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Some Consequences (and Enablings) of Process Metaphysics

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Abstract

The interactivist model has explored a number of consequences of process metaphysics. These include reversals of some fundamental metaphysical assumptions dominant since the ancient Greeks, and multiple further consequences throughout the metaphysics of the world, minds, and persons. This article surveys some of these consequences, ranging from issues regarding entities and supervenience to the emergence of normative phenomena such as representation, rationality, persons, and ethics.

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Notes

  1. Parmenides argued (against Heraclitus) against change, and Democritus and Empedocles proposed models of apparent change with an unchanging substrate—atoms for Democritus and substances for Empedocles (Graham 2006). It is this underlying assumption of the metaphysical necessity of an unchanging substrate that is crucial to the position in the main text, and I refer to such an assumption as that of a substance metaphysics, for both “stuffs” as for Empedocles and “atoms” as for Democritus.

  2. Quantum field theory is not a complete physics, and, in fact, cannot be fully correct. But there is no returning to a particle framework: non-localities of interactions, a lack of a consistent definition of particle detections in an accelerating frame, vacuum activity (such as the Casimir effect; Aitchison 1985; Mostepanenko et al. 1997; Sciama 1991), and other phenomena are not consistent with the particularities and localities of particles.

  3. Finite sized “particles” would have non-zero probability of interaction, but they encounter serious problems of their own. For example, if they are deformable, then it is not clear in what sense they are fundamental, rather than decomposable. If they are rigidly not deformable, then they would transmit force through their width instantaneously, in contradiction to the special theory of relativity. There would be extreme difficulty in explaining differing kinds of interactions, such as gravity and electromagnetism, and so on. As mentioned next in the text, if a hybrid position is considered, in which point particles interact via fields, this is strictly false, but it nevertheless already grants much of what I take to be of basic importance in a field-as-process framework.

  4. Aristotle developed a sophisticated metaphysics that also honored this Parmenidean constraint. Classically, he has been interpreted as assuming a basic level of Prime Matter that does not change as a substrate for change. Some contemporary interpretations argue that he was not committed to Prime Matter—the notion of an unchanging substrate for each change, however, is still maintained (e.g., Gill 1989).

  5. I argue that Jaegwon Kim’s arguments against emergence, and Hume’s argument against deriving norms from facts, both depend on unstated substance and particle assumptions (Bickhard 2009a, in preparation).

  6. Note that a model of the emergence of normative phenomena out of non-normative phenomena must address Hume’s argument that this is impossible. For the unsoundness of Hume’s argument, see Bickhard (2009a, in preparation).

  7. They can be indirectly pushed if they happen to be in a directly pushable container. They can be moved in various ways, e.g., by manipulating the thermodynamic gradients in which they are operating (e.g., shifting the course of a hurricane by altering air temperature gradients), and this could be considered unconventional “pushing”.

  8. See Bickhard and Campbell (2003).

  9. There are multiple variants of supervenience, depending on the scope and strength of the modalities involved and of the presumed base (McLaughlin and Bennett 2005). The discussion in the text does not depend on these variations.

  10. As with fields and other processes, an instant of time can be defined as limit point (i.e., relationally), but a spatial distribution of values or particles (or atoms, molecules, etc.) cannot constitute a flame (or any other process): the temporal flow must also be included. If the process can be modeled mathematically, this is generally via differential equations, but the basic point holds independently of the mathematics: just consider exactly the same physical distribution of molecules as in a candle flame, but with completely random momenta.

  11. Such “states” can exist as ongoing conditions, such as the condition of burning or of thinking about metaphysics, but these are by definition themselves conditions of temporally extended process, not infinitely thin time slices.

  12. There is a further perspective on this regarding substances or particles: in a process metaphysics, there is, arguably, no ground for postulating either bare particulars or (clusters of) proper properties. Everything is patterns of unfolding relations in larger unfolding patterns. ‘Instances of patterns’ is as close as possible to notions of entities, and relationally located regions in dynamic patterns is as close as possible to ‘particular’ point locations.

  13. Similarly, what might appear to be exceptions, such as various forms of non-standard analysis, are based on inherently relational category theory or inherently relational model theory. Still further, the apparent units bases of developments in physics, such as string theory or loop quantum gravity—strings and loops—are also relational (Smolin 2001). There is an assumption of an absolute background in current string theory, but that is a defect to be overcome, not a metaphysical implication of the approach (Smolin 2001).

  14. Perhaps the strongest opposite pole would be Teller’s “local physicalism” or “particularism” (Teller 1986, 1989), but Teller introduced this framework as part of arguing that it is incompatible with quantum mechanics.

  15. Note that this is not a nomic relation; it is a kind of relationalism necessary in order for any (field) laws to be definable, even in Lewis’s “best system”.

  16. Mathematical modeling of self-organization is seriously problematic in any case (Hooker, forthcoming), but the claim here is not just that self-organization cannot be mathematically modeled in terms of discrete causal chains, but that discrete causal chains cannot metaphysically capture the relational grounds of self-organization.

  17. The environment affords (or is constituted by) various potentialities, while indications of such potential interactions are in the animal’s CNS.

  18. Millikan and Cummins (Millikan 1984, 1993; Cummins 1996) propose respective models that separate the determination of representational content from that which is represented, and, thus, have an approach for attempting to account for representational error: the content falsely applies to the represented. But these models too fail to account for organism detectable error (Bickhard 2009a, in preparation).

  19. Some models—e.g., Dretske (1988) and Clark (Clark 2001; Wheeler and Clark 1999)—are explicitly presented as accounting for representation, thus representational error, only from the perspective of an external observer—an analyzer or explainer of the system. But this leaves sui generis representation, as has to have emerged in evolution, unaddressed. Further, it leaves the representations of the analyzer or observer unaddressed (Bickhard 2004a, 2009a, in preparation; Bickhard and Terveen 1995).

  20. The allusion to Gibson is deliberate, and is elaborated in Bickhard and Richie (1983) and elsewhere.

  21. See (Piaget 1954; Bickhard 1988a; Bickhard and Campbell 1989).

  22. This amounts to a kind of functional-dynamic version of implicit definition (Bickhard 2009a).

  23. Consistent with this, in the development of understandings of modality in children, we find an early phase of a lack of coordinated differentiation among modalities, not one of an absence of modality to which modality is later added (Piaget 1987; Bickhard 1988b).

  24. A term for which I am indebted to a conversation with Raymundo Morado.

  25. Situation conventions do not constitute the only resolutions of mutual “social” situations: I may be only interested in killing you, for example, perhaps even without you ever realizing that we are in a mutual situation, and certainly without a coordination problem solution. Or I may be interested in deceiving you in a con game or espionage move, in which I may want you to think that some conventions are in place, but in which I intend to violate the purported coordinative resolution—there is a situation in which or level at which I intend to deviate from the purported coordination. More commonly, we take a social situation to constitute an organization of conventional frameworks, but discover in the course of interacting that there are senses in which we are not in full accord. These most commonly yield attempts to restore or repair situation conventions, but can also yield a destruction of all but the most minimal frameworks for competition or conflict (Bickhard, forthcoming).

  26. One manifestation of this is that even truth purportedly becomes a factual, non-normative property—e.g., a factual matter of Tarskian correspondences (or not) (Campbell 1992, forthcoming).

  27. A more complete model of values can be found elsewhere (e.g., Campbell and Bickhard 1986; Bickhard 2006, in preparation). This model requires, in its turn, a model of reflective consciousness (Bickhard 2005).

  28. He perhaps partially recognized this tangle of problems, especially the weak arguments deriving moral principles from the rational and reasoning nature of human beings, in his point that morality in this life would be rewarded in the afterlife—and that the necessity for such a balancing of justice in an afterlife is a reason for believing in an afterlife.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Richard Campbell, Cliff Hooker, and Susan Schneider for improvements on earlier drafts.

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    Mark H. Bickhard

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Bickhard, M.H. Some Consequences (and Enablings) of Process Metaphysics. Axiomathes 21, 3–32 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-010-9130-z

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