Return tor Reason - Chapters 4, 5, 6

 

Chapter Four

Democracy in Theory

The Open Society and its Enemies is the story of democracy, with an exhaustive explanation and reasoned advocacy of it, not as the best of all possible worlds, but as the best practical scheme so far invented, and one which is capable of almost indefinite improvement. Popper does not dodge the question: what is democracy? `We may distinguish two main types of government. The first type consists of governments of which we can get rid without bloodshed; that is to say the social institutions provide means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled, and the social traditions ensure that these institutions will not easily be destroyed by those who are in power. The second type consists of governments which the ruled cannot get rid of except by way of a successful revolution - that is to say, in most cases, not at all. I suggest the term "democracy" as a shorthand label for a government of the first type, and the term "tyranny" or "dictatorship" for the second.' And then, very characteristically, he adds `and should anybody reverse this usage (as is frequently done nowadays), then I should simply say that I am in favour of what he calls tyranny' (O.S., i, 124). For Popper is impatient with those modern philosphers who see their task as being to find out what words or statements `really mean'. A witty spoof of this kind of philosophy appeared in the Guardian's 1978 April-fool edition of The Times which reported that:

"a team of philosophers at Oxford has discovered a new meaning of .the word 'and'. This brings to 18 the number of meanings found since the project began in the 1930s and puts the philosophers ahead in the competition with Cambridge scientists who are discovering sub-atomic particles."

Popper's method is to identify the realities he wants to talk about and give them suitable names. This involves pointing out that other philosophers and common usage have sometimes given the same name to different realities, with obvious confusion. Definitions, Popper says, should be read from right to left: `democracy is a system where the government can be dismissed by the people' is better stated as `a system where the people can dismiss the government is called democracy'.

Throughout history men have asked the question `what is?', wanting to know the `essential nature of'. Popper points out that this has on the whole been an unproductive question. It is usually not possible to find a satisfactory answer. It was only when essentialism was abandoned in favour of nominalism that science began to advance. This term means giving names to things but has come to mean asking the question: how does it behave, what are its properties and characteristics? We still do not have satisfactory answers to the questions about the essential nature of light, matter, atoms, electricity, etc., but we nevertheless have a wealth of knowledge about them and how they behave.

Popper's definition of democracy may seem bare and inadequate; but he points out that in no conceivable system can you or I rule. In no conceivable way can the differing ideas of sixty million people be combined in, say, British foreign policy. The essential point is that in some general way the rulers are controlled by the ruled, even if it amounts to no more than that they can be dismissed. (I shall suggest in Chapter 11 how it may be possible to achieve a `plastic' control without necessarily going to the length of dismissal or the threat of it.)

Popper's philosophy of politics diverges from that of Plato (and so much in modern politics that can be traced back to Plato) in that he rejects the question that was paramount in Plato's eyes, the question `who should rule?'.+ To Popper this is a red herring. The really important question is how the rulers, whoever they are, can be controlled. He elaborates this as `How can we so organise political institutions that even bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?'

Who should rule would indeed be the vital question if the theory of unchecked sovereignty were true, that is if it were true that whoever has the power can do as he likes. This theory is in fact taken for granted by those who in modern times think the important question is who should dictate, the capitalists or the workers. But Popper points out that no political power is ever unchecked. `Even the most powerful tyrant depends upon his secret police, his henchmen, his hangman.' He is forced to play one group off against another.

The open society

Popper's theory of historical development is based on the idea of two extreme forms of society - closed and open. In their pure form both may be theoretical abstracts. A society completely closed in his sense may never have existed. Certainly no completely open one has. But direction and change towards or away from greater openness is easily detectable.

The closed society is the typical tribal society in which each man has a fixed place and role and where there is no provision for a change of status. `Taboos rigidly regulate and dominate all aspects of life. They do not leave many loop-holes. There are few problems in this form of life, nothing really equivalent to moral problems. I do not mean to say that a member of a tribe does not sometimes need much heroism and endurance in order to act in accordance with the taboos. What I mean is that he may rarely find himself in the position of doubting how he ought to act.' In the open society on the other hand there is constant changing of social position: `Many members strive to rise socially, and to take the places of other members. This may lead, for example, to such important social phenomena as class struggle' (O.S., i, 101). Taboos remain and all known societies have a certain rigidity of class structure. But there has been a fitful, irregular, and often temporarily reversed movement away from the completely closed society in the direction of greater openness at any rate since the Athens of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Popper thinks that the beginning of seafaring and commerce, both of which demand some individual initiative, were the start of the movement helped on by the beginning, for whatever reason, of criticism, of the idea that doctrines and taboos and customs and `knowledge' might be looked at objectively and criticised.

Roberts, in his history already quoted, points to the special historical importance of the Hebrew prophets. Until their time, might was right. The king was the law. Their great innovation was the idea of an absolute standard by which even the king might be judged.

"It is not too much to say that, if the heart of political liberalism is the belief that power must be used within a moral framework independent of it, then its tap root is the teaching of the prophets. This was a vital step in the development of those institutions and traditions which, in Popper's definition of democracy, enable the ruled to rid themselves on occasions of the rulers."

The breakdown of the closed society in Athens led quickly to the rise of democracy in the age of Pericles; but it was short-lived. one of the most influential contributors to its fall was the great philospher Plato. The first volume of The Open Society is devoted to an analysis of Plato's political thought and the way in which it has led to confusion down to the present time by its apparent concern with freedom and justice while advocating a totalitarian regime. one vital issue which Plato succeeded in confusing for all future generations was that of individualism. This word, Popper points out, has two distinct meanings; the opposite of collectivism and the opposite of altruism, unselfishness, public-spiritedness. Plato ignored the first sense and managed to convince his contemporaries and posterity that individualists were necessarily selfish egoists and the only alternative to selfishness is collectivism, that there is no such thing as the unselfish altruistic individualist. Popper unmasks this deception and points to Charles Dickens as a perfect example of this supposedly non-existent type. `It would be difficult to say', he wrote, `which is the stronger, his [Dickens's] passionate hatred of selfishness or his passionate interest in individuals with all their human weaknesses; and this attitude is combined with 'a dislike not only of ... collectives, but even of a genuinely devoted altruism, if directed towards anonymous groups rather than concrete individuals (c. f. Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House "a lady devoted to public duties")' (O.S., i, 101). Plato attacked individualism, Popper believes, because he recognised that, even more than equalitarianism, it was such a power in the new humanitarian creed.

"The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy ... This individualism, united with altruism, has become the basis of our western civilisation. It is the central doctrine of Christianity ('Love your neighbour', say the scriptures, not `love your tribe') and it is the core of all ethical doctrines which have grown from our civilisation and stimulated it."

Compare also Kant's saying `Always recognise that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your ends.' `There is no other thought', says Popper, `which has been so powerful in the moral development of man' (O.S., i, 102).

His idea of historical development as a general trend from the closed society towards the open one may at first sight look like historicism, the very idea he most consistently attacks. But Popper does not say that history, inevitably moves in a steady progression onward from the closed society. on the contrary history records many reversals - the dark ages, the Fascist domination of Europe in the 1930s and '40s, and of South America and South Africa now. The opening of human society is something that has happened. He hopes it will go on. He thinks we should encourage it; but its advance is not inevitable although it is linked with the growth of knowledge, which is also capable of being halted and reversed.

Throughout the ages writers have invoked the organic theory of society, they have likened human societies to living organisms, drawing an analogy between the members of a tribe or nation and the members or limbs or organs of the body. Popper concedes that in the closed society there is some justification for this analogy but from the moment that a society begins to `open' the analogy breaks down completely. For there is nothing in the individual organism remotely corresponding to, for instance, the class struggle. There is no kind of tendency for a leg to become an arm or a heart to take the place of a brain. John Donne's well known sermon describes an attribute of the closed society, for although it may be true that `no man is an island', it is palpably untrue in a society even as open as ours that `The bell' always `tolls for thee'. Far from losing by the death of others, individuals in our society frequently profit both materially and psychologically and are in no sense diminished. The closed society is like an organism in the sense that it is united by physical factors of bodily contact and direct personal relationships; the open society is characterised by a degree of abstractness. The abstract society is an unrealisable imaginary society outlined by Popper to illustrate an extreme. In it individuals never actually meet in the flesh but interact by letter, telephone, bill, cheque (and even artificial insemination!).

The increasing abstraction of the open society is one of the factors leading to what is called the strain of civilisation. It is created by the effort which life in a partially open and abstract society demands from us and is felt most in times of rapid social change. It arises from `the endeavour to be rational, to forgo at least some of our emotional social needs, to look after ourselves, and to accept responsibilities. We must, I believe, bear this strain as the price to be paid for every increase in knowledge, in reasonableness, in cooperation and in mutual help, and consequently in our chances of survival'. It is of the same nature as the strain felt by the child on leaving the shelter of the parental home.

"There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way, we must return to the beasts. If we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom (O.S., i, 201)."

The state

Karl Marx defined the state as `an organ of class discrimination, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of an "order" which legalises and perpetuates this oppression'. For Popper the state is a society for the prevention of crime, its essential function being the protection of the meek and weak in both the physical and the economic sense. It is an organisation for the restraint of physical and economic bullying.

Marx gave an appalling account of the working conditions of his time. Popper quotes from Das Kapital a number of examples of children working a fifteen-hour day from the age of under seven and of young women working even longer, in some cases to their death. `Using the slogan "equal and free competition for all" ', Popper commented, `the unrestrained capitalism of this period resisted successfully all labour legislation until 1833, and its practical execution for many years more. The consequence was a life of desolation and misery which can hardly be imagined in our day.'

"Marx's burning protest against these crimes, which were than tolerated, not only by professional economists but also by churchmen, will secure him forever a place among the liberators of mankind ..I believe that the injustice and inhumanity of the unrestrained `capitalist system' described by Marx cannot be questioned, but it can be interpreted in terms of ... the paradox of freedom. Freedom defeats itself if it is unlimited. Unlimited freedom means that a strong man is free to bully a weak one and to rob him of his freedom. This is why we demand that the state should limit freedom to a certain extent, so that everybody's freedom is protected by the law. Nobody should be at the mercy of others but all should have the right to be protected by the state (O. S., ii, 124)."

He quotes with approval the apocryphal story of the judge who told the accused `Your freedom to swing your fist is limited by the proximity of your neighbour's jaw'. In the same vein is the comment on her adopted country by a G.I. bride after twenty-five years in the United States: `This is a country where they scream freedom from the roof tops; but what's the use of freedom when you're afraid to go out at night?'

The formal or legal freedom, despised by Marx, the right of the people to choose and dismiss their government, is the only known device by which we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power. It is the ultimate control of the rulers by the ruled. And since political power can control economic power (see below), political democracy is the only means for the control of economic power by the ruled. Without democratic control there is no earthly reason why a government should not use its power for purposes very different from the protection of the freedom of its citizens. The remedy against economic exploitation and injustice `must be a political remedy similar to the one we use against physical violence'.

Economic power

Marx, misled by the power in his day of the capitalist over the workers, thought that economic power is necessarily superior to political power. Politics, he wrote, could do no more than `shorten the birth pangs' of the inevitable revolution. Hence the need for the state to own the means of production, distribution etc., and hence the British Labour Party's belief in the need to own `the commanding heights of the economy'. The argument, roughly, was that he who has the money has the power because if necessary he can buy guns to enforce his power. But, Popper argues, this is only the first stage. Those that have the guns can see this too; and so you may end up by having both the money and the guns in the same hands. Marx failed to see that even in his own day the capitalists owed their power of exploitation to the political power of the state which legalised their profits and protected them against personal violence and theft. Bertrand Russell (1938) gave two historical examples to demonstrate that political power was necessarily superior to the power of money.

"Julius Caesar was helped to power by his creditors who saw no hope of repayment except through his success; but when he had succeeded he was powerful enough to defy them. Charles V borrowed money from the Fuggers in order to buy the position of emperor; but when he became emperor he snapped his fingers at them and they lost what they had lent."

The pre-occupation of the British Left with ownership has had two unfortunate consequences. Firstly there has been this tendency to blame people - capitalists, managers etc. - and thus to imply that all that is needed is to hand over the running of things to new managers with the right (i.e. Left) ideas. Disillusionment sets in when the ownership is changed and the management given to people of socialist sympathies and the result is not only a service or industry that loses money, but one that shows even less signs than the privately-owned one of being run in the interests of its customers. Probably no private company would have dared to treat its customers as cavalierly as did the publicly-owned electricity supply industry. Having induced people to invest in electric appliances for space and water heating by offering attractive off-peak discounts, they then proceeded to cut the discount very substantially.

Secondly, the obsession with ownership and the political attitude of management has diverted thought from the important consideration of how an industry should be run and what its priorities should be. It is typical of the muddle over public ownership that the Labour government's own Transport Policy white paper should insist on the need to preserve competition between three nationally-owned industries - rail, air, and bus - on the inter- city passenger services, when part of the rationale for public ownership was the elimination of wasteful competition.

In Shaw's play The Apple Cart, any invention to make a commodity more durable was immediately bought up and suppressed by the powerful monopoly, Breakages Ltd. British Rail's research engineers have come up with an ingeniously simple solution (which G. Freeman Allen described) to the important problem of transferring goods cheaply and safely from road to rail and back to road. This has been suppressed, according to Joseph Hanlon, as effectively as if Breakages had been involved, by the bureaucratic, inverted Heller, technique of estimating (or rather over- estimating) the costs of development.

On the whole the theory prevailing, though not often spelt out, in the Labour Party (an organisation now somewhat averse to theorising) is what Popper called a Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy Theory (O.S., ii, 101), in which the exploitation of workers is seen as a malevolent conspiracy by capitalists. This theory, Popper pointed out, has largely replaced in both overt and quasi Marxist circles the `ingenious and highly original' doctrine of Marx himself that capitalists as much as workers were helpless puppets pulled by economic wires, helpless victims of historical forces.

An extraordinary apparent contradiction between fact and theory faced both Marxists and quasi Marxists when early in 1979 the workers who went on strike against low wages were not the exploited employees of capitalist industry but their less well-off brothers in the public services. Their bosses could not possibly be seen as grinding the faces for the sake of profit. Their bosses' only purpose was to provide services for a public which included those worse off than the strikers; and the former were certainly the ones who suffered.

Interventionism

Marx took the appalling conditions of early industrial life as being an essential part of capitalism and predicted that inevitably they would get worse. It is one of many of his prophecies which did not come true. It would have been true of unrestrained, laissez-faire, capitalism, Popper believes; but even while Marx was writing, partly as a result of his writing, the restraint of capitalism was beginning. The conditions he so vividly described have everywhere ceased to exist.

Economic interventionism has everywhere been adopted, and this has undoubtedly resulted in an enormous improvement in working conditions and in living standards too. Economic interventionism has had two arrows to its bow. The first was legal - the British Factory Acts, limiting by law the hours of labour and the age of the employed, were the first restraint. Later followed the trade unions, which gave the employed the means of bargaining with the employers. `Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains' was a piece of advice that was taken and a prophecy that did come true. They did unite and did lose their chains - and not much else.

Revolution and peaceful change

Marxism and other revolutionary theories, Popper pointed out, suffer in a democracy from an inner contradiction at least as fundamental as that which Marx attributed to capitalism. It is this: in order to attract sufficient support revolutionaries must campaign for the improvement of the conditions of the workers that they wish to recruit. But what if their campaign succeeds? If wages rise and conditions generally improve, they must say it is not enough. They must demand more. But with each improvement fewer and fewer workers are dissatisfied with the status quo. The revolutionaries are thus `forced to fight for the immediate betterment of the workers' lot, but to hope at the same time for the opposite'. The contradiction produces a stage in which `it is hard to know who is the traitor, since treachery may be faithfulness and faithfulness treachery'. Popper wrote this during the war but it is still very much to the point. The British Left is still very much divided between those who want to do something `within the system' and those who want to destroy the system and are therefore forced to be two-faced. They have to advocate better conditions without really wanting their advocacy to succeed.

The difference between the views of Marx and Popper in regard to the nature or function of the state draws attention to the ambivalent way in which we now regard the chief agent of the internal power of the state - the police. Popper regards the police as the most important element in the maintenance of freedom. They are the means by which the law is enforced; and freedom from every kind of bullying and exploitation ultimately rests on their ability to uphold the law. This view has nothing to do of course with the moral character of individual policemen nor whether there is widespread corruption in any particular police force. A police force is essential, just as a government is essential. Popper's interest in the police as such is the same as his interest in all other political institutions: how can we so organise the police that even bad policemen cannot do too much damage? It seems to me that one of the things we might do is to relieve them as far as possible of their function as enforcers of what may be unpopular government or local government policy and so let them concentrate on being the protectors of the public. I have in mind the setting up of more separate forces like the customs officers and the traffic wardens, distinct from the police, to take over such things as the activities of the drug squads.

There is an asymmetry in this matter of law and its enforcement which is somewhat analogous to the asymmetry between the possibility of refuting a theory and the impossibility of confirming it. Changes in the law must be made by democratic discussion and not by force; but once the change is made it must be maintained by force. one can think of it as a kind of ratchet mechanism, the discussion and democratic decision being the winding up, while the police are the pawl that prevents slipping back to lawlessness.

Two kinds of intervention

The state must intervene to prevent physical and economic bullying; but Popper makes an important but little recognized distinction between `two entirely different methods by which the intervention of the state may proceed. The first is that of designing a legal framework of protective institutions. . . . The second is that of empowering organs of the state to act ... as they consider necessary for achieving the ends laid down by the rulers' (O.S., ii, 131-3).

At first sight one might imagine that the second method of leaving a matter to the discretion of a committee or official would be less restricting than laying down a definite law; and it does seem that this is often assumed to be the case.

The operation of the fire precaution laws is the example of this difference of method which first comes to my mind. The first method would be to lay down by law that, for example, all buildings of more than three storeys must have an external fire-resistant escape stairway. This might prove unnecessary or impossibly costly, in which case the law would be amended to require this only in certain specified circumstances. What we have in fact is that, if such a building is occupied by more than one household (one household can burn so far as the law is concerned), then means of escape must be provided `to the satisfaction' of some authority who may be the fire officer. This is the second method. Now this kind of arrangement is open to all kinds of abuse and can even make life more dangerous for the people it is supposed to protect. Here are two instances known to me. In one case a couple, who let their second-floor rooms to summer holiday-makers, were told that they must do some £1,500 worth of fire-precaution work. They were not told that, if they ceased to let rooms, they need not make any changes at all, as they would be a single household. In another case an eighty-year-old widow who lived alone upstairs in her four-storey house, but had a young couple living in her semi-basement, was told that she must evict them. She was thereby condemned to live entirely alone and was deprived, in the event of fire, of the help of an able-bodied couple. Had there been a steel fire escape from her top storey where nobody slept, she would have been allowed to keep her basement tenants - a slight case of tunnel-vision!

The lack of a definite standard that can be disputed has meant that architects have to play safe. You cannot wait until you have erected an expensive building and then find that the fire officer will not approve it. You put in double the number of fire doors that he could conceivably demand; and you put springs on them so strong that elderly people cannot open them. (They then have to be propped open and so lose all purpose.) While the main staircase used to be the central feature of many public buildings, play-safe architects now have often to hide it away and box it in behind spring-loaded doors. There would be something to be said for the system if it really saved lives. But the fact is that the four fires that have cost the most lives in the past decade have all been in new buildings which must have been passed by the fire officers. Lord James of Rusholme, chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission, in a letter to The Times (8 September 1978) protesting about the aesthetic damage being done by over-enthusiastic fire precautions, said that in `the many historic buildings of the University of Oxford ... only one death by fire appears to have been recorded in the last 400 years'. He added that `the risk taken by the public in using such buildings is ... negligible when compared with the risk taken on the roads to get to them'.

In the case of the first method (of state intervention), I exchange of information. The rulers must know what the Popper says: `The legal framework can be known and understood by the individual citizen ... Its function is predictable. It introduces a feature of certainty and security into social life. When it is altered, allowances can be made, during a transitional period, for those individuals who have laid their plans in the expectation of its constancy.' The other method (personal intervention by civil servants etc.), he says, `must introduce an ever-growing element of unpredictability into social life, and with it will develop the feeling that social life is irrational and insecure. The use of discretionary powers is liable to grow quickly, once it has become an accepted method, since adjustments will be necessary, and adjustments to discretionary short-term decisions can hardly be carried out by institutional means'. The tendency, he says, must create `the impression that there are hidden powers behind the scenes, making people susceptible to the conspiracy theory of society with all its consequences - heresy hunts, national, social, and class hostility.'

It seems to me likely that the growing tendency to govern by these discretionary powers is a major cause of discontent and of the widespread feeling that democracy is a sham. Whichever party is in power, `they' will carry on regardless. Popper himself gives several reasons why governments and civil servants tend to adopt the discretionary method; but, he says:

"The most important reason is undoubtedly that the significance of the distinction between the two methods is not understood. The way to its understanding is blocked to the followers of Plato, Hegel, and Marx. They will never see that the old question `Who shall be the rulers?' must be superseded by the more real one `How shall we tame them?' (O.S., ii, 133)"

Democracy and induction connected

To return to the essential point of democracy: the control of the rulers by the ruled must depend on a two-way people want and what is the effect of their ruling, and the people must know what the rulers are trying to do and why. The rulers are bound to make mistakes; and rational government can be carried out only if it is subject to criticism so that the mistakes can be pointed out and the lessons learnt.

There is an obvious parallel between the above paragraph and the concluding paragraph of Chapter 1, where it was emphasised that science depends on communication between scientists and potential critics.

We are now in a position to appreciate the far-reaching importance, already mentioned, of the fact that induction is not a valid method and of Popper's solution of the resulting problem, his demonstration that science, and action generally, can nevertheless be rational. If induction were the source of knowledge and if a theory could be corroborated by finding confirmations of it (white swans), then scientists working alone or in groups, committees of experts etc., could be left on their own to arrive at the truth or the next best thing. But the fact that induction is not valid and that truth emerges as a result of criticism - of attempts to refute theories (to find black swans) - means that critics, who may well be people who know far less than the experts, are necessary to the process. For no man can be relied on to criticise sufficiently searchingly his own ideas; and no planner can know all the implications of his own plans.

In the political and social fields there has been an attempt to emulate the success of the physical sciences by taking over their machinery. Computers, statistical methods, decision-theory - these it is sometimes thought, will give to political decisions the validity that they seem to have given to scientific results. The idea arises from a misunderstanding of science. These things are the trappings, the apparatus, of science. The validity of the results depends, as we have seen, on their public-ness, on the fact that anybody with the necessary skill can repeat the experiments and calculations for himself and point out any mistakes.

This is the connection between science and democracy. This is why each depends on the other. Technology can flourish in secrecy and under tyrannical regimes, but new knowledge depends upon open-ness and on public criticism for its validity. Politicians and planners can use their expertise to work out anything from the rebuilding of a city to a new pension scheme, but they will not see all the snags without the aid of the people affected.

This is perhaps the most important of all the conclusions that arise from Popper's work; the fact that experts and specialists of all kinds from physicists to civil servants are not sufficient unto themselves, cannot find out the truth or lay down the law by themselves, but depend on the public at large in order to substantiate the truth and the validity of what they do, although even then there is no certainty. This is the case for democracy.

Chapter Five

Psychology Against Culture

In the introduction to this book I quoted from J. M. Roberts's History that `The message men took from Freud ... called in question the very foundation of liberal civilization itself, the idea of the rational, responsible, consciously-motivated individual.' `Freud's importance beyond science lay in providing a new mythology', Roberts writes, and he adds `It was to prove highly corrosive.' on behaviourism, the mechanistic psychology that was founded on Pavlov's `conditioning', Roberts says that `the diffused effect . . . seems curiously parallel to that of Freudianism, in that its bias is towards the demolition of the sense of responsibility and individualism which is the heart of the European and Christian tradition'. This cultural tradition is based above all things on the idea of truth, that is on correspondence with the facts. This is in strong contrast with most Eastern philosophies. Anybody who has travelled in the East knows how the most respectable Asiatic will, if disposed to please, answer a question, not primarily on the basis of fact, but rather on what he hopes will please the questioner. Science, based on the idea of theories which correspond with the facts, is essentially a Western invention. It never could have arisen in the East. Now, paradoxically, two Western psychologies have undermined the concept of truth with their own science, the one with a general blurring of distinctions and the other by reducing truth to the answer we are programmed to give. They have knocked away their own foundation.

However if either were to stand up to attempts to refute it we should have to accept it as provisionally established no matter what its effect. But I shall maintain that both are myths. While the Freudian theories are unfalsifiable and a therefore metaphysical, I shall attempt to show in the next chapter that conditioning can be logically disproved.

I shall devote most of this chapter to the `corrosive' effect, particularly of the Freudian outlook, although, as Roberts has implied, much that can be said against one applies also to the other. First I shall show how psychology as a subject, independently of its authorship, has tended to assume an exaggerated importance (a) because of the omission of World 3 (under whatever name) from the scheme of things and (b) because of the false doctrine of `psychologism'.

We have been too much concerned with unconscious motivation rather than with conscious intentions, purposes, and interests; too much concerned with what we have in common with other animals rather than with what makes us unique. And even those who are concerned exclusively with human studies seem often to miss the point. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the introduction to a book called Human Behaviour by Claire and W. M. S. Russell. `What makes us human', they say, `is our capacity for furthering each other's explorations by a process of creative communication between us. Our enquiry will therefore have two closely related phases or departments, the study of individual behaviour, and that of the relations between individuals - the study of social relations.' This hardly exhausts the range of human life, in fact it does not seem to make us very different from bees - just that our communications are capable of greater precision. It virtually excludes from consideration the world of abstractions. Popper's World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, theories, myths, designs, etc., which exist independently of their creators but react on us all.

A very large part of our waking lives is spent in such `behaviour' as talking about non-material things, ideas, intentions etc., reading, writing, calculating, making things to a design, cooking to a recipe, operating machinery, following a map, time-table, or other technical reference, looking at pictures; and we even think about and are influenced by what happened before we were born, and we make plans for or dream dreams about a far off future. Although all this could be called `individual behaviour' it is very different from what is called animal behaviour and nothing to do with social relations.

What makes us human is our capacity to interact not only with each other but with the world of abstractions and ideas, with World 3. This is what is absolutely unique about us. It depends upon human language and it leads, as Popper has pointed out, to a greater importance in our lives of control from above, of conscious intention over unconscious `animal' motivation. An entry in an engagement diary may be the prime cause of the movement of the physical body of a man across the Atlantic ('Compton's problem') and that engagement may be kept in spite of an unconscious reluctance to keep it. An attitude of aggressive hostility can be transformed at once into one of cooperation when, for example, one grasps a new explanation of someone else's behaviour.

It is important to note that this interaction with World 3 is not confined to intellectuals or even to literates. All who use human language are constantly interacting with objective ideas such as age, death, good value, fairness, next year, laws and rules, and with theories even if they are false, mere superstitions, or old wives' tales. Popper's example, quoted in Chapter 2, about the practical difference between thinking today is Saturday and saying today is Saturday, makes the point. The second can be criticised, the first cannot.

The capacity for interaction between individual minds and the products both of our own minds and those of others (living or dead) is the exclusively human achievement. Its existence and its central importance in our lives must make us profoundly suspicious of any attempts to deduce norms of human society from the behaviour of apes.

The exaggerated importance given in our time to psychology depends also on a doctrine which formed a central part of the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Mill recognised that human behaviour is a consequence not only of human psychology but also of material and social institutions. We do what we do very largely because of material constraints imposed by our houses, roads, clothes etc., and also because of customs and laws and the institutions of family, commerce, employment and so on. But, Mill maintained, since all these things were human inventions, they were themselves ultimately reducible to human psychology. This reduction is what Popper calls `psychologism' and he shows it to be false.

Much of what is written tends to play down even the part played by social institutions, whatever their origin, and assumes that psychology is the only factor. It is worth emphasising the importance of institutions and the comparative unimportance, in some situations, of psychology. The brief summary of the causes of the outbreak of the first world war at the beginning of Chapter 7 is a good example of this - how the war would most probably not have started, whatever the psychology of the statesmen concerned, had the war plans of the various great powers not existed, or had they been more flexible.

Popper's technique in demolishing psychologism, the doctrine that social laws must ultimately be reducible to psychological laws, is the same as with historicism: to make the best possible case for this view - better perhaps than most people who uncritically assume the truth of it could make - and then to refute it. In making the case for psychologism, one has first to admit that no action is ever explained by motives or any other psychological or behavioural concept alone. There is always the environment, the general situation, ranging from laws and customs to all kinds of physical restraints. (One walks along the road or footpath although the direct way to one's destination may be through someone else's house or garden.) But the case, then, for psychologism is, admitting the influence and restraint of the environment, that the social environment is man-made. Institutions, the market for example, are derived from human psychology which disposes towards the pursuit of wealth: and the fact that human life is so much a matter of institutions is itself due to a peculiarity of human psychology. Furthermore the origins of all the institutions that now govern human society must be explicable in terms of human psychology since at some stage in history they have been introduced for some human purpose. Thus, to quote Mill: `All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature and the laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings, that is to say, the laws of individual human nature.'

This is an impressive argument; but more impressive to me is the way in which Popper demolishes it.

"If all regularities in social life, the laws of our social environment, of all institutions etc., are ultimately explained by, and reduced to, the `actions and passions of human beings' then such an approach forces upon us not only the idea of historico-causal development, but also the idea of the first steps of such a development. For the stress on the psychological origin of social rules or institutions can only mean that they can be traced back to a state when their introduction was dependent solely upon psychological factors, or more precisely, when it was independent of any established social institutions."

Psychologism was thus forced, whether it liked it or not, Popper showed, to operate with the idea of a beginning of society and with the idea of a human nature and a human psychology as they existed prior to society:

"It is a desperate position ... This theory of a pre- social human nature which explains the foundation of society is not only an historical myth, but also, as it were, a methodological myth. (O. S. 92-3)"

As Popper says, it can hardly be seriously discussed because we have every reason to believe that man's immediate ancestors were social. Thus social institutions and sociological laws must have existed before `what some people are pleased to call "human nature" and before human psychology. Thus sociology is prior to psychology and if a reduction is to be made at all, it would be more hopeful to attempt a reduction of psychology to sociology than the other way round.

As usual Popper has several arguments to pile on top of this one; but this is the most easily understood and is sufficient by itself. It always reminds me, in its elegance, of the proof, also a reductio ad absurdum, attributed to Pythagoras of the irrationality of the square root of two. (Nothing to do, of course with unreasonableness. An irrational number is one that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.) Another way of saying the same thing is to say that it is impossible to measure the diagonal of a square whose side is one unit. At first sight, as in the present case, one would not imagine it possible to prove such a proposition by mere logic applied to undisputed facts. The importance of proving the (psychologism) case is directly related to the fact that the opposite is widely assumed. Freud, for example, according to his biographer Ernest Jones, said that sociology `can be nothing other than applied psychology'.

Popper uses competition as an example of a social phenomenon which cannot be attributed to psychology. It is after all usually undesired by the competitors themselves and `must be explained as a (usually inevitable) unintended consequence of (conscious and planned) actions of the competitors'. Competition to purchase a house, used in Chapter 1 as an example against the conspiracy theory, is a case in point. `Thus', says Popper, `even though we may be able to explain psychologically some of the actions of the competitors, the social phenomenon of competition is a psychologically inexplicable consequence of these actions.' ('The logic of the Social Sciences'.) The popularity of such assumptions as the conspiracy theory underlines the importance of the refutation of psychologism. Conspiracy theory irrationally explains adverse events psychologically in terms of individual motives, thus encouraging groundless enmity and disaffection. It is like blaming the government for the weather.

I return now to the cultural impact of modern psychology. `Psychologists say', we read frequently in the newspapers by way of introduction to some highly questionable piece of dogma; but, in fact, as David Cohen's interesting collection of interviews shows, his selection of the world's best-known psychologists are agreed on practically nothing. Nevertheless, however much they disagree in detail, the diffused effect, to use Roberts's ｅxpression, of their studies is an atmosphere of determinism and therefore of irresponsibility. However successful the Freudian and behaviourist theories have been within, so to speak, their own terms of reference, their cultural influence, pervasive, excessive, has been on the whole vicious and tending to run counter to all that I have subsumed under the term rationalism, as well as being very largely against common sense. It is necessary to qualify this statement with the phrase' `on the whole' because one cannot deny that, for example, the amelioration of the often harsh conditions for children in institutions of all sorts owes a lot to Freud's interest in children's mental processes. And there have been other benefits - a relaxation of puritanical standards, but these of course have been relaxed at other times in history without the aid of this particular psychology.

In a recent four-page article on Freud, covering the various revisions and heresies of Freudianism and its offshoots and sects, Laurie Taylor, a professor of sociology, did not once pose the question to what extent any of the theories he mentioned was true; and he ended it by quoting from another journal: `with Copernicus the earth moved from its position of centrality in the universe, with Darwin man moved from his position of centrality in the eye of the creator, with Marx the individual human subject moved from its position of centrality in history, and with Freud consciousness moved from its position of centrality in the structure of the psyche.' The professor's comment was that this provides an explanation of Freud's enduring significance for social scientists. But there is another way of looking at the significance of these great thinkers.

Popper and his co-author Sir John Eccles gave as one of the reasons for writing their new book The Self and its Brain that `the debunking of man has gone far enough - even too far'. They refer to this same decentralising argument and then say `but since Copernicus we have learnt to appreciate how wonderful and rare, perhaps even unique, our little earth is in this big universe; and since Darwin we have learned more about the incredible organisation of all living things on earth and also about the unique position of man among his fellow creatures' (S.B., VII). They might have added that since Freud began his decentralising of consciousness, and therefore of reason, the practical achievements of reason have been greater than in the whole of previous history. Computers, television, space travel, atomic energy, the incredibly detailed recent knowledge about, for example, ultra-microscopic biological structures and processes - you don't have to like all these things, but it cannot be denied that even if their inventors did labour under unresolved complexes and even if they were motivated by unconscious infantile fantasies, they achieved all this by science and reason.

An analytical theory, by postulating underlying elements in a whole, may help to explain observations; but it cannot alter them. What seems to me to be the mistake in analytical psychology can be illustrated by an analogy from physics. I know that the accepted theory is that this table I am writing on consists mostly of space in which electrons are revolving around nuclei. The theory explains the observed fact that the table can be sawn in half or converted into smoke and ashes; but it in no way detracts from the solidity of the table. I may lean on it as hard as if I had never heard of atoms. Psychoanalysis has tended to imply, in the terms of this analogy, `It is not really solid. Do not treat it as a table, always remember it is really an assemblage of particles'. And in its own field what it is saying is `People are not really people. They are assemblages of instincts and complexes masquerading as people'. Because it has analysed such qualities as loyalty, patriotism, public-spiritedness, and integrity, and found them to be derived from certain infantile impulses, it tends to imply that these qualities are therefore not what they seem. Its tendency is thus to disparage if not to discount all that we most value and admire in each other. It is a kind of not-seeing-the-wood-for-the-trees, a form of induction. It is a mistake that physics has never made.

The revolution that Freud initiated was a revolution against a two thousand-year-old European tradition that virtue was something to be inculcated, a morality to be taught directly or by example, and superimposed on an animal nature. Freudian analysis in contrast consisted of a systematic unpeeling of the encrustration of the culturally-acquired `super-ego' to free the natural `id' from which all goodness flowed. (I am referring here to the early, pre-first world war, phase of Freud's theorising, which was the source of Roberts's `diffused effect', before the clarity was blurred by second thoughts, for example in Civilization and Its Discontents.) Modern biology has, I think, vindicated the traditional view. Nature is, in Tennyson's phrase, red in tooth and claw. This is the importance of Dawkins's The Selfish Gene from which I have already quoted. Dawkins exposes the error in the view, assumed by many distinguished biologists - Konrad Lorenz among them - that natural selection works to secure the interests of the species or some other group. Dawkins demonstrates that it must work at a lower level even than that of the individual. It works at the level of the gene. The self-sacrifice, apparently in the interests of the group, demonstrated for example by some members of insect colonies is in fact part of this blind process of short-term self-interest of the gene. (The self-sacrificing members are always the sterile ones. The genes in their bodies will not survive whatever they do.)

This self-interest of the gene is inherent in all living things; but it does not preclude a conscious far-seeing 'conspiracy of doves' (page 30). He coins the term meme to describe the elements in the uniquely human process of cultural evolution, elements of World 3 - ideas, snatches of a tune, slogans, etc., - which replicate themselves in a manner analogous to the self-replicating segments of DNA, the genes. 'We have at least the mental equipment', Dawkins says, 'to foster our long term selfish interests.... We can see the long-term benefits of participating in a "conspiracy of doves", and we can sit down together to discuss ways of making the conspiracy work. We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination . . . We have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of selfish replicators.'

Freudian theory has developed over the eighty years of its existence in so many directions that it is hard to crystallise it into a form that could be disproved. This is one reason for its influence. It was also this characteristic which, in its comparatively early years, led Popper to realise that such a theory which defied refutation, which every observation seemed to confirm, could not be regarded as science. I must repeat that this is not the same as saying it is nonsense. on the contrary it is a fruitful source of ideas; but its predictions tend to be ambiguous and its interpretations cannot be relied upon in the way that reliance was placed on the theories of physics in order to guide man to the moon. Nor does the dismissal of Freudianism as science imply that the psychoanalytic treatment of patients is no good. There is a vital difference between applying Freudian theories in the man-to-man situation of psychoanalytic therapy and applying them to human behaviour at large or-to. historical characters. In the treatment situation the patient is there to disagree, if he thinks fit, with the analyst's interpretation of his behaviour.  In other words the interpretation is subject to criticism, and in that situation the truth may well emerge. In the broader field there is no objective criticism, and conclusions derived from psychoanalytic theory in these circumstances are no more than speculations. The trouble is that, as I shall indicate below, we do rely in the broader field on psychoanalytic speculations, even if not explicitly.

In a paper to the British Association in 1976 Dr William Belson blamed television violence for violent behaviour in real life. The same allegation is now being contested in a case in the American courts. Much emphasis is placed on the fact that Dr Belson and those who agree with him have not been able to prove their thesis. Of course they have not. As we have seen, it is theoretically impossible for them to do so. And not only does this seem to be a failing on their part, it seems to be generally regarded as being up to them to try to do so, rather than for the defenders of television violence to defend their case that it does no harm. Why should it be generally accepted that it does no harm? After all it is a matter of experience that examples are followed. Children imitate their parents and peers, and, even more relevant, sensibilities are blunted by familiarity. Most people feel queasy and many actually faint when present for the first time at a surgical operation on a live human being. But everybody whose job it is to be present gets accustomed to it. Most people are upset when for the first time they see a dead body, but those whose work involves them frequently with dead bodies take them as a matter of course. Hitler's butchers were recruited from the slaughterers of animals, and many of those who had become used to bashing in the skulls of incurable lunatics soon became able to do the same for healthy Jews and political prisoners. So why should it need to be proved that the repeated sight on television of people being brutally assaulted makes one more able to tolerate brutal assault in real life? I think the blame can fairly be put on psychoanalytic theory which has got the better over other theories, probably because of its romantic appeal and the lack of a firm contrary theory.

The psychoanalytic view in this matter is (or was) broadly that we all have a certain amount of innate aggression, just as we all have a certain amount of available physical energy, and this aggression will out. Some believe in the possibility of `sublimating' into creative channels this aggression, which tends to be thought of rather like steam under pressure, so that it will, as it were, drive an engine rather than merely burst the boilers. Others think that the aggression can be got rid of vicariously; and this is the theory, unlikely as it appears on the face of it, which has caught on. Watching violence on television gets rid of the violence which would otherwise come out in direct action. (This may be unfair to psychoanalysts who may protest that they no longer believe this. But Roberts's view is, I think, right. What matters is what people believe psychoanalysts believe. And, of course, it is even more  absurd if we are in a sense governed by a theory that nobody any longer believes.) Throughout the ages humanitarians have considered that violent spectacles - gladiator fights, bull fights, public executions, cock fights - especially when presented as entertainment have had a brutalising effect on the public rather than the opposite; and this is why at various times they have all been made illegal in this country. Is there any reason for thinking that repeated television portrayals of these things might have the opposite effect? At the bottom of our acceptance of this illogical position is the attractiveness of romantic, non-scientific theories such as the Freudian steam-pressure theory of the mind compared with a hard rational scepticism, and the failure of our thinkers to face the public, and especially the students, with this scepticism. Very largely on the strength of an irrefutable theory, we are allowing the future generation to grow up in an atmosphere of sustained portrayed violence after reformers had, for the previous three hundred years, succeeded in slowly reducing the amount of public violence permitted.

Because Freudian ideas go very largely against common sense, their influence has tended to give a kind of boost to other ideas which, in the ordinary course of events would have been destroyed by common sense. The influence has thus been extraordinarily pervasive and difficult to pin down. Among such ideas which have persisted and can in some way be attributed to the `diffused effect' of Freud are what might be called the infantilising of teaching and the medicalising of morality.

Teaching methods, developed quite properly on psychoanalytic lines to overcome the resistance to learning of backward children of various sorts, have been extended in many schools to the children who are perfectly willing to learn, in the spirit of `a dose of medicine will do them all good'. In effect all children are being treated as backward. That play is the best way for children to learn is another widely assumed idea that owes its popularity to the Freudians. Peter Smith (1978) casts doubt on it. The same goes for the 'disproportionate and irreversible' effect of the early environment on the developing child, criticised by the Clarkes (1976).

Freudian ideas have combined in a curious way with a bogus egalitarianism to produce the current dogma that competition of any sort in academic performance (but not in sport or music or art) is to be condemned. An aspect of this is the cloud under which 'streaming' in secondary schools is regarded in some quarters. It has resulted in (a) the same thing being done under another name, e.g. 'banding' and (b) in a great outburst of extra-curricular academic competition, especially on radio and television: University Challenge, Ask the Family, etc. A similar tendency to evade such a doctrinaire reversal of tradition is demonstrated by studies of persistent truants from school. They have been found sometimes to organise themselves into gangs where the discipline and punishments are far harsher than in any school.

There has been an attempt to make every misfortune, disability, crime, or eccentricity into a kind of illness subject to diagnosis, treatment, and cure. I am not saying that Freud started the idea, merely that his 'diffused effects' gave it a great fillip. Its absurdity is best illustrated by an extreme example, the psychiatric 'illness' given the name drapetomania by Samuel A. Cartwright MD who first described it, in all seriousness, in the May 1851, issue of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. The symptoms occurred in slaves and manifested themselves as an unexplained tendency to run away. Before the full development of the symptoms, the patient was likely to become sulky and dissatisfied. Treatment by whipping was sometimes effective; but the condition could best be prevented by keeping the patient firmly in the state willed by the Creator, namely that of a 'submissive knee-bender'. The condition was practically confined to the negro race.

Freud cited Hamlet as a kind of archetype of the neurotic; but undoubtedly many so-called neurotics are better typified by Lady Macbeth, and this example shows the dangers of the `medical model'. Lady Macbeth's obsessional hand-washing was the consequence of her own guilt, not just what Freudians tend to dismiss as guilt-feelings, but real guilt about her dominant part in cold-blooded murder. Her doctor's own comment was entirely apt: 'More needs she the divine than the physician' (Act V. Sc. 1) . A successful relief of her guilt might enable her to murder again without feeling guilty, in other words convert her from a woman of sensibility into a psychopath. This is why the pharmaceutical firms' dream of the perfect tranquillizer is not something that doctors await with unequivocal enthusiasm. It could appear to signify the ultimate reduction of morals to chemistry.

The confusion of guilt (for which one can at best make some atonement) with `guilt-feelings' (which one can be cured of) is part of the blurring of distinctions that I have mentioned which leads to an undermining of truth. Apropos of Rolf Hochhuth's play which seemed to accuse Churchill of having contrived General Sikorski's fatal air crash, a Freudian was heard to say that he was inclined to believe the charge because Churchill was the sort of person who could have done it. In one sentence he dismissed centuries of history, of the laborious working up to fair trial in the light of evidence, of being not guilty unless proved guilty. What did it matter, Churchill being the sort of man who might have done it, whether he actually did it or not?

The concept of intelligence

I cannot leave discussion of the anti-cultural influence of modern psychology without mentioning a matter which has nothing to do with Freud and little with Pavlov, the concept of the intelligence quotient, the I.Q. The idea that human mental capacity could be measured by a single number can probably be attributed to Francis Galton, a Victorian pioneer psychologist of immense ability who according to George Miller, `was never satisfied with a problem until he had discovered something he could count'. To Galton it was so obvious as to be not worth questioning that intellectual capacity is related to the physical dimensions of the brain. Nowadays the idea smacks of Bertie Wooster and makes us smile. (Wodehouse enthusiasts will remember how Bertie was convinced that the explanation for Jeeves's omniscience and amazing competence lay in the way his head bulged out at the back.) It is not a silly idea. It just happens to be wrong, except in the case of brains markedly smaller than average (microcephalic) which always do denote mental defect. Although Galton's attempts to correlate intelligence with brain size were unsuccessful, they led, Miller shows, via Alfred Binet to the I.Q. of today based on standardised tests. `It seems likely', says Popper, `that there are innate differences of intelligence. But it seems almost impossible that a matter so many-sided and complex as human inborn knowledge and intelligence (quickness of grasp, depth of understanding, creativity, clarity of exposition, etc.) can be measured by a one-dimensional function like "Intelligence Quotient"' (SB 123). Again, as with brain size, a very low I.Q. does denote mental defect; but Medawar, for one, has suggested that the amount by which the score exceeds a certain amount may be as insignificant as small variations in brain size. We do not know, for example that Einstein or Bertrand Russell had very high I.Q.s. In agreement with this idea, Popper has commented that probably the most difficult intellectual task that any of us ever faces is the learning of his native language. Yet we all achieve it.

The alleged connection between I.Q. and race is a subject on which people have literally come to blows. But the critics of the comparative racial results seem to criticise more the application than the actual concept of the I.Q. which Professor D. H. Stott has described as `biologically preposterous'. Furious discussions go on under the misapprehension that what are argued about are matters of fact and of science, rather than of metaphysics (see page 20). The I.Q. is, I think one can safely say, a wrong idea which has had the power, as Stott quotes to `dig the educational graves of many racially and/or economically deprived children for too long'. It has been kept alive by the failure to recognize white-swanning as invalid. Although it is not strictly analogous, the following example does illustrate the white-swanning fallacy. Asked about a friend's new car, the average wife will describe it in terms of colour and perhaps size. To the automobile connoisseur, what are interesting and important are the  power and design of the engine, the system of suspension, and other technical details. Nevertheless it can be `proved' that colour is relevant to performance. The theory that white cars are faster than black can be verified. The tests that have been used to show that black people have on average a lower I.Q. than whites would also show that black cars are on average slower than white ones. Among the explanatory facts of course, which do not emerge from a statistical comparison, are that the police who need fast cars tend to favour white, while undertakers who need slow ones invariably opt for black. Another observation on the same lines is the finding that short-sighted people get higher-paid jobs!

As with I.Q., so with some of the other labels that are pinned on children by psychiatrists and psychologists. They treat poor performances as though they were hereditary diseases. In effect a child who loses at chess lacks the chess-playing ability. Nobody bothers to inquire whether he understands the rules (see also page 132).

In conclusion I must make this point quite clear. To categorise Freudianism or any other theory as metaphysics rather than science is not to deny the truth or even the relevance of observations made by psychoanalysts or anybody else. What must be denied is their power to deduce a general theory of `human nature' and thereby to make predictions on the score of their observations. For no theory can be deduced from any set of facts. Popper has shown, most ingeniously and by purely logical means, that even so well-tested a theory as Newton's laws of motion could not have been deduced from observation (C.R. 190). Observations can of course suggest an hypothesis; but they cannot prove or confirm a theory. Conclusions from Freudian theory are thus strictly limited in their scope and so, as I shall show in the next chapter, are those from stimulus-response psychology. These theories do not of themselves undermine `the very foundation of liberal civilisation', and `the ideal of the rational, responsible, consciously-motivated individual' remains a noble one.

 

 

Chapter Six

Conditioning is an Illusion

The second influential group of theories mentioned in the last chapter comprises the stimulus-response psychologies. Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment is well known: how by repeatedly sounding a bell before presenting food he induced a dog to salivate to the bell alone. The sound of the bell, an arbitrary neutral stimulus, became conditioned, producing automatically the same response as was reflexly produced by the unconditioned stimulus, the smell and sight of food. (This is the `official' terminology. In popular parlance, of course, it is the animal rather than the stimulus that becomes conditioned.) According to the theory, a new connection was established in the cerebral cortex of the animal by the repetition and association of the experimental procedure.

Running through the subsequent development of the theory is a trend which originated with Thorndike, an American contemporary of Pavlov, and has greatly influenced B. F. Skinner who regards Pavlovian conditioning as of much less importance in human learning than what he now calls operant (formerly operant conditioning). In contrast with the stimulus substitution of Pavlov, whereby a new conditioned stimulus produces the same response as the unconditioned stimulus, Thorndike's system amounted to a response substitution. A new (usually desired) response is made to the same stimulus: the `right' speech, note, typewriter key, is substituted for the `wrong' response previously made . to the `cue'. It is essentially a system of trial and error, success and failure, reward and punishment. This is the basis, it is fair to say, of Skinner's operant - his technical terms - positive and negative reinforcers, being the equivalent of reward and punishment in the vernacular. 

As long ago as 1959, Noam Chomsky published a very long review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior and showed that there was a kind of sleight of hand in Skinner's extrapolation of his carefully controlled experiments with rats in captivity to uncontrolled, everyday, human situations. His most telling point was that, out of the mass of external and internal stimulation to which the individual was subjected and the totality of his behaviour, Skinner picked out single elements and called them the stimulus and the response and assumed them to be connected, only because this connection fitted both the laboratory results and the theory. Devastating as this criticism was, Skinner went on his way as though nothing had ever been said, indeed he recently revealed to David Cohen that he did not read Chomsky's paper until ten years later.

Popper's refutation of conditioning centres on the idea of repetition. It follows from his rejection of Hume's psychological theory (page 14) that we - humans and animals in general - observe repetitions and then act in the expectation that these repetitions will go on recurring. But, says Popper: `All repetitions that we experience are approximate repetitions ... Repetition B of an event A is not identical with A or indistinguishable from A, but only more or less similar to A' (L.Sc.D. 520). Things which are similar but not identical are similar only in certain respects; and whether or not we regard things as being similar depends on whether we are interested in those respects. Popper illustrates his argument with diagrams which show that things may be similar in different respects and that similarity in one respect may easily be accompanied by dissimilarity in another (in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl R. Popper, Hutchinson, Revised Edition 1968, Appendix * x, page 421).

A good example is the spuriously objective pick-theodd- one-out kind of question in which examinees are systematically put in the wrong. Seeing the similarity between the non-odd items presumes a point of view. The question is really `guess what I am thinking of' and is a good illustration of the need for criticism of experts in general. It is quite inconceivable that the examiner will have considered all the possibilities of similarity and dissimilarity in the words listed; and it is easily conceivable that the examinee will hit on one that was not considered when the question was set.

Popper goes on: `We must therefore replace, for the purposes of a psychological theory of the origins of our beliefs, the naive idea of events which are similar by the idea of events to which we react by interpreting them as similar' (C. R.45). For all of us seeing things as similar depends upon interpretation, anticipation, and expectation. We cannot therefore explain anticipation and expectation as being consequences of repetition. For even the first repetition-for-us would only be interpreted as such if it is seen as similar, and seeing something as similar depends upon expectation. Thus Popper was led, he said, by purely logical considerations to replace Hume's widely assumed, weaker, psychological theory of induction with the following:

"Without waiting passively for repetitions to impress or impose regularities on us, we actively try to impose regularities on the world. We try to discover similarities in it, and interpret it in terms invented by us. Without waiting for premises we jump to conclusions. (C.R.46)"

Pavlov's dog invents the theory that food follows the bell. All organisms are all the time inventing such theories, mainly unconsciously but actively. The theories are not passively instilled into them by the `conditioning' process. It is essentially a trial and error process, of conjectures open to subsequent refutation. The theories formed in this way may have to be discarded later.

Skinner's operant behaviour can, as I have mentioned, also be regarded as a trial and error process and may therefore seem to come to the same thing as what Popper describes. The vital difference is that Skinner does not allow that the spontaneous action, the trial, can be theory-directed, intelligently exploratory. He rules out of court the intervention of thoughts, ideas, theories, intentions. He does not deny that they exist; but regards them as mere `flotsam' accompanying the action. For him the trial in trial-and-error is not based on conjecture. It is blind and random; and words are nothing but the movement of the vocal cords.

This is another of those conceptual illusions that I mentioned in the first chapter (page 17): conspiracy, induction, instruction, and now, it looks as though the world imposes its pattern on the passive organism, but really the active organism tries out its guesses on the world and the world accepts or rejects them. In the physical world perhaps the best example of the same sort of thing is suction. There is no such thing as suction, conceived as a magnet-like force. When you `suck' up lemonade through a straw what really happens of course is that the atmospheric pressure forces some of the liquid up the straw into the region of lowered, but positive, pressure in your mouth. What looks like pull is really push. However the idea of suction remains convenient fiction as long as it is not taken too far - more than about thirty-four feet for water. The most powerful pump imaginable will not `suck' water from a greater depth than that. It is important to mention this fact that a false theory can be useful within some range, but manifestly and dangerously false outside that range. I can best illustrate this by adapting an example used by Popper in a slightly different context. Suppose the time is really five minutes past eleven. Then the statement `It is eleven o'clock' is untrue but more useful for most purposes than the true statement `It is between ten o'clock and midday'. However the generally useful eleven o'clock statement is a dangerous one for the purpose of catching a train timed to depart at 11.04. Newtonian physics, which is grossly inaccurate when velocities of the same order as that of light are concerned, is more useful than Einsteinian physics in the ordinary `practical' range.

But to return to the case in point, Popper's rejection of conditioning is of a piece with a central element in his philosophy, that there is no such thing as direct experience. The central mistake, he says, in the so-called commonsense theory of knowledge is the quest for certainty, which leads to `the singling out ... of sense data or sense impressions or immediate experiences as a secure basis of all knowledge. But ... these data or elements do not exist at all. They are the inventions', he adds, 'of hopeful philosophers, who have managed to bequeath them to the psychologists' (O.K.63).

He reaches his conclusion by logical means but the view that what seems to be directly experienced is really the result of interpretation of coded information is of course a fact of anatomy and physiology. At birth our brains are in the position of an underground military intelligence unit connected with the outside world only by telephone lines, most of which are unlabelled. only by a lengthy process of cross reference can the brain attach labels so it can tell, at once and reliably, whence any particular message originates. Recent research on the eye has underlined the degree to which the brain interprets rather than merely receives data. The eye is, in optical terms, a very poor sort of camera, producing an extremely fuzzy image, much less clear than what we `see'. The brain compares the series of blurred images as the eye scans and deduces the clear image we `see' and even after years of experience we can still be deceived by `optical illusions'. The Necker cube, illustrated here, demonstrates two facts that are central to the theme of this book. The first is the one mentioned above that there is no such thing as direct experience. There are no sensory data corresponding to the bits of information that are stored in a computer. All perceptions are interpretations of coded signals, analogous to the reading of a non-standardized Morse code. The second fact is that the will or conscious intention can sometimes override unconscious reaction. The figure is  clearly a network of straight lines in a plane, but we perceive it as a three-dimensional figure in space. If one fixes one's gaze so that the lower square appears to be the front face of the cube, then after less than thirty seconds one's perception involuntarily changes so that the sipper square becomes the front face. However one can intentionally override this and switch back to the original" perception - and back again if so desired.

The above by no means exhaust the reasons against what Popper calls the bucket theory of the mind, the idea that experience is just passively collected. Above all there is the mechanism of attention whereby of the mass of sensory material reaching the brain at any one time, only a fraction is admitted to consciousness. What is perceived depends upon attention, upon interest, and upon what has previously been perceived. To a degree we see what we are watching and hear what we are listening to. This is yet another of the same kind of illusion: it looks like direct experience, but it is really interpretation.

'There is no such thing as association or conditioned reflex', wrote Popper (O.K.67), and he later amplified the statement: `I do not at all question the correctness of the "conditioning" and "reinforcement", and "learning" experiments; but I give them and the learning process a different interpretation' (personal communication). The wealth of observation that has accumulated from learning experiments is not invalidated by the suspicion that conditioning and association are untenable hypotheses, but the observations will need reinterpretation in the light of a better theory. And I cannot help suspecting that some experimental results which have been presented as though they were universal phenomena will turn out to be singular events.

Eysenck made a revealing admission in his account of J. B. Watson's 'little Albert' experiment, commonly regarded as a classic in the application of conditioning theory to the treatment of the neuroses. By hitting an iron bar with a hammer whenever Albert reached out to touch a white rat, Watson gave him a pathological fear of white rats and other small furry animals. However, Eysenck says: `Watson was lucky in his choice of subject; others have banged away with hammers on metal bars in an attempt to condition infants, but not always with the same success.' Other accounts of this experiment have been less frank than Eysenck's (e.g. Salter and Wolpe), and have allowed it to be assumed that conditioning of this sort is as predictable as a chemical reaction. Eysenck explains the failure in terms of the great variation of inherited `conditionability'. A simpler, Popperian, explanation might be that what was repetition-for-Albert was not repetition-for-everybody.

Interestingly enough, Skinner in his interview with David Cohen makes the same kind of admission with regard to Pavlov. 'He was dealing with ... just about the only gland that would have worked. It's an amazing accident that he hit on it. It's very hard to find another gland that could be used ... You can't use tears. You probably could have used some other gastric secretions if you could get at them more easily. But I doubt that you could use urine or sweat. Salivation was it. As a matter of fact ... you might say that Pavlov was a specialist in conditioned salivation.'

The conditioning experiments are not questioned, nor is it denied here that the theory can be useful in practice, just as rules of thumb are useful - often more useful than exact calculations. What must be dismissed is the tendency to say `this is all there is to human behaviour - stimulus and response, positive and negative reinforcement'. It is the fanciful and naive generalisations of a philosophical nature, allegedly deduced from conditioning theory (itself perhaps a generalisation from the salivation of dogs), that must be firmly rejected; generalisations which pose as 'proof' that traditional values and ideas of truth and free will can no longer be taken seriously by those who consider themselves well informed and up to date. I am thinking of such works as B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Nigel Calder's book and television series The Mind of Man, and an article in New Scientist entitled 'The shadow of the mind' by Professor John Taylor.

'Physiological' psychology, a new discipline started independently by Pavlov in Russia and Thorndike in the U.S.A. at the end of the nineteenth century, was a reaction against the earlier introspective psychology which was criticised as subjective and therefore unscientific. The raison d'etre of the new science was its objectivity. Its extreme proponents took the view that only what could be independently observed existed. It is ironical that they should have enthroned as their central concept this conditioning process, this unobservable and perhaps mythical process in the cerebral cortex.

What I hope I have demonstrated in these two chapters is that the current tendency to explain all human thought and behaviour in terms of (unsubstantiated) theories of unconscious psychology tends, in the first place, to distract from the central importance of rationality and reasonableness and conscious responsibility, which as I have already shown form the only known alternative to violence, as well as being our peculiarly human qualities. In the second place the cult of psychology distracts from the practical things that can be done to improve our society by way of improving its institutions and inventing new ones. We cannot change human psychology but we can change our institutions, little by little, and - to use the phrase already quoted - these can make an incalculable difference to human happiness.