1
Law

There was once a wealthy old gentleman, called Francis Palmer, who owned a large farm in the
countryside of New York State. The old man had a deep love for his grandson, Elmer, and was happy when
his grandson came to live with him, especially now that his two daughters had left home. In his
grandfather’s eyes, Elmer could do no wrong, and when Elmer reached the age of 16, Mr. Palmer called his
grandson to the library to inform him that he had altered his will so that Elmer would be the major
beneficiary. Of course, Elmer was delighted. However, as the months went by, Mr. Palmer grew
increasingly discontented with his grandson. Having given everything over to this grandson, for the first
time, Palmer began to notice Elmer’s faults. Meanwhile, Elmer himself was growing more boisterous and
rude. Disagreements broke out during which Palmer started hinting that he would change his will again. At
this, Elmer decided to learn about poisoning. When events reached a climax, he murdered his grandfather
before the old man had the opportunity to alter his will for the second time.
You are a judge in the Court of Appeal and the case comes before you. The question is ‘Should Elmer
inherit from his grandfather?’ Let us suppose that, as a matter of fact, the law of inheritance does not
prohibit a person from gaining from such a murder. The existing statutes regulating wills and property
inheritance would pass the property on to the convicted grandson. In the case presented to you, the
defendants claim that, for this reason, Elmer should keep the inheritance despite the fact that he is
benefiting from being a murderer. They argue that the will was made lawfully. Furthermore, they contend
that the laws of inheritance spell out exactly under what conditions the courts can alter wills after the death
of the testator. None of these conditions apply in this case. Therefore, the existing will should stand.
The appellants (the other members of the family, including Francis Palmer’s daughters) argue that,
despite all this, the court should nullify the existing will. They claim that the purpose of the relevant
statutes is to enable people to leave their property according to their final wishes. This was the prime
intention in making the law, and it was never the intention that a convicted murderer should benefit from
his act. The testator would not have agreed to leave his money to his murderer; nor would the lawmakers, if
they had had such a case in mind. If they had thought of it, the legislature would have included a suitable
provision or clause in the statute.
The other side replies that the function of the court is to apply the law in the form that it has been
passed by the elected legislators. The court cannot ignore and change that law, even if the court thinks that
the law is wrong. Its function is not to make new law or social policy, but to apply existing law, as the
traditional distinction between an elected parliament and appointed legal officials makes clear. Judges
should only apply the existing law, the defendants argue.
Imagine that you have been listening to the case for some weeks. Finally, it is the time to make up
your mind. One of the reasons why the decision is so difficult is that you, the judges, have to determine
your own function. This is an unavoidable feature of the case. You have to resolve to what extent judges
can change the letter of the law in order to keep to the spirit of the law. How should you decide?
This story is based on an actual case that appeared before the Court of Appeals of New York in 1889
(Riggs et al. vs. Palmer 22N.E. 188 (1889), with Judge Earl presiding (Adams, 1996, p.143). The letter of
the law was clear; at that time and place, it did not prohibit a murderer from receiving a legacy through the

5
act of murder. The court had to decide whether a court has the power to override this legislation. What is
the role of a judge? Should judges apply only existing laws, or, in exceptional moral circumstances, should
they have the power to interpret the spirit of law?
This case and others like it show us that we cannot escape jurisprudence. Philosophical questions
concerning the nature of the law have important implications for key cases. What is a legal system? The
answer affects what we think the function of a judge or court should be, and that affects the decisions the
judges should make.

Another Case
These questions have great importance for understanding the constitution of a country and its relation
to the Supreme Court. In most countries, the Supreme Court has the job of interpreting constitutional law,
even though, ironically, the Constitution of the USA does not specify that the justices of the Supreme Court
have the final say in interpreting the US Constitution. What does ‘interpret’ mean? Does it mean sticking
to the letter of the law, or following the spirit, even when that means violating its letter? What does the
phrase ‘following the spirit of the law’ mean?’
The 1938 statutes of Connecticut prohibited persons from using drugs and medical instruments to
prevent conception on pain of a fine. The law also prohibited people from counseling others about
contraception. In 1961, Griswold, who was the executive director of the Planned Parenthood Society of
Connecticut, was fined according to the law of the state. He appealed, and the case finally came before the
US Supreme Court in 1965, where Griswold sought a reversal of the Connecticut decision to fine him.
Justice Douglas, presiding over the case, affirmed that the Supreme Court does ‘not sit as a super-
legislature to determine the wisdom...of laws that touch economic problems, business affairs or social
conditions.’ Nevertheless, the court decided in favor of the appeal, citing the right to privacy that would be
violated if the Connecticut law were enforced. In other words, this law was judged to be unconstitutional
because enforcing it would require violating the privacy of persons (Griswold vs. Connecticut, 381 U.S.
479 (1965)).
However, the problem is that the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and
the Constitution itself do not mention any right to privacy. The Bill of Rights specifies certain particular
rights, but not one pertaining to privacy. For this reason, Justice Black, like Justice Douglas, disagreed with
the court’s decision, arguing that no right to privacy exists in the U.S. Constitution and, therefore, the
Connecticut statute could not be judged unconstitutional.
In fact, the Griswold determination spawned other decisions by the Supreme Court that upheld other
privacy rights that are not mentioned in the US Constitution. One might argue that this first judgment
created a precedent that helped justify later decisions. Nevertheless, the question remains regarding the first
decision: was it correct to judge the Connecticut law unconstitutional?

The Usual Diagnosis

These famous cases are often cited as examples in debates between two general theories of
jurisprudence: positivism and naturalism. A philosopher such as John Austin (1790-1859), a legal
positivist, would argue that the law is simply a system of rules imposed by the state on the people. Even
morally bad laws are still laws and, therefore, we should try to analyze the nature of the law in morally
neutral terms. The law has no intrinsic relation to morality. What counts as a system of law can be defined
formally, for example, in terms of the nature of the rules and sanctions imposed by the state. The Oxford
philosopher H.LA. Hart provides probably the most sophisticated theory within this tradition (Hart, 1968).
In contrast, natural law theorists claim that the law is essentially connected to the values of justice and
the common good. There is an intrinsic link between law and morality. A legal system is not only a set of
rules made by a state because government by law requires the principles of serving justice and the common
good. Perhaps, Ronald Dworkin’s is the most sophisticated theory within this kind of tradition (Dworkin,
1982, 1986).
In the history of jurisprudence, there are more extreme theories in both camps. For example, Austin
claimed that the law comprises the commands of whoever is the sovereign of a country, and that it is a

6
purely empirical question, independent of all moral criteria, which body counts as a sovereign. This is an
extreme form of positivism because moral notions, such as justice and rights, ought to have some role in
the law, and extreme forms of naturalism seem to deny this.
On the other hand, there are also implausible forms of natural law theory. For instance, it would be a
mistake to identify moral and legal requirements. Ethical requirements are not always legally enforced,
such as the moral principle of not hurting peoples’ feelings maliciously. Additionally, not all legal
requirements are moral, for example, the need to have a valid driver’s license. Furthermore, consider St
Augustine’s affirmation: ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ Natural law theory does not need to go to the
extreme of denying that there are unjust laws in order to argue that the law is intrinsically related to
morality.
It is better to proceed directly to the more sophisticated and plausible views within both traditions. Let
us begin with Hart and Dworkin with the aim of the examining whether the problem-cases raised at the
beginning of the chapter are satisfactorily resolved by either of the theories.

Legal Positivism
Hart recognizes the defects of Austin’s original positivist theory: for example,

• Austin’s idea is that the law is a set of orders backed by the threat of punishment. Hart replies that this
analysis is based on a criminal law model. It is not applicable to the law of torts and contracts, as well
as to procedural laws, for which the notion of punishment is irrelevant.

• Laws cannot be the commands of a sovereign because sovereigns themselves are subject to the laws.
Note that we do not need to restrict the term ‘sovereign’ to monarchies; elected governments and
congresses can count as sovereigns.

• Laws remain the same even when the sovereign changes. Furthermore, custom is a source of law and a
sovereign may not even be aware of such legal customs. Thus, laws are not commands of a sovereign.

Hart argues that the law is a system of rules rather than a set of commands. Primary rules, such as
those of criminal law, are those that govern conduct. Secondary rules are those that regulate the primary
rules; they are concerned with the recognition, changing and adjudication of the first-order rules. For
example, they prescribe how courts should be constituted; their legal powers and obligations; how laws
should be changed; and how difficult cases should be adjudicated.
A legal system must have secondary rules and, in particular, a rule of recognition that defines how
laws must be formed in order to be legally valid. This rule defines what counts as a pedigree. For example,
the constitution defines who appoints judges and the legislature, and it prescribes their powers with regard
to the alteration and creation of laws. In short, any rule made in a procedurally correct manner will be
legally valid.
Having defined a law, Hart argues for the separation of the legal and the moral as follows.

a) First, any rule that is derivable from the basic rules of recognition has legal validity. It is a law, even if
it is unjust. Furthermore, any system of rules that has the appropriate form is a legal system. The
system itself may be unjust.

b) It is not part of the concept of a law that there is a moral obligation to obey it. ‘Moral reasons’ and
‘legal reasons’ are different notions.

Despite arguing for the legal/moral distinction, Hart distances himself from a narrow positivist view.
First, he thinks that legal rules are normative or prescriptive rather than being merely descriptive. From the
point of view of a participant in a society, laws prescribe actions without giving moral reasons. In this
sense, they are comparable to the rules of a game. Second, Hart claims that the law does have a minimal
moral content, which is necessary to explain its functions. Given the individual goal of survival, and given
certain fundamental shared features of human existence, such as finite resources and limited mutual

7
understanding and altruism, societies need rules to govern behavior and to prevent social chaos. To perform
this function, governing rules need to be recognized and, hence, there is a need for a rule of recognition and
a system of law. In a social world liable to disagreements, we need publicly ascertainable rules in order to
control conduct. The law serves this purpose.
However, according to Hart, the moral content of the law is minimal. Often, people have divergent
moral views and, given this, it is preferable to explain the law without appealing to any particular ethical
theory. People might have different ideas about what the law morally ought to be, but that does not prevent
them from reaching agreement about what the law actually is on a specific point. This is one of the
motivating reasons for Hart’s view.

Legal Interpretation
Here is a question that Hart cannot answer satisfactorily: ‘should judges follow the letter of the law?’
Hart’s reply is: ‘not always.’ It has two aspects that establish a false dilemma. On the one hand, he
recognizes that language has an open-texture that is reflected in the law and that because of this, there will
be always unclear borderline legal cases. Consequently, following the letter of the law is not always
possible. However, on the other hand, this seems to imply that judges must decide some cases on non-legal
grounds, such as those of moral fairness and justice, and this requires them to determine social policy and
make moral decisions. Hart recognizes that this is not a satisfactory answer (as a positivist must).
According to this dilemma, judges must either stick to the letter of the law, a view called legal formalism,
or they must go beyond the law and decide on non-legal, social policy grounds, a view called rule-
skepticism. Neither of these two alternatives seems attractive.
To avoid to this dilemma, Hart tries to forge a middle path. In effect, he argues that formalism is
correct concerning straightforward legal cases, and skepticism is correct regarding borderline ones, for
which the law is unclear. In other words, Hart’s position employs both theories but without offering a third
alternative.
According to Hart, judges must either follow the letter of the law or decide on extra-legal, social
policy grounds. In contrast, Dworkin conceives his own theory as a way out of the dichotomy between rule
formalism and skepticism. According to Dworkin, both views are based on an inadequate understanding of
interpretation.
Dworkin’s aim is to show how the courts can change the law while still being bound by it. To achieve
this, he denies the positivist assumption that the law consists solely of rules. Dworkin argues that the law
also consists of deeper principles, which are implied by the written law and precedence but which are not
always stated explicitly. When a judge interprets the law, he or she must appeal to those implicit principles,
and changes to the letter of the law must accord with those principles. In other words, the role of a judge is
to interpret the law by constructing a coherent moral theory that justifies and accords with it; judges
articulate the moral principles inherent implicitly in the legal tradition. Their interpretation must fit the
relevant law, but also must make the best moral sense of it. Through this theory, Dworkin avoids the earlier
dichotomy: judges cannot decide on non-legal grounds, but neither can they keep strictly to the letter of the
rule. The moral principles implicit in the law, which judges appeal to in their interpretations, are not extra-
legal, but they do not constitute the letter of the law.
Dworkin argues that in this manner we can explain how a judge can make a mistaken decision. For
example, consider the case of Olmstead vs. the U.S. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
secures the right of people against unreasonable searches and seizures. Traditionally, this has meant that
government officers could not enter a house without a search warrant, which would only be issued once a
judge is persuaded that there is probable cause. In 1928, the U.S. Government wiretapped a suspected
criminal’s telephone without a search warrant. Olmstead claimed that such action was prohibited by the
Fourth Amendment. The case came before the Supreme Court, which decided against Olmstead on the
grounds that wiretapping was not an act of physical intrusion and, therefore, was not prohibited by the
Amendment (Altman, 1996).
Dworkin’s position could be used to illustrate why this is a mistaken legal judgment. When the Fourth
Amendment was drafted, the technology of wire-tapping was not even imagined and, therefore, the courts
today must interpret the significance of the amendment for this new technological context. According to
Dworkin, this implies that the courts should look for the appropriate or fitting moral principle implicit in

8
the Fourth Amendment, such as the right to privacy. Given such a moral principle, we might argue that the
Court’s decision against Olmstead was mistaken.
This example also shows that an objection to Dworkin’s theory, sometimes voiced by legal realists, is
not valid. The objection is that few judges actually decide cases in the way that Dworkin describes because
his theory makes legal theory and the reasoning of judges very abstract and philosophical and, as such, it
does not correspond to the facts. The reply to this objection is that Dworkin’s theory is not an empirical
theory that yields psychological predictions concerning how judges actually perform their function but
rather it is a normative theory that prescribes how they should make decisions based on the nature of legal
interpretation.

An Objection from Critical Legal Studies

Another more serious objection claims that legal theory cannot be as Dworkin portrays it because
there is no coherent moral theory implicit in the law. The law of any land is full of moral contradictions,
and one cannot find a coherent set of moral principles in the legal canon. We can appreciate the force of
this objection by comparing the work of Dworkin with that of Lon Fuller, who has a theory of adjudication
similar to Dworkin’s. However, they differ in one fundamental respect; whereas Dworkin’s understanding
of the law reflects a liberal concern for equality, Fuller’s view mirrors a more conservative concern for
liberty. Both views are reflected in existing laws. This point reinforces the objection that the task Dworkin
sets for judges is impossible to accomplish.
The critical legal studies theorist, Roberto Unger, takes this kind of criticism a step further. He argues
that, once rule formalism is abandoned, traditional legal theory collapses into a political dispute. The law
already contains conflicting principles representing different political visions. For every principle, there is a
counter principle, and there is no way to adjudicate between these by appeal to some deeper third principle.
Unger thinks that, because legal decisions are underdetermined, they cannot be justified as correct or
incorrect. Additionally, he argues that, as a matter of fact, most legal decisions are an expression of the
conservative and generally mistaken assumption that social arrangements must carry on more or less as
before. They are simply expressions of political bias.

Objectivity without Rules

Dworkin tries to explain how it is legally possible for a court to make decisions that transcend the
letter of the law, as in the two cases of Palmer and Griswold. According to Dworkin, judges can and must
interpret the spirit of the law without becoming legislatures, and this is possible because of the nature of
legal interpretation. However, now, we have to consider the critical legal studies’ criticism that this
interpretation is underdetermined.
The issue is how is it possible for judges to make legally better or worse decisions, when the letter of
the law does not explicitly lay down what those decisions should be. To help resolve this problem, we shall
return to the relationship between rules and understanding. I shall argue that rules have two kinds of
inherent limitations that explain Unger’s objections to Dworkin’s theory but without vindicating them.

1) First, rules do not determine their own application. A rule does not specify how it should be applied.
Because of this, rules do not determine practice, but rather indeterminately guide it. In this way, they are
analogous to sign-posts rather than railway lines. Furthermore, legal understanding cannot be reduced to
solely knowing a set of rules. Because a rule does not determine how it should be applied, the legal
understanding of a judge cannot consist in simply knowing a set of rules codified in the law. Such
understanding requires knowing how to apply the rules appropriately and cannot be reduced to knowing yet
another set of rules without establishing a regress. Wittgenstein makes these points albeit in a different
context. He claims that there is no single correct way of following even a mathematical rule, such as ‘+2,’
where the correctness is established by the rule alone (Wittgenstein, 1953, para.186). In other words, the
rule alone does not determine that ‘144’ should follow ‘142’ in this series. It only functions as such given a
background of established mathematical practice, which normally we take for granted.

9
 Wittgenstein intends this point as an analogy for our use of language more broadly, especially general
terms. In other words, the idea of carrying on or proceeding in the same way (for example, in a
classification) cannot be predetermined by a rule alone. Ultimately, the point is that ‘the same X,’ and
correctness and incorrectness cannot be defined solely in terms of knowing a set of rules. This is because
knowing a rule does not determine how it should be applied; its application requires a context of practice.
Given this conclusion, even in non-problem legal cases, understanding a set of rules cannot consist in
a mechanical following of what they lay down. Even in standard cases, rules have to be applied, and no rule
can determine itself how it should be employed.
In this sense, Hart does not go far enough in dispelling rule formalism. When Hart mentions the open-
texture of legal concepts, he is referring to the gray or hazy areas where the rules have nothing clear to say.
However, this implies that, according to Hart, there are non-gray areas for which a judge simply follows
what is laid down by the rule. As mentioned earlier, Hart seems to accept rule formalism for non-problem
cases.

2) Second, moral principles necessarily underdetermine particular moral choices. To see why, we need to
distinguish reasons for action and conclusive reasons for action. A reason for action is some fact that is
relevant to what one should do. For example, if X will cause me pain, then there is a reason for me to avoid
X. A conclusive reason is a reason that is not overridden in the circumstances, all things considered. A
reason for action does not have to be conclusive. For instance, I may have a reason to avoid X because it is
painful, but there may be better reasons to endure the pain if, for example, X is a medical operation without
which my health will be endangered.
Moral principles can state that there is a general reason for or against a type of action. However, a
general principle cannot state truly that there is always a conclusive reason for or against a type of action.
This is because statements that indicate conclusive reasons are specific to circumstances. For example, no
moral rule can claim truly that there is a conclusive reason against killing a person in all circumstances.
There may be special circumstances in which there is a conclusive reason to kill a person. Nevertheless, a
general moral principle can affirm the weak claim that, in all circumstances, there is a non-conclusive
reason against killing. Furthermore, we can assert the general claim that there is a conclusive reason against
killing in most circumstances. But there is no general moral principle to the effect that there is always a
conclusive reason against killing in all situations.
Furthermore, we cannot hope to construct such a general rule by building all the exceptions into the
rule. This is basically because no general rule can cover all possible circumstances and exceptions
(Thomson, 2003, p. 135). In conclusion, specific moral decisions are not determined by general moral
principles. This is because general moral principles must cover all circumstances, and moral decisions are
specific to particular circumstances. In this way, morality is underdetermined by general rules or principles.

These two points about rules and principles explain part of what underlies the critical legal theorist’s
objections to Dworkin’s position. For both reasons, general moral principles underdetermine particular
legal and moral decisions. Nevertheless, this does not vindicate the critical legal theorist’s objection to
Dworkin’s theory because it does not imply that misinterpretation of the spirit of the law is impossible.
Furthermore, the two points do not imply that the law does not contain a coherent moral theory. Rather,
they imply that the moral theory insofar as it consists of principles underdetermines particular legal
decisions. Nevertheless, we can make legally mistaken judgments, but these mistakes cannot be defined
solely in terms of moral principles or legal rules. In other words, the following argument is not sound.

1. Objectivity in a judgment requires that there are covering rules that determine what counts as a
mistaken judgment
2. There are no such legal or moral rules.
3. Therefore, there can be no objectivity of legal judgments.

As indicated by Wittgenstein, we should challenge premise 1. Legal judgments can be mistaken and,
in that minimal sense, they are objective. However, this objectivity does not necessitate legal rules or moral
principles that determine what the correct judgment is (see Chapter 12). The concept of objectivity without
determining rules is compatible with the general thrust of Dworkin’s theory. In contrast, Hart would claim
that objectivity requires rules, except with regard to the gray areas. As a consequence, the critical legal

10
theorist challenge fails to recognize adequately the inherent difference between the positions of Hart and
Dworkin.

11
 2
Economics

Economic thinking has had a profound impact on society. It has benefited very many people
especially in the industrialized nations; increases in productive efficiency in the last two centuries are in
part a result of the improvements in economic theory. In contrast, perhaps, it can harm our culture and our
understanding of our own interests by reducing all concerns to the economic. This juxtaposition between
harm and benefit shows the importance of a satisfactory answer to the question: ‘What are the limits of
economic theory?’
Some economists have tried to give an economic analysis of family life and of the way we spend our
time (Becker, 1980; Sharp 1981). Other social scientists reject a purely economical account of such areas of
life. How far can economics be extended into social theory? Again, we need to know the limitations of
economic theory.
Here is another example of this need: we ban the buying and selling of persons, and yet we trade
animals, labor, education, and land. We regard these goods as market commodities, and assign them a
monetary price. On the other hand, we shrink from assigning a price to such things as love and friendship.
Why is this? Would it be a similar mistake to privatize the sea and sky? Again, we need to know the
boundaries of economic thinking.
In this chapter we will begin to explore these issues in three steps. In the first section, we will
examine the nature of the standard neo-classical economic theory with the aim of showing that the theory
has some normative assumptions. In the second section, we will criticize those assumptions by examining
the nature of well-being. Finally, in the third section, we will show how the best reply to these objections

SECTION I: Is Economics Normative?

Milton Friedman and Keynes agreed that economics is only a positive or descriptive science, and that
it is not also a normative theory. According to this view, economics deals with what is, and not with what
ought to be (Friedman, 1994). Its function is to make correct predictions, and this means that economic
hypotheses are to be tested like any other scientific claim. For example, increasing the money supply will
increase inflation and can decrease unemployment. A positive macro-economic theory will yield
quantitative predictions as to how much a given rise in the money supply will cause a rise in inflation in
specific conditions. This quantitative prediction can be tested against observations. According to this view,
normative judgments, for instance, concerning what a government ought to do are not a part of the science
of economics, which, for example, will not tell us whether the Government should prioritize decreasing
unemployment, even if that causes inflation. In short, economics will help us discover the most efficient
means to a given set of ends, but it will not tell us what the ends should be. For this reason, according to
Friedman, it is not normative.
Is this view correct? We need to examine two issues. First, do economic theories involve a priori
assumptions that articulate a model of rational choice, as opposed to consisting only in empirical
predictions? Second, does this model have normative implications? I shall argue for a positive answer to

12
both of these questions, and thereby contend that Friedman’s characterization of the nature of economic
theory is mistaken. Economics does have an implicit normative element.

a) A Priori
Some of the basic propositions of economic theory would not fare well under repeatable experimental
conditions. If they are empirical propositions, then they are false. One reason for this is that economic
claims depend on idealized models which assume, for instance, perfect and free information and that all
other things are equal. For example, in neo-classical micro-economic theory, one assumes perfect
competition in order to examine and predict the behavior of firms. However, real world market behavior is
only modeled approximately using perfect competition. No actual market meets the appropriate conditions.
Even in those that come closest, such as the stock and bond markets, information is imperfect and costly,
and players do not always act rationally. Nevertheless, such simplifying assumptions have a rationale;
without them, economic theory would be very difficult to apply because of the huge number of variables
involved in economic changes.
In short, standard neo-classical economic theory makes simplifying assumptions that are empirically
false. Nevertheless Friedman argues that this does not negate the value of the theory because it still can
yield useful and true predictions. For example, corporate managers usually behave as if they had the aim of
maximizing net profit and, irrespective of whether they actually do have such an aim, this assumption
allows us to predict their behavior. In other words, Friedman argues that even when the theory is false, it
makes useful predictions.
Friedman adopts this position for two reasons. First, he accepts a logical positivist view of science,
according to which all meaningful statements are either tautologies or empirical predictions. This view
rules out the possibility of a priori statements that are not analytic tautologies, such as a theory of
rationality, which might endanger the scientific and empirical status of economics. We will examine some
problems with logical positivism in a later chapter. Second, Friedman thinks that a theory of economics
should avoid value questions, which are supposed to be inherently subjective and threaten the scientific
status of economics.
An alternative to Friedman’s view would be that some of the fundamental propositions of economic
theory are a priori claims. Here is a brief sketch of two arguments in favor of this alternative. First,
propositions such as ‘price equals marginal cost’ cannot be treated as true empirical predictions. Without
adequate qualifications, they are usually false. However, once they are suitably qualified, with phrases such
as ‘all other things being equal’ or ‘in a perfectly competitive market,’ then they become a priori truths. For
example, the statement ‘price equilibrium in a perfectly competitive market is at the point where marginal
cost equals marginal revenue’ is an a priori claim. Given the conditions, price must be at that point of
equilibrium.
Second, the required qualifications lay down conditions that are never satisfied in reality. ‘All other
things being equal’ or ‘ceteris paribus’ is never true of social life; markets are not perfectly competitive;
and even the model of imperfect competition assumes perfect knowledge. Because the conditions are never
satisfied, the suitably qualified claims cannot function as empirical predictions. Consequently, they are a
priori.
b) Normative
Micro-economic theory has an a priori element because it implicitly contains a model of rationality or
rational choice, and that model consists of evaluative or normative a priori claims.
The argument for this conclusion consists of three steps. First, economic theory can predict human
behavior under certain conditions only because it offers an explanation of actions or choices, namely: a
person’s choices can be explained in terms of his or her attempting to maximize utility. Second, if
economic theory attempts to explain some human behavior, then it must do so by appeal to explanatory
reasons for action. For example, suppose that John must choose between two boxes, and that he picks the
red one. We can explain his action by citing a reason. Suppose, for example, he thought that the red one
contained more money than the blue one. In such a case, rationality is required to explain his action; one
assumes that he wants more money rather than less, all other things being equal, unless there is some good
reason to the contrary, and one assumes that he is rational at least to the extent of choosing in accordance
with this want. Given these assumptions, we can explain his action. Third, it is part and parcel of such
explanatory reasons that they can function also as evaluative reasons. Given only the information that the

13
red box contains more money than the blue, it would be irrational (in some sense, a mistake) to choose the
blue one. The better action is to choose the red, all other things being equal.
We may conclude that if economics explains actions, then it implies a theory of rationality, and this
theory of rationality is implicitly normative. The economic model of rationality seems to presume at least
one normative proposition, which is also a priori, namely ‘all other things being equal, it is better to choose
more utility rather than less.’
In summary, the argument that economics makes normative claims as follows.

1. To predict economic choices requires an explanatory theory of such actions.

2. Any explanation of actions must involve citing explanatory reasons and must assume that a
person is to a minimal extent rational.
3. Necessarily, explanatory reasons for action and rationality can function also as guiding reasons,
4. Necessarily, guiding reasons are normative.
5. Therefore, economic predictions have normative implications.

c) Economic Rationality

In his classic work, L. Robbins defines economics as the science that studies human behavior as a
relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses. He says that economics deals with
the decisions made under the constraint of scarcity (Robbins, p.15-6). We have seen that economic theory
requires a theory of rationality or rational choice. Now, we need to articulate and explain this theory, which
we can do in five steps.

1) First, we must assume that the preferences of any person are complete and transitive. They are complete
if, for all X and Y, the person either prefers X to Y, or Y to X, or is indifferent between them. In other
words, one cannot have indeterminate preferences. Preferences are transitive if, when person N prefers X to
Y and Y to Z, then N will prefer X to Z, for all alternatives X, Y and Z. A similar transitivity clause would
need to be constructed for the concept of indifference.

2) Second, given these two conditions, we may construct an idealized list of a person’s preferences that has
a weak ordering, which may be considered as an ordinal preference function.

3) From this, we may define rationality: a choice is rational if the person has an idealized preference
function, and does not prefer any option to the one chosen.

4) This basic theory can be extended in several ways. First, it can be modified to include uncertainties and,
thereby, it becomes expected utility theory; this modification has controversial aspects and, in any case, it is
not used often in standard economic models, which usually assume perfect information.

5) This basic theory can be extended into consumer theory by adding in two extra postulates. The first
states that a person’s preferences consist in bundles of commodities that are independent of any other
person’s preferences, and that the person prefers larger bundles to smaller ones of the same goods, ceteris
paribus. The second states that these bundles are subject to diminishing marginal rates of substitution: as
the amount of Y that a person has increases relative to X, he or she will be willing to exchange more of Y
in order to obtain a unit of X (Hausman, 1992, p.30). Given consumer theory, we can draw indifference
curves between any two bundles of goods, and from there, we can derive demand curves, which everybody
knows from school.

To return to an earlier point, we can see that the model aims to define an a priori normative conception of
rationality from the fact that we can support some of the above components with arguments. For example,
consider the requirement of transitivity, explained earlier. If transitivity fails, a person would prefer X to Y
and Y to Z, but also would prefer Z to X. The need for a condition that says that preferences must be
transitive in the model can be argued for as follows. Suppose a person has intransitive preferences, as
outlined above. Suppose that such an individual owns Z. In this case, he or she would willing to pay money
to exchange Z for Y, since he or she prefers Y to Z. Similarly, the individual also would be willing to pay

14
money to exchange Y for X, and X for Z. Therefore, a person with intransitive preferences who owns Z
would be willing to sell Z and pay money in a series of exchanges that would result finally in him or her
owing Z once again, and losing money in the process. Consequently, the person would quickly lose all of
his or her money (Hausman, 1992, p.17). Therefore, it is irrational to have intransitive preferences. The
point of the example is to show how the model of economic rationality is both a priori and normative: the
first because it is supported by argumentation and the second because it is supported by an appeal to
rationality. The theory does not make the empirical claim that people have transitive preferences. It makes
some minimal claims about what a rational person would do, and such claims can be supported
argumentatively. Insofar as the model has a normative a priori element, it is not refuted by the empirical
fact that sometimes people behave irrationally.

d) Some Standard Objections

Sometimes this basic model is criticized for being too idealized. For example, in reality, people do not
have complete preferences. Furthermore, we all have intransitive preferences as well as ones that depend on
other people’s preferences, and we behave irrationally. There are other criticisms in a similar vein. For
example, most versions of the model require the impossible condition of perfect and free information. Such
criticisms question the applicability of the economic model to, and its ability to make accurate predictions
in, an imperfect world in which information is never complete or free, and in which all other things are not
equal and humans are often irrational
However, these kinds of objections are not directly pertinent to our aims because we are considering
the model as a normative theory and not as an empirical one. We are examining it as a definition of rational
choice and, in this regard, the fact that people do not always conform to the model does not constitute an
adequate refutation of it. This theory of rational choice is not an empirical hypothesis, but rather it consists
of a priori normative statements that define rationality and, as such, it is not defeated by the fact that people
sometimes act irrationally.

SECTION II The Outline of a Normative Critique

A line of criticism that is more pertinent to our ultimate aims is to argue that the model does not
function well as a normative definition of rationality. In this regard, there are two important issues: first,
does the model capture reasonably well the idea of human happiness or well-being? Second, does economic
theory imply that utility is the only intrinsic value?

1) Well Being
We want our lives to improve. The economic model affirms implicitly that this improvement consists
in the satisfaction of more of the higher ranked preferences in each individual’s preference function.
However, is this an adequate analysis of human well-being? Elsewhere, I have argued that it is not
because preference satisfaction per se does not constitute the relevant values of self-interest (Thomson,
1984 and 1999). Neither harm nor well-being can be defined in terms of getting what one prefers or wants.
The preference theorist claims that well-being consists in the satisfaction of certain kinds of
preferences, and much of the work of these theories consists in supplying the conditions that the relevant
kinds of preferences must comply with in order to count towards well-being. Sometimes, these preferences
are characterized in hypothetical terms i.e. as the preferences one would have under certain ideal conditions
rather than as the preferences one actually does have. I shall return to this point later; for the moment, note
that the criticisms I shall make of the desire/preference theory also apply to these ideal preference theories.

1) Things that are good are not so just because we prefer or want them. Something that has no worth
apart from one’s desiring it has a comparatively trivial value, if any at all. The proposition ‘it is good solely
because I want or prefer it’ implies that it does not matter what I desire because what does matter is the
obtaining of what I want, whatever that happens to be. If there is no value in what one desires aside from

15
one’s wanting it, one may as well have wanted something else. Consequently, the notion of obtaining what
one wants or prefers does not provide a grip on what constitutes the intrinsic value of activities.
Of course, one can want something that is valuable independently of one’s desiring or preferring it. In
such a case, what one desires is valuable, but it is not the desire or preference that makes it so. In other
words, desired things can be important, but not simply because they are desired or preferred. Some of the
things that we want are valuable; others are not. There are valuable things that we do not want. So
preference is neither necessary nor sufficient for intrinsic value.
I would suggest that the relation between desire and value is as follows: desire functions as a guide to
what is valuable. This means that it does not define it. The evidence that it is a guide is that it is sometimes
misleading, for instance, when we want things that are bad for us. For example, I can be attracted to a job
that on the whole would not at all be good for me.

2) Thinkers who try to define value in terms of preference might reply to this suggestion as follows.
‘The desire itself was not misleading; the problem was that the desire was based on false beliefs. You had
false beliefs about the job and that is why you wanted it. Thus, one needs to correct one’s beliefs about the
objects of preference and, given this kind of correction, value can and should be defined in terms of
preference or what one wants.’
This type of theory is called the informed preference theory, according to which we should define
well-being in terms of the satisfaction of informed preferences. In other words, ‘Y has a greater value than
X for a person’ is constituted by his or her having an informed preference for Y rather than X.
However, this revised account also fails. First, it falsely assumes that desires can mislead only
because they are based on false beliefs. It supposes that knowing all the relevant information, I will
automatically and necessarily prefer only what is intrinsically best for me. Obviously, it is better to have an
informed guide than a misinformed one. However, the guide can mislead even when it is well informed.
Correcting false beliefs is not always enough. For example, when I feel ugly, my desires may be directed
towards ugly things. When I am in a bad mood, my preferences, even when informed, may not be for the
best for me. Consequently, even it is informed, desire remains as a guide to, but does not define, value.
This conclusion is reinforced by the following consideration: explanation runs from value to informed
preference rather than from informed preference to intrinsic value. When a person changes his or her
preferences subsequent to acquiring new information, this change may be explained and justified in terms
of the factual content of the information learnt. It is the factual content of the information, rather than the
change in preference that constitutes the value. One course of action is more preferable than another for a
person because of the facts about those options, and not because of the individual’s preference once that
person is informed of those facts. The facts explain and justify the individual’s informed preference. N’s
change in preference merely indicates his or her sensitivity to the different preferability of the options;
therefore, they are not constitutive of that preferability, but merely reflect it.

3) The preference theory of well-being suffers from another general important problem. Sometimes
what we personally need for an improved life may be a transformation of desire, rather than obtaining what
we want. For example, a person who is inhibited by many anxieties will have desires that reflect his or her
fears. For such a person a better life might involve being freed from such fearful desires. In other words,
sometimes, a higher quality of life requires a transformation of desire or preference. Furthermore, getting
what one wants is too limited a notion to capture the value possibilities that lie before us. Our desires are
limited by what we are. It is the nature of value judgments that they should reach out beyond what already
exists and point to something better. Basing well-being on preference and desire constricts this reaching
out. It limits possibilities to what is already conceived and wanted. In this way, desire provides too
restricted a view of well–being. It reaches only as far as the horizon prescribed by our wants, taking those
desires as a given. For this reason, well-being should not be defined in terms of what we want. Of course,
these negative points do not provide a positive account of well-being, but they do rule out the preference
theory.
If these lines of criticism are correct, then this is an important limitation of economic theory. In other
words, concepts such as ‘well-being,’ ‘a better quality of life,’ and even ‘consumer satisfaction’ are
essentially non-economic. We will return to this theme in Chapter 11.

b) Does the theory imply that Utility the only Intrinsic Value?

16
 Does the economic model of rational choice imply that utility is the only non-instrumental value?
First, let us distinguish instrumentally and intrinsically valuable. Something is only instrumentally valuable
if it is desirable for only what it causes or facilitates and not for what it is. On the other hand, something is
valuable intrinsically if it is valuable non-instrumentally, or if it is valuable for what it is. For example,
money is only instrumentally valuable because it is not valuable in itself. In contrast, happiness is usually
considered to be intrinsically or non instrumentally valuable. Instrumental value is entirely derivative on
intrinsic value; things have instrumental value only because other things have intrinsic value. (Here, as in
later chapters, the term ‘intrinsic’ means ‘non-instrumental’ and does not mean ‘non-relational’).
This distinction is important because economic activities, such as producing, selling and earning
income, are portrayed often as valuable only as a means to the obtaining and consuming of products and
services (for a criticism of this view, see Chapter 11). Furthermore, apparently, those products and services
are only valuable in relation to utility. In other words, goods and services also appear to be valuable only as
a part of utility or insofar as they are objects of highly ranked preferences.
Furthermore, there is another reason for thinking that utility ought to be the only non-instrumental
value according to standard economic theory: if such theory is committed to the claim that utility is the
only intrinsic good, it protects the putative scientific nature of economic theories. It means that we can
portray economic rationality purely as a question of efficiency. Since there is only one intrinsic value,
effectively all decisions become questions regarding the relative efficiency of the means to the
maximization of this one end. This diagnosis accords well with Friedman’s earlier comments about positive
economics being a science: it implies that all decisions within economic theory become factual as opposed
to normative. All economic assertions would be empirical claims about which means are the most efficient
or how to obtain the most benefit (or rather utility) for the least cost.

The thesis that economic theory implies that utility is the only intrinsic value requires an important
clarification. As already mentioned, one’s utility is not distinct from the satisfaction of one’s highest ranked
preferences. As Richard Posner affirms,

The most important thing to bear in mind about the concept of (economic) value is that it is based
on what people are willing to pay for something rather than on the happiness they would derive
from having it’ (Posner, 1981, p.60).

The claim that people maximize utility is equivalent to the assertion that they will choose what they
most prefer. Consequently, it would be a mistake to think that people want utility as something additional
to various bundles of goods and services. Therefore, strictly speaking, we should not portray goods and
services as a means to utility, as if utility were something distinct from or over and above our preferences
for goods and services. Utility is constituted by such the satisfaction of such preferences.
In the light of this point, we can distinguish having value from being or constituting a value. Thus, the
thesis implicit in economic theory is that utility is the only intrinsic value. But this does not imply the less
plausible claim that utility is the only thing that has intrinsic value. All of the many things that we want for
their own sake have intrinsic value, but the issue is whether their value solely consists in their having
utility, or their being objects of preferences. The economist’s claim is that utility is the only value and not
that only utility has value.
In summary, we can answer the question ‘Does neo-classical economic theory imply that utility is the
only non-instrumental value?’ affirmatively. This is the correct reply insofar as the theory asserts that for
something to be intrinsically valuable for a person is for that thing to be an object of preference for that
person. Consequently, the theory asserts that rationality is always a question of specifying the most
efficient means to a given end, and that the only end or value is utility conceived as the satisfaction of
preferences. In which case, according to the economic model of rational choice, utility is the only intrinsic
value.

c) Is Utility the Only intrinsic Value?

Many writers do criticize the standard economic theory of rationality precisely on the grounds that it
implies that utility is the only intrinsic value (see Sagoff, p.101). It seems that there are other values, such

17
as justice and truth, that cannot be regarded merely as instrumental to utility. Furthermore, following on
from the previous section, well-being itself might be best understood as involving a variety of non-
instrumental values. For example, friendship and aesthetic appreciation are construed more plausibly as
distinct intrinsic values rather than as solely instrumental. Given these points, if the economic model of
rational choice implies that utility is the only non-instrumental value then, it can be fairly criticized as
significantly inadequate on these grounds.

SECTION III A REPLY: MEASUREMENT

Probably the best reply to this objection takes neo-classical theory to a new level of sophistication. It
denies that utility is an intrinsic value, and instead claims that it is simply a comparative measure of the
value of different goods according to their position in the ordinal preference ranking of a person. According
to this new view, utility is a way to measure value.

Unfortunately, many economists do not differentiate between this claim and the thesis that utility is a
value. The two views are conflated because many economists are unwilling to distinguish between value
and its measurement since they think that value should be defined operationally through its measurement in
terms of rational choice and, ultimately, price. Value is how its measured. For instance, most economists
would claim that it is necessary and sufficient for two things to have the same value for a person that he or
she would be willing to swap them and pay the same price for them, all other things being equal. In other
words, according tot his view, the way that we define value and the way that we measure it are the same.
So let us consider the claim that utility is a measure of value when this view is held in conjunction
with the thesis that the measurement and what is measured are not distinct. According to such a view,
utility as a measure and as a value must be identified as the same because value is to be defined
operationally in terms of the way it is measured. Such a view is called ‘operationalism.’ It holds that a
procedure of measurement defines the relevant theoretical term. The physicist P.W. Bridgman (1927)
argued that all scientific concepts are synonymous with the operations or procedures that are used to
measure them. He concluded that science should not postulate the existence of entities that cannot be
measured by clear procedures. This view, which is similar to some forms of logical positivism, was
influential in the development of behavioral psychology, as well as economics (see Chapters 4 and 16).
Such a theory is open to two kinds of objections. Since these are contentious points that many
economists will not agree with, and we need to proceed carefully. First, it can be criticized on the grounds
that the way we measure something must be separated from what is measured. In other words, in this case,
a measurement of value is distinct from the value itself. The measurement of value should not be identified
with the value that is measured. To assert that something is valuable is roughly to affirm that it provides a
reason for action or choice. This is an important point that we shall return to later when we examine cost-
benefit analysis.
A problem with an operational semantic definition becomes apparent when we consider the following
quote from a behaviorist psychologist, who attempts to define ‘behavior’ operationally:

Perhaps, then, the best way to define behavior is simply to consider it to be nothing more than the
sum total of the measures and operations that are used to measure it’ (Uttal, p.165; see Chapter 4).

What does this final ‘it’ refer to? Behavior! The definition is viciously circular because it implies that
behavior is no more than a measure of behavior, which is no more than a measure of behavior, which is….
This infinite regress entails that, given the operational definition, there is nothing to measure. In order for
there to be something to measure, then the thing measured must have a specification apart from the way we
measure it. It cannot be defined semantically solely in terms of the measurement. However, this does not
mean that it cannot be referred to through the measurement; ‘behavior is what we measure in the following
way...’ refers to behavior, but it does not provide the sole and complete semantic definition of the term.
Similarly, value cannot be defined solely in terms of its economic measurement.
The second argument against operational definitions is as follows: if one defines X in terms of some
way of measuring X, then the question of whether there are better or alternative ways of measuring X

18
logically cannot even be raised. The operational definition implies that such questions are meaningless but,
since they are plainly not, the definition must be mistaken. This does not mean that natural and social
scientists cannot or should not seek ways to measure a phenomenon (or operationalize a concept) rather it
implies that these do not count as complete definitions of the term’s meaning.

Finally, this view can be criticized also on the grounds that, because it identifies utility with value, it
is still committed to the assertion that utility is the only non-instrumental value. In other words, the whole
point of arguing that utility is a measure of value was to silence the criticism that there are other values
apart from utility. But the operationalist definition of value makes this strategy fail because the definition
makes utility a value and the sole value, after all.

Utility as a Measure without Operationalism

The sophisticated idea that utility is a measure of value rather than being a value does not need to be tied to
operationalism. One could hold the thesis that utility is a measurement of value when this view is held in
conjunction with the assertion that measurement and what is measured are distinct.

Such a position would permit one to argue in favor of value pluralism but could be combined with the
claim that utility is the best way to measure certain kinds of values.

However, in this case, utility and value are separate and, consequently, we would require some definition of
value that makes it independent of preference functions and utility. This requirement is philosophically and
practically important for several reasons. Primarily, we need such a definition in order to evaluate whether
measurement of value through preference functions and, ultimately, price is always an appropriate way to
measure value. For example, when we consider policy decisions made on the basis of cost/benefit analysis,
we need to know whether this analysis is an accurate and fair way to measure the values involved in the
decision. Furthermore, as we recognized in the previous section, we need to know whether the notion of
utility is an accurate measure of the values associated with human well-being. In short, this first view has
the rather dramatic implication that the economic model is radically incomplete. It needs to be
supplemented with a non-economic theory and definition of value.

SUMMARY

Because economics tries to explain choices and actions, it is necessarily also an a priori and normative
theory of rationality. Once this theory is made explicit as such, it is vulnerable to the objections that well-
being cannot be understood as the satisfaction of preferences and that utility is not the only intrinsic value.
Economics cannot be portrayed as a value-neutral science of economic prediction because it contains
implicitly a normative theory of rational choice. This model is open to two serious objections. The first is
that it assumes that the value of a person’s well-being should be defined in terms of his or her preferences,
and that this is an inadequate conception of well-being. The second is that the model assumes falsely that
utility is the only non-instrumental value.
If it is responded on behalf of the model that utility is not a value at all because it is a measurement of
value, then we shall argue that the standard economic model does not answer adequately both of the
following questions

a) Is utility a measurement of value?

b) Is utility an intrinsic value?

First, let us assume that a positive reply to both questions would be a contradiction because if X is a
measure of Y, then X cannot be identical to Y. In other words, assume that value cannot be defined solely
in terms of its economic measurement. Given this assumption, if it is argued that utility is a way to measure
value without being a value then this signifies that we must find a definition of value outside economics,
and that economics is radically incomplete. It deals only with means and the measurement of value, but not
with values themselves.
Second, let us assume that the initial assumption is denied, i.e. assume that value can be defined solely
in terms of its economic measurement. Given this, then utility is an intrinsic value after all, and that the

19
original criticisms of the thesis that it is the only intrinsic value become relevant once again. Furthermore,
we may support the initial assumption, and challenge its denial, by arguing that operational definitions that
identify the way to measure something with the thing measured are mistaken.

20
 3
The Social Sciences

Writing about village life in Vietnam, the anthropologist Samuel Popkin notes that many collective
community projects fail. He explains this in terms of individual villagers making calculated, self-interested
decisions not to participate in the projects. He says, ‘I assume that the individual weighs his decision about
participation in the supply of these public goods’ (Popkin, 1979, p.24). Popkin would try to explain as
much of a society as he can in terms of the economically rational decisions of individuals.
In sharp contrast, concerning a Balinese cockfight, Clifford Geetz, writes ‘The culture of a people is
an ensemble of texts’ (Geetz, 1973, p. 452). According to Geetz, social scientists should be interpreting
cultural practices, by revealing the local meanings of a practice, rather than trying to explain them (Geetz,
1983, p.10). According to Geetz, the method that Popkin advocates imposes a Western economic
conception of rationality on an Asian society.
Geetz and Popkin embody opposing attitudes to two fundamental problems that plague the
methodology of the social sciences. First, should the social sciences investigate cultures as wholes, or
rather as groups of individuals? For example, how should we explain marriage and burial customs? Can we
explain such cultural practices in terms of the psychology of individual people? Or, is a culture something
over and above the individuals?
Second, should the social sciences try to give causal explanations of social practices and institutions,
rather like the natural sciences do? Or instead, do the social sciences have a special aim, that of
understanding a culture, which excludes causal explanations?

Section I: the Classification

Many methodological issues in the social sciences revolve around these two groups of questions. We
can organize the major traditional approaches to social science methodology around them. Following
Martin Hollis, we can divide the traditional approaches into four categories or boxes.

CAUSAL
EXPLANATION UNDERSTANDING

HOLISM 4. Social Structures 3. Cultural Meaning

INDIVIDUALISM 1. Individual Behavior 2.Individual Meanings

21
 The numbering is purely arbitrary. I do not claim that box 4 is a more advanced position than box 1,
nor that box 1-type theories are historically first. Furthermore, not all social theories can be easily slotted
into one of these categories. However, this classification is useful because it not only reflects general
philosophical views but also mirrors different practices in the social sciences. By examining these boxes,
we can gain more insight into the relation between the social and the natural sciences.
The views in categories 2 and 3 hold that understanding a social phenomena requires interpreting its
meaning, which is very different from merely providing a causal explanation of the phenomena. Views 1
and 4 deny this: according to them, understanding social phenomena is merely a question of providing an
adequate causal explanation.

Box 1:
This category consists in theories that try causally to explain social phenomena in terms of the behavior or
decisions or the nature of the individual people who compose that society.
This kind of view was advanced by Thomas Hobbes, who tried to explain the structure of the state and
other social phenomena in terms of the rational behavior of self-preserving individuals. More recently,
some social anthropologists have followed Hobbes in advocating a rational choice theory that tries to
extend the rational explanations of behavior offered in economics to the social field. This approach can be
found in contemporary game theory and the famous prisoner’s dilemma.
However, box 1 type theories do not have to be linked to economics. Sociobiological theories of
social customs also would belong in box 1 because they try to provide causal individualistic explanations of
social practices based on biological traits.

Box 2:
Theories in box 2 argue that the social sciences do not causally explain social phenomena. Instead they
should interpret the meanings of social practices for the individual people involved. The social sciences aim
to understand the view of the participants. For example, Max Weber tries to distinguish the social from the
natural sciences by introducing the concept of Verstehen (or interpretive understanding) (Weber, 1949, p.
76). However, Weber asserted that a society is a collection of individuals and, as a consequence, he was
opposed to the idea of sociology as the uncovering of social structures that are not based on individual
behaviors (box 4).
Schutz has a similar view, arguing against the neutral and external viewpoint advocated by theorist of
type 1; he claimed that the social sciences must consist in an interpretative understanding of the lives of
individual persons within a culture (A. Schutz, 1962).

Box 3:
Box 3 theories agree with box 2 that the social sciences should try to understand meanings, rather than give
causal explanations. However, they disagree with box 2, in that these descriptions should be at the level of
cultures and not individual people. This position is adopted by Clifford Geetz, who tries to show the
cultural significance of cock fighting by describing it as a symbol for aspects of social and status relations.
Social science is hermeneutical and can be compared to interpreting texts. Amongst philosophers, Peter
Winch argues for this kind of position by adapting the later work of Wittgenstein; we shall be examining
his arguments below (Winch, 1958 and Taylor, 1985).

Box 4:
These are various holistic theories according to which social phenomena should be given a non-
individualistic causal explanation. We can place the following theories in this category.
In Marxist theory, social phenomena are explained in terms of the power relations between the classes
in a given system or mode of production (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.1, 1867). For example, Marx himself
explains the enclosure system of agriculture as a move from a feudal to a capitalist mode of production.
This is a non-individualist causal explanation, which belongs in box 4.

22
 The structuralist Levi-Strauss advocates that the social sciences should seek structural features that are
common to all societies. He compares these features to the deep grammar common to all languages. Both in
anthropology and linguistics, we need structural abstract models that make observed facts intelligible. Levi-
Strauss tries to explain social phenomena in a way that goes beyond the characterizations a society would
give of itself. This makes his position distinct from a box 3 theory. Also, Levi-Strauss explicitly denies
individualistic psychological explanations of social phenomena. He claims to ‘dissolve man’ and Foucault,
echoing Nietzsche, calls structuralism ‘the death of man.’ The theory does not belong in either box 1 or 2 or
3.
Durkheim also thinks that social facts cannot be explained individualistically because they are
expressions of a collective or social consciousness. For example, in The Elementary Forms of Religious
Life (1912), he explains the phenomena of religion in terms of their function in unifying a community.
Malinkowski and, more recently, Marvin Harris also give such functionalist explanations of social
phenomena, and these too belong to the fourth category.

Section II: Understanding versus Explanation

According to the positivist Comte (1798-1857), social scientists should seek to discover the general
laws that govern social changes and that explain why a society is as it is. According to this view, the main
function of a social theory is to explain by citing causes in much the same way as the natural sciences.
The philosopher Peter Winch opposes this idea. He argues that the social sciences are not concerned
with causal explanations because there are no causal laws governing societies. Causal laws and
explanations are the province of the natural sciences, such as physics. The social sciences do not conform
to natural law-like pattern because they aim to understand cultural practices, and this requires making sense
of them from the point of view of the participants. Cultural studies aim to make the meaning of an activity
evident; this hermeneutical exercise of interpretation is very different from the causal explanations of the
natural sciences.
This very brief portrait of an old debate in the social sciences shows that the discussion is overly
polarized. On the one side, there is the position that assimilates the social sciences into the natural sciences
and impose a positivistic method on both. On the other side, there is the view that draws a very radical line
between the two sciences.
We shall argue that Winch is right to claim that the social sciences involve concepts, such as meaning,
that are different from those of physics. However, on the other side, this does not mean that the social
sciences can dispense with causal explanations. To argue for this conclusion, we shall examine briefly the
philosophy of mind.

Lessons from the Philosophy of Mind

What is the relationship between mental and brain states? There are at least three distinct issues
disguised in this one question that are important for the social sciences. We shall outline a position
regarding these issues, but sketching only briefly the relevant arguments.
1) Ontology
For nearly four hundred years, thinkers understood the mind/body relation ontologically, in terms of what
exists. The dualists, following Descartes, argued for the existence of a non-material mind distinct from the
physical body, and the materialists denied this.
However, this ontological discussion is sterile. First, the composition of the mind is not directly
relevant to understanding the nature of awareness. Like materialism, dualism per se does not explain
consciousness. If it is difficult to imagine how the physical brain could be conscious, then it is equally hard
to explain how a non-material soul could be conscious. Merely postulating the existence of non-material
entities does not explain how mental states are possible. Nor does denying their existence. Discovering
what we are composed of does not amount to an understanding of the mind, though it might be a step on
the way. More fruitful discussions about the nature of the mind concern, for example, introspective or
subjective versus functionalist or behavior-based definitions of mental content (Thomson, 2002).

23
2) Reduction
The natural sciences are partly characterized by their extensionality. Such theories consist in extensional
sentences, in which equivalent or co-referring terms can be substituted without changing the truth-value of
the sentence as a whole. ‘Water is H2O’ is extensional because for ‘water,’ we can substitute any
expression that refers to water (for example, ‘the substance that fish live in’). In a sense, extensional
sentences are true from any point of view, and this is why the natural sciences consist of such propositions.
However, sentences about our mental states and about linguistic meaning are non-extensional or
intensional. In the sentence ‘John believes that water is H2O,’ we cannot substitute just any words that refer
to water. If we replace the word ‘water’ with the phrase ‘the substance that Garrett drunk on the 4th May,
2011 at 22.15 hours’ then the overall sentence can be false. John does not believe that. Sentences of the
form ‘John believes that p’ characterize the content of an individual’s belief from his or her point of view. I
may want or believe something under one description, but not under another. A faithful characterization of
my desire or belief must reflect this.
Psychological statements are intensional because and insofar as they specify the intentional content of
mental states. They reflect the point of view from which, and the description under which, we perceive and
want things. They mirror the about-ness, or intentionality, of mental states. Everyday psychology and the
social sciences consist largely in such intensional statements and, in this way, they are fundamentally
different from the natural sciences.
Theories concerning the natural and psychological sciences try to explain the relation between
intensional and extensional sentences. For example, reductionist theories claim that intensional or
psychological statements can be reduced to a complex set of extensional statements about the neurological
state of the person. Notice that reductionism is a semantic thesis about the relationship between two sets of
sentences. It is not an ontological claim. This last point is important, as we shall now see.
It is a common mistake to assume that materialism requires reductionism. Materialism states that only
physical things exist. It is an ontological claim. Reductionism is the thesis that intensional sentences can be
reduced to extensional ones. It is a semantic claim. Reductionism is false if there are two irreducible ways
to characterize a person, extensionally and intensionally. Reductionism can be false even if materialism is
true because complexly organized matter, such as a functioning brain, can be described both intensionally
and extensionally. A group of psychological descriptions and a set of neurological statements both can be
true in virtue of the same facts without the former being reducible to the latter. Even if everything is
composed of matter, still there can be irreducible psychological or intensional descriptions. Therefore,
materialism need not espouse reductionism, and avoiding reductionism does not require ontological
dualism. The semantic and ontological issues are distinct.

3) Explanation
We have just seen the following important point. The psychological and the physical are two irreducible
ways of describing a person without abandoning a materialist ontology. A similar point can be applied to
explanation. Corresponding to the two ways of describing, there can be two types of causality as follows.

a) Between two events described extensionally, as physical changes, there would be a causal relation
according to the standard scientific model of causality. The two events, described extensionally would
be linked via appropriate physical laws.

b) Between the same two events described intensionally, there would be a causal relation without a
physical causal law. For example, John’s belief changes, which causes a change in his desires. Such a
psychological change is not describable using the laws of physics. This is not to say that it is
incompatible with them. At the psychological level, we have causes without natural laws.

Employing this idea, let us consider the relation between psychological and neurological explanations.
Some changes in the brain can be described both neurologically (extensionally) and psychologically
(intensionally). In the first case, the description of the change will accord with a physical law. In the second
case, when it is characterized in terms of the content of a mental state, the change is caused but not
according to some physical law (Davidson, 1980)

24
 Furthermore, these points also can be applied fruitfully to actions. Like mental states, actions are
intentional and are described intensionally. Suppose that you water the garden and, as a result, a spider dies.
This does not mean that you deliberately killed the spider. We can distinguish the action from its
unintended consequences. As an action performed by a person, behavior must be characterized with the
appropriate intensional description.
We make sense of a person’s actions by citing his or her reasons for performing the action, which are
usually the appropriate beliefs and desires that caused the action. For example, John dances in the rain. We
can understand his strange conduct by knowing the reasons he had for so behaving. The action answers
some want of his that is directed by a belief. The belief and desire make the action intelligible. By
describing the desired aspect of what John wanted, we can make sense of his actions.
Nevertheless, the action consists in a set of physical movements. In other words, the same events
described intensionally as an action can also be characterized extensionally as a set of bodily motions. The
relevant kind of explanation will be different in the two cases. As an action, we explain the events by citing
the agent’s reasons. As a physical movement, described extensionally, we explain the events by specifying
the relevant causal mechanism and natural laws.
Let us put a little order in these points. From this discussion of action, five theses emerge that are
important for the social sciences:

a) The Hermeneutics of Action

Everyday psychology is hermeneutical and concerned with interpretation because actions have intentional
content or meaning. They have content because the individual performs those actions for a reason. We can
interpret the action by knowing the reasons that make the action intelligible from his or her point of view.

b) Reasons are Causes

A person performs an action for a reason when those reasons cause the action. In the case of psychological
explanations, the actions are caused by intentional mental states. Consequently, we can interpret or make
sense of an action by knowing its psychological causes. In other words, reasons can be causes. These
psychological causes have their effect by virtue of the content of the relevant mental states. For example,
John wanted to show off and so he danced in the rain.
We can divide the argument in favor of reasons being causes into two steps. First, there are several
ways to make an action intelligible. For example, there are numerous possible reasons why John danced in
the rain, all of which will show desirable aspects of the behavior. However, most of these will not be
relevant to this particular case; only some of them will apply.
Second, what distinguishes these actual reasons from the merely possible ones is that only the actual
reasons were causally effective in bringing about the action. Suppose John danced in the rain because it
was cooling. Then, this is the reason that caused him to dance or that is causally operative. To give the
proper explanation of why he acted as he did requires citing the causally operative reason, namely the
desires and beliefs that were causally active in this specific case. It is not sufficient to merely make sense of
the action without specifying the sense that caused the action (Davidson, 1980 and Habermas, 1971).

c) Psychological Causes without Natural Laws

So the idea that actions must be interpreted hermeneutically does not preclude them being caused.
However, psychological causes do not conform to the model of causation appropriate for the physical
sciences. They do not involve physical causal laws because such causes explain by virtue of their
intentional content. It is what John wanted and believed that explains his conduct.

d) Two Types of Explanation

Actions can be described in two ways: intensionally as meaningful actions and extensionally as mere
physical movements. Corresponding to these two types of description, there are two kinds of explanation.

i) When described intensionally, we regard the action as an action performed by a person, as behavior
caused and explained by his or her wants and beliefs. The psychological explanation of an action involves
interpreting the reasons that make sense of the action and that caused the action without citing physical
causal laws. In brief, the intentionality of mental states and actions does not preclude causation.

25
ii) When described extensionally, we think of the action as a series of physical events caused according to
physical causal laws. Described as a set of physical movements, it can be explained physically by citing the
relevant causal laws.

In summary, because the same event can be described both intensionally as an action and
extensionally as a set of physical movements, it can be explained in at least two ways.

e) Physical Causal Mechanisms without Reduction

The next point is that the same event can have the two kinds of explanation without the former being
reducible to the latter. Psychological explanations cannot be reduced to neurological ones.
Nevertheless, the neurological changes may be the causal mechanism of the psychological change.
The first may be the causal mechanism for the other but, again, without the psychological explanation
being reducible. In other words, underlying any psychologically-described change, there is an extensionally
described alteration explicable in terms of physical laws (Little, 1991).

Summary
Let us return to the main overall conclusions regarding the philosophy of mind:

c) Psychology consists in intensional sentences. The claim that such sentences are not reducible to the
extensional sentences of natural sciences is compatible with a materialist ontology.

d) There are two types of causal descriptions: extensional ones that involve causal laws and psychological
or intensional ones that do not.

e) Underlying the causality described intensionally, there is a causal mechanism described extensionally
(this point will be important for section III).

These important results can help us draw provisional conclusions about the nature of the social sciences
and their relation to the natural sciences, and thereby assess the traditional positions outlined in the system
of classification given at the beginning.

Back to the Social Sciences

Winch and others are right to claim that there is an important difference in kind between the natural
and social sciences. Although he never explains it like this, the former deal with things described
extensionally, and the latter with things described intensionally. In other words, the social sciences deal
with cultural practices that have an intentional content or meaning. In this way, Winch is right to draw our
attention to the similarities between the social sciences and studies of linguistic meaning, and to contrast
both with the natural sciences. Because of this intensionality and intentionality, the social sciences are
essentially hermeneutic and, hence, Geetz’s comparison of the Balinese cockfight to a text, mentioned at
the beginning, is appropriate.
However, once we portray the difference Winch is aiming for in these terms, then we can see that
there is no need to deny causality in the social sciences. Indeed, we need both interpretation and causality.
We make sense of cultural practices by showing what the participants saw as desirable about them; we cite
their reasons for participating i.e. those that were causally operative (Habermas; Little). This means that we
cannot oppose understanding and causal explanation, as Winch and others do, and as is portrayed by the
traditional categories of boxes 1 and 4 versus 2 and 4. Understanding requires knowing which meanings
were causally operative.
This does not involve assimilating the social sciences into the natural ones because social causal
explanations require understanding or interpretation. We have to understand a social practice by correctly
identifying its meaning for the participants. The causal explanation of intensionally described social
phenomena requires us to interpret them. In summary, meaningful social customs can have causes, and we
shall examine the methodological implications of this point later.

26
Section III: Holism versus Individualism
Many social theorists argue that society is composed of individual people and that, because of this,
social phenomena should be explained in individualistic terms. This is the position of theorists in boxes 1
and 2. In contrast, Durkheim argued vigorously that there are social facts that cannot be reduced to claims
about individuals.
Many people feel the force of both sides in this debate and, perhaps, we can assume that there is
something right about both sides. In this section, we will examine the ways in which both sides of this
debate are right and wrong by using some of the conclusions from our brief incursion into the philosophy
of mind.
The most important lesson to draw from that debate was that there are several different problems
disguised as one. Similarly, individualism and holism involve different issues sheltering under one wider
umbrella. For the sake of clarity, we must separate the different claims. The individualist could be making:

a) An ontological claim: i.e. all societies are composed of individual people;

b) A semantic claim: i.e. all statements about social behavior involving social concepts can be reducible
to claims about individual behavior that does not involve social concepts;

c) An explanatory claim: i.e. any explanation of how a culture or society behaves must be cast in terms of
the behavior of the individual people concerned.

I shall argue that the first of these claims is true, but relatively uninteresting; that the second is false;
and that the third is also false. These conclusions are implicit in what we have already seen regarding the
philosophy of mind.

a) Ontology
The ontological claim seems obviously true. A society is made up of people. A social custom is composed
of what the people who follow it actually do, and a social institution is not an entity distinct from the people
involved in it. What is less obvious is whether the other two claims (i.e. b and c above) follow from this. I
shall argue that they do not. Individualists tend to assume that, because any society is composed of people,
the reductive thesis must be true, and consequently, so must the explanatory claim.
However, we saw in the philosophy of mind that, even if ontological materialism is true, this does not
mean that reductionism is. Non-reductive materialism states that there are two kinds of description both
potentially true by virtue of the same facts, and neither reducible to the other. Reductionism is a semantic
thesis. Materialism is an ontological thesis.

b) Reductive
The reductive claim (i.e. b above) seems false. Many of our desires and beliefs already have an
ineliminable social content. For example, a person goes to see a football game and hopes that the home
team will win. These beliefs and desires involve social concepts, such as ‘team,’ ‘win,’ ‘game’ and these
concepts rely on a wider nexus of other social concepts, such as ‘player,’ ‘spectator,’ ‘work’ and ‘money.’
Furthermore, there is no way to eliminate these social concepts from our psychological descriptions of the
person, while still remaining faithful to what he or she thinks or wants. In this case, the person’s wants
already imply such social concepts and, consequently, such statements about the social behavior of
individuals cannot be reduced to statements about individuals that does not involve social concepts. Thus,
the reductive thesis is false. Notice that the issue is not who the statements are about: the un-eliminable
social content is ascribable to the individual and the denial of the reductive thesis does not require reifying
social institutions as some thing over and above individuals.
Before moving on, let us note two clarifications. First, in a sense, all concepts are social because they
are formed socially, and also because meaning has an essentially social and public nature. However, this is
not the point at issue here, which is that some beliefs have a social content and others do not. For example,
the belief that the banks are closed on Sundays is social because it involves the concepts of social

27
institutions such as ‘bank,’ closed’ and ‘Sunday.’ In contrast, the belief that electrons have a negative
electric charge does not have a social content.
Second, the reductive thesis in the social sciences (i.e. all or some claims about how a society behaves
are reducible to statements about how individual people in that society behave) is essentially different from
that in the philosophy of mind (i.e. all psychological statements can be reduced to neurological ones). The
difference is that, whereas the second reductive thesis involves a putative reduction of intensional claims to
extensional ones, the first does not. It involves a reduction of social statements to claims about individuals.

c) Explanation
Social marriage customs are constituted by what individual people do (i.e. thesis a above). Despite the
failure of reductionism, is the explanatory claim true? Can marriage customs be explained by explaining
why the individuals concerned behave in the way they do?
We can see why they cannot, by examining the differences between physiological and psychological
explanations. Because they pertain to different kinds of descriptions of a person, these two explanatory
modes involve different levels of regularities. In the extensional mode, we are interested in fine-grained
regularities that obey causal laws. In the intensional mode, we are interested in intentional regularities that
make sense from the agent’s perspective. We are concerned with content.
In this, there is a lesson for individualism. Social explanations do not target regularities that obey
natural causal laws. They aim for social regularities between and within cultures. These social regularities
are composed of the actions of individuals within those societies. But, as the earlier argument against social
reductionism informs us, the explanation of these individual actions will use and require autonomous social
concepts. Reduction is impossible because there is a circle of explanation from the social to the individual
and back again. The parts and the whole of a society are in an interlocking interdependence. The whole
(society) is composed of the parts (individuals), but to describe what the parts are doing, one needs to refer
back to the meanings of the whole. This implies that, although a society is composed of individuals, social
descriptions and explanations form an autonomous level that cannot be reduced to the psychology of
individuals.
This echoes the earlier conclusion regarding psychology. Although an individual is composed of cells,
psychological descriptions and explanations form an autonomous level that cannot be reduced to the
neurological and physiological. However, the reason for the conclusion is different in the two cases.

1. Regarding the psychological-neurological, it is due to the impossibility of reducing intensional

statements to sets of extensional statements. A group of extensional statements do not entail an
intensional one.
2. Regarding the social-individual, it is due to the impossibility of reducing social claims to sets of
statements about what individuals do. What the individual does, wants and believes already requires
and involves the social.

In both cases, composition does not require reduction. In this way, the thesis of individualism
concerning explanation is false. Nevertheless, there is another sense in which it is has something true to
say. To see this, let us return to the philosophy of mind once again. We saw that psychological explanations
are causal, without being characterizable in terms of physical laws, and this means that they are not
reducible to neurological explanations. However, at the same time, we also saw that the micro- or
neurological level provides a causal mechanism for the psychological. Any psychological description of an
alteration supervenes or overlays a set of physical descriptions of the change.
Analogous points apply to the relations between social and individualistic explanations in the social
sciences. Any social change is composed of changes in individuals; and, in this sense, any social change
requires the individual level as a causal mechanism (Little, 1991). At the same time, this does not mean that
social explanations can be reduced to individualistic ones.

Section IV: Some Conclusions about Practice

28
 We may conclude that none of the four traditional categories reflect an adequate methodology in the
social sciences. This does not mean that everybody is wrong, but rather that everybody is partly right. Let
us review the important lessons.
Box 1 theories, like most forms of naturalism, do not sufficiently take into account the intentionality
of actions and, consequently, of social practices. This is why the explanations they offer sometimes feel, at
best, like cultural impositions and, at worst, crude reductions. Intentionality requires that the content of a
practice must be described in terms that reflect the participants’ own experience of their practice or custom.
This is what intentionality is. Consequently, the hermeneutical approach is a necessary ingredient of the
social sciences; the meaning of the activity in question needs to be interpreted. This is beginning to appear
too much like an argument in favor of box 3, so let us move on and examine its limitations.
Box 3 restricts the social sciences to only describing cultural practices in their own terms. If
interpretive understanding requires seeing the sense that a culture makes of its own practices, then this
means that we must try to characterize those practices only in the terms that would be used by or within
that society. This means that we cannot re-describe it in other terms (those not used in the society itself).
This has severe drawbacks:

1. It means that there is no possibility to compare different cultures, for example, to find similarities
between them. For, doing that requires using concepts not native to that culture in order to understand
it better, which is exactly, of course, what box 3 excludes. Each culture becomes like an island that
must be understood only on its own terms. This kind of position would tend to lead to a form of
cultural relativism.

2. Such theories eschew the idea of giving causal explanations of cultural or social phenomena in the
mistaken belief that all causal explanation has to follow causal laws. This restricts the social sciences
to description or interpretation. There is no doubt that an insightful description of a social practice will
deepen understanding and that this is an essential aspect of the social sciences. However, if this were
the only function of the social sciences, then this would automatically preclude any structuralist or
functionalist or economic explanations of cultural practices.

The idea that social causal explanations do not have to follow the model of the natural sciences
liberates us from this dichotomy between box 1 and 3. Understanding a cultural practice must require
having correct intensional descriptions of it, which requires interpreting the sense of the practice from that
cultural point of view. This is the point that boxes 1 and 4 do not take into account.
However, the need for hermeneutic interpretation does not preclude also giving causal explanations of
the practices that are couched in terms that would not be used by the participants. Despite this, given what
we concluded earlier, any causal explanation cannot have reductive pretensions. The social level requires
descriptions and explanations that are independent from the individual level.
Affirming this, of course, does not give us any insight into what the relevant social causal
explanations should be; it merely affirms that such an aim is possible, without falling into the usual
reductionist and positivist traps. We must distinguish understanding a cultural practice from explaining it.
In this sense, box 3 theories are right to stress the primary importance of interpretation in the social
sciences, but wrong to claim that this excludes explanatory hypotheses.
A couple of other points follow that are important in relation to boxes 2 and 4. First, social
explanations (for example, of the functionalist) presuppose an underlying individualistic causal mechanism,
even though they are not reducible to such mechanisms. For example, showing that something is beneficial
does not show that it came about because of that benefit. If it is to count as an explanation, function must be
accompanied by a causal mechanism. Similar points can be made about structural explanations. Sometimes
in the social sciences, the causal mechanisms (for example, the details of the particular historical process)
are more important or relevant than an overarching functionalist or structuralist explanation, which omit the
specifics.
Second, the remark about causal mechanisms reminds us that statistical inferences do not offer causal
explanations. Relevant statistical information indicates the need for a causal explanation. It points towards
the existence of an underlying causal mechanism. But, in itself, it does not provide any causal explanation.
Naturalism and hermeneutics must live together in the social sciences. Once we get rid of false
assumptions about reduction and causation, we see that they can. This is not a plea for methodological
pluralism. Rather, the point is that this is the only way in which we can form an understanding of the

29
function of the social sciences that does not make them part of the natural sciences and that, at the same
time, treats humans and their societies as a part of the natural world. Dissolving the nature-culture divide
does not require absorbing the social into the natural sciences.

30
 4
Psychology

The primary distinction between the natural and psychological sciences is not ontological. Both
investigate things made of matter. The physical sciences study those things as matter and the psychological
study them as psychology. These simple points can constitute an illumination for our study of persons
because they imply a non-reductive, non-eliminative materialism. This is a position that avoids, on the one
hand, forms of ontological dualism that contradict science. Minds and mental states exist only as brain
states. On the other hand, it resists the reductive and eliminative tendencies in science. In this way, it
affirms the idea that psychology does not have to be reductive or eliminative to be scientific. Consequently,
this type of position has important implications for psychology. Negatively, it implies that psychology does
not have to pursue a reductive or eliminative program to remain faithful to a materialist ontology. More
positively, it means that psychology can respect the autonomy of the intentional without entangling itself in
ontological dualism. These points will help towards resolving a dispute concerning psychology, namely in
what ways it should aim to be scientific.
Psychology appears to be a bewildering array of different methods ranging from behaviorism to those
of child developmental psychology, from neurology to social science, and from computational models to
psychoanalysis. It is very difficult to make sense of this wide variety of approaches. Consider perception.
Should we build computer models of various perceptual tasks? Or should we be studying how children
develop their perceptual skills? Alternatively, perhaps we can try to understand how the relevant parts of
the brain function when we perceive. Or, perhaps we ought to conduct controlled laboratory experiments on
subjects by varying their reactions to changes in the conditions of perception. Alternatively, one might
study how perception is influenced by various cultural expectations. Even if we reply that we can push
forward along all of these lines of investigation, this still does not provide an overarching conception to
make sense of these different components. How do these approaches fit together? Which is most
appropriate for which kinds of understanding? Once we bring the emotional aspect of human nature into
the equation, these questions become even more vexed. Moreover, we still need to understand the relation
between our everyday understanding of persons and scientific psychology.
My main objective in this chapter is to examine scientific psychology in relation both to everyday folk
psychology and the theories of the natural sciences. The aim of this three-way contrast is to show in what
ways psychology can and cannot be scientific. Initially, I shall focus on behaviorism mainly because it is
most concerned about preserving the scientific status of psychology in the strictest sense.

Behaviorism
In its early days, in the 19th century, much psychology was directed towards the study of conscious
mental states through subjects’ reports of what they felt and thought in different conditions. It was based on

31
introspective reports of consciousness. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, the founder of
behaviorism, J.B. Watson, argued that psychology should not be concerned with conscious mental states
but rather only with observable and measurable behavior. Drawing on the work of Pavlov and Lashley on
conditioning, Watson formulated the claim that the fundamental unit of psychological study should be the
stimulus-response mechanism, which could be altered through conditioning. In this way, he laid the ground
for the behaviorist claim that psychology should be purged of mentalistic concepts.
Pavlov postulated classical conditioning in which, for example, a dog responds to an unconditioned
stimulus, such as the sight of food, with an unconditioned response, such as salivation. On this basis, the
dog is trained to respond to a conditioned stimulus. For example, when a bell is rung whenever food is
present, the dog associates the two and, as a result, it later salivates whenever a bell is rung.
Another important early influence on behaviorism was the work of Thorndike, who towards the end
of the 19th century introduced the concept of instrumental learning. In one of his experiments, cats in a box
were presented with food the other side of a grille, which could be opened by pulling a string. In repeated
trials, the cats learned to open the grille with increasing efficiency. On the basis of such experiments,
Thorndike postulated the law of effect according to which responses are more likely to reoccur if followed
by a reward than if they are not.
Later, in the 1930s, Hull tried to show how higher mental functions, such as knowledge, purposes, and
problem solving could be explained in similar terms (Hull, 1930 and 1943). He postulated the law of
primary reinforcement as a basic psychological mechanism, and he tried to turn instrumental conditioning
into a mathematical theory using intervening variables. For example, according to Hull, how fast a rat
presses the appropriate lever is a way to measure response strength, which depends on various input
variables such as the length of time the rat has been deprived of food and the number of reinforcement trials
to which it has been subject (Bechtel, W and Graham, G, p.16). However, following Hull’s death in 1952,
increasingly psychologists argued that his research program would not work because it was unclear how
instrumental learning could be transferred from one learning domain to another.
Nevertheless, B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) argued vigorously for a form of radical behaviorism, called
“the experimental analysis of behavior,” which focused on experiments on single subjects using controlled
stimuli and observations of behavior. Like Watson, he based his work on correlating input and output
ignoring so-called unobservable intermediate mental processes. Skinner employed the principle of operant
conditioning, which is similar to the laws proposed by Thorndike and Hull, to construct complex behavior
patterns out of naturally emitted behaviors, called operants. Skinner’s version of behaviorism was popular
in academic circles up to the late 1950s.
In 1959, the linguist Chomsky wrote an influential critical review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior in
which he argued that operant conditioning was insufficient to explain verbal behavior, which required the
presence of an innate knowledge base to explain grammatical competence. Chomsky studied the deep
grammatical structure of language in order to show how we can generate and understand an indefinite
number of sentences based on the knowledge of a finite number of words and grammatical rules.
Chomsky’s attack and his own positive theory of linguistics were important steps in the development of
cognitivist theories of the mind, which postulate hypotheses regarding the cognitive systems and processes
that intervene between stimulus and response. We shall examine cognitive theories later in this chapter and
in the next.

A Brief Summary of Some Other Approaches

Before beginning our critical examination of behaviorism is important to note that psychology during
this period was by no means exclusively behaviorist. In addition to the linguistic theory of Chomsky and
the cognitive theories described in the next chapter, other important traditions in psychology included the
Gestalt movement, the work of Piaget and Bruner in child development, the theories of Vygotsky in social
psychology, and clinical psychology, including more contentiously the work in the psychoanalytic
tradition.

1) A pioneer of Gestalt psychology was the German Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967), who stressed that
we perceive things holistically or as wholes in opposition to the standard empiricist view that analyzes
perception in terms of independent sensations. For example, Gestalt theory stresses the importance of the

32
effect of background on the perception of figures. In varying contextual backgrounds, a given figure can be
perceived as different shapes. In such cases, the whole determines in part the perception of the parts.
Gestalt psychologists considered organizational form as a basic property of perception, and used
varying figure-background relationships and ambiguous patterns, for example, formed out of dots, as a way
to identify the laws of organization of perception.
From 1913, Köhler applied this conception of unity to problem solving in chimpanzees. He placed a
banana out of reach of a chimp, which, after some reflection, used a branch from a nearby tree as a stick.
From his observations, Köhler argued that the chimps organized the problem into steps to achieve a goal in
a way that demonstrates the temporal unity of the awareness of the problem, which result in a sudden
insight, thus denying the trial and error approach adopted by the behaviorist Thorndike.

2) The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) pioneered the study of child developmental
psychology. Piaget stressed that children pass through definite qualitative stages of development at
different ages. He argued for four such stages. A) From birth to roughly 2 years of age, the intelligence of
a child consists in its ability to learn to manipulate objects by coordinating sensory input and motor output.
During this sensory-motor stage, the child learns to regard objects as permanent, existing independently of
being perceived. B) During the pre-operational stage, typically from 2 –7 years, the thinking of a child is
dominated by his or her perception and by an egocentricism that renders the child incapable of
distinguishing clearly between its psychological states and physical reality. For example, at this age
children typically cannot describe how a scene would appear from a different spatial perspective. C) From
around 7-11, in the concrete operations stage, children are capable of applying formal operations using and
reversing terms such as ‘greater than’ and ‘smaller than’ but only to concrete objects that are perceptually
present. D) After 11, children develop formal operational thought, which involves the ability to reason
abstractly. Piaget’s pioneering work has been very influential, although many of the details of the four
stages have been refined and criticized.

3) The social psychologist Leo Vygotsky (1896-1934) tried to formulate an alternative to the
physiological and introspective psychology common at the time in his native Russia. He introduced the
idea that cognitive abilities are formed from simple tool and sign using skills, which are acquired socially.
In contrast to Piaget, he stressed the social interactive nature of development, and this led him to formulate
a new approach to the evaluation of a child’s development that included the potential capacities of the child
by observing the tasks that a child can perform with assistance of a teacher, thereby, revealing its capacity
to use social prompting. Also, Vygotsky showed that the nature of word meaning itself undergoes a
general development, beginning as emotional, during which stage language and thought are not essentially
related. Later, words acquire meaning by designating concrete objects and situations and, finally, they
acquire more abstract meanings, which progressively allow the child to use language in solving problems.
Initially, children speak out loud when employing language to solve problems, but later it becomes
increasingly internalized. In effect, children adopt the language used by their parents or mentors when
solving problems, which becomes part of the child’s own repertoire. Vygotsky’s work continues to have
an important influence today.

Against Behaviorism vs. Dualism

To return to the main theme, behaviorists argued that, because mental states are publicly
unobservable, they could not be studied scientifically. Because such states are beyond scientific study,
behaviorists concluded that, as a science, psychology had to confine itself to observable behavior purged of
all mentalistic concepts. This conclusion was reinforced by the assumption that the only alternative to the
scientific study of behavior was to count on unreliable introspective reports.
However, these arguments require the assumption that the only alternative to behaviorism is a form of
dualism, according to which mental states are essentially private and non-material. As a result, the
arguments have four problems, which challenge the whole conception of behavior that underlies
behaviorism. More specifically, the term ‘behavior’ covers intentional actions as well as habitual responses
and, as we shall see, the behaviorist model is not adequate for characterizing such actions. The four
problems with the behaviorist argument are as follows.

33
 1) First, the dichotomy between behaviorism and dualism cannot be maintained because there are
other plausible theories of mind. For example, as already mentioned, one could affirm a view that is
materialist and functionalist without embracing reductionism or eliminativism. For instance, such a theory
would distinguish at least three distinct issues in the philosophy of mind.

f) A Materialist Ontology: Being in particular mental states is nothing but being in specific brain states.
Such a view rejects ontological dualism and accepts token materialism. It denies the existence of
mental items or objects, such as beliefs, ideas and feelings, but not the claim that people think,
perceive and feel.
g) A Naturalist or Causal Definition of Content: The content of such mental processes should be defined
causally, in terms of their public causes and potential behavioral effects. In other words, such content
cannot be defined through introspection or in terms of the private felt quality of mental states because
such an introspectivist view cannot adequately account for the fact that words such as ‘pain’ are part of
a social and public language. Instead, we should accept a general form of causal functionalism or a
naturalized theory of mental content.
h) A Non-Reductionist View of Psychological Descriptions: Psychological descriptions of mental states
and behavior cannot be reduced to, or translated into, neurological or other extensional statements.
Furthermore, such psychological descriptions can be true. In other words, such a theory would
repudiate both reductionism and eliminativism, which try to reduce or eliminate intensional
descriptions of mental states and behavior (see Chapter 3). A naturalized theory of mental content does
not have to be reductive or eliminativist.

This kind of theory appears to furnish us with the best of both worlds. Through a) and b) above, it
respects and answers the concerns that led early psychologists to rebuff ontological dualism and to espouse
behaviorism. However, because of c), it respects the integrity of psychological descriptions; it does not
attempt to eliminate them by arguing that all true descriptions of the world must be extensional, as are the
statements of the natural sciences, and it does not try to reduce them. This kind of position can be
summarized as ontological materialism and semantic dualism: one kind of entity (physical human beings)
described in two kinds of ways (i.e. with extensional, scientific descriptions and with intensional,
psychological ones). However, our aim here is not to defend such a view of the mind, which certainly has
problems of its own, but rather to show that there are reasonably viable alternatives to behaviorism and
dualism, which have methodological implications for psychology.

2) Second, among the early behaviorists in psychology, there was an implicit tendency to support a
dualist conception of the mind, which is apparent in the argument for behaviorism. For example, Watson
affirms that private mental states exist. According to him, the problem is that they cannot be observed and
measured and, therefore, scientific psychology should ignore them and focus its investigations exclusively
on behavior. Even the strict behaviorist, B.F. Skinner wrote: ‘The objection to mental states is not that they
do not exist, but that they are not relevant to a functional analysis’ (Skinner, 1953, p.35). In brief, the
behaviorist methodology is based on an introspectivist view of mental content. It assumes that private
mental states exist as something logically or semantically distinct from possible behavior patterns.

3) Third, following on from this second point, the argument in favor of behaviorism ignores the fact
that some behavior patterns themselves are intentional. For instance, actions are the natural and cultural
expression of mental states, acts or processes. This point has two implications. First, it means that mental
states and actions are not logically divorced from each other, and that any attempt to place them in a strict
dichotomy is an error. In other words, by investigating behavioral patterns that are actions, ipso facto we
can study mental states. Second, the point implies that, although action is publicly observable, it is still
intentional, and this means that it has contestable meanings that need to be interpreted. In other words,
actions have meaning or content in much the same way that mental states do. As a consequence, although
behaviorism avoids some of the epistemological difficulties inherent in the dualist concept of private
mental states, it still faces the problem of the intentionality of behavior or action.

4) The previous point needs to be amplified. Dualists assume that the content of mental states can be
defined in purely introspective terms. For example, pain should be defined in terms of how it feels to the
person having the experience. Most contemporary philosophers of mind reject this introspectivist view of

34
mental states. They argue that it makes words such as ‘pain’ essentially private and, therefore, cannot
account for the fact that public communication through shared word meanings is possible (Wittgenstein,
1958). Instead, they argue that the content of mental states should be defined causally either in terms of
their typical causes or typical behavioral effects.

The main point is that this causal analysis implies that the content of mental states and their potential
behavioral effects are not semantically distinct. It rejects the dualist or introspectivist assumption that the
mental state is one thing and the behavior something completely distinct. Of course, we do not always act
on our thoughts and feelings; they are causally distinct. Nevertheless, the content of mental states is not
logically separate from their potential behavioral expression or effects and their typical causes.
In summary, behaviorism accepts the introspectivist assumption, and this affects its methodology in
two ways. First, it assumes that psychology must either study mental states or behavior, and thereby places
the two in a false exclusive dichotomy. It ignores the possibility that one can study mental states by
investigating behavior. Second, accordingly, it also places two methods in a parallel dichotomy. Recording
introspective reports is the only appropriate method for studying private mental states as such, and studying
stimulus-response mechanisms is the only appropriate method for investigating behavior. Given that we
must either study mental states or behavior, and given that introspective reports are notoriously unreliable
(see below), the conclusion apparently follows that we should study behavior in stimulus-response terms.
However, this argument relies on the introspectivist conception of the mental states/behavior relation.
It assumes that the only way to study mental states is through first person introspection, and that the only
alternative is to investigate stimulus/response behavior. To repeat, this dichotomy falsely assumes that there
is no logical relationship between mental states and behavior and, thereby, ignores the possibility that we
can learn about mental states by investigating behavior.
The behaviorist assumption is equivalent to ignoring the intentional nature of behavior or, more
precisely, action. Actions are intentional because they have a content or meaning that needs to be
interpreted, unlike for instance the beating of the heart. Not all movements of an organism count as action.
Behavioral actions have content because they are the causal manifestation of mental states. These are points
that we shall return to later.
Given all this, we should expect the definition of ‘behavior’ to be essentially problematic for
behaviorism. We should expect this because the behaviorists need to define ‘behavior’ in purely
extensional or non- intensional terms but, given our critique, such a definition ought to be impossible for
actions. An apparently extensional characterization, as mere movement, would be as follows.

By behavior, then I mean simply that movement of an organism or of its parts in a frame of
reference provided by the organism itself or by various external objects or fields of force (Skinner,
1938, p.6)

A definition that implicitly recognizes the intentionality of behavior would be as follows.

Behavior is that part of the functioning of an organism which is engaged or acting on or having
commerce with the outside world (Skinner, 1938, p.6)

The first definition is apparently extensional because it defines behavior as mere movement of an
organism. However, the second half of the definition seems to recognizes that behavior cannot be so
defined by introducing the apparently mentalistic idea of ‘a frame of reference provided by the organism
itself.’ In contrast, the second definition is more explicitly intentional because it includes intensional
concepts such as ‘engaging’ and ‘having commerce.’ Defined in this second way, behavior is intentional
and, consequently, there is a problem of how to interpret such behavior.

Folk Psychology and Science

In this section, I shall contrast our normal way of understanding ourselves with the methodology of
the natural sciences in order to provide a simple analysis of the conditions that psychology must satisfy in

35
order to be a natural science. I shall argue that, even in its most strict behaviorist forms, psychology cannot
satisfy all these conditions, and that it is not a natural science. The conclusion is not a surprise, but the
reasoning that leads to it will illuminate the idea that psychology nevertheless can be scientific.

Folk Psychology

How do we normally understand ourselves? The answer is at least a complex interplay between two
components. First, there is the hermeneutics of behavior and social relations, according to which we
interpret the meanings of actions and omissions, and the principal problem is to find appropriate or correct
interpretations. Second, there is phenomenology, which concerns the description of first-personal conscious
experience as such. In the case of ordinary self-understanding, the relation between these two is complex
and contested.
In everyday life, we often face the problem of how to learn more about what other people desire, feel,
and think. Despite this, we can know a remarkable amount about other people, and this knowledge is an
exercise in interpretation. Given that we know how people behave, and given that actions are caused by
beliefs and desires, we can try to make sense of other people’s actions by citing the reasons for their
actions, which are the appropriate belief and desire states. These intentional states can express themselves
in behavior patterns and actions, which typically answer some desires directed by a set of beliefs. Thus,
given that we know the person’s beliefs, we can discover what he or she wants, and vice versa, on the basis
of what he or she does. In this process of interpretation, we make certain assumptions about the rationality
of these belief and desire states. For example, according to the philosopher Donald Davidson, we assume
that, by and large, a person will have true and rational beliefs (Davidson, 1980). In brief, we assume that
people are usually rational, but this assumption is defeasible or can be defeated.
There are four additional points about this hermeneutical understanding. First, it must not be trivial.
For example, the claim ‘he did it because he wanted to’ does not advance our understanding because it
provides a trivial characterization of the reasons for action. Second, this hermeneutical process of
interpretation is heavily reliant on environmental or contextual factors. If someone rubs his or her hands
inside a restaurant, it probably means one thing; in a cold windy field, it probably means something else.
Third, the process of attributing desires and beliefs to a person explains some aspects of the individual’s
intentional actions. However, it is inappropriate for many other kinds of behavior, such as instinctive
reactions, sleeping patterns, and entrenched habits. Fourth, through this hermeneutical process, we can
build up knowledge of a person’s personality and character –traits that can help us to predict how people
will behave. In this case, once again, we must avoid the temptation of thinking that trivial explanations of
action can count as understanding. For example, the claim that she acted courageously because she is a
brave person is circular.
Regarding ourselves, we can also attend to our own conscious experiences, and the branch of
philosophy most concerned with such descriptions is phenomenology. It is contentious to what extent
phenomenology provides self-understanding that is independent of hermeneutical interpretation.
Nevertheless, by attending to our experience as such, for instance, we can gain insight into how moods
affect the way we perceive and alter our attention. It is a different matter to what extent beliefs gained in
this way are reliable. Philosophical phenomenology tries to avoid this issue altogether by bracketing all
ontological questions, but everyday folk psychology typically does not follow this practice.

The Theories of Natural Science

We now need to contrast these everyday ways of understanding ourselves with a very simplified
portrait of the knowledge of the natural sciences. Although the character of the natural sciences is highly
disputed, in order to keep our discussion uncluttered, we will try to avoid these debates. To simplify, let us
assert without argument that the theories of natural science must comply with at least three minimum
conditions.

1) Controlled experiments

36
Insofar as possible, such theories must be evidentially supported by controlled repeatable experiments,
which are designed to try to refute them. A theory may be regarded as confirmed to the extent that it
survives such tests or other attempts to disconfirm it.

2) Extensionality
Such theories have as their domain extensionally defined items. This condition is necessary because it
permits the inter-substitutability of equivalent theories, as we shall see later.

3) Explanation through Natural Laws

Insofar as scientific theories try to explain natural events rather than merely predicting them, such theories
must cite natural laws, which are supposed to be universally applicable. Ideally, these laws should be stated
mathematically, even if in probabilistic terms.

In conclusion, folk psychology is unsystematic, but it respects the intentionality of psychological life.
In contrast, the natural sciences secure reliability through experimentation, and substitutable theories that
offer increasingly unified causal explanations. Given these points, to qualify fully as a natural science
psychology must satisfy the three conditions above. Let us examine these conditions in turn.

1) The Experimental Condition

Behaviorists assumed that to satisfy the first condition, psychology had to restrict itself to the study of
behavioral outputs. However, the waning of behaviorism did not mean the demise of the experimental
method in psychology. It meant that psychologists extended the methods of controlled experimentation to
the nature of perceptual, cognitive and semantic processes and, in fact, non-behaviorist psychologists had
started such work prior to the 1950s. Here are some of ways in which the experimental study of mental
processes can be achieved. For instance, an experimenter can:

i) Thresholds
Vary the thresholds of perception, for example, by presenting a stimulus for a very brief time period under
different conditions and asking the subject what he or she perceived;

ii) Reaction Times

Measure the reaction times to different stimuli under different conditions in order to understand the
components of mental processing. For example, the conditions of perception can be varied by introducing
distractors (irrelevant material) or by asking subjects to perform two tasks simultaneously;

iii) Physiological Indicators

Study eye movements and other physiological indicators under varying perceptual conditions (see Chapter
5).

We should cite briefly some of the important early results in this area, obtained by employing such
methods. In 1949, Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman studied how subjects perceive words that are flashed
rapidly through a tachistoscope. They found that people are more capable of quickly recognizing words that
pertain to the values they hold. This means that the meaning of a word affects the cognitive process prior to
the conscious recognition of the word. They also discovered that people’s expectations also affect their
ability to recognize a word rapidly.
Meanwhile, George Miller became interested in the principles that govern the quantity of information
that can be transmitted acoustically. For example, early in his career, he studied the effects of noise on the
intelligibility of speech. In 1956, Miller turned to the cognitive structure of memory and discovered that
humans can remember approximately only seven units. For this reason, the sequence of letters I, B, M, C, I,
A, B, B, C, U, S, A is difficult to retain until it is presented as four units (i.e. IBM, CIA, BBC, USA)
(Bechtel, W and Graham, G, p.23-5). Miller claimed that similar limitations affect other activities, such as
distinguishing phonemes, because of limits of the nervous system.

37
 The work of Miller and Bruner are early examples of what was later to be called cognitive
psychology, which postulates cognitive structures in the mind to explain observable effects. They illustrate
how experimental methods can be employed outside of a behaviorist framework.
The more recent advent of information processing and cognitive science has meant that some
psychologists pursued a different, non-experimental, line of investigation, namely the construction of
computer models of mental processes. However, as we shall see in the next chapter, this does not obviate
the need for experimental evidence regarding the applicability of specific computer models to human
cognition. A computer model might simulate some cognitive task, but this shows only that the human brain
might follow such a pattern and not that it actually does.
As we have seen, behaviorism grew out of a rejection of earlier psychological practice based on first-
person introspective reports. Such reports are notoriously fallible as was later experimentally shown. In a
famous experimental study of 1977, Nisbett and Wilson showed how stimuli affected subjects’ behavior
and then demonstrated that the human subjects were seldom able to identify these relations. For example,
they were unable to identify the important effect of verbal cues in problem solving or how their evaluations
of a person were affected by previously seen videotapes. In many cases, introspective reports of higher-
level cognitive processes are unreliable. Even when subjects solve a problem correctly, often they are not
able to identify correctly the process that led to that solution (Uttal, p.94-5). They over-generalize, are
strongly influenced by authority and tend to perceive what they expect or want to see. These points suggest
that experimental psychology should rely on introspective reports only in a limited way, and it illustrates
the epistemological importance of controlled, repeatable experiments insofar as they are possible. However,
we cannot examine here the thorny question of how far investigation in different psychological fields can
rely on such experiments.

2) The Extensionality Condition

Intentionality can be regarded as a defining sign of the psychological, and it has four characteristics,
which are linked.
First, many kinds of mental states are intentional in that they have content or meaning; for example,
one thinks, wants, wishes, or fears that p, where ‘p’ specifies the content of the state.
Second, in virtue of having content, mental states can be about or refer to something in the world.
They can have objects. One can think about and perceive an actual object, such as a particular flower. The
content of a mental state defines the state of affairs that it refers to or picks out, if any. Although an
intentional mental state must have content, it need not have an object. If I think that Father Christmas will
come tomorrow, my thought has content but not an actual object, because Father Christmas does not exist.
For this reason, it is important to distinguish the content and the object of a mental state, even though we
use the phrase ‘what a mental state is about’ to refer to both. We can refer to mental states by their content
(as in ‘she believed that p’) or by their object (as in ‘she saw the flower’).
Third, because mental states can be about things in the world by virtue of their content, the object of a
mental state is always directed to something under some description. For example, one always perceives
the flower as something, though not necessarily as a flower; one may perceive it as a flower or as a gift or
as a strange colored object.
Fourth, as a consequence of this, the content of intentional states are described with intensional
sentences. Because they are intentional, the identity of a mental state depends on the meaning of the
sentence that specifies its content rather its extension. For example, the belief that 2+3=5 is different from
the belief that 25/5=5, even though ‘2+3=5’ and ‘25/5=5’ are extensionally equivalent. Because of this, the
sentences that describe the content of a mental state, such as ‘Person A believes that 2+3=5’ are intensional
rather than extensional.

Behavioral actions are intentional in the derivative sense that they are caused by mental states and, as
such, they too have meaning that must be interpreted. We can see this point by considering the fact that
actions are described with non-extensional sentences. For example, if you turn on the radio and this
accidentally causes a city-wide electrical blackout, we cannot conclude that your action was one of
blacking out the city. This was an unfortunate effect of your action, but not one of your actions. In other

38
words, actions are described with intensional sentences of the form ‘she did A,’ and this is because they
have content or meaning.

The Problem of Intentionality

Why is the intentionality of behavior a potential problem for scientific psychological theories? The
natural sciences investigate phenomena that are not intentional and do not have content and, because of
this, they consist in statements and theories that are extensional or referentially transparent. This means that
they have no logical problems concerning substitution between theories. For example, the following
argument is valid because it consists of extensional statements

Argument A

1. Water freezes at 0 degrees centigrade in conditions C

2. Water is H2O.
3. Therefore, H20 freezes at 0 degrees centigrade in conditions C

Any expression that refers to water can be substituted for ‘water’ in 1 and the resulting sentence will
still be true, if 1 is indeed true. Consider what this means. For example, an expression that refers to water
constructed in the language of quantum mechanics or super-string theory can be substituted in this way. To
put the point figuratively, with a scientific extensional statement, it does not matter from what point of view
one refers to the thing in question.
In contrast, phenomena that are intentional and do have content must be described as such with
intensional or referentially opaque sentences and, as a consequence, there are logical problems concerning
substitution. For instance, the following argument is not logically valid because premise 4 is intensional.

Argument B

4. John believes that water freezes at 0 degrees centigrade.

5. Water is H2O.
6. Therefore, John believes that H20 freezes at 0 degrees centigrade

Argument B is invalid. The substitution fails because what John believes depends on the meaning of
the sentence that specifies the content of his belief and not on its extension or on the reference of ‘water.’
If John is ignorant of 5, the conclusion 6 will be false even though premise 4 is true. Figuratively speaking,
with intentional states, it matters from what point of view you refer to the thing in question. Mental states
are selective and aspectual; this characteristic is essential to their subjectivity.
Even after having divorced themselves from ontological dualism and from the notion of essentially
private mental states (i.e. from a) and b) on page 63), psychological theories still have to decide their
position with regard to the intentionality of behavior (i.e. c) above). Should they treat behavior as
intentional? On the one hand, a positive reply implies that psychology is not a science in the way that the
natural sciences are because they must face the question of how the meaning of a behavior pattern should
be interpreted. On the other hand, the negative reply implies that the theories cannot regard behavior as
behavior, as we shall now argue. In other words, the behavioral sciences must investigate intentional
phenomena as intentional.
To appreciate this last point, let us picture a completely extensional or non-intensional description of
an action. Consider a person who runs out of a burning building. A completely extensional description of
this behavior would be as follows. We could assign a spatio-temporal position to the different molecules
that constitute the person’s body and, thereby, describe his or her behavior extensionally as a complex set
of physical movements. We could also describe the fire and surroundings in similar terms.
Three important points emerge from this example.

1) First, these extensional descriptions alone would not entail that a person was running to avoid a
fire. Even a detailed knowledge of chemistry and physics would not allow one to infer that a person was
trying to escape a blaze. In addition, one would need to know that some complex arrangements of matter

39
constitute persons, who can perceive, desire and act intentionally, and also one would have to know how to
interpret certain physical movements as fire-avoiding actions. In other words, the interpretation of the
extensional descriptions as a person running to avoid a fire is not logically implied by those descriptions
themselves and, this sense, the intensional or psychological sentence ‘someone ran to escape a fire’ is not
reducible to the extensional descriptions.

2) Second, even these extensional characterizations do not constitute a non-intensional description of

a stimulus and response. The reason for this is that the expressions ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’ impute
intentionality insofar as they are shorthand terms for ‘perceptual stimulus’ and ‘behavioral response.’ In
other words, the concepts of stimulus and response already contain an intentional element and, therefore,
the extensional descriptions alone cannot be regarded as a characterization of a stimulus and response.
Therefore, behaviorism cannot pretend to offer non-intensional descriptions of stimuli and responses.
Additionally, insofar as behaviorism appeals to notions such as reward, it requires intentional mentalistic
concepts because ‘reward’ depends on statements such as ‘organism A likes that …’

3) Third, without the intentional notions of perception of danger, fear and avoidance, one could not
see what these events have in common with, for instance, a person in a car swerving to avoid a falling
brick, or a person jumping to avoid a snake.

Because of these three points, we may conclude that any psychological study must investigate
behavior as intentional. Insofar as psychology studies behavioral actions, it investigates intentional
phenomena and, in this respect, there is a fundamental difference between the psychological and natural
sciences (see Chapter 3).

The Cognitive Argument Against Behaviorism

This point becomes even clearer once one moves away from strictly behaviorist views. In the 1960s
behaviorism waned in popularity among many psychologists. The development of artificial intelligence
computer models gave rise to the birth of cognitive science, which claimed that mental processes could be
studied scientifically. At the same time, there was increasing dissatisfaction with the stimulus-response
model.
This move away from behaviorism was motivated by the following consideration. Typically, there is
no simple one to one correspondence between stimuli and behavior and, therefore, behavior must be caused
by internal representations of the world or mental states, which are transformed by processing operations.
From these points, the cognitivist draws the conclusion, which the behaviorist challenges, that psychology
must study such cognitive processes (Uttal, p.113).
However, our point is not the soundness of this argument, but rather that cognitivism is implicitly
committed to a vision of psychology that includes, or at least must deal with, intentionality because it
postulates internal representational states. This point will be important in the next chapter.
Summary

In summary, psychological theories do not always distinguish the points a), b) and c) above, which
were:

a) Materialism: The having of mental states is nothing but the having of brain states.
b) Functionalism: The content of mental states should be defined causally, and not through private
introspection.
c) Intentionality: Intensional descriptions of mental states and behavior cannot be reduced to extensional
statements and cannot be eliminated from psychology.

Insofar as theories of psychology do not make this distinction then, typically, they assume that by
solving the problems a) and b), point c) is also resolved and, as a result, the implications of intentionality
for psychology are seldom addressed explicitly. We have argued that insofar as psychology concerns itself
with behavior that counts as actions, it cannot escape the problem of intentionality. Nevertheless, this does

40
not imply that psychology should relinquish the aim of being scientific; it means that we need to define
carefully the question of what the scientific status of psychology consists in, as we are attempting to do.

Causal Laws
In the natural sciences, we explain events in part by citing causal laws, such as those of mechanics.
We try to state these laws in mathematical terms and in such a way that they are invariant in all changes so
that they can have a basic explanatory function. Physical laws are often held to be special in at least a
couple of ways. First, in some sense, which will be explored in Chapter 7, causal laws are more than just
empirical generalizations; they characterize what must happen. Second, the explanations of the natural
sciences seem to tend towards more unified theories. Supposedly, the ideal is to obtain a set of
mathematical laws that in principle could be employed to explain all physical changes. The natural sciences
aim towards unified explanatory theories. For example, suppose that Snell’s law concerning the refraction
of light and that the properties of the atomic table can be explained both in terms of quantum mechanics. In
such a case, we take this as evidence that the laws of quantum mechanics are more basic.

Everyday Psychological Explanations

In contrast, normal everyday psychological explanations of actions as such do not involve causal
laws. This is because such explanations require semantic relevance. They involve the content of the mental
states and the intentional nature of the behavior to be explained. For example, given that a person acts to
avoid some danger, we can explain his or her behavior by indicating which aspects of his or her
environment were perceived as dangerous, and this amounts to specifying the content of the individual’s
relevant mental states. In other words, explanation of the intentional requires relevance of content.
Because of this, some philosophers contrast the causal explanations of the natural sciences with the
reason-giving explanations of everyday psychology. We explain actions by citing the reasons that the agent
had for performing the action. However, as we argued in the previous chapter, this does not imply that
reasons are not also causes. The beliefs and desires that explain an action also cause it. However, this
causation does not involve citing physical causal laws that do not depend on content.
This does not mean that everyday psychological explanations of action violate physical causal laws.
Mental states are physical states and, as physical states, in principle they can be explained according to the
model of the physical sciences. As we saw in the previous chapter, there are at least two levels of
explanation corresponding to the extensional descriptions of mental states as physical states, and to their
intensional characterization as mental states. Physical causal neurological mechanisms underlie
psychological explanations (see Chapter 3).

Other Types of Explanation

The above points apply to the everyday, so-called folk psychological explanations of action.
However, scientific psychology offers explanations of psychological phenomena that go beyond those of
everyday folk psychology, even if it also does not involve the causal laws of the physical sciences. In this
section, I shall argue both that scientific psychology aims to give explanations of psychological phenomena
that are different from those of everyday folk psychology and that, nevertheless, such explanations do not
involve causal laws in the way that the natural sciences do. In this sense, scientific psychology is different
from both the natural sciences and folk psychology.

a) Not Causal Laws

Psychologists sometimes refer to laws in psychology. In addition to Thorndike’s law of effect and
Hull’s law of primary reinforcement, which were mentioned earlier, there are, for instance, Weber’s,
Fechner’s, Steven’s, Fitt’s, and Hick-Hyman’s laws. However, it is in a way misleading to call such

41
psychological principles natural causal laws, even when they can be stated with mathematical precision.
Let us examine some examples.
In the 19th century, Gustav Fechner showed that the perceived intensity of variables such as
brightness or loudness is proportional to the logarithm of their physical intensity. This is known as
Fechner’s law, which he derived by calculating the just noticeable difference of stimuli based on subjects’
reports. In 1956, Stevens estimated the magnitude of stimulus intensity by assigning a number to one
stimulus at a time and thereby formulated Stevens’ law.
There are three reasons why it may be misleading to think of these as causal laws akin to those in
physics. First, such laws clearly depend on neurological factors and, therefore, they are not basic. Second,
insofar as it seeks principles such as the above, psychology does not have the aim of seeking more unifying
fundamental laws in the way that the natural sciences do. Psychological theories do not aim for more
unified explanatory theories. This is in part because different areas of psychology employ disparate kinds
of concepts, such as abnormality, personality, information processing, cognitive ability, and cultural
influences, to mention only a few. Third, this second point is reinforced by the fact that an important part of
psychology is the study of intentional phenomena that as such are explicable in terms of their content rather
than as a result of physically described processes. To explain an action as such typically will involve
showing why the person acted in the way he or she did by citing semantically relevant beliefs and desires.

b) Beyond Folk Psychology

Even if scientific psychology does not employ physical causal laws that are independent of content,
nevertheless this does not mean that its explanations should be assimilated to those of everyday folk
psychology. There are plenty of psychological phenomena that are not amenable to the belief-desire-action
psychology of everyday life, and scientific psychology often tries to offers explanations of these
phenomena. For example, belief-desire type explanations do not explain habits or the habitual aspects of
our actions. They do not explain non-intentional phenomena such as why we need to sleep and why we
dream. They do not explain the behavior patterns of people with neurological damage, mental illnesses and
cognitive impairments. They do not explain the structural features of cognition, why, for example, we
perceive perceptual illusions, or why we can learn quickly information presented in one form and not
another (e.g. compare 5439802765 with 543-980-2765). They do not explain how we do things, such as
coordinating our movements in a game of tennis or understanding what someone says.
To see that scientific psychology can offer explanations not available to everyday belief-desire folk
psychology, let us briefly consider the types of explanations offered in cognitive science, which is the
subject of the next chapter. In the computational models of cognitive science, we can distinguish four levels
of description. First, there is the intentional specification of the mental state as such, for instance ‘Person A
perceived that p.’ Second, there is an architectural description of the structure of the relevant cognitive
process, which Daniel Dennett calls the design stance. Third, there is a purely computational description of
this process. Fourth, there is a purely physiological and extensional description of the physical processes
involved; for instance, we can map the neurons that fire during a particular time period and describe in
detail the neuro-chemical changes that occur in the neurotransmitters of the synapses of each neuron.
Corresponding to these different levels of description, there may be different kinds of explanations of the
appropriate facets of the cognitive process.

Conclusion
In conclusion, we can separate three aspects of the idea of a natural science: epistemological
reliability, its extensionally defined domain, and the explanatory power of a theory. Psychology can aim to
be a science in the first sense by employing controlled experimental methods. However, it cannot aim for
unifying explanatory theories of the mind because its explanations do not always involve citing natural
causal laws. It does not involve such laws insofar as the phenomena it deals with have content and, as such,
are described intensionally. In this way, psychology is not a natural science.
However, this does not mean that scientific psychology is restricted to offering the kinds of
explanations of action that we find in everyday folk psychology. For example, it can provide explanations
of aspects of our cognition based on the structural and design features of cognitive processes, and it can
appeal to evolutionary and physiological considerations to explain those structural features. Furthermore,

42
although it cannot appeal to causal laws, its explanations can appeal to general principles. Despite this,
psychology cannot aim for the unifying causal explanations of the natural sciences because its domain
includes the intentional.

43
APPENDIX: REDUCTIONISM AND ELIMINATIVISM

In this chapter, we have argued that materialism does not require either reductionism or eliminativism.
Materialism is an ontological claim concerning what exists. Reductionism and eliminativism assert an
additional semantic thesis about the relation between intensional and extensional sentences. The
reductionist argues that the former can be reduced to the latter, and the eliminativist claims that all true
sentences are extensional. This distinction makes it clear that the eliminativist and reductionist cannot argue
in favor of their theories on the grounds that the only alternative to their views is an unacceptable form of
ontological dualism.
However, this distinction does not show that reductionism and eliminativism are false, even if does
deprive them of an important support. In this appendix, we shall review very briefly some of the major
arguments against reductionism and eliminativism.

a) Reductionism

‘Reduction’ is roughly a kind of translation. Theory A can be reduced to statements B and C only if C
and B imply A. For instance, the claim that the average size of the people in the room is six foot is
reducible to the claims that 1) there are only three people in the room; 2) that one person is 5.5ft tall,
another 6.5ft tall and the other 6ft tall; and 3) a definition of ‘average.’ The three latter statements imply
logically the first but not visa versa, and this is a necessary condition for the first to be reducible to them.
The main argument against the possibility of reducing psychological intensional descriptions to
extensional statements is as follows. No set of extensional statements about a person’s neurological system
will imply that a person is in a particular psychological state without some bridge laws that connect mental
and physical descriptions or predicates. (In the case of averages, the relevant bridge law would be the
definition of ‘average’). However, any bridge law that connects mental and physical descriptions will have
to reply on type-type identities. In other words, it requires identifying general kinds or types of mental
states with general kinds of brain states. However, there are no such type-type identities between mental
states and neurological states because the same kind of mental state can be realized physically in many
different ways. For instance, the feeling of the fear of heights will correspond to a particular brain state in
one person and to another in another person and, furthermore, it may be something quite different in a
being of another species. The brain is flexible or plastic and, for this reason, mental states can have very
different physical realizations. In short, strong type-type identities are implausible, and we are entitled to
assert only token-token identities (i.e. that a particular mental state is identical to some particular brain
state). In summary, the argument is:

Argument A

1. The reduction of psychological statements to neurological ones requires bridge laws

2. The relevant bridge laws require type-type identities between the mental and neurological
3. There are no such type-type identities
4. Therefore, psychological statements cannot be reduced to neurological ones

If intensional sentences cannot be reduced or translated into extensional ones, this means that there is
no way to translate psychological statements into the language of physical science. This presents a problem
for those who want to unify everyday statements about peoples’ desires and beliefs with the natural
sciences. As the problems with reductionism became more apparent in the 1960s, some philosophers
argued that if everyday psychological statements cannot be reduced to theories in the natural sciences, then
this is a reason for being suspicious about such psychology. This idea gives rise to eliminativism.

b) Eliminativism

Eliminativism is the theory that all true statements are extensional. In other words, all psychological
intensional statements are strictly speaking false. They might be instrumentally useful, but they do not true
in a realist understanding of the term. They do not describe the ‘true and ultimate structure of reality’
(Quine, XXX)

44
 In favor of this position, eliminativists argue that the concepts that we use in ordinary everyday
descriptions of peoples’ psychological states do not correspond to reality. For example, Churchland argues
that the concept of believing is confused because there exist many borderline cases for which we do not
know how to ascribe content to the belief. If a dog scratches and whines at the closed door, we might say
‘he believes that his master is in the room.’ But on reflection, we may wonder whether the dog really has
the concept of a master, of a room. As a consequence, the concept of a belief is vague. According to
eliminativism, the ordinary concepts of folk psychology, such as ‘belief’ and ‘want,’ will have to be
replaced by more precise scientific concepts of neuroscience (Churchland, XXX).
It is worth examining these claims before turning to the main argument against eliminativism. The
eliminative idea that neuroscience eventually will replace everyday psychology is misleading because it
falsely suggests that neuro-physiology and everyday psychology are competing theories. If by ‘theory’ we
mean a set of statements that can be given up in the light of contrary empirical evidence, then it is
misleading to call everyday psychology a theory because there could be no evidence to the effect that
people do not think, want, believe and perceive.
Churchland urges a historical comparison between the theory of phlogiston and everyday psychology.
Phlogiston was thought to be a spirit-like substance released when things are burned. He says that
‘phlogiston emerged, not as an incomplete description of what was going on, but as a radical
misdescription,’ and that ‘the concepts of folk psychology - belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy, and so
on - await a similar fate.’ I am suggesting that this comparison is not appropriate because whereas
phlogiston was part of an empirical theory of heat that was amenable to empirical refutation, everyday
psychology is not. No empirical evidence could count against it.
Why should this be? The concept of an action is fundamentally different from that of a physical
movement. As we saw earlier in our discussion of behaviorism, the concept of action has an intensional
element, i.e. as such intentional actions must be described intensionally. This means that eliminativism is
committed to the claim that no action statement is true. In other words, because eliminativism requires the
purging of all intensional concepts, it involves the elimination of action. More crudely, no one ever
performs actions. The eradication of desire and belief ascriptions requires that of action descriptions too.
The claim that people perform actions is not an empirical theory that can be refuted. One reason for
believing this is that any claim to the contrary is self-defeating: ‘I have gathered evidence that no one ever
performs actions’ is self-refuting because gathering evidence is an action; likewise ‘I think that no-one
thinks’ defeats itself.
The point can be pushed further because the assertion that no one thinks, believes, perceives or acts
implies that there are no persons, given that persons are beings that perform actions, believe and feel. In
this way, eliminativism implies that persons do not exist. A commitment to the thesis that all true sentences
are extensional requires denying the claim that people exist. Therefore, if I am a person, eliminativism
implies that I do not exist. Yet, I cannot think truly ‘ I do not exist.’

c) Concluding Comments

To return to the initial point, reductionists and eliminativists tend to confuse the issues central to their
views by characterizing their positions with ontological assertions such as ‘Mental states reduce to brain
states’ and ‘there are no such things as beliefs.’ Such statements appear to make reductionism and
eliminativism ontological claims that are indistinguishable from most forms of materialism. This causes
their positions to seem more reasonable than they really are by making it seem that the only alternative to
their positions is ontological mind/body dualism.
In opposition to this confusion, we can separate materialism as an ontological claim from
eliminativism and reductionism as much stronger assertions about intensional descriptions. For instance,
the eliminativist should not assert his or her position as the plausible claim ‘there are no such things as
beliefs’ but rather as the much less reasonable claim that all intensional statements of the form ‘Person A
believes that p’ are false. There may be no such entities as beliefs but this does not mean that no one ever
believes.

45
 Cognitive Science

5
Cognitive Science

The practice of psychology has changed dramatically over the last fifty years. Generally, behaviorism
has been abandoned, and there is much more interest in the connections between neurology and computer
models, both of which are usually linked to the broadly cognitive science approach, originally developed in
the 1950s. In this chapter, we shall trace the historical development of cognitive science from artificial
intelligence, to parallel distribution networks, to cognitive neuroscience, and beyond. We shall explain the
philosophical basis of this development, which, finally, we shall evaluate critically, reviewing some more
recent approaches.

1. Behaviorism

As we saw in the previous chapter, behaviorism was motivated primarily by two considerations. First,
there was the thesis that consciousness is unobservable and, therefore, could not be studied scientifically.
From the point of view of an external observer, mental phenomena occur in a black box that cannot be
opened. Second, it was also motivated by the idea that what should be studied are input-output relations
conceptualized as stimulus-response mechanisms that can be reinforced through conditioning.
After the 1960s, behaviorism declined in popularity because it was realized increasingly that it was
not an adequate model for higher-level mental functions, such as problem solving. The departure consisted
in the assertion that there are intervening cognitive processes between input and output which can be
studied indirectly, and without which input-output relations cannot be explained. As a result of this view,
mentalistic concepts such as ‘information,’ ‘schema,’ ‘image,’ ‘strategy,’ and ‘retrieval’ became part of the
psychologist’s vocabulary. More positively, the departure from behaviorism largely consisted in the
realization that the analogy of information processing could be used to characterize some mental functions.
However, behaviorism’s decline in popularity does not, of course, constitute an argument against it and, in
any case, the decline is far from universal; some academic psychologists still are sympathetic to a
behaviorist approach.

2. Information Processing

In the 1960s and 70s, cognitive science emerged as an interdisciplinary study of mental processes and,
to a lesser extent, of the physical systems that83 underlie such processes. The expression ‘cognitive
science’ can be used in a broad way to refer to any scientific study of cognitive processes, and in a
more specific sense to refer to information processing models. I shall employ the term in its narrower sense
to indicate any attempt to model the activities that constitute intelligence in part through the assumption
that cognitive processes are computational.
Roughly, the historical origin of cognitive science consisted in four steps.

46
 1) First, in the 1930s, Alan Turing developed the powerful theoretical idea of a Turing machine,
which consists in an infinite tape and a head for reading and writing. The tape consists of a series of squares
each of which is filled with either a 0 or a 1. The head can be in a state that specifies what it should do in
response to any specific number occurring in a sequence of numbers. The head has four basic actions: it can
move the tape to the right or left one square at a time; it can read the numeral in the square and it can write
over it. For example, Turing showed precisely that an appropriately designed Turing machine could be used
to carry out any computational formal procedure. Amongst other things, Turing’s work defined an
important challenge for later generations, namely how to program computers so that they can act as such a
universal Turing machine.
2) Second, in the 1940s, Wiener and others developed a theory of feedback mechanisms called
cybernetics, which he defined as the science of ‘control and communication in the animal and machine.’
Cybernetics consists in showing how the information generated by a system can be feedback into the same
system for its control. A simple feedback mechanism is the thermostat, which controls temperature. When
temperature falls, the heating mechanism is switched on and when it increases, it is switched off. Other
feedback mechanisms include the guided missile. Wiener was interested in the application of feedback to
biological systems, including the brain.

3) Meanwhile, John von Neumann designed the first basic computational architecture. Central to von
Neumann’s design were the distinction between the central processing unit (CPU) and the memory, and
also the idea that computer instructions or programs could be stored in the memory in much the same way
that data can be.

4) Fourth, in the 1950s, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell brought these three ideas into fruition by
designing the first program that could model aspects of intelligence, called Logical Theorist, which could
prove theorems from Russell and Whitehead’s axiomatic logic. In the process, they developed the first
computer processing language. Two of the key ideas of their work came from organizational theory. First,
Simon observed that, in business corporations, lower division management often pursue sub-goals of the
organization’s overall objectives. In other words, he observed how a task could be divided into sub-tasks
that are performed at different levels; the results from the lower level can be fed back into the original task
at the higher level. Second, from his earlier studies in organizational theory, he also hit on the idea that a
task may be defined as completed when a solution satisfies a predetermined standard or heuristic. In other
words, finding a solution to a problem does not require a procedure that compares all the options. During
this period, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy were also working on the idea of simulating intelligence
with computer models, and they organized the first conference on artificial intelligence in 1956, at which
Simon and Newell presented their results. This event marks the birth of cognitive science.

3.Cognitive Science

During the 1960s and 1970s, cognitive scientists working in different areas of cognition began to
apply the general principles of information processing to different areas of cognition, such as problem
solving, memory, language processing and perception. During this period, cognitive science became a
rapidly developing branch of psychology. Let us examine briefly some of these developments.
For example, in the 1960s, Simon and Newell designed a program called General Problem Solver.
They asked human subjects to reason out loud when solving various problems and, from this, they
identified general reasoning strategies and principles to be incorporated in the program. By the 1970s,
researchers were developing expert systems, such as the program MYCIN, which diagnosed blood
diseases, and DENDRAL, an expert system that performed various forms of data analysis.
In 1967, Ulrich Neisser published the influential text Cognitive Psychology, in which he tried to unify
the various disparate studies of cognition under one information-processing theoretical umbrella. His basic
idea was to follow the processing of information from perception to its storage and coding in different
memory systems, such as a sensory register, short-term and long term memory stores.

85

47
 In 1972, Terry Winograd developed his famous program SHRDLU, which consisted of a computer
representation of a world of different sized blocks. The program enabled the computer to answer questions
about the blocks, and also to perform actions, such as moving the blocks and following instructions.
Another area of landmark development was semantic information processing pioneered initially by
Ross Quillian, and later by Marvin Minsky, in which particular words or concepts were represented by a
series of nodes connected to those representing other words or concepts. In this way, the definitions of
words could be represented through a network of such node connections, and such structured networks
could be used to represent semantic relationships. Such developments made possible new processing
concepts, such as scripts (representations of event structures from particular points of view) and frames
(data structures that allow some features to be invariant and slots for other features that can be altered).
Furthermore, it was an important step towards the later idea of neural nets and parallel distribution
networks or connectionism, which will be explained later.
As a result of these developments, and many others like them, in the 1970s, cognitive science was
established as an interdisciplinary research project between psychology and computer science or, more
specifically, artificial intelligence.

4. Neuroscience

The early work in cognitive science during the 1960s and 70s was based on the sharp distinction
between software and hardware. Whereas mental functions are forms of software, the functioning of the
brain is a question of hardware. This distinction led to an initial separation between cognitive psychology
and neuroscience. Because a computer program can be instantiated in many different physical systems, it
was assumed that computer models could be constructed and studied independently of the physical
mechanisms that underlie them.
However, this hard and fast distinction did not survive long. As more computer models of cognitive
processes were developed, investigators began to question whether these models in fact accurately
represented the details of human cognition. At the same time, empirical and conceptual advances in
neuroscience made it possible to investigate the workings of the brain and, as a result, in the 1980s, the
search for empirical confirmation became increasingly directed to the study of the brain.
One of the very early pioneers of neuroscience was Donald Hebb, whose influential book The
Organization of Behavior was published in 1949 at the time when cognitive science was still being
developed. Hebb realized that, because the brain was divided into functional areas responsible for different
mental operations, it must have a complex internal structure that mediates between stimulus and response.
He proposed that it must be composed of assemblies of cells that function as self-reinforcing and
interconnected systems by firing together.
As a result, in the 1950s, the crucial idea of neural networks began to emerge. McCullough and Pitts
showed how networks of neuron-like units could perform most computations involving logical functions
and suggested that neural networks could be regarded as Turing machines, thereby establishing a
fundamental link between neurology and the psychological work of AI. In brief, neurons form networks by
firing together or by inhibiting each other. Frank Rosenblatt extended this work in the 1960s (see below).
Meanwhile, the powerful technique of single cell electrophysiology was developed during the 1950s.
Earlier attempts to localize functions within the brain had been confined to studies of brain damage and to
electrical stimulations of different parts of the brain. However, the new technique used microelectrodes to
stimulate particular neurons, which allowed the study of specific neural pathways associated with different
mental operations, such as the processing of different kinds of visual information. For example, it was
discovered that the systems in the visual cortex responsible for visual properties such as color, size and
shape is different from that which recognizes8 7 spatial relations, even though there are
interconnections between them.

5. Parallel Distribution Networks

86
However, the early work on neural nets did
for experimental confirmation of the psychological applicability
not reachoffruition
computer models
until beganafter
the 1980s, to bethe
extended
search

48
to the actual functioning of brain processes. In part, this extension was made possible by a technique, called
PET, which enabled researchers, such as Michael Possner, to study changes in the blood flow in different
parts of the brain while subjects performed cognitive tasks under varying conditions. Similarly, magnetic
resonance imagining also enabled more precise studies of the functioning of the brain.
In part, too, the extension was made possible by a major conceptual advance with the publication of
Parallel Distributed Processing by Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP Research Group in 1986. In this
work, they consolidated and extended earlier work on neural networks. This earlier investigation, initiated
by Frank Rosenblatt in the 1960s, had focused on single-layered networks. It showed how a computer
simulation of a network of cell-like units could generate the desired input-output relations when the firing
of cells or units was interconnected through an appropriate weighting process. In other words, if enough
units in a system fired together then this would either trigger or inhibit the firing of other specific units or
cells. By weighting the interconnections between the cells in the appropriate way, these networks could be
used to simulate the desired input-output relations.
In the 1980s, the PDP (Parallel Distributed Processing) group expanded this general approach to
multi-leveled neural networks. Furthermore, researchers were thereby able to vindicate theoretically the
original suggestion of McCullough and Pitts that such neural-nets in principle could be equivalent in
computational power to a Universal Turing machine.
These developments constituted a conceptual advance mainly because neural networks involve
distributed representations. For example, in such a network, a concept will be represented by a system of
interconnections between various cell-like units, and each unit will be involved in the representation of
several concepts. For this reason, neural nets show plasticity or flexibility in their reactions. For instance,
when they are damaged, they do not simply breakdown, but rather the accuracy of their performance
degrades gradually.
To better appreciate the nature of this advance, let us compare symbolic representational and PDP
systems. Standard symbolic processing systems employ rules to specify the relevant conditions and
outcomes. The conditions delineate the applicability of the rules, and the outcomes are the results of the
application of the rule specific inputs. The rules manipulate various symbols that are organized in structures
or syntactically and which represent information. In contrast, PDP systems consist in complex patterns of
activation between nodes, as was explained earlier. Whereas such an arrangement permits simultaneous or
parallel processing at multiple levels, the symbolic model and the digital computer is confined to
implementing a single instruction at a time.
However, this advance may have a cost. Writers such as Fodor and Pylyshyn have argued that the
connectionist or PDP model apparently cannot account for syntactical and grammatical structure of
language or for inferences. It functions through the interconnections between word-like units rather than
through the manipulation of symbolic representations of syntactically structured sentences. It is a disputed
question as to whether or to what extent this constitutes a limitation of PDP.
Cognitive scientists often employ PDP models because the brain frequently functions like a parallel
and interactive system. For example, cognition often appears to involve simultaneous top-down and
bottomup processing. Bottom-up processing occurs when lower levels of information, such as perceptual
patterns, are processed first and, afterwards, successively higher levels of information, such as semantic
features, are processed each in turn. In contrast, top-down processing occurs when higher levels are
processed first. For example, the ability to recognize rapidly a single letter depends on whether it is
presented in the context of a familiar word. In other words, higher-level semantic features affect lower level
perceptual processing. In principle, PDP models can explain this kind of effect in a way that linear
symbolic models cannot because they rely on simultaneous processing. Furthermore, because of their
flexible nature, simulations of neural-nets can be trained to improve their performance towards a specified
outcome by making the weightings of the relevant connections alter appropriately.
Because of the emergence of neural-nets and of new techniques for studying brain activity, in the
1980s, cognitive science forged a deeper relation to neurology, which resulted in the birth of the discipline
cognitive neuroscience, which relates neurological 8 8 processes to cognitive functions.

Philosophical Frameworks

49
 According to the standard view of cognitive science, human cognition is the processing of the
information in the brain. Information is encoded into a symbolic representational form and is transformed
by the operation of rules or mechanical procedures. This idea suggests thesis that all mental states are
computational.

I. Two theses of strong artificial intelligence

Historically, early writers on AI, such as Turing, argued for the claim that in principle a computer
could be intelligent. It might have been more accurate to assert the broader thesis that, in principle, a
computer could have intentional and conscious mental states or processes, such as intelligent thinking. Let
us call this claim, the historical A.I. thesis.
Although this thesis about computers has been hotly contested, it is not the main issue. This is because
it is often confused with a similar claim in cognitive science regarding the nature of our mental states,
namely that they are computational. Indeed, the original historical thesis about what computers might
accomplish is important and contentious primarily because it may shed new light on the nature of mental
states in general.
Consequently, we need to distinguish the historical thesis from the truly strong thesis of AI, which is
that all mental states are computational. In this context, ‘strong’ means roughly ‘bold’ and ‘undiluted’. To
avoid terminological confusion, we can call this new claim, ‘the undiluted AI thesis.’
The failure to separate the historical and undiluted theses has caused confusion. Of course, if the
undiluted claim is true then so too is this historical thesis. However, the converse is not true: the historical
thesis about computers does not imply that all mental states are computational. It only entails that some are
and is consistent with the idea that the mental states of humans are not computer-like. In order to examine
whether the undiluted thesis of AI is true, it is not enough to answer the question ‘In principle could a
machine think?’ Even a positive answer to that would not establish that all human mental states are
computational in nature.
For the sake of clarity, we need to distinguish the undiluted claim from various weaker AI theses.
First, notice that the undiluted thesis is about all mental states. In practice most cognitive scientists examine
the nature of cognitive states or processes, such as perceiving and thinking, rather than also non-cognitive
states, such as wanting, desiring and feeling. Roughly speaking, whereas cognitive states, such as believing,
perceiving, and thinking, aim at knowledge of the world, non-cognitive states, such as desires, emotions
and feelings do not. We will return to non-cognitive states later.
Second, the practice of cognitive science sometimes depends on building computer models of
cognitive processes. On their own, such practices do not force us to conclude that all, or even some, mental
states are computational. They seem to require only the weak claim that some mental states can be modeled
and understood computationally. ‘Computer models are fruitful’ does not show that mental states are
computational.
Nevertheless, many writers have argued that the philosophical framework of cognitive science
establishes the truth of the undiluted A.I. thesis. So let us examine critically the reasoning that leads to this
conclusion. In doing this, I shall partition two different layers of reasoning. I will argue that they need to be
separated because they have dramatically different implications for the meaning and prospects of A.I.

II. The First Layer

The first layer is the least contentious and it comes in four steps.

1) First, consciousness is not a single, simple property or state, which one either has or does not, as
Descartes supposed. Rather, conscious cognitive states consist in a variety of task-related abilities and
activities, such as recognizing the corners of a cube, and differentiating a voice from other sounds.
Consciousness is a complex range of phenomena, and this explains how the differences between the
awareness of mice, monkeys and humans are ones 9 0 of degree and not of kind.

2) The content of mental states must be

essentially private introspective terms. For example, pain cannot in
specified be defined
causal privately in terms
or functional of how
rather it
than
feels to the individual. It must be defined in terms of its typical causes and behavioral effects, as well as its
potential effect on other mental states. This point may seem to leave out the subjective quality of pain, but

50
it does not need to; it insists that this subjective quality has to be specified functionally or causally rather
than through some private ostensive definition or inner pointing. If it were not, ‘pain’ could not be a public
or shared concept and we would not understand each other when we use such mentalistic terms.

3) Third, if conscious cognitive functions consist in a complex arrangement of activities and tasks,
then we may reasonably hope for the following. Each one of these tasks can be split into sub-tasks, each of
which can be further divided, and so on, until at root level, one reaches tasks that can be performed
mechanically. The expression ‘performed mechanically’ means that a computer can execute each task
through a highly complex series of binary operations, each of which is mechanical and unintelligent. If a
computer can do so, then so can a complex arrangement of neurons.

4) Finally, if higher-level mental processes consist in a highly complex set of sub-tasks, each of
which is fundamentally computational, then such processes can be represented by an organized formal
symbolic or PDP system on a computer. Potentially, here is a way to understand conscious acts that does
not require postulating a little person or homunculus inside a brain to perform the relevant tasks as if by
magic.

We can summarize the main thrust of layer one as follows. At the very least, we can simulate some
intelligent acts through a complex set of unintelligent operations that a machine could perform. For
example, in principle, we could design a computer program to simulate the visual abilities of spiders, which
might provide a model for what is happening inside the spider’s brain. The computer performs certain tasks
with specifiable end results and, if the results are the same, then it seems reasonable to think that the
spider’s brain is performing similar tasks with the same end results. Understanding the spider’s visual
abilities would consist in knowing how to design a computer model, which achieves those results, and
knowing how the neurology of the brain works to the same end.
In brief, any physical system that simulates the right input-output connections in the appropriately
complex way can be said to simulate the relevant intentional and conscious states. However, if we add to
this a causal-functional definition of the content of mental states (as explained in 2) above), then it will
follow that any system that has the appropriate input-output relations will have the relevant mental state.
Consequently, given that this first layer of explanation is adequate, we can conclude that, in principle, it is
theoretically possible for a computer to have intentional and conscious mental-states, so long as it has the
appropriately complex input-output connections (what this means we will examine later). This does not
imply that just anything could behave physically in the relevant manner; there are physical limits as to what
kind of system could perform appropriately. However, if we also assume that computers could be
physically up to the job, then the historical AI thesis follows.
However, as we saw earlier, this does not mean that the undiluted thesis of AI is true. At most, it
demonstrates that some types of mental states can be computational, and not that they all are. Arguably, it
might be compatible with something even more modest: namely, that a system that consists of
computational states can also have mental states, without it being true that those mental states themselves
are computational.

III. The main issue #1: potentially public

Philosophers who argue against the historical AI thesis typically would reject the second step above.
In other words, they argue that some aspect of the content of mental states cannot be defined in purely
causal-functional terms. For instance, they would contend that qualia, or the qualitative feel of a conscious
experience, has no such definition and can only be known by the subject him or herself.
However, a causal-functional theory of the content of mental states need not deny that such
experiential states have a subjective qualitative feel. The theorist need only insist that this aspect of the
content must be conceived in causal-functional terms. The functionalist need not even deny that this
qualitative feel is known directly only by the subject. Such an epistemological (or knowledge) issue is
distinct from the nature or definition of content. Even if it is true that in some regards mental states are
known directly only in a private way, this does not mean that their content should or can be defined in
essentially private terms. The content could still be potentially public, even if known directly privately.
The main problem that qualia-type theories face is that any attempt to define the content of mental
states in essentially private terms contradicts the potentially public nature of language. For example, if I

51
defined ‘pain’ as the sensation that I am feeling now and that no-one else could possibly feel, then this
renders it strictly impossible for someone else to know what the term means. Yet, of course, we do refer to
and describe our sensations in public language.
To avoid these difficulties and to preserve the idea of the essentially private, many qualia theorists
reserve the term ‘qualia’ for the ineffable aspect of conscious experience.
However, this move fails to overcome a deeper argument, which is that the idea of such essential
privacy does not even make sense. According to Wittgenstein, to be able identify or refer to any mental
state through time requires that its content is potentially public, and not essentially private. An essentially
private language is one that privately names or refers to different sensations solely on the basis of how they
feel introspectively to the person having them (Wittgenstein, 1953). Wittgenstein argues that such a
language is impossible, and given this, then the essentially private identification of mental states is also
impossible.
The argument turns on the idea that an essentially private language (EPL) lacks a feature that any
meaningful language must have, namely the possibility of error. An EPL would lack this feature because,
within it, there is no possible distinction between how things are and how they seem; the EPL assumes that
the nature of a sensation is necessarily and solely how it seems or appears. Consequently, in an EPL,
nothing can count possibly as my being mistaken. Wittgenstein says ‘Whatever is going to seem right to me
is right and that only means that here we cannot talk of ‘right” (Wittgenstein, 1953, paragraph 258).
The Wittgenstein-based argument against the possibility of an essentially private language (an EPL)
is:

1. Meaningful word usage requires the possibility of error

2. In an EPL, there is no possibility of a distinction between X appears to be right and X is right
3. Therefore a meaningful EPL is impossible

The first premise claims that meaning requires that the mistaken employment of a word is possible,
such as calling an elephant ‘an apple.’ The second premise states that such misapplication of a term is
impossible in an EPL. The first premise sets a requirement for meaningfulness, and the second states that
an EPL fails that condition. If a meaningful EPL is impossible then so is the essentially private
identification of mental states because the idea that we could refer to the same sensation in an essentially
private way becomes impossible.
If this argument is sound, then the content of our mental states cannot be defined solely in terms of
how they feel. This does not mean that we must jettison the idea of the subjectivity of experience. Rather it
means that the subjectivity of experience must be thought of in potentially public terms. For instance,
perceptions must be identified in terms of the external objects that typically cause them, such as the taste of
raspberries and the smell of rain, or in terms of the behavior they typically cause.
If the qualia objection to the second step fails, then the causal functionalist view of mental contents is
temporarily vindicated and the historical A.I. thesis survives. However, even if the historical A.I. the thesis
is true, this does not necessarily imply that one’s laptop can think. We have removed the idea of essentially
private conscious mental-states as a challenge to the historical A. thesis. Nevertheless this does not mean
that human-made computers can engage in appropriately complex behavior. It is important to understand
what ‘appropriately complex behavior’ implies in these contexts. The issue is: what kinds of complex
behavior must a system be capable of in order that one can say of it truly that it believes or thinks or
perceives? We cannot probe this vital question here, but we can make a couple of important observations.
First, remember the opening step. Like consciousness, intentionality comes in degrees. There may be
no clear cut-off point where intensional psychological language suddenly becomes appropriate in
describing what a system does. Of course, we use such language metaphorically to describe what ones
laptop is doing: ‘the computer remembers or reasons that...’ Granted that this usage is metaphorical, at what
point does the employment of such verbs become literal? Dogs want, believe and see. Do ants? This is not
the question ‘how do we know whether they do?’ Rather, this is the more fundamental question ‘what do
we mean when we assert or deny that they do?’ There need not be a clear cut-off point at which it becomes
correct to use intensional language to describe 9 5 the behavior of a system. If the behavior is less
complex, it is less fitting, and more complex, more appropriate.
Second, nevertheless, the intentional mode may have strong requisites. For example, arguably,
intensional psychological verbs might apply only to systems that are capable of being aware. In other

52
words, only something that is conscious can be truly said to believe and think. Furthermore, such
psychological terms may come in packets. Such ascriptions may be holistic. For example, it might be
appropriate to describe a system with the verb ‘think’ or ‘perceive’ only given that ‘believe’ also applies.
More importantly, the same point may apply to non-cognitive terms: a system can’t be said to think and
believe unless it can also desire and want. The applicability of cognitive verbs may require that of non-
cognitive ones.
Cognitive scientists have sometimes ignored the influence of non-cognitive states on cognitive
processes. For example, emotional states can have a dramatic impact on cognition, and our motivations
clearly affect the selective aspect of perception and often define its intentional content (e.g. when one is
angry, one sees things as annoying).
The main reason the cognitive and non-cognitive might be inseparable concerns the causal nature
of mental states. Beliefs, desires and actions apparently form an inseparable triad. Necessarily, actions are
typically caused by a combination of belief and desire, and one cannot make sense of believing and
desiring without the idea of their potential effect on action. Thus, a being can believe only if it can desire.
There may be good arguments for other such requirements. For example, perhaps, it is necessary
for a being to have emotions in order for it to believe and think. The general point is that the more such
conditions apply, the more palatable to the skeptic the historical AI thesis might be, without having to
challenge the causal theory that makes the content of mental states potentially public.
In other words, even if a causal theory and the historical A.I. thesis are true, nevertheless, if the
requirements for intensional descriptions are strong, then it may be that no human-made computer can
literally think. In saying this, I am not endorsing the idea but rather showing how the main issue has shifted
away from the public or private nature of subjectivity.

IV. The Second Layer

Let us move on to the undiluted A.I. thesis. In order to better assess the undiluted AI thesis, we divided the
philosophical explanation into two layers. We have just seen that the first layer of explanation does not
imply the undiluted thesis, although it does entail the historical thesis.
The second layer of explanation adds contentiously a representational twist to the first by employing
the notion of information processing in order to explain in greater detail the third and fourth steps of the
first layer. As we have seen, to characterize the content of cognition involves coupling perception (input)
and potential action (output) in appropriately complex ways. The second layer of explanation explains this
coupling in terms of the processing of symbolic representations.

a) Computers work purely syntactically. Here the word ‘syntax’ refers to the physical properties of a
set of marks that do not involve any meaning or semantics. In computers, physical marks are transformed
according to sets of rules or computational procedures. Consider an adding machine. In such a machine, the
output states have rule-governed relations to the input states. For example, if the rule is ‘+ 3’ and the input
is ‘6’ then the output is ‘9’. This transformation is effected on the basis of syntax alone. The machine does
not know what these marks mean; there is no semantics involved. For this reason, such transformations can
be represented by a purely formal system, which consists of a set of formulae and rules for manipulating
the formulae irrespective of any interpretation or meaning. It is sometimes said that formal logic aims to
show how we can derive one true proposition from another. However, this statement is misleading. Formal
uninterpreted logics are merely systems for manipulating marks, which then are interpreted as symbols that
represent truth-preserving inferences.

b) However, the beauty of formal systems is that when they are set-up precisely and appropriately,
then they can be used to represent truth-preserving inferences. They allow only the right inferences.
Similarly, games such as chess can be represented formally; the formal system permits only legal moves.
Indeed, any computational procedure that can be defined purely syntactically can be represented in formal
terms. Furthermore, it seems that perhaps semantic relationships can be represented formally at least
insofar as language consists of referring9 6 expressions and syntactical rules both of which are
extensional. And, insofar as language can be represented formally, it appears that all mental
states that have a linguistically specifiable content can also be formally represented.

53
 c) From these considerations, many philosophers have derived the conclusion that thought itself and
other cognitive processes can be represented by a formal system implemented on a computer. The idea is
often expressed as follows. Computers manipulate symbols that have a representational function and,
therefore, insofar as the brain is analogous to a computer, there must be something equivalent to symbols in
the brain that are processed during cognitive processes and which represent in the same way as thoughts.
d) This idea leads to the following analogy. Just as a program is software implemented on the
hardware of the computer, so cognitive processes are like software implemented on the hardware of the
brain. Furthermore, a program is an abstract formal model that can be physically implemented in different
material forms on different machines, including the brain. Obviously, the computations that constitute or
simulate cognitive functions are not performed only on numbers. They are supposed to explain the
recognition of shapes, colors, and words and solve a wide variety of problems. For example, Guzman's SEE
program enables computers to count boxes that are in a jumble. The program allows computers to detect
edges, corners and sides, and to draw the appropriate conclusions about how many boxes there are
(Churchland, 1988, p. 115).

e) Up to now, I have been careful to use expressions such as ‘thought can be represented as
computation.’ However, some philosophers argue that human cognitive functions must be regarded in this
way. Usually, the argument employs the claim that any other alternative position would entail a mistaken
view of the mind, for instance, necessitating a return to dualism or to postulating homunculi (little people)
or ghosts in the brain that work by magic.

f) Finally, some philosophers argue that we should drop the expression ‘represent’ in sentences such
as ‘thoughts can be represented computationally.’ They claim that human cognitive processes are
computational. The brain is a biological computer and, therefore, all mental states are computational.

We can summarize the main idea of layer two as follows. Digital computer systems can produce the
appropriate input-output relations because they systematically manipulate syntactic marks that are symbols
or, in the case of PDP, non-symbolic representations. In other words, they process representations. Human
cognitive processes function in a similar way and, consequently, at the very least, they can be represented
computationally.
A proponent of the undiluted A.I. thesis claims that human mental functions are computational states
through steps e) and f) above. A proponent of weak A.I. might claim that all human cognitive functions
must be depicted through computational models (i.e. it accepts e) but not f) above). An even weaker
version of AI claims that some aspects of some mental functions can be represented computationally (i.e. it
eschews both steps e) and f) above).

V. The main issue #2: extensionality

What does it mean to say that mental states are computational? This crucial question is not as
straightforward as it may appear. On the one hand, one could stipulate that a computational state must
belong a machine, literally an artifact, and thereby exclude by fiat any natural thing from being in a
computational state. On the other hand, one could define a computational state as any state that could be
described mathematically in terms of input, output and function; in which case, almost any physical state
would count as computational.
Digital computer-based cognitive science involves two fundamental ideas: symbols that represent and
algorithmic manipulation of these symbols, which specifies particular outputs by forming new
combinations of symbols. Whereas standard digital computational views regard these representations as
discrete symbols, analog PDP models regard these representations as distributed in the system as a whole.
At root, these algorithms are purely syntactical. They function without regard to content or semantic
relevance. In other words, to link this point to that of previous chapters, they are described non-
intensionally. A computational state can be described fully in purely extensional terms. Consequently, the
claim that mental states are computational is equivalent to the claim that they can be specified
98
completely in purely extensional terms. We do not 9 7 need an intensional characterization of such a
state. In this sense, this strong computational approach is fundamentally similar to the eliminativist
position, which we discussed in chapters 3 and 4.

54
 Eliminativism is the view that all folk psychological descriptions are strictly speaking false because
they are intensional and all true sentences are extensional.1 This position is thus:

a) The world must be described in terms of purely extensional sentences only.

b) Folk psychology does not meet this criterion. Verbs such as ‘believes that’ ‘thinks that’ and ‘wants
that’ all form intensional contexts, and any sentence that describes the intentional content of a
mental state will be intensional.

c) Therefore, folk psychology is a false theory.

As we argued in earlier chapters, claim a) is open to serious challenge. In contrast, b) is a crucial point
because (given that a) is false) it draws a fundamental distinction between the natural sciences, on the one
hand, and the psychological and social, on the other.
The eliminativist position is that all non-extensional sentences are strictly speaking false. In this
sense, the undiluted A.I. thesis implies eliminativism because, in claiming that all mental states are
computational, it implies that they are algorithmic, which in turn requires that they must be characterized
extensionally.
This conclusion (that undiluted A.I implies eliminativism) is important for our understanding of
cognitive science because it allows us to distinguish two philosophical strands in A.I. that are seldom
separated.

1) The first is the causal-functional theory of content, which implies the historical thesis about
computers..

2) The second strand concerns extensionality, and is the claim that all mental states and processes
must be specified extensionally because they are algorithmic. This is part of the undiluted claim.

Clearly, one can accept the first without the second. Mental states can be potentially public (as opposed to
essentially private) without their being computational.
Often, the two strands are not separated because many functionalists (who are also extensionalists)
assume that the functional states must be specified in purely extensional language. For example, when
functionalists refer to inputs and outputs, this suggests that extensionality is a requirement of a causal
theory.

VI. Main Issue # 3: the intentionality of representations

There is another issue. One might argue that the symbols that are manipulated according to some algorithm
in a computing system are representations. It is clear that representations in some sense represent and, thus,
have content. This implies that representations are intentional. The key question is ‘in what ways are they
intentional?’ One argument against the strong A.I. thesis tries to show that the kind of intentionality that
computational states have is fundamentally weaker than the kind that mental states have and that, as a
consequence, the undiluted thesis of A.I. must be false.
In this vein, philosophers, such as Searle, have distinguished two kinds of intentionality. First, there is
the kind that mental states, such as believing, have, which we can call ‘non-derivative intentionality.’

1 100
Non-extensional or intensional sentences are referentially opaque because terms with the same reference
cannot be substituted within the sentence without potentially changing whether the sentence as a whole is
9 9 that Superman is a hero’ one cannot substitute
true or false. For example in the sentence ‘Lois Lane thinks
the phrase ‘Clark Kent’ for ‘Superman’ without changing the truth-value of the sentence as a whole. The
psychological verb ‘thinks that’ forms an intensional linguistic context.

55
Second, there is derivative intentionality, which external representational systems, such as texts and maps
possess. This second kind of intentionality is derivative because it depends on that of mental states. This
does not mean that a text only has meaning insofar as someone is actually reading it. Rather it means that
books do not think. A book represents a series of events because of the conventional nature of the language
it is written in and because it has potential readers. Prima facie, this is different from the way in which a
person represents those events by, for instance, thinking about them.
It is disputable in what respects language has these two kinds of intentionality partly because the term
‘language’ is vague. Insofar as some mental states are inherently linguistic, language has the first kind of
intentionality because it is an essential aspect of thought. Insofar as ‘language’ refers to written and spoken
sentences, it has the second kind.
This second kind of intensionality itself can be sub-divided. We can distinguish intrinsic and extrinsic
derivative intentionality. The former does not depend on someone’s actually interpreting the text; the latter
does so depend. For example, if we assert that once a text has been written, it has meanings independently
of whether there are readers to interpret it or not, then this means that the text has intrinsic derivative
intentionality. It is derivative because it depends on potential readers, but intrinsic because it does not
depend on there being an actual reader.
In contrast, suppose I draw a map by designating that certain objects, such as sticks, designate
various U.S. cities and the relative distances between them. If I stipulate that a specific stick represents
Baltimore and another Boston, then this representational system has extrinsic derivative intentionality.
Supposedly, unlike the text, the stick system does not represent anything independently of someone
intending or interpreting it as such.
This sub-distinction is necessary in order to clarify the following point. Suppose that an apple falls to
the ground and that the relevant mathematical formulas and values that describe this fall are written down.
The physical events satisfy, and in a sense implement, the relevant mathematical functions, but this does
not make every falling apple a representational system (representing a formula). However, we might
interpret the falling of the apple as such and, in this way, the event
can have extrinsic derivative intentionality. On the other hand, the written mathematical formulas represent
the functions, and have intrinsic derivative intentionality.
Employing the distinction, one might argue that computational states can only have derivative
intentionality, unlike mental states that have non-derivative. Hence, according to such a view, computation
does not involve representations that are intentional in the required sense:

“To explain how a given system does what it does, positing internal representations would be required
just in case the system trafficked in entities whose content-bearing status does not depend just on our
descriptions or interpretations.” (Koskiejew, Richard J., 2011)

The weak A.I. thesis is that cognitive mental states can be represented and simulated by
computational states, but it is not that they are computational. Thus, the defender of the weak thesis need
only claim that computational states possess the second kind of intentionality: they are only derivatively
intentional. If all representational computer systems have only derivative intentionality and minds do not,
then weak A.I. is true. This would mean that a sophisticated computer is more like a complex and
interactive book than a mind.
In reply, the defenders of undiluted AI would argue in two ways. One way is to claim that all mental
states have only derivative intentionality. This may sound strange, but the underlying idea is that there is no
non-derivative intentionality. All intentionality is ascribed. This kind of position is advocated by Daniel
Dennett (Dennett, 1991).

Second, they may defend their position by arguing that the distinction between non-derivative and
intrinsic derivative intentionality is one of degree rather than one of kind. In other words, a sufficiently and
appropriately complex selfautomated book (i.e. a computer) can be a mind. The initial hard and fast
dichotomy between non-derivative and derivative intentionality is false.
These technical words ‘non-derivative’ 1 0 and ‘intrinsic’ are unfortunate. In calling the
intentionality of mental states ‘nonderivative,’ 102 1 I mean that their intentionality does not depend

56
on the intentionality of something else. This does not mean that such intentionality is independent of
everything else nor that such intentionality is intrinsic in a sense that contradicts the first layer of
philosophical explanation.
Insofar as undiluted A.I. requires the second layer of explanation, it is vulnerable to the problems that
accrue to the idea of symbolic representations as entities. To recap in brief: whereas external symbolic
representations have only derivative intentionality, mental states, such as someone’s believing, which have
non-derivative intentionality, are not representations because they are not entities.

VII. Cognition without Representations

Some writers have contested the basic principles of representational theories on other grounds. First, the
idea that cognitive processes are entirely internal to the brain ignores the importance of the environment. In
humans, cognition is both embodied and contextually situated. According to this idea, for instance, it is
essential to visual perception that we constantly move our eyes and bodies to see something from different
angles. This type of consideration suggests that perception consists in a constant interaction with the
environment by a being with a body. It suggests that a view of perception that is restricted to the processing
of internal sensory data is too limited (Clark, 2001). It is worth noting that the phenomenologist Merleau-
Ponty made some of these general points in his work The Phenomenology of Perception (1945).
Second, these points have suggested a radical departure from standard information-processing models.
According to dynamic system theorists, cognition can be understood as a dynamic system that includes
both the person and the environment. This approach avoids the idea of internal information processing.
This view criticizes both the idea of computing symbolic representations and that of computing non-
symbolic representations (i.e. PDP) because it claims that cognition is not representational at all. Instead
such theories construct mathematical models of such dynamical interactive systems (van Gelden, 1995).
This contentious new approach to cognition is briefly described in the appendix to this chapter.

Appendix: Dynamical Models of Cognition

Dynamical systems theory provides mathematical models of systems that change in complex ways,
such as whirlpools and storms. Sometimes the repeated or iterated use of very simple coupled or
interlocking equations can describe and predict the general behavior of complex feedback systems. The use
of this kind of theory in physics will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.
A famous example of a dynamic system is the Watt governor, the function of which is to ensure that a
flywheel on a steam-powered machine rotates at a smooth and constant speed. James Watt engineered a
way of achieving this by attaching a vertical spindle to the flywheel and attaching two hinged arms to the
spindle with a ball at the end of each arm. These arms are linked to a valve so that as the arms swing out
higher, less steam is let in. The governor works as follows: as the balls rotate, the centrifugal force causes
the balls to rise up and this reduces the amount allowed in causing them to fall, which in turn increases the
amount of steam allowed in (van Gelder, 1995, and Clark, 2001). The point of the example, as introduced
by van Gelder, is that the working of governor is best described with dynamic systems theory because it
involves a continuous feedback mechanism. It is a control system that is non-representational and,
therefore, it is not a computational system.
Because dynamical systems theory models continuous feedback loops, it seems to be especially apt
for describing adaptive behavior that involves, for instance, a constant interaction between a person, his or
her body and the surrounding environment. As was explained earlier, recently, some cognitive scientists
have challenged the standard static representational model of cognition on the grounds that it ignores such
interactions, which are vital for perception. They argue that such processes can be understood better using
dynamical models. For example, Thelen and Smith constructed a dynamical model of how infants learn to
walk (Clark, 1997, p.124). They employ a dynamical system that involves the interactions between three
variables: neural states, the leg muscles and the103 environment. When an infant’s legs were oriented
in the same direction as a treadmill with which they made contact, the infant’s legs showed a

57
stepping motion. According to Thelen and Smith, the leg acts like a spring when it is stretched out. So,
stepping behavior emerges when the brain cooperates with the muscles and tendons in the right physical
environment (i.e. the treadmill).
Van Gelder presents the advantages of dynamical models over representational computational
systems. First, standard computational models describe the computational state of a system from one point
in time to another. In other words, they treat time as a set of discrete points (e.g. T1 T2 T3 etc). These are
ordinal rather than cardinal: they represent the sequential order of different moments in time, but not
cardinal amounts, which would allow one to talk of duration or amounts of time (Van Gelder, 1995). In
contrast, dynamical models describe how processes change in real time. Therefore, such models can be
used to represent how cognitive systems change in continuous ways and they can represent what a system
does between two moments in time or in transitional states, unlike the discrete computational model.
Second, this is an important advantage of the dynamical approach because cognitive processes can
involve different but interrelated time scales.

Changes in the state of neurons can take just a few milliseconds, visual or auditory recognition
half a second or less, coordinated movement a few seconds, conversation and story understanding
minutes or even hours, and the emergence of sophisticated capacities can take months and years
(Van Gelder, 1995).

Processes that take place at one time scale affect those at another. For example, what we see affects how we
move and vice versa. Dynamical models can handle this kind of interdependence. For example, one can
link the relevant descriptive equations so as to characterize the ways in which the faster processes influence
the slower ones.
Third, standard computation models describe the structure of cognitive systems. However, because of
their static nature, typically such models do not describe how these structures are created. They ignore
morphogenesis, the study of the emergence of forms, which requires appropriate dynamical laws. As we
shall see in Chapters 7 and 9, dynamical models in the natural sciences can describe mathematically the
formation of self-organizing structures. Likewise, dynamical cognitive models aim to describe the
formation of selforganizing cognitive systems. Such models characterize how such structures emerge in the
brain given the body and the environment

58
 6
Quantum Physics

In a sense, matter is not made up of matter. It is composed of something that has few of the properties
traditionally ascribed to matter. Another way to make the same point is that sub-atomic particles are not
adequately described as material objects. Nevertheless, this fact ought not lead us to give up our concept of
reality independent of mind. On this point, there seems to be some debate and confusion.
We shall look at three aspects of quantum mechanics that might be thought to challenge the idea of
mind-independent reality. These are Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the nature of the wave collapse,
and Bell’s inequality theorem. On the one hand, these last two constitute the two fundamental paradoxes of
quantum mechanics that seem to involve us in contradictions. On the other hand, Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle does not involve a paradox or an apparent contradiction, even though it is very puzzling both in
itself and for its implications. In summary, these three aspects of quantum mechanics challenge our normal
conception of reality; our question is: ‘in exactly what way?’
I shall describe briefly the relevant physical theories and then explain why they might be thought to
threaten the idea of a mind independent reality. Afterwards, I shall show why this thesis is mistaken.

Quantum Waves and Particles

Particles and waves are essentially different. They have contradictory properties. Waves are
movements that have amplitude, frequency and wavelength. They are spread out. Also, they interact with
each other with interference effects or they can be superimposed on each other. When two waves interact,
they form a new composite wave. When the peaks of one wave encounter the troughs of another, the two
waves can cancel each other out. When the peaks of one wave encounter the peaks of another, they
superimpose to form a new larger composite wave. Think of the way in which water ripples in a pool
interact.
In contrast, traditionally, particles are not spread out, but to have a definite location. They are not
movements that have amplitude, frequency and wavelength. Their interaction basically consists in
collisions. Think of billiard balls hitting each other.
In short, waves and particles have contradictory properties. Yet, under one set of conditions, light
behaves like a particle and, under another, it behaves like a wave. Furthermore, these quantum waves are
very different from those of classical macrophysics. In classical physics, waves are formed out of the
movement of particles. For example, the wave-like motion of water or air consists in the undulating
movement of the atomic particles of the medium up and down. Consider the wave movement of a string.
The string moves up and down, and this movement is transmitted horizontally along the string, even though
no part of the string actually moves horizontally. However, in quantum mechanics, the situation appears to
be reversed. In a sense, particles emerge out of waves. In the case of light, electro-magnetic radiation and

59
the sub-atomic particles, there is no vibrating medium because a medium would have to be composed of
something even more fundamental. We will return to this point later.
In summary, in some conditions, light behaves like a particle. It comes in packets or discrete bundles
called light quanta or photons. This is observable with the photoelectric effect. In other conditions, light
behaves like a wave. It has amplitude, frequency and wavelength. It is spread out, and when two light
beams react, then they can interfere with each other or be superimposed on each other. Light can behave
both as a particle and as a wave and, as we shall see, in this respect, its behavior depends on the conditions
of measurement. It will never behave in both ways at once because the two sets of properties are
incompatible. The same points apply to other sub-atomic particles, such as the electron and proton.

Superposition

One reason why quantum physics seems strange is that the wave-particles it studies have what is
called superposition. This means that, for instance, if a wave-particle has a definite position, then it does
not have a definite momentum. In that case, the momentum will have to be described in essentially
probabilistic terms. Similarly, if the particle has a definite momentum, then it does not have a definite
position. Its location must be described in probabilistic terms. In contrast, in classical mechanics, we can
completely and determinately specify the state of a system by giving the position and momentum of its
constituent particles.
Superposition applies to other pairs of complimentary properties, such as its angular momentum with
regard to its spin along the X and the Y-axis. Such pairs of properties are called complimentary. They arise
from the fact that such quantum particles have both wave-like and particle-like properties, which are
incompatible in the sense that no particle can have both at the same time. However, any complete
description of a quantum system must involve both of these pairs of incompatible properties. Consequently,
when one of the pair of the complimentary set of properties has a definite value, then the other must be
probabilistic. The claim that particles have a superposition of such complimentary states is based on firm
experimental evidence, which will be described below.
Heisenberg, Born, Schrodinger, Dirac, and other physicists developed a mathematical symbolism that
describes beautifully superposition, and which basically consists of representing the dynamical aspects of a
system with operators on vector spaces, using imaginary numbers to represent superposition. This is the
mathematically precise and observationally accurate language of quantum mechanics. (For a clear
exposition of this mathematics, see Albert, Chapter 2)
To consolidate this first part of our exposition of quantum mechanics, we need to describe four
features of a quantum system.

1) Superposition
First, there is the strange fact that particles behave under certain circumstances as waves and, under other
circumstances, as particles, depending on how they are measured. These complimentary sets of properties
exist in superposition, meaning that, when one is definite, the other is indefinite and essentially
probabilistic.

2) Wavelength and Momentum

Second, the wave-like property of wavelength (λ) is inversely proportional to the particle’s momentum (p),
and this is described by the equation:

1) λ=h/p

where ‘h’ is Planck’s constant, which is described below.

3) Schrodinger’s Wave Equation

Third, there is a correlation between the amplitude of the wave and its position at different times, or rather
the probability of its being at a specific location at any time. This correlation is specified by the square of
the state function of the wave, ⎟ψ⎟2. The square of the state function specifies the probability of all the
possible values of the particle’s position at different times. The relevant equation is called Schrodinger’s
wave equation.

60
4) Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
These last two points (i.e. 2 and 3) are important because they relate the wavelength and amplitude of a
particle, that is its wave-like properties, to its physical attributes of momentum and position. In this way,
they give a physical meaning to these wave-like properties in a way that does not depend on quantum
waves having a medium.
Now, we need to return to the relationship between the momentum and position of the particle. As we
have already seen, the complimentary pairs of the properties of sub-atomic particles, such as position and
momentum, are indeterminate. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle specifies the maximum size of this
indeterminacy. As such, the name of the principle is slightly misleading. The point is not that we have
uncertain knowledge about the particle, but rather that the particle itself has properties that are
indeterminate, and at least one of which has to be described in probabilistic terms.
With regard to momentum and position, the Principle says that the inexactness of position of a particle
times that of the momentum of a particle must be greater than a specific number. This number is Planck’s
constant divided by 2 times pi (i.e. 2Π). Planck’s constant (h) is 6.6 x 10–34 Joules-seconds. Heisenberg’s
Uncertainty Principle is expressed with the following formula:

2) Δx. Δp > h/ 2Π

The reason why a particle cannot have a determinate position and momentum at the same time is
related directly to the fact that it has superposition. Wavelength is a wave-like property and is a direct
function of its momentum. Position is a particle-like property. Thus, these two properties are
complimentary.
The linked ideas of complimentarity and superposition describe the main features of a quantum
mechanical system. They are strange and puzzling, but this means only that they do not conform to our
experience and normal conception of physical objects. However, in the next section, we shall describe the
nature of the wave collapse, which is more than just puzzling. It is paradoxical in the sense that it appears
to involve a logical contradiction.

Wave Collapse and the Measurement Problem

To understand this paradox, let us briefly examine a simple experiment that provides some of the
evidence for complimentarity and superposition. We will then show how an extension of this experiment
reveals the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics.
In Young’s famous double-split experiment, a device projects a beam of electrons or photons through
one or two slits onto a fluorescent screen behind which there is a series of measuring devices. When only
one split is open, the electrons or photons form a pattern on the screen that one would expect from a beam
of particles, and which is similar to a round of bullets. However, when the two slits are both open, the
electrons or photons form a pattern on the screen that shows interference and which is similar to what one
would expect from the interference of two waves. This pattern is maintained even if the light beam has a
low intensity equivalent to a single photon passing through the slits one at a time. In other words, the
photon as a wave does not pass through one slit rather than the other, nor through both slits, or through
neither slit. In brief, the standard double-split experiment confirms that photons and electrons have a
superposition.
So far, the experiment reveals the observational basis for the idea of superposition, which was
explained in the previous section. Now we can depict an extension of this experiment that reveals the
paradox or apparent contradiction. Consider what happens if one places a device at each of the two open
slits in order to measure whether a photon has just passed through the slits. Remember that, when the two
slits are open, the beam of particles behaves like a wave. However, now, when the measuring devices are
attached to the slits, the results change dramatically. In this case, the interference pattern vanishes, and the
resulting pattern on the screen is what one would expect from summing or adding the two beams of
particles. In other words, because it has been measured, the light behaves like a stream of particles and no
longer as a wave.

61
 This effect is referred to as the collapse of the wave function because it appears that the wave
suddenly acquires the properties of a particle when it is measured. It acquires a definite position and
behaves like a particle. In other words, when it remains unmeasured, light, for instance, behaves according
to Schrodinger’s wave equation; it has no definite position, but only a range of probabilities for different
positions at different times. However, when it is measured, light becomes a photon with a position. One
cannot predict where the photon will appear, except in the probabilistic terms described by Schrodinger’s
wave equation.
Why is this paradoxical? Schrodinger’s wave equation is supposed to describe all physical events at
the quantum level. However, now it seems that there is one type of physical event that is not describable
with this wave equation, namely the collapse of the wave function. It is apparently not describable with
Schrodinger’s wave equation because of the incompatible properties of waves and particles mentioned at
the beginning of the previous section. Therefore, it appears that we have three true, but contradictory
propositions:

i) All physical events can be described with the wave equation.

j) The collapse of the wave function cannot be so described.
k) The collapse of the wave function is a physical event.

It appears that one of these three propositions must be denied, and it is tempting to think that the third
statement is the most vulnerable. According to one way of denying this third premise, the collapse of the
wave function is a non-physical event. The physical universe consists basically of quantum waves, but the
consciousness of an observer makes these waves appear as particles. We shall consider this view, which
challenges fundamentally our concept of consciousness-independent reality, later.

Bell’s Inequality and Non-Local Effects

Can an event cause a simultaneous change in some distant event? Einstein’s theory of special
relativity implies that it cannot because nothing can travel faster than light. In order for one event to effect
another, there must be some physical mechanism or particle that transmits the change across the distance
involved, and this mechanism cannot function faster than the speed of light. It will take time.
Bell’s inequality theorem shows how it is a logical/mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics
(for some systems that are composed of more than one particle) that there are quantum cause-effects over a
distance, which are simultaneous. These are called non-local effects.
Here we have both a paradox and a puzzle. The paradox is that there are good experimental reasons
for affirming both quantum mechanics and special relativity, and yet they appear to be contradictory. In
other words, once again, we have a set of propositions that appear to be true and yet contradictory.

3. Quantum mechanics is true

4. Special relativity is true
5. If quantum mechanics is true then there are non-local effects.
6. Special relativity implies that there are no non-local effects

The puzzle, which remains even when the paradox has been resolved, is how are simultaneous cause-
effect relations possible over a distance? The idea that one event can immediately effect another distant
event without any intervening causal mechanism is not contradictory, but it is very puzzling or contrary to
our normal expectations.
Let us describe briefly the nature of these non-local effects. The history of Bell’s inequality begins, in
1935, with a famous thought experiment put forward by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR), which they
advanced originally in order to challenge the completeness of quantum mechanics by arguing that there
must be certain hidden variables involved. In this thought experiment, they describe a situation in which
quantum mechanics implies that it is possible to establish the momentum or the position of a distant particle
merely by performing a measurement on another nearby particle. EPR argued that this was impossible,
since there was no physical connection between the two particles, and concluded that the first particle must
have both a precise position and momentum, despite the fact that the wave equation states otherwise. In

62
short, EPR tried to argue that quantum mechanics, or Schrodinger’s wave equation, was an incomplete
theory.
In fact, the theoretical work of David Bell and the experiments of Alain Aspect have shown that the
kind of non-local effects predicted by EPR actually occur in reality. Quantum mechanics does imply that
there are non-local effects for two or more particle systems, and these non-local effects have been observed
concerning spin. Hence, we face both the puzzle and the paradox mentioned earlier, which will be
discussed in more detail later.

A Philosophical Debate
Our normal realist view of reality can be summarized with the following theses:

1) Reality consists of entities that possess intrinsic properties

2) These entities exist independently of our perceiving them
3) As observers, we are part of this reality.

Quantum mechanics might be thought to challenge all three of these claims because of the two
paradoxes described earlier.

1) The Wave Collapse

One way to escape the paradox regarding the wave collapse is to argue that measurement only occurs
when there is conscious observation. The idea is that all physical reactions are described by Schrodinger’s
wave equation, including those that comprise the physical interactions of a wave with the appropriate
measuring apparatus. According to this position, the physical interactions between the wave and the
apparatus do not count as a measurement until there has been a conscious observation of those interactions.
In short, consciousness causes the wave collapse. Unobserved, the physical world consists of quantum
waves; when it observed, these waves appear to consciousness as particles and objects.
This view avoids the contradiction between a), b) and c) above by denying proposition c) (i.e. the
collapse of the wave function is a physical event). Furthermore, because it denies c), this theory asserts that
ordinary macro objects do not exist independently of our observations of them and, in effect, it negates
common sense realism and propositions 1-3) above. However, despite some popularity outside of
academia, most physicists and philosophers do not take this ‘consciousness view’ of measurement very
seriously, and we shall see why in a moment.
Unfortunately, this consciousness view is sometimes confused with the standard Copenhagen
interpretation of quantum mechanics advanced by Neils Bohr, which is an instrumentalist interpretation of
the theory. According to the Copenhagen view, macro-physical objects, such as a measuring apparatus, are
real. Quantum mechanics is a complete and true theory, but its truth does not imply that physical reality
actually consists of quantum waves. Rather, its truth should be understood instrumentally, in terms of the
fact that the theory permits us to make accurate predictions of quantum effects at the macro level. It only
predicts measurements. In summary, the Copenhagen interpretation tries to modify proposition a) above
(i.e. All physical events can be described with the wave equation) by interpreting quantum mechanics
instrumentally. Bohr asserts:

There is no quantum world…only an abstract quantum description. It is wrong to think that the
task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature
(quoted in Kosso, p.152)

Clearly, the Copenhagen interpretation is very different from the consciousness view explained
earlier, even though both are sometimes called “non-realist,” a point that helps to explain the confusion.
The consciousness view implies that ordinary macro-objects are not real; the Copenhagen interpretation
affirms that they are.

63
 In fact, the consciousness view of measurement has little to recommend it. First, it does not really
explain measurement and the collapse of the wave function at all. How does consciousness collapse the
wave function? Why does it do so in some circumstances and not others? The consciousness view does not
provide answers and places any possible replies outside the realm of physics. Second, the theory relies on a
dualist view of mind and matter. It must postulate consciousness as something non-physical and, therefore,
it is susceptible to all the objections normally raised against dualism. Third, there are several other more
plausible interpretations of quantum mechanics and, therefore, the measurement paradox does not force the
consciousness view on us. For a start, there is the instrumentalist or Copenhagen interpretation offered by
Bohr, which is probably the most commonly accepted by physicists. However, there are several other
interpretations, which are more realist (or non-instrumentalist), such as the interactive approaches argued
for by Kochen and Healy (Healy, 1989). Furthermore, David Bohm has advanced a theory that denies
superposition. Briefly, he argues that particles always have a definite position. There is no collapse of the
wave function. However, in addition to particles, there also exists a field that causes the changes in the
positions of the particles, and this field must be described in a way that explains the results of the two slit
experiments and other similar observations. Additionally, Bohm’s theory is holistic because the wave
equation should be applied to an entire system of which any one particle is only a component. This will be
explained shortly.
In conclusion, the measurement problem does not constitute a good argument for the claim that the
realist theses 1-3 above are false. However, as we shall now see, the situation is a little more complex with
the introduction of Bell’s inequality theorem.

2) Non-Locality

Imagine a revised version of the EPR in which two particles with spin are produced by a single event
with no spin, such as the disintegration of a molecule. In a quantum mechanical system, total spin is
preserved or conserved. Therefore, if one particle had an up-spin, then the other would have to have a
down-spin. Of course, prior to measurement, the two particles are the same because both are in a
superposition of up and down. Imagine that the two particles separate. We measure one of them and, as a
result, it changes from being in a superposition and acquires a down-spin. Therefore, we can conclude that,
because total spin is conserved, the other particle must have an up-spin. It also must have changed from
being in a superposition to having a definite up-spin. This change must be instantaneous and it occurs non-
locally.
From this kind of thought experiment, we can draw only one of two conclusions. Either there is a
genuine action at a distance, which apparently violates the special theory of relativity, or else, the particles
must have had a definite spin right from the start instead of being in a state of superposition as quantum
mechanics asserts. Einstein (or EPR) argues for the second alternative, which in effect means that quantum
mechanics is an incomplete theory. In other words, there must be hidden variables that determine the
definite spin of each particle prior to measurement, which quantum mechanics does not account for. In
sharp contrast, Bohr argues for the first option: quantum mechanics is complete; there are no variables that
are hidden from the theory; and therefore, there must be genuine action at a distance even if this violates
special relativity.
In 1964, Bell set out to prove that Bohr was mistaken and that Einstein was right. In fact, in a sense,
he ended up proving the opposite. He demonstrated that it is impossible to have both determinate spin and
locality in quantum mechanics. He ruled out the possibility of local hidden variables in quantum
mechanics, thereby invalidating Einstein’s EPR argument.
Note that Bell’s theorem does not exclude a theory of non-local hidden variables, which is the kind of
theory advanced by David Bohm, who postulates the existence of both genuine non-local simultaneous
action at a distance and the hidden variables that are required to claim that particles have a determinate
properties prior to measurement, despite quantum mechanics’ claim to the contrary.
However, also note that, when combined, Bell’s theorem and the special theory of relativity
apparently exclude the possibility of all hidden variables. The former rules out local hidden variables, and
the latter non-local ones. This is why Bohm’s theory requires rejecting a realist interpretation of special
relativity.
As we have seen, Bohm’s theory is a special case for four reasons. First, he argues for a realistic
theory that rejects the instrumentalism of Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation. Second, against quantum

64
mechanics, he claims that particles have determinate properties prior to measurement and tries to account
for observations such as those of the two slit experiments by postulating the physical existence of wave
functions that carry the particles, rather than doing so in terms of the collapse of a quantum wave function.
Third, because of its realism, the theory must postulate genuine physical action at a distance. Therefore, the
theory does contradict Einstein’s special theory of relativity because it requires the concept of absolute
simultaneity: non-local effects take place instanteneously. Fourth, nevertheless, because of quantum effects,
it will always be impossible to determine which inertial frame of reference is the one that defines absolute
simultaneity. In this way, although Bohm’s theory requires an instrumentalist interpretation of special
relativity, it remains consistent with the observations of both quantum mechanics and relativity. This is one
way to resolve the second paradox described by propositions d-g) above. However, there are others, which
we shall not go into here.
Whether one accepts Bohm’s theory or not, there remains the second puzzle (how are non-local
effects possible?) and its implications for the realist theses 1-3. Non-locality seems to imply that thesis 1
(i.e. that reality consists of entities that possess intrinsic properties) is false because it challenges the idea of
intrinsic properties at the quantum level for certain kinds of particle systems. Let me explain. If a two-
particle wave function is separable and if the two particles do not interact in the way that Bell’s theorem
describes, then they may be treated as two distinct one-particle systems. However, if a two-particle wave
function is not separable, as is the case for the systems described in the EPR experiments, then the relevant
properties of each of the two particles depend on those of the system as a whole. This means that, for
example, the velocity of particle A, once measured, will depend instantly on that of particle B however far
apart they may be. In this way, the claim that particles have independent intrinsic properties is not viable
for certain kinds of properties of particles in certain kinds of quantum systems.
However, this does not imply that the concept of an object as a distinct entity must be jettisoned.
Particular particles still can be individuated in terms of their spatio-temporal position, even when those
positions are essentially probabilistic, and even when those particles form part of a non-separable system.
In other words, the assertion that some of the properties of each of the two particles depend on the other
does not require denying that there are two particles. They are distinct, even if they are not separable from
the system they are a part of. Given these points, one cannot claim that Bell’s theorem demonstrates the
truth of Spinoza’s thesis that everything is one.

Conclusions
Even if it is interpreted realistically, quantum mechanics does not show us that the world only exists
when we observe or measure it. Rather it shows that, prior to measurement, particles have indeterminate
complimentary properties. In other words, with respect to some pairs of properties, they are essentially
fuzzy or indefinite.
This conclusion is subject to three conditions. First, it may not apply to all of the properties of a
particle. For example, even though the Copenhagen interpretation assumes that no classical determinate
values apply to quantum states, Bell’s theorem does not apply to electrical charge. Second, the above
conclusion applies only to realistic interpretations of quantum mechanics. In contrast, when it is interpreted
instrumentally, quantum mechanics does not demonstrate that particles really have indeterminate properties
prior to measurement. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that, because quantum mechanical theory
successfully predicts our macro-level observations, we should use it to make predictions, without thinking
that it describes the world as it really is. Third, the conclusion applies only to some realist interpretations,
and not, for instance, to Bohm’s theory.
Bell’s theorem reveals the essential interconnectedness of certain quantum systems with more than
one particle. Such quantum systems demonstrate non-locality. This implies that the relevant properties of
the particles concerned are not intrinsic to the individual particles but rather belong to the system as a
whole even when it is dispersed in space.
In conclusion, subject to the qualifications already mentioned, everyday objects are composed of
quanta that are indeterminate and interconnected, and in this sense they are not composed of smaller
material objects.

65
 7
Macrophysics:
Chaos and Necessity

Physical theories apparently imply that universal mathematical causal laws govern the workings of
universe. It seems that the universe is mathematically ordered. However, this idea is puzzling in various
ways. It seems odd that mathematics captures so well the nature of these laws given that it is a language
invented by us. Does this close fit mean that the universe is inherently mathematical or do we impose this
order in some way To answer these questions, we shall examine two issues: the nature of causal necessity,
and realism vs. instrumentalism regarding physical laws. Towards the end of the chapter, we shall examine
briefly the implications our replies to these questions for chaos theory.
This is an ambitious menu. In part it is so because there are many important side issues and, in order
to avoid complicating the main thrust of this chapter, I have placed concise discussions of these tangential
points as a set of notes at the end of the chapter.

Causal Laws and Necessity

There are several different kinds of natural laws, and for the sake of simplicity, we need to restrict our
discussion (Hung, 1987, p.136). These kinds include:

a) Low-level specific laws, which state the regular association of observable attributes, such as ‘the melting
point of iron is 1535 degrees centigrade.’ In this category, we may also include laws that state the
uniformity of development of observable properties, such as those that concern chemical reactions.

b) Laws that govern functional relationships (Hung, p.137). These also concern the functions that express
mathematically the relationship between observable properties. In this category, we can include the
following. The gas law ‘PV = KT’. Newton’s gravitational law: F = G x m1.m2/d2. Snell’s law ‘y= sin
a/sin b’ where ‘y’ is index of refraction, ‘b’ is the angle of refraction and ‘a’ is the angle of incidence.

c) Theoretical laws, such as ‘E=mc2’ and Ohm’s law, which states that the strength of current is
proportional to the potential difference between the ends of a conductor. Such laws employ theoretical
terms and usually concern properties that are not directly observable.

We shall concentrate our discussion on the last two categories. All three types of laws express a
certain necessity. Consider Einstein’s claim that nothing with a positive rest mass can travel faster then
light. He did not affirm merely that nothing does travel faster than light, but rather the much stronger

66
assertion that nothing can do so. This strong statement draws a boundary between the physically possible
and impossible. It appeals to modal notions such as necessity and possibility. How should we understand
these concepts?
Prior to the birth of modern science around 1600, it was usually assumed that God, as the supreme
authority of the universe, laid down certain rules or laws that His creation had to obey. The term ‘natural
law’ indicated the authoritarian view that such laws were God’s commands. The idea that events must
happen according to natural laws was understood in terms of their obeying omnipotent divine commands.
As science developed during the modern period (1600-1800), the conception of law was shorn
gradually of these normative, religious and authoritarian connotations through the development of two
contrasting theories of physical laws, the rationalist and empiricist, which are still influential today. We
shall contrast them with respect to their implications for causal necessity.

1) The Rationalist View

The 17th century rationalist approach to causation has two elements: first, a theory of the causal
relation and, second, a view of causal laws and necessity. The difference will become clear later.
The first element starts from the following observation: a complete specification of a cause will
logically entail its effect. In much classical macrophysics, we explain an event by showing that it had to
happen given the cause and conditions. For example, the window breaks because the stone hit it with a
sufficient force and because of the laws of motion, and because there were no other relevant factors in the
circumstances. Combining these components, it seems that the window had to break and, for this reason,
we can represent the explanation with a logically valid syllogism as follows.

Argument A
2
1. A body with a mass of 3 kg and an acceleration of 2m/s is moving towards a window at a distance
of 10m.
2. Force equals mass times acceleration
3. The resisting force of the window is 0.3N
4. There are no other relevant causal factors
_______________________________________
5. Therefore, the force of the moving body is greater than that of the resisting body.

In other words, the window breaks. The rationalist view, expounded by Descartes, Spinoza and
Leibniz, tries to explain the relation between cause and effect in terms of the logical relationship between
the statements that represent cause and effect. Given the premises, the conclusion follows with logical
necessity. This does not mean that statement 5 is a necessary truth, but rather that the conditional assertion
‘If the premises 1, 2, 3, and 4 are true then the conclusion 5 is true’ is necessary.
Let us turn now to the second element. The rationalists tended to regard causal laws as logically
necessary. For instance, they would consider premise 2 in argument A, which is Newton’s Second law of
motion, as a necessary truth because it specifies a law of nature. In contemporary language, they considered
laws to be akin to analytic truths such as the principle of non-contradiction. More exactly, they assumed
that there always must be a sufficient reason why things are as they are. This assumption is called ‘the
principle of sufficient reason.’ General causal laws, such as Newton’s laws of motion, can be derived
logically from this principle, and more specific laws follow deductively from the general ones. If one asked
a rationalist why the principle of sufficient reason must be true, then he or she would appeal to the nature of
the divine: if it were not true, then God would be less than all-perfect, which is logically impossible.
Combining these two elements of rationalism, we arrive at the conclusion that the causal necessity of
events should be analyzed in terms of logical necessity. An event E is causally necessary because the
description of its cause implies logically the description of E and also because the relevant covering causal
law is itself a necessary truth.
This theory appears thoroughly deterministic. However, the vitally important clause that there are no
other relevant factors involved (i.e. premise 4 above) helps to alleviate that impression. In short, the model

67
outlined by an argument like A requires us to treat the particular events concerned as a closed system, but
in reality, the only plausible candidate for being such a system is the universe as a whole. For anything less,
one cannot rule out the possibility of interfering factors. For example, a flying stone might be caught or
deflected before it reaches the window, and there are plenty of examples of heavy objects that do not fall to
the ground, such as airplanes and helium balloons. In short, the rationalist deductive conception of causal
relations requires idealized conditions that isolate a series of events as a closed system. Since it cannot be
guaranteed a priori that specific particular events occur within a closed system, the model does not imply
determinism with regard to those events. Nevertheless, it does entail determinism concerning the universe
as a whole.
Is the rationalist theory plausible? For the sake of clarity, we shall evaluate its two elements
separately. Regarding the first part (concerning the causal relation), it is fruitful to examine a similar
contemporary theory. Some 20th century thinkers of an empiricist persuasion have argued that we can make
sense of causal explanation in terms of logical deduction through arguments such as the one given above.
In 1965, Carl Hempel gave the seminal contemporary exposition of this kind of account of causal
explanation, which he called the deductive-nomological (D-N) model. This model affirms that ‘a cause
explains its effect’ is equivalent to the assertion that the relevant description of the effect is entailed by the
description of the cause, which must include a covering natural law. This means that the D-N model is
similar to the first element of the rationalist theory, even though its empiricist proponents would reject the
second element of the rationalist theory for reasons that will become clear soon.
One well-known problem with the D-N model is that it does not account for the asymmetry of causal
explanations. A flagpole casts a shadow. The height of the flagpole explains the length of the shadow given
the position of the sun and certain physical laws. However, we could perform the deduction the other way
around. We can deduce the height of the flagpole from the length of the shadow, given the position of the
sun, and this inference can be represented in a D-N form. However, obviously, this new deduction does not
represent the cause–effect relation: the length of the shadow does not cause the height of the pole. Many
contemporary writers think that considerations of this kind indicate that the logical relationship between
sentences is too weak to represent the causal relationship between events. It may be necessary but it is not
sufficient.
Now, the second element of rationalism: the claim that causal laws are logically necessary. Prima
facie, this view does not appear plausible It is not a logical contradiction to deny a causal law, such as
‘F=ma’ or the principle of the conservation of energy. Such laws appear to be empirically rather than a
priori true, even if there is not a sharp divide between the two and even if some laws do have an a priori
element <1>. The causal laws that apply to this actual universe do not hold in all logically possible worlds
and, thus, it is not a contradiction to deny them.
However, even if causal laws are not logically necessary, they may be physically necessary. It still
may be true that, in the actual world, they are necessary in some sense yet to be explained.
There is another point. The rationalist view is apt to mislead us into thinking that there is logical
necessity in the world. However, this thought confuses the vital distinction between descriptions of reality
and reality itself. Logical necessity is a property of sentences and not of things. This point forms part of the
empiricist critique of rationalism to be examined now.

2) Empiricism

Traditional empiricism denies the very idea of natural necessity and, consequently, also the
rationalists’ attempt to account for it in terms of logical necessity. David Hume provides the classic
statement of this empiricist view (Hume, 1739). Hume claimed that all concepts must be derived from the
impressions of sense-experience and noted that there is no sensory impression of a necessary connection
between events. We can observe only that event of type A is followed always by event of type B, but we
never observe a necessary connection between A and B. Hume concluded that the notion of necessity is not
derived from sensory experience or observation.
Furthermore, Hume also argued that the concept of natural necessity could not be demonstrated
analytically through reason. According to Hume, there is no logical contradiction in supposing that a heavy
body released near the surface of a planet will not fall. The body will fall, but it is not a logical
contradiction to claim that it will not. In other words, he denied the rationalist analysis of causal necessity
in terms of logical necessity.

68
 From these two points, Hume concluded that we have no concept of natural necessity. Such a concept
cannot be derived either deductively by reason or inductively from experience. Therefore, the so-called
laws of nature merely express regularities between observable properties; they do not express any
necessity. Hume analyzed causation in terms of a constant conjunction of events; it consists in regularities.
Hume also tried to explain psychologically why we have a belief in natural necessity. He claimed that
the belief that there is causal necessity is merely a result of our subjective expectations, to which nature
does not have to conform, even though it often does.
In conclusion, because of this skepticism regarding natural necessity, Hume’s view implies that the
so-called laws of nature describe regularities in the world, such as event of type A is followed by event of
type B (e.g. heating a gas is followed by its expansion). In short, they are merely empirical generalizations.
However, against Hume, there are significant differences between empirical generalizations and
causal laws. First, causal laws support counterfactual statements such as ‘If this gas were heated, then it
would exert a greater pressure.’ Such a statement is counterfactual because it can be true even if the gas is
never heated. Empirical generalizations do not imply such counterfactuals. For instance, ‘All the coins in
my pocket are quarters’ does not support the counterfactual ‘If I put this coin in my pocket, then it will be
a quarter.’
Second, physical laws also support modal judgments of necessity, possibility, and impossibility, such
as ‘It is impossible to break the window with this feather.’ Empirical generalizations do not support such
statements. From the general statement ‘All of the flowers in my garden are yellow,’ one cannot conclude
that it is impossible for me to grow red flowers.
Third, because of this, causal laws can provide explanations in a way that mere empirical
generalizations do not. Suppose that someone were to ask me why this flower is yellow. The reply
‘Because this is my garden, and all the flowers in my garden are yellow’ does not really explain the
phenomena.
To summarize, on the one hand, classical empiricism treats causal laws as empirical generalizations of
natural regularities, and thus cannot account adequately for counterfactuals. On the other hand, rationalism
assimilates causal necessity to logical necessity and, on this score, Hume’s criticisms seem correct. There is
no logical necessity in the world; logical necessity is a feature of some sentences. Furthermore, causal laws
are not analytic truths. In conclusion, the rationalist and empiricist views of causal necessity are both
inadequate <2>.

3) Elements of a Third View

This indicates the need for an alternative third position, namely that, to understand causation, we need
physical modal notions such as those of physical necessity and possibility, which are distinct from the
logical modal ones. Classical macrophysics requires the concept of causal necessity, which cannot be
jettisoned but which cannot be explained in terms of logical necessity. Causal laws express a physical
necessity, even though it is not a contradiction to deny them. This need for physical necessity is important
because it is a requirement of the idea that natural things, such as magnets and acids, have powers and
dispositions. The concept of dispositions requires that of natural necessity. The significance of this will be
apparent later.
This third position leaves us with the very difficult task of characterizing the nature of physical
necessity. One attempt might be as follows. When we describe changes and dispositions in terms of causal
laws, we must frame such descriptions so that they attempt to capture the invariant, inescapable, and basic
aspects of those changes and dispositions.

1) First, physical laws are supposed to describe invariant features of physical systems <3>. For
example, a cornerstone of Einstein’s special theory of relativity is the claim ‘the laws of physics are the
same in all inertial frames.’ Because of this and because the speed of light is also invariant, Einstein claims
that properties such as length and simultaneity must vary with the inertial frame. The important point is that
a central premise of Einstein’s reasoning that led to the special theory of relativity is that the laws of
physics are invariant. However, as we shall see later, physical laws are typically invariant only within a
certain domain of application. Laws are invariant through space and time.

69
 2) Second, physical laws are supposed to describe the inescapable aspects of change and dispositions.
For example, Newton’s second law of motion states that, in all changes of velocity, force equals mass times
acceleration. The force required to accelerate a body must comply with the equation ‘F=ma.’ The point
might be expressed as follows. There is nothing that we can do to alter this aspect of the relevant kind of
disposition given the relevant restrictions. By definition, the laws of nature cannot be altered by us, given
certain conditions <4>.

3) Third, natural laws are supposed to describe the basic features of changes and dispositions. For this
reason, philosophers of science often distinguish derived and fundamental laws. It is often assumed that the
former can be reduced to the latter, and thereby explained in terms of them. For example, Kepler’s three
laws of planetary motion can be derived from Newton’s general laws of motion and gravity, given the
appropriate descriptions of the solar system. Newton’s laws are more general than Kepler’s because they do
not mention particular bodies, and furthermore, they unify and underlie many other natural motions, such
as those of pendulums, projectiles, falling bodies, and more contentiously, the tides. Likewise, the laws
governing the behavior of light were subsumed under Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which was
later explained quantum mechanically. A set of laws is more basic than another if and only if the former
explains the latter and not visa versa. According to the standard view, this means that that the latter can be
reduced to the former; this reductive aspect of the standard view gives rise to the ideal of a unified theory
of everything <5>. However, the claim that laws must be basic need not depend on this reductive
conception of explanation.

The above are necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, conditions for causal laws. In a way they help
explain in what way causal laws are necessary; laws are necessary precisely because, to count as such, a
description of a change and a disposition must satisfy at least these three requirements. Laws pick out the
inescapable aspects of the universe, which, at the same time, are invariant and basic. They are necessary
because they cannot be altered.
However, this explanation is circular. The statement that laws are inescapable and cannot be changed
appeals to the very notion of natural necessity. It is possible to explain why some specific feature of nature
is inalterable by appeal to some other general and, perhaps, more basic inescapable feature. However, this
kind of explanation will always rely on some aspect of nature being inalterable and, in any case, does not
explain ‘inalterability’ as such. Consequently, to explain the concept of natural necessity in terms of
inescapability is circular. For this reason, many contemporary thinkers treat the idea of natural necessity as
a primitive simple notion.
Perhaps, however, the circularity should not worry us. We find a similar situation with regard to
logical necessity. To explain why a truth is logically necessary, we must appeal to the principle that it is
impossible for a contradiction to be true. This explanation is also circular. Nevertheless, it still can count as
part of an explanation of logical necessity because we have identified and appealed to the basic principle at
work.
Using this as an analogy, we can argue that the notion of natural necessity can be explained, albeit in a
circular way, by appeal to the idea that there limits to what a person can alter or change.

Are Causal Laws Real?

We have arrived at the preliminary conclusion that causal laws express a certain kind of physical
necessity by picking out features of reality that are invariantly inalterable and which have a basic
explanatory role. In this way, they are not logically necessary but they are not merely accidental
generalizations that only happen to true. However, does this mean that causal laws are real features of the
universe? Unlike logical necessity, which is a feature of sentences, natural necessity seems to be a feature
of physical universe. This seems to mean that causal laws are real.

1) Realism

70
 The full-blown realist position claims that there are two quite distinct realms of existence:
mathematical objects and the physical, and that mathematical objects can represent causal laws when they
have a similar structure, called a homomorphism, which permits a mapping from the mathematical to the
physical. Thus, this full-blown position involves realism at two distinct levels, namely regarding
mathematical objects and the causal laws and properties that they represent.
In the case of mathematics, realists, such as the great logician Gödel and the contemporary
mathematician Penrose, claim that mathematical terms can designate mathematical objects, which are
abstract non-physical entities. Consequently, when a new mathematical concept is formed, this should be
construed as the discovery of a mathematical object, which existed prior to the discovery.
Realists in physics regarding causal laws, such as Arthur Eddington and Feynman, argue that some
causal laws are the actual rules that govern the workings of the universe itself. According to the realist,
such laws are not merely imposed by us, but are really out there as eternal entities that are real in much the
same way that individual objects are, except that they immutable and abstract.
Some recent philosophers such as Tooley, Armstrong and Dretske argue for the strong realist claim
that causal laws state a relation among properties, which are universals that exist independently of us and of
particular objects and events (Brown, 1994, p.97). The idea is that a causal law expresses a relation of
necessitation among universals that exist independently of physical objects. According to this view, there
would be laws concerning universals that are not actually instantiated. In this way, laws do not depend on
particular events. Nevertheless, such laws entail regularities among physical events and objects. These
writers conceive of necessitation or nomic necessity as a simple and irreducible relation.

2) Instrumentalism

In sharp contrast, some physicists and philosophers claim that the so-called laws of nature are only
theoretical instruments that permit successful predictions, but which do not pick out any structural features
of the real world. Scientific laws are useful but not real. There is no question of them being true or false
characterizations of reality. We examined an instrumentalist approach to quantum mechanics in the form of
the Copenhagen interpretation (Chapter 6).
Anti-realism can be extended to mathematical expressions and statements: mathematical terms do not
designate any special type of abstract object. According to one form of this position, called intuitionism,
mathematical theorems do not derive their meaning from a special subject matter that exists independently
of the human mind, but rather from their derivation or proof, which specifies the conditions that entitle one
to assert them. Our understanding of mathematical propositions depends on knowledge of their proof rather
than on the discovery of independent mathematical objects. Another form of mathematical anti-realism,
called formalism, developed by the mathematician Hilbert (1882–1943), claims that mathematical
expressions derive their meaning from their use as part of a consistent formal system. In other words, they
have no representational content but the introduction of new mathematical expressions is justified when
they allow us to solve problems, and they can be defined as part of a consistent formal system. Even a brief
introduction to anti-realism in mathematics would require a discussion of such topics as Frege’s and
Russell’s program to reduce mathematics to logic and set theory, Gödel’s incompleteness proof, and the
infinite and infinitesimal, all of which lie far beyond the scope of this chapter <6>.
To return to the main point, instrumentalists reject the realist thesis that causal laws are real,
unchanging entities that govern changes. Instead, they argue that such laws are only parts of theories or
models that are useful for predicting events or sense-experience, but which are not literally true or false.
They merely perform their instrumental role successfully or not. They do not characterize reality.

3) Towards An Intermediary Position

In this section, we shall outline a view that lies halfway between hard realism and instrumentalism.
The view shares and rejects features of both theories. Since the debate between these two polarized
positions is contentious and complex, we shall limit the discussion in two ways. First, let us restrict it to the
issue of the most general theoretical causal laws. Second, we shall not argue directly against the two
standard theories, but rather merely sketch an alternative position and some of the considerations that
support it.

71
i) Anti-Realism

The laws of physics are descriptions of reality. If this is correct, then some of the realist ways in
which we refer to causal laws are inappropriate. For example, the statement that laws govern the universe
would be misleading. Laws are not out there to govern anything. Even the phrase ‘the laws of nature’
would be problematic; nature does not have laws but is described with them. Likewise, the idea of laws as
fundamental regularities in nature would be problematic. Such ways of talking confuse the statements with
what is described, or they conflate language with the world. We do not describe the laws of nature; the laws
already are descriptions. Furthermore, the realist conception of causal laws as abstract objects and as part of
the ultimate furniture of the universe is mistaken. Laws are abstract descriptions and not abstract objects.
The argument for the conclusion that laws are descriptions is that they have semantic attributes and
that, because of this, they must be regarded as special ways of describing the world. Thus, they cannot be
conceived as absolute objects or non-linguistic structures as some realists suppose.
Let us examine two of these semantic attributes. The first idea is derived in part from a social
constructivist and holistic account of science. It begins with the observation that the meaning of any
description is relative to, or dependent on, groups of other relevant concepts. This point applies to causal
laws. Their meaning depends on a range of other concepts and, because of this, laws are always parts of
wider theories. As we shall see later, this does necessarily preclude laws from being true, but it does mean
that they should be conceived primarily as descriptions or statements. The theory-dependency of laws is the
reason why the history of physics involves both the discovery of new facts about nature and the
development of new concepts, which go hand in hand. These concepts are socially created through a
process of experimentation, selection and definition. Because of their dependence on other concepts, laws
are linguistic descriptions, and it is misleading to represent them as absolute entities that exist
independently of all concepts and particulars.
Second, whenever we describe, we employ predicates that presuppose certain conditions regarding
their range of meaningful application. For example, color words apply meaningfully only to objects that
can reflect light. For this reason, it makes no real sense to ask what the color of the number four is. The
preconditions of application of theoretical terms in physics need not be so obvious. For example, we saw in
the previous chapter that, in some situations, the macro-level concepts of determinate position and
momentum are inappropriate for describing micro-particles. Such predicate terms do not meaningfully
apply to quantum particles. As a wave, a photon is not located in any one position rather than another, but it
is not nowhere and nor is it everywhere. The predicate ‘has a determinate location’ has no real sense in
application to such phenomena.
We can make the same point regarding any causal law, even though the details will be different in
each case. All predicates have preconditions for meaningful application and, for this reason, so do causal
laws, which employ such predicates. Laws, like any description, have semantic features, which precludes
them from being absolute entities.

Argument B

1) Laws require certain qualifications in order for them to be meaningfully applied to reality.
2) Such qualifications are semantic and as such apply only to sentences or other linguistic items
3) Therefore, laws are linguistic items.

ii) Anti-Instrumentalism

On the other hand, against instrumentalism, causal laws are not merely instrumental if this idea
suggests that they are like fictional statements that are neither true nor false. The laws of physics can be
true descriptions of aspects of nature, within certain limitations. Their truth or falsity does not depend on
our beliefs, even if their meaning does. In this sense, their truth or falsity is objective; if a law is true then it
is so independently of what people think or want with regard to its truth. Believing or wishing it to be true
does not make it so and, consequently, we can make mistakes.
The crucial point here is the juxtaposition of two claims. First, laws are not absolute features of reality
because they have semantic features. Their meaning depends on other concepts and on their role within

72
wider theories. In this sense, they depend on our concepts. Second, nevertheless, this does not prevent them
from being true in some objective sense of the term because their truth does not depend on our beliefs and
wishes. In short, they are not absolute, but neither are they subjective. Insofar as they have linguistic
meaning, they are not absolute; insofar as they are true, they are objective. (For a more extensive discussion
of this distinction in relation to descriptions more generally, see Chapter 17). In this way, although this
alternative conception denies hard realism, it does not vindicate instrumentalism.

iii) True in Virtue of What?

Earlier we argued that laws are descriptions. This raises the obvious and delicate question: when they
are true, they are descriptions of what? What are the relevant truth-makers? In reply, a hard realist might
argue as follows. ‘Insofar as a statement is true, then there must be some fact or aspect of reality in virtue of
which the statement is true. Therefore, the claim that laws are descriptions that can be true leads us straight
back to strong forms of realism. True abstract descriptions require the existence of real abstract properties
or objects.’ The instrumentalist might agree and use this point to argue that the intermediate position fails,
and that the only viable alternative to hard realism is instrumentalism.
This argument assumes that when a physical law is true then, there must be some property or object or
structural feature of reality that directly makes it true. However, in the specific case of general theoretical
causal laws, there are good reasons for resisting this assumption (Cartwright, 1999, p. 36). These concern
the nature of the conditions that apply in order for a law to be true. In brief, laws are highly abstract,
idealized, and ceteris paribus (all other things being equal) descriptions of reality, and for this reason, they
do not indicate features of the world distinct from the dispositions and powers of natural objects (this point
is adapted from Cartwright, op. cit.).
Let us review this argument in some detail. The issue is what makes a true causal law true? In very
broad terms, there are three options: first, events or changes and the regularities among them; this is an
empiricist view; second, abstract structural properties or objects; this is the realist position; third, the
dispositions or powers of ‘concrete’ natural objects, such as magnets, and electrons. The two-step argument
tries to show that only the third alternative is viable.
The first step concludes that causal laws are true because of the powers and capacities of natural
phenomena rather than because of regularities among observable events. Causal laws apply to nature only
given that all other things are equal. Laws describe changes only in highly idealized conditions and thus, in
the messier, more complex and essentially open real world, in which all other things are not equal, often
they do not describe actual events. Instead, they describe natural dispositions, and observable events in a
natural, open system are the effect of many such powers or tendencies. This is why the laws of physics
cannot predict where a paper airplane thrown in the wind will land.
The second step concludes that causal laws are true because of the powers and dispositions of natural
phenomena rather than because of the existence of abstract properties or objects. Causal laws are highly
abstract and idealized descriptions of reality. However, true abstract descriptions are true only by virtue of
something concrete; they describe concrete things in an abstract way and they do not describe anything
distinct from the concrete. A city is not an entity distinct from the many buildings and roads that compose
it. In a similar vein, we should not treat laws as features of reality in addition to the dispositions of natural
objects.
The two-step argument can be summarized as follows.

Argument C

1) Laws can describe events only given certain idealized conditions

2) Those conditions do not apply in nature
3) Therefore, laws do not describe natural events

Argument D

1) Laws are abstract descriptions of natural dispositions of concrete natural objects

2) A true abstract description is not true by virtue of something distinct from the concrete
3) Therefore, true laws are not true in virtue of abstract objects or properties.

73
 In reply to these arguments, someone might insist that we can define a property as anything that the
predicate in a true sentence picks out. However, in such a case, properties become merely the shadows of
predicates, and do not exist independently of language. In other words, this move provides no sustenance
for a hard realist position. Furthermore, these properties would have to have the semantic features
mentioned earlier; and the notion of the conditions of applicability and meaningfulness of an abstract
property or object probably does not make sense. In any case, this move ignores the special conditional and
idealized nature of laws, as we shall see now.

iv) Conditions of Application

To reinforce the above conclusions, let us review some of the conditions that must be met for laws to
be appropriate descriptions of changes or events.

1) First, the changes have to be described in the appropriate ways. A change can be described in an
indefinite number of ways, but a law applies to a relevant event only under certain kinds of description. For
instance, Boyle’s law tells us that a gas will exert a force against a container when it is heated. But it does
not tell us how quickly it exerts that pressure. The statistical laws of thermodynamics will not inform us
how a particular molecule will behave when a gas is heated. They describe the overall statistical pattern of
behavior of a collection of molecules.
This point is especially relevant concerning the different levels of description of physical systems. As
we shall see when we examine chaotic systems, it is no use trying to describe and predict the behavior of a
storm using Newton’s three laws of motion, even if perhaps we can think of the collision of each pair of
molecules in isolation in such terms. This does not imply that such dynamical systems actually contradict
Newton’s laws. It means that his laws are inappropriate for describing the behavior of such systems as a
whole.
This general point leads us in two directions. First, it implies that a scientist has to know how to apply
such laws appropriately; we will consider the significance of this in a while. Second, it leads us to a claim
that we have considered already: laws are highly idealized and abstract descriptions. For instance,
Newton’s laws of motion and gravity assume that bodies are perfectly rigid and that the mass of a body can
be considered as exercising a force that is concentrated at a point, called its center of gravity. They also
assume that no other causal factors are present.

2) Second, causal laws apply to the relevantly described changes ceteris paribus, all other things
being equal (Cartwright, 1999, p. 25). This is because nature contains no closed systems, except perhaps
the universe as a whole. Therefore, any causal law specifies a relationship between events that holds
provided that there are no other relevant causal factors involved. In other words, the applicability of a law
to changes assumes a closed system in which all other things are equal. However, nature does not contain
closed systems and all other things are not equal, as we saw in the chapter on economics. This means that
laws describe events only in idealized circumstances and that, in normal conditions, they describe
dispositions.

3) Third, the laws apply inescapably only given certain conditions. For instance, it is an
oversimplification to claim simply that nothing can travel faster than light. The statement needs certain
qualifications. For instance, it would be more accurate to affirm that nothing with a positive rest mass can
accelerate to a velocity faster than light given a finite force and given a one dimensional and unidirectional
theory of time. A similar point applies to all laws of nature. Earlier, we cited the examples of Newton’s
Second Law and the principle of the conservation of matter, which are inescapable only given certain
qualifications.

A causal law usually describes a range of idealized paradigm cases. To apply it beyond these
paradigms, we have to find the aspects of situations that are relevantly similar to the paradigms, and we
have to ignore those aspects that are irrelevant. This requires an understanding of how to employ the
appropriate concepts, which depends only in part on the meaning of the law considered in isolation. In
other words, the specific meaning of a law does not predetermine completely how it should be applied
because this also requires other background knowledge of what should count as ‘relevantly similar.’ For
example, Ohm’s law regarding electrical currents is irrelevant to the description of the behavior of heated

74
gases that are not ionized. Therefore, to know how to apply this law to heated gases requires background
knowledge regarding ionization. In general, we have to know how to apply causal laws relevantly and,
because of this, laws themselves do not determine their own appropriate domains of application or scope.
(In Chapter 1, we saw the importance of a similar point in legal philosophy).
This claim reinforces the conclusion that laws are highly abstract and idealized descriptions of reality.
We can describe natural phenomena with laws, but in order to do so, we must have the relevant background
knowledge to apply the laws beyond paradigm cases. The laws themselves do not fix these applications.
We have also seen that laws are descriptions of inescapable features of phenomena, but that such
inescapability is always subject to conditions. Often the mistakes made concerning laws pertain to these
conditions. For example, whereas Newton assumed that his three laws of motion applied inescapably to any
body in motion, it is now known that they apply only to bodies whose velocities are well below the speed
of light and for which the effects of special relativity are negligible. Sometimes, scientific progress consists
in uncovering, or specifying more completely, the conditions under which a law is inescapable, and in this
way delineating their scope of application. Laws prescribe the boundary between what can and what cannot
happen. They do not describe what must occur (except in special idealized circumstances) but rather what
cannot take place. However, statements concerning what cannot happen are always subject to some
qualification or limitation. We can never be certain that we have a complete specification of those
conditions, and in this respect, nature often surprises us.

v) Conclusion

In this section, we have tried to outline a position that is intermediate between hard realism and
instrumentalism regarding the causal laws. In conclusion, we purchase the possibility of describing the
natural world with mathematically stated laws at a cost, which is that those laws can only be thought of as
descriptive of events only under special, highly idealized conditions. For this reason, laws do not specify
which events must occur, except in ideal conditions. In normal natural circumstances, in which all other
things are not equal, they describe the powers and capacities of natural objects. They delineate what the
object can and cannot do but, then again, only subject to certain qualifications.

Dynamical Systems
Now that we have sketched some answers to the questions with which we began, let us see briefly
how these apply to chaos theory. Chaos is part of an exciting new branch of physics called dynamical
systems theory, which has important implications for the other sciences (see the appendix to Chapter 5).
However, to the popular imagination, ‘chaos’ suggests disorder and seems to threaten the idea that the
natural world is orderly. It is important to dispel this popular conception. In the technical use of the term,
chaos is a special kind of order. Because of this, as we shall see, the points that we have made regarding the
match between mathematical descriptions and reality also apply to chaos theory, albeit in a rather different
way from the types of classical physics that we have considered so far.
Consider the wind blowing the leaves, eddies in a turbulent river, the movement of the clouds, the
waves crashing on the beach, and the motion of flying insects. Very few of the natural changes that we see
obey straightforwardly Newton’s mechanical laws of motion. Even billiard balls have to be struck before
they collide in ways that are described by Newton’s laws.
In the light of this, we can see why dynamical systems theory is a significant scientific development.
The central idea is that dynamic systems that are described with groups of simple mathematical equations
can behave in very complex and sometimes unpredictable ways. ‘Chaos’ is a technical term for the
behavior of special unpredictable kinds of dynamical systems. This behavior is not really chaos in the
everyday sense of the term and, in this sense, the name ‘chaos theory’ is a misnomer.
Dynamical systems theory aims to provide a mathematical characterization of the changes that occur
in physical systems. For example, suppose that we identify three components of a system that we want to
study e.g., the position of the jaw, tongue, and lower lip. We can assign numerical values to the state of
these elements at different times, and we can represent visually the way these elements change over time
with a three-dimensional graph with one axis each for each factor. This representation is called the state or
phase space. Every point in phase space must specify a complete description of one possible state of the

75
system. The changes in the system are represented by trajectories within this state space. Each possible
trajectory has a characteristic ‘shape’ in phase space. In order to pick out the relevant variables, other
factors will have to be assumed as constant, and these are called the parameters of the system.
We can employ linked differential, or sometimes difference, equations to express formally the way in
which the value of these variables evolve over time in relation to each other. Differential equations are used
to specify the continuous rate of change of the variables involved, and difference equations are employed
when the system needs to be specified in discrete time units, such as rainfall per month. The linked first-
order differential equations employed in dynamical systems theory have the following standard form:

dxi/dt = Fi (x1, x2, x3, …, xn)

for the different values of ‘i’ from 1 to n. In contrast, the difference equations have this form:

xn+1 = µxn(1-xn)

This equation defines the value of the variable X at time n+1 in terms of its value at time n. The symbol ‘µ’
represents the relevant parameter of the system (Smith, p.2 and p. 91).
Through repeated applications, this type of difference equation is used to construct logistic maps.
Given that we know the values of X at time n and of the parameter µ, we use this equation to calculate the
values of X at times later than n.
The logistic map is important because it illustrates how a system may change from being in
equilibrium to chaotic behavior. The map was first developed to study the fluctuations in the population of
insects, such as the gypsy moth, that die annually en masse. ‘Xn = 0’ represents extinction; ‘Xn = 1,’ the
maximum population; and the parameter ‘µ,’ the extent to which the population growth rate changes with
favorable and unfavorable circumstances. For higher values of µ, small populations will increase, and large
populations will decrease, more rapidly. The logistic map shows the transition from equilibrium to chaos.
As µ increases, the population size passes from stability to cyclical fluctuations from large to small and
back to large that double in their duration. In other words, it begins as a 2-year cycle and becomes a 4-year
one, then an 8-year and a 16-year one, and so on; this is called a period-doubling cascade. At even higher
values of µ, the changes in the population size become chaotic, without a repeating sequence of numbers
(Kellert, p.20-1).
In summary, the goal of dynamical systems analysis is to describe the behavior of a system using
mathematical equations that tell us how the state of the system, such as the position of a pendulum at any
given moment, changes over time.

Chaos

Chaotic systems are a particular kind of dynamical system, characterized by four features.

1) First, they are described with nonlinear equations; this means that they cannot be represented
graphically with straight lines. For example, ‘y=5x+3’ is a linear equation, and ‘y=5x2+3’ is nonlinear. For
reasons that we shall come to later, chaotic systems are not amenable to simple quantitative solutions but
their behavior is described qualitatively. This means that theoreticians describe their general long-term
patterns of evolution mathematically rather than calculating precise values for the variables at a given time.

2) Second, chaotic systems are unstable and aperiodic. They are unstable because a very small
perturbation may cause large changes in the behavior of the system, and they are aperiodic because their
behavior does not consist in the regular or periodic repetition of values. In other words, ‘it never repeats
and it continues to manifest the effects of any small perturbation’ (Kellert, p.4).

3) Third, chaotic systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This means that two chaotic
systems described with the same equations that have only slightly diverging initial conditions (e.g. one part
in a million) may develop in dramatically different ways. This renders chaotic systems unpredictable
because a slight vagueness in the specification of the initial conditions will become greatly magnified. The
Lyaounov exponent measures the degree of sensitivity to initial conditions of a system.

76
 4) Fourth, despite points 2 and 3, the systems described in chaos theory are deterministic in the sense
that for any input there is a unique solution for the equations at any time given specific values for the
relevant variables and parameters. This means that if we plot the relevant values for the variables for the
equations in a graph, then there will be no point at which the lines of the graph intersect. If they did
intersect, then they would not have unique solutions. This point will emerge as important later considering
that the graphs of chaotic systems are complex curves shaped as fractals. Furthermore, the coupled
equations used to describe a chaotic system are usually very simple and often Newtonian. In this sense,
chaos theory does not introduce fundamental new concepts into physics. Yet it is precisely this that makes
the theory so interesting: apparently random and complex unpredictable behavior can be generated from
sets of simple deterministic equations, without the introduction of probabilities as in quantum mechanics.
The system is orderly with respect to its overall pattern, but it is not orderly or predictable with regard to its
microstates. In summary, chaos can be defined initially as follows.

Chaos theory is the qualitative study of unstable aperiodic behavior in deterministic nonlinear
dynamical systems (Kellert, p.2).

One important qualitative notion in dynamical systems theory is that of an attractor, which in normal
conditions the system will tend to move towards. For example, in the case of a pendulum, the attractor is
the state at the bottom vertical position where the pendulum is at rest. There is an attracting force that
draws the pendulum back toward this position. For example, a closed dissipative structure is one where
friction or other energy dissipation causes loss of available energy and which, because of this, is described
by an attractor towards which all trajectories converge. Dissipative structures are confined or limited in
their state space by their attractors.
Chaos theory requires new forms of attractors. For example, they are often characterized by strange
attractors, which are so called because they involve both convergence on a single point and sensitivity to
initial conditions. Such attractors are described by the repeated folding of a curve that never intersects (if
they intersected then they would not have unique solutions). This is why the geometric representations of
chaotic systems often have the appearance of fractals. Sometimes, strange attractors are defined as
trajectories in state space that display fractal geometry.
In the 1960s, the French mathematician Mandelbrot pioneered fractal geometry. Fractals are
geometrical structures that consist of ‘a stack of two dimensional sheets displaying a self-similar packing
structure’ (Kellert, p.10). In other words, the shape of the whole is repeated at all levels of scale. Here is a
way to construct a simple fractal. Take a straight line, divide it in to three equal parts, and cut out the
middle third, replacing it with the two of the equal sides of the equilateral triangle that would have had as
its base the segment that you cut out of the original line. The result looks like a straight line with a two
dimensional pyramid rising out of it. Repeat the same operation on all the straight lines of this complete
figure. Repeat in turn the operation again on all the remaining straight lines of this new figure, and continue
the operation ad infinitum. The result is called a Koch curve, which has some strange properties (Smith,
p.21). It is infinitely long and infinitely intricate.

Edward Lorenz pioneered elements of chaos theory in 1963, when he was trying to develop
mathematical models of the earth’s atmosphere. He simplified earlier work and arrived at a model
consisting of three differential equations (see note 9).
By integrating these equations for different initial values, Lorenz discovered that the model was
highly sensitive to these values and, because of this dependence, he coined the term ‘the butterfly effect,’
claiming that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could make the difference between calm weather and
a tornado in Texas. If it were closed, a weather system would be dissipative; friction would cause it to lose
energy if not for the input of external heat that causes convection, and because of this, its state space is
confined by an attractor.
Lorenz discovered that the attractor in question was quite different from those known at the time; it
was the first strange attractor. It consists of two disk-like structures, one of which corresponds to clockwise
rotation and the other anticlockwise convection. A trajectory that begins on the left side might switch to the
right side, and the trajectories of each side are folded among those of the other without intersecting.

77
 Strictly speaking, such an attractor cannot be drawn because it has a fractal dimension between 2 and
3. The reason for this is as follows. A fractal dimension is a way of describing how the structure of a
geometrical object appears at different magnitudes. In short, it measures how compressed the layers are
and, thereby, quantifies the stretching and folding of the trajectories of a dynamical system. It does so by
counting the number of n-dimensional cubes of different lengths that are required to cover the fractal.
a) A two-dimensional surface cannot represent the Lorenz attractor because, on such a surface, the
trajectories cannot converge without intersecting. Thus, the attractor must have a fractal dimension greater
than 2.
b) At the same time, the Lorenz attractor must have a fractal dimension of less than three. This is
because a dissipative system that behaves chaotically must have at least three variables and because its
attractor represents the shape to which it contracts. Therefore, the attractor of a system with three
dimensions in state space, such as Lorenz’s, must have a fractal dimension of less than three.
Consequently, Lorenz’s system has a fractal dimension between 2 and 3, which cannot be represented
visually (Bergé and al, 1984, p.122, and Kellert, p.15).

Real Systems

As we noted earlier, we need to distinguish mathematical descriptions and the physical reality they are
supposed to characterize. Unfortunately, the term ‘system’ is sometimes applied to both (see Chapter 5).
The distinction is necessary to appreciate the differences between a theory and the physical phenomena it
describes. In the case of chaos theory, there are at least two such differences.
First, for instance, Lorenz’s equations can be represented geometrically as a state space that is
portrayed by a fractal-like attractor, which, like all fractals, has infinite intricacy. However, as Smith points
out, physical systems do not have such infinite detail. Physical properties, such as velocity at a point,
cannot be perfectly determinate. Hence, there is a disparity between the mathematical equations and the
physical system they are supposed to describe; the theory postulates an infinite intricacy that the physical
system does not have (Smith, p.40-5).
Second, dynamical systems theories are idealized descriptions of reality in a way that is similar to
Newtonian mechanics. In constructing such mathematical models, scientists have to make simplifying
assumptions. For instance, Newton made the assumption that the gravitational force of a body with mass
can be represented as a force which acts from center of the body at a mathematical point. Newtonian
mechanics requires the idealized conception of forces acting at dimensionless points. Earlier in this chapter,
we mentioned other examples of idealization in Newtonian mechanics, which render such laws true only
given certain qualifications such as ‘all other things being equal.’ In the case of dynamic systems, in
forming the linked equations

These points are important because they indicate that physical theories, including dynamical systems
and chaotic theories, are descriptions of reality subject to conditions, similar to those outlined earlier in this
chapter.

78
NOTES

1. More recently, some scientists argue that causal laws are true by definition because such laws
provide operational definitions of key concepts, such as ‘force.’ This view, however, relies on the suspect
notion of an operational definition (see Chapters 2 and 4). Furthermore, the claim that all causal laws are
merely true by definition seems inadequate because, at least, some laws provide empirical knowledge of
causal regularities. Moreover, as Hume argues, it would not be a contradiction to deny them. Nevertheless,
it still may be true that some causal laws serve as partial definitions of key physical concepts.
In what follows, we will examine physical laws insofar as they are not merely definitions. In other
words, we may distinguish two kinds of laws in physics (or rather two aspects of such laws): those that are
really definitions of key physical concepts, and those that express certain types of causal regularities and
are not merely true by definition. This distinction need not be clear-cut in the sense that the laws of a theory
might serve both purposes at once. For example, ‘F=ma’ might be taken as a partial definition of ‘force’
but, at the same time, as expressing a type of causal regularity that holds for physical systems in which
energy is conserved. Despite this complicating factor, in what follows we shall be looking at physical laws
insofar as they are genuinely causal as opposed to semantic definitions.

2. The D-N model and empiricism are not the only current theories of causal explanation. For
instance, there are also pragmatic theories that stress the importance of the context in which the request for
an explanation occurs, and the reasons for that request. Consider argument A (the brick hitting the
window). This argument lays out the total cause of the window’s breaking as a syllogism. The idea of
pragmatic theories is roughly that we appeal to different premises according to context in giving an
explanation. For instance, usually we would cite the force with which the brick is thrown (i.e. premise 1).
However, if we expected to someone to catch the brick then we might site this as the explanation (i.e.
appeal to premise 4).

3. Normally, scientists and philosophers of science distinguish between states and laws. The state of a
physical system is defined by specifying the values for certain variables, such as the momentum and
position of all the relevant particles (see Chapter 6), given certain parameters. These variables are often
represented as points in phase space (see below). In contrast, the laws that govern or describe the alterations
in these states are unchanging or invariant, and are often represented mathematically by what is called a
Hamiltonian (Davies, p.49). Typically, scientists assume that, in the case of fundamental laws, the laws of a
system are independent of its states.

4. This last qualification regarding inescapability is important in several ways. First, the law ‘F=ma’
describes changes only in idealized contexts, such as acceleration in a vacuum where there is no air
resistance and there are no other forces in operation. In other words, it is inescapable only given that they
are no other causal factors involved. Second, as we now know, the Newtonian law ignores the effects of
relativity and, therefore, it is inescapable only in a very specific kind of circumstance, namely those where
relative velocity is low or does not approach the speed of light. Therefore, it is conditionally inescapable;
we should write ‘F=ma in C.’ Likewise, the law of the conservation of energy/matter does not hold in the
high- energy processes that create new particles and anti-matter. It is inescapable only in low-energy
conditions. Furthermore, perhaps, even the fundamental laws of physics apply only to entities in space-time
and thus would not be applicable to singularities, such as the center of black holes (Davies, p.60-1).

5. Let us briefly explain and evaluate the idea of TOEs or theories of everything. In constructing
theories, physicists often look for a set of simple, unifying laws that explain many kinds of dispositional
regularities; they search for ever more basic laws. The ideal would be to encounter those laws that provide
a single, comprehensive and systematic theory of the whole physical world. Such a quest can be portrayed
as a search for the smallest set of independent, basic natural laws that are needed to explain all other laws
and which govern the working of the universe independently of the changing states of any physical system.
This ideal is sometimes called a TOE. Therefore, the fundamental laws of nature would be those that would
form part of a TOE, and would be universally and inescapably applicable to all physical changes, and
which would be sufficient for the derivation of all derivative laws.

79
 There are many problems with this grand vision, which requires the idea of fundamental universal
natural laws to which all other laws can be reduced. First, subsidiary laws cannot be derived strictly from
the so-called fundamental laws. For example, Ohm’s law, which relates electrical resistance to current and
voltage, is usually not considered a fundamental law because it applies specifically to electrical circuits. It
can be derived from QED, quantum electrodynamics, which is contains more fundamental laws. However,
the derivation requires certain other assumptions. In other words, QED is necessary to derive Ohm’s law,
but it is not sufficient because, in addition to QED, ‘one needs to make all sorts of additional assumptions
about constraints, boundary conditions and statistics that are not logically a part of QED at all’ (Davies,
p.59).
Second, laws do not state or determine their own range or conditions of application. They do not
specify how they are to be applied to a change or situation. For example, QED does not contain the idea of
voltage as such. The restrictions that specify the kinds of events or phenomena to which the law applies and
that state the preconditions of this application are not part of the law itself (see Chapter 1 for a similar point
in legal philosophy). In other words, even if we understand their semantic meaning, we still have to know
how to apply laws to relevantly similar situations. As we shall see later, this claim is important because it
indicates that laws are best conceived as descriptions of reality rather than as absolute objects.
Third, this second point also applies to the supposed fundamental laws. Let us suppose that theory A
(for instance, quantum field theory or super-string theory) is the fundamental theory of the universe and
that the entities it postulates are the basic building blocks of everything that exists. Even given this, it does
not follow that everything in the universe can be described adequately in terms of theory A. This is because
sufficiently complex combinations of the elementary particles postulated by A will have emergent
properties that are not describable in terms of A. Emergent properties are those that a system as a whole
has, but which its parts do not have. In other words, sufficiently complex systems of the A-particles will
behave in ways that require concepts that are not a part of theory A. Furthermore, given the first point
mentioned above, these additional concepts will not be reducible to those of theory A. For example,
immensely complex and organized aggregates of quantum particles in certain dynamic systems can behave
in ways that are described with the concepts of chaos theory, and the concepts of chaos theory cannot be
reduced to those of quantum mechanics. From this, we can see that the laws of any supposed fundamental
theory or TOE is subject to the same kinds of limitations as any physical law.

6. The reader should be aware also of the views of Hartry Field who argues that mathematics per se is
not necessary for science, and who thereby tries to avoid the problems of mathematical realism. As Frege
showed, statements such as ‘there are 2 chairs in the room’ can be analyzed as follows: ‘there is an X and
there is a Y such that x is a chair in the room and y is a chair in the room and, for all Z, Z is either identical
to Y or to X,’ (or in logical notation: ‘∃x∃y∀z (Fx & Fy & (Fz → z = x ∨ z = y)))’ where ‘F’ stands for ‘is
a chair in the room.’ This analysis does not mention any numbers. Field argues in detail that such analyses
show that numbers are not ontologically necessary for science, even though the language of mathematics
makes scientific reasoning easier.

8. The early modern scientists, such as Kepler, Galileo and Descartes, sometimes expressed their
Platonic view in terms of the universe being the work of God, whom they declared to be a mathematician.
Furthermore, they assumed that God had implanted in us humans the divine light of reason capable of
grasping these mathematical principles. In other words, Platonic realism received a divine epistemological
underwriting. Contemporary versions of Platonism do not appeal to such divine considerations to support
their position. However, they typically do appeal to some special epistemological capacity to directly intuit
or grasp mathematical truths and objects. This appeal is needed because such abstract objects do not have
causal relationships with physical objects, and therefore, a causal theory of knowledge cannot be applied to
explain mathematical knowledge (Brown, 1994, p. 99).

9. The three differential equations of Lorenz’s system are:

x˙= -σx + σy
y˙ = - xz + rx-y
z˙ = xy-bx

80
 The three variables ‘x,’ ‘y’ and ‘z’ specify completely or determine the state of the model, which
represents changes in the atmosphere. The symbol ‘x˙’ represents the differential of x. The parameters of
the model are given by ‘σ,’ ‘r’ and ‘b,’ which represent certain physical properties of the atmosphere. For
instance, ‘σ’represents the Prandtl number, which is kinetic viscosity divided by thermal diffusivity
(Kellert, p.11).

81
 8
Evolutionary Biology

According to the theory of evolution, both the biological traits of natural beings and their variety can
be explained entirely in terms of natural selection, sexual selection and genetic drift, without the need for
purposes in nature. In the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin (1809-1882) pointed out that organisms vary in
their inhered traits and their populations tend to increase geometrically. Hence, they compete for limited
resources in a changing environment. Based on these observations, he concluded that:

a) Some of these inherited traits will confer competitive advantage to the organisms that have them.
b) Organisms with such advantages will have the best chance of surviving for longer.
c) Such organisms will have a comparatively greater number of offspring with the same inherited traits
(Lennox, p.271).

Darwin thought that we could explain the origin of species and the variation of their traits solely in
terms of these natural processes of variation, inheritance and selection. A nice way to conceive of natural
selection is to contrast it with artificial selection or breeding. By selective breeding, certain morphological
traits can be encouraged and others extinguished. Natural selection is a similar process of selection, but one
that takes place unintentionally, based on the principle that organisms with certain traits will have
competitive advantage over others and thus they are more likely to survive longer and reproduce. Over
generations, the result will be that there will be more organisms with that trait.

Organisms vary in a heritable fashion. Some variants (are better adapted to their environment,
survive longer and) leave more offspring than others; their characteristics, therefore, are
represented at a greater frequency in the next generation. (Wilson, 1984, quoted in Lennox, p.
288). (My additions are in brackets).

Darwin derived his theory from five types of observations. First, he made a careful study of artificial
selective breeding, which showed him that species could be modified. Second, he studied biodiversity,
noting especially the affinity between species on the Galapagos Islands and those on the South American
mainland 500 miles away. Third, Darwin looked at the fossil record, which showed him that extinct species
are morphologically similar to present species, and which suggested that they were ancestors. Fourth,
Darwin considered the evidence of embryology; embryos of different species pass through similar stages of
development and this strongly suggested to him a common ancestry. Fifth, he studied anatomical or
morphological evidence. For example, the structure of the forelimb of frog, lizard, bird, horse and human

82
are similar, and this should be explained in terms of common ancestry shaped into different forms over the
generations by natural selection.
Contemporary theory of evolution is a synthesis of three distinct ideas. The first is Darwin’s powerful
idea of explaining the generation of adaptations and biodiversity in terms of natural and sexual selection, a
blind process of adaptation. The second is Mendel’s theory of genetic inheritance that posits genes as the
units of heredity. The third is the important contemporary discovery that the genes are composed of the
DNA molecules of the cell, a finding that unites genetics and biochemistry.

A Survey of Some Recent Debates

There are several major theoretical disputes in contemporary evolutionary biology, which have
occurred largely between those taking a genetic standpoint, such as Richard Dawkins and John Maynard
Smith, and paleontologists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge and Elisabeth Vrba. They span at
least four different issues and have involved several philosophers of biology.

1) Punctuated Equilibrium
First, Darwin’s theory implies that natural selection works continuously on individual organisms
producing gradual and continuous changes. However, several paleontologists have challenged the historical
accuracy of this claim, producing fossil records that show that many species remain relatively unchanged
over long periods, say 5-10 million years.
In 1972, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge argued for the theory of punctuated equilibrium,
according to which most species remain relatively stable. In periods of local environmental change, groups
of species tend to move with their habitat and this accounts for their relative stability. However, according
to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, after this period of stasis, there is a phase of rapid change or abrupt
speciation, which may last 5,000-50,000 years, during which new species develop, possibly initiated by
genetic drift (see below) and radically new environmental conditions (Eldredge, 1995, p. 99).
Multi-cellular organisms developed some 800 billion years ago. According to Gould, about 550
million years ago, there occurred the Cambrian explosion during which nearly all the major phyla, as well
as very many species, developed suddenly by geological time standards. Phyla are the major subdivisions
of animal life, such as mollusks, chordates, arthropods and echinoderms; there are roughly 30 phyla.
The evidence is as follows. In the early 20th century, Charles Walcott discovered the famous Burgess
Shale fossils, which are significant because they include not only shells but also the soft structures of the
organisms that existed in the Cambrian period. They reveal a startlingly rich diversity of fundamentally
disparate kinds of animals including phyla and many species that no longer exist (Sterelny, p.97). Gould
argues that this fossil record constitutes evidence of a Cambrian evolutionary explosion. (In opposition,
others contend that the evidence is inconclusive because of the comparative lack of pre-Cambrian fossils.)
By about 248 million years ago, towards the end of the Permian period, an estimated 96% of all these
species were extinct, including, for instance, the trilobites. Around this time, there occurred a second
explosion during which time many new species, but no new phyla, developed (Kauffman, p.10-14). These
new post-Permian, Mesozoic marine ecosystems are distinguished by the predominance of mobile animals
unlike those of the Permian period and before, which tend to be fixed in place, such as the clam and
brachiopod (Sterelny, p.82).
The Cambrian explosion forms part of the evidence for Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium. It
suggests the following picture. There was a sudden development of new phyla and species in the Cambrian
period, followed 280 million years later by a period of mass extinction possibly caused by climate change.
Likewise, it is hypothesized that the climatic effects of a huge meteor possibly caused the disappearance of
the dinosaurs at the end of Cretaceous period, at the conclusion of the Mesozoic period, some 65 million
years ago. These dramatically new environmental circumstances, i.e. a protracted winter caused by dust,
favored mammals (Sterelny, p.87).
In summary, Gould and colleagues see the history of evolution as long periods of species stability,
marked by local adaptations, punctuated by the sudden mass development and extinction of species.
Whereas the contemporary mainstream stresses gradual change due to natural selection, Gould and
Eldredge emphasize discontinuities.

83
 This 1972 paper was contentious in part because it argued for the biological importance of species
contradicting the by then received view that evolution is a process that selects individual organisms and not
species or groups. Darwin’s theory of evolution implies that, over long periods of time, species are not
fixed, and it apparently destroys the notion of species as real discrete natural kinds. For this reason, some
biologists, called “cladists,” reject the division of species into groups based on morphological similarities
but instead argue for a classification based strictly on lineage (Sterelny, p.102). In contrast, Gould’s theory
of punctuated equilibrium claims that species are relatively stable and enduring. In summary, once again,
whereas Darwinism emphasizes continuities in nature, the recent challenge stresses discontinuities (i.e.
distinct species).

2) Other Mechanisms
Second, the general debate took another turn with the publication of papers by Gould and Lewontin,
and Gould and Vrba, which challenged the Darwinist assumption that all morphological traits develop
directly because of natural selection. Gould and colleagues tried to identify other biological processes that
are causally important in evolution, including the effects of large-scale dramatic climate change. For
example, traits that are selected naturally may have spin-off effects that are also important for evolution.
We shall discuss this point more extensively later.

3) Units of Selection
Third, another debate was initiated by the publication of George Williams’ Adaptation and Natural
Selection (1966) and fuelled by Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976). Williams argued that, in
Darwin’s theory, the unit of selection is the individual organism and not the species. Dawkins took the
argument a step further by claiming that the unit of selection is the gene rather than the individual
organism. Dawkins bases this claim on the fact that genes are replicators. If an organism survives long
enough to have offspring, then its genes are differentially replicated, not the organism itself. For this
reason, Dawkins argued that, from the perspective of evolution, individual organisms are vehicles that aid
genes in their replication. Dawkins does not ignore the role of organisms in selection; however, he claims
that they play a subsidiary role compared to that of genes and their resulting phenotypic traits. Furthermore,
he argues against the idea of group and species selection on the grounds that a group is nothing over and
above a collection of individuals and that species do not mark real essences that exist in nature.
Dawkins’ position was criticized for implying a reductionism that fails to take into account how
evolutionary processes can occur at the level of individual organisms, groups, species and even ecosystems,
in addition to the genetic level (Eldredge, 1995, p.6). Furthermore, writers such as Gould are skeptical of
the genetic view of evolution because the relationship between specific genes and traits is very complex;
most characteristics depend on more than one gene and also depend on complex and contingent
environmental factors. On the other hand, Dawkins does not dispute this but insists that the evolution of the
phenotype can occur precisely because genotypes have causal effects on phenotype, and not the other way
around. This is the essential difference between Darwinian and Lamarckian evolution (Lamarck claimed
that acquired traits could be inherited by individuals).
However, Sober and Wilson have argued that there are differences between taking the gene,
individual organism and group as a unit of selection that favor the claim that the gene is not the only unit of
selection (in Hull, 1998). They argue that the gene is part of the individual who is part of the group, and
that the traits that evolve are sometimes compromises between what is good for the whole and what is good
for the parts. For example, altruism is a possible outcome of evolution only if the group is sometimes a unit
of selection, and groups composed of individuals with some altruistic traits may be fitter than those
without. This is a reason for thinking that evolutionary processes take place at the level of the group.
(Dawkins replies that although organisms co-operate, genuine altruism is an illusion.)
Furthermore, the evolution of sex ratios cannot be adequately explained on the assumption that the
sole unit of selection is the individual or the gene. The slight bias in nature towards a greater ratio of
females requires the influence of group selection because, from the point of view of groups, males should
‘be produced only to the extent that they are needed to fertilize the females’ (Sober and Wilson, Hull,
1998).

4) Sociobiology
The fourth contemporary dispute concerned the question ‘what does the category of biological
characteristics explicable in terms of natural selection include?’ Edmund Wilson initiated the discipline of

84
sociobiology by arguing that such evolutionary explanations may be extended to the social systems of
insects and other animals, such as marine invertebrates. For example, Wilson documents how in many
insect colonies, individuals may change their social role, caring for eggs or larvae early in their lives and
later acting as food gatherers outside the nest. In such systems, insects act cooperatively for the
reproductive success of the colony and, according to the sociobiologist, these features of their social system
should be explained in terms of natural selection. Sociobiology extends this form of explanation to the
social systems of mammals, including human culture. This view has been contentious among many
biologists who claim that other non-evolutionary ecological factors are relevant in the explanation of group
behaviors and controversial more generally among social scientists for offering an individualistic and
reductive account of social phenomena, including morality and social customs (see Chapter 3).
The debate over sociobiology has sometimes been confused with the discussion regarding the thesis
that the unit of selection is the gene. It has also been confused with genetic determinism, the view in
embryology that genotype strictly determines phenotype. This confusion generates the criticism that
sociobiologists try to reduce human culture to genetic causes. However, sociobiology, gene selectionism
and gene determinism are independent theses, despite the fact that some of the protagonists of
sociobiology, such as Dawkins, are also gene selectionists.

This very brief review sets the context for some of the issues that we shall examine in this chapter.
These debates deal with the overall philosophical significance and nature of the theory of natural selection,
and less with the details of the debate between, for instance, Gould and Dawkins.

Evolutionary Progress?
The term ‘evolution’ may be misleading because to many people it suggests the idea that nature is
progressing or changing for the better, or that life is evolving from the simplest organisms to more complex
ones. It suggests that natural selection inevitably produces more evolved or higher organisms, such as we
humans. There are two rather distinct ideas at play here. The first is the claim that evolution requires, or at
least is compatible with, the idea of a cosmic plan and goal. The second is the idea that ‘progress’ can be
given a scientific definition that renders it compatible with natural selection.

A Cosmic Plan

The theory of evolution rules out the explanatory need for the natural world having purposes and for
the idea that biological change is movement towards some cosmic or divine goal. In other words, the
relevant biological traits of organisms can be explained without recourse to supernatural causation and
without the need for cosmic or divine ends. Natural selection is purely mechanical, and this is why the
contemporary American philosopher Dennett calls it ‘algorithmic:’ it consists of mindless, mechanical
processes guaranteed to produce certain results (Dennett, 1995, p. 48 ff).
Despite this, some thinkers have continued to argue for some concept of evolutionary progress based
on the idea of a cosmic plan (though this is an unorthodox view among biologists). Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin (1881-1955), a paleontologist and a Jesuit priest, was one of the pioneers of this kind of view. In
The Phenomenon of Man, he presented a vision of the universe progressing towards a goal, the spiritual
development of humanity. De Chardin coined the term ‘noosphere’ to refer to the universe’s capacity to
know itself through the human mind. This is very reminiscent of the 19th century philosopher Hegel who
argued that the universe is developing towards consciousness of itself. The comparison with Hegel shows
us that the thesis that nature is developing towards some end does not require the idea of the divine
purposes of God; there might be such developmental tendencies within nature itself.
Is the mechanistic idea of natural selection incompatible with the idea of a cosmic plan? Initially, it
seems that the two ideas are incompatible. After all, the essence of the idea of a cosmic plan is that there is
some goal towards which nature is developing. In contrast, the essence of Darwin’s theory is that
mechanical, non-teleological processes are completely sufficient to explain all biological phenomena.
However, one still might argue that the two ideas are not contradictory on the grounds that, even if a
cosmic design is not necessary to explain biological traits, there still might be such a design. Even though

85
natural selection is a sufficient explanation of any relevant natural phenomena, this does not rule out the
claim that nature actually is progressing towards some goal. Because the theory of natural selection is true,
the idea of such a plan or goal is not necessary to explain biological phenomena; natural selection is
enough. Nevertheless, given all this, it still might remain possible that there is such a plan, for which there
could be empirical evidence.
This idea can be elaborated in two ways. First, one could claim that, while the theory of evolution
spells out how the changes take place, any concept of a cosmic plan would specify why. Natural selection
lays out the physical mechanism by which the natural world develops towards some end. Second,
apparently, the initial idea can be given intuitive appeal with an analogy. Think of human action. Let us
assume that, in principle, all the physical movements of a person can be explained in physiological terms
because all behavior is caused by the nervous system. Yet, despite this, those same physiologically based
movements can also be described as purposeful actions. In the case of human behavior, the adequacy of
mechanical physiological explanations and the existence of purposeful action are not mutually exclusive.
We might apply this point by analogy to the evolutionary development of the biosphere. As long as nature
as a whole shows sufficient complexity, physical explanations and purposes might be compatible in the
case of the biosphere, just as they are in the case of human actions. We will return to this analogy later.
In reply to these points, here is an argument for the conclusion that, ultimately, the idea of a cosmic
plan is incompatible with the theory of natural selection. If the idea that nature is progressing towards some
end is to make sense, then there must be some potential empirical or observable feature of the universe that
is taken to manifest this plan or goal. This observable feature need not be any specific characteristic of a
particular organism or ecosystem; it could be a very general feature of the patterns of development or, to
use the phrase of the biologist Edmund Wilson, a ‘property of the evolution of life as a whole.’ However, if
such a property is taken to indicate that there is a plan, then it must be asserted that the blind processes of
natural selection cannot explain that property. In which case, the idea that there is a plan to the natural
world will require the claim that blind, mechanical processes are not competent to explain all natural
features. Consequently, the idea of a plan is not compatible with the theory of evolution. If the idea of a
plan is explanatorily redundant, then it is empirically vacuous.
There is another criticism. Conceiving nature as developing towards some end requires attributing a
goal to it and, thereby, anthropomorphizing it. It implies treating nature as a person or organism. Just
because the natural world contains persons, this does not mean that it itself is a person or person-like. Prima
facie, this is also a weakness with the analogy that we looked at earlier when we compared evolutionary
changes in the biosphere to human behavior or action in order to argue that the sufficiency of mechanical
explanations and the existence of purpose are not mutually exclusive. The analogy is weak because it
depends on nature having person or organism-like qualities.
In conclusion, claiming that the theory of evolution is true is equivalent to saying that all relevant
biological phenomena can be completely explained in terms of natural selection and possibly other
biological mechanisms, such as genetic drift. This implies that there are no sky-hooks, a term that Dennett
(1995) uses to describe the idea of citing supernatural causes to explain some biological feature that
appears designed. If there are no sky-hooks, the claim that nature has a goal has no explanatory role.
Furthermore, to be meaningful, the idea of such a goal must pick out some feature of the natural world that
could count as a manifestation of the plan. If this is so, then we must conclude that if ‘nature has a purpose’
is a meaningful claim, then there must be natural characteristics that cannot be explained scientifically in
terms of natural selection.

Evolutionary Progress

A few scientists found something of worth in the basic idea of De Chardin, although they tried to
distance themselves from his theology. Most prominent among these was the British biologist Sir Julian
Huxley (1887-1975), who argued that evolution is a process of progress that depends solely on natural
selection without the intervention of non-material causes. He defined progress as the ‘increased control
over and independence of the environment’ (Barlow, p.13). In effect, Huxley tries to define the idea of
evolutionary progress in a scientific way by severing it from the idea of a cosmic plan.
The contemporary scientist Francisco Ayala further developed this general approach in a more
plausible form by defining biological progress as increased ability to gather and process information about

86
the environment (Ayala and T. Dobzhansky, 1974). Even more recently, the biologist Edward Wilson
affirmed:

Progress is a property of the evolution of life as a whole by almost any conceivable intuitive
standard, including the acquisition of goals and intentions in the behavior of animals (from The
Diversity of Life, 1992).

However, perhaps the most apparently plausible attempt to define evolutionary progress scientifically
employs the concept of complexity. The thesis is that the process of natural selection results in increasingly
complex organisms and, in this sense, biological progress.
However, the concept of complexity is not simple. There are many different kinds of complexity.
However, using one standard definition of ‘complex,’ a system is structurally more complex if and only if it
has more parts that are irregularly arranged (McShea in Hull, 1989). In this sense, complexity is the
opposite of order. This accords with the definition of complexity in information science as the minimal
amount of information required to specify the structure of a system. A random sequence can be specified
only by its complete description, and thus it would be complex. These contemporary technical definitions
of complexity do not accord with the intuitive idea that evolution produces greater complexity.
Probably, the proposed idea is that natural selection results in organisms that are more organized. A
system is organized to the degree that it is structured for a set of functions. (Note that the concepts of order
and of complexity are distinct from that of organization because, whereas the latter is functional, the first
pair depends on structure independently of function). However, this concept is unlikely to yield a useful
and biologically viable notion of progress since it makes ‘organized’ relative to a set of functions, and
would not support judgments across different biological functions.
There have been several other kinds of attempt to define ‘complexity’ and hence ‘progress’ in
biological terms. For example, Bonner tries to show that there is a general trend in evolution towards the
largest organisms being more complex. He notes that larger organisms generally require more organized
support systems, which require a greater number of different kinds of cells. He defines complexity in terms
of the number of different cell types an organism has, and concludes that evolution does produce greater
complexity and progress (Ruse in Hull, 1998).
This definition and others like it generally assume that ‘progress’ can be defined in terms of greater
complexity, and seek to encounter a biologically valid and measurable conception of complexity. This way
of conducting the discussion makes the discussion turn on the question ‘Can we find a suitably scientific
definition of ‘complexity’? However, an alternative strategy would be to return to the idea of progress
itself.
The concept of progress implies ‘better.’ It is value-laden. It is not part of the theory of natural
selection that historically later organisms will be better or in any sense higher. Moreover, given that natural
evolution is sufficient to explain all biological traits, the idea of progress does not serve an explanatory
purpose. Therefore, the notion seems redundant unless, of course, evidence of evolutionary progress is
taken to indicate some supernatural power at work, in which case we are back to the arguments of the
previous section. In brief, the concept of biological progress can serve no purpose in a scientific theory of
evolution.
Furthermore, the general point of value judgments is to indicate what counts as improved practice.
Value judgments guide actions and choice. This implies that ‘progress’ requires the possibility of choice or
past choice. In other words, it only makes sense to speak about progress in relation to some activity or
process that can be or could have been improved as a result of choice. For instance, we can refer to
someone progressing in some activity, and even to refer to humankind progressing historically or not
relative to some set of standards. However, when we speak about evolutionary progress, this condition is
not satisfied. There is no agent to make progress or bring about improvements. In other words, the idea that
the universe or nature or life in general progresses requires that nature etc has some choice over the matter.
It anthropomorphizes nature.

Other Mechanisms?

87
 Does Darwin’s natural selection explain all morphological differences? Up until about 30 years ago,
most evolutionary biologists were strictly Darwinist, claiming that all morphological differences should be
explained in terms of adaptation through natural and sexual selection alone. However, recent writers such
as Stephen Jay Gould and others have criticized the adaptationist paradigm, arguing that other biological
mechanisms are also causally important, although they agree that natural selection produces directly most
biological characteristics. Sometimes, they present their claim as an alternative paradigm to the Darwinian
one.
First, to the above we must add the idea of genetic drift. In the 1930s, Sewall Wright proposed the
theory of genetic drift. Drift results from the fact that the probability of an event need not correspond to its
actual frequency. For example, when one tosses a coin, the probability of getting heads is a half. However,
if one actually tosses two or more coins, the resulting real frequency of heads might be different from a
half. This statistical point can have important evolutionary consequences in small populations where such
divergences are more likely to be significant. Proportionately large divergences will occur more frequently
in smaller populations and can become more readily fixed. According to genetic drift, the frequencies of
alternative versions of a gene, called alleles, may change over generations due to chance mutations within
geographically isolated sub-groups or colonies of species (called demes).
Second, Gould and Vrba (1982) claim that exaptation occurs when a feature produced by natural
selection for one function and is used for another. For example:

Sea turtles use their forelimbs to dig nests in the sand, but these forelimbs evolved long before
turtles came out of the sea to build nests (Sober in Hull, 1998)

In other words, the way an organism currently uses a trait may not be the historical reason why the
trait was first selected. Consequently, Gould and Vrba suggest that we should distinguish between
adaptations and exaptations: ‘a feature is an adaptation (if and) only if it was built by natural selection for
the function it now performs’ (Gould in Hull, 1998). Gould calls the use of an adaptation “its function.” In
contrast, an exaptation is a trait has evolved historically through natural selection because it has one use
and then becomes employed for another. Gould calls the use of an exaptation “its effect.” So, according to
Gould’s terminology, adaptations have functions and exaptations have effects; his proposed general term
for both kinds of feature is “aptation.”
Here are some possible examples of exaptations cited by Gould (Hull, 1998). The first bird
Archaeopteryx, from the late Jurassic period, probably could not fly far; the structure of its skeleton
indicates this. However, it was fully feathered. On this basis, several authors have suggested that the
feathers originally evolved because of their insulating function. Here is another example. The very first
bone structures may have evolved originally as a way of storing phosphorus, in the form of calcium
phosphates. Much later, bones replaced the cartilage endoskeleton as the frame of bodily support for some
animals.
A third alternative biological mechanism is that genetic and physical constraints limit the ability of
natural selection to produce certain outcomes. For example, the human chin is not a direct result of natural
selection, but rather the natural by-product of something that is, namely jaw structure. Gould and Lewontin
(1979) argue for the importance of such evolutionary spandrels. A spandrel is an architectural feature that is
a necessary by-product of rounded arches in buildings such as churches; it is the triangular space formed by
the intersection of such arches. In evolutionary theory, a spandrel is a trait that is a physical or phylogenetic
correlate of another trait that is the product of natural selection. A spandrel is not the direct result of natural
selection; it is a spin-off. Gould’s most famous example of a spandrel is the panda’s thumb. The panda has
a thumb-like structure that it uses for stripping bamboo. According to Gould, this feature could arise only
because of the existing bone structure of the wrist. More contentiously, some writers have argued that our
linguistic abilities may be spandrels, a natural by-product of a brain capable of general high-level problem
solving.
In conclusion, by citing examples of these alternative mechanisms, Gould and other paleontologists
have argued that uncritical adaptationism is often a form of unscientific speculation because it involves
showing how features might have been selected naturally because of their survival value without producing
historical evidence that actually they were so selected.
In response, writers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have defended the Darwinian claim
that natural selection is the sole mechanism of biological change. They reject the idea of an alternative

88
paradigm to the Darwinian one on the grounds that there is actually no other research program on offer. In
effect, Dennett argues for the principle that natural selection is the only basic mechanism that can explain
biological traits on the grounds that any other explanation would end up invoking supernatural forces. On
the basis of this principle, he argues a priori that there must be some reverse engineering-type explanation
of any biological trait. Biologists must employ reverse engineering to show the potential survival value of
any biological trait. Reverse engineering is the process whereby one shows the potential adaptive value of
some characteristic that was engineered by natural selection.
Philosopher Eliot Sober has given an interesting analysis of this debate, which helps resolve the
dispute and which consists of three major points. First, as Dennett himself points out, the controversy was
in part due to the rhetoric, which suggested falsely that Gould and company were trying to refute the theory
of natural selection. Creationists and others opposed to Darwin’s theory exploited this suggestion to argue
that biologists were divided among themselves as to the truth of the theory of evolution.
Second, in fact, the so-called ‘alternative’ mechanisms suggested by Gould are not, broadly speaking,
alternatives to adaptionism at all. Spandrels and exaptation do not refute adaptionism and natural selection.
Rather, they show how natural selection can have indirect as well as direct effects. In other words, they rely
on natural selection; they arise only because of it and, as such, they are not alternatives.
Third, Sober argues that the controversy confuses the theory of evolution as a methodological
principle and as a causal thesis about natural history. The theory of evolution can be regarded as a
methodological principle and as a historical claim concerning what actually happened in the past
concerning any particular trait. As a methodological principle, the theory would tell us that all the relevant
biological traits should be explained as a product of natural selection. As an empirical historical claim, the
theory of evolution would be a statement to the effect that any specific relevant trait actually has developed
only because of a particular causal history of natural selection.
This third point helps to make sense of the debate. On the one hand, it explains why writers such as
Dennett and Dawkins argue a priori that there must be some mechanism of natural selection at work
irrespective of the empirical details. They are arguing for the theory of evolution as a general scientific
methodological directive as opposed to a set of specific empirical and historical claims. In other words,
they are underscoring the a priori assertion that we must explain biological traits through natural selection
because the only alternative is to cite supernatural causes, which are no explanation at all.
On the other hand, Sober’s distinction explains why writers such as Gould balk at such general a
priori reasoning. They see the theory of evolution as a set of specific historical claims about how specific
biological traits have come about. Such claims need to backed-up by empirical evidence and such evidence
is possible. On this point, there is convergence; Dennett also claims that adaptationist theories need to be
and can be tested: ‘Adaptationist stories do get disconfirmed and abandoned, however’ (Dennett, 1995).
So, from the point of view of evolution as a causal historical claim, the differences between adaptation and
exaptation do matter. This is why Gould says:

As evolutionists, we are charged, almost by definition, to regard historical pathways as the essence
of our subject. We cannot be indifferent to the fact that similar results can arise by different
historical routes.

The two different kinds of theory of evolution can be combined and both are necessary for
evolutionary biology. The methodological a priori principle is necessary in order to frame specific
hypotheses about why certain traits were selected naturally; it determines the kinds of explanations
biologists should look for. However, specific hypotheses about the causal history of specific traits need to
be tested to determine what actually happened or how traits were selected naturally. In the absence of such
evidence, we can resort to the a priori principle and compare different suggestions about the evolution of
specific traits thereby generated for their general reasonableness but without pretending that this constitutes
knowledge.
Nevertheless, despite this proposed reconciliation, there are important differences between the views
of evolution offered by Dawkins and Gould, especially when we take into account Gould’s theory of
punctuated equilibrium. Gould stresses that the evolution of species takes place in fits and starts; Dawkins
emphasizes the continuous nature of the process of evolution.

89
Chance and Necessity
Jacques Monod, a French biologist, wrote in his famous book, Chance and Necessity:

Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged
only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelt out, nor is his duty (p.198, Barlow).

Monod emphasizes the utter contingency of the evolutionary process. In part, he does so to advance
an existentialist theory about humankind’s place in the universe, and to undermine the theology of his
fellow countryman, Tielhard de Chardin, who argues for the claim that nature is developing according to a
divine plan. We will return to the metaphysical implications of Monod’s statement later.
In scientific terms, Monod may be mistaken to stress that the processes of natural selection are as
contingent as a huge lottery (Barlow, p.191). It is clear that, all other things being equal, traits such as
general intelligence have a strong adaptive value and, in most conditions, will be favored by natural
selection. As Dennett says about Gould’s idea of radical contingency:

Evolution can have produced us by an algorithmic process, without it being true that evolution is
an algorithm for producing us (Dennett, p. 308).

Furthermore, since the 1980s, some physicists have tried to explain the behavior of complex,
nonlinear dynamical systems, such as whirlpools, in terms of their capacity for self-organization. In
computer simulations, sometimes known as artificial life, populations of mindless agents following simple
rules can produce collective behavior that is amazing life-like and rich. In the life sciences, proponents of
self-organization can argue that:

Natural selection is not the product of chance alone. It is the result of form building properties in
nature integrating and stabilizing the favorable changes that are produced by chance (Louise
Young, p.144).

In other words, physical phenomena, such as tornadoes, display an order that does not require the
theory of natural selection. Tornadoes do not breed. However, such order forms part of the explanation of
the early evolution of life, such as the chemical formation of complex protein molecules.
The earliest known signs of life developed 3.45 billion years ago, roughly 300 million years after the
earth was cool enough to support liquid water. These early fossils look like cells with a membrane. Single
celled life forms predominated on the planet for 3 billion years. According to Kauffman, these cells
developed because of an intermingling of chance, natural selection and self-organization, as we shall see.
How did the first cellular organisms develop? According to Kauffman, part of the answer lies with the
catalysts that are vital to the formation of the very complex protein molecules that are essential to life.
Catalysts are chemicals that speed up other chemical reactions and that are not altered in the process. For
example, enzymes and ribozymes are important catalysts in living bodies. The formation of catalysts can
occur in a self-sustaining cyclical system. For example, if chemical reaction A requires catalyst B, which is
produced by chemical reaction C, which requires catalyst D, which is produced by the original chemical
reaction A, then we have a simple chemical recycling process. Such interlocking reactions can form a part
of a larger complex web composed of such processes. In such autocatalytic systems, the chemical reactions
of the whole produce the catalysts that are necessary for the system to sustain itself. Kaufman argues this is
a characteristic of life; it involves autocatalytic chemical processes. In other words, living organisms have
chemical systems that have the capacity to catalyze their own reproduction, which means that they are self-
sustaining.
The important point is that when a certain kind of system attains a critical level of complexity, it is
bound mathematically to produce the kind of complex web of interlocking reactions embodied by
autocatalytic processes. In other words, the very mathematics of complexity ensures that this type of
organization occurs in systems of certain kinds. In short, evolution does not imply the thoroughgoing
contingency that Monod refers to.

90
 Nevertheless, one may have the opposite concern – namely that the theory of natural selection implies
that nature is mechanistic. Remember that Dennett likens natural selection to a mechanistic algorithm. The
worry is that living organisms are not mechanistic and yet the theory of evolution is a mechanistic process.
Although the discussion of the previous chapter should have helped to alleviate this disquiet, we shall
return to it in the next one.

Does Evolution Destroy Value?

Darwin himself saw that the theory of natural selection would explain the biological features of
humans. Evolution has helped us to appreciate that there is not a radical difference of kind between humans
and other species. The differences are ones of degree. Like the other species, we are part of the natural
world.
However, to what extent can social phenomena such as morality be explained in purely evolutionary
terms? Sociobiology is the theory that attempts to give a biological explanation of all animal behavior and
social organizations, including that of humans. This theory is very contentious especially with regard to its
application to human morality; this is because it appears to undermine the claim that we really have moral
obligations by making morality and value claims in general a by-product of natural selection. In other
words, this aspect of sociobiology seems to imply that our lives are valueless because value claims only
have meaning in relation to, and because of, a blind and mechanical process of natural selection. It seems
to explain morality and values away.
Let us examine the statement that the scientific theory of evolution destroys the concept of the value
in general. This is a complex issue partly because of the view that there cannot be valuable states in a
purely material universe. In other words, some people think that moral values require the existence of a
non-material soul. This complicates the issue because it shifts our attention away from evolution
specifically and towards materialism more generally.
However, to simplify the discussion, we shall simply assume that materialism per se is not
incompatible with the truth of claims such as ‘I ought not to gratuitously harm others’ and ‘there is a prima
facie reason to avoid pain’ (this assumption is defended in Thomson 2003). In the philosophical literature,
the discussion of the impact of evolutionary theory on values is usually focused on the origin of morality,
but it can be applied to the values more generally (see, for example, Murphy, 1982, Ch.2; Dennett, 1995,
Chs. 14 and 16; Mary Midgely, 1985).
In what sense could the theory of evolution explain our moral values? To answer this question clearly,
we need to distinguish between morality as a social institution, as a set of capacities, and as a set of
statements or assertions. Morality as a social institution consists of the moral beliefs and attitudes that
people in a society have and, in particular, their mutual expectations regarding what types of behavior are
acceptable. The theory of evolution could not explain directly such sociological phenomena because any
explanation of this aspect of a culture will have to appeal to social and historical facts about the society in
question. It requires reference to irreducibly social concepts (see Chapter 3).
However, the theory of evolution should be able to explain our moral capacities insofar as they are
innate. In other words, we have certain capacities that make it possible for us to make moral judgments and,
in part, these are natural abilities, such as the capacity to make reasoned choices, to reflect self-consciously
and to have certain feelings and emotions, such as care for others. However, and this point is important, the
theory of evolution will not explain how these capabilities are developed and trained socially; nor can it
explain how these capacities will and should be used in specific circumstances (Murphy, 1982, p. 79).
Morality also consists of evaluative claims that specify reasons for action i.e. what we have reason to
do; for example, there is a moral reason to keep promises. Some of these claims would be substantive
moral principles, such as a theory of social justice. The theory of evolution cannot be used to derive such
substantive claims. To see why, we might compare moral principles to those of economics and to
mathematical statements. Evolution can explain why we have the mathematical capacities we do; but this
does not mean that we can derive or prove mathematical propositions from the theory of natural selection.
Their meaning and truth cannot be explained in such terms. Similarly, the capacities that allow us to make
sense of economic activity in terms of micro and macro-economic theory should be explicable in terms of
natural selection, but that does not mean that economic theories themselves can be derived from or are
based on evolution. Sociobiology does not replace mathematics and economics. For similar reasons, it does
not make morality redundant or an illusion.

91
 Let us apply these conclusions. Even if our capacities to feel and perceive meaning and value can be
explained as a result of a long, mechanical evolutionary process, this does not mean that our sense that life
is valuable or meaningful is an illusion, nor that the claim ‘life is valuable’ is false. It does not imply that
value claims can be reduced to statements about a mechanical process.
The general message of this last point can be amplified in two ways. First, consider this quotation
from the famous zoologist Alister Hardy regarding the idea of a cosmic plan:

The very fact that one can conceive (a)…possible solution may save one from being in the
pessimistic position of imagining that there can be no possible purpose in the process at all. Such a
defeatist loss of all sense of meaning...is one of the tragic outcomes of the materialism of today
(Darwin and the Death of Spirit, 1984, quoted in Barlow, p. 245).

Compare this quotation with that of Monod cited earlier, to the effect that life is merely the
meaningless and valueless product of chance. Hardy and Monod share the fundamental assumption that, in
the absence of a divine plan, life is valueless. Whereas Monod is prepared to embrace meaninglessness,
Hardy argues for the existence of a plan. However, it is a trap to think that either the universe has a plan, or
else life must be nothing but a valueless result of a mechanical slot machine. This is a false dichotomy
because the claim that life can be valuable does not depend on the existence of a divine plan. Furthermore,
evolution is not necessarily a reductive theory: it does not mean that statements that specify value can be
reduced or translated into statements about the effects of natural selection. As we have seen, we cannot
reduce mathematics, economics, or even sociobiology itself to statements about natural selection. The
theory of evolution aims to provide a naturalistic explanation of biological characteristics, including those
capacities that enable us to recognize value and meaning. Giving a causal explanation of the origin of these
capacities is not the same as giving an account of the meaning or content of the relevant statements. More
specifically, sentences specifying the nature of morality have meanings that indicate the content of
morality. We can investigate this content without thinking that it must be explained in evolutionary terms.
We should not confuse morality as a set of statements with moral capacities.
The second amplification of the general point is that the false dichotomy represented by De Chardin
versus Monod is a general reflection of the feelings of many people concerning our situation in the
universe. Many people feel that there are only two alternatives: either we humans are a very special part of
God’s creation, or else we live in a universe that is ‘unfeeling,’ to quote Monod, and mechanically
indifferent.
Both limbs of this dichotomy are problematic. On the one hand, the idea that we are special because
we have an important God-given task to perform instrumentalizes the value of our lives and, as a
consequence, is an erroneous way to understand the statement that our lives have non-instrumental or
intrinsic value. It turns us into God’s tools. This is problematic because tools are only valuable insofar as
they serve a purpose, and this is not a good basis for explaining the claim that a person’s life can have non-
instrumental value.
On the other hand, Monod’s idea that the universe is coldly indifferent to our fates actually personifies
or anthropomorphizes the universe. A person can be indifferent to you only if you have reason to expect
that he or she might care. Only a person can be coolly unsympathetic. For this reason, to affirm that the
universe is indifferent to us is to personify it.
According to this dichotomy, in the first option, we are given a job to be done by a cosmic parent, and
in the second we receive silence and the cold shoulder because the boss is absent. Our feelings of being at
home in our own lives and with our surroundings do not have to depend on such cosmic considerations.

92
 9
Biology

According to one view, advanced, for instance, by the logical positivists (Chapter 16), the natural
sciences are a unity in the sense that the claims of biology can be reduced to those of chemistry, which in
turn can be reduced to those of physics. The thesis that biological processes are entirely physical seems to
support the statement that we can reduce biological theories to those of physics. Because physical processes
are apparently mechanistic, this reduction seems to imply a mechanistic conception of life. This kind of
mechanistic view apparently gained support through the discovery that the genes of organisms are DNA
molecules, which unites evolutionary biology, genetics and biochemistry.
Some philosophers, such as Elliot Sober and Philip Kitcher, and many biologists, such as Richard
Levins, Richard Lewontin and Ernst Mayr, have argued against this view. Other writers, such as Lynn
Margulis and Gregory Bateson, have tried to replace the mechanistic conception with a holistic
understanding of biological systems. Such holistic approaches involve the claim that the functioning of the
parts of a system cannot be understood apart from that of the whole. For example, in ecology, the behavior
of organisms cannot be understood in isolation from the ecosystem within which they live and on which
they depend. Furthermore, in the previous chapter, we touched on the idea that individual organisms
themselves are dynamical biological systems that involve self-organization. Writers who stress the holistic
nature of such biological systems usually argue that the reductionism and mechanistic approaches inherent
in much mainstream biology, especially biochemistry, are inadequate.
In this chapter, we shall examine this debate, which impinges on the definition of life itself. We need
to start with a little history.

The Standard View

Descartes (1596–1650) initiated the modern vision of the unity of science. Descartes’ idea was that
the physical universe consists only of matter and its spatio-temporal properties, and that all physical
changes should be explained solely in terms of matter in motion. On this basis, he proposed explanations of
natural phenomena as diverse as light, the motion of the planets and tides, and physiological processes such
as digestion, the circulation of the blood and working of the nervous system. In brief, all natural changes
can be explained in terms of the mechanics of pieces of matter pushing other pieces of matter around. This
is the idea of mechanism.
At the time, this simple idea was revolutionary. It avoided the need for attributing of ‘tiny minds’ to
material things. In a sense, Descartes and his contemporaries invented the concept of inanimate matter,
which replaced the medieval idea of the four elements (earth, water, air and fire). According to this modern
conception, matter is essentially the same throughout the universe and is governed by the same mechanical
laws. Because of this, the varying reactions of different bodies must be explained in terms of the differing

93
size, shape and motion of the smaller bodies (corpuscles) that compose them. The physical world consists
of only matter and its quantifiable, measurable primary qualities.
Descartes applied this principle of mechanical motion to physiology and, as a result, conceived all
animals and plants mechanistically, although he famously argued that the principle could not be extended
to the intentional actions of self-conscious persons. In other words, the behavior of living organisms should
be explained in terms of the motions and primary qualities of the relevant particles, except for the
intentional actions of persons.
The fundamental principles of Descartes’ vision remained relatively intact in biology for several
centuries. However, by the 18th century, the underlying mechanical processes were conceived of as
chemical. This was because of the great advances in modern chemistry and Lavoisier’s discovery that
respiration is a process of oxidation. In the late 19th century, Pasteur’s work in microbiology, Mendel’s
laws of hereditary influence, and the development of cell theory and embryology signaled the importance
of chemical and physical mechanisms for the understanding of diverse biological phenomena.
Indeed, until recently, the major philosophical alternative to a mechanistic view of biology was
vitalism, which holds that there exist non-material or vital force fields that guide biological processes such
as cell division, as well as the development of the embryo and morphological structures (Mayr, p.9-12).
Vitalism was especially influential in 19th century Germany following the work of Immanuel Kant (see
below).
In contrast, according to the mainstream mechanistic view, the universe consists of basic physical
units, such as elementary particles and forces, out of which all other entities, such as cells, organisms, and
ecological communities, are composed. Furthermore, the characteristics and behavior of these other entities
can be explained in terms of the structure, nature and behavior of these elementary parts, which accord with
universal causal laws. In the final analysis, the physical properties of matter determine the behavior of
everything because complexes should be understood in terms of simples. In other words, the part is prior to
the whole both ontologically and in explanatory terms.

An Alternative: Teleological Holistic Systems

The famous German philosopher, Kant (1724–1804) first articulated a teleological and holistic
alternative in a clear form. He distinguished external purposes from internal ones. Internal purpose belongs
to things in nature that embody purpose. Instead of having a purpose in relation to something external, they
are a purpose in themselves. For example, consider the growth of a tree. The tree organizes matter in a
process of self-production, and this process depends on a mutual dependency of whole and part: the tree as
a whole needs the leaves which it itself produces. An organism has its own internal purpose when it itself
supplies its own cause and effect in two ways. First, in a purposive whole, ‘each part exists by means of all
the other parts and is regarded as existing for the sake of the whole.’ Of course, this point is not sufficient
to distinguish an organic whole from an artifact such as a watch. This is why Kant added the second
condition: the being must be self-organizing, in the sense that the parts must be regarded as reciprocally
producing each other. Such a self-organizing whole has what Kant called formative power.
Kant defined internal purposiveness as follows: ‘An organized product of nature is one in which
everything is reciprocally end and means.’ He thought that this served to define ‘organism’ and that the
concept of the ends of nature forms a necessary guiding principle in the scientific study of organisms.
Scientists who ‘dissect plants and animals’ seek to investigate their structure and ‘see into the reasons why
the parts have such and such a position.’ The principle that organisms are reciprocally both ends and means
is a regulative ideal that we need to interpret nature. It is both teleological and holistic.
Kant claimed that this principle requires us to regard nature as governed by more than blind causal
mechanisms. However, he did not mean that we have to postulate hidden supersensible causes. He meant
that mechanical causes in nature have to be viewed also teleologically.
In conclusion, Kant’s vision of biology has two intertwined aspects that distinguish it from a
mechanistic approach. First, it is quasi-teleological: biological traits must be regarded as if they had a
purpose. Second, it is holistic; the functioning of any part of an organism must be understood in terms of its
role in a self-organizing whole. At the same time, it is not vitalist because it does not postulate non-physical
causes.

94
Self-Organizing Biological Systems

Whereas Kant thought that the principle of self-organization is a judgment that we impose on nature,
contemporary scientists claim that self-organization is inherent in certain kinds of physical systems. Let us
briefly sketch the history of this theory.
First, in the early part of the 20th century, various so-called organismic biologists such J.S. Haldane,
W. Ritter, E.S. Russell and Joseph Woodger, who were dissatisfied with the mechanistic-vitalism debate,
began to employ concepts such as organization, ordered relations, pattern and system in their biological
work. This constituted a new departure because it permitted the idea that living beings are more their
physical parts, not because of some immaterial vital force but rather because those parts must be
appropriately organized in order for something to be alive. It thereby generated the claim that organisms are
living systems whose parts are themselves living systems, as well as the idea of hierarchies of complex,
interlocking systems (Mayr, p.16-21). These developments led to some of the concepts of ecology, such as
food chains and cycles, and ecosystems.
Second, around the 1950s, scientists began forming the concepts necessary for cybernetics and
systems analysis, such as feedback loops, subsystems and emergent properties, which are the properties of
a system as a whole which are not shared by its parts (see Chapters 5 and 7). Indeed, many of the concepts
of cognitive science, such a hierarchies of networks, seem appropriate for the new more holistic approach
to biology.
Third, during the 1960s and 70s, the Russian physicist and Nobel prize-winner Ilya Prigogine studied
physical systems that are not in equilibrium and that have the capacity to develop their own organizational
structure. For example, when a film of liquid is heated from below and the temperature difference between
the top and bottom of the film reaches a certain critically high value, hexagonal cell-like structures, called
“Bernard cells,” develop on the top surface as the hot liquid rises from below. Prigogine showed how
dissipative structures in open systems can be stable when the systems are far from equilibrium and how
they can develop new organizational forms, such as the Bernard cells, through positive feedback loops.
Self-organizing systems have the capacity to develop structures of their own. Such systems are open in the
sense that there is a constant inflow of energy into the system. A dissipative structure is one in which
friction or some other form of dissipation causes loss of available energy. A system that has internal
feedback loops must be described mathematically with nonlinear equations, and so self-organizing systems
are nonlinear.
Fourth, in the 1980s, mathematicians elaborated the mathematics of complexity, including the
equations needed to model or map dynamic patterns, and nonlinear feedback systems, which we mentioned
in Chapter 7.
Self-organizing systems are important in the development, and perhaps the definition, of life. The
German biochemist and Nobel prize- winner Manfred Eigen proposed the idea of catalytic cycles. Catalysts
accelerate chemical reactions without being altered in the process. Enzymes are catalysts inside cells. When
studying enzymes, Eigen observed the functioning of catalytic networks in which enzymes are involved in
the formation of other enzymes in a closed system (Capra, p.94). As was described in the previous chapter,
Kauffman developed this idea into the concept of autocatalytic systems, arguing that such systems played a
vital role in the evolution of the first life forms.
These self-organizing autocatalytic systems are not alive. However, some writers believe that similar
concepts might be employed to define a living system. The Chilean academics Maturana and Varela coined
the term ‘autopoeisis’ to define the self-making features of a living organism. According to Maturana and
Varela, living systems produce their own organization including their own boundaries. In other words, a
living system constructs itself as a unit (Capra, p.99). In this sense, they are different from the autocatalytic
processes that do not define their own boundaries.
Maturana and Varela claim that autopoeisis is both necessary and sufficient for life, and the simplest
of such units is the cell. Assessing whether this definition of life is correct or not is beyond the scope of this
chapter. However, the point of citing their work is to show how their overall approach differs from the
mainstream theory described earlier, which has its roots in Descartes, and also how it is similar to some of
the ideas first articulated by Kant. Indeed, Maturana and Varela, like the earlier organismic biologists,
regard their work as an alternative to both mechanistic and vitalist approaches.

95
Teleology

We ascribe purposes, relatively uncontentiously, in two areas. First, humans and other animals are
beings that have purposes in the sense that they have desires and act purposively. Second, they create
artifacts that serve these purposes. However, teleological explanations are sometimes employed in biology,
as we saw in the previous chapter, and as Kant argues. For example, the leaves of trees and the organs of
animals serve a purpose for the organisms that they are a part of. However, such appeals to purpose are
very contentious because they apparently anthropomorphize nature. They seem to require a form of
vitalism or the intervention of a supernatural power. For this reason, most biologists avoid such teleological
explanations and adhere strictly to purely mechanistic ones, while most philosophers of biology try to
define the technical notion ‘function’ causally without appeal to purposes. For a brief explanation of this
disputed concept, see the appendix.
Nevertheless, according to such writers as Dennett and Dawkins, we can employ legitimately the
concept of the purpose of a trait because of the theory of natural selection but only when that purpose can
be explained in terms of the trait’s adaptive or survival value in evolutionary terms. This is the essence of
Dennett’s reverse engineering, which was explained in the previous chapter.
Another possible way of introducing purposes into biological theories is through systems analysis. For
example, Levy argues that the biological systems involve the organization of units into a network and that
the concepts of function, goal, and representation can be captured in the theory of networks, without
postulating that such networks are conscious. For example, he claims that the non-conscious immune
system can be treated teleologically (Mohan and Linsky, 1988).
We find similar views in cognitive science; writers in this area also claim that a sufficiently and
appropriately complex system or network can be characterized teleologically with the language of
purposes. However, this need not automatically imply that such systems really are intentional or that they
really have purposes and goals. Rather, it may mean that the system can be described usefully in such
terms; the description need not be literally or realistically true but instead instrumentally useful. This point
will be important for our evaluation of environmental ethics (see Chapter 13).

Three Challenges
As we mentioned, some philosophers have challenged the mechanistic and atomistic view of
biological processes. At the same time, the advent of holism in biology has encouraged some biologists and
philosophers to present holism as an alternative to mainstream mechanistic biology. There seem to be three
aspects to these challenges.
First, mainstream biology is held to be mechanistic insofar as it focuses on the physical mechanisms
that underlie living processes and has assumed that all biological explanations must be framed in such
terms.
Second, traditional biology is reductionist insofar as it assumes that biological theories can be reduced
to those of chemistry, which in turn can be reduced to physics.
Third, traditional biology is atomistic insofar as it focuses on the parts of individuals at the expense of
a more holistic approach that studies individuals as parts of a wider whole system.
Let us look at these three challenges each in turn, even though they are interrelated. We shall examine
each challenge in terms of two considerations: first, its implications for holism, and second, for the
introduction of biological explanations couched in terms of purposes.

1) Mechanisms

What is a mechanism? We have already seen how Descartes and his contemporaries argued that all
natural changes must be the result of the mechanics of the movement of matter. To put it crudely, their
assumption was that pieces of matter affect changes in other pieces only by pushing them around. Any
other kind of change was held to be mysterious. In physics, this meant that there could be no genuine action
at a distance; if material body A causes a change in a distant material body B, then there must be some
intervening physical mechanism, such as invisible particles, that transmit the changes from one to the other.

96
 In physics, the first serious challenge to this overall idea was Newton’s theory of gravity because,
according to Newton, gravity can cause instantaneous effects on a distant body. The reply to this challenge
was Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein realized that Newton’s theory of gravity contradicted
the claim that nothing can travel faster than light because it postulated instantaneous effects over a distance.
In brief, Einstein resolved this problem with his general theory by arguing for the thesis that bodies with a
mass cause a curvature in space-time. The second serious challenge to the need for mechanisms in physics
was Bell’s inequality described in Chapter 6, according to which non-local effects are an inherent aspect of
some multi-particle quantum systems. The fact that we regard Bell’s inequality as a puzzle shows the extent
to which we take the idea of physical mechanisms seriously.
The idea of underlying physical mechanisms applies to biology in two general ways. First, there must
be some causal physical mechanism by which organisms acquire their morphological traits. For example,
there must be some such mechanism by virtue of which elephants’ ears have the shape they do. This
mechanistic account starts with the structure of the DNA molecules, which affect the production of proteins
and amino acids, which in turn affect the way in which cell divisions occur in the embryo. Some of the
details of the causation from genotype to phenotype are not well understood. However, it is generally
accepted that such an understanding must consist in knowledge of the underlying causal biochemical
mechanisms.
Elephants’ ears also have a function; they help to keep the animal cool. We can explain most, if not
all, of the morphological features of an organism in terms of their function (see Chapter 6). Such functional
explanations appeal to purposes and, in this sense, they are not mechanistic. However, writers, such as
Dawkins and Dennett, argue that these functional explanations have an underlying physical causal
mechanism, which is natural selection. In other words, teleological and functional explanations in biology
are appropriate only to the extent that they can be underwritten in principle by natural selection. This is the
second way in which mechanisms are required in biology. As a qualification, in this case, the term
‘mechanism’ is slightly misleading because the causal processes in question are the birth, reproduction, and
death of organisms (but see below).
The main argument against a purely mechanistic approach is that biology is the study of living or
animate organisms, and mechanisms are essentially inanimate or dead and, therefore, cannot be adequate
for biological understanding. In other words, by investigating physical mechanisms, we lose what is
distinctive about biological organisms, namely that they are alive. In general, the argument has the
following form:

1. Biology is the study of living systems as such.

2. Living systems must have property P.
3. Physical mechanisms do not have property P.
4. Therefore, biology cannot be solely the study of physical mechanisms.

This argument-form can be developed in various ways. In other words, there are several candidates
for property P. For example, one might argue that living systems have teleological properties; organs and
behaviors serve purposes. Physical mechanisms, such as biochemical processes, do not involve purposes
and, therefore, biology cannot be devoted exclusively to the search for such mechanisms. Alternatively, one
might claim that living systems are necessarily self-organizing rather than mechanistic. Then again, one
could point out that living organisms cannot live in isolation from their environment and from other
organisms; they live in ecosystems. One might then argue that the appeal to mechanisms ignores this
holistic interdependence.
We can help resolve the conflict between mechanistic and holistic approaches in part by
distinguishing the claim that all biological changes require underlying physical mechanisms from the
additional thesis that all biological explanations and theories must be framed ultimately in terms of such
mechanisms. The thesis ‘change requires mechanisms’ does not mean that all explanations must be
mechanistic (see Chapter 3 for a similar point in the social sciences). For instance, the behavior of an
organism might be explicable only holistically in reference to its role within an ecosystem. Similarly, the
workings of an animal’s organs might be explicable only in teleological terms, and in relation to the animal
as a whole living system.
These claims would preclude citing only purely mechanistic explanations of the behavior of an
organism and of the functioning of its organs. However, it need not exclude the claim that there are
underlying causal mechanisms at work. For, as we saw in Chapters 3 and 4, there can be different kinds of

97
description of a phenomenon; for example, we can describe an organism as a physical system, or as a living
being, or as a part of a wider ecological community. Since the most appropriate explanation of a
phenomenon depends on how it is characterized, different kinds of explanation would be relevant for the
different descriptions. Furthermore, let us suppose that the other kinds of description, such as the
teleological and holistic ones, are not reducible to the purely physical ones. In which case, then, neither
would the different kinds of explanation. In summary, postulating the existence of physical causal
mechanisms, such as a biochemical process, need not be a reductive strategy. It need not imply that other
kinds of description and explanation must be reduced to the mechanistic ones (see below for more on
reduction).
Before turning to reduction, we need to consider some misleading arguments against the introduction
of mechanisms in biology. First, the concept of a physical mechanism appears to be deterministic, and this
may lead to the protest that animal behavior and the course of evolution are not predetermined and,
therefore, cannot have any underlying mechanisms. However, we saw in Chapter 7 that determinism is an
illusion engendered by the failure to remember that no physical system is closed in nature. Therefore, the
claim that biological processes have underlying causal mechanisms need not imply determinism. This is not
a good reason for excluding physical mechanisms from biology.
Second, a mechanism is typically a system that is described with linear equations. In contrast, the
types of system that are capable of self-organization are nonlinear because they involve feedback loops. It
might be argued on these grounds that biological self-organization and physical mechanisms are
incompatible and, therefore, that biological systems are not mechanistic. This argument, however, is not
decisive without a clearer definition of mechanism. For example, many writers refer to such loops as
‘feedback mechanisms.’ Furthermore, as we saw in previous chapters, some non-biological, dynamic,
physical systems are also characterized by nonlinear feedback loops and these do have an underlying
physical mechanism. As a consequence, the original argument cannot be employed to exclude underlying
mechanisms from biological systems.
Thirdly, the idea of a physical mechanism may conjure up the image of the wheels and cogs of an
industrial machine, or of a clock, which is more or less the way in which Descartes thought of animals.
This is quite the wrong analogy for our conception of an animal as a living being. It is misleading
aesthetically and morally, as well as scientifically. However, the concept of a physical mechanism does not
have to be wedded to Descartes’ inappropriate conception because he assumes, contrary to what we have
just argued, that all biological explanations must be mechanistic. In short, his view is reductionist.

2) Reductionism

One theory or set of descriptions reduces to another when the second logically entails the first, and not
visa versa. Thus, the claim that the theories of biology can be reduced to those of biochemistry implies that
those of biochemistry entail those of biology. A similar point applies to the relation between biochemistry
and physics.
According to some thinkers, such as the logical positivists, the claim that biology can be reduced to
physics is required for the idea that the natural sciences are a unity. Since the natural world is physical, and
because the natural sciences study the different ways in which matter manifests itself, such thinkers
conclude that the physical principles that govern matter should be applicable to all natural things. They
argue that to deny this would entail an unacceptable dualism such as the postulation of non-physical and
vital forces.
The thesis that biological processes are entirely physical seems to imply that biological theories can
be reduced in principle to those of physics. However, in Chapters 3 and 4, we argued that this assumption is
mistaken. Materialism does not imply reduction. It is possible to hold that only matter and its material
properties exist, and yet also claim that non-physicalist descriptions of reality can be true without being
reducible to extensional physical theories. This is possible because the ontological issue of what exists and
the semantic issue of how it might be truly described are distinct. Materialism is an ontological claim.
Reductionism is a linguistic thesis; it concerns language i.e. the relation between different kinds of
descriptions or theories.
Statements such as ‘materialism entails that mental states reduce to brain states’ and ‘reductionism
implies that biological systems can be reduced to physical ones’ confuse this point. They make

98
reductionism into an ontological claim. These statements refer to the reduction of entities, states and
systems, when ‘reduction’ really applies to theories and statements, which are linguistic.
This clarification is important; it implies that the assertion ‘biological entities are physical’ does not
mean that biological explanations and theories must be reduced to those of physics. The concepts employed
in the biological sciences are distinct from those of physics. They offer descriptions of organisms and
ecosystems as such; those of physics do not.
This point reinforces the earlier conclusion that the existence of physical mechanisms does not mean
that all explanations must be mechanistic. It is also vital to our understanding of the holism/atomism
debate, as we shall see. However, note that we have not yet given a positive argument against reductionism,
but only disarmed one important argument in its favor.
One argument against reductionism is as follows. A biological system has emergent properties that its
parts do not have, and sentences using the predicates employed to describe those emergent properties are
not logically entailed by those sentences that do not employ such predicates. For example, if being alive is
an emergent property, then the claim that an organism is alive cannot be deduced logically from a set of
sentences that describe the chemical functioning of its cells. The reason why such a deduction is impossible
is that it would require bridge or connecting principles that effectively define ‘being alive’ in chemical
terms. Such definitions are impossible because they necessitate strong, general or type/type identities. For
example, they require statements of the form ‘anything with the general biological property F must have the
general physical property P because F and P are identical.’ Such type/type identity statements are
implausible because biological properties may be realized in many different physical ways (for a similar
argument regarding the mental properties, see the appendix to Chapter 4). In summary, one argument
against reductionism is that it requires implausible identities between general types of biological and of
physical properties.
For these reasons, writers who argue against reductionism but in favor of a materialist ontology often
claim that the relationship between emergent biological properties and their underlying physical processes
should be conceived in terms of supervenience. ‘Supervenience’ is defined as follows. A biological
property F supervenes on physical properties if two physically indistinguishable things both must either
have or lack F. However, the converse need not be true: two objects that both have or lack F need not be
physically indistinguishable. Anti-reductionists who are at the same time materialists often contend that the
biological properties of an organism are supervenient on its microphysical properties. In other words, they
overlay the underlying physical properties.
Additionally, such writers, who reject general type/type identities and reductionism, also argue in
favor of particular token/token identity statements on the basis that any biological system is a physical
system that only has physical properties.

3) Atomism

If we want to understand the physical mechanisms through which some biological process works, then
it seems that we must adopt what is sometimes called an analytic approach, which means that we need to
look at the mechanisms of the relevant parts of the organism. For instance, we must study the functioning
of cells and examine the biochemistry that describes how DNA coding specifies the processes of cell
division and differentiation through the production of amino acids. Such understanding requires knowing
what the organism and its parts are composed of. For instance, we need to know the composition of cells,
and of DNA and proteins. We have to proceed from whole to part and to the parts of the part, and so on
until we reach the basic building blocks out of which everything is composed. In other words, this kind of
understanding of an organism will necessitate investigating cells, molecules, and eventually atomic and
sub-atomic structures.
However, as we have seen, biological theories do not always take this form. Holism states that the
functioning of a part of a system cannot be understood independently of the functioning of the whole. In
this way, holism urges a synthetic approach rather than an analytic one. It requires us to see a whole as a
part of a larger whole instead of examining the parts or the composition of the whole.
Inherently, there is no contradiction between these two general approaches unless exclusivity is
claimed on behalf of one of them. We can appreciate this point by considering the fact that evolutionary
explanations that appeal to teleology need not contradict mechanistic explanations. For example, if we want
to understand why an elephant has large ears, then we must perform a piece of reverse engineering (see
Chapter 8). That is, we must explain the useful function that this feature may perform which also has an

99
adaptive value. This is a teleological explanation that appeals to purposes and not to any micro-mechanism.
On the other hand, this does not mean that there are no underlying mechanisms by virtue of which an
elephant has large ears. If we want to understand how an elephant has large ears, then we must investigate
the biochemical mechanisms through which this morphological feature develops. In short, the teleological
and mechanistic explanations are not incompatible. A contradiction occurs only if we claim that all
biological explanations must be mechanistic.
A similar point applies to the holistic and atomistic or to the synthetic and analytic approaches in
biology. We can investigate an organism as a part of and in relation to a larger whole, such as an
ecological community or indeed the whole biosphere.
However, these points are not complete. One argument against the analytic approach is not only that it
claims exclusivity but also that it tends to ignore the relations between the parts of a whole.

Some Qualifications

We have examined three challenges to mainstream mechanistic biology. First, even if biological
processes have an underlying physical mechanism, this does not mean that all explanation must be
mechanistic. Second, even if biological systems are composed of matter, this does not imply that biological
theories can be reduced to those of physics. Third, even though biological systems have physical parts, this
does not mean that understanding them always requires analyzing them in terms of their parts.
These claims can be expressed more positively. Biological systems are organized networks that have
emergent properties. Furthermore, they are self-regulating and self-organizing hierarchical networks
regarding which understanding the working of the parts requires knowledge of the functioning of the
whole.
However, it would be misleading to claim that these points are individually sufficient to distinguish
living organisms from inanimate physical systems. Let us see why.
First, inanimate physical objects and systems are organized. Snowflakes and ice crystals have
physical organizations that make them more than just an agglomeration of fundamental particles. The same
could be said of molecules and even atoms. Aristotle (384-322 BC) made this point clearly. He claimed that
any substance consists of form and matter, which are not two independently existing entities but rather two
aspects of any substance that are separable only in thought. In other words, any entity is organized matter.
In short, organization per se is not a defining feature of organisms, even though, it is clear that the
organization of living beings is extremely complex.
Second, there is a good case to be made for the thesis that, for instance, rivers have emergent
properties and that statements about these cannot be reduced to statements about hydrogen and oxygen
atoms. Moreover, one might even argue that statements about water molecules cannot be reduced to those
concerning their component atoms because water molecules as a unit have emergent properties.
Additionally, in some cases, reduction within physics itself apparently fails. For instance, as we saw in
Chapter 7, descriptions of the behavior of chaotic systems cannot be reduced to quantum mechanics even
when the chaotic system is composed of sub-atomic particles.
Third, in Chapters 7 and 8, we mentioned inanimate dynamical physical systems that are self-
regulating and self-organizing, such as the formation of Bernard cells and the structure of laser beams.
Similarly, there are physical systems that behave holistically; for instance, in Chapter 6 we described how
certain multi-particle quantum systems are holistic. Therefore, self-organization and holism are not
uniquely biological properties.
Finally, let us consider the more complex case of teleological properties. Instrumentalists claim that
we can describe appropriately complex non-biological networks, such as some computer systems, in terms
of purposes. However, according to an instrumentalist, such ascriptions are not realistically true but rather
instrumentally useful, for instance, in terms of making predictions of the system’s behavior. Typically,
instrumentalists extend this non-realistic approach to teleological descriptions of organisms, including
humans (see Chapters 4 and 5). In contrast, realists understand teleological descriptions of conscious
organisms realistically; in other words, when such descriptions are true, the organisms really do have the
relevant goals and desires. However, a realist would claim that non-conscious organisms, such as plants, do
not desire or have goals. In conclusion, for the instrumentalist, purpose is not a sufficient condition for
distinguishing life from the inanimate, and for the realist, it is not necessary.

100
 In sum, as a word of caution, none of these properties are individually sufficient to define ‘life,’
except, according to the realist view, the having of goals. However, this does not exclude some
combination of the properties being sufficient. Furthermore, it does not mean that they are not necessary
conditions of life, or that they are biologically insignificant.

101
Appendix: Biological Function

We might try to define ‘function’ in terms of an organism’s goals. The function of a trait would be
defined in terms of its current causal properties that contribute to the organism’s current needs and goals.
Such a definition has several problems. First, it cannot be applied to organisms and systems that do not
have goals, such as plants. Second,

For these reasons, as we mentioned earlier, most biologists and philosophers try to define the
technical notion of function causally without appeal to purposes. One generally accepted definition of this
type, which occurs in evolutionary theory, is in terms of selected effect. Functions should be defined in
terms of their evolutionary cause. According to this definition, attributing a function to a structure in an
organism is equivalent to claiming that, in the past, this structure contributed to the fitness of the ancestors
of the organism and that it caused the relevant genes to be selected. ‘The function of structure X is F’
means that the organism has X because it does F and that F is the result of X’s being part of the organism.
For instance, the heart’s blood-pumping function is constituted by the natural selective history for that
effect. This analysis, which was originated by Larry Wright, aims to reveal the theoretical meaning of the
term ‘function’ specifically for the context of evolutionary biology.
This definition accords well with many interpretations of evolutionary adaptations. For instance,
Sober defines adaptation as follows: ‘X is an adaptation for task F in population P if and only if X became
prevalent in P because there was selection for X, where the selective advantage of X was due to the fact
that X helped perform task F’ (Sober 1984). This definition of an adaptation dovetails with Wright’s
analysis of ‘function.’ What Sober refers to as ‘task F’ is the function of trait X. Furthermore, when writers
talk about the adaptive benefit produced by X as being the function of X, they usually mean that the benefit
was the cause of selection for X. In other words, a trait is an adaptation when it has a function (Amundson
and Lauder in Hull, 1998).
However, some philosophers of biology follow Robert Cummins in arguing that a different
conception of function is required in other areas of biology apart from evolutionary theory, such as
comparative and functional anatomy. Cummins’ analysis refers to the actual causal powers of a trait rather
than to its evolutionary origins. These powers are relative to a capacity of the system as a whole and to the
functional explanation of that overall capacity. In other words, the function of a specific trait is its capacity
to contribute appropriately to the overall capacity of the system. More precisely, given a system S that has
the capacity to G, ‘the function of trait X in S is to F’ means that:

a) X is capable of F functioning in S and

b) An appropriate and adequate account of S’s capacity to G appeals to the capacity of X to F in S.

For example, suppose that the system is the jaw, and its capacity is to crush. In this context, the
function of a particular muscle might be to contract and bring two bones together. Given that this is part of
an adequate account of the jaw’s capacity, then we can say that a function of that muscle is to bring those
two bones closer together.
In short, the functions of a trait are relative both to the overall capacity of the system and to the
functional explanation of that overall capacity. Cummins’ analysis differs from the selective effect
definition of function because it does not employ the evolutionary history of a trait. However, it is similar
to the selective effect account in that it does not appeal to purposes.
The main problem facing this account is that it appears to implicitly appeal to purposes when referring
to the overall capacity of the system in terms of which the function of the trait is defined. In other words,
what is to count as a relevant capacity of the system of a whole? This is important because the function of a
trait is defined in terms of that overall capacity. In answer to this question, it seems that the causal powers
analysis faces the following dilemma:

a) It can appeal illicitly to purposes or goals of the organism in specifying the relevant capacities of
the whole system, or

102
 b) It can leave the capacities an open-ended category. In which case, it cannot distinguish functions
and trivial effects. For example, Sober uses the following example: the function of the heart is to
give the organism a certain weight because of its mass.

Cummins tries to overcome this dilemma by claiming that the general capacities subject to this kind
of functional analysis should be of scientific significance, for instance, capacities that are complexly
organized.

103
 10
Education

What are the aims of education? This question is a little odd because it is primarily teachers and
educational institutions that have aims, and these depend very much on the context. The educational aims
of teachers in a rural state primary school in Indonesia will be rather different from those who work in a
teachers’ training college in the Ukraine, and both will face a situation very different from a liberal arts
college in the USA.
However, the need for contextual thinking does not mean that we cannot make some generalized
statements about how educational institutions ought to conceive their mission and objectives. It does mean
that we should be wary of building a vision of educational aims around a particular philosophy, such as a
scientific epistemology, a Kantian analysis of moral autonomy, or Existentialism. This word of caution also
applies to the conclusions of this chapter.
In the context of Western educational philosophy, an important debate concerns whether education
should be knowledge-based or else more centered on the developmental processes of the individual child.
What matters most: the knowledge that should be taught or the educational process of the child or student,
much more broadly conceived? This type of question marks a central theme of a debate between the
traditional and progressive approaches to education. Our aim in this chapter will be to try to resolve this
debate by distinguishing three kinds of educational aims, and by investigating the relationship between
them.
First, however, there are a few qualifications to be made. To begin with, the debate between
progressive and traditional approaches to education is obviously multi-dimensional. It involves more than
the themes that we shall discuss. For example, there is the question of power and authority in teaching and
learning. In what sense, if any, should teachers have authority over their students? Who leads the
educational process? Additionally, there is the related question ‘In what ways should different educational
institutions embody democratic values?’ Furthermore, the debate may include the important question of the
social function of education. To what extent should education serve existing socio-economic needs? To
what extent should education be considered as a tool for social change? The debate involves a host of
issues. Partly for this reason, I shall give a very brief general historical survey of some educational
philosophies with a view to offering a simple but, I hope, useful classification of different approaches.
Second, often the traditionalist/progressive debate is roughly divided along party political lines.
Conservatives tend to emphasize the traditional approach based on the factual knowledge that apparently
needs to be imparted to students. Liberals tend to be more sympathetic to the idea that the learning process
should be based on the child or student’s own needs. Yet, despite this, nearly everyone recognizes the
severe limitations of politically motivated public debate. Popular political polemics often hinder
understanding because, in politics, positions are often guilty by association. According to most liberals,
anything remotely conservative must be wrong, and vice versa.
Nevertheless, at the same time, most people recognize that both content and process are important in
education. What, then, is the underlying issue of this debate? What is the relation between content and

104
process? Given the importance of education, we should give these questions our best attention because if
we don't understand well in general terms the relationship between process and content, then our attempts
to formulate educational policy will suffer. In this chapter, I shall argue that a pivotal issue in this
discussion is the relationship between means and ends and the nature of instrumental rationality. Clarity on
this relationship will help us dissolve and resolve some of the conflict between the two approaches.
.

Some Background History

Let us review briefly the relevant aspects of the history of the philosophy of education. Many of the
great philosophers of the past, such as Plato, Aristotle, Locke and Kant, made important claims about the
nature of education. However, the debate that concerns us in this chapter really begins in earnest with Jean
Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), the Romantic philosopher and contemporary of Voltaire. In 1762, in Emile,
Rousseau wrote: ‘Nature provides for the child’s growth in her own fashion, and this should never be
thwarted.’ According to this romantic and progressive view, the educational development of a child occurs
gradually and naturally, and the main job of teacher is to facilitate this process and not to impede it by
imposing rules and the preconception that children should know various facts. According to this view,
children are naturally active, creative and curious, and teachers should observe the child’s interests and
activities, and provide a learning environment that encourages them.
The Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827) extended Rousseau’s approach and put it into
practice. Pestalozzi regarded the nature of the individual child as more important than the installing of
social obligations and cultural norms and developed a system of education practices … Consequently, in
his schools, he eschewed traditional forms of discipline, reward and coercion, and fact-based learning. He
sought to educate children through the use and manipulation of objects from their everyday lives, and
through self-directed learning. As a result, he denied the idea that teachers have authority over the pupils.
His approach became popular in Prussia and enjoyed some popularity in the US through the influence of
William Machure and Joseph Neef, who opened a Pestalozzi school in Philadelphia. Another earlier
pioneer of progressive education was Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), the founder of the kindergarten, who
emphasized the idea that the individual character of child unfolds naturally like a plant (Miller, p.80).

In the 20th century, John Dewey (1859-1952) and Montessori (1870-1952) argued for a child-centered
view of education, and both, in rather different ways, stressed the importance of science for the progressive
view. Maria Montessori was a medical doctor with knowledge of psychiatry and anthropology, who
worked clinically with disabled children and who developed her educational method for normal children
based on this work. Her first schools achieved very positive results, and her method spread quickly around
the world.
The Montessori method is based on the idea that children develop naturally in the right kind of caring
and stimulating environment. Children learn best through following their own interests and through hands-
on-experience, which stimulates the senses and feelings. Like Rousseau, Montessori stressed that timing is
very important in education; children are naturally ready for different kinds of learning experiences at
different ages and therefore, teachers need to be observant in order to be able to facilitate the right
experience for the individual child. This idea influenced the developmental psychologist Piaget.
Dewey was an academic philosopher who wrote on an extraordinary wide range of subjects. One
unifying theme in this diversity is Dewey’s aim of naturalizing philosophy with an instrumentalist approach
according to which meaning, experience and knowledge are the outcome of biological interactions and
processes. He repudiates the claim that knowledge is a correspondence between a mental image and an
object, and tries to replace it with the instrumentalist idea that we have knowledge when we know how to
use objects for practical purposes. As a consequence, knowers are not passive spectators of reality, but
rather knowing is essentially an act. Therefore, his educational philosophy emphasizes the importance of
active engagement and interaction with objects and, more generally, the construction of personal meanings,
which enable us to make sense of our experience.
Dewey also argues that the concept of truth as correspondence is misconceived and should be
replaced by the idea of warrant, which depends on how knowledge is employed usefully, e.g. for the
prediction of events. In other words, Dewey tries to understand the notion of truth instrumentally rather
than realistically. ‘True’ does not indicate what is real but rather what is useful. As a result, his educational

105
philosophy stresses the importance of the processes of inquiry as opposed to obtaining the correct or true
answers.
According to Dewey, modern society is permeated with a mistaken classical metaphysics, which
assumes that there is a realm of timeless essences in contrast to the ever-changing physical world. This
false assumption leads to the dangerous notions of human essence and moral absolutes, which stunt human
potential. In contrast, Dewey claims that character and personality consist of the various habits that result
from interactions between individuals and their environment. In this way, he rejects the idea of a fixed
human nature that unfolds naturally, which is an important ingredient of the romantic educational vision of
Rousseau and Froebel.
In politics, Dewey defines democracy as a shared way of living, which essentially requires
collaboration, as well as free and open communication. In this way, democracy is a participatory process
rather than just a form of government and, as such, it can be practised in the classroom, for example, when
students work on common problems in groups, and construct school rules and their own learning
objectives. Like the Russian psychologist Vygotsky, Dewey claims that social interactions are an essential
part of the growth of intelligence and, of course, help foster the development of individuals who are
responsible members of a democratic society.
However, Dewey rejected the claim that education has a specific aim beyond the growth of the
student. In other words, education is an end in itself, and does not have some overall objective beyond mere
education.
In the 1960s, several analytic philosophers, including R.S.Peters, R. Dearden, Paul Hirst and
Scheffler, began to question the concepts of progressive educational philosophy. Employing the methods of
philosophical analysis, Peters launched an influential attack on some of the key ideas of progressivism,
which was becoming more widely accepted, especially in Britain where the official Plowden Report
endorsed many aspects of progressivism (Children and their Primary Schools, 1967). For instance, the
report refers to the model primary school as a place where children can ‘be themselves.’
In opposition to this trend, Peters argued that the key terms of progressive philosophy, such as
‘growth,’ ‘development,’ ‘needs’ and ‘interests,’ have a hidden normative element and, hence, cannot be
used to provide an independent justification of progressive ideas. He also argued in favor of the more
traditional idea that education should involve a curriculum that consists of the imparting of knowledge that
society deems important for children to learn (Peters in Perspectives on Plowden and Dearden, 1968).
Peters claimed that for a person ‘to be educated,’ it is insufficient that he or she should possess a certain
know-how or knack. He must have also some body of knowledge’ (Peters, 1966, p.30-1).
Meanwhile, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, several writers, such as John Holt, Ivan Illich and Paulo
Freire, raised radical political criticisms of traditional schools, the educational system and its culture. For
example, Illich argued that, because schools had become an instrument of power of modern technological
society, they had become dehumanized and could no longer serve the developmental needs of children. In
Deschooling Society, he advocated that we abandon traditional schools and the profession of educating.
John Holt (How Children Fail, 1964) showed how children invent strategies for pleasing teachers because
of an educational culture that stresses correct answers over and above process.
In the 1980s, there was a conservative resurgence in the philosophy of education. In the area of moral
education, the 19th century idea of moral character development was revived. Furthermore, in 1983, the US
President’s Commission on Excellence in Education produced their report A Nation at Risk, which called
for more core requirements, greater rigor, more standardized test evaluations and a longer school day and
year. At the same time, the idea of cultural literacy became popular and, in 1982, Mortimer Adler published
his Perennial or Paidedia Program based on the idea that there is a universal wisdom and a traditional
general culture contained in the great books, which all children should learn. Such an approach emphasizes
a fixed knowledge-based curriculum and an authoritarian role for teachers. In the U.K, the National
Curriculum was established in 1988, which is based on three core subjects, mathematics, English and
science, and on six foundational subjects, namely geography, history, design and technology, music, art and
physical education. In each subject, the curriculum defines attainment targets and programs of study for
each stage, organized in terms of objectives, methods, achievements and evaluation.
In the subsequent backlash of the late 1980s and 1990s, several writers picked up the radical themes
initiated by Illich and others, as postmodern thinking began to have some influence on educational
philosophy.

106
A Map
The above lightning sketch of some developments in educational philosophy reveals that it is too
simplistic to contrast only traditional and progressive views of education. In fact, we require at least a four-
cornered debate, which revolves around two distinct issues. On the one hand, there are those theories that
stress the acquisition of knowledge as an end in itself, and those that emphasize that its acquisition is a
means to some other end. On the other hand, there are theories that highlight the individual child or student,
and those that underscore the social and political functions of education. Following these distinctions, we
can draw the following schema.

KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE
AS AN END AS A MEANS

INDIVIDUAL 2. Liberal 3. Progressive

SOCIAL 1. Traditional 4. Radical

The numbering is purely arbitrary. It does not imply that box 4 is a more advanced position than box
1. Furthermore, not all educational theories can be easily slotted into one of these categories. Many fall
between the boxes and some lie outside the scheme altogether. The schema is not exhaustive or categorical.
The differences are not hard and fast. The differences are often a question of emphasis. Nevertheless, this
classification is useful because it reflects general philosophical tendencies. Let us briefly explain the
different positions.

1) Traditional Theories
Theorists of this type argue that education should be based primarily on the imparting of knowledge,
usually divided along the lines of the disciplines. Academically, they tend to regard knowledge as an end in
itself. However, at the same time, such theories argue that the nature and justification of, at least,
compulsory state-funded education is based on socio-political considerations. Such institutions serve the
purposes of the status quo, or social stability, by upholding social norms and by training young people to
serve society in the work force. This view, therefore, tends to distinguish sharply between academic
education for the sake of knowledge and vocational and professional training for work. Consequently, it
emphasizes discipline in two distinct ways. Academic discipline is needed so that students can absorb the
epistemological norms that are required to learn the factual knowledge that they are being taught. Social
discipline is needed so that the student can function as a good citizen who upholds the norms of society.
Both of these emphases involve stressing the authoritarian nature of education.

2) Liberal Theories
Like traditional views, liberal theories emphasize academic learning as the main purpose of education.
They regard the acquisition of knowledge as valuable as an end in itself. At the same time, liberal theories
are based on the idea that the individual person is an autonomous rational being and, therefore, they also
believe that education should facilitate the child becoming such a person through the advancement of his or
her rational skills. However, it is not the function of schools to advance any specific political or moral
theory beyond those necessary for the child becoming an autonomous agent capable of making rational
choices for him or herself in adult life. In a liberal society, each person must choose his or her own
conception of the good life and political ideals. Thus, liberal theories tend to portray themselves as
apolitical and value-free.

3) Progressive Theories
Such theories are child or student centered. The main function of education should be to facilitate the
development of the child in accordance with his or her own individual nature rather than to serve any
political or social aims, which are of secondary importance. In this last respect, the progressive view is
similar to the liberal one: both emphasize the individual above the social. However, the progressive has a
more rich or full-bodied conception of individual human nature. While liberals define human nature in

107
terms of autonomy and the capacity to make rational choices, the progressive sees each child as having a
distinctive nature, which includes all of his or her emotional and character dispositions and needs.
Progressive theorists believe that one of the main duties of a teacher is to avoid imposing cultural values
and knowledge-based norms on the child. The teacher is merely a facilitator, who has no special authority.
Furthermore, unlike liberal theories, progressive views tend not to regard knowledge as an end in itself. A
child will acquire knowledge as a part of his or her natural developmental process, which should not be
interfered with for the sake of the acquisition of knowledge. Acquiring knowledge is a means to that
developmental process. This point underlines once again the conception of a teacher as a facilitator who has
no special knowledge-based authority.

4) Radicals
Radical theories, like the traditional ones, stress the socio-political nature of education. However, education
should not serve the status quo but rather it is a tool for social reconstruction or transformation. It should
undermine the self-perpetuating power relations that typically oppress people, especially minority groups.
Radicals tend to regard the apolitical and individualistic pretensions of the liberal and progressive theories
as equivalent to the conservative aspirations of traditional views. They emphasize the political nature of
knowledge either in its traditional form, as a tool of oppression, or in its radical form, as an instrument of
liberation.

These characterizations are a little like a caricature of each position, and many of educational thinkers
do not fit neatly into one category. Nevertheless, the categories help to make sense of some of the
arguments between the different theories, and to locate the debate that we shall focus on in a more general
context. In this chapter, we shall concentrate on the debate between knowledge and child-centered
approaches, i.e. between categories 2 and 3 above, leaving aside the more overt political debate, and also
ignoring other facets of the debate.

The Nature of the First Conflict

Let us characterize these two polarized views of education regarding knowledge. I will try to portray their
respective lines of thought faithfully, without comment, even when the arguments seem to me to be
unsound or unclear.

Side A): Knowledge as an End

First, academic education requires that knowledge be considered as an end in itself. To see this,
consider the following example. An astronomer is a person who loves the stars and is interested in the facts
concerning their evolution or distribution in the universe for their own sake. A person who did not know or
care about the stars could not be an astronomer. Such knowledge must be treated as intrinsically valuable
rather than merely a means to some other end.
Second, many people have the talent to be an astronomer, but this ability is not enough. Knowledge is
also required to be an expert. Therefore, training in astronomy has to consist largely in learning detailed
facts about the stars, galaxies and the complex theories that describe their formation and behavior. In other
words, the central part of such academic training has to be the imparting of the knowledge of astronomy for
its own sake. In this sense, the educational focus should be on the informational content or the subject
matter.
This point is reinforced by the fact that the skills and talents that a person needs for astronomy are
defined by the nature of the subject matter itself. This is what makes it an academic discipline.
Additionally, these skills are acquired by, or through the process of, learning the relevant facts. In both of
these ways, the relevant skills are subsidiary to the knowledge. They are a means to it.
The same principles apply to other academic subjects. Much the same points can be made about, for
instance, chemistry, literature, history, and mathematics. Of course, the knowledge that is taught must be
appropriate for the age of the students concerned, but the curriculum should be primarily knowledge based,
and the functions and qualities of a teacher can be defined on this basis. For example, a teacher must be
able to impose the relevant intellectual discipline on his or her students so that they can acquire the skills
that are necessary for the prescribed learning.

108
Side b) Knowledge as a Means
The idea that education is primarily about imparting knowledge is wrongly focused for three reasons.
First, it is primarily persons that have value. Therefore, the educational process should be one that permits
the development of a child as him or herself. Furthermore, the child, like any person, is a whole, which
includes much more than the abstract cognitive processes that are traditionally the main concern of most
schools. The developmental process should be focused on the person as a whole. It should respect the
nature of the child because otherwise surely harm will result. This means that the educational process must
take place in a caring and safe atmosphere that allows children to practice their motor and perceptual
abilities, their social, interpersonal and affective skills, and to satisfy their emotional needs, as well as
developing their reasoning abilities.
Second, merely imparting knowledge makes children passive and undervalues their creative and
exploratory instincts. Our educational institutions should encourage children towards self-motivated
learning because people learn much better when the process accords with their own needs, interests and
will rather than being imposed from without. Since children are inquisitive, they will follow their own
interests, and this means that, with a little guidance, we can trust them to develop naturally for the best
when they are left alone in the right learning environment.
Third, knowledge on its own has comparatively little value and, perhaps, does not even make sense at
all as a concept. In order for knowledge to have worth, one must be able to apply and use it appropriately.
This means that education should be directed towards learning activities that stimulate the child or student
to use knowledge appropriately rather than towards passive reception. Thus, even in terms of knowledge,
that is without taking into account the wider needs of the child as a whole, the traditional model fails. Once
these other broader needs are taken into account, the traditional approach looks even more mistaken. In
conclusion, knowledge per se has only instrumental value because its value is as a means to the
development of the child.

Three Levels of Education

I hope that the reader can discern some wisdom in both sides of this debate and, for this reason it may
appear that the question is largely one of emphasis. However, I shall argue that this is a misleading way of
conceiving the relationship between the two views. The underlying issue is not merely one of emphasis. In
order to argue for this, I shall first distinguish three levels of education, and then characterize their
relationship in connection with instrumental rationality.

a) Education for Information

We have already seen a set of considerations that aim to support the claim that education is primarily
about imparting knowledge and information. We can conclude that knowledge-based education is valuable
and, for the moment, leave aside the divisive issue of whether this value is instrumental or intrinsic.

b) Education for Skills

However, knowledge on its own cannot be the only aim of the educational process. Mere knowledge
is not enough to make an expert or an educated person because people need to develop the skills without
which knowledge cannot be put to use. Without such skills, one cannot make the connections between
different areas of knowledge. Mere information is not sufficient for understanding, and it means nothing on
its own.
Having realized the above, some educators and policy makers try to frame educational objectives and
policies in terms of skills. Six year-old infants need certain motor and social skills, and the teenager, certain
thinking skills. We could make a list of all the mathematical operations that a ten-year should be able to
perform, for example. Curriculums are often conceived in these terms. We can conclude that education for
skills is valuable but, for the moment, we shall leave aside the thorny question of whether this value is
instrumental or intrinsic.

c) Education for the Person

109
 However, the teaching of knowledge and skills is not a complete view of education. We can see this
by considering the following examples. A lawyer requires a complex set of skills, for example, for dealing
with clients, presenting cases, constructing arguments, and writing briefs. However, these skills are not
sufficient to make a person a good lawyer. There are also certain qualities or character-traits that a good
lawyer must have. We need not assume that such qualities will be the same for all lawyers in all contexts,
but there may be some common factors. For example, a good lawyer should have a certain respect for the
truth, which typically will manifest itself in a love for detail and in carefulness. A constructor needs
another set of qualities or virtues. For example, a builder or contractor has to deal with a wide range of
people, each with their own agendas. This requires a set of personal virtues, such as patience and
perseverance, in addition to building and general management skills. The main point is that these personal
qualities are more than skills because they involve caring in appropriate ways.
In general, a person can know how to do something without having the care that would motivate him
or her to do it well. A technical ability in drawing does not amount to a love of art and beauty. The mere
ability to reason and argue well is not the same as a concern for truth. Nursing know-how does not amount
to a caring attitude. Although such qualities are connected to the appreciation of values, this does not mean
that they are necessarily moral virtues, even though they may be connected to morality.
We have argued that a vision of education must include the development of qualities, a process that is
distinct from the acquisition of skills and the learning of knowledge. So far we have examined only
professional training. Nevertheless, the same argument can be extended to academic subjects, such as
astronomy, mathematics, literature and history. A central part of being a good historian is having certain
qualities, even if those qualities are not the same for all historians. The same point can be applied more
generally to the liberal ideal of being an educated person, or to the more radical idea of being politically
and ecologically aware and active, or to the progressive ideal of being a person who lives in accordance
with his or her own nature.
However, these points leave unanswered how an educational process that includes the development of
qualities should be different from ones that are directed solely towards knowledge and skills. Moreover,
they do not help us to specify what the aims of an educational institution should be. Nevertheless, they do
mean that education should involve the development of the whole person in the sense of transcending the
acquisition of information and skills. Such an education also requires developing appropriate qualities or
ways of being. Students who lack such qualities may find it hard to develop skills and acquire knowledge.
Their way of being may impede them if, for instance, they are inattentive and passive, and lack a caring or
questioning attitude. Because such qualities more a question of attitude or character than skill, they concern
the development of the whole person, and not just the intellect.

Values and Goals

The question that now confronts is how we should conceive of the value relationships between these
three levels of education. Traditionalists and liberals tend to view knowledge educationally as an end in
itself and progressives tend to deny this. To address this issue, we need to make a fundamental point. Most
people assume that the distinction between means and ends is the same as that between instrumental and
non-instrumental value. According to this assumption, means as means have only instrumental value, and
only goals as goals can have non-instrumental value. I shall argue that this assumption is an error that has
important implications for the point in hand.
First, we need to distinguish goals or ends and non-instrumental value. Something has non-
instrumental value if and only if it is valuable for its own sake rather than for the sake of something else. In
contrast, something is an end if and only if it is a desired aim or objective. The two are distinct. To confuse
them is to think that intrinsic value must consist in a desired goal or end. (In this and later chapters, I shall
use the expression ‘intrinsic value’ to indicate a non-instrumental value without implying that such values
are non-relational).
As a result of this confusion, we may treat the activities required for attaining a goal as having only
instrumental value. In other words, if intrinsic values and goals are identified, then all goal-seeking activity
necessarily has only instrumental value. Effectively, this means that, if we think that the value resides in the
result, then we think of the activities in only instrumental terms and want achieve those results as
efficiently as possible with the minimum time and energy.

110
 Teachers sometimes complain that students do no more than the bare minimum to attain their relevant
goals. However, given the claim that the activity of learning is only instrumentally valuable to goals such as
obtaining good grades or the acquisition of knowledge, the students’ attitude is quite rational. In other
words, if the activity of learning has only instrumental value then, as students perceive, the rational attitude
is to achieve the goals with as little effort as possible. This is because what has only instrumental value is
effectively no more than a cost. Instrumental rationality implies that we should achieve our goals at
minimum cost.
Consequently, the teachers’ complaints should be directed towards the assumption that logically
generates this attitude and renders it reasonable. In short, the problem is the assumption that only goals or
ends have intrinsic value. This supposition involves a misunderstanding of the nature of non-instrumental
value. We cannot hope to understand and appreciate non-instrumental values when we identify them with
goals and ends; this is because this identification turns all activities that are means into costs, which
rationally should be minimized. A valuable life-process cannot be characterized merely as time and energy
spent in the pursuit of an end or a set of goals. A process or activity can be a means to a goal, but this does
not imply that it is only instrumentally valuable.
Second, for these reasons, we also need to distinguish between means and instrumental value. The
process of gaining knowledge is in part a means to the acquisition of abilities and qualities. However, this
does not imply that this process has only instrumental value. It can be a means that has intrinsic value.
Furthermore, these points do not imply that goals are unimportant in the processes of both learning
and teaching. For example, in order to be able to manage our work and study, we need goals. However,
even when we need goals, their importance for us is that they improve the process. Because of this, what
we tend to regard as having purely instrumental value (i.e. the activities themselves, which are means)
really has intrinsic value, and what we tend to regard as intrinsically valuable (i.e. the ends, goals or results)
has instrumental value. In other words, if we do not appreciate the importance of goals in terms of their
contributing to the value of processes, then our understanding of the value relationships will be back-to-
front. To put the point slightly paradoxically, we might affirm: ‘the means justify the ends.’ Less
paradoxically, ends or goals have instrumental value to better life and educational processes. Goals can be
instrumentally valuable as a way to improve the quality of our activities.
In summary, we need to separate the distinctions of means/ends and instrumentally/intrinsically
valuable, even though instrumental rationality conflates them. This implies that goals can be vital in
educational processes without turning the learning process into something of purely instrumental value.
This point will help us clarify the relationship between the three levels discussed earlier.

The Reconciliation
We now need to relate the distinction between, on the one hand, intrinsic vs. instrumental value and,
on the other hand, means and ends to the three kinds of educational aim presented earlier. Relating these
points should enable us to understand better the debate between the educational philosophies that stress
student-centered processes and those that emphasize the knowledge content of education. We can avoid
making a false dichotomy of the two usually polarized traditional and progressive approaches. I wish to
make two points.
First, we explained the three kinds of educational aim (knowledge, skills, and personal development)
as three levels. The use of the hierarchical term ‘level’ was deliberate; it indicates that the higher levels are
in some way more significant than the lower ones. The relationship between these levels is, in part, one of
means to ends. In other words, the educational process at level 1 of acquiring knowledge can be regarded in
part as a means to the educational process at level two, the acquisition of skills and abilities. Similarly, the
educational process at level two is, in part, a means for the development of the appropriate virtues and
character traits at level three. In other words, we learn the facts in part as a means to acquiring the relevant
abilities, and we acquire those largely as a means to developing the relevant character dispositions.
These character dispositions define what kind of person the individual is, which, in turn, is an
important determinate in the quality of life he or she leads. In other words, their importance for the
individual is much wider and more profound than their role in determining how well we acquire knowledge
and perform academically.

111
 I take these points to be a partial vindication of one aspect of the student-centered approach as against
the knowledge-focused one because it enables us to argue that the development of the person as a whole is
the ultimate end of the educational process; of course, this point does not specify what kind of
development, but that is a different issue.
Second, despite being a means to the higher levels of the educational process, the educational process
at level 1 can still be intrinsically valuable. In other words, learning at level 1 may be a means to the
acquisition of skills and character-traits but, even so, learning ‘facts’ can be regarded as an intrinsically
valuable process. This is possible because means can have non-instrumental value.
Without this last point, the educational process at level 1 threatens to be regarded as merely
instrumentally valuable for some other ends and, thereby, become subject to instrumental rationality
according to which costs should be minimized. When we treat learning or the acquisition of knowledge as
merely instrumentally valuable, we regard it only as a cost to be minimized and, thereby, it can be
degraded.
We can see that this may count as a debasement of learning because, in many educational contexts, it
is often an important intellectual quality or virtue for students to care about what they study for its own
sake. Virtues require appreciation of the relevant values. If it is an important intellectual quality to
appreciate and care about the content of what one is learning for its own sake, then the learning process at
level 1 must be valuable in itself, despite being a means.
I take these last points to be a partial vindication of one aspect of the traditional and liberal
approaches to education. It stresses that the learning of knowledge is not merely instrumentally valuable.
In summary, the proposed reconciliation of this aspect of the traditionalist/ progressive debate is
simple. The progressive is right in that knowledge-based learning is a means to the more holistic
development of the student. The traditionalist is right in that knowledge-based learning is non-
instrumentally valuable. This reconciliation requires us to distinguish means and instrumental value and to
deny the normally accepted assumption of instrumental rationality that identifies means/ends with
instrumental/intrinsically valuable.
Of course, this conclusion does not solve the thorny issue of how the development process should be
defined and conceived, let alone executed. It does not specify the qualities that should be encouraged and
nurtured. This returns us to the very first point, namely that students and educational institutions are
situated within a social context, even if this does not mean that generalizations are impossible.
Furthermore, this question probably is one of emphasis. In other words, when we consider the many
alternatives, such as increased political awareness, the development of autonomy and reason, being in
harmony with oneself, and being an educated person, as well as very many others then, prima facie, they all
sound like good general educational aims, subject to the needs of students in the conditions of the context.
If they are, then this means that it is not a question of selecting one or the other. Rather, the issue must be
one of emphasis. Beyond these platitudes, it is not possible to say more here.

112
 11
Business

Corporations are an extraordinarily successful social invention and institution, comparable in their
importance to the nation state. However, what is a corporation? This question is significant; directors and
executives need to know how to conceive the objectives and goals of the businesses they manage, and this
depends on the nature of a company. Are corporations instruments for profit, or are they best regarded as
organisms or persons? The answer defines whether we can apply instrumental rationality to firms and in
what ways they can have their own interests and rational aims. Our ultimate objective in this chapter is to
understand better the ways in which the activities of companies can have value. However, to reach that
point, it is necessary to examine first traditional ways of thinking about corporate aims.

Rational Aims
We can understand the value of our activities only if we find a satisfactory answer to the question
‘What is the point?’ Without such understanding, our actions may be misdirected, and the result may well
be a waste of resources. According to standard theories of management, the minimal rational aims of a
company are:

1. To make profits
2. To survive
3. To grow

Are these independent aims? Or is the primary end to make profits, and survival and growth are
means to this aim? Alternatively, are profits a means to survival and growth? The traditional conception of
a company as the instrument of shareholders implies that survival and growth are means to profit. In
contrast, the contemporary conception of a company as a person in its own right implies that profits are a
means to survival and growth.
The traditional answer to the question ‘What is the purpose of a company?’ is ‘To survive and grow in
order to make profits.’ This seems almost definitional of a market economy. However, in this first section, I
shall argue that this reply cannot be correct. And by this, I do not mean that it is ethically misguided or
morally unjustifiable.

The Company as an Instrument

113
 There are many different types of businesses, such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, small limited
private firms, large international corporations, and nationalized industries. In this section, we shall
concentrate on large corporations whose shares are publicly traded.
The first private companies were formed in 19th century Britain, when the law established limited
liability as a way of encouraging people to employ their capital in new ventures. With limited liability,
investors could lose no more than their original capital injection into a venture instead of having a
potentially unlimited liability for any possible debts incurred by the enterprise (Marshall, 1965, Book II
Chapter II). Limited liability protected investors by transferring the legal responsibility to repay loans to the
company itself.
These first joint-stock companies were established as the legal instruments of investors, mainly for
their own personal financial gain. The stockholders controlled the company and were clearly its owners.
They appointed agents, who were beholden to them, to manage the company on their behalf. As a result of
these points, it would be inappropriate to think of these first companies as persons in their own right. On
the contrary, they can be regarded as instruments of the owners. In this sense, we can view such companies
as machines for making profit.
Since that time, a new type of large business organization has emerged, which we shall call
corporations, which do fit into the original model. Their historical emergence is marked by three factors.

1) First, as companies grew, they had to attract new capital, and this led eventually to the boom in
capital markets and to changes in the nature of the equity holder. Because shares are now negotiable
instruments, traded heavily on the market, many large corporations cannot be regarded as the property of
any group of specific investors. There is no longer a patron or relatively fixed group of shareholders who
can treat the corporation as their personal property or instrument.

2) Second, shareholders increasingly include other corporations, such as insurance groups and
investment funds, whose interest is strictly financial. Typically, their concern is only in dividends and
market capital gain, and such corporate equity holders regard themselves as outside the organization rather
than being its proprietor. In short, they own specific right-claims against a corporation rather than owning
the corporation itself. Additionally, with these changes, the voting right of any single individual
shareholder has become less effective or powerful. In this way, corporation managers have gained greater
autonomy from the shareholders, and are no longer the agents of owners.

3) Third, with the original joint-stock company, typically the distinction between shareholder and
creditor was a difference of kind. The shareholder could regard the company as his or her own property to
be used for private purposes. On the other hand, people who had merely lent the company money only had
the right to receive the capital and interest on their loan. In contrast, for many larger corporations today, the
equity/loan distinction has become a difference of degree rather than one of kind. Equity can be regarded as
a non-repayable loan stock with a variable rate of return and voting rights. This change is in part because
loans have themselves become a negotiable instrument like equity. As a consequence, there are many
possible types of negotiable instruments that would be intermediate between equity and loans as
traditionally defined. For example, bonds can have variable rates of interest linked to company
performance, and some preferential bonds carry voting rights under special circumstances. Such bonds are
virtually indistinguishable from equity. In short, shareholders are capital creditors with a right to a variable
rate of return and to vote at company annual general meetings.

Although these changes have affected only larger corporations, nevertheless they represent
fundamental alterations in the nature of the economy. In particular, they mean that:

a) Shareholder dividends or distributed profits have become a cost to the corporation;

b) The corporation has become more independent of the shareholders and, it seems, legally more of a
person rather than an instrument of a relatively fixed set of individual owners.

In short, corporations cannot be regarded as the instruments of a group of owners. One argument for
this thesis is that a corporation is not an instrument of its loan-holders, and that the shareholders of a large
publicly traded corporation are similar to loan-holders with special rights.

114
 This means that, for large corporations, distributed profit is not a reward or an aim, but rather a cost.
Dividends paid to equity have become a cost to the company. They are the cost of capital. As a result of
this, the aim of a large corporation cannot be to maximize distributed profits. As a cost, such profits should
be minimized. Consequently, we should expect corporations to minimize distributed profits within the
limits established by their longer-term aims. Corporative executives ought rationally to calculate what the
minimum dividends are that need to be paid in order to maintain the position of the company in the equity
market, its image, to avoid unfriendly take-over bids and, ultimately, to be able to raise new capital more
cheaply in the future. And, in fact, large corporations do treat distributable profit as a cost of capital, to be
minimized within such limits.
If distributable profits are a cost, then the main aim of a corporation cannot be to maximize them. In
this sense, we cannot characterize the reason why large corporations are in business in terms of the ‘profit
motive.’ Such an idea confuses the point of view of the corporation and that of the investor. These points
also demonstrate that a popular understanding of capitalism is questionable. Shareholders are outside the
corporation, and their reward is a cost to the company, and thus, whole sectors of the global market
economy are now no longer capitalist in the original 19th century sense of the term.

Corporations as Persons
The contemporary view of corporations regards them as organisms or persons. This is a
fundamentally different conception from the traditional one, apparently with much to recommend it.
First, if it is an organism, then a corporation can have objectives, goals and interests of its own. In
contrast, conceived as an instrument or machine, it cannot. Thus, under this latter conception, the purposes
of the company are really those of the proprietors. Furthermore, as a person, the corporation can have
beliefs and can learn. It can have a self-image, which may need to be improved for the sake of its interests.
In brief, under the contemporary conception, we can appropriately employ psychological verbs to describe
what the corporation does and fails to do, and this is very useful. It permits a much more powerful
diagnosis of company performance and modes of operation than the machine or instrumental model.
Second, with persons, it does not make sense to ask: ‘What is the purpose of that?’ The question
applies only to artifacts, machines, and other instruments. It would be a mistake to ask, for instance, ‘What
is the purpose of Boris Becker?’ Consequently, if it is really a person, we should not ask of a corporation:
‘What is its purpose?’ The question has to be replaced because, as a person, a corporation has its own aims
and goals.
Third, if a corporation is a person with aims and interests, then it becomes plausible to defend the
standard view of company rational aims on the grounds that increased retained profits are an instrumental
means to its survival and growth, which are valuable in themselves. Under normal conditions, the survival
and the growth, or rather development, of a person are intrinsically valuable. In this way, the contemporary
view of a corporation accords well with the standard view of corporate rationality outlined at the very
beginning of this chapter.
Fourth, insofar as a corporation is a person, it cannot really be owned because it has moral rights. It
has a life of its own and belongs to no one because, as a person, it is not the kind of entity that can be
owned. This shows that it would be a contradiction to regard shareholders as proprietors and, at the same
time, the corporation as a person with its own interests. Hence, our earlier point is strengthened: dividends
are the cost for the service of supplying capital. Shareholders are suppliers.
Although the two contrasting characterizations of a company are not hard and fast, they mirror certain
social, economic and political realities and changes. For example, they reflect the differences between 19th
and 21st century capitalism. In this era of huge multi-national organizations, which are basically not owned,
global capitalism is partly characterized by the idea that such corporations are apparently agents with their
own interests and aims, in much the same way that nation-states apparently are.

A Critical Evaluation

115
 However, even if large corporations are increasingly regarded as persons in their own right, this does
not mean that we must endorse this view. We should separate empirical and normative questions. We can
still ask whether this is an adequate model.
One problem with the second view is that corporations are not really persons at all, even if they are
regarded as such in law and corporate policy. Legally, a person is defined in terms of its powers and
responsibilities, such as the ability to own and to enter into a contract. In the law, a corporation is in a
twilight zone, considered as a person in some respects, and not in others. For example, it can buy and sell,
borrow and lend, but it cannot murder, blackmail, get married, or kidnap. The law treats companies as legal
persons, but within limits and only for the regulation of financial ownership issues.
Quite apart from this, we should not automatically assume that we must extend this legal definition
beyond the law to characterize social reality. The fact that corporate law assigns financial rights and
obligations to companies does not make a corporation a living person. In other words, the fact that the term
‘person’ is used in such contexts should not confuse us into thinking that a corporation is a person in the
normal sense of the word.
Given these clarifications, it is obvious that corporations are not persons or even organisms. A
corporation cannot consciously think and want, suffer pain, or be someone’s friend and have children. It
does not undergo life’s processes. In this sense, my cat is more akin to a person than General Electric.
At the same time, corporations are composed of individual people who act together in a way that no
single individual can, and this point returns us to the themes of methodological individualism and social
facts discussed in Chapter 2. From that discussion, we can conclude that, although a company is composed
of individuals, statements about it cannot be reduced to judgments about the individual people concerned.
In this sense, it is essentially social. This does not mean that companies can think and have desires. Rather
it implies that when we refer to the director of a company thinking about how he or she sees its future in
twenty years, the identification of that person as a director and the specification of what the individual is
thinking are ineluctably social. Such social concepts cannot be reduced. However, let us move on because
our current interest in these points is slightly different.

Harm and Interests

Given that a corporation is not a person, can it have its own interests and aims? This question is
important because it is a significant part of contemporary business language that corporations do have aims,
objectives and interests, which need to be fulfilled, promoted and protected. I shall argue that this way of
talking and thinking is misleading and can be harmful when it is regarded literally.
Strictly speaking, a corporation cannot be harmed. Saying that an institution is harmed is a shorthand
way of saying that certain stakeholders will be harmed. We are tempted to think that a corporation can be
harmed because it can own things, and because we mistakenly think of harm in purely financial terms.
However, harm cannot be so defined because money has only instrumental value. Although damage to
purely instrumental interests often causes people harm, such interests do not constitute harm. Harm should
not be defined in terms of ownership ‘interests,’ but rather in terms of the process of experiencing and
living values, for instance, in terms of the inability to appreciate the valuable aspects of the processes of
living.
From these points, we can draw the provisional conclusion that something can be harmed only if it
has a conscious life. We need to reexamine this principle in our discussion of ecological ethics in Chapter
13, but given this principle, we can argue as follows:

1. Something can be harmed only if it lives consciously

2. Corporations as such do not have a conscious life.
3. Therefore, corporations as such cannot be harmed.

To this argument, we can add the following. Only something that may be harmed can have interests,
and the conclusion follows that corporations per se do not have interests. From this, it follows that when we
apparently refer to the interests of a corporation, then we must be referring to something else, such as the
interests of a specific group of stakeholders. Similarly, to refer to the conscious life of a corporation is a
shorthand way of talking about the lives of certain stakeholders as such.

116
Personifying

Another reason why it is misleading to think of a corporation as a person is that this can lead us to
misrepresent its relation to its stakeholders, such as its employees. In effect, if the corporation is a person,
then the employees must be its organs or cells. Their purposes and roles become subsidiary to its. Such a
view does not accord with the independence many employees have in the contemporary corporation. In this
age of increased specialization, employees often do not have set functions in the way that organs do; often,
they have to adapt, make decisions, be innovative and suggest changes to their own roles.
Moreover, such a view contradicts the assertion that people are persons. If a corporation is a person,
then its employees are not, at least in respect of their relations to the corporate body. They are parts of a
person defined in relation to it by functions. This means that their interests must be subsidiary to those of
the corporation itself. In other words, viewing a corporation as a person excludes regarding individuals in
the workplace as persons.
We regard corporations as persons because we use language that personifies them. For the sale of
convenience, we employ constructions such as ‘the corporation aims to be…’ as if it were an organism with
real desires and beliefs. Consider the following. Create a small sub-committee, put some zealous people on
the board, give it a name, such as I.O.C., and a small publicity budget and, before long, everyone will
referring to it as if it were a being with interests and thoughts of its own, forgetting that it was created as no
more than a way to complete some task. Eventually, people will have to make some sacrifices for the
interests of this entity. The short road to bureaucracy is paved with such decisions. A few well-intentioned
and badly motivated people will soon unwittingly use its mythical interests as an instrument of small-scale
human oppression. Personalizing institutions usually dehumanizes people.
If we dismantle the idea of a company as a person, then we remove the power behind the claim that
what benefits a corporation is good per se. Of course, this does not imply that the continued survival and
growth of companies is not a good thing; it just means that this good has to be explained in other terms. It
has instrumental and not intrinsic worth.

Summary

In the first section, we argued that large corporations cannot be regarded as the instrument of
shareholders and that, to this extent, increasing distributed profits cannot be a final end of a corporation.
This traditional view of company rationality and aims is mistaken.
In the second section, we argued that large corporations cannot be regarded as persons or organisms
and that, to this extent, it is a mistake to treat them as having aims, ends and interests that can be harmed.
This shows that we do not know to what extent we can apply instrumental reasoning to corporations.
On the one hand, we should not regard them as means, like pieces of furniture or large machines. On the
other hand, we should not serve and care for them as if they had interests of their own.

Companies as Associations
If large corporations are neither means nor ends, that is instruments or persons, then what are they? In
part, the difficulty can be dissolved quite simply by thinking of a company and a corporation as people
associating or as an association of people. Obviously, this view defines the political shape of companies
and not their actual legal form; associations are a different kind of legal entity from corporations.
Such a view accords well with the ontological composition of companies; they are composed of
individual people. It also accords well with the meaning of the word ‘company.’ One crucial factor in this
proposed way of looking at a company is that it concentrates on the people, rather than on the corporate
entity. It emphasizes the concerns of human beings rather than the mythical interests of money or the
corporation. Moreover, it stresses the assembling or associating of these people. This will emerge as an
important point.
I do not intend to argue directly for the general claim that companies should be regarded as an
associating of people. Instead, I shall do so indirectly by showing how it illuminates the problems that we

117
have been considering and by demonstrating how it is a more reasonable view than the two views that we
have already rejected.
In brief, an association is formed when a group of people associates for a set of purposes under a set
of conditions. Associations can have different types of members that have different roles, functions, powers
and responsibilities. The members of an association can meet in a general assembly to appoint officers,
who need not be members of the association. Today, most companies are more like associations that
include directors and top managers and, in some cases, employees, among their members, in addition to the
shareholders.
Please note that the phrase ‘members of the association’ suggests that these individuals are like cells
or organs of a body and, consequently, that they are subservient to it. In other words, the noun ‘the
association’ suggests an organism; it reifies and personifies. In contrast, the verb ‘to associate’ does not,
and is less misleading. For the sake of convenience, I shall continue to use the noun ‘association’ but hope
that the reader will remember this warning.
The view of the corporation as an association helps clarify our thinking because it suggests two new
and illuminating basic questions. Notice that greater clarity can consist, initially, in asking new questions,
even when one is not sure of the answers. The two questions are, ‘who are the members of the association?’
and ‘for what purposes and aims do these people associate?’

1) Who are the members of this association?

This is primarily a question about power and control because, for instance, if employees are not
considered members then they are like officials appointed by the voting members and, as such, they have
no voice in the continuing formation of the association’s mission and objectives. With regard to all
questions concerning power, we can distinguish the empirical and the normative: ‘how is power actually
distributed?’ and ‘how should it be distributed?’ Or rather, what are the actual power relations and how
should these be?
One of the potentially insightful aspects of the view of a company as an association is that it can
transform our thinking about the relationship between employees and a company. In brief, it permits us to
consider employees as part of a company without necessarily having to make them shareholders.
Furthermore, it forces us to reconsider the nature of the shareholder–company relationship. It does this
because, necessarily, the nature of the associating must be in part non-economic, as we shall see.

2) For what purposes and aims do these people associate?

For what purposes, and under what conditions, do the various people associate? Is it merely for their
mutual economic advantage? Or do they have an aim beyond this? These questions will absorb us in the
remainder of the chapter because they help to define the values of the activities of a company in a way that
avoids the pitfalls of the two earlier views.
As we shall see, one of the potentially illuminating aspects of this view is that it alters our conception
of the relationship between the shareholders and the rest of the company. It avoids the dichotomy between,
on the one hand, thinking of shareholders as owners and, on the other, regarding them merely as the
suppliers of financial capital. It does so because it circumvents viewing the company either as a means or
as an end, that is either as a mere instrument or else as a person. In other words, in the associating,
shareholders have the opportunity to connect to the intrinsic values of enterprising activities.

Summary

In summary, people tend to view the company either as a means to make returns for investors or as an
end in itself, as a strange kind of super-person. The first corresponds to the idea that the main goal is to
make distributable profits, and the second to the claim that a major goal is to make retained profits for the
sake of survival and growth. We have seen that both of these views are mistaken. We have tentatively
suggested an alternative view, namely that companies be regarded as for-profit associations, and indicated
some of the benefits of this view.

118
Means/Ends Rationality
Let us return to the standard theory of company rationality mentioned at the beginning of the chapter.
Given that the aim of a company is not to maximize distributed profits, one might be tempted to conclude
that its main purpose is to increase retained profits, which are plowed back into the corporation for the
furtherance of its own interests, for its growth and survival. Empirically, this answer looks promising.
Corporations do try to increase revenue and cut costs to increase retained profits, which apparently are used
for the benefit of the corporation itself. However, a series of points challenges this claim.
First, if one assumes that the corporation has interests and that its growth and survival are intrinsically
valuable per se then, implicitly one has assumed that a corporation is a person, which is a view that we
have already rejected. Therefore, we may assert that corporate survival and growth are only instrumentally
valuable. To understand this point, we need to distinguish instrumental and intrinsic value. Something has
instrumental value when it leads to or facilities something else that has intrinsic value. In this way,
something that has only instrumental value has a value that is necessarily derivative.
Second, money has only instrumental value, and never intrinsic value in and of itself. This does not
mean that money is not important. On the contrary, it indicates the kind of value that money has, which is
precisely what constitutes the fact that money is important. However, because the value of money is
essentially derivative, ‘profit’ is always an incomplete answer to the question ‘What is the purpose of a
company?’ The money gained, or profits retained, must have some other purpose, and to understand the
ultimate values of a corporation, we require a characterization of them that is not purely financial.
This important point does not mean that profit should not be a goal of a company’s activities.
Acquiring more things of instrumental value is clearly a legitimate goal or end in most circumstances.
However, we should not confuse aims with non-instrumental or intrinsic values (see Chapter 10). Just
because something is a goal or end does not mean that it has intrinsic value. Therefore, we can conclude
that increasing retained profit might be a corporate aim, but also that the value of this goal must be
derivative on something of non-instrumental value. In other words, the following cannot be a final reply to
our question ‘What is the purpose of a company?’ We make money to make money, to make money, and so
on.
A similar point applies to survival. Survival is clearly, all other things being equal, a minimal goal for
a company. However, just because something is a goal does not mean that it has intrinsic value. Can the
survival of a company have intrinsic value? Apparently not, because what makes survival valuable is that it
enables other things that do have intrinsic value, such as the members of a corporation continuing with their
work. On its own, mere survival would not be valuable since the corporation is not a person. Survival is
instrumentally valuable and, thus, the continued survival of a company cannot be a complete reply to the
question ‘What is the purpose of a company?’ because it invites, but does not answer, the further question:
‘Survival for what end? ‘
Similar points apply to growth when this is understood in purely financial terms. This would be
obviously so when the justification of growth is presented as follows: in today’s competitive markets, a
corporation needs to grow in order to stay alive as a going concern. Put in these terms, growth has
instrumental value as a necessary condition of survival. But we have already seen that survival itself has
instrumental value only and, consequently, the growth of a company for the sake of survival cannot be an
ultimate answer to our original question.
Even when it is not given this instrumental justification, financial growth cannot be of intrinsic value
because money has only instrumental value. Thus, having more of it cannot constitute an intrinsic value.
We may conclude the following. Increasing retained profits, staying alive and growth may be among
the rational aims for a company or corporation, but these cannot form a complete answer to the question
‘What is the purpose of a company?’ because these aims have only instrumental value, which is derivative
on something else of non-instrumental value.
In each case, it is like claiming that one needs money. In order for such an affirmation to be sustained,
one must specify for what reason one needs money. This means that the standard theory regarding the
rational aims of a company is mistaken in the sense that such aims indicate only an instrumental value but
without specifying the relevant non-instrumental values. A company that defines its mission and goals
solely in these terms has failed to connect to the intrinsic values implicit in its own operation.
Two further points reinforce this conclusion. First, from the point of view of these corporations,
profits, whether retained or distributed, might be regarded better as a measurement of success than

119
constitutive of that success. Profit is a measurement of sensitivity to opportunity. Obviously, only
companies that are performing well can afford to distribute profits with a high market rate of return.
Therefore, the economic capacity to do so is a sign or a measure of financial viability and success, and
capital markets respond to this sign, giving equity holders capital gains. But, if distributable profits are a
sign of success, then success itself has to be defined in other terms. We should not confuse measurement
with the thing measured (see Chapter 2). So, if distributed profits are a measurement of success, then we
require another definition of the success itself. In other words, if the main aim of the company is not to
make distributed profits, then it must have other types of aims, in relation to which success can be defined.
Similar points apply to retained profits. The ability of a corporation to retain profits and invest in its own
future is a sign or measure of success, but does not constitute that success.
Second, the claim that profits are the main goal of a company is an example of a grade-disease
common to many schools, which consists in two steps: first, treating the activities of learning as merely
instrumentally valuable to a goal, and second, mistaking the measurement of the goal with the goal itself,
thereby turning the measurement into the goal. Through these two steps, education becomes an instrument
to good grades and the work of a company becomes directed towards improving the relevant performance
figures, and becomes merely instrumentally valuable to that goal. In other words, this way of thinking
converts the opportunity for good work into a series of chores. It effectively denies the company the
possibility of connecting to the values that make its work meaningful.
In an archery contest, if you hit the bull’s eye, you win the prize and your name is put first on the
scoreboard. However, we do not aim our arrows at the prize or at the scoreboard. The slogans ‘our aim is to
make profits’ and ‘our aim is to become number one in this market sector’ ignore this simple point. No one
manufactures profits and market positions; no one aims at the prize and the scoreboard.
We should take care not to reinforce the error that we are trying to avoid. Management expert Peter
Drucker, for instance, points out that a company geared to profit-making will generate a corporate culture
that will stress the wrong kind of results (Drucker, 1967). The business at hand, he says, is not to make
profits, but to satisfy customer wants. The objectives, and the specific goals and strategies generated by
them, should be market-oriented. Obviously, Drucker recognizes that a corporation needs to make profits to
stay in business, and that its profit levels function as a sign that it is viable. His point is that it is a mistake
to make profits the main aim of a company because profits have instrumental value only.
However, unfortunately, at the same time, Drucker also makes the point that a company that is
market, rather than profit, focused will be more profitable. The problem is that, even if this is true, it
intensifies the misunderstanding that he was originally at pains to dispel. One should not say: ‘Do not
concentrate on the financial results; you will have better financial results if you do not.’ If intrinsic or non-
instrumental value does not reside in the financial results, then we should not try to sell a non-profit-result
oriented approach on the grounds that it improves the financial results. Such an argument is self-defeating.

Another Suggestion

If the non-instrumental value of the work of a corporation is not to make distributed or retained
profits, then what does this value consist in? Drucker suggests that it is to make goods and provide services
that satisfy customers.
Again, if this is the correct reply, then it is only a confusion to add: ‘Making the customer king or
queen is good for business.’ For this would be equivalent to claiming ‘Let us pretend that the point of
business is to satisfy customers because if we can pretend well enough, then this will bring increased
profits, which, as we all know, is the real aim.’ We should avoid this subterfuge, and be faithful to the
original idea that making profits is not the primary aim of a company because it does not indicate the non-
instrumental value of its activities.
The claim that the purpose of a company is to produce goods and services that satisfy its customers is
in part right, but not completely so. In fact, few companies really act consistently with this idea because it
requires actions that usually are regarded as beneficent or altruistic according to normal company and
market defined policy. For example, notoriously, prices are sticky downwards, and this implies that, for
companies, customers are good as a source of revenue. A company will not lower prices, unless there is a
reasonable prospect that doing so will increase revenue. Furthermore, practices such as built-in
obsolescence and aggressive advertising are inconsistent with the claim that pleasing the customer is the
final goal of many corporations.

120
 It appears that there can be conflicts between the interests of customers and those of a corporation
itself and it seems reasonable, in such circumstances, all other things being equal, that a corporation should
favor its own interests. However, this diagnosis cannot be correct because a corporation is not a person with
interests of its own.

Non-Economically Solvent
As we saw earlier, it is clearly rational for the members of an association to want it to make money
and to survive and grow as a going concern. However, this leaves unanswered the question ‘Money, growth
and survival for what ends? These financial specifications of aim are necessarily incomplete on their own
because, as we have seen, they indicate only instrumental values, and because such values are always
derivative on intrinsic ones. In this sense, a purely economic answer is never satisfactory or even rational.
This simple point turns much standard understanding on its head.
To transcend these limitations, we require a suitably non-economic answer to the question of the aims
of the associating. I suggest that an appropriate reply must consist of at least two elements: good work and
the service of customer wants. When combined, these two elements can constitute the non-instrumental
values that we have been looking for.

1. Good work.

A company is like an association formed for the sake of working together, which is a process that is
valuable in itself. A good company provides the opportunity for working together with other people, and
that is part of its reason for being.
Why work? Working is an activity that constitutes a vital aspect of a person’s life and, as such, it has
non-instrumental value. If anything has intrinsic value then persons do, but if they do, then so do their lives
and the activities and processes that comprise a person’s life. Work, then, has intrinsic value. Indeed, good
work is a process value and, as such, it cannot be conceived adequately in terms of instrumental reasoning,
which identifies means with instrumental values and ends with intrinsic values (see Chapter 10). In other
words, work may be a means, but this does imply that it has only instrumental value.
The drive to make profits for reinvestment can be understood partly in terms of facilitating more
opportunities at a later date for higher quality work for the members of the association. Normally, the
decision to retain profits is explained in one of two ways, neither of which really makes sense. First, the
decision is understood in terms of the good of the company. However, this reply is not reasonable because
it appeals to the idea of promoting the aims and interests of a non-existent or fictional person (i.e. the
company). Second, the reinvestment decision is explained often in terms of the longer-term interests of
shareholders (i.e. reinvestment for the sake of yielding increased distributed profits in the longer term
future). Since distributed profits function financially as costs, this explanation is also unsatisfactory. Since
these two standard views fail, we may suggest that the real importance of retained profits is that they
function to provide an opportunity for future activity and work. In this sense, the ultimate instrumental
benefit of work is more work.
To see this, let us briefly consider the expression ‘unfriendly take-over bid.’ A take-over bid is
unfriendly to whom? Surely, it is not necessarily financially unfriendly for the shareholders themselves,
who are given financial incentives to sell their stocks at a premium rate. It is not unfriendly for the
company itself because companies, not being people, do not have friends. The term ‘unfriendly’ expresses
the point of view of the employees and the management of the company, in other words, the members of
the association, who believe that their work interests will be harmed by the proposed take-over.
Now, of course, a process can have goals and, indeed, in any work process, the goals are very
important. However, as we saw in chapter 10, instrumental reasoning leads us to think that intrinsic value
must be identified with the goals, and that means can have only instrumental value. This implies the
disastrous idea that activities that are a means to a goal can have only instrumental value. Since this way of
thinking is destructive of value, we need to understand goals differently: in terms of their contribution to,
and as a part of, a process. Given all this, we can now turn to the goals of work.

2) Social aims.

121
 The second ingredient in the non-economic answer is that, by associating and working together, the
people concerned may respond to non-instrumental values beyond themselves, as expressed by market
demand and the needs of society beyond, in ways that no individual could alone.
This point may transform the way we conceive the value of what a company makes and sells. These
goods and services are more than a means to make money; they are a way to respond and connect to the
intrinsic value of other people’s lives. In this way, a company can connect to the intrinsic value of its
activities. Given this, it matters, or ought to matter, to the company why its clients purchase its products or
services. In other words, for a company to connect to the intrinsic values of its activities, it must aim to sell
products that people buy because they recognize the value, rather than because of false expectations and
desires created by marketing and advertising. In this way, we arrive at the strange idea that businesses have
an interest in consumer education.
These are not moral injunctions. Our aim is to transcend instrumental values and the normal
measurements of financial performance in order to characterize the intrinsic value of the activities of a
corporation. Our objective is to provide an alternative vision of corporate rationality that goes to the heart
of the matter and does not remain at the level of instrumental values only, which can seem futile or hollow.
The aim is not to argue that this vision is a moral requirement or duty.
As we saw, persons and their lives have intrinsic value and, because of this, so do the activities and
processes that constitute their lives. Work is such a process. However, at the same time, working is goal
directed activity, and we need to understand the intrinsic values associated with this goal. Work for work
sake does not exclude goals. However, these goals also need to connect to intrinsic values because,
otherwise, we would return to the instrumentalism that has been subject to considerable critical scrutiny
earlier in this chapter. Consequently, work must be a way to respond and connect to the intrinsic value of
other people’s lives. In other words, what has intrinsic value is work that serves and enhances the life
processes of other people. By conceiving of itself in this way, a company can connect to the intrinsic value
of its activities.

The Importance of Revenue and Profit

A by-product of the work process must be sufficient revenue to meet all costs, including the capital
costs of re-investment in order to be able to continue and improve the working process in the future.
Viewed in this way, profits are not an intrinsic value of the work process. They are derivative.
Consequently, although making profits is a rational aim, it cannot be a complete aim and, in this sense, the
standard view of company rationality is defective.
Additionally, profit is also a measure of the success of the work process. However, these
measurements or indicators are certainly not the intrinsic values themselves (see Chapter 2).
Some profitable companies do not connect to the intrinsic values of their activities, but rather only to
instrumental values and their numerical measurement. When one defines one’s goals and success purely in
financial and numerical terms, rather than in ways that also connect to the intrinsic values of their activities,
then ipso facto work is conceived as only instrumentally valuable as a means to certain results. And if the
results are identified with their measurement, then work becomes merely an instrument to good
performance ratios.
In education, this instrumental conception destroys the intrinsic values of the activity of learning, as
well as the possibility of appreciating these values. Learning becomes merely instrumentally valuable for
the sake of good grades. Logically, this implies the attitude that rationality requires maximum grades for
the minimum learning, and that, ideally, the most rational option would be maximum grades with no
learning. Obviously, such an ideal is incompatible with the idea that learning is a process of self-
development that is valuable in itself. The instrumental conception denies intrinsic value by confusing a
goal with its measurement, and goals with intrinsic values. Likewise, in business too, the possibility of a
company connecting to the real values of its work is extinguished by aims defined only in numerical terms
that measure performance (see also Thomson, 2003b, Chapter 4).

It might be argued that the central claims of this chapter cannot be applied to corporations working in
current very competitive market conditions. In short, they are forced to employ instrumental rationality to
stay alive. Keynes once said:

122
 In conclusion, since economic and financial aims are essentially incomplete, they are a hidden
postponement of answering the questions, ‘what is the point?’ and ‘what is the value of what we are
doing?’ Achieving goals defined in terms of the financial measurement of success is no guarantee of
connecting to values. On the contrary, necessarily, defining one’s goals solely in such terms entails
conceiving the activities as intrinsically valueless.

123
 12
Design

‘What is design?’ is an interesting philosophical question because of its important ramifications

concerning the nature of practical rationality and value. To explain these implications, I will try to
undermine three myths about the nature of design: the first concerns what kinds of things are designed, i.e.
its domain; the second, the nature of design itself; the third pertains to the nature of the values and wants
that motivate design.

Step One: Expanding the idea

Those not familiar with the contemporary theories of design tend to associate design with either the
creation of commercial products, which have a use value, or else with art broadly conceived as anything
that has an aesthetic value. This traditional conception of design typically includes both elements - art and
use – and covers areas such as architecture, interior design, furniture and fashion. In brief, we tend to
conceive of design as a confluence of artistic and commercial values. Following most contemporary design
theories, I shall challenge this traditional view.
This challenge is based foremost on the realization that any area of human action involves some
design, which is not restricted to traditional products, such as material objects and services. Thus, design
includes all symbolic meaning and communication, such as the social meanings of signs, in addition to the
traditional design domains such as layout and graphic art. Of course, social signs have use and aesthetic
value, but they constitute an area of design primarily because they are planned and constructed. For this
reason, activities, such as organized services, and whole systems and environments, such as the political or
educational system of a country, are also designed.
Let us enumerate some of these design areas: a) products; b) communicative messages; c) organized
systems of services; d) the meaning, culture and environment of any activity. This multiplicity of examples
points towards a definition of design as the conception and planning of anything that is artificial (following
Richard Buchanan, 1992).
As we expand the conception of design, we appreciate more the extent to which things that are not
deliberately conceived and planned are, nevertheless, in a sense created indirectly by default. For instance,
they might be constructed by the cumulative unintended results of many actions. These human
constructions and creations that are not designed deliberately, nevertheless, count as decisions that we take
by default, without responsibility. They delineate what we might have designed but did not. This fact may
cause the loss of valuable opportunities. For example, currently, cities are designed directly only in part. As
town planners already know, by deciding not to design a city more deliberately, we are taking decisions by
default and are losing the opportunity to improve what exists. For example, with more carefully planned
public transportation systems, we could have larger cities that contain rural areas and transform the whole
idea of a city.

124
 With increasing global resource pressures, the world community may have to consciously design
more and more of the environment that is now taken for granted, beyond the purely commercial field of
market products and services. Here is an obvious example: the weather. With global warming, we have
built a planetary heating system by default. In future years, we might have to build a global cooling system
by conscious design, for example, by constructing plankton farms in the oceans.
The expanded conception of design reveals that there is little in our surroundings that is not either
designed or constructed by default. Although the building blocks of nature do not fall into either category,
the layout of our landscape and our own lives do, but usually unintentionally. This defines the area of
opportunity for design.

Step Two: the Nature of the Process

This wider view of design throws into sharp relief the question ‘what is design?’ It implies that the
study of design must involve the study of organization as a part of the study of itself. ‘Design studies’
includes a study of itself. Furthermore, it requires us to abandon our preconceptions about the nature of the
design process in two important ways.

1) First, the expanded view of design has implications for who the designer is. Consider, for example,
a construction project. Normally, we think of such a project in five phases: first, an entrepreneur sees an
opportunity; second, the relevant feasibility and market studies are undertaken and an architect is hired;
third, the architect designs the buildings; fourth, the engineer draws up the detailed plans; fifth, the
constructor builds. The traditional view of design encourages us to see the architect as the sole or main
designer in this process. However, design is involved at each stage of the project. For example, the architect
must receive some kind of brief, which requires design. The wider conception of design implies regarding
the whole process of a project as a designing activity. We cannot view design as only one element in such a
production process, and the designer must be the whole team of people involved in that process.
Furthermore, the building itself is part of larger design process, which is the continuing construction of a
city.

2) Second, design is often thought of as a process of problem solving, as, for example, in engineering.
However, the expanded notion of design renders this conception untenable. It reveals that design is a
creative and inventive process, which cannot be fitted into a pattern of means-ends reasoning typical for
solving problems.
The standard model of problem solving rationality is roughly as follows. First, we need to identify
clearly the problem to be solved. Second, we must try to find a complete list of reasonable solutions to that
problem. Third, we have to select the best of these solutions, and the best is the most efficient, all other
things being equal. This model is similar to the economic theory of rationality discussed in Chapter 2.
Many real life problems do not conform to this theory. More often, one does not know what the
problem is. There are many different and diverging ways to describe a problem, and the question ‘How
should the problem be characterized?’ is open-ended in that it has no pre-existing answer that can be
defined completely in terms of a set of rules. However, this does not imply subjectivism, because it is still
possible to make mistakes in the way that one defines a problem. In Chapter 1, we saw a similar point
regarding legal decisions.
In recognition of these points, contemporary design theorists have argued that much design consists in
solving so-called ‘wicked problems’ rather than the linear problem solving approach outlined above
(Churchman, 1967 and Buchanan, 1992). The expression ‘wicked problems’ indicates that design problems
are radically indeterminate, and yet, at the same time, that errors are possible in the search for solutions.
Wicked problems are essentially open-ended because their solution depends on the way the problem is
framed. As a consequence, no rule-based decision procedure can be constructed to solve such a problem.
Nevertheless, mistakes are possible.
This point is important because it forces us to rethink the nature of practical reasoning itself. It
challenges the standard problem solving, linear means-ends approach, and suggests a vision of reasoning
which blends invention and creation with rationality. In short, it indicates that we need to develop a
conception of practical reasoning that is based on objectivity without rules (see Chapter 1).

125
Beyond Problem Solving

However, the contrast between standard and wicked problem solving is not sufficient to define design.
First, it would be a mistake to claim that the standard form of rationality is irrelevant to design, and to
suggest that it is inappropriate for all design problems. This is because once a problem has a definition, i.e.
once it has the shape of a specific problem then it can be solved. Realizing the limitations of standard linear
rationality does not require us to abandon it. This is a point that we explored in Chapter 2.
Secondly, and more importantly, the contrast between linear and wicked problems does not reach the
essential point. The whole vocabulary of wicked problems still assumes that ‘problem’ is the appropriate
general concept for characterizing the central nature of design. Despite all the caveats about open-
endedness, it still conceives of design as a search for solutions. This assumption ignores the fact that design
problems only arise once someone has identified a design opportunity. In other words, it assumes that
designers are on the receiving rather than on the giving end of a brief. However, prior to any problem-
solving activity, whether linear or wicked, someone has to create a brief or a set of problems. In short,
design essentially includes a process of recognizing relevant opportunities, which creates wicked design
problems. Since that process is a part of designing, it cannot be correct to frame our understanding of
design solely in terms of problem solving. The design task includes also how to encounter and redefine
opportunities.
In conclusion, we need to employ the concept of discovering design opportunities to understand the
concept of design. What does this discovery consist in? To answer this question, we need to understand the
nature of design values, which takes us to our third myth.

Step Three: Values and Wants

Design is a value-directed activity. Designed things serve the purposes of users and, in this way, have
a value to users. The mainstream quasi-economic approach to use-value urges that such value should be
understood in the following terms. First, objects and services have instrumental value, which is relative to
the desires and preferences of their users. Designed products are means to satisfy the ends of users, which
are defined by their preferences or desires. Second, a product has greater value insofar as it more efficiently
matches those desires or preferences. In other words, it provides us more exactly with what we want and
does so more efficiently.
However, this way of conceiving use-value is inadequate. The third myth is that use-value should be
understood in terms of desire satisfaction, or obtaining what one wants.
First, the economic conception is misleading because it suggests that design is concerned exclusively
with the optional means to satisfying given ends. This is too simplistic a view even of material artifacts,
which can be more than instruments. Good design often does more than create instruments for given ends;
rather it creates vehicles that permit the development of new ends. For this reason, sometimes, the things
created are not described adequately as only means to specified ends. They are more like enablers that
permit wide ranges of activities, concerning which the potential users may not have specific pre-existing
desires. For instance, the car is not merely an instrument to take us to places efficiently, but it is also a
space we live and work in, a toy to be played with and an article of clothing. A person may not have
preexisting preferences concerning these aspects of a car. Furthermore, the car conduces us towards new
ways of life that we may not have foreseen, such as drive-ins, commuting, and shopping malls outside
town. It reshapes many desires and makes new ones possible.
These simple points require us to transcend the mainstream account because they show that design
does not only satisfy preexisting preferences, but also creates new desires in a way that reopens the
question of what constitutes good design. It means that designers often have to anticipate what people
would want in hypothetical situations, and this requires us to rethink the way in which we understand
desire.
Second, use-value is merely instrumental and, as such, is entirely parasitic on intrinsic values. In
Chapter 2, we saw that the economic theory that intrinsic values can be understood in terms of desires and
preferences is very questionable, but without suggesting any alternatives. In the context of the current

126
chapter, we need to remedy this defect in order to know how to conceive of the interests of users, especially
insofar as they manifest themselves in hypothetical situations (Margolin, 1997). We need a different
approach.

Transcending Desire Satisfaction

Suppose that, in the light of the arguments of Chapter 2, we recognize that there is more to human
well-being and to users’ interests than the satisfaction of existing desires or preferences, as defined by their
objects. Using the arguments of the earlier chapter as our starting point, I shall contend that we require a
theory of the interpretation of desire, which allows us to distinguish interests and desires in a way that is
relevant to design theory. Let us begin by reviewing some limitations of the mainstream approach.
First, as we noted in Chapter 2, the traditional theory requires us to take wants or preferences at face
value. This is because it identifies desire exclusively in terms of its object or the thing that is wanted, as is
specified primarily by the person’s avowals. An avowal is a person’s own description of the object that he
or she wants. In sum, these points imply that the individual usually knows infallibly what he or she wants,
and that the satisfaction of the want must consist in the obtaining of the specific object of desire.
This approach is problematic because it implies that there is no more to understanding our
motivational natures than knowing our existing preferences identified in terms of their specific objects. We
need comprehension that transcends such knowledge in order to be able to predict what people would want
and like in hypothetical situations, and to anticipate how their desires alter in changing circumstances. For
example, when one cannot obtain exactly what one wants, one’s desire switches to something relevantly
similar. The standard account cannot explain adequately what counts as ‘relevantly similar’ insofar as it
simply lists preferences and thereby ignores their structure. Furthermore, the mainstream theory implies
that use-value must be defined in terms of getting exactly what one wants. It disallows the idea that it can
be defined more broadly using the concept of something relevantly similar to an existing desire. For these
reasons, to understand use-value, we require an account of desire that does not take wants at their face
value and which attempts to interpret them. Implicitly, this critical attitude implies that there is more to the
concept of ‘better’ than simply the satisfaction of preference as identified by the object of desire.
Second, as we saw in Chapter 2, our capacity to live well and fully is not restricted to satisfying our
existing desires, which are limited by our beliefs and character traits. We can reach beyond them to
something better, and designers often have to help us do that. In other words, important design products can
bring new desires or preferences that the individual might never have imagined and which can constitute an
improvement over the actual. Once again, this implies that there is more to the concept of ‘better’ than
simply the satisfaction of any specific preference.
Third, in effect, the traditional economic theory of utility tends to ignore the intentionality of desire, a
concept explained in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. Desires are intentional, and this means that an object of desire is
always wanted under some description and not under others, and that we are not necessarily aware of every
aspect of our desire. Because of this intentionality, the process of understanding desire should be thought of
hermeneutically. It is a question of interpreting or reading desire and not just identifying the object that is
wanted, as some contemporary economists recognize (Becker, XXX). As we shall see, an important part of
design is to know how to interpret desires.

The Hermeneutics of Desire

In our everyday practice, we interpret people’s desires without necessarily taking at face value their
word concerning how this should be done. We read between the lines of verbalized conscious desires to
find broader patterns but without impugning unconscious drives to the individual.
The area of philosophy and the social sciences most directly concerned with interpretation is
hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a relatively new branch of philosophy that in part has arisen because literary
critics, legal thinkers, social scientists and historical scholars have seen that their work involves a shared set
of problems and a common practice.
This approach has four characteristics. First, it applies to things that have some kind of intentionality,
even if it is derivative. It originated as an approach to the interpretation of texts but has been extended since
then. Consequently, for example, there can be a hermeneutics of social practices, of texts, of paintings, of

127
animal behavior, and of legal precedents and traditions. However, there is no hermeneutics of cloud
formations or star clusters.
Second, interpretation is usually contrasted with causal explanation. In part, hermeneutics originated
as a response to the logical positivist idea that the methodology of the natural sciences could be imported
into the social sciences (see Chapter 3). In the natural sciences, we explain an event by citing its causes,
which would include some physical laws. However, the hermeneutic tradition opposes the claim that the
methodology of the natural sciences can be extended into social studies because, in the social sciences, we
are concerned with actions and the intentional as such, which have content or meaning. The point of
interpretation is to understand the content or meaning of these states and of actions, and this hermeneutical
process will not involve citing law-like causes. For example, interpreting a social ritual would require
understanding the meaning of that ritual for the people engaged in it, from their point of view, and not in
explaining the ritual causally, for example, in terms of its potential survival value.
Third, interpretation is essentially holistic. For example, to understand a ritual requires
comprehending a host of other concepts that the people concerned employ, which in turn requires
understanding other social practices of the group. There is a web of interrelated meanings to understand.
This holistic nature of interpretation is reflected in the famous hermeneutical circle, according to which
interpretation involves a circle: to understand the parts of a text or practice, one needs to grasp the meaning
of the whole, but to do that requires understanding the parts. However, this is not a vicious circle; it is a
question of correcting one in light of the other. Habermas expresses the point as follows:

We can decipher parts of a text only if we anticipate an understanding, however diffuse, of the
whole; and conversely, we can correct this anticipation only to the extent that we explicate
individual parts (quoted from D’Amico, p.182).

Fourth, look at the following contrast. On the one hand, there is no such thing as presupposition-free
interpretation. All interpretation must start from the set of concepts and meanings of the interpreter, which
Heidegger calls ‘the fore-structure.’ However, on the other hand, interpretation consists in entering into the
point of view of another. When one tries to understand a text, one cannot simply impose one’s own ideas
on it; one needs to interpret it correctly.
How do we reconcile these two points? The hermeneutical approach claims that we can reconcile
them through the self-reflective nature of interpretation. To understand something requires us to examine
critically the fore-structures or presuppositions of our own interpretation in light of the uncovered meanings
in what is being interpreted. In other words, we should place our presuppositions into a critical dialogue
with the text that is being read. In this way, our own understanding changes through the process of
interpretation. The German hermeneutical thinker Hans George Gadamer says:

The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its
otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own foremeaning (Gadamer, p.269).

Viewed in this fashion, the cultural presuppositions one brings to an interpretation cannot be regarded
as an obstacle to understanding. They are a necessary part of it. However, interpretation must be both open
and critical in order for it to be enriching and self-reflective.
Gadamer argues that the process of interpretation must be self-reflective because it is constrained by
truth. A reading of a text ought to be true or not erroneous. This requirement necessitates the element of
self-reflection, as opposed to some rigid pre-defined method (One of Gadamer’s books is called Truth and
Method). However, we should emphasize that this point may not mean that there is necessarily only one
correct way to understand a text. Nevertheless, it does rule out the idea that it is merely a matter of opinion.
There is such a thing as misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

Application to Desire

Hermeneutics constitutes an approach to understanding desire that is significantly different from both
the economic model and psychoanalytic theory, which postulates unconscious drives. In our everyday

128
interpretations of people’s wants, we usually employ a method that is hermeneutical. It is holistic and self-
critical.
At the same time, this interpretation often involves characterizing desires in terms of their motivating
interests. The word ‘interest’ is being used here in a special way, which needs explaining. Desires can be
instrumental or non-instrumental; instrumental desires are directed to things wanted as means to something
else. Things wanted non-instrumentally are desired for their own sake. The term ‘interest’ refers to the
motivational sources or nature of non-instrumental desires. In this sense, interests indicate, from a
psychological viewpoint, the desirable aspects of what we desire. Interests are not things separate from our
normal desires, but rather they are facets of our wants. They constitute a way of characterizing desire that is
distinct from specifying the object of desire. They indicate why we want and not what we want.
The notion of interest allows us to see what apparently disparate desires have in common. For
example, the need or interest people have in belonging may express itself in many different ways. It may be
manifest as a general desire for certain kinds of friendship or to live in a community. Alternatively, it may
express itself as a desire to conform or to outshine others in competition. It is also an important factor in the
way people decorate their houses and tend their gardens. In each case, these general wants will generate
more specific desires in particular circumstances. These very different object-individuated desires can have
a unifying aspect, namely shared motivating interests. In this way, the notion of an interest enables us to
understand how wants for disparate things are nevertheless similar.
Additionally, ‘interest’ is often necessary to interpret how desires change. For example, it allows us to
comprehend how a desire for material success might be replaced later by a desire to conform. As a person
acquires new beliefs, his or her desires alter. However, such change need not amount to transformation
insofar as the motivating source of the desires remains constant. If our motivational nature is structured like
a web, the outer part consists in specific desires individuated by their objects, which change with belief. In
contrast, the central core remains relatively stable and permanent, constituted by general motivating
interests, which are belief independent. Changes in the central core constitute a transformation in character
and nature. As the outer ring of the web alters, sense and order can be made of this flux by concentrating
upon the relatively stable motivating interests. In summary, without the notion of an interest, one cannot
see the patterns in the ways that desires change, nor structure in the varieties of our wants. Interests explain
desires by structuring them into choice-independent groupings.
We need to clarify why interests are not simply general desires. In fact, they are significantly
different. First, desires act as potential causes of actions in conjunction with suitable beliefs. For example, I
want to eat cheese and believe that the cheese is in the refrigerator; jointly, these explain my action of
walking towards the fridge. They constitute my reason for action. In contrast, interests act as potential
explanations of desires without the need of a relevant belief. Such explanations indicate the reason for a
desire by revealing its motivational nature, but they do not give the person’s own reasons. They
characterize the desire in a way that shows how it is relevantly similar to other desires. The individual may
not acknowledge these reasons, and so such acknowledgment cannot be essential to their existence, nor to
the fashion in which they explain. Second, object-individuated desires are often belief dependent, whereas I
am using the term ‘interests’ to indicate an aspect of our desires that is not so dependent. For instance, a
person’s desire to buy a specific painting depends on the individual’s judgments about its desirability and
cost. On the other hand, if a person has aesthetic interests then he or she has aesthetically motivated desires,
and this is not dependent on beliefs regarding the desirability or cost of beautiful things. Indeed, the person
may not even realize that he or she has aesthetic interests. Interests mark aspects of our desires that do not
depend on our beliefs about what is desirable and available.
In summary, a description that characterizes a person’s interests indicates the motivational nature of
the individual’s desires; they inform us of why a person desires, but without necessarily specifying what he
or she desires (for more details concerning the interest/desire distinction, see Thomson, 1987, Chapter 4).
Finally, we should explain why this distinction is important. First, we have seen why the desire-based
theory of use-value is unsatisfactory. We have now offered the preliminaries of an alternative account
based on interests, which avoids the problems of the desire theory. In particular, it allows the idea that
value does not have to be tied to the specific things wanted, and yet does depend on the patterns of our
motivations. One of the interesting points apparently in favor of the misguided attempt to explain value in
terms of desire is that it permits individual variations in what counts as value. However, an interest-based
account has the same advantage but without the problematic aspects of the desire theory.
Second, interests provide a basis for the critical evaluation of desires. For instance, social forces can
lead to a situation where the object of a person’s desire clashes with the interests that motivate the want.

129
For example, many people aspire for status, and this aspiration generates many more specific wants, which
can demand tremendous effort. However, suppose that the desire for status is largely an expression of an
interest or need to belong. If this is true, then it is worrying because trying to attain status is a muddled way
to belong. Indeed, the search for status, which will make a person ambitious, may actually thwart the
possibilities to belong, for example, by making a person work too hard and ignore his or her friends and
family. In which case, what the person actually desires (status) is incongruent with the interest or need that
motivates the want (belonging). In this case, the satisfaction of the desire and the effort that entails frustrate
the interest or need that motivates the want.
Third, we interpret desires in part because often we cannot get exactly what we want. This
interpretation consists in characterizing the interests that motivate the desires, and it shows what is valuable
about the desired object without indicating its specific object. For example, when your child wants a
popsicle and the shop is shut, you might freeze a banana on a stick. Now, imagine that there is no banana
and no fridge. What should you do? It depends on the nature of your child’s desire. Is she thirsty? Does she
have a bad taste in her mouth? Does she just want a treat? Is she hot? Or, is it more than she wants loving
attention? If it is the latter, then a walk in the park might be better than a popsicle. As we shall see, this
ability to predict what people will want in new circumstances is crucial to the design process.
In conclusion, let us summarize these points.

1) First, non–instrumental desires have a motivational source, which we may call ‘an interest’ and
which is not another more general desire. Our belief dependent desires and preferences are expressions of
such interests. Because such interests are not based on choices and beliefs, they constitute a feature of
desire distinct from what is wanted. However, although interests are different from desires, they are not
some entity completely distinct or separate. They are facets of our wants.

2) Second, these interests define the temporal patterns and non-temporal structures of our desires.
They permit us to see that desires for very disparate things may have common motivational sources. In this
way, they make interpretation of desire possible.

3) Third, what is important in desire satisfaction is not the obtaining exactly of what one wants, but
rather that the interests behind the desire are satisfied. If I need more beauty in my life, then it is not so
important that I obtain exactly the specific beautiful things that I want, but rather that there is more beauty
in my life. Indeed, I may not be aware that my desires are aesthetically motivated.

4) The fourth point is that the objects of desire do not necessarily express well the interest behind the
desire. For example, I may have an interest in belonging, and this may express itself as a range of desires
pertaining to status, which drive me to work so hard that I end up feeling alienated. Interests provide a way
to evaluate desires.
Applied to Design

Let us apply these conclusions to design. In Part Two, we argued that design could not be solely a
question of solving problems, even wicked ones. Part of the design process must involve creating problems
through the recognition of new design opportunities. The problem-solving stage of the design process
begins only once there is a brief, however indeterminate or open-ended. We need to understand better this
problem creating, brief-writing process, which is like the process of spotting new opportunities for design.
The discovery of design opportunities crucially requires interpreting desire. The designer does not
interpret desire verbally, but rather materially, in the form of new design-products. This means developing
a sense of the possibilities concerning how new products might meet interests, rather than trying to satisfy
actual desires. To be able to perceive new real possibilities, one has to be able to know their parameters.
The space of opportunity is defined by its limits. Consequently, we can recognize new design opportunities
only if we understand human interests, which define the limits and structure of desire.
The capacity to predict what people will want in new or hypothetical circumstances is an essential
part of designing. It requires understanding what counts as relevantly similar with regard to hypothetical
and actual desires, which in turn depends on having a grasp of the relevant interests. In conclusion, a
designer must have a good sense of the meaning of human desires. In this way, design is in part a
hermeneutical science of desire.

130
Conclusion
In conclusion, we have examined three myths concerning design. First, there is the myth that the
domain of design is restricted to traditional products and services. Second, there is the misunderstanding
that the process of design consists solely in linear and wicked problem solving. Third, there is the
misconception that user values are to be conceived in terms of the satisfaction of desire.
To return to the beginning, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of design in purely economic or
aesthetic terms. Surprisingly, little serious theoretical thought and empirical investigation have been
invested directly in the project of understanding the nature of our desires and the needs or interests that lie
behind them. For the most part, our conception of our own well-being is very simplistic, and we have yet to
develop an adequate conceptual framework necessary for the serious empirical investigation of the
psychological foundations of users interests.

131
 13
Environmental Ethics

A central problem of environmental ethics is that there does not appear to be an alternative to, on the
one hand, what seems to be expediency and, on the other, what appears to be mysticism. Utilitarianism
appears to be a form of expediency because it implores us to calculate our interests with more accuracy
when we use nature. It urges us not to greatly damage our long-term interests for small short-term gain in
our use of natural resources and the environment. It does not value nature as an end and, therefore, it treats
nature merely as a means. Thus, it seems to promote the very attitudes that have lead the world to the brink
of an ecological disaster. On the other hand, theories that impute to nature an intrinsic value often refer to
ecosystems and the biosphere as if they were conscious organisms in an almost mystical way. I shall argue
that this kind of position cannot be upheld. However, this does not force us back into the apparent
expediency of a utilitarian view either. We need an alternative to traditional ethics to explain adequately
why it is wrong to damage certain aspects of the environment.
This is an important issue because these philosophical positions reflect deeply entrenched attitudes
about the environment that are at odds with each other. On the one side, we have a cold business-like
approach to natural resources and, on the other, a reverence for nature as a unified being, which approaches
the religious. Not perceiving any clear alternatives between these polarized extremes is dangerous. It makes
debate difficult.

The Utilitarian Approach

An ecological catastrophe would be a disaster for the human race. Additionally, it would harm and
kill other animals, and damage their sustaining environment. According to the utilitarian, this is the sole
problem with pollution and all environmental damage: it harms sentient beings.
On this basis, utilitarianism may seem like a solid foundation for environmental ethics. It asserts that
the right action in any circumstance is the one that maximizes overall happiness more than the alternatives.
This has three features especially relevant to environmental destruction. First, it is clear concerning the
nature of the good; only happiness or well-being are intrinsically valuable, and these concepts apply only to
conscious beings. Second, the theory requires impartiality over time and does not privilege the present
generation. Therefore, it condemns causing significant damage to future generations for the sake of present
luxurious living because this exchanges a serious harm for a small benefit. Thirdly, because it is impartial,
the theory extends to all conscious life. It denounces killing whales as much as killing people. In other
words, species as such does not constitute a morally relevant distinction, even though there are morally
relevant differences between species, such as the differing capacities to feel pain and different degrees of
consciousness. Ethically, we cannot favor humans just because of our species.
Furthermore, utilitarianism can be combined with an understanding of the principles of ecological
biology, according to which all parts of nature, including humans, are interdependent. Everything lives in

132
delicate and very complex webs of interrelations with its environment and with other species. Nothing lives
alone. Given this interdependence, the utilitarian can argue that contemporary mass-consumer society is
undermining the ecological balance and harmony of the biosphere and, therefore, we need to change
drastically our way of living in order not to harm our home, the global environment, for the sake of future
generations and other animals. In other words, the utilitarian can argue that utilitarianism is compatible
with a sound ecology.
However, in order for it to be a viable ethic of the environment, we would need to amend
utilitarianism to explain the nature of collective responsibility. There is no significant damage to the
atmosphere caused by any one person using his or her air-conditioning system. However, if everyone uses
their systems, the CFCs released eventually will damage the ozone layer. This point is a problem for
individual act-utilitarianism that would condone any single act of using air-conditioning as harmless. How
can the theory be adapted to explain that a billion harmless acts together can make one destructive act? In
this case, I think that we might give utilitarianism the benefit of the doubt and assume that a notion of
collective responsibility can be accommodated within a broadly utilitarian framework.
A more incisive problem is as follows. Utilitarianism implies that all values apart from happiness and
well-being are merely instrumental. This means that the aesthetic value of a beautiful landscape can be
reduced to its effects on the happiness of sentient beings. It also means that all non-sentient natural things,
such as trees and flowers, mountains and swamps, are valuable only in so far as they contribute to that
happiness. They only have instrumental value. In other words, utilitarianism requires us to treat everything
in nature that is not conscious purely as a means.
This appears to be a poor basis for an environmental ethic, the main purpose of which is to
characterize humanity’s relation to nature as it should be. One argument against utilitarianism is that the
human race needs to treat nature with more respect, and that regarding non-sentient nature merely as a
means would violate that respect. To push the point further, it is precisely treating nature merely as a means
that has led us to the brink of ecological disaster. Looked at in this way, utilitarianism becomes part of the
problem and not the solution, despite its impartiality. We shall not consider whether this is a fair criticism
of utilitarianism or not and how the utilitarian might try to accommodate these worries; we need to move
on.

Radical Approaches
The core of this argument against a utilitarian-based environmental ethic is that the theory cannot
recognize the value of natural things that are not sentient. The remedy, it seems, is to argue that biological
systems can have non-instrumental value akin to the way that conscious beings do. We shall explain three
such approaches.

A) Biocentricism
Paul Taylor argues for an environmental ethic that attempts to recognize the value of non-conscious
life, which is based on three major ideas.
1) First, Taylor argues for a biocentric moral attitude, which is a character-state that involves seeing
the good of other living beings as a reason for action, and which requires the following beliefs. First,
humans are part of nature in the same sense that all other living things are and are not inherently superior to
other living things. Second, all living things are part of an interdependent natural system and pursue their
own good. Taylor argues that the biocentric outlook is rational, because it is based on scientific evidence,
and that it requires the attitude of respect for nature.
2) Second, he argues that all living things are teleological centers of life and, thus, have a good of
their own, which means that even if they do not have desires, nevertheless it still makes sense to speak of
harming and benefiting them. For example, even a fly has a good of its own because it has ends, such as
development, sustenance and propagation. To claim that a plant is a teleological center of life is to assert
that its internal and external functions are goal-oriented.
3) Third, as a consequence of the bio-centric moral attitude, we have a moral duty not to harm and
interfere with other living things, as well as to treat them fairly. To explain these duties, Taylor appeals to
the four general kinds of moral obligations that are commonly cited in applied ethical theories: non-
maleficence, non-interference, fidelity and restitutive justice. Non-maleficence means that one should not

133
intentionally harm another; non-interference requires us to not interfere with the freedom of other beings.
Fidelity involves respecting other forms of life by not deceiving them, and restitution requires
recompensing other beings for the harm we cause them, for example, by restoring damaged habitats.
To deal with conflicts of interests between humans and other living organisms, Taylor appeals to
some of the procedural rules of liberal political philosophy. These are self-defense, proportionality,
minimum wrong, distributive justice and restitutive justice. The principle of self-defense permits killing
organisms that threaten human life and health. However, proportionality requires that we do not harm the
basic interests of other beings for the sake of our non-basic interests and minimum wrong requires us to
satisfy our non-basic interests in a way that causes minimum wrong to other beings. The principle of
distributive justice requires an impartial fairness in the distribution of harms and benefits, and that of
restitutive justice requires recompense for harms caused.

B) Ecological Ethics
A radical objection to biocentricism is that, like utilitarianism, it does not recognize the value of
ecological wholes. It implies that only individual living things have value. Against this view, some thinkers
have claimed that ecosystems, species, and even the whole biosphere have a non-instrumental value in
much the same way that specific individuals do.
According to this idea, just as we can refer to the good for any living organism as Taylor claims, we
also can do the same for ecological systems per se. In other words, we can harm and benefit an ecological
system. In this sense, they must be regarded in the same way as individual organisms are. An ecological
community is like a higher-level organism because, like an individual, it is a unified whole in which the
parts play a functional role and have a purpose in relation to the whole. It is a self-organizing system.
Some ecological theories make the further and more radical claim that ecological systems are primary
compared to any individual organism. This claim is suggested by the finely tuned interdependence of the
parts of a whole ecosystem. In this vein, Baird Callicott writes:

Ecological relationships determine the nature of organisms rather than the other way around. The
system as whole produces the individuals that it needs to survive.

For instance, James Lovelock has argued for a similar view regarding the biosphere as a whole or
Gaia. In collaboration with microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Lovelock claims that the biosphere is a huge
self-regulating system in which the biota, or the total of all living organisms, controls certain properties of
the earth, such as its temperature and the composition of the lower atmosphere. Since the formation of life
on the earth, the surface temperature of the sun has increased 25%, even though the earth’s temperature has
remained relatively constant, prior to global warming. For example, oxygen levels are also controlled by
the growth of plants, bacteria and algae. On the basis of this and other evidence, Lovelock argues that the
earth as a whole is a self-regulating system to which we have ethical duties. However, he does not claim
that this system is teleological.

C) Deep Ecology
In the 1940s, the American ecologist Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) employed similar ideas to pioneer
what was at the time a new approach to ecological ethics. In his essay ‘The Land Ethic,’ contained in his
classic book A Sand Country Almanac, Leopold develops the first eco-centric ethics, the idea that
ecosystems as a whole have intrinsic moral worth and as such should be respected. He widens the
ecological community to include the land and other sources of energy that an ecological system needs.
Leopold writes: ‘a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic
community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’ (Leopold, p.262). Leopold’s view was developed and
defended by Baird Callicott in the late 1980s.
The more spiritual aspects of Leopald’s views inspired another non-anthropocentric approach, which
is called ‘deep ecology,’ and which was developed by Arne Naess in the 1970s. The deep ecological
movement opposes shallow approaches that characterize our environmental problems merely as the
prevalence of pollution and the depletion of resources. Such views are superficial because they fail to
identify our ecological predicament as constituted by an unhealthy way of life and unsustainable modes of
thinking. Our culture fosters lack of ecological consciousness by failing to see humans as an integral part of

134
nature. The environmental crisis is but a manifestation of this deeper condition. Because of this, members
of the deep ecological movement call for a political, philosophical and spiritual transformation.
Insofar as deep ecology explains why ecosystems have value in terms of the fact that they can be
harmed, the position is very similar to ecological ethics (i.e. B above). However, deep ecologists often
appeal also to a rather different kind of consideration, namely a metaphysical holism, in order to show that
an ecosystem has intrinsic value. They reject the reductionism and individualism inherent in the traditional
western worldview that tries to separate humans from the rest of nature. For example, they oppose the idea
that we humans have souls that distinguish us from other organisms. Their idea is that ecosystems are
genuine wholes because understanding the life of any animal or plant requires knowledge of how it
interacts with other parts of the system. Furthermore, ecosystems are wholes because they are biologically
primary in the sense of generating the organisms they need.
More fundamentally, many deep ecologists argue that the conception of an individual as an entity
separate from its environment is a mistaken metaphysical notion that reflects our lack of ecological
consciousness. For example, some claim that the whole biosphere is a system of energy flow within which
individual organisms are temporary concentrations of energy rather like a wave or vortex in a current of
water. As such, the distinction between the individual and its surroundings is an artificial one. The universe
consists of parts within wholes, and the only genuine whole is the universe itself. This kind of claim is
reminiscent of the metaphysics of Spinoza (1632–1677), who argued that the only real individual is the
world as a whole. It is also similar to some forms of Buddhism. Like Spinoza, some deep ecologists see the
process of acquiring ecological awareness as a process of spiritual transformation through which one
transcends the limited individualistic conception of the self (Devall and Sessions, 1985).
The main ethical conclusions of deep ecology are that the earth’s ecosystem is a valuable whole,
which we have a moral duty to preserve and maintain as healthy, and that humans are essentially only part
of this whole. Ethically, the whole ecological system has value in itself, quite apart from its usefulness for
human purposes, and humans have no right to damage its diversity and health except to satisfy vital needs.
All three positions considered in this section are in part as ethical expressions of a reaction against a
mechanical approach to biology, which was examined in Chapter 9.

Some Criticisms
The main challenges facing these three radical theories are the two claims that only conscious beings
have non-instrumental worth and that, all other things being equal, the more conscious the more valuable.
These claims imply that non-conscious individuals, such as plants, and non-conscious wholes, such as
ecosystems, do not have intrinsic value. In this section, it is not my aim to argue that we have no
obligations to ecosystems and plants. Instead, I shall argue that the three radical ecological explanations of
why we do have such obligations are insufficient on their own to establish that we do. The important
question is ‘do the relevant biological facts support the ethical positions?’ where the relevant facts are that
biological systems are self-organizing, goal directed and genuine wholes. We will examine these now each
in turn.

1) Self-Organizing
Does the fact that biological systems are self-organizing have the claimed ethical significance? To
begin, we can distinguish the following three claims regarding both plants and ecosystems:

a) Eco-systems are self-organizing systems

b) They are intentional, and
c) They are conscious.

Although these three claims need to be separated, we can construct a two-step argument that tries to
link them in a way that reflects some ecological ethical views of type B. The first step is that, because they
are self-organizing, ecosystems can be described with intensional language and, hence, b) is true. The
second step is that, because of b), c) is also true or, at least, ecosystems have the same kind of moral
standing as conscious beings.

135
 Both of these steps are highly problematic. First, the mere fact that a system is self-organizing does
not imply that it is intentional. For example, the Russian chemist Ilya Prigogine studied self-organization in
certain dissipative physical structures in which a chemical system acts as a whole, and the German
physicist Hermann Haken describes laser beams as self-organizing systems (Capra, p. 86-91).
Furthermore, the fact that a self-organizing system such as a plant can be described with intensional
language (for instance, in terms of purposes) does not mean that the system really is intentional. Like that
of a plant, the behavior of a computer can be described as goal-directed but this does not entail that
computers actually have desires. The same point may be applied to ecosystems.
Let us turn to the second step. Even if ecological systems and plants show signs of intentionality, they
do not meet the criteria for consciousness. They might react in adaptive ways that are described best with
intensional language, but this does not mean that they are aware. For instance, they do not suffer pain and
enjoy conscious experience in the way that many animals do. This is because conscious experience requires
a central nervous system or something functionally equivalent.

2) Goal-directed
To examine critically the idea that non-conscious, goal-directed organisms, such as plants, and
ecosystems have intrinsic value, let us review an adapted version of an argument from Chapter 11.

Argument A

4. Something can be harmed if and only if it lives consciously

5. Ecosystems as such do not have a conscious life.
6. Therefore, ecosystems as such cannot be harmed.

The crucially contested premise is the first, which directly contradicts both Taylor’s biocentric views
and ecological ethics (A and B above). The issue is not whether we can harm the individual animals that
form a part of an ecosystem. The question under contention is whether we can harm ecosystems per se.
Additionally, the issue is not whether we can damage an ecosystem but rather whether this damage can
amount to harm to the ecosystem itself. I can damage a car but this does not harm it.
As we have seen, Taylor repudiates premise 1 by arguing that all living things are goal-oriented and
have a good of their own and, therefore, that it makes sense to speak of harming them even if they do not
have desires and are not conscious. The ecological ethics approach extends this central idea to whole
ecosystems.
There are two problems with this way of trying to undermine premise 1. The first is based on an
understanding of what it means to say that, for instance, a plant is a teleological center or goal-directed. It
does not mean that they actually have desires; this much Taylor admits. Desires can be attributed only to an
entity that can have beliefs and that can perform actions. Literally speaking, plants do not have goals and,
thus, do not have ends. What it means to claim that plants are goal-directed is that their reactions can be
described with the intensional language of goals and ends. Because such descriptions are not literally true,
they should be understood instrumentally. Put crudely, they are useful, simplifying fictions.
Second, in the light of this first problem, if the ethical conclusions of biocentricism and deep ecology
are true, then they really ought to be extended to non-biological goal-oriented systems, such as corporations
and computers. Computers are like plants, and corporations are akin to ecological systems. All four are
goal-directed systems that can be described instrumentally with the language of goals. This means that if
we deny that computers and corporations have intrinsic value then, we should also do so for biological
goal-oriented systems. If it is counter-argued that plants and ecosystems are different because they are alive
unlike computers and corporations, then we need some non-circular criteria for being alive that does not
appeal only to self-organization and goal directed behavior.
In conclusion, premise 1 looks reasonable. As we said in Chapter 11, harm should be defined in terms
of the processes of the experiencing and living of values, for instance, in terms of the inability to appreciate
the valuable aspects of one’s life. If this is right then, strictly speaking, plants and ecosystems cannot be
harmed.
Premise 2 might also be contended on the grounds that ecosystems that contain conscious life must
themselves be conscious and, although we have already examined this point, more needs to be said about it
(see section 3 below).

136
 In summary, the moral claims that ecological systems can have harm-based interests, and that because
of this we have obligations to them, depend on the proposition that such systems can be harmed. As we
have seen, this in turn depends on the thesis that they have conscious experience. In other words, these
moral claims depend on the false idea that ecosystems are more like animals with nervous systems than
non-conscious organisms such as plants. As a consequence, if we have obligations not to destroy
ecosystems, then this is not because they are conscious, nor because they are self-organizing. In other
words, these versions of the radical approach fail to explain adequately our ecological obligations to non-
conscious life and to ecological systems.

3) Holism
Is it true that the whole is more than the sum of its parts? First, let us clear away a dualist or vitalist
misunderstanding of this claim, namely that the word ‘more’ refers to an additional entity. A chair is
composed of molecules, but it is more than just a collection of molecules. However, it is not composed of
some extra thing. Rather, the molecules have to be organized in a certain way to be a chair. Similarly,
referring back to a theme of Chapters 4 and 9, a person is a complexly organized collection of cells and, as
such, is capable of behaviors that no cell or disorganized collection of cells could perform. In this sense, a
human is more than just a group of cells, but that does not mean that a person is some additional thing or
entity, such as an immaterial soul. Rather it means that a human being is composed of a highly organized
collection of cells. This point is generally well understood by ecological thinkers.
Given this clarification, we can move on to the main point. We can refer to wholes in three ways.

A) According to the first view, a collection is nothing over and above the individuals that compose it.
Let us call this view A.

B) In contrast, in ecology and social theory, when we refer to a system as a whole, the whole cannot
be defined adequately in terms of the parts that compose it for two distinct reasons. First, the individual
parts can be replaced without changing the identity of the whole; I do not become a different person when
some of my cells die, and an ecosystem can remain the same when individual organisms perish. The whole
is defined in terms of the organization of the parts. The second point is that, because of this organization,
new characteristics and behaviors emerge at the level of the whole that the parts alone are not capable of,
and in this sense, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. These are called the emergent properties of
the system. Let us call this view B.

C) Given view B, we can return to the level of the individual in a new way by describing individuals
as members of a collective and specify their role in the collective. For example, we when talk about the
actions of a social community, we refer not to the community as a whole, but rather to the actions of
particular members of the group in their capacity as members of the community or in terms of their role in
relation to the whole. For example, we can refer to the actions of the director of a company, who acts on
behalf of the whole. Similar points apply to ecosystems. Let us call this view C.

In ordinary parlance, we refer to a collective in each of these three ways without distinguishing
between them. For instance, if we claim that a community will suffer then we refer to it under view A, i.e.
we mean that the members will be caused harm. In contrast, when we refer to the characteristics of an
ecosystem as a whole, then we do so under view B. In contrast, when we talk about the actions of a
corporation, we refer to the actions of individuals who serve specific roles in that corporation, i.e. view C.
These distinctions help explain the difference between damage and harm. We refer to the damage
done to an ecosystem (under view B), which in turn causes harm to the individuals of the ecosystem (view
A). Likewise, when we damage a community or corporation (view B), this may harm the relevant
stakeholders (view A).
I have drawn these distinctions in order to clarify in what ways we can talk about the suffering and
actions of collectives, such as ecosystems, communities, and corporations. Given these clarifications, we
can return to the original question ‘Is the whole more than the sum of its parts?’ The answer is a
resounding ‘it all depends.’ For instance, a corporation can act in ways that no individual person alone can
(view C) and, in this respect, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Furthermore, a society has many
characteristics that no individual can have (view B). On the other hand, a corporation per se is not a self-

137
conscious being, even though it is composed of persons, and in this respect the whole is less than the sum
of its parts.
The overall conclusion we can draw from these considerations is that denying full-blown holism does
not commit one to a reductive individualism. The reason why this is an important conclusion is that some
strong versions of holism assert the priority of the whole over the individual in all respects, and such a view
appears attractive when the only alternative is reductive individualism that denies interdependence.

However, these points do not address directly the deep ecological point that the traditional western
conception of the individual organism is radically mistaken. Are we temporary blips within the total energy
flow, metaphorically like waves on the ocean? Suppose that the answer is ‘yes.’ Would that imply that
individual beings do not exist? And, furthermore, would it entail that non-conscious aspects of nature have
intrinsic value? I believe that the answer to both questions is ‘no.’ Even if I am a wave on an ocean of
energy, nevertheless, I am one that hopefully will last for 80 or so years and that is stable and complex
enough during that time to be self-conscious and to want, feel, think and act. Furthermore, my being a wave
does not show that other waves, such as plants, that are not complex enough for consciousness are
intrinsically valuable.
In conclusion, the three radical approaches considered here do not establish that non-conscious life
and ecosystems have non-instrumental value. However, this does not imply that we should revert to the
utilitarian position that treats non-conscious aspects of nature purely as a means. Rather, it shows the need
for an alternative explanation of our obligations to nature, one that may retain some features of both the
utilitarian and the deep ecological approaches.

Towards a Different Approach

There was a man who owned a beautiful walled garden, which had been tended for generations. The
man hated the garden. Everyday he would walk around it, spitting on the flowers and cursing them (this
example is a modification of one given by Hill, p.104).
The feeling that these actions are somehow wrong cannot be based directly on any utilitarian moral
considerations. The actions do not hurt any person or any conscious being and, additionally, the man is not
depriving anyone of his or her freedom or rights. Yet, surely, there is something wrong with these actions.
Given this, we have to find an alternative explanation that does not appeal only to normal utilitarian
considerations, or to more radical ecological ideas.
One alternative explanation is that such actions express a character state that one has a moral reason to
avoid. Returning to the example, spitting on the flowers can be expressively wrong because of the character
states it manifests. Instead of focusing on the consequences of the action, as traditional utilitarianism does,
we could look towards the character traits of a person who authors this kind of action. We need to ask ‘Is
there anything wrong with being the kind of person who spits on flowers?’ In brief, a person who loved
nature just would not spit on flowers, and we have a moral reason to be the kinds of people who respect
nature.
It is time for some preliminary qualifications and warnings. This kind of alternative explanation is not
alien or new to either utilitarian or radical theories. Radical ecological theories are often virtue based. For
example, Taylor’s biocentric view incorporates an attitude towards nature, and elements of Leopold’s
writings also suggest a virtue-based approach. Furthermore, utilitarianism can be a virtue ethic, even
though it usually explains virtues and vices indirectly in terms of their effects on our actions. Although the
alternative explanation will contain elements from both radical and utilitarian theories, it will be
substantially different from them. Furthermore, in this chapter we cannot develop a full-blown alternative
theory. There will be many important questions left unanswered, such as how to deal with ethical conflicts.
Also, we will have to leave undeveloped the links between this chapter and, for instance, Chapters 2 and 9.
Nevertheless, we can sketch a framework for an alternative approach.

The Elements

138
 The following argument captures the alternative line of reasoning, taking for granted, for the moment,
the claim that one ought to the kind of person who respects nature.

Argument B

1. Action A expresses a disrespect for nature in circumstances C

2. One ought to be the kind of person who loves and respects nature
3. Given that one should be the kind of person who loves X, one ought not perform an action that
expresses disrespect for X.
4. Therefore, one ought not perform action A in C

This kind of explanation has three elements. First, premise 1 says that actions can express character-
states and, in particular, an action such as spitting on the flowers expresses disrespect for nature. Of course,
we can imagine cultural contexts in which spitting on the flowers can be a sign of respect and,
consequently, the first premise must specific to certain circumstances.
Second, premise 2 is the claim that one has a moral reason to avoid the character-state in question (i.e.
one that disrespects nature). This premise assumes that there must be something about the character-state of
loving nature such that one has a moral reason to cultivate that state.
The third premise states that one has a reason not to perform action A (in this case, spitting on the
flowers) because it expresses a character state of disrespect for nature, which one has reason to avoid.
In summary, with this argument, we can try to explain the feeling that it can be wrong to destroy parts
of the environment on the basis of the expressive value of the action even when those parts of nature serve
no purpose and are not conscious or intentional. For example, swamps and salt deserts are not conscious or
intentional, and so it is difficult to explain why their destruction can be wrong on the basis that they are
intrinsically valuable. Furthermore, suppose that a particular desert serves no purpose to human or beast.
Even so, the destruction of the desert might still be wrong because the action of destroying it expresses an
uncaring state of being. In a better state of being, we might be more careful not to degrade the environment,
pollute the desert, and not to treat fragile eco-systems as mere instruments for our benefit.
Note that this argument is not a consequentialist one. It does not assert that if we perform actions that
express disrespect for nature then this will cause us eventually to become persons who are disrespectful of
nature and, ultimately, of other people. Such a claim may well be true, and it is certainly relevant to our
concern for the environment. However, such a consideration does not take us beyond a utilitarian
conception of the relationship between virtues and actions.
Utilitarian thinkers claim that the value of virtues is completely derivative on that of actions. In other
words, virtues are good solely because of the good actions they promote, and actions are good because of
their consequences. According to this view, actions that help cultivate virtues are instrumentally good
ultimately only because of their consequences. Thus, such a view of the virtue-action relation will not help
us resolve the differences between the utilitarian and radical conceptions of environmental ethics. It will
lead us straight back to the earlier debate, namely ‘do plants and whole ecosystems have interests such that
we can harm them, and do they have intrinsic value?’
To avoid returning to the beginning, we need to develop a non-utilitarian view of the relationship
between actions and virtues, and this requires arguing both that actions can be expressively wrong, and that
virtues can be valuable independently of their effects on action. In other words, actions can be wrong
because they express character states that are intrinsically bad. Thus, in opposition to the utilitarian view, I
shall argue that, although virtues and the actions that cultivate them do have instrumental value, they also
can have a non-instrumental value that cannot be analyzed solely in terms of their effects.

1) Expressive Value
The argument requires the idea that an action can be good or bad purely because of the character-state
that it expresses (i.e. premises 1 and 3 combined). The thesis that something can be valuable for what it
expresses is not a novel idea. For example, an old gift that has become useless and is unwanted in itself
nevertheless can be cherished for what it expresses. Actions can express virtues or vices. For instance, if I
defile the memory of a dead relative, I may not actually harm anyone of intrinsic value; yet my action may

139
express an uncaring or hateful state of mind. For example, if I tear up the letters of my dead grandfather in
hatred, I am not acting contrary to any moral obligations that I have to a living, intrinsically valuable being.
And if my actions have no further consequences, then the utilitarian position implies that my actions are not
wrong. Yet, they express a disrespect or hatred that we may suppose that I should not have. Thus, if I
actually hurt a living relative, then this action also expresses my state of being too, but in addition, it harms
another person. Consequently, in addition to the normal categories ‘intrinsically good,’ ‘instrumentally
good,’ and ‘good as a part of a whole,’ actions can be expressively good or bad.
To develop this idea more fully, one would need to satisfy various conditions. For example, one
would need to argue that expressive value judgments of this kind can be true, and outline some conditions
or criteria for the truth and falsity of such statements.

2) Love of Nature
The alternative explanation also requires we have reason to become a person who loves nature, and
this needs to be explained and argued for. What are the morally relevant psychological features of loving
nature that imply that we have a reason to do so? Thomas Hill answers this question as follows. A proper
appreciation of nature is an aesthetic experience that involves a humility, which is incompatible with
feelings of self-importance, and a sense of self-acceptance, which requires understanding that we are part of
nature (Hill, p.108-115). In other words, indifference to non-sentient nature ‘is likely to reflect either
ignorance, a self-importance, or a lack of self-acceptance, which we must overcome to have proper
humility’ (Hill, p.115).
He also claims that many of the capacities that are necessary for an aesthetic appreciation of nature
are also needed for an appreciation of other people (Hill, p.116). However, this last point is a
consequentialist consideration that we cannot appeal to. Let us see why.

3) Virtues
Someone might object that the position we have argued for is a merely an indirect form of
utilitarianism. According to indirect utilitarianism, we need certain virtues in our dealings with other people
because a virtuous person will tend to act in ways that increase happiness. In other words, the value of
virtues is to be explained solely in terms of their consequences, i.e. their effects on our actions, the value of
which, in turn, is to be explained consequentially. A person who has such virtues will tend to manifest them
in the way he or she acts towards nature. Furthermore, the love of nature essentially involves and cultivates
character traits, such as humility, that are important in our lives. Thomas Hill argues for this kind of view
(Hill, 1991).
However, this indirect utilitarianism is not the approach we are advocating. On the contrary, I shall
now argue that it embodies two common misunderstandings that threaten the integrity of environmental
ethics. This is because of the powerful word ‘solely,’ which rules out all other accounts of virtue.

a) Do Virtues Reduce to Actions?

First, as we have seen, indirect utilitarians argue that the sole value of a virtue is the actions it
typically causes. For instance, courage is important only because it disposes us to act bravely, and prudence
is valuable solely because it prevents us from acting foolishly. According to this reductive view, the value
of a virtue is entirely derivative on the value of the actions that it normally causes. In turn, the value of
those actions would be explained in terms of some standard moral theory, such as utilitarianism.
However, such a view is an error. Being courageous is more than the disposition to act bravely; for
instance, it also consists in perceiving more opportunities, which open up the courageous person’s life-
world. Part of being generous is to perceive other people as more real, that is in seeing them more often as
persons rather than merely as useful instruments or nuisances. The value of a virtue is not constituted solely
by the actions that it typically produces because being is more than doing. Morality, and value judgments
more generally, do not merely direct actions, but they also guide and affect perception. In this sense, there
is more to living than doing because the quality of one’s life also includes the quality of what Husserl

140
called one’s ‘life-world,’ which is roughly one’s experience as lived. This quality is defined in part by the
kind of person one is. Consider the role of attention in this respect. When perception is guided by value, we
can see the valuable things around us as valuable. We appreciate and attend to them as such.

b) Is Ethics only a Social Tool?

Second, we must reject also the assumption that the sole purpose of ethical judgments is to improve
society. For example, consider the view that the content of moral judgments is defined solely by the idea
that a society, or even the whole world, needs to be more happy. Such a view entails that virtues are
valuable only because of their external effects on the public good, and perhaps also on justice and fairness.
This view reinforces the reductive analysis of virtue, which we rejected earlier.
To reject the second assumption, we might draw a rough distinction between the institutions of
personal ethics and social morality. The general point of social morality is to improve society. In contrast,
the overall purpose of personal ethics is to improve or transform oneself for the sake of oneself. We can see
that these two types of judgment are different because, whereas social morality has an enforcement
problem, personal ethics does not. Social morality often needs to be enforced and, hence, it has important
links to the philosophy of law and to our moral practices of praise and blame. Personal ethics, on the other
hand, does not need to be enforced because it concerns what the ancient Greek philosophers called the
‘good life.’ In brief, social morality concerns directly one’s social obligations to others, and personal ethics,
one’s care of oneself.
To draw the distinction more completely, we need to add the following. Personal ethics also can
involve care for others, but the nature of the moral motivation is different from social morality. Following
Nozick, personal ethics involves moral push, and social morality, moral pull (Nozick, 1981). If I ought to
act morally towards you because of your value as a person, then this indicates moral pull. There is moral
pull when your value as a person fixes what action should flow from me. Moral push occurs when my
value as a person fixes what behavior should issue from me. Push is when I act morally because I am a
certain kind of person. The point is that personal ethics concerns the care for others insofar as this is
motivated by push rather than pull.
I have drawn the distinction between personal ethics and social morality in a provisional way to signal
why one should reject the second assumption (that the sole purpose of moral judgments is to improve
society). Why is this important?
The second assumption implies that we should answer the question ‘How should I be?’ only in terms
of the betterment of society. This means that social morality regards emotions externally, in terms of how
they guide actions that have effects on others. If a feeling does not cause any outer action then, social
morality would have nothing to say about its moral worth since the emotion does not affect others.
However, in contrast if we deny the second assumption then we can assert that the ethical importance of
feelings is also that they are lived. They transform our attention, and hence our appreciation of the world,
and of nature. Therefore, personal ethics can be concerned about the ethical value of how we feel, even
when such feelings are never expressed in actions that affect others. This does not mean that social morality
does not enjoin us to be more virtuous. Instead, it indicates how a purely social conception of morality and
virtue is insufficient for environmental ethics.

c) Relevance to Environmental Ethics

How are these two points relevant to environmental ethics? Social morality cannot explain
environmental duties except in terms of our obligations to future generations and collective enlightened
self-interest. Like the utilitarian view, it does not explain adequately how there can be reasons to avoid
damaging non-conscious aspects of the environment.
In contrast, personal ethics allows for the possibility that a caring attitude towards nature is an integral
part of an ethic of personal development. It thereby presents the possibility that such an attitude should
cover non-conscious features or parts of nature. It does so on the basis of ethical push rather than pull. In
other words, given that we should have a caring attitude towards non-conscious nature then this is not
because we owe it to plants and ecosystems due to the fact that they are intrinsically valuable, but rather
because we owe it to ourselves to be the kinds of persons who are respectful to nature. In short, the idea of
personal ethics is a requirement of argument B.

141
 Argument B also requires a non-reductive view of virtue. The value of being the kind of person who
respects nature cannot be explained adequately only in terms of the effects of one’s actions on other people.
This would short-circuit the appeal to personal ethics. The explanation of this value also requires the idea
that there are reasons to acquire the relevant virtues because of their implications for the way we perceive
the world. In this way, the claim that we do have a personal reason to be such a person acquires more
plausibility.

Some Conclusions
The alternative approach combines some aspects of both the utilitarian and more radical theories. The
utilitarian is right to claim that we must protect the environment for the sake of our future, the well-being of
future generations and conscious animals. However, this does not mean that utilitarianism is a viable and
complete moral theory.
Furthermore, utilitarianism implies that the non-sentient parts of nature have only instrumental value,
and we have claimed that the radical theories are right to reject this aspect of utilitarianism. However, the
radical theories argue that non-sentient individuals, such as plants, and whole ecosystems have intrinsic
value, and we have contended that their arguments to this effect fail.
While this point does not show that the non-sentient aspects of nature do not have intrinsic value, we
have tried to develop the framework for an alternative approach. This alternative tries to show that we
should love and respect even the non-sentient aspects of nature without appealing to the idea that they have
intrinsic value. The alternative relies on the claims that we should be and become the kind of persons who
respect nature, and that actions that express disrespect are consequently morally wrong.
The reason for developing this alternative was to show that there are positions that avoid the business-
like approach seemingly intrinsic to utilitarianism and the almost mystical approach apparently inherent in
radical theories. These parts of nature are neither merely instrumentally valuable nor intrinsically valuable.

142
 14
The Social Relevance of Philosophy

The main body of the first parts of this book is drawing to a close. We have dipped our toes in the
philosophy of law, economics, sociology, psychology, physics, biology, education, management, design
and environmental ethics. We have done so primarily to see philosophy at work with some of the other
disciplines. Therefore, it is fitting that we should complete this first part of the book by considering the
question, ‘What is the social relevance of philosophy?’ Any answer to this question must involve at least
three elements.

Part I: Some Quiet Revolutions

Philosophy can instigate revolutions. These revolutions are sometimes slow and profound and, for this
reason, they can be difficult to perceive and appreciate. For example, consider the transformation of
thinking about nature in the seventeenth century. Galileo, Descartes and other thinkers invented physics,
and made science as a unity possible. Prior to this quiet revolution, the world was conceived as consisting
of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. Physical changes were usually explained in terms of the natural
tendencies of these elements and in terms of the purposes of God. The intellectual uprising consisted in the
discovery and the invention of the modern notion of matter, the concept of physical laws and the idea of
describing physical changes mathematically. Along with these concepts, philosopher-scientists developed
the empirical method of science, of making controlled, repeatable observations, and separated this from
both a priori deduction and the citation of authority.
This was an incredibly productive set of ideas and practices. By the end of the seventeenth century, it
already had many practical applications and socio-political effects. There were a host of inventions that
were precursors to the industrial revolution of the late 18th century. The initial discovery and creation of
these fundamental concepts and methods of investigation was a philosophical revolution because it was not
merely a question of encountering new empirical information. It also involved crucially the molding of new
concepts, and finding new ways of thinking.
Consider another important conceptual revolution. Locke portrayed society as a social contract among
equals in a way that explained how it was sometimes legitimate for a people to overthrow the government.
His political thought became enshrined in the U.S. constitution and, because of this and the work of other
thinkers, the idea of a right became common political currency in the 20th century. Many of today's
political movements could not exist without this notion. Usually, we take the concept of a right for granted,
as part of our everyday political vocabulary, but a little reflection shows us that it had to be built and,
probably, that it can be improved and refined. These are theoretical and philosophical tasks.
Here is a third example. The 19th century saw a revolution in our thinking about logic and the
foundations of mathematics. The idea of a formal system became possible because of the theoretical work
done at this time in mathematics and logic, which broke two thousand years of domination by Aristotle’s

143
syllogistic logic. In turn, the idea of a purely formal system made the development of computers possible in
the 20th century. As in the previous examples, the development of new concepts opened new areas of
research, which in turn permitted new technology and social institutions.
These three examples illustrate how philosophical revolutions can occur quietly on a grand scale.
They also suggest how they can function in a more modest way. For example, in the 1960s, there was a
fundamental change in the philosophy of mind, which went hand in hand with a transformation in
psychology. This consisted in the realization that, to avoid ontological mind/body dualism, one does not
have to espouse behaviorism (see Chapter 4). In other words, the study of cognitive processes can be
scientific and, in part as a result of this conceptual insight, cognitive science was born (Gardiner, 1985).
Consider another example. In the 1970s, the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen, along with
other political theorists, challenged the standard view of development as economic growth and, in the
1980s, Sen developed new ways to measure the well-being of individuals and communities based on the
kinds of capabilities that people need to have in order to be able to live well, and which includes many non-
economic factors. This work was part of a conceptual revolution that overthrew the conception of
development as merely economic growth, which was prevalent in the 1950s. As a result of this change,
non-governmental organizations and, to a lesser extent, governments have altered the ways in which they
give aid. Once again, a conceptual change brings, as well as reflecting, new kinds of practice

Part II: The Conception of Philosophy

A more complete answer to the original question requires that we reconstruct the concept of
philosophy itself. We should not assume that philosophy is an activity performed exclusively by university
professors who work in philosophy departments. Such a definition excludes, for example, Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke and Hume who never taught in a university. Moreover, it also excludes a lot of
today’s exciting philosophical thinking that occurs outside philosophy departments and academia.
We should conceive of philosophy as a way of thinking rather than as an academic institution. Put
simply, it is critical thought about concepts and ways of thinking. It is thought that involves the analysis or
clarification of concepts and the uncovering of meanings, and which is normally supported by arguments
(Thomson, 2003a, Chapter 1). Perhaps, this seems an overly generous or wide characterization of
philosophy, but narrower definitions end up excluding aspects of what is normally considered as a part of
philosophy. Anyone who asks questions about concepts, seeks clarifications and distinctions, and gives
arguments to support his or her claims, thereby engages in philosophy. Academic philosophers tend to have
certain styles of practicing these arts; they tend to focus on the most abstract questions and often emphasize
rigor as against innovation. However, there is no uniform philosophical method or pre-defined set of
philosophical problems that could make a hard and fast distinction between academic philosophy and
conceptual thinking outside academia.
The main purpose of this broad definition is to contrast philosophy as conceptual inquiry with
empirical investigations that attempt to discover facts. Such empirical investigations form an important
part, but not the whole of, the natural sciences, the social sciences and some of the humanities, such as
history. In contrast, philosophy is concerned with clarifying, expanding and creating concepts and
meanings.
This does not imply that we can separate sharply empirical research from conceptual innovation and
clarification. Such a distinction is, for example, difficult to apply to the historical development of quantum
mechanics and relativity. Furthermore, the invention of new concepts always takes place in the context of a
background of empirical knowledge and of investigative and other practices. Consider the work of the
pioneering economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790). Smith observed the division of labor in
the manufacture of pins in small factories in his native Scotland and applied this idea to international trade.
Locke’s political philosophy did not occur in a vacuum. The ideas that he expressed explicitly and
systematically were becoming part of the political atmosphere of 17th century England, where there had
been a long power struggle between parliament and various kings.
Also, this view of philosophy does not mean that empirical facts are irrelevant to philosophical
thinking. For example, the philosophy of physics would be concerned with questions such as ‘What would
count as an elementary particle?’ To give a satisfactory answer to this kind of question, one needs to know
a lot of physics. Finding answers to questions in the philosophy of economics requires a good knowledge of

144
economics. Furthermore, in any field, formulating new conceptual questions in a way that opens up space
for innovation requires empirical knowledge.
The important overall point that emerges from this discussion is that academic philosophers are not
the only practitioners of the art of critical thinking about concepts. For example, biologists who try to
answer conceptual questions regarding their area of research are practicing philosophy. Educational
theorists and teachers who try to rethink the basic principles of curriculum development are also engaging
in philosophy.
As a consequence of this broad view of philosophy, there are philosophical questions and problems in
all areas of human inquiry and practice. Moreover, almost every person has practiced the art of conceptual
thinking at some time. For instance, many people ask questions like these: ‘What would count as an
improvement in the quality of my life?’ or ‘What sort of work would be good for me? In part, these
questions are philosophical because they seek a definition or clarification of an idea, in addition to
empirical, psychological information about oneself. They request the relevant criteria.
To return to the original question, the expanded conception of philosophy implies that philosophical
thought is bound to have social relevance. Viewed in this way, philosophy is a human activity in much the
same way that telling jokes is. Asking about its social relevance is a little like inquiring about the social
relevance of talking. It is so much a part of the human condition that it hardly can be separated in the
necessary way.

Part III: Theory vs. Practice

Sometimes, questioning the social relevance of philosophy is motivated by a general worry about the
usefulness of theoretical thinking in general. Theory is often opposed to practice, and the term ‘practice’
apparently implies something practical and useful. In this way, theory becomes regarded as something that
is, almost by definition, useless and impractical. According to this view, theory is for ivory towers and
practice is for everyday life. I shall try to meet these concerns, which are based on a method of contrasting
theory and practice that is flawed in at least two respects.
First, theory and practice inform each other because necessarily they are bound to each other. On the
one hand, theory builds on existing practices. We have already noted the examples of Smith and Locke. In
fact, Smith’s idea of the specialization of labor, which he applied to international trade, had many
consequences that he could not have foreseen. For example, it led to the idea of the automated factory and,
eventually, had an impact on computer science (see page XX). In effect, theorizing itself is a practice that
takes place within a context of other practices.
On the other hand, all of our social practices and individual activities are expressions of
understanding. Actions are caused by beliefs and desires, which are framed and limited by our concepts.
Therefore, practice necessarily has an implicit theoretical aspect, and we can improve practice by
improving theory.
Of course, there are also other more direct ways to enhance practice. Not all improvements in practice
require conceptual change. Furthermore, we do not want to fall into the trap of imagining that, by resolving
a problem in thought, we solve it in practice. Theory is only useful insofar as it is actually used, even when
the way it is employed is not predictable.
Second, this way of contrasting theory and practice tends to be traditionalist; it silently tends to
oppose change. This is because the usefulness and practicality of something always assumes an end. ‘X is
useful’ and ‘Y is practical’ are incomplete expressions in that they do not specify any relevant objective.
Something useful is merely a means, a hopefully dispensable instrument to some goal. If we take the aims
implicitly for granted, then this signifies that they are not open for revision or explicit acceptance. This may
not be very problematic, for instance, when we refer to some general instrument, such as a telephone or a
bridge. However, when we refer to an activity as socially useful, we may have to consider important ends
that are not so obvious. For example, does being educated count as an end? By this, I do not mean ‘Is it
socially useful that people are better educated?’ Rather, I mean ‘Does the improvement in people’s
education itself count as an end?’ If it does, then an activity that leads to this result may well be socially
relevant, even if it does produce visible technological changes.
The examples of the use of philosophy that we examined in Part I of this chapter suffer from a defect.
They were cases where conceptual change has resulted in obvious technological and social applications.

145
For instance, we claimed that 19th century logic was necessary for the computer; 17th century philosophy
of science was necessary for the industrial revolution and so on. These examples assume a standard of
usefulness and try to show how philosophy has contributed to social development that accords with this
standard. This gives us a relatively superficial understanding of how philosophy is socially relevant
because it makes a narrow assumption about what the appropriate ends are in order for something to count
as socially relevant. We need to understand better the very idea of something being useful or socially
relevant, and that is a philosophical question.
The original worry that may motivate one to contrast theory and practice can be reformulated to avoid
these problems. The reformulation is: How, in fact, can theory and practice be better integrated? This
question assumes that, ideally, theory and practice should not be divorced, but it implies that, in actuality,
they often are. This reformulation is really a new and more interesting concern, which, when applied to
philosophy, implies a criticism of the discipline as it is often practiced in academia, and but also of those
people who engage in practices but without reflecting philosophically about their meaning and
presuppositions. For example, until quite recently, philosophers have stayed away from management
science, and business managers have religiously tried to avoid the philosophical implications of their
practices. In politics, in the hands of the practioners, theory has tended to be considered as a tool for
gaining votes and packaging pre-formed ideas rather than as a serious enterprise to deepen and refresh our
understanding. And, in the minds of the theoreticians, political practice has tended to be regarded as a
Darwinian struggle between parties, best left to those who do not mind having dirty hands or a soiled
reputation rather than as an activity loaded with presuppositions that need to be articulated.

Social Relevance
What is the social relevance of philosophy? From our brief discussions, we can answer this question,
tentatively, in two ways.

a) Challenging the Question

The first way challenges the question rather than trying to answer it directly. The question has two
major assumptions built into it, which may be disputed.
First, what counts as socially relevant? What are the social ends that we should have in mind?
Without some specification of the appropriate ends, the question is incomplete and cannot be answered. As
we have seen already, we should not merely assume the ends because this amounts to taking accepted
social values for granted. A specification of such ends must be the result of a normative social analysis or
discourse, which is part of the function of philosophy.
Second, the question suggests that philosophy ought to be socially relevant. Perhaps, philosophy
ought be more socially relevant than it is usually today. Nevertheless, even if we assume that this is true,
we still should challenge the question by asking ‘Should philosophy always be socially relevant?’ There are
two reasons for thinking that it ought not, and both relate to the idea that having social relevance as a
primary goal can destroy important facets of the philosophical process.

a) First, the very general goal of philosophy is to improve the conceptual aspects of our understanding
in any field. With this idea in mind, let us review some of our earlier conclusions. We have seen that there
are conceptual aspects to all fields of knowledge, whether they appear socially useful or not. Also, we
noted that dramatic conceptual revolutions have occurred slowly when groups of thinkers have pursued
their work without having specific practical results in mind. The theoretical work undertaken in the 19th
century concerning the foundations of mathematics was not instigated in order to develop the computer.
Galileo did not foresee the industrial revolution; he wanted to understand the mechanics of motion and
overthrow the medieval conception of physical explanation. Furthermore, we have seen also that practice
always presupposes theory, or ways of understanding and concepts. Better theory can lead to better
practice, but not necessarily in ways that are predictable. Given these three points, the anti-answer to the
question ‘What is the social relevance of philosophy?’ is that philosophy should not always aim to be

146
socially relevant because, by so aiming, it may undermine the conditions that allow it to be fertile and
transformational.

b) Second, the philosophical process is sometimes comparable to artistic creation, not in the sense that
it results in conclusions that should be aesthetically appreciated rather than critically assessed, but rather in
the sense that philosophers often struggle with expressing insights that nag them. A similar creative process
occurs in much investigation. Additionally, much philosophical thinking can be likened also to exploration,
motivated by curiosity and love for an area of knowledge. A thinker fascinated by the conceptual
implications of the theory of evolution will explore this area of knowledge without trying to justify it in
terms of its usefulness. Of course, the person’s love for the area may lead him or her to praise it as one of
the most important fields of contemporary research, but that is a different point. The investigation is
motivated mainly by the love of the subject matter and by the desire for greater understanding, and not
primarily by the idea that it will have useful results.
For these reasons, philosophical activity cannot be compared always appropriately to our usual
models of the socially useful. For example, consider the building of a hospital, the search for a new
pharmaceutical drug and various forms of social and political activism. These are exemplary socially useful
actions. Such actions are motivated by goals that are perceived to be useful for society in a way that artistic
creation and exploration are not. Consequently, insofar as the philosophical process is like artistic creation
and exploration, we should not expect it always to follow our typical paradigms of socially useful actions.
However, once again, this point does not negate the claim that philosophy should be more socially
relevant. Nevertheless, it warns us not to assimilate all forms of the philosophical quest to our usual models
of actions that are socially useful.
In summary, the question ‘Is philosophy socially relevant?’ is loaded with some unspecified
conception of social relevance and with the assumption that philosophical thinking should be directed
towards being useful, which may destroy the creative and exploratory facets of such thought. It might be
better to ask ‘How can philosophy be socially relevant?’

b) Answering the Question

We can answer this new question as follows. To counter-act narrow-mindedness, we need to

understand better the idea of being socially useful. Something useful is merely a means to some goal. The
concept of the useful is not especially problematic when the ends in question are obvious. However, when
we refer to something as socially useful, we may have in mind, for example, an idea that promotes
important ends that are not obvious and that require either redefinition or invention.
For example, without doubt, the global community will face increasing natural resource shortages
during this new century and, while part of the solution to this problem will be technical, we will also have
to change our ways of thinking. For instance, economics will have to become more ecological, as well as
more human. Of course, we do not know how this should happen because this is exactly the problem. We
need to discover and invent new ways of thinking economically, and we do not know yet what these are. In
a densely populated world, our conception of design will have to change because more aspects of our
environment will have to be designed. The question ‘How should it change?’ is precisely the problem. Here
is another example. The political changes we have seen happening in the world these last twenty or so years
almost certainly indicate the need for a reformulation of the concept of democracy. For, while regions
affirm their need for more autonomy, at the same time global problems indicate the future need for better
management and more democracy at the international level. Meanwhile, the traditional debate between the
left and the right has lost steam in many parts of the world. All of this points to the need for new political
thought.
These examples illustrate two important general lessons. First, that it is a mistake to place theory and
practice in a dichotomy. Theory and practice, like thought and action, always influence each other.
Furthermore, thought itself is an action, and every practice embodies a theory. Think of Adam Smith.
Practice breeds theory, which breeds new practice. Second, conceptual thought is suited to the solving and
clarifying of what we can call open and basic normative questions, which cannot be answered by empirical
investigation alone. Questions, such as ‘How should we conceive democracy?’ and ‘How should morality
be defined?’ are a request for the redefinition of ends and intrinsic values and, in this way, they are quite
different from technical questions, which seek more efficient means to a given set of ends.

147
148
 15
Dogmas of Logical Positivism

Two general philosophical positions are currently popular in some Western academic circles: logical
positivism and postmodernism. Logical positivism is often attractive to the practitioners of the natural
sciences for its hardheaded scientific and empiricist approach, which eschews metaphysical speculation. In
contrast, according to many academics in the humanities, postmodernism offers a diagnosis of and a
remedy for the overly rationalistic and politically naïve mainstream tradition. Clearly, these two broad
approaches contradict each other and, indeed, they do so to such an extent that the sciences and the
humanities sometimes seem to be unable to speak to each other in mutually understandable terms.
However, both approaches are problematic, and the dichotomy between them can prevent us from
understanding where the humanities and sciences converge.
It is for these reasons that in the next two chapters, we shall examine critically both positions in the
hope that common ground can emerge. Let me hasten to add that not all scientists are logical positivists,
and not all academics in the humanities accept post-modernism. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that this
dichotomy is part of our intellectual culture.

Logical Positivism
In both the natural and social sciences, logical positivism still has wide appeal. On the one hand, some
people assume that being scientific requires it. On the other hand, many academics scornfully reject
positivism, but few can explain what is really wrong with it. Often, we hear vague slogans, such as that
logical positivism is too rigid, or that it excludes the human factor. We need a better diagnosis: what is
wrong with logical positivism? And, why should this matter to scientists?
For many philosophers, by default, Quine’s Two Dogmas of Empiricism has defined an important
reply to these questions. However, Quine’s criticisms have not gained much currency outside of academic
philosophy, and they transport us to the exotic lands of the indeterminacy of translation, ontological
relativity and eliminativism. Moreover, Quine is a radical empiricist, and I shall argue that, for this reason,
he does not articulate the fundamental flaws of logical positivism. His criticisms are more like those of an
insider trying to refine the doctrine. However, first, let us address the more pressing point: What is wrong
with logical positivism? We need a new answer for the post-Quinean era.

The Central Thesis

Logical positivism is a visionary philosophical movement that developed in Vienna and Germany
prior to the Second World War with the aim of making philosophy more scientific and less speculative. The
essence of logical positivism is the thesis that all meaningful statements are either analytic tautologies or

149
else they are empirical sentences, which derive their meaning from the experiences or observations that
would confirm or disconfirm them.
This central thesis permits positivists to claim to have destroyed metaphysical speculation, but to have
explained science and mathematics. Mathematics, like logic, consists of tautological analytic statements,
and science is composed of empirical statements based on sense experience. In contrast, the putative
sentences offered in metaphysics do not fit into either of these two categories and, therefore, they are
meaningless. In consequence, according to the positivist, there is no need to debate such metaphysics
because there is nothing really to discuss.
It is this potentially powerful tool, the dichotomy ‘tautology or observational,’ that makes logical
positivism worth refuting, and so, we shall concentrate on that. The logical positivists had problems
specifying exactly how the meaning of empirical sentences is tied to their observational conditions or to
verification. However, we do not need to examine these technical difficulties here. Instead, we will
examine critically the basic thesis of logical positivism that all meaningful statements are either analytic or
empirical. We shall try to dissolve this dichotomy.
In this chapter, I shall contend that two of the dogmas of logical positivism are as follows. First, there
is the thesis that all analytic claims are tautologies. I shall argue that this claim under-describes the
potential of analytic truths to give us knowledge of the world and, for this reason, it is false. Second, there
is the thesis that the meaning of empirical claims depends on concept-neutral sense experience. I shall
maintain that this is an unsustainable conception of perception.
These two objections to logical positivism are not new but, in the third section, I shall try to add a
more original twist to them by suggesting that they have a similar root, which is the thesis of extensionality.
This thesis is the claim that all true sentences are extensional. The expression ‘extensional’ was explained
in chapters 3 and 4. The thesis of extensionality affirms that intensional or non-extensional statements
cannot be true. As we saw in earlier chapters, this thesis is important because, whereas the theories of the
natural sciences are extensional, those of the social and psychological sciences appear to be intensional.
Thus, the thesis of extensionality implies that the world is completely described by the true theories of the
natural sciences. I have placed my very brief comments on Quine in an appendix to the chapter because
they may not be of interest to all readers.

The First Dogma

The first dogma of logical positivism is that all analytic truths are merely tautologies. An analytic
claim is one that is true or false solely by virtue of the meaning of the terms involved. A tautology is a
statement that can never yield new information about the world. The positivists’ thesis that all analytic
claims are tautologies serves to dispense with metaphysics. Since a metaphysical statement is not empirical,
then it must be either a tautology or else meaningless. Because tautologies do not yield any information
about how the world is, metaphysics becomes either trivial or meaningless.
In opposition to this, I shall argue that analytic claims are not necessarily tautologies. First, as a
preliminary point, note that analytic truths certainly seem to provide knowledge. For example, the claim
‘the axis of the fourth dimension must lie at right angles to the axes of the other three dimensions’ is an
analytic truth, but also it can function as a source of illumination for someone who has never conceived of
the possibility of a fourth dimension. Similarly, Gödel’s theorems and Cantor’s diagonal proof in
mathematics count as analytic truths and, yet they can hardly be called tautologies. Philosophy aims to be
full of such rich and illuminating analytic truths that yield insights in fields as diverse as morals, aesthetics,
politics and education. Go to almost any interesting philosophy book, and you will find statements that are
not empirical, but are not tautologies either. This simple point seems to negate the positivist claim that
analytic truths are necessarily tautologies in any sense that denies or deadens metaphysics.
However, these considerations do not show that analytic truths can provide new knowledge of the
world. The positivist argues that the truth or falsity of an analytic statement is guaranteed solely by the
meanings of the words involved and, therefore, they do not provide knowledge of empirical facts. The
argument is as follows:

Argument A

150
 l) Analytic truths are true solely by virtue of the meanings of their constituent words.
m) Statements that are true solely by virtue of the meanings of words cannot give us knowledge of
facts.
n) Therefore, analytic claims cannot provide knowledge of facts

I shall contend that the second premise of this argument is false; knowledge of meanings can provide
knowledge of empirical facts. Consider the trivial claim ‘all brothers are males.’ It gives us important
information about brothers, even though all English speakers already have this knowledge. To see this,
consider the extreme case of a meaning dullard or dunce, who is not aware of this analytic truth. Such a
person discovers something new about brothers (or the world) by learning the analytic truth. We can extend
this example because we are all meaning dullards to some extent. It is never the case that we know
everything there is to learn about the meaning of words. This is why the uncovering of meaning can
illuminate and, in this way, analytic truths can give us knowledge of the world. For example, any detailed
examination of the nature of work will certainly require empirical socio-economic knowledge of how
people work, what they do etc; however, it will also involve an understanding of the concept of work,
which may change one’s conception of what work is and, thus, provide one with new knowledge of the
world.
We can put the point more positively: our knowledge of meanings and our knowledge of the world are
in constant interaction and are interdependent and, thus, cannot be separated in the way that logical
positivism requires in order to sustain the thesis that all analytic claims are tautologies.
To extend this point even further, we need to examine the crucial phrases ‘knowledge of the world’
and ‘knowledge about what exists.’ What do they mean? These phrases can be employed in at least two
ways.

7. First, there is conditional information about what exists, such as ‘if anything is a brother then it is a
male,’ and ‘if anything is a zebra, then it is an animal.’ Analytic claims can provide this kind of
conditional information concerning what exists.
8. Second, there is knowledge of the form ‘X exists.’ Here, the positivist thesis is on stronger ground
because, as Hume and Kant claimed, that there are no analytic truths of the form ‘X exists.’

However, this second point does not mean that analytic truths cannot provide knowledge of the world
unless one also assumes that all empirical truths have the form ‘X exists.’ We cannot separate knowledge
of facts and knowledge of meanings because the first always relies on the second. The first defines what the
relevant X is that may be said to exist or not. Without knowledge of the meaning of ‘zebra,’ we could not
have the empirical knowledge that zebras exist.
To summarize, my argument against the thesis that analytic truths are tautologies is as follows:

Argument B

1) All analytic truths give us knowledge of meanings

2) Knowledge of meanings can give us knowledge of the world
3) No tautology gives us knowledge of the world
4) Therefore, not all analytic truths are tautologies.

In order to further support the contentious second premise, let us return to the distinction between the
knowledge of meaning and of fact inherent in this first dogma. We require a prognosis. In brief, my
diagnosis is that the logical positivist assumes that facts must be definable extensionally. Facts always
come in extensional packets. Given that any fact must be extensionally defined, knowledge of meanings
can only furnish re-descriptions of a fact. Such knowledge can provide only new descriptions of a fact that
is already known; it cannot provide the original knowledge of the fact, or new information of any other
fact. In other words, from the assumption about facts, the positivist concludes that analytic truths do not
give us new knowledge of the world. On this basis, he or she asserts that the insights that analytic truths can
give rise to do not constitute new knowledge of the world. In other words, such insights only shed new light
on old information by revealing or making explicit the meaning of words.
This view requires a hard and fast distinction between knowledge of meanings and knowledge of
facts, which is manifest as a separation between

151
 a) New descriptions of old information (or already known facts),
b) New information about the world (knowledge of new facts).

In summary, the first dogma relies on the assumption that facts must be extensionally defined because
this permits a hard and fast distinction between a) and b) and, hence, the thesis that analytic claims can
provide a) but never b). In effect, the positivist theory is that there is a hard and fast distinction between
knowledge of meanings and knowledge of empirical facts, and the assumption behind this is that all facts
must be defined in extensional terms. In other words, it depends on the thesis of extensionality.
In contrast, I am claiming that a) and b) cannot be sharply separated because ‘A knows that...’ like ‘A
believes that…’ forms a non-extensional context. If I know that p and p implies q, then this does not imply
that I know that q. Let us suppose that I do not know that q. When I subsequently learn that q, does it count
as new information about the world or as a new description of the old information (i.e. p)?
Note that the thesis that a) and b) cannot be sharply separated is not the same as claiming that the
distinction between meanings and facts is not sharp. The issue at hand is whether we can gain new
knowledge of the world by having linguistic knowledge. The argument in favor of the claim that we can do
so is that knowledge of meanings can provide new knowledge of the world. Whether we can separate
meanings and facts sharply is a distinct issue.

The Second Dogma

The second dogma of logical positivism is the thesis that all empirical statements can be reduced to
sentences about sensory experience. The heart of the issue is how this second thesis functions to dispense
with all metaphysics. This, we shall claim, is the relevant conception of sense experience itself.
The critical points we shall examine are not restricted to logical positivist theories that are
phenomenalist i.e. to the claim that we can perceive directly only our own experiences or ideas. They also
apply to logical positivist theories that are realist i.e. that affirm that we can perceive material objects
directly. This is because the critical points concern primarily the content of perceptual experience rather
than its object. Realists distinguish between the content and the object of experience. The first characterizes
how one perceives or the content of one’s perception, and the second, what one perceives i.e. the object
perceived. Phenomenalists, who argue that we can perceive directly only our own ideas, collapse this
distinction by arguing that the content of the experience is some sense data or set of ideas that is also the
object of experience. In short, the debate between the realist and phenomenalist is irrelevant to the thesis of
this section.
Basically, the relevant logical positivist or empiricist assumption is that the content of visual
experience consists only of a spatial and temporal array of colored dots that make up shapes of varying
sizes. In other words, the empiricist requires that sense experiences consist in the ideas of primary and
secondary qualities alone or that experience can be described only with predicate terms for primary and
secondary qualities. So, any answer to the question ‘what is the content of your perceiving?’ must be
restricted to extensional descriptions, such as ‘blue colored dot at spatial-temporal position X.’ This is a
way to eliminate richer non-extensional descriptions of experience.
Compare this to a non-eliminativist position of perception. For example, Wittgenstein stresses the
‘seeing as’ nature of sense perception. He points out that it is very rarely the case that we actually see
something as a set of colored shapes or an array of secondary and primary qualities. For example, normally
visual experience consists of seeing a dog as angry, a tree as ancient, and a person as distressed.
In fact, perception is intentional in two ways.

a) First, we see always under a description. In this sense, seeing itself is intentional, and ‘I see that...’
forms an intensional context. In order to characterize faithfully the content of what a person saw, we
must describe the content of his or her experience with the appropriate intensional descriptions.

b) Second, the description of what we see is often itself implicitly intensional. In other words, what we
perceive is usually infused with intentionality or intensional concepts. For example, if I perceive a

152
 person as hopeful, then this description itself is implicitly intensional because it depends on the
intensional concept of hopeful which in turn relies on the intensional verb ‘hopes that.’

To summarize, when I see a person as a person, for instance, intentionality is involved at two levels.
First, there is the intentionality of my seeing, which is marked by the phrase ‘as,’ or by the form ‘I see
that….’ Second, the content of what I see is implicitly intensional because the concept of a person requires
that of intentional states, such as desire and belief. In other words, an accurate description of the content of
my visual perception employs intensional concepts.
The logical positivist view of sense experience negates the intentionality of perception in both of these
senses. By restricting descriptions of the content of perception to statements such as ‘green colored dot at
spatial-temporal position X,’ the logical positivist has placed a restriction on the notion of perception that
denies its intentionality, and, in this way, the second thesis is indeed a dogma.
Of course, this restriction has precisely the consequence that logical positivism wants, namely that it
is not possible to draw any epistemological or meaning-nourishment for anything except the extensionally
framed physical sciences.
This restriction plays an important role in the methodology of the natural sciences. Consider the
following example. One afternoon you see an accident in the street. The police ask you to describe exactly
what you saw and you reply: ‘I saw an ugly man, in a hugely opulent car, maliciously and carelessly crash
into a small defenseless child.’ The police are unhappy with your description, and yet you insist in claiming
that this is a faithful characterization of what you saw.
In contrast, imagine that I have to fill in a chart that divides my visual field of this experience into tiny
segments; I am asked to fill in one of a hundred shades of color for each of the micro-segments. In other
words, suppose that I am not allowed to describe the full intensional description of my visual experience
i.e. to describe my experience as I had it. Instead, I have to restrict myself to a purely extensional
description of the experience, in terms of colored dots. Clearly, this imposed requirement is not faithful to
the nature of my experience as such.
The two descriptions characterize my experience faithfully and accurately in different ways and for
different kinds of purposes. If you want to know my experience as experienced by me, then you need a
fully intentional description of it, which expresses the content of my experience as such. If you want a
minimalist description of my experience that is more likely to enable you to make more reliable inferences
about what happened objectively, then you will require an extensional description of the experience, which
abstracts from my personal interpretation. In its quest for repeatable and controlled experiments, natural
science restricts itself to the second kind of description. In itself, this is not problematic. However, the
additional claim that only extensional statements can be true is problematic and it is not a requirement of
scientific methodology.

The Common Source

We can see now that the two dogmas have something in common. The first requires us to think that
information comes in extensionally definable packets such that we can distinguish sharply between new
knowledge and old information described in new ways. The first dogma requires us to think of information
in extensional terms, so that we can maintain a hard and fast distinction between knowledge of meanings
and of facts.
Similarly, the second dogma requires us to think of sense perception in purely extensional terms. By
placing on the content of perception the restriction that it be described in extensional terms, the logical
positivist ignores the intentionality of perception.
A common source of the two dogmas of logical positivism is the thesis of extensionality, namely the
claim that non-extensional sentences do not characterize reality or experience as it really is.
The fact that the two dogmas have this feature in common is not surprising when we consider what
the two dogmas are. They are the aspects of logical positivism that give it the alleged power to wipe out
metaphysics, without harming the credentials of the natural sciences. Theories of the natural sciences,
mathematics and standard logic consist in purely extensional statements. Through the two dogmas, logical
positivism tries to restrict claims about the world and experience to those that comply to the thesis of
extensionality.

153
Why This Matters
Why do these criticisms of logical positivism matter? First, it matters for the practice of science that
we cannot sharply separate knowledge of meanings and knowledge of facts. For this implies that science
cannot avoid conceptual questions, which concern our knowledge of meanings. Indeed, as we saw in
chapter 15, in all areas of knowledge, progress can be made through conceptual advances. Of course, this
does not diminish in any way the importance of detailed and careful empirical research in the sciences. It
merely means that conceptual questions must also arise in the practice of the natural sciences.
Second, these criticisms matter for understanding the relation between the natural sciences and our
everyday intensional descriptions of ourselves as persons. By embracing the thesis of extensionality, logical
positivists are committed to the unity of science, and to the claim that the theories and concepts of
psychological and social sciences are reducible to those of the natural sciences (see Chapters 3 and 4). This
way of conceptualizing scientific theories gives the natural sciences a virtual monopoly regarding truth
about the world, a view that we have rejected (see Chapters 3, 4 and 5) and which more recent postmodern
thinkers have also challenged.

154
Appendix: Holistic Empiricism with Underdetermination
The central feature of logical positivism is the thesis that all meaningful statements must be analytic
or tied to observational experience. Whereas Kant tries to show that there is a third option, Quine attempts
to dissolve the distinction. Some of the arguments of this chapter might appear to be very similar to Quine’s
original diagnosis. After all, as we have characterized them, both dogmas concern the failure of the
theory/data distinction, which is part of Quine’s own diagnosis.
In this appendix, we shall very briefly sketch how Quine’s analysis is essentially different from the
one outlined in this chapter. Our first objection to logical positivism is different from Quine’s first dogma.
The reasoning behind the two complaints is quite distinct. Quine argues against a clear-cut analytic-
synthetic distinction on the grounds that the notions of synonymy and meaning cannot be defined clearly,
that is extensionally. Analyticity fails to reach the standards of clarity required by extensionality.
In contrast, in our case, we have argued that the logical positivists have treated the concept of
information as if it were extensional. In other words, the dictum of the triviality of the analytic fails to
recognize the non-extensionality of ‘trivial’ and of ‘information.’ Therefore, our complaint is the opposite
of Quine’s. For him, the sin is not living up to extensionality. According to this chapter, it is ignoring
intensionality. What Quine takes as a virtue - the elimination of the non-extensional, we have taken as a
vice - the failure to recognize intensionality.
Furthermore, for Quine, the two dogmas amount to the same thing: the indeterminacy of meaning. He
argues that, because of indeterminacy of meaning, we cannot draw an analytic/synthetic distinction. And,
because of indeterminacy of meaning, the reduction of scientific theories to statements about sense data is
impossible, which is the second dogma. In short, Quine’s argument against both dogmas is based on the
indeterminacy of meaning.
In sharp contrast, according to our diagnosis, the two dogmas share a common root, namely the thesis
of extensionality, which Quine accepts. In other words, we have argued that logical positivism is mistaken
in its reliance on the thesis of extensionality and this argument could be extended to Quine’s own views.
As a result of this, there is a major difference between the two arguments against positivism.
According to the picture we have painted, Quine’s position is very similar to the traditional empiricist
program, despite his criticisms of it. Like logical positivism, Quine’s view is extensionalist. He thinks that
intensional concepts (or concepts of intentionality) should be eliminated from our theories of the world.
In other words, although Quine rejects reductionism, he embraces eliminativism in order to preserve the
thesis of extensionality (see the appendix to Chapter 4). In this, he is still very much an empiricist, albeit
one who recognizes indeterminacy.
Our aim in this chapter was not to supply a critical evaluation of Quine’s views, but rather to provide
an alternative criticism of logical positivism. Therefore, this brief sketch will have to suffice.

155
 16
Postmodernism

In European history and philosophy, the modern era is the phase after the medieval age. It covers the
period from around 1600, when modern science first developed, until the twentieth century. (However, in
some contexts, the modern period ends around 1800; most books on modern as opposed to contemporary
philosophy follow this practice). Postmodernism is a movement that criticizes the basic philosophical
assumptions of the modern period in the broader sense. In this chapter, we shall assess some of those
criticisms. In order to do so, we must simplify the discussions and portray postmodern writings as a unified
body of thought, which it is not. In other words, the positions we shall describe are highly selective
oversimplifications. This is the cost of the narrative.

Language
We can arrive at some of the central issues quickly through the philosophy of language by comparing
the work of the German logician Frege with that of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. These two
thinkers had fundamentally different conceptions of linguistic understanding. Postmodern thinkers tend to
reject Frege’s conception and accept some aspects of Saussure’s approach.
Frege introduced, among several others, three important elements into our understanding of language.
First, he claimed that words have meaning only in the context of a sentence, and that the meaning of a word
can be regarded as the contribution it can make to the sense of an indefinite number of sentences. Second,
he distinguished between the sense and reference of expressions. The phrases ‘the only British philosopher
at the College of Wooster’ and ‘the eldest son of June Thomson’ have different meanings, but they refer to
the same individual. Likewise, the words ‘water’ and ‘H2O’ have different senses but the same referent.
Third, Frege suggested that understanding the sense of a sentence can be analyzed in terms of knowing its
truth-conditions, i.e. the relevant facts that would make the sentence true or false.
Saussure’s work Course in General Linguistics was published posthumously in 1916. It lays down the
foundations of semiology, the general science of signs. Semiology has four main characteristics, which
contrast sharply with Frege’s view. First, according to Saussure, all signs consist of both a signifier and the
signified. For example, the signifier would be the word ‘tree’ and the signified would be the concept or idea
‘tree.’ In effect, Saussure asserts that words can refer only to linguistic entities, such as concepts or ideas.
Second, a sign is determined by the differences between it and all the other signs in a whole language or
self-contained system of signs. In other words, signs function reflexively rather than referentially. Third,
any system of signs is both social and structured. Fourth, semiology regards all social phenomena as a
system of signs. In other words, this view extends to, for instance, our clothing, political organizations and
architecture.
In summary, broadly speaking, Frege articulated a sophisticated form of a representational view of
language, according to which words refer to things in the world and true sentences represent facts. Saussure

156
denies such a view; he rejects the notions of reference and truth insofar as these require a representational
relation between language and a non-linguistic reality.

Some Implications

We can regard some of the work of some postmodern thinkers as an attempt to articulate the
implications of Saussure’s views for the theory of knowledge, history and politics, as well as for the natural
and social sciences. For example, as we have seen, concerning language, postmodern thinkers reject the
concepts of a transcendental referent, of absolute truth, and of a single, meaning-independent world. The
thesis that language is a changing holistic system of social signs denies the opposite view that it is a
transparent representation of an objective reality. From these points, many other implications apparently
follow.

1) Regarding knowledge, beliefs cannot be guaranteed as true with certainty through some
correspondence with reality. All knowledge is socially constructed and, as a consequence, the idea of
objectivity is to be abandoned, at least when it is understood in representational terms. For example,
according to Derrida, there is nothing beyond the play of signs through differences. He argues that there is
nothing outside of a text and, for this reason, the world must be considered as a text.

2) Concerning history, postmodern thinkers deny the Enlightenment notion of a universal history, a
single narrative that describes the cultural development of humankind. The French philosopher Leyotard
defines postmodernism as the death of all meta-narratives (Leyotard, 1984). Instead, there is an irreducible
variety of perspectives within changing social systems of signs, and no overarching single perspective that
encompasses and explains this multitude.

3) This point also applies to the interpretation of texts. For example, Derrida rejects logocentricism,
the claim that interpretation of a text will tend to converge on a single reading or meaning of a text that
simply waits to be discovered. Derrida tries to undermine logocentricism through deconstruction, the
process of reading a text in a way that involves highlighting those aspects of it that contradict its dominant
readings. Deconstruction involves carefully picking out the blind spots of a text that reveal its shadow texts
or subtexts, which dislocate its dominant reading by undoing the oppositional hierarchies that it depends
on.

4) In a similar vein, we should eschew all grand political theories, such as Marxism, conservatism,
and liberalism, which attempt logocentric interpretations of political activity. In their place, the French
thinker Foucault documents how power relations function in particular historical contexts (Foucault, XXX).
For example, he examines how claims to knowledge reveal the centralizing power structures in a society
and how different forms of inquiry function as mechanisms for exercising power. Other writers have
extended this approach in order to reveal how social practices oppress and marginalize minority groups.
This view can be extended to value claims generally, especially when they are meant to be objective
normative claims.

5) Concerning the sciences, postmodern thinkers reject both the naturalist and realist idea of real
essences in the natural world and the allied notion of human nature; science does not give us knowledge of
how the world really is beyond the signs of the sciences. In that sense, it is one perspective among many.

6) The concept of a human being does not refer to individuals who exist independently of a social
system of signs. In this way, postmodernism attempts to provide a radical antidote to the absolute Cartesian
notion of the self and to the Enlightenment idea of the autonomous individual. In short, the notion of the
self is also a social construct, and so the meaning of signs does not depend on independent subjects. This is
why Foucault says: ‘Man is an invention of recent date. And perhaps one nearing its end.’ Likewise,
Derrida claims that there is no self-identical concept of the self, which would amount to a transcendental
signified. As in structuralism, ‘the self’ is a sign within a system of signs.

157
 In general, postmodern thinkers regard with suspicion general theories and any claims to universal
truth, and instead emphasize the historical nature of particular claims and their changing relation to the
social context.

Some Comparisons

This rushed catalogue is meant to give the reader the flavor of postmodern thought. However, it
should be stressed that postmodernism is a general movement and style of thinking, and certainly not a
school of philosophy. Despite the haste, we are already in a position to appreciate some of the major
differences between postmodern philosophy and the traditional scientific worldview embraced by some
analytic philosophers and epitomized by logical positivism. Needless to say, this contrast must be sketched
with broad bush strokes; it will involve many oversimplifications. I shall list the theses that postmodern
thinkers regard as the basic and mistaken assumptions of much traditional modern philosophy.

1) The traditional view tends to accept a representational view of linguistic meaning and cognitive mental
states: words can refer to items in the world and true sentences represent facts. Furthermore, cognitive
mental states, such as beliefs and perceptions, are also true insofar as they accurately represent the world.
Meaning should be explained in terms of truth-conditions, which ultimately require a realist conception of
truth.

2) The traditional view tends to accept a realist ontology according to which the world really consists either
of objects and their properties, or else of events, both of which exist or occur independently of our
conception of them. This realism is often coupled with the claim that, in nature, objects are divided into
different natural kinds, such as species and the physical elements, each of which has an essential nature.

3) Sometimes, the traditional view also is linked to the project of naturalism, according to which social,
moral, semantic and psychological concepts must be explained in causal and naturalistic terms, which
accord with the metaphysical commitments of the natural sciences. This project is often assumed to require
either a reductionist or eliminativist strategy (but for arguments that it does not require this, see Chapters 3,
4 and 5).

4) Part of the traditional view is a generally empiricist epistemology according to which meaning is
ultimately derived from our sense experience of the world and, because of this, theories should be subject
to empirical or observational tests in order to be regarded as warranted.

5) A single universal theory: the traditional view is often portrayed as including the idea of the unity of
science. All true sentences are scientific in the sense of being extensional or referentially transparent.
Therefore, different true scientific theories about the same domains can be inter-substituted. Because of this
and because science aims for general unifying theories, at the limit, there must be one single true scientific
theory of the world, which contains all truths.

6) Rationality: the modern view implies a single, universally applicable conception of rationality that is
usually economic or utilitarian concerning practice, and empiricist and realist concerning knowledge. This
conception underwrites traditional political theories, and it is used to oppress minority groups, judge alien
cultures and discount more radical theories.

Without Reference to the World

Is it justifiable to call a natural object, such as a tree, a transcendental signified? We might expect
such a label to be applied to God, or to Kant’s notion of noumena, or to the concept of absolute reality, but
how does it apply to a common tree? Saussure claims that the word ‘tree’ signifies only the idea ‘tree.’ It
refers to a concept and not to an extra-linguistic item because language is a system of signs that we cannot

158
break out of. Indeed, there is nothing beyond such a system to breakthrough to. The very thought that there
is something beyond remains as a part of a system of signs.
Let us examine some arguments for the view that words cannot refer to extra-linguistic things. The
general idea can be expressed as follows. Necessarily, we encounter the world through language, and
language consists of a whole network of concepts that are socially constructed. Had our interests,
perceptual systems and history been different, we might have quite different concepts. Our concepts are
both social and contingent. Therefore, it is a mistake to suggest that the natural world should correspond to
those concepts.
This line of reasoning can be regarded as the first step in a process that leads to the conclusion that the
meaningfulness of language cannot be explained in terms of word-world relations and, hence, to the claim
that language is a self-contained system of signs. This first step needs to be examined with care.

Argument A

1. To refer to any object X requires some concept F by means of which X is identified as an F.

2. All concepts are socially constructed.
3. If all Xs must be referred to as some F and if all Fs are socially constructed, then all Xs are also
socially constructed (because the idea of an X independent of all Fs is vacuous).
4. Therefore, X is socially constructed.

In other words, all reference is relative to some predicate or concept, and all concepts or predicates are
socially constructed. Therefore, the claim that reality consists of things that we can refer to and that, at the
same time, are independent of us and of our social concepts is a contradiction. We must choose. On the one
hand, if we can refer to objects, then they are social constructions and not extra-linguistic items. On the
other hand, if objects are extra-linguistic, then we cannot refer to them and, in this way, it is fair to call
them, or the idea of them, a transcendental signified.
There is more to come. There was another argument implicit in the original line of reasoning.

Argument B

1. Our concepts indicate the ways in which we classify

2. Necessarily, the ways we classify depend on contingent and varying cultural and historical factors
3. Necessarily, the world itself does not depend at all on such factors
4. If X corresponds to Y, then it cannot be the case that X varies in ways that Y cannot.
5. Therefore, our concepts do not correspond to the world

Let us remind ourselves of the overall significance of these arguments. If language is a self-contained
system of signs, then meaning does not consist of the relations of language to a non-linguistic world.
Therefore, meaning cannot be understood in terms of truth and reference. From here, it is a relatively short
step to some more dramatic conclusions. For example, the project of scientific naturalism becomes based
on a misconception. The idea of a single true unifying scientific theory should be replaced by the concept
of multiple narratives, which tell stories from different perspectives and which cannot be assessed as true or
false independent of those perspectives. Consequently, the idea of universal moral truth becomes at least
suspect.

Both Objective and Relative

To make my task easier, I would like to give a general argument against the lines of reasoning
mentioned above, before turning to the specifics of arguments A and B.
Common sense tells us that trees really exist. This means that they would exist even if we did not and,
thus, they would exist even if we had no concept of a tree. In this sense, trees are natural objects, which are
different from social objects, such as money and games, which do depend for their existence on us and on
our activities as money users and game players.

159
 Can this element of common sense be retained in the face of the postmodern line of reasoning? I think
that it can. Consider the following contrast.

a) The meaning of the judgment ‘trees exist’ depends on and, thus is relative to, our system of
concepts or signs, which in turn depend on social and cultural factors.

b) ‘Trees exist’ is a true judgment. If a judgment is true or false, then this means that it is true or
false independently of what people accept, think or want with regard to its truth and falsity.

Both of these claims appear to be plausible. However, are they compatible? Thesis b) states that the
truth or falsity of a judgment does not depend on what we believe and want with regard to its truth or
falsity. It tries to express the adage that thinking does not make it so. In this sense, but only in this sense,
we may conclude that the notions of truth and falsity are objective. In contrast, thesis a) states that the
meaning of a judgment is not absolute because it depends on various cultural and social factors.
Thesis a) does not entail the denial of b). In other words, we cannot argue that, because meaning is not
absolute, truth is not objective. Or, put differently, the fact that meaning is relative does not imply that truth
claims are subjective. When we assert that the statement ‘p’ is true, it is implicit that the sentence ‘p’ is part
of a language or conceptual scheme. We might express this conditionality as follows: ‘As part of language
L or conceptual scheme S, ‘p’ is true’ (for a qualification of this point, see below). Nevertheless, the
predicate ‘is true’ retains the characteristic such that if a sentence is true, then it is so independently of what
anyone thinks or wants with respect to its truth. This feature permits the possibility that one might be
mistaken.

The Arguments

In view of this, let us now consider the arguments. In argument A, premises 1 and 2 appear relatively
plausible, though both are contended. However, premise 3 looks suspicious (3. If all Xs must be referred to
as some F and if all Fs are socially constructed, then all Xs are also socially constructed). In effect, this
premise does not distinguish theses a) and b) above. Concepts or meanings are social, but this does not
imply that statements such as ‘trees exist’ and ‘trees are composed of wood’ cannot be true in the sense
explained by thesis b). The concept of a tree is socially constructed, but this does not mean that trees are.
Concerning argument B, we could accept the conclusion and argue that this does not threaten a
broadly realist conception of truth, as outlined by thesis b). A realist theory of truth does not require a
correspondence theory of meaning. In other words, classification is a human activity that depends on
cultural factors; but this does not mean that we cannot misclassify. We can still make mistakes when we
classify. Classificatory boxes or concepts are social and depend on us. Nevertheless, given the categories,
which items go in which box does not.

Some Other Points

The above distinctions are often obscured in the literature by the introduction of very interesting but
ultimately irrelevant points. For instance, it is sometimes claimed that truth is not absolute and that we do
not have a God’s eye view on the world. Our judgments are selective and depend on our interests.
However, such points emphasize claim a) above and do not undermine thesis b). To make objectively true
claims is not necessary to have an absolute, God’s eye view.
Another example is that many postmodern writers deny the so-called picture theory of meaning and
its ally the correspondence theory of truth. These theories claim that a sentence is meaningful because it is
like a picture of the world, and that a sentence represents the world truly if and only if what the sentence
says corresponds to the facts. However, the denial of these theories is ultimately not relevant to the issues at
hand because the assertion of thesis b) does not depend on either a picture theory of meaning or a
correspondence theory of truth.
Another interesting, but ultimately irrelevant point, is the postmodern claim that modern thinkers are
often guilty of a kind of truth fetishism. The complaint is that modern thinkers almost always ask ‘Is this
statement or theory true?’ thereby ignoring other aspects of the views under consideration. For example, we

160
might ask of a view or judgment whether it is illuminating, liberating, misleading, important, relevant,
interesting, or fruitful, without directly focusing on the question ‘Is it true?’ In other words, there are other
dimensions of evaluation which may not be reducible to truth and falsity. Furthermore, we might try to gain
understanding by examining a view without passing judgment on it at all. However, even if some modern
thinkers are guilty of obsession with truth and falsity, this does not negate the characteristic of ‘is true’ and
‘is false’ specified by thesis b).

Natural and Social Objects

There is a second general distinction, which we need to draw for the sake of clarity. The first
concerned statements, and their meaning and truth; the second relates to the existence of objects. Consider
the following contrast.

c) Trees exist independently of we humans.

d) Money does not exist independently of we humans.

(I shall ignore irrelevant complications such as the existence of plantations and the possibility of Martian
money). The above is a minimal way to distinguish between natural and social objects. It is minimal
because, for instance, it does not require the thesis that natural objects have a real essence but only that they
have a real existence independent of us. The important question is whether thesis a) above entails the denial
of thesis c). Prima facie, it appears that it does not because whereas a) is about meaning and its dependence
on our cultural practices, thesis c) concerns the existence of trees and human beings.

An Either …Or…?
Let us set the postmodern position in a broader context by contrasting it with eliminativist
materialism, which is in some respects the heir and successor to logical positivism and is the polar opposite
of postmodern thought (see Chapter 4). Eliminativism is the claim that only scientific or extensional
statements can be true in the strict realist sense of the term. In other words, all intensional statements are
false, even though they can be instrumentally useful. This view banishes meaning and sense from the
world, and in this manner, it implies that there are no signs, beyond what can be defined extensionally. In
contrast, by arguing that there is nothing beyond self-contained systems of signs, postmodernism banishes
reference to a non-linguistic world. Put simply, one theory discards sense, and the other, reference.
Let us link this to the previous chapter. Postmodern thinkers deny extra-linguistic reference by
arguing that there is nothing except systems of signs and their intensional meanings. Therefore, there are no
extensionally individuated facts in virtue of which sentences can be true (‘truth’ has to be defined in some
other way). This implies that postmodernism rejects the concept of extensional truths, though no
postmodern writer actually expresses the point in this way. In sharp contrast, eliminativists argue that there
are no true intensional sentences, where ‘true’ is understood realistically. One theory denies extensionality
and the other intensionality. In effect, the eliminativist view claims that all truths belong to natural science,
and the post-modern one denies that there are any natural scientific truths as traditionally understood.
In this section, I aim to show that there are alternatives to these two opposite views. This will help us
understand some of the claims of the previous section, and also connect logical positivism and
postmodernism.

1) Retaining Sense
The first step in developing an alternative is to argue that there can be true intensional descriptions of
reality, such as ‘Mary wants to know where her brother is.’ Such a claim eliminates eliminativism.
The fundamental motivating premise of eliminativism is there are no intensional items in the world,
such as beliefs, ideas, concepts, meanings, and senses. The natural sciences have no place for such entities,
which cannot be individuated clearly. For this reason, most eliminativists are materialists; they argue that
everything that exists is made of matter. From this premise, eliminativists draw the conclusion that all true

161
statements must be extensional. Whereas the theories of the natural sciences are extensional or referentially
transparent, statements about the meanings of sentences and psychological judgments are not. They are
intensional or referentially opaque (see Chapter 4). The eliminativist argues that all such statements are
false because the world does not contain any intensional items.
This draws a fundamental distinction between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and, on the other,
our everyday psychological descriptions and our normal view of the world. The expressions ‘is true’ and ‘is
false’ should be understood realistically when applied to the extensional theories of the natural sciences.
The world is as a true natural scientific theory describes it. In contrast, intensional statements do describe
the world truly, but they can be more or less useful for making predictions. The expressions ‘is true’ and ‘is
false’ should be understood instrumentally or non-realistically when applied to the intensional statements of
everyday life. Only the natural sciences can be true in the realistic sense of the term; this is why eliminative
materialism is sometimes characterized as ‘scientism.’
In earlier chapters, we argued, against this view (see Chapters 3 and 4). We contended that both
intensional and extensional statements can be true descriptions of reality. The claim that intensional
statements of the form ‘A believes that p’ can be true does not require the postulation of beliefs as objects
or items. We can accept a materialist ontology that denies the existence of beliefs and other intensional
items without claiming that intensional sentences must be false. Even if a person is composed entirely of
matter, intensional judgments, such as ‘she wants to drink some coffee,’ can be true. In other words, the
denial of dualism does not require eliminativism. Materialism does not have to be eliminativist because
intensional sentences can be true without this requiring us to reify intensional items.
Suppose that everything is composed of matter. In which case, there are no intensional or non-
material items that would be left out by a description of the world couched solely in the extensional terms
of physics. An immensely long extensional description of reality could be complete in the sense of not
omitting any thing or entity. However, these suppositions do not require the additional and more
contentious thesis of extensionality, namely that all true statements are extensional. Psychological
statements can be true even if everything is composed of matter. Thus, even though a complete extensional
description of the universe would not leave out any thing, this does not imply that there are no true
intensional statements. In this sense, the complete physical description would not say everything. In brief,
excluding non-material entities does not require banishing intensional statements.
In conclusion, against eliminativism, we have argued that we can retain the notions of sense or
meaning, so long as we do not reify them or treat them as objects or entities. In other words, intensional
descriptions of linguistic sense and psychological content can be true even in an entirely material universe.
These points do not constitute an argument against eliminativism but they do deprive it of its main
motivating support. They show that science does not require it. Science without scientism is possible.
This thesis of extensionality is an important motivating idea behind much 20th century analytic
philosophy, including Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, logical positivism, psychological reductionism and, more
recently, eliminativist materialism, in addition to many forms of naturalism. In fact, we can trace the
origins of this thesis back to Galileo and Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction. Therefore, it is
understandable that postmodern thinkers should take the thesis of extensionality (or something like it) as a
defining characteristic of modern thought. Nevertheless, it is misleading to do so in the sense that the
natural sciences do not require it, and that many analytic philosophers, such as the later Wittgenstein, have
rejected the thesis of extensionality.

2) Retaining Reference
Now, we must consider the other side, namely the postmodern assertion that the notion of reference to
non-linguistic items must be jettisoned. The key phrase is ‘non-linguistic items.’ In what way are trees
non-linguistic? We have already answered this question by distinguishing between theses a), b) and c)
above. Judgments about the tree can be true or false objectively, that is independently of what we think and
want with regard to their truth. Therefore, ‘trees exist’ can be true and, thus, trees can exist even when there
are no language users to describe them. Indeed, as we know, trees existed long before humans. In these
ways, a tree is a non-linguistic item that can be referred to.
It still remains to show how we can refer to such non-linguistic items. According to postmodern
thought, the doubt arises from the fact that a tree cannot be picked out as a tree independently of meaning.
Furthermore, the idea that we can refer to a tree seems to depend on the claim that the world corresponds to
our concepts, which appears dubious since our concepts depend on many social and historical factors (see
arguments A and B).

162
 We can answer this doubt, first, by appealing again to the distinctions a) and b). Classificatory
concepts are social constructions that depend on us but, given these concepts, their extension is not fixed by
us. Similarly, the meaning of assertions depends on us. However, given those meanings, we are not
responsible for the truth or falsity of those assertions, which do not depend on what we believe or want. In
this sense, assertions can be objectively true or false.
Second, assertions may be objective, but this does not imply that their meaning is absolute. It is not
absolute because it depends on many factors, such as the meaning of other signs and social conditions.
Thus, when we affirm that trees exist, the meaning of the assertion is implicitly qualified. It is a bit like
adding the qualification ‘relative to our conceptual scheme.’ Nevertheless, when one makes such an
existential claim, then it is true or false independently of what anyone thinks and wants with regard to its
truth. The unqualified existential claim is objectively true. As a consequence, it is a mistake to conclude
that what exists depends on our conceptual scheme; such a statement obfuscates the point made in an
earlier paragraph: the concepts depend on us; their extension does not.
Third, earlier we said that assertions are implicitly qualified. This is because, in effect, the
qualification amounts to nothing. There is no relevant contrast to give the qualification any definite sense.
Any speculation about other conceptual schemes will be senseless because any concept that we employ
(even for the purposes of speculation) will be part of our conceptual scheme or system of signs. Otherwise,
we could not employ it. Furthermore, there is no meaning to any speculation concerning what the world is
like independently of any conceptual scheme because any attempt to describe the world must employ
concepts, and any attempt by us to do so must utilize our conceptual scheme. In this way, the qualification
amounts to nothing but a reminder that our thoughts are not absolute.
As a consequence of these points, two conclusions follow.
a) On the one hand, the claim that we can refer to trees does not require that the world itself
miraculously corresponds to our concepts or that the world itself is carved up in exactly the ways
we divide it. Rather it means that, given such and such concepts, we can say what the world is
like independently of us.
b) On the other hand, we cannot conclude that we are trapped in our conceptual scheme unable to
get to the real world on the grounds that we must use our concepts to refer to things. Such a
complaint would be like grumbling that we cannot see real things because the seeing gets in the
way. To refer to non-linguistic items is necessarily to employ language to do so. In short, the
world is independent of language, even though our conception of it is not.

We might summarize our position as follows. At the level of meaning, the concept of a tree is
essentially linguistic and social, but at the level of reference and truth, trees are non-linguistic items. In
other words, we can retain both reference and sense.

Back to Extensionality and Intensionality

Since we earlier characterized eliminativism and postmodernism as the attempts to remove

respectively intensionality and extensionality, we should link the previous points to those two notions. We
can do so as follows.

1) The complex assertion i) “the sentence ‘Garrett has one brother’ means that Garrett has one male
sibling” is an intensional claim. Any attempt to specify what any sentence means by mentioning it
appropriately will result in a non-extensional sentence. Nevertheless, the original sentence that is
mentioned can be extensional. For instance, the sentence ii) ‘Garrett has one brother’ is extensional. We
can substitute for ‘Garrett’ any term that uniquely picks out the same individual and the resulting sentence
remains true.

2) We can use sentence ii) to refer to a non-linguistic item, namely Garrett. Of course, that sentence
has a socially constructed meaning. However, this point does not make ii) non-extensional; rather, it means
that sentence i) is intensional.

3) Earlier we drew an important distinction: at the level of reference and truth, we can refer to trees,
which are non-linguistic items; and, at the level of meaning, the concept of a tree is essentially linguistic

163
and socially constructed. Given points 1) and 2), this division gives rise to the following linguistic
distinction: extensional sentences, such as ii), that refer to things, and intensional meta-sentences such as i),
that specify the meaning of other sentences.

Given this third point, we are now in a position to explain more clearly the difference between thesis
a) and b). Simply, whereas the notions of ‘is true’ and ‘is false’ are extensional, the concept of meaning is
intensional.

Conclusions

We can conclude that rejecting eliminativism does not require accepting postmodernism. In order to
retain meaning-claims, we do not need to abandon reference. Additionally, denying a postmodern view of
language does not require accepting an eliminativist position. In order to retain reference, one does not
have to eliminate intensional meaning claims.
While these points do not demonstrate that eliminativism or postmodernism are mistaken theories,
they do show that there are quite reasonable alternative positions that lie between the two extremes, and
this is an important conclusion for the considerations with which we begun (but see the appendix to
Chapter 4 for an argument against eliminativism).
At the beginning of the previous chapter, we noted that natural scientists often accept some form of
logical positivism, which is an early brand of eliminativism. Additionally, researchers in the humanities
often embrace some aspects of postmodern thought. We have now seen in what ways these two views are
fundamentally opposed to each other. However, we have also seen that there are alternative positions.
On the one side, a social constructivist and coherence conception of meaning does not require
abandoning an extensional and objective notion of ‘is true.’ The claim ‘the concept ‘electron’ is a social
construction’ does not mean that ‘there are electrons’ cannot be realistically true and, thus, does not imply
that electrons are social constructed.
On the other side, we can describe truly humans and animals both intensionally and extensionally.
The natural sciences are committed to provide extensional theories of reality, but true non-scientific,
intensional descriptions of reality are also possible.

Value Judgments
In this chapter we have focused on technical points in the philosophy of language. Let us examine
briefly how these issues are relevant to an important area where eliminativists (and logical positivists) and
postmodern thinkers would agree, namely the nature of value judgments. Both would assert that value
claims cannot be straightforwardly true, albeit for opposite reasons. The eliminativist would argue that
value judgments are not part of the natural sciences, which have a monopoly on truth defined realistically.
In contrast, the postmodern thinker would argue that this realistic conception of truth, especially universal
truth, is part of the modern paradigm that ought to be rejected for the reasons mentioned earlier.
It should not be a surprise that the two theories agree on the conclusion that value claims cannot be
true or false. Although (or because) they are polar opposites, they have much in common, such as the
rejection of the distinctions between sense and reference, and between intensional and extensional
descriptions.
Can value judgments be true or false? I shall indicate briefly how both the eliminativist and
postmodern negative replies to this question are problematic. However, please do not assume that the
postmodern positions expressed here represent what writers such as Foucault and Derrida think. In fact,
their views are more complex and subtle than the oversimplifications that we shall examine. Furthermore,
the considerations that we shall consider are not supposed to be decisive. Nevertheless, both the
postmodern and eliminativist responses that we shall look into do reflect views that are commonly voiced.

a) Scientific Eliminativism
The eliminativist, like the earlier logical positivist, will argue that evaluative claims cannot be true or
false because they do not satisfy the condition of extensionality of science. Reality is characterized

164
completely by true scientific theories. Basically, it consists of the sub-atomic particles postulated by
physics, and such a characterization of the world excludes the possibility of evaluative claims being true or
false. On this basis, eliminativists and logical positivists tend to argue that value claims are either
expressions of feeling, or imperatival prescriptions, neither of which can be true or false. In this way, such
claims are subjective.
We have already criticized this line of argument, which assumes the thesis of extensionality, that all
true statements are extensional (see the appendix to Chapter 4). In opposition to this assumption, we argued
that, for instance, we can describe human beings in both the intensional and extensional modes.
To this point, we may add the following. Evaluating and describing need not be mutually exclusive.
When we use terms such as ‘harmful,’ ’enchanting,’ and ‘dirty,’ we describe and evaluate at the same
time. Such descriptions can present us with non-conclusive reasons for action, which guide choice. Once
they are properly qualified, they are non-extensional descriptions of reality, which can be true or false.
The eliminativist will reply that it only seems that such words describe and evaluate at the same time.
In fact, their meaning consists of two logically distinct elements: a descriptive and evaluative component.
The two constituents are always logically separable. Given this, the eliminativist can insist that the
descriptive element is extensional and the evaluative is neither true nor false. In other words, describing
reality is the exclusive province of the value-neutral natural sciences, and value claims are merely
subjective expressions of feeling or command-like imperatives.
This reply is inadequate. Words, such as ‘harmful,’ and ‘dirty,’ cannot be split into two logically
separable parts. This is because the so-called descriptive element cannot be understood without knowing
the point of the classification that it is supposed to make, and this point cannot be grasped without
understanding the so-called evaluative component. Consider the predicate ‘is dirty.’ It cannot be divided
into two logically separate parts, the neutral descriptive (ND) and the negative evaluative part (NE). Such a
separation is impossible because the classification supposedly effected by ND cannot be understood
without grasping the point of such a classification, and this requires knowing NE. In other words,
understanding ND requires knowing NE (McNaughton, 1988). Consequently, the predicate ‘is dirty’ does
not have two logically distinct components. Thus, we can evaluate by describing, and evaluative claims can
be true and false.

b) Postmodern Theory

In contrast, and in line with earlier clarifications, postmodern theorists tend to maintain that value
claims cannot be true or false because they are not absolute. Having rejected the notion of absolute realistic
truth, they will argue that such a concept is also inappropriate for ethical and other evaluative claims. Let us
review some of these arguments.
First, postmodern thinkers sometimes point out that value claims are not absolute because their
meanings depend on social factors or on a system of signs. However, in reply to this, we have already seen
that arguments of this form do not warrant the conclusion that judgments cannot be true or false; this is
because we should distinguish theses a) and b) mentioned earlier or, in other words, meaning and truth.
Second, sometimes it is argued that value judgments are relative to contextual factors and, therefore,
there are no universal evaluative truths. However, in answer to this point, judgments can be true or false
relative to specific circumstances. For example, something harmful to one person might not be to another.
Sugar harms the diabetic and, in this sense, judgments concerning what is harmful are not absolute.
Nevertheless, the evaluative claim that sugar harms a particular person may be true when suitably qualified.
The concept ‘universally applicable’ should not be confused with that of truth-value. Value claims can be
true or false non-universally, that is when they are appropriately qualified.
This last point is also important: a universal value claim might be very restricted in its scope of
application; it can apply to a specific group of people in a specific set of circumstances because it is
qualified. For example, the claim ‘given X and given circumstances Y, then one ought to do A’ is universal
in that it applies to anyone meeting those conditions, but it is highly specific and not general. In other
words, the concept ‘universally applicable’ should not be confused with that of true without qualification.
Finally, the claim that value judgments can be true does not depend on their being universally
accepted or believed. Universal acceptance is not a condition for truth (see thesis b). Thus, the fact that a
value judgment is not universally accepted is not sufficient to show that it is not true. Truth does not require
agreement.

165
 The third and final general point: morality is often a coercive, authoritarian and paternalistic social
institution that involves people exercising power over others for the sake of social control. Moral
judgments are often judgmental.

Conclusion
In conclusion, let us return briefly to the general themes of this chapter. On the one hand, the
eliminative position claims realistic truth exclusively for extensional scientific theories. It rejects the
possibility of intensional truths. On the other hand, postmodernism rejects the realist conception of truth
wholesale. It also denies the possibility of extensional truths. As a consequence, both discard the idea that
value judgments can be true and false, subject to qualifications. In contrast to both positions, once we
accept the idea that intensional statements can be true in addition to extensional ones, this opens the
possibility that value judgments can be true and false in much the same way. Disallowing a conception of
truth that is exclusive to the extensional sciences does not require rejecting the notion of truth per se.

166
 17
Conclusions

The reader probably noticed that there are recently emerging general conceptual trends which are
common to several fields, and which in conclusion I shall briefly list. In drawing up this list, I shall use
very general and rather vague characterizations, and I shall resist the temptation to make evaluative
comments.

Some Emerging Trends

1) Holism
We find in quantum physics, ecological biology, and general systems theory a tendency to stress a holistic
approach, according to which the behavior of a whole system depends essentially on that of the parts or
elements, and vice versa. Thus, the part cannot be defined in isolation but can be characterized adequately
only in terms of its contribution to the behavior of the whole system. A similar idea is also important in
hermeneutics, the art of interpretation, and in semiology, the science of signs, both of which have
influenced the social sciences and postmodern thought. In hermeneutics, the interpretation of any part of a
text depends on the interpretation of the whole and vice versa. In semiotics, the meaning of any sign
depends on a whole system of signs of which it is a part. This view is reflected increasingly in other
disciplines. In general, the more holistic an approach is the more it will stress relationships and
interdependence as opposed to the nature of independent entities. Atomism is out.

2) Organizational Structures
In many of the sciences, there have been recent conceptual breakthroughs through the application of
computer modeling and cybernetics, the science of feedback mechanisms. For instance, in psychology, we
have artificial intelligence and, in biology, the study of artificial life. This general development has bred the
concept of self-organizing or self-regulating systems, which has interesting applications in biology,
economics and the social sciences generally. Self-organization is the ability of a system to develop its own
structures. The wide-ranging applicability of this concept seems to vindicate the adage that the whole is
more than the sum of the parts and, thereby, reinforces the holism mentioned earlier. This brings us to the
main underlying point: there is an increasing awareness in many different fields of the importance of
organization and structure for understanding. A whole is more than the sum of its parts when it is
appropriately organized. While this is an old idea that goes back at least to Aristotle’s form/matter
distinction, it has had increasing inter-disciplinary importance in recent years.

3) Complex Dynamical Systems

The idea of self-regulating systems also highlights the tendency in several areas of knowledge to be
concerned with the dynamic as opposed to the static. This has led to the development of chaos theory and
the theory of system dynamics in physics, which is now being applied in many disciplines, such as
economics and neurology. Systems that change their behavior over time, in sometimes apparently

167
unpredictable ways, cannot be represented mathematically with linear equations and graphically with
straight lines. Changing patterns and relationships require non-linear equations and curves. To put the point
in a different way, they involve reflexivity. When we apply the function ‘times x’ reflexively to itself, we
obtain the non-linear curved relationship ‘times x2.’ When we reflexively feed the output of a system back
into a system in the appropriate way, we can obtain a feedback mechanism. When we provide a market
with predictions as its own behavior, then it will tend to satisfy those predictions at an accelerated rate.
Reflexivity is an important element of dynamic systems that change at non-linear rates. Chaos theory
emerges through a nonlinear and reflexive process, called iteration, in which specific functions operate
repeatedly on themselves.

4) The Need for Context

In the social sciences and humanities, there is an increasing tendency to challenge the concept of universal
timeless truths that are divorced from the context of particular circumstances. This change is in part due to
the influence of postmodern and feminist thought. This emphasis on contextualized thinking has had, for
example, an important recent effect on the social sciences, history, cognitive science and theories of
decision-making.

5) From Individualism to the Social

Following on from the previous and also from the first point, there is also an emerging tendency, especially
in the social sciences and humanities, to stress the social, political and historical nature of concepts and
understanding, and to resist various forms of individualism. The idea of the autonomous individual as a
social atom is also on its way out.

6) Against Hierarchies
The ideas of holism and self-adapting systems, and various aspects of postmodern and feminist thought
eschew the concepts of hierarchical relationships and forms of organization that place one group above
another in some sense. This idea has had an important influence on the way we think about business
organization, governance and values more generally. In political terms, the trend away from hierarchical
thinking represents a changing attitude towards authority. The alternative idea of networks provides a
model for non-hierarchical relationships, and the concept of self-adapting systems illustrates how an
organization can exercise control over its environment without the need of a centralized ruler.

7) Towards Metaphor, Narrative and Qualities

Modern science developed around 1600 in part because of the fundamental realization that physical
changes could be represented mathematically. In contrast, there was an increased tendency towards the end
of the 20th century towards the idea that certain changes described in the psychological and social sciences
cannot be represented adequately in mathematical terms. When they are understood in qualitative as
opposed to quantitative terms, the concepts of relationships and patterns suggest the notion of metaphor. By
putting these two points together, we can see why the idea that understanding can be or is essentially
metaphorical has gained more acceptance in the last fifty or so years. In a similar vein, the assumption that,
ideally, understanding should consist in a single unified theory is becoming replaced increasingly by the
idea that understanding can consist in multiple and divergent narratives.

Let me stress again that this incomplete catalogue is meant to highlight informally some general inter-
disciplinary trends in rather vague terms, without endorsing those characterizations. Furthermore, to argue
that these are truly new emerging trends would require a detailed historical study, as would any attempt to
trace their development.

Philosophical Themes
In trying to tackle the issues generated by these trends, there are several common philosophical themes,
some which are as old as philosophy itself.

1) Intensional and extensional descriptions

168
The natural sciences describe the world extensionally. In our everyday lives, we characterize ourselves and
other people non-extensionally or intensionally, as beings that think and feel. Contrary to a major element
of 20th century western philosophy, we have argued that intensional descriptions do not have to be reduced
to extensional ones or even regarded as more basic. We have also argued that intensional descriptions
cannot be eliminated. In this way, we have challenged the scientism that claims a monopoly on truth for the
natural sciences, in particular physics. We also argued that this challenge does not require abandoning a
materialist ontology.
The rise of computer science and systems theory highlights a new but related question: can systems,
such as social organizations, corporations, ecosystems, and computers, be described realistically in
intensional terms? Are they intentional systems? This is an important question because if they can, then
they may have interests that ethically require consideration. This question was important in chapters 5, 9,
11 and 13.

2) Individuals and wholes

Any individual entity can be part of a greater whole and, therefore, the universe seems to consist of parts
within wholes. Furthermore, because we often cannot understand the part without reference to the greater
whole, sometimes the whole seems more real than the part. On the other hand, the reference to individual
people seems to be an ineliminable aspect of our understanding of life. To what extent does holism require
us to alter our conception of the individual person? This question has been important in our discussions of
various chapters (i.e. Chapters 3, 9, 11, and 13).

3) The Model and the Reality it models

In Chapter 2, we argued that economic measurement should be distinguished from the values it measures.
The measurement and the thing measured are distinct. More generally, the map is not the landscape.
Operational definitions in science typically confuse this distinction. This distinction is also easily confused
in systems theory because the term ‘system’ is used to refer to both. This is a significant point not only in
economics but also in the natural and social sciences more generally, as testified by the discussions of
Chapters 5, 7 and 9. This is an important issue because without the distinction, we may fail to appreciate
the limitations and preconditions of a theory that describes reality.

4) Truth and Meaning

Here is a related theme. In several chapters, we have defended the claim that ‘is true’ and ‘is false’ are
objective in the minimal sense that if a sentence is true then it is so independently of what we think or feel
about its truth or falsity. This claim can be taken as a defense of a weak form of realism. On the other hand,
we also stressed how the meanings of the sentences we use to describe reality are not absolute because
meanings are relative to other factors, such as social conditions and context. This thesis can be taken as a
rejection of strong forms of realism. In brief, descriptions can be relative without being subjective

5) Instrumental and non-instrumental value

Instrumental rationality implies that all values can be divided into means and ends, and it identifies
instrumental or derivative value with means and non-instrumental value with ends. We have had occasion
to challenge both of these assumptions. The value of corporations and ecosystems cannot be characterized
in terms of either means or ends, nor even instrumentally or intrinsically.
Moreover, the identification of means and instrumental value, and of ends and non-instrumental value
implies that all intrinsic values must be conceived as goals and all goal-seeking activity as merely
instrumentally valuable. These identifications have disastrous results for understanding the value of
activities and processes such as learning and work (see Chapters 10 and 11).

6) Open-ended rationality
In discussing both legal decision-making and problem solving in design, we have encountered the
phenomena of ‘wicked problems,’ which are characterized by two features. First, they involve open-ended
problems, the solutions to which are not completely determined by any set of rules. They are
underdetermined. Second, at the same time, such problems do admit of better and worse solutions, and it is
possible to make mistakes in attempting to resolve them.

169
 18
Bibliography

Law
Adams, David, Philosophical Problems in the Law, Wadsworth, 1996,
Altman, Andrew, Arguing about the Law, Wadsworth, 1996
Austin, John, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955
(originally1832)
Dworkin, R., ‘Natural Law Revisited,’ University of Florida Law Review 34, 1982, p.165-88 (reprinted
in Smith, 1993
Dworkin, R., Law’s Empire, Belknap, 1986
Finnis, J. Natural Law and Natural Rights, Clarendon Press, 1980
Fuller, L., The Morality of Law, Yale University Press, 1969
Hart, H.L. The Concept of Law, Clarendon Press, 1968
Raz, J., The Authority of Law, Clarendon Press, 1979
Raz, J., The Concept of a Legal System, Clarendon Press, 1980
Simmonds, N.E, Central Issues in Jurisprudence, Sweet and Maxwell, 1986
Smith, Patricia, The Nature and Process of Law, Oxford University Press, 1993
Thomson, On Philosophy, Wadsworth, 2003
Unger, R. M., Knowledge and Politics, Free Press. 1976
Unger, R. M., The Critical Legal Studies Movement, Harvard University Press. 1986
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, 1953

Economics
a) Economists
Becker Gary, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, University of Chicago Press, 1976
Friedman, Milton, ‘The methodology of Positive Economics,’ in Hausman, 1994
Lancaster, Kelvin, Modern Consumer Behavior, Edward Elgar Publishing, 1991
Robbins, Lionel, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, MacMillan, 1969
Robinson Joan, Economic Philosophy, London, 1962

Sharp, Clifford, The Economics of Time, Wiley, 1981

b) Philosophers
Dworkin Gerald, Markets and Morals, Hemisphere, 1977
Dyke, C., The Philosophy of Economics, Prentice Hall, 1981
Hahn, Frank and Hollis, Martin, Philosophy and Economic Theory, Oxford University Press 1969
Hausman, Daniel, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics, Cambridge University Press 1992
Hausman, Daniel, ed., The Philosophy of Economics, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Heine, Paul, The Economic Way of Thinking, MacMillan 1991

170
Posner, Richard, The Economics of Justice, Belknap, 1981
Richardson, Robert, ‘Heuristics and Satisficing,’ in A Companion to Cognitive Science, Blackwell,
1998
Subroto Roy, Philosophy of Economics, Routledge 1989

c) Cost-Benefit Analysis
Kelman, Steven, ‘Cost-Benefit Analysis: an Ethical Critique,’ Regulation, Jan.-Feb., 1981
Lean, Geoffrey, Independent on Sunday, 23rd July 1995, London
Pojman, Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, Wadsworth, 2001
Sagoff, Mark, The Economy of the Earth, Cambridge University Press, 1988
Shrader-Frechette, Kristin, ‘A Defense of Risk-Cost-Benefit Analysis,’ in Pojman, 2001, p. 474

Social Sciences
a) Social Scientists
Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant, 1979
Clifford Geetz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight’ in The Interpretation of Cultures. Pp. 412-
453. New York: Basic Books 1973
Clifford Geetz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in interpretative anthropology, Basic Books, 1983
Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, 1949,
Schutz, Collected Papers: the Problem of Social Reality, 1962
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.1, 1867
Durkheim Emile, The Rules of Sociological Method, 1894,

b) Philosophers
Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Martin Hollis, ‘The Philosophy of Social Science,’ The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 1996
Charles Taylor, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, 1985
Donald Davidson, ‘Mental Events,’ Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford University Press, 1980,
Jurgen Habermass, Knowledge and Human Interests, Beacon, 1971,
Daniel Little, Varieties of Social Explanation, Westview Press, 1991
Roger Trigg, Understanding Social Science, Basil Blackwell, 1985
Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science, Routledge, 1958
Alan Ryan, ed., The Philosophy of the Social Sciences, XXX
Garrett Thomson, Needs, Routledge, 1987

Psychology
a) Psychologists
Hull, C.L., ‘Knowledge and Purpose as Habit Mechanisms,’ Psychological Review, 37, 1930
Hull, C.L., Principles of Behavior, XXX, 1943
Skinner, B.F., The Behavior of Organisms; An Experimental Analysis, Appleton Century, 1938
Skinner, B.F., About Behaviorism, Alfred Knopf, 1974
Uttal, W., The War Between Mentalism and Behaviorism, Lawrence Erlbauum, 2000

b) Philosophers
Botterill, George and Carruthers, Peter, The Philosophy of Psychology, Cambridge University Press,
1999
Churchland, Paul,
Davidson, Donald, Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford University Press, 1980
Flanagan, Owen, The Science of the Mind, MIT Press, 1984
Quine, W.,
Searle, John, Intentionality, Cambridge University Press, 1983
Thomson, Garrett, On Philosophy, Wadsworth, 2003
Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, 1958

Cognitive Science
a) Cognitive Scientists

171
Bly, B., and Rumelhart, D, Cognitive Science, Academic Press, 1999
Rumelhart, D.E., and McLelland, J.L., Parallel Distributed Processing (2 vols), MIT, 1986
Van Gelder,T., and Port, R.F., eds, Mind as Motion, MIT Press, 1995

b) Philosophers
Bechtel, W and Graham, G, A Companion to Cognitive Science, Blackwell, 1998
Bechtel, W., and Abrahamsen, A., Connectionism and the Mind, Basil Blackwell, 1991
Churchland, Paul, Matter and Consciousness, MIT Press, 1988
Clark, Andy, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, MIT Press, 1995
Clark, Andy,
Dennett, Daniel, Consciousness Explained, Little and Brown, 1991
Stephen Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 1983.

Quantum Physics
a) Physicists
Bell, J.S., ‘On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox,’ in Wheeler and Zurek, 1983 (originally 1964)
Bohm, D., A suggested interpretation of the quantum theory in terms of ‘hidden variables,’’ in
Wheeler and Zurek, 1983 (originally 1952)
Bohm, D., and Rily, The Undivided Universe, Routledge, 1992
Bohr, Neils, ‘Can quantum mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?’ in
Wheeler and Zurek, 1983 (originally 1935)
Einstein, A., Podolsky, B., Rosen, ‘Can quantum mechanical description of physical reality be
considered complete?’ in Wheeler and Zurek, 1983 (originally 1935)
Wheeler, J.A. and Zurek, W.H., (eds), Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton University Press,
1983

b) Philosophers
Albert, David, Z., Quantum Mechanics and Experience, Harvard University Press, 1992
Bub, J., Interpreting the Quantum World, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Kosso, Peter, Appearance and Reality, Oxford University Press, 1998
Sklar, Lawrence, Philosophy of Physics, Westview Press, 1992
Healey, R.A., The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics; An interactive interpretation, Cambridge
University Press, 1989

Macro Physics
a) General
Brown, James Robert, Smokes and Mirrors, Routledge, 1994
Cartwright, Nancy, How the Laws of Physics Lie, Oxford University Press, 1983
Cartwright, Nancy, The Dappled World, Cambridge University Press, 1999
Davis, Paul, ‘What are the Laws of Nature?’ in Doing Science, Brockman, John, Prentice Hall Press,
1998
Field, H., Science without Numbers, Princeton University Press, 1980
Harre, R. and Madden, E., Causal Powers, Blackwell, 1977
Hempel, Carl, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, Free Press, 1965
Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, Clarendon Press, 1988 (originally 1739)
Edwin Hung, Wadsworth, 1987
Mackie, J.L., The Cement of the Universe, Clarendon Press, 1974
Resnik, M., Mathematics as a Science of Patterns, Oxford University Press, 1997
Salmon, W, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, Princeton University Press,
1984
Shapiro, S., Philosophy of Mathematics, Oxford University Press, 1997
Steiner, M., The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, Harvard University Press,
1998

b) Chaos Theory
Berge, P., Pomeau, Y. and Vidal, C., Order within Chaos, Cambridge University Press, 1984

172
Kellert, Stephen, In the Wake of Chaos, University of Chicago Press, 1993
Smith, Peter, Explaining Chaos, Cambridge University Press, 1998

Evolutionary Biology
a) Biologists
Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species, 1859
Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, 1871
Dawkins, R., The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976
Eldredge, Niles, Reinventing Darwin, Phoenix, 1995
Gould, S., The Panda’s Thumb, Norton, 1980
Gould, S., and Lewontin, R., ‘The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique
of the Adaptationist Programme,’ 1979, reprinted in Sober, 1994
Gould and Eldredge, ‘Punctuated Equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered,’
Paleobiology, 3, 1977
Gould and Vrba, ‘Exaptation: a Missing Term in the Science of Form,’ Paleobiology, 8, 1982
Kauffman, S.A., Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford University
Press, 1992
Wilson, E.O., Sociobiology, Harvard University Press, 1975

b) Philosophers
Ayala and T. Dobzhansky, Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, 1974
Barlow, Connie, ed., Evolution Extended, MIT Press, 1994
Dennett, Daniel, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon and Schuster, 1995
Lennox, James, ‘Philosophy of Biology’, in Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Salmon et al.,
Prentice-Hall, 1992
Midgley, Mary, Evolution as a Religion, Methuen, 1985
Murphy, Jeffrie, Evolution, Morality and the Meaning of Life, Rowman and Littlefield, 1982
Sober, E., Philosophy of Biology, Westview, XXX
Sober, E., ed., Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, MIT Press, 1994
Sterelny, Kim, Dawkins vs. Gould, Icon Books, 2001
Thomson, Garrett, On the Meaning of Life, Wadsworth, 2003
Young, Louise, The Unfinished Universe, Oxford University Press 1986

Biology
Betchel, W., and Richardson R.C., Discovering Complexity, Princeton University Press, 1993
Kauffman, S.A., At Home in the Universe: the Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and
Complexity, Oxford University Press, 1995
Hull, David L, The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford University Press, 1998
Goodwin, Brian, How the Leopard Changed its Spots, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994
Kitcher, P., Vaulting Ambition, MIT Press, 1985
Langton, C.G, (ed.), Artificial Life, Addison-Wesley, 1989
Levins, R. and Lewontin, R., The Dialectical Biologist, Harvard University Press, 1985
Levy, S., Artificial Life, Jonathan Cape, 1992
Mayr, Ernst, This is Biology, Harvard University Press, 1997
Mohan, Matthen and Bernard, Linsky, Philosophy & Biology, Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Supplementary Volume 14, University of Calgary Press, 1988
Ruse, M., The Philosophy of Biology, Hutchinson, 1973
Ruse, M, Philosophy of Biology Today, State University of New York Press, 1988
Thompson, P., The Structure of Biological Theories, State University of New York Press, 1989

Education
Cahn, S., The Philosophical Foundations of Education, Harper and Row, 1970
Dearden, R.F, The Philosophy of Primary Education, Routledge, 1968
Dewey, John, Experience and Education, Collier Books, 1963
Elias, John, Philosophy of Education: Classical and Contemporary, Krieger, 1995
Entwhistle, Noel, ed., Handbook of Educational Ideas and Practices, Routledge, 1990

173
Hirst, Paul, Knowledge and the Curriculum, Routledge, 1974
Hirst, Paul, ed. Educational Theory and its Foundation Disciplines, Routledge 1983
Miller, Ron, What are Schools For? Holistic Education Press, 1990
Peters R.S., Ethics and Education, Allen and Unwin, 1966
Peters, R.S., and Hirst, P., The Logic of Education, Routledge. 1970
Noddings, Nel, Philosophy of Education, Westview, 1998
Warnock, Mary, A Common Policy for Education, Oxford, 1989

Business Management
Ackoff, Russell, Creating the Corporate Future, John Wiley, 1981
De Geus, Arie, The Living Company, Harvard Business School Press, 1997
Drucker, Peter, Managing for Results, Pan, 1967
Marshall, Alfred, Money Credit and Commerce, Augustus Kelly, 1965
Morgan, Gareth, Images of Organization, Sage Publications, 1997
Schumaker, E.F, Good Work, XXX
Solomon, Robert.C., Above the Bottom Line: an Introduction to Business Ethics, Harcourt Brace, 1994
Thomson, Garrett, On the Meaning of Life, Wadsworth, 2003

Design Studies
Buchanan, Richard, ‘Wicked Problems in Design Theory,’ Design Issues, 1992
Churchman, C. West, ‘Wicked Problems,’ Management Science, December, 1967
D’Amico, Robert, Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Westview, 2000
Gadamer, Truth and Method, Crossroad, 1989
Habermas, J., Knowledge and Human Interests, Beacon, 1971
Margolin, Victor, ‘The Politics of the Artificial,’ Leonardo, Vol. 28, 1995
Margolin, Victor, ‘Getting to Know the User,’ Design Studies, 18, 1997
Thomson, Garrett, Needs, Routledge, 1987
Thomson, Garrett, On the Meaning of Life, Wadsworth, 2003

Environmental Ethics
Callicot, Baird, J., In Defense of the Land Ethic, SUNY Press, 1989
Des Jardins, Joseph, Environmental Ethics, Wadsworth, 1993
Hill, Thomas, E., Jr., Autonomy and Self Respect, Cambridge University Press, 1991
Devall, Bill and Sessions, George, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered, Peregrine Smith
Books, 1985
Leopold, Aldo, Sand Country Almanac, University of Wisconsin Press, 1991
Lovelock, James, Gaia, Oxford University Press, 1979
Naess, Arne, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, Cambridge University Press, 1989
Nozick, Robert, Philosophical Explanations, Harvard, 1981
Pojman, Louis, ed., Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, Wadsworth, 2001
Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics, Cambridge, 1993
Taylor, Paul, Respect for Nature, Princeton University Press, 1986

Politics
Archard, David, ‘Political and Social Philosophy,’ The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Ed.
Bunnin, N. and Tsui-James, E. P., Blackwell, 1995
Brown, A., Modern Political Philosophy. Penguin, 1988
MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, Duckworth, 1981
MacIntyre, A., Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Duckworth, 1988
Nozick, R. Anarchy, State and Utopia, Blackwell, 1974
Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice, Oxford University Press, 1972
Rawls, J., Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, 1993
Sandel, M., Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge University Press, 1982:
Walzer, M. Spheres of Justice, Basic Books, 1983
Wolff, J., Robert Nozick, Polity, 1991
Wolff, R., Understanding Rawls, Princeton University Press. 1977

174
Social Relevance
Gardiner, Martin, The Mind’s New Science, Basic Books, New York, 1985
Sen, Amartya,
Thomson, Garrett, On Philosophy, Wadsworth, 2002

Logical Positivism
Ayer, A.J., Language, Truth and Logic, Victor Gollancz, 1946
Hanfling, O., Essential Readings in Logical Positivism, Blackwell, 1981
Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism,’ in From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press,
1953

Post-Modernism

D’Amico, Robert, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Westview, 2000

Derrida, Jacques, Positions, University of Chicago Press, 1981,
Foucault, Michael, The Foucault Reader, Pantheon, 1984, ed. P.Rabinow
Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization, Pantheon, 1965,
Foucault, Michel, Power and Knowledge, Pantheon Books, 1980,
Foucault, Michel, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, The New Press, ed., P. Rabinow
Gutting, Gary, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2001
Leotard,
McNaughton, David, Moral Vision, Blackwell, 1988

175
 COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

With urgent environmental problems to be solved, it is tempting to put a price on clean air, water, and
attractive landscapes. In this way, consumers and producers can pay for such so–called negative
externalities, or cost factors that are external to the pricing mechanism of the market. Building a factory in
a beautiful valley destroys a place of aesthetic and ecological value. Normally, this loss is not quantified
and it does not enter into the market decision of the company contracting the construction. However, the
decision to allow such construction has to be taken by the relevant governmental agency, which can grant
or deny planning permission. Thus, we must face the question, ‘according to what criteria should this
decision be made?’ The decision may be difficult, for example, in an area of high unemployment. One way
to make the decision rationally would be to assign a monetary price to the value of the beautiful valley.
With a number rationally assigned, the loss can be contrasted to the economic benefits of having the
factory. In this way, for example, the economic benefit of higher employment rates of local communities
can be compared to the cost of the destruction of the beautiful valley. In this way, a rational decision to
give or deny planning permission can be made by employing cost benefit analysis. This is the temptation.
Here is one reason why we might want to resist it. In our current social context, it is important to
understand why we feel that some things cannot (or should not) be given a monetary price. We think that
some things, such as friendship, moral qualities and the lives of our children, cannot or should not be
priced. It is debatable to what extent aesthetic values can be or should be assigned a monetary price.
Perhaps, the idea of quantifying the value of the beautiful valley is a mistake. If it is, then the decision to
grant building permission should not made entirely on the basis of economic efficiency.
In the sections that follow, we shall examine different ways to articulate this worry about cost-benefit
analysis. In this section, after some preliminaries, we will concentrate first on the nature of measurement by
price, and, on this basis, draw some conclusions in the next section about the nature and limitations of cost-
benefit analysis and its use.

a) The Theory

We need first to explain briefly the economic theory behind cost-benefit analysis. As we have seen, in
standard economic theory, a person’s welfare is simply the satisfaction of his or her preferences. This
means that, whilst we can make sense of the claim that an individual is better off than he or she was earlier,
the statement that one person is better off than another is essentially meaningless. There is no basis for
inter-personal welfare comparisons in ordinal preference functions. For this reason, economists claim that
such comparisons must be based on ethical rather than purely economic principles. As a consequence,
welfare economics appeals to the notion of Pareto optimality. An economic situation O is Pareto-optimal if
and only if there is no other state S such that anyone prefers S to O and at least one person prefers O to S.
In other words, a Pareto improvement is one that makes no-one worse off and at least one person better off,
and Pareto optimality is the idea that no Pareto improvements can be made: to make anyone better off
would involve making someone else worse off.
For economists, one important feature of Pareto optimality is that all competitive general equilibriums
are Pareto optimal, given no market failures such as monopolies, imperfect knowledge and externalities.
This theorem is often expressed popularly in terms of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. A second important
feature of Pareto optimality or efficiency is that it is a much weaker notion than our normal conceptions of
fairness. However, even if not all Pareto efficient states are just, welfare economists usually assume that all
fair distributions are Pareto optimal or at least potentially so. Furthermore, every Pareto efficient state can
be achieved through a competitive market given some initial distribution of resources. Because of these two
features of optimality, welfare economics often focuses on how to compensate for market failures and how
to shift initial distributions through taxation and education (Hausman, p. 60-1).
The Kaldor-Hicks amendment extends the Pareto concept by introducing the idea of potential
compensation. Suppose that under a certain arrangement everyone would be much better off except a small
segment of the population who would be made only a little worse off. Strictly speaking, such an
arrangement is not Pareto-efficient because someone is made worse off. However, if we introduce the idea

176
that this group would receive compensation sufficient so that they are made better off, then the arrangement
can be made Pareto efficient. In such as case, it is potentially Pareto optimal.
Cost-benefit analysis is based theoretically on this extension of the Pareto concept. Any social action
or policy involves costs and benefits to different people, and the idea of cost-benefit analysis is to compare
these through people’s willingness to pay, which is measured indirectly. In other words, the analysis tries to
discover whether a policy or action is potentially Pareto-efficient by identifying the amount of
compensation that would be required for those who suffer the costs of the action to be sufficiently
compensated so that the action would be Pareto-efficient. The required recompense is measured in terms of
their effective willingness to pay to avoid the relevant costs or damage. For example, house prices are
generally lower in areas near airports, and the relevant percentage indicates how much reparation people
would require so that it would be sufficient compensation for the construction of an airport to be potentially
Pareto optimal.
This criterion raises notorious problems of fairness. First, to be clear, it does not involve anyone
actually receiving recompense. The idea is rather than the costs are measured in terms of potential
compensation. Second, it involves an inbuilt bias against the preferences of the poor because the less
money one owns, the less one has to purchase an improvement and so one would receive less in
compensation. Third, such calculations do not involve the preferences of future generations. Nevertheless,
defenders of cost-benefit or C-B analysis argue that it can be adjusted to offset such injustices. However,
the critique of C-B analysis that we shall examine here is based on the fact that a value is treated as relevant
to C-B decision-making only when and insofar as it is reflected in someone’s preferences.

b) Misleading Objections

Here are some popular objections to cost-benefit analysis that do not cut to the quick. Commonly,
people are apt to claim that the value of a person’s life is infinite and that, therefore, it always trumps or
overrides economic calculations (Pojman, p.448). However, so stated, this suggestion is misleading.
Consider the following. If a person has the option to save ten lives or one then, all other things being equal,
he or she should save the ten. This is because of the quantities involved; he or she would be saving more
lives. However, three times infinity is infinity but so is nine times infinity. Consequently, the popular
objection fails to capture the idea that saving more lives is better. Perhaps, rather than claiming that the
price of human life is infinite, one should try to argue that, in some sense, the value of human life is beyond
price. The italicized qualification is important because we do make quantitative choices concerning human
life. For example, typically, the resource-decisions of hospitals involve comparing the number of lives
saved, and so does the decision whether to raise the speed limit or not. Given this point, the objection fails
to voice accurately a problem with cost-benefit analysis.
Second, it is sometimes claimed that cost-benefit analysis bases decision-making on materialistic
values only. However, this objection seems unfair because cost-benefit analysis involves measuring the
preferences of the persons involved, and people can have as the object of preferences non-material goods.
In general, we should be careful of confusing criticisms that are directed to the misapplication of C-B
analysis with a critique of the method itself (see Kristin Sharder-Frechette, in Pojman, 2001).
Third, it is important to distinguish the claim that certain values cannot be measured by price from the
statement that they should not be so measured. Critics of cost-benefit analysis often fail to make this
distinction. It is one thing to assert that certain values cannot be measured in monetary terms. It is another
to affirm that they should not be so measured. Furthermore, both propositions can be distinguished from
more modest warnings regarding the dangers and limitations of such measurement.

c) Measurement by Price

Let us return to the main point, the nature of measurement by price. Monetary pricing is a specific
form of measurement with its own features. As a form of measurement, pricing a commodity or good
measures its value in terms of the possibility of exchanging it for other bundles of goods. In this way, its
equivalent price is established. When we measure the value of something by assigning it a price, then we
measure its value in terms of what an individual would be willing to swap for the thing concerned. Goods,
such as fresh air or the lack of noise, which cannot be exchanged directly, nevertheless can be assigned a

177
price on the basis of what they would be exchanged for hypothetically (Kelman, 1981, pp. 74-82). Their
hypothetical price can be estimated by making comparisons with other goods that are marketed, such as the
difference between the price of otherwise similar houses in areas of low and high air or noise pollution.
With this clarification in hand, I shall argue that price measurements have three features that delineate
their nature and limitations. From these points, we shall draw later some conclusions about the applicability
of cost-benefit analysis.

1) First, the measurement of value should not be identified with the value that is measured. This is a
contentious point that many economists will not agree with, and so it requires a careful argument. To assert
that something is valuable is roughly to affirm that it provides a reason for action or choice. Operationalism
holds that a procedure of measurement defines the relevant theoretical term. The physicist P.W. Bridgman
(1927) argued that all scientific concepts are synonymous with the operations or procedures that are used to
measure them. He concluded that science should not postulate the existence of entities that cannot be
measured by clear procedures. This view, which is similar to some forms of logical positivism, was
influential in the development of behavioral psychology as well as economics (see Chapters 4 and 16).
A problem with an operational semantic definition becomes apparent when we consider the following
quote from a behaviorist psychologist, who attempts to define ‘behavior’ operationally:

Perhaps, then, the best way to define behavior is simply to consider it to be nothing more than the
sum total of the measures and operations that are used to measure it’ (Uttal, p.165; see Chapter 4).

What does this final ‘it’ refer to? Behavior! The definition is viciously circular because it implies that
behavior is no more than a measure of behavior, which is no more than a measure of behavior, which is….
This infinite regress entails that, given the operational definition, there is nothing to measure. In order for
there to be something to measure, then the thing measured must have a specification apart from the way we
measure it. It cannot be defined semantically solely in terms of the measurement. However, this does not
mean that it cannot be referred to through the measurement; ‘behavior is what we measure in the following
way...’ refers to behavior, but it does not provide the sole and complete semantic definition of the term.
Similarly, value cannot be defined solely in terms of its economic measurement.
Another problem with operational definitions is that if one defines X in terms of some way of
measuring X, then the question of whether there are better or alternative ways of measuring X logically
cannot even be raised. The operational definition implies that such questions are meaningless but, since
they are plainly not, the definition must be mistaken. This does not mean that natural and social scientists
cannot or should not seek ways to measure a phenomenon (or operationalize a concept) rather it implies
that these do not count as complete definitions of the term’s meaning.

2) The second feature of measurement by price is that when we measure something, the only
dimension mentioned is that which is being measured. A measurement leaves out all other factors except
those measured. With respect to weight, 10 lbs. of baby is the same as 10 lbs. of earth. This obvious point is
important because what we count is not necessarily what counts.
More specifically, pricing as a way to measure value ignores all other variables except what someone
would be willing to pay for the thing concerned. In particular, pricing does not reflect why a person buys or
sells. It is not relevant why you purchase, but only how much you would be prepared to pay. For example,
it is irrelevant whether the object in question is purchased for resale or as a treasure. This obliterates, for
instance, the difference between an art lover and an art dealer who only trades the object. In general terms,
pricing fails to distinguish between valuing something instrumentally and valuing it intrinsically, for its
own sake. Pricing as a method of measuring value does not distinguish between things that are merely
instrumentally valuable and things that are intrinsically valuable. From this, since money is only a means,
we may deduce also that giving something a monetary price ipso facto treats it as merely instrumentally
valuable, only as a means for what we can gain in exchange for it.
This point does not imply that we cannot price things that are intrinsically valuable. Of course, we
can. However, it means that when we measure the value of something through its monetary price then we
are measuring it as if it were only instrumentally valuable. In this way, pricing treats things of instrumental
value on a par with things of intrinsic value because measurement by price ignores the reasons for the
exchange.

178
 Instrumental value is entirely parasitic on intrinsic value. What is valuable instrumentally has no value
except in relation to something of intrinsic value. This point implies that, in a sense, we cannot compare the
instrumental value of a means with the intrinsic value of an end, as if they were on a par. A means has no
value except in relation to an end and, so when we apparently compare the two, we must be assuming that
there is some end that confers value on the means, as it were in the background. So, what we are really
doing is comparing the intrinsic value of one end with that of another end. In summary, we might think of
intrinsic and instrumental values as different levels of value. Pricing does not differentiate between these
levels. It treats the intrinsically valuable processes of life and merely instrumental means as comparable, or
on a par.

3) Third, measuring value by monetary price does not specify what is exchanged or the context of the
exchange. Suppose you affirm that a car is worth $30,000. In fact, in and of itself, the money is worth
nothing. It is only valuable in that you can exchange it for any number of things that do have value.
However, measurement by price leaves the exchange completely indeterminate, and this accentuates the
deceptions caused by first two points. First, in measuring value by price, we are enticed to conflate the
monetary measurement with the value itself. Second, we are tempted to treat mere means as if they were
valuable in themselves. By leaving undetermined what the exchange is for, we defer indefinitely the
specification of the thing that has intrinsic value and this accentuates both confusions. Since one cannot
specify the object of real value, it may as well not be there.
Additionally, such hypothetical exchanges assume market and a set of normal conditions. For
example, we might exchange US dollars for rubles or for bread. As far as the measurement of value by
monetary price is concerned, this does not matter. However, one cannot eat rubles, and this point may be
vitally important in some situations.

These points, especially the second one, require a couple of qualifications. First, the phrase ‘merely
instrumentally valuable’ may appear pejorative, and the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey has criticized
the tendency to diminish or disparage the importance of means. However, the point we have made here
escapes Dewey’s critique. To say that something has merely instrumental value affirms that it has precisely
the kind of value that allows it to be important. The term ‘merely’ does not diminish the value of means; it
indicates the kind of value that they have. Means and ends cannot be in conflict; the necessary and
sufficient means cannot be less important than the relevant end. The point is not that one is more or less
important than the other; but rather that they have different kinds of value, the one being entirely dependent
on the other. Second, in later chapters, we shall draw a distinction between means and instrumental value
(Chapters 10 and 11). Although this distinction would be relevant to the themes of this chapter, it would
over-complicate it.
In conclusion, pricing is a form of measuring value that can ignore significant differences, especially
the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. Furthermore, this point is compounded in the
practice of identifying the measurement of the value with the value being measured. Given these two
points, we can conclude that cost-benefit analysis treats everything as only a means of instrumental value.
d) Some Applications

These points help explain in what way giving things a monetary price can turn them into commodities
and, thereby, degrade them.
First, to give something a price implies that it can be swapped with anything else of the same price
without any loss, where the loss is financially measured and defined. Therefore, if we confuse measurement
and value, then we will conclude that two things with the same price must have the same value. Let us see
this confusion at work. A recent United Nations study which was undertaken to determine whether it is
financially worth cutting carbon dioxide emissions to halt global-warming, measures the value of lives in
terms of their probable earning power. Lives in developing countries are put at £62,500 compared to those
in the former Soviet Union at £180,000, and in Europe and North America at £940,000 (Geoffrey Lean,
1995, p.2). If you are a westerner, then your life is worth one million pounds sterling and, in which case, it
is worth approximately 100,000 bottles of whisky. This has horrific implications. It would follow that,
given the choice, I ought to save a crate of 110,000 bottles of whisky in a shipping accident rather than
someone’s life. Furthermore, it means that, rationally, we can save one American life at the cost of the
lives of 14 Africans. These conclusions follow logically once we identify the measurement of the relevant

179
values with the values themselves. In other words, if you assert ‘my life is worth a million pounds,’ then
the conclusions follow. In contrast, if you assert ‘a financial measurement of the value of my life would put
it at a million dollars,’ then the horrific conclusions do not follow.
Let us consider another, more subtle example. When we affirm a statement such as ‘this policy would
involve a net loss of $850,000,’ we are apt to forget that the loss is not really the money. Rather, the loss is
the value of what we would have done with the money. However, the statement leaves unspecified how we
would have spent or used the money lost, and, therefore, we are tempted to believe that the value lost is the
money rather than the money being a means and measurement of the value.

SECTION IV: Cost-Benefit Analysis

We now need to apply these conclusions to the application of cost-benefit analysis. The application of
such analyses involves three basic assumptions:

1) The Pricing Assumption

Any action, such as the implementation of a governmental policy, will have a cost and a benefit, both of
which can be expressed in monetary terms. To determine whether benefits outweigh costs, it is necessary to
express all benefits and costs on a common scale, so that they can be compared with one another. The most
usual way to do this is to assign monetary prices to the costs and benefits, based on what people would be
willing to pay for a benefit.

2) The Scope of Application Assumption

The use of cost-benefit analysis as a decision procedure should be applied to all the actions of individuals
or to public institutions. This is because cost-benefit analysis is clearly an integral part of the economic
model of rationality and, therefore, any rational choice must be subject to such an analysis.

3) The Policy Assumption

The policy that should guide our choices is that of increasing the net benefit of an action. The standard
guiding rule for rational action is that one should act in a way that maximizes the net difference between
benefit and cost. In other words, one should always maximize net benefit.

Are these assumptions reasonable? Or rather, under what conditions are they reasonable?

1) The First Assumption

We have examined already the pricing assumption, and concluded that financial cost-benefit analysis is
really only a way to compare means expended with means gained. After all, costs and benefits are simply
means. As we have seen, this is a significant limitation.

2) The Second Assumption

Let us turn to the second assumption. Clearly, such monetary measurement can function sometimes as a
guide for taking better decisions, but this does not imply that it is an appropriate guide in all circumstances.
Whether it is appropriate decision tool depends on the nature of the action or choice in question.
If the action is to be undertaken purely for gain, for the purpose of gathering more means, then it is
necessary to cost the action and its consequences, to compare this net benefit with that of all other relevant
possible actions in the circumstances, and to make a decision on that basis alone. In such a case, all hidden
costs have to be uncovered in order to find out, in purely instrumental terms, whether the action is worth
the trouble. If the means expended are greater than the means gained, then the action should not be
undertaken. Furthermore, if there are other actions that would increase net benefit by a greater amount,
then, under these conditions, the alternative action should be performed. In other words, it is a sufficient
condition of cost-benefit analysis that the action to be evaluated is purely commercial.
The crucial question is whether it is also a necessary condition. If it is, then actions that are not
purely commercial cannot be evaluated adequately using cost-benefit analysis alone. In other words, when
an action is not to be undertaken purely for gain, then we should not make a decision on the basis of CB
alone.

180
 The argument for this conclusion is as follows. If an action is undertaken even in part for non-
commercial reasons, then the worth of the action involves non-instrumental values. CB analysis would treat
those intrinsic values as purely instrumental. Basing a decision on CB analysis would involve assuming
that, for instance, the worth of an activity of intrinsic value is the money one would be prepared to receive
in lieu of engaging in the activity. However, intrinsic values should not be treated instrumentally. It is like
confusing the value of food with that of persons.

1. If an action is undertaken for non-commercial reasons, then it involves intrinsic values

2. The use of CB analysis to decide what to do requires treating intrinsic values as purely
instrumental
3. We should not treat intrinsic values as purely instrumental
4. Therefore, we should not use only CB analysis to decide what to with regard to actions that
are undertaken for non-commercial reasons.

In summary, the formula of calculating instrumental means spent and gained will not be decisive
when the value of action involves more than instrumental means. In other words, it should not be the sole
criterion for taking a decision.
What does that conclusion cover? It seems inappropriate that activities such as painting, playing and
praying should be regarded as a cost because the activities themselves are not merely instrumentally
valuable. It is not a question of whether they are worth the trouble because they are not an inconvenience.
Insofar as we view such activities as trouble, to be counted as a cost, then we are no longer responding to
the intrinsic value of the activity itself.
The idea that the value of something is the means or instrumentally valuable benefit that you can
derive from it is especially destructive of human relationships. A cost-benefit analysis of friendship
misunderstands the nature of friendship because such a bond requires that one responds to the intrinsic
value of the other person. If one responds only to the means expended and derived from being friends with
another person, then the relationship is not one of friendship. If this is true of one’s relation to others, then
it is also so of one’s relation to oneself i.e. of one’s time.
In conclusion, with regard to the second assumption, we can assert that cost-benefit analysis is a
complete tool for decision-making if and only if the action concerned is purely commercial. We can use
this conclusion to examine critically the third assumption.

3) The Third Assumption

The third assumption states that any action ought rationally to maximize the net difference between benefit
and cost. In conditions of uncertainty, the rational choice is the one that maximizes net expected utility.
However, aside from the recommendations of the economic model of rational choice, the guiding rule
of a cost-benefit analysis need not be so strong. There are other possible policies. For instance, the policy
‘one should not perform an action for which costs exceed benefits’ states a much weaker principle than the
maximization rule. This weaker policy merely excludes actions that have a net negative benefit. It does not
recommend the maximization of utility.
Nevertheless, it is important to see that this weaker principle cannot be defended on standard
economic grounds because a person or an organization employing such a rule would endorse policies that
do not maximize utility. The standard model of economic rationality requires that the rational choice is the
one that maximizes utility.

a) The First Line of Argumentation

However, the weaker rule does meet the requirements of theories of decision-making based on the technical
notions of bounded rationality and satisficing, which were elaborated originally by the cognitive scientist
Herbert Simon. Simon’s idea was that, in fact, humans rarely make decisions by assigning excepted net
utility to all available possible actions in some situation because such a decision-procedure is costly and
time consuming. Instead, Simon proposed that we usually decide by setting a minimum condition or rule
that any outcome must satisfy in order to be chosen, and then we choose the first option that we find that
actually satisfices, or is sufficient to satisfy, this condition or rule. This is called ‘bounded rationality.’
Simon employed this heuristic decision procedure in the construction of the first computer programs (see
Chapter 6). Subsequent research showed that, in fact, computer models that employ satisficing conditions
reproduce many of the features of human decision-making (Richardson, 1998, p. 566-7).

181
 However, suppose that it is true empirically that human rationality is satisficing. Nevertheless, on its
own, this empirical psychological point is not sufficient to refute the normative claim that the rational
choice is the one that optimizes net utility. It may be true that people do not usually try to maximize
expected net utility, but this fails to refute the thesis that the normative concept of rationality should be
defined in terms of such an optimal policy.

b) The Second Line of Argumentation

A better argument along a similar line would be that the definition of rationality in terms of maximization
of utility necessarily assumes that there is perfect and free information, which is an impossible requirement.
Actually, this understates the point. The definition requires the concept of all possible choices and all of
their possible future consequences as a given, and this condition can never be satisfied, and arguably does
not even make sense because we are located in time facing an essentially open future.
In reply, the defender of maximization might argue that, in theory, the likely future outcomes that are
relevant to a decision can be specified, ranked and given probability estimates, and that, thus, the problem
is only our ignorance of the future. In other words, he or she will argue that the idea of maximizing net
expected utility can be retained as an ideal definition of rationality.
Although I believe that this reply is not satisfactory, the discussion of this point will lead us into a
tangled web of issues regarding how we should conceptualize the future, such as the following. Can we
really specify or isolate the future outcomes of our actions and decisions in the required way, especially
when those outcomes depend on what others will do?

c) A Third Line of Argument

The key idea in the third assumption that needs to be scrutinized is that values are numerical in nature and
thus can be increased and maximized. This central idea is vulnerable to a dichotomy outlined earlier: utility
is either a value or a measure of value.

On the one hand, if utility is conceived as a non-instrumental value, then, as we have argued, there are
other intrinsic values, and as a result, there will be no such thing as an optimal mix. The reply that these
values can be ranked ordinally through preference functions does not help to salvage the preference
theorist’s case because it relies on the assumption that preference satisfaction is the only intrinsic value.

On the other hand, if utility is conceived only as a measure of value, then we cannot assume that by
increasing the measurement, we increase the appropriate values. The claim that we measure the value of
things through price rankings does not imply that those values themselves consist in such rankings. Values
may be not numerical even though their economic measurement is. After all, values are not things or
entities that can be counted in the way apples can. To talk about values is a shorthand manner of referring
to the ways in which actions, processes and states can be valuable.
Once again, I am not claiming that values cannot be measured economically, but rather pointing
out that, granted that they can, this does not mean that we can talk about the maximizing of value as
opposed to its measurement.

In conclusion, maximization requires an impossible condition. This argument would need to be

supplemented by the additional claim that, in conditions of an essentially open future, a rational choice
must be defined in terms of satisficing conditions. Of course, such an argument would not indicate what
those conditions are.

Conclusion
Because economics tries to explain choices and actions, it is necessarily also an a priori and normative
theory of rationality. Once this theory is made explicit as such, it is vulnerable to the objections that well-
being cannot be understood as the satisfaction of preferences and that utility is not the only intrinsic value.
The economic theory of rationality finds a clear expression in cost benefit analysis, which requires three
assumptions. First, the presumption that the intrinsic values of life can be measured in monetary terms is
subject to the inherent limitation that pricing necessarily treats things as merely instrumentally valuable.

182
 Second, the usual assumption that all decisions are subject to cost-benefit analysis is false because C-B
analysis compares means expended and gained and not all actions are performed to gain means. Third, the
policy inherent in the economic model that utility should be maximized is subject to limitations and doubts.
The original intent of this chapter was to reveal the limits of economic thought. If I had to express
these limits in one sentence, it might be as follows: economics should be a theory of instrumental means,
but not a theory of ends.

183

View publication stats