> Nobel winner physicist Steven Weinberg, who kept insisting that in principle everything in the world could be explained in terms of quantum mechanics. At a conference we attended together (Dawkins was there too!) I kept asking: exactly what principle? I never got an answer.
Yeah, I've been trying to get a good answer about the meaning of in principle statements for a while. Still no luck.
You answered the question yourself on Saturday. It was the perfect example of Beauty reduced to reductionist sciencism. It's amazing to learn that before life on earth existed, there was no beauty in the universe.
Great essay. I have read you for a long time and I think that your work has often centered around the question of what exactly is a category error. It’s not just levels we have to keep straight, right? Aren’t there lateral categories?
I don’t know if he came up with it, but I like Daniel Stoljer’s use of the idea of an unreasonable demand for total information. Goff’s whole project is to prioritize a desire for a satisfying explanation over all else. He doesn’t just want it to be total but also satisfying!
But with the Russell and Whitehead failing in their project, and with ongoing doubts about whether physics is actually continuous with chemistry on up, we really need to just get comfortable with a certain amount of ungrounded and also incompleteness. This leads to anxiety that hucksters can exploit.
I’ve been working on a levelist’s principal of appropriate doubt. It’s something like “once you have bit a bullet, you can’t shoot it again” So for instance, Goff bites a bullet when he admits there is just a leap of faith required to get beyond fundamental skepticism. He accepts that as a metaphysical problem that aught to be just abandoned. but later he stamps his foot and demands an explanation for something else that may never have an explanation.
My point being: I think each level has its appropriate type of skepticism. And it’s a category error to bring a doubt from a “lower” level into a higher level.
Excellent essay, Massimo. Well done. Yes, these extremes of telling the narrative from the Big Bang to the outermost fringes of spacetime (with the galactic clusters in it) to all the universe’s quarks and their respective directions and interactions are far-fetched, though absolutely worthy of study, for any practical reasoning to the “goings on” in the here and now. The constituent parts do not make up the “wholes,” plural. We need “contentful structures.” https://philosophy.yale.edu/publications/plato-parts-and-wholes Your explanation of reductionism and interactionism couldn’t be clearer. I do not agree with Weinberg’s theory, despite his being a Nobel prize physicist. What is that principle? I would like to know, too.😊
I don't think it is necessary to coin a new term "levelism". What you have described goes by the term "emergence". This concept is a very popular one amongst my Religious Naturalism friends:
Emergence plays a major role in Ursula's book "The Sacred Depths of Nature"
Goodenough, Ursula. The sacred depths of nature (2nd Edition). Oxford University Press, 2023.
Personally, I have been advocating the idea that emergence is a conceptual phenomenon, not a physical one. To summarize: the levels emerge out of the way that we perceive the world, but physical reality itself is not emergent - it just is. This is similar to the Taoist viewpoint that holds that our concepts are always limited:
The Tao can't be perceived.
Smaller than an electron,
it contains uncountable galaxies.
...
When you have names and forms,
know that they are provisional.
- Tao te Ching, Chapter 32, Stephen Mitchell translation
My point of view comes from looking at quantum mechanics such that I consider the wave function collapse to be the instantiation of a concept - a fact of nature.
Causally Active Metaphysical Realism,
Quantum Speculations (supplement to the International Journal of
Quantum Foundations), Volume 1, Number 1, October 2019, Pages 1-31.
Actually, this is a similar viewpoint to Philip Goff's. But I can show that it is inherent in most interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. Also, I provide experimental tests that could confirm or disconfirm my theory. I'm pleased to say that this viewpoint relativises naturally - different people perceive the same events differently based on theire relative state.
So far, though, I have not been able to convince my Religious Naturalist compeers. The idea that facts exist in the world independent of minds is a tough one to get your head around. People, especially materialists, are conditioned to think that physical reality is more "real" than conceptual reality. I am a materialist in that I do not believe in a spiritual or ideal realm, but I am a property dualist.
Thanks for this! In many on-line and verbal discussions, particularly about free will, these ideas get muddled. There is little question that heredity and cumulative experience are embodied, and that when encountering the present (infinitely complex?), the resulting behavior is a combination. (not necessarily predictable in complex systems) However, on another level, social mammals have group responses and influences. Also physical, and often the driving 'cause' of some events.
Massimo,
I enjoyed.
> Nobel winner physicist Steven Weinberg, who kept insisting that in principle everything in the world could be explained in terms of quantum mechanics. At a conference we attended together (Dawkins was there too!) I kept asking: exactly what principle? I never got an answer.
Yeah, I've been trying to get a good answer about the meaning of in principle statements for a while. Still no luck.
Super interesting and instructive post! Sorry about the annoying accusations you have to deal with!
You answered the question yourself on Saturday. It was the perfect example of Beauty reduced to reductionist sciencism. It's amazing to learn that before life on earth existed, there was no beauty in the universe.
Great essay. I have read you for a long time and I think that your work has often centered around the question of what exactly is a category error. It’s not just levels we have to keep straight, right? Aren’t there lateral categories?
I don’t know if he came up with it, but I like Daniel Stoljer’s use of the idea of an unreasonable demand for total information. Goff’s whole project is to prioritize a desire for a satisfying explanation over all else. He doesn’t just want it to be total but also satisfying!
But with the Russell and Whitehead failing in their project, and with ongoing doubts about whether physics is actually continuous with chemistry on up, we really need to just get comfortable with a certain amount of ungrounded and also incompleteness. This leads to anxiety that hucksters can exploit.
I’ve been working on a levelist’s principal of appropriate doubt. It’s something like “once you have bit a bullet, you can’t shoot it again” So for instance, Goff bites a bullet when he admits there is just a leap of faith required to get beyond fundamental skepticism. He accepts that as a metaphysical problem that aught to be just abandoned. but later he stamps his foot and demands an explanation for something else that may never have an explanation.
My point being: I think each level has its appropriate type of skepticism. And it’s a category error to bring a doubt from a “lower” level into a higher level.
Excellent essay, Massimo. Well done. Yes, these extremes of telling the narrative from the Big Bang to the outermost fringes of spacetime (with the galactic clusters in it) to all the universe’s quarks and their respective directions and interactions are far-fetched, though absolutely worthy of study, for any practical reasoning to the “goings on” in the here and now. The constituent parts do not make up the “wholes,” plural. We need “contentful structures.” https://philosophy.yale.edu/publications/plato-parts-and-wholes Your explanation of reductionism and interactionism couldn’t be clearer. I do not agree with Weinberg’s theory, despite his being a Nobel prize physicist. What is that principle? I would like to know, too.😊
Massimo, can you say a bit more about what it means to be an ontological reductionist? Thank you.
I don't think it is necessary to coin a new term "levelism". What you have described goes by the term "emergence". This concept is a very popular one amongst my Religious Naturalism friends:
The Sacred Emergence of Nature Get access Arrow
Ursula Goodenough, Terrence W. Deacon
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199543656.003.0051
From Biology to Consciousness to Morality
Ursula Goodenough, Terrence W. Deacon
09 December 2003
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2003.00540.x
Emergence plays a major role in Ursula's book "The Sacred Depths of Nature"
Goodenough, Ursula. The sacred depths of nature (2nd Edition). Oxford University Press, 2023.
Personally, I have been advocating the idea that emergence is a conceptual phenomenon, not a physical one. To summarize: the levels emerge out of the way that we perceive the world, but physical reality itself is not emergent - it just is. This is similar to the Taoist viewpoint that holds that our concepts are always limited:
The Tao can't be perceived.
Smaller than an electron,
it contains uncountable galaxies.
...
When you have names and forms,
know that they are provisional.
- Tao te Ching, Chapter 32, Stephen Mitchell translation
My point of view comes from looking at quantum mechanics such that I consider the wave function collapse to be the instantiation of a concept - a fact of nature.
Causally Active Metaphysical Realism,
Quantum Speculations (supplement to the International Journal of
Quantum Foundations), Volume 1, Number 1, October 2019, Pages 1-31.
https://ijqf.org/archives/5704
Actually, this is a similar viewpoint to Philip Goff's. But I can show that it is inherent in most interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. Also, I provide experimental tests that could confirm or disconfirm my theory. I'm pleased to say that this viewpoint relativises naturally - different people perceive the same events differently based on theire relative state.
So far, though, I have not been able to convince my Religious Naturalist compeers. The idea that facts exist in the world independent of minds is a tough one to get your head around. People, especially materialists, are conditioned to think that physical reality is more "real" than conceptual reality. I am a materialist in that I do not believe in a spiritual or ideal realm, but I am a property dualist.
https://religious-naturalist-association.org/forums/topic/emergence-is-a-conceptual-phenomenon-not-physical/
Very nice one, Massimo!
Thanks for this! In many on-line and verbal discussions, particularly about free will, these ideas get muddled. There is little question that heredity and cumulative experience are embodied, and that when encountering the present (infinitely complex?), the resulting behavior is a combination. (not necessarily predictable in complex systems) However, on another level, social mammals have group responses and influences. Also physical, and often the driving 'cause' of some events.