No More Learning

Despite, the impetuosity of those biologists who claim that health is an empirical data, we have seen that that is not the case. One could ask then, what is the origin of the judgment of health?
'Vital' in its original meaning, is the thing that entirely determines itself --which is the spirit. It follows from this that 'less vital' (i. e. , sick) is what is being determined, in higher or lesser degree, by outer agents which reduce its self-determination, liberty or capacity of moving to itself. The lesser point of reference is the inorganic, it is to say, the 'object' that is externally determined by others and has no initiative
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whatsoever. The organism is reduced to that state in a higher or lesser degree by sickness.
The same gradation that allows us to affirm life in plans and ani- mals --insofar they resemble more or less the self-determination of the spirit-- constitutes the possibility of judgments of health and sick- ness. The self-determination of animals and plants consists in that the specificity of their reactions, forms and characteristics is not determined by the environment but by the hereditary germ which each species pos- sess. This makes us see that it is not a full self-determination, for it is not the individual organism the one that decides but rather the species, that "universal individual" as Hegel called it (PG 218). However, even the limited and flawed self-determination decreases in case of illness, and illness should be defined by the diminution whose extreme possibility is suppression (death).
Let us note finally that the same gradation of the concept of life --whose concretion, Hegel told us, "is subjected to multiple condi- tionings and circumstances of the external nature" (EPW 368 A). The gradation rules the formation of the concept of the diverse species of the organic.
The multiple attempts that Biology has made in order to determine the species on the grounds of physical and empirical features have failed. That was the case of a person named Blumenbach, who in times of Hegel affirmed that the earlobe was the essential feature of the hu- man species. Biology could have spared too many troubles had it read carefully what Hegel said about such physical features:
By their exteriority one notices that the knowledge of concept did not origi- nate in them: it was an obscure premonition, an indeterminate yet pro- found sense, a forewarning of the essential, what preceded the discovery of the species in nature and in the spirit, and one only searched afterwards, for the abstract intellect, some determined exteriority (WL II 456).
It has been a delusion, an illusion of the empiricism like the one we mentioned apropos the judgments of health and sickness.
For responsible biologists it is nowadays evident that their disci- pline cannot justify by empirical data the formation of their concepts of species. As Munson and York report, "some biologists have concluded that species have only a subjective existence merely as convenient la- bels for arbitrary assemblages and have only a minimum of biological
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significance" (EB 25, 686, 2). Furthermore, Herbert H. Ross, one of the most acclaimed specialists in taxonomy, makes all the more evident this spectacular failure: "We might find that different populations each previously considered to be separate species are only one, or that dif- ferent populations previously considered to be a single species actually represent many species. " (1974, 13).
For centuries, in an effort to set their concepts of species in empirical data, Biology drew its attention to describable features and characteris- tics. But this attempt failed innumerable times in facts like the follow- ing one: some butterflies have only four legs in contrast with the model of six legs that characterizes almost all insects: having six legs could not be longer considered any longer to be a particular empirical feature of insects, because on the 'basic' and 'fundamental' level, butterflies had to be considered as insects. This was the crack that made the entire building of the anatomical criterion fall down: to call some features es- sential and other not is a judgment of value and not an empirical data. To justify such a judgment by empirical observation is impossible, for this judgment determines precisely which observations are basic and fundamental and which observations are not. We could quote many examples like this.
In the light of this failure, biology --not willing to renounce to its status of empirical science-- employed the criterion of mating and intraspecific fertility: it decreed that species is characterized by the fact that their individuals mate between themselves and have offspring. But this failure is just as spectacular as the past one. First, many species reproduce themselves by simple fission, others by parthogenesis, other species are hermaphrodite, and so it turns out that we cannot divide animals in species by look only to the fact of the mating of the individu- als; the above mentioned types of reproduction --more particularly, the first one-- are quantitatively very important in the animal king- dom, and in those realms the term 'mating' does not have any mean- ing at all. Second, if one adopts this criterion, one must abandon the previous one, namely, the description of the essential characteristics. Biology, however, does not come to terms with this idea. Baker and Allen tell us: "Two progenitor plants, which are capable of producing a hybrid offspring, are eventually considered as distinct species because they differ in their anatomy and in other important details" (1970, 462). Biology works ludicrous conceptual tricks to feed its own complacent delusion of being an empirical science.
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Third, the objection of Benjamin Burma is tremendously powerful:
What, then, is a species? It would seem thus far to be the whole of any one series of breeding populations. . . [But the] definition as it stands unfortu- nately puts all living and fossil animals in one species, since there is a con- tinuity of germ-plasm back from John [an individual animal] to the original primordial cell, and from it forward to every living animal (not to mention plant). (EB 25, 686, 2)
In order to reply to Burma's objection, one could define species as the set of populations that have intercourse at a period of time, but then the number of species would be infinite. There would not be a temporal continuity among a species, which is something utterly absurd.
The origin of all this mess was to believe that the concept of spe- cies is obtained a posteriori, i. e. by generalization of all the particular cases. But from a logical or an epistemological point of view this is impossible. How could we know from which individuals --among the many existing ones in the world-- should we abstract the concept in question, if we do not observe the world with the concept that will de- termine our selection? By means of which criterion can we rule out the sets of animals that are not useful for us? By means of which criterion, if is not the a priori concept, can we rule out the monstrosities and hy- brids, that the very experience displays us?
The trouble lays in the impotence of nature to hold the concept in its veri- fication [. . . ]. Nature revolves everywhere the essential boundaries, which always present new instances against every firm decision, even within a determined species (e. g. men), by means of monstrosities that, on the one hand, must be ascribed to the species in question, and on the other hand, lack the determinations that must be regarded as the characteristics of the species. In order to consider such forms as defective and deformed, one must suppose a fixed type, but that cannot be collected from experience, for experience provides us also with such monstrosities, engenders, etcet- era; a fixed type supposes rather the autonomy and dignity of a concept (EPW. 250 A)
"It follows from this that only life in general can be valid for the ob- servation of the concrete forms, but when that life is fragmented it does not have any order or rational classification in itself, it is not a round- about system of forms" (PG 219). The concept of life, as we have said,
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is obtained by means of self-consciousness; it is a priori, not a posteriori. Its content is the self-determination of reason and of the spirit: that is life in general. From plants and animals we predicate life in a deficient and diminished sense, because such a realization of life "is subjected to many conditionings and circumstances of exterior nature" and non organic. Each species is life insofar it possesses such material condition- ings and particularities; we obtain the concept of species by means of selection, that is to say, by selecting the true content of life according to the possibilities that the material world offers. One species crystal- lizes in front of our eyes --so to speak-- only when a picture of uncon- nected points suddenly appears to us, as in the gestalt experiments, as a figure that 'makes sense'. In our case, to have meaning means that it is viable and can have life. One should not be surprised that such configurations called species have a provisory character, as the taxono- mist Ross warned us. We maintain that species only insofar that there is not instance that contradicts it. We maintain it because it has sense, because it is a possible form or realization of the a priori concept of life.
7. conduct
Although Hegel could not foresee the contemporary boom of the con- cept of behavior, such notion falls undoubtedly under the judgment that he left Hegel formulated: "Life as an example of what cannot be understood with the abstract intellect" (PR III 71). After all, a behavior is a piece of life, one piece among the many that conform life, one unit of that which we call vitality. If only by means of self-consciousness is possible to grant meaning to the term life, the same must happen with the term behavior.
"In the empirical reality each action has many precedents, so that it is very difficult to determine in which point is the beginning" (A? sth III 274).
In the search of a behavior we find the same gestalt procedure we just mentioned in regard to the concept of species: a behavior is a vital unity that 'has sense'. We could not justify by empirical data the con- ceptual selections we make in the temporal continuum in the life of an organism in order to affirm that there is a behavior between the two cuts. The rat does not cease to move once it eats. And, in fact, the rat was not still before. No sensible data tells us: here a behavior ends and
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here another begins. To be sure, there are empirical data: but none of them means 'limit'. The criterion by means of which we will judge the ulterior movement does not belong to the behavior to which we paid attention before: evidently, it is a question that is not determined by empirical data. The temporal continuum which is the life of the ob- served organism is not empirically sectioned in parts. Our verbs of action --projected over the said organism-- constitute different types of unities. The subject experimented as a unity certain segment of his own existence and named that set of movements. Only afterwards he projected those unities and the cuts that limit them over the other or- ganisms. It is only due to the interiority of the subject that such sets have unity.
I am not saying that we do not know when a behavior ends and another begins. Of course we know that, but not by means of empiri- cal data. If the observer remains in the empirical, he could only speak at best of movements, but not of behaviors. Behavior says something much more that movement: it means activity. Now, if some concept was originated in self-consciousness, was the concept of activity. It im- plies causation, and we have seen (III 8) that causality is not an empiri- cal data. One says that he behaviors himself in one way or another, only because he realizes that it is him who determines the course of his ac- tions. If that was not the case, he would not behave himself he would be manipulated by something else. Only in a deficient and derived sense we can say that animals behave themselves: "Both the action and the event are originated in the interiority of the spirit" (A? sth III 139), "the agency begins with subjectivity" (PR II 211).
It is amusing that behaviorism --grounded itself entirely in an in- trospective and 'mental' concept-- criticizes all other psychological methods, accusing them of mentalism and anti-empirical.
If the behaviorists decree that 'behavior' is movement 'for them', they are going directly to a death end. In fact, a behavior comprises many movements, but the important questions are: How many? With which criterion does the observing mind comprise them as a unity? On what grounds does the observer affirm that many movements constitute only one behavior and not many?
For instance, how could we know in a banquet if I had one or several behaviors? If I drank one glass of wine in five sips, did I have one be- havior or five? If the rat ceases to eat while eating, would we say that it carried out as many behaviors as the times it stopped moving?
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Two extreme behaviorists, Tolman and Guthrie, addressed this sub- ject, but they displayed an astounding lack of reflection while dealing with the epistemological problem that it entails.
Winfred Hill describes this very accurately:
Walking a city block, for example, is a molar act made up of an enormous number of molecular movements --expansions and contractions of the various muscles of the legs and other parts of the body. Guthrie is an exam- ple of a theorist who puts a good deal of emphasis on molecular analysis. Tolman, on the other hand, states explicitly that he is concerned only with molar behavior. The ways in which molecular movements work together to produce molar acts are of no concern to his system. (1983, 133)
We must say something in regard of the tastes and preferences on account of these investigators:
First, Guthrie himself falls short in his analytic preference. For instance, biologist Frank Brown speaks of "This is well illustrated by the complex movements of swallowing in mammals; in the dog, for example, 11 sepa- rate muscles or muscular systems are found to discharge one after the other, precisely timed to a matter of milliseconds". (EB 14, 636, 2). Accord- ing to the preferences of Tolman, one behavior would comprise a long series of events. On the contrary, Guthrie would say that each single move- ment is a behavior. Furthermore: if one tries to reduce behavior --doing without its genuine meaning-- to physical movements, why should one exclude the atomic movements of each muscle from our analysis?
Second, if it depends on the taste of the observer the number of behaviors we are dealing with, it follows that the object of study of be- haviorism is not an empirical data. The criterion by means of which the investigator builds up a behavior is not extracted by empirical data but from his own understanding and self-consciousness. Therefore, behaviorism is no other thing that a reloaded mentalism.
Against the above mentioned decree, we would like to pose a di- lemma which seems to us to be definitive. And this, of course, has to do with still behaviors. But before we formulate it, let us see some other problems first.
Will behaviorism deny that a paralytic has a behavior? Should we say that a disabled person that pays us attention does not have any behavior at all? Is hearing not a behavior? Is looking carefully instead of being distracted not a behavior? If I stay still during five minutes
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while listening a sonata with attention, could someone say that I am not behaving myself somehow? Is listening to a sonata not a behavior? These still behaviors can have tangible effects. For instance, a forester can contemplate attentively a fire during five minutes in certain direc- tion, and then make a phone call in which he says that there is no fire at the place he has to watch. If it has some undeniable empirical effects,
would the behaviorists deny that such still behavior existed?
And let us go now to our dilemma. Against the behaviors we have
mentioned previously, behaviorism can assume two positions:
First, behaviorism can acknowledge that there are in fact behaviors. In order to do so, it would appeal to the (supposed) movements of the neurons inside the head of the agent. But then the circulation of blood would be a conduct which, by the way, is not motivated by an exte- rior stimulus. That would be a decisive proof against the behaviorist theory, for it pretends to explain any conduct by exterior stimuli, and ignore the mentalist entities. The recourse it could employ is to distin- guish the behaviors of the paralytic and the forester in one hand and in the other the circulation of the blood pointing out that the firsts are in terms of voluntarism, and the second don't. However, if that happens, the will would be an essential element of conduct, and few things are
as introspective and mental as that!
Second, behaviorism could stubbornly affirm that the allegedly
still behaviors are not behaviors because they are not exterior move- ments of an organism. If that were the case, the salivary and gastric secretion of the Pavlov dogs would not be a behavior. We should not forget that the entire behaviorism originated in the observation of that very fact as some kind of paradigmatic behaviorism. To be sure, behaviorism could try to escape from that reductio ad absurdum by de- creeing that we are dealing with a behavior when we consider the en- tire organism as a whole, but the salivary secretion is evidently not a movement of the organism as a whole. Furthermore, there would not be any conduct at all, since not even eating is a movement of the organ- ism as a whole; my Saint Bernard dog i. e. does not rise from his place to eat when I bring near him his plate; during his meal, most of his body continues exactly as it was before.
Each and every one of the above mentioned alternatives means the fall of behaviorism, unless it relinquishes the thesis of behavior as a physical movement. But then behavior is an introspective concept, and that would also mean the fall of this theory.
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We have not talked about the word stimulus. It is obvious that this word is meaningless if does not refer to different impulses or instincts, or needs, or to pleasures or pains, being all of them metaphysic entities.
In order to avoid the proper meaning of the term stimulus, behav- iorism would have to arbitrarily decree that 'stimulus is every empiri- cal fact that explains the existence of a behavior', for the epistemological status of behaviorism is eminently explanatory. Its primary intention is to formulate laws (cf. v. 4). Let us not bring into consideration what we said before in regard of unempirical terms like 'always' or 'every', without which no law can be formulated. The sole reflection upon the matter would show how frustrated their attempts are. What is specifi- cally important to point out is that without the consideration of an inte- rior impulse or a pleasure, the definition of stimulus above mentioned would not explain the existence of a given conduct nor make it exists. We are not witnessing a behavior when we apply the same stimulus to a brick. Therefore, the stimulus taken alone does not make that behavior exist. Something more is required in the body we are observing: some instinct, necessity or pain: all those things are mental. In spite of the arbitrary recourses it employs, this arbitrary definition cannot avoid the internal.
To make matters worse, behaviorists themselves cannot deny that be- havior can occur without the stimulus whose effectiveness they study. It is very well known, for instance, that the movements of the mouth of an infant or a chimpanzee who want milk while asleep are a behavior without the belonging stimulus. Then what is missing is to reflect on the epistemological status of behaviorism, and this would make its existence to be justified. For example, (and we could talk of many others): It is not the stimulus that brings behavior into existence. But, if behaviorism is not explanatory, what would be then its status? It is not descriptive, because terms like reasoning and stimulus, just to mention a few, are evidently explanatory.
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The Man and the State
? ? All fundamental mistakes in political philosophy and in the so- cial and human sciences (including the legal theory of Kelsen) stem either from one or two of the following assumptions: the first one is to believe that man is naturally good or even that he is man by nature; the second one is to consider the studied entities as empiri- cal data. I am referring to entities such as society, state, freedom, lack of freedom, language, equality among man, the Right, The Law, humanity itself, customs, behavior, the authority or government, property, pro- duction mode, etcetera.
Since we have previously demonstrated several important theses about man, we strongly advise against reading these chapters without reading the previous ones. Following our analysis, it is of primal im- portance to consider that not even the entities of Physics and Biology can be discovered by appealing to empirical perception. After this meticulous study, it would be childish to affirm the equality among men --in the belief that it is an empirical data-- without previously demonstrating it. The empirical data is the inequality of men: some are bigger and others are smaller, some are fat and others are thin, some are active and others are passive, etcetera. Nevertheless, if equal- ity is not demonstrated, our unavoidable demand of democracy is not justified either, and anyone who defends it would have as much
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reasonableness --or unreasonableness-- as those who defend autocracy. This subject will become a question of 'taste' outside the margins of rationality. The dispute among men about political theories will cease when the truth of them become an obligation to be demonstrated.
And if we are talking about demonstrations in politics, surely Hegel's political theses have a lot to say to us. What we have been saying does not pertain only to the problems themselves but also to the interpretation of Hegel. He takes off from the fact that he is making science and not simply boasting esthetical caprices. He states that ex- plicitly in his prologue to his Philosophy of Right. If we are dealing with science, we must first define and then demonstrate. It is very funny, for instance, that people who accuse Hegel of worshipping the State are those who do not even define that concept. Those persons inevita- bly confuse the State with the government, despite that Hegel eagerly demonstrates they are different things. Those persons believe to be the champions of the civil society against the State, but they are incapable of defining both. They are incapable, therefore, of supposing that per- haps both things are the same, and that does not depend on the arbi- trary definitions that each author has the whim of writing. If the civic society is not a physical object proved by empirical means, then it is constituted by rights and obligations. Only in that, and just in that, does the State consist.
In this present subject would be very artificial to deal with interpre- tative questions separately, dealing with specific matters in indepen- dent sections as we have done so far. Our exposition will be from this point onwards more discursive, except in cases like Hegel's iusnatural- ism, which has been put into question by some.
One unequivocally notices that Hegel's message about man and the State, insofar it is a demonstrated truth, acquires the importance of a revelation. This is the reason why we must deal with theologians in our study too, for we are speaking about the end of man and the meaning of the entire human history.
1. naturaL goodneSS?
Any thinking person can see that men of letters and poets attributed natural goodness to farmers and countrymen in order to idealize pas- toral life. Without this element, they did not consider this landscape
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'beautiful' enough to be treated by the arts. Obviously, this assumption of natural goodness is an apriorism. Unfortunately, the political left nowadays moves entirely within this apriorism. In order to be sup- portive with the oppressed, the indigenes and the proletariat, the left has blindly assumed that each one of its members is truthful, honest and moral. The leftist reacts with indignation when someone demon- strates him that all the felonies and crimes that the poor commit against each other are deeds as perverted as those which the working class suffers under the hands of the wealthy class. Although the rational and moral justification of the struggle in favor of the exploded ones does not need at all such romantic assumptions --which, in fact, only hinder us from constructing a world that is truly just and good--, it is very understandable that the left has felt the psychological need of employ- ing them. The left has given much more importance to this objection than what it actually has: why should one commit oneself with a class that is not morally better than the other class? As an objection against the just revolutionary class this is useless; however, as a scientific question that demands and answer, it has a tremendous power and depth from which the left has in vain tried to escape.
Neither political struggle nor science can be grounded on vulgar, romantic reveries and argumentations. A clear example of this is rude kind of reasoning is the opinion according to which the Christian thesis of the natural evilness of man is 'outdated', only because it was formu- lated many centuries ago. Two plus two equals four is a truth that was formulated many more centuries ago and no one questions it.
The Christian teaching according to which man is evil by nature is superior to that which affirms man is good by nature; it is necessary to understand its philosophical meaning. As a spirit man is a free being whose destiny is not to be determined by his natural impulses. Therefore, in conditions of immediacy and ignorance, man is in a situation in which he should not to be and from which he must free himself. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the original sin, without which Christianity would not be the religion of freedom (Rph 18 Z).
I believe that no honest intelligence can consider as a 'matter of theologians' something which in our century made Einstein say: "it is easier to denature plutonium than it is to denature the evil spirit of men" (Schilpp II 1970, 655). These words of Einstein (Conacyt revue,
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