Aristotelianism and transformative technology

The Aristotelian picture of us is that like other organisms, we flourish in fulfilling our nature. Our nature specifies the proper way of interacting with the world. We do not expect an organism’s nature to specify proper ways of interacting with scenarios far from its niche: how bats should fly in weightless conditions; how cats should feed in an environment with unlimited food supply; how tardigrades should live on the moon.

But with technology, we have shifted far from the environment we evolved for. While adaptability is a part of our nature, some technological innovations seem to go beyond the adaptability we expect, in that they appear to impact central aspects of the life of the social beings we are: innovations like the city, writing, and fast and widely accessible global communication. We should not expect for our nature specify how we should behave with respect to these new social technologies. We should have a skepticism that our nature contains sensible answers to questions about how we should behave in these cases.

Thus we appear to have an Aristotelian argument for avoiding the more transformative types of technology, since we are more likely to have meaningful answers to questions about how to lead our lives if our lives are less affected by social transformations. To be on the safe side, we should live in the country, and have most of our social interaction with a relatively small number of neighbors in person.

The theistic Aristotelian, however, has an answer to this. While evolution cannot foresee the Internet, God can, and he can give us a normative nature that specifies how we should adapt to vast changes in the shape of our lives. We do not need to avoid transformative technology in general, though of course we must be careful lest the transformation be for ill.

Darwin and Einstein against the shared-form interpretation of Aristotle

Assume an Aristotelian account of substantial form on which forms are found in the informed things. A classic question is whether substantial forms are shared between members of the same kind or whether each individual has their own numerically (but maybe not qualitatively) distinct form.

Here’s a fun argument against the shared-form view. For evolution to work with substantial forms, sometimes organisms of one metaphysical kind must produce organisms of another kind. For instance, supposing that wolves are a different metaphysical kind from dogs, and dogs evolved from wolves, it must have happened that two wolves reproduced and made a dog. (I suspect wolves and dogs are metaphysically the same kind, but let’s suppose they aren’t for the sake of the argument.) If we are to avoid occasionalism about this, we have to suppose that the two wolves had a causal power to produce a dog-form under those circumstances.

Plausibly dogs evolved from wolves in Siberia, but there was also a Pleistocene wolf population in Japan, and imagine that the causal power to produce a dog was found in both wolf populations. Suppose, counterfactually, that a short period of time after a pair of wolves produced a dog in Siberia, a pair of Japanese wolves also produced a dog. On a shared-form view, when the Siberian wolves produced a dog, they did two things: they produced a dog-form and they made a dog composed of the dog-form and matter. But when the Japanese wolves produced a dog, the dog-form already existed, so they only thing they could do is make a dog composed of matter and that dog-form.

The first oddity here is this. Our (perhaps imaginary) Japanese wolves didn’t know that there was already a dog in Siberia, so when they produced a dog, they exercised exactly the same causal powers that their Siberian cousins did. But their exercise of these causal powers had a different effect, because it did not produce a new form, since the form already existed, and instead it made the form get exemplified in some matter in Japan. It is odd that the exercise of the same causal power worked differently in the same local circumstances.

Second, there is an odd action-at-a-distance here. The dog-form was available in Siberia, and somehow the Japanese wolves in the story made matter get affected by it thousands of kilometers away.

In fact, to make things worse, we can suppose the Japanese wolves only lagged a two or three milliseconds after their Siberian cousins. In that case, the Siberian wolves caused the existence of the dog-form, which then affected the coming-into-existence of a dog in Japan in a faster-than-light way. Indeed, in some reference frames, the Japanese dog came into existence shortly before the dog-form came into existence in Siberia. In those reference frames we have backwards causation: the Siberian wolves make a dog-form and that dog form organizes matter in Japan earlier.

If, on the other hand, every dog has a numerically distinct form, there is no difficulty: the Japanese wolves’ activity can be entirely causally independent of the Siberian ones’.

More on the centrality of morality

I think we can imagine a species which have moral agency, but moral agency is a minor part of their flourishing. I assume wolves don’t have moral agency. But now imagine a species of canids that live much like wolves, but every couple of months get to make a very minor moral choice whether to inconvenience the pack in the slightest way—the rest is instinct. It seems to me that these canids are moral agents, but morality is a relatively minor part of their flourishing. The bulk of the flourishing of these canids would be the same as that of ordinary wolves.

Aristotle argued that the fact that rationality is how we differ from other species tells us that rationality is what is central to our flourishing. The above thought experiment shows that the argument is implausible. Our imaginary canids could, in fact, be the only rational species in the universe, and their moral agency or rationality (with Aristotle and Kant, I am inclined to equate the two) is the one thing that makes them different from other canids, but yet what is more important to their flourishing is what they have in common with other canids.

At the same time, it would be easy for an Aristotelian theorist to accommodate my canids. One needs to say that the form of a species defines what is central to the flourishing, and in my canids, unlike in humans, morality is not so central. And one can somehow observe this: rationality just is clearly important to the lives of humans in a way in which it’s not so much these canids.

In this way, I think, the Aristotelian may have a significant advantage over a Kantian. For a Kantian may have to prioritize rationality in all possible species.

In any case, we should not take it as a defining feature of morality that it is central to our flourishing.

One might wonder how this works in a theistic context. For humans, moral wrongdoing is also sin, an offense against a loving infinite Creator. As I’ve described the canids, they may have no concept of God and sin, and so moral wrongdoing isn’t seen as sin by them. Could you have a species which does have a concept of God and sin, but where morality (and hence sin) isn’t central to flourishing? Or does bringing God in automatically elevate morality to a higher plane? Anselm thought so. He might have been right. If so, then the discomfort that one is liable to feel at the idea of a species of moral agents where morality is not very important could be an inchoate grasp of the connection between God and morality.

Aristotelian sciences

There is an Aristotelian picture of knowledge on which all knowable things are divided exhaustively and exclusively into sciences by subject matter. This picture appears wrong. Suppose, after all, that p is a fact from one science—say, the natural science fact that water is wet—and q is a fact from another science—say, the anthropological fact that people pursue pleasure. Then the conjunction p and q does not belong to either of these science, or any other science.

One might cavil that a conjunction isn’t another fact over and beyond the conjuncts, that to say p and q is to say p and to say q. I am sceptical, but it’s easy to fix. Just replace my counterexample with something that isn’t a conjunction but is logically equivalent to it, say the claim that it’s not the case that either p or q is false.

Of snakes and cerebra

Suppose that you very quickly crush the head of a very long stretched-out serpent. Specifically, suppose your crushing takes less time than it takes for light to travel to the snake’s tail.

Let t be a time just after the crushing of the head.

Now causal influences propagate at most at the speed of light or less, the crushing of the head is the cause of death, and at t there wasn’t yet time for the effects of the crushing to have propagated to the tip of the tail. Furthermore, assume an Aristotelian account of life where a living thing is everywhere joined with its form or soul and death is the separation of the form from the matter. Then at t, because the effects of crushing haven’t propagated to the tail, the tail is joined with the snake’s form, even though the head is crushed and hence presumably no longer a part of the snake. (Imagine the head being annihilated for greater clarity.)

Now as long as any matter is joined to the form, the critter is alive. It follows that at time t, the snake is alive despite lacking a head. The argument generalizes. If we crush everything but the snake’s tail, including crushing all the major organs of the snake, the snake is alive despite lacking all the major organs, and having but a tail (or part of a tail).

So what? Well, one of the most compelling arguments against animalism—the view that people are animals—is that:

1. People can survive as just a cerebrum (in a vat).

2. No animal can survive as just a cerebrum.

3. So, people are not animals.

But presumably the reason for thinking that an animal can’t survive as just a cerebrum is that a cerebrum makes an insufficient contribution to the animal functions. But the tail of a snake makes an even less significant contribution to the animal functions. Hence:

4. If a snake can survive as just a tail, a mammal can survive as just a cerebrum.

5. A snake can survive as just a tail.

6. So, a mammal can survive as just a cerebrum.

Objection: Only physical effects are limited to the speed of light in their propagation, and the separation of form from matter is not a physical effect, so that instantly when the head is crushed, the form leaves the snake, all at once at t.

Response: Let z be the spacetime location of the tip of the snake’s tail at t. According to the object, at z the form is no longer present. Now, given my assumption that crushing takes less time than it takes for light to travel to the snake’s tail, and that in one reference frame w is just after the crushing, there will also be a reference frame according to which z is before the crushing has even started. If at z the form is no longer present, then the form has left the tip of the tail before the crushing.

In other words, if we try to get out of the initial argument by supposing that loss of form proceeds faster than light, then we have to admit that in some reference frames, loss of form goes backwards in time. And that seems rather implausible.

Tables and organisms

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.

The inappropriateness of matter explanation of death

A standard Aristotelian explanation of when an organism dies—when its form separates from the body—is that this happens precisely when the organism’s body is no longer “fit” for the form, say because it completely fails to support the basic functions of the type of organism that the form specifies.

If I am right in my series of posts about pointy beginnings and ends (starting with this one), this is a problematic idea. For according to the arguments in the posts, in almost every reference frame, towards the very end of my life, my form (which is my soul) informs a tiny subatomic bit of matter. But no subatomic piece of my matter is supportive of the distinctive functioning of a human being: it is equally supportive of an oak tree, a frog, a human, or just a particle. If I survive until a moment when I am reduced to such a tiny organism, then the “fitness” criterion seems rather meaningless or at best trivial—for as far as this criterion goes, I could survive even if everything was destroyed in me other than a subatomic piece of my left little toe, since the subatomic pieces of my left little toe are no different from the subatomic pieces of any other part of me.

I still suspect that fitness of the body for the form plays some sort of a role in determining the time of death. Plausibly the causal powers of an organism, grounded in the form, are such that when the body stops being capable of supporting the functioning of the organism, the organism’s power to sustain its existence starts to fade, and the organism shrinks (as per my pointiness posts) and dies. However that shrinking is gradual, and not necessitated simply by the unfitness of the matter, but by the unfitness of the matter and the form’s causal powers which explain how quickly the unfitness of the matter is followed by death.

But maybe there is a way out of this argument using this line of thought.

Metaphysical semiholism

For a while I’ve speculated that making ontological sense of quantum mechanics requires introducing a global entity into our ontology to ground the value of the wavefunction throughout the universe.

One alternative is to divide up the grounding task among the local entities (particles and/or Aristotelian substances). For instance, on a Bohmian story, one could divide up 3N-dimensional configuration space into N cells, one cell for each of the N particles, with each particle grounding the values of the wavefunction in its own cell. But it seems impossible to find a non-arbitrary way to divide up configuration space into such cells without massive overdetermination. (Perhaps the easiest way to think about the problem is to ask which particle gets to determine the value of the wavefunction in a small neighborhood of the current position in configuration space. They all intuitively have “equal rights” to it.)

It just seems neater to suppose a global entity to do the job.

A similar issue comes up in theories that require a global field, like an electromagnetic field or a gravitational field (even if these is to be identified with spacetime).

Here is another, rather different task for a global entity in an Aristotelian context. At many times in evolutionary history, new types of organisms have arisen, with new forms. For instance, from a dinosaur whose form did not require feathers, we got a dinosaur whose form did require feathers. Where did the new form come from? Or suppose that one day in the lab we synthesize something molecularily indistinguishable from a duck embryo. It is plausible to suppose that once it grows up, it will not only walk and quack like a duck, but it will be a duck. But where did it get its duck form from?

We could suppose that particles have a much more complex nature than the one that physics assigns to them, including the power to generate the forms of all possible organisms (or at least all possible non-personal organisms—there is at least theological reason to make that distinction). But it does not seem plausible to suppose that encoded in all the particles we have the forms of ducks, elephants, oak trees, and presumably a vast array of non-actual organisms. Also, it is somewhat difficult to see how the vast number of particles involved in the production of a duck embryo would “divide up” the task of producing a duck form. This is reminiscent of the problem of dividing up the wavefunction grounding among Bohmian particles.

I am now finding somewhat attractive the idea that a global entity carries the powers of producing a vast array of forms, so that if we synthesize something just like a duck embryo in the lab, the global entity makes it into a duck.

Of course, we could suppose the global entity to be God. But that may be too occasionalistic, and too much of a God-of-the-gaps solution. Moreover, we may want to be able to say that there is some kind of natural necessity in these productions of organisms.

We could suppose several global entities: a wavefunction, a spacetime, and a form-generator.

But we could also suppose them to be one entity that plays several roles. There are two main ways of doing this:

1. The global entity is the Universe, and all the local entities, like ducks and people and particles (if there are any), are parts of it or otherwise grounded in it. (This is Jonathan Schaffer’s holism.)

2. Local entities are ontologically independent of the global entity.

I rather like option (2). We might call this semi-holism.

But I don’t know if there is anything to be gained by supposing there to be one global entity rather than several.

Relativistic Aristotelian beginnings

From purely geometrical facts, it follows that every spatially extended entity is arbitrarily small at its beginning and at its end in almost every reference frame.

A stronger result is possible in the special case of the beginnings of substances in simple Aristotelian substantial change. In simple Aristotelian substantial change, substance A wholly changes into a new substance B by having all of the terminal matter of A be the proximate matter of B without any temporal gap. I claim that then substance B comes into existence at a single point in every reference frame (i.e., the temporal bottom of B fits into a light cone).

For suppose that in some frame F, substance B comes into existence at two F-simultaneous and distinct spacetime points z₁ and z₂ (these could be points at which there is still A but arbitrarily close to points of B or these could be points at which there is B but that are arbitrarily close to points of A). Then there is another frame F′ at which z₁ is earlier than z₂. Let t′_i be the time of z_i in F′. Because of how the terminal matter of A is the proximate matter of B, there is matter of A arbitrarily close to z₂. Hence, arbitrarily close to time t′₂, we will have A still existing. However, arbitrarily close to time t′₁ we will have B already existing. Since t′₁ < t′₂, it follows that according to F, we will have A still existing after B has already come to exist. So the cause is partly later than the effect, which is absurd.

Maybe there is a way around this in more complex cases where multiple substances result in one new substance. I am not sure.

But here is another way to see the pointiness of the beginnings of substances if one accepts the Aristotelian idea that substances are individuated by their initial matter and we take matter to be infinitely subdivisible. Suppose in frame F, substance B begins at distinct and simultaneous points z₁ and z₂. Let F′ as before be a frame where z₁ is earlier than z₂. Then according to frame F, substance B already exists before its matter close to z₂ exists (I am assuming matter is infinitely subdivisible, and in this case a relevant division happened). So its matter close to z₂ cannot be essential to its individuation. And there is a third frame, F″, where z₁ is later than z₂, and so the matter close to z₁ cannot be essential to B’s individuation. It follows that none of the matter can be essential to the individuation of the substance if the substance starts at two or more places at once. Thus, a substance must start at a single point.

What happens in substantial change then? It seems that if we are to preserve relativity, we have to say that the new substance comes into existence at a single point z out of one or more preceding substances. If matter individuates (which I am dubious of), then the matter immediately around z is what does the individuating. The substance’s form then spreads out from z, perhaps incorporating more and more of the stuff around z, at the speed of light or less.

Of course, all these problems disappear if we allow for faster-than-light causation in substantial change. But that should be a last resort.

What has form?

On the question of what has a substantial form, I have tended to think something similar to van Inwagen’s answer to the question of what wholes there are. Namely, I assign form to:

1. organisms, and

2. fundamental objects in physics that are good candidates for being substances.

Regarding 2, if the correct physics is particle-based (which I doubt, in light of the apparent possibility of the world being in a superposition of states with different numbers of particles), these will be particles, or at least those particles that aren’t part of an organism. If the correct physics is field-based, the substances in physics will be fields (or maybe just one field-like object, namely “the global wavefunction”).

A lot of Aristotelians have substances, with forms, that are intermediate between (1) and (2), such as hydrogen atoms or water molecules or chunks of iron, and maybe astronomical objects like stars or galaxies. While I don’t have a knock-down argument against such substances, I also don’t see any reason to posit them.

My reasons for positing form for organisms and fundamental physical objects are quite different. For organisms, the reasons are largely normative. Parrots and oak trees can flourish or languish; they have ends and proper functions. In the case of humans, the normativity extends much further. Furthermore, we need well-defined boundaries for organisms for ethical reasons—there is reason not to harm an organism, especially but not only a human one—and there need to be well-defined persistence conditions for humans for moral responsibility. Something needs to ground all this. And the best candidate is form.

It is a central commitment of Aristotelianism that all of physical reality is grounded in physical substances and their accidents. But it is false that all of physical reality is grounded in organisms. There was a time when the physical universe had no organisms. So we need other substances. The fundamental objects of physics are the best candidates. They are active and have very clear kind-boundaries. The electromagnetic field is a different kind of thing from the gravitational field (which is just spacetime, according to Einstein). Photons are clearly different from electrons. (Though if it turns out that particle number is indeterminate, then particles won’t be the fundamental objects of physics.)

Granted, it is not obvious (and somewhat counterintuitive) that organisms have well-defined kind-boundaries and identity conditions. And it is not obvious (and somewhat counterintuitive) that fundamental physical objects have norms. But here I just take these to be consequences of the theory. Organisms have well-defined kind-boundaries and identity conditions, but we don’t know where they lie. Fundamental physical objects have normative properties, but I suspect they are perfect instances of their kind, and always do exactly what they should (C. S. Lewis says something like that in Mere Christianity).

Neither of my two reasons applies much to objects like atoms, molecules, chunks of stuff, or astronomical objects. There is no strong independent reason to suppose that they have normative properties in their own right, and their boundaries are, if not quite as fuzzy as those of organisms, pretty fuzzy. How far apart do I get to move a hydrogen atom from two oxygen atoms before I destroy a water molecule? How many sodium and chloride ions do I add to water to change it from water with impurities to a salt solution? (I suppose the concept of impurity pulls in the direction of thinking there are normative properties. But here is a reason to think this is mistaken. If impure water is languishing, then we have reason to distill water independently of any practical benefit to any organism, just for the sake of the water itself. That seems absurd.)

That the reasons don’t apply doesn’t show that there aren’t other reasons to posit substantial forms for these other candidates. But I don’t see such reasons. And so we can apply Ockham’s razor.

Complexity and skeptical hypotheses

Suppose a strong epistemic preference for simpler theories of the world. One might then think that a simulation hypothesis is automatically more complex than the best physical story about our world, because in addition to all the complexity of our simulated cosmos, it includes the complexity of whatever physical cosmos houses the hardware running the simulation.

But this need not be the case. The best physical story about our world makes our world include vast amounts of information that would not need to be included in the simulation. To simulate the history of the human race, we at most need information on the particles wihtin a sphere of radius about a hundred thousand light-years, so basically just the Milky Way Galaxy, a very small fraction of the particles in the world. And even that is a vast overstatement. One can surely have a low simulation resolution for a lot of stuff, simulating things only on a macroscopic level, and only including particle-level information when the simulated humans peer into scientific instruments. So the information content of the simulation software could be much, much lower than the information content of the physical world that our best theories say we live in.

But what about the simulation hardware itself? Wouldn’t that need to live in a complex physical universe? Maybe, but that universe need not be as complex as our physical theories claim ours to be. It could be a universe that has a level of physical complexity optimized for running the computing hardware. The granularity of that universe could be much coarser than ours. For instance, instead of that universe being made of tiny subatomic particles like ours, requiring many (but fewer and fewer with progress in miniaturization) particles per logic gate, we could suppose a universe optimized for computing whose fundamental building blocks are logic gates, memory cells, etc.

I am dubious, thus, whether we can rule out simulation hypotheses by an epistemic preference for simpler theories. The same goes for Berkeleian skeptical hypotheses on which there is no physical world, but we are disembodied minds being presented with qualia.

And of course the “local five minute hypothesis”, on which the universe is five minutes old and has a radius of five light-minutes, posits a world with intuitively much less complexity than the world of our best theories, a world with vastly fewer particles.

But if we cannot avoid skeptical hypotheses on grounds of complexity, how can we avoid them?

My current view is that we simply have to suppose that our priors are normatively constrained by human nature (which on my Aristotelian view is a form, a real entity), and human nature requires us to have non-skeptical priors. This is a very anthropocentric account.

An Aristotelian argument for presentism

Here is a valid argument:

1. Matter survives substantial change.

2. It is not possible that there exist two substances of the same species with the very same matter.

3. If matter survives substantial change, it is possible to have two substances of the same species existing at different times with the very same matter.

4. So, it is possible to have two substances of the same species existing at different times with the very same matter. (1,3)

5. If presentism is not true, and it is possible to have two substances at different times existing with the very same matter, it is possible to have two substances of the same species existing with the very same matter.

6. So, if presentism is not true, it is possible to have two substances of the same species existing with the very same matter.

7. So, presentism is true. (2, 5)

Let’s think about the premises. I think Aristotle is committed to (1)—it’s essential to his solution to the alleged problem of change. Claim (2) is a famous Aristotelian commitment. Claim (3) is very, very plausible—surely matter moves around in the world, and it is possible to set things up so that I have the same atoms that Henry VIII had at some point in his life. Claim (5) follows when we note that the only two plausible alternatives to presentism are eternalism and growing block, and on both views if two substances of the same species exist at different times with the very same matter, then at the later time it is true that they both exist simpliciter.

However, given that there is excellent Aristotelian reason to deny presentism, the above argument gives some reason for Aristotelians to deny (1) or (2). Or to be more radical, and just deny that there is any such thing as the “matter” of traditional Aristotelianism.

Matter and distinctness of substance

According to Aristotelianism, the distinctness of two items of the same species is grounded in the distinctness of their matter. This had better be initial matter, since an item might change all of its matter as it grows.

But now imagine a seed A which grows into a tree. That tree in time produces a new seed B. The following seems possible: the chunk of matter making up A moves around in the tree, and all of it ends up forming B. Thus, A and B are made of the same matter, yet they are distinct. (If one wants them to be at the same time, one can then add a bout of time-travel.)

Probably the best response, short of giving up the distinctness-matter link (which I am happy to give up myself), is to insist that a chunk of matter cannot survive substantial change. Thus, a new seed being a new substance must have new matter. But I worry that we now have circularity. Seed B has different matter from seed A, because seed B is a new substance, which does not allow the matter to survive. But what makes it a new substance is supposed to be the difference in matter.

Species flourishing

As an Aristotelian who believes in individual forms, I’m puzzled about cases of species-level flourishing that don’t seem reducible to individual flourishing. On a biological level, consider how some species (e.g., social insects, slime molds) have individuals who do not reproduce. Nonetheless it is important to the flourishing of the species that the species include some individuals that do reproduce.

We might handle this kind of a case by attributing to other individuals their contribution to reproduction of the species. But I think this doesn’t solve the problem. Consider a non-biological case. There are things that are achievements of the human species, such as having reached the moon, having achieved a four minute mile, or having proved the Poincaré conjecture. It seems a stretch to try to individualize these goods by saying that we all contributed to them. (After all, many of us weren’t even alive in 1969.)

I think a good move for an Aristotelian who believes in individual forms is to say that “No man or bee is an island.” There is an external flourishing in virtue of the species at large: it is a part of my flourishing that humans landed on the moon. Think of how members of a social group are rightly proud of the achievements of some famous fellow-members: we Poles are proud of having produced Copernicus, Russians of having launched humans into space, and Americans of having landed on the moon.

However, there is still a puzzle. If it is a part of every human’s good that “I am a member of a species that landed on the moon”, does that mean the good is multiplied the more humans there are, because there are more instances of this external flourishing? I think not. External flourishing is tricky this way. The goods don’t always aggregate summatively between people in the case of external flourishing. If external flourishing were aggregated summatively, then it would have been better if Russia rather than Poland produced Copernicus, because there are more Russians than Poles, and so there would have been more people with the external good of “being a citizen of a country that produced Copernicus.” But that’s a mistake: it is a good that each Pole has, but the good doesn’t multiply with the number of Poles. Similarly, if Belgium is facing off Brazil for the World Cup, it is not the case that it would be way better if the Brazilians won, just because there are a lot more Brazilians who would have the external good of “being a fellow citizen with the winners of the World Cup.”

Video: Three Mysteries of the Concrete

Alexander Pruss, “Three mysteries of the concrete: Causation, mind and normativity”, Christian Philosophy 2022, online, Cracow, Poland, September, 2022.

Substantial change and simultaneous causation

Some philosophers hold that all fundamental instances of causal relations are simultaneous. Many of these philosophers are Aristotelians, though presentism provides a plausible route to this simultaneity doctrine independently of (other) Aristotelian considerations. I think the phenomenon of substantial change shows that this simultaneity doctrine is false.

When a horse changes into a carcass (or an electron-positron pair changes into a pair of photons) we have substantial change. Clearly, in such a case, the horse is the cause of the carcass.

Notice, however, that there is never a time at which both the horse and the carcass exists. This means that substantial change involves properly diachronic rather than simultaneous causation. And while there is a way of building a diachronic causal explanation out of simultaneous causation and persistence, I don’t see any way of doing that here. The trick in that way was to use the persistence of one or both of the relata of simultaneous causation to extend the relationship temporally. But here adding the earlier persistence of the horse or the later persistence of the carcass does not help, because it is still not the case that the horse and carcass have any moment of co-existence.

I think that this is where an Aristotelian will try to bring in matter. The horse has matter. When the horse perishes, its matter persists and comes to make up a carcass. We have a simultaneous relation between the horse and its matter, and then we have a simultaneous relation between the matter and the carcass.

But this doesn’t solve the problem. For the horse doesn’t just cause a heap of matter—it causes a carcass of a particular sort, made up of substances other than the substance of the horse. What persists in substantial change, on a classic Aristotelian view, is at most the prime matter. And the prime matter does not explain the form had by the carcass (or the parts of the carcass, if the carcass counts as a heap of substances).

We can even see the problem at the level of the accidents. Take the horse’s shape S_h and the carcass’s very similar shape S_c. Then, clearly, S_h causes S_c. One can see this empirically: if one rearranges the legs of the dying horse, the carcass’s shape changes correspondingly. But the only relevant thing that on the Aristotelian story persists across the change from horse to carcass is the matter: S_h does not persist, nor does anything that grounds S_h.

On reflection, the last line of thought shows that there could be a problem even for accidental change. For it seems likely to the case that a substance has an accident A which partially causes itself to be replaced by an accident B incompatible with itself. For instance, consider my current shape S₁. In a moment, my body will shift into a new shape S₂. The shape S₁ partially causes the shape S₂. Yet there is never a moment where I have both shapes. Indeed, at any time where I have shape S₁, that’s the only shape I have. So, the shape S₁ cannot cause any different future shape of me, assuming causation is always simultaneous.

This problem may be less serious than for substantial change, however, because one might say that S₁ does not cause S₂, but there is some deeper persisting accident that first causes me to have S₁ and then causes me to have S₂, so that there is no more a causal relationship between S₁ and S₂ than between a shadow of a moving person first appearing in one place and then in another. I think it is implausible to think that all cases where an accident A partially causes its immediate replacement by an accident B can be accounted by positing A and B to be mere epiphenomena, but I am not sure I have as good an argument against this as I do against the substantial change case.

I conclude from all this that while simultaneous causation is possible, it is not the case that all diachronic causation reduces to simultaneous causation.

Spacetime and Aristotelianism

For a long time I’ve been inclining towards relationalism about space (or more generally spacetime), but lately my intuitions have been shifting. And here is an argument that seems to move me pretty far from it.

Given general relativity, the most plausible relationalism is about spacetime, not about space.

Given Aristotelianism, relations must be grounded in substances.

Here is one possibility for this grounding:

1. All spatiotemporal relations are symmetrically grounded: if x and y are spatiotemporally related, then there is an x-to-y token relation inherent in x and a y-to-x token relation inherent in y.

But this has the implausible consequence that there is routine backwards causation, because if I walk a step to the right, then that causes different tokens of Napoleon-to-me spatiotemporal relations to be found in Napoleon than would have been found in him had I walked a step to the left.

So, we need to suppose:

2. Properly timelike spatiotemporal relations are grounded only in the later substance.

But what about spacelike spatiotemporal relations? Presumably, they are symmetrically or asymmetrically grounded.

If they are symmetrically grounded, then we have routine faster-than-light causation, because if I walk a step to the right, then that causes different tokens of x-to-me spatiotemporal relations to be found in distant objects throughout the universe.

Moreover, on the symmetric grounding, we get the odd consequence that it is only the goodness of God that guarantees that you are the same distance from me as I am from you.

If they are asymmetrically grounded, then we have arbitrariness as to which side they are grounded on, and it is a regulative ideal to avoid arbitrariness. And we still have routine faster-than-light causation. For presumably it often happens that I make a voluntary movement and someone on the other side of the earth makes a voluntary movement spacelike related to my movement (because there are so many people!), and now wherever the spatiotemporal relations is grounded, it will have to be affected by the other’s movement.

I suppose routine faster-than-light causation isn’t too terrible if it can’t be used to send signals, but it still does seem implausible. It seems to me to be another regulative ideal to avoid nonlocality in our theories.

What are the alternatives to relationalism? Substantivalism is one. We can think of spacetime as a substance with an accident corresponding to every point. And then we have relationships to these accidents. There is a lot of technical detail to work out here as to how the causal relationships between objects and spacetime points and the geometry of spacetime work out, and whether it fits with an Aristotelian view. I am mildly optimistic.

Another approach I like is a view on which spacetime position is a nonrelational position determinable accident. Determinable accidents have determinates which one can represent as values. These values may be numerical (e.g., mass or charge), but they may be more complex than that. It’s easiest in a flat spacetime: spacetime position is then a determinable whose determinates can be represented as quadruples of real numbers. In a non-flat spacetime, it’s more complicated. One option for the values of determinate positions is that they are “pointed spacetime manifold portions”, i.e., intersections of a Lorentzian manifold with a backwards lightcone (with the intended interpretation that the position of the object is at the tip of the lightcone). (What we don’t want is for the positions to be points in a single fixed manifold, because then we have backwards causation problems, since as I walk around, the shifting of my mass affects which spacetime manifold Napoleon lived in.)

The Fourth Way, remixed

I’m playing with a reading—or perhaps remix—of Aquinas’ Fourth and Fifth Ways as giving a theistic solution to a problem that non-theistic Aristotelianism has no solution to. In this post, I will discuss the Fourth Way, and in the next, the Fifth.

The Fourth Way starts with the principle that degreed predicates, predicates where it makes sense to talk of “more” and “less”, are predicated in comparison to a maximal case. Infamously, however, given modern science, Aquinas’ down-to-earth illustration of that principle, namely that heat is predicated in comparison to the maximal case—allegedly, fire—is not not an example of the principle, but is actually a counterexample to it. There just is no such thing as maximum heat.

But nevermind heat. Aquinas wants to apply the Fourth Way to goodness. Now, the Aristotelian system that he has adopted already has an account of the good: a thing is good to the extent that it fulfills its proper function, a proper function that is defined by the thing’s form. Note that this account, too, does not match Aquinas’ gradation principle: unlike in Plato, forms are not self-predicating, so rather than the Form of the Sheep being the most ovine thing possible, the Aristotelian form of the sheep is immanent in each sheep, directing each sheep to an ovine perfection that no object actually meets.

But the Aristotelian account of the good is incomplete. While it allows us to compare the goodness of things within a kind—the four-legged sheep better fulfills its form than a three-legged one—there are also meaningful value comparisons between kinds. When Jesus says that we are “worth more than many sparrows” (Mt. 10:31), what he is saying is entirely commonsense. The human has much more good than the sparrow. The sparrow has more good than the worm. And the worm has more good than a mushroom. There really is a something like a great chain of being in reality. These comparisons, however, are not simply grounded in the immanent forms of things. The form of the worm need make no reference to mushrooms, nor that of a mushroom to worms.

Note that these interspecies value comparisons not only cannot be read off from the immanent forms, but sometimes they are in a kind of tension with the immanent forms. An earthworm’s form limits the neural development of the worm. Were the worm to grow a brain as big as a dog’s, it wouldn’t be able to burrow as well. And a mushroom that walked around would fail to be properly rooted as a mushroom ought.

Interspecies value comparison is a genuine problem that Aristotelianism faces, though some Aristotelians are willing to bite the bullet and deny the meaningfulness of such comparisons. Platonism did not face this problem—it could just talk of varying degrees of participation in the Form fo the Good—but Platonism lacked a satisfactory solution to the problem of intraspecies comparisons (Platonism’s solution would be to posit a self-exemplified Form for each species, which would involve the absurd idea that there is a perfect Sheep, which somehow manages to be both a sheep and immaterial, and we have all sorts of silly questions about whether it is male or female, what color it is, whether it has an even or an odd number of hairs, etc.)

A theistic Aristotelianism, however, has a solution to the problem of interspecies value comparison, in addition to non-theistic Aristotelianism’s solution to the intraspecies’ problem. There is a great chain of being defined by the ways in which the various species participate in the being that has all perfections. The human exemplifies intellection, the sparrow approximates omnipresence through rapid movement and exemplifies a significant degree of intelligence, the worm approximates omnipresence less well and has a lower degree of intelligence, while the mushroom at least exemplifies life. What grounds the goodness of these qualities independently of the forms of the things they are found in, and what makes for their axiological directionality (more intelligence is better than less), is then comparison to the maximal case, namely God.

Note that while this gives something like a great chain of being, it need not exactly be a great chain of being. We should not seek after a strictly total ordering—a partial ordering matches intuition better.

I don’t have a knock-down argument that theistic Aristotelianism is the only good Aristotelian solution to the problem of interspecies comparison. But it is a very good solution, and so once we have accepted basic Aristotelianism, it gives us significant reason to adopt the theistic version.

An earlier, more compact, version of this argument is here.

Formas aristotélicas y leyes de la naturaleza

Rafael Abuchedid kindly translated my piece on Aristotelian forms and laws of nature into Spanish.

Ill-suited matter, form, and immortality

A question I haven’t seen explored much by contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is that of matter ill-suited to the form. Is it metaphysically possible for a bunch of molecules arranged like a normal oak tree to have the form of a pig? It would be, of course, a very unfortunate pig. Or is some minimal amount of match between the actual arrangement of the molecules and the form needed?

On light-weight neo-Aristotelianism, on which forms are simply structural properties, the answer has got to be negative.

But on heavy-weight neo-Aristotelianism, on which forms are irreducible entities, it seems like there should be no such restrictions. Why couldn’t God unite the form of a pig with a body as of an oak tree, or the form of an oak tree with a body as of a human?

However, supposing that we take such a liberal view on which there is no such thing as matter metaphysically incompatible with a form (presumably pace historical Aristotelians), we then have a puzzle. If it would be metaphysically possible for a pig form to be united to a bunch of organic gases, why is it that when pigs are vaporized, they (we assume) invariably die? Here is my story. Assume for simplicity time is discrete. At each time t, a pig—in virtue of its form—has a causal power to continue existing at the next time. But causal powers have activation conditions. The activation condition for the causal power to continue existing at the next time is an appropriate arrangement of the pig’s body. When the pig’s body becomes so distorted that this activation condition is no longer satisfies, the pig loses the power to go on living. And so it dies. However, of course, God could make it keep on living by a miracle: a miracle can supply what the causal powers of a thing are incapable of.

This account has one somewhat implausible prediction. Suppose that some powerful being instantaneously scatters the molecules of an ordinary pig across the galaxy, so that at t₁ we have an ordinary pig and at the next time, t₂, the pig molecules are scattered. Because at t₁ the pig has a causal power of continuing to exist conditionally on its molecules being appropriately arranged at t₁, and this condition is indeed satisfies at t₁, the pig will live one moment in scattered condition at t₂—and then perish at the next moment, t₃.

On this account, external causes do not directly destroy an object. Rather, they destroy the activation condition for the object’s power to continue existing. When that activation condition is destroyed, the object (barring a miracle) ceases to exist. But it has that one last existential hurrah before it falls into nonbeing.

Does it follow that on a heavy-weight Aristotelianism with my story about death, a pig metaphysically could survive the annihilation of its body? I am not sure, but I am inclined to think so. Indeed, I am inclined to think that if we had a normal pig at t₁, and then at t₂ the matter of the pig were annihilated, the pig would still exist—reduced to an abnormal immateriality—for that one instant of t₂, and then, barring a second miracle, it would slide into non-being at t₃.

What about us? Well, Aquinas argues for our soul’s natural immortality on the grounds that the human soul has a proper operation that does not depend on the matter, namely pure thought. I have never before been impressed by the move from a proper operation independent of matter to natural immortality, but in my above (neo-Aristotelian but not very Thomistic) setting I see it having significant force. First, we have this question: What are the activation conditions for the human’s power-to-continue-existing? It makes sense that for a being whose only non-existential operations are material, the activation conditions should be purely material. But if a being has a proper operation not dependent on the matter, then it makes perfect sense for the activation conditions of its power-to-continue-existing not to include material conditions. In fact, something stronger can be said. It seems absurd for a thing to have a power to continue thinking whose activation conditions outstrip its power to continue existing. It would be like a power to play soccer without a power to move. So, it seems, if Aquinas is right that we have an immaterial operation, then we have the power to continue existing even absent a body. Of course, God can stop cooperating with any power we have, and if he stopped cooperating with our power-to-continue-existing, then we would stop existing (unless God miraculously sustained us in existence independently of that power!), but naturally we would continue to exist. Assuming, of course, Thomas is right about us having a proper operation that does not depend on matter, which is a different question.

(And unlike Thomas, I think we have immortality, not just our souls.)