The Scientific Nature of Physicalism:Turtles All the Way Down

 

I first heard the anecdote about turtles when it starred Wittgenstein. In some class he taught, supposedly, they were referring to the Indian cosmogany in which the earth sits on the back of an elephant and the elephant is on the back of a great turtle. A student asked "what does the turtle sit on?" Supposedly Wittgenstein said "from there on it's turtles all the way down." There is no real proof that Wittgenstein ever said that. Googling the phrase, it is associated with him without proving who said it. Moreover, no one knows what it means. I've seen about six interpretations. It's always associated with the sort of flippant remark a skeptic might make about religious answers. Here I use it as a metaphor for the arrogance of scientism to think that scientific exactitude and certainty rules out the possibility of other realms and forms of truth that science can't seek.

One of the most solid things in modern science is the Greek concept of the atom, and Greek atomism  stands as atheistic symbol and as the basis of scientific thought. The reason atheists use an atomic symbol for their own is becuase they harken back to Greek atomistic view as a replacement for belief in deity. Science shows us all, we know the basic building blocks of reality, sub atomic particles, and thus we know there's no need for a God, yada yada yada. When we examine those bulwarks of modern thought we see that they are shaky and as uncertain as the one about the turtles. This is especially apt for sub atomic particles; science has never found a basic particle, it seems there is always a smaller one, it's particles all the way down.

The Issue of Transcendence

            Are there realms beyond our knowing, is this possible? If so, is there any possibility of our investigating them? Scientists have usually tended to assume that metaphysical assumptions about realms beyond are just out of the domain of science and can’t be investigated so they don’t bother to comment. Victor Stenger, however, wants to be able to assert that he’s disproved them so he argues that the magisteria do overlap. “There exists a widespread notion, promulgated at the higher levels of the scientific community itself, that science has nothing to say about God or the supernatural…”[1] He sights the national academy of sciences and their position that these are non overlapping magisteria, “science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Weather God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”[2] Stenger disagrees. He argues that they can study the effects of prayer so that means they can eliminate the supernatural.

            Two things are wrong with Stenger’s approach. First, he doesn’t use Lourdes or any other empirical record of miracles. He’s going entirely by double blind studies which can’t control for prayer from outside the control group; that makes such studies virtually worthless. So in effect Stenger is taking the work of people who try to empirically measure what is beyond the empirical, then when it doesn’t work he says “see, there’s nothing beyond the empirical.” That proves nothing more than the fact that we can’t measure that which is beyond measuring. Secondly, he doesn’t deal with the real religious experience studies or the M scale. That means he’s not really dealing with the empirical effects of supernature. I deal with the M scale at length in my book The Trace of God.  I’ve just demonstrated good reason to think that supernature Is working in nature. It’s not an alien realm outside the natural, it’s not a miracle it’s not something that sets its self apart form the daily regular workings of the world. Supernature is of God but nature is of God. God made nature and he works in nature. We can tell the two apart by the results. Now I am going to deal with the other two issues, are there realms beyond the natural? Are there evidences of a form of supernatural in the world that stand apart from the natural such that we can call them “miracles?”

            Are there realms beyond the natural? Of course there can be no direct evidence, even a direct look at them would stand apart from our received version of reality and thus be suspect. The plaintive cry of the materialists that “there is no evidence for the supernatural” is fallacious to the core. How can there be evidence when any evidence that might be would automatically be suspect? Moreover, science itself gives us reason to think there might be. Quantum physics is about unseen realms, but they are the world of the extremely tiny. This is the fundamental basis of reality, what’s beneath or behind everything. They talk about “particles” but in reality they are not particles. They are not bits of stuff. They are not solid matter.[3] Treating particles as points is also problematic. This is where string theory comes in.

This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than 4.

So where are they then? One idea is that they are right under our noses, but compacted to the quantum scale so that they are imperceptible. "Hang on a minute", you might think,"How can you ever prove the existence of something that, by definition, is impossible to perceive?" It's a fair point, and there are scientists who criticize string theory for its weak predictive power and testability. Leaving that to one side, how can you conceptualize extra dimensions?[4]

There is no direct evidence of these unseen realms and they may be unprovable. Why are they assumed with such confidence and yet reductionists make the opposite assumption about spiritual realms? It’s not because the quantum universe realms are tangle or solid or material they are not. Scientists can’t really describe what they are, except that they are mathematical.  In fact why can’t they be the same realms?

            Then there’s the concept of the multiverse. This is not subatomic in size but beyond our space/time continuum. These would be other universes perhaps like our own, certainly the size of our own, but beyond our realm of space/time. Some scientists accept the idea that the same rules would apply in all of these universes, but some don’t.

Beyond it [our cosmic visual horizon—42 billion light years] could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.” Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life. A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.[5]

Well there are two important things to note here. First, that neither string theory nor multiverse may ever be proved empirically. There’s a professor at Columbia named Peter Woit who writes the blog “Not Even Wrong” dedicated to showing that string theory can’t be proved.[6] There is no proof for it or against it. It can’t be disproved so it can’t be proved either.[7] That means the idea will be around for a long time because without disproving it they can’t get rid of it. Yet without any means of disproving it, it can’t be deemed a scientific fact. Remember it’s not about proving things it’s about disproving them. Yet science is willing to consider their possibility and takes them quite seriously. There is no empirical evidence of these things. They posit the dimensions purely as a mathematical solution so the equations work not because they have any real evidence.[8]

            We could make the argument that we have several possibilities for other worlds and those possibilities suggest more: we have the idea of being “outside time.” There’s no proof that this is place one can actually go to, but the idea of suggests the possibility, there’s the world of anti-matter, there are worlds in string membranes, and there are other dimensions tucked away and folded into our own. In terms of the multiverse scientists might argue that they conceive of these as “naturalistic.” They would be like our world with physical laws and hard material substances and physical things. As we have seen there are those who go further and postulate the “rules change” idea. We probably should assume the rules work the same way because its all we know. We do assume this in making God arguments such as the cosmological argument. Yet the possibility exists that there could be other realms that are not physical and not “natural” as we know that concept. The probability of that increases when we realize that these realms are beyond our space/time thus they are beyond the domain of our cause and effect, and we know as “natural.” It really all goes back to the philosophical and ideological assumption about rules. There is no way to prove it either way. Ruling out the possibility of a spiritual realm based upon the fact that we don’t live in it would be stupid. The idea that “we never see any proof of it” is basically the same thing as saying “we don’t live it so it must not exist.” Of course this field is going to be suspect, and who can blame the critics? Anyone with a penchant for the unknown can set up shop and speculate about what might be “out there.” Yet science itself offers the possibility in the form of modern physics, the only rationale for closing that off is the distaste for religion.

All that is solid melts into air

            This line by Marx deals with society, social and political institutions, but in thinking about the topic of SN it suggests a very different issue. The reductionst/materialists and phsyicalists assume and often argue that there is no proof of anything not material and not ‘physical” (energy is a form of matter). We see this in the quotes at the beginning of the chapter. The hard tangible nature of the physical is taken as the standard for reality while the notion of something beyond our ability to dietetic is seen in a skeptical way, even though the major developments in physics are based upon it. Is the physical world as tangible and solid as we think? Science talks about “particles” and constructs models of atoms made of wooden tubes and little balls this gives us the psychological impression that the world of the very tiny is based upon little solid balls. In reality subatomic particles are not made out of little balls, nor are these ‘particles” tangible or solid. In fact we could make a strong argument that no one even knows what they are made of.

We keep talking about "particles", but this word doesn't adequately sum up the type of matter that particle physicists deal with. In physics, particles aren't usually tiny bits of stuff. When you start talking about fundamental particles like quarks that have a volume of zero, or virtual particles that have no volume and pop in and out of existence just like that, it is stretching the everyday meaning of the word "particle" a bit far. Thinking about particles as points sooner or later leads the equations up a blind alley. Understanding what is happening at the smallest scale of matter needs a new vocabulary, new maths, and very possibly new dimensions.

This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than 4.[9]

Particles are not solid; they are not very tiny chunks of solid stuff. They have no volume nor do they have the kind of stable existence we do. They “pop” in and out of existence! This is not proof for the supernatural. It might imply that the seeming solidity of “reality” is illusory. There are two kinds of subatomic particles, elementary and composite. Composite are made out of smaller particles. Now we hear it said that elementary particles are not made out of other particles. It’s substructure is unknown. They may or may not be made of smaller particles. That means we really don’t know what subatomic particles are made of. That means scientists are willing to believe in things they don’t understand.[10] While it is not definite enough to prove anything except that we don’t know the basis of reality, it does prove that and also the possibilities for the ultimate truth of this are still wide open. To rule out “the supernatural” (by the wrong concept) on the assumption that we have no scientific proof of it is utterly arrogance and bombast. For all we know what we take to be solid unshakable reality might be nothing more than God’s day dream. Granted, there is end to the spinning of moon beams and we can talk all day about what ‘might be,’ so we need evidence and arguments to warrant the placing of confidence in propositions. We have confidence placing evidence; it doesn’t have to be scientific although some of it is. That will come in the next chapter. The point here is that there is no basis for the snide dismissal of concepts such as supernatural and supernature.

---

[1] Victor Stenger, God and The Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion. Amherst: New

York: Prometheus Books, 2012. 225.

[2] Stenger, ibid, quoting National Academy of Sciences, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. Washington DC: National Academies Press, 1998, 58.

[3] STFC “are there other dimensions,” Large Hadron Collider. Website. Scinece and Facilities Council, 2012 URL: http://www.lhc.ac.uk/The%20Particle%20Detectives/Take%205/13686.aspx

[4] ibid

[5] George F.R. Ellis. “Does the Miltiverse Reallly Exist [preview]” Scientific American (July 19, 2011) On line versoin URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-multiverse-really-exist

George F.R. Ellis is Proffessor Emeritus in Mathematics at University of Cape Town. He’s been proessor of Cosmic Physics at SISSA (Trieste)

[6] Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, Posted on September 18, 2012 by woi  blog, URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ 

[7] ibid, “Welcome to the Multiverse,” Posted on May 21, 2012 by woit

 URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4715

[8] Mohsen Kermanshahi. Universal Theory. “Sring Theory.”    Website URL: http://www.universaltheory.org/html/others/stringtheory5.htm

[9] STFC ibid, op cit.

[10] Sylvie Braibant; Giorgio Giacomelli; Maurizio Spurio Particles and Fundamental Interactions: An Introduction to Particle Physics (2nd ed.).  Italy: Springer-Verlag, science and Business media, 2009, pp. 1–3. 


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Reductionism part 3 (final): Holism, the Altnernative

Holism

We might be remiss if we did not mention the major methodical nemesis of reductionism, holism. In some ways holism might be thought of as the opposite of reductionism: often summarized as “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” the relation of the parts to the whole is such that the individual parts do not explain the state of the whole. This includes aspects of emergent properties that can’t be reduced to the parts that produce it. This latter formulation is the Cousin of holism, nonseperablity. This is the idea that the state of the parts do not explain the state of the whole.[1] Holism as a mythodological thesis can best be understood as the idea that “the best way to study the behavior of a complex system is to treat it as a whole.”[2] Holism may also be a metaphysical thesis. In that sense it’s about the relation of the whole to laws that govern it and the independence of the law from the individual parts. There are three types of metaphysical holism:

Ontological Holism: Some objects are not wholly composed of basic physical parts.

Property Holism: Some objects have properties that are not determined by physical properties of their basic physical parts.

Nomological Holism: Some objects obey laws that are not determined by fundamental physical laws governing the structure and behavior of their basic physical parts.[3]

            Apparently most physicists are holists in methodological terms, but there are notable exceptions. Both methodological and metaphysical versions of holism and reductionism are assumed in different ways among physicists.

It is surprisingly difficult to find methodological reductionists among physicists. The elementary particle physicist Steven Weinberg, for example, is an avowed reductionist. He believes that by asking any sequence of deeper and deeper why-questions one will arrive ultimately at the same fundamental laws of physics. But this explanatory reductionism is metaphysical in so far as he takes explanation to be an ontic rather than a pragmatic category. On this view, it is not physicists but the fundamental laws themselves that explain why “higher level” scientific principles are the way they are. Weinberg (1992) explicitly distinguishes his view from methodological reductionism by saying that there is no reason to suppose that the convergence of scientific explanations must lead to a convergence of scientific methods.[4]

Carl Popper rejected holism because it has a long standing relationship with totalitarian thinking. In social terms the individual is determined by the whole, social groupings play out on a massive scale. According to the social holist individuals are formed by the social groupings to which they belong.[5] Popper was critical of holism for this reason, this doesn’t mean that physicist using holism as a methodological tool think in a totalitarian fashion. It’s a matter of how you look at it. The reductionst reducing everything to one thing is totalitarian. The reductionist move of losing phenomena of religious experience and categorizing such experiences which they have never had is totalitarian.

            We clearly see philosophical implications and repercussions in these matters. In physics science interfaces with philosophy to such a degree its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. It would seem that what is needed a sharper focus on the use of reductionism/holism as a methodology and better fences between philosophy and physics. The problem the spreading ideology of scientism, that seems to detract from any respect for philosophy, while ransacking its territory. One commentator and blogger wrties:

I don’t know what’s the matter with physicists these days. It used to be that they were an intellectually sophisticated bunch, with the likes of Einstein and Bohr doing not only brilliant scientific research, but also interested, respectful of, and conversant in other branches of knowledge, particularly philosophy. These days it is much more likely to encounter physicists like Steven Weinberg or Stephen Hawking, who merrily go about dismissing philosophy for the wrong reasons, and quite obviously out of a combination of profound ignorance and hubris (the two often go together, as I’m sure Plato would happily point out). The latest such bore is Lawrence Krauss, of Arizona State University.[6]

                                                

This is no mystery but what we’ve been observing. There is a tendency even among “regular science” or shall we say “real science” to infuse scientific work with philosophical assumptions. The scientistic/reductionist mentality has fomented the notion that science is the only form of knowledge. Those who take his credo seriously are assaulting real philosophy to clear it out of the way so they can make room for their ideology. If this is the only form of knowledge it’s proponents are clearing away all the non knowledge. The only problem this only knowledge is made up of different approaches to philosophy and other disciplines.

This is by no means an exhaustive account of holism. It’s very complex and just doesn’t allow for streamlined summary. There’s just too much there to justice to the topic. I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss briefly one upshot of holism which is downward causation.

Downward Causation

            Systems theory has been construed as anti-reductionism. In this stance it says “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Reductionism says that we can know the nature of the whole by knowing the nature of the parts, because the whole is nothing else but the sum of the parts and can be reduced to the parts. The basic assumption of systems theory in its anti-reductionist stance is that because the whole has emergent properties it is more than the sum of its parts thus it can’t be reduced to the parts. This means that mind can’t be reduced to brain. “Emergence” is sometimes a veg idea thus some thinkers prefer to call it “downward causation.”[7] Downward causation is the opposite of the reductionist premise: “The behavior of the parts is determined by the behavior of the whole.”[8]  “Top-down causation refers to the effects on components of organized systems that cannot be fully analyzed in terms of component-level behavior but instead requires reference to the higher-level system itself.”[9]

            There are five types of downward causation or “top-down” causation: (1) Algorithmic top down causation; (2) Non adaptive information control; (3) adaptive selection; (4) adaptive information control; (5) Intelligent top down.[10] Random processes allow all of these forms of causation to work at the same time without negating other causal processes. Each of these five forms of causation takes place in the human brain.[11] As an explanation of number one, (1) Algorithmic: Ellis tells us that “physics is the basic science underlying physical reality, characterized by mathematical descriptions that allow predictions of physical behavior.”[12] He raises the question are other forms of causation merely epiphenomenal grounded in purely physical causation? This is the view of strong reductionsits. He argues that the other forms of causation do exist in the real world and that they are acting within the framework provided by Aristotle of the four kinds of causes. He gives a table that provides a simplified scheme of hierarchy of levels of reality. “Each lower level underlies what happens at each higher level in terms of causation.” Level 1: particle physics, level 2: atomic physics, level 3: chemistry, Level 4: Biochemistry, level 5:, cell biology, level 6:, physiology, level 7: psychology. Level 8: Sociology/Economics/politics.[13]

            (2)

Downward Causation also contains

Other dierections.

But downward causation does not assert that the only direction of causation is downward. There is causation both ways; the whole is to some extent limited to the parts and vice versa. The example that Heylighen uses is that of a snow flake. Snow flakes all contain a six point similarity but within that similarity, which is the whole because it’s universally found, each crystal contains it’s totally individual shape. The shape is the result of the chemical composition of water molecules but the shape is confined to the whole.[14]

The appearance of this "two way causation" can be explained in the following way. Imagine a complex dynamic system. The trajectories of the system through its state space are constrained by the "laws" of the dynamics. These dynamics in general determine a set of "attractors": regions in the state space the system can enter but not leave. However, the initial state of the system, and thus the attractor the system will eventually reach is not determined. The smallest fluctuations can push the system either in the one attractor regime or the other. However, once an attractor is reached, the system loses its freedom to go outside the attractor, and its state is strongly constrained.

Now equate the dynamics with the rules governing the molecules, and the attractor with the eventual crystal shape. The dynamics to some degree determines the possible attractors (e.g. you cannot have a crystal with a 7-fold symmetry), but which attractor will be eventually reached is totally unpredictable from the point of view of the molecules. It rather depends on uncontrollable outside influences. But once the attractor is reached, it strictly governs the further movement of the molecules.

The same principle applies to less rigid, mechanistic systems such as living organisms. You cannot have organisms whose internal functioning flouts the rules of physics and chemistry. However, the laws of physics are completely insufficient to determine which shapes or organizations will evolve in the living world. Once a particular biological organization has emerged, it will strongly constrain the behavior of its components.

 For example, the coding of amino acids by specific triplets of bases in the DNA is not determined by any physical law. A given triplet might as well be translated into a multitude of other amino acids than the one chosen in the organisms we know. But evolution happens to have selected one specific "attractor" regime where the coding relation is unambiguously fixed, and transgressions of that coding will be treated as translation errors and therefore eliminated by the cell's repair mechanisms. [15]

Downward causation extends from a level above a given system downward to affect that system. When the direction of causal influence extends from beyond the system downward to affect the system we have downward causation. That means the system can’t be explained totally in terms of its individual parts. In terms of consciousness it means consciousness can’t be explained entirely in terms of brain chemistry.[16] Cartesian dualism envisioned only two levels to reality but in modern terms modern emergantism pictures the world in multiple levels. The Cartesian levels were consciousness and extension, but…

…In contemporary emergentism the world is pictured in terms of a multilayered structure, with microphysical entities at the bottom and with higher-level entities (such as molecules, cells, organisms, and social groups) being mereologically composed of these lower-level entities, yet characterized by a set of properties distinctive of the relevant higher level. In a way, so-called nonreductive physicalism, which more or less became the received view in the philosophy of mind of the last quarter of the twentieth century, may be seen as nothing but a modern application of classical emergentism within the philosophy of mind. Although it holds that, ontologically speaking, all there is are physical entities and mereological aggregates thereof, it argues that psychological properties are irreducibly distinct from the underlying physical and biological properties.[17]

            There are two other major examples ideological reductionism: (1) Brain/mind; mind is reducible to brain function. (2) Determinism; free will reducible to an illusion by determinism.

Summary and Conclusion:

            Reductionism is a valid scientific methodology, but it is more than that. Science itself is infused with ideological and philosophical implication. There is no pure human endeavor that is all knowledge and no politics. Reductionism is basically traceable to the Greeks and implies a metaphysics that would reduce all reality to one thing: in modern time in the scientistic circles that one thing can only be science. This philosophical tendency issues forth in rhetorical strategies that empirical tricks of reducing, such as labeling the loosing the phenomena. The alternative is holism, which offers philosophical alternative as well as methodological and rhetorical options. Holism opens up our thinking to a vast possibility of multidimensional reality. It offers explanations of emergent properties and top down causation that rule out much of the reductionist’s repertoire.

---

[1] Healey, Richard, "Holism and Nonseparability in Physics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .visited 4/25/2012

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

[4] ibid http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-holism/#Metho

[5] Thornton, op cit URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#SocPolThoCriHisHol

[6] Massimo Piglicci, “Rationally Speaking: “Lawrence Krauss: Antoher Physcist With an Anti-Philosophy Complex.” Truth from Argument Among Friends. Blog book Review URL: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ca/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html visisted 4/27/2012

[7] Francis Heylighen, “Downward Causation.” Principia Cybernetica web On line resource. Sept 15, 1995, summarizing work of Donald T. Campbell 1974. Heylighen is research Professor at Free University of Brussels and director of Global Brain Institiute. URL: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DOWNCAUS.html   visited 5/9/12

• see also Campbell D.T. (1990): "Levels of Organization, Downward Causation, and the Selection-Theory Approach to Evolutionary Epistemology", in: Scientific Methodology in the Study of Mind: evolutionary epistemology, E. Tobach and G. Greenberg (ed.), (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ), p. 1-17.
• Campbell D.T. (1974): "'Downward causation' in Hierarchically Organized Biological Systems", in: Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, F.J. Ayala & T. Dobzhansky (ed.), (Macmillan Press), p. 179-186

[8] ibid

[9] Mary Ann Meyers “Top Down Causation: An integrating theme within and across the sciences.”  A symposium by the John Templeton foundation, Participnats from the Royal Society,  Contact Mary Ann Meyers Senior Fellow, 2010, website: URL http://humbleapproach.templeton.org/Top_Down_Causation/index.html  visited sept 25,2012.

[10] George F.R. Ellis, “Top Down Causation and The Human Brain,” Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will: Understanding Complex Systems. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag,  Ed.Nancy Murphy, George F.R. Ellis, Timothy O. O’Connor, 2009, 63

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., Table 4.1

[14] Meyers, “top Down Causation…” Symposium, Op. Cit.

[15] ibid.

[16] Gale Cengage, “Downward causation,” Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. New York: Macmillan, Wentzel Van Huyssteen edit 2003. quoted in Enotes, Downward Causatoin, on line resource for teachers:

URL: http://www.enotes.com/downward-causation-reference/downward-causation  visited 5/10/12

[17] Ibid.