Hi Pierz, On Tue, Jun 18, 2019, at 04:15, Pierz wrote: > > I've been thinking and writing a lot recently about a conception of reality > which avoids the debates about what is fundamental in reality. It seems to me > that with regards to materialism, we find it very difficult to escape the > evolutionarily evolved, inbuilt notion of "things" and "stuff" that our > brains need in order to manipulate the world.
Right. I think this points to a fundamental fact that is overlooked in the dominant scientific paradigm of our age: that we are embedded in reality. We are participants, looking at it from the inside. The contemporary paradigm gives the utmost importance to the "third-person view" of reality, which is nothing more than a model, if not a fantasy. The edifice collapses once you try to explain consciousness, because this third person view model forces us to explain consciousness as an emergent property of matter, and that doesn't work. An overlooked simple possibility is that separating the notions of "consciousness" and "reality" is nonsensical. There is no evidence of any "reality" outside of conscious experience, nor can there be. I am not saying that there is no value in the third-person view, on the contrary, it leads to myriad interesting things, namely the computer I am using to type this email. But we have to be able to see models for what they are. Consider a camera lens. I want to take a photo of something, which is to say, I want to compress a 3D object into some 2D representation. Different lenses provide different mappings, but there is no way to avoid the fact that, no matter what lens you choose, something is lost. At the same time, there is no "correct lens". They just produce different mapping, that may be more or less useful depending on the situation. There are no cells, hearts, stars, atoms, people, societies, markets, ants, music or any other such category outside of human language. These are words that point to human mental models. These models please us, and we keep playing the game. Sometimes we find even better models, but we are doing nothing but coming up with new, perhaps better lenses. Ultimately, I think this is an infinite game. > Yet QM and importantly the expected dissolution of time and space as > fundamental entities in physics have made any such simple mechanistic notion > of matter obsolete - what is left of matter except mathematics and some > strange thing we can only call "instantiation" - the fact that things have > specific values rather than (seeming to be) pure abstractions? What does a > sophisticated materialist today place his or her faith in exactly? Something > along the lines of the idea that the world is fundamentally describable by > mathematics, impersonal and reducible to the operation of its simplest > components. With regards to the last part - reductionism - that also seems to > be hitting a limit in the sense that, while we have some supposed candidates > for fundamental entities (whether quantum fields, branes or whatever), there > is always a problem with anything considered "fundamental" - namely the old > turtle stack problem. If the world is really made of any fundamental entity, > then *fundamentally* it is made of magic - since the properties of that > fundamental thing must simply be given rather than depending on some other > set of relations. While physicists on the one hand continually search for > such an entity, on the other they immediately reject any candidate as soon as > it is found, since the question naturally arises, why this way and not that? > What do these properties depend on? Furthermore, the fine tuning problem, > unless it can be solved by proof that the world *has* to be the way it is – a > forlorn hope it seems to me – suggests that the idea that we can explain all > of reality in terms of the analysis of parts (emergent relationships) is > likely to collapse – we will need to invoke a cosmological context in order > to explain the behaviour of the parts. It's no wonder so many physicists hate > that idea, since it runs against the deep reductionist grain. And after all, > analysis of emergent relationships (the parts of a thing) is always so much > easier than analysis of contextual relationships (what a thing is part of). I have the utmost respect and interest in Physics, but I think that contemporary physicists suffer from the problem of having convinced themselves that their field, and their filed alone, can produce "the correct lens". Most scientific fields have a lot to learn from Physics when it comes to rigor, but at the same time physicists underestimate how much easier it is to achieve rigor when you are dealing with very low levels of complexity (as compared to Biology, Psychology, Sociology and so on). I think it would be good if Physics found its way back to a more humble and wise position, being proud of the great lenses it creates, but understanding that we also need other lenses in our toolkit. Another thing I think is that the epistemic boundaries of current scientific fields have reached a point of diminishing returns, and we really should take seriously the project of crossing these boundaries without sacrificing rigor -- the elusive dream of interdisciplinarity without bullshit. > > To get to the point then, I am considering the idea of a purely relational > ontology, one in which all that exists are relationships. There are no > entities with intrinsic properties, but only a web of relational properties. > Entities with intrinsic properties are necessary components of any finite, > bounded theory, and in fact such entities form the boundaries of the theory, > the "approximations" it necessarily invokes in order to draw a line somewhere > in the potentially unbounded phenomenological field. In economic theory for > instance, we have “rational, self-interested” agents invoked as fundamental > entities with rationality and self-interest deemed intrinsic, even though > clearly such properties are, in reality, relational properties that depend on > evolutionary and psychological factors, that, when analysed, reveal the > inaccuracies and approximations of that theory. I am claiming that all > properties imagined as intrinsic are approximations of this sort - ultimately > to be revealed as derived from relations either external or internal to that > entity. I agree. > > Of course, a purely relational ontology necessarily involves an infinite > regress of relationships, but it seems to me that we must choose our poison > here - the magic of intrinsic properties, or the infinite regress of only > relational ones. I am not sure that a relational ontology must suffer from infinite regress, it can instead be self-referential. The ontology of "strange loops", as proposed by Hofstadter. I think this is the only way out of the fact that we are observing an object from the inside, so self-referentiality is unavoidable. This is also why I claim that computer science might be more fundamental than Physics, because computer science is the field with the tools to tackle self-referentiality / recursion. But again, I am being silly. Perhaps it is just another lens. > I prefer the latter. (Note that I am using a definition of relational > properties that includes emergent properties as relational, though the > traditional philosophical use of those terms probably would not. The reason > is that I am interested in what is *ontologically* intrinsic, not > *semantically* intrinsic.) > > What would such a conception imply in the philosophy of mind? Traditionally, > the “qualiophiles” have defined qualia as intrinsic properties, yet (while I > am no fan of eliminativism) I think Dennett has made a strong case against > this idea. Qualia appear to me to be properties of relationships between > organisms and their environments. My only problem with this idea is how quickly it goes over "relationships between organisms and their environments", as if there is some clear distinction or boundary between the two categories. Right now I am looking at this text, in my computer screen, and I am me looking at my computer screen. This is true of all objects we know. When we say apple, we mean "a human being's experience of an apple", even if we are not consciously aware of that. But we say "apple" for short. > > They are not fundamental, but then neither is the “stuff” of which organisms > and environments are made. We simply cannot ask about fundamental properties, > but must confine ourselves to the networks of relationships we find ourselves > embedded in, and from which we, as observer-participants, cannot be > extricated. Exactly. > “Third person” accounts, including physics, are abstractions from > aggregations of first person accounts, and none can rise so high above the > field of observation as to entirely transcend their origins in the first > person. Thus there are certainly objective truths, but not Objective Truths, > that is truths that are entirely unbound to any observer and which nominate > the absolute properties of real objective things. I think so too. > > Note that the “relationalism” I am proposing does not in any way imply > *relativism*, which flattens out truth claims at the level of culture. Nor > does it make consciousness “primary”, or mathematics. I cannot personally > reconcile the interior views (qualia, if you like, though I think that terms > places an unwarranted emphasis on “what experiences are like” rather than the > mere fact of experience) with a purely mathematical ontology. > > One obvious objection to this whole idea is the counter-intuitiveness of the > idea of relationships without “things” being related. Yet I think the fault > lies with intuition here. Western thinking is deeply intellectually addicted > to the notion of “things”. David Mermin has interpreted QM in terms of > “correlations only” – correlations without correlata as he puts it – an > application of similar ideas to quantum theory. Part of the objection I think > lies in the semantics of the word “relationship”, which automatically causes > us to imagine two things on either side of the relation. It would be better > to think in terms of a web, then, than individual, related entities. Or > simply say that the related entities are themselves sets of relationships. > Mathematics provides a good example of such a purely relational domain – a > number exists solely by virtue of its relationships with other numbers. It > has no intrinsic properties. > > Yet what then of the problem of specific values – the instantiation aspect of > materialism? To quote Hedda Mørch: “… physical structure must be realized or > implemented by some stuff or substance that is itself not purely structural. > Otherwise, there would be no clear difference between physical and mere > mathematical structure, or between the concrete universe and a mere > abstraction.” > > We can overcome such an objection by invoking the first person perspective. > Mørch credits the specific values of entities in our environment (some > specific electron having this position, that momentum and so on) to some > property of “being instantiated in something intrinsic”, harking back to > Kant’s *Ding an Sich*. Yet there is an alternative way of viewing the > situation. Let us imagine that each integer was conscious and able to survey > its context in the field of all numbers. Take some number, let us say 7965. > When number 7965 looks around, it sees the number 7964 right behind it, and > the number 7966 right ahead. Trying to understand itself and the nature of > its world, it starts doing arithmetic and finds that everything around it can > be understood purely in terms of relational properties. Yet it says to > itself, how can this be? Why do the numbers around me have the specific > values they do? What “breathes fire” into those arithmetical relations to > instantiate the specific world I see? Yet 7965 is wrong. It is ignoring the > significance of the first-person relation that places it within a specific > context that defines both it and the world it sees. > > Note that I am not, like Bruno, actually suggesting that numbers are > conscious. I do not think that this is what Bruno claims. In fact, most of what you write seems compatible with what Bruno says, but he will correct me if I am wrong. Telmo. > The point of the thought experiment is merely to show how specific values > can exist within a first person account, without us needing to invoke some > unknowable thing-in-itself or substrate of intrinsic properties. > > Grateful for any comments/critiques. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/868bd041-299a-4618-9586-4b6362755cd7%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/868bd041-299a-4618-9586-4b6362755cd7%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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