On Conscioueness and Science

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Namaste,

 

Having written about Berkeley in a recent post (message # 28031), it

would seem worthwhile to trace a certain thread of European thought

as it progressed from Berkeley through Hume to Kant because I believe

that it would give us an insight into how Consciousness stands in

relation to Science, a topic that has been of some interest in the

group lately. On Berkeley, I think enough has been said already, but

a few words with regards to Hume would be necessary before we come to

Kant's philosophical treatment of science.

 

David Hume was the logical culmination of Berkelian Empiricism. He

was also the supreme exemplar of the loss of symbolism that

characterised Western Philosophy, when almost all that was once rich

in Scholastic Philosophy - all the key symbols of ancient and

medieval philosophy - had been masked by the darkness of the age. It

was a trend that began with Descartes, and it reached its

questionable 'glory' in the radical scepticism of David Hume.

 

Hume classes all perceptions into two categories depending on "their

force and vivacity" – those that are more lively he calls

impressions, and those that are less lively he calls ideas. Next he

says that ideas are copies of impressions. His justification for this

division is based on the premise that "a blind man can form no notion

of colour; a deaf man of sounds." Furthermore, he says: "Restore

either of them that sense in which he is deficient; by opening this

new inlet for his sensations, you also open an inlet for the ideas;

and he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects."

 

Now the objects of human reason are again of two kinds being the

relationships between ideas and the relationships between

impressions. Hume says: "Of the first kind are the sciences and

geometry, algebra and arithmetic, and in short, every affirmation

which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the

square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the two sides, is

a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That

three times five is equal to half of thirty, expresses a relation

between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by

the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere

existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or

triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever

retain their certainty and evidence." But in so far as relations

between matters of fact (i.e. between impressions) are concerned,

they "are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of

their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The

contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can

never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the

same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality.

That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a

proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation,

that it will rise."

 

According to Hume, relations between ideas are perfectly determinable

because they are demonstrable through ideas alone. On the other hand,

relations between impressions, or matters of fact, are not thus

determinable because propositions that make perfect sense may still

not conform to fact, i.e., the sun will not rise tomorrow. "Nothing,

at first view" says Hume "may seem more unbounded than the thought of

man, which not only escapes all human power and authority, but is not

even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. To form

monsters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the

imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and

familiar objects." But the relations between impressions (matters of

fact) shall justifiably remain within the empirical because ideas

with which we form relations are only more feeble copies of the

impressions. Therefore, relations between matters of fact should be

guided by the empirical. The veneration that we have for the pure

sciences like mathematics are justified, but in so far as the

sciences dealing with matters of fact are concerned, they need to be

guided within the limits of reason. Hume observes: "all reasonings

concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of

cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond

the evidence of our memory or senses." Hume subjects this idea of

causality to analysis. Everywhere our perception presents one

sensation conjoined with another, and experiencing these compounded

sensations successively we presume a 'power' within them as one

determining the other and assume that the same order of relation

shall prevail in the future. Behind every such assumption is the

notion of a 'power' of one object to influence another – to determine

or force the other to being invariably in conjunction with the first.

After a detailed investigation Hume concludes that no such 'power' is

empirical observed i.e., it is not an impression or matter of fact.

What is it then? It is an idea that illegitimately enters into the

relationship between matters of fact. Its entry is illegitimate

because a legitimate idea should be a feeble copy of an impression,

but here there is no causality as impression or matter of fact in

order for the idea to be a legitimate valid copy i.e., when

impressions do not themselves reveal the power (of cause) then it

becomes illegitimate for an idea of causality to impose itself on a

relationship between impressions wherein no impression of cause

or 'power' reveals itself. There are merely successions of

sensations. Therefore causality is illegitimate and is a

mere `habit'. That, in short, is Hume. The Charvakas of India and the

Pyrrhoneans of Greece would have been proud of him. And from amidst

the ruins he had brought upon the great human sciences, Hume boldly

declared:

 

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what

havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or

school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any

abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain

any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?

No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but

sophistry and illusion."

 

Not only religion but also the sciences seemed to stand discredited.

The ruins were everywhere, and there seemed to be no answer, not even

from the ablest intellects of Europe. From out of this despondency

there arose one man who was to change the course of European thought.

His name was Immanuel Kant, and the seminal book he wrote was 'The

Critique of Pure Reason'.

 

The foundations of science were in shambles. Berkeley had shown that

the world science explained was nothing but mind. Hume knocked down

the pillars of causality that science was built on. The sack of

science seemed complete. It was left to Kant to restore once more the

dignity of science. But it is not easy to read Kant. His language is

obscure and his style is difficult and verbose. What he could say in

two paragraphs, he says in four chapters of convoluted language. But

it is still rewarding to see how Kant saved science from the sledge-

hammer of Hume's scepticism.

 

If Berkeley had shown that the world is only mind, Kant begins by

assuming that the world as we see it is rooted in the mind. He calls

this the Copernican Inversion in philosophy. For experience to be

possible, says Kant, the forms of all experience must lie ready a

priori in the mind as the paraphernalia for experience; otherwise it

is difficult to see how anything at all may be experienced. Kant

derives his philosophy from these apriori forms and notions rather

than from the world and therefore he calls his

philosophy 'Transcendental Philosophy'. There are things that we know

prior to experience, and these he calls knowledge apriori. We do not

seek to derive this knowledge from experience, but impose them on to

experience. Then there are things we know from experience and these

he calls knowledge aposteriori. These are the forms and sensations we

experience.

 

The judgments that we make regarding our experience fall into two

types: analytical and synthetical. An analytical judgment is one that

does not need anything other than the object because the answer is

contained in (the analytic of) the conception of the object itself.

For example, the proposition that all bodies have mass does not need

anything outside the conception of body to judge whether all bodies

have mass because bodies are such things that have mass, i.e., there

is no conception of body that does not include the conception of

mass. A synthetical judgment on the other hand is one that involves

two disjoint conceptions. For example, the judgment regarding the

colour of a table is a synthetical judgment because the conception of

a table does not involve the conception of the specific colour (say

white) that it may have. Table and the colour white are two different

concepts and we would have to rely on experience to inform us for

making the judgment in this case.

 

Now combining the two kinds of knowledge and the two kinds of

judgment, we may further classify the kinds of judgments into four:

 

Analytical apriori

Analytical aposteriori

Synthetical aposteriori

Synthetical apriori

 

Analytical apriori judgments are the domain of pure sciences like

mathematics. They are true because the judgments derive their

certainty from the conceptions that lie within the object to be

judged. They are tautological.

 

Analytical aposteriori judgments are redundant because they are given

even before we experience them. If I see two apples and then another

two apples and together see four apples, the experience merely

reflects the apriori knowledge that I already have. Judgment from

experience in this case is redundant.

 

Synthetical aposteriori judgments are those that are given by

experience. That a particular table is white is known only from

experience. This is the empirical part of science – the

experientially verifiable component.

 

Synthetical apriori judgments are those judgments wherein two

disparate conceptions are joined together apriori, for example, the

proposition that every effect has a cause. This kind of knowledge is

not given by the sensible impressions of experience, but yet it

comprises the conception that we invariably impose on experience. How

indeed may we justify these synthetical apriori judgments when they

involve two or more conceptions that are not given in the field of

experience? This is the vital question that Kant seeks to answer for

it is the validity or invalidity of synthetical apriori judgments

that make or break all our sciences (as well as religion).

 

The sensible forms that we experience are the aesthetics of

experience, the play of forms upon our senses. The investigation of

sensible forms in the Transcendental Philosophy is the science of the

Transcendental Aesthetic. For the experience of the transcendental

aesthetic to be possible, two forms of pure intuition must exist as

necessary conditions – these are space and time. But we do not merely

experience forms in space and time, we also relate them one with

another through reason, and in the Transcendental Philosophy the

investigation of the categories of relation which bind the sensible

forms of the aesthetic is the Transcendental Analytic. These are the

categories substance, causality and all those concepts with which we

ratiocinate experience, and which are given to experience by

synthetical apriori judgments. But the question remains: How are

synthetical judgments possible at all? If they are the conjunction of

two concepts, how are they brought together as bearing one upon the

other? Where is their binding principle?

 

The binding principle Kant discovers in the Synthetical Unity of

Consciousness. Sensible forms and causality may be different

concepts, but they are found in a unity, and that unity is the unity

of Consciousness. All the manifold that is found in the field of

experience, and all the categories of reason, exist within the unity

of conscious experience in which we behold them. Even the notion

that 'I behold' lies within this unity and is given to me in the

apperception of this unity, and as an analytic of the unity. It is a

synthetical unity because it has within it the manifold of forms and

categories of reason, but this manifold is given as separate things

only through an apperception of the synthetical unity of

consciousness. The categories are thus the analytic of this unity and

are found as the necessary condition by which experience may be as it

is. Thus, our experience, such as it is, can only be this way by

virtue of these categories existing in the analytic of the unity. The

binding principle of synthetical apriori judgments is the synthetical

unity of consciousness. Therefore causality is valid.

 

Science had been saved. But what saved it was Consciousness as its

Ground, as the Principle that gave meanings to the things that

science investigated. If science exists today with a measure of

confidence, it is because its Ground is Consciousness. But what an

irony of fate that today science looks to finding Consciousness in

some nook and corner of the brain!

 

The Charvakas believed that consciousness arose due to the

configuration of the body. In refuting the doctrine, Sri

Shankaracharya remarks that the doctrine of the Charvakas amounts to

saying that a man carries himself on his own shoulder!

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan