The Clash of the Images

03

ADEM MULAMUSTAFIC

THE CLASH OF THE IMAGES Why the Manifest Image and the Scientific Image Are Incompatible

Theoria

Katja Crone / Johannes Haag / David Löwenstein (eds.)

Volume 3

Adem Mulamustafić

The Clash of the Images Why the Manifest Image and the Scientific Image Are Incompatible

Schwabe Verlag

Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 389518284.

Printed with generous support of the Geschwister Boeringer Ingelheim Stiftung für Geisteswissenschaften in Ingelheim am Rhein and of the FAZIT-Stiftung.

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Furthermore, the table of contents is linked to the headings. rights@schwabeverlag.de www.schwabeverlag.de

To my parents, Zenaida and Amir

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

1. Introduction: The Story of Two Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

1.1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13

1.2

The Two Tables Problem

....................................

17

1.3

Eddington’s Fluctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26

1.4

The Two Tables Problem and Contemporary Metaphysics . . . . . . . .

27

1.5

The Two Tables Problem and Contemporary Philosophy of Science

32

1.6

Monistic Answers to the Two Tables Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

1.7

Summary and Outlook

38

...................................... ..................................

41

2.1

What Does It Mean to Exist Mind-Independently? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

2.2

Mind-Independence and Eddington’s Two Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

2.3

Realness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

2.4

Excursus: Dear Neo-Carnapians, … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

2.5

Second Excursus: State of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

2.6

Existence

..................................................

60

2.7

Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

3. The Ordinary World and Its Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

3.1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

3.2

The Ordinary Objects of the Ordinary World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

3.3

Ordinary Objects and Their Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

3.4

Kinds of Ordinary Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

2. The World without the Mind

8

Contents

3.5

Science within the Manifest Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

3.6

Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

74

3.7

Colors in the Ordinary World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.7.1 Theories of Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.7.2 Primitivism as the Manifest Image View of Color: The Historical Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3.7.3 Primitivism as the Manifest Image View of Color: The Systematic Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 3.7.4 Concluding Remarks on the Manifest Image View of Color . . 124

3.8

Conclusion

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

4. The World of Science and Its Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 4.1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

4.2

Dispositional Monism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

4.3

Ontic Structural Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

4.4

Process Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

4.5

Science and Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.5.1 The Argument from Scientists’ Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.5.2 The Argument from Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.5.3 The Argument from Tetrachromacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.5.4 The Arguments from Normal Observers and from Standard Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.6

Conclusion

136 136 139 144 149

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

5. Excursus: The World of Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 5.1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

5.2

Experiential Naïve Realism (ENR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

5.3

Some Remarks on Knowledge by Acquaintance and on Modifications of ENR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

5.4

ENR and Metaphysical Naïve Realism (MNR)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

6. The World as It Is in Itself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 6.1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

6.2

The First Compatibility Issue: Individuals

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Contents

6.3

The Second Compatibility Issue: Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

6.4

The Third Compatibility Issue: Proper Sensibles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

6.5

The Fourth Compatibility Issue: Everything

6.6

Some Remarks concerning Space, Time, and Normativity . . . . . . . . . . 192

6.7

Conclusion

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

7. A Brief Outlook: Oh My World! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

9

Acknowledgments

Finally finished! Writing this book took quite some time. I’d like to thank everyone who supported me during this time.

Many people commented on this work on various occasions. For helpful comments, I’m indebted to: Stefanie Grüne, Logi Gunnarsson, Oliver Holtz, Anton Kabeshkin, Lena Ljucovic, Niklas Lutterbach, Christoph Marschner, Mahdi Ranaee, Tobias Rankewitz, Luz Christopher Seiberth, Lionel Shapiro, Bernhard Thöle, Joachim Toenges-Hinn, Brian Tracz, Sarah Wellan, and Dennis Wildfeuer.

My special thanks go to those who read and commented on the entire work: Till Hoeppner, Till Hopfe, and an anonymous referee. I now know that the anonymous referee was Bill deVries – thanks a lot, Bill!

This book is based on my PhD dissertation. For their support and supervision of my PhD project, I’d like to thank my two supervisors: Johannes Haag and Christian Barth.

My dissertation was supported by the FAZIT-Stiftung, the Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung für Geisteswissenschaften and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG). I wish to thank all three institutions for their financial support. As part of the research project funded by the DFG, we held two workshops: one with Keith Allen and one with Amie Thomasson. I’d like to thank both Amie and Keith for their thought-provoking input.

Inestimable thanks belong to my partner Laila Kühle, both for her comments on this book and for the wonderful distractions from the ever-present carousel of thoughts – especially, during our trips together in the mountains.

Finally, I want to thank my parents, who have always supported and encouraged me in every possible way I could wish for.

1. Introduction: The Story of Two Tables

1.1 Introduction It happened in 1927. Sir Arthur Eddington, the great British astrophysicist, sat down on his two chairs and at his two tables in order to write his Gifford Lectures: I have settled down to the task of writing these lectures and have drawn up my chairs to my two tables. Two tables! Yes […] One of them has been familiar to me from earliest years. It is a commonplace object of that environment which I call the world. How shall I describe it? It has extension; it is comparatively permanent; it is coloured; above all it is substantial […] Table No. 2 is my scientific table. It is a more recent acquaintance and I do not feel so familiar with it. It does not belong to the world previously mentioned – that world which spontaneously appears around me when I open my eyes […] It is part of a world which in more devious ways has forced itself on my attention. My scientific table is mostly emptiness. Sparsely scattered in that emptiness are numerous electric charges rushing about with great speed; but their combined bulk amounts to less than a billionth of the bulk of the table itself. (2012 [1928]: xi)

Look around Eddington’s study room: You can see his black-brown table covered with many sheets of paper. There are a few shelves made of oak wood, all of which are filled with books. Looking outside the window, you see a lime tree and some beautiful daisies. Now picture the following scene: atoms in a void. How does the scientific picture of the world as a tremendous emptiness riddled with some micro-particles fit together with what you perceive in and from Eddington’s study room?1 Let’s call the objects you are able to perceive (like Eddington’s black-brown table) ordinary objects.2 Is it possible that ordinary objects are constituted of enti1 Sometimes – like in this chapter – I will assume that the scientific picture of the world entails the idea of micro-particles as building blocks of the universe. I will discuss other options in ch. 4.

2 Roughly, ordinary objects are “objects belonging to kinds that we are naturally inclined to regard as having instances on the basis of our perceptual experiences” (Korman 2016). This definition is rough because I want to count objects as ordinary only if we can perceive them with our unaided senses. Of course, this is still rough, because one needs to say what ‘unaided’ is supposed to mean (do glasses count?), but I think we can work pretty well with this rough idea for now. For a more detailed discussion of unaided senses, cf. sec. 3.2.

14

1. Introduction: The Story of Two Tables

ties like electrons and quarks? You might intuitively think: of course, this is possible! But you will spot some problems with this answer once you think about it more deeply. For example, all fundamental micro-particles postulated by scientists (like electrons and quarks) are colorless. That’s what the standard model of particle physics tells us. Mass and spin, for instance, are among the properties of micro-particles, while color is not. Yet, Eddington’s ordinary table is blackbrown. Therefore, the following problem emerges: The color problem: If Eddington’s black-brown table is constituted only of colorless micro-particles, how is it possible that it (the table) is colored?

At first glance, the color problem seems to be a hard problem. Maybe it has a satisfactory solution. Maybe, however, the problem rests on a false assumption.

The false assumption, one might think, is that both colored ordinary objects and colorless micro-particles exist mind-independently. Let me first clarify what I mean when I say that something exists mind-independently. In first approximation, I mean the following: x exists mind-independently =df x exists independently from being represented by someone (or from being presented to someone).3 What this definition says can easily be understood through an example. Consider the sun. There is no doubt that, in everyday life, we take the sun to exist mindindependently. This means that we take the following claim to be true: the sun would exist even if no one represented it (perceived it, for example). The same, however, does not hold for a sun you imagine. If you did not imagine that sun, your imagined sun would not exist. The sun you imagine does not exist mindindependently, because it depends on you representing (imagining) it.4 The second disjunct of the definiens – the addition in brackets – is supposed to capture theories of perception according to which perception is not a representational relation but a certain form of a presentational relation (see ch. 5 for an explication of some such theories). But for now, let’s ignore the second disjunct.

This is a rough definition. See ch. 2 for a detailed discussion of mind-dependence and mind-independence.

4 This example seems to presuppose that there are intentional objects (at least the imagined sun), which is controversial. However, even if the example does presuppose that there are intentional objects: it’s just an example. If you don’t think that there are intentional objects, imagine that I’ve put ‘Suppose that there are intentional objects’ in front of the example.

3

1.1 Introduction

Taking the above example as a model, you may think that colored ordinary objects are more like the imagined sun and that colorless micro-particles are more like the real sun. You may argue: The mind-independent world is colorless; color is just a product of our minds. Therefore, it’s misleading to ask how it’s possible that Eddington’s ordinary table, when taken as a mind-independent thing, is colored. Such a stance has scientific support. For instance, neurobiologist Semir Zeki writes in an often-cited passage: The results described here […] suggest that the nervous system, rather than analyze colours, takes what information there is in the external environment, namely, the reflectance of different surfaces for different wavelengths of light, and transforms that information to construct colours, using its own algorithms to do so. In other words, it constructs something which is a property of the brain, not the world outside. (1983: 764)

But if color, a property we are able to experience through vision, is not a property of the mind-independent world, what about the properties we are able to perceive through our other senses? What about sound, then? What about odor?

What about taste? What about solidity? Maybe these properties are not properties of mind-independent things, either. It could be, to speak with Galileo Galilei, that like color all these properties reside “exclusively in our sensitive body (corpo sensitivo), so that if the perceiving creatures were removed, all of these qualities would be annihilated and abolished” (2000 [1623]: 9).

If this were the case, there would be no mind-independent ordinary objects, because ordinary objects are (among other things) colored, solid, odorous entities that taste someway and may sound somehow. Eddington’s ordinary table is black-brown, it consists of solid oak wood, its woody aroma has a pleasant smell, it tastes woody (if you would bother to taste it), and it makes a hollow sound when you knock on it. If you were to eliminate all the italicized properties from the mind-independent world (and all other properties of the same kind), what would remain? Eddington’s ordinary table wouldn’t, that’s for sure.

All that would remain (if at all) are colorless, soundless, odorless, tasteless micro-particles that are not even solid: atoms in a void. Thus, not only would the color of Eddington’s black-brown table be a construction of our nervous system (to speak with Zeki), but the table as a whole would be such a construction. Indeed, this would not only hold for Eddington’s table, but for stones and trees, for the sun and the moon as well. All ordinary objects: constructions of our minds.

We: the constructors of our ordinary world.

Alfred Whitehead describes the resulting picture of the mind-independent world as follows: Thus the bodies are perceived as with qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves; the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his

15

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1. Introduction: The Story of Two Tables

song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colorless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly. (1925: 55)

And it may even be worse. Consider you and me. We, too, are ordinary objects.

So what about us? Peter Unger thinks we do not exist: I do not exist and neither do you. The scientific perspective, especially as developed over the last few centuries, compels this result […] No finite persons or conscious beings exist, including myself Peter Unger: I do not exist. (1979a: 236)

Unger’s claim is frightening and fascinating at the same time. But is it even coherent? Can we deny our own existence without self-contradiction? Alfred Ayer thinks we cannot: The sentence ‘I exist’ […] may be allowed to express a statement which like other statements is capable of being either true or false. It differs, however, from most other statements in that if it is false it cannot actually be made. Consequently, no one who uses these words intelligently and correctly can use them to make a statement which he knows to be false. If he succeeds in making the statement, it must be true. (1956: 50)

If Ayer is right, then you and I exist, since we are able to make the statement ‘I exist.’ However, ‘I exist’ does not imply ‘I exist as an ordinary object.’ So even if you accept Ayer’s argument and, thus, think that Unger’s claim (‘I do not exist’) cannot be true, Unger may still have a point: it may be the case that he does not exist as an ordinary object. However, maybe there are good reasons to suppose that we exist as ordinary objects if we exist at all. Johannes Haag, for example, argues at length that we “can only ascribe mental predicates to ourselves if we can also ascribe to ourselves physical or bodily predicates” (2010: 128; also compare Evans 1982: 220 ff.). The idea is that we can only have conscious mental states (and claim, for example, that we exist) if we also have physical states or have bodies – if, in other words, we are ordinary objects.5 This is not the right place to present in detail Haag’s arguments for the claim that you and I exist as ordinary objects if we exist at all. But if his arguments are sound and we do indeed exist, then why shouldn’t other ordinary objects exist as well? Maybe one reacts in the wrong way to the color problem by assuming that Eddington’s black-brown table does not exist mind-independently whereas colorless micro-entities do. Maybe it is, rather, the other way around; maybe colored ordinary objects like stones, trees, and Eddington’s table exist mind-independent-

5 Having a body does not necessarily mean being an ordinary object. However, bodies in our world, in which we say sentences like ‘I exist,’ are ordinary objects if they are anything.

1.2 The Two Tables Problem

ly whereas the colorless entities postulated by scientists are mere fictions. Maybe they, and not stones, trees, and Eddington’s table, are products of our minds.

After all, we do perceive stones and ordinary tables. But we don’t perceive electrons and quarks, do we? So, why should we think that electrons and quarks exist mind-independently, but deny that stones and ordinary tables exist mindindependently? Recall how G. E. Moore proved that his two hands exist: I can prove now […] that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand’, and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another’. (1993 [1939]: 165 f.)

Moore thinks that “it is perhaps impossible to give a better or more rigorous proof of anything whatever” (1993 [1939]: 166). He seems to have a point, for if we cannot even prove, in the way described, that our hands exist, how can we prove that there are electrons in the mind-independent world or, say, the instruments that detect electrons? How can we prove anything whatsoever if we cannot even prove that there are two hands? If Moore is right and if it is right that the color problem is based on a false assumption, the false assumption cannot be that there are no mind-independent ordinary objects; it must, rather, be that there are no colorless micro-particles. Or so one may argue.

You might find this picture calming. According to this picture, you, I, stones, trees, and Eddington’s black-brown table are all inhabitants of a mindindependent world. But you may still feel somehow uncomfortable because of the inhabitants that were excluded: the micro-entities that are postulated by scientists. What do our scientific theories tell us if they don’t tell us something about the mind-independent world?

Maybe there is some hope for a conciliatory answer after all; maybe both micro-particles and ordinary objects exist mind-independently. Maybe the question about Eddington’s colored table and the colorless micro-particles it consists of does not rest on a false assumption but does have a satisfactory answer.

Maybe, however, the situation is much more troublesome than one thinks: maybe neither micro-particles nor ordinary objects exist mind-independently.

Let’s consider the initial problem again!

1.2 The Two Tables Problem The problem is the following: The Two Tables Problem: Which of Eddington’s two tables exists mind-independently: the ordinary table or the scientific table or both tables or neither table?

17

18

1. Introduction: The Story of Two Tables

Let me first clarify the terminology. I call the table Eddington is familiar with from earliest years the ordinary table. I call the other table, following Eddington, the scientific table. You might wonder whether the scientific table deserves the label ‘table.’ In calling something ‘table,’ we usually refer to an ordinary object, that is, to something colored, solid, odorous, etc. Moreover, in calling something ‘table,’ we usually refer to an artifact – to something made by humans. Artifacts usually have a certain function for us; we make them with a certain purpose – for example, we make ordinary tables in order to place something on them (like meals) or to work at them. Ordinary tables, thus, seem to have functional properties essentially. Scientific tables, however, do not seem to have functional properties essentially; they are just atoms in a void.6 You are therefore right: it’s strange to call Eddington’s scientific table a ‘table.’ But strange as it is, in calling it a ‘table,’ I simply wish to highlight its contrast with the ordinary table. If you feel uncomfortable with calling the scientific table a table, you can replace the expression ‘scientific table’ with the expression ‘table-wise ordered micro-particles.’ And if you feel uncomfortable with this expression as well (because it entails ‘table’), then you can replace it with ‘suchand-such ordered micro-particles’ where ‘such-and-such’ in turn needs to be replaced by a detailed geometrical description of the order. In what follows, I will use the term ‘scientific table,’ because it’s short, because it’s easy to grasp, and because it highlights the contrast to the ordinary table. But nothing hinges on it – whenever I say ‘scientific table,’ you can replace it with one of the other terms I considered here.7 However, maybe it’s not that strange to call the scientific table a ‘table.’ After all, the ordinary table consists of micro-particles, doesn’t it? Isn’t, therefore, the ordinary table identical to the scientific table? A positive answer to this question presupposes that both the ordinary table and the scientific table exist mind-independently. A positive answer, thus, presupposes a specific answer to the Two Ta-

Let’s say that something can be a scientific table even if micro-particles randomly form a table-wise ordered system. At least in this case, the scientific table would not have functional properties essentially.

7 You may have noticed that the ordinary table as discussed in this and the last paragraph cannot exist mind-independently in the sense of my definition above, because (i) if the ordinary table really has functional properties essentially, and (ii) if functional properties are relational properties, and (iii) if one relatum needs to be a representing mind, then there simply are no mind-independent ordinary tables. However, I am not concerned with artifacts in a special way. If you think that artifacts have (relationally specified) functional properties essentially, let’s just abstract from functional properties. Let’s think of the ordinary table – within the scope of the Two Tables Problem – just as we think of a stone: as a macroscopic thing that is colored, solid, odorous, etc. For my purposes, the Two Tables Problems could easily be replaced by the ‘Two Stones Problem.’

6

1.2 The Two Tables Problem

bles Problem.8 But it is not clear whether the assumed answer is true. So, let’s explore the whole problem! There are four combinatorically possible answers to the Two Tables Problem (all of which we already encountered in the discussion above): (i)

(ii) (iii)

(iv)

The Compatibility Answer: Both the ordinary table and the scientific table exist mind-independently. (This answer usually amounts to the claim that the ordinary table consists of the entities postulated by scientists (equally: that the scientific table constitutes the ordinary table).)9 The Scientistic Answer: Only the scientific table exists mind-independently. It just appears to us as if there were the ordinary table.

The Instrumentalistic Answer: Only the ordinary table exists mindindependently. (An advocate of this answer usually thinks that the scientific table is just a useful fiction designed by scientists in order to make more precise predictions about the behavior of the ordinary table.)

The Negative Answer: Neither the ordinary table nor the scientific table exists mind-independently.

If we abstract from the two tables and consider ordinary and scientific entities in general (which is what I obviously want to do; this is not a book about tables!), then a fifth answer pops up: (v)

The Mixed Answer: For some pairs of ordinary and scientific entities, one of the previous four answers is true; for other pairs of ordinary and scientific entities, another of the previous four answers is true.

8 Moreover, a positive answer presupposes a certain view regarding material constitution (cf. footnote 9).

9 You can understand this answer in two different ways, depending on your view on material constitution: Some philosophers claim that the relation of constitution is nothing else than the relation of numerical identity (Geach 1967; Griffin 1977; Burke 1994; Myro 1986; Noonan 1993; Gallois 1998). If this is true, then saying that the scientific table constitutes the ordinary table amounts to saying that the scientific table is numerically identical to the ordinary table.

Other philosophers hold that constitution is not numerical identity (Wiggins 1968, 1980; Yablo 1987; Johnston 1992; Lowe 1983, 1995; Fine 2003; Koslicki 2004; Baker 1997, 2000, 2007). If this is true, then the scientific table constitutes the ordinary table, but the scientific table and the ordinary table are numerically distinct entities.

19