Abstract
I argue that the Parmenidean argument against the possibility of change initiated a metaphysical response that (1) has dominated Western thought since, and (2) creates aporia for understanding mental phenomena. A return to a process framework is consistent with historical trends, consistent with contemporary physics, and permits metaphysical emergence – most especially the emergence of normative function and representation: intentionality. I show that contemporary alternative models of representation are still caught in the classic assumptions and, in consequence, cannot model or account for the inherent normative issues (Bickhard 2010).
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- 1.
Aristotle’s “elements” – earth, air, fire, and water – were not unchanging as they were for Empedocles, but he did postulate an unchanging ground (prime matter) beneath them. Also, translation vicissitudes have rendered “substance” for Aristotle as involving the problem of unity – the difference between an aggregate and a statue, a body and a living being. As will be addressed later in the text, problems of unity, of stability, are crucial, but I will not pursue any details of Aristotle’s thought on this (Gill 1989).
- 2.
Note that, once the Parmenidean framework is accepted, the fact/norm or substance/mental split is a forced consequence. Within the framework of that split, there are only three possibilities: posit two realms, one of substance, fact, and cause, the other of mentality, intentionality, and normativity – e.g., Aristotle’s substance and form; Descartes’ two kinds of substance; Kant’s noumenal and phenomenal; analytic philosophy’s scientific world of fact and linguistic/philosophical world of normativity – or try to make do with only the mental realm – e.g., Hegel and the idealists – or try to make do with only the physical realm – e.g., Hobbes, Hume (on most interpretations), Quine, and most contemporary scientists and philosophers. Transcending this split requires emergence, but emergence is what the entire framework was introduced to avoid.
- 3.
There is a partial exception to this point, and an important exception, in the normative phenomena of biological function.
- 4.
E.g., the Casimir effect, in which two metal plates held close to each other are pushed toward each other because the vacuum activity outside the plates is greater than that between the plates, thus inducing a pressure. The vacuum activity between the plates is reduced relative to outside the plates because that activity is restricted to quantized wave-like processes that will “fit” between the plates – the plates “fix” the vacuum just like the fingers and frets “fix” the guitar string, forcing a quantization of the wave processes in between them (Mostepanenko et al. 1997).
- 5.
I would argue, in fact, that there is no unitary kind of phenomena that answers to our notions of causality. Causality has to do with locations of idealized intervention (Piaget 1954, Woodward 2003), but there are multifarious processes to which such a notion of potential intervention might be applied, ranging from quantum processes to billiard balls to military or corporate commands.
- 6.
A word is in order about the notion of supervenience. X is defined to be supervenient on its base, consisting of the base set of particles, their properties, and their relations, if there can be no changes in X without corresponding changes in the base (Kim 1993, 1998). There are multiple variants on this intuition, and hundreds of pages addressing them, but, ultimately, they have little to do with the issues for which ‘supervenience’ was enlisted. First, the notion is so broad that it includes almost any naturalistic framework (Kim 1998), but, worse, it does not apply at all to a rather large class of the most important phenomena in the world.
In particular, supervenience does not apply to relational ‘properties’. Some pencil may be the longest pencil in the box, and cease to be so with the inclusion of a longer pencil, but the particles, properties, and relations that make up the pencil need not have changed (Teller 1992). Being the longest pencil in the box is not of great interest to most, but other much more important phenomena are similarly relational in nature. In particular, thermodynamic phenomena are relational, and, more specifically, being far from thermodynamic equilibrium is relational to the environment – therefore, it has no supervenience base. Furthermore, even on a particle view, a candle flame, for example, is constantly and necessarily changing the particles, etc. that make it up. The candle flame is a configuration of process flow and cannot be identified with any base. The same holds for any living thing, as well as hurricanes, and so on. Supervenience was born of and presupposes a static Aristotelian world of substances (or atoms) and their properties. It cannot handle, except by ad-hoc stipulation, phenomena that are inherently relational (Bickhard 2000). It cannot handle process.
- 7.
Kim’s more recent work has left relations out of the definition of the base. Relations, therefore, do contribute something beyond that base, because relations are not part of (the definition of) the base. This has allowed Kim to endorse a kind of emergence: new causal properties (perhaps mere regularities within his earlier framework) are now not reducible to the base because those relations are not in the base. On the other hand, a new configuration can have new properties precisely because that new system is the relational organization (Kim 1998). The move of placing relations in this special position is correct – relational organization is what emergence is supposed to depend upon – but it is not a well motivated shift so long as Kim stays within a particle framework. No metaphysical work can be done by such mere definitional shifts (Campbell and Bickhard, in preparation). Within a process framework, however, this move is not only motivated, it is forced.
- 8.
Beth’s theorem states that implicit definition and explicit definition are of equal power, and has often been used as an excuse to ignore implicit definition (Doyle 1985). But it just as easily legitimates implicit definition (Quine 1966). More deeply, however, Beth’s theorem holds only in certain combinations of kinds of logic and kinds of models considered for those logics. In some combinations, for example, first order predicate logic with finite models, implicit definition is more powerful than explicit definition. In general, implicit definition has always been found to be at least as powerful as explicit definition, and, in many cases, more powerful (Kolaitis 1990). It has never been found to be less powerful. Implicit definition cannot be ignored.
- 9.
It seems clear, in fact, that no meanings are derived as constructions out of basic empiricist inputs, in spite of valiant efforts to show how this is or could be done by, for example, Carnap.
- 10.
Such “truth in action” is the original meaning of truth. It has undergone major historical transformation, and, arguably, degeneration, since ancient times (Campbell 1992, in preparation).
- 11.
Elsewhere I argue that it is this implicitness of content that creates the frame problems (Bickhard and Terveen 1995): in being implicit, the content is unbounded relative to any attempt to explicitly exhaust it. The satisfiers of an implicit definition, whether formal or dynamic, cannot be simply enumerated because there is no bound on what needs to be included in the enumeration. A (meta-) perspective on an implicit definition might be able to derive a bound or to prove that the implicit definition is categorial (i.e., all models are isomorphic), but this requires examining the implicit definition itself, not just examining or enumerating its extension.
- 12.
This model of the representation of a small manipulable object is basically the translation into the interactive model of Piaget’s model of such objects (Piaget 1954). Such borrowing is possible because both models are interaction based; both are within a general pragmatist framework (Rosenthal 1983). The answer to the challenge of how such an interaction model could account for abstract representation, such as of number, is also roughly Piagetian, though in this case with wider divergences (Campbell and Bickhard 1986, Bickhard and Campbell 1989). Models of much wider ranges of representational and cognitive phenomena can be found elsewhere (Bickhard 1980, 2002, 2003, 2004b, 2005, 2006, in preparation; Bickhard and Richie 1983).
- 13.
Physiological textbooks commonly have several chapters on “sensory encoding”. Doesn’t that mean that there are basic “perceptual” encodings? A good question, but the answer is “No”. For this and other discussions, see Bickhard (2004, in preparation).
- 14.
Such arguments do not work in any case: if there is no process that can generate emergent representation, then evolution cannot do it either, and neither can cosmology, so representation cannot exist. On the other hand, if there is such a possibility, then there is no argument showing why evolution might be capable of it but learning and development not capable of it (Bickhard 1993).
- 15.
Cummins’ model of representation makes a fundamental distinction between the representational content and that which is represented – between content and target – and, therefore, can account for the possibility of error per se more readily than Fodor’s, for example, in which the content is prima facie determined by that which is being represented. Millikan’s’ model too has this positive characteristic: the content is determined in the past, while the represented is in the present, so the possibility of mismatch is not inherently problematic. But neither model can address system detectable error, and Cummins’ model does not address crucial normativity issues that determine what a content is, and certainly not as involved in system detectable error. See, e.g., Bickhard (2004, in preparation).
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Bickhard, M.H. (2010). Interactive Knowing: The Metaphysics of Intentionality. In: Poli, R., Seibt, J. (eds) Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8845-1_10
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