|
 Philosopher
of the Month
September
2002 - Kenneth Craik
Simon
Collinson
To
read the earliest work of any serious thinker is often to experience
the additional charm of a mind still willing to explore the boldest
of hypotheses. The brilliance of the mature work remains as yet
wedded to a youthful enthusiasm less restrained in the premises
it is prepared to entertain and the conclusions it is prepared to
draw. In reading Kenneth Craik's The Nature of Explanation,
published in 1943, such charm is coupled with real poignancy in
light of the tragedy that was shortly to befall its author. In 1945,
aged just 31, Craik would be killed in a road accident in Cambridge
and a brilliantly promising career halted in its tracks.
Born
in 1914, Kenneth Craik studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh
before becoming a research student in psychology at Cambridge. The
shift from philosophy to psychology would be fully evident in The
Nature of Explanation, where Craik would advocate an 'experimental
philosophy' in which the study of psychological and physiological
mechanisms was seen as fundamental to the philosophy of mind. Craik
believed this subject had hitherto been hindered by a deeply flawed
method, namely 'introspective analyses of particular instances of
perception…. You cannot wring the truth out of a particular
observation of a particular event.'
Craik
excelled at Cambridge, receiving his PhD in 1940 and being elected
to a fellowship at St. Johns College in 1941. In 1944, having spent
much of the war engaged in applied research on behalf of the armed
forces, Craik was appointed director of the Medical Research Council's
Cambridge-based Applied Psychology Unit. His death occurred while
preparing a more extended elaboration of the ideas propounded in
The Nature of Explanation.
That
latter work divides into two distinct parts, the early chapters
addressing a number of traditional philosophical questions and the
later chapters advancing a hypothesis regarding the nature of thought
and the possibility that its principal characteristics might be
evident in non-human mechanisms. The earlier chapters are largely
concerned with demonstrating the truth of two premises which form
the foundational assumptions of what is essentially a materialist
philosophy of mind; these premises are 'the existence of the external
world and of causation.'
Craik
identifies 'five main attitudes to the problems of knowledge and
explanation': a priorism, scepticism, descriptive theories, relational
theories ('represented by modern physics'), and causal theories.
In a series of critiques, Craik attempts to expose the inconsistencies
and contradictions inherent in all but a causally grounded attitude.
Because 'language is based on the assumption of external objects
behaving in a certain way,' indeed because symbolism is 'the one
bridge between thought and the outer world,' scepticism is confronted
by a crippling dilemma: 'it either assumes the validity of verbal
and other forms of symbolism, in which case the symbolisation and
discussion of external events is also legitimate, or it denies the
possibility of symbolism at all, in which case it is reduced to
silence and cannot express any meaning at all.' As to some quantum
physicists' rejection of causal interpretations of the relations
discovered by experiment, this, Craik suggests, is 'meaningless',
not least because the more innocuous probability theory favoured
by physicists is itself ultimately grounded on 'the assumption of
causality.'
The
latter part of Explanation is far more speculative, Craik
going so far as to concede that any experimental corroboration of
his theory must remain 'a very remote possibility.' Observing that
'one of the most fundamental properties of thought is its power
of predicting events,' Craik suggests that such predictive power
is 'not unique to minds'. Indeed, although the 'flexibility and
versatility' of human thought is unparalleled, such essential properties
as recognition and memory are all evinced by mechanical devices.
In considering the prescience of Craik's observations, it is worth
recalling that Alan Turing's famous paper on 'Computing Machinery
and Intelligence' would not be published for another seven years.
Craik's neglect as one of the founding fathers of cognitive science
(neural mechanisms operate via 'symbols connected by rules') and
of artificial intelligence ('it is impossible to decide whether
or not the most elaborate man-made machines also show [consciousness]')
is clearly in need of correction. Craik also anticipated contemporary
interest in consciousness, constructing a 'hylozoistic' theory which
'would attribute consciousness and conscious organisation to matter
when it is physically organised in certain ways.' He even applied
his theory as a corrective to the stultifying a priorism he detected
in of much ethics.
Apart
from some posthumously edited papers, The Nature of Explanation
must remain Kenneth Craik's philosophical epitaph. This brief, rich
book provides a most fitting one.
A
new philosopher of the month will be featured early-October 2002
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