Workshop – Adalja

The Experiencing Subject

Our scientific paradigm is so consolidated that it in many camps functions as a whirlpool that drags everything into it. Since presumably nothing can explain everything this leaves the door open for exploitation of the cracks between the paradigmatic world view and the reality (given that the reality cannot be explained in its totality). This creates tension that cannot be monitored from within the paradigm.

Plan B

Michael Cain’s character Professor John Brand in the movie Interstellar has a Plan A for the survival of mankind. If that doesn’t work he has a backup Plan B. Plan A is the wanted one whereas Plan B saves some astronauts and a lot of fertilized eggs.

Today we have a scientific culture that functions as our Plan A. That culture states that everything in one way or the other is physical. A recent shift in our language is the move from “my thoughts are in my mind” to “my thoughts are in my brain”. If we have thoughts and everything in the end is physical it is natural to think that one’s thoughts are in one’s brain.

In preparation for the defense of my master thesis (Gamper 2019) I played with an application of it and found that it provided an ontologically neutral view of the scientific object. I had introduced the concept of causal objects and it applied for any kind of object (with a causal background). In my preparation I saw that separate ontological fields could be joined by something I called interfaces (2017). Accordingly, everything in the end may be physical – or not. I thought this eventuality was very interesting.

Plan B is to investigate this possibility and see where it may lead. One thing is established, though, and that is that the mind can be a substance of its own. Provided that there can be interfaces between ontological domains.

Variation 2

Deep down, if everything is physical, our sense of self, our dreams, our wandering thoughts, simply are illusions, they don’t exist as sense of self, as dreams, as wandering thoughts. This idea is neatly captured in the descriptive operational definition. The belief in the operational definition guaranties that you only can know what you can measure. And you can only measure what is physical. In Gamper (2021) I looked at this from the point of view of biology. According to this view we only can know of measurable features of biological objects. At closer inspection, however, this leaves biology in the hands of chemistry. This may be as it should be but I introduced a non-chemical biological kind of energy that challenges the Plan A scenario. Purely biological energy may be irreducible to chemical and/or physical energy but that would take something concrete to be accounted for. In Gamper (2021) it is pictured that a non-physical subject has non-biological energy that is dependent upon the described non-chemical biological energy. The conceptual template for this undertaking is the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” (Wigner 1960) put on the potential interface between the body and the mind. This is the variation, that physical things are in mathematical dimensions and in non-mathematical physical dimensions and that the subject is in biological (/physical) dimensions as well in as non-biological/physical mental dimensions.

References

Gamper, J. Biological Energy and the Experiencing Subject. Axiomathes 31, 497–506 (2021).

Gamper, J. Blocking the Vagueness Block – A New Restricted Answer to the Special Composition Question. Philosophia 47, 425–428 (2019).

Gamper, J. On a Loophole in Causal Closure. Philosophia 45, 631–636 (2017).

Wigner EP (1960) The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Commun Pure Appl Math 13:1–14.

/Johan Gamper

Omega— (Interstellar Variations 9)

In Gamper (2018) the Höglund perspective is put on the notion of an object. The Höglund perspective is to make a claim weaker and thereby accessing a more general perspective on the subject at hand. For instance the claim that everything is physical in a Höglund perspective generates the claim that everything basically consists of only one kind of things. Since this in effect is monism physicalism implies monism. Epistemologically this may seem unimportant but if we regard physicalism as a basic assumption physicalism actually refutes itself as a basic assumption since not both physicalism and monism can be basic assumptions. Another example is intelligence in the light of extra terrestrial beings. Even if there are no extra terrestrial intelligent beings we can define intelligence in the light of their possible existence. One option here is that such beings would be aware of their own conscious contents. In such a case they would not be artificially intelligent but intelligent.

Gamper (2018) builds upon Gamper (2017) that also utilizes the Höglund perspective. It looks at the claim that the universe is causally closed. How causal closure is defined, however, implies monism. Monism and causal closure, nota bene, imply that all ontological domains are causally closed (since there only is one). If all ontological domains are causally closed, though, it is safe to redefine causal closure, a move that can entail that pluralism may be true! Implicitly the Höglund perspective is used also in Wigner (1970) where Wigner exemplifies how the understanding of a subject matter changes when it is look at in a wider picture.

Concretely the Höglund perspective in Gamper (2018) is that however we conceptualize the notion of an object we can widen the scope and ask what an object per se is. Even if monism is true we can utilize the Höglund perspective and ask what any object must be, hence the title On the Kind “Object”. The object on this very high level of abstraction is called Omega. In the workshop we will investigate Omega in various ways with help of the Höglund perspective and other tools. For inspiration it could be useful to look at Gamper (2021).

References

Gamper, J. (2017). On a Loophole in Causal Closure. Philosophia 45, 631–636.

Gamper, J. (2018). The Kind ‘Object’. Philosophia.

Gamper, J. (2021). Rebooting Science 1.0. BoD. Stockholm, Sweden.

Wigner, E.P. (1970). Physics and the explanation of life. Found Phys 1, 35–45.

Website: karlpu.org

Email: johan.gamper@karlpu.org.