Modern science rests upon the assumption that everything (that we can account for) fundamentally is physical. The alternatives seems to be that everything is mathematical, mental or parts of God. In the northern part of Europe, however, the Finnish-Swedish psychologist and ontologist Johan Gamper has proposed that the things that exist may come in different flavors. He suggests the unobtrusive thought that there may be physical tings as well as mathematical and mental things. This thought is unobtrusive only outside science and philosophy. Even since the dawn of modern science the scientists have been very clear about what can affect the material world. Only physical events can affect physical things. When we add the closing remark that physical things only can affect physical things we end up with what Johan Gamper calls “causal monism”, a world in which everything that can causally affect us is physical.
Historically we must go back to the time before Descartes to be able to appreciate pluralism. When Descartes claimed dualism, the idea that mind and matter are separate the door immediately closed. Princess Elisabeth just asked where mind and matter interacted if they were of two distinct kinds? Perhaps not in the physical space where there were no non-physical things but neither in some region of non-physical things where there where no physical things. Dualism simply died when it was coined.
Interfaces
In Mr. Gamper’s way of thinking the question can be put in a new way. If we look at the physical universe as a starting point the traditional question is where the causes of it are or must be (and the answer is in the very physical universe). Mr. Gamper asks where they are not. A small step for man but perhaps a big step for philosophy and maybe also for science in itself. The trick is that if we answer that they are not in another universe, we open up for interfaces between universes (universes are regions with only one kind of stuff, physical or of some other kind). If the causes of the physical universe are in the physical universe it cannot be caused and if it can only cause physical things it cannot cause, say, mental things. If, however, the causes of the physical universe are not in another universe, the very physical universe is allowed to be caused by something that is not a universe, an interface between universes.
This idea was born in 2015 and was published in 2017 as “On a Loophole in Causal Closure”. To “reboot” science Gamper suggests that we we put causal monism on hold and try out what he calls “scientific ontology”. Modern ontology basically is causal monism which generates that everything is physical (or mathematical or mental). Scientific ontology, on the other hand, rests on the assumption that the causes of a universe does not come from another universe. We can therefore try to create ontologies, here referring to theoretical structures that can accommodate universes as such, and see if an ontology can contain interfaces between universes. This updated kind of ontology, scientific ontology, would rest upon the assumption that there may be interfaces between universes as opposed to the more brute assumption that everything is physical (or mathematical or mental). If it could be proven that interfaces are impossible scientific ontology would “collapse” into our traditional monistic view.
Interfaces in action
In his ongoing research Mr. Gamper is playing with the notion of interfaces. Since they are not universes they have some interesting “degrees of freedom“. One example is that the original singularity behind the Big Bang perhaps was an interface. Also our “mysterious” ability to be conscious perhaps is an interface, in this case between body and mind. Even more speculative is the thought of “horizontal” interfaces (as opposed to “vertical” interfaces that causes universes). A possible candidate is the black hole singularities that lingers out there in our physical universe. They are singularities but are not seen as entities that cause the universe. The corresponding horizontal interface in the mind is perhaps our self-consciousness, the entity that is conscious about itself.
An even further drained philosophy.
If scientific ontology would replace old fashioned materialism there would be a movement for science towards philosophy. In the end, of course, philosophy would lose also this kind of science.
Adalja 