Is There “Ultimate Stuff” and Are There “Ultimate Reasons”? by David Rousseau and Julie Rousseau

Frank,

Thank you for reading our essay, and picking up on one of the central ideas. As you point out, our model avoids the sort of "mental substance" that Descartes proposed, which cannot be accommodated in a scientific model. Philosophy of mind is certainly in need of some new avenues of exploration that gets us away from just trying to explain consciousness in purely physical terms (which is now at an impasse), or just adds the qualities we cannot explain to fundamental stuff (which seems ad hoc).

Best wishes,

David

Dear George,

Thank you for the kind comments. Philosophers especially can be all over the place when it comes to analyzing causation, but in our view that is because they are typically under-informed about physics and systems theory. Your informed pragmatism and anti-obscurantist approach seems much more likely to lead to useful insights.

I see a lot of synergy between the ideas you develop in your interesting and very clear essay, and what Julie and I are trying to do here. I like your Table 1 especially, which is very similar to ours, although drawn from a different perspective . You rank structures by scale whereas we rank by complexity -- it is an interesting question why the two orders scale similarly. We included the life science hierarchy in our diagram, which will probably fit into yours too given the (rough) alignment between size and complexity in Nature . I find your essay very stimulating, and will go and comment more over on your essay page, but perhaps only early next week as I will be at a conference over the week-end. For now I agree with you about the importance of definitions for terms such as 'cause', 'exist', 'real', 'concrete', 'physical' and so on. I have some specific suggestions in this area, but could only hint at them in the space of our essay. By and large I have more formal ways of saying the same sort of thing you are illustrating in your section 2, so we are broadly in agreement here (for example I would say that something 'exists' if it is an irreducible subject of predication in a domain of discourse). The important thing about getting clarity on these concepts is that without them one cannot really make sound ontological commitments by which one can interpret the QM formalism. And that, as you indicated, is where the rub lies.

Best wishes,

David

Dear Ben,

Thank you for the nice questions! There is much to explore here.

1. To your point 1 on the nature of time, I think my view is aligned with yours . Along with other philosophers who believe in the existence of things and of change (e.g. Mario Bunge and Tim Crane) I reject the existence of time as real apart from change. I think talk of "the passage of time" designates the fact that things change, and the amount of time that has passed is a measure of how much change has occurred. Things that are assumed to change in a uniform way (e.g. decay of radioactive substances) can then be used to define standard intervals of time. On such a view things are wholly present in the present , and cannot be "four-dimensional space-time worms". I think we lose the cogency and utility of notions like change and cause when we turn the mathematical convenience provided by the abstract model representing Einstein's general theory of relativity into a metaphysical hypothesis. In any case I think that the discovery that space is a concrete substance provides realistic grounds for distinguishing space from time in fundamental theories.

2. To your point 2, the different forces that dominate at various scales was briefly discussed in relation to the systems hierarchy by Ervin Laszlo some forty years ago, but this whole area needs review and updating; as you guessed we are working on that. Forty years ago the QV and dark energy were unknown, so this linkage between change at the highest and lowest level phenomena was not evident. There may be empirical grounds emerging here for holistic ideas even in the absence of a unified field theory. An important missing element from present treatments of this hierarchical force/change model is how to bring energy and causation models into the life science portion of the systems hierarchy without devaluing or obscuring what makes the life sciences distinctive. We think that our effort to bringing psychonic properties into energy-based causal models, via ideas such as 'psychonium', has promise but much more needs to be done.

3. To your point 3, Julie is the mathematician on our team and she is not here right now but I'll take a punt anyway. Ordering relationships require persistent properties of some kind (such as spatial or physical relations). At the most fundamental level as I see it (energeum, below the QV), there are no persistent properties of the required sorts, so ordering relationships cannot be identified, and manifold concepts break down. Next level up things are getting a bit better, since the QV does have spatial properties and the question of order does arise. But since the QV is locally comprised of virtual quantons the situation is complicated, and your angle on might well be the right one. I was much taken with your essay, which I though very lucid and penetrating. I'm away for the weekend but will comment more on your essay page next week, when I've had a chance to read it more carefully.

As you point out, these issues run up against how we define and apply our most primitive concepts -- there is much still be done here, but why would one want to work on anything else? Nice meeting you, and hope to discuss more after the weekend.

Kind regards,

David

Dear Helmut,

Thank you for the friendly comments. I agree with you that philosophy, especially Ontology, is crucial for progress in science, but that metaphysics should be rooted in empirical data. Clearly, we cannot untangle philosophy from science, and make one discipline more fundamental than the other. We need philosophy to guide the clarification of our concepts, but since we cannot (as yet) see how to work out the nature of reality from first principles, but have to 'reverse engineer' our insights from practical observations, we need science and philosophy to work together, moderating each other. Neither can do without the other. I think you'll agree that the balance is not right at present, and we need more philosophers (and more philosophy) to help deal with the interesting problems science is presently wrestling with.

Good luck with your essay -- a bold choice of topic!

Best wishes

David

Roger,

You have an interesting model but I'm afraid it doesn't align with our concept of 'energeum', nor with how energy is understood by us in following Mario Bunge. Spheres are defined by their spatial properties, but in our model energeum does not have persistent spatial properties, so your model and ours are very different. Bunge explained that "energy" is the ability to change, consistent with orthodox understandings, but you 'define' energy as the "pushing" on each other of spheres that already have the ability to form, deform, reform, etc., so your model of energy is different from Bunge's. I recommend you try to make your energy concept compatible with his, otherwise you will not be able to integrate your ideas into models that science and philosophy have good reason to have great confidence in. Or better still, develop a principled argument for why your conception of energy is more appropriate...

Best wishes,

David

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your interest in our essay. We look forward to your comments and rating, and will consider and rate yours too. Good luck in the competition!

Best wishes,

David

Dear Dan,

Thank you for reading our essay so closely, and your friendly but challenging questions. I have tried to respond to all of them below. The post is a bit long for the editor so I'll do it in consecutive chunks.

Q1: [p1] One must ask, what does it mean for there to "exist" a complete explanation for something, let alone for everything? Where does it exist? Does an explanation mean a cause? If explaining is the act of an agent, then clearly there are many things for which no explanation "exists". Leibniz himself distinguished between necessity and certainty.

R1: I think PSR means that for everything that is the case it was either (a) caused to be the case or (b) it could not have been otherwise (it is necessary) or (c) it is self-evident (self-explanatory). Demonstrations of these facts are explanations, and they exist (actually) if they have been presented, or (in principle) if they can be worked out/presented. The fact that some explanations do not as yet exist in an articulated form is not a logical problem for the principle that an explanation exists potentially. Explanations are abstract things, and therefore do not exist some "where", although people talk metaphorically about abstract things in that way by invoking abstract spaces or Platonic realms.

Q2: 'Mysterianism' [p1] seems a prejudicial category. The fact that there are "brute facts" at any given time is relative to state of knowledge at that time. What does it mean for something to be "in principle incomprehensible"? This represents a gesture by the rational mind to trump uncertainty by "proving" that it is necessary-rendering it rational on a meta-level. It is simpler to admit that there is no justification to assume that knowledge can be complete-including the knowledge that it must be incomplete.

R2: Mysterianism is a prejudicial category, but by no means a pejorative one. As you are no doubt aware it is not is not our invention, but rather an existent category in philosophy, especially Philosophy of Mind. It is meant to encapsulate assumptive positions people really do take relative to brute facts. In these terms brute facts (without scare quotes) means facts that are necessarily brute, and not placeholders for contingent ignorance. "Brute facts" (with scare quotes) are placeholders for mysteries that can in principle be elucidated. This much is definitional. PSR supposes that that there are only "brute facts" and no (necessarily) brute facts. Mysterianism is a position about the "brute fact"/brute fact dichotomy. Weak Mysterianism is the view that there are no brute facts but only "brute facts", facts that are forever beyond our capacity to elucidate, but are not incorrigibly mysterious, just as quantum mechanics is beyond dogs to ever work out, but not mysterious in principle. Strong Mysterianism is the view that there are brute facts - facts that are inherently 'just so', and hence inexplicable to anyone, no matter how intelligent or well equipped.

Q3: I am not convinced that energy "merely represents the ability of a concrete thing to change" [p2] What about the ability to cause other things to change?

R3: There is indeed a close link between causal powers and energy. To quote Bunge, for natural things "the concept of energy can be used to define that of causation, and to distinguish the latter from correlation. Indeed, causation may be defined as energy transfer" (Matter and Mind, 2010, p.66)

Q4: The idea that properties can average out to net zero is seminal. It makes all properties, microscopic or macroscopic, relative to scale and essentially statistical-that is, ultimately the result of brute facts (statistical data).

R4: Thanks for the endorsement of our new property concept. One caution though: we did not mean to imply that concrete properties are grounded in abstract facts, but rather that the ways in which properties manifest are relative to concrete scale and concrete context. I don't think that statistical measures can be called brute facts, since they are contingent reflections of concrete situations. They can be taken as useful "brute facts" about the behaviour of concrete things, though.

...continuing on from previous post:

Q5: I would agree with Parmenides that the world must have "always" existed (in some form), and for similar reasons add that it can have no bottom or top (infinite in both directions of scale).

R5: I agree that that we cannot have an infinite regress in either direction of scale/complexity. So a proper explanation has to start with something like your "always existed in some form" and try to fill in details and make it compatible with empirical knowledge such as Big Bang Cosmology, perhaps via something like Multiverse Cosmology. The big challenge is getting the explanation down to necessary or self-evident facts.

Q6: [p3] I would like to know more about Peter Inwagen's idea that "we can only understand what logically follows from what is logically necessary or self-evident". Can you direct me to a particular source? I relate this idea to Vico's verum factum, since logical systems are human constructions. Also, Wikipedia says about Inwagen's ideas in Material Beings, that "all material objects are either elementary particles or living organisms. Every composite material object is made up of elementary particles, and the only such composite objects are living organisms. A consequence of this view is that everyday objects such as tables, chairs, cars, buildings, and clouds do not exist." This intriguing idea suggests that only organisms are intrinsically "organized", because they self-organize. All other appearances of organization are human constructs-either projections upon nature (clouds) or actual human artifacts (chairs, cars, etc).

R6: You might start with van Inwagen's 1983 book "An Essay on Free Will" and the general discussion in Alexander Pruss's 2006 book "The Principle of Sufficient Reason". I agree with you that logical systems are human constructions, but I think we construct them after the example of Natural causal consistency. In the words of physicist Hubert Reeves, although it at first appears that Nature is structured like a language, it turns out that language is structured because Nature is (John Searle's argument against ontological Idealism essentially follows the same line of thought).

I think Van Inwagen is wrong when he says that "everyday objects...do not exist". It is one of the central findings of systems theory that systems are systems in part because they contain processes that define and maintain their boundaries (see for example p.51 of Laszlo, A., & Krippner, S. (1998). Systems Theories: Their origins, foundations, and development. In J. C. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception, Advances in Psychology Vol. 126, pp. 47-74) One can carve up the world any way one likes using set theory (as they do in the branch of philosophy called Mereology), but if you use systems theory you carve reality at its own joints, and avoid the sort of paradoxes the mereologists keep encountering.

Q7: We "have to accept some brute facts" not in order to save free will but because (on the basis of experience so far) we are never in a position to do otherwise. If the world is indefinitely complex, then in principle there will always be brute facts; theory can never fully capture indefinite complexity.

R7: We do not know for sure yet whether the world is indefinitely complex, but we have some reasons, from Systems Philosophy, to think that it isn't. All the same, we have theories such as fractal theory or chaos theory can characterise indefinite complexity without themselves being indefinitely complex, so complexity in the world is not, to my mind, a cause for concern about finding ultimate explanations.

Q8: There is no a prior reason to think that "explanatory chains must terminate" [p3, Sec 5]. I agree with the view you call "organicism", but would point out that PSR and the "reasonableness" of the Systems approach may be wishful thinking on the part of reason itself. Nothing compels PSR but our desire for certainty.

R8: I agree that there are no a priori reasons for the validity of PSR. However, the foundational arguments in Systems Philosophy show that there are empirical reasons for supporting PSR that go beyond our desires for certainty. Briefly, the argument is that since there is trans-disciplinary order in the world there is an underlying order governing change at all levels. Systems Philosophers are (amongst other things) trying to characterise that order exactly so that we can move beyond 'pious hope' arguments for PSR to an empirically grounded one. The basic argument is in Ervin Laszlo's 1972 book "Introduction to Systems Philosophy". I have a paper under review that develops the argument further, and if you'd like I'll send you a copy when it comes out.

...continuing on from previous post:

Q9: [p5, Sec 7] 'Systems' are human creations projected onto Nature. That is, all systems are inherently deductive systems; their fit to real natural structure is an empirical matter. If it is "reasonable to assume PSR", it is because PSR is an imperial decree of reason itself.

R9: Humans can and do create formal systems that can represent aspects of the concrete world. But this is only useful to the degree that they map the nature of concrete systems that have their systems properties independently of the sense we make of them. Early systems theorists flirted with the idea of arbitrary system-boundaries in Nature, just as social scientists flirted with Constructivist ideas about concepts generally. Thankfully systems theory has founded its grounding in the realities of Nature, and Constructivism is now headed the same way. See also my response to your question 6.

Q10: I submit that empirical facts cannot be "self-evident or logically necessary". Only theorems provable within a deductive system can be so. That is, self-evident truths are human assertions. "Brute facts" may be "placeholders for discoveries and explanations yet to come whether or not "we assume PSR". What limits discoveries at deeper levels may not be any ontological structure or an ultimate bottom but epistemic limits.

R10: I'm not sure we have good handle yet on what counts potentially as an empirical fact, so would not like to exclude that there can be ones that are "self-evident or logically necessary".

You are right that truth-claims about Nature are human assertions, but if PSR is right then when they are true they must be true in virtue of properties that inhere in Natural things (something about Nature makes them true). If such a truth-claim is logically necessary the implication is that the part of Nature it represents cannot have been otherwise than it is. In our view the fact that concrete things have energy is such a claim.

Q11: [p6] It does not follow from "the 'ultimate stuff' must have energetic properties" that it "must have energy on average". Quite the contrary, in your earlier discussion (Sec 4), the instantaneous properties of virtual particles average out to "nothing".

R11: If the "ultimate stuff" did not have energy "on average" it would have no energy, and by definition it would then not be a concrete material substance any more. That would make it supernatural or non-existent, either of which option would render it unsuitable for grounding understandable explanations. So if PSR is true, then the ultimate stuff must have energy on average.

The instantaneous physical properties of the QV average out to "nothing", but its ability to change in physical ways (physical energy) cannot be nothing at any time. Its net physical energy is always positive, but the intensity of every specific manifestation of physical energy (e.g. charge, mass or spin) is zero.

Q12: [p8, Sec 10] Personally, I don't believe in any resolution of the mind-body problem that relies on "primitive properties of fundamental matter", other than its ability to self-organize. I believe the solution lies elsewhere. Penrose's "microtubules", for example, are no more plausible than Descartes' pineal gland.

R12: I agree with you that microtubules and pineal glands are implausible foundations for an account of psychonic properties. However, the ability to self-organise leads only to ordered complexity, and does not seem to have the 'makings' for the emergence of qualities such as subjectivity, qualia, intentionality, etc. from physical or spatial properties, as e.g. David Chalmers has argued. I agree that self-organisation is a crucial factor in cosmological evolution, but I do not see how it could be sufficient if you start with ultimate stuff that potentially has only spatial, physical and organisational qualities.

Dan, thanks again for reading our essay so carefully, and for your interesting questions. There is clearly much overlap between our concerns, and our essays clearly target similar foundational questions. Good luck with yours, we will be posting some comments there soon.

Best wishes,

David.