A common-sense response to Eddington’s two table problem is that a table just is composed of molecules. This leads to difficult questions of exactly which molecules it is composed of. I assume that at table boundaries, molecules fly off all the time (that’s why one can smell a wooden table!).
But I think we could have an ontology of tables where we deny that tables are composed of molecules. Instead, we simply say that tables are grounded in the global wavefunction of the universe. We then deny precise localization for tables, recognizing that nothing is localized in our quantum universe. There is some approximate shape of the table, but this shape should not be understood as precise—there is no such thing as “the set of spacetime points occupied by the table”, unless perhaps we mean something truly vast (since the tails of wavefunctions spread out very far very fast).
That said, I don’t believe in tables, so I don’t have skin in the game.
But I do believe in organisms. Similar issues come up for organisms as for tables, except that organisms (I think) also have forms or souls. So I wouldn’t want to even initially say that organisms are composed of molecules, but that organisms are partly composed of molecules (and partly of form). That still generates the same problem of which exact molecules they are composed of. And in a quantum universe where there are no sharp facts about particle number, there probably is no hope for a good answer to that question.
So maybe it would be better to say that organisms are not even partly composed of molecules, but are instead partly grounded in the global wavefunction of the universe, and partly in the form. The form delineates which aspects of the global wavefunction are relevant to the organism in question.
"I don't believe in tables." This has got to be the most interesting statement in this entire piece. It strikes me as an example of a certain class of philosophical statements that, for lack of a better term, I would classify as "Unbelievable Statements." What I mean is this: there are a class of statements advanced by philosophers either as hypotheticals (as, for instance, Descartes advancing the idea that all his sense impressions had no more reality than what he saw in dreams) or as actual proposals (as in, for instance, eliminative materialists denying that they have beliefs), that I cannot believe that those advancing them actually believe at the deepest level or can really entertain with any epistemic justification. Understand, I'm not advancing the idea that there is any dishonesty on the part of those advancing such statements. They obviously believe (or at least entertain) them at some level. I simply find it unbelievable that, at a fundamental level, they really believe them, even if they are believed/entertained at some less fundamental level. Descartes didn't go banging his head against trees because he entertained the idea that the trees didn't really exist, eliminative materialists still advance ideas and proposals, and you presumably still put your orange juice, coffee, Diet Coke, or other breakfast beverage on your table this morning. So, to my mind, if a train of thought I had led me to deny the existence of tables (which I cannot actually deny), so much the worse for the train of thought. I may not know what's wrong with it, but I must have gone wrong somewhere to deny the evidence of what is so evident to my senses or internal perceptions. Since those experience of life are precisely what either philosophy or science is supposed to explain, if I find myself denying them, I must still have fallen short of explaining my life/experiences.
ReplyDeleteThere is, of course, an alternate explanation, which is that you gave the statement in an unqualified sense, but you have mental qualifications that you left out, because the statement was obviously pithier and more thought provoking in its current form.
I advance this because I'm interested in knowing how you would reply, Dr. Pruss, since you are a professional philosopher who I truly respect, and this is a sentiment that I've been thinking about for a while. I'm also truly curious what you mean by denying the existence of tables :-)
I think ordinary English sentences like "There is a table in my kitchen" are true. But I don't think tables "really exist". What do I mean by that? Well, think of some other cases: holes, shadows, in-game items, and average plumbers. In each case (though a bit less so in the last case) we talk in ordinary English as if the item really existed.
ReplyDeleteBut if pressed whether reality really includes such entities, I think we are apt to say that of course not. For instance, if shadows really exist, then we have a violation of the principle that nothing moves faster than light (the earth casts a shadow on space-dust; that shadow does one rotation around the sun in a year; thus, at about one light-year away from the sun, the earth's shadow sweeps through space at a speed about six times that of light). If holes really exist, then we will have silly pseudophilosophical questions such as "If there are two holes side-by-side in the road, and the road wears out between them thereby joining them, so that now there is only one hole, have we destroyed the original holes?"
I think waves are in the same category as holes and shadows. And I think tables are something like waves in the wavefunction. :-)