Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A proposal for a minimalist ontology

Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Cite this article

Abstract

This paper seeks to answer the following question: What is a minimal set of entities that form an ontology of the natural world, given our well-established physical theories? The proposal is that the following two axioms are sufficient to obtain such a minimalist ontology: (1) There are distance relations that individuate simple objects, namely matter points. (2) The matter points are permanent, with the distances between them changing. I sketch out how one can obtain our well-established physical theories on the basis of just these two axioms. The argument for minimalism in ontology then is that it yields all the explanations that one can reasonably demand in science and philosophy, while avoiding the drawbacks that come with a richer ontology.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Castaneda (1980, p. 106) uses the term “super-Humean world”, meaning a view that does not regard energy (or forces) as something that exists in the world; but there is no rejection of absolute space or natural intrinsic properties considered in Castaneda. I’m grateful to Gordon Belot for suggesting the term “Super-Humeanism” for this view of a relationalism that rejects intrinsic properties of the spatial relata.

  2. See Dürr (2013, in particular ch. 2) for Bohmian mechanics. See Dickson (2000), Allori et al. (2008) and Esfeld et al. (2014, 2017) for the Bohmian particles being characterized by their relative positions only.

  3. For the debate about explanations in Humeanism, see Loewer (2012) and then Lange (2013), Marshall (2015) and Miller (2015).

References

  • Albert, D. Z. (2015). After physics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allori, V., Goldstein, S., Tumulka, R., & Nino, Z. (2008). On the common structure of Bohmian mechanics and the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 59, 353–389.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbour, J. B., & Bertotti, B. (1982). Mach’s principle and the structure of dynamical theories. Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 382, 295–306.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell, J. S. (1987). Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belot, G. (2011). Geometric possibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belot, G. (2012). Quantum states for primitive ontologists. A case study. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2, 67–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhogal, H., & Perry, Z. R. (2017). What the Humean should say about entanglement. Noûs, 51, 74–94.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bigaj, T. (2015). Dissecting weak discernibility of quanta. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 50, 43–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, A. (2007). Nature’s metaphysics: Laws and properties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Briceno, S., & Mumford, S. (2016). Relations all the way down? Against ontic structural realism. In A. Marmodoro & D. Yates (Eds.), The metaphysics of relations (pp. 198–217). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callender, C. (2015). One world, one beable. Synthese, 192, 3153–3177.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castaneda, H. (1980). Causes, energy and constant conjunctions. In P. van Inwagen (Ed.), Time and cause. Essays presented to Richard Taylor (pp. 81–108). Dordrecht: Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, J., & Callender, C. (2009). A better best system account of lawhood. Philosophical Studies, 145, 1–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colin, S., & Struyve, W. (2007). A Dirac sea pilot-wave model for quantum field theory. Journal of Physics A, 40, 7309–7341.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deckert, D., Esfeld, M., & Oldofredi, A. (2016). A persistent particle ontology for QFT in terms of the Dirac sea. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. arXiv:1608.06141 [physics.hist-ph] (Forthcoming).

  • Dickson, M. (2000). Are there material objects in Bohm’s theory? Philosophy of Science, 67, 704–710.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dürr, D., Goldstein, S., & Zanghì, N. (2013). Quantum physics without quantum philosophy. Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esfeld, M. (1998). Holism and analytic philosophy. Mind, 107, 365–380.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esfeld, M. (2004). Quantum entanglement and a metaphysics of relations. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 35, 601–617.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esfeld, M. (2014). Quantum Humeanism, or: Physicalism without properties. Philosophical Quarterly, 64, 453–470.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esfeld, M., & Lam, V. (2011). Ontic structural realism as a metaphysics of objects. In A. Bokulich & P. Bokulich (Eds.), Scientific structuralism (pp. 143–159). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esfeld, M., Lazarovici, D., Hubert, M., & Dürr, D. (2014). The ontology of Bohmian mechanics. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65, 773–796.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esfeld, M., Lazarovici, D., Lam, V., & Hubert, M. (2017). The physics and metaphysics of primitive stuff. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 68, 133–161.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feynman, R. P. (1966). The development of the space-time view of quantum electrodynamics. Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1965. Science, 153, 699–708.

    Google Scholar 

  • Field, H. H. (1985). Can we dispense with space-time?. In P. D. Asquith & P. Kitcher (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1984 Biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association (Vol. 2, pp. 33–90).

  • French, S. (2014). The structure of the world. Metaphysics and representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, N. (2009). Humean reductionism about laws of nature. Unpublished manuscript http://philpapers.org/rec/HALHRA.

  • Heil, J. (2012). The universe as we find it. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huggett, N. (2006). The regularity account of relational spacetime. Mind, 115, 41–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, F. (1994). Armchair metaphysics. In J. O’Leary-Hawthorne & M. Michael (Eds.), Philosophy in mind (pp. 23–42). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keränen, J. (2001). The identity problem for realist structuralism. Philosophia Mathematica, 9, 308–330.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ladyman, J. (2007). On the identity and diversity of objects in a structure. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl 81, 1–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ladyman, J., & Ross, D. (2007). Every thing must go. Metaphysics naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lange, M. (2002). An introduction to the philosophy of physics: locality, fields, energy and mass. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lange, M. (2013). Grounding, scientific explanation, and Humean laws. Philosophical Studies, 164, 255–261.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leibniz, G. W. (1890). Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz. Band 7. Edited by C. I. Gerhardt. Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leibniz, G. W. (2000). G. W. Leibniz and S. Clarke: Correspondence. Edited by Roger Ariew. Indianapolis: Hackett.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1986a). Philosophical papers (Vol. 2). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1986b). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1994). Humean supervenience debugged. Mind, 412, 473–490.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loewer, B. (2012). Two accounts of laws and time. Philosophical Studies, 160, 115–137.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lowe, E. J. (2016). The are (probably) no relations. In A. Marmodoro & D. Yates (Eds.), The metaphysics of relations (pp. 100–112). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, D. (2015). Humean laws and explanation. Philosophical Studies, 172, 3145–3165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maudlin, T. (2007). The metaphysics within physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maudlin, T. (2010). Can the world be only wavefunction? In S. Saunders, J. Barrett, A. Kent, & D. Wallace (Eds.), Many worlds? Everett, quantum theory, and reality (pp. 121–143). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maudlin, T. (2015). The universal and the local in quantum theory. Topoi, 34, 349–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKenzie, K. (2014). Priority and particle physics: Ontic structural realism as a fundamentality thesis. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65, 353–380.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, E. (2014). Quantum entanglement, Bohmian mechanics, and Humean supervenience. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 92, 567–583.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, E. (2015). Humean scientific explanation. Philosophical Studies, 172, 1311–1332.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mumford, S. (1998). Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mumford, S. (2004). Laws in nature. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pettit, P. (1993). The common mind. An essay on psychology, society, and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saunders, S. (2006). Are quantum particles objects? Analysis, 66, 52–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaffer, J. (2010a). The internal relatedness of all things. Mind, 119, 341–376.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaffer, J. (2010b). Monism: The priority of the whole. Philosophical Review, 119, 31–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vassallo, A., & Esfeld, M. (2016). Leibnizian relationalism for general relativistic physics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 55, 101–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wheeler, J. A., & Feynman, R. P. (1945). Interaction with the absorber as the mechanism of radiation. Reviews of Modern Physics, 17, 157–181.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

A first version of this paper was presented at the conference “New trends in the metaphysics of science” in Paris in December 2015. I’m grateful to the participants for their feedback, to Max Kistler for the invitation to submit the paper to this special issue, and to three anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The programme set out in this paper is worked out in the book A minimalist ontology of the natural world, co-authored by Michael Esfeld and Dirk-André Deckert, forthcoming with Routledge in autumn 2017. Apart from the many discussions with Dirk-André Deckert, the view expressed in this paper is influenced by the work with my collaborators Mario Hubert, Dustin Lazarovici, Andrea Oldofredi and Antonio Vassallo.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Michael Esfeld

Authors
  1. Michael Esfeld
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Esfeld.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Esfeld, M. A proposal for a minimalist ontology. Synthese 197, 1889–1905 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1426-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1426-8

Keywords

search

Navigation