The Big Picture

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The Big Picture Page 4

by Carroll, Sean M.


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  thing “the same thing” as some other thing? But more broadly, they’re ques-

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  tions about ontology, our basic view of what exists in the world. What

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  kinds of things are there at all?

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  When we ask about the identity of the “real” Captain Kirk or Ship of

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  Theseus, a whole bundle of unstated assumptions come along for the ride.

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  We are assuming that there are things called “persons,” and things called

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  “ships,” and that these things have some persistence over time. And every-

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  thing goes swimmingly, until we come up against a puzzle, such as these

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  duplication scenarios, that puts a strain on how we define these kinds of

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  objects.

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  All this matters, not because we’re on the verge of building a working

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  transporter, but because our attempts to make sense of the big picture in-

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  evitably involve different kinds of overlapping ways of talking about the

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  world. We have atoms, and we have biological cells, and we have human

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  beings. Is the notion of “this particular human being” an important one to

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  how we think about the world? Should categories like “persons” and “ships”

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  be part of our fundamental ontology at all? We can’t decide whether an

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  P O E t IC n At u R A l I S M

  individual human life actually matters if we don’t know what we mean by

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  “human being.”

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  As knowledge generally, and science in particular, have progressed over the

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  centuries, our corresponding ontologies have evolved from quite rich to

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  relatively sparse. To the ancients, it was reasonable to believe that there were

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  all kinds of fundamentally different things in the world; in modern

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  thought, we try to do more with less.

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  We would now say that Theseus’s ship is made of atoms, all of which are

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  made of protons, neutrons, and electrons— exactly the same kinds of particles

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  that make up every other ship, or for that matter make up you and me. There

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  isn’t some primordial “shipness” of which Theseus’s is one particular exam-

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  ple; there are simply arrangements of atoms, gradually changing over time.

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  That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about ships just because we understand

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  that they are collections of atoms. It would be horrendously inconvenient

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  if, anytime someone asked us a question about something happening in the

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  world, we limited our allowable responses to a listing of a huge set of atoms

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  and how they were arranged. If you listed about one atom per second, it

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  would take more than a trillion times the current age of the universe to

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  describe a ship like Theseus’s. Not really practical.

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  It just means that the notion of a ship is a derived category in our ontol-

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  ogy, not a fundamental one. It is a useful way of talking about certain sub-

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  sets of the basic stuff of the universe. We invent the concept of a ship

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  because it is useful to us, not because it’s already there at the deepest level

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  of reality. Is it the same ship after we’ve gradually replaced every plank? I

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  don’t know. It’s up to us to decide. The very notion of “ship” is something

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  we created for our own convenience.

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  That’s okay. The deepest level of reality is very important; but all the

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  different ways we have of talking about that level are important too.

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  What we’re seeing is the difference between a rich ontology and a sparse

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  one. A rich ontology comes with a large number of different fundamental

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  categories, where by “fundamental” we mean “playing an essential role in

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  our deepest, most comprehensive picture of reality.”

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  T H E B IG PIC T U R E

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  In a sparse ontology, there are a small number of fundamental categories

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  (maybe only one) describing the world. But there will be very many ways of

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  talking about the world. The notion of a “way of talking” isn’t mere

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  decoration— it’s an absolutely crucial part of how we apprehend reality.

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  Love

  Books

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  Life

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  Causes

  Fire

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  Prime

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  Heaven

  Numbers

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  Duty

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  Wetness

  Earth

  Humanity

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  God

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  Elephants

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  Purpose

  Marriage

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  Flatworms

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  Energy

  Time

  Society

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  Happiness

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  The

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  Natural

  Explanations

  World

  Color

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  Laws

  Virtue

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  Atoms

  Chairs

  of

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  Nature

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  Cells

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  Two different kinds of ontologies, rich and sparse. Boxes are

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  fundamental concepts, while circles are derived or emergent

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  concepts— ways of talking about the world.

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  P O E t IC n At u R A l I S M

  One benefit of a rich ontology is that it’s easy to say what is “real”— every

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  category describes something real. In a sparse ontology, that’s not so clear.

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  Should we count only the underlying stuff of the world as real, and all the

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  different ways we have of dividing it up and talking about it as merely illu-

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  sions? That’s the most hard-core attitude we could take to reality, sometimes

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  called eliminativism, since its adherents like nothing better t
han to go

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  around eliminating this or that concept from our list of what is real. For an

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  eliminativist, the question “Which Captain Kirk is the real one?” gets an-

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  swered by “Who cares? People are illusions. They’re just fictitious stories we

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  tell about the one true real world.”

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  I’m going to argue for a different view: our fundamental ontology, the

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  best way we have of talking about the world at the deepest level, is extremely

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  sparse. But many concepts that are part of non- fundamental ways we have

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  of talking about the world— useful ideas describing higher- level, macro-

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  scopic reality— deserve to be called “real.”

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  The key word there is “useful.” There are certainly non- useful ways of

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  talking about the world. In scientific contexts, we refer to such non- useful

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  ways as “wrong” or “false.” A way of talking isn’t just a list of concepts; it

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  will generally include a set of rules for using them, and relationships among

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  them. Every scientific theory is a way of talking about the world, according

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  to which we can say things like “There are things called planets, and some-

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  thing called the sun, all of which move through something called space,

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  and planets do something called orbiting the sun, and those orbits describe

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  a particular shape in space called an ellipse.” That’s basically Johannes Kep-

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  ler’s theory of planetary motion, developed after Copernicus argued for

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  the sun being at the center of the solar system but before Isaac Newton

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  explained it all in terms of the force of gravity. Today, we would say that

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  Kepler’s theory is fairly useful in certain circumstances, but it’s not as useful

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  as Newton’s, which in turn isn’t as broadly useful as Einstein’s general the-

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  ory of relativity.

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  The strategy I’m advocating here can be called poetic naturalism. The poet

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  Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of at-

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  oms.” The world is what exists and what happens, but we gain enormous

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  insight by talking about it— telling its story— in different ways.

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  T H E B IG PIC T U R E

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  Naturalism comes down to three things:

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  1. There is only one world, the natural world.

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  2. The world evolves according to unbroken patterns, the laws

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  of nature.

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  3. The only reliable way of learning about the world is by ob-

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  serving it.

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  Essentially, naturalism is the idea that the world revealed to us by scien-

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  tific investigation is the one true world. The poetic aspect comes to the fore

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  when we start talking about that world. It can also be summarized in three

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  points:

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  1. There are many ways of talking about the world.

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  2. All good ways of talking must be consistent with one an-

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  other and with the world.

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  3. Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of

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  talking.

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  A poetic naturalist will agree that both Captain Kirk and the Ship of

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  Theseus are simply ways of talking about certain collections of atoms

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  stretching through space and time. The difference is that an eliminativist

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  will say “and therefore they are just illusions,” while the poetic naturalist

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  says “but they are no less real for all of that.”

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  Philosopher Wilfrid Sellars coined the term manifest image to refer to

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  the folk ontology suggested by our everyday experience, and scientific image

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  for the new, unified view of the world established by science. The manifest

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  image and the scientific image use different concepts and vocabularies, but

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  ultimately they should fit together as compatible ways of talking about the

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  world. Poetic naturalism accepts the usefulness of each way of talking in its

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  appropriate circumstances, and works to show how they can be reconciled

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  with one another.

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  Within poetic naturalism we can distinguish among three different

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  kinds of stories we can tell about the world. There is the deepest, most fun-

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  damental description we can imagine— the whole universe, exactly de-

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  scribed in every microscopic detail. Modern science doesn’t know what that

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  description actually is right now, but we presume that there at least is such

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  an underlying reality. Then there are “emergent” or “effective” descriptions,

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  valid within some limited domain. That’s where we talk about ships and

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  people, macroscopic collections of stuff that we group into individual enti-

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  ties as part of this higher- level vocabulary. Finally, there are values: concepts

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  of right and wrong, purpose and duty, or beauty and ugliness. Unlike

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  higher- level scientific descriptions, these are not determined by the scien-

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  tific goal of fitting the data. We have other goals: we want to be good peo-

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  ple, get along with others, and find meaning in our lives. Figuring out the

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  best way to talk about the world is an important part of working toward

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  those goals.

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  Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and responsibility. The raw

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  materials of life are given to us by the natural world, and we must work to

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  understand them and accept the consequences. The move from description

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  to prescription, from saying what happens to passing judgment on what

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  should happen, is a creative one, a fundamentally human act. The world is

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  just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of any

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  judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things

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  that we bring to it.

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  Poetic naturalism may seem like an appealing idea— or it may seem like an

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  absurd bunch of hooey— but it certainly leaves us with a lot of questions.

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  Most obviously, what is the unified natural world that underlies every-

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  thing? We’ve been bandying about words like “atoms” and “particles,” but

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  we know from discussions of quantum mechanics that the truth is a bit

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  more slippery than that. And we certainly don’t claim to know the ultimate

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  final Theory of Everything— so how much do we actually know? And what

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  makes us think that it’s enough to justify the dreams of naturalism?

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  There are equally many, if not more, questions about connecting that

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  underlying physical world to our everyday reality. There are “Why?” ques-

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  tions: Why this particular universe, with these particular laws of nature?

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  Why does the universe exist at all? There are also “Are you sure?” questions:

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  Are we sure that a unified physical reality could naturally give rise to life as

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  we know it? Are we sure it is sufficient to describe consciousness, perhaps

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  the most perplexing aspect of our manifest world? And then there are the

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  T H E B IG PIC T U R E

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  “How?” questions: How do we decide what ways of talking are the best?

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  How do we agree on judgmental questions about right and wrong? How do

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  we find meaning and purpose in a world that is purely natural? Above all,

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  how do we know any of this?

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  Our task is to put together a rich, nuanced picture that reconciles all the

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  different aspects of our experience. To put ourselves in the right frame of

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  mind, in the next few chapters we’ll survey some of the ideas that helped

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  set humanity on the road to naturalism.

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  The World Moves by Itself

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