The Matter of Vision. Peter Wyeth
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by Newton and carried on in philosophy in his era by Hume (who died before Kant’s response was published, although their lives overlapped). Kant felt he had achieved a Copernican Revolution in philosophy, distinguishing the world in our minds and an external world impossible for us to know directly. There are interesting parallels between that view and current neuroscience discussions. Neuroscientists agree that we have only a representation of the world in our brains, partly due to the limitations of Consciousness and partly because, despite the idea that the brain is the most complex object known to man, it would not be possible to know the world completely in its every moment. Kant concluded for his part that it was the case that reason apprehended the world independently of the world outside the mind and that world could not, in principle, be known.
It is this autonomy to reason, an ideological perspective in Kant, that creates the problem. If reason is autonomous then philosophy by extension has a truth independent of the criteria of science. Those truths are not rooted in ‘experience’, that is in the material world, and are thus – in philosophical terms – Idealist. Kant arguably thus founded the tradition of German Idealism, which could be seen as passing in various guises through Hegel, inverted by Marx to his brand of materialism, which in turn fed into the thinkers behind the beginnings of Film Theory in the 1960s. In these synoptic strokes the line of argument goes that Marx, through an inversion rather than wholehearted disconnection from Hegel, erected Castles not in the Air (as Schopenhauer put it), but in the sand of Economics. It could be said that in eschewing the real materialism of Evolution after Darwin, Marx’s brand of Hegelianism succeeded in creating another Idealism keen to take on the garb of materialism.
The continuities of German Idealism, however, took up slightly unlikely residence in Film Theory, via the thinkers behind it, in denying the materialism of science and substituting for it the false materialism inherited from Marx, in ‘scientific socialism’. Returning to Kant, his assertion of an autonomy for reason found an interesting contradiction in Damasio’s conclusion40 based on work with brain-damaged patients rather than the abstractions of philosophy. His formula makes Reason contingent upon Emotion or, to put it another way, Reason has no autonomy. It is Emotion that has autonomy.
If we are able to accept that point, then Kant’s wishes fall. Reason is not and cannot ever be autonomous. The historical echo is now with David Hume, in his famous assertion that Reason is and always should be under the control of the Passions. If you recall, it was partly Hume that Kant set out to deny.
The problem that leads back, in this sketch, to Kant, is that in the presentation to Reason of a licence to autonomy, Hegel’s Castles in the Air41 are echoed in the whole of French thought that lies behind Film Theory. That tradition is anti-visual42 while leaving a trail of idealisms often claiming to be materialist, but in reality nothing of the sort. Rejecting science out of hand, turning its back on the real materialism of evolution, let alone neurobiology, it is without the faintest thought of submission to the proper discipline of science. In science ideas must be testable, able to formulated in such a manner that experiments can be designed that will put the truth of those ideas to the rigours of laboratory conditions. No post-modernist relativism must ever be allowed to deny one jot of the achievements of real science. The notion that ideas must be testable is a universe away from the inheritance of German Idealism. A Lacan produces not Castles but labyrinths in the air, an unintended legacy of Kant that has permitted the creation of ‘a tumbling ground for whimsies’, as William James observed of Freud’s conception of the unconscious.
Real Materialism
This project represents the rejection of the whole of that philosophical tradition originating with Kant and German Idealism, in favour of a materialist analysis based in science and upon scientific method. The notion of scientific method identified here is one enlarged by the addition of Emotion into the paradigm, a change regarded in itself as revolutionary. That diplomatic addition to the paradigm is seen as marking a step-change in the potential of science to analyse the Arts and Humanities. In contrast, the whole philosophical tradition behind Film Theory is viewed as irredeemably in thrall to the word. That is the major reason it is unable to say anything of consequence about Vision. It is, in effect, blind to Vision.
This project returns to Hume’s closeting of Reason as necessarily always under the control of Emotion. The shadow of German Idealism falls sharply across the French thinkers of the 20th Century who form the background to Film Theory. Their ‘materialism’ is substantially rhetorical, a kind of wishful-thinking that is another form of Idealism, often fuelled by a wish to be associated with political radicalism. In fact, their abandonment of the Port Royal tradition of clarity in discourse, ‘If it is not clear it is not French’, seems historically to be part of a broader identification with German Idealism that parted company with materialism based in science even in the time of Kant.
New Empiricism
There is a clear line to be drawn here between what is regarded as a proper materialism, in which ideas have to be capable of submission to experimental testing, and the rhetoric of Film Theory and its intellectual parents. The latter often apes the garb of materialism, but in reality it is the King’s New Clothes, nothing remotely to do with the essential discipline of science.
The call here is for a return to the fundamentals of real materialism, with the principle of testability as the gold standard. This is not however, it should be said, a return to the traditional logic of scientific method and empiricism of old, but one whose potential I would suggest has been radically changed by the inclusion of Emotion43 within the walls of what might be thought of as a New Scientific Method. That change would seem to me to have the potential to be a revolution In submitting the formerly excluded area of what had been thought of as subjective, the opposite of and enemy to Reason – the foundation of science – to scientific analysis and methods, it has been shown that areas such as Consciousness, Dreams and Emotion are capable of objective analysis. This might be called a New Empiricism, a change that I would argue qualitatively extends the reach of scientific method, with profound implications.
There are certain parallels with the difference in perspective identified by the large body of research on ‘hemispherical lateralisation’ between the two hemispheres (the left brain/right brain debate). Current opinion is that both sides of the brain deal with the full range of problem-solving, but the left side brings a narrow, focussed and goal-oriented approach, whereas the right side brings a broader, more holistic and innovative approach. The inclusion of Emotion within the citadel of scientific method is as though science has been able in some way to embrace the complementary biological value of a ‘right-side’ approach, in an appreciation of the value of elaboration of a fuller picture than had been possible hitherto when focussing strictly on a ‘left-side’ rationality. The scepticism that remains among many scientists to consideration of Emotion indicates that would be over optimistic, if arguably worthwhile as an aim. There remains significant resistance to the inclusion of Emotion and other subjectivisms within the ranks of scientists, so it would be misleading to represent what is effectively a shift in epistemology as universally accepted. Even researchers in the area are reluctant to make too much of the development, perhaps partly because of the barely-concealed scepticism emanating from their more conservative colleagues. However, this project does not hesitate to come out unequivocally in favour of the development, and to the extent of hailing it as a revolution in scientific method.
The Anti-Science tradition
A further characteristic of the thinkers behind Film Theory was what seemed rather like a distaste for and disinterest in science. Christian Metz put it that ‘Science is a big word’.44 The contention here is that Language, in contrast, is a small word. It seems quite extraordinary that a whole intellectual tradition could ignore the advances in science, and particularly in neuroscience, as though they did not exist. It is as though Kant gave a license to philosophy, in his declaration of its independence, to turn decisively away from science in the firm belief that the autonomy of philosophical truth was a sufficient protection. While a certain autonomy is reasonable,