Good. I like it.
On 6/17/2019 7:15 PM, Pierz wrote:
I've been thinking and writing a lot recently about a conception of
reality which avoids the debates about what is fundamental in reality.
It seems to me that with regards to materialism, we find it very
difficult to escape the evolutionarily evolved, inbuilt notion of
"things" and "stuff" that our brains need in order to manipulate the
world. Yet QM and importantly the expected dissolution of time and
space as fundamental entities in physics have made any such simple
mechanistic notion of matter obsolete - what is left of matter except
mathematics and some strange thing we can only call "instantiation" -
the fact that things have specific values rather than (seeming to be)
pure abstractions? What does a sophisticated materialist today place
his or her faith in exactly? Something along the lines of the idea
that the world is fundamentally describable by mathematics, impersonal
and reducible to the operation of its simplest components. With
regards to the last part - reductionism - that also seems to be
hitting a limit in the sense that, while we have some supposed
candidates for fundamental entities (whether quantum fields, branes or
whatever), there is always a problem with anything considered
"fundamental" - namely the old turtle stack problem. If the world is
really made of any fundamental entity, then /fundamentally/ it is made
of magic - since the properties of that fundamental thing must simply
be given rather than depending on some other set of relations. While
physicists on the one hand continually search for such an entity, on
the other they immediately reject any candidate as soon as it is
found, since the question naturally arises, why this way and not that?
What do these properties depend on? Furthermore, the fine tuning
problem, unless it can be solved by proof that the world *has* to be
the way it is – a forlorn hope it seems to me – suggests that the idea
that we can explain all of reality in terms of the analysis of parts
(emergent relationships) is likely to collapse – we will need to
invoke a cosmological context in order to explain the behaviour of the
parts. It's no wonder so many physicists hate that idea, since it runs
against the deep reductionist grain. And after all, analysis of
emergent relationships (the parts of a thing) is always so much easier
than analysis of contextual relationships (what a thing is part of).
To get to the point then, I am considering the idea of a purely
relational ontology, one in which all that exists are relationships.
There are no entities with intrinsic properties, but only a web of
relational properties. Entities with intrinsic properties are
necessary components of any finite, bounded theory, and in fact such
entities form the boundaries of the theory, the "approximations" it
necessarily invokes in order to draw a line somewhere in the
potentially unbounded phenomenological field. In economic theory for
instance, we have “rational, self-interested” agents invoked as
fundamental entities with rationality and self-interest deemed
intrinsic, even though clearly such properties are, in reality,
relational properties that depend on evolutionary and psychological
factors, that, when analysed, reveal the inaccuracies and
approximations of that theory. I am claiming that all properties
imagined as intrinsic are approximations of this sort - ultimately to
be revealed as derived from relations either external or internal to
that entity.
Of course, a purely relational ontology necessarily involves an
infinite regress of relationships, but it seems to me that we must
choose our poison here - the magic of intrinsic properties, or the
infinite regress of only relational ones. I prefer the latter. (Note
that I am using a definition of relational properties that includes
emergent properties as relational, though the traditional
philosophical use of those terms probably would not. The reason is
that I am interested in what is /ontologically/ intrinsic, not
/semantically/ intrinsic.)
I wonder what you think of the observation that epistemology precedes
ontology. Epistemology is relational; it's about how you know about
that. I tend to view it as more basic than ontology. Our observations
are much more stable than the ontology of our theories. That's one of
things makes me skeptical of Bruno's theories. The fact that he
discounts observation as a source of knowledge (mere Aristotelianism)
and wants to derive everything from abstract reasoning and equate
knowledge with provability.
What would such a conception imply in the philosophy of mind?
Traditionally, the “qualiophiles” have defined qualia as intrinsic
properties, yet (while I am no fan of eliminativism) I think Dennett
has made a strong case against this idea. Qualia appear to me to be
properties of relationships between organisms and their environments.
And qualia are identified with consciousness. Yet it seems that
conscious thoughts and feelings are often best explained by somatic
events that are subconscious.
Brent
They are not fundamental, but then neither is the “stuff” of which
organisms and environments are made. We simply cannot ask about
fundamental properties, but must confine ourselves to the networks of
relationships we find ourselves embedded in, and from which we, as
observer-participants, cannot be extricated. “Third person” accounts,
including physics, are abstractions from aggregations of first person
accounts, and none can rise so high above the field of observation as
to entirely transcend their origins in the first person. Thus there
are certainly objective truths, but not Objective Truths, that is
truths that are entirely unbound to any observer and which nominate
the absolute properties of real objective things.
Note that the “relationalism” I am proposing does not in any way imply
*relativism*, which flattens out truth claims at the level of culture.
Nor does it make consciousness “primary”, or mathematics. I cannot
personally reconcile the interior views (qualia, if you like, though I
think that terms places an unwarranted emphasis on “what experiences
are like” rather than the mere fact of experience) with a purely
mathematical ontology.
One obvious objection to this whole idea is the counter-intuitiveness
of the idea of relationships without “things” being related. Yet I
think the fault lies with intuition here. Western thinking is deeply
intellectually addicted to the notion of “things”. David Mermin has
interpreted QM in terms of “correlations only” – correlations without
correlata as he puts it – an application of similar ideas to quantum
theory. Part of the objection I think lies in the semantics of the
word “relationship”, which automatically causes us to imagine two
things on either side of the relation. It would be better to think in
terms of a web, then, than individual, related entities. Or simply say
that the related entities are themselves sets of relationships.
Mathematics provides a good example of such a purely relational domain
– a number exists solely by virtue of its relationships with other
numbers. It has no intrinsic properties.
Yet what then of the problem of specific values – the instantiation
aspect of materialism? To quote Hedda Mørch: “… physical structure
must be realized or implemented by some stuff or substance that is
itself not purely structural. Otherwise, there would be no clear
difference between physical and mere mathematical structure, or
between the concrete universe and a mere abstraction.”
We can overcome such an objection by invoking the first person
perspective. Mørch credits the specific values of entities in our
environment (some specific electron having this position, that
momentum and so on) to some property of “being instantiated in
something intrinsic”, harking back to Kant’s /Ding an Sich/. Yet there
is an alternative way of viewing the situation. Let us imagine that
each integer was conscious and able to survey its context in the field
of all numbers. Take some number, let us say 7965. When number 7965
looks around, it sees the number 7964 right behind it, and the number
7966 right ahead. Trying to understand itself and the nature of its
world, it starts doing arithmetic and finds that everything around it
can be understood purely in terms of relational properties. Yet it
says to itself, how can this be? Why do the numbers around me have the
specific values they do? What “breathes fire” into those arithmetical
relations to instantiate the specific world I see? Yet 7965 is wrong.
It is ignoring the significance of the first-person relation that
places it within a specific context that defines both it and the world
it sees.
Note that I am not, like Bruno, actually suggesting that numbers are
conscious. The point of the thought experiment is merely to show how
specific values can exist within a first person account, without us
needing to invoke some unknowable thing-in-itself or substrate of
intrinsic properties.
Grateful for any comments/critiques.
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