Downward Causation at the Level of the Mental… and Election Results?

 

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“Events at higher levels — levels where emergent properties become evident — can in turn feed back and affect events at lower levels. For example, chronic stress, a mental event, can cause parts of the brain to become smaller. Similarly, an economic depression or the results of an election affect the lives of the individuals who live in that society.”

— Stephen M. Kosslyn [Source here.]

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It must be stated right from the start that the passage above simply assumes that there are emergent properties. Thus, only then does Stephen Kosslyn tackle what he calls “downward causality”. So readers will need to know if Kosslyn’s examples are ones of strong emergence or weak emergence.

There may be a problem here.

Kosslyn says that “chronic stress” (which he classes as a “mental event”) can “cause parts of the brain to become smaller”.

Here, Kosslyn is assuming that mental events aren’t at all physical. In simplistic terms, then, this could be read as a form of dualism.

So it’s important to stress that a mental event (such as chronic stress) may also be physically embodied in (parts of) the brain — and also in the body as a whole.

To repeat. Chronic stress must be physically embodied (or instantiated) in the brain and the body — even if it’s still deemed to be a mental event.

This may — or does — mean that (to use Kosslyn’s words) “parts of the brain” are affecting other parts of the brain — as well as parts of the body.

We can tackle this from a different angle.

Kosslyn’s words may — or do — mean that some given x can fall under two different modes of presentation. However, this modes-of-presentation idea isn’t identical to Gottlob Frege’s notions of sense and reference. It refers, instead, to a mode of presentation from the the “first-person perspective”, and a mode of presentation from the “third-person perspective”. In both cases, then, the same x is being presented in two different ways.

More broadly, Kosslyn’s “events at higher levels” are as physical as anything else. However, it’s just the case that such events aren’t identical to any single “element” which gives rise to them. Added to that, such events at higher levels are phenomena experienced from the first-person perspective.

So all this may be a case of the physical affecting the physical, rather than the non-physical affecting the physical. And, if that’s the case, then this may not be a case of downward causation at all!… Or, at the very least, the words “downward causation” need qualifying.

Kosslyn also mention an “economic depression” and the “result of an election”.

An economic depression and the result of an election are both abstractions. In other words, all the precise, many, varied, and individual physical details which make up an economic depression or an election result are factored out. That is done in order to abstract up to to something more basic and simple — i.e., an abstraction. That abstracting process, then, is essentially linguistic and due to the (human and cognitive) requirement for conceptual simplicity. However, reifying an abstract entity (such as an economic depression of the result of an election) may well make it seem to have a nature which encourages us to think in terms of it bringing about some kind of downward causation.

Yet an abstraction isn’t a physical phenomenon.

More mundanely and linguistically, the words “economic depression” make up an abstract noun (or, at the least, an abstract noun prefixed with an adjective), and the same is true of the words “election result”. But this is just a factor of language and the cognitive utility of such abstract terms. It certainly doesn’t tell is that something non-physical (or emergent) is affecting something physical.

Consequently, thinking in terms of abstract entities (i.e., at the same time as not fully realising that) makes it seem that a non-physical phenomenon is taking part in a process of downward causation. Yet this is to believe that these abstract terms (i.e., in a language) are actually non-abstract things: things are deemed to be non-physical in some way, and also responsible for cases of downward causation.

The American philosopher Mark A Bedau is also suspicious of such strong emergence. He writes:

“Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing.”

The point here is that the “higher-level” entity or process (in Kosslyn's examples, chronic stress, economic depression and an election result) is deemed to to be over and above “the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities”…

Mark Bedau

Well, it is if seen purely as an abstract entity/process or an abstract term. However, abstractions don’t have downward causal powers. Indeed, they don’t have any causal powers at all. (The entities and processes which abstract terms refer to, if indirectly and circuitously, do have causal powers.)

So if we’re talking about abstractions which are (tacitly) taken to be real non-abstract things, then the latter aren’t “something form nothing”. In a loose sense, we can take the abstractions themselves as being something beyond the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities. But, of course, supervenience theorists aren’t talking about abstractions qua abstractions.

Downward causation and strong emergence aren’t one and the same thing. That said, Mark Bedau does connect them together — as does Stephen Kosslyn himself in the opening passage. In other words, that which strongly emerges is also deemed to have “supervenient downward causal power”. Thus, in Kosslyn’s examples, chronic stress, economic depression and an election result are deemed to be (strongly?) emergent phenomena which, nevertheless, have downward causal power. Yet, as hopefully shown, these examples are simply linguistic or conceptual abstractions. And such things can’t have downward (or upward!) causal power. However, whatever collective or individual physical elements these abstract terms indirectly refer to, will indeed have causal power. None of them are individually emergent at all.

So, if anything is emergent (if only in a loose sense), then it’s the linguistic (or conceptual) abstractions we use every day (such as “stress”, “election result”). Yet these terms won’t help much because such abstractions alone can’t have downward causal power.

There is Science. And There Are Individual Scientists.

 

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Of course, you can’t have science without flesh-and-blood scientists. Yet, in broad terms, it can still be said that science is an abstraction which has been derived from the work of many individual scientists over hundreds of years.

Science is science.

And scientists are scientists.

So it’s wise not to confuse what an individual scientist states — or believes — with science itself.

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The evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis once said that Richard Dawkins is “arrogant” and “solipsistic”. Richard Dawkins, in turn, said that Margulis is an “extremely obstinate” person who “doesn’t listen to argument”. These two examples — among many others — help show us that scientists are emotional creatures. They also often have fragile and/or large egos — just like you, me and all the other readers of this piece.

Scientists also hold strong political and moral views. Arguably, those views sometimes impinge on their science. And that’s precisely why the distinction between science and scientists should be made…

All this basically means that Stephen Hawking wasn’t theoretical physics. Michael Mann and James Hansen aren’t climatology. And Richard Lindzen and Freeman Dyson aren’t climatology either. Richard Dawkins isn’t evolutionary biology or Darwinism. And Stephen Jay Gould isn’t evolutionary biology either. Anthony Fauci isn’t immunology or medical science…

And Brian Cox, Nigel DeGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku aren’t the whole of science.

To state the obvious: scientists are human beings. So, like all human beings, they’re emotional creatures who also have strong political and moral views. Not only that: those views sometimes impinge on their science…

And — again — that’s precisely why the distinction between science and scientists should be made.

It’s also worth making a distinction here between the following:

(1) Those scientists who use science (or specific scientific theories) to advance their prior political goals, values and ideologies. 
(2) Those scientists who believe that science itself is always political (i.e., regardless of the specific goals, values and ideologies of particular scientists).

Of course, there can be much overlap between (1) and (2).

Some commentators believe that science itself is (always) political. In that, they’re following the footsteps of Soviet agronomist and biologist Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976), who divided science into “bourgeois science” and “proletarian science”. (Lysenko had a problem with the Darwinian notion of competition too.) And other commentators — even some scientists — speak of “gendered science” and “white male science”. [See note.]

However, most scientists wouldn’t say that science itself is political. They may, instead, say that science can be politicised. However, it can be argued that some (perhaps even many) scientists do use their scientific theories to advance their prior political goals and values…

Of course, highly-politicised scientists (or those activist scientists who use science for political ends) may argue that these distinctions are naive or problematic…

But they would do…

Wouldn’t they?

And all that, again, is a good reason to distinguish science itself from the words and theories of individual scientists.

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Note:

Take this passage from an article published by the Times in the 1930s, which discussed the views of Nazi scientists and mathematicians:

“[L]ogic alone was no sufficient basis for them, and that the German intuition which had produced the concepts of infinity was superior to the logical equipment which the French and Italians had brought to bear on the subject.”

 

Relationalism/Relationism and its Violent Hierarchy: Relations vs Things

 

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[The word “things” is used to refer to objects, entities, particulars, individuals, etc.]

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“Relationism” and “relationalism” are terms which denote two different philosophical positions. The following is one account of both terms:

“For relationalism, things exist and function only as relational entities. Relationalism may be contrasted with relationism, which tends to emphasize relations per se.”

Relationism is said to simply emphasise the relations between things: it doesn’t deny that things exist.

With relationalism (i.e., with an added “al”), on the other hand, “things exist and function only as relational entities”. In other words, if there were no relations, then there would be no things.

However, on analysis, the distinctions between these two isms appear to break down — at least in certain respects.

Relationalism is like ontic structural realism in that the latter eliminates things (as in “every thing must go”). Relationism, on the other hand, simply places relations in an important position in any metaphysics.

Having said all that, it’s hard not to see the importance of relations — even if one also accepts the existence of things. (One can also see the vital importance of relations when it comes to — particularly — physics.) Yet, on the other hand, one can’t really see how things could be entirely eliminated. (This may largely depend on how the word “thing” is defined.)

In addition, relationalism itself can be read as not actually being eliminativist (i.e., about things) at all. After all, this metaphysical position may simply have it that things aren’t what’s called “self-standing”, which isn’t in itself a denial that things exist. Alternatively, we can say that literally all a thing’s properties are relational. In other words, things don’t have intrinsic properties. Thus, in a weak (or even strong) sense, if all things only have relational properties (and such properties literally constitute things), then in one sense things are are indeed eliminated from this metaphysical picture. To put that more simply: if a thing’s relations (or relational properties) were eliminated, then it would no longer be that thing. Indeed, it would no longer even exist!

Despite all the above, it’s still hard to make sense of the idea that, to use Lee Smolin’s words, “the world is made of relations”.

What does that mean?

The same goes for Smolin’s claim that “all properties are about relations between things”.

In any case, Smolin explicitly states his relationist (or Leibnizian) position in the following passage:

“There is no meaning to space that is independent of the relationships among real things of the world. [] Space is nothing apart from the things that exist. [] If we take out all the words we are not left with an empty sentence, we are left with nothing.”

However, there may be a problem here (again) with the use (above) of the word “relationist”.

On my own reading, Smolin seems to go one step beyond relationism in order to delve into the domain of relation[al]ism. What I mean by this is that — to repeat — it can be said that relationism simply emphasises the relations between things: it doesn’t deny that things exist. With relationalism (with an added “al”), on the other hand, “things exist and function only as relational entities”. In other words, if there were no relations, then there would be no things.

The arguments above can be used against ontic structural realism, which is very much like relationalism (at least in these respects).

Ontic Structural Realism

James Ladyman and Don Ross offer a list of four statements which they believe summarise the position of what they call “standard metaphysics”.

Take (1):

“There are individuals in spacetime whose existence is independent of each other. Facts about the identity and diversity of these individuals are determined independently of their relations to each other.”

The problem is how to take the word “independent” in the above.

One can happily accept individuals (which is a similar term to particulars), and also believe they that they aren’t independent of other individuals. In other words, the reality of individuated objects, and their lack of independence, aren’t mutually exclusive.

What’s more, one can accept the “identity and diversity of these individuals”, and also deny that such individuals are “determined independently of their relations to each other”. In other words, why is a commitment to individuals necessarily also a commitment to their complete independence from all other individuals (or from relations, events, processes, etc.)?… Unless this is true by definition.

Rovelli’s Binary Opposition: Relations vs Things

This seeming (to use a term from Ferdinand de Saussure) binary opposition between relations and things is given a scientific and historical reading by Carlo Rovelli in the following:

“But physics has long been asked to provide a firm basis on which to place relations: a basic reality underlying and supporting the relational world. Classical physics, with its idea of matter that moves in space, characterized by primary qualities (shape) that come before secondary ones (colour), seemed to be able to play this role [].”

The very phraseology in the above seems odd.

Surely no physicist or scientist would ever have thought in terms of a “relational world” at all. So perhaps that’s precisely Rovelli’s point. In other words, there is indeed a relational word, but physicists simply haven’t seen it that way. Yet if physicists haven’t seen the world this way, then why were they (according to Rovelli) “asked to provide a firm basis on which to place relations”?

The odd thing is that a philosopher, scientist or layperson could accept most of what Rovelli argues, and still believe that things are important — or even vital.

So is Rovelli simply inverting what he sees as the violent hierarchy in which a supreme importance was supposedly given to things in Western philosophy and physics? In other words, is Rovelli now simply putting interactions and relations in the place of things? In addition, if he is doing so, then why is this clear and blatant reversal of a previous hierarchy a better philosophical position?

Lee Smolin’s Relationism/Relationalism

Lee Smolin (who was mentioned a moment ago) cites Gottfried Leibniz as a relationist. Or, at the very least, he sees Leibniz as being a relationist when it comes to space and time. So, unlike Newton, Leibniz

“wanted to understand [space and time] as arising only as aspects of the relations among things”.

Smolin sums up the two opposing positions when he says that “this fight” is

“between those who want the world to be made out of absolute entities and those who want it to be made out of relations”.

Smolin adds that this opposition is a “key theme in the story of the development of modern physics”. [See note 1 on Smolin’s philosophy of space and time.]

In terms of Leibniz again. Leibniz’s position (as expressed by Smolin) is that space and time don’t exist — at least not as independent phenomena. Instead, space and time essentially arise as ways of making sense of the (as Smolin puts it) “relations among things”. In other words, space and time are the means by which we plot the relations between things. That basically means that if there were no things, then there would be no space and time either. That is, space and time aren’t (to use Smolin’s word again) “absolute”: they’re a consequence of things and their interrelationships.

Nonetheless, if space and time don’t exist, then what are these things moving about in?

It can be supposed, of course, that both space and time come into being as soon as there are things which have relations with one another…

But how does that work?

Even if space and time do spring into existence as soon as things spring into existence, then it’s still the case that things move about in space, and exist through time.

So here are two alternative conclusions:

i) Space and time depend on things and their relations.

ii) Things and their relations depend on space and time.

The obvious way out of this opposition is simply to say that there’s no hierarchy involved here: spacetime and things depend on each other. That is, space and time aren’t more important (or fundamental) than things, and things aren’t more important (or fundamental) than space and time.

What’s called “relational theory”, however, is indeed eliminativist about space. This theory has it that if there were no things, then there would be no space either. Relational theory is eliminativist about time too in that if there were no events (in space), then there would be no time.

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Note:

It’s hard to decide if Lee Smolin’s position on space and time is a purely metaphysical position, a position within physics and cosmology, or a metaphysical position on the physics and cosmology. Whichever option is taken will make a big difference to how readers should (or will) interpret his positions on this particular subject.

For example, an entirely metaphysical position on space and time may run entirely free of how they’re tackled in physics and cosmology. (You wouldn’t expect this to be true of a physicist like Smolin himself.) Of course, there may also be a degree of interplay between the metaphysics and the physics and cosmology. However, this isn’t always the case.

Wittgenstein on Why the Liar Paradox Belongs to a Language Game

 

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(i) Introduction

(ii) On the Liar Paradox as a Language Game

(iii) The Liar Paradox Was Created, Not Found

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The following passage offers us a short account of the Liar Paradox:

“[T]he classical liar paradox [] is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that ‘I am lying’. If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In ‘this sentence is a lie’ the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis. [] Trying to assign to this statement, the strengthened liar, a classical binary truth value leads to a contradiction.

“If ‘this sentence is false’ is true, then it is false, but the sentence states that it is false, and if it is false, then it must be true, and so on.”

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once confronted this well-known paradox. In a discussion with Alan Turing, he said:

“Think of the case of the Liar: It is very queer in a way that this should have puzzled anyone — much more extraordinary than you might think. Because the thing works like this: if a man says ‘I am lying’ we say that it follows that he is not lying, from which it follows that he is lying and so on.”

Wittgenstein continued:

“Well, so what? You can go on like that until you are black in the face. Why not? It doesn’t matter. [I]t is just a useless language-game, and why should anyone be excited?”

There is a paradox (or contradiction) here… but so what!

In broader terms, Wittgenstein stressed two things:

1) The strong distinction which must be made between accepting contradictions within mathematics (actually, metamathematics), and accepting contradictions outside mathematics.

2) The supposed applications and consequences of these mathematical contradictions and paradoxes outside mathematics. [See note 1.]

So at least some people should “be excited” by the Liar Paradox — logicians and metamathematicians...

As for 1), Wittgenstein said (as quoted by Andrew Hodges):

“Why are people afraid of contradictions? It is easy to understand why they should be afraid of contradictions in orders, descriptions, etc. outside mathematics. The question is: Why should they be afraid of contradictions inside mathematics?”

Thus, Wittgenstein can be read as not actually questioning the logical validity or status of these paradoxes. Instead, he was making a purely philosophical point about their supposed — and many — applications and consequences outside of metamathematics. [See note 1 again.]

But what about Wittgenstein’s use of the term “language-game”?

On the Liar Paradox as a Language Game

At first glance, Wittgenstein was perfectly correct to use the philosophical term (his own) “language-game” to refer to the Liar Paradox (as well as to refer to many of the other paradoxes thrown up in what’s often called the foundations of mathematics). More correctly, these paradoxes were seen to arise within various language games.

To add to Wittgenstein himself. The Liar Paradox is internal to a language game which allows a very specific kind of self-reference…

But — again — why use the term “language game”?

Well, in which other language (or language game) would you ever find the statement, “This sentence is false”? (Even it’s supposed everyday translation — “I am a liar” — seems somewhat contrived.)

Thus, these kinds of sentence simply don’t belong to everyday languages at all. Thus, they must all belong to specific technical language games. (As do, for example, Gödel sentences.) [See note 2.]

So Kurt Gödel (for one) didn’t have any problems at all with self-reference. Indeed, he once wrote the following:

“Contrary to appearances, such a proposition involves no faulty circularity, for it only asserts that a certain well-defined formula [] is unprovable. Only subsequently (and so to speak by chance) does it turn out that this formula is precisely the one by which the proposition itself was expressed.”

On the surface, Wittgenstein would have had no problems with the impeccable logic of that passage from Gödel.

However, he might have argued that it’s not a question of what Gödel called “faulty circularity”. Perhaps, instead, it’s also about whether anything at all can be affixed to (or said of ) such sentences as “This statement is not provable” (or even “This statement”). More specifically, if these statements are semantically (as well as scientifically, empirically, and even metaphysically) empty, then perhaps we really don’t need to worry about even the possibility of Gödel’s faulty circularity.

Of course, logicians can — and do — use weirder statements such as “Bricks have a sense of humour” or “The number 2 is blue” logically. That is, they can assign a truth value to such statements, and then treat them as pure syntactic strings (from which they can derive further statements and conclusions). Similarly, we can programme the words “The number 2 is blue” into a computer, and then that computer can grind out further statements (i.e., if it’s programmed in the right way).

To repeat. Wittgenstein didn’t argue that such cases of self-reference were bogus, or even that they have no value. Instead, he simply saw them as being part of particular (technical) language games. And from that, many things followed.

The Liar Paradox Was Created, Not Found

Alan Turing

Wittgenstein’s position can be summed up by saying that the Liar Paradox (or the Liar Language Game) doesn’t display (or uncover) a contradiction or paradox — it actually creates one.

So Wittgenstein was stressing the artificiality of the Liar paradox.

However, that artificiality doesn’t automatically mean that the Liar Paradox has nothing to offer us. In other words, the word “artificiality” needn’t be used negatively. It may simply a reference to something which is artificial…

As it is, though, Wittgenstein did mean it in a (fairly) negative way. After all, he did say that the Liar Paradox “is just a useless language-game”.

Alan Turing, on the other hand, seemed to be interested in the Liar Paradox for purely logical and intellectual reasons. He replied to Wittgenstein in the following manner:

“What puzzles one is that one usually uses a contradiction as a criterion for having done something wrong. But in this case one cannot find anything done wrong.”

To repeat. Wittgenstein wasn’t denying that there is a contradiction here. Instead, he was simply asking questions — and making points — about the Liar and other paradoxes.

In basic terms, then, Turing was arguing that, unlike many other cases of contradiction, the Lair Paradox doesn’t simply uncover a contradiction: it makes it the case that x and not-x must both be accepted. That is, when the (Cretan) liar utters “I am lying”, and it leads to it being interpreted as making him both a liar and not a liar (i.e., at one and the same time), then “in this case one cannot find anything done wrong”.

One can almost guess Wittgenstein’s reply to Turing. He said:

“Yes — and more: nothing has been done wrong [].”

So when it comes to the Liar Paradox, “one cannot find anything done wrong”!

In other words, nothing has been done wrong in that particular language game. However, outside that particular language game, much has been done wrong. Or, at the very least, much of this language game is semantically — and otherwise — very weird.

Finally. Wittgenstein’s argument is that the Liar Paradox does indeed lead to a bizarre conclusion. However, that’s because — in a strong sense — it was designed to do so. In other words, the Paradox is part of a language game which was specifically created to bring about a contradiction. What’s more, because it’s a self-enclosed and artificial language game, Wittgenstein ended by asking the following question:

Where will the harm come from allowing such a contradiction or paradox?

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Notes

(1) These consequences — if not always applications — of the Liar and other paradoxes usually include stuff about consciousness, God, human intuition, the universe, human uniqueness, religion, arguments against artificial intelligence, meaning, purpose, etc.

(2) Of course, everyday language does allow other kinds of self-reference which don’t generate contradictions or paradoxes, such as merely referring to oneself when one says “I am happy”.

Physics and the Philosophy of Intrinsic Properties

 

(i) Introduction

(ii) David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties

(iii) Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature

(iv) Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic Properties?

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“An intrinsic property, as David Lewis puts it, is a property ‘which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are’, as opposed to an extrinsic property, which things have ‘in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things’.”

— Ted Sider (see source here).

“An extrinsic (or relational) property is a property that depends on a thing’s relationship with other things. For example, mass is an intrinsic property of any physical object, whereas weight is an extrinsic property that varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field in which the respective object is placed.”

— See source here.

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Introduction

Very few physicists use the term “intrinsic property”. What’s more, when they do so, they don’t use it in the same which in which many philosophers do. Take the following as an example:

“In science and engineering, intrinsic and extrinsic properties are two classifications of matter or objects. An intrinsic property is inherent or innate to the sample, while an extrinsic property is not inherent to the sample.

“An intrinsic property remains the same regardless of the conditions under which it is measured. Its value depends on chemical composition and structure. The value of an extrinsic property may change, depending on conditions. It depends on the way external factors affect the sample.”

According to philosophers, intrinsic properties underlie “chemical composition and structure”: chemical composition itself can never be deemed to be intrinsic. In addition, structure is the abstract result of the chemical and physical reality of what is studied.

In other words, chemical composition itself must have an intrinsic nature, rather than it being intrinsic nature itself.

So we now need to know what it is for intrinsic properties to underlie chemical composition.

Does the chemical or physical composition of any given x simply emerge from that which is intrinsic?

Of course, these difference alone don’t provide us with a good reason to dismiss the existence of intrinsic properties (i.e., in the philosophical sense of that term). And that’s primarily because various philosophers have provided arguments as to why there must be intrinsic properties, and therefore intrinsic nature.

David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties

It may be the case that Philip Goff’s position on intrinsic nature (which will be discussed in a moment) is inspired by the work of the American philosopher David Lewis (1941–2001).

Firstly, let’s take Lewis’s own definition of intrinsic properties:

“A thing has its intrinsic properties in virtue of the way that thing itself, and nothing else, is.”

[This is the exact opposite of relationalism.]

Lewis’s wording above is almost identical to some passages written by Philip Goff, which will be quoted later, and which can also be found elsewhere.

So could there ever be such a state as “the way that a thing itself is” regardless of everything else? That is, regardless of a thing’s relations to other properties, objects, events, conditions, etc., its place in time and space, and so on?

Lewis’s position can be taken to its most extreme (or, perhaps, ridiculous) in the following statement:

Object (or thing) O would still have intrinsic property P even if the entire world around it disappeared.

Perhaps there’s a midway position in which it can be argued that there are indeed intrinsic properties: However, they still have vital (even essential) relations to extrinsic properties. In other words, extrinsic proprieties may determine — to some extent at least — intrinsic properties.

All that said, it may now be countered that because objects are such-and-such-a-way, then they can only be affected (or determined) in particular ways precisely because they have the intrinsic properties which they do have. That may mean that there may be some kind of mutual relation between intrinsic and extrinsic properties.

Yet there may still be no “way” an object is regardless of its relations to other things (i.e., it relation to extrinsic properties).

To be clear on one distinction.

Some metaphysicians highlight the difference which can be made between the following:

(1) Properties which objects have independently of any external factors acting upon them (i.e., intrinsic properties).

(2) Properties which are deemed to be the way they are regardless of what’s external to them (i.e., essential properties).

If the distinctions above are applied to Philip Goff’s later example, then the intrinsic nature of mass would be what it is independently of any external factors acting upon it. Similarly, an object (or its intrinsic property) will be what it is regardless of what’s external to it.

Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature

It may well be the case that “physics doesn’t fully describe reality”.

Yet it doesn’t help here that we’re talking about what are called “intrinsic properties”. That’s because it’s not clear how that word — “properties” — is meant to be read or interpreted. (Forget about the word “intrinsic” for a moment.)

In other words, all this will depend on what intrinsic properties are supposed to be. And it may be the case that whatever such philosophers take these properties to be, they can never be described by physics. Indeed, that may be (rhetorically put) the main point of such properties.

Take the case of the English philosopher Philip Goff.

Philip Goff doesn’t simply stress the fact that physics only concerns itself with doings and relations. He also tells us what’s missing from this picture: intrinsic nature. Indeed, Goff goes one step beyond that by telling us exactly what intrinsic nature is! He does so in the following passage:

“What then is the intrinsic nature of matter? Panpsychism offers an answer: consciousness. Physics describes matter ‘from the outside’, that is to say, physics gives us rich information about the behaviour brought about by mass, spin, charge, etc. But there must be more to what something is than what it does; and according to panpsychism, mass, spin, charge, etc, are, in their intrinsic nature, forms of consciousness.”

Even if there is such a thing as “the intrinsic nature of matter”, etc., why must it be consciousness? Why not something else? Why not noumena, pixie dust, God’s thinking, etc? Indeed, since Goff tells us that intrinsic nature is beyond physics, then it’s hard to establish if we could ever (conclusively) find the right candidate for such a role. How could we ever know that we’d done so?

Thus, panpsychism isn’t going to be discussed in this piece.

That’s primarily because there are different properties that are — and can be — taken to be intrinsic by other philosophers.

In any case, whatever philosophers take intrinsic properties to be, those properties will be beyond physics — as already stated. So, again, one could (rhetorically) say that they’re designed to be beyond physics…

In other words, Goff’s intrinsic properties are designed to be (quite literally) metaphysical.

Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic Properties?

“An essential property is a property that an individual has to have if it exists at all; it is a property that it has at every instant it exists, and in every possible world in which it exists.”

— — See source here.

When discussing the properties and events of physics, the English philosopher Bertrand Russell took a relationalist position. In other words, he seemed to reject what’s now called “intrinsic properties”. (It may be argued, however, that intrinsic properties underlie the “relational world”, without them thereby being relational themselves.)

We also have a connection set up between what is intrinsic and what is essential. So although what is intrinsic is that “which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are”, such properties may also be essential. That is, an intrinsic property may also be essential. Indeed, surely it must be essential.

In any case, Bertrand Russell once asked the following question:

“What do we mean by ‘piece of matter’?”

He answered his own question by telling us that

“[w]e do not mean something that preserves a simple identity throughout its history”.

Now that statement is partly correct and partly incorrect. It also seems to be a remark against essentialism, not against intrinsicalism.

It’s true that any particular thing (or even Russell’s “piece of matter”) won’t have (or instantiate) precisely the same properties over any given period of time. (That statement may not be true of particles and other fundamental entities.) So object O at time t¹ will be different in some — or in many — ways to O taken at t². In everyday terms, there are things about Paul Murphy which are true in June 2024; though which won’t be true of Paul Murphy in August 2024. And, of course, the same can be said of any given oak tree or a crab.

In other words, an object (or entity) needn’t ( as Russell put it) “exist complete at every moment”. So it depends on what Russell meant by the word “complete”. If it means that everything that “belongs” to object O at time t¹, will not do so at t², then that’s correct. However, an entity doesn’t need to be the sum of literally all its properties at every single point and place in time of its entire existence. (This was Leibniz’s position. See Robert Stalnaker!) It’s only the case that certain (essential?) properties are passed on from t¹ to t² to tⁿ…

Of course, if there aren’t any essential or intrinsic properties in the first place, then this scenario can’t work, and we must take Russell literally.

So it doesn’t follow that because any object (or thing) x doesn’t remain identically the same in all respects over time that it doesn’t remain the same in at least some respects.

In metaphysical terms, we call those unchanging aspects essential properties. So although the terms “essential” and “intrinsic” are related, it’s surely the case that both essential and intrinsic properties must “exist complete at every moment” when it comes to a particular entity.

However, we may not like such a reference to “essential” properties, and want to to use the words “important” or “enduring” instead (see Quine 1960).

Thus, I’ll loose millions of neurons over time, just as an oak tree will loose many of its leaves. Nonetheless, both persons and trees do have important characteristics — functional, formal and physical — which last over time. Indeed, if that weren’t the case, then we wouldn’t have any (philosophical) right to keep on referring to a particular thing (or even a particular person) with the same name over time.

Russell himself did believe (he was explicit about this) that we have no right to use the same name over time because he rejected intrinsic properties. Either that or he didn’t deem the enduring and/or important properties of an x to also be intrinsic properties.

The upshot of Russell’s position (if only in 1927) is that there are no intrinsic properties and, consequently, there aren’t really any things (or objects). In other words, all x’s properties are extrinsic. (Semantically, surely if there are no intrinsic properties, then there are no extrinsic properties either.)

Russell’s (partly Kantian) bottom line is that we have no access — either observationally or otherwise — to the intrinsic characteristics of such things. Instead, “[w]hat we know about them” is simply “their structure and their mathematical laws”. In other words, all we’ve got is mathematical structure…

This basically means that it’s “mathematical structure all the way down” — at least in the case of quantum mechanics, and, perhaps, physics generally.

Finally, did all this mean that Russell outrightly rejected the existence of intrinsic properties? Or did he argue that although all “we know about” objects (such as electrons) are their relational or extrinsic properties, it’s still the case that intrinsic properties must exist?