Talking to Ilya Farber at Logicmills yesterday resurrected my frustration against reductionism. Here's my angry splashing of my thoughts out upon the electronic world, in the hope that some clearer echo might return.
The Problem
First off, I'm very much attracted to Trenton Merricks' argument for eliminativism. Consider a left glove and a right glove on a table. How many objects are there on that table? A proper answer, it seems, is two -- a left glove, and a right glove. One would be a strange answer -- a pair of gloves. Three would be just completely bizarre -- a left glove, a right glove, AND a pair of gloves. It seems that that bizarreness might spring from our intuitive understanding that 'a pair of gloves' does not exist in the same sense as the individual gloves do. The 'pair of gloves' is, in some sense, just in our heads.
Consider then a regular table, or chair. I point to it, and ask, how many objects are there? We know (I assume more people accept this) that the table is composed of many smaller particles, be they atoms or quarks or whatnot. Let say the table is composed of a zillion atoms. A proper answer might be: a zillion. The 'table' is just like the 'pair of gloves' -- both seem to only have existence in our minds, as a grouping of things. Surely, we cannot say that there are a zillion and one objects there: a zillion atoms, AND a table.
We note that this means everyday objects do not exist. If they have no causal power above and beyond their parts, existence becomes meaningless. Chairs don't exist, tables don't exist, that bus doesn't exist, that building doesn't exist. People, I'll put aside for now. Merricks wants to say that people have causal powers more than the sum of their parts, and therefore exist. I'm not sure where I stand on that though.
On the other hand, I am also very attracted to Aristotle's virtue ethics, which demand the existence of people. His function argument (and the modern version of it, Phillipa Foot's) further demands the existence of hammers and knives and animals. The idea is this: that ethics is about what it is to be a good man. A good hammer hammers well, because the function of hammers is to hammer. A good knife cuts well, because the function of a knife is to cut. The function of a man is to think, be rational, and therefore, a good man thinks well. There is no change in the meaning of 'good' as applied to 'a good oak tree' or 'a good person'.
Clearly, this argument cannot work if there are no such things as hammers or knives, or oak trees. If arete, or telos, can only be applied to people, then we need some other argument to arrive at what it is to be good.
A Sketch of a Solution
Tentatively, I will accept that most (maybe all) things are reducible, either to simple parts or reducible ad infinitum. After all, it seems pretty clear that the 'pair of gloves' really is just left glove plus right glove, and nothing else, just like the table is just Atom 1 + Atom 2 + Atom 3 ... + Atom Zillion, and nothing else. There is no extra weird entity of 'a pair' or 'a table' that pops into existence when you put those parts together.
At the same time, it is not meaningless to talk of tables, and pairs of gloves. After all, if we mean ANYTHING at all by 'exist', we mean that tables exist. We are interested, usually, in what the soccer ball did to that window, rather than the interaction of these zillion atoms on these other zillion atoms. When we seek explanations, we seek explanations about wholes, rather than parts. The whole must have some sort of existence.
Maybe the right way to think about this is that existence an incredibly rich concept, rather than the sad little thing some metaphysicians seem to want it to be. We use it loosely, but when the context changes, the meaning changes. When we say "Quarks exist", we use a different sense of 'exist' from when we say "Democracy exists". Perhaps, democracy can be reduced to the total sum of the concept of democracy held in the brains by all sentient beings, and then further reduced to brain states, and then further reduced to quarks. Perhaps.
But there is something wrong with this process! I still can't put my finger on what exactly it is. Which step fails? Argh.
But for now, tow huey calls. And one does not refuse the siren cry of tow huey.
The Problem
First off, I'm very much attracted to Trenton Merricks' argument for eliminativism. Consider a left glove and a right glove on a table. How many objects are there on that table? A proper answer, it seems, is two -- a left glove, and a right glove. One would be a strange answer -- a pair of gloves. Three would be just completely bizarre -- a left glove, a right glove, AND a pair of gloves. It seems that that bizarreness might spring from our intuitive understanding that 'a pair of gloves' does not exist in the same sense as the individual gloves do. The 'pair of gloves' is, in some sense, just in our heads.
Consider then a regular table, or chair. I point to it, and ask, how many objects are there? We know (I assume more people accept this) that the table is composed of many smaller particles, be they atoms or quarks or whatnot. Let say the table is composed of a zillion atoms. A proper answer might be: a zillion. The 'table' is just like the 'pair of gloves' -- both seem to only have existence in our minds, as a grouping of things. Surely, we cannot say that there are a zillion and one objects there: a zillion atoms, AND a table.
We note that this means everyday objects do not exist. If they have no causal power above and beyond their parts, existence becomes meaningless. Chairs don't exist, tables don't exist, that bus doesn't exist, that building doesn't exist. People, I'll put aside for now. Merricks wants to say that people have causal powers more than the sum of their parts, and therefore exist. I'm not sure where I stand on that though.
On the other hand, I am also very attracted to Aristotle's virtue ethics, which demand the existence of people. His function argument (and the modern version of it, Phillipa Foot's) further demands the existence of hammers and knives and animals. The idea is this: that ethics is about what it is to be a good man. A good hammer hammers well, because the function of hammers is to hammer. A good knife cuts well, because the function of a knife is to cut. The function of a man is to think, be rational, and therefore, a good man thinks well. There is no change in the meaning of 'good' as applied to 'a good oak tree' or 'a good person'.
Clearly, this argument cannot work if there are no such things as hammers or knives, or oak trees. If arete, or telos, can only be applied to people, then we need some other argument to arrive at what it is to be good.
A Sketch of a Solution
Tentatively, I will accept that most (maybe all) things are reducible, either to simple parts or reducible ad infinitum. After all, it seems pretty clear that the 'pair of gloves' really is just left glove plus right glove, and nothing else, just like the table is just Atom 1 + Atom 2 + Atom 3 ... + Atom Zillion, and nothing else. There is no extra weird entity of 'a pair' or 'a table' that pops into existence when you put those parts together.
At the same time, it is not meaningless to talk of tables, and pairs of gloves. After all, if we mean ANYTHING at all by 'exist', we mean that tables exist. We are interested, usually, in what the soccer ball did to that window, rather than the interaction of these zillion atoms on these other zillion atoms. When we seek explanations, we seek explanations about wholes, rather than parts. The whole must have some sort of existence.
Maybe the right way to think about this is that existence an incredibly rich concept, rather than the sad little thing some metaphysicians seem to want it to be. We use it loosely, but when the context changes, the meaning changes. When we say "Quarks exist", we use a different sense of 'exist' from when we say "Democracy exists". Perhaps, democracy can be reduced to the total sum of the concept of democracy held in the brains by all sentient beings, and then further reduced to brain states, and then further reduced to quarks. Perhaps.
But there is something wrong with this process! I still can't put my finger on what exactly it is. Which step fails? Argh.
But for now, tow huey calls. And one does not refuse the siren cry of tow huey.
posted by WhatRoughBeast at 4:00 PM
3 Comments:
From the POV of an engineer -- what differentiates a table from a zillion atoms is order.
Consider that "pair" of gloves. If the gloves were mismatched you may not consider them a pair -- though if you knew they belonged to Iffy the half-Ogre half-halfling who prefers to wear a size 12 red right glove and a size 4 blue left glove, you might still consider them a pair. On the other hand, if the two gloves were of similar design and size you may consider them a pair -- though similarly if you knew that one belonged to Iffy and the other belonged to Zim then you may not consider them a pair?
So there's something other than the atoms themselves. That's somewhat like the physics concept of entropy -- that from one state of an object to another there's a difference in order, which we also know as energy. Some states have more energy than others, and one possible end of the universe is that you have perfect entropy, with the entire universe reduced to a single uniform sheet of energy. (That includes all that mass, which has been e=mcsquared into energy as well).
(Of course, we all know that the universe ends when I die. Or you die, from your POV. lol)
So a table = a zillion atoms + a certain order/lattice that makes it a table. Don't knock that order, because it reflects a state of energy, and since energy and mass have some equivalence, then that order exists in a physical sense as well. In other words, you could describe it as a table, or as a zillion and one items. But a zillion items is just a little bit short of the entire truth.
I'm not so sure about the gloves, because in a bizarre sense the "order" there appears to be totally in our minds!
I lub engineers. This is an angle I haven't considered.
Perhaps I can refine my previous argument then. Let the table be composed of a zillion atoms, and a zillion energy bonds. There would be two zillion things there, right? Not two zillion and one?
This requires that that this order, or lattice, is reducible down to parts. This link plus this link plus this link makes up the lattice of order that holds these zillion atoms together. Is this right?
This is difficult. See, a zillion bonds suggests that you only need to define B relative to A, C relative to B, D relative to C and so on. And if you consider only xyz coordinates that's enough. But it's not only xyz coordinates.
Consider if you had a monofilament whip that could cut the table at one leg without removing any molecules. Positions have not changed at all, but the "bond" between molecules A and B, A and C, B and C etc have been cut. That's a different table from the whole one. What this suggests is that the number of bond objects is somewhere between 1 zillion, and 0.5*(zillion * zillion + 1). (That's Gauss' trick for adding arithmetic progressions)
Complicated answer?
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