In Search of a Better World

The Search for a Better World

The first half of the title of my lecture was not chosen by me, but by the organizers of the Alpbach Forum. Their title was: ‘Knowledge and the Shaping of Reality’.

My lecture consists of three parts: knowledge; reality; and the shaping of reality through knowledge. The second part, which deals with reality, is by far the longest, since it contains a great deal by way of preparation for the third part.

1. Knowledge

I shall start with knowledge. We live in a time in which irrational-ism has once more become fashionable. Consequently, I want to begin by declaring that I regard scientific knowledge as the best and most important kind of knowledge we have – though I am far from regarding it as the only one. The central features of scientific knowledge are as follows:

1. It begins with problems, practical as well as theoretical.

One example of a major practical problem is the struggle of medical science against avoidable suffering. This struggle has been extremely successful; yet it has led to a most serious unintended consequence: the population explosion. This means that another old problem has acquired a new urgency: the problem of birth control. One of the most important tasks of medical science is to find a genuinely satisfactory solution to this problem.

It is in this way that our greatest successes lead to new problems.

An example of a major theoretical problem in cosmology is how the theory of gravitation may be further tested and how unified field theories may be further investigated. A very great problem of both theoretical and practical importance is the continued study of the immune system. Generally speaking, a theoretical problem consists in the task of providing an intelligible explanation of an unexplained natural event and the testing of the explanatory theory by way of its predictions.

2. Knowledge consists in the search for truth – the search for objectively true, explanatory theories.

3. It is not the search for certainty. To err is human. All human knowledge is fallible and therefore uncertain. It follows that we must distinguish sharply between truth and certainty. That to err is human means not only that we must constantly struggle against error, but also that, even when we have taken the greatest care, we cannot be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

In science, a mistake we make – an error – consists essentially in our regarding as true a theory that is not true. (Much more rarely, it consists in our taking a theory to be false, although it is true.) To combat the mistake, the error, means therefore to search for objective truth and to do everything possible to discover and eliminate falsehoods. This is the task of scientific activity. Hence we can say: our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake. This might also be put as follows:

There are uncertain truths – even true statements that we take to be false – but there are no uncertain certainties.

Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we can correct them.

Science, scientific knowledge, is therefore always hypothetical: it is conjectural knowledge. And the method of science is the critical method: the method of the search for and the elimination of errors in the service of truth.

Of course someone will ask me ‘the old and famous question’, as Kant calls it: ‘What is truth?’ In his major work (884 pages), Kant refuses to give any further answer to this question other than that truth is ‘the correspondence of knowledge with its object’ (Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edition, pp. 82 f.¹). I would say something very similar: A theory or a statement is true, if what it says corresponds to reality. And I would like to add to this three further remarks.

1. Every unambiguously formulated statement is either true or false; and if it is false, then its negation is true.

2. There are therefore just as many true statements as there are false ones.

3. Every such unambiguous statement (even if we do not know for certain if it is true) either is true or has a true negation. It also follows from this that it is wrong to equate the truth with definite or certain truth. Truth and certainty must be sharply distinguished.

If you are called as a witness in court, you are required to tell the truth. And it is, justifiably, assumed that you understand this requirement: your statement should correspond with the facts; it should not be influenced by your subjective convictions (or by those of other people). If your statement does not agree with the facts, you have either lied or made a mistake. But only a philosopher – a so-called relativist – will agree with you if you say: ‘No, my statement is true, for I just mean by truth something other than correspondence with the facts. I mean, following the suggestion of the great American philosopher William James, utility; or, following the suggestion of many German and American social philosophers, what I mean by truth is what is accepted; or what is put forward by society; or by the majority; or by my interest group; or perhaps by television.’

The philosophical relativism that hides behind the ‘old and famous question’ ‘What is truth?’ may open the way to evil things, such as a propaganda of lies inciting men to hatred. This is probably not seen by the majority of those who represent the relativist position. But they should have and could have seen it. Bertrand Russell saw it, and so did Julien Benda, author of La Trahison des Clercs (‘The Treason of the Intellectuals’).

Relativism is one of the many crimes committed by intellectuals. It is a betrayal of reason and of humanity. I suppose that the alleged relativity of truth defended by some philosophers results from mixing-up the notions of truth and certainty; for in the case of certainty we may indeed speak of degrees of certainty; that is, of more or less reliability. Certainty is relative also in the sense that it always depends upon what is at stake. So I think that what happens here is a confusion of truth and certainty, and in some cases can be shown quite clearly.

All this is of great importance for jurisprudence and legal practice. The phrase ‘when in doubt, find in favour of the accused’ and the idea of trial by jury show this. The task of the jurors is to judge whether or not the case with which they are faced is still doubtful. Anyone who has ever been a juror will understand that truth is something objective, whilst certainty is a matter of subjective judgement. This is the difficult situation that faces the juror.

When the jurors reach an agreement – a ‘convention’ – this is called the ‘verdict’.² The verdict is far from arbitrary. It is the duty of every juror to try to discover the objective truth to the best of his knowledge, and according to his conscience. But at the same time, he should be aware of his fallibility, of his uncertainty. And where there is reasonable doubt as to the truth, he should find in favour of the accused.

The task is arduous and responsible; and it demonstrates clearly that the transition from the search for truth to the linguistically formulated verdict is a matter of a decision, of a judgement. This is also the case in science.

Everything I have said up to now will doubtless lead to my being associated with ‘positivism’ or with ‘scientism’ once again. This does not matter to me, even if these expressions are being used as terms of abuse. But it does matter to me that those who use them either do not know what they are talking about or twist the facts.

Despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I am not an adherent of scientism. For scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific knowledge; whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always resisted dogmatism; and I continue to resist it, especially in science. I am opposed to the thesis that the scientist must believe in his theory. As far as I am concerned ‘I do not believe in belief, as E. M. Forster says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few instances. I believe, for example, that objective truth is a value – that is, an ethical value, perhaps the greatest value there is – and that cruelty is the greatest evil.

Nor am I a positivist just because I hold it to be morally wrong not to believe in reality and in the infinite importance of human and animal suffering and in the reality and importance of human hope and human goodness.

Another accusation that is frequently levelled against me must be answered in a different way. This is the accusation that I am a sceptic and that I am therefore either contradicting myself or talking nonsense (according to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 6.51).

It is indeed correct to describe me as a sceptic (in the classical sense) in so far as I deny the possibility of a general criterion of (non-tautological) truth. But this holds of every rational thinker, say, Kant or Wittgenstein or Tarski. And, like them, I accept classical logic (which I interpret as the organon of criticism; that is, not as the organon of proof, but as the organon of refutation, of elenchos). But my position differs fundamentally from what is usually termed sceptical these days. As a philosopher I am not interested in doubt and uncertainty, because these are subjective states and because long ago I gave up as superfluous the search for subjective certainty. The problem that interests me is that of the objectively critical rational grounds for preferring one theory to another, in the search for truth. I am fairly sure that no modern sceptic has said anything like this before me.

This concludes for the moment my remarks on the subject of ‘knowledge’; I now turn to the subject of ‘reality’, so that I may conclude with a discussion of ‘the shaping of reality through knowledge’.

2. Reality

Parts of the reality in which we live are material. We live upon the surface of the earth which mankind has conquered only recently – during the eighty years of my life. We know a little about its interior, with the emphasis upon ‘little’. Apart from the earth, there are the sun, the moon and the stars. The sun, the moon and the stars are material bodies. The earth, together with the sun, the moon and the stars, furnishes us with our first idea of a universe, of a cosmos. The investigation of this universe is the task of cosmology. All sciences serve cosmology.

We have discovered two kinds of bodies on earth: animate and inanimate. Both belong to the material world, to the world of physical things. I will call this world ‘world 1’.

I shall use the term ‘world 2’ to refer to the world of our experiences, especially the experiences of human beings. Even this terminological and provisional distinction between worlds 1 and 2, that is, between the physical world and the world of experiences, has aroused much opposition. All I mean by this distinction, however, is that world 1 and world 2 are at least prima facie different. The connections between them, including their possible identity, are among the things that we need to investigate using hypotheses, of course. Nothing is prejudged by making a verbal distinction between them. The main point of the suggested terminology is to facilitate a clear formulation of the problems.

Presumably animals also have experiences. This is sometimes doubted; but I do not have the time to discuss such doubts. It is perfectly possible that all living creatures, even amoebae, have experiences. For as we know from our dreams or from patients with a high fever or similar conditions, there are subjective experiences of very different degrees of consciousness. In states of deep unconsciousness or even of dreamless sleep we lose consciousness altogether, and with it our experiences. But we may suppose that there exist also unconscious states, and these too can be included in world 2. There may perhaps also be transitions between world 2 and world 1: we should not rule out such possibilities dogmatically.

So we have world 1, the physical world, which we divide into animate and inanimate bodies, and which also contains in particular states and events such as stresses, movements, forces and fields of force. And we have world 2, the world of all conscious experiences, and, we may suppose, also of unconscious experiences.

By ‘world 3’ I mean the world of the objective products of the human mind; that is, the world of the products of the human part of world 2. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, contains such things as books, symphonies, works of sculpture, shoes, aeroplanes, computers; and also quite simple physical objects, which quite obviously also belong to world 1, such as saucepans and truncheons. It is important for the understanding of this terminology that all planned or deliberate products of man’s mental activity are classified within world 3, even though most of them may also be world 1 objects.

In this terminology, therefore, our reality consists of three worlds, which are interconnected and act upon each other in some way, and also partially overlap each other. (The word ‘world’ is obviously not being used here to mean the universe or cosmos, but rather parts of it.) These three worlds are: the physical world 1 of bodies and physical states, events and forces; the psychological world 2 of experiences and of unconscious mental events; and the world 3 of mental products.

There were and there are some philosophers who regard only world 1 as real, the so-called materialists or physicalists; and others who regard only world 2 as real, the so-called immaterialists. Even some physicists were or are among these opponents of materialism. The most famous was Ernst Mach, who (like Bishop Berkeley before him) regarded only our sensory impressions as real – although perhaps not always. He was an important physicist, but his way of resolving difficulties in the theory of matter was to assume that matter does not exist: in particular, he insisted that there are neither atoms nor molecules, and that these mental constructions are unnecessary and highly misleading.

Then there were the so-called dualists. They supposed that both the physical world 1 and the psychological world 2 are real. I am going still further: I assume not only that the physical world 1 and the psychological world 2 are real, and therefore, of course, all the physical products of the human mind, such as, for example, cars or toothbrushes and statues; but also that mental products which belong neither to world 1 nor to world 2, are equally real. In other words, I assume that there exist immaterial inhabitants of world 3, which are real and very important; for example, problems.

The order of worlds 1, 2 and 3 (as indicated by these numbers) corresponds to their age. According to the current state of our conjectural knowledge, the inanimate part of world 1 is by far the oldest; then comes the animate part of world 1, and at the same time or somewhat later comes world 2, the world of experiences; and then with the advent of mankind comes world 3, the world of mental products; that is, the world that anthropologists call ‘culture’.

I now want to discuss each of these three worlds in greater detail, starting with the physical world 1.

Since my present theme is reality, I would like to begin by saying that the physical world 1 is entitled to be regarded as the most obviously ‘real’ of my three worlds. By this I mean in fact only that the word ‘reality’ obtains its meaning first by being applied to the physical world. I mean no more than that.

When Mach’s predecessor Bishop Berkeley denied the reality of physical bodies, Samuel Johnson said ‘I refute him thus’, kicking at a stone with all his might. It was the resistance of the stone that was intended to demonstrate the reality of matter: the stone pushed back! By this I mean that Johnson felt the resistance, the reality as a repercussion, a kind of repulsion. Although Johnson could not of course prove or refute anything in this way, he was nevertheless able to show how we comprehend reality.

A child learns what is real through effect, through resistance. The wall, the railing is real. Anything that can be picked up or put in the mouth is real. Above all, solid objects that get in our way or act in opposition to us are real. Solid material things give us our central and most basic conception of reality, and the conception broadens out from this centre. So we include everything that can change solid material things or can act upon them. This makes first water and air real; also attractive magnetic and electric forces, and gravity; heat and cold; motion and rest.

Hence everything is real that can kick, such as radar, either us or other real things, and can be kicked back; or anything that can have an effect upon us or upon other real things. I hope that this is sufficiently clear. It includes the earth and the sun, the moon and the stars. The cosmos is real.

III

I am not a materialist, but I admire the materialist philosophers, especially the great atomists, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. They were the philosophers of the great enlightenment of antiquity, the opponents of superstition, the liberators of mankind. But materialism has transcended itself

We human beings are familiar with one kind of effect: we reach for an object, such as a switch, and press it. Or we push or shove an armchair. Materialism was the theory that reality consists solely of material things, which act upon each other through pressure, push or action by contact. There were two versions of materialism: first, atomism, which taught that tiny particles, too small to be visible, interlink with each other and bump into each other. Between the particles there is a void. The other version taught that there is no void. Things move in a ‘full’ world – perhaps full of ‘ether’ – rather like tea leaves in a cup full of tea that has been stirred.

It was fundamental to both theories that there are no incomprehensible or unfamiliar modes of operation –j ust pressure, shove and push; and that even pull and attraction are explicable in terms of pressure and push: when we pull a dog on a leash, then in reality the effect is that his collar exerts pressure upon or pushes him. The leash acts like a chain, of which the links are pressing against or pushing each other. Pull, attraction, must somehow be explained by pressure.

This materialist philosophy of pressure and push, also put forward by others, notably René Descartes, was shaken by the introduction of the notion of force. First came Newton’s theory of gravity as an attractive force operating at a distance. Then came Leibniz, who showed that atoms must be centres of repulsive force if they are to be impenetrable and capable of pushing. Then came Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. And finally even push, pressure and action by contact were explained by the electrical repulsion of the electron shell of the atoms. That was the end of materialism.

In place of materialism came physicalism. But this was something completely different. In place of a conception of the world that held that our everyday experiences of pressure and push explain all other effects and thereby the whole of reality, there came a philosophy in which effects were described by differential equations, and ultimately by formulae that the greatest physicists, such as Niels Bohr, declared to be inexplicable and, as Bohr repeatedly insisted, incomprehensible.

The history of modern physics can be described in the following, oversimplified, manner: materialism expired, unnoticed, with Newton, Faraday and Maxwell. It transcended itself when Einstein, de Broglie and Schrodinger directed their research programme towards the explanation of the nature of matter itself; in terms of oscillations, vibrations and waves; not oscillations of matter, but rather vibrations of an immaterial ether consisting of fields of forces. But this programme became obsolete too and was replaced by still more abstract programmes: for example by a programme that explains matter as vibrations of fields of probability. At every stage the various theories were extremely successful. Yet they were overtaken by still more successful theories.

That is, roughly speaking, what I call the self-transcendence of materialism. It is also precisely the reason why physicalism is something completely different from materialism.

It would take far too long to describe the rapidly changing relationship that has developed between physics and biology. But I would like to point out that, from the point of view of the modern Darwinian theory of natural selection, the same situation can be represented in two fundamentally different ways. One mode of representation is traditional; the other, however, seems to me to be by far the better of the two.

Darwinism is usually regarded as a cruel philosophy: it depicts ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’; that is, a picture in which nature poses a hostile threat to us and to life in general. My claim is that this is a prejudiced view of Darwinism, which has been influenced by an ideology that existed before Darwin (Malthus, Tennyson, Spencer) and has almost nothing to do with the actual theoretical content of Darwinism. It is true that Darwinism places great emphasis upon what we call ‘natural selection’; but this too can be interpreted in a quite different manner.

As we know, Darwin was influenced by Malthus, who tried to demonstrate that the increase in population, combined with a shortage of food, would lead to cruel competition, to selection of the strongest and to the cruel annihilation of those who are not as strong. But according to Malthus, even the strongest are put under pressure by the competition: they Are forced into exerting all their energies. Hence, on this interpretation, the competition results in the limitation of freedom.

But this can be seen in another way. Men seek to extend their freedom: they are in search of new possibilities. Thus competition can clearly be regarded as a process that favours the discovery of new ways of making a living and with them new possibilities of life, together with the discovery and the construction of new ecological niches, including niches for such individual human beings as physically handicapped people.

These possibilities entail choice between alternative decisions, increased freedom of choice and more freedom.

The two interpretations are therefore fundamentally different. The first is pessimistic: limitation of freedom. The second is optimistic: extension of freedom. Both are, of course, oversimplifications, but both can be regarded as good approximations to the truth. Can we claim that one of them is the better interpretation?

I think that we can. The great success of the competitive society and the great extension of freedom to which it has led can be explained only by the optimistic interpretation. It is the better interpretation. It is closer to the truth, it explains more.

If this is the case, then individual initiative, pressure from within, the search for new possibilities, for new liberties, and the activity that seeks to realize these possibilities, is more effective than the selection pressure from without, which results in the elimination of the weaker individuals and in the curtailment of freedom, even of the strongest.

Throughout these remarks I am taking for granted the pressure that is caused by the increase in population.

Now, the problem of interpreting Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection seems to me to be quite like the problem of interpreting Malthus’s theory.

The old, pessimistic and still accepted view is this: the role played by the organisms in adaptation is purely passive. They constitute a very heterogeneous population, from which the struggle for existence, the competition, selects those (on the whole) best-adapted individuals, by eliminating the others. The selection pressure comes from without.

Great emphasis is usually put on the fact that all evolutionary phenomena, especially the phenomena of adaptation, can be explained only by reference to this selection pressure from without. Nothing is thought to come from within except the mutations, the variability (of the gene-pool).

My new optimistic interpretation stresses (as does Bergson) the activity of all living creatures. All organisms are fully occupied with problem-solving. Their first problem is survival. But there are countless concrete problems that arise in the most diverse situations. And one of the most important problems is the search for better living conditions: for greater freedom; for a better world.

According to this optimistic interpretation, it is through natural selection and (we may suppose) through an external selection pressure that a strong internal selection pressure comes into being at a very early stage; a selection pressure exerted by the organisms upon their environment. This selection pressure manifests itself as a kind of behaviour that we may interpret as searching for a new ecological niche. Sometimes it is even the construction of a new ecological niche.

This pressure from within results in a choice of niches; that is, in forms of behaviour that may be regarded as a choice of lifestyles and of surroundings. This must be taken to include choice of friends, symbiosis, and above all, perhaps most importantly from a biological point of view, the choice of a mate; and the preference for certain kinds of food, especially sunlight.

So we have an internal selection pressure; and the optimistic interpretation regards this selection pressure from within as at least as important as the selection pressure from without: the organisms seek new niches, even without having undergone any organic change themselves; and they mutate later as a result of the external selection pressure, the selection pressure of the niche that was actively chosen by them.

We might say that there is a circle, or rather a spiral of interactions between the selection pressure from without and that from within. The question that is answered differently by the two interpretations is: which loop in this circle or spiral is active and which is passive? The old theory locates the activity in the selection pressure from without; the new in the selection pressure from within: it is the organism that chooses, that is active. It may be said that both interpretations are ideologies, ideological interpretations of the same objective content. But we can ask: is there anything that can be better explained by one of the two interpretations than by the other?³

I think that there is. I would describe it briefly as the victory of life over its inanimate surroundings. The essential fact is as follows: there was, so most of us suppose – hypothetically, of course – a primordial cell from which all life gradually developed. According to Darwinian evolutionary biology this is best explained by the hypothesis that nature worked on life with a desperately cruel chisel, which then chiselled out every living adaptation at which we marvel.

However, we may point to one fact that contradicts this view: the primordial cell is still alive. We are all the primordial cell. That is not an image, nor a metaphor, but rather the literal truth.

I want to give only a very brief explanation of this. There are three possibilities for a cell; the first is death, the second is cell division; the third is fusion: a union, a merging with another cell, which almost always causes a division. Neither division nor union means death: it is a reproductive process, the changing of one living cell into two living cells that are virtually the same. They are both the living continuations of the original cell. The primordial cell came into being billions of years ago, and the primordial cell has survived in the form of trillions of cells. And it lives on still in every single one of all the cells alive now. And all life, everything that has ever lived and everything that is alive today, is the result of divisions of the primordial cell. It is therefore composed of the primordial cell, which is still alive. These are matters that no biologist can dispute and that no biologist will dispute. We are all the primordial cell, in a very similar sense (genidentity) to that in which I am the same person now as I was thirty years ago, even though perhaps not one atom of my present body existed in my body in those days.

In place of a picture of the environment that attacks us with ‘tooth and claw’, I see an environment in which a tiny little living creature has succeeded in surviving for billions of years and in conquering and improving its world. If, therefore, there is a struggle between life and the environment, then life has triumphed. I believe that this somewhat revised conception of Darwinism leads to a completely different view from that of the old ideology, namely to the view that we inhabit a world that has become more and more agreeable and more and more favourable to life, thanks to the activity of life and its search for a better world.

But who wants to admit this? Today everyone believes in the persuasive myth of the total maliciousness of the world and of ‘society’; just as formerly everyone in Germany and Austria believed in Heidegger and in Hitler, and in war. But the mistaken belief in maliciousness is itself malicious: it disheartens young people and leads them astray into doubts and into despair, and even into violence. Although this mistaken belief is essentially political, the old interpretation of Darwinism has nevertheless contributed to it.

A very important thesis forms part of the pessimistic ideology, namely, that the adaptation of life to the environment and all these (to my mind wonderful) inventions of life over billions of years, which we are not yet able to recreate in the laboratory today, are not inventions at all, but the product of sheer chance. It is claimed that life has invented nothing at all, it is all the mechanism of purely chance mutations and of natural selection; the internal pressure of life is nothing more than self-reproduction. Everything else comes about through our struggle, indeed blind struggle, against each other and against nature. And things (in my view, wonderful things) like the use of sunlight as food are the result of chance.

I maintain that this is once again just an ideology, and indeed a part of the old ideology. To this ideology, by the way, belong the myth of the selfish gene (for genes can only function and survive by co-operating), and the revived social Darwinism that is currently being presented as a brand-new and naively deterministic ‘sociobiology’.

I should now like to put together the main points of the two ideologies.

1.	Old:	Selection pressure from without functions by killing: it eliminates. The environment is therefore hostile to life.
	New:	The active selection pressure from within constitutes the search for a better environment, for better ecological niches, for a better world. It is favourable to life in the highest degree. Life improves the environment for life, it makes the environment more favourable to life (and friendlier for man).
2.	Old:	Organisms are completely passive, but they are actively selected.
	New:	Organisms are active: they are constantly preoccupied with problem-solving. Life consists in problem-solving. The solution is often the choice or the construction of a new ecological niche. Not only are the organisms active, their activity is constantly on the increase. (The attempt to deny activity in humans – as the determinists do – is paradoxical, especially with regard to our critical mental activity.) If animal life began in the sea – as we may suppose – then its environment was in many respects fairly uniform. Nevertheless the animals (with the exception of the insects) developed into vertebrates before they went on to land. The environment was equally favourable to life and relatively undifferentiated, but life itself diversified into an unforeseeably large number of different forms.
3.	Old:	Mutations are a matter of pure chance.
	New:	Yes; but the organisms are constantly inventing wonderful things that improve life. Nature, evolution and organisms are all inventive. They work, as inventors, in the same way that we do: using the method of trial and the elimination of errors.
4.	Old:	We live in a hostile environment that is changed by evolution through cruel eliminations.
	New:	The first cell is still living after billions of years, and now even in many trillions of copies. Wherever we look, it is there. It has made a garden of our earth and transformed our atmosphere with green plants. And it created our eyes and opened them to the blue sky and the stars. It is doing well.

I now turn to world 2.

Improvements in the organism and in its environment are associated with an extension and improvement of animal consciousness. Problem-solving, invention, is never a completely conscious act. It is always achieved by means of trial and error: by means of tests and the elimination of error; that means, through interaction between the organism and its world, its surroundings. And in the course of this interaction consciousness sometimes intervenes. Consciousness, world 2, was presumably an evaluating and discerning consciousness, a problem-solving consciousness, right from the start. I have said of the animate part of the physical world 1 that all organisms are problem solvers. My basic assumption regarding world 2 is that this problem-solving activity of the animate part of world 1 resulted in the emergence of world 2, of the world of consciousness. But I do not mean by this that consciousness solves problems all the time, as I asserted of the organisms. On the contrary. The organisms are preoccupied with problem-solving day in, day out, but consciousness is not only concerned with the solving of problems, although that is its most important biological function. My hypothesis is that the original task of consciousness was to anticipate success and failure in problem-solving and to signal to the organism in the form of pleasure and pain whether it was on the right or wrong path to the solution of the problem. (‘Path’ is initially – as in the case of the amoeba – to be understood quite literally as the physical direction of the path of the organism.) Through the experience of pleasure and pain consciousness assists the organism in its voyages of discovery, and in its learning processes. It thus intervenes in many of the mechanisms of memory, which – again for biological reasons – cannot all be conscious. It is, I believe, very important to realize that it is not possible for the majority of the mechanisms of memory to be conscious. They would interfere with each other. It is for precisely this reason – this can be shown almost a priori – that there are conscious and unconscious events that are quite closely related to one another.

Hence, almost inevitably, a domain of the unconscious comes into being, fundamentally linked to our memory apparatus. It contains above all a kind of unconscious map of our surroundings, of our local biological niche. The organization of this map and of the expectations that it contains, and the subsequent linguistic formulations of expectations, that is, of theories, constitute the task of the cognitive apparatus, which has therefore conscious and unconscious aspects interacting with the physical world, world 1, the cells; in man, with the brain.

So I do not regard world 2 as what Mach described as the sensations, visual sensations, aural sensations, etc.: I regard all of these as thoroughly unsuccessful attempts to describe or classify our varied experiences systematically and, in this way, to arrive at a theory of world 2.

Our fundamental starting point should be the question of what the biological functions of consciousness are, and which of these functions are the most basic. We must also ask how we, in the course of the active search for information about the world, invent our senses: how we learn the art of touching, develop phototropy, vision and hearing. Thus we are confronted with new problems and respond with new expectations and with new theories about the environment. Hence world 2 comes into being through interaction with world 1.

(Naturally, there is then the further problem of discovering signals for rapid actions; and our senses play an important role in this.)

I will soon return to world 1 and world 2; but first I want to say a few words about the beginning of the physical world, world 1, and about the idea of emergence, which I would like to introduce with the help of the idea of phase.

We do not know how world 1 came into being and if it came into being. Should the big bang theory be true, then the first thing to come into existence was probably light. ‘Let there be light!’ would have been the first stage in the creation of the world. But this first light would have had a short wavelength, well beyond the ultraviolet region, and would have therefore been invisible to man. Then, so the physicists tell us, came electrons and neutrinos, and then came the first atomic nuclei – only the nuclei of hydrogen and of helium: the world was still far too hot for atoms.

Thus we may suppose that there is a non-material or pre-material world 1. If we accept the (in my opinion, very dubious) theory of the expansion of the world from the big bang, we can say that the world, thanks to its expansion, is slowly cooling down, and is therefore becoming more and more ‘material’ in the sense of the old materialist philosophy.

We could perhaps distinguish a number of phases in this process of cooling down:

Phase 0:	Here there is only light, as yet no electrons, nor atomic nuclei.
Phase 1:	In this phase there are electrons and other elementary particles as well as light (photons).
Phase 2:	By now there are also hydrogen nuclei and helium nuclei.
Phase 3:	In this phase there are atoms as well: hydrogen atoms (but no molecules) and helium atoms.
Phase 4:	In addition to atoms, diatomic molecules can now also exist, thus including, among others, diatomic hydrogen gas molecules.
Phase 5:	In this phase there is, among other things, water in a liquid state.
Phase 6:	At this stage there are, among other things, and initially very rarely, water crystals, that is, ice in the diverse and wonderful forms of snow flakes, and later also solid crystalline bodies, such as blocks of ice, and still later, other crystals.

We live in this sixth phase; that is to say, in our world there are local areas, in which there are solid bodies and, of course, also liquids and gas. Further away there are, of course, also large areas that are too hot for molecular gases.

VII

What we know as life could only come into being in a sufficiently cooled down, but not too cold, area of the world in phase 6. Life can be thought of as a very special phase within phase 6: the simultaneous presence of matter in gaseous, liquid and solid states is essential for what we know as life, as is a further state, the colloid state, which lies somewhere between the liquid and the solid states. Living matter differs from (superficially) very similar but inanimate material structures in the same way as two phases of water differ from one another, such as the liquid and gaseous forms of water.

The characteristic feature of these temperature-dependent phases is that the most thorough examination of one temperature-dependent phase could not enable the greatest natural scientist to foresee the properties of the next and later phase: the examination of atoms in isolation by the greatest thinker with nothing more at his disposal for his examination but phase 3, in which there are only atoms but still no molecules, would hardly permit him, we may assume, even from the closest examination of the atoms, to infer the coming world of molecules. And the most careful examination of steam in phase 4 would indeed scarcely have allowed him to foresee the completely new properties of a fluid, like those of water or the wealth of forms of snow crystals, let alone the highly complex organisms.

Properties such as that of being gaseous, liquid or solid we call (with reference to their unforeseeable nature) ‘emergent’ properties. Clearly, ‘living’ or ‘being alive’ is such a property. This does not say very much, but it does suggest an analogy with the phases of water.

VIII

Thus, life is, we may assume, emergent, like consciousness; and so is what I call world 3.

The greatest emergent step that life and consciousness have taken up to now is, I suspect, the invention of human language. This no doubt led to the creation of mankind.

Human language does not consist in mere self-expression (1), nor merely in signalling (2): animals have these abilities too. Nor is it mere symbolism. That too, and even rituals, can be found in animals. The great step that resulted in an unforeseeable development of consciousness is the invention of descriptive statements (3), Karl Biihler’s representational function: of statements which describe an objective state of affairs, which may or may not correspond to the facts; that is, of statements that may be true or false. This function is the unprecedented feature within human language.

Herein lies the difference from animal languages. Perhaps we could say of the language of the bees that their communications are true – except, perhaps, when a scientist misleads a bee. Misleading signs can also be found among the animals: for example, butterflies’ wings may give the appearance of eyes. But only we human beings have taken the step of checking our own theories for their objective truth by means of critical arguments. This is the fourth function of language, the argumentative function (4).

The invention of descriptive (or, as Bühler calls it, representational) human language makes a further step possible, a further invention: the invention of criticism. It is the invention of a conscious choice, a conscious selection of theories in place of their natural selection. Thus, just as materialism transcends itself, so, one might say, natural selection transcends itself. It leads to the development of a language containing true and false statements. And this language then leads to the invention of criticism, to the emergence of criticism, and thereby to a new phase of selection: natural selection is amplified and partially overtaken by critical, cultural selection. The latter permits us a conscious and critical pursuit of our errors: we can consciously find and eradicate our errors, and we can consciously judge one theory as inferior to another. This is, in my opinion, the decisive point. Here begins what is called ‘knowledge’ in the title I was given: human knowledge. There is no knowledge without rational criticism, criticism in the service of the search for truth. Animals have no knowledge in this sense. Of course they know all kinds of things – the dog knows his master. But what we call knowledge, and the most important type of knowledge, scientific knowledge, is dependent on rational criticism. This is therefore the decisive step, the step that depends upon the invention of true or false statements. And this is the step that, I suggest, lays the foundations for world 3, for human culture.

World 3 and world 1 overlap: world 3 encompasses, for instance, books, it contains statements; it contains above all human language. These are all also physical objects, objects, events, that take place in world 1. Language consists, we may say, of dispositions anchored in nervous structures and therefore in something material; of elements of memory, engrams, expectations, learnt and discovered behaviour; and of books. You can hear my lecture today because of acoustics: I am making a noise; and this noise is part of world 1.

I would now like to show that this noise is perhaps more than pure acoustics. That part of it that goes beyond world 1, of which I am making use, constitutes precisely what I have termed world 3 and has until now been only rarely noticed. (Unfortunately, I do not have the time to talk about the history of world 3; see, however, my book Objective Knowledge, chapter 3, section 5.) I want to try to explain the main point, that is, the immaterial part, the immaterial aspect of world 3; or, as we might also say, the autonomous aspect of world 3: what goes beyond worlds 1 and 2. At the same time I would like to show that the immaterial aspect of world 3 not only plays a role in our consciousness – in which it plays a major role – but that it is real, even apart from worlds 1 and 2. The immaterial (and non-conscious) aspect of world 3 can, as I hope to show, have an effect upon our consciousness and, through our consciousness, upon the physical world, world 1.

I would therefore like to discuss the interaction, or what we might call the spiral, of the feedback mechanisms between the three worlds and their subsequent mutual reinforcement. And I would like to show that there is something immaterial here, namely the content of our statements, of our arguments, in contrast to the acoustic or the written, and hence physical, formulations of these statements or arguments. And it is always the subject matter or content with which we are concerned whenever we use language in its truly human sense. It is above all the content of a book, not its physical form, that belongs to world 3.

Here is a very simple case that illustrates clearly the importance of the idea of content: with the development of human language came numerals, counting with the words ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’, etc. There are some languages that have only the words ‘one’, ‘two’ and ‘many’; some that have ‘one’, ‘two’ … up to ‘twenty’ and then ‘many’; and still other languages like ours, that have invented a method allowing us to count onwards from every number; that is, a method that is essentially not finite, but rather unbounded in the sense that every number can in principle still be exceeded by adding another number. This is one of the great inventions that was made possible only by the invention of language: the method of constructing an endless sequence of more and more numerals. The instructions for the construction of such a sequence can be formulated linguistically or in a computer program, and they could therefore be described as something concrete. But our discovery that the series of natural numbers is now (potentially) infinite is totally abstract. For this infinite series cannot be instantiated in concrete terms in either world 1 or world 2. The infinite series of natural numbers is ‘something purely ideationaF, as they say: it is a pure product of world 3, since it belongs solely to that abstract part of world 3 that consists of elements or ‘inmates’ that are indeed thought of, but instantiated in concrete terms neither in thinking nor in physically concrete numerals nor in computer programs. The (potential) infinity of the series of natural numbers is, one might say, not an invention, but rather a discovery. We discover it as a possibility; as an unintended property of a series that was invented by us.

In the same way we discover the numerical properties ‘even’ and ‘odd’, ‘divisible’ and ‘prime number’. And we discover problems, such as Euclid’s problem: is the series of prime numbers infinite or (as the ever increasing rarity of larger prime numbers suggests) finite? This problem was, so to speak, completely hidden; it was not even unconscious, rather it was simply not there, when we invented the number system. Or was it there? If it was, then it was there in an ideational and purely abstract sense, that is, in the following sense: that it lay hidden in the number system that we constructed, but was nonetheless there, without anyone’s being aware of it and without its being somehow hidden in the unconscious of some person or other, and leaving no physical trace behind. No book existed in which it could be read about. It was therefore physically not there. It was also not there as far as world 2 was concerned. But it was there as a not yet discovered, but discoverable problem: a typical instance of a problem that belongs only to the purely abstract part of world 3. Incidentally, Euclid not only discovered the problem, he also solved it. Euclid found a proof for the proposition that after every prime number there must always be another prime number; from which we can conclude that the sequence of prime numbers is infinite. This proposition describes a state of affairs that is obviously, for its part, purely abstract: it is likewise an inmate of the purely abstract part of world 3.

There are also many unsolved problems connected with the prime numbers, such as, for example, Goldbach’s problem: is every even number greater than 2 the sum of two prime numbers? Such a problem may have either a positive solution or a negative solution; or it may be insoluble; and its insolubility may or may not itself admit of proof. Thus new problems arise.

These are all problems that are real in the sense that they have effects. They can above all have an effect upon the human mind. A man can see or discover a problem and then try to solve it. The grasping of the problem and the attempt to solve a problem constitutes an activity of consciousness, of the human mind; and this activity is clearly also created by the problem, by the existence of the problem. A solution of the problem may result in a publication; and hence the abstract world 3 problem can cause (via world 2) the heaviest printing presses to be set in motion. Euclid wrote down his solution to the problem about prime numbers. This was a physical act with many consequences. Euclid’s proof was reproduced in many textbooks, that is, in physical objects. These are events in world 1.

Of course consciousness, world 2, plays the main role in the causal chains that lead from the abstract problem to world 1. As far as I can see, the abstract part of world 3, the world of abstract, non-physical contents, that is the actual, specific world 3, has so far never exerted a direct influence upon world 1; not even with the aid of computers. The link is always forged by consciousness, by world 2. (Perhaps this will be different one day.) I suggest that we speak of ‘mind’ when we are referring to consciousness – in its role of interacting with world 3.

I believe that the mind’s mediation with the inmates of world 3 influences and shapes our conscious and unconscious life in a decisive fashion. Here, in the interaction between world 2 and world 3, lies the key to understanding the difference between human and animal consciousness.

XII

To sum up, we can say that world 3, above all that part of world 3 that is created by human language, is a product of our consciousness, of our mind. Like human language, it is our invention.

But this invention is something external to us, outside our skin (‘exosomatic’). It is something objective, as are all our inventions. Like all inventions, it creates its own problems, which, although autonomous, depend upon us. (Think of the control of fire, or the invention of the motor vehicle.) These problems are unintentional and unexpected. They are typical, unintended consequences of our actions, which then in their turn react upon us.

This is how the objective, abstract, autonomous, yet real and effective world 3 comes into being.

One example, which is perhaps not altogether typical, but is nonetheless striking, is mathematics. It is, clearly, our work, our invention. Yet almost all mathematics is surely objective and at the same time abstract: it is a whole world of problems and solutions, which we do not invent, but rather discover.

Accordingly, those who have reflected upon the status of mathematics have in the main reached two opinions. And we have in effect two philosophies of mathematics.

Mathematics is the work of mankind. For it is based upon our intuition; or it is our construction; or it is our invention. (Intuitionism; constructivism; conventionalism.)
Mathematics is a field that exists objectively in its own right. It is an infinitely rich field of objective truths, which we do not create, but confront objectively. And we can discover more than a few of these truths. (This conception of mathematics is usually described as ‘Platonism’.)

These two philosophies of mathematics have until now stood in direct opposition to each other. But the theory of world 3 shows that they are both right: the infinite series of natural numbers (for example) is our linguistic invention; our convention; our construction. But the prime numbers and their problems are not: these we discover in an objective world, which we have indeed invented or created, but which (like all inventions) becomes objectified, detached from its creators and independent of their will: it becomes ‘autonomous’, ‘purely ideational: it becomes ‘Platonic’.

From the point of view of world 3 there can be no quarrel between the two philosophies of mathematics. There remains at most the disagreement about whether a particular mathematical object – such as the infinite sequence of numbers or the universe of sets of axiomatic set theory – is the work of man, or whether we confront this field as a part of the objective world, as if given by God. But at least since 1963 (Paul Cohen) we have known that axiomatic set theory is also the work of man. We have known for a long time that even mathematicians are fallible and that we can refute our theories, but cannot always prove them.

I have tried to explain world 3. And I come now to the third and final section of my lecture: On the shaping of reality.

3. On the Shaping of Reality

It is the interaction between world 1, world 2, and world 3 that may be regarded as the shaping of reality; the interaction that consists of multiple feedback mechanisms, and within which we operate using the method of trial and error. That is, we intervene consciously in this spiral of feedback mechanisms. We – the human mind, our dreams, our objectives – are the creator of the work, of the product, and at the same time we are shaped by our work. This is in fact the creative element in mankind: that we, in the act of creating, at the same time transform ourselves through our work. The shaping of reality is therefore our doing; a process that cannot be understood without trying to understand all three of its aspects, these three worlds; and without seeking to understand the way in which the three worlds interact with each another.

This spiral of interactions or feedback mechanisms is influenced by our developing theories and by our dreams. An example is the shaping, the creation, the invention of Leonardo’s bird: of what we all know today as the aeroplane. It is important to notice that it is the dream of flying that leads to flying, and not, as the materialistic conception of history of Marx and Engels would doubtless suggest, the dream of thereby making money. Otto Lilienthal (whose brother I knew personally) and the Wright brothers and many others dreamed of flying and consciously risked their lives in pursuing their dream. It was not the hope of gain that inspired them, but the dream of a new freedom – of the expansion of our ecological niche: it was in the course of the search for a better world that Otto Lilienthal lost his life.

World 3 plays a decisive role in the shaping of reality, in the attempt to realize the world 2 dream of flying. The decisive factor is the plans and descriptions, the hypotheses, the trials, the accidents and the corrections; in a phrase, the method of trial and the elimination of errors through criticism.

This is the spiral of the feedback mechanism; and within it the world 2 of the researchers and the inventors also plays a great role. But even more important are the emergent problems and above all world 3, which has a constant feedback effect upon world 2. Our dreams are constantly corrected by means of world 3, until they can one day be finally realized.

Pessimists have pointed out to me that Otto Lilienthal, the German glider pilot, like Leonardo, dreamed of a mode of flying like a bird. They would probably have been horrified if they could have seen our Airbus.

This remark is correct in so far as our ideas are no doubt never realized in quite the way we imagine them. But nevertheless the remark is false. Anyone who wants to fly today in exactly the way that Leonardo and Lilienthal wanted to fly need only join a gliding club. Provided that he has the courage, it is not too difficult. Those others who fly in the Airbus or in a Boeing 747 will no doubt have their reasons for preferring this way of flying, despite its great dissimilarity to the glider; preferring it to the latter or to the railway or to the boat or to the motor vehicle. Even flying in the cramped conditions of a giant aeroplane has created many new possibilities and many new and valuable liberties for many people.

Giant aeroplanes are without a doubt consequences of Leonardo’s and LilienthaPs dreams, but probably unforeseeable consequences. Using our language, our scientific knowledge and our technology, we are able to predict the future consequences of our dreams, our wishes and our inventions, better than do plants and animals, but certainly not a great deal better. It is important that we realize just how little we know about these unforeseeable consequences of our actions. The best means available to us is still trial and error: trials that are often dangerous, and even more dangerous errors – which are sometimes dangerous to humanity.

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts of life. We are right to believe that we can and should contribute to the improvement of our world. But we must not imagine that we can foresee the consequences of our plans and actions. Above all we must not sacrifice any human life (except perhaps our own if the worst comes to the worst). Nor do we have the right to persuade or even to encourage others to sacrifice themselves – not even for an idea, for a theory that has completely convinced us (probably unreasonably, because of our ignorance).

In any case, one part of our search for a better world must consist in the search for a world in which others are not forced to sacrifice their lives for the sake of an idea.

III

I have come to the end of my lecture. I would like to add just one final optimistic reflection, with which I also ended my contribution to The Self and Its Brain, a book that my friend Sir John Eccles and I wrote together.

As I have tried to show above, Darwinian selection, the ideas of natural selection and selection pressure, are generally associated with a bloody struggle for existence. This is an ideology that should be taken seriously only in part.

But with the emergence of human consciousness and of the mind and of linguistically formulated theories this all changes completely. We can leave it to the competition between theories to eliminate the unusable ones. In previous times the upholder of the theory was eliminated. Now we can let our theories die in our place. From a biological point of view – the point of view of natural selection – the main function of the mind and of world 3 is that they make possible the use of conscious criticism; and consequently, the selection of theories without the killing of their proponents. This non-violent use of the method of rational criticism is made possible through biological development; through our invention of language and the subsequent creation of world 3. In this way natural selection overcomes or transcends its original no doubt rather violent character: with the emergence of world 3 it becomes possible to select the best theories, the best adaptations, even without violence. We can now eliminate false theories using non-violent criticism. Doubtless, non-violent criticism is still seldom employed: criticism is usually still a semi-violent activity, even when it is fought out on paper. But there are no longer any biological reasons for violent criticism, only reasons against it.

Hence the currently predominant, semi-violent criticism could be a temporary stage in the development of reason. The emergence of world 3 means that non-violent cultural evolution is not a Utopian dream. It is a biological and entirely feasible consequence of the emergence of world 3 through natural selection.

A shaping of our social environment with the aim of peace and non-violence is not just a dream. It is a possible, and from the biological point of view obviously necessary, objective for mankind.

Notes

1 Translator’s note: The page numbers refer to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, Macmillan, London, 2nd edn 1933 (reprinted 1990).

2 Translator’s note: The English term ‘verdict’ does not express the element of truth contained in the jury’s judgement as explicitly as does the German Wahrspruch (literally ‘true saying’). However, the English word is derived from the Latin veredktum (literal meaning ‘spoken truly’).

3 There are of course also facts that support the old interpretation; such as catastrophic changes of the niches, say, through the introduction of a poison like DDT or penicillin. In these cases, which have nothing to do with the preferences of the organisms, it is in fact the chance existence of a mutant that may determine the survival of the species. The situation is similar in the famous case in England of ‘industrial melanism’; that is, the development of dark varieties (of moths) by way of adaptation to industrial pollution. These striking and experimentally repeatable, but very specific, cases may perhaps explain why the interpretation of Darwinism that I describe as ‘pessimistic’ is so popular among biologists.

A lecture given in Alpbach in August 1982. The sub-title – ‘The search for a better world’ – was added by the author.