Guide to Reality

Short Review of Getting Causes from Powers

2012-01-15T16:56:00.001-05:00

In this book, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum present their theory of causal dispositionalism, that is, causation based on dispositional properties, or powers. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the philosophy of causation.

Powers do the causal work in our world, according to the authors: effects are brought about by powers manifesting themselves, and the manifestation is itself a further power or set of powers.

A central idea is that powers don't necessitate their manifestations - they dispose toward them. Causality has long been associated with the idea of necessity, and necessity (and the sense of constant conjunction) is too strong to describe causation. The main insight here is that other factors can prevent or interfere with the expected manifestation (and, indeed, they often do).

To help demonstrate how a disposition can be enhanced or, importantly, hindered by other powers, the authors develop a vector addition diagram. Only when the sum of vectors (with various strengths and directions) exceeds some threshold do we get the manifestation. They extend the model to more complex scenarios to argue that the model is robust enough to explain non-linear and even "emergent" behavior.

In addition to arguing strongly against necessity, the authors want to overthrow another usual notion. The authors reject as misguided the typical "two-event" conception of causation, where cause is temporally prior to effect, in part because no one has a compelling account of how you get from one to the other. Instead causes and effects are simultaneous - they are two aspects of a temporally extended process which brings about a change.

An important and creative part of the book explores the distinctive modality of dispositions in more depth. Dispositional modality (weaker than necessity but stronger than "pure" contingency) is the primitive and fundamental modality of nature. We derive necessity and possibility from our prior experience with dispositionality. Mumford and Anjum argue that we do indeed perceive causation, and present what they see as the clearest examples of this in the case of bodily sensation and specifically proprioception.

The book concludes with a compelling application: showing how the theory fits with processes studied in biology and genetics.

More on Causation and Reduction to Physics

2012-01-08T12:11:00.000-05:00

I finished reading GettingCauses from Powers by Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum. I recommend the book highly to anyoneinterested in causation, and I’ll be thinking about many of its arguments andthemes for a long time to come.

As touched on at the end of my prior post, one possiblechallenge to models of causation, including the thesis of causaldispositionalism presented in this book, is the fact that causation doesn’tseem to comport well with physics. Theauthors acknowledge this in their first chapter, referencing Russell’sdiscussion in his "On the Notion of Cause” (1913). The issue is that dynamical equationsassociate states of a system with points in time, but nowhere do they invokethe idea of causal production. They aresymmetric with regard to time, where causation is not. Mumford and Anjum respond in a couple ofways. First, they say, the fact thatcausation doesn’t appear at the level of physics doesn’t mean it isn’t presentat larger scales: the reducibility ofall phenomena to physics is a controversial idea which we are not compelled toaccept. We don’t know that physicsrepresents a special fundamental level of reality in any case. And given the provisional nature of scientifictheories, should we let them trump our metaphysical reasoning?

This issue recurs as the book progresses. In Chapter 4, the authors show how thecomposition of powers in causal situations can plausibly model emergentphenomena in the form of novel powers. So the theory is robust if it does turn out that reduction of thephenomena in the special sciences isn’t possible. And the final chapter of the book (ch.10) presentsan interesting and persuasive application of the theory by showing how causaldispositionalism fits quite well with examples of processes studied in biology(including genetics).

Just like the situation in philosophy of mind, one must becautious about drawing metaphysical conclusions from the perceived character offormal physical theory.

Determinism Doesn’t Imply Causal Necessity

2011-12-29T11:53:00.000-05:00

A key part of the argument for causal dispositionalism inMumford and Anjum’s Getting Causes FromPowers is the case against causal necessitarianism (chapter 3 in thebook). Causality is commonly thought toimply a necessary connection between cause and effect: the authors say this is a mistake, and thatthe proper modality of causation is dispositional. Causes dispose toward their effects - theydon’t guarantee them. The insight hereis that other factors can prevent or interfere with the expected manifestation(and in everyday experience, they often do). In fact, such prevention is always possiblein causal situations, and if one moves to evade this fact by stipulating thatprevention or interference is impossible, then the resulting necessity is notreally coming from the causal process itself, but is being imposed in anotherway.

To see this, suppose I specify the causal factors involvedin some manifested effect, and then someone points out another factor whichcould possibly interfere (despite my match being dry, a proper striking motionmade and sufficient oxygen being present, a gust of wind might prevent thematch from lighting). Can’t I modify myscenario to specify that the threatening factor is absent (the wind iscalm)? Leaving aside the potentialproblem of listing an absence as a causal factor, the objector might present anotherpossible interferer (a passing car might splash water on the match as it isbeing struck). So, then I, in turn, specifythat there is no nearby traffic, and so on. In fact, no finite list of factors will ever suffice to rule out everyinterferer (however unlikely). And bythe time one is led to propose a “catch-all” condition, covering the wholestate of the universe, we’re really not talking about a process of causalproduction anymore.

The authors note something interesting here. They say that their argument against causalnecessitarianism does not mean they are ruling out determinism. This was ahelpful observation for me because I have been guilty of confusion on thispoint. One might think “determinism”means “causal determinism” which means “causal necessitarianism”. However, determinism can be specified inother ways (including what might be the most common conception – seebelow). Then causal dispositionalismcould be compatible with determinism. Thereis a causal process, and while it doesn’t necessitate effects, necessity isimposed in another way.

Note, that for the moment, we are leaving aside the idea of irreduciblyprobabilistic causation. Such causationis likely a feature of our world (in fact I think the a posteriori case for it isnearly airtight), and therefore determinism is false. But disentangling these ideas remainsphilosophically valuable.

As Mumford and Anjum say: “The core idea in determinism is the fixity of the future by the past(p.75)” If one wanted to build a model of a deterministic world, causalnecessitarianism is probably not the best tool, since the causal process doesn’tpromise to cover all the possible loopholes - for instance if there are suchthings as uncaused events, then they would not be addressed.

It seems to me that the most common notion of determinism (probablyinspired by classical mechanics) is this: given a specification of all facts, and given comprehensive deterministiclaws of nature, then the future isfixed. There is no reason here to evenmention causation – it adds nothing to the scenario. One could be a Humean about causation andstill endorse the deterministic picture. And given the fact that in this physics-inspired vision the mathematicaldepiction of laws is symmetric with regard to time, it would be equally true tosay that the past is fixed by the specification. This is inconsistent with causation, which isnot a symmetric process. One mightbelieve that the mathematically specified physical laws comprise a model of acausal world, but the laws themselves don’t constitute a theory of causation,and may very well be inconsistent with the idea of a causal process.

On this last point, I recalled a paper I had read a fewyears ago by Carl Hoefer: “Causality and Determinism: Tension, or OutrightConflict.” In this paper, Hoefer definesa deterministic world specifically as one governed by deterministicmicro-physical laws, and then goes on to argue that this definition isinconsistent with the presence of causation, using several philosophicaltheories from the literature as examples of how causation might be characterized.

A Note on Events and Causation

2011-12-06T09:42:00.001-05:00

Presently I’m reading GettingCauses From Powers by Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum (and havefinished six chapters out of ten). Iexpect to blog more about this book, of which I think very highly. I just wanted to very briefly comment onevents, inspired by the treatment they are getting so far in the book.

Years ago, influenced by reading (later) Russell and Whitehead, I acquiredthe notion that (all else equal) there is an attraction to an ontology whichgave a leading role to events rather than one primarily featuring substances (orobjects) and their properties. Thereseemed to be more potential for explaining the dynamic aspects of nature (includingmind).

But while there has been an active modern debate on the natureof events, the most common depictions don’t seem to offer specific advantagesto an event-focused ontology. To greatlysimplify, it seems philosophers would model events either as property exemplifications,in which case they are in danger of seeming much like static facts or states ofaffairs; or else events would be associated with spacetime locations, in whichcase they are little distinguished from objects, which are the quintessentialoccupiers of spacetime. (The SEP articleon events is here; an IEP article with additional focus on the theories of Kim,Davidson, and Lewis is here). Thesesorts of models of events don’t seem to bring differentiated resources to metaphysicaltheorizing.

The goal of the GettingCauses From Powers book is to develop a theory of causation based ondispositional properties, or powers. Whilepowers play the leading role, their theory incorporates an intriguing view of events(at least causal events: they don’t take a position on whether thereare other sorts). Specifically, causalevents, which are manifestations of powers, are temporally extended processes. The authors reject as misguided the typical “two-event” conception ofcausation, where cause is temporally prior to effect, in part because no onehas a compelling account of how you get from one to the other. Rather causes and effects are simultaneous –they are two aspects of a processwhich brings about a change. Very Whiteheadian!

Do We Need Essences?

2011-11-14T11:13:00.001-05:00

I’ve just been starting to read and think more aboutessences, in particular the debate which has followed Kit Fine’s argument in“Essence and Modality” (1993) that essences cannot be understood in modalterms. The modal understanding is thatan essential property of an object is one is must have of necessity (in orderto be that object), while properties it can (possibly) do without areaccidental. Fine, on his way toadvocating a definitional notion of essence, said the modal understanding wastoo broad: an object may have certainnecessary attributes which are intuitively not essential. In the paper, he offered some examples intended to bolster this point.

Now I’ve read a few papers which take issue with Fine’sargument. In particular, one line of protest, due to Michael Della Rocca, notesthat Fine’s examples are of necessities which seem trivially true of allobjects or existents, and the modal understanding of essence can be recast by afocus on non-trivial necessary properties.

For present purposes, though, I want to concede that thereis an intuitive sense that essence seems prior to its modal understanding (evenif the latter turns out to be extensionally equivalent): when I try to think of what properties arenecessary to an object I seem to be appealing to some non-modal definition Ihave in mind.

But do we really want to add essences as irreducibleelements in our ontology? While I’m attracted to some Aristotelian orneo-Aristotelian notions (such as causal powers), my inner Occam wants toresist essences.

One clue to a way to think about this dilemma occurred to mewhile reading Michael Gorman’s paper, “The Essential and the Accidental”. Gorman highlights one of the passages aboutthe nature of essential properties discussed by Fine in another paper (“Sensesof Essence”, which I have not read): “An essential property of an object is a constitutive part of theessence of that object if it is not had in virtue of being a consequence ofsome more basic essential properties of the object; and otherwise it is aconsequential part of the essence.” Perhaps this constitutive subset should be the real target of our ideaof essence.

While Fine’s idea of distinguishing consequential propertiesfrom constitutive properties is one of logical consequence, Gorman takes thisas an inspiration to develop an account of essence that depends on the notionof explanation. Perhaps the essential properties of an object are those whichcannot be explained by appeal to other characteristics (while accidentalproperties are those that can be so explained). The paper elucidates this argument and considers possibleobjections. This view is distinct fromthe modal understanding because it can accomodate necessary but non-essentialproperties.

For myself, being in a very preliminary stage of studyingthese issues, I reserve my opinion about Gorman’s particular strategy, but amled to a desire to link essences to some other metaphysical problem, such ascausation (which is obviously related to explanation). By the time we conceive of an object, wealready have in mind something which has been caused and has its own causalpowers. And we already know (I believe)that modality alone, say a mosaic of categorical properties distributed acrosspossible worlds as in David Lewis, doesn’t provide a theory of causation. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise if there is aproblem with defining essence solely in modal terms if essence relates tocausation. I’ll try to see what’s beenwritten along these lines.

UPDATE: 20 November 2011:
Kathrin Koslicki has posted a preprint of a chapter for a forthcoming book called "Essence, necessity, and explanation" which fleshes out a discussion similar to Gorman's. She uses an analysis of Aristotelian notions of explanation, including cause, to account for how necessary but not essential properties follow from constitutive essential ones. However, the scheme here is that essence is basic and prior to cause (I was wondering if there was a way to reverse this priority.)

Philosophy for Children Forum: 29 October

2011-10-18T10:12:00.004-04:00

Coming up very soon is the next event on this year’s GPPC program: our Public Issues Forum. The topic this year is Philosophy for Children. The date is Saturday October 29th, 1pm, at the University of Pennsylvania. The event is free and open to the public.

We’re very excited about this event, and hope those of you in the area will consider joining us. In planning this conference over the past year I have become fascinated with the question of whether pre-college kids might benefit from philosophy. Our main speakers are philosophers who have committed their efforts to exploring how this can be done: each is working with K-12 students and teachers on introducing children to topics and methods of philosophy in an age-appropriate way.

Detailed information is below, and please forward to anyone else you think might be interested. Email me with questions and to register (optional but appreciated).

Thank you!

The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium presents:

Public Issues Forum: Philosophy for Children

Saturday, October 29, 2011 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Location: University of Pennsylvania, Room 402 Claudia Cohen Hall
249 S.36th St., Philadelphia PA 19104

Speakers:
Mitchell Green, University of Virginia
Thomas Jackson, University of Hawaii
Thomas Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College

Chair: Frank Hoffman, West Chester University, Chair, GPPC
Commentators: Dominic Sisti, Penn Center for Bioethics; Igor Jasinski, The Pingry School
Coordinator: Steve Esser, GPPC Board of Governors

Free and Open to the Public

For more information and to register (optional), please contact Steve Esser, steve.esser@permitcap.com

This event is sponsored by the GPPC, the Penn Center for Bioethics, and the Penn Department of Philosophy

Penn Map and Directions

Why philosophy for children?

Can philosophy get kids thinking critically about issues, practical or theoretical, which otherwise they might not have the opportunity to discuss in or outside of school? Which issues can be introduced, and how can teachers foster a discussion which will enrich and inspire students?

All are welcome: philosophers, educators, students, parents and friends. Please join us to hear about the “why?” as well as the “how?” of philosophy for children.

Dispositional Modality as Restricted Possibility

2011-10-10T09:41:00.001-04:00

I’ve been interested in the metaphysics of dispositional properties (or powers), and I’ve ordered Getting Causes from Powers, a new book from Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum. I look forward to reading this later in the fall, but it the meantime I have read a couple of related papers by the authors (see an earlier post here).

In “Dispositional Modality” Anjum and Mumford argue that the modal value of dispositions is distinct from necessity and possibility: it is described as “sui generis” and “irreducible”. What I thought was interesting, though, is that the authors themselves include a nice account of dispositional modality in terms of restricted possibility, which seemed to me had the flavor of a reduction.

I’ll pass over the first several sections of the paper, which covered some familiar ground: the fundamental disagreement with Hume about powers; the failure of the semantic reduction of dispositional ascriptions to conditionals; and the fact that dispositions, by their nature, clearly do not necessitate their manifestations (they are disposed toward, or tend toward their manifestations).

So, dispositional modality is distinct from necessity, but what about possibility? In section 5, Anjum and Mumford argue that dispositional modality is also distinct from possibility, in the sense that it is different from “pure” possibility. By pure possibility, the authors mean the broadest sort of logical or metaphysical possibility. A glass vase is disposed to shatter when dropped. One might suppose it is logically possible that the vase will turn to jelly when dropped, but it is clearly not disposed to do so – at least in our world.

The authors say we might think of dispositional modality as a subclass or restricted version of possibility. But this is already a familiar idea. Modal theorists talk about various nested classes of possibility: logical possibility (typically the broadest notion), various formulations of metaphysical possibility, and nomological possibility -- the subclass which holds the laws of nature fixed (some philosophers would identify one or more of these). Anjum and Mumford see dispositions as giving rise to “natural” possibility: “The reason some things are naturally possible is because there are dispositions for them.”

The authors don’t elaborate greatly on this point, but it seems as if natural possibility is the set of all the possibilities inherent in the dispositions contained in the state of the natural world at a given time. Building on this idea: when it comes to individual natural objects or systems, in saying they possess dispositional properties (or powers), we might equally well say they possess a certain restricted bundle of possibilities. Then we might turn to a discussion of how causation is explained in terms of the “actualization” of some of these possibilities (compare the “manifestation” of a disposition), perhaps depending on how a system interacts with other systems which similarly bear possibilities.

If one can retell the story of dispositions with restricted sets of possibilities, might this be a reductive analysis? It’s not completely clear to me, because one might say the introduction of restricted sets of possibility of the type needed is an irreducible extension of our notions of modality. And perhaps the idea of an object bearing a set of possibilities, rather than bearing properties, isn’t coherent (but maybe the terminology can be worked out). In any case, this paper’s comparison of dispositional modality to the idea of restricted possibility was very thought-provoking.

Aaronson on QM and Free Will

2011-09-20T12:19:00.018-04:00

One thing that has frustrated me in the past is the fact that folks tend to think indeterministic means “just random”, where by random they mean some stochastic process (like a dice roll) where one can’t predict which outcome will be chosen from some probability distribution. Quantum indeterminism doesn’t work this way, but it’s a difficult subject and experts don’t agree on exactly how to characterize it. It seems clear one cannot simply use a “frequency" interpretation, the way you can with a classical stochastic system. There seems to be something more involved, something spontaneous which resists reduction, but I have a hard time being more precise about this.

Computation theorist Scott Aaronson (home page, blog) recently gave a presentation on free will (at an FQXi conference) which was very thought-provoking (see this Sciam piece with helpful links), and had an interesting take on this issue.

He says (on a slide):

“Conventional wisdom: ‘Free will is a hopelessly muddled concept. If something isn’t deterministic, then logically, it must be random—but a radioactive nucleus obviously doesn’t have free will!’ But the leap from “indeterminism” to “randomness” here is total nonsense! In computer science, we deal all the time with processes that are neither deterministic nor random…”

As examples Aaronson cites cites nondeterministic finite automota, and more generally, algorithms designed to work for any inputs.

I take his general point to be that there’s a difference between randomness, where the distribution of outcomes is known (or at least can be discovered in some way) versus a situation where this is impossible.

If something is indeterministic, but there’s no way to know the probability distribution, then it is something which seems worthy of being called free.

Free will is then defined (for the purposes of his talk) as unpredictability (even in terms of probability distribution) by any actual or conceivable technologies. Aaronson describes a “prediction game” whereby a future computer analyzes one's entire brain/body/immediate environment, and predicts your answer to questions (actually the probability distribution of your answers).

Now, in assessing whether this will be possible, there is a key discovery we need to derive from science, which is: in a human brain, do quantum level states impact macroscopic (say, neuronal) behavior? We don’t know the answer yet for certain, although I would guess it’s extremely likely. This doesn’t mean any fancy quantum coherence in the brain; it just means quantum states at the molecular level sometimes are amplified to influence macroscopic processes.

The next key point is that if this were to be true, then the quantum no-cloning theorem would prevent prediction of human behavior by any future technology (assuming quantum mechanics is true). We cannot replicate all the relevant physical states.

Then our behavior is described by “Knightian uncertainty”, i.e. uncertainty that one can’t even accurately quantify using probabilities. The prediction game is unwinnable.

Even if the prediction game is unwinnable in this way, what does this have to do with free will? Even if the universe were deterministically evolving from an initial quantum state (Everettian view), the world would still be (stochastically) determined in spite of this result. It would just be that the computer couldn’t know the initial condition of the universe.

But here’s something weird. He says: “If the Prediction Game was unwinnable, then it would seem just as logically coherent to speak about our decisions determining the initial state, as about the initial state determining our decisions!” The situation could be something like this: “…there are qubits all over the world today which have been in states of Knightian uncertainty since the Big Bang. Maybe we should call them ‘willbits’. By making a decision, you can retroactively determine the quantum state of one of these willbits. But then once you determine it, that’s it! There’s no going back.”

A sort of backwards-in-time causation seems implied (but not one which could lead to grandfather paradoxes). In general, the picture is of spacetime history determining in retrospect what it’s own initial state was as quantum particle states get amplified to a macroscopic scale and decohere.

(Aaronson then finishes with a speculative discussion of why this situation might fit well with black-hole complementarity, but I’ll leave that aside for now.)

Now, personally, I have an different opinion about the measurement problem. Whereas in the Everettian view all of the uncertainty could be seen as embedded in an initial state of the universe, I believe measurement collapses are happening all the time naturally. So spontaneity is introduced continually, not just all at once. But it’s not clear this matters for the present discussion (except that perhaps we wouldn’t need to discuss retrocausation). Either way, there is freedom, if one accepts the way it is defined here.

GPPC 2011-2012 Program

2011-09-14T09:50:00.003-04:00

Lots of good Philly-area philosophy coming up!

The GPPC website has the updated program information for 2011-2012. The site also has other news, including this year's discussion groups and other lectures at the member schools which are open to the public. I'm also anticipating that, like last year, there will be further GPPC-sponsored events added to the calendar as we move forward.

Coming up soon (Saturday 1st October) is the "Bertrand Russell in Pennsylvania" event at Ursinus College. Three speakers will give talks inspired by the time Russell spent living west of Philadelphia in the early 1940's.

Priority of Actual over Potential in Aristotle

2011-09-09T10:51:00.004-04:00

Aquinas follows Aristotle in utilizing the interplay of potentiality and actuality to explain substance and change. And the idea that the actual is prior to the potential, which I got a bit hung up on when reading Edward Feser’s book Aquinas, is from Aristotle as well.

The relevant discussion appears in book Θ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics; a summary is included in Marc Cohen’s SEP article (section 12).

First, Actuality is prior in sense of logos (account or definition), because we cite the actuality or actualities in describing a potential (something is fragile because it is capable of being broken). I think this is a good point, as it relates to everyday examples we can describe. However, if you think there is novelty in the world, then latent potentials exist which we cannot so define. A novel actuality may very well be described after the fact in terms of potentials which were previously unknown.

Next, Aristotle also views the actual as prior in a temporal sense: while an acorn’s potential to be a tree is prior to its actually becoming one, actual adult trees had to exist beforehand. This seems like a chicken and egg situation.

Finally, Aristotle argues that the actual is prior “in substance” because the actuality is the end or telos, and the potentiality exists for the sake of the end – actuality is the final cause of the potential.

An added argument is that Aristotle looks at the bigger picture and sees that potentials may or may not be fulfilled, therefore they are perishable. On the other hand, something eternal would have to be imperishable, hence actual. Since the eternal can exist without the perishable, but not conversely, this is another way to see that the actual is prior in substance. Just to be devil’s advocate here, though, I can easily conceive of eternal potentials: if potentiality is truly a mode of being.

These points about the priority and eternal nature of actuality lead us into the territory of the unmoved mover being seen as pure Act, utilized by Aquinas in arguments for God. I have been entertaining the different idea that if there is an ultimate being it should encompass both (infinite) potential and the power to act. But we’ll see how this holds up with further reading.

Thoughts on Edward Feser’s Aquinas

2011-08-24T12:07:00.005-04:00

I recently read Aquinas, by Edward Feser (home page, blog). I would recommend the book; it is an excellent introduction to the thought of Aquinas (it deals with his philosophy – it is not a biography of his life and times, nor does it cover all the theology). It is very accessible to the non-expert, but is best suited for those with some background knowledge of philosophy. In about 200 well written pages, Feser both presents and advocates for Thomist positions through 4 chapters devoted respectively to metaphysics, natural theology, psychology, and ethics.

I think Feser‘s greatest success is in his arguments for a re-consideration of Aquinas’ Aristotelian metaphysical ideas, especially with regard to causation, but also with regard to an ontology of potency and action, and hylomorphic (form/matter) dualism.

My main criticism is that while Feser’s assumed role as Aquinas’ champion is usually a benefit to the reader, as Aquinas is presented in most sympathetic light, he is inclined to insist that all of Aquinas' ideas are equally meritorious. In some cases this leads him to present arguments which seem to go beyond what would have occurred to Thomas himself.

But, with plenty of references for further reading, Feser has given the reader a roadmap for further study to follow onto his fine introduction.

Below are somewhat scattershot notes and comments I made while reading the book. To briefly summarize my own views: I'm attracted to some of the metaphysical elements of Aquinas/Aristotle as they relate to causation and mind, and I'm even sympathetic to some of the cosmological arguments. On the other hand, I was unconvinced by significant parts of the Thomist package, including arguments by analogy for some of the divine attributes, God's nature as pure act and his separateness from matter, and the special nature of the human soul.

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Ch. 1 Aquinas (intro.)

Ch. 2 Metaphysics

P.12 The interplay of potency and act in explaining change is something I’m attracted to. One part of Aquinas’ view I didn’t see any motivation for was the presumed asymmetry whereby act is prior to potency. He says potency cannot exist without act, but act can exist without potency. This anticipates Aquinas’ hierarchy from God as pure act down through to prime matter as pure potency. But I think it is simpler to view all of reality as composed of both potency and act. And if God is the ultimate being, he should be the source of all potentia as well as the power to actualize them.

P.21 I agree neo-Aristotelian causation has merit. There is a lot of good current work on a powers/dispositions ontology which is simpatico.

P.24 Essences are difficult, and seem at first to be outmoded by the essentially quantitative differences among physical objects. However, I’m open minded: perhaps if all the infinite possibilities are considered, there is a set of overlapping ones which might define an essence.

P.34 Feser’s explanation of how Aquinas comes to consider the good and true, etc. as “convertible” with being was helpful, as I didn't understand this before. Ultimately, though, the resultant “stretching” of these terms throughout the system becomes increasingly strained and unconvincing to me.

P.49 Feser has an excellent discussion of the problems with post-Humean thinking on causation, and the potential superiority of the “powers” viewpoint.

P.54 An interesting point is attributed to John Haldane: that indeterminism considered as resulting from natural propensities in quantum systems is in keeping with the spirit of Aristotelian view.

P.58 The doctrine of analogy seems the weakest part of Thomism to me, and repeated invocations throughout the book didn’t alter my initial view on this.

Ch. 3 Natural Theology

P.65 The First Way. Aquinas thinks no potential can actualize itself, but I would say the spontaneity of QM phenomena seems to undermine this (in the same sense that the full-strength Liebnizian principle of sufficient reason is undermined). Contingent facts might beg for explanation, but not a complete explanation in terms of prior acts. New spontaneous acts are constrained by other/prior acts but not determined by them.

I do sympathize with the quest for ultimate explanation that leads to a necessary being as the ultimate source of creative power. I think again, though, that viewing this ultimate power as external to the material world weakens the argument (in other words I don’t see again why act is prior to potency).

P.91 The Second way doesn’t seem to add much once you’ve delved into the first, and understand Aquinas’ background assumptions regarding causation. Feser here brings in a discussion of Thomas’ “existence proof” from On Being and Essence.

P.92 The Third Way’s weakness is Thomas’ presentation of contingency and necessity as temporal notions. Feser helps out by noting that if we assume an infinite expanse of time, we can bring the concepts closer to the modern conception (although he says we can and should reject the “possible worlds” account of modal concepts).

p.95 Feser notes an interesting criticism, due to J.L. Mackie, that even if individual contingent things go out of existence, a “permanent stock of matter” could persist indefinitely (and hence be “necessary”). Feser says Thomism shouldn’t have a problem with this. It’s OK if matter exists necessarily, as this doesn’t impact his argument for God specifically: all necessary things get their necessity from God. I think it still is simpler if we posit a panentheistic God which includes all raw materials in its being.

In fact, a better argument from contingency to necessity is this: there is a set of all metaphysically possible things (events, objects, worlds, whatever). The sum of all of these must exist necessarily (there can be exactly one maximal set of possibilia).

P.100 The Fourth Way. This is weak: it relies on the convertibility of the transcendentals and the doctrine of analogy. These are Aquinas’ most questionable tools.

I would be tempted by a version which said there must be a maximal being in the sense of all-encompassing.

P.116 The Fifth way. This is very weak IMO. If things have final causes, then one could argue there must be a greater power underlying these (as in the first or second ways), but then here he states it must be intelligent, without adequate argument.

P.120 The Divine attributes
Immutability: God as pure Act not justified in my view, therefore God is better seem as the sum of all that is changing and unchanging (so not immutable).
Incorporeality/Immateriality: No
Eternal: OK
Powerful: Yes, as the source of all power.
Intelligence: No argument given. Obviously, His being includes all beings which we do consider intelligent. But human intelligence is an aspect of being a finite agent in a larger context or environment. God has no larger context, so I’m not comfortable invoking analogy and calling God intelligent (or possessing a will – that’s another notion linked to intentionality which presumes an environment).

P.125 To beat a dead horse, the Thomist doctrine of analogy is an all-too-flexible tool which attempts to build a bridge from the necessary being of metaphysics to the God of tradition.

Good: Is God good? Here we are stretching the convertible sense of Good into the moral sense of good. This is difficult. It makes sense that God is the source of moral facts, alongside all others, but like the discussion of intellect, this doesn’t suffice for the N.B. to earn the human-derived label.
Simplicity. To be charitable, maybe the idea that God has infinite parts leads to a sense of simplicity (?)

Ch. 4 Psychology

P.132 The discussion of the soul I find unconvincing: thanks to science we now know that nature is continuous is a way Aristotle and Aquinas couldn’t appreciate. While I might concede that living things seem to have a “form” different from everyday non-living objects which still begs for a fuller explanation, there is no motivation for a qualitative difference between humans and our living cousins. The degree of our intelligence does distinguish us from other species, but not qualitatively.

P.151 Likewise, the discussion of immateriality and immortality is unconvincing. Knowledge of universals is not sufficient to demonstrate immateriality of mind; immortality is argued based on the doctrine of asymmetry between act and potency, which we discussed above. Was this asymmetry supposed to be an intuitively obvious axiom? If act and potency are not symmetric, I can picture potency having priority as easily (or with as much difficulty) as the reverse.

P.165 Feser presents a good diagnosis of the modern mind-body problem and the virtues of Aristotelian ideas. Good advocacy of hylomorphic dualism (excepting the idea that the human form is special vs. other living things)

The banishment of intentionality and qualities from nature and substitution of an inert material world is the source of the post-Cartesian conundrum. If, instead, these are ubiquitous features of the natural world, we are a long way toward solving the problem of mind.

Ch.5 Ethics

P.176 Briefest part of the book is the short introduction to ethics and natural law. Some good ideas here, but of course the interpretation of good as natural inclination is difficult to work out. There is again a stretching of the sense of “good”.

Composing the Mind

2011-07-31T08:58:00.008-04:00

William Seager, of the University of Toronto, has written a number of interesting papers over the years on the mind, with panpsychism and emergence/reduction included as frequent topics. I’m grateful for his contributions on panpsychism, which remains a neglected option in philosophy of mind.

Seager’s newest offering is “Panpsychism, Aggregation, and Combinatorial Infusion.” This paper includes a very nice summary of how the panpsychist position fits into the debate over mind, including its advantages and difficulties. A central challenge to working out a theory is the problem of composition or combination. Given that human minds are composite objects which seem to clearly depend on lower-level processes, even if one is willing to grant some element of mentality to the parts, how do they come together to comprise our familiar complex yet unified experience? Since the purported advantage of panpsychism over materialism is the avoidance of the latter’s need to posit brute emergence of the experiential from the non-experiential, it is a particular point of vulnerability if panpsychism itself lacks a plausible model of the mind’s emergence.

Clearly a simple aggregation of the properties of the parts won’t do, but what other kind of composition is there? Quantum mechanics offers a distinctive account in the form of coherence/entanglement, but despite recent advances in creating superpositions in larger objects, it still seems unlikely that such effects can be invoked on a scale as large as neuronal assemblies in the brain.

Now, science will continue to shed more light on these matters, and this could take forms which might be friendly to panpsychism (such as further advances in quantum biology). But Seager wants to find a conceptual model, inspired by reflections on panpsychism, which might show how a complex mind could indeed emerge from smaller parts.

Rather than aggregation, a mind must, while assuming its mental character from that of its parts, absorb and supersede the mental states of the parts. This resulting relation of whole to parts should be intelligible, not a mysterious sort of emergence. A model which would meet these goals is labeled “combinatorial infusion.” The whole is simple, yet extended and comprised of parts.

Seager looks for analogues in science. One which he thinks is promising from physics is the classical model of a black hole. Here the properties of the constituents which, when fused, give rise to the black hole are absorbed and superseded by the simple physical properties of the hole itself (mass, charge, and angular momentum). I think examples from condensed matter physics might have served Seager as good examples of this kind of phenomenon as well.

Seager thinks that while we may find a physical analogue to a combinatorial infusion of the mind (observable among the brain’s physical processes), it is not a requirement of his panpsychist theory that this physical instance exists. He thinks that the physical correlate of the effect may not itself be combinatorial infusion per se, but a reflection of it in some other phenomenon: the widespread neural synchrony we observe, for instance. (I tend to think, though, that we should expect an interesting and tight connection between the phenomenon and its correlate).

In any case, Seager’s work helps show that the “combination problem” isn’t adequate reason to rule out a theory which says the complex but unified experience of the human mind is formed by parts which also have a mental aspect. Nature has surely surprised us in greater ways than this.

Causal Regularity is not Universal but Rare

2011-07-18T11:27:00.006-04:00

The picture of our universe as a machine governed by deterministic laws is hard to shake. Physics has profoundly undermined this vision of course, but even before this was known, it is a bit surprising that philosophers and scientists were inspired by everyday macroscopic experience to form such a conception. Was Hume so talented at billiards that he experienced constant conjunction? I can’t come close! Certainly to build and maintain a machine which achieves any determined outcome with regularity takes a lot of human effort.

This last point was made by philosopher John Dupré in a 1995 paper called “A Solution to the Problem of the Freedom of the Will” (hat tip: tweet by Rani Lill Anjum). This paper has a number of thought-provoking insights: contrary to the title, it’s doesn’t put forth a full theory of free will, but argues that the way the world works makes human autonomy unsurprising. (Dupré, a philosopher of biology among other research interests, took part in an interesting debate regarding reduction and emergence on Philosophy TV here). Most assume the world is governed by global microphysical laws, such that autonomy would require an exception to these laws. Dupré argues that we actually have no reason to think the world is governed by such globally applicable laws. Using his terminology, the world is far from causally complete.

Today, our most fundamental physical law, quantum mechanics, is indeterministic -- and I’m continually surprised that well-informed people still assume determinism. But Dupré says it’s not enough to simply argue indeterminism vs. determinism, the argument is targeted against completeness. (He doesn’t get into the details of QM, but I think some of them are supportive of his point: for instance, the fact that quantum probabilities are not objective laws of particle behavior, but rather apply strictly relative to their measurement context.)

Conventional wisdom takes examples of causal regularities, and extrapolates from these to an assumption of causal completeness. Dupré argues that this extrapolation is unwarranted. The evidence, rather, is that causal regularities are the exception rather than the rule in nature, applying only in specialized situations. In fact, “…humans, far from being putative exceptions to an otherwise seamless web of causal connection, are in fact dense concentrations of causal power in a world where this is in short supply.”

The alternative picture, then, is one of objects or systems, at a variety of structural levels, having causal powers. These causal powers do not result in uniform outcomes, because other objects at various levels often interfere with the powers. As discussed in prior posts (e.g. here) on the topic of powers/dispositions, these properties tend toward manifestations, but not of necessity.

Whence the intuition that the world is deterministic, or even subject to universally applicable laws of any kind? Science reveals impressive regularities only in highly controlled settings, and cannot precisely explain complex systems (see Newtonian mechanics and the 3-body problem). Dupré goes on to discuss the rareness of reliable regularities in everyday experience (in contrast to the conclusions of philosophers like Hume and Mill). He then discusses machines, and their inability to maintain reliable regularity without great effort. Machines are not sources of causal autonomy; they are subject to our creation and control. Organisms, on the other hand, do behave autonomously, and are loci of causal order. Of these, humans seem to have the most impressive causal powers for imposing regularities on a world where these are in fact rare.

Introspection and Acquaintance

2011-06-30T23:00:00.006-04:00

How reliable is knowledge gained through introspection? On the one hand, we have been learning that knowledge gained through introspection is surprisingly fallible. A philosopher who has worked on bringing this fact to light is Eric Schwitzgebel. In this paper, among others, he has argued that,based on the evidence, knowledge gained from introspection is less reliable than knowledge gained in other ways. He now has a book out called Perplexities of Consciousness which looks worth reading -- see reviews here and here.

On the other hand, perhaps there is still something special about knowledge gained via introspection. Schwitzgebel participated in a debate on introspection with Brie Gertler last fall on Philosophy TV. In a draft of a forthcoming paper called "Renewed Acquaintance" (Word doc), Gertler defends a view called the acquaintance approach to introspective knowledge of phenomenal qualities (a book is forthcoming titled Self-Knowledge).

Gertler's view, which is inspired by Russell's theory of acquaintance (see here for some history), claims that, in at least some cases, introspective knowledge of the phenomenal is direct, as the conscious state is itself the basis of our knowledge.

There is a sense in which this seems a radical view: the direct grasp of the phenomenal constitutes (as she says) an intersection between reality and the epistemic. On the other hand, however, the view is modest in the scope of its claims: Gertler is not claiming any widespread infallibility about introspective knowledge, even of phenomenal states. Only some introspective knowledge is knowledge by acquaintance -- namely very stripped-down examples of attending to a simple experiential quality. Further, even these judgments need not be claimed to be infallible, although it is claimed that these judgments are better justified than normal empirical judgments. So Gertler is able to agree with Schwitzgebel and others when they point out the variety of mistakes we are prone to make (my own view is that the only infallible judgment is probably a "meta" judgment that we are indeed having experiences featuring phenomenal qualities). As a result, I find Gertler's case is pretty strong.

Upcoming GPPC Event: Philosophy for Children

2011-06-21T11:29:00.000-04:00

I'm helping to organize this GPPC forum on philosophy for children coming up on October 29. I've gotten interested in this topic over the last year, and have talked to a number of smart and passionate people who are working in this field. Please check out the preliminary information below and forward to anyone you know who might be interested. This event will be free and open to the public. For updates, check the GPPC website or contact me with any questions. Thanks, and I hope to see you there!

Save the Date!

GPPC Event - Saturday October 29, 2011

Public Issues Forum: Philosophy for Children

The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium presents an afternoon forum with lectures and discussion on the topic of philosophy for children. Can children benefit from exposure to philosophical thinking and topics before college? This event will feature philosophers who believe they can and who are working with K-12 students and their teachers toward this goal. We invite area philosophers, school teachers, and members of the public to hear about the “why?” and “how?” of philosophy for children.

Saturday, October 29, 2011 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Location: University of Pennsylvania (room TBA), Philadelphia PA

Speakers:
Mitchell Green, University of Virginia
Thomas Jackson, University of Hawaii
Thomas Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College

Chair: Frank Hoffman, West Chester University, Chair, GPPC

Commentators: Dominic Sisti, Penn Center for Bioethics; Igor Jasinski, The Pingry School

Coordinator: Steve Esser, GPPC Board of Governors

Free and Open to the Public

This event is sponsored by the Board of Governors of the GPPC and the Penn Center for Bioethics

Mind-Dependent Composition

2011-06-17T09:43:00.000-04:00

The Russellian view of the mind-body problem explains why experience has qualitative content: the natural world has qualities, and this fact poses no conflict with physics, because physics offers only a formal description of nature’s causal regularities. Our participation in the world acquaints us with these qualities (even if our knowledge is fallible about details). There is a further question, however, beyond this issue of “raw” qualitative content. Recently, in interesting comments on this old post, dnn8350 posed the question of why our experience features macroscopic objects/events and not just a flux of the micro-level entities which are fundamental in physics.*

Now, separately from philosophy of mind, metaphysicians also debate problems concerning the compositions of objects (mereology). Perhaps the problem of composition and the problem of why minds feature macroscopic clumps are related. Uriah Kriegel has a couple of papers which connect with these issues: he has a 2008 paper called “Composition as a Secondary Quality”, and now a draft of a forthcoming paper called “Kantian Monism”. The first paper addresses things from the point of view of ontological pluralism, and presents an argument that (very roughly) states that objects compose a larger composite object if it is the case that a subject would judge it to be so (I’m obviously glossing over many important details and conditions specified by Kriegel). In the new draft paper, Kriegel explores this view from the perspective of monism, and presents the case that the world decomposes into parts just in case it would appear that way to a subject in the world.

If mind-world interaction is responsible for the composition of objects (or decomposition of the world into parts), the task remains of filling in how this works, but perhaps there is a sense that we have combined two problems into one.

*I guess this question may also be related to the so-called binding problem of consciousness – that is the question of how our experience unifies various disparate sensory inputs – but I’m not sure.

Horizon Complementarity

2011-05-31T13:17:00.004-04:00

Sean Carroll had an interesting post at the Cosmic Variance blog. The post discusses the idea, outlined in a couple of recent papers, of finding a concordance between the multiverses which exist according to some speculative cosmological models and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Carroll provides a sketch of his own thoughts about how this might work. (The referenced papers are by Nomura and Bousso & Susskind).

I have some thoughts about this broad question, but for now I want to highlight one key notion utilized in the discussion, which is that of “horizon complementarity”.

I was familiar with the holographic principle, which says roughly that the information about what is inside a region of space-time can be encoded on the surface boundary of the region. This idea developed from the study of black holes, where it was earlier theorized that black hole entropy was proportional to the area of its event horizon. Horizon complementarity is likewise an extension of another idea which was developed in the study of black hole entropy/information paradox. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from Carroll (who is skilled in explaining difficult topics to a general audience - see the original for embedded links):

The idea of horizon complementarity is a generalization of the idea of black hole complementarity, which in turn is a play on the idea of quantum complementarity. (Confused yet?) Complementarity was introduced by Niels Bohr, as a way of basically saying “you can think of an electron as a particle, or as a wave, but not as both at the same time.” That is, there are different but equally valid ways of describing something, but ways that you can’t invoke simultaneously.

For black holes, complementarity was taken to roughly mean “you can talk about what’s going on inside the black hole, or outside, but not both at the same time.” It is a way of escaping the paradox of information loss as black holes evaporate. You throw a book into a black hole, and if information is not lost you should (in principle!) be able to reconstruct what was in the book by collection all of the Hawking radiation into which the black hole evaporates. That sounds plausible even if you don’t know exactly the mechanism by which happens. The problem is, you can draw a “slice” through spacetime that contains both the infalling book and the outgoing radiation! So where is the information really? (It’s not in both places at once — that’s forbidden by the no-cloning theorem.)

Susskind and Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested complementarity as the solution: you can either talk about the book falling into the singularity inside the black hole, or you can talk about the Hawking radiation outside, but you can’t talk about both at once. It seems like a bit of wishful thinking to save physics from the unpalatable prospect of information being lost as black holes evaporate, but as theorists thought more and more about how black holes work, evidence accumulated that something like complementarity is really true. (See for example.)

According to black hole complementarity, someone outside the black hole shouldn’t think about what’s inside; more specifically, everything that is happening inside can be “encoded” as information on the event horizon itself. This idea works very well with holography, and the fact that the entropy of the black hole is proportional to the area of the horizon rather than the volume of what’s inside. Basically you are replacing “inside the black hole” with “information living on the horizon.” (Or really the “stretched horizon,” just outside the real horizon. This connects with the membrane paradigm for black hole physics, but this blog post is already way too long as it is.)

Event horizons aren’t the only kind of horizons in general relativity; there are also horizons in cosmology. The difference is that we can stand outside the black hole, while we are inside the universe. So the cosmological horizon is a sphere that surrounds us; it’s the point past which things are so far away that light signals from them don’t have time to reach us.

So then we have horizon complementarity: you can talk about what’s inside your cosmological horizon, but not what’s outside. Rather, everything that you think might be going on outside can be encoded in the form of information on the horizon itself, just like for black holes!

I’ve always thought that there is something problematic about referring to putative space-time regions beyond our ability to probe. If you take seriously that even local reality isn’t actualized until measured (as in QM), then it’s consistent to treat the “actual” universe as simply that patch which is in principle subject to a causal connection to the observer: the rest of reality consists of possible events or worlds.

Horizon complementarity seems to comport with this idea. As for the question of whether the possibilities encoded in QM somehow match a given cosmological model of the multiverse, I don’t have much claim to have an opinion, although I’m skeptical of the eternal inflation/supersymmetry picture favored by the authors of the papers referenced above. Carroll's own idea would invoke vacuum fluctations within the actual universe as the multiverse of possibilia - I like this better, but the idea is at most provisional to the extent it relies on quantum field theory rather than a quantum gravity theory.

On Quantum/Relativity Incompatibility

2011-05-17T13:21:00.001-04:00

I’ve been very interested in the search for a theory of quantum gravity. General Relativity and Quantum theory, the twin crowning achievements of twentieth century physics, are not compatible, and the hunt has been on for a successor theory which would underlie or reconcile the two.

Approaches include trying to extend or modify the quantum field theory programs which were so successful for building models of particle interactions and forces, but which failed to accommodate gravity (superstring theory falls broadly into this category). Alternatively, some researchers have explored approaches which feature some conceptual rethinking of the issues involved. I’ve been intrigued by recent research programs which posit that the space-time geometry of GR emerges from a more fundamental background theory, such as a dimensionless quantum causal framework of some kind.

In thinking about the conceptual, rather than technical issues involved, it is worth reflecting on the fact that there may be a basic conflict between ordinary quantum mechanics and relativity, which predates the issues of reconciling quantum field theories and Einstein’s theory of gravity.

M.P. Seevinck reviews the issue of compatibility in his white paper (pdf), “Can quantum theory and special relativity peacefully coexist?” The source of the potential conflict is the nonlocal aspect of quantum phenomena, as described by Bell’s inequalities and demonstrated in EPR-style experiments (see also this comprehensive SEP article).

Seevinck argues that non-locality is simply not consistent with the local causal structure inherent in SR. Now, there is a weaker sense in which one might argue the theories are compatible: while the nonlocal correlations which arise in entangled systems are themselves well demonstrated empirically, we have been unable to utilize these phenomena to create an experimental conflict with SR such as superluminal signaling. Theoreticians also have characterized no-signaling as an essential part of quantum theory, developing no-signaling theorems.

Seevinck is critical of no-signaling theorems, saying they are either circular or else serve as consistency proofs (QM and no-signaling can, rather than must, be compatible). In the case of some theorems derived from QFT it seems clear why they might be circular: quantum field theory obscures the issue at hand because it is formulated against a backdrop of SR – so compatibility is enhanced by construction.

But the compatibility between QM and SR is not all about no-signaling. It can be argued that the spirit of SR is a geometric causal structure of space-time, and there can be no story of nonlocal correlations arising causally in this structure.

Seevinck briefly reviews several general approaches to resolving the conflict through interpretation or modification of the theories, without endorsing one. Part of his discussion references the ideas of Nicolas Gisin. In several papers, Gisin has also argued the case for incompatibility. He has been critical of the traditional discussion of Bell’s results which describe it as presenting a choice to reject either locality or “realism”. He finds no sensible "irrealism" option which gives a reason to reject the conclusion of nonlocality (see brief Gisin papers here and here).

Gisin’s view is that we must accept that nonlocal correlations can’t originate in space-time, and he ponders the alternative, which is that they must emerge from “outside” space-time. What this means needs to be fleshed out, but it seems compatible with the idea that space-time geometry is an emergent rather than fundamental aspect of nature.

Templeton Funding for Philosophy

2011-05-03T13:21:00.002-04:00

There was a conference at St. Louis University last weekend on causal powers (Putting Powers to Work). The program looked excellent. I note that the John Templeton Foundation was a sponsor. IMO this is an excellent use of their funds, given how they describe the portion of their mission which is devoted to "Science and the Big Questions". One subset of this funding area is called "Philosophy and Theology" (other areas relate to direct science grants, which are obviously welcome, and also the promotion of "dialogue" between science and "theology and/or philosophy").

The reason this is notable is that until recently the Foundation's material and grant record struck me as notable for a neglect of philosophy in (often quixotic-seeming) pursuit of dialogue between science and religion. Three years ago, I wrote a letter to the foundation about this, and got a polite reply acknowledging this but saying it was in keeping with the founder's vision.

Since then, the Foundation has been revamping its organization and programs fairly extensively, and philosophy has been getting more into the mix -- notable was a recent significant grant for the study of free will. Hopefully, they will continue to fund pure philosophical research, particularly in the areas of metaphysics which are indispensible IMO if one wants to pursue answers to "Big Questions". Looking at the free will program and the inclusion of a philosophy of religion talk at the powers conference, it appears Templeton will likely insist on some PoR or theology aspect to these programs, but I would think that needn't be problem as long as it's not heavy-handed.

Power Property Papers Perused

2011-04-11T14:05:00.001-04:00

Here are some brief thoughts on papers I read recently on the metaphysics of powers/dispositions.

I thought “A Powerful Theory of Causation” by Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford was an important paper. The authors set out to show that powers have the right degree of “modal strength” to support a theory of causation. Powers have been long thought to necessitate their manifestations, and necessity (and the sense of constant conjunction) is too strong to describe causation. The notion of metaphysically necessary connections in nature has long supplied a basis for arguing against powers and associated theories of causation. Anjum and Mumford say that powers (dispositions) “dispose” toward their manifestations, but don’t necessitate them.

One way of seeing that powers fall short of necessity is to note that when placed in a context, a disposition can be enhanced or, importantly, hindered by other powers. The authors use a vector addition model as a heuristic to see how this works. Only when the sum of vectors (with various strengths and directions) exceeds some threshold do we get the manifestation.

In later sections of the paper the authors deal with various potential objections and place their theory in a historical context of the difficulties faced by causal models, showing again that the unwarranted assumption of necessitation was the key stumbling block.

While the vector model was interesting, my favorite section of the paper (section 5) deals with explaining probabilistic causation. Here Anjum and Mumford endorse a propensity (propensity=probabilistic power) interpretation for a single disposition. I myself think this is the key to understanding how powers can have the right modal strength “all the way down”; it also has the virtue of fitting with our best physical theory of how the actual world works (quantum mechanics).

I eagerly look forward to a forthcoming book from Mumford and Anjum called Getting Causes from Powers – this will elaborate upon the theory in greater detail. Also note that a podcast and slides from a recent talk by Stephen Mumford from the PhilSci forum at UMB (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) are available here (scroll down for previous talks). It is a very nice introduction to powers, and focuses on contrasting a powers approach with a laws-based theory of causation.

Some quick takes on other papers.

Michael Esfeld argues that a metaphysics of powers has an advantage in terms of compatibility with physics in his paper “Humean metaphysics versus a metaphysics of powers.” In the paper, Esfeld summarizes the difference between a Humean approach and the powers approach: in contrast to the above he does characterize powers as having necessary connections with their manifestations. However, he does then describe the option of treating powers as propensities to explain probabilistic causation. His main point in the paper is that while physics can be compatible with more than one metaphysical picture, the powers model is the best fit given the commitment of physics (and other sciences) to describing dispositional and functional properties.

William A. Bauer takes up the issue of the ontological grounding of powers in "Four theories of pure dispositions". Can they exist without depending on categorical properties for their being? What is the nature of powers when they aren’t manifesting if they lack such grounding? He reviews several approaches to this problem, and concludes that the best model is one where they are self-grounding via a continuous low-level manifestation (which is distinct from their more pronounced, distinguishing potential manifestation).

This was a thought provoking paper, which prompted me to go back and review others on this topic, including Mumford’s “The ungrounded argument”, Neil E. Williams’s response “The ungrounded argument is unfounded”, and Stathis Psillos’s 2006 paper “What do powers do when they are not manifested?”. My quick two cents on this issue is inspired by QM and the idea of powers as propensities: I think powers have a real-but-not-concrete status akin to possibilities in a framework of modal realism. Unlike a static notion of possibilia, however, propensities causally impact our world through their disposition toward actual manifestation events. This is again consistent with QM: between measurement events, quantum systems don’t have concrete existence, but they certainly exist in a causally relevant way, as their influence on events is apparent and measurable.

Finally, I note with interest that two philosophers have recent papers endorsing the Heil/Martin view of powers as inherently qualitative: Jonathan D. Jacobs in “Powerful qualities, not pure powers”, and Robert Schroer, in “How far can the physical sciences reach?”. Both make for interesting reading, as do other papers by these authors.

Here is a list of prior posts on powers/dispositions (chronological).

George Molnar and the Powers That Be

Pan-Intentionality

Powers and Property Dualism

Modal Problems with the Theory of Powers

John Heil Gets Very Close

Suarez on Quantum Propensities

Notes on C.B.Martin's The Mind in Nature

Power Holism

Powers vs. Humean Supervenience

Abilities vs. Dispositions

Upcoming GPPC-Sponsored Events

2011-03-17T11:23:00.000-04:00

A number of exciting events sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium are coming up in the next few weeks.

A Philosophy on Film Series beginning Thursday March 31st and continuing for the two following Thursdays. This will be at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. Each week a film will be presented and then discussed by a professor from a GPPC school.

The GPPC Community Lecture Series in Cherry Hill NJ on Saturday afternoon, April 2nd, features "The Uses of Literature" with two talks by GPPC professors and discussion.

At Drexel University on Saturday afternoon, April 9th is the annual GPPC Public Issues Forum with the topic "Philosophy, Education & Life".

Please spread the word to anyone in the area who might be interested. Check the GPPC website for details. I'm also available if you need more information (contact info. via clicking my profile).

Russellian Monism and Dispositional/Categorical Properties

2011-03-14T11:41:00.002-04:00

{Note: this is a draft of some work that I might develop further with add'l research at some point. Comments or suggestions are welcome.}

I’m gratified that the position in Philosophy of Mind known as Russellian Monism (also known as Russellian theory of mind and probably the best developed account of neutral monism) has gotten more attention in recent years. However, the terminology typically used to describe the position today is different from Bertrand Russell’s, as presented in his 1927 work, The Analysis of Matter. This post discusses some of the issues involved, and briefly looks at how some stances in contemporary debates would fit with the original account.

In a recent post on the Brains blog, Richard Brown (referencing an online discussion he had with David Chalmers) said: “RM [Russellian Monism] is the view that the dispositional properties talked about by physics have as their categorical base phenomenal or protophenomenal properties.” While descriptions vary, the reference to dispositional and categorical properties is common. In his book, Ignorance and Imagination, Daniel Stoljar says the position is a combination of two theses. First: “…that physical theory tells us only about dispositional properties.” And: “The second thesis we need to consider is that the dispositional properties of physical objects do require categorical grounds; that is, for all dispositional properties, there must be a non-dispositional property... (p.110)”

Now, Russell never uses discusses properties at all, and certainly not dispositional or categorical properties specifically! These are terms which have emerged in the more recent debates of analytic philosophy. So, how well is the intent of RM captured when using this terminology? (Please again note I’m only speaking of Russell’s work in The Analysis of Matter).

Brief summary of RM

Russell’s project is to show how careful analysis of the formulation of physical theory can reveal a common framework connecting what we think of as the physical and mental realms. First, he argues that the subject matter of physics can be interpreted as an abstract description of events and their linkage in causal relations. He then argues that the mental realm can likewise be described in terms of events, and that given a causal theory of perception, we can view perceptual events (“percepts”) as connecting with physical events. And a key point is that our knowledge of the physical events (which is inferred and ultimately derived from observations) includes nothing which is known to be inconsistent with the mental.

Russell speaks of events (or groups of events) as having “intrinsic qualities” or “intrinsic character”. These are things which are known to be an aspect of percepts, but are not part of physics, given its abstract structure. He doesn’t assert that physical events must have qualities like those of percepts – he is agnostic -- but he argues there’s no reason they couldn’t.

One thing I would note before discussing the recasting of RM in terms of properties. Russell is very insistent on an event ontology, rather than one of objects or substance. This distinction is usually ignored in contemporary discussions of RM. I’ll assume for present purposes that an event can be seen as something which either bears properties or is itself a bundle of properties, in the manner of objects, although there may be some issues with this assumption.

Dispositional and Categorical Properties

The topic of the nature and roles of dispositional properties (or dispositions -- also known as powers) and categorical properties is complex, and there is an extensive literature that concerns many aspects of metaphysics. But it seems fairly clear why philosophers have connected these concepts to RM. Dispositional properties (roughly) are those that when possessed, like the classic examples of fragility or solubility, direct its bearer toward some manifestation. A categorical property is (roughly) something possessed by an object which need not be connected to such manifestations. Dispositions seem to be closely associated with physical interactions and causation, while categorical properties appear to offer an affinity to “intrinsic qualities”.

So, if physical theories only describe occurences and causal relations (as in Russell), and these are due to dispositional properties, then dispositional properties are the content of physics. If categorical properties are intrinsic qualities (as in Russell), then these are properties which are not captured by formal physical theory; they are, on the other hand, things which we still might be acquainted with (in some fashion) via perception. At a minimum, they comprise a part of the world which could play a constituting role for mental phenomena. So this sort of thinking likely gives rise to the typical contemporary description of RM we began with above.

Does this description of RM reintroduce dualism?

However, there are a number of nuances and controversies regarding the status of categorical and dispositional properties, and there might be danger that certain stances on these might lead to interpretations inconsistent with RM. For instance, do categorical properties play a supporting role in causation as well, or not? If the latter, does this lead to epiphenomenalism with regard to the mental? If the former, what is the basis for ascribing such a role? Cannot dispositions fully account for causes? I’m not able to delve into all of the issues in detail. But I have one especially pointed concern: given Russell’s goal of monism, do we run the risk of re-introducing a variety of dualism in the form of these two sorts of properties. If dispositions do the "physical" work in the ontology and categorical properties do the "mental" work, isn't this just a "property dualism" in the context of Philosophy of Mind? With this concern in mind, I want to conclude by briefly looking at contemporary stances which seek to eliminate one of these property types, and see how they fit with the goals of RM.

1. Are dispositions fundamental, or are they reducible?

Some philosophers argue that dispositions are not fundamental and can be reduced to categorical properties. For instance, there has been an extended debate over whether the ability to describe dispositions in terms of conditional statements means they are amenable to reduction. David Lewis argued for such a reduction as part of his metaphysical program (sometimes called Humean superveniece). However, Lewis' theory effectively eliminated causation itself as a fundamental aspect of reality (it just reflects regularities in a static mosaic of qualities). There are other avenues to support real causation without dispositions, but for present purposes I conclude that, since Russell was working with an assumption of causal realism, "disposing of dispositions" wouldn't be appropriate as part of a property-based description of RM.

2. Alternatively, can we do without categorical properties?

The key issue here is “intrinsic qualities”. RM relies on the assumption that events have intrinsic qualities. If you eliminate categorical properties – perhaps by assuming that dispositions are identical with their bases, or don’t need bases at all -- you might risk losing these qualities, which are traditionally associated with the categorical side of things. Many philosophers have argued that a world of "bare" dispositions isn't coherent, and that they need a categorical base for support. This is debatable. But for present purposes, the issue is simply that a world of “bare” dispositions lacking qualities (and adequately described by physical theory, at least in principle) would not be consistent with RM.

However, there is another option available for a "disposition-only" ontology. Some philosophers, notably John Heil and C.B.Martin, identify qualities with dispositions (they are another aspect of the same property). This move retains consistency with RM. In fact this view might be a particularly good fit when combined with the notion that we only encounter the qualitative side of causation when in direct causal connection with something. Perception detects this aspect, at least in some fashion, while the abstracting process of physics has no place for it. Note, in constrast, that if we maintained the dual property picture, where qualities are distinct from dispositions, then the reasons for their being “on display” when we are in causal contact are less obvious.

So, given the aims of Russellian monism, the stance in modern debates over the role and nature of dispositional and categorical properties which offers the best fit is the Heil/Martin view -- sometimes described as an ontology of "powerful qualities".

Limiting Possible Evils

2011-03-01T14:36:00.003-05:00

1. Multiverse Theodicies

Why would God, assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, create a world which is suffused with gratuitous suffering? There are many responses given by theists, but I’ve thought the most persuasive one was an appeal to a theistic multiverse. I was reminded of this strategy by reading Bradley Monton’s draft paper titled “Against Multiverse Theodicies” (warning – Word document). It was a helpful paper to review because in it he describes various approaches that have been taken in the literature, on his way to formulating an argument against them. There are many variants, but a typical version of the theodicy says that God maximizes total value by creating infinite universes, not just the one we observe, and all we need to accept about our own world is that it is minimally worth creating by the deity -- perhaps the good it embodies just barely outweighs the bad. Then can imagine that the countless superior worlds of which we can conceive also exist. Terrible worlds unrelieved by sufficient good would not be created.

Now, Monton’s paper argues the strategy doesn’t work: The key to his argument has to do with God’s ability to create duplicate and near duplicate universes (without end). To greatly simplify, he says that instead of creating a world with a given amount of suffering, God could create duplicates of better worlds and create more aggregate good. (A counterargument, he says, would have to involve a successful defense of Leibniz’ principle of the Identity of indiscernibles).

I recommend the paper, although I’m not going to engage his argument here. Rather I bring this up because, while I’m not a theist, the issues raised in this discussion bear on concerns I have about my own views.

2. The Modal Realist’s “Problem” of Evil
Modal realism is the view that possibilities share in reality alongside the actual. In David Lewis’ conception of modal realism, possibilities are accounted for by a collection of static concrete worlds (“actual” refers to things in our local world). If this picture is true, and assuming metaphysical possibility is as broad as logical possibility, then reality includes countless worlds WORSE than our own: the totality of suffering boggles the mind.

I’ve endorsed a bit different type of modal realism. I think actual events arise from a background web of possibilities through an ongoing creative process (actualization). We don’t live in a static space-time block world, rather the “world” is a causal nexus of actualization events (events are the basic unit here, not worlds). Unlike Lewis, then, I don’t think everything in modal space is concrete. The unactualized possibilities may be thought of as abstract. On the other hand, I don’t see a way to know how extensive the concrete realm is. As long as the space of metaphysical possibilities includes countless instances of terrible things, they might be realized as concrete in the absence of a reason to the contrary. The end result could be little different than Lewis’ when it comes to the existence of a plenitude of terrible events.

So while modal realism doesn’t generate a logical or evidential “Problem of Evil” in the manner of theism, I’m simply troubled by its potential inclusion of infinite gratuitous suffering. Or, to put it another way, I’m motivated to see if there are principled arguments for a modified model that would include a reduced amount of suffering.

3. How might evil be restricted without God?

In the multiverse theodicies mentioned above, we assume God is good, and this is how we know creation is (on balance) good as well. If there is no traditional deity, and reality consists of the sum of all possibilies {plus} an impersonal creative actualization process, is there any reason to think evil could be limited relative to good? It appears such a limitation would have to result from either restricting the scope of metaphysical possibility itself, or having the creative process include a bias toward the good.

On the first strategy, perhaps one could reason from the existence of the moral facts of our world, including our own moral impulses, to a view that the metaphysical multiverse is skewed to the good. On the second strategy, creation is considered a positive force which leads to an ultimate bias toward good. I’d note that John Leslie, in his model of pantheism, inverted this equation by invoking the Platonic idea of the Good as a creative principle. I have to say, however, I didn’t find his arguments to be compelling upon first encountering them.

I’ll be continuing to work on this.

FQXi Question: Is Reality Digital or Analog?

2011-02-22T14:08:00.000-05:00

The latest FQXi Essay Contest – “Is Reality Digital or Analog” attracted a large number of submissions. As in past contests, there will likely be some insightful “diamonds in the rough”. I’ll be looking for these.

My own view is that the right answer is ‘both’, and that the two processes of quantum mechanics give us a clue to this. I would say that concrete reality is discrete (so “digital”), since it consists of a network of distinct measurement events (I think space-time is not fundamental, but emerges from the distribution of events). But events are actualized possibilities. So, reality also includes possibilities or propensities (like quantum systems between measurements), and it appears that these have a continuous (or analog) nature.

In addition to being inspired by an interpretation of QM (such as I’ve discussed many times before), this sort of view comports with a Whitehead-style metaphysics. I’ll mention again here a recent blog post by Stuart Kauffman which covered some of this ground in a nice way.

Americans Unwilling to Bar Heaven’s Gate

2011-02-08T15:12:00.003-05:00

Before leaving the topic of American Grace, I should mention the authors’ notably upbeat conclusion. They argue that despite the substantial religious divisions among Americans (both by denomination and between the most and least religious), the vast majority of Americans are very tolerant of each other.

They say the source of this high degree of tolerance is (simply) the high level of diversity among our extended family and friends. Due to a high degree of intermarriage and religious mixing (outlined by survey data), they surmise most people know an “Aunt Susan” or a “Neighbor Al” who is an undeniably good person of a different religious affiliation.

Admirably, Americans are very generous in allowing that people who don’t share their faith can still go to heaven. Putnam and Campbell report the percentages by affiliation of those who believe “people of other religions can go to heaven”(p.535): evangelicals affirm this 83% of the time, whereas all other groups are at 90% or more (Mormons are the highest at 98%).

But the authors note that this question could be ambiguous with regard to what the respondent conceives of when he or she hears “other religions”. So they asked Christians whether people “not of my faith, including non-Christians, can go to heaven”(p.537): Mormons stayed at 98%, Mainline Protestants and Catholics drop from the 90’s to the low 80’s, and Evangelicals drop to 54% (still much better than one might have guessed).

No Basis for Spirituality as a ‘Bridge’

2011-02-04T09:47:00.002-05:00

In an effort to improve the dialogue between scientists and science writers on the one hand and religious folks (who are sometimes science skeptics) on the other, it has been suggested that emphasizing a common spirituality might help. This would be possible because even in the case of atheists, the universe inspires feelings of awe and wonder which might be considered “spiritual”. Science journalist and author Chris Mooney made this case in a recent op-ed titled “Spirituality can bridge science-religion divide.”

Some of the religious survey data I’ve been looking at suggests this is not a well-founded recommendation.

As part of the data analysis used in their book American Grace, Robert E. Putnam and David Campbell construct a religiosity index, which combine answers to questions (from their “Faith Matters” survey) regarding strength in belief in one’s religion and God, importance of religion in one’s life, and frequency of attendance at services. They use this index to measure the correlation of religiosity with other opinions and demographic characteristics.

On page 21 they report: “Among rank-and-file Americans, spirituality and religiosity go hand in hand.” This is because among those who are the least religious only 4% describe themselves as "very spiritual", while 80% of the most religious do so (each grouping was about one fifth of the total).

At the same time, the Pew US Religious Landscape survey asked respondents two questions directly related to this topic: first, whether they frequently felt a “deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being”, and secondly whether they frequently felt a “deep sense of wonder about the universe.” With regard to the first question, there was a significantly greater percentage who responded affirmatively among those affiliated with the most devout denominations as compared to secular respondents. On the second question, however, there was no meaningful difference in agreement across groups (about 40% responded yes); I interpret this to mean that a sense of wonder at the universe does not act as a proxy for spirituality among the secular.

So, there is evidence here that Mooney's premise of a shared sense of spirituality is incorrect.

The ‘Impersonal Force’ is a Popular Choice

2011-02-02T14:21:00.000-05:00

In its Religious Landscape Survey, Pew asked Americans the following: “Do you believe in God or a Universal Spirit?” Then, for those who answered affirmatively, they asked this follow-up question:

“Which comes closest to your view of God? ‘God is a person with whom people can have a personal relationship’ or ‘God is an impersonal force’.”

I found the results here surprising. The 92% who replied yes to the first question broke down this way: 60% personal God, 25% impersonal force, 7% other/both. Here’s some of the breakdown by affiliation: 19% of Protestants believe in God as an impersonal force (13% of evangelicals); 29% of Catholics agree, as do 50% of Jews. It would appear many folks are not fully on board with their official theology. 35% of the nones believe in a God who is an impersonal force (representing half of those who reported a belief in God or a universal spirit).

As a check, I looked at data from the ARIS report, which is somewhat less dramatic. Here they asked a different question – no “impersonal force” option, per se. 70% affirmed a belief in a personal God, while 12% selected the option “there is a higher power but no personal God.” This question elicited a bit more in categories called “I’m not sure” and “don’t know/refuse” compared to similar options in the Pew survey (6% each).

Still, as someone who is broadly in the impersonal force/higher power camp, I was interested to learn I might have so much company.

What do the Nones Believe?

2011-01-31T15:43:00.002-05:00

Surveys show that the “nones” (those who report no religious affiliation) are a diverse group. The first observation often made is to note that only a small percentage self-identify as atheists or agnostics. For instance, Putnam and Campbell, on page 16 of American Grace, report that only 5 people in their 2006 “Faith Matters Survey” of 3,108 described themselves by either label. But it would be better to look at some larger surveys which addressed this question.

The Pew U.S Religious Landscape Survey of over 35,000 Americans in 2007 found 1.6% responding as atheist, 2.4% as agnostic, and 12.1% selecting “no particular religion” (total nones coming to 16.1%). In analyzing the “no particular religion” group, Pew looked at their responses to another survey question: “How important is religion in your life”? They found about half of this group answered “not at all important” or “not too important” while the rest answered “somewhat important” or “very important”. Pew decided to label these two groups as Secular unaffiliated (6.3% of the total) and Religious unaffiliated (5.8%) for the purpose of summarizing the results on other parts of the survey.

For one more comparison, the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (with 54,461 respondents) found 0.9% atheist, 0.7% agnostic (out of total nones of 15.0%). It should be noted, however, that the percentage of atheists/agnostics in the survey nearly doubled from a previous 2001 tabulation.

Beliefs

Pew asked respondents if they believed in “God or a universal spirit” expressed by level of certainty. 70% of nones answered affirmatively and 36% were “absolutely certain” (vs. 92% and 71% for all respondents). Even 21% of atheists and 55% of agnostics responded affirmatively (8% and 17% were “absolutely certain”!).

When responding to questions relating to specific religious beliefs and practices (fallibility of scripture, belief in the afterlife and miracles, frequency of prayer), nones generally respond at lower levels than the religiously affiliated (as would be expected), but still show significant degrees of agreement with some questions (55% completely or mostly agree with the statement “miracles still occur today as in ancient times vs. 79% for the total).

Looking through the data for the first time, it’s not obvious to me why many of the nones are nones. The authors of American Grace argue that politics are a big reason. But while the nones skew toward the left on political views, the picture here is again very diverse and there is substantial overlap with the religiously affiliated. Putnam and Campbell focus on some relatively large discrepancies in the younger age cohort to make the case for politics acting as a spur to growth in the nones, and this may be the case. Another factor surely is the growth in adoption of atheism as a worldview, but the numbers here are still small. At this point, it strikes me that the growth in the nones is still underexplained.

American Grace and the ‘Nones’

2011-01-25T10:35:00.003-05:00

I’m reading American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell. It’s an interesting and statistics-laden study of US religion over the past 50 years.

The book discusses a huge number of issues, trends, and cross-currents, and makes for thought-provoking reading. A topic which I find particularly interesting is the recent growth in the portion of Americans with no religious affiliation (sometimes referred to as the “nones”), and I was curious how the authors analyze the phenomenon.

The percentage of nones in the authors’ 2006 “Faith Matters Survey” of 3,108 Americans was 17%. This is very close to the 2007 (released 2008) Pew US Religious Landscape Survey (a sample of over 35,000), which put the percentage at 16.1%. Putnam and Campbell take note of the growth of category in recent years. Using longer-term data from the General Social Survey, they note that the percentage of nones hovered at about 7% during the 70’s and 80’s, but then began a steady march toward 17% beginning in the 90’s. The trend is particularly acute among younger people: the increase in the 18-29 year-old cohort over this period went from just over 10% to over 25% (the Pew survey also pegged the 2007 percentage of 18-29 nones at 25%). To be clear on this point, younger Americans have always been less religiously inclined than older ones, but the recent generational cohorts are much less religious so than previous cohorts of young people.

Putnam and Campbell construct a plausible narrative which explains (at least in part) some of the biggest trends in the last 50 years, including increased religious polarization and the recent rise of the nones. Here’s a one paragraph distillation from the first chapter:

“The nation’s religious polarization has not been an inexorable process of smoothly unfolding change. Rather, it has resulted from three seismic societal shocks, the first of which was the sexually libertine 1960’s. This tumultuous period then produced a prudish aftershock of growth in conservative religion, especially evangelicalism, and an even more pronounced cultural presence for American evangelicals, most noticeably in the political arena. As theological and political conservatism began to converge, religiously inflected issues emerged on the national political agenda, and “religion” became increasingly associated with the Republican Party. The first aftershock was followed by an opposite reaction, a second aftershock, which is still reverberating. A growing number of Americans, especially young people, have come to disavow religion. For many, their aversion to religion is rooted in unease with the association between religion and conservative politics. If religion equals Republican, then they have decided that religion is not for them. (p.3)”

I think this story makes pretty good sense, although clearly (and as the authors frequently say) there exist a huge number of caveats and cross-currents within the larger trends. They do support their highlighting of sexual concerns as a key factor using survey data: opinions about pre-marital sex provided one of the most dramatic demarcations between the 1960’s coming-of-age boomers and previous generations, while opinions about homosexuality provide one of the clearest demarcations between the highly religious and the nones today.

Is this a good explanation of the rise of the nones? I would like to hear from those who disagree with this narrative to test my own level of confidence in it (none of the book reviews I’ve read so far – NYT, WSJ, WaPo, CS Monitor-- took issue with the broad outline). The idea that the expression of values in the political domain could drive religious affiliation (rather than the other way around) was something I hadn’t thought much about before.

I’m interested in looking more closely at the nones as a group, and there’s a fair amount of data available. American Grace has some additional discussion, while the Pew surveys asked a large number of questions which shed light on their opinions and beliefs. There was also a survey called the American Religious Identification Survey in 2008 which spun off a report (pdf) on the nones.

Don’t Assume Quantum Physics Doesn’t Matter

2011-01-11T13:40:00.006-05:00

85 years after the formulation of quantum mechanics, it is still often assumed that distinctively quantum phenomena have no role to play in explaining life or mind. I think this assumption is unjustified.

Clearly scientific models have done an excellent job across a variety of fields (including molecular biology and bio-chemistry) with no need to invoke quantum effects like superposition and entanglement. It’s almost as if nature was tempting us to believe we live in an essentially classical world -- with quantum physics safely relegated to the laboratory. But now we’re beginning to learn about the exploitation of quantum effects in biology. While we already had an in-depth understanding of photosynthesis, it turns out that the process is made much more efficient by utilizing quantum coherence. I think this example shows that progress in quantum biology is made challenging by the technological sophistication needed to detect such processes -- but it’s also true that we won’t discover them if we assume they don’t exist. Hopefully recent results will spur many new research programs in this area.

We can try to speculate in advance of the science: when done well this can suggest avenues for research (I think Stuart Kauffman, the subject of the last post, does a fine job of this). But I wonder if the ubiquity of a philosophical materialism seemingly inspired by classical physics holds us back. For example it’s surprising to me that scientifically-oriented philosophers would still defend the thesis that the human brain/body system is not only (for all practical purposes) classical but deterministic, despite our grounding in quantum physics. For example Daniel Dennett, in his book Freedom Evolves, argues for determinism and compatibilism about free will. In doing so he assumes at the outset that the details of microphysics do not matter until proven otherwise. I thought that was backwards: why wouldn’t natural selection exploit the indeterminism of quantum mechanics and its other distinctive features? The goal should be to figure out how and to what extent. (It’s also possible QM was needed to “get off the ground” – some ideas toward solving the problem of the origin of life suggest this).

Now I know part of the problem is that many of those who would invoke QM to explain the human mind in particular engage in rampant speculation or worse. In particular we are afflicted with some popular “new-age” authors who have an unfortunate propensity to link quantum mechanics to wishful thinking about paranormal abilities and the supernatural. This clearly taints the topic in the eyes of many. But there’s a false dichotomy at work here: the fact that QM fails to give us magical powers doesn’t make it irrelevant. On the topic of free will, a false dichotomy also seems to prevail: it’s true we have evidence that the folk conception of free will is deeply flawed, but it doesn’t follow that our brain/body systems have no freedom.

While the evidence is preliminary and the effects may be subtle, I predict that 85 years from now it will be well understood that non-trivial quantum effects play an important explanatory role in life and mind.

Stuart Kauffman Blog Series

2010-12-30T12:45:00.010-05:00

Stuart Kauffman has been writing some interesting posts at NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog. Kauffman is a biologist, author and "big thinker", and his latest thoughts are about the possible role of quantum mechanical processes in life and mind. He also has some philosophical speculations related to these ideas.

The latest series of posts takes as a launching point recent theoretical and experimental results which show that it is possible for an open quantum system which has decohered into a classical system (for-all-practical-purposes or FAPP) to re-cohere. Also there are preliminary indications that such behaviour may occur in a biological context (see recent photosynthesis research): therefore this is new science which might have applications to understanding mind. The philosophical side to this is that he interprets QM to show that there is an ontological status to possibilia or potentialities in addition to concrete actualities; furthermore the border between these two realms might be where the interesting action takes place (the 'Poised Realm'). He speculates that the ability of systems to repeatedly move between quantum and FAPP classical status might lead to "non-algorithmic" processes. If the human brain utilizes these, it might then constitute a "trans-turing system".

Now all this is alot to digest, and the fearless speculation coupled with invented jargon can be off-putting at first. But I like his ideas and I would recommend readers take a look. Here are the links (Kauffman also interacts quite a bit with commentors, which is nice).

Part One: Beyond Einstein and Schrodinger?
Part Two: The Quantum Mechanics of Closed Quantum Systems
Part Three: The Quantum Mechanics of Open Quantum Systems
Part Four: The 'Poised Realm' is Real
Part Five: The Non-Algorithmic Trans-Turing System
Part Six: We Seem to be Zombies
Part Seven: How Mind can Act Acausally on Brain?

Update [5 January 2011]: I'll add new links as they come. In the latest post, Kauffman discusses the interpretation of QM. He says that after 85 years, we need to bite the bullet on a less economical ontology. We need to recognize that there are real possibilities as well as real actuals and the quantum measurement event is the actualization process which bridges these two realms.
Part Eight: A Hypothesis: Res Potentia and Res Extensa Linked By Measurement

Update [29 January 2011]: Why consciousness might be associated with quantum measurement events.
Part Nine: What is Consciousness? A Hypothesis

Update [30 January 2011]: Looking for the neural correlates of consciousness in measurement events at (entangled) synapses.
Part Ten: Standing the Brain on its Head

Update [31 January 2011]: Last in the series for now:
Part Eleven: Can We Have a Responsible Free Will?

Experience and Causation

2010-12-17T13:39:00.004-05:00

I’m re-reading sections of Gregg Rosenberg’s A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. What’s brilliant about the work is that it starts with the Russellian insight about the mind-body dilemma (discussed here) and then “ups the ante” by linking consciousness to other metaphysical puzzles – including those of those of causation and the composition of objects.

Here’s a rough table listing a general feature of the world and the aspect of consciousness it matches up with.

Feature of Nature/Aspect of Consciousness
Intrinsic Properties/Qualitative Content (“Qualia”)
Causation/Experiential Flow
Properties bundled into Objects/Subjective Unity

The world is panpsychist in the sense that the aspects of consciousness are really ubiquitous features of nature as seen from our particular point of view.

Let me say a few words about causation:

With regard to Russell, in The Analysis of Matter he characterized the world as a network of causal events. He describes mental percepts as causal events we participate in, while physical theories are models of causal events we don’t necessarily participate in, but infer via their effects. His proposal of neutral monism is simply based on the fact that we don’t have a reason to think these categories of events are essentially different.

But while physics clearly seeks to describe the causal structure of the world, Russell doesn’t explicitly criticize physical theories for their lack of a full account of causality (unless I missed it, which is very possible). But it is pretty clear that while physics models the causal structure of the world, physics does not provide a theory of causation. Rosenberg discusses this fact in his chapter 9. (Note this critique parallels the Russellian observation that physics doesn’t provide a full ontological account of properties).

Physical theories as we have known them are compatible with several theories about causality, with philosophers debating their relative merits. Dynamic equations link states with points in time, but they don’t speak to how one state gives rise to the next. (Note they are also typically symmetric with regard to time’s direction and don’t explain the flow of time.) Hume would say they are only describing regularities, others might say they are describing causal laws, still others that there are causal connections between dispositions and their manifestations, etc.

Rosenberg proposes his own theory of causation and proposes that conscious experience is linked to the work being done moving from one event to the next. (See my original review of the book here).

Russell on QM and the Brain

2010-12-02T12:41:00.001-05:00

Since I’m quoting Bertrand Russell these days: check out the following passage from late in The Analysis of Matter. It’s hard to believe he wrote this in 1927.

Russell is discussing how physics seems to imply a universal, causally closed determinism which encompasses the mental. But then he says this:

This, however, is perhaps not quite the last word on the subject. We have seen that, on the basis of physics itself, there may be limits to physical determinism. We know of no laws as to when a quantum transaction will take place or a radio-active atom will break down. We know fairly well what will happen if anything happens, and we know statistical averages, which suffice to determine macroscopic phenomena. But if mind and brain are causally interconnected, very small cerebral differences must be correlated with noticeable mental differences. Thus we are perhaps forced to descend into the region of quantum transactions, and to desert the macroscopic level where statistical averages obtain. Perhaps the electron jumps when it likes; perhaps the minute phenomena in the brain which make all the difference to mental phenomena belong to the region where physical laws no longer determine definitely what must happen. This, of course, is merely a speculative possibility; but it interposes a veto upon materialistic dogmatism. It may be that the progress of physics will decide the matter one way or another; for the present, as in so many other matters, the philosopher must be content to await the progress of science. (p.393)

It has been a long wait, but quantum biology is finally emerging as a research field, and I predict it will have implications for mind (even if less dramatic than the new age crowd would picture).

Quotes on the Key Mind-Body Insight

2010-11-29T10:48:00.004-05:00

A very simple insight serves to clear away a common confusion regarding the mind-body problem. The great success of the physical sciences has led many to assume that the formal descriptions contained in scientific theories also provide a metaphysical guide to the essential character of natural phenomena. The insight is that this leap is unwarranted, and therefore the metaphysical thesis of scientific materialism (or physicalism) is founded on a flawed conception of the natural world. To the extent dualists share this conception of the “body” side of the problem, they share the mistake as well.

It’s important to stress that this is not a critique of science. It is a critique of a metaphysical position inspired by science. All science begins with the observations of researchers, but the power and leverage comes from the fact that theories are formulated and then tested by the community, resulting in the removal of potential subjective biases of individuals, and the establishment of a theory which can be used by anyone to describe and predict phenomena. And of course mathematics has turned out to be extremely well suited to modeling nature with remarkable accuracy.

These theories remain models, however. They are formal and abstract. They are mathematical (often geometric) or quantitative. They describe structures and relations, and extrinsic properties revealed in measurements and interactions. What’s the problem? It is that the models do not encompass the intrinsic character of phenomena, but only extrinsic features. Why think the objects or events of the universe have such a thing as “intrinsic character”? First, it's not clear a purely mathematical world is coherent. But the obvious answer (too obvious?) is that our own experience in the world directly acquaints us with intrinsic qualitative content. While it is entirely appropriate to ignore this when doing physics, it cannot be forgotten when doing metaphysics.

Importantly, one doesn’t need to think our conscious experience gives us some special knowledge hidden from science. On the contrary, it seems clear the contents of our consciousness can be fraught with confusions and errors. The argument only needs one to acknowledge that our experience has a qualitative and intrinsic (subjective) character.

So what’s the correct metaphysics? At this point a lot of work remains to be done, but grasping this insight is a crucial first step. What follows are quotes from philosophers, whose formulations can press the point home much better than I have done here. I’ll start with Bertrand Russell, who is prominently associated with the argument and whose name is often attached when related ideas are discussed in contemporary philosophy (e.g. “Russellian theory of mind”, or “Russellian monism”)

Bertrand Russell

"Physics, in itself, is exceedlingly abstract, and reveals only certain mathematical characteristics of the material with which it deals."(Analysis of Matter p.10)

"The events which are not perceived by any person who can communicate with me, supposing they have been rightly inferred, have a causal connection with percepts, and are inferred by means of this connection. Much is known about their structure, but nothing about their quality." (p.388)

“Mathematical physics contains such a superstructure of theory that its basis in observation is obscured.” (Human Knowledge p.41)

“There is here a peculiarity: physics never mentions percepts except when it speaks of empirical verification of laws; but if its laws are not concerned with percepts, how can percepts verify them?” (p.219)

Alfred North Whitehead

"There is an error; but it is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete. It is an example of what I will call the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’. This fallacy is the occasion of great confusion in philosophy." (Science and the Modern World, p.51)

"The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter, with its simple location in space and time, on the other hand mind, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact.
Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who accept matter and mind on an equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind insider matter, and those who put matter inside mind." (p.55)

Thomas Nagel

"The understanding of the physical world has been expanded enormously with the aid of theories and explanations that use concepts not tied to the specifically human perceptual viewpoint.
…
Powerful as it has proven to be, this bleached-out physical conception of objectivity encounters difficulties if it is put forward as the method for a complete understanding of reality." (The View from Nowhere, pps.14-15)

David Chalmers

"The strategy to which I am most drawn stems from the observation that physical theory only characterizes its basic entities relationally, in terms of their causal and other relations to other entities.
...
There is only one class of intrinsic, non-relational property with which we have any direct familiarity, and that is the class of phenomenal properties." (The Conscious Mind p.153)

Gregg Rosenberg

"This pivotal shift from thinking about matter as something qualitative to thinking about it as something quantitative drew a revolutionary line that has sharply differentiated modern from pre-modern thinking. In this book I argue that Descartes’ error, and the error that still haunts us, is that we have come to believe that this revolutionary view of matter is all there is to matter." (A Place for Consciousness, p.8)

C.B.Martin

"Relations within the most intimate parts of nature also get their expression (and, it is tempting to think, their full expression) in terms of algorithms and mathematical formulae.
Let there be a warning: 'This way lies Pythagoreanism.' We must see that physics has tended to be, in Locke's phrase, a 'partial'consideration' qua the measures of quantities and not let it become a denial and an expungement of the properties for and of which the quantities have a measure." (The Mind in Nature p.74)

Galen Strawson

“It may be added, with Russell, that although physics appears to tell us a great deal about certain of the general structural or mathematical characteristics of the physical, it fails to give us any real insight into the nature of whatever it is that has these characteristics –
…
For many take this [the ‘mind-body problem’] to be the problem of how mental phenomena can be physical phenomena given what we already know about the nature of the physical. And this is the great mistake of our time. The truth is that we have no good reason to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that mental or experiential phenomena are physical phenomena.” (“Realistic Materialist Monism” from Towards a Science of Consciousness III, edited by Hameroff, Kaszniak, and Chalmers, p. 23-4)

Comments on Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape

2010-11-06T14:29:00.005-04:00

In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Sam Harris argues for moral realism, and a version of consequentialism in which the proper target for moral concern is the maximization of human well-being. Furthermore, he says the substance of well-being consists in the qualities of conscious experience, and modern neuroscience is giving us the tools to assess conscious states: hence answering moral questions is properly within the domain of science.

Harris endeavors in the early parts of the book to anticipate some complaints and potential misunderstandings. He says: “I am not suggesting we are guaranteed to resolve every moral controversy through science. (p.3)” But he insists there are answers in principle even if not always in practice. When thinking about morals, many seem to make a mistake in thinking that persistent disagreements and difficulties mean there are no correct answers in principle: Harris persuasively points out that we don’t seem to make this assumption in other analogous contexts (e.g. health, economics). He also thinks there may be more than one way to maximize well-being (multiple peaks on a “landscape”). Finally, he is not saying any of this will be easy!

Along the way, he argues against the idea that facts and values are in different domains: values are features of conscious states, and these are themselves natural facts. The lack of separation between facts and values may also supported by neuroscientific evidence, particularly studies of how we form beliefs.

Because this is a book by Sam Harris, we also get plenty of pointed criticism of traditional religion. This time, however, it is coupled with indignation toward secular liberals who express various degrees of moral relativism or anti-realism.

Critique

I think Harris is on the right track: I’m a moral realist and I think he’s got the right target for moral concern: the qualities of conscious experience.

I concur with one criticism made of Harris, which is that he should concede he needs more than science to build his foundation. He can acknowledge that this is a philosophical project, and argue (persuasively I think) that our moral reasoning will be much more successful now that we can leverage modern scientific tools and techniques. As I set out below, I think the project would also benefit from an explicit metaphysical grounding.

But first, let me mention some criticism of Harris I don’t agree with. Moral philosophy is an incredibly complicated subject and there are extreme practical challenges faced by any sort of consequentialism. But I don’t think it is an adequate critique to throw out examples of these moral dilemmas and difficulties. The review by Kwame Anthony Appiah fit this pattern: he emphasizes the challenges that historically have faced philosophical utilitarianism/consequentialism (a sentence begins: “Even if you accept the basic premise…). But the point should be to seek some consensus on the principles, and then form a coherent research program for tackling the complicated practical questions with the aid of modern tools.

Appiah also questions (as does Jean Kazez, in her review) whether the moral relativism that Harris targets is all that common. They believe most secular liberals are more likely to be moral realists. This may be true if you conduct a survey, but I would assert that holding to a vague sense of moral realism that lacks a clear foundation for where moral facts reside is a poor backdrop for making moral arguments. A case in point was found in my post about cosmologist Sean M. Carroll’s responses to Harris, where Carroll’s inability to locate a ground for morality in either natural facts or the supernatural left him without a convincing way to refute Harris’ thesis.

This points to a broader issue. Most secular thinkers tend to hold to a variety of scientific materialism which doesn’t have a clear home for conscious experience: the idea is that third person descriptions of brain states, which can be explained ultimately in terms of physics, are what constitute the facts. This stance strands our subjective, qualitative experience outside of nature, and this leads in turn to a difficulty in seeing values and morals as truly real. Harris is arguing that values and morals are natural facts like all the others, but he isn’t putting forth a metaphysical picture which backs this up. I think this is what leads to differences between him and other materialists on this topic. Religious folks, of course, are more confident they have a foundation for morals in their embrace of the supernatural.

I would argue that Harris would benefit from adopting an explicitly expanded version of naturalism which treats first-person experience as a fundamental feature of reality.

Book recommendation:

I recommend the book because I think the argument Harris puts forth is one people should hear about and grapple with. One quibble: I had listened to his TED talk and read his essays on the topic beforehand, and the book didn’t actually flesh out the thesis all that much more. It was padded with some off-topic material (some of which you’ll enjoy if you liked his previous books).

Abilities vs. Dispositions

2010-10-10T11:47:00.006-04:00

John Maier (of ANU) does research on the philosophy of abilities. I read his SEP article on abilities, and a draft paper entitled “An Agential Theory of Dispositions.” In the latter, he argues that dispositional properties (also known as dispositions, and sometimes powers) can be analyzed in terms of agents' abilities. The idea is that claims about dispositions in the world are a “projection of agent-centric facts about manipulability onto a world whose nature, considered in itself, is exhausted by the categorical.” Since I have been interested in ontological accounts which place dispositions in a central, fundamental role (see list of posts below), I was interested to see Maier’s argument for this alternative proposal.

Some philosophers have argued that dispositions can explain abilities. Maier agrees that there is a deep connection between them, but that it is the abilities which are more fundamental.

Maier notes that there are problems with reducing dispositions to categorical properties, as has been argued by philosophers like C.B.Martin. He briefly recapitulates the difficulties in the strategy of using counterfactuals as the reductive tool. Likewise, he then notes problems which arise when attempting a counterfactual analysis of abilities. So we have two kinds of things which would appear to lend themselves to a counterfactual analysis, which is ultimately unsuccessful. So, one might turn to analyzing dispositions and abilities in terms of one another.

Looking at the strategy of reducing abilities to dispositions, Maier identifies some difficulties (although he doesn’t present these as conclusive at this point). The analysis would seem to have trouble accounting with some features we associate with abilities, involving the notion of “trying” and the passive and active aspects of an agent’s abilities.

Still, the commonalities between the two notions motivates Maier to explore a way to convert dispositional talk to ability talk and back again (e.g. “an object has a certain disposition just in case the ability to apply a certain stimulus to that object determines the ability to elicit a certain manifestation from that object.”) After considering and defending against some objections to this biconditional analysis, Maier turns back to the question of order of priority.

He argues that the better case is for abilities as the prior notion. In addition to noting the challenges dispositions might face in explaining some of the subtleties involved with our understanding of abilities (noted earlier), Maier is persuaded by the fact that if dispositions are analyzed in terms of abilities of agents it helps explain how dispositions fit into the world, and also why we (as paradigm agents) are interested in them.

I liked this paper and thought Maier’s drawing out of the connections between abilities and dispositions to be valuable. I disagreed with his conclusion, however.

I find Maier’s arguments for the priority of abilities are modest compared to an “elephant” in the room which weighs against the idea: abilities presuppose the existence of agents, and we have no account of these. In fact, the unspoken but presupposed dualism of agents and non-agents is deeply unsatisfying. If, on the other hand, dispositions are fundamental, they can be posited as the ubiquitous building blocks of the world with at least the potential for explaining agency and mind, as in the work of Martin or John Heil.

List of Dispositions/Powers posts (in chronological order).

George Molnar and the Powers That Be

Pan-Intentionality

Powers and Property Dualism

Modal Problems with the Theory of Powers

John Heil Gets Very Close

Suarez on Quantum Propensities

Notes on C.B.Martin's The Mind in Nature

Power Holism

Powers vs. Humean Supervenience

Philosophers Gently Debating

2010-10-01T09:43:00.002-04:00

Philosophy TV is a welcome addition to the web, and I look forward to watching more installments.

I watched Craig Callender and Jonathan Schaffer debate whether metaphysical debates have substance/merit, given recent criticism from other quarters, particularly from philosphers of science. Callender took the skeptical position while Schaffer took the defense. (I posted on a Callender paper on this topic here; a post which touches on some of Schaffer's metaphysical interests is here).

It was a thoughtful discussion, but both gentlemen were so exceedingly polite and deferential, that the points of disagreement took a long time to bring out. Schaffer had a bit easier time being the defender of metaphysics (merelogical examples were the focus): partly this was because Callender doesn't himself consider all metaphysics to be irrelevent, and also because it is very hard to have a detailed account of what's good and what's bad. For instance, asserting that a debate is too unconnected to science isn't sufficient, since we don't know that the debates couldn't have relevance in the future.

Despite an hour and a half, they didn't get to discuss the key issue of whether our modal intuitions should be considered reliable. Anyway, I'll be checking in on other episodes.

Necessary Being(s)

2010-09-17T12:40:00.000-04:00

I think there’s a good case to be made for a necessary being (NB), driven by an argument from contingency. But what else can we say about the NB?

I think a lot about the nature of this NB, and have been oscillating between different conceptions. At one pole is a conception of a chaotic and indifferent mega-cosmos which contains every non-contradictory thing as an actual or latent part. Then, I consider incrementally “tamer” NB’s which are shaped by additional necessary features.

To start, it certainly seems plausible that a broad range of logical and mathematical truths are necessary. Perhaps all reality must contain some minimum degree of order, so it can be grasped by reason (although I don’t see why our local physical laws should be thought specifically necessary). Much more controversially, my study of the mind/body problem leads me to suspect all concrete existence is necessarily experiential or proto-experiential in character. And, going further on a limb, where there is experience, there is value: perhaps value and morals are somehow grounded in the nature of the necessary being.

But this project of “taming Chaos” gets increasingly problematic.

Coming at this from the other direction, most people who posit an NB are theists who believe in a personal God with various attributes who sometimes acts as an agent within the world. I don’t see right now how I’d ever get to this conception.

What seems most clear is that the NB must be the maximum instance of existence. Any more specific or idiosyncratic depiction of God runs the risk of being inconsistent with this. (I thought Mark Johnston, in his book Saving God, is good on this point, when he argues that if God is the “highest one”, any devotion to a more specific and hence lesser deity can be seen as idolatry.) This is where “divine simplicity” breaks down, too: the only arguably “simple” NB is the metaphysically maximal one.

Once you layer God with attributes which are derived from human properties, and most obviously if you make God an actor in an earthly drama (rather than him “in whom we live and move and have our being”), it seems clear you’re no longer talking about the NB.

Comments welcome -- this is difficult stuff!

GPPC: New Links

2010-09-15T15:34:00.002-04:00

The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium, a non-profit organization formed by area colleges and universities, has a new web address, and also now can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.

The purpose of the GPPC is to promote philosophical inquiry, foster cooperation among philosophers in the region, and also share the insights and methods of philosophy with the larger public.

The site has information on several conferences and programs scheduled for the 2010-2011 academic year, as well as discussion groups, and will include information about other events at member schools. Please check it out. I'm involved in providing support to the GPPC; you can contact me if you're interested in learning more about this.

Is the Universe 2-Dimensional at Short Distances?

2010-09-13T15:12:00.001-04:00

We don't have a theory of quantum gravity, but we have a number of research programs on the case. Steve Carlip has a paper (The Small Scale Structure of Spacetime) which discusses an intriguing fact: many of these otherwise disparate programs display or imply the idea that our familiar four dimensional (3 spacelike + 1 timelike) spacetime may be two dimensional (1+1) at high energies/short distances.

If 4 dimensional spacetime is an emergent phase, and the more fundamental physics is comprised of elementary, causally linked, quantum bits of some sort, you might expect this kind of dimensionality.

Here is the physics arxiv blog article on the paper.

Comments on Meillassoux

2010-08-31T14:35:00.003-04:00

I enjoyed Quentin Meillassoux’s book (please see my prior post): it is creative and thought-provoking philosophy at its best. I can’t endorse Q.M.’s quest for a “speculative materialism”, but I found his views on the central topics of contingency and necessity (hyper-chaos!) very interesting and challenging to my own opinions.

1. Why Materialism?

I came to Q.M.’s discussion of “ancestrality” and its challenge to “correlationism” from a different perspective: I don’t agree that the right goal involves purging mind from nature, thereby elevating the scientific account as such to truth. (I’m actually not even sure why he wants to be a materialist, as I’ll explain below). I don’t think “correlationism” is completely wrong in that I think subjective points of view are indeed ineliminable aspects of our world. I note ancestrality poses no prima facie problem for Russellian monism and panexperientialism. But I thought Q.M. made excellent points in his critique of most philosophers’ failure to provide an account of the compelling nature of scientific facts, and the trap of centering reality on human consciousness and/or language. He draws a persuasive connection between these problems and philosophy’s slide into deflationism/anti-realism (and sometimes postmodernism) which has hurt its relevance.

Now, I really liked his exploration of contingency and proposal of a hyper-chaos model. Q.M. views facticity (the absence of a reason for something) as a kind of universal solvent that ultimately undermines any view of what’s necessary other than contingency itself. Interestingly he shares with his “correlationist” opponents the rejection of arguments for any necessarily existing entity or entities. And it is certainly true that many or most modern philosophers reject not only classic arguments for the existence for God – but also broadly reject the possibility of engaging in metaphysics to reach conclusions regarding the necessity of logical truths, mathematics, physical laws, morals, etc.

With regard to the “correlationist” philosophers, Q.M. uses the fact that they themselves might agree that subjectivity itself can't be demonstrated to be necessary as ammunition against them. If even this can be doubted --and note a correlationist would tend to argue this in refuting an absolute idealist, for example-- then the correlationist subject-object “circle” is not necessary either. It turns out then, that, in rejecting absolute idealism, the correlationist has endorsed the ubiquitous scope of facticity. And, ironically, this is evidence to Q.M. that facticity itself can be elevated into something absolute and necessary (“factiality”). (Note he sees this as a necessary principle, not an entity).

Now, here is where I pause to wonder why Q.M. is a self-described materialist. He believes he has derived that things-in-themselves do exist (as contingent facts), but even if he has shown they exist independent of human minds, he hasn’t ruled out that they might have aspects of both mind and matter, or that perhaps facts might be somehow neutral with respect to those categories.

2. My “well-behaved” chaos vs. Hyper-chaos

But let me get back to the issue of necessarily existing entities.

A. Has he really shown necessarily existing entities are impossible?
B. Couldn’t hyperchaos be a necessary entity?

Now, in the absence of a knock-down argument for the necessary existence of something, why would someone believe in its truth? Well, some assume rationality can reach beyond our world and conceive of what is possible, and that this can lead us to map what is metaphysically possible and what is necessary. There are two problems: first, some disagree with this rationalist premise; second, people disagree regarding what’s conceivably possible. In fact, the widespread disagreement can be taken as evidence for the faultiness of the premise.

Now, Q.M. doesn’t offer new arguments against rationalism, he just assumes that the forces of modern anti-rationalism are on firm ground, and then he turns to his project of finding (ironically) a new absolute in the fact that everything can be questioned and found lacking a reason for its being.

But I’m not ready to concede that rationalism is dead just because there exist a preponderance of modern philosophers who think so (they could be wrong). I’ve argued there is a viable modern foundation for rationalism, inspired by the discovery that indeterminism is true of our world (see recent posts here and here).

In fact, I have been entertaining a model for a necessarily existing entity which is a chaotic ground of all metaphysical possibilities (including variation in physical law) – with the creation of the actual an intrinsically chancy process. (see for instance my posts on Timothy O'Connor's book). But my chaos has been “shaped” via rationalism: I thought certain conclusions, such as the fact that logical and mathematical truths were necessary, and that actual events are always experiential events, were justified by reason. And I have been willing to entertain the possibility that other truths might be necessary, too (morals/values?).

But Meillassoux has done a good job making me question my capacity to reach such conclusions. For every necessity I propose he might assert there is no way to be sure, and thus the only sure thing is (“super-”) contingency.

And yet I note that he immediately follows his conclusion of supercontingency and hyper-chaos with a derivation of the principle of non-contradiction, which, as it is based on conceptual analysis, seems pretty rationalist. And he hopes to derive other such conclusions, involving mathematics for instance. At this point I start to wonder if his project is very different from mine (albeit more sophisticated). And by the way can’t I define hyper-chaos as the set* of all non-contradictory possibilities and refer to this as a necessarily existing entity?

I’ll stop there. There’s lots to think about, and “hyper-chaos” is definitely haunting my thoughts, thanks to Q.M.

* I assume he'd say that we can't sum the possibilities because they are "transfinite", hence untotalizable, given his arguments in Ch.4.

Meillassoux: A Foundation of Absolute Contingency

2010-08-30T14:10:00.001-04:00

I thank Allen for recommending that I read Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Meillassoux is an innovative thinker on a philosophical mission. His goal is to re-establish a secure foundation for our scientific knowledge, lacking in modern philosophy, without returning to an outmoded metaphysics of the past. The key for him will be taking the notion of contingency to the limit. If there is truly no reason for anything (including physical laws), then, rather than seeing this as a limitation, we should embrace this as the one positive absolute truth on which we can build our foundation.

Meillassoux (hereafter Q.M.) is a French philosopher; the English translation is provided by Ray Brassier. (A talk given in England by Q.M. which offers an overview of his work is here -- however, in my case I needed to read the book for things to sink in.) In some ways, Q.M.’s writing betrays a bit of what I think of as “continental style” – including some tendency toward the grandiose, and an unfortunate penchant for creating new terms. However, the content transcends any intra-academic boundaries – he is dealing with big philosophical questions of perennial interest, and indeed he doesn’t invoke the work of any postwar philosopher with the exception of a shout-out to Alain Badiou (who also wrote the preface).

Below are my notes on the book; I’ll add some further thoughts of my own in a follow-up post.

Chapter 1 (“Ancestrality”) presents the path which Q.M. took to apprehending what he sees as the biggest problem in post-Kantian philosophy. Science endeavors to describe, in mathematical terms, the phenomena of nature, and takes the stance that what is being described are the things in themselves. The whole arc of modern philosophy, however, has been variations on the theme that we can’t escape the circle of subjectivity: what science is about, at best, is inter-subjective agreement about the outcomes of its observations and valid inferences drawn from them. What is being discussed is not things-in-themselves, but, depending on the philosopher, some description of a subject-object interaction or interface: Q.M. calls this general stance “correlationism” -- it is opposed to naïve realism. Post-Kantian philosophy sees no way to describe phenomena from the outside, or “objectively”; there is no path to the real-in-itself. Consciousness and language are always directed to the outside, but they don’t reach it.

But here is what fascinates Q.M.: science manages to talk about dates and events which predate humans, and life itself! He calls this “ancestrality”. How do we think about this kind of fact? Absent positing an absolute God or Mind which was around to perceive things, modern philosophers would have to say that what scientists are describing is still not the real-in-itself, but how it is “for humans.” They can’t accept the facts outright, given correlationism. So it causes a conundrum if you ask the correlationist outright: “Did the earth form 4.5 billion years ago or not?” If the philosopher rejects the naïve realist stance, he/she must reject it completely. And this is a problem for Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy: the distinction between these philosophies and old-fashioned idealism vanishes upon interrogation. For the Kantian position, note that even transcendental idealism implies the existence of a point-of-view. It is positioned in the world. So we can still pose the problem of ancestrality. Q.M. says that modern philosophy shares this problem broadly, whether it is the focus on human consciousness of the continental phenomenologists, or the language focus which has dominated a good deal of analytic philosophy.

What is at stake here is scientific truth in general – the case of these ancestral facts, particularly in their mathematical formulation, just brings this into high relief. We use mathematical science to go beyond what is given to us in experience: how is this possible?

Chapter 2 “Metaphysics, Fideism, Speculation”

So, what to do? How do we think about a reality which exists even if we do not? We can’t go back to Descartes and other pre-Kantians: although by reexamining the turn from Descartes and the rationalists we might get some clues. Q.M. discusses the principle of sufficient reason and the ontological arguments, and concludes these paths to an absolute reality can’t work for us. We need an absolute foundation, but because the critiques of these earlier efforts were sound we can’t return to those kinds of necessarily existing entities – that ship has sailed.

Now, a “strong” correlationist, unlike Kant, maintains that we can’t be sure of any necessity – of laws, of logic, etc. We’re not sure they’re not necessary either, we just don’t know. Q.M. refers to this as having the property of “facticity”. But if we can’t even be sure of logical necessities, doesn’t this mean “anything goes”? Q.M thinks that this kind of philosophy, where even our reasoning power is ungrounded, leads to an inability to criticize the irrational – inadvertently opening the door for “faith-based” or “mystical” paths to the absolute.

The philosopher is left with truth as inter-subjective agreement as grounds for science at best, or if you deny even this possibility, you are left with an even emptier post-modernism. This has been a path to the marginalization of philosophy.

Many philosophers have thought criticizing metaphysics goes hand in hand with debunking religion, but this is wrong. Philosophers need to recover some modicum of the absolute in order to be in a position to criticize religion effectively.

Chapter 3 “The Principle of Factiality”

Q.M. asks: can we discover a truth underlying this very principle of facticity (whereby laws of nature, etc. are indeterminate)? But how could we turn an inability into a positive thing – a new absolute? Q.M. proposes that the defeat of the principle of sufficient reason can be turned into something positive. He proposes that the lack of grounding of our knowledge is not just a result of our limitation, our finitude; it is a governing truth of the world – that it is without reason. The PSR is not just wrong, it is backwards. (This is the central pivot point of the book.)

And, Q.M. argues, this conclusion cannot itself be subjected to the correlationist-deflationist circle—that it is just a truth “for us” -- that would elevate the correlationist principle to dogma. Our new principle says “it is absolutely necessary that every entity might not exist.” It is a principle of unreason. It is a greater contingency – for it applies to everything, not just material objects in our world, but all laws as well. Our absolute is a principle of hyper-chaos.

Wait now: what happened to our project from Chapter 1 of finding a way to ground the mathematical descriptions of science? We have replaced ignorance of the thing-in-itself with positive knowledge of chaos which seems no better. What can we do with this hyper-chaos to make it useful? What follows from it?

Q.M. believes we can derive important things. First restate the principle in two parts as follows: 1. a necessary entity is impossible; 2. the contingency of the entity is necessary. Now, Q.M. concludes that a contradictory entity cannot be contingent, because it can’t become anything else, and something has to be able to change to be contingent. So this allows us to derive from the principles above the principle of non-contradiction (not in thought, but ontologically). Also, we can derive the principle that the things-in-themselves do exist. For facticity to be true, there has to be something which exists for it to apply to. Q.M. calls “factiality” the speculative essence of facticity. It alone transcends being a (contingent) fact.

Now, having derived the (Kantian) principles of non-contradiction and the reality of the in-itself, the next step will be to try to derive the (Cartesian) reality of the mathematical descriptions of the in-itself.

Chapter 4 “Hume’s Problem”

In this chapter, Q.M. deals with what he sees as a major objection to his move. If everything is contingent, including laws, the world could go haywire at any time (a concern which follow if, like, Hume, we exclude causal laws – hence the chapter title). Can we explain the manifest stability of physical laws if they are contingent?

First, note that stability does not entail necessity. And why should contingency imply frequent instability? It is a mistake to invoke the concepts of chance and probability here, since this presupposes (indeterministic) physical laws. The contingency of laws cannot be subject to the laws of chance. But going beyond this point, we want a positive account of how stability can be manifest from chaos.

Now, chance implies some sense of a denominator – a totality (finite but large, or infinite) that we can conceive. But when considering a whole world, we cannot a priori conceive of the totality of the set of all possible worlds, according to Q.M.: “…we have no grounds from maintaining that the conceivable is necessarily totalizable. (p.103)” Next, Q.M. references Alain Badiou’s work on the transfinite (a concept from set theory). The transfinite gives us the ability to distinguish contingency from chance. The transfinite is untotalizable. And this would deflate Hume’s problem (note that Q.M. doesn’t think he has demonstrated this is the exclusively correct answer, but he thinks its viability serves to indicate the problem is defeasible).

Q.M. claims that his approach offers a path to answering deep questions like this one (and his derivations above) which contemporary philosophy has approached with a deflationary mindset or else claims are meaningless. Q.M. wants to show the questions can be answered without lapsing into what he sees (here agreeing with the consensus) as discredited metaphysics. Ironically, by realizing there is no reason for the way things are, we arrive at a way to answer metaphysical questions. He sees the potential for deriving further conclusions, including, he hopes, the foundation for mathematical science.

Chapter 5 “Ptolemy’s Revenge”

The challenge of “ancestrality” is really one for all of empirical science, particularly the mathematical account of nature, which seems to let us know what is even where we are not. This is a world separable from man: the creation of the Galilean-Copernican revolution. We want an alternative path to the (essentially Cartesian) thesis, “that whatever is mathematically conceivable is absolutely possible (p.117)”; that is, contingent, but able to be independent of our thought.

The next sections of chapter 5 are basically a good old rant. Q.M. says the real Copernican revolution was in opposition to Kant’s thought, despite his invoking it as an analogy for his system. Kant’s was really a “Ptolemaic counter-revolution” which put the subject back into a central role (p.118). The major result of this move over time was to promote science over metaphysics as the path to knowledge while “serious” philosophers, now sidelined, would tell themselves that of course the knowledge gained wasn’t really objective knowledge.

Q.M. believes philosophers would have been better served over the past 200 years thinking about the question: “how is empirical knowledge of a world anterior to all experience possible? (p.123)” But Kant and post-Kantian philosophy followed up on its rejection of metaphysics only with different forms of “correlationism” which had no hope of answering the question.

Now we need to bring back the absolutization of the mathematical truths of science without the PSR and the metaphysics of necessary beings. Q.M. believes he has started the process by deriving some conclusions from factiality – the principle of unreason. Can we do the same for these mathematical descriptions of nature: i.e. show they are not necessarily true, but are absolutely possible? Also, returning the topic of Chapter 4, can we derive the absolute and necessary scope of the theorem regarding the non-totalizability of the transfinite? The next step in the project is to derive these two things from the factial.

Quantum Measurement in an Infinite Universe

2010-08-13T10:26:00.004-04:00

Anthony Aguirre, Max Tegmark, and David Layzer have an intellectually stimulating paper on Arxiv called “Born in an Infinite Universe: a Cosmological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”. They seek to show that if eternal inflation has led to an infinite, statistically uniform universe which therefore contains innumerable exact copies of our local region, then this leads to a new interpretation of quantum mechanics. Specifically they say we can associate the Born rule probabilities of QM with the actual frequency of measurement outcomes realized across the identical spatially distributed experiments. In other words, when we do an experiment, the uncertainty in the outcome is a result of our ignorance of which copy we are. (Layzer has a related paper posted here).

There are quite a few assumptions involved in the setup here. Importantly, an eternal inflation model is assumed, and the authors show how this leads to an infinite, statistically uniform space. In inflation, small scale quantum fluctuations get leveraged into the large-scale structure we observe. There is a certain governing probability distribution of the initial, pre-inflation fluctuations, and in eternal inflation, this “parent” distribution governs the creation of infinitely many other near-homogeneous regions.

When setting up a quantum experiment, we infer from the nature of eternal inflation that the same indistinguishable experiment is being set up many places in the universe. Don Page had argued in his papers (see here) that the potential existence of identical copies creates a problem in assigning probabilities using the Born rule. The Born rule must be supplemented by probabilities drawn from relative frequency of outcomes among the identical observers. The authors of this paper want to turn that bug into a feature. They set out to show that as the number of observers approach infinity the probability drawn from relative frequencies converge to the Born rule result.

Now there is a lot of literature about trying to re-interpret quantum theory using a frequency approach to probability; I’m under the impression that these don’t work. But in this case, the authors, using their cosmological set-up (not repeated experiments, but spatially separated identical experiments), seem to show that the frequency approach converges close enough that the two approaches to probability are indistinguishable. As usual, I’m not great at following the formal arguments, so I’ll await some commentary from the experts.

But it seems that if one was willing to buy into the assumptions, one gains a new interpretation of quantum theory.

Della Rocca on the PSR

2010-08-02T14:54:00.004-04:00

Yale’s Michael Della Rocca has a paper out in support of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Della Rocca, whose expertise is on the Rationalists, begins the paper with a humorous shtick about how he is writing the paper against his better instincts, since he knows how little credibility the PSR has in contemporary mainstream philosophy. [UPDATE 4 August 2010: I neglected to tip hat to Sympoze.]

His strategy in the paper is to push the burden of proof back onto those who dismiss the PSR.

To begin, he points out that we all make common use of what he calls an “explicability argument”. This is an argument where “a certain state of affairs is said not to obtain simply because its obtaining would be inexplicable – a so-called brute fact.” One of Leibniz’ examples was that of a scale or balance: if we hang equal weights on each side, we infer that the balance will remain still. That is because there is no reason why one side should hang down; if one side were to hang down, it would be inexplicable.

Della Rocca goes on to give many examples of explicability arguments with an emphasis on their role in contemporary philosophical debates: e.g., arguments that, say, consciousness or modality is dependent on other features (if not, they would be inexplicable).

Now take the case of existence: what explains why the things that exist exist? Unlike the other examples, taking on this question makes a “global” commitment to the PSR.

Della Rocca notes you can certainly say explicability arguments are useful in some cases, but not in the case of existence. Presumably this is what the opponent of the PSR would say. But then, he says, he has a right to ask for a principled argument regarding where you draw the line between the appropriate usage and the full-blown PSR.

He doesn’t want to hear appeals to intuition. The embrace of explicability arguments elsewhere is enough to get one to take seriously the possibility that it should apply to the case of existence as well. So we want a positive reason for its inapplicability here.

Another strategy might be to point to bad consequences of embracing the PSR, such as the Van Inwagen/Bennett argument that it leads to necessitarianism. Della Rocca says even if this is correct it doesn’t suffice as a principled case against the applicability of explicability arguments in the case of existence (in other words, if the PSR does mean necessitarianism, then so be it).

Pointing to the apparently anti-PSR implications of quantum mechanics is similarly missing the point about needing an argument for where the line is drawn on using explicability arguments.

So, until a line is drawn in a principled and non-arbitrary way, Della Rocca argues the PSR is alive and well.

My take: Della Rocca does not discuss further how the implications of QM might be involved in this debate, but my first though is that this is where I would develop an argument about drawing the line. I might argue that existence and certain other problems closely tied to it (conscious experience) are unavoidably concerned with quantum mechanics. On the other hand, many other problems in the macroscopic world do not depend on the specifics of QM, and thus can legitimately make use the explicability argument.

I would note that even in the world of QM, a weaker cousin of the PSR can still be potentially used: the things in our world depend on (but are not completely explained by) something else.

Fine-Tuned for Pantheism?

2010-07-17T14:08:00.006-04:00

In his book, Immortality Defended, John Leslie argues (in his Chapter 5) that the characteristics of our world can serve as evidence for his model of pantheism. Recall that Leslie thinks our world is one of many called forth from possibility into actuality by the creative power of the Good. These worlds can also be characterized as those worthy of being thought about by a divine mind.

This position can be thought of as intermediate between a non-theistic concrete modal realism (David Lewis’ model), where all metaphysically possible worlds exist, and classical theistic models where a personal deity creates our world alone (although some modern thinkers allow for a personal God to create many worlds, too.)

Causal Orderliness

Leslie argues against Lewis that if all worlds exist, then many more chaotic and disorderly worlds exist than orderly ones. And he says there would be many which may be orderly for a time but where people living in them “suddenly turned into blackberry jam.” At every instant, innumerable things can go wrong. If all these worlds exist, then chances are we would inhabit one of them. So our expectation of a continued orderly existence implies accepting that these disorderly worlds don’t exist. The pantheistic idea would be that the world’s causal orderliness makes it worth contemplating for the divine mind inside which it has its being.

Cosmic Fine-Tuning

The argument that the parameters of physical law are fine-tuned for life has become a familiar one, and Leslie thinks it has some force. The idea that there are many universes, however, dilutes the force of the argument: if there are innumerable universes of all sorts, then we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves in a universe conducive to life, since otherwise we wouldn’t be here to observe it (observational selection rather than divine selection).
But Leslie sees things about the universe which remain mysterious even considering the observational selection effect. First, he finds it mysterious that force strengths and particle masses are tuned for many different needed purposes at the same time. His example is the electro-magnetic force, which is tuned to provide for many seemingly distinct phenomena that all must manifest themselves for life to result. This suggests that the multiverse has to be one where all possible laws of physics needed to be tried out (not just parameters on the forces we know). Maybe there are regions of reality with no recognizable laws? Leslie thinks this makes the multiverse idea too foreign and strange to be reasonable. He also says he thinks it strange to contemplate that something as fundamental as relativity theory might only exist in a local region of reality. So, he thinks the observational selection effect can explain why we see our world among others which may have somewhat different parameters, but it has a harder time accounting for the existence of laws themselves.

Pantheism vs. Theism

Leslie thinks fine-tuning provides some support for the existence of God, but on the other hand he also thinks there certainly can be many worlds with different characteristics, including many lifeless worlds. He thinks traditional theism is inconsistent with the creation of these other worlds – why would God bother when his focus is supposedly on we humans? To pantheists, in contrast, he says these many orderly, if lifeless, universes may very well be seen as worthy of contemplation by the divine mind.

Now, putting aside the question of other worlds, many are skeptical that the deity of classical theism would create our world at all, given its flaws. In the same vein, one might ask a pantheist to address why the creative power of the Good would call forth our often miserable world? Leslie thinks that while there may indeed be innumerable worlds better than ours, there’s enough good about it that it could be worthy of creation as well.

Comments

I’ve not been impressed in the past with fine-tuning arguments, and I have thought the simplest explanation for the existence of our radically contingent world was that all metaphysical possibilities do exist. Still, as I discussed in this prior post, I am disturbed by the vision of so many worse-than-our-world scenarios granted concrete being in this modal realist model.
And I’m reminded that even in this model, its normal to accept some limits on what exists: logical necessities and perhaps mathematical ones. Why not some further restrictions? And if one is a realist about value, perhaps there are necessities about value which govern or shape what is concrete? It’s worth thinking about.

John Leslie: Immortal Pantheist

2010-07-10T14:11:00.004-04:00

I read philosopher John Leslie’s Immortality Defended (2007). It is an admirably brief book (supplemented with many suggestions for further reading) which outlines and defends a model of pantheism. The discussion of immortality is actually only a small part of the story (the fourth chapter of a five chapter book) and Leslie’s ideas about that topic follow fairly naturally once the pantheistic stage is set. My summary and comments are below (also to be continued in a follow-up post), but note they only capture a small portion of the rich and provocative arguments to be found in the book. FYI, a good NDPR entry on the book is here.

Leslie’s model has several contentious elements (introduced quickly in the first chapter). First, he argues that some form of Platonism and modal realism is true. He says that even if the cosmos did not exist, its possibility would, as would things like mathematical truths, and, he thinks, ethical truths. The next key concept, which he finds first in Plato, is the notion that there is an ethical requirement for the existence of the concrete world. Finally, he adopts from Spinoza the suggestion that what exists can be described as aspects of a divine mind (or minds, as Leslie discusses later).

Let’s assume that Platonism is true in some form; Leslie devotes chapter 2 to his most difficult topic: the idea of the Good as a creative principle. Plato said that the good “is what gives existence to things” and is “itself not existence.” In Leslie’s updated version: “the ethical requiredness of the cosmos accounts for its existence. (p.17)” The world exists because it is good that it should.

So, how does this work? How does an abstract concept act as creative force? Leslie concedes that there is no logical or mechanical schema for explaining this. Nor can it be verified in any empirical way. Despite this he thinks the idea is coherent and shouldn’t be ruled out. He notes a classical theist would cite a personal God-creator as the mechanism; Leslie thinks many of the same reasons for thinking God created the world (the world’s grandeur, its intelligibility, its life-suitability, its sheer existence) can be just as easily be invoked without the personal deity, and the pantheistic model actually comports better with what we observe about the world. Specifically, the pantheist doesn’t have to explain why this particular world was created, with all of its flaws and evils (and apparent absence of miracles), he or she can merely point out that our world is valuable enough to be a manifestation of the creative principle or, put alternatively, interesting enough to be something contemplated by a divine mind. And it is likely far from the best world so contemplated which exists: Leslie says it can be viewed “…as one of countless worlds that deserve a divine mind’s contemplation. (p.29)”

In a tricky and not especially convincing section Leslie discusses “How Creative Power might be Real Necessarily”, although the necessity is not a logical one. He says there are other kinds of necessity: there seems to be a need for bare qualitative similarities and differences in the world (he uses an example of the perceived colors of after-images); the linkage of goodness to the other qualities of the world’s objects could be such a given, pre-linguistic/symbolic necessity. Still, the idea of creative power doesn’t go automatically with the concept of the good, and Leslie has no proof that it does so. But he says if the good did have creative power it would meet many of the criteria needed to provide a ground for the world: it doesn’t depend on the prior existence of any person or object, it exists necessarily and eternally, and the exercise of its power would not be conditional on anything else.

In Chapter 3, Leslie discusses his idea that there might be infinitely many divine minds to go with many cosmoi. But it seemed to me very little was riding on the choice between many minds vs. a single infinite divine mind, so I’ll skip ahead. Next he discusses the relationship between a human mind and a divine one of which it is a part. He argues that there is no inconsistency in our limited minds being small parts of a divine mind. In fact he thinks there is evidence for this derived from the kind of unity manifested in our conscious minds, and likewise the holistic aspect of nature generally, given quantum theory. These unities make the idea of our being part of a unified, yet structured divine mind more plausible. It follows that pantheism would imply panpsychism, but Leslie thinks only the right kind of complex quantum system would presumably be a candidate for a substantive mind. I thought these lines of arguments were good.

Chapter 4 discusses three models of immortality which we might have, despite the rejection of the afterlife of traditional religions. First, Leslie discusses the model of the universe as a four-dimensional block. If the past and future are as real as the present, then any person who ever lives has a type of immortality. But more interestingly, if we accept the idea of being part of a divine mind, then other possibilities open up. Perhaps this divine mind could think thoughts about us beyond the lifespan we’re in now: this would be a sort of afterlife. But a less specific concept of immortality than this seems to be Leslie’s preferred one. This follows directly from the idea that the divine mind is itself eternal, and our life-pattern is one aspect of its being. The eternal nature of this larger entity represents “…the persistence of something existentially unified that had carried one’s mental life... (p.67, emphasis original).” So, we might thus survive bodily death, in a fashion, as we participate in the future of the divine mind.

The final chapter of the book returns to the argument of why Leslie thinks his pantheistic model is supported by what we observe about our own world. I will discuss this in a follow-up post.

UK Fetal Awareness Metastudy

2010-07-02T11:10:00.004-04:00

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released an updated report on fetal awareneess with a focus on pain (summary here, pdf of full report here, hat tip: Parableman). Its key conclusion is that there is no fetal pain prior to 24 weeks of gestation. This is because “connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks” and “most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception.”

The conclusion is broadly similar to the JAMA report from 2005 (see my post here; another post on this topic was here), except that the emphasis is on the 24 week point (which is when cortical connections begin to form) as opposed to the 29-30 week stage emphasized by JAMA which is when cortical functioning is relatively complete. Reading between the lines, I suspect the increasing numbers of surviving premature infants in the 24 -30 week range (and the empathy they engender if you come in contact with them) has encouraged this change in emphasis.

On the other hand, the UK study adds a section which concludes (from studies of unborn lambs) that fetuses are unlikely to feel much even later in gestation, due to their not being in a state of full wakefulness. The in utero environment is compared to a state of sedation. I don’t think is a very compelling aspect of the report: nothing increases awareness like trauma to one’s body.

Like my comments in earlier posts, I think this sort of interpretion of the data suffer from a sort of “cortical chauvinism”. As the report details, nerves form and pathways develop to the spinal cord, brain stem, and thalamus at various points from 8 to 18 weeks. I also think the role of the cortical subplate is intriguing. This structure, which develops at 12-13 weeks and disappears after 32-34 weeks, starts to receive connections from the thalamus between 12 and 18 weeks – this is kind of a primitive precursor to the cortex. And it is known that much earlier than 24 weeks the fetus both withdraws from a needle and launches a stress response.

Fetuses without fully developed brains certainly don’t feel pain the way we do, but this doesn’t mean there cannot be analogue of pain experience worthy of consideration. For many reasons I don’t believe experience is an all-or-nothing phenomenon, and I think we need to give the benefit of the doubt when considering the experiential status of fetuses (as well as animals) who don’t fully share our brain structure.

No Final Theory

2010-06-21T10:08:00.005-04:00

I read Marcelo Gleiser’s book, A Tear at the Edge of Creation. Gleiser is a physicist who has begun to wax reflective about the methods and limits of science. His main message is that the idea of a final theory is misguided and counterproductive (Gleiser blogs at the NPR 13.7 blog; he has a recent talk online here; hat tip goes to Peter Woit’s blog). [UPDATE: 25 June 2010: Prof. Gleiser responds to some criticisms here.]

Gleiser thinks the search for a final theory, or “theory of everything” (TOE), could be called “monotheistic science”. The idea of the TOE is that there must be a simple powerful theory underlying the complexity of the universe; such a theory would be marked by elegant symmetries and beautiful equations. This is a search for “oneness” which suggests a parallel with what religions have at their center.

Gleiser says: “It is now time to move on. It is now time to shake free of the old imperative for perfection and embrace the lessons of a new scientific worldview that explores the creative power of Nature’s imperfections and accepts that there are limits to knowledge. (p7)” He thinks that a focus on preserving earth and life, which is a product of this complexity, should be the goal.

After a bit of autobiography and some reflections about the persistence of religious belief, Gleiser attempts to trace the history of the idea behind the final theory. The idea of finding the perfect truth or “oneness” standing behind nature was part of Greek thought, and the Pythagoreans elevated mathematical beauty to religious heights.

A couple of brief chapters on Copernicus and especially Kepler are highlights of the book. Copernicus’ great achievement was still characterized by his desire to fit things into aesthetic harmony (i.e. perfect circles for orbits). Kepler had his vision of the five platonic solids nested in spheres guiding his solar system model. He, of course, made great strides despite this misguided fantasy. Of course the reader quickly sees the paradoxical aspect of this: thinkers throughout history have been inspired to make vlauable advances via this "misguided" pursuit of elegance and perfection which themselves remained out of reach. Can we and should we denigrate the inspirational source for so much progress even if it is true that our scientific approach to truth is necessarily asymptotic?

For himself, Gleiser says when he looked at Kepler’s model, he thought: “I knew my days as a Unifier were over. (p.37)”

Then he spends several chapters tracing the asymmetries in Nature which are actually responsible for the rich phenomena we observe. The asymmetry of time; the big bang’s blow to the idea of an eternally unchanging cosmos; asymmetry in EM given the absence of magnetic monopoles; the end of the clockwork universe given QM; matter/anti-matter asymmetry and CP violation.

Turning to recent TOE efforts, Gleiser is critical of any “… physical theories that cannot be tested…(they)should not be part of the scientific canon. (p.66)” In the absence of data, TOE’s are guided by things like mathematical beauty, which we know from experience will mislead. He is concerned when looking at superstring theory that “symmetry changed from useful tool to overarching dogma (p.60)”

He notes that the empirical complications of dark matter and dark energy went unanticipated by the unifiers: in his Perimeter talk he emphasizes that surprises will likely keep coming; despite this, superstring theorists continue to operate under the assumption that what we already know won’t be discomfited by new discoveries. The idea of supersymmetry which is postulated to enhance the unification of forces in the standard model is a “…clever invention of symmetry-hungry theorists. (p.138)”

Gleiser spends a fair amount of time on the standard model, the development of grand unified theories (GUT’s), and supersymmetry. While many expect the LHC to support supersymmetry, he thinks, based on the historical record, that higher energies are more likely to reveal unanticipated new phenomena.

Gleiser thinks unification is a holy grail, an unreachable dream. While each new theory increases our knowledge, we shouldn’t ever think we’ve discovered an eternal law. Regarding laws, he says: “There are natural laws, and they reflect patterns of organized behavior. But are these laws blueprints of physical reality? Or are they logical descriptions that we create to represent it? (p.150)”

Gleiser then spends a portion of the book on the question of life, with an emphasis on the chiral asymmetry of organic molecules needed for life. He sees this as a similar problem to the cosmic and subatomic asymmetries discussed earlier.

Taken altogether, the main theme of existence seems to Gleiser to be asymmetry. This leads to a worldview of the accidental or “absurd” universe, where there is no overriding purpose, and life is fragile and rare. This is opposed to the idea of a Grand Cosmic Plan, whether supernaturalist (religious) or naturalist (unifiers). (He does discuss the increasing use of multiverses in theories, but doesn’t see how these untestable regions really change the discussion.)

To conclude, he thinks “…it is precisely our insistence in search for “unique” and “final” explanations that is delaying our progress in our true search for meaning. (p.223)” We should, rather, find meaning in the fact that life is the result of a series of accidents, hence it is fragile and precious.

I liked this book and think its perspective is important. I thought it was somewhat repetitive, however, and the theme could have been equally well expressed in a somewhat briefer essay.

With regard to the conclusions, I would say that he is certainly right to emphasize the limits of our knowledge and the need for realism about what our theories can do. I happen to agree that we most probably will not achieve a physical TOE which consists of a short set of mathematically elegant expressions. It's interesting to note that some promising quantum gravity programs now take the form of simulating the large scale behavior of a certain kind of elementary element – implying that the pursuit of precision in our theories may now be superseded by insightful views about how laws of matter and space-time geometry arise as emergent regularities.

Still, I only agree partly with Gleiser’s philosophy: I think while we can accept that perfection will remain beyond our finite grasp, it is not inappropriate that we finite creatures can and should continue to be inspired by the idea that we part of an infinite and majestic whole.

Order Underpins Everything

2010-06-14T10:34:00.009-04:00

I discovered the work of Kevin H. Knuth, and took a dive into his papers and this recent talk given at the Perimeter Institute. The theme of his research is that a simple ordering relation among elements is more fundamental than, and can be used to derive, more familiar theories. The talk is entitled “The Role of Order in Natural Law”, and was part of a workshop on the topic of laws of nature.

In older papers, such as “Deriving Laws from Ordering Relations”, and “The Origin of Probability and Entropy”, Knuth shows how a partially ordered set, or lattice, can give rise to probability theory and information theory. There are broader applications, too, which follow from his demonstration of how order leads to algebra, and , through assigning numbers to elements, can further be used to derive measure theory; this is the link to order being revealed as foundational to other areas of science and mathematics. The derivation of probability theory, which is the first half of the talk, is easy to follow and interesting.

In a new paper, co-authored by colleague Newshaw Bahreyni, Knuth constructs a causal set (a bit different partially ordered set compared to the lattice) and undertakes to derive special relativity. The steps here are also pretty straightforward; a causal set is one where events are ordered according to a relation where some events have the potential to be informed of or influenced by, other events, but the relationship is not reciprocal. Completely ordered chains of events are selected to be “observers”, and events on chains are quantified by simply assigning integers. Then the relation of off-chain events to the earliest potentially informed events on 2 observer-chains gives rise to time-like and space-like coordinates. The Minkowski metric follows from this analysis, and Knuth and Bahreyni also derive Lorentz transformations.

Knuth also thinks that ordered pairs of numbers also could play a role in the foundations of quantum mechanics. He is a co-author of this paper by Philip Goyal (who also gave a talk at the same workshop), which looks to derive the complex quantum amplitudes from ordered pairs of real numbers. This looks very interesting as well.

From the conclusion of the causal set paper: “Given the belief that physical law represents underlying order, one would expect that given this underlying order, one ought to be able to derive the most fundamental aspects of physical law.”

Knuth’s program , while not yet tackling gravity, shares the spirit of many of the quantum gravity programs I’ve reviewed which explore the idea that the space-time of general relativity itself emerges from a more fundamental network of causally-linked elements. Causal sets themselves have played a featured role in the research program spearheaded by Rafael Sorkin (see old post here). Progress has been made in this program over a number of fronts, although incorporating quantum mechanics explicitly has evidently been a challenge. The arxiv has recent update papers on this causal set program by Sorkin and Joe Henson.

UPDATE 18 June 2010: I finished listening to Goyal's talk, and I am excited by his program. If even the foundations of QM end up being derived from 1) the ordering of events, 2) the logic that derives operationally from this order, and 3)an assumption about the limits on the accessibility of degrees of freedom (the essence of complementarity), this would be a great achievement. Events (which Goyal interestingly thinks about as Aristotelian actualizations) would be fundamental: "The quantum formalism is not explicitly about space and matter" -- these would be secondary notions; and time enters only in the minimal (but crucial) sense of ordering.

Getting Moral Truths from Non-Moral Truths

2010-06-10T13:53:00.005-04:00

David Chalmers has been posting chapters of a draft manuscript entitled “Constructing the World”. The project has to do with the idea of “scrutability”: given some set of base truths and ideal reasoning, can all truths be known? He thinks so, and the work is mainly about fleshing out (in much detail) variations on this thesis.

Chalmer’s arguments engage the more technical side of analytic philosophy, which makes it more difficult reading for me. But, there is good stuff here to be sure (I thought the chapter which confronts Quine’s critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction was very valuable by itself).

In Chapter 6, Chalmers briefly discusses “hard cases” of truths which seem difficult to derive from a more limited set of truths: these include some mathematical truths, philosophical truths, and moral truths. The case of moral truths was on my mind given the recent discussion of Sam Harris’ remarks on developing a science of morality. Chalmers seems to think that if moral truths are real, then they should be scrutable from the set of non-moral truths.

What follows are some quotes from Chalmers (Ch.6, Sect.2). Please note his brief discussion on moral truths needs to be considered in the context of the much broader work; I’m just using this excerpt to further provoke my own thinking on the topics of moral realism/moral knowledge. Also note that for Chalmers, non-moral truths are not just physical truths, but would typically include phenomenal, or experiential truths as well.

“On the face of it, there are good grounds to hold that insofar as there are moral truths and they are knowable, then they are scrutable from non-moral truths.
…
Perhaps the best reason to deny that moral truths are a priori scrutable from non-moral truths arises from the possibility of moral disagreement even among ideal reasoners who agree on the non-moral truths. It is not obvious that this sort of disagreement is possible: perhaps apparent moral disagreement always involves empirical disagreement, or nonideal reasoning, or merely verbal disagreement. But it is also not obvious that this sort of disagreement is impossible. If this sort of disagreement is possible, then the truth of moral claims that are the object of disagreement will not be scrutable from non-moral truths.
However, if this sort of disagreement is possible, then it is natural to hold that there is no fact of the matter about who is correct. That is, one will then naturally embrace a form of moral anti-realism, according to which there are no moral truths. If so, there will be no inscrutable moral truths. Alternatively, one might embrace some form of moral relativism, so that moral utterances are adjudged true insofar as they are true according to an appropriate standard (that of a speaker, or an assessor); but then one can argue that according to that standard, the claim that the utterance in question is implied by nonmoral truths will also be adjudged correct. Either way, there is no trouble for scrutability here.
…
The meta-ethical view that is most obviously incompatible with scrutability of the moral from the nonmoral is a hardline form of moral realism on which there are moral truths that are not knowable even on full knowledge of nonmoral truths and ideal reflection. Such a view is unattractive, though. The best reason for being a moral realist stems precisely from our apparent knowledge of moral truths. If that knowledge is denied, moral anti-realism seems much the more natural option.”

My reading of these passages tends to reinforce my prior opinion: a consistent moral realism implies one can know moral truths and can in principle derive these from non-moral truths (I fully concede the practical difficulties may be extreme – Chalmers invokes ideal reasoning and full access to non-moral truths).

I don’t think naturalists who deny this in principle possibility can also be moral realists. I continue to think the problem here is that most subscribers to naturalism, inspired by the paradigm of physical science (which seeks to emulate objectivity), limit their conception of nature to non-experiential truths, and thus end up with no foundation in reality for human (and animal) intentions and values. I think naturalism as a worldview can and should expand to incorporate first-person truths, and this brings moral truths within reach. Perhaps some would argue this stretches the concept of “naturalism” too far, meaning we need a new label; nonetheless, there is plenty of room for such an expansion without embracing traditional supernaturalisms.

Mark Johnston's Surviving Death

2010-05-31T12:52:00.005-04:00

I read Mark Johnston’s book, Surviving Death, which was based on his 2006 Carl G. Hempel lectures at Princeton. I had liked his previous book, Saving God (which I mentioned here); in comparison, Surviving Death is more densely argued and challenging, relative to the “payoff”. But I’m glad I read it: Johnston is an interesting and unique thinker.

In the book, Johnston looks for and finds a naturalistic sense in which a person could be said to survive death: a good person can truly identify with all of humanity by directing his or her actions in concert with this concern. He or she will then live on in the “onward rush of humanity.” A highly condensed summary follows below.

Most people believe in an afterlife, where their personality lives on and justice is meted out in some fashion. Johnston points out that, even for the non-religious, death seems to pose some threat to the project of being good. It’s not that one necessarily needs the incentive to be good, but that death is discouraging, and morality would seem to be greatly supported by an afterlife.

In a lengthy first chapter, Johnston examines and rejects the various Protestant Christian efforts to make the notion of a future bodily resurrection coherent. I didn’t need convincing here, so I’ll pass over this section. In contrast, Johnston rejects quickly the idea of an eternal soul, pointing out that while we can’t rule it out, the preponderance of empirical evidence is against the idea: having a consistent personality appears to wholly depend on the functioning of an undamaged brain.

Then Johnston enters into a lengthy argumentation about what constitutes a self or a person and whether any such entity is a legitimate target for self-directed concern. He determines that it is the unified “arena of presence and action” we seem to be at the center of, which is the leading candidate for our concern (as opposed to the indexical-person we are in the affairs of the world).

But does this arena of presence and action persist? The impression of the persistence of the arena is just a matter of how it subjectively strikes us. While we’re well founded in saying I exist now, where I refers to the center of the arena, we’re not well-founded in saying this “I” will exist in the future. Whether this I has a future depends on its being acknowledged as a past by the future “arena-I”, but there is no guarantee of this. Therefore nothing justifies a future-directed self concern.

The practical implication of this conclusion is that there is no reason to favor one's own interests over another.

Johnston backs up to reconsider this surprising conclusion. There is reason to privilege this moment of presence. And this is connected with a person – a human being – and these do persist, right?

Well, Johnston enters into some thought-experiments which have the goal of breaking down this connection of the present arena with the lifespan of a living body. The “Hibernators” are beings which view each new spring as entailing the incarnation of a new person, even though the organism has continuity with last year’s model. And the “teleporters” identify with the being which exits the teleporter, even though the process involves the complete destruction of the organism which entered the teleportation device.

So, we can’t look to the organism as the link to the persistence of the “arena-I”. There is nothing (physical or metaphysical) we can point to which can justify future-directed self-concern.

(Johnston also spends some time distinguishing personality from personhood. For instance, we can picture having a cure for a completely devastating case of Alzheimer’s disease, which has the effect of restoring health, but with no recovery of pre-disease memory. We still might associate this person with ourself, but with no continuation of personality.)

How should we react to this conclusion? Well, what seems distinctive about personhood is the demand to live one’s life. And we do this in accordance with what seems to be good. A person is a practical reasoner, and this practical reason is future-directed. But we saw that personal identity does not justify a future-directed concern. So, here we see a “reversal”: personal identity doesn’t justify the future-directed disposition; rather it is the disposition which constitutes our notion of personal identity.

Here is the next key insight: we can change this disposition. If you change the disposition, you thereby change what it means to be a person. If the persisting self is determined to be unreal, and just how things seem to us, then we should alter our disposition.

Persons are “Protean”. We can change what personhood means (we could trains ourselves to be like the Hibernators or Teleporters), so what we are “capable of surviving” can change. Altering the Teleporter thought experiment a bit: we could imagine teleportation devices also duplicate, and we could identify our future-directed concern based personhood with all of the duplicates which result.

Note an interesting result here: that even if a supernatural afterlife were true, it would not matter to these conclusions! (Of course, even if it was true, it is inconsistent with altruism: concern about the eternal persistence of one’s personality is selfishness writ large – if it was true, it would be distraction from living a good life).

So, to maximize the good (“follow the command of agape”), we should implement personal identity in such a way that we should survive wherever and whenever interests are to be found. We should identify with the “onward rush of humanity” (a phrase used by John Stuart Mill). We would, “quite literally”, live on in this onward rush.

The good, then, can survive death.

A final chapter deals with a disagreement with Parfit on the nature of personhood, and comparisons of the conclusion with Kant, Schopenhauer, and ideas from Buddhism and the Vedanta.

Where Rationalism Meets Empiricism

2010-05-13T11:20:00.001-04:00

To review one aspect of the model being explored here:

The concrete world is a causal network of events; each event is an actualized outcome, selected from a set of possibilities*. Some form of modal realism is true: while the unactualized possibilities aren’t themselves concrete, they are real in some sense. Their reality is implicated in everything that happens.

I speculate that since we’ve evolved in this kind of world, we are naturally acquainted with possibilities. In fact, the consideration of possibilities is central to life (of animals, too) and to our reasoning. Somehow, humans leverage this acquaintance with possibilities to spin whole scenarios of how a world could be.

Contemporary rationalism takes the form of modal metaphysics – where one claims that our faculty for conceiving possible worlds is reliable. Like older forms of rationalism, it is vulnerable to critics who claim we can’t know about anything which is not experienced concretely.

But on this account, the space of possibilities is involved in every concrete event. These “abstract” entities are real and are implicated in causality. Therefore our modal reasoning (and by extension, our contemplation of all sorts of abstract concepts) is not disconnected from the empirical realm. Our rational faculties are grounded in our direct acquaintance with something real.

* An alternative account would characterize each event as a manifestation, resulting from an intersection of probabilistic dispositions, or propensities. In quantum physics, the analogues are the measurement event and the wavefunction.

Morality: Not Natural or Supernatural?

2010-05-10T10:39:00.006-04:00

Sean M. Carroll, the Caltech cosmologist who blogs at Cosmic Variance, has had a couple of posts responding to Sam Harris’ recent arguments that we should be able to develop a science of morality (he doesn't think this is possible in principle, although his reasoning reads to me as a list of challenges about the practical difficulty).

His discussion offers a clear example of exactly why a materialistic worldview inspired by science leaves one out to sea when it comes to issues crucially important to us. (I say all this as a big fan of Carroll; he is a great representative of a new generation of scientist-popularizers.)

Here is an excerpt from the latter part of the most recent post (from the third-to-last paragraph -- please check out the whole thing, including links to prior parts of the interchange with Harris, who has now added another riposte here):

“...morality is still possible. Some of the motivation for trying to ground morality on science seems to be the old canard about moral relativism: 'If moral judgments aren’t objective, you can’t condemn Hitler or the Taliban!' Ironically, this is something of a holdover from a pre-scientific worldview, when religion was typically used as a basis for morality. The idea is that a moral judgment simply doesn’t exist unless it’s somehow grounded in something out there, either in the natural world or a supernatural world. But that’s simply not right. In the real world, we have moral feelings, and we try to make sense of them. They might not be “true” or “false” in the sense that scientific theories are true or false, but we have them. If there’s someone who doesn’t share them (and there is!), we can’t convince them that they are wrong by doing an experiment. But we can try to talk to them and try to find points of agreement and consensus, and act accordingly...”

So morality isn’t grounded in the natural or the supernatural (!). It’s just about feelings and earnest discussions, which are untethered to anything. Well, that isn't good enough. It isn’t that Carroll is wrong about naturalism about morality being somehow beyond science in a strictly defined sense. Physical science endeavors to remove the first person perspective from the facts gathered (even though all science begins with the experience of observation). I’m in no way suggesting any change to the methodology. But to base a worldview on this paradigm of scientific methodology leaves out first person experience, and all that comes with it: feelings, values, rationality itself. This is an inadequate metaphysics. Naturalism can be expanded to encompass this part of reality.

Powers vs. Humean Supervenience

2010-04-26T10:49:00.006-04:00

I’ve been interested in ontological accounts which feature dispositional properties (also known as dispositions or powers) in the starring role. This intriguing draft paper, “Goodbye, Humean Supervenience”, by Oxford's Troy Cross, sets out to show that David Lewis’ Humean supervenience program (which seeks to reduce everything to a mosaic of categorical properties) fails, since it can be reinterpreted as a system where Lewis’ fundamental properties are in fact identical to dispositions. This implication can’t be rejected without abandoning the account of properties as sets of possibilia. The possibility unattractive feature of the dispositional doppelganger of Lewis’ story is its appeal to nonlocal circumstances as the trigger for the manifestation of the powers. My notes on the paper follow.

Cross begins by placing the debate in a historical context, discussing the role of causation (and nearby topics of counterfactuals, nomic necessity, etc.) in analytical philosophy in the 60’s and 70’s. This was driven by naturalism and its attendant need to find “topic-neutral” concepts to describe the mental and physical non-dualistically.

But then, even causation and related concepts came to be seen by some as too much like “spooky theological vestiges”, which needed to be reduced – hence Lewis’ program. Others, such as Shoemaker, retained causal powers and endeavored to explain all else with that toolkit. Cross sets out to review Shoemaker’s work and uses it to provide a launching point for his attack on Lewis.

Shoemaker’s thesis in “Causality and Properties” (1980) said that properties were uniquely correlated with powers that they bestowed. To be more precise he identified powers possessed by an object with a function from circumstances to effects, and then said every property necessarily and uniquely correlates with a function from other properties to these powers. Cross notes a circular aspect of this system, since the function by which Shoemaker individuates properties itself takes properties as arguments, and the circumstances and effects are a matter of which properties are instantiated where.

To argue for his view, Shoemaker pointed out that if properties were untethered to powers of objects, we would never know about them. So they must be tied to powers. He constructed reductio-style scenarios where properties are assumed to be unrelated to powers and then odd things result (2 objects which appear identical and have the same causal powers in fact differ greatly in their properties).

But critics armed with modern epistemological theories have been able to respond to these scenarios effectively. More devastatingly, Cross says, is that even if properties are linked to powers you can still construct analogous skeptical scenarios. To see this, note that dispositional differences between objects need never be manifest in the actual world: they may even contain potential manifestations alien to the actual world. These quasi-inert powers can play the same role as the causally inert properties in Shoemaker’s scenarios. So Shoemaker’s ontological account is not seen as panning out.

However, this notion of “alien sensitivity” – that dispositions may have radically non-actual activation conditions – gives Cross an idea for his argument that even paradigmatically categorical properties are in fact causal powers.

First, note that Lewis would admit that there are possible conditions such that for some one of his (arbitrarily perfectly) natural properties "F", F endows some power to objects in these conditions. (He doesn’t say they can’t endow powers, just that they would endow different powers in different circumstances). Now exactly how for Lewis the powers granted by F vary with circumstances is complicated. But we can look at a simpler nomic theory to get the idea: such a theory would involve laws of nature in determining when F endows the power to become a G, etc. (Some alternative theory may be better, but what matters is that there are possible conditions in which F disposes things to become G’s.) The conditions may be states of the world, or sub-regions, but it’s not random. On an account of Humean supervenience, it’s a matter of how powers generally supervene on the distribution of Humean facts.

Now, let “C” be this set of conditions under which F endows the disposition to become a G.

1) 1) In C, F disposes things to become G’s.

2) 2) Now compare: F disposes things to become G in C.

This second version strengthens the link between F and the disposition (compare "in England, this joke is funny” to "this joke in funny in England"). But it’s hard to resist that 1) implies 2). Cross says these two ways of presenting things are just a general feature of power and disposition talk. Especially easy to see in the case of habituals: F’s G in C iff in C, F’s G.

In contrast, note this doesn’t work for subjunctive conditionals, in fact the cases where it fails for the subjunctive “are precisely those cases where dispositional ascriptions succeed and counterfactual or subjunctive analyses appear to falter.” So called “finkish” dispositions are those which disappear in their stimulus conditions (see the work of Martin.) Cross claims that “all counterexamples to the pattern of subjunctive inference above are also cases of finks, antidotes, or mimics.” So, swapping the conditions in and out of the scope of the power operator doesn’t inherit the danger of the analogous operation for subjunctives.

To recap: “If there are possible conditions C, under which a “categorical” property F disposes things to become G, then throughout modal space, F disposes things to become G in C.” This is the key move.

“Some parts of the pluriverse are poised to send the property into action.” By the same token, the property is poised to go into action in those parts of the pluriverse and not others. So, these categorical properties are far from the causally inert entities they’re supposed to be, seen in this light. Properties do endow powers, in this way, and different properties will endow different powers (this distinguishes each property from another).

Now, for Lewis, all properties are sets of possiblia Sets are individuated by their membership. So if a perfectly natural property P and a power P’ endowed by P are coextensive, then P=P’. So Lewis is committed to (all) perfectly natural properties being powers. So Humean supervenience “isn’t worthy of the name.”

So, you take global states of the world, such as possible laws of nature, and treat them as circumstances, which together with the original property, trigger an effect. Then you see that the circumstances reveal the disposition in the supposedly categorical property.

Is this cheating?

A standard objection would be that these sort of global circumstances are of a different category than the standard activation conditions for a disposition such as “being put in water” or “being dropped”. Laws concern the relations between ordinary properties, and “being in a world with such-and-such laws” is itself a property only in a highly derivative sense.

Can the critic insist you must try to run this without involvement of laws, a non-nomic version of the conditions? Doesn’t make sense – if (as in Shoemaker) laws of nature are necessary, then every circumstance is in a sense nomic. There aren’t any non-nomic conditions. But before continuing down this path of trying to restrict the conditions, consider the big picture. Compare the philosophy of Lewis to that of the dispositional doppelganger “DLewis”. Same metaphysics, except DLewis says all the perfectly natural properties are dispositions to have certain effects, conditioned on the global state of the world. Which global states? Why, precisely the ones Lewis says are the conditions in which his perfectly natural properties endow the powers to bring about those effects.

So for Lewis (simplifying - leaving aside the fact that Lewis’ theory is more complicated than the straightforward nomic case) F endows the power to become G just in the circumstances in which it is nomically necessary that F’s become G’s. For DLewis, the global states do not constitute laws; he thinks, instead, that laws reflect the dispositional essences of the properties. Lewis sees as contingency which powers are granted by F. DLewis sees contingency in the existence of the activation conditions for the F dispositional powers.

Lewis may not like it, but the DLewis account is just as coherent, and makes no difference. So why object and insist on the existence of “genuinely” non-dispositional properties? The only way to do this would be to insist properties can be non-identical even if they’re necessarily co-extensive. (Go to some hyperintensional model, which Lewis would not wish). The general lesson being that “the only way to avoid a reality that is cut finer than the modal is to accept a reality that is fundamentally dispositional.”

On the issue of non-local triggering conditions, compare Neil Williams’s exploration of whether a dispositional theory needs to invoke nonlocal "holism".

Balaguer on Free Will, Part Three

2010-04-20T12:01:00.011-04:00

The last post discussed Mark Balaguer’s argument that that the question of libertarian freedom reduces to the question of indeterminism at the point of decision. In this post, I’ll summarize his argument that the presence or absence of the indeterminism in question is an open scientific problem.

If there is indeterminism at the point of many decisions, we’re L-free (specifically he calls this “TDW-indeterminism” referring to torn-decisions being wholly undetermined at the point of decision). So does the required indeterminism exist? Balaguer says we don’t have good enough evidence on either side; it is an open empirical question.

In sections 4.2 and 4.3 of his book, he argues there are no good a priori arguments for determinism or indeterminism; I’ll skip these (there don't seem to be any that are viewed as very persuasive).

In 4.4, he begins to consider the empirical evidence. He takes it as clear that we don’t yet have good evidence for TDW-indeterminism. However, some people think we have good evidence for its falsity, so he will focus on arguing why there is no such evidence.

First, there is no good evidence for universal determinism in nature. We know micro-events cannot be convincingly argued to be deterministic since the advent of QM (hidden variable theories are not ruled out absolutely, but they are a very long shot.)

Now, some would argue that despite quantum mechanics, the macro-world is still deterministic or virtually so. A typical argument goes that, apart from a naïve interpretation of our own mental events, everything else we experience seems determined by causes. But, actually, there are lots of things in nature without clear causes; this attitude is a hangover from when we used to think that even mysterious macro events had to be determined since we knew that the micro-events that composed them were determined.

OK, but at the level of neurons and such, things are determined, or virtually determined, right? Well, it appears that as a matter of fact (at least from consulting a textbook and phoning up a few neuroscientists) that synaptic transmission and spike firing are typically described probabilistically. The point isn’t that neuroscience treats these as definitely indeterministic either; but at this level of description the phenomena are best described as stochastic processes (could be theoretically consistent with either a determined or undetermined underlying situation). In particular, the opening and closing of ion channels seems random/indeterministic.

What about the fact that large scale quantum coherence is ruled out by the hot and wet brain (cf. Tegmark’s paper in response to Penrose/Hameroff)? Large scale quantum coherence is not necessary to the right kind of indeterminism: as above, neural decisions could go one way or another due to micro-level indeterminism.Balaguer quotes a few neuroscientists, including Christof Koch (p.154): “At this point, we do not know to what extent the random, i.e., stochastic, neuronal processes we observe are due to quantum fluctuations (a la Heisenberg) that are magnified by chemical and biological mechanisms or to what extent they just depend on classical physics (i.e. thermodynamics) and statistical fluctuations in the underlying molecules.”

What about Libet’s work? This is not a good argument against the presence of the relevant kind of indeterminism either. In Libet’s experiments, we don’t know what the unconscious processes indicated by the readiness potential are for. We don’t have reason to think it’s relevant to making a choice between options, as opposed to being a part of processes needed to set up the moment of decision and determine which options are live.

What about all of the recent psychological experiments which indicate our introspective conscious perceptions are very fallible guides to what’s going on? Well, these are interesting and important but they don’t argue for determinism, per se, especially in the case of torn decisions. Now, they do provide evidence that our decisions are influenced by non-conscious causal factors. But these still don’t refute the idea that indeterminism is present at the point of decision in many cases.

So whether there is such indeterminism is present is an open question. And if it is present, then we are free.

(Note that much of the discussion in ch.4 of his book is drawn from this earlier paper: "Why there are no good arguments for any interesting version of determinism")

My personal view is that the "odds" are much more in favor of indeterminism playing a key role given the ubiquity of such processes in nature and the fact that all physical processes are constituted by quantum micro-events. It's surprising to me that the vision of nature as a deterministic machine is still so pervasive 80+ years into the quantum mechanical era of science.

Balaguer on Free Will, Part Two

2010-04-18T12:32:00.011-04:00

There are two steps in Mark Balaguer’s argument (contained in chapters 3 and 4 of his book, respectively). In the first step, the subject of this post, he argues that the question of freedom reduces to a question of indeterminism in decision-making. In the second step (to be discussed in the next post) he argues that the presence or absence of the relevant indeterminism is an open scientific problem.

Appropriate non-randomness

Balaguer says that a person is free “IFF she makes at least some decisions that are such that a) they are both undetermined and appropriately non-random, and b) the indeterminism is relevant to the appropriate non-randomness in the sense that it generates the non-randomness, or procures it, or enhances it, or something along these lines. (sec.3.1, p.65-6).”

What is “appropriate non-randomness”? For a decision to be appropriately non-random it needs to have been “authored and controlled by the agent in question, that is, it has to have been her decision and she has to have controlled which option was chosen. (p.66)”

Now, some think libertarian freedom (L-freedom) is untenable because they think indeterminism can’t help. An undetermined event is just accidental, it “just happens”, or it’s “just random”. Or putting it the other way, for a decision to be appropriately non-random, it needs to be authored and controlled by us; this would mean we “determine” the choice for certain reasons. So they can’t be undetermined. An event can’t be both undetermined and appropriately non-random.

Or, maybe the critic can concede that there is some indeterminism in our decision-making process which doesn’t completely destroy non-randomness. But nonetheless, it’s hard to see how indeterminism in the process could generate or help or increase appropriate non-randomness. Inserting an undetermined event into the process adds randomness, not non-randomness!

Balaguer says these sorts of reasoning are wrong. If certain decisions are undetermined in the right way, then they are appropriately non-random, and the indeterminacy in question does increase or procure the appropriate non-randomness (note in this discussion we are assuming materialism and event causation).

Torn decisions

To make the case, Balaguer focuses on particular decisions he calls “torn decisions”, where we have reasons for 2 or more options, no belief as to which is best, and we just choose without resolving which is best.

He says: If a torn decision is undetermined at the moment of choice, then it is L-free. The final decision in the torn decision scenario, which is undetermined, is conscious, intentional, and purposeful. These are decision-events which settle which option is chosen in a conscious purposeful way. So they are indeed authored and controlled by the agent in question, but are undetermined.

Furthermore, the indeterminism here increases or procures the authorship and control: in fact the undetermined case maximizes authorship and control compared to the case of a causally determined decision. Remember, it is a torn decision: making an undetermined choice in this case is making it under maximum authorship and control. In cases where some determining event (external or subconscious internal) tips the scales, there is less authorship and control. And, this result is important, he says, because we make a lot of torn decisions.

(Note: if people still have the intuition that internal indeterminism can’t suffice for freedom, it’s probably a hangover from thinking of freedom as necessitating old-fashioned interactive dualism. But if the indeterminism is in me, then it is mine and it makes my choice free in a manner we can’t improve on and remain naturalists).

Are these decisions rational? Yes, because the choice is made for good reasons, even though the reasons weren’t’ enough to tip the scales vs. another option for which we also had good reasons. There is “plural” authorship, control and rationality, since at least one unchosen option, if it had been chosen, would have met the criteria also.

What about untorn decisions? Well, other types of decisions (e.g. where we have reasons which cause a “lean” toward one option over others) are probably L-free, too, if there is indeterminism at the point of decision; it’s just the torn case brings this out most clearly. Also, even determined decisions could be said to be L-free is they are made by an ”L-free person”, that is, one who makes a significant number of undetermined L-free decisions also.

So, the question of freedom reduces to the question of indeterminism at the point of decision.

Balaguer on Free Will, Part One

2010-04-12T14:34:00.013-04:00

After reading and enjoying one of Mark Balaguer’s papers on free will I also ordered and read his book Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem. Not only did I like his approach to the topic, but his opening arguments, discussed below, clarified for me the reasons for my own vague dissatisfaction with much of the contemporary literature on free will.

(Note: In these posts I’ll present much of the discussion in my own words; Balaguer himself is very precise in defining his terms and setting forth the arguments. So, I recommend the book for those interested, but also in the online domain take a look at this paper, "The Metaphysical Irrelevance of the Compatibilism Debate", which overlaps with the first two chapters of the book, as well as a discussion of the paper and then the book itself in several posts and comment sections at the “The Garden of Forking Paths” blog – here, here, here, and here.)

Much of the philosophical energy on the topic of free will has been devoted to debates over compatibilism: these are questions such as “is the ordinary language sense of ‘free will’ compatible with determinism?” Balaguer notices something about these debates:

1. There are a number of philosophers who think humans have some kind of libertarian freedom.
2. There are also quite a large number who think compatibilism is true (i.e. they would answer yes to questions like the one above).
3. But, interestingly, few people are on record as believing both of these things.

And, yet, as he points out, these are independent questions. It seems those who are inclined to think humans have a meaningful sort of freedom argue against compatibilism, while those inclined to think determinism is true (or to think that any indeterminism in nature can’t provide meaningful freedom) argue in favor of compatibilism. But, the various notions of compatibilist free will are obviously consistent with an actual situation of humans having meaningful freedom. So, why don’t more philosophers endorse some kind of libertarian freedom while also conceding that (some version of) compatibilism is true? What has happened is that because the facts about human freedom are difficult and unsettled, philosophers have diverted their energies into debates about compatibilism.

But the first kind of question – which kinds of freedom (if any) do humans have? -- is the only big interesting metaphysical question here. Compatibilism debates are arguments over semantics (definitions, ordinary language usage, etc.) and over the consistency of various concepts of free will with moral responsibility. It isn’t that these questions aren’t at all interesting, but what I call the big question is untouched by them. If we knew which sorts of freedom (if any) humans had, and if we also had an answer for the semantic question regarding what “free will” is, then we would have a definitive answer to the question “do humans have free will?” But we don’t know the answer to the first question yet, and so the compatibilism debate is just a semantic debate keeping us busy in the meantime. I think this critique is right, and it is why, as someone deeply interested in metaphysical explanations, I’ve been less interested in what has been a large swath of the free will literature dealing with compatibilism.

Balaguer believes that the answer to the big question is an open problem. Given the arguments and evidence available we don’t have a good reason to answer yes or no to the question. However, because a majority of contemporary philosophers think humans aren't free (or at least lean in that direction), he spends his time in the book formulating the case that we don’t have good reason to believe humans lack meaningful freedom. He’s not saying we can settle the argument in favor of freedom yet either, but that it’s an open question.

Another part of his thesis is that while I’ve called this a metaphysical question, it actually reduces to an open scientific question. This is because (he argues) that the question of freedom reduces to a question of the presence of certain indeterminacies in human decision-making. Because this question can be determined in principle scientifically (even if this will be difficult), then the question of human freedom is an open scientific problem. (Balaguer also thinks metaphysical questions generally reduce to empirical questions, or else they are either questions of logic or are meaningless. I think this would be interesting to debate, but will leave it aside for the time being).

In the next post I'll get into his arguments for why there might be indeterminacies in human decision making and why these would suffice to provide meaningful freedom.

I Agree With Sam Harris on Science and Morality

2010-04-06T15:14:00.007-04:00

Sam Harris has a short talk here on why he thinks "science can answer moral questions." A follow-up to some initial criticism is here, and a brief discussion of "getting an ought from an is" is here. He evidently has a book forthcoming related to all this.

While the philosophically more talented will have issues with his arguments (and with my brief discussion of this complex topic below), I agree with his main thrust. There are two key steps here: first, we include first-person experiences in our view of nature, and second, we locate the target for our (natural) moral instincts in the qualities of the experiences of sentient creatures.

1. In assessing the world, we use two perspectives-- the first-person and the third-person. On the one hand, we feel, think and form values - these are all aspects of first-person experiences; on the other hand, we work with others to determine agree-upon ("objective") facts. But there is only one world, not two. Experiences are ineliminable natural facts: they are simultaneously facts about a brain/body/environment system (viewed from the other perspective).

Now, it seems the ideal of scientific methodology excludes (or "brackets") first-person experiences, and so whether "Science" is able to assess experiences may be partly a semantic issue. But since our experiences are part of the natural world, we can explore these in a similar spirit to the conduct of science, even if we fall somewhat short of the traditional ideal (and allowing that there will be practical limits to precision). For a start, we build on the existing neuroscientific program which looks at the brain/body events which correspond with different experiential events. I would expect that in the future we can get much more sophisticated and precise compared to the tools used today.

There's just a slight but crucial difference in the stance here from that of a stereotypical materialist worldview: the experiences are not reduced to physical events: they are the same events, viewed from different perspectives. I would challenge the naturalists out there: do you really want to limit your worldview to one which excludes first-person experiences as natural facts? Doesn't this kind of reductive materialism leave the door open for the persistence of dualisms and supernaturalisms to fill the vacuum?

So, feelings, values, etc. are experiences, and experiences are natural facts.

2. But what about morals and what we "ought" to do?

Here, I have argued in the past that the intrinsic, qualitative richness of subjective experience is a good, and should be the target of moral judgments. We should favor the greatest number of high quality, robust, complex and rewarding experiences we can, and minimize low quality, degraded, unpleasant experiences. Of course this needs to be considered and worked out in great detail -- that's a huge project. We can work to develop tools to evaluate the presence or absence of the experiences we're targeting.

But even if experiences are facts and good experiences are preferred to bad, why "ought" one pursue moral goals? Can you get an "ought" from an "is"? I don't think this question has any bite. I think the evidence from evolutionary biology shows that our moral impulses are grounded naturally, among other facts about our makeup; we don't seek special explanations for our other natural impulses (I "is" hungry so I "ought" to eat lunch). It's part of our nature to seek out the best experience for ourselves, and then to seek it for others. While there is much more to be said here, too, I think it's clear that extending our circle of concern to encompass all humans and other sentient creatures is just the cultivation of a natural impulse.

So, we should pursue the study of how experiential well-being can be assessed, and use this knowledge to benefit sentient creatures (understanding how difficult and complex an undertaking this is).

Spinoza on the Composite Self

2010-03-24T11:59:00.004-04:00

It can seem surprising the degree to which our conscious experience is opaque as to what causes and/or composes it. The revelations of neuroscience come only from third person investigation. Even on its own first-person "turf", introspection has been shown to be a poor guide to analyzing our mental states, perceptions and memories. The mind-body problem in philosophy is of course the story of the inability of the mind to perceive how nature constitutes it.

The fact that the brain/body is very much a composite system seems to be the reason for some of the difficulty. Reading Spinoza's Ethics recently, it was interesting for me to see that he grasped this point in the 17th century.

Spinoza made his living as an expert lens grinder, working on components for telescopes and microscopes, and had some familiarity with contemporary scientific studies which utilized these instruments. For instance, he had heard of and may have gotten a look at Hooke’s Micrographia of 1665. So he was thinking through the implications of the revealed micro-structure of natural bodies when it came to his theory of mind (a model of mind/body parallelism).

Picking up the story at Part II, postulate 13:

“…we understand not only that the human mind is united to the body, but also what should be understood by the union of mind and body.”

But:

“The human body is composed of a great many individuals of different natures, each of which is highly composite.”

So (IIP24):

“The human mind does not involve adequate knowledge of the parts composing the human body. The parts composing the human body pertain to the essence of the body itself only insofar as they communicate their motions to one another…and not insofar as they can be considered as individuals, without relation to the human body.”

Certain coordinated patterns of events within the brain/body system constitute the emergent unified conscious experience of our introspection. These are only a subset of all the processes going on, so it shouldn’t be surprising, after all, that that the full picture hasn’t been easy for us to figure out.

Philosophers Discussing Food! Upcoming Event

2010-03-12T16:03:00.010-05:00

Mark your calendars -
The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium presents its annual Public Issues Forum:

“The Future of Food”

Saturday, March 27, 2010, 1:00 to 5:30 P.M.

Free and Open to the Public
Montgomery Auditorium in the Parkway Central Library, Free Library of Philadelphia

SPEAKERS:
David Kaplan, University of North Texas, “Real Food, Fake Food”
Lisa Heldke, Gustavus Adolphus College,“Down-Home Global Cooking: Why Cosmopolitanism versus Localism is a False Dichotomy, and How Our Food Can Show Us the Way to a Third Option”

Respondents:
John Hymers, La Salle University
Kate Thomas, Bryn Mawr College
Panel Discussion Leader:
Solomon Katz, University of Pennsylvania

For further information contact Marc Moreau, La Salle University
This event is co-sponsored by the Board of Governors of the GPPC and La Salle University.

Books Unblogged: Spinoza Edition

2010-03-09T14:51:00.007-05:00

Here are some books I enjoyed reading in recent months (which in a parallel blogging universe I discuss in greater detail.)

1. A Spinoza Reader (edited and translated by Edwin Curley).

I wanted to read Spinoza’s Ethics; this volume also contains some excerpts from other writings and correspondence. Among philosophers, Spinoza is comparatively easy to read. While his idea to write the Ethics in a Euclidean format was quixotic, it makes the discussion straightforward to follow and subsequently reference.

I like Spinoza’s metaphysics very much, so I’m inclined to say he was “way ahead of his time.” (Good SEP articles on Spinoza here and here). In any case, I think he’s right that the most viable view of God is as a maximal conception of Nature. We live in a finite locale within God’s infinite expanse. On the other hand, Spinoza failed to find an explanation for contingency and so endorsed necessitarianism (but see also here): ignorance is his explanation for our intuition of contingency (I’d like to travel in time and see what he would have made of quantum mechanics and the idea of objective indeterminism). I think his views about mind (thought and extension are two coequal aspects of the same reality) still make plenty of sense in today’s philosophical landscape. The latter parts of the Ethics get a little long-winded and pedantic, but include a variety of practical tidbits of wisdom about human psychology and how to live one’s life that will reward a re-reading.

It’s a wonderful world we live in where you can find multiple well-written popular books about Spinoza, too. I enjoyed

2. The Courtier and the Heretic, by Matthew Stewart.

This is a great book about Leibniz (the courtier) and Spinoza (the heretic), their lives and their philosophy (NY Times review here). Stewart is a talented writer who trained as a philosopher and spent time as a management consultant prior to becoming an author (here’s an interview with him). Spinoza is the hero of the book, whose philosophy and personal life were conducted with a high degree of integrity. Liebniz is the less admirable but more fascinating figure: a whirling dervish of opinions and inquiry (on philosophy, theology, politics, law, drainage devices for mines, etc.) who at all times is looking to advance his career and curry favor with the right elites. Stewart’s main thesis (which he surely overstates a bit) is that Leibniz’ philosophy was profoundly influenced by that of Spinoza (whom he met once, not long before the latter’s death). Stewart’s Leibniz knows (but conceals) that Spinoza has superior metaphysical arguments, and takes as his challenge the creation of a worldview which is equally up-to-date, but still comports with religious orthodoxy.

I also liked

3. Betraying Spinoza, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

This is mediation upon Spinoza’s life and background, and its influence in setting the course of his philosophy. Goldstein also sees Spinoza as a heroic and admirable figure, and a kindred spirit to boot. The book discusses the history of the (Spanish/Portuguese) Jewish community in 17th century Amsterdam; she traces the roots of the kind of religious and philosophical thought which a member of that community received as inheritance, and finds strands which emerge in Spinoza’s work. This is a “betrayal” of Spinoza, since he viewed his philosophy as the product of working out a pure “view from nowhere,” uninfluenced by the community which excommunicated him. Much of this book is speculative, and it’s a distinctly personal reflection, but it is very interesting and informative. Most of Goldstein’s books are novels (and she has a new one which looks interesting), but so far I’ve only read her non-fiction (my post on her Gödel book is here; Harold Bloom’s review of this book is here).

4. Saving God: Religion after Idolatry, by Mark Johnston

I’m cheating here, because this is not a book about Spinoza (although he is discussed a bit), however the author constructs an interesting argument which arrives at a Spinoza-like destination. Johnston is a philosopher at Princeton; this work, however, is not a philosophy book per se, but an extended essay (with some philosophical and theological elements). In it, Johnston’s goal is to criticize traditional religions on their own terms and see where this leads him (the first sections of this NDPR review summarize the book very well). He assumes there is a God (a “highest one”) worthy of our fealty and the source of a path toward some kind of salvation. He then wants to strip away everything from traditional religious practice which can be criticized as arbitrary, idolatrous, or inappropriately focused on ego or worldly interests. He finds this eliminates supernatural entities and interventions, idiosyncratic historical trappings, the afterlife, and on and on. What’s left is a panentheistic vision of reality. This is a provocative and interesting book.

Quantum Interactions Create Space-time

2010-03-04T13:10:00.003-05:00

The notion that spacetime is an emergent phenomenon is, by my reckoning, being proposed by an increasing number of thinkers. Physicists and philosophers working in quantum gravity and quantum foundations are turning to the idea that the spacetime of relativity is not fundamental, but rather something which arises from a more fundamental world of quantum mechanical systems and their interactions.

I just saw a reference to one such argument which was made a few years ago in an article by Avshalom C. Elitzur and Shahar Dolev called “Quantum Phenomena Within a New Theory of Time”. This was published in the 2005 collection Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics?, Avshalom C. Elitzur, Shahar Dolev, Nancy Kolenda, Eds.

Elitzur and Dolev examine several puzzles over the nature of time in quantum mechanics and are led to the hypothesis that quantum interactions (measurements) themselves are responsible for the creation of spacetime.

A couple of quotes from section 17.10, titled “An Outline of the Spacetime Dynamics Theory”:

Could it be, then, that the two phenomena – time’s passage and wave-function collapse – are not only real, but the latter is the very manifestation of the former? A wave function, after all, is a sum of many equally possible outcomes, while the measurement brings about the realization of one out of them, the others vanishing. Is this not the very difference between future and past? And is collapse not elusive because it creates the elusive ‘now’?
…
Suppose that there is indeed a ‘now’ front, on the one side of which there are past events, adding up as the ‘now’ progresses, while on its other side there are no events, and hence, according to Mach, not even spacetime. Spacetime thus ‘grows’ into the future as history unfolds.
…
What role does the wave function play in this creation of new events? The dynamically evolving spacetime allows a radical possibility. Rather than conceiving of some empty spacetime with which the wave function evolves, the reverse may be the case. The wave function evolves beyond the ‘now’, i.e., outside of spacetime, and its ‘collapse’ due to the interaction with other wave functions creates not only the events, but also the spacetime within which they are located in relation to one another. The famous peculiarities of the quantum interaction – nonlocality, the coexistence of mutually exclusive states, backward causation and the inconsistent histories presented in the previous sections, thus become more natural.
Can the reciprocal effects of spacetime and matter – the celebrated lesson of general relativity – thus possible gain a quantum mechanical explanation? Perhaps it is the wave function, we submit, that is more primitive than spacetime, and the spacetime connecting the two events is the product of their interacting wave functions.

Neither Special nor Trivial

2010-02-23T14:44:00.003-05:00

Note: this is a navel-gazing post with no external links.

I'm thinking again about my modal realism and the status of the actual vs. the rest of the possibilities. I summarized in a prior post (Actual as Indexical, After All?) my conclusion that, while my metaphysical model is very different from that of David Lewis, his idea that what it is actual is just what is local to a point of view made sense. This implies that our actual world is not the result of a special creative outcome, and that we should probably assume that all metaphysical possibilities are actualized "somewhere" in modal space. I saw this as just an extension of the Copernican trend familiar from science: our local situation is not special; it's just another local neighborhood in a huge expanse of reality.

But more recently I've been reconsidering this.

There's an inconsistency with the rest of my metaphysics -- specifically with the foundational idea of an actualization process. This is the causal activity which collapses a set of possibilities into an actual event, grounding change and experience. If every possibility is actualized, why bother? Being actual is trivial and this kind of process seems redundant.

I have a second problem, too. Given all of the suffering borne by sentient creatures in our world, the prospect of all metaphysically possible worlds being actualized, including countless horrible ones we can conceive of, is just hard to stomach. This is the "problem of evil" for a modal realist. I put this in quotes, since it's not a logical problem, or even much of a philosophical argument against the position, it's just a consequence that's very difficult to embrace (for me, anyway). Our moral sense, like our other rational faculties, is ultimately grounded in the metaphysical reality we inhabit. It's hard to make sense of that reality including so much gratuitous suffering.

So, while I continue to respect the impulse that we shouldn't think our situation is special, I also want to reject the idea that it is trivial and that everything possible exists in an even-handed way. Is there an option between these extremes? I'm not sure.

One idea is to revisit a "chaos" model for creation. As I discussed when reviewing Timothy O'Connor's book (here and here), I don't endorse a classical theist view where a personal deity picks our world (or a subset of worlds) from his or her metaphysical card deck. An impersonal, but indeterministic process can perform the same role. Given the evident role for irreducibly chancy, spontaneous processes within our world, perhaps something similar happens on a trans-cosmic scale. We're neither special nor trivial, we're just lucky.

Dieks on RQM

2010-02-22T14:30:00.002-05:00

This is a quick follow up on the prior post. Van Fraassen was a pioneer in the 1970's of the modal interpretation of QM (which became over time a family of interpretations), and he’s now clearly an admirer of RQM. I'm not a careful student of the modal interpretations (here's the SEP article by Michael Dickson and Dennis Dieks), but the starting point involved an attempt to do away with the measurement collapse postulate (which was why I originally had a hard time getting interested in the program). The goal was instead was to append actual values to dynamically evolving states. The SEP article details the various challenges and developments over the years; what was new to me was the fact that a subset of the philosophers involved had proposed a perspectival or relational approach in an effort to solve some of the problems. These efforts come close to the spirit of RQM despite the very different starting point. This is discussed in a recent paper by Dieks called "Objectivity in Perspective: Relationalism in the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics".

Below for bookkeeping are some past posts on interpreting QM.

Quantum Foundations Series (chronological order):

The Duality at the Heart of Physics
I discuss how the two processes of QM are unavoidably interdependent.

Free Will All the Way Down
A paper describes the relationship between freedom at the human level and indeterminism at the micro-level.

Interpreting Quantum Probability
Is the probabilistic aspect of QM objectively real or epistemological?

The Limit of the Bayesian Interpretation
Why the Bayesian (subjective) interpretation of quantum probability is preferred but is still incomplete.

Wigner’s Friend and Perspectivist Quantum Theory
A superior interpretation of QM by Paul Merriam.

Merriam’s Quantum Relativity
How Merriam addresses the “preferred basis” problem for the perspectivist interpretation.

A Russell-Style Objection to Many-Worlds
Using quotes from Bertrand Russell to help explain my problem with the motivation of MWI.

Conway and Kochen vs. Determinism
Their "Strong Free-Will Theorem"

Points of View are Irreducible
Michel Bitbol on the role of perspective in interpreting QM.

Suarez on Quantum Propensities
Mauricio Suarez links the interpretation of QM to the metaphysics of power properties.

Fine Idea on the Measurement Problem
Arthur Fine's 'selective interactions" and 'quantum silence.'

Van Fraassen on "Rovelli's World"
Bas C. van Fraassen analyzes Relational Quantum Mechanics.

Van Fraassen on "Rovelli's World"

2010-02-15T11:38:00.012-05:00

I’ve long been interested in Carlo Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM), and had been aware that philosopher of science Bas C. van Fraassen had an unpublished paper discussing RQM. Recently, I saw that a preprint draft of this paper, called “Rovelli’s World,” had appeared on his website.

In the opening paragraph, van Fraassen calls RQM an “inspiring” original vision, and says “its presentation involves taking sides on a fundamental divide within philosophy itself.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t return explicitly to this last statement (and there is no conclusion section in the paper), but it is pretty clear that the key controversy of RQM revolves around the issue of realism. RQM seeks a consistent and complete interpretation of a quantum mechanical world, but this comes at the expense of fully objective realism. We give up the idea of absolute observer-independent quantum states, likewise observer-independent values of physical quantities; “the theory describes only the information systems have about each other.”

The main content of van Fraassen’s paper is a careful exercise in analyzing RQM to see what higher-order aspects of the world it describes are actually “absolute” (or objectively known) even as the states and measurement outcomes only exist relationally. He wants to compare what Rovelli - qua the author of the paper on RQM - seems to know about the world, as opposed to what a particular system in the world (playfully denoted “ROV”) can know, assuming the theory is correct. He looks at length at a specific example, where ROV is a third observer following on a “Wigner’s friend”-style example: based on his analysis he concludes an additional postulate should be added to RQM to clarify the scheme.

Below the fold are my notes on the paper: they are somewhat sketchy; please refer to the paper for the real deal.

Section1: van Fraassen first summarizes the theory and its place in the family of QM interpretations.

Again, there are no observer-independent states. A system has a state relative to an observer. An “observer” is just any system (nothing special about macroscopic vs. microscopic, conscious vs. non-conscious, etc).

Each system has its own frame of reference. It seems that the first absolute or invariant aspect of RQM is that each observer applies the same rules of quantum mechanics. Also note that observables will be relational in the same manner as states as the theory retains the eigenstate-eigenvalue link.

On the one hand, like in the Copenhagen interpretation, the observer is external to the system under consideration. On the other hand, observers are ubiquitous and equivalent. Any system can be a frame of reference. Like Many-Worlds and unlike Copenhagen, RQM wants to be a complete description of the world with no assignment of special status to any subset of reality. Of course RQM is in direct opposition to Many-Worlds in that it takes measurements (equivalent in RQM to interactions) as foundational elements, where the MWI tries to dispose of measurements.

Like some other contemporary treatments of quantum theory, RQM uses information theory, where information is correlation established by an interaction.

Van Fraassen sees a predecessor with regard to the use of information theory in the work of H.J. Groenewold, who evidently described states in terms of observer-obtained information. In recent times, work exemplified by that of Christopher Fuchs use an information-theoretic approach: “The quantum system represents something real and independent of us; the quantum state represents a collection of subjective degrees of belief about something to do with that system…” (From Fuchs quant-ph/0205039). Van Fraassen also discusses a paper by Clifton, Bub, and Halvorson which discusses quantum states as “information depositories,” and additional work by Bub.

Section 2. “Is there a view from nowhere?”

Van Fraassen discusses the key example Rovelli uses in discussing RQM, where a system has different states relative to two observers. (Rovelli calls this situation the “main observation” motivating elaboration of RQM). System S has different states relative to observer O (who has performed a measurement on S) and observer P, who (from previous measurements) knows of a correlation between S&O, but only knows S to be in a mixed state.

A first worry when hearing this type of scenario described (as in “Wigner’s friend”) is that we tend to naturally assume that the state of S relative to O is the “real” state, where P is just ignorant of the reality. But this is not the situation. Imagine a 3^rd observer, ROV. ROV only has info about S, O, and P on the basis of earlier measurements, plus later states resulting from unitary evolution. That's all he can know. The limited information known by this system ROV should not be confused with the story being told by Rovelli when narrating how RQM works. “Narrator Rovelli” is telling us only a story to convey the general form that an observer’s information can take, given that certain measurement interactions have taken place. There’s no omniscient “view from nowhere” which has primacy.

But, if we accept RQM, van Fraassen stresses we do have some omniscient or “transcendental” knowledge that is about QM as a set of principles constraining the general form information can take.

Next, we note with Rovelli, that the specific info had by one system relative to another, can only be a record of measurement outcomes. A measurement is a physical interaction: a system delivers a value for some observable; this also serves as a preparation, so the value obtained has probabilistic predictive content. While the eigenstate-eigenvalue link is retained (unlike in van Fraassens’ original modal interpretation), recall again that the “collapse” of the system is only relative to the particular observing system. So, the observable is observer-relative. Because actual, physical measurements are needed, the states assigned would presumably not be pure, so the info available will not be sharp.

Let’s take a closer look at the information available and the information obtained. What in the scheme is absolute in a sense vs. relational?

Each system is characterized in the first place by a set of questions which can be asked about it. This set would count as one of the “absolutes” in the theory. This set is the specification of the family of observables that pertain to S.

Also, that an observer who has been in a measurement interaction with a system has a record of the questions asked and the outcomes thus obtained is an absolute fact (we can’t describe the specific info objectively, of course).

Section 3. States as Observer Information

Rovelli’s RQM paper put forward two postulates constraining information acquisition.

First Postulate (Limited Information): There is a maximum amount of relevant info that can be extracted from a system.

While answers to questions have (probabilistically) predictive value, earlier answers typically become irrelevant once subsequent answers are had. This creates a limit on info. There exists some maximally productive (most non-redundant) question-answer sequence (when asking any further questions reduces info.) Postulate One says this sequence is finite. One can ask how many questions are needed to extract maximal info, leading to the assignment of a pure state relative to the observer. This number of questions is an “absolute” fact.

Note that given the same string of past outcomes, the transition probabilities would not differ based on which observer asks the next question, and the past items which become irrelevant also would not differ. So these are other examples of “absolutes” as interpreted by van Fraassen.

Rovelli says we can say any system has a maximum info. capacity measured in bits, -- this depends on the dimension of the state space.

Postulate 2 (Unlimited Information) It is always possible to acquire new info about a system.

This is possible because new info can make older info irrelevant. And even with maximal info, there are questions which can be asked where you won’t know the answer before hand (different observables with no joint eigenstate).

Sections 4&5.

Van Fraassen looks at the most puzzling aspects of RQM. Getting back to a system S and observers O and P: Can O and P “contradict” each other with regard to outcomes of their measurements on S?

Here van Fraassen takes a careful look at what O and P could know about what each other have measured, with the key point being that one has to treat each question as a quantum mechanical interaction. P knows that O has measured S, and if P interacts subsequently with O, he will confirm consistent answers based on the fact that a correlation was established between O (the pointer observable of O) and S.

Van Fraassen extends Rovelli’s example by bringing in a third observer, ROV.ROV has made measurements on S, O, &P in the past. Subsequent to the measurements by O and P, suppose ROV conducts his own measurements of O and P to see what they found. He can establish an agreement was reached between O and P, but not what the value was they had earlier relative to their own point of view. Working through the formalism, one can see that the relative state of observable A on S does not change to ROV from O’s measurement to P’s measurement.

To clarify matters, van Fraassen proposed an additional postulate relating relative states:

For any systems S, O & P, witnessed by ROV:

- The state of S relative to O (if any), cannot be orthogonal to the state of S relative to (O+P) (if any), and,

- The state of S relative to P (if any) similarly cannot be orthogonal to the state of S relative to (O+P) (if any), and,

- And the state of S relative to any of these cannot be orthogonal to the state of S relative to ROV, and,

- (and so forth for larger composite situations).

These are for pure states; the requirement for non-orthogonality will be less restrictive for mixtures.

So, ROV should indeed know that O and P are in agreement (even as Rovelli did), even without engaging in further measurement, given the facts of QM, including this extra, clarifying, postulate.

Section 6: Relational EPR

Both Smerlak and Rovelli, and earlier, Laudisa, took a look at the RQM interpretation of the EPR set-up and Bell’s inequalities. Van Fraassen takes a look, including his additional postulate.

Now S is a two-part system, and ROV will assign a mixture of consistent outcomes for the results as measured by the two EPR observers. ROV can know this, if not which of the two consistent options they got (absent further measurements). But even this seems to go beyond what Smerlak and Rovelli discussed (where they stressed the need for the original two to interact before confirming the consistent result was reached – taking away the need to suggest “action at a distance.”)

Quantum Photosynthesis Update

2010-02-08T10:36:00.001-05:00

There's an new paper in Nature (full text behind the paywall) which looks very interesting. The authors found evidence that quantum coherent effects are utilized to drive more efficient photosynthesis in algae at room temperature. This result, along with other research, suggests this is a ubiquitous aspect of photosynthesis in nature. A SciAm article describing the research with quotes from team leader Greg Scholes is here. Wired has an article here (hat tip: Cosmic Variance). In other work on this topic, the research group behind the Engel, et.al. paper from 2007 (the subject of my post: "Quantum Biology Goes Mainstream") also has a new arxiv preprint with updated results.

I suspect that non-trivial quantum effects are widespread in biology, and I hope researchers continue to get the inspiration (and funding ) to continue these efforts.

Justifying Metaphysics to its Critics

2010-01-26T12:13:00.006-05:00

There has been a (to me gratifying) rebirth of metaphysics in English-speaking philosophy over the last couple of decades. Now, just as in the past, there is a backlash coming from within the profession. One locus of the opposition comes from philosophers of science. Now one of the best contemporary philosophers of science, Craig Callender, has a draft paper (“Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics”) giving his own critical assessment of metaphysics, which he presents in a judicious and thoughtful manner. (For a recent bloggy example of the tension here, see the sometimes pointed debate down in the comments to this post at It’s Only A Theory.)

Callender believes metaphysics plays an important role in science itself as well as philosophy of science. But he thinks some metaphysics goes wrong by assuming too much autonomy from science: there is a “resurgent idea that metaphysicians have a wider domain of study than scientists.” As a result:

Today metaphysics is again the target of deep suspicion. In fact, we are in the midst of a flare-up of historic proportions. Evidence of this comes from my bookshelf. Many recent books in philosophy of science possess entire chapters strongly condemning comtemportary analytic metaphysics.

To explore why this has come about, he presents a brief sketch of post WW-II philosophy: first, Quine’s critique of positivism took away one reason to reject metaphysics; second, exploration of modal logic and counterfactuals in the 1960’s and 70’s made modality a respectable part of the subject; and third Kripke’s work convinced others we could use our intuition to describe and analyze metaphysical modality.

Subsequently, Callender says, some philosophers began to embrace the idea that while science explores the actual, metaphysicians are empowered to explore not only the actual but the metaphysically possible. And the only equipment needed for this was an armchair.

At the same time, while Quine helped “clear the room” for metaphysics (while Kripke “furnished it”), Quine was clearly no friend of metaphysics and helped bequeath a strong naturalistic bent to philosophy which gave primacy to science and suggested philosophy had a supportive, not groundbreaking, role to play in advancing our knowledge (whence the critics).

As Callender goes on to further diagnose, what clearly bothers critics about modal metaphysics is this idea that it is an exclusive philosopher’s playground (to David Lewis, “a philosopher’s paradise”). How can this idea be justified? Here’s the heart of the matter:

Where do we acquire the ‘modal intuitions’ that are the currency of the field? How do we know that they’re reliable? What are they of? Shouldn’t intuitions of what is possible make some contact with science? [emphasis original]

In the next section of the paper, Callender picks on some examples of recent metaphysical discussions which seem shallow or pointless to critics (some mereology). But he concedes one needs some sound criteria from which to try to distinguish the good from the bad metaphysics.

His prescription is to do away with the idea that metaphysics can be completely independent of science. What is deemed possible and necessary needs to come from a scientific theory, allowing that it can be a new and unproven theory. (The metaphysican would respond that this would only give you a species of what’s physically or nomologically possible). In other worlds, Callender says you need to construct the space of possibilities with a good theory which is based on explaining the actual, not just rely on our conceptual apparatus to somehow be putting us in touch with a space of metaphysical possibilities.

Again, the suspicions about metaphysics are traced to the question of how we know our modal intuitions are reliable. Modality needs to be grounded in something more tangible.

In his concluding chapter, Callender wants to emphasize that despite his negative arguments, he thinks metaphysics has an important role to play, and needn’t only follow where science leads. Metaphysics can help explore future directions as well as deepen understanding of existing models.

My take (because this topic clearly needs input from an outside amateur!): I think modal metaphysics is can meet the challenge posed by critics. There is a good reason to think that our modal intuitions are sound.

First an observation: when you look at the work of theoretical physicists themselves these days, the notion of what might be physically possible in cutting edge theories seems to me to be converging quickly to the metaphysician’s broad view of what’s possible - essentially that it maps to what is logically possible. Hugely expansive multiverses are being proposed again and again with a variety of motivations. (Off the top of my head: explaining the fine-tuning of physical constants or the low entropy big bang, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, eternal inflation bubbles, the string theory landscape, loop quantum cosmology “big bounces”; by the way it appears Craig Callender is skeptical of multiverse proposals based on this review of Sean M. Carroll’s new book).

But here’s my thought. A metaphysical picture which is naturally motivated by quantum physics (science!) gives us at least a good sketch of why our modal intuitions should be reliable. Our world consists of a causal series or network of quantum measurement events. Each event is a “collapse” of a number of possibilities into a single actuality. While we don’t understand the details yet of how our brain/body system works, we can infer that our participation in this network acquaints us with natural possibility at the ground level. This helps explain, by the way, why assessing possibilities is central to our practical lives (as it is to even the most primitive living things). Experience with these natural possibilities throughout our evolution should be expected to give rise to a reliable conceptual faculty for extrapolating our experience via modal reasoning.

Another Argument for Emergent Gravity

2010-01-14T13:39:00.008-05:00

I have followed with interest a growing body of opinion among physicists that gravity (and space itself) is best thought of as an emergent phenomenon (most recently here). Erik Verlinde has a paper, called On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton, which presents a heuristic case for gravity as emergent.

Unlike most of the other research papers I've blogged about, this is not a quantum gravity theory, but rather uses a number of concepts in mainstream physics (thermodynamics, the holographic principle) to derive emergent gravity. He says that if one coarse grains a microscopic theory (whose precise dynamics need not be known), and applies the holographic principle to measure information on partition screens between particles, the information on the screens will give rise to an entropic force - this is gravity.

The paper has engendered discussion (I first saw it mentioned by Peter Woit here; there is some appreciation here, and criticism here -- Verlinde responds here). The main criticisms are that Verlinde's points are either not new, or that they embody circular reasoning (since concepts from Newtonian and post-Newtonian physics are used to derive Newtonian gravity). Verlinde responds that he is bringing out a new insight which should help convince people that gravity is not a fundamental force, but is emergent.

I can't adjudicate the disagreements, but I think it's very suggestive that the argument for emergence continues to gain adherents.

I also think it is interesting to note that in Verlinde's model the microscopic theory, while not defined in any detail, must have a well-defined asymmeterical time dimension, as in the emergent quantum gravity theories I've reviewed. "Time is fundamental, while space is not".

[UPDATE 22 Jan.2010: A couple of more related links (HT). A New Scientist article, and an illuminating preprint from Lee Smolin, who works through a Verlinde-type derivation in a different way, utilizing ideas from Loop Quantum Gravity research (altho note the specifics of LQG are actually not very important to the analysis). He does a very good job placing the Verlinde work in context of other research and shows where it seems to add new value.]

Templeton Funds Initiative in Evolutionary Biology

2010-01-06T11:46:00.020-05:00

[See also updates at the end of the post]

I just saw the news (here - I’m not sure if this was made public earlier) about the John Templeton Foundation's $10 million multi-part grant to fund “Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology” (FQEB), an initiative to be led by Harvard’s Martin Nowak.

Nowak has led what is called the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard and has focused on the mathematical modeling side of evolutionary studies. The first announced effort is to offer fellowships to scholars pursuing envelope-pushing work on topics in evolution as well as the study of the origin of life.

I would like to learn more about this, but here are a few tidbits from the above links which are interesting. While the name evokes the earlier Templeton funding of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi), this program is more geographically centered (in Boston) and so, while not involving a new independent physical institute, it nonetheless is less “virtual” than FQXi. FQXi exists mainly to provide grants to scholars whose work in foundational physics might not otherwise garner funding from traditional sources. FQEB seem to be more people-driven (and Harvard/Boston oriented), and Nowak’s role seems crucial.

Importantly to me, however (as someone who watches Templeton -- see here and here -- and “roots” for them to apply their vast resources wisely), the initiative raises more potential controversy in terms of whether pure science will result from this effort versus a bias to search out and rationalize religion-friendly results. (This is not an issue with FQXi, which I think anyone who supports pure physics would be at least broadly pleased with):

The stated goal includes a reference to "understandings of teleology and concepts of ultimate purpose".
A Templeton officer says a “next phase of FQEB” will include “rigorous integrative work” with scholars in philosophy and theology.
The board includes a Divinity professor(!)
Nowak, who has had affiliations with Templeton for some time, is himself is a committed Christian (was this a necessary if not sufficient fact in spurring this initiative?). A short essay where he expresses some of his views is here.

The reason this is concerning, obviously, is that this country has faced an long and ongoing challenge to keep education in evolutionary biology free from interference from misguided religious folks. The Templeton Foundation has disavowed any support for the most prominent recent political agitators in this area – the “Intelligent Design” movement -- and I think their efforts in supporting science/religion rapprochement have been harmless (if often wasteful, in my opinion). But why make a big effort in science funding in this crucial and sensitive area (which is a wonderful idea) and then contaminate it with any religiosity at all? That concerns me and I’m worried that it is a big mistake.

[UPDATE 8 Jan.2010: It seems the Templeton newsletter emailed to me on 6th January, which is my first link above, was the first public notice of this; the next blogosphere notice was today and comes from the "Intelligent Design" promoter, William Dembski, here. My brief opinion of ID is above and in an earlier blog post here.]

[UPDATE 20 Jan.2010: Templeton has announced funding priorities for the new year, and, of interest to this blog, they include Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality and Foundational Questions in the Mathematical Sciences.]

[UPDATE 21 Jan. 2010: Also interesting to me is Templeton’s recruiting of journalist and blogger Rod Dreher to a post called a director of publications. His new blog is here (the first post is here). I assume it is no accident that he is a Christian conservative. There seems to be plenty of circumstantial evidence of an ongoing tension at JTF between the late founder’s clearly non-sectarian, progressive view of the religious impulse and the current Christian conservative leadership.]

A Crystallizing Universe

2010-01-04T14:27:00.002-05:00

The use of a phase transition to describe reality pops up in this paper by George Ellis and Tony Rothman: “Time and Spacetime: The Crystallizing Block Universe.”

I had previously read Ellis’ contribution to the FQXi contest on time: “On the Flow of Time”. In that essay, Ellis criticized the notion of picturing the universe as an unchanging four-dimensional space-time block, and proposed a model of an “Evolving Block Universe”, which includes the indispensable notion of time flow. In this new paper, Ellis and Rothman fine-tune this idea.

They associate the flow of time with the transition from a quantum future to a classical past: this transition is marked by the time-irreversible process of quantum state-vector reduction (measurement). They note, however, that phenomena displayed in certain quantum set-ups (delayed choice and quantum eraser schemas) show that the transition process doesn’t take place uniformly. This non-uniform nature of the transition inspired the crystallization metaphor.

I like that Ellis takes quantum measurement seriously as a natural process (actualizing potentialities) and links this transition to the experienced flow of time.

Why Hard Questions are Hard: The Cosmos as a Phase of Being

2009-12-23T15:00:00.004-05:00

Why is reality mysterious? Why should difficult questions persist for so long despite the successes of physical science?

An answer to these meta-questions may lie in the concept of a phase transition. As discussed in prior posts (like this recent one), a school of quantum gravity research has arisen which explores the idea that the visible cosmos (of matter bound in space-time geometry) arises at lower energies from a more fundamental quantum world. This more fundamental level is usually characterized by a network of quantum systems, subject to a directional causal arrow, but otherwise connected in a highly non-local fashion (little or no recognizable spatial geometry).

This model is inspired by the myriad examples of phase transitions observed in nature, and particularly those in the field of condensed matter physics (which utilizes the toolkit of quantum field theory to describe the phenomena). Superconductors, superfluids, etc. display remarkable emergent features which arise under certain pressure/temperature conditions.

Picture our familiar physical cosmos as a portion of reality which condensed into a “classical” phase, but retained subtleties in its nature which reflected its pre-transition roots. If this analogy works, then it would explain our situation: while classical explanations usually work well, some phenomena defy such analysis because their foundations go deeper. This could be the case, for instance, for the arrow of time and for conscious experience itself.

2 Ontology Papers

2009-12-10T15:12:00.004-05:00

1. I discovered on the web the writings of Ian Thompson. He is a physicist by career but someone who is also well versed in philosophy and has been setting out his own stance on things metaphysical. In “Power and Substance” he says some things I thought made a lot of sense. He likes the idea that dispositional properties (or powers) are ontologically essential. He sets out an argument that dispositions could be taken to constitute a substance rather than as properties. I am intrigued by this argument, but agnostic about it on first reading. What I really liked (hopefully not just because I agree) is his take on how a dispositions-based ontology comports with the picture of quantum physics (section 6).

First, he introduces the notion of propensity as the probabilistic incarnation of a disposition. He says QM equations may be describing something he calls a propensity field. He then says: “The only things that exist are propensity fields and the inter(actions) they produce.” The interactions are events, so the propensities fields exist “for” events. Then comes this good passage:

Such events are characterized generically as ‘actual events’, because they have definite properties once they exist, and are selections between distinct possibilities that are arrayed like a field. In quantum mechanics, these actual events are just the process of “reduction of the wave packet’ that physicists and philosophers have long discussed and sought for both theoretically and experimentally.

2. Jonathan Schaffer (who must be one of the best contemporary analytic metaphysicians) has another draft paper posted called: “The Internal Relatedness of All Things”. In it he explores another avenue for defending priority monism (in addition to those contained in this paper).

The key argument goes that if there is some internal relation among things in the cosmos (resulting from shared causal history, spatio-temporal relatedness or some other factor); if, in other words, you cannot perform a “free recombination” of parts; then, a logical chain of reasoning leads to the conclusion that the whole of the cosmos is prior to its parts.

I don’t see any reason to disagree with his reasoning given the premises. However, I do disagree with one of his seemingly not-very-controversial premises: that is, that the common conception of our concrete cosmos can be considered the object which plays the role of the “whole” in priority monism. The dependence of actual things is not only on adjacent actual things, but crucially on possibilia which go beyond the actual (local neighborhood) cosmos.

This Just Doesn’t Ring True

2009-12-04T15:53:00.004-05:00

Karen Armstrong is a prolific writer about religion, and stakes out a conciliatory position in contemporary debates between "new" atheists and theists. I have not read any of her books and I don’t claim any expertise on the subject matter! But nonetheless her take on religious history as presented in this op-ed piece bothered me. Perhaps someone more familiar with her work and/or with history can set me straight.

Here are excerpts:

In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence…

But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator……it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.

Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words…. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century…

Now I think that if one questioned the literal truth of the Bible in Europe in the centuries before Newton you would have been vulnerable to exile, jail, torture or death. I don't doubt that a number of theologians were subtle enough to avoid appearing to question literal truth while spinning out a an essentially symbolic interpretation of God and the Bible, but this fact isn’t enough to assert something about “standard practice in the West.”

What is she talking about?

UPDATE: 7 December 2009
In this interview on NPR (hat tip Thomas J McFarlane), Armstrong, after discussing the Descartes’ and Newton’s vision of God and universe says:

Well, once this scientific religion caught hold, people started to read the Bible in a literal manner, where they never had before. Nobody before the 17th, 18th century understood the first chapter of Genesis as a literal account of the origins of life. ….

And:

St. Augustine had made it quite clear, too, in the Christian world, that if a biblical text contradicted Scripture, that text must be re-interpreted and given an allegorical interpretation. And that remained the practice of the church right up until the 16th century.

And:

Nobody expected literal proof from Scripture, and that's whether you look in the Jewish world, people like Maimonides (ph); in the Muslim world, people like Abu Sina or Al-Ghazali; or in the Christian world with Thomas Aquinas.

I’m sorry. I understand the point she’s trying to make. She wants to argue that scientific understanding created fertile ground for a reactionary fundamentalism as well as for atheism. However, I still don’t buy this historical analysis implying there was some golden era of gentle allegorical interpretation of God as the ineffable Brahman during Europe’s dark ages (sorry for the sarcasm).

I don’t think you can cherry pick a few theologians and say this allegorical understanding of God and scripture was the pre-17th century “standard of practice”. And may I say using the creation story in Genesis as your example is far too easy – I’d like to hear an argument saying the New Testament miracles, including the resurrection of Christ, were taken as allegorical.

Maybe Armstrong makes a more persuasive case in her book – I guess I’ll have to read it now!? (Maybe overgeneralizations in the op-ed and interviews are in fact a deviously effective marketing strategy to sell the book).

String Theorist Turns to Emergent Gravity Approach

2009-11-30T14:37:00.011-05:00

Inspired by phase transitions displayed in condensed matter physics, Petr Hořava has constructed a model where the time dimension is decoupled from space at high energy/short distance while the space-time characteristic of relativity (and Lorentz invariance) emerges at low energy/long distances. The model, which is a quantum field theory, is able to be renormalized in a way GR itself cannot be. The paper, “Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point,” sets out the theory.

Evidently, some condensed matter models have an exponential factor which represents the degree of anisotropy (a directionally variable divergence) between space and time. Adopting an appropriate exponent, along with some other pragmatic assumptions (including imposing something called a “detailed balance condition”) creates the high energy decoupling of time from space and allows for renormalization. (A Lifshitz point evidently is a special critical point in a model with such a anisotropic continuous phase transition).

At high energies, the model implies a fundamentally non-relativistic theory, where there is a “preferred foliation” consisting of a structure of time slices. This means a directional causal structure is part of the foundation: time is freed from being bound to space.

In a second paper here, Hořava discusses that the theory has a feature in common with the simulated outputs from the model known as Causal Dynamical Triangulations. Both theories imply that the effective dimensionality of space-time changes with the scaling, from d=2 at high energy to the familiar d=4 at low energy. The imposition of a preferred causal structure is common both models.

As always, my summaries could be flawed by my lack of background knowledge -- please see the papers for details. I’m a little late to reading about all this: Hořava’s papers have led to a good burst of activity on Arxiv in recent months. Also, a short mention of his work in SciAm magazine is here.

It’s interesting to me that another physicist (and a string theorist, at that), has taken up this type of approach to the problem. It seems to my amateur eye to be most fertile area of research in quantum gravity. The theories in this genre share the following characteristics (see the end of the post for a full list of my blog entries on these research programs):

1. In assessing the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and general relativity, and despite the breathtaking triumph that is Einstein’s theory, QM is assumed to be more fundamental than GR.
2. Gravity as we know it from GR, is an emergent phenomenon: it arises as an effective limit from a more fundamental theory (some approaches attempt to show both gravity and matter/energy co-emerge from a fundamental quantum mechanical theory; others just model gravity and assume the theory can be married to matter fields).
3. Some notion of time/causality is fundamental.
4. Many (but not all) of the approaches utilize concepts and/or mathematics from condensed matter physics.

One key difference running through some of the approaches has to do with the issue of background independence. In the case of some, including Hořava’s, the mathematics is that of quantum field theory and all the action, including gravity, takes place against a fixed space-time background. Some researchers object that this is a conceptually untenable situation, and a truly “background independent” approach is needed. This debate, which figured prominently in the original critique of string theory by those working in loop quantum gravity, continues to lurk as an issue in the emergent gravity genre.

[UPDATE: 3 December 2009 -- Here's another interesting paper which appeared in Arxiv. "A quantum Bose-Hubbard Model with evolving graph as toy model for emergent spacetime"]

Emergent Quantum Gravity Research Series (in chronological order):

What’s New in Quantum Gravity
A section of Lee Smolin’s recent book discusses new approaches.

Causality First
Rafael Sorkin’s Causal Sets and Fotini Markopoulou’s Quantum Causal Histories.

Emerging From the Noise
More on Markopoulou’s approach.

Caution: Universe under Construction
The Causal Dynamical Triangulation program.

Geometrogenesis
More papers from Markopoulou and colleagues.

In the Beginning was the Qubit
Seth Lloyd’s quantum computing-inspired take on quantum gravity.

Dreyer's Internal Relativity
Olaf Dreyer's approach to finding emergent gravity from a quantum mechanical base.

The Superfluid Universe
Grigory Volovik looks for the answers to fundamental physics in the surprising phenomena displayed in condensed matter physics.

Group Field Theory and Emergent Space-Time
Daniele Oriti's Group Field Theory.

CDT in Scientific American
A bit more on Causal Dynamical Triangulations and how it compares with other research programs.

Re-defining Where We Live

2009-11-20T13:06:00.005-05:00

(A short rant for a Friday)

If you’re like me, you learned the following story.

The universe, or cosmos, consists of a four-dimensional space-time continuum which contains matter and energy. It all began with a big bang singularity: time as well as space started then, so it doesn’t make sense to ask what happened “before”. The universe probably extends beyond what is observable, but the same physical laws prevail everywhere. Nothing exists outside the universe.

Every statement in that paragraph is likely wrong.

1. Space-time is probably not continuous; in fact, space-time may not be fundamentally distinct from matter-energy.

2. We don’t have a quantum gravity theory yet, but any version will likely banish the big bang singularity. Our universe almost certainly arose from a pre-existing context.

3. Observable physical constants appear fixed, but this has been questioned in some cases; we have no good reason to think physical laws are fixed beyond what we can observe.

4. According to many proposals multiple universes exist. And if they do, there’s no good conceptual reason to think they are entirely isolated from each other (just because we appear causally isolated from our point of view).

I think trends in cosmological and physical theories lend support to a different picture. What we think of as the actual world is just a local neighborhood in a larger expanse. And I can see no non-arbitrary reason to think this larger reality is anything short of being a realm of maximal size. The maximal size is the one which encompasses all metaphysical (=logical) possibilities.

Spinoza: Are Finite Things Contingent After All?

2009-11-10T11:37:00.005-05:00

I’ve never studied Spinoza in any depth, so have been ignorant of the many subtleties/ambiguities in his work and the competing interpretations put forward by scholars on many points. I enjoyed reading two articles by Samuel Newlands: first, his SEP article “Spinoza’s Modal Metaphysics”, and the recent preprint, “Another Kind of Spinozistic Monism.” The latter paper argues that the various forms of metaphysical dependence employed by Spinoza (causation, inherence in, following from, etc.) are each connected to a broad notion of conceptual dependence, which is the key to understanding their role. This paper, interesting in its own right, helped me understand Newlands’ work in the modal metaphysics article, which is directly about the aspect of Spinoza I’m most interested in at the moment.

Spinoza is widely seen as a necessitarian (everything which exists does so necessarily), and for good reason: he has passages which explicitly affirm this. But evidently if you dig deeper there is a subtlety with regard to the status of “finite modes”, the ontological category which would include everyday concrete things. (Please note the use of “modes” here is unrelated to the “modal” dimensions of necessity and contingency). The one substance (God) and its infinite modes are absolutely necessary, but finite modes don’t follow from God in the same way as infinite modes. On the one hand, Spinoza affirms that God created everything, but elsewhere he specifies that finite modes follow only from other finite modes. What does this mean for the modal status of finite things (and how can he affirm both of these statements?)

Newlands analyzes these questions in depth, and I’m giving a very superficial gloss here. But his main point relies on the idea that causation and “following from” are for Spinoza varieties of conceptual connections (e.g. something follows from God if it is properly part of the concept of God). Now, if something is necessary, its concept involves its existence: this is the case for God (and for God’s “infinite” modes). But if something is contingent, it means its concept does not involve or is not connected to its existence. Looking at Spinoza’s various passages discussing finite modes, he makes a distinction depending on whether they are considered in themselves, or rather in their full connection with all other modes (“the entire order of nature”). Viewed in this latter way, the concept of finite modes includes their necessity. But if we only conceive of them in isolation, then this is not the case, and their status could then be seen as contingent.

Put another way, from our (limited) point of view, the objects of our world are conceived as contingent. If we could expand our conceiving to encompass God’s point of view, then we would see all as existing necessarily. God’s global view of things (and remember there exists an infinite number of things and they are metaphysically exhaustive of all possible things) conceives their necessity; our local view (which encompasses only the adjacent neighborhood) conceives things as contingent.

This seems like a sensible model. It comports with a modal realist picture where the manifold of all metaphysical possibilities (all possible worlds) exists necessarily, while the things in our actual world are contingent – and actual here is an indexical term designating the world (or better, the region of reality) in which we find ourselves.

(Going beyond anything in Newlands article, I also was wondering if, for Spinoza, this interpretation could lead to the view of this system as a form of panentheism, as opposed to the usual label of pantheism, since God’s domain of the infinite contains but outruns our finite world.)

Logicomix!

2009-10-26T13:30:00.003-04:00

I loved Logicomix, the graphic novel of ideas written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou and illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (here are reviews from the NYT and Guardian). It dramatizes the quest of Bertrand Russell and some of his contemporaries to build a certain basis for knowledge, beginning with the project of providing a complete and consistent logical foundation for mathematics (or at least arithmetic). It was a quest tinged with tragic overtones, as the effort itself led to the uncovering of its own impossibility (culminating with Gödel’s theorems). The authors play up a second kind of dramatic theme as well, dwelling on the specter of madness as it haunted figures in turn of the 20th century mathematics: it depicts Cantor’s insanity, Frege’s paranoia, and Russell’s fear of inheritable madness in his family.

I guess I rate Logicomix highly in part just because it was such a nice surprise that it exists! I’m not sure where it would rank if there were 10 graphic novels dramatizing historical intellectual or scientific quests. If I were to come up with criticism, I would say first that it has an excess of framing devices: the story is delivered by Russell via reminisces at a 1939 lecture; then, an outer frame consists of ingressions of the authors themselves as they debate how to present the story, and then at the end digress into a discussion of Aeschylus’ Oresteia (!). Also, I think the madness theme is too forced (e.g. by having Russell seeking out Cantor without knowing he was committed to an asylum – Russell never met him).

The ideas themselves are presented accurately, I think, although not explored in great depth: the focus is more on storytelling. However, a key conclusion is delivered correctly IMO: reality outruns its abstract description (the map should not be mistaken for the territory). Both Russell and his Principia Mathematica collaborator Alfred North Whitehead separately would critique metaphysical materialism in the 1920’s developing this theme.

GPPC Calendar: Update

2009-10-20T13:45:00.004-04:00

Work is underway to get the GPPC website updated (a new webmaster was needed); in the meantime, below is some information for the two fall 2009 conferences.

The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium is a cooperative effort of 15 area University philosophy departments, which puts on 3 topical philosophy conferences, an annual undergraduate philosophy conference, and a public issues forum on a topic of interest to philosophers and folks at large. All conferences are free and open to the public.

1. "Instrumental Reasoning: A Conversation with John Broome"
Sunday, November 1, 2009, 1pm to 5pm
Clayton Hall, University of Delaware, Newark, DE

This conference, organized by Mark Greene at Delaware, has its own home page here.

2. GPPC Symposium, “The Medical Humanities”
Saturday, November 14, 2009, 1:00 to 5:30 P.M. Followed immediately by a reception until 6:00 P.M.
Temple University School of Medicine, 3500 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia. Room 105 & Stone Commons

SPEAKERS:
Sherwin Nuland, M.D., Yale University,
“Half a Millennium of Artists Portraying
Diseases and Healers: 1500-2000”
Hilde Lindemann, Ph.D., Michigan State University,
“Caring and Coercion: What Counts as Autonomy
at the End of Life?”
Rebecca Kukla, Ph.D., University of South Florida,
“Paper is Complete – Author TBD: The Death of the Author in Contemporary Biomedical Research”
Scott Burris, J.D., Temple University,
“When ‘Ethics’ Becomes ‘Law’”
CHAIRS:
Miriam Solomon, Temple University (contact for more info.)
W. Mark Goodwin, Rowan University

3 Links: Math and Physics

2009-10-12T13:38:00.006-04:00

[UPDATE 13 October 2009: Edited for typos and clarity]

First, since I’m on the record as a skeptic regarding the existence of actual or concrete infinities, I’m on the lookout for discussion of this topic. Here’s a talk given by mathematician Edward Nelson (hat tip: Not Even Wrong). In it, he expresses deep skepticism not only (in passing) regarding the idea of an actual physical infinity, but also (very controversially) on the concept as used in mathematics itself. I wouldn’t think skepticism about the former need have anything to do with the latter (and I’m certainly no mathematician), but I thought this was interesting reading.

Second, I enjoyed reading this (lengthy) overview of quantum gravity research by R.P.Woodard. The main focus of the paper is a “pedagogical explanation” of just why the techniques used in creating quantum versions of classical theories didn’t work when it came to general relativity (I thought this was helpful even if one can't follow all the formalisms). There is also a short section on the state of current research. Woodard makes this comment in the section discussing Causal Dynamical Triangulations (p.67): “…exact calculations are unlikely to be unattainable for quantum gravity, so the most fruitful way of questioning perturbation theory [i.e. the QFT method which is also the basis of original string theory – Steve] is to develop better approximation techniques.” The idea of finding a theory of everything (TOE) which consists of a set of equations with exact solutions looks like it is not going to happen. Finding a well-motivated approximate description of the ultra-high energy regime from which GR and QFT matter fields co-emerge at lower energies is probably the way things will go (I fearlessly predict).

Lastly, here’s a link which is just plain cool. Experimental physicists have been trying to place larger and larger molecules in quantum superposition: here’s a proposal for designing an experiment which could achieve this for a virus. Hat tip goes to the Physics and Cake blog.

Power Holism

2009-10-02T15:19:00.006-04:00

This makes a nice follow up to my recent reading of C.B. Martin’s book: I found this paper, “Puzzling Powers: The Problem of Fit” by Neil E. Williams. In it, Williams identifies and seeks to address a trouble spot encountered by Martin and other advocates of a powers/dispositions-based ontology.

To start, Williams describes three key features of the ontology. First: the powers are intrinsic properties of their bearers. They don’t need external or relational connections for support. Second, the manifestations which they are capable of producing are essential features of the power: those potential manifestations make a power what it is. Third, the actual manifestations occur as a result of reciprocity. Martin in particular stressed the mutual nature of powers working together to produce manifestations, noting different pairings or combinations of powers will lead to different outcomes.

Given these three features, Williams sees “a problem of fit.” He says: “Stated briefly, the problem is that powers have to work together when they produce manifestations (reciprocity), but as they are not relations (intrinsicality), and they cannot change with the circumstances (essentialism), the fact that they are causally harmonious is without explanation.” Powers fit together to produce mutual manifestation, but the fact that they fit is not accounted for by the three features they possess. He uses a jigsaw puzzle analogy to suggest that, as it stands, there’s no reason to expect a fit to occur without adding more to the story.

So, what to do? Williams doesn’t think it’s advantageous to drop one of the three features he began with. With regard to essentialism, he does mention an alternate idea that the potential manifestations essential to powers are not determinate but are instead “TBD” (to-be-determined) via hooking up with other powers. But he still sees a gap with this idea: what finally makes the particular determinate manifestation finally occur?

So, instead, Williams puts forward a solution: “power holism”. The nature of powers is determined holistically: “the specific, determinate nature of each power (that is, the set of manifestations a power is for and the precise partners required for those manifestations) depends on the specific, determinate nature of other powers with which it is arranged in a system of powers.”

He notes we also need to discuss the bigger picture of “…what kind of world allows for or provides for the fit that power holism bestows.” How do the powers get their holism on, in other words?

He looks at three ways one might address this. First, we could just posit holistic coordination as a brute addition to ontology. But this isn’t very satisfying. Second, he suggests one might look to a platonic account: collaboration between powers takes place in the platonic realm. Third, one might retain naturalism, but suggest a form of monism which could support the coordinated fit. For instance, if all powers ultimately ontologically depended on the prior existence of the whole world (a la Jonathan Schaffer), then this shared basis could explain the harmonious fit. Williams is sympathetic to this option but says any of the choices might be worthy of consideration.

A very good paper. I liked the appeal to holism and (although Williams doesn’t use this terminology) non-local connections. In my opinion, though, in order to really nail it down, some indeterminism needs to be added to the model. Fit (correlations) can be explained by the non-local connections, but powers need to be seen as capable of more than one outcome per partner—an irreducible indeterminism only resolved when the manifestation (event) occurs. This would then nicely comport with quantum mechanics.

(I see Williams also has a paper co-authored with Andrea Borghini advocating a single-world modal actualism, explained using a powers ontology. I’ll have to check that out – my last post on that topic was here).

First Gunk, now Junk: Infinite Chains of Metaphysical Explanation

2009-09-25T14:57:00.004-04:00

I recently read a few philosophy papers which share a common theme. They advocate the idea that there may be no foundational or basic metaphysical level of reality (whether monistic or pluralistic), and that therefore one should (or at least can) embrace infinite chains of metaphysical explanation.

Einar Duenger Bohn, in the draft paper “Must There Be a Top Level?” notes that many philosophers have discussed the conceivability of “gunk”, which is infinitely divisible stuff (a world is gunky if everything in it has, mereologically speaking, proper parts). Bohn thinks that “junk” is also conceivable, where everything is a proper part of something else.

The term junk is drawn from the paper “Monism: The Priority of the Whole” by Jonathan Schaffer (here’s a post which discussed an earlier draft of this paper). Schaffer argued against the conceivability of junk as part of a larger set of arguments in favor of the monistic whole as the foundational entity in a world. (To fill out the glossary, Bohn introduces the adjective “hunky” to describe a world both gunky and junky).

Schaffer says that in discussing possible worlds, a “junky world” makes no sense, since “world” refers to a single entity. Junk has no upward “cut-off” point to contain it within a world. Bohn objects that there is no need to constrain the term world as singular: maybe it can refer to a set or some other plural entity, which allows for junk.

But is junk really conceivable? Bohn offers thought experiments which put junk on a par with gunk with regard to conceivability (imagine each atom in a world is itself a world: now take this idea both upward and downward). What’s wrong with a “hunky” world extending without foundation in both directions?

Schaffer’s paper is also the target of Matteo Morganti’s just published “Ontological Priority, Fundamentality and Monism” (hat tip; no draft available online that I can see). Morganti sees no compelling argument for a foundational level of reality vs. the alternative of “metaphysical infinitism”. He also takes issue with Ross Cameron’s conclusion that we should postulate a fundamental level for methodological reasons if we are to have any satisfying metaphysical explanations (I discussed the relevant Cameron paper in this post).

A third paper, by Francesco Orilia, makes an analogous argument in a different philosophical argument “thread”: he compares whether facts (or states of affairs), which bind an object with its attribute (or relate multiple objects), are basic ontological entities (as in Armstrong), or whether they give rise to an infinite regress of binding relations (Bradley’s regress). Orilia thinks we should accept “fact infinitism” as a live option. (For a very deep dive on this see Bill Vallicella's thoughts and dialogue with Orilia here and here).

So is there a foundational entity or entities or not? Do you really have an explanation when you invoke an infinite chain? There’s a lot to digest here, and I plan on rereading this set of papers and others. My intuition has always been that there must be a fundamental level of reality, but an argument is needed here, not an intuition. I think we can reject gunky/junky worlds. I will go ahead and sketch my speculative argument below (a previous gunk-inspired post with a good comment thread is here).

First, though, let me note that I’m very happy to continue to find members of a new generation of philosophers who are taking up “meaty” metaphysics as a primary focus. Philosophers like Schaffer and Cameron are doing serious and innovative metaphysics, and are provoking responses from other young philosophers (definition of young = anyone younger than me): great stuff.

My tentative position is this (what follows assumes modal realism). When we employ our (remarkable) ability to conceive of infinities we are in danger of making a particular error. As background, I endorse conceivability as a guide to possibility, and specifically think that our concept of what is logically possible maps to what is metaphysically possible. I think this total space of metaphysical possibilities is infinite and this is what grounds our concept of the infinite. Now, philosophers usually refer to this space of possibilities specifically as the space of possible worlds (I think this is rooted in methodological usefulness). However, our attempt to conceive of what is possible in a particular world may be actually importing content which may not fit in one world. We need to be careful about how we define a world.

Consider the actual world. Following David Lewis in one respect (but not in others), I think the best sense of “actual” to use is as an indexical. If I take the actual world to be the causally connected region centered on my point of view, then, based on a posteriori reasons, the actual world should arguably be considered finite: quantum physics as applied to space-time implies no infinite divisibility, and causal connections only extend so far. If all possible worlds are likewise defined as centered causally connected patches, I hypothesize that all “worlds” should be considered likewise finite.

Let me pause here for a moment. Many (most?) thinkers assume that a world is an isolated, bounded spatio-temporal object of arbitrary size. But I assert there actually isn’t a good reason to think there is some clean definition of a world boundary beyond this concept of a causally connected region or patch. (Please note I’m not saying physicists/cosmologists need to adopt my definition of a world or universe, this is just to help make sense of a philosophical problem.) If one asserts a world contains a concrete infinity, then one has exceeded the boundary for what can fit in a world. This is the error.

Now, let’s go back and consider the question of whether there is a foundational “level” of reality using this model of an infinite space of metaphysical possibilities broken down into finite worlds. When considering a world, its “parts” have a good claim for being basic given indivisibility. Since a world can have an irregular and changing boundary as events move into or out of causal contact with the center, the “whole” of the world seems to have less of a claim to be foundational.

On the other hand, let’s consider all of reality, i.e., the total space of metaphysical possibilities (all possible worlds). In this case, there exists an infinite number of ways to parse it, and the parts no longer seem to have as good a grip on being basic. Here it is the total space which is the ultimate source of the reality individual worlds take part in. So in the bigger picture, the monistic whole takes priority, and has the best overall claim to be the foundational entity.

Notes on C.B.Martin’s The Mind in Nature

2009-09-21T10:17:00.003-04:00

Philosopher C.B.Martin died last year and left us a great book. The Mind in Nature summarizes his philosophy and its applications to mind, causality and more. For background see Paul Snowdon’s obituary and a brief note on the book by Gualtiero Piccinini; here is a very good draft review by Jessica Wilson. It was not an easy book for me to read but I found it very rewarding. Martin proposes an ontology featuring dispositions (sometimes referred to as powers). Notably for him, dispositions are inherently qualitative, and are also capable of producing myriad manifestations depending on the context.

I have previously read the work of philosophers who feature dispositional properties/powers as a basic element in their ontologies. (Martin has an early section recounting arguments for the irreducibility of dispositions– see the Wilson review for more on this). An attraction of these proposals is their potential to support a theory of real causality and of intentionality – topics mainstream analytic philosophy has trouble with IMO (see my series on George Molnar for more). John Heil adds the twist (along with Martin) that we could consider dispositions to also be qualities, which helps solve an additional aspect of the mind/body problem. Despite these accomplishments I have continued to view disposition-based accounts as falling a bit short when it came to mind and also to modality (see this recent post). Martin’s distinctive account takes another step toward addressing these issues.

Dispositions Offer Possibilities

I think the key to Martin’s ontology is that his dispositions don’t just point to one kind of manifestation, they are prolific. He says that whatever the fundamental elements of nature are, they have multiple internal properties which are dispositions to potentially an infinite number of different manifestations depending on context. Different “reciprocal disposition partners” will give you different manifestations. At any point, what exists is a “…manifestation tip of a disposition iceberg (p.9)”.

One doesn’t need “possible worlds”, since dispositions and their “projectivity” of actual and non-actual manifestations with various partners constitute a web or “power-net (p.29)”. In fact actual readinesses exist for infinite potential (Wilson points out this assertion is not backed up by an argument), so you don’t need any further grounding for possibility. (Upon reading this my own thought was why couldn’t Martin just redefine possible worlds as possible power-nets?). I note Martin himself isn’t vehement in asserting he’s definitely provided a full and adequate grounding for modality, compared to his tone when defending other aspects of his view.

Emergence/Reduction

For Martin, the creative power of dispositions means you don’t need “levels of reality” or the notion of supervenience. He sees all reality as a continuum “going from the many directional readiness of the quark, most of which will never be manifested, to the capacities and dispositions for many representations of some English speaker, most of which also will never be manifested (p.29)”. (Note that in contrast to the mainstream of analytic philosophy, language is not primary: the ontology comes first). The basic ontology is rich enough that emergence occurs through processes at the one level of reality; emergence is not a concept implying or requiring multiple levels.

Causality and Events

The manifestation of a disposition is the basis unit of causality. At one point (Ch.5), Martin stresses that causality in his view is not a temporally separated thing. The reciprocal partnering of dispositions creates a mutual manifestation; the model is of a “cause-effect” rather than cause-then-effect. (I would say, in other words, an event.) Martin doesn’t much address the problem of time and its perceived unidirectional flow. He takes the space-time of Einstein to be a substratum carrying the dispositional properties.

Mind

With regard to mind, Martin stresses that dispositions (which are inherently directional) give you intentionality at level below what we think of as “mental”. He also gives an account of how a natural system utilizing representation comes into being; he is inspired by results in neurobiology which he takes to show that “vegetative” (i.e. unconscious) systems of the brain effectively utilize representations already. So intentionality and representation are not distinctive hallmarks of human consciousness.

And neither are qualities. Martin first says dispositions cannot be identified with structural properties (such a view leads to an empty “Pythagoreanism” in his view). Even structureless elementary units (quarks or whatever) have multiple internal dispositions. And there is no need for purely qualitative, non-dispositional (categorical) properties. It is dispositions through-and-through and these dispositions are themselves simultaneously qualities (Wilson’s review also discusses criticism of this dual-aspect idea citing Armstrong).

So what does distinguish the mental? Here Martin offers a model which says the difference between mental and non-mental lies in the kind of qualitative material used in a representation. If the material of use is appropriately sensory, we get consciousness. I’m giving this model short-shrift here a bit in my notes (chs.13 -15), but I was a bit disappointed by it. Given Martin’s emphasis on gradualism, i.e. having nature exploit its base level qualities to give rise to all phenomena, I found his account of mind to be ad hoc. Since we’re making some brute assumptions in our ontology anyway, I would prefer to just couple the experiential aspect of reality to the qualitative aspect at the base level as two views of the same thing (possessed by each mutual manifestation). Then the emergence of human consciousness would be likewise gradual and not wholly dependent on functional criteria. (Wilson has a somewhat similar critique in the last part of her review).

Propensities and Quantum Physics

I was happy to see Martin tries to grapple (briefly) with quantum physics (in his chapter 6). In a section called “Dispositions and Quantum Theory”, Martin briefly discusses quantum theory and the interpretational question of assigning ontological status to the wave function vs. the measurement events. He thinks a system as described by the wave function could be taken as a propensity, which is a bit different idea than a disposition which points to specific manifestation. There seems to be a metaphysical gap here (correlating to the problem of the “collapse of the wave function”). He suggests that a “dispositional flutter” or oscillation might cause the appearance of irreducible probability. He says the flutter could be a consequence of practical limits on detection, or an intrinsic random oscillation. Unfortunately, I think we know this kind of interpretation of QM doesn’t hold up.

I thought it would have been consistent with his views if he identified his dispositions as wave function-type propensities and than had his “mutual manifestation” event map to the quantum measurement event. There still is an element of apparent mystery or gap surrounding the triggering of events, but I think we have to accept that this is just a given feature of the world, given QM.

Guide to Reality

Short Review of Getting Causes from Powers

More on Causation and Reduction to Physics

Determinism Doesn’t Imply Causal Necessity

A Note on Events and Causation

Do We Need Essences?

Philosophy for Children Forum: 29 October

Dispositional Modality as Restricted Possibility

Aaronson on QM and Free Will

GPPC 2011-2012 Program

Priority of Actual over Potential in Aristotle

Thoughts on Edward Feser’s Aquinas

Composing the Mind

Causal Regularity is not Universal but Rare

Introspection and Acquaintance

Upcoming GPPC Event: Philosophy for Children

Mind-Dependent Composition

Horizon Complementarity

On Quantum/Relativity Incompatibility

Templeton Funding for Philosophy

More on the Problem of Being for Powers

Power Property Papers Perused

Upcoming GPPC-Sponsored Events

Russellian Monism and Dispositional/Categorical Properties

Limiting Possible Evils

FQXi Question: Is Reality Digital or Analog?

Americans Unwilling to Bar Heaven’s Gate

No Basis for Spirituality as a ‘Bridge’

The ‘Impersonal Force’ is a Popular Choice

What do the Nones Believe?

American Grace and the ‘Nones’

Don’t Assume Quantum Physics Doesn’t Matter

Stuart Kauffman Blog Series

Experience and Causation

Russell on QM and the Brain

Quotes on the Key Mind-Body Insight

Comments on Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape

Abilities vs. Dispositions

Philosophers Gently Debating

Necessary Being(s)

GPPC: New Links

Is the Universe 2-Dimensional at Short Distances?

Comments on Meillassoux

Meillassoux: A Foundation of Absolute Contingency

Quantum Measurement in an Infinite Universe

Della Rocca on the PSR

Fine-Tuned for Pantheism?

John Leslie: Immortal Pantheist

UK Fetal Awareness Metastudy

No Final Theory

Order Underpins Everything

Getting Moral Truths from Non-Moral Truths

Mark Johnston's Surviving Death

Where Rationalism Meets Empiricism

Morality: Not Natural or Supernatural?

Powers vs. Humean Supervenience

Balaguer on Free Will, Part Three

Balaguer on Free Will, Part Two

Balaguer on Free Will, Part One

I Agree With Sam Harris on Science and Morality

Spinoza on the Composite Self

Philosophers Discussing Food! Upcoming Event

Books Unblogged: Spinoza Edition

Quantum Interactions Create Space-time

Neither Special nor Trivial

Dieks on RQM

Van Fraassen on "Rovelli's World"

Quantum Photosynthesis Update

Justifying Metaphysics to its Critics

Another Argument for Emergent Gravity

Templeton Funds Initiative in Evolutionary Biology

A Crystallizing Universe

Why Hard Questions are Hard: The Cosmos as a Phase of Being

2 Ontology Papers

This Just Doesn’t Ring True

String Theorist Turns to Emergent Gravity Approach

Re-defining Where We Live

Spinoza: Are Finite Things Contingent After All?

Logicomix!

GPPC Calendar: Update