Biology without Consciousness—and Its Consequences

BIOLOGY WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESSAND ITS CONSEQUENCES* ROBERTEFRON, M.D.f I. Introduction "I myselffind it philosophically quite acceptable, ifa friend from the Indian subcontinent tells me that he does not find it difficult to assume that a crystal may be suffused with satisfaction derived from the regularity in the arrangement ofits atomic particles. I do not find anything distasteful in this assumption. I am aware, ofcourse, that such experiences ... are unrecognizably different from ours. On the other hand, ... I ... am quite willing to endow monistically constituted organisms with mind-like properties " [i, p. in; my italics]. These words climaxed a speech given in 1964 by the past president of the Association for the Study of Animal Behavior. This imputation of consciousness to inanimate matter is not unusual today. Twentieth-century biologists are making statements that are flatly indistinguishable from the propositions ofancient Indian mysticism. Why? The science ofbiology suffers from a progressive and potentially fatal epistemological disorder. It is characterized by such profound chaos in the realm of definitions and the logical relationships between concepts that those who suffer from it have lost cognitive contact with reality. One of the most fundamental causes ofthis disorder is a philosophical principle: It holds that all the phenomena oflife will ultimatelybe reducedto—that is, accounted for, described by, and deduced from—the laws ofphysics and chemistry. It is known as the "principle ofreduction." * This paper was presented at the Center for Philosophy ofScience, University ofPittsburgh, on February ??, 1967, and will be included with the lectures given in 1966-67 to be published by the University ofPittsburgh Press. Permission has been granted for prior publication in Perspectives. t Chief, Neurophysiology-Biophysics Research Unit, Veterans Administration Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02130. 1 gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to Nathaniel Branden for clarification ofsome ofthe philosophical problems ofreductionism and ofmechanistic biology discussed in Sec. ?. The result ofblind adherence to this principle has been an intellectual smashup in neurophysiology and psychology. It has involved such concepts as perception, emotion, the reflex, abstraction, the conditioned reflex , the cerebral localization offunction, learning, and memory—to name only a few. This paper will document the severity ofthis disorder in neurophysiology and psychology by presenting a detailed analysis oftwo ofthese concepts —the reflex and memory.1 ?. The Principle ofReduction The most important premise of the philosophy of materialism which affectsthe field ofbiology is the "principle ofreduction," that is, thepremise that all the phenomena oflife can be accounted for, described by, and deduced from the laws ofphysics and chemistry. The principle ofreduction, as usually stated, is ofquestionable meaning. In the first place, it is ambiguous. It can be interpreted to mean either: (a) that the phenomena ofbiology will, at some future date, be reduced to the laws ofphysics and chemistry which are now known or (b) that biology can be reduced to laws ofphysics and chemistry which will ultimately be discovered but which are at this moment still unknown. The second and more serious fault found in the usual statement of the principle ofreduction is the fact that the terms "physics," "chemistry," and "biology" areleft undefined—on the implicit premise that these terms have clearly defined meanings. Unfortunately, this is not the case. "Physics" is often defined as "a science that deals with matter and energy " [3]. "Chemistry" is defined as "a science that deals with the composition , structure and properties ofsubstances" [3]. Since chemistry, by this definition, is subsumed under the broader concept of"physics," only the term "physics" is needed. Ifphysics is defined in such broad terms, however, then all knowledge ofthe universe is to be subsumed under the "science ofphysics." Physics actuallybecomes that sciencewhich studies thenature ofreality. Ina recent paper in theJournal ofPhilosophy, one physicist actually said, "In the widest sense, physics is the study ofall thephenomena that occur in nature, and its problem is to understand them" [4, p. 5]. According to thisview, econom1 For a presentation ofthe epistemological methods underlying this analysis, the reader is referred to "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" by Ayn Rand G2]. IO Robert Efron · Biology without Consciousness Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Autumn 1967 ics, ethics, and esthetics, as well as biology, are the province ofphysics. Indeed, ifphysics is the study ofreality, then it is merely...