Later he continues:
In examining the reasonings of those physicists who gave to modern science the initial propulsion which has insured its healthful life ever since, we are struck with the great, though not absolutely decisive, weight they allowed to instinctive judgments. Galileo appeals to il lume naturale at the most critical stages of his reasoning. Kepler, Gilbert, and Harvey – not to speak of Copernicus – substantially rely upon an inward power, not sufficient to reach the truth by itself, but yet supplying an essential factor to the influences carrying their minds to the truth.10
“Instinct” and the “natural tendency” to agreement thus wrote – more surely than the a priori – the subtext of the Copernican revolution!
The synthesis between categories and objects of experience, far from proceeding from an improbable spontaneity, thus appears instead as the “result of a long evolution that Darwinian theory allows us to explain.”11 This is an evolution that renders possible a progressive adaptation of our mind to objects. The so-called “pure” forms of cognition and thought are in fact biological adapters: the only thing that is true is that which the mind can assimilate at any given moment. This harmonization, which develops constantly, “is probably always in process.”12 Again we see that the “neo-skeptical” argument steals epigenesis from critical philosophy.
Against “Nativism”: Helmholtz and Boltzmann
Arguing against Kant, Bouveresse states, “[T]he possibility of a Darwinian interpretation of everything that may give the impression of being innate or a priori in cognition [will] be used systematically later on.”13 An entire intellectual tradition, from Charles Sanders Peirce to Ludwig Boltzmann, via Hermann von Helmholtz and Robert Musil, develops the adaptive argument and prepares the ground for the contemporary thesis of brain epigenesis, in other words, the shift from epigenesis as traditionally understood to epigenetics.
It is particularly interesting to see physicists such as Helmholtz and Boltzmann defend the Darwinian point of view and accept an adaptability of both the laws of physics and the laws of the mind. Helmholtz is a great defender of evolutionary harmonization. Bouveresse writes: “When Helmholtz criticizes authors who believe in a pre-established harmony, or, worse yet, an identity between nature and the mind, he targets first and foremost the tendency to explain production [of the agreement] by innate mechanisms, whose origin remains entirely mysterious.”14
Helmholtz argues that the form of our perception of objects is not innate, but rather acquired (acquisitio derivativa!), and that it results from an interaction, produced in course of the learning process, between the perceiving subject and objects. In his 1869 lecture “Über das Ziel und die Fortschritte der Naturwissenschaft” (“On the Goal and Progress of the Natural Sciences”), he praises the great resource of Darwinian theory that offers him an entirely new interpretation of “organic purposiveness” (organische Zweckmässigkeit) and emphasizes the absence of an origin and goal in evolution, in other words, highlighting the absence of final causes. Adaptation – the adaptation of our mind to particular objects – thus proceeds from a strict, meaningless mechanism.15
Moreover, Boltzmann considers that the laws of the mind are merely inherited habits of thought. To view them as a priori is therefore erroneous.
Our innate laws of thought are indeed the prerequisite for complex experience, but they were not so for the simplest living beings. There they developed slowly, but simple experiences were enough to generate them. This explains why they contain synthetic judgments that were acquired by our ancestors but are for us innate and therefore a priori, from which it follows that these laws are powerfully compelling but not that they are infallible.16
Our synthetic judgments, inherited from gradual acquisition, are thus not a priori initially, but have become so. The a priori would thus be produced by experience. The laws of thought, like the form of objects themselves, would result from the evolutionary process that certainly grants them some stability, but not unconditional truth. We do have a priori cognitions, but a priori has an entirely different meaning here from in Kant’s work:
It is entirely certain that we have a priori representations. According to Darwinian theory, on the grounds of which I base myself, it is also equally clear. Some concepts were acquired by our ancestors; little by little their knowledge was transmitted to their heirs; and eventually it came down to us.17
The conclusion is without possibility of appeal: the a priori is the result of becoming. Over time, that which was the object of a process of conquest and learning for our ancestors was reduced to a form that is transmitted but that can also change in response to new environmental demands.
Consequently, mathematical and logical truths are not immutable. Bouveresse writes: “After all, even in the case of logic itself, we could bequeath our distant descendants very different principles to those that we have received from our ancestors and that they would consider as innate, even though they are the result of a modification that was gradually acquired.”18 The mechanisms, habits of thought, concepts, or behavioral aptitudes, all the acquisitions that come from specific learning, are not definitive and cannot give rise to any immutable certainty. There is no a priori necessity insofar as the a priori is an acquisition – and so resists any transcendental approach.19
Retrospectively, doesn’t the Kantian recourse to epigenesis act as a means of destroying exactly that which it intended to deduce? It appears that the circle is drawing close around two incompatible positions. Either one wishes to defend the possibility of an a priori epigenesis, but this attempt paradoxically leads to a justification of preformationism. Or one defends an epigenesist conception of the truth and the agreement of the categories with the objects, but at the same time the a priori and its necessity are discharged. At that point, an intermediary position, such as the one taken by Genova, appears to be a dead end. How, indeed, can we simultaneously maintain the purity of epigenesis and the adaptability of the transcendental to the “environment” of its development? We recall that Genova tried to reconcile the Kantian point of view of a production of the categories and their relation to objects with the Darwinian theory that he describes as “neo-epigenesist.” He asserts that “Darwin, in effect, performed a neo-epigenetic synthesis which turned on the subtle interrelation between external, environmental factors and internal, genetic variability.”20 It would then be possible to see the transcendental prefiguration of this type of synthesis in the Kantian conception of cognitive faculties that develop like a biological organism.
Clearly, neither the Kantians nor the anti-Kantians can really accept this sort of compromise. Apparently there is no intermediary solution between predetermination and evolution, which undermines the argument in §27 and the very idea of spontaneity, in other words, the notion of a pure source. Indeed, according to Boltzmann, if the forms of cognition “are given a priori, then there is no longer any need for an examination of the sources, it is indeed no longer possible to talk about it anymore under these conditions; but in practice this is no advantage whatsoever, for how can we know if they are correct or not if they are given to us a priori?” How can we know, among the laws of nature, “which of the a priori judgments are correct and which are mere prejudices that we find in our mind and that we must extricate?”21
Through a strange effect of a posteriori response, the skeptic’s argument swallows up the Kantian position. What remains, then, of a “system of the epigenesis of pure reason” when the a priori and innateness are assimilated to one another? We do understand that it is the defense of the a priori that passes for a preformationist position. The “pure” elements of knowledge become contingent implants. The a priori appears as a denial of epigenesis. Whoever is unwilling to accept the evolutionary nature of cognition is therefore of necessity a supporter of innatism.
Transcendental Idealism Disappears from the Debate: Frege versus Darwin
Strangely, transcendental idealism disappears from the debate that Bouveresse stages. We might
quite legitimately have expected that ultimately he would return to Kant at the end of the article to develop, if only to even better criticize, the “neo-Kantian” argument that might contradict cognitive neo-Darwinism. And yet, the extreme conclusion that Bouveresse reaches is as follows: the most effective opposition to the neo-skeptical thesis can no longer be a Kantian-style opposition. Ultimately, it is Gottlob Frege, not Kant, who is called upon to figure as the adversary of neo-skepticism – Frege, whose position is entirely distinct from Kant’s. The eclipse of transcendental epigenesis is confirmed: on the one hand, it is entirely confiscated by the neo-skeptical thesis; on the other, it is no longer even mentioned in the counter-argument. Kant cannot defend himself and is quite simply excluded from the discussion.
Frege’s response to skepticism does not involve the reaffirmation of a pure engendering of the objective reference of the categories. And this is simply because in his work it is no longer a question of engendering at all! It appears that at this point there remains only one type of argument to oppose the skeptical thesis: the dogmatism of absolute truth.
What does this amount to? Frege develops a virulent critique of mental evolutionism. Bouveresse writes: “At a time when the theory of evolution was already widely accepted and had begun to be used to resolve several traditional problems in the theory of cognition, Frege reacted with characteristic distrust against the tendency – which he viewed as disastrous – to introduce evolutionary-type considerations into all fields, including that of logic.”22 Frege in fact asserted that “in the sense in which we speak of natural laws, psychological, mathematical, or logical laws, it is, strictly speaking impossible for laws to change at all.”23 He states:
A proposition may be thought, and again it may be true; let us never confuse these two things. We must remind ourselves, it seems, that a proposition no more ceases to be true when I cease to think of it than the sun ceases to exist when I shut my eyes. Otherwise, in proving Pythagoras’ theorem we should be reduced to allowing for the phosphorous content of the human brain; and astronomers would hesitate to draw any conclusions about the distant past, for fear of being charged with anachronism, with reckoning twice two as four regardless of the fact that our idea of number is a product of evolution and has a history behind it. It might be doubted whether by that time it had progressed so far.24
Laws are true without any reference to our cognitive power, and this intrinsic validity also guarantees the agreement with objects. It is true that our cognitive power may well register changes, and may even have a history, but this in no way affects the objective truth of laws. This is the case in all universal instances and “entirely independently of the reference to space and time.”25 We may, by all means, accept that thought “occurs differently now than it did three thousand years ago,”26 but this transformation in no way affects the validity of laws:
[T]he validity of the laws of nature is subordinated to the achievement of various conditions, which are or are not entirely mentioned in the statement of the laws, or which, if they are indicated, are so in a manner that allows a certain indetermination to subsist, such that it is always possible to discover at any given moment that it is necessary to add further details or additional restrictions in order to be able to continue to assert the universal validity of the law.27
But this law is not relativized at all, which protects its independence in relation to experience.
And to what do we attribute the possible changes that make up the history of the mind? Frege says that it is important not to confuse “holding-true” (Fürwahrhalten) – the relation of the subject knowing the truth – and “being true” (Wahr) itself. To say that the true evolves would be to suffer from this confusion:
‘2 times 2 is 4’ is true, and will continue to be so even if, as a result of Darwinian evolution, human beings were come to assert that 2 times 2 is 5. Every truth is eternal and independent of being thought by anyone, and of the psychological make-up of anyone thinking it.28
It is therefore clear that for Frege, transcendental idealism, which is guilty of psychologism since it confuses “being true” and “holding-true,” objective truth and subjective truth, ultimately joins – once again – the skeptic’s camp. All recourse to a knowing subject in the search for the origin of truth in fact leads to psychologism and relativism.
It seems that one might retort that a transcendental approach to truth includes a constitutive reference in regard to the subject of cognition, but that this does not necessarily coincide with the “human,” empirical, or psychological subject. But still, the Kantian distinction between the empirical and the transcendental subject does not convince Frege: “[I]t is unlikely that Frege would have managed to draw a real difference between the fact of making truth depend on the acts of an empirical subject and the fact of relating it to the constitutive activities of transcendental subjectivity.”29 Here again, any reference to subjectivity, whatever the concept might be, remains a figure of “holding-true” for Frege, and for this reason cannot have the value of an origin. The transcendental philosopher is condemned to “attempting to escape his own skin,” in other words, to watching himself think and thereby falsely equating truth and the subjective recognition of truth.30
Kant is never again given a chance to speak in this debate. Bouveresse insists repeatedly that Frege’s position does not coincide with the critical position: “[D]espite the use Frege occasionally makes of Kantian terms and concepts, he should rather [. . .] be viewed as a dogmatic realist.”31 In fact,
the Kantian solution apparently forces us to accept that transcendental arguments do not reveal anything to us about the nature of the objects of experience a priori, except insofar as this cognition that we gain a priori is above all a contribution made by the mind and not by the objects themselves.32
Kant confirms that “laws exist just as little in the appearances, but rather exist only relative to the subject in which the appearances inhere, insofar as it has understanding, as appearances do not exist in themselves, but only relative to the same being, insofar as it has senses.”33 For Kant, to assume the absolute validity of laws would amount to considering that these laws are “in” appearances and to thereby simultaneously eluding the problem of the origin of the agreement between the categories and the objects of experience.
In counterpoint, Frege asserts that an epigenesis of reason can be nothing but a psychogenesis. So again, transcendental idealism is simply the adventure of “holding-true.” With this position we are clearly returning to dogmatism pure and simple. The conflict between skepticism and dogmatism not only does not cease, but definitively swallows the transcendental and, with it, the analogy in §27.
In the end, what is Frege really criticizing, which Kant would not have been entirely able to warn us of, by countering simply with the weak force of “holding-true”? Isn’t it the equating of reason with an organ? What does the neo-skeptical thesis actually claim? If the agreement between categories and objects is the result of biological adaptation, if the a priori and the transcendental disappear to give way to a gradual harmonization of reason and the real, then it is possible to consider reason as a biological given. Without transcendental structures, isn’t reason quite simply a brain? Wouldn’t the genesis of epigenesis then be confounded with brain development itself?
Notes
1. Genova, “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 263.
2. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori.”
3. “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 354. In this quotation, Bouveresse cites Ross Harrison, “Transcendental Arguments and Idealism,” in Godfrey Vesey, ed., Idealism Past and Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 211–24, p. 211.
4. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” pp. 354–5.
5. “Le problème de l’a priori” p. 354.
6. CPR, p. 242, A126.
7. CPR, p. 242, A127.
8. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 357.
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9. Charles Sanders Peirce, Principles of Philosophy, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, eds Charles Hawthorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965, Vol. I, section 12, “Il Lume Naturale,” §81, p. 33. Cited by Bouveresse in “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 357.
10. Peirce, “Principles of Philosophy,” §81, p. 33.
11. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 357.
12. Quotes cited in notes 12–15 are taken from the fuller version of Bouveresse’s text in Essais V – Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Marseille: Agone, 2006, pp. 113–28. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” in Essais V, p. 117. My translation.
13. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” in Essais V, p. 116.
14. “Le problème de l’a priori,” in Essais V, p. 116.
15. “Le problème de l’a priori,” in Essais V, p. 116.
16. Ludwig Boltzmann, Principien der Naturfilosofi. Lectures on Natural Philosophy 1903–1917, ed. Ilse M. Fasol-Boltzmann, Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 1990, p. 160. My translation. Cited by Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 364 (here and henceforth from Revue de théologie et de philosophie).
17. Boltzmann, Principien der Naturfilosofi, p. 160
18. Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 365.
19. In one of his notebooks, Robert Musil writes, in a manner very similar to Boltzmann: “The laws of nature: the cause of natural events; this can but mean that they systematically render them comprehensible in the causal form. They do not condition that which happens; rather they are merely an abstraction drawn from them. The causal conception says only that we are internally constrained by a change to presuppose a cause. From the phylogenetic point of view, this constraint may derive from experience; from the ontogenetic point of view, it is a category.” Robert Musil, Tagebücher, ed. Adolf Frisé, Rowohlt: Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1976, Vol. 1, p. 119. Cited by Bouveresse in, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 364. English translation from Bouveresse’s loose translation to French from the German.
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 12