No More Learning

Fortunately, Niels Bohr the most intelligent physic of our century, and his Danish school understood with perfect clearness right from the start of quantum physics that "probabilities concern only mental states; a probability value can only measure the strength of our belief and the accuracy of our information" (Bunge, 1973, 66). We said that the word 'possible' lacks meaning if one does away with the spirit; the same thing goes for the probable, for that is only a species of the 'possible'. By defini- tion, what is probable does not exist yet. Consequently, one cannot say it exists independently from the intelligence that considers it probable.
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In order to determine the degree of probability of something, all the relevant information has to be taken into account. To judge whether a piece of information is relevant or not is a prudential consideration that inanimate things cannot obviously make. The intervention of intelligence is necessary.
But there is more to it. I can judge whether a piece of information that I possess is relevant or not, for I do not have it before my mind; there- fore it is impossible to gain absolute and mechanical certainty as whether or not we have obtained all the relevant information. For pragmatic needs, because I cannot remain indecisive all my life, a moment comes in which I decide prudentially that the information that I have ob- tained is sufficient to me. In function of this, I calculate the probability in question and proceed. Despite what the 'objectivists' may say, the only probabilities that exist are the ones which are built up the way we just indicated. Many operations of the intellect intervene in their constitution.
To think that there is an entity called percentual probability with- in things is to fall into the illusion denounced by Hegel; one projects imaginatively an entity which is not seen but which is 'under' the phe- nomena that we can see, and whose only definition is being cause or explanation of these same phenomena.
In order to make probability something 'objective', the following thinkers want it to be a propensity or a tendency: Smoluchowski, Poin- care? , Popper, Margenau and Bunge. But none of these authors has paid attention to the fact that a propensity or a tendency is not empirical data; not even the tendency to eat called hunger is an empirical data. The meaning of these words is something known by reflection of the subject towards himself. Here we are before the inwardness and the subjec- tivity that objectivism pretended to dismiss. Naturally, it would be very equivocal to attribute propensities to what is probable in itself, for that which does not exist yet cannot have any propensity. One should attri- bute them to the causes, but if these are material and physical objects, such attribution would be animism, and H. R. Post has mocked "". . . the pagan device of investing the world of phenomena with pervasive wood spirits called propensities. " (Bastin, 1971, 279). The causes would have to be true spirits, and there we find again the subject which was trying to be avoided by the objectivists.
The above mentioned authors do not realize that the propensity which they affirm is a propensity towards existence, and hence it would
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be a propensity of a fact that does not yet exist; it follows from this that neither the fact nor its property can be the real referent of the word probability; the only real referent that exists in this moment is knowl- edge; therefore, probability can only mean 'the strength of our belief and the accuracy of our information', that is what the Danish sustain.
On the other hand, the Spielraumtheorie, the range theory, was held with variants by Bernoulli, von Kries, Bolzano, Waismann, Wittgenstein, Keynes and Carnap. Although its ambition went far beyond, this theory only tells what the expression 'percentage' means, which is the expres- sion of the degree of probability. This theory tells us that the percentage is the quotient or fraction whose numerator is the number of the favor- able events, and whose denominator is the added number of favorable and unfavorable events. In order to talk about probability, this theory insists in that the number of unfavorable events must have a priori the same probability of occurring than the favorable events. It is the famous indifference or equipossibility they are always speaking about.
This has been acutely observed, but as von Wright notices "The question may be raised whether randomness and equipossibility can be satisfactorily accounted for without reference to states of knowledge or ignorance. " (EB 23, 631, 1s. ) It is evident to me that the amount of events covered by the so-called denominator cannot be determined without a prudential judgment similar to the one we employ when we determine if the data we have are sufficient. There is no mechanical or absolute procedure in order to know whether I am taking into account all the relevant facts. In other words: in order to determine the amount of events or facts in a percentage is something which is determined by a prudential judgment, and as Von Wright says, this does not happen without reference to one's own state of knowledge or ignorance.
Lastly, von Mises and Reichenbach believe that probability means certain frequency which is empirically observable. But this theory suffers from a misunderstanding of concepts. Probability is perhaps (and not always) measured by a certain frequency, probability may be the cause of a certain frequency of events, probability may be inferred from a certain frequency observed, but no probability has frequency as its meaning. First, we pointed out that physics often measure intensities of spectral lines to calculate the probability: if the line is brilliant, the transition of state is highly probable; if the line is cloudy, the transi- tion is slightly possible; if there is no spectral line, the transition is not probable. Now, these intensities are not frequencies by any means. In
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addition, there are other ways in physics to measure probability, which are not frequencies. Therefore, it is absolutely false that probability means frequency.
But the most important thing to point out is that probability is prob- ability of a possible event, that is to say, an event that does not yet exists, while the frequency --in order to be an empirical data, as von Mises and Reichenbach would want-- is the computation of the event that have occurred, events that exist or that have existed. Perhaps the observed frequency authorizes us to infer a certain probability for the future, but this demonstrates that probability is not frequency, for the former would still have to be inferred while we already have the latter. One doesn't infer A from A; if we have A, we do not need to infer it.
By the way, the inference in question requires as a premise a prin- ciple which is itself unverifiable and which is must certain false 'there is regularity in nature' and 'the future resembles the past'. It requires it because the rationalizing assumption of the inference is that the fre- quency of the past will also be the frequency of the future.
The individual facts of which we speak when talking about fre- quency or probability are distinct: in the first case we say that from one hundred observed events, x were positive. In the second case we speak of a new event which hast no yet occurred and which is not one of the one hundred cases that have been observed. How justified is it to speak about the probability of such future event after proving some- thing in regard to one hundred different events is a question we do not need to go into now. In any case, it supposes a highly doubtable premise, which is the so-called principle we previously alluded to. But even if we graciously supposed that this logical step is valid, it re- mains clear that frequency and probability are different concepts. First: because they cannot be predicated simultaneously in regard to a same event. Second: because in order to go logically from one to the other one needs the intervention of a highly metaphysical principle: a clear sign which tells us that the content of one of the concepts is not the same as the content of the other.
6. Life
If what has been said in this book proves to be right in its thesis that physics is not an empirical science, with much more reason can we say
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the same in regard to biology and behavioral disciplines, since their own cultivators only refer to the empiricity of the physical sciences as the ideal their methodologies strive for. Nevertheless, we need to explain the non-empirical character of the biological and behavioral sciences, for the belief in their empirical character is widespread and has particular consequences.
Hegel expressly warns about this: "That which is alive is an example of what cannot be understood by the abstract intellect" (PR III 71). It is important to have in mind the difference that we already established between: reason (Vernunft) and the abstract intellect (Verstand).
Proceeding like this intellect does, the biologists use words to which they cannot give any meaning and therefore they do not un- derstand them. I will deal specifically with three very important topics: 1) Life and organisms; 2) Normality or abnormality, that is to say, health or sickness; 3) Species.
If Biology does not succeed in defining empirically that which is alive, it does not even limit its own field of investigation. Now let us look at what Baker and Allen admit in the name of all biologists: "there is no concrete line between what is alive and what is not" (1970, 3). The same acknowledgment is found in the Britannica: "There is not as yet a set of nonarbitrary characteristics that mark the distinction between living and nonliving systems. " (EB 25, 684, 2).
We would like to insist in this point, since the common sense fre- quently believes that there is no problem here, and that belief is based on the false security with which the biologists think that they can proceed undisturbed, even if they do not really know what they are speaking about. It is easy to the common sense to say: all that moves is alive. But the sea moves, the wellspring moves, the volcano lava moves, the flame moves, the sun moves, the river moves; and no one, not even the common sense, affirms that these things are living beings.
Nutrition, growth and reproduction are the three characteristics most commonly considered to be distinctive of what is alive. But it is difficult to define these three terms in such a way that they do not apply to inorganic objects as well. Of course, one tries to define them by means of empirical data, and under those conditions nutrition and growth are almost the same: local transfer of external matter to the bundle of the studied object, that is to say: aggregation or incorpora- tion of external elements of the body we consider to be alive. Neverthe- less, that growth or aggregation of new elements is also observed in
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crystals, which are not organisms. It can also be observed in the flame, which undoubtedly nourishes itself and grows. Reproduction has two different kinds of problems. On the one hand, reproduction is not a sufficient criterion to define life: under that consideration neither the ox, nor the working bees, nor the human eunuchs nor children could be called living beings. In the case of the first three, one could not even say that they can reproduce themselves 'potentially'. And on the other hand, the flame not only nurtures itself from external elements and then grows, but also produces other similar flames and in that sense it reproduces itself. And if we wish to add as a fourth characteristic the dissimilation or elimination of the waste material, we would still face a lot of problems, for the ashes are the waste of the flame.
But the difficulties do not finish there. Each cell of the organism holds these four characteristics, and Biology would remain disabled to decide if a dog is one or many living beings.
Therefore, it is necessary to make a fundamental consideration.
If the finality seems to modern scientists something brought from the outside and not empirically evident, that is because they believe that the very object is empirically evident and they figure that by the sense data they can determine whether they have or not a living being in front of them. All the absurd pride they take in their contempt of the teleological is grounded on the supposition that the terms they use have empirical meaning and that is why they the task of knowing the object was of primal importance to them. But none of the empirical features that we have enumerated allow them to know if a dog is a living or multiple living beings, and nevertheless biologists and we know that the dog is only one. The question is: How do we know that? It is impossible to know the unity and non-multiplicity of a living being if we do not follow the consideration that the cells contribute to the wellbeing of the whole organism as an end. In determining its ob- ject of study, Biology uses of Teleology, despite the fact that it claims the opposite.
Moreover, the growth in the empirical sense of the mere amount of matter is an absurd criterion, since there are tumors and odd for- mations. For instance: a deformed head that is much bigger at one particular side --something which is not considered beneficial, but rather a very negative condition that leads to death. The incorporation of more matter only seems like life to biologists if this contributes to the wellbeing of the organism.
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"The Aristotelian concept of nature is superior from that one used nowadays, for what is essential in the former is the determination of the end as the internal characteristic of the natural object itself" (GP II 173).
The difference between Aristotle and modern biologists consists in that the latter do not think enough on what they are doing; they do not notice how they are thinking.
Aside from what has been said before --which cannot be put into question--, there is a special point in which Teleology cannot be dis- regarded: the reproduction in the animal and vegetal realms is unac- countable if the species at itself does not act as an end and exerts thereby causality. Hegel highlights this: "the species is end" (GP I 381), "the universality or species is the inner" (WL II 435).
One speaks in vulgar zoologies about certain kind of insects whose male dies after the coitus: he leaves his own member and bowels inside the female's genitals. Scientific treatises supply even more dramatic examples. Let us only mention a few. Entomologist Ashley B. Gurney speaks of a particular kind of orthoptera:
A striking sequel to mating occurs frequently in mantids when the female eats the male. There is a popular opinion that mantid males always are eaten, but many escape under natural conditions.
But in the close confines of a small cage cannibalism of the male is more common. (EB 21, 607, 1).
Let us understand this correctly: when the male decides to mate, he is almost certainly heading towards his own end. Among animals the individual is not the end; the end is the species; and this happens with real effectiveness, not only on the theorist's minds.
According to the zoologist Justin W. Leonard, in most of the ephemeroptera species, both the male and the female die shortly after mating and safely securing the fertilized eggs (cf. EB 21, 602, 1). This means that, when the couple 'decides' to copulate, what they are decid- ing is to die. In the animal kingdom there is no individual instinct of conservation which can oppose the good and wellbeing of the species. When some atheist thinkers say that we can find some acts of altruism among animals --as in the case of the paternal care of the offspring, which jeopardizes even one's survival--, they forget that, in order to have an alter one needs to have also an ego, something that does not exist among animals. As a matter of fact, among animals the true unity is the species.
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The zoologist George C. Kent tells us the following about the repro- duction of the nematode (some wind of worm): when the ratio between the males and the females of a group is not optimal, then all the indi- viduals will have a sex reversal (cf. EB 26, 684, 1). The same happens with certain species of mollusks and insects. In a word, the individual is not respected: he is in the world for the sake of the species and not vice versa.
In the barnacles --which are, by the way, hermaphrodites-- occurs very often that normal sized individuals do not produce enough sperm; when that occurs, their male offspring are all dwarfs; all the parts of their bodies are stiffen and stingy, with the exception of the testicles (cf. EB 26, 685, 1). Whenever the evolutionist biologists describe --with the particular emphasis that characterizes them-- the selective mecha- nism by means of which only the fittest survive, they provide us with a tautological expression. All that the Darwinist wants to say is this: the fittest for survival survive. In the light of the case of these degenerated barnacles we must say: we are not dealing with the fittest ones for sur- vival, but rather with the fittest that can make survive the species. In the case of bees, "the male lives only briefly, just long enough to mate" (EB 21, 661, 1); males "live only for a short time at a specific time of year" (EB 21, 661, 2). And we find even a more extreme instance among unicellular organisms than that which we mentioned before: the whole male individual transforms itself into a gamete and the rest of his body disappears (cf. EB 26, 656, 2). The materialistic explanation of evolu- tion cannot be tenable, for it is entirely based on an alleged tendency of self-conservation of the individual material bundle. After all, even stones outlast the pass of time. The Darwinian mechanism consists in that the species survives, because the strongest and fittest animals for the individual surviving, are those that have the bigger chances to procreate, while weak and feeble animals are either eliminated or ex- cluded from the possibility of mating. The above mentioned examples demonstrate that this is not the fundamental mechanism of conserva- tion of species. The effective leadership that the species carries through cannot be explained materially.
Let us mention only some few examples of total subordination of the animal individual to the reproduction; this time is about the female. Among certain kinds of water flies (dipteral), reproduction is parthe- nogenetic; the eggs are fertilized and developed inside the mother, and when they are big enough they "escape by destroying the body of their
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mother in a process called paedogenesis" (EB 21, 589, 2). In the so-called ephemeral fly, or ephemoptera, which is fertilized by the male, the de- livery is sheer suicide: the female lets herself fall over the aquatic surface from a considerable height, and with the impact all the fertilized eggs are expelled out of the bowels of the mother, who dies right in the mo- ment when that happens (Cf. EB 21, 602, 2).
Few things are more certain in Biology than the above quoted sen- tence of Hegel: "The species is end" (GP I, 381).
One needs only to read carefully any modern treatise on Biology to see how the very necessity of understanding objectively the phenom- ena makes the treatise writer forget the antiteleological dogma which he had imposed to himself in his methodological statements. A competent physic can bear witness of what I am saying, for his professional sensibil- ity discovers immediately finalistic terms and considerations which do not occur in physics. Niels Bohr says: "Actually, we must recognize that the requirements of objective description, in tendency at least, are ful- filled by the caraceristic complementary way in which arguments based on the full resources of physical and chemical science, and concepts di- rectly referring to the integrity of the organism transcending the scope of these sciences, are practically used in biological research. " (1987, 76)
We could make an anthology with quotes of biologists who only by means of teleological considerations can seize the objects of study. Let us see some cases of this, in particular, the case of N. J. Berrill, an out- standing specialist of sexuality in the animal kingdom:
This division of labor between mating types, male and female, respectively, is nature's way of attaining two ends. These are the bringing together of the gametes so that fusion may take place and the accumulation of reserves so that development of a new organism can be accomplished. The first calls for as many motile cells as possible; the second calls for cells as large as possible. These different requirements are practically impossible to satisfy by a single type of cell. (EB 27, 247, 1)
This paragraph does not need any further commentary.
Another instance of this source is to be found in Baker and Allen, in spite of the fact they affirm that "modern biology is based upon de pre- sumption that the living system's functions can be explained on terms of chemical and physical processes" (1970, 2). However, when they speak of the placental mammals, they say the following:
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The placenta is an extraordinary organ. At the same time is an intestine, a pair of lungs, a kidney, a liver and an endocrine gland. Many substances that go from the mother to the embryo pass through the placenta by active transpor- tation [. . . ] The placenta does not work for the child's wellbeing only. It also secretes hormones which charge the maternal mammary glands to bring them to a condition in which they are capable of secreting milk (ibid. 429).
Each time the treatise writer says this 'works to [. . . ]' he is doing Teleology, and confirming, involuntarily, this thesis of Hegel: "the good, which is by itself an end, is also a principle in the philosophy of nature" (GP I 472).
In regard to the lack of conscience of biologists, Hegel makes a remark that, from the point of view of the epistemologist, is of primal impor- tance: that lack of conscience "remains attached to the determinations of the imagination, such as impulse, instinct, necessity, etcetera, without asking what these determinations are in themselves" (EPW 359 A).
Along the tree concepts mentioned in this text, one must add other two which are closely intertwined with them: pain and pleasure. Without this set of concepts, not only zoologist cannot go any further, but be- haviorism proves incapable of granting a meaning to the principal term of this discipline: reward, gratification and stimulus.
In regard to the case of pain, Hegel remarks: "living things have over the unanimated ones the privilege of pain" (EPW 60 A).
Their already alluded lack of consciousness consists in believing that the above mentioned terms have empirical meaning, when only the re- flection of the subject over himself can grant them meaning. We said before that not even the tendency to eat, that is to say, the impulse or instinct that we call hunger is an empirical data. All the attempts to ascribe meaning to a physical fact which we can perceive by means of the sight and the touch are doomed to failure. For instance, to be- lieve that the meaning of hunger is the act of eating is tantamount to say something stupid, for we can eat without being hungry. The lapse of many hours in which we do not eat is not the meaning either, for those who have carried out diurnal hunger strikes bear witness that the sensation of hunger fades away after some time. And not even a single exterior sign as starvation means hunger because, on the one hand a fat and healthy person can have hunger, and on the other hand, some- one could be starving because he has been beaten up or is simply sick. Besides, not even gastric secretions can be pinpointed as the physical
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meaning of the word hunger: like every gastroenterologist knows, one can segregate an enormous amount of gastric juices due to different worries and anxieties.
I do not believe it is possible to define impulse, instinct, necessity, pain or pleasure doing without the idea of 'end' --let alone to explain the existence of this entities. But precisely the introspective character of such terms brings us back to our point of departure: the concept of life.
As we have seen --and this something accepted by the biologists themselves --, not a single or a set of empirically perceivable data is the meaning of the word life. Now (cfr II, 2), it follows that this concept does not have an empirical origin, since its cause would have to be some empirically perceivable data. The inevitable conclusion of this is that the concept itself of life was originated in self-consciousness, and that its primal meaning is a reality known by self-consciousness. When someone said 'life' for the first time, what he said was: like myself. Life, in its fullest sense, is the self-determination and -causation of the spirit. We predicate life of plants and animals in a diminished and deficient sense. As Hegel says: "his own self-consciousness is that which man makes objective to himself" (PR II, I 94, 1); "in so far as the mind thinks of itself as changing but remaining simple on that change, it thinks life as such" (GP II 452). The 'salient point' in the concept of life is "the moving of oneself, the direction of oneself as such" (EPW 359 A).
In order to understand the next paragraph, one must keep in mind that the concept is the spirit, and by reflection, in its derogatory sense, Hegel means the activity of the abstract intellect with its mirror games (Cf. V, 3), since they do not add any content at all.
The omnipresence of the simple on the multiple exteriority is for the reflec- tion an absolute contradiction; and insofar that it is forced by the perception of the life to understand such omnipresence and to concede the reality of that idea, it results to him an unintelligible mystery, for the said reflection does not understand either the concept or the concept as substance of life (WL II 416). [. . . ] It is from the idea of life that the idea of spirit has issued. (WL II 435).
True life is self-determination. Biologists could deny this concept only if they had another one. But we have seen that they do not have another one.
There have been many snobbish people who pretend to get indig- nant about the traditional judgment that catalogs animals and plans as
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inferior living forms. But in order to make meaningful such a grandilo- quent statement, the person in question would have to define life in a different way than Hegel. But he or she is unable to do that.
The Aristotelian definition of life, motus ab intrinseco et in intrinsecum, only comes about fully in the spirit, since in the inferior living beings some parts are exterior with respect to other parts and hence movement is not entirely intrinsic. At the end of the day, however, movement does not originate inside of animals, but in the agent who put inside them such instincts and tendencies; we would not say that a toy moves it- self. What moves the toy is the person who sets it into motion. On the contrary, the decision to move can go in man against the impulses and the natural inclinations; the origin and the last instance of movement is the self itself, and the determinations that are produced thereby are the being itself of the spirit, the intrinsic.
Life of animals --although, as life, it is an idea-- does not represent yet the infinitude and freedom itself which is only manifest when the concept permeates its adequate reality so fully, that only has itself, and it makes no other thing that producing itself (A? sth I 229).
Animals and plants have life insofar they resemble man; insofar they, in a gradual way, possess self-determination and move them- selves. A horse moves itself --although this is not very intrinsic--, for his legs are exterior with respect of the rest of his body.
It is true that mind has before itself a general image of the vitality and of its organization; but in real nature this general organism is dividend in a realm of particularities, from which each of them has its own limited type and figure and their own particular degree of development (A? sth I 227).
"The inmediacy of the idea of life consists in that the concept does not exist as such in life; therefore, its concreteness its submitted to multiple constraints and circumstances of the external nature and may appear in the more measly forms" (EPW 368 A).
The range or scale is very wide, precisely because the life one predicates of plants and animals consist in 'resembling to [. . . ]', and that every re- semblance says 'more or less'; gradation is inherent to the very concept of resemblance. Hegel would have seen a confirmation of his thesis in the fact, recently discovered, that viruses --the lowest degree of life we
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