Notes on Ontology

Betty asked me to makes some comments on this question from the point of view of an autonomist. I told her I would be unable to, and am not sure, even now, that I will be able to contribute anything substantive, beyond some comments on specific points.

I must point out that Autonomy is not a philosophy, ideology, movement, or organization. One cannot learn autonomy, convert to autonomy, promote autonomy, or join autonomy. Autonomy is a characterization of a class of individuals who choose to live their lives autonomously.

I pointed out to Betty in another post that an autonomist is simply one who has chosen to take complete responsibility for their own thoughts, choices, and actions, that is, their life. She suggested (in much kinder words) that this was absurd since it is impossible to escape one’s responsibility for one’s choices and actions.

She is, of course, absolutely correct, not about the absurdity of autonomy, but about the fact that one cannot escape responsibility for one’s own life. The absurdity is evading responsibility for one’s life, choices, and actions is exactly what most people spend their entire lives trying to do. The autonomist is simply one that recognizes that absurdity and refuses to do it.

While autonomy itself is neither a philosophy or ideology, it is obviously inconsistent with any philosophy of a collective nature (socialism, humanism), or any form of mysticism (supposed knowledge from sources other than evidence or reason). The actual philosophy autonomy is most consistent with is objectivism, however, an autonomist is not an objectivist, except in its most essential meaning, of not being a subjectivist.

In that light, before I say anything about the nature of man, I must comment on the various suggested meanings of reality, since this certainly does have bearing on our understanding of what man is?

To an autonomist reality is all that is, the way it is.

That is correct.

It is listed as thought it were merely one of many possible meanings of reality, and that is incorrect. There is only one reality and it can have only one meaning. That meaning can be expressed in different ways, but the difference is the expression, not the meaning, not the thing that is actually being identified by the word. For example, the definition attributed to the autonomist (but actually a common one found in various philosophical dictionaries) could have been stated, reality is all that exists the way it exists. The meaning would be the same.

All the other supposed meanings of reality are actually variations on the meaning attributed to the autonomist, or statements not about the meaning of reality, but what actually exists and in what way. There is a very important difference.

Suppose I ask, what does the phrase, betty’s car, mean? Someone might say, it’s the automobile that betty owns, or someone else might say, it’s the car that betty drives, or any number of other expressions that all mean the car that pertains to betty. Now someone else comes along and says, betty’s car is an Aston Martin. This may certainly be true (we’d like to think it were), but, while correct, if it is, the intention is an entirely different one. The meaning of the phrase, betty’s car, is whatever car pertains to betty, while Aston Martin (or Geo) is the actual car. Betty’s car, could be any car and would still be true if she sold her Aston Martin and bought a Geo. The difference is called abstract verses concrete. Betty’s car is abstract, Aston Martin is concrete. So the definitions of reality may be classified as abstract, concrete, or a mixture, for example:

To a metaphysical naturalist, reality is all that exists in nature, (A mixture.) The reality is all that exists, part is abstract, the, in nature, part is concrete, assuming by nature is meant, physical nature, or all that which we can be directly conscious of and is the proper object of the physical sciences.

To an autonomist reality is all that is, the way it is. (Abstract). The phrase, the way it is, is required in the definition, because things exist in different modes. Fictional characters, exist, for example, but not in the same way (or mode) that historical characters do. Concepts exist, as components of human consciousness but not in the same way (or mode) physical entities exist. It would be wrong to say Santa Claus is not a real existent, but it is correct to say Santa Claus does really exist, but only as a popular fiction meant for the entertainment of children at the Christmas season. The mode or, the way, something exists must be specified to be included in reality.

To an objectivist reality is that which exists. (Abstract) This is the way Objectivists describe reality based on the axiom existence exists. It is a truncated version of the autonomist’s definition, but if one reads objectivist discussion of these concepts, the as it exists is implied in their meaning. It ought to be made specific.

To a mystic reality may include thought as substantive force and hence, a part of reality. (Concrete) This, of course, is not a definition of reality, but a description of an aspect of reality, namely thought as something reality includes. Objectivists (and autonomists) certainly believe thoughts are real, but they do not believe they exist in the same mode as material entities. They exist, not as physical existents, but as psychological existents.

To Plato reality includes constructs such as redness, chairness, numbers, geometry and pi (Partial - concrete) This, again, addresses only one aspect of reality. What this addresses is the concept of Platonic universals, which platonists and the schoolmen all believe have real ontological existence. For every idea there is somewhere somehow an actual existent that is the real thing our ideas are only an examples or particulars of. To a thoroughgoing Platonist, the idea Santa Claus has, in some higher way, actual existence.

To Aristotle these constructs are not part of reality but merely language. (Partial - concrete) This is true of the linguistic analysis school of philosophy but is probably an unfair characterization of Aristotle, but that is another question. It is difficult to know what exactly this means. Certainly language is part of reality, so how could something that is merely language not be part of reality. Probably what is meant is, those who reject Platonic universals do not believe concepts of entities, events, and qualities have any existence other than as concepts. Some concepts are for actual qualities and entities, like pi (a quality) and chairs (entities); other concepts are for fictional qualities and entities, like red (as the color of Santa’s suit) or Santa (a fictional entity). From this view, Platonic universals exist, but only as the mistaken notion (fictions) of Platonists.

To some physicists, reality is the illusion of quantum mechanics. (Concrete) Does this mean quantum mechanics is an illusion or quantum mechanics gives rise to an illusion, which illusion is reality? We assume the latter. But if there is an illusion, something must be suffering that illusion, and if the illusion is the reality, whatever is suffering that illusion must be unreal. That seems about right. Can you imagine scientists holding such muddle-headed notions?

To Christians reality is God’s will and unknowable in its fullness. (Concrete) I do not believe this is a fair characterization of the Christian viewpoint. Christians generally believe reality consists of two realms, a natural realm, by which they mean the physical universe, and a supernatural realm, by which they mean that superior that includes the celestial beings, God, angels, and more. They also believe these two realms intersect or interact in at least some ways, and actually believe the supernatural permeates the natural, and is the cause of life consciousness and accounts for the human soul or spirit which they believe is part of the supernatural realm. As for God’s will, they certainly believe all of this reality is the result of God’s will, but I do not think they would generally hold that it is God’s will, itself. Some might. There is great variety and difference in the beliefs of Christians.

I have attempted to make this analysis of these various views of reality as fair, objective, and accurate as possible, where they are not it is my fault. The reason for the analysis is because our concept of truth is dependent on our concept of reality. Truth is that which describes reality or any aspect of reality. If our concept of reality is wrong, our concept of truth will be wrong.

The reason I was very careful in my description of the Christian concrete view of reality is to demonstrate that, while the autonomist may not agree with the Christian concrete meaning of reality, the Christian (or anyone else) ought to hold the same abstract meaning of reality as the autonomist. The autonomist may not believe reality is divided into natural and supernatural realms, but the Christian certainly ought to believe reality is all that is (the natural and supernatural realms) as it is (rocks, atoms, and bosons natural while God, angels, and demons are supernatural).

While we might not agree about what the ultimate truth is (for example that there are demons) we would agree on what the truth means (if there are demons, a statement that says there are demons is true, if there are not demons, a statement that says there are not demons is true) because what correctly describes what is, is true, whatever there is.

Now you see why I have doubts about being able to say much substantive about the nature of man, when I have had to say all of this before I could even begin. And I must say something more, if I haven’t already bored you to death.

The nature of reality is important to our understanding of the nature of man, because to understand that, we need to understand where in the realm of existence man fits. Man is, after all unique, else the question would never come up.

But here, the question of reality is not the abstract one, but the concrete one. What is the actual nature of existence? The answer to this is all of philosophy, which I am not prepared, (and even if I were, have neither the time nor inclination) to present here, and no one here wants to wade through all that, anyway.

So, we must abbreviate.

Aristotle, objectivists, and autonomists define man as, rational animal. Those with a background in formal logic or philosophy know this definition comes at the and of a long chain of logical analysis. Those without such a background may see this definition as incomplete, or even shallow.

The definition of man as rational animal can best be understood in terms of the Porphyrian Tree, which illustrates in a graphical way, what that definition means. Specifically it defines man in terms of his logical place in the hierarchy of existence.

Original Porphyrian Tree

The Autonomist updates this structure thus:

Tree of Ontological Hierarchy

Tree of Ontological Hierarchy

This is an outline of ontological existence, demonstrating the logical relationship between all existents. Please note, life, consciousness, and volition are not physical, in the usual sense of the word, but if natural means, anything that is part of that existence we can actually be directly conscious of, these are as natural as any other existents.

At this point I will confine my remarks to that aspect of human nature that distinguishes human beings from all creatures, indeed, from all other existents, his volitional nature. (The interdependent nature of reason and volition were well understood by the early philosophers, one is impossible without the other, and the actual nature of human consciousness was correctly called rational-volitional.)

In most discussion of the nature of man, this is the crucial question. If man is truly volitional, if man must live by conscious choice and is able to choose, then everything follows from that. His need for knowledge, his ability to gain knowledge, his requirement for values, especially moral values, all depend on this aspect of his nature.

If man is not volitional, if he is not required to live by conscious choice and is unable to consciously choose, knowledge is neither needed or possible, values are pointless, and morality is meaningless.

The Big Problem

If everything that exists in this world is physical, and all physical existence is determined by those laws and principles discovered by the physical sciences, physics, chemistry, and biology, and their legitimate branches, how is volition possible? According to physics, everything that happens, every event, is determined by the relationship of everything to everything else, and the laws that govern those relationships.

Even if we make consciousness something separate from physical existence, it is still physical existence that consciousness must be able to influence if there is to be volition. If physical events, including all those in our brains, can be explained entirely in terms of the physical laws, even if we are conscious of those events, we cannot possibly change them without violating those laws.

The usual approach to this problem is either to deny that everything in the physical world is absolutely determined, or to throw up one’s hands and declare in the final analysis, volition must be an illusion, and one becomes a materialist, a behaviorist, or both.

Recently some have attempted to escape this apparent paradox employing certain interpretations of quantum mechanics and the uncertainly principle. This is really just another, though a more modern example, of denying that physical existence is determined absolutely, and attempting to find a space where volition can sneak in and change things while statistical wave forms are trying to decide to collapse or not to collapse, which for statistical wave forms, it is suppose, is the question. (It’s how particles decided to be or not to be, or at least where to be, or how much energy to have once they are, but not both, apparently.) (Just kidding.)

There Is No Problem

One of the reasons an absolutely determined physical existence is questioned is its implications for knowledge. In whatever way the events of the brain are related to our thoughts and ideas, it is apparent that identical behavior of the brain cannot be associated with totally different thoughts or ideas. There must be some relationship between specific events of the brain and the specific content of consciousness. If everything is determined, that means everything in our brains is determined, and all our thoughts are nothing more than reflections of physically caused events and all our supposed ideas are nothing but naturally occurring phenomena with no more reason or meaning than a tree falling or a rock rolling down a hill.

As much as determined physical existence seems like a threat to the possibility of knowledge, a much more dangerous threat would be an undetermined physical universe. If knowledge is to be possible, the world we are to know better be determined by laws that it conforms to pretty consistently, else no knowledge is possible at all. If we cannot count on the things we identify today being those same things tomorrow, and having the same nature and behaving the same way, there is no way we can know anything. An undetermined world controlled by no laws or principles is unknowable. It is only in terms of those laws and principles that we know it. Without them, there would be nothing to know, nothing could have any identity, and no relationship would be possible.

Physical But Living

It is true, human beings are physical beings, physical entities that, as physical entities, are subject to all the principles applying to all other physical entities. But human beings are a special kind of physical entity, they are living entities, members of that class of physical entities called organisms. The quality that differentiates organisms from all other physical (non-living entities) is life.

In our Tree of Ontological Hierarchy we indicated that life is a level of differentiation. The meaning of this is not at all obvious, and not all that easy to understand or explain, but it is necessary to understand if we are to understand, not only how volition is possible, but life and consciousness as well.

A full explanation is both tedious and demanding (though necessary), but for our purposes, an explanation by analogy will probably suffice. Earlier in the tree another level of differentiation (the second) is motion. The specific differentiation called motion is a differentiation of the previous level, position. Specifically motion is a change in position.

The analogy we want to make is between two relationships, the relationship between position and motion, and the relationship between physical entities and living entities (organisms). To do that, we need to understand something about the hierarchy itself, and what it is a hierarchy of.

First, everything that exists does so by virtue of its qualities. We might say Jthat anything is its qualities, that is, if we know all of a things qualities, we know what it is. There are two kinds of qualities of the things we know, which in a non-technical way we can divide into subjective (those we directly perceive, like hard, cold, round, red) and objective (those we know by understanding relationships and physical characteristic, like mass, tensile strength, chemical structure.) The hierarchy is entirely in terms of objective qualities.

Second, everything that exists must be different from everything else that exists. Since everything is whatever its qualities are, no two things can have exactly the same qualities, that is, everything must have at least one quality that differentiates it from all other things.

The minimum quality that anything must have to differentiate it from anything else is positional. No two things can have the identically same position. Two things may be identical in every way, but so long as their positional quality is different, they are different things. Even if things are already differentiated by other qualities, even if they have had no quality in common with each other (which is not possible) they would still be differentiated positionaly.

Since everything that exists must be different from everything else that exists, and everything is whatever its qualities are, to exist, a thing must have some positional quality, and it must be different from the positional qualities of all other things. This is why position is the primary quality of differentiation of ontology.

Positional qualities alone are capable of describing static states and those qualities of entities which are static. But this is a dynamic world, and all entities exhibit some behavior, even if it is only relative. This is a world of events, not just entities, but entities that do something. But events cannot be described in terms of position alone. For there to be events, there must be motion.

Here is where we get to our analogy. If positional qualities were all we had, there could be no motion. No matter how many positions we had, or how complex their arrangement, positional qualities alone could never give rise to motion. In order to have motion, there must be another different level of differentiation, a change in position, which is exactly what motion is, change in position.

The nature of positional qualities is not in any way compromised by motion. Motion provides a whole new field of qualities, not possible with position alone, but it detracts nothing from the field of positional qualities.

Now consider physical entities. The entire physical world consists of physical entities. All event are events of physical entities. All processes are processes of physical entities. All substances and material is actually comprised of physical entities. While physics describes many things which seem very remote from physical entities in the every day sense, ultimately, if those remote concepts do not ultimately have some effect on entities in the every day sense, they are mistaken.

But physical entities, no matter how complex the arrangement, or how sophisticated the complexity can never give rise to life. There is no known example of life that does not come from life. The reason is, life is not itself a physical phenomena or quality, just as motion is not itself a positional phenomena or quality.

Life is a process carried out by a complex physical entity, called an organism, but an organism is an organism because of the life.

The behavior of all entities, except living entities, can be described entirely in terms of their physical nature. The popular materialist view that life is just a very complex manifestation of the material qualities and might be described in those terms is mistaken. An organism can be studied in terms of its physical/chemical/electrical behavior (as biology does), but such a study will not discover those aspects of an organism’s behavior which are uniquely living behavior.

The unique characteristics of an organism are purpose and sentience.

When life is described as a self-sustaining process it means sustaining the organism, as an organism. It is to this fact purpose pertains to, the fact that an organism’s living behavior is to sustain itself as a living organism. Only organisms exist by virtue of their own action. All other entities exist entirely as a result of forces and laws acting without regard to the entity’s existence or continuation, and no non-living entity acts to maintain its own existence.

For all non-living action there is no connection between the cause of the action and the consequence of the action except for the physical one. Both the cause and the consequence of that action we call the living is the same, the nature of the living organism. An organism’s behavior is caused by and results in itself. An organism continues to exist only so long as it continues to sustain itself. Only the action of living entities has a purpose, and that purpose is the sustaining of the living entity.

Every kind of organism has a specific nature that determines what behavior is required and appropriate for that organism to continue to exist. Those requirements determine the character which the organism’s primary purpose will take. Ultimately, then, the purpose of any organism is the continuation of itself as the kind of organism it is and the fulfillment of the requirements of its nature. (This is one of the most important concepts in philosophy.)

In order to fulfill the requirements of its nature, an organisms behavior must be able to fulfill those requirements. It is to this required behavior sentience pertains. Sentience refers to an organisms reaction to external stimuli which is dependent on the life process and the organisms specific nature.

A response to stimuli is not the same a non-living physical reaction to an external influence. A container of water might react to an impact or sound waves impinging on it, but that reaction is entirely physical and totally explainable in terms of physical laws. The response of a living organism to outside influences called stimuli, is an action made possible and required by the life process of the organism. If for any reason, the life process should cease, that reaction to stimuli cannot happen. It is the process itself that reacts to the stimuli, indicating the process senses (detects the presence and nature of) the stimuli in order to react to it.

If an organism could not detect a stimuli, it could not react to it; if an organism could not distinguish the difference in the nature of stimuli, it would react in the same way to all stimuli, or react randomly without any connection between the nature of the stimuli and the action. This is what distinguishes a living response from a physical reaction. A response is the result of the organism in some way detecting the presence and nature of the stimuli, a reaction is an immediate action attributable directly to the external influence (even if the reaction is a very complex one involving a computer program, for example).

The particular things an organism will react to and the specific response the organism makes is determined by the organism’s nature as an organism. As soon as the organism is, dead, its behavior reverts to that of any other non-living entity, including its reactions to external influences.

Purpose and sentience are both qualities of the living process of an organism. While the process is a physical one, in terms of its physical/chemical/electrical characteristics, it is the process itself, not that physical elements the process uses, that has purpose and is sentient. The process, life, is another level of differentiation which makes possible all the qualities of life, not possible to non-living physical existence.

Jump To Volition

The next two levels of differentiation beyond life, Consciousness, and Volition, are analogous to those already described. The point has been to demonstrate that Physical existence is only part of existence. The physical part of existence is totally determined by its nature, which is what the sciences study. Life is also a part of existence, physical and more. The physical aspects of a living organism are as determined by physical laws as any other physical entity, but the life aspects are determine only by those characteristic which are living. The same is true of consciousness and volition.

The entire description of how merely sentient life is differentiated to become truly conscious (perception) and how the consciousness is differentiated to become volitional consciousness requires much too much discussion to include here.

What we have included should allow us to get the flavor of these concepts however, and to answer the question of how volition is possible in a physically determined world. In fact, the question is really asked the wrong way.

We know we have knowledge, and we know we must live by conscious choice and are capable of choosing. That volition is possible cannot really be questioned. We could not even ask the question if we were not volitional creatures. So we know reality includes volitional, conscious, living, physical entities, and these comprise reality at its highest and most complete form.

The real question is, how can a world with volitional, conscious, living, physical entities have in it dumb, dead, determined, physical entities? The answer is, dumb, dead, determined, physical entities are all you have left when volitional, conscious, amd life is left out. The world is controlled by volition, unless, volition is absent, still it is conscious, unless consciousness is left out, but still it is living, unless the life is left out, then all that is left are the physical laws, and everything will be controlled by them.

So life is not something injected into or added to non-living entities, it is a natural quality of existence, as is volition. We are volitional creatures, we must choose everything we think and do, and we are responsible for every choice. To choose we need knowledge, to choose right we need values, to be fully human, we need moral values.

To discuss these we need much more time and space, which we do not have.

Hank

27 posted on 09/25/2003 5:34:12 PM PDT by Hank Kerchief