Harmon on Science and Heidegger

Posted on June 30, 2010
Filed Under Heidegger, Philosophy | 15 Comments

Graham Harman at his blog responding to a post at Enowning:

“As a scientist, I am fairly satisfied with science’s explanations for raindrops, but find science’s explanation for humans’ concerns unsatisfying, or just missing entirely.”

Yes, this is the standard continental attitude. The natural sciences are doing fine already with the non-human world, so let’s hole up in an inner phenomenal sphere that science cannot touch. It’s a fairly reactive move, and ripe for assault by cognitive science. If you take the position Enowning is taking, you’re consigning yourself to a permanent defensive war against the encroachments of neuroscience.

I’m still trying to figure out what Harman’s point here is. It seems to me that the above is a straightforward argument. Science has done a pretty good job on normal physical stuff but hasn’t done a terribly good job on minds. That they might in the future do a good job doesn’t seem to address that psychology, anthropology, economics and so forth are pretty dismal at the moment. I’d love it if neuroscience changes this. But it hasn’t yet.

It seems to me that Heideggarians, such as Herbert Dreyfus, have been offering fairly robust critiques for why this is. The typical responses haven’t exactly engaged with the issues. Yet many issues remain and it seems to me there is very robust philosophical debate on many of these issues precisely because science hasn’t made progress.

Maybe OOO will offer something here. I’m a bit skeptical even though I tend to think emergence as described in a network ontology can be quite helpful. (But then I’m a Peircean – so we’ve thought that for over a century)

What I don’t quite understand is why Harman’s rejoinder is that the Heideggerians will be fighting a permanent defensive war. But maybe that’s because it’s not obvious to me what the conflict is there. It’s one thing to notice science is very inadequate with their explanations and quite an other to say there is a conflict.

Maybe I’m just missing something that is obvious to others.

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Comments

15 Responses to “Harmon on Science and Heidegger”

Yeah, I kind of agree with you on this one. I’m not sure what metaphysics has to offer to the academy. For my mind, it is (potentially) too divorced from empirical work in the natural sciences. If you want to study a rock as it is “in itself”, you better be talking about its molecular and subatomic properties, since the physical sciences have conclusively demonstrated that such objects are the building blocks of reality. It seems to me that physicists are much more able to talk about the “strange” properties of objects which are radically independent of human access, such as the stars and galaxies on the other side of the universe which demonstrate incredible and counter-intuitive properties. I guess Harman and co. think metaphysics is important to clear up conceptual confusions regarding whether there are objects at all (as opposed to a flux), but once this is established, shouldn’t the experimentalists step in? After all, if you want to confirm the objectivity and human-independence of your theory, you must put it to an empirical test, otherwise how will we know your theory about reality is not false? And that brings me to another problem with metaphysics: it doesn’t seem to be falsifiable. Under what conditions would Harman give up his theory of withdrawal? Does he think that there are any findings, empirical or otherwise, which would show his thesis to be wrong? If not…what are the chances that Harman hit upon the whole truth?

Well I’m not about to throw out metaphysics and think it has a perhaps undeserved reputation for various reasons. (The tendency of instrumentalism in science, the difficulty of non-philosophers to see what is debated, the caricature of positions like idealism in the popular mind, Heidegger’s own use of the term, etc.)

I actually was preparing a post on just that topic after listening to an interesting Philosophy Bites with Patricia Churchland last night. So I’ll try and tie it in. She argues that ideally philosophy should be more akin to theoretical physics and I think that’s right.

I’m also enough of a Peircean to believe that metaphysics is affected by empirical investigation and that reality will hit us enough that our metaphysics do improve.

I go along with Heidegger’s notion that it’s often helpful to step back from metaphysics. Instead of getting caught up in disputes such as idealism vs. realism, science vs. religion, or whether essence precedes existence or existence precedes essence, it is helpful to realize that they are metaphysical issues, and if we want to inquire about what’s-really-going-on, then we need figure out what makes both binary opposites possible.

Oh – I agree with that. I just think that for some they read a bit of Heidegger or Heideggarian influenced writers and think metaphysics is bad. At least Heidegger didn’t attack it in a naive way like the positivists did. Heidegger seems pretty clear we can’t really escape from metaphysics – indeed most of his later writings can be seen as various attempts to deal with that. How to talk about a nothing when talking about it intrinsically makes it a thing. That’s why so many, especially in the 90′s, made that quasi-religious move of appropriating the discourse of negative theology. (Although obviously Heidegger who knew his Eckhart did it earlier)

I think though that Heidegger critiques metaphysics due to the problem of being and treating it as a regular thing. (Typical in a lot of metaphysics) This gives metaphysics a bad rap even though arguably most metaphysics isn’t really wrapped up in that controversy. It is, as I mentioned, more akin to theoretical physics.

My own view is that if you attempt to avoid metaphysical thinking you’re still going to do it only in a more incoherent hidden way. Which ties one back to that earlier post on the paradox of the prefix. Most people have incoherent metaphysics in their beliefs and most beliefs depend logically on metaphysics in one sense or an other. So the paradox of the prefix besets most beliefs.

I mostly agree with Enowing’s point, but I disagree that the state of psychology is dismal, at least within certain domains, and I strongly disagree that it is neuroscience that could possibly get us beyond that state.

On the first point, the advances in cognitive science over the last 50 years are impressive by any standard, and we now know a great deal about the human mind. Granted, we still have a ways to go, particularly on integrating cognition and affect, cognition and the social, and the social in general, but “dismal” the psychological sciences are not. They are thriving and in many ways as productive as any other science to day, if not more so.

On the second, the lay love of neuroscience is, I think, largely born of a belief that the human sciences must look like the “physical” sciences, at least in the sense that they must be reductionist, and that “reductionist” means reduced to the obviously physical, but in psychology there are multiple levels of analysis, and each can be reductionist in its way, while remaining semi-autonomous, though generally incomplete without the others. And this last part goes for neuroscience as much as computational and representational analysis.

By the way, you might find this interesting: Neuroscience and the correct level of explanation for understanding mind.

Graham put up a response at his blog. Rather than create a new post I’ll just reply here in the comments. (BTW – sorry about the typo on the name: feel free to write Clark Gable for me)

As can be seen from this exchange, both Enowning and Mormon Metaphysics accept the standard continental philosophy attitude, which is roughly this… “Science is perfectly adequate for understanding the external world, but it will never grasp Dasein.” I don’t call this the standard continental attitude with a sneer, either. No less a digure than Martin Heidegger himself adopts the same strategy.

I can’t speak for Enowning but this certainly doesn’t capture my own view nor my confusion. I have zero problem with science dealing with all this because I see no essential divide between science and philosophy. I think we especially see that in physics (my own field). If anything, I think philosophy should change more than science by becoming more like the theoretical sciences such as what is done in theoretical physics. The influence of ordinary language in philosophy still can cause some problems. (Which isn’t to say explicating ones concepts or ones society’s “default” meanings isn’t helpful)

Contra what Graham suggests I actually do think science will eventually offer explanations. My confusion was over the purported conflict. I just don’t think there is a conflict and indeed it seems to me that a lot of cognitive science I’ve read the past years have tended to really embrace a lot of positions posited by Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty decades earlier. (Think of the discussion of embodied actions, for instance)

I am pretty skeptical that scientific theories about the mind can be reduced to physics. And ultimately that’s the essence of the so called “hard problem of consciousness.” But it’s a hard problem with tons of philosophical dispute precisely because science appears to offer little to resolve it. What isn’t clear is that this leads to a problem with Continental philosophy as Graham suggests. It’s that I have trouble understanding.

Now perhaps Graham is, as many scientists and philosophers of mind have done, simply assuming a particular answer to the hard problem and thinking neuroscience will eventually demonstrate his metaphysical presupposition. In that case there would be a conflict. I think it fairly naive to assume that neuroscience is making any progress at all in the hard problem of consciousness though.

Once again, this is not an issue of being optimistic about neuroscience. I’m amazingly optimistic. Rather it is the question of being optimistic for a particular metaphysical resolution. That I’m far, far more skeptical of. Will neuroscience help make psychology more robust? Of course! It already has the past decade and will continue to. Will neuroscience resolve the traditional metaphysical disputes though?

The second point I wanted to address was this:

That brings me to the other key point by Mormon Metaphysics, which is this: “science has done a pretty good job on normal physical stuff.” Yes it has. But not in metaphysical terms. If there is one theme running throughout my work, it’s that philosophy must be universal. It must be capable of accounting for purely physical interactions just as it accounts for the mind.

This seems to undermine his earlier point about the divide between science and philosophy (which I didn’t quote). Once again let me reiterate that I don’t think there is a divide. Metaphysics ultimately is the same as scientific argument only with weaker arguments. (I have a great quote from Sider on this in and old post) Of course both science and philosophy must do this. Where I’m confused is why Graham thinks this is a problem for Heideggarians. Even Heidegger had a great deal of respect for physics, thought Heisenberg’s philosophy book was great, and seemed to have a quasi-philosophy of science that dealt quite well with physics. (The de-worlding approach etc.). So I guess I’m confused as to the problem.

>Heidegger seems pretty clear we can’t really escape from metaphysics – indeed most of his later writings can be seen as various attempts to deal with that.

I must respectively disagree with this. I thought Heidegger did an admirable job of overcoming metaphysics in Being and Time when he exposed the ontological groundlessness of traditional subject-object distinctions. He challenged the metaphysical assumptions of postcartesian philosophy by showing how the tradition had simply assumed that the conscious mind is always present in experience. Because this can’t be shown in experience, either through science or introspection, it can only be assumed in accordance with a dogmatic assumption that the mind is metaphysically distinct from the physical world and thus in need of always being present so as to ground subjective experience.

While one could say that Heidegger’s phenomenology depends on a naturalistic metaphysics of some sort, the important thing is to realize how he came to that conclusion. As scholars like Carman and Dreyfus have shown, Heidegger gave the natural sciences full authority for discovering how the ontic world is independent of humans. Indeed, he thought that the scientific mindset was a specific, albeit derivative, mode of being for humans. If scientists discover that we live on a giant rock called Earth with such and such objective properties, then that is the truth we have uncovered and must accept. But this is done within experience, not “prior” to it, as in the rationalist tradition. Discussion of what makes up the universe must be done through the authority of ontic science. In this respect, Heidegger was a robust entity realist and thorough going empiricist.

This is why Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology can be said to “overcome” or “deconstruct” traditional metaphysics. By grounding his mental taxonomy and metaphysics on the intersubjectively verified inspection of lived experience, Heidegger shows how we can do “transcendental psychology” and “metaphysics” in a scientifically respectable manner (One could say that this is similar to James’ “radical empiricism”). Kant’s psychology was based on dogmatic assumptions; Heidegger’s psychology is phenomenological through and through. If experience tells us that consciousness wanes in and out, and empirical science tells us that there is a cognitive unconscious, then we must accept these facts (hence, the “they-self”). This is why I think Heidegger’s attack on Cartesian-Kantian psychology is genuinely phenomenological rather than metaphysical. For this reason, I think Heidegger had more problems with how people interpreted his work, rather than with the metaphysical consistency of the work itself. Indeed, he said that “The fundamental flaw of the book Being and Time is perhaps that I ventured forth too far too early”. In other words, the book wasn’t “inconsistent” or “anthropomorphic”; people just weren’t ready for it.

I think he does an admirable job showing there is something “else” but he can’t fully escape from metaphysics. But of course that’s not all that metaphysics is about either.

Saying the mind is metaphysically distinct seems the wrong way to put Heidegger’s insight, I should add. Of course the Peircean in me would object to the claim that the physical world isn’t mind-like in some aspects. (And Heidegger verges in that territory at times I think as well – although I’m not prepared to argue that just now) Anyway, saying the mind is metaphysically distinct from the physical world ends up just reintroducing Cartesianism whereas I think that is precisely what Heidegger does an admirable job overcoming in BT.

The rest of what you say I fully agree with though – although I think the distinction between metaphysical and phenomenology is blurrier than you suggest. (Which is I think Derrida’s insight)

Chris, by dismal I mean relative to the universal explanations physics offers. I’m certainly not downplaying the real breakthroughs in psychology or even economics. Just that there’s nothing akin to fundamental physics yet. (And yes, I recognize that in one sense there is no fundamental physics given the problem of quantum gravity – but beyond that small area basic foundational physics is amazingly robust)

Further I absolutely agree that there are tons of fruitful science that isn’t foundational: even in physics. Material science (on the border of physics and engineering) has had tremendous growth the past two decades even though the basic physics upon which it rests is fairly well understood. There’s just a lot of “higher level” phenomena which isn’t understood even if the physics upon which it rests is understood.

Like you I’m skeptical about the appeal to neurobiology as offering the full foundational answers to the human sciences. But that’s not to say that, for instance, psychology or sociology can’t establish real laws or notice real structures. I agree with you that there is a certain romance to neurobiology in that some think it’s how we’ll be able to reduce the brain (and thereby the mind) to chemistry and E&M. I’m pretty skeptical that will happen. Which isn’t to say there won’t be a foundational science. Just that I don’t think the foundational science will look like what many currently expect.

> So I guess I’m confused as to the problem.

I think the problem appears with Kant. He marks a split in the narrative (self-understanding) between science and philosophy.

Both science and philosophy recognize the importance of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, to our understanding of how the world works. Then, the philosophy story says, there was this split between rationalists and empiricists, and Kant figured out how reconcile the two, and so made the world safe or coherent for modern science.

The interesting thing to me is that science completely ignores Kant. At least I never came across him in science, only in philosophy texts. Would science be any different if Kant had never been born? I don’t think so, and consequently, Kant seems to be an entirely metaphysical thinker.

Kant’s thinking presents problems for philosophers, and that’s what Graham, correlationism, and speculative realism, are grappling with. Heidegger comments on Kant extensively, because that the milieu he found himself in, but he doesn’t need Kant to support his way of thinking. In fact, I think, Heidegger didn’t question Kant enough. For example, in the sections of spatiality in B&T, he should have radically questioned Kant’s account of space instead of going along with it. There are hints in later essays and seminars that Heidegger evolved his understanding of spatiality (e.g., the clearing is less about the light getting in, and more about space opening up) but he never again wrote anything as systematic as B&T, so we’ll never be sure about his final understanding of spatiality differs from Kant.

Yes – although to be fair the post-Kantian German Idealists tried to remove that bridge in various ways. (Hegel, Schelling, etc.)

I’m not sure science ignores Kant. I think science is still subtly dominated by the neo-Kantian thinking of late 19th century and early 20th century. At least as much as by Dewey’s instrumentalism or the positivists (who arguably didn’t so much help science so much as try to reform philosophy in terms of science).

Of course I think that had Kant not appeared someone would have made a similar move. The “thing in itself” and the transcendental view of structures is just too necessary a move.

I actually do think Heidegger’s discussion of space is different than Kant’s. (Although this may just be me getting Kant wrong) I think Kant was still caught up in space in terms of science: what Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza were doing. He tried to transform it via the categories into something more phenomenal. But it’s still that objective sense of space. I think if anything Heidegger radicalizes Leibniz more here and space becomes something purely phenomenalogical and not related to what I’d term ontic space.

Heidegger doesn’t embrace Kant’s view of space entirely. For example, we move the furniture around, turn off the lights, and then someone familiar with the room walks in and stumbles over the furniture.

Kant says that the person had a mental map of the room, and the correlation between the map and room is broken, so a new mental map needs to be drawn up.

Heidegger says the peron had learned to cope with the room, and stumbling across some furniture in the dark, the room changes from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand.

I’m a radical. I want to turn off the lights and gravity. What would that tell use about being that was hidden or forgotten in everyday life?

But wouldn’t you say that Kant’s category of space entails something about “near and far” which is different from what Heidegger is getting at with space? Certainly one can discuss the mental map vs. coping although that wasn’t what I was thinking of as key to Heidegger for spatiality or Kant.

If gravity ceased to behave itself I suspect as our coping broke down the average person would notice quite a bit about the equipment around them they didn’t notice. Interestingly while it isn’t really a breakdown of gravity if you’ve ever slammed on the breaks in a car and seen how equipment behaves it can be quite shocking. It really reorganizes how you view the items in your car.

Certainly Heidegger distinguishes between physical near and far, and existential close and distant, even if he isn’t consistent about his use of the terms.

Both Kant and Heidegger fail to recognize the impotance of up and down, thanks to gravity. So, while mathematically, with Cartesian coordinates, direction doesn’t matter (Kant and Heidegger’s position), it matters very much to life. In fact, my definition of life is things-that-struggle-with-gravity. Sorry bacteria, you’re just complicated molecules.

Because we have to cope with gravity, we invent time, the difference between our body’s velocity and acceleration, and we invent spatiality, and so light behaves differently (like a wave) when observed, and so on.

OK, that I’d agree with. It’s interesting some of the recent work on cognitive science that deals with embodied metaphors and the like and how they affect wide ranging thinking that is tied to early cognitive development of the body. (i.e. how we use ideas like up, far, etc. that are tied to bodily movement in a more metaphoric sense that still is tied to that basic development)

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