Keith’s Conundrums: Are there individuals? A puzzle from J. Ladyman and D. Ross

Keith Douglas

Recap

Last time I talked about a strange claim by a computing academic and revisited an old one from the mathematician Frege. I got no comments on that column as of the time of writing, so I’ll move on to a …

Special announcement

October includes Mole Day, a chemistry holiday. Happy Mole Day, everyone! This column has almost nothing to do with this subject, but I thought it would be fun to mention it anyway. (But stay tuned!) Now on to…

Something new

I’ve had several teachers of metaphysics in my formal education. At least two (Storrs McCall and my MA thesis advisor, Gary Wedeking) of them mentioned Peter Strawson’s Individuals to me. As it was more or less off topic at the respective times, I alas did not get to read this classic until I was working as a federal public servant in the (then) CS classification. It was even more off-topic then, but at least I could devote as many bus rides as I wanted to it. P.F. Strawson’s 1959 book distinguishes between revisionary and descriptive metaphysics. Descriptive metaphysics in a way has always bothered me – it raises the “Who is we, Kemosabe?” problem. Strawson claims to be analyzing “our” conceptual scheme, after all. Needless to say, I am also convinced there are human cognitive universals, but armchair analysis of what they are doesn’t strike me as promising. Moreover, there is still the question of their correctness (relative to the way the world actually is). Enter revisionary metaphysics, which is about (part of) what our conceptual scheme should be, changed in the light of … something. Following Bunge and the work of D. M. Armstrong, for example, I think science (and technology?) plays this role. (Long-time readers of this column have heard this metaphilosophical view I hold previously.)

In this column, I would like to take up one strange argument from some science-oriented contemporary revisionary metaphysics written by James Ladyman and Don Ross. This argument is a central part of the 2006 book, Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. The title itself contains a reference to this very argument, in fact.

The authors have an argument to the effect that there are no things in fundamental physics. I’ll state it baldly, then expand it to make it clear (this sort of recapitulates how the book presents it). Once I do that, I will offer some critical analysis.

(1): Things (as conceptualized by ordinary cognition) have intrinsic properties that serve as the basis for thinghood. 

(2): The referents of quantum field theory do not. 

(Conclusion): Therefore, there are no (fundamental) things.

(Conclusion 2): Therefore, there are just relations.

Analyzing and expanding:

1. Ordinary cognition here is cognition not informed by scientific research but likely also that of the educated “world layperson”.
2. Intrinsic here means “as opposed to relational” – a property is intrinsic just in case whatever “possesses” it does so independently of anything else.
3. Properties are attributes in the world; they are not predicates, which exist in thought and language and attempt to capture properties.
4. Quantum field theory is held to be the fundamental theory of matter (broadly construed) we have today.
5. Quantum field theory tells us that if we exchange two field excitations of the same amplitude, the relevant system will be unchanged. (Of the right sort of field.)
6. Field excitations are the basic items of the theory that are approximately “particles” in classical physics.
7. This is not a claim that thinghood is completely otiose – sufficiently complicated (somehow) entities may approximate thinghood but not in fundamental physics.
8. Similarly, the authors are not claiming there are relations without relata. Instead, it is “relations all the way down”.
9. Fundamental physics is physics that is held to apply everywhere and everywhen. This is by contrast to the “special sciences” (every science but physics) and non-fundamental physics. The latter would include areas like acoustics, the theory of gases, solid state physics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism (at least large scale), …
10. The authors are unsure if thermodynamics and statistical mechanics count as fundamental.

Heady indeed. I’ll go through the expanded notes (keeping the numbering) and make some critical comments as I go.

1. This is fine as far as it goes, however, it runs into trouble with one interesting corner case: I can agree with the authors that Jaegwon Kim should know some neuroscience and psychology to do philosophy of mind. I am not sure his criticisms land on the philosophers of physics. C. Wüthrich (a graduate student in the HPS unit at Pittsburgh at the time) told me in 2003 or so that philosophers of physics then had to basically be double doctorates. (What is it like now?) Mind you, they aren’t usually publishing responses to D. Armstrong or David Lewis, which I guess might be part of the point!
2. Is it really true that philosophers to this day never count relational properties as part of something’s essential properties? I have no sense at all if this anti-relational prejudice (that Russell identified over 120 years ago) is part of “our” cognition either (see point #1). I mentioned P.F. Strawson’s “our cognitive scheme” idea above for a reason … (Note, however, that Ladyman and Ross do not think essential properties exist.)
3. I have no trouble with this item at all, but a lot of philosophers do not seem to realize this, to their detriment. (I am now slowly realizing that a lot of work in metaphysics and even in ethics needs a good theory of properties – my own MA thesis from UBC is certainly not exempt!) 
4. I’ll grant this for the sake of the argument.
5. This is true in my understanding of QFT as well. Note that the main claim isn’t always true without the parenthetical, however, and that seems to be important. Why is one sort of “fundamental entity” being regarded as the one to appeal to and not the other?
6. This is the central claim of those who think field ontologies are basic and particle ones are not. There are people who hold the opposite point of view (my online friend from years ago, Vic Stenger – who admittedly was a particle physicist!) and some who think that both parties are wrong (Bunge). I should emphasize that Ladyman and Ross are also not field partisans (like Einstein seems to have been, for example). In fact, they seem not to distinguish between the two senses of “field” used in physics. There’s the mathematical notion, which is itself used to describe fields (which are a thing in a thing-ontology!) in the physics sense. There’s an article from the 1998 or so Philosophy of Science Association meeting proceedings that explores the distinction and why it matters. Even were our authors to think the article wrong, it would be, I think, prudent to address the matter. This is one of several places where the authors have ignored some literature I (an outsider, for all real purposes) knew off the top of my head when reading the book. One cannot know everything, but if one is going to talk about the ontology of physics, surely a Philosophers Index search on “field” would have helped. 😊
7. The authors think supervenience (the traditional philosophical notion which would help understand this central claim) is wrongheaded, and so there’s a bit of a difficulty in stating this aspect of “non-reductionism”. (I have used some fraught vocabulary here; be warned). Hence, they may be accused of denying even special-science things, etc. So, “chairs and tables” do disappear from the “furniture of the world” in their view after all. (Pun intended!) However, I do share their disdain for supervenience, since (like they and Bunge) point out that it is never analyzed with good scientific examples (examples given are often superficially stated or are from ordinary knowledge). Unfortunately, however, their next target for antireductionism is a straw person. The other antireductionism “term” used is “emergence”, and this comes in several flavours – contrary to the author’s discussion. One is the “and new stuff appears, not matter” of the British emergentists. This is rightfully ignored as antinaturalistic, to say the least. (The authors do not like the term materialism, preferring naturalism to avoid discussion about what matter is from the get-go.) Next up is J. S. Mill’s notion, which shades into the view of some of the British emergentists. This is the view that holds that although what results is still matter, one cannot predict the result of certain forms of combination (for example, that water would be wet by studying hydrogen and oxygen). Ladyman and Ross rightly point out that this confuses epistemology with metaphysics. I remember addressing Bunge on this exact topic, and he explained that his view was purely metaphysical – a claim about what is, rather than how we come to know it (if at all). Our authors do not address this possibility – even though there had been decades of it in the literature (For example: Bunge is just one – it appears in the philosophy of biology literature as well, independently). It is also pointed out therein that one needs to know how something is put together and what surrounds it in order to understand what it is like, as well. So even epistemologically, Mill is in trouble for oversimplifying. For example, to calculate the wetness of water one needs to know the ambient pressure and temperature as well as know how the water is put together – which is not independent of the ambient conditions. This latter point is ironic, given the label “structuralism” is used to describe Ladyman and Ross’ own viewpoint in general. (They do not, however, necessarily mean mereotopological structure like this, and it is unclear to me what they do mean. This weakness of their account is off topic for the current review, however.)
8. This conceit is at least somewhat reassuring. (In fact, from the introduction I anticipated using this objection.) However, it relies on them concluding from physics that there is no basic level and that reality is infinitely variegated in some sense (and not in the “dappled world” sense of Nancy Cartwright, which they in my view rightly criticize – this is off topic, however). I think their field-theoretic “preference” shows here – a particle physicist might tell them that it seems clear enough that an electron has unusual properties and is certainly not a classical particle, but it may well still have no internal structure. So, are electrons “at the bottom”? The particle physicist might think so. Ladyman and Ross would just deny that it is a thing. However, we can count electrons – in fact, I have done so myself indirectly while measuring the electron charge, even with my limited physical science education. My biography notwithstanding, the idea that one can count electrons seems to me to be the basis of electrochemistry. Perhaps this is acceptable to our authors because electrochemistry is a “special science” – and hence may not fully make use of the “fundamental physics of the electron” here. I’ll leave that to the reader to think about. Meanwhile, I’d add that there is a basic unit in the SI system that is a pure count – the mole. (See, Mole Day is not irrelevant after all.)
9. As a purely terminological matter, I have no trouble with this aspect of the argument as such, and will leave it be to make this column manageable in length.
10. This is a very important matter to address – the philosophy of time, for example, must deal with it (and does). However, I don’t think it plays a role in our discussion.

This is a longer-than-usual column, and also one that deals with a more advanced subject than usual. Thanks, then, for reading to (almost) the end. Thanks also to the several people who have recommended I tackle this interesting and very challenging book. I only wish I had an academic affiliation, so I had time to take on more of it! I do think I may write another column on it later, however. Not next time, though: I want to return to something a bit more accessible. See you then, and happy thinking!

¹ People often talk about the task of metaphysics includes exploring basic “categories” of the world – or of our thought (in the case of Kant, say). These “categories” are sometimes called “the furniture of the world” – a phrase Bunge uses in his 1977 book on the subject.

² In fact, a lot of Bunge’s work on metaphysics has the same basic complaint as our authors – that much of contemporary metaphysics is scientifically disreputable – and he’s not cited once.

³ Chemists and others count in huge batches because molecules and atoms are so incredibly (to us) small, but the idea (often badly presented in high school science) is exactly like the “dozen” used in food service. Growing up in Montreal, when and where I did, I sometimes may have temporarily felt as if I ate a mole of bagels. I leave it to the reader to calculate how wrong that is – even ignoring that I haven’t lived in Montreal for almost 20 years.