On the purpose of metaphysics, historically and today

Metaphysics & Epistemology
21

Doesn’t every scientific approach rest on its own metaphysical presuppositions? You seem to acknowledge this, but then split off science from metaphysics on the basis of the the claim that science relies on evidence. This then justifies a prioritization of the methods of science over philosophy, as though philosophy needs to take a back seat, waiting for the bleeding edge of science to produce the facts based on empirical evidence, and then producing a commentary or interpretation around these facts.

The boundary between science and metaphysics is currently very confused, and has historically moved (usually in the direction of science taking ground from metaphysics). If the theory I am defending is correct, this will be another movement – this time with physics being forced to cede ground, because anything which currently looks like science but depends on hidden physicalist assumptions can no longer stand unchallenged.

This would seem to be the basis of your grand synthesis. You even use the Kuhnian term ‘paradigm shift’ to describe this grand new synthesis. But your reading of the role of evidence in the sciences ignores Kuhn’s argument and misreads what he meant by paradigm shift. His thesis was that what counts as evidence is determined and made intelligible within particular paradigmatic frameworks of scientific practices.

Kuhn was specifically writing about paradigm shifts in science. I am broadening its scope to include metaphysics, but the dynamics of the shift remain the same. And yes, what counts as evidence will change, especially the need for a theory to make holistic sense. The new paradigm must prioritise coherence across disciplines rather than reductive, fragmentary focus on fine details.

A paradigm shift is thus a shift in metaphysical presuppositions. The presuppositions which organize theoretical understanding in science are not restricted to those sciences but typically unite a multitude of cultural domains, including philosophy and the arts. From this vantage, every era ties together science and philosophy on the basis of shared worldviews.

Yes, I agree.

So it seems to me the task isn’t to integrate the sciences and metaphysics. They already arrive to us that way. The question is which worldview we prefer.

I disagree. If we had multiple holistic coherent worldviews to choose from then we could choose which we prefer. What we actually have is a large number of fragmentary and incoherent worldviews – an infinite menu of inadequate (partial or incorrect) models of reality. If we can find a combined scientific-metaphysical model which actually accounts for all of the empirical evidence, is internally coherent, and doesn’t leave anything critical out (e.g. Consciousness), then we will have precisely one coherent model of reality. At that point, everything else must be judged as empirically inadequate, and/or incompleteable.

The “old paradigm” is not physicalism but epistemic anarchy – the normalisation of fragmentation of knowledge, and a cultural addiction to being able to choose which worldview we prefer from an almost infinite menu of nonsense. This has reached a zenith with the advent of AI, meaning anyone who can type can invent their personal pseudoscientific theory of everything. Peak Nonsense. The new paradigm must consign most of the menu to history.

It sounds like your preferred metaphysics is a post-physicalist realism which is closer to Popper than to Kuhn, closer to Kant and Hume than Hegel and the pragmatists.

I think I am closer to Kuhn than Popper, but I am certainly closer to Hume and Kant than I am to either Hegel or the pragmatists. Also very close to Whitehead and Wheeler.

22

A good OP – even if I find much to take issue with – well-articulated and opinionated. Welcome to the forum!

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23

String theory? I hear it’s our best shot vis-á-vis a theory of everything.

24

All well and good, but what grounds could you have to suppose there are first principles, and what might they be?

Added:

You’ve built a picture of metaphysics as a bridge between (1) some fixed starting point and (2) the science of the day. What is (1)?

Perhaps the “given” that doesn’t need justifying is a myth, not a discovery.

That there is a (1) is a presumption, and recognising this is explains disinterest in foundationalist metaphysics of the sort you picture. Why not an ad hoc approach that only looks for explanation as needed, and just gets on with stuff?

The need for an absolute certainty looks more psychological than logical.

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25

Great OP and well written. But I will observe there is a great ferment of re-imagined metaphysics going on all over the world, often mediated via the Internet. I happened to attend the first Science and Nonduality Conference in San Rafael, 2009, which is situated at the junction of Western science and Eastern metaphysics. It was popular and informal, as distinct from academic and specialised, and the quality was uneven (putting it charitably). But a metaphysical synthesis is what it was aiming for.

The bi-annual Consciousness Studies conferences hosted in Tucson are a more academically-focused forum covering many of the same topics. Metaphysics aplenty there, including speakers spruiking syntheses of Eastern philosophy and cognitive science. Today’s Institute of Art and Ideas has many panel sessions focussed on debating metaphysics in the modern world, with a long listof visiting speakers and authors.

There’s John Vervaeke’s Lectern which hosts dialogues and courses on metaphysical subjects. So it would be mistaken to say that nothing is happening, although it’s true that much of it is going on outside the hallowed walls of the Academy.

The ‘problem of consciousness’ is subject of perennial debate here. One observation I will make is that in this subject matter ‘we are that which we seek to know’. Whereas the objective sciences, as the name entails, presumes a fundamental separation between subject and world. As you note, this insight is hinted at by the discoveries of quantum physics, in particular the observer problem, and is at the basis of the dialogue between Eastern philosophy and quantum physics, made famous by the 1975 publication of the Tao of Physics. (A search on the phrase ‘quantum consciousness’ on Amazon now returns in excess of 10,000 items.).

But I think the underlying point is that modernity (or post-modernity) aren’t just worldviews, but also states of consciousness or ways of being in the world. Modernity (which I think extends from Newton up until the publication of the Theory of Relativity) is instinctively realist, in a way that the previous religious culture was not. Post-modernism is another state altogether, one in which ‘all that is solid melts into air’ to allude to a book on the topic.

Which is why metaphysical insight dovetails with and seems to demand a kind of quasi-religious approach. Because we the observers are implicated in it, an integral part of the process, no longer detached observers watching on from the outside. We’re still coming to terms with implications of that understanding, but it will involve factors beyond the objective.

Seems highly congenial to my own outlook, will await further details with interest.

26

While all that was indeed interesting, the metaphysics I’m familiar with is in no danger of reconstruction.

Irrespective of its symptoms, which would likely be either observable or mathematically inferred, what does a deeper ontological mistake look like, relative to whatever the simpler kind of mistake may be?

27

Have you checked out the QBism of Fuchs ? I see him as continuing the great tradition of phenomenalism, radical empiricism, or whatever you want to call it. “Neutral monism” is basically what I mean, but I prefer to emphasize radical pluralism. Basically Mach and Avenarius, with their empiriocriticism, remain far ahead of most talk about mind and matter today.

28

Do you model this within a temporal framework? For example, are phase 1 quantum possibilities the future, while phase 2 classical actualities are the past? The process which selects would be at the present.

If so, how do you avoid dualism? The process which “selects classical actuality” must be a form of actuality itself, but it is distinct from the classical actuality. This implies two distinct types of “actuality”, therefore dualism.

Consider the following problem created by what this passage says. There is “no time until collapse”. Prior to time starting to pass, there is only future, maybe quantum possibility. There is no past, no actuality (in that sense, no “classical actualities”), because no time has past yet. This would be a realm of pure, infinite possibility, what Aristotle called prime matter. But his cosmological argument shows that this world of pure infinity possibility (prime matter) is physically impossible, because it could not ever actualize itself. Therefore to maintain this premise, of something which exists prior to time, as possibility, we must assume a different type of actuality, different from the “classical actuality”. This different type of actuality, which is present prior to the passing of time, is required to account for what you call the “process which selects”. This would be analogous to the act which is prior to time, as the act which causes time to start passing, enabling every classical actuality.

29

Yes, as Davidson concludes - but nothing in that necessitates a foundation. It’s a description of coherence, not of foundations.

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String theory is basically dead.

31

My answer:

The Void | Two-Phase Cosmology

How can something come from nothing? The answer is simple, and has been known since antiquity: Ex nihilo nihil fit – from nothing, nothing comes. If absolute nothingness had ever been real, there would still be nothing now. The existence of anything at all means that, barring a logic-defying miracle, some kind of eternal ground must underlie reality. That leaves us with two options. One is an eternally complex source such as an Abrahamic God – a pre-existent being who chooses a possible cosmos and wills it into being. The other is an eternally simple source – a condition with no prior structure, no determinate content, but infinite potential. The simplest possible paradox: an Infinite Void.

I have never believed in the intelligent designer God which so many Western theists are convinced is real. By the time I was old enough to have formed a view on such things, I had decided it was about as believable as Father Christmas, and I chose Christmas Day to refuse to attend church ever again. Much has changed about my understanding since then, but the idea of God as a kind of CEO and project engineer of reality has never made sense to me. If such a being actually does exist – a God who thinks, designed the cosmos, and makes strategic decisions about the course of human history – then I have a lot of questions to ask about the details of Its decision-making. So for me this is not a tough decision – the Two-Phase Cosmology begins with an Infinite Nothingness. I write this as 0|∞. This represents the unity of absolute absence and limitless possibility – the paradoxical ground from which all structure arises.

This intuition is not new…

We lack a coherent model of reality. I think that is a major contributing factor to what has been called “the Meaning Crisis”.

I’d say it is deeply practical, at the level of the whole of society. I believe Western society has been crippled by both physicalist confusion and postmodern epistemic anarchy. I think we need a new realism. A metamodern realism.

32

This theory is very much post-postmodern. “Metamodern” is a bit confused – the “oscillation” model is just postmodernism with a new hat on, Jason Storm’s version more clearly points the way to a new realism. Storm is only talking to social scientists though – 2PC is a metamodern foundation for the hard sciences.

Wiki: Introduction | Two-Phase Cosmology
Book: The Two-Phase Cosmology: Amazon.co.uk: Dann, Geoff: 9781917558181: Books
Free PDF of slightly earlier version of book (aimed more at philosophers, less at cosmologists): The Sacred Structure of Reality / Two-Phase Cosmology and a Metaphysics for the Quantum Age | Zenodo

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33

I don’t really understand the question. I (obviously) tried to avoid any mistakes.

34

There’s a nice big performative contradiction in sharing such a proposition on an international forum on the internet.

We have a pretty good model of reality.

Without engineers to come here to set the poor benighted philosophers to rights, such fora would have far fewer posts.

Perhaps that might not be a bad thing.

35

QBism has some important similarities: rejection of naive realism, Wheeler-like participatory reality, local rather than global rendering of classical reality. However, QBism reduces QM to epistemology, whereas 2PC is a hard quantum ontology. More seriously QBism suffers from the multi-agent problem that Wigner’s interpretation does, and which 2PC resolves completely (via Competition-Resolved Collapse | Two-Phase Cosmology).

“Radical pluralism” sounds too much like postmodern relativism to me, but I might be misunderstanding exactly what you mean.

But yes, neutral monism has long been the sophisticated option for metaphysics, and generally misunderstood and under-estimated. However, until now I don’t think anybody got the model quite right. The idea that classical reality (and spacetime) could be co-emergent with consciousness is just beginning to turn up in cutting edge physics. Physicists and cosmologists are conservative by nature, but the deeper their problems gets, the more open-minded they have to be in response.

36

Phase 1 is non-temporal. There is no “now”, and time is just a dimension of an information structure. That is how it can appear that causality is working backwards from the perspective of a Phase 2 embodied agent. The phase transition selects both a past and a future at the same time (that is the only way it can work). But yes, the phase transition is always the present, and the reason time has an arrow is that wavefunction collapse (one of three names for the transition) is irreversible. Free will (another name) is also irreversible. We always make decisions in the present.

The first type of actuality isn’t actuality, because it is only possibility. There are two distinct kinds of “physical” (quantum and classical), which in itself means it can’t be a physicalist monism. And the transition between these two phases is consciousness. Whatever that is, it certainly isn’t mind-matter dualism. I think it is best categorised as a new kind of neutral monism.

In Phase 1, there is no present, so no direction of time, and “past” and “future” don’t really mean anything. There is no change. There is just a “block of wavefunction” – a block of information which corresponds to the wavefunction evolving unitarily. So this is exactly like MWI, except there is no mind and no classical reality, just non-local quantum possibility.

Actualisation requires something else. Schrodinger called it his “second equation”: Atman=Brahman. Once a brain exists in Phase 1, it is physically possible for Brahman to become an Atman (because a potential point of view exists). But until this happens, Phase 1 can’t be actualised.

I didn’t quite follow that. The act of realisation/actualisation is also an act of selection. All possible histories/futures exist in Phase 1 (like MWI), but a brain capable of making meaningful choices about which future/past it prefers means that unitary evolution must end. In other words, when we make a meaningful choice, we are necessarily choosing one possibility and rejecting all the others. We cannot choose every possible option (as implied by MWI).

37

Surely it would require some kind of foundation though. The model has to start from somewhere.

38

I’m basically referring to William James. The point of radical pluralism is that we don’t need to decide on some primary ingredient of reality. James can be fuzzy on this, because “pure experience” can serve as such as primal stuff.

To me the way to secure radical pluralism is to understand the word “consciousness” as the “being” or “presence” of every kind of stuff. But the ontological difference must be emphasized here. The nouns “being” and “presence” are not intended as pointers to a primal stuff.

That makes sense to me. I don’t think that anyone needs to wait for a physicist to get caught up with the philosophical tradition though. I see positivistic philosophy as a pre-science that helps us get a better grip on our fundamental terms. An engineer might be bad at philosophy but still create working tech. The tech is its own proof. The philosophical account given of the tech can itself be terrible and confused. This is explained by human priorities. A relatively learned and coherent story of the world is low on the list, is a luxury product. It’s difficult to create, difficult to understand, and the cognitive pleasure is nice but something that most can and do live without.

39

Popper.

Science does not, he maintains, rest upon any foundational bedrock. Rather, the theoretical systems of science are akin to buildings in swampy ground constructed with the support of piles:

The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or “given” base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. (2002: 94)

40

That immediately implies consciousness though, which breaks the model of reality I am describing. It sounds too much like idealism, even if James is generally considered to be closer to neutral monism.

Again, given that many people are seeking life after death, and brains appear to be necessary for consciousness, equating consciousness to being is inviting misinterpretation, IMO.