Quantum mechanics and consciousness - Part 4/8: Generative Levels in Psychology

4. Generative Levels in Psychology

It is easier to understand this downward causation pattern within psychology. There are many examples of derivative dispositions in everyday life, in psychology, in particular in cognitive processes. The accomplishment of a given disposition requires the operation of successive steps of kinds different from the overall step. The original disposition on its operation generates the “derived dispositions” for the intermediate steps, which are means to the original end. An original “disposition to learn”, for example, can generate the derived “disposition to read books”, which can generate further “dispositions to search for books”. These dispositions can then generate dispositions to move one’s body, which in turn lead to one’s limbs having (physical) dispositions to move. These successively generated dispositions are all derived from the original disposition to learn, according to the specific situations. 

Another example of sequential and derivative dispositions is the ability to learn. To say that someone is easy to teach, or that they are musical, for example, does not mean that there is any specific action that they are capable of doing. Rather, it means that they are disposed to learn new skills (whether of a musical or general kind), and that it is these new skills that are the dispositions that lead to specific actions.

In this I follow Broad [7]: that there are “levels” of causal influence. Particular dispositions or intentions are not the most fundamental causes, but rather “intermediate stages” in the operation of more persistent “desires” and “motivations”. The intention to find a book could be the product or derivative of a more persistent “desire for reading”, and need only be produced in the appropriate circumstances. Broad would say that the derived dispositions were the realization of the underlying dispositions.

The pattern of “underlying propensity / distribution / result” for “mental sub-degrees” shows the steps by which deep motivational principles (purposes) in an “interior mind” lead to action. These purposes come to fruition by means of discursive investigation of ideas, plans and alternatives in what can be called a more exterior “scientific discursive mind”, as constrained by existing intellectual abilities. The actions of the sensorimotor mind select one outcome among many, as constrained by bodily conditions. Psychologists who have investigated perceptive and executive processes within the sensorimotor stage realize that these are far from simple. What we see is very much influenced by our expectations and desires, as well as by being constrained by what is in front of our eyes. There are subsidiary degrees of expectation, presentation of alternatives and resolution even during “simple” sensations. 

Consciousness enters into this picture whenever actions occur. All actions of desire or love are conscious actions, and part of the conscious awareness of at least some personality or person. Consciousness is therefore not a mental source itself, but an essential aspect of operations from mental sources.

[7] C. Broad, Mind and Its Place in Nature, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925. 

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Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World II: Desire and Energy

In the previous post of this series, we saw how Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences could help us to better understand the physical world from a quantum perspective. If our mental processes consist of desire acting by means of thoughts and intentions to produce physical effects, then these physical actions should manifest themselves according to a corresponding pattern. More specifically, if the components of our mental processes occur at variable finite intervals, so too should the expected physical events.

According to many thinkers throughout history, mental and physical are not identical but instead are two different kinds of substances that relate with each other. Swedenborg describes the mental (spiritual) and physical (natural) as distinct but says that they interact by discrete degrees:

A knowledge of degrees is like a key to lay open the causes of things, and to give entrance into them. . . . For things exterior advance to things interior and through these to things inmost, by means of degrees; not by continuous degrees but by discrete degrees. “Continuous degrees” is a term applied to the gradual lessenings or decreasings from grosser to finer . . . or . . . to growths and increasings from finer to grosser . . . precisely like the gradations of light to shade, or of heat to cold. But discrete degrees are entirely different: they are like things prior, subsequent and final; or like end, cause, and effect. These degrees are called discrete, because the prior is by itself; the subsequent by itself; and the final by itself; and yet taken together they make one. (Divine Love and Wisdom §184)

The mental can never be continuously transformed into something physical, nor can the physical be continuously transformed into something mental. They are connected, however, by virtue of their causal relationship: all physical processes are produced, or generated, by something mental. As described in my previous post, this relationship is what gives rise to our correspondences in the first place.

Most of us can realize that the mental and the physical are distinct, even though this may be denied by materialists (for whom the mental is merely an emerging product of the physical) and also by monistic idealists (for whom the physical universe is merely a representation in the mind). The latter view is common in many New Age circles today, and it is even thought to be implied by quantum physics. In this series of posts, by contrast, I want to show how Swedenborg’s ideas give us a new understanding of how mental and physical things can both exist in fully-fledged ways and with serious connections between them that are not deflating or reductionist.

Mental and physical things can both be substances but, they have very different characteristics:

• Mental things are conscious, whereas physical things are unconscious.
• Mental beings can think and make deductions using reason, whereas physical beings can only make logical deductions if they are designed that way.
• Mental beings can use symbols and language to refer to objects and ideas outside themselves, whereas physical beings have no intrinsic ability to refer to anything.
• Mental processes are motivated by purposes and intentions, whereas physical processes are determined by physical causes that supposedly exclude purposes and intentions.
• Mental processes tend to produce results according to some conception of what is good, whereas physical processes have no need for any such concept.

As already discussed in the previous post, desire is a component of all mental processes, and we recognize “something physical like desire” as energy or propensity. Swedenborg sees desire, or affection, as a specific kind of love:

That love and wisdom from the Lord is life can be seen also from this, that man grows torpid as love recedes from him, and stupid as wisdom recedes from him, and that were they to recede altogether he would become extinct. There are many things pertaining to love which have received other names because they are derivatives, such as affections, desires, appetites, and their pleasures and enjoyments. (Divine Love and Wisdom §363)

For desire and energy to correspond to each other in the sense that Swedenborg describes, the function of desire as a cause must be similar to the function of energy as a cause. That is, the way in which desire causes mental processes must be similar to the way in which energy causes physical processes. This is not to say that desire is the same as energy but only that desire’s pattern of operation is similar to that of energy. The common pattern is that desire (energy) persists between events, then explores multiple possibilities for those events by means of thoughts (fields of energy), and finally becomes manifest in the physical events produced.

Up until now, the idea of substance has been rather obscure in both physics and philosophy, and it has not been developed significantly. From an ontological perspective, substance is that which endures between events. It is what individuates and bears the intrinsic properties of those events. We are not necessarily talking about a substance that endures forever or about a substance that exists independently of everything else. Based on the common pattern described above, we can arrive at the idea of a created substance that persists, or endures, as a thing at least for some finite time between events. And such a substance would be the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction in that time interval.

This relates to the idea of “dispositional essentialism” that has been put forth by philosophers in recent years.[1] Dispositional essentialism is the notion that some kind of power or disposition (such as a cause or energy) must be an essential part of something. Some philosophers take this idea even further, saying that disposition must be the individual essence of something. In much the same way, I am saying that disposition is what constitutes the substance of something.[2] So if the main similarity between desire and energy is that they both persist between events, then both desire and energy are substances.

By using ideas from Swedenborg to understand the world, we have a new way of grasping the mental and physical and perhaps of understanding quantum physics. Either one of these results would be very useful; to have both is to be extremely fortunate.

In the next post of this series, I will discuss how and in what form both desire and energy persist between events.

[1] B. Ellis and C. Lierse, “Dispositional Essentialism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (72, 1994): 27–45.

[2] See Ian J. Thompson, “Power and Substance,” http://www.generativescience.org/ph-papers/pas.htm.

First posted here.

Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World I: Events

For the last hundred years, physicists have been using the quantum theory about the universe, but they still do not properly understand of what the quantum world is made.

The previous physics (referred to as “classical” and started by Isaac Newton) used ideas of “waves” and “particles” to picture what makes up the physical world. But now we find that every object in the quantum world sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes behaves as a wave! Which is it? In quantum physics, objects behave most of the time like waves spreading out as they travel along, but sometimes measurements show objects to be particles with a definite location: not spread out at all. Why is that? It is as though their size and location suddenly change in measurement events. This is quite unlike classical physics, where particles exist continuously with the same fixed shape. In quantum physics, by contrast, objects have fixed locations only intermittently, such as when they are observed.  So they only offer us a discrete series of events that can be measured, not a continuous trajectory. Quantum objects, then, are alternately continuous and discontinuous.

Why would we ever expect such a fickle world? Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) has some ideas that might help us. He describes how all physical processes are produced by something mental, or spiritual, and this can be confirmed by reason of the similarity in patterns between the physical processes and their mental causes. In Swedenborg’s words, there are correspondences between the physical and the mental—that they have similar structures and functions, even though mind and matter are quite distinct.

I need to state what correspondence is. The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world—the natural world not just in general, but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called “something that corresponds.” It needs to be realized that the natural world arises from and is sustained in being by the spiritual world . . . (Heaven and Hell §89)

Although these ideas are not part of present-day science, I still hope to show below that they may have some implications for how science could usefully develop.

Swedenborg’s theory of mind is easy to begin to understand. He talks about how all mental processes have three common elements: desire, thought, and action. The desire is what persists and motivates what will happen. The thought is the exploration of possibilities for actions and the making of an intention. The action is the determined intention, the product of desire and thought that results in an actual physical event.

The [actions] themselves are in the mind’s enjoyments and their thoughts when the delights are of the will and the thoughts are of the understanding therefrom, thus when there is complete agreement in the mind. The [actions] then belong to the spirit, and even if they do not enter into bodily act still they are as if in the act when there is agreement. (Divine Providence §108)

All of the three spiritual elements are essential. Without desire (love), or ends, nothing would be motivated to occur. Without thought, that love would be blind and mostly fail to cause what it wants. Without determined intention, both the love and thought would be frustrated and fruitless, with no effect achieved at all. In everyday life, this intention is commonly called will, but it is always produced by some desire driving everything that happens. 

Here is the pattern:

      Spiritual                                                                   Natural
Desire + Thought => Mental Action (Intention)    >>    Physical Action, or Event, in the World

Swedenborg summarizes the relationship between these elements as follows:

All activities in the universe proceed from ends through causes into effects. These three elements are in themselves indivisible, although they appear as distinct in idea and thought. Still, even then, unless the effect that is intended is seen at the same time, the end is not anything; nor is either of these anything without a cause to sustain, foster and conjoin them. Such a sequence is engraved on every person, in general and in every particular, just as will, intellect, and action is. Every end there has to do with the will, every cause with the intellect, and every effect with action. (Conjugial Love §400:1–2)

Now consider Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences mentioned above. He says that there is a similar pattern between the details of the effects and the details of the causes. ”As above, so below,” others have said. So if mental action produces some effect in the physical world, then, by correspondence, we would expect a similar pattern between that physical effect and each of the three elements common to all mental processes. We would expect something physical like desire, then something physical like thought, and finally something physical like mental action. Do we recognize these patterns in physics? And if so, do we recognize them better in classical physics or in quantum physics?

I claim we do recognize them in physics:

• We recognize the “something physical like desire” as energy or propensity. These are what persist physically and produce the result, just like desire does in the mind. They are in both classical and quantum physics.
• We recognize the “something physical like thought” as the wave function in quantum physics. This describes all the possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for physical events, just like thought does in the mind.
• We recognize the “something physical like mental action” as the actual specific physical outcome, a selection of just one of the possibilities to be made actual. This is a measurement event in quantum physics, the product of energy or propensity and the wave function, just like the product of desire and thought is the mental action.

We will discuss energy and wave functions in later posts, focusing here on the final step of mental actions and physical events. According to Swedenborg’s ideas, the structure of mental processes and the structure of physical events should be similar. So, too, the function of mental processes and the function of physical events should be similar. Can we tell from this whether we should expect a classical world or a quantum world?

One feature of thought and mental action with which we should be familiar is time. That is, we always need time to think! Without any time gap between desiring and intending, we would be acting instinctively and impulsively. Sometimes that works but not always (at least in my experience!). Most often, there has to be some delay, even some procrastination, between having a desire and fulfilling it. That delay gives us time to deliberate and decide on the best action to select. And, most importantly, if it is we who decide when to act, we feel that we act in some freedom. It feels better.

If the physical world corresponds to those mental processes, according to Swedenborg, what hypothesis do we reach about physics? It is that there will be corresponding time gaps between the beginning of some persisting energy or propensity and the selection of physical outcome. Remember that quantum objects are selected and definite only intermittently—when measured, or observed—while classical objects are continuously definite with no gaps. All this leads us to expect that physical events should not be continuous; that is, we should expect a quantum world rather than a classical world.

First appeared here.

Derivative Dispositions and Multiple Generative Levels

The analysis of dispositions is used to consider cases where the effect of one disposition operating is the existence of another disposition. This may arise from rearrangements within aggregated structures of dispositional parts, or, it is argued, also as stages of derivative dispositions within a set of multiple generative levels. Inspection of examples in both classical and quantum physics suggests a general principle of `Conditional Forward Causation': that dispositions act 'forwards' in a way conditional on certain circumstances or occasions already existing at the `later' levels.

This is a previous article of mine, published in the book: M. Suárez (ed.), Probabilities, Causes, and Propensities in Physics, Synthese Library, Springer, 2011. [pdf]

1. Introduction

Recently, the much philosophical work has emphasized the importance of dispositions for realistic analyses of causal processes in both physics and psychology. This is partly because of the attractiveness of the thesis of dispositional essentialism, which holds that all existing things have irreducible causal powers, and such views are advocated by [many philosophers]. The thesis opposes the views of Ryle [1949] who sees dispositions as merely `inference tickets' or `promises', and Armstrong [1969] who sees them as derived from universal laws combined with nondispositional properties. Mumford [2005] articulates a common aspect of dispositional essentialism, to imagine how the concept of universal laws could be rather replaced by talk of specific objects and their dispositions.

It may well be that concepts of more sophisticated kinds of dispositions allow us to make headway in understanding the above complications within the framework of dispositional essentialism. I therefore continue the analysis of kinds of dispositions, to consider the possibility of derivative dispositions, and later consider whether these together may form a structure of multiple generative levels. This paper therefore consists of proposals for what those concepts might mean, and of analyses of examples in physics and psychology that appear to need such concepts for their understanding. We need to distinguish the cases whereby new dispositions come about from rearrangement of parts, from possible cases where they are `derived' or `generated' in some more original way.

2 Beyond simple dispositions

2.1 Changing dispositions

Most examples of dispositions in philosophical discussions are those, like fragility, solubility, radioactive instability, whose effects (if manifested) are events. If a glass exercises its fragility, it breaks. If salt shows its solubility, it dissolves, and the manifestation of radioactive instability would be a decay event detected say with a geiger counter. However, physicists want to know not merely that these eventsoccur, but also how the dispositions themselves may change after the manifestation event. In the cases here, the fragility of the parts or the stability of the nuclei may change as results of the manifestation events, and it is still part of physics to describe the new (changed) dispositions as accurately as possible. Such descriptions are part of dynamical accounts, as distinct from descriptive accounts events.

Sometimes, new dispositions may be ascribable after an event which could not be done so before an event. The fragments of a broken glass may be able to refract light in a way that the intact glass could not, for example. The dissolved salt may be to pass through a membrane, in contrast to the dispositions of the initial salt crystals. The fragments of nuclear decay may possibly decay by emitting electrons in a way the parent nucleus could not.

In general, it appears often that new dispositions may be truthfully ascribed as the result of the operation of a prior disposition. If the ascription of dispositions is attributed to the existence properties of some object, then it appears that, in the above examples, new dispositions come into existence as the manifestation of previous dispositions. Since now one disposition leads to another, some philosophical analysis is called for.

2.2 Rearrangement dispositions

The existence of some of these new dispositions may perhaps be successfully explained as the rearrangement of the internal structures of the objects under discussion, which are then presumably composite objects. The refraction by pieces of broken glass, in contrast to the original smooth glass, has obvious explanations in terms of the shapes of the new fragments. Salt's diffusion through a membrane, once dissolved, is presumably because of the greater mobility of salt ions in solution compared with the crystal form.

Science is largely successful in explaining such dynamical evolutions of empirical dispositions of natural objects. It bases the explanations in terms of changes in their structural shapes and arrangements of their parts, along with the fixed underlying dispositions or propensities of these parts. It is from the dispositions of these parts that, according the structure, all their observed dispositions and causal properties may be explained.

The existence of new dispositions by rearrangement of the parts of an object, I take to be non-controversial within existing philosophical frameworks. It appears that typical philosophical analyses need only slight modifications to take into account the way the derivative dispositions of an aggregate are explained in terms of recombinations of the dispositions of its parts.

2.3 Derivative dispositions

However, it also appears that not all dynamical changes of dispositions occur by rearrangements of parts, and these are what in this paper I want to call derivative dispositions. There are some cases, to be listed below, where new dispositions come into existence, without there being any visible parts whose rearrangement could explain the changes. The next section gives some examples of what appear to be such derivative dispositions, and this is followed by a more general analysis of how these might work.

If there turns out to be a sequence of derivative dispositions, then the combined structure may be said to be that of `multiple generative levels'. We will see some examples below.

3 Examples of derivative dispositions

3.1 Energy and Force

If we look at physics, and at what physics regards as part of its central understanding, one extremely important idea is energy. Physics talks about kinetic energy as energy to do with motion, and potential energy as to do with what would happen if the circumstances were right. More specifically, if we look at definitions of force and energy which are commonly used to introduce these concepts, we find definitions like

• force: the tendency F to accelerate a mass m with acceleration F/m.
• energy: the capacity E to do work, which is the action of a force F over a distance d,
• potential energy field: the field potential V(x) to exert a force F = -dV/dx if a test particle is present.

As Cartwright [1989] points out, force is not identical to the product ma, because it is only the net forceat a point which is important. An individual force is only by itself a tendency which may or may not be manifested. It is a disposition, as is energy generically, as well as potential energy. Furthermore, we may see a pattern here:

• potential energy field: the disposition to generate a force, and
• force: the disposition to accelerate a mass, and
• acceleration: the final result.

I take this to be an example of two successive derivative dispositions, where the effect of one disposition operating is the generation of another. An electrostatic field potential is a disposition, for example, the manifestation of which is not itself motion, but which is the presence now of a derivative disposition, namely a force. The manifestation of a force may or may not occur as motion, as it depends on what other forces are also operating on the mass. The production of a force by a field potential does not appear to be something that occurs by means of the rearrangements of microscopic parts, but appears to be more fundamental, and almost sui generis. It is clearly in need of philosophical inspection, as it appears that field potentials, force and action form a set of multiple generative levels.

Admittedly, many physicists and philosophers often manifest here a tendency to say that only potential energy is `real', or conversely perhaps that `only forces are real', or even that `only motion is real', and that in each case the other physical quantities are only `calculational devices' for predicting whichever is declared to be real. Please for a while apply a contrary tendency to resist this conclusion, at least to the end of the paper. In §5 I will be explicitly evaluating such `reductionist strategies, along with the comparative roles of mathematical laws and dispositional properties within a possible dispositional essentialism.
 ............

Whole article here.

Final Causes in Theism

Jon Garvey today advocates Broadening the vision of theistic evolution:

So I suggest that not only the human race, but science itself, would be better served by taking final causation into account. 

This is almost what I am suggesting in theistic science here. We have to work out more clearly, however, what exactly we mean by final causes. Jon reminds us of the classical view that comes from Aristotle via Aquinas:

Final cause has, for the Thomistically-challenged, to do with God’s purpose for each of his creatures, and in classical theology this extended to the simplest of inanimate things. God made water to wet things, the sun to light the earth and so on, as well as imposing the form of, say, a fish, on matter in order to help populate the sea.

The problem is that this view of final causation and God's purpose can just as easily be part of deism as well as theism. Remember that in deism, God created the world for it to run by itself. God may sustain the world's existence as a whole, but is not involved in the details. In theism, by contrast, God not only creates the world, but sustains it in existence by even now enlivening each individual thing in the world (inanimate, animate, and/or human). Deism is 'hands off' or 'remote hands', whereas theism has God providing (directly or via others) the very life and loves of every creature, all the time.

In theism, final causes are not so much the plans that God may have originally had for the use of object and creatures, but are the present consequences of the loves and enlivening powers and dispositions that sustain those beings. Past and future things cannot be causes, even final causes:

1. Past ideas cannot be themselves causes. 
2. Only powers that are present can be causes.
3. Future events can never be causes.

That is, only if God is presently enlivening and causing water to wet things, can 'wetting things' be the final cause of water. Only if the sun is now being sustained by God's love to produce light, can we say that 'producing light' is the final causes of the sun. Only if fish are even now being actively sustained from the love of God, can we take the final causes of fish to be that of populating the ocean.  

God may have done things in the past that contribute to God's plan for water, the sun, or fish. But, in theism at least, those cannot be the final causes of present fish unless that plan is informing the present love that generates and sustains the fish.

What is past is now dead. Its only function is to constrain the next stages of the development of the world.  What is future does not yet exist.  Future events in a plan, even in God's plan, can never themselves be present causes: only the love (or some disposition) that has that plan in mind.

Then, we can agree with Jon Garvey, when he continues:

Who is going to do that if not theistic scientists, and theistic scientists who actually believe in final causation and let it influence their approach to their work? And what groups today are committed to such an approach? I fear it is not the likes of BioLogos, by reason of their naturalistic approach to both science and theology, nor ID or YEC folk, because of their specific sociological agendas.

But somewhere, there may exist successors to the nineteenth century characters I named in my essay – who would no doubt appear to most people, by their philosophical and theological approach, to be throwbacks to the mediaeval age. They’d be more concerned to understand nature in its relationship to God’s will than to manipulate it to our own. They’d even follow the “unscientific” quest to determine some of that will in individual cases. But by that token, they might even be of more long-term practical use to the world than science has actually been thus far.

Let's do it.

Mental dispositions and desires

Psychology necessarily deals with dispositions and not just with what events actually occur. Even the behaviorists recognized that they should study tendencies to behavior and not merely the behavioral events themselves. Our question will concern the ontological status of these tendencies or dispositions.

Ryle (The Concept of Mind, 1949) takes the view that dispositional ascriptions “assert extra matters of fact” and claims that they are only “inference-tickets which license us to predict, retrodict, etc.” He quite explicitly denies that one should look for either causal or mechanistic explanations of the dispositions. This holds even in cases in physics and chemistry where there are explanations in terms of constituents and their propensities to attract and repel each other. His restriction against looking for explanations in terms of internal dynamics is, fortunately, largely disregarded in scientific practice.

We could interpret psychological dispositions in the same way that physics interprets potential energy. Bawden, for example, claimed in 1947 that “the role of the psychical in relation to the physical (in the living organism) is essentially the relation of the potential or incipient to kinetic or overt action.” I respond that potential energy is (again) a kind of disposition that must in some way exist, as a substance. 

In cognitive psychology it is a common starting point that mental activities consist of functions of information-processing modules, engaged, for example, in signal or symbol processing. This description refers only to the structural or formal aspects. Admittedly, structural changes are described, but no specific powers or dispositions for those processes are admitted. This is inadequate, however, from the point of view of any causal realism. Any account based on computation can only be realistic if it at least allows that the hardware implementations use objects with powers, as then physical symbol processing is consistently possible. Remember (from the previous post), that dispositions/causes remain absolute different in category from forms and information.

So, what is the actual nature of the dispositions that are operative in mental activities?  Are these just aggregations of physical dispositions, or are there ‘true mental dispositions’ that are distinct from the physical?  If the later were true, we would ask what impact the true human substances have on cognitive processing, since they will have their own characteristic powers and propensities not necessarily present in computers. The issue in psychology is thus whether the dispositions and powers that constitute the substance for mental objects and processing are related to the dispositions and powers manifest in the mind itself. I am thinking specifically of the emotional and motivational dispositions that make up the apparent life of mental feelings and intentions. These are powers that appear on first phenomenological analysis, so psychology should consider whether they could be the first ‘more fundamental’ underlying stuff of which cognitive and symbol processing is the activity.

According to Descartes, the soul (mind) is a substance and thought is the mode of its operation. This might explain what constitutes minds. However, Descartes does not offer a dynamical account to explain the operations of the soul. (On the contrary, he was pleased that the rational soul, as he conceived it, was completely outside the scope of the new empirical sciences and could be made subject to the edicts of ethics and religion.) In the end, Descartes never discusses reasons for the details of mental powers or capacities.  That is what we want really to discover!

Identifying 'Substance' as 'Propensity'

Here is a summary of my argument as applied to physics.
Discussing the basic categories, and how there is seen to be a connection between them that was previously missed.

Three categories of terms in physics:

• existential terms
  • about what exists
• formal terms
  • about the structure & static properties of what exists
• dynamical terms
• about what would happen, in new and/or hypothetical conditions
• only by hypothesizing dynamics, can we deduce the future.

Examples of Formal Terms

• shape, number, form, relation, configuration, symmetry
• function, field, oscillation, wave, flow,
• point, length, area, volume, amplitude,
• vector, matrix, operator, Hilbert space, bra, ket,
• ratios, relative frequency, probability, ...
DESCRIBED BY MATHEMATICS

Examples of Existential Terms particle, material, matter, corpuscle, body, fluid, ether, substance, actuality, reality, event, interaction, outcome,person, experience, observation, sensation, thought, feeling, ... (we know we exist!) world, universe, ... DESCRIBED BY ONTOLOGY Examples of Dynamical Terms cause, propensity, disposition, power, capability, potentiality, energy (kinetic and potential), mass, charge, field coupling, force, pressure, momentum, impetus, elasticity/rigidity, (for people: intention, disposition, motivation, skill, desire, intelligence, …) DESCRIBED BY LAWS (PHYSICAL or mental)  Remember: Dynamical properties say what would happen, even if it does not:  A force says what acceleration would be caused if a mass was acted on. Electric fields generates a force if and when a charge is present. Quantum propensities give probabilities if a measurement is performed. New idea: ‘Dynamic substance’ Derive ‘existence’ from ‘dynamics’ This happens already in physics. Many examples: ‘electromagnetic force field’, ‘potential energy field’ ‘matter is a form of energy’ wave function is a ‘propensity field’ propensity to interact, or propensity to choose actual outcome Propensity (of some kind) is substance So form is never substance: only propensities (etc) can ever be substantial. There is no need to describe 'substance' any more in obscure terms! All that is needed are propensities that intrinsically endure for finite times. We identify 'the substance of things' with 'some enduring propensity'. This summary is taken from a talk I gave in 2000 to my physics department at Surrey University. A complete set of slides is online here. I will in later posts argue that the same conclusion applies to mental as well as physical dispositions.

Are propensities the Substance of things?

Are propensities (powers, etc.) the right kind of thing to be substance?  Let us examine the proposal from the previous post. 

One might object that propensities do not appear to have enough being, as they appear instead always to point to an incipient state of becoming. Are they, as Armstrong (1997) claims, always packing but never arriving?  Would objects made of such substance as proposed here actually exist, or only potentially exist, or (perhaps) exist potentially?  Bird (2007) responds to this by pointing out that this objection assumes that powers or dispositions are not fully actual. Rather, he says, we should insist that powers are actual full-blooded features of objects and that what is merely potential are their manifestations. I would respond slightly differently: powers are the actual full-blooded substance of objects and are not merely the ‘features’ or ‘properties’ of objects.

Perhaps we wonder whether objects made of such substance are really ‘full-blooded’. Do such substantial objects persist as objects should?  How do they have being?  Can they be individuated properly?  Are they simple units, or can they be divided?  Could elementary particles be of such substances?  Could we be such objects and still feel our own reality?  Let us discuss some of these issues.

Do these new kinds of substance persist?  There is certainly no need for them to persist forever, but can they persist through accidental changes while maintaining their essential nature?  To answer the question about persistence, we note that dispositions are possessed even when they are not being manifested. A vase is still fragile when it is not breaking. The fragility persists for a finite duration: at least from one contact event until the next. What I am asserting is that the corresponding substance of the glass persists for at least exactly that same duration. In that duration, it may change its position, orientation or illumination. These are the variable accidental properties that vary while the underlying substance (fragility and the other dispositions) remain the same. Whether the underlying substance persists forever is the same question as whether the fragility (etc.) persists forever. That can be answered by looking at the future adventures of the vase in the world.[1] If the fragile glass ceases to exist, then the substance ends, perhaps by being changed into another kind of substance. That substantial objects might persist only for a finite time does not render them any less enduring or persistent objects during that time.

How do these substances have ‘being’?  The recent dispositional essentialists have taken all properties as ‘powers, and nothing but powers’, so we wonder if we can take all objects similarly. The claim was thought by Bird (2009) to include all properties, including all those previously thought categorical such as position, shape and structure. I do not hold such a strong view. Particular objects have both dispositional and categorical properties, once we understand how this is to be conceived. The dispositional properties are instantiated by the underlying dispositional substance, whereas the categorical properties are instantiated by the form or structure of that substance which makes up this specific object. In this way we have what Martin (1993) calls a ‘Janus-faced’ or ‘dual-aspect’ view, but of objects rather than of properties. We are thereby constructing a notion of substance wherein substantial objects legitimately have both dispositional and categorical aspects. We do not follow Jacobs (2011) in having ‘powerful qualities’ that have both dispositional and qualitative sides. Rather it is the substantial objects that have both. Now, some but not all properties are dispositional. We do not deny the semantic distinction between dispositional and categorical properties but rather reinforce it. Neither do we have a ‘neutral monism’ whereby the dispositional and categorical are ‘modes of presentation’, following Mumford (1998), of the same instantiated properties.

Many philosophers since Prior et al. (1982), and recently, Rives (2005) have argued that dispositions are ‘causally impotent’ following the argument that “if dispositions are distinct from their categorical bases, and their bases are efficacious, then the dispositions themselves are impotent.” Rives explicitly assumes that “the causal efficacy of categorical properties is not in question”. I disagree. I think categorical properties such as size, shape, structure are by themselves never causally efficacious. We saw that above. Such properties are only efficacious when they are shapes or structures of some substantial object, and this requires the participation of dispositional properties. A ‘base’ can never be a structure per se and hence never purely categorical.[2]

A summary of the new position is to say that specific objects are unions of form and power, of qualitative and dispositional aspects.[3] Objects are structures of propensity, namely forms of substance, in a good Aristotelian manner. Forms may be examined in great detail by form-al sciences such as mathematics and logic, but no natural changes can be generated by formal constructions. For example, contemporary attempts in physics to construct ‘it from bit’ (to derive existence from form) can only produce a static (timeless) universe without changes or causes of change. I would instead say that forms are the means by which dispositional powers operate, since the power-substances can only operate if they are arranged in some form or structure that allows for interaction and movement. Conversely, forms can only have an impact on the world if they are the forms of some propensity, as thereby a physical object in the world is in existence and has powers to influence others. This is why I said that objects in the world are required to be unions of form and power: they require powers to be in some form and require forms to be of some power. The resulting union has an existence that goes beyond either ingredient by itself.[4] In a natural object, the power and form are actually inseparable and only abstractly distinguishable. We can (and should) intellectually distinguish them—as recent philosophers have emphasized—but that does that mean that they can ever exist apart.

Can these substantial objects be individuated?  Can we identify individual objects made of such substance?  It certainly does not seem that we can divide powers or propensities themselves into parcels, with some for each individual object in the world. I can only see individuation proceeding via the specific forms or trope that the substance-stuff has in specific objects. That is, identifying individual objects, as forms of the underlying substance-stuff, can only proceed by identifying those particular forms used in each individual object. We may say that even the individual and specific existence of an object depends on the specific forms that inform the essential underlying powers/propensities of the substance.

Some scientists may be suspicious of the idea that there is a fundamental level where objects are composed of dispositions directly and do not have parts in substructures. Would that not be the end of science?  No, because science’s task is to first determine which is the fundamental level. Secondly, scientists try to exactly characterize and understand all those dispositions, both common and uncommon, in order to predict their exact operation. Any such claims are subject to empirical verification or revision.

Finally, we must consider the logical plausibility of this proposed identity. Grammatically, nouns in sentences are the agents of actions and refer to the bearer of causal influences. The object of an action must cooperate in the operation of those influences.[5] This is entirely consistent with the present claim that subjects and objects are themselves forms of propensity. It is the nature of powers and propensities to be causal influences, so any thing constructed from them will be the bearer of causal influences. We must agree, therefore, to a grammatical move of powers from being adjectives within predicates to being the substance of subjects and objects. Then we must envisage as nouns the forms of such powers and propensities. This seems to me to be quite feasible.

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[1] I would doubt that vases are eternal. I not believe that electrons or nuclei are necessarily eternal either.

[2]  Psillos (2006) also makes this mistake, when he argues that “fundamental properties [..] flow from some fundamental symmetries," for symmetries, as purely mathematical structures, can never physically ‘flow’, and can never produce physical objects. Rather, in our Aristotelian framework, they describe the properties of objects and, here, relations between those properties. It cannot be that “elementary particles are the irreducible representations (irreps) of a group," again because groups (or even their representations) have no causal powers.

[3]  Neither can exist by itself. No dispositions can exist except in a form, and no forms can exist except as forms of dispositions.

[4]  Ellis (2010) has recently written in support of this view of forms as being both categorical and necessary for the operation of powers.

[5] A hammer and a vase must have powers to interact with each other if fragility is to be manifested this way.

References

Armstrong, D. M. 1997. A world of states of affairs. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bird, Alexander. 2007. Nature’s metaphysics: Laws and properties. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.

Bird, Alexander. 2009. Structural properties revisited. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press: Clarendon Press;.

Ellis, Brian D. 2010. Causal powers and categorical properties. New York: Routledge.

Jacobs, J.D. 2011. Powerful qualities, not pure powers. Monist, 94(1), 81–102.

Martin, C. 1993. The need for ontology - some choices. Philosophy, 68(266), 505–522.

Mumford, Stephen. 1998. Dispositions. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Prior, E.W., Pargetter, R., and Jackson, F. 1982. 3 theses about dispositions. American Philosophical Quarterly, 19(3), 251–257.

Psillos, Stathis. 2006. What do powers do when they are not manifested?  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72(1), 137–156

Rives, B. 2005. Why dispositions are (still) distinct from their bases and causally impotent. American Philosophical Quarterly, 42(1), 19–31.