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Chemistry, context and the objects of thought

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Abstract

In this paper we wish to raise the following question: which conceptual obstacles need to be overcome to arrive at a scientific and theoretical understanding of the mind? In the course of this examination, we shall encounter methodological and explanatory challenges and discuss them from the point of view of the philosophy of chemistry and quantum mechanics. This will eventually lead us to a discussion of emergence and metaphysics, thereby focusing on the status of objects. The question remains whether this could be interpreted in terms of a re-description or dissolution of seemingly troubling problems in the philosophy of mind, or whether it further emphasizes the problematic: the ubiquitous and irreducible role of mind and consciousness in scientific (and other) activities.

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Notes

  1. The conceptual implications of the Born–Oppenheimer approximation have duly been discussed in the literature, usually in the context of the reduction of molecular structure and its quasi-classical behavior (Wooley and Sutcliffe 1977; Primas 1983, 1998) Note however, that with respect to mereology, the main point isn’t whether the adiabatic approximation results in (semi-) classical behavior or not. The product-Ansatz above is still consistent with a nuclear wavefunction that is not classical in the sense of assigning well-localized positions to each nuclei, as could for example be seen in solutions which are describing “tunneling motions” (Albert et al. 2013).

  2. Of course, a relation like the above can be introduced for all different kinds of ensembles, and it is quite common to define such a “temperature” in diverse contexts (e.g., in NMR-spectroscopy a negative “spin-temperature” is sometimes defined for inversely populated levels of quantum states). However, the macroscopic property expressed by the 0th law of thermodynamics need not necessarily follow from this.

  3. In philosophical parlance, the reduction of relations to intrinsic properties of things is dependent on the supervenience of relations on intrinsic properties. If supervenience wouldn’t hold, then one could have changes in relational structure without accompanying changes in “intrinsic nature”, and this leaves open the possibility of having two intrinsically identical bodies which differ relationally. The issue of relationalism and supervenience would need more discussion, which, however, lies outside of the scope of this article.

  4. In a broadly Husserlian sense (2001, Chap. 3.1).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Harald Atmanspacher, Marina Banchetti-Robino, Michael Hampe and the Chair for Philosophy at ETH Zürich for help and discussion. We'd also like to express our gratitude to Karen Kepler for reading a manuscript version of this work and to the audience at ISPC 2016 in Boca Raton. This work was financially supported by an ETH Research Grant, ETH-16 13-1.

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    Robert Prentner

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Prentner, R. Chemistry, context and the objects of thought. Found Chem 19, 29–41 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-017-9273-8

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