Thoughts on Thoughts on Reality – on Thoughts on Reality – Yakir Shoshani
Thoughts about thoughts about reality
Under the heading 'Philosophy of Science' lie at least two main areas of study: 1. Methodology and philosophy of scientific inquiry. 2. Philosophical implications and meanings of scientific results in various fields. Studying the first field requires mainly a philosophical education, and a little scientific background certainly helps. The second field, on the other hand, requires mainly a scientific education, but a philosophical background is almost essential. Therefore, texts belonging to the second field are often prone to failure, inaccuracy, and at the very least shallowness, due to the writer's lack of background in the scientific or philosophical field. There are texts written by scientists, some of whom are senior and very good in their fields, that fail due to a lack of background in philosophy, and there are those written by philosophers and fail due to a lack of scientific background.
This is doubly evident in physics, where the philosopher is required to have a deep understanding of the latest results in the scientific field he is discussing, an understanding that requires mathematical and conceptual tools that cannot be acquired by reading popular science books alone. This is the main reason why many philosophical assertions in texts dealing with the philosophy of modern physics are flawed by superficiality and imprecision. On the other hand, when a professional physicist feels that this is the case, and decides to take the matter into his own hands, the result is often philosophically flawed.
Shoshani's book deals mainly with the latter field. The book was written by a scientist, a physicist, who has been dealing with the philosophical aspects of physics for many years (as stated on the back cover). It seems that Shoshani is not lacking in knowledge, both in the philosophical aspects and especially in the scientific aspects of the field he discusses. The book is interesting and fluent, and it reviews with clarity and simplicity several fundamental issues in scientific and physical thought. Some of the points are presented with impressive clarity and are simplified in an original and beautiful way. Others are too partial and concise (such as the foundations of quantum theory in Chapter 10 and more).
However, the art of popularization involves not only simplifying and clarifying scientific discussion, but also, and perhaps primarily, doing these things without compromising accuracy. Several of the philosophical arguments presented in the book, both the problems and their solutions, are flawed by superficiality and imprecision (from a philosophical, not scientific, perspective). A striking example is found in the last chapter, which delves, somewhat speculatively, into a metaphysical discussion of God. It reads:
"Can the connection between consciousness and reality serve as justification or confirmation for the existence of the 'God of the philosophers'? In my opinion, the answer to this question is quite clear. The existence of God cannot stem from any other essence, since God is the most comprehensive essence. If the existence of God could be deduced from logic, for example, as Anselm tried to prove in the Middle Ages, then the status of logic would be higher than the status of God in the sense that the very existence of God would be conditional on the existence of logic."
Here there is a fallacy of confusing the way to arrive at knowledge of the existence of God from within logic, and the ontological conditioning of His existence on the existence of logic. Incidentally, a fallacy of this type, which involves a way of knowing about something (epistemology) with the nature of that something in itself (ontology, metaphysics), is found in many places in this book. Another example, one of many, is found, for example, at the end of Chapter 11 (and more), where there is no distinction between the way of discovering a property of a particle, such as its electric charge, by examining its interaction with another particle, and this property being a property of the particle itself (and not of the pair).
As its title suggests, the book is a somewhat eclectic collection of reflections on reality as it is reflected through the prism of the physical sciences. It discusses a (too) broad range of topics, such as the very possibility of human cognition to explore reality, the meaning and status of time and space, the issue of causality, the laws of conservation, the ability to project the rules of logic onto the world itself, the psychophysical problem ('psycho-physical', in his language!?), the fundamental components of being, and on and on, as well as on and on, the fundamental issues of science and its philosophy.
The discussion is not exhaustive at any point. Even a lay audience could delve deeper into the various points. The platform here is too short to respond to all the problematic points in the book, and there is certainly something to comment on.
It seems that the general trend of the discussion is actually to prepare the groundwork for the final chapters of the book, chapters in which the author presents a model of formal ontology that he has developed. The multiplicity of topics, and the partiality of the discussion at various points, probably stem from the author's tendency, who wants to present the necessity of an a priori theory from which all of fundamental physics can be derived. The arguments leading to the necessity of such an a priori theory are tendentious, do not raise additional alternatives, and are generally not always convincing.
For example, in several places in the book the author assumes Leibniz's principle of the identity of indistinguishables, without explicitly formulating it or discussing it. This principle states that the multiplicity of things is derived from their different properties, or from their different locations in space and time (see Chapters 3, 4, 5, and more). Therefore, for example, the author concludes that the multiplicity of points in space-time itself has no meaning, and from this he deduces one of the reasons for the necessity of physical a priori (see the beginning of Chapter 12). I, for example, like many others better than me, am convinced that Leibniz, and following him Shoshani, are wrong. The difference between two objects is not derived from the difference in their properties, but from the fact that they are two (this is the principle of individuation, see for example Hugo Bergman's book 'Introduction to the Theory of Logic', Chapter Two, Sections 8-10). In principle, they could also have completely identical properties, and be located at the same point in space-time, and yet be two different objects. In light of this belief of mine, do I also need physical a priori?
Another example is causality. This, according to the author, requires a reference to space and time, and therefore cannot be derived a priori from logic (Chapter 4). On the other hand, it must be a priori because every experiment or observation presupposes it (end of Chapter 11). In addition to all this, in Chapter 4 Shoshani rejects (rightly!) the solution offered by Kant to the question of the origin of causality, a solution that can be reconciled with the two previous assertions (Kant stated that space and time are also a priori). What, then, is Shoshani's model?
There are several other problems in the book. Some of them are fundamental problems, some stem from the eclecticism of the topics discussed, and some from the shortness of the scope. In my opinion, Shoshani would have done well if he had set out the discussion in advance as a deliberate move leading to his apriori, and discussed only the points that directly concern it. At these points, he should have expanded the scope and detailed the problematic nature of each point, and the solution given to it within the framework of his theoretical proposal.
The central point in the book is, as stated, a priori. Shoshani argues as follows (beginning of Chapter 12, and more): "The most fundamental entities of which all the materials in the world are composed must stem from an a priori theory, since in principle it is impossible to discover them experimentally."
First, I don't understand how entities 'arise' from a theory. A theory usually describes (perhaps explains) entities but never 'gives' them birth. Incidentally, this kind of ambiguity characterizes many of the theories of modern physics, such as string theory (also mentioned in the book), which describes particles as 'oscillations' of tiny strings in multidimensional spaces. The precise solution to identifying a string oscillation with a particle is not so clear to me, and I think it is also not so clear to many of those involved in the field. As mentioned, the interpretation of some of the theories of modern physics requires a great deal of philosophical attention, which is not always characteristic of those who deal with them.
This ambiguity also recurs when Shoshani 'solves' the psycho-physical problem (in the last chapter). He does so by relying on the claim that the fundamental entities that make up matter are 'spiritual', and as such there is no problem in understanding their connection to the human spirit. This is of course not a solution to the problem, but rather a transfer of it from the boundary between the psychic and the physical to the boundary between the 'spiritual' elements of matter and massive matter itself. Now we do not understand how the matter we know is created from the composition of these 'spiritual' entities. Material existence is 'born' mystically from its spiritual components, just as it was previously 'born' from the theory that describes it.
Second, the confusion between our way of knowing about those entities and their essence itself is repeated here as well. Isn't it possible that we have no way of knowing about those entities at all despite their existence? Perhaps he meant to say that if it is at all possible to know about them then this is the only way. If so, he should have phrased it this way. Here too, it should be noted that such confusion characterizes many scientific arguments in physics and its philosophy.
The a priori theory presented in chapters 11-12 of the book assumes the existence of abstract 'systems' (=elementary entities) that are different from each other (in the formal senses defined there), that do not exist in space and time, that maintain 'connections' between them (the 'connections' are relations that maintain two mathematical properties: non-reflexivity and exchangeability). From formal considerations alone, two 'universes' are obtained from these assumptions, that is, images of a set of systems linked in the simplest way. It seems clear that several physical principles are derived from these structures. The two most fundamental and important in my opinion are: 1. There are three physical connections (except for gravitation, which cannot appear in such a theory because it is space-time-dependent). 2. The numbers of elementary particles seemingly fit well with what is known so far (the first universe describes the collection of force-exerting particles, and the second the collection of force-carrying particles). The other properties are more marginal, and even slightly artificial. This approach is original, interesting, and thought-provoking, and the two results, if not coincidental, are also so.
It seems to me that this theory distills a discussion of the concept of a prioriity itself (which is sorely lacking in the book), mainly in two aspects:
A. What is an a priori theory?
B. Is this theory indeed a priori?
The first problem arises from the following sentence (p. 129): "It [apriori] is similar to the metaphysics that preceded it in that it is not based on experimental or observational findings, and differs from them in that it is a formal theory that does not include the concepts of space and time. It is based on a number of initial concepts and fundamental assumptions that link them, similar to other formal theories such as geometry, number theory, or logic. The 'realistic' content of apriori is therefore hidden in its concepts and fundamental assumptions, and its conclusions or predictions are obtained on the basis of a deductive inference from fundamental assumptions."
It is important to understand that in every construction of a scientific theory there is a generalization and abstraction from the empirically given to the theoretical concepts. Sometimes the transition is so speculative that some doubt the very existence of the theoretical entities that populate modern theories in physics. After the generalization, at least in the world of physics, a formal theory is constructed from which the scientific theorems are deductively derived, just as in geometry (at the end of Carnap's book, INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC LOGIC AND ITS APPLICATIONS, formal systems are presented for geometry, arithmetic, and in exactly the same way for biology and physics; there is also a general way there to construct such systems for any scientific field). In fact, according to the prevailing view, this is the purpose of all physical research. If so, it is not clear in what way the system proposed by Shoshani is a priori more than the systems used in conventional physical theories? This point is worth clarifying.
Furthermore, the identification of theoretical concepts will always require a non-a priori interpretation step (this is the difference between 'theory' and 'model' in mathematics). Therefore, it is not clear what the gain is from the a priori nature of this process. As mentioned, theory does not 'give rise' to applications. The way in which these are created from theory is by interpretation, and this is never a priori.
The second question concerns the very a priori nature of the proposed theory. Isn't the absence of gravitation from the theory based on the results of general relativity, which links gravitation with space-time? Why isn't such a step a posteriori? At the very least, it is no more a priori than any conventional physical theory (the 'Standard Model' also assumes a priori structures of group theory).
I, personally, agree that the a priori side of the physical sciences should be emphasized more, a side that today tends not to be emphasized (modern science likes to present itself as an empirical science, unlike ancient science which was a priori-speculative). I even agree that God is a necessary assumption for scientific research (in meta-theory), and also for rationality in general. I certainly do not think that the arguments presented in this book are clear and convincing enough on these points. As mentioned, the book itself is readable, and gives the lay reader the opportunity to encounter some of the fundamental ideas of physical thought. The a priori approach presented in it is in itself interesting and thought-provoking.