This book, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE: Uniscience and the Modern World, by Robert Hanna, presents and defends a critical philosophy of science and digital technology, and a new and prescient philosophy of nature and human thinking.
It is being made available here in serial format, but you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text–including the BIBLIOGRAPHY–of THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE HERE.
This forty-sixth installment contains section 4.4.
We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. (Pascal, 1995: #110, p. 28)
If there is any science humankind really needs, it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in [the world] that is assigned to humankind, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be human. (Rem 20: 45)
Natural science will one day incorporate the science of humankind, just as the science of humankind will incorporate natural science; there will be a single science. (Marx, 1964: p. 70, translation modified slightly)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A NOTE ON REFERENCES TO KANT’S WORKS
0. Introduction: Science, The Four Horsemen of The New Apocalypse, and The Uniscience
0.0 How Uncritical and Unreformed Science Is Literally Killing The Modern World
0.2 The Uniscience and Pascal’s Dictum
Chapter 1. Natural Piety: A Kantian Critique of Science
1.0 Kantian Heavy-Duty Enlightenment and The Uniscience
1.1 Kant’s Neo-Aristotelian Natural Power Grid
1.2 Kant, Natural Piety, and The Limits of Science
1.3 From Kant’s Anti-Mechanism to Kantian Anti-Mechanism
1.4 In Defense of Natural Piety
1.5 Scientific Pietism and Scientific Naturalism
1.6 How to Ground Natural Science on Sensibility
1.7 Sensible Science 1: Natural Science Without Natural Mechanism
1.8 Sensible Science 2: Natural Science Without Materialism/Physicalism
1.9 Sensible Science 3: Natural Science Without Scientism
1.10 Frankenscience, the Future of Humanity, and the Future of Science
2.1 Wrestling with Modernity: 1900-1940
2.1.1 Six Sociocultural or Sociopolitical Developments
2.1.2 Two Philosophical Developments: Classical Analytic Philosophy and First Wave Organicism
2.1.3 Architectural and Artistic Trends
2.2 The Historical Black Hole, The Mechanistic Mindset, and The Mechanistic Worldview: 1940-1980
2.2 The Emergence of Post-Classical Analytic Philosophy
2.2.3 The Two Images Problem and its Consequences
2.2.4 Modernism and Countercurrents in the Arts and Design
2.3.1 The Rise of Po-Mo Philosophy
2.3.2 Po-Mo Architecture: Unconstrained Hybridity
2.3.3 Other Apocalyptic Developments: Crises in Physics and Big Science, and The One-Two Punch
2.4 From The Mechanistic Worldview to Neo-Organicism
2.4.0 Against The Mechanistic Worldview
2.4.1 Seven Arguments Against The Mechanistic Worldview
2.4.1.1 Logical and Mathematical Arguments
2.4.1.2 Physical and Metaphysical Arguments
2.4.1.3 Mentalistic and Agential Arguments
2.4.2 Beyond The Mechanistic Worldview: The Neo-Organicist Worldview
2.4.2.1 The Neo-Organist Thesis 1: Solving The Mind-Body Problem
2.4.2.2 Dynamic Systems Theory and The Dynamic World Picture
2.4.2.3 The Neo-Organicist Thesis 2: Solving The Free Will Problem
2.4.2.4 Dynamic Emergence, Life, Consciousness, and Free Agency
2.4.2.5 How The Mechanical Comes To Be From The Organic
3.1 A Dual-Content Nonideal Cognitive Semantics for Thought-Shapers
3.2 The Cognitive Dynamics of Thought-Shapers
3.3 Constrictive Thought-Shapers vs. Generative Thought-Shapers
3.5 Thought-Shapers, Mechanism, and Neo-Organicism
3.6 Adverse Cognitive Effects of Mechanical, Constrictive Thought-Shapers
3.7 How Can We Acknowledge Organic Systems and Organic, Generative Thought-Shapers?
3.8 We Must Cultivate Our Global Garden
Chapter 4. How To Complete Physics
4.2 Frame-by-Frame: How Early 20th Century Physics Was Shaped by Brownie Cameras and Early Cinema
4.3 How to Complete Quantum Mechanics, Or, What It’s Like To Be A Naturally Creative Bohmian Beable
4.4 Can Physics Explain Physics? Anthropic Principles and Transcendental Idealism
Chapter 5. Digital Technology Only Within The Limits of Human Dignity
00. Conclusion: The Point Is To Shape The World
APPENDICES
Appendix 1. A Neo-Organicist Turn in Formal Science: The Case of Mathematical Logic
Appendix 2. A Neo-Organicist Note on The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem and “Skolem’s Paradox”
Appendix 3. A Neo-Organicist Approach to The Nature of Motion
Appendix 4. Sensible Set Theory
Appendix 5. Complementarity, Entanglement, and Nonlocality Pervade Natural Reality at All Scales
Appendix 6. Neo-Organicism and The Rubber Sheet Cosmos
BIBLIOGRAPHY
4.4 Can Physics Explain Physics? Anthropic Principles and Transcendental Idealism
Science is a dialogue between [hu]mankind and nature, the results of which have been unpredictable. At the beginning of the twentieth century, who would have dreamed of unstable particles, an expanding universe, self-organization, and dissipative structure? But what makes this dialogue possible? A time-reversible world would also be an unknowable world. Knowledge presupposes that the world affects us and our instruments, that there is an interaction between the knower and the known, and that this interaction creates a difference between past and future. Becoming is the sine qua non of science, and indeed, of knowledge itself. (Prigogine, 1997: p. 153)
Can contemporary physics, understood as a natural science that’s committed to the Standard Models, explain itself? Yes, but only if it supplements the Standard Models by affirming a philosophically defensible and scientifically respectable version of The Anthropic Principle that’s also equivalent with a suitably weak version of Kant’s metaphysics of transcendental idealism. Or so I’ll argue argue in this section.
Yet again, by the Standard Models in contemporary physics I mean the current Standard Model of Cosmology (SMC), together with a proper sub-part of SMC, the current Standard Model of Particle Physics (SMPP), as per Robson’s gloss (Robson, 2022):
The current Standard Model of Cosmology (SMC), also called the “Concordance Cosmological Model” or the “ΛCDM Model,” assumes that the universe was created in the “Big Bang” from pure energy, and is now composed of about 5% ordinary matter, 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy.[i]
[T]he SMC is based primarily upon two theoretical models: (1) the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SMPP),[ii] which describes the physics of the very small in terms of quantum mechanics and (2) the General Theory of Relativity (GTR),[iii] which describes the physics of the very large in terms of classical mechanics; it also depends upon several additional assumptions.
The main additional assumptions of the SMC are: (1) the universe was created in the Big Bang from pure energy; (2) the mass energy content of the universe is given by 5% ordinary matter, 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy; (3) the gravitational interactions between the above three components of the mass energy content of the universe are described by the GTR; and (4) the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on sufficiently large (cosmic) scales.
Unfortunately, both the SMPP and the GTR are considered to be incomplete in the sense that they do not provide any understanding of several empirical observations. The SMPP does not provide any understanding of the existence of three families or generations of leptons and quarks, the mass hierarchy of these elementary particles, the nature of gravity, the nature of dark matter, etc.[iv] The GTR does not provide any understanding of the Big Bang cosmology, inflation, the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, the nature of dark energy, etc.
Furthermore, the latest version of the SMC, the ΛCDM Model is essentially a parameterization of the Big Bang cosmological model in which the GTR contains a cosmological constant, Λ, which is associated with dark energy, and the universe contains sufficiently massive dark matter particles, i.e., “cold dark matter.” However, both dark energy and dark matter are simply names describing unknown entities.
Correspondingly, here are two informative non-technical glosses on The Anthropic Principle.
The anthropic principle is a group of principles attempting to determine how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, given that we could only exist in a particular type of universe to start with…. In other words, scientific observation of the universe would not even be possible if the laws of the universe had been incompatible with the development of sentient life. Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life, since if either had been different, we would not have been around to make observations. Anthropic reasoning is often used to deal with the fact that the universe seems to be fine tuned.
There are many different formulations of the anthropic principle. Philosopher Nick Bostrom counts them at thirty, but the principles can be divided into “weak” and “strong” forms, depending on the types of cosmological claims they entail. The weak anthropic principle (WAP) such as the one defined by Brandon Carter, states that the universe’s ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias (specifically survivorship bias). Most often such arguments draw upon some notion of the multiverse for there to be a statistical population of universes to select from. However, a single vast universe is sufficient for most forms of the WAP that do not specifically deal with fine tuning. The strong anthropic principle (SAP), as proposed by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it. (Wikipedia, 2022k)
We could not possibly have existed in conditions that are incompatible with the existence of observers. The famous weak anthropic principle (WAP) … suggests that this apparently trivial point may have important consequences:
[W]e must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers. (Carter, 1974: p. 293, Carter’s emphasis)
Our methods of empirical observation are unavoidably biased towards detecting conditions which are compatible with the existence of observers. For example, even if life-hostile places vastly outnumber life-friendly places in our universe, we should not be surprised to find ourselves in one of the relatively few places that are life-friendly and seek an explanation for this finding, simply because—in virtue of being living organisms—we could not possibly have found ourselves in a life-hostile place. Biases that result from the fact that what we observe must be compatible with the existence of observers are referred to as observation selection effects. The observation selection effects emphasized by the weak anthropic principle with respect to location in the universe are emphasized by what Carter dubs the strong anthropic principle (SAP) with respect to the universe as a whole:
[T]he Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit within it the creation of observers within it at some stage. (Carter, 1974: p. 294)
Carter’s formulation of the SAP has led some authors, most influentially Barrow and Tipler (Barrow and Tipler, 1986), to misinterpret it along teleological lines and as thereby categorically different from the WAP. (Simon, 2018)[v]
The philosophical upshot, so far, is threefold.
First, both versions of The Anthropic Principle—i.e., weak (WAP) and strong (SAP)—go significantly beyond what’s contained in the Standard Models per se, by requiring an asymmetric or irreversible, forward-directed arrow of time, and therefore also requiring the manifest reality of time (Prigogine, 1997; Smolin, 2013, 2014). Moreover, if, as per the epigraph of this section, Prigogine is correct (and I think that he is), then postulating the manifest reality of an asymmetric or irreversible, forward-directed arrow of time, is a necessary condition of adequately explaining human scientific knowledge
Second, although there are various possible interpretations of WAP, I’m going to interpret it as the thesis that our nomological possibility as a biological species is built into in the natural world from The Big Bang forward. It’s especially to be noted that WAP is consistent with various versions of metaphysical materialism/physicalism, universal natural determinism, universal natural indeterminism, and universal natural mechanism.
Third, although there are also various possible interpretations of SAP, some of which take SAP to be consistent with WAP, I’m going to interpret SAP as the categorically distinct thesis that the nomological or metaphysical necessity of our existence as sentient, sapient minded animals is built into the natural world from The Big Bang forward. It’s especially to be noted that WAP is consistent with classical theism and the existence of a “3-O” creator-God: omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
Now, given (i) that we actually exist, (ii) that we also know a priori that our actual existence logically follows from the fact of our conscious and self-conscious thinking (the Cartesian Cogito: necessarily, if I’m thinking, then I actually exist), (iii) that the natural world actually exists, and (iv) that the natural world actually existed long before rational “human, all-too-human” minded animals began to exist as a biological species, then since actuality entails possibility, it follows that we cannot be either logically, metaphysically, or nomologically impossible. Or otherwise and now positively put, necessarily, given that we actually exist and also know a priori that our actual existence follows from the fact of our conscious and self-conscious thinking, then the natural universe, from The Big Bang forward, structurally contains our real possibility as rational “human, all-too-human” minded animals. This is what I call The Moderate Anthropic Principle, aka MAP.
MAP is categorically stronger than WAP, because MAP entails the denial of metaphysical materialism/physicalism, universal natural determinism, universal natural indeterminism, and universal natural mechanism alike. But MAP is also categorically weaker than SAP, since MAP rules out any version of classical theism. Indeed, and perhaps surprisingly, MAP is necessarily equivalent with a suitably weak version of Kant’s metaphysics of transcendental idealism. Let me explain.
What I’m talking about—see also chapter 1 above—is what I call weak transcendental idealism, aka WTI, which is my interpretation of a doctrine that Kant presented and defended in the Critique of Pure Reason in order to explain the real possibility of a priori or non-empiricalnecessary truth and knowledge in logic, mathematics, metaphysics, and natural science, as well as the real possibility of a posteriori or empirical/observational contingent truth and knowledge in natural science.
According to Kant, a mental representation is transcendental when it’s either part of, or derived from, our non-empirical (hence a priori) innately specified spontaneous cognitive capacities. Then transcendental idealism can be stated as a two-part philosophical equation: transcendental idealism = representational transcendentalism + cognitive idealism, as per the following definitions.
(i) Representational Transcendentalism: necessarily, all the forms or structures of rational human cognition are generated a priori by the empirically-triggered, yet stimulus-underdetermined, activities of our innately specified spontaneous cognitive capacities, i.e., cognitive competences, cognitive faculties, or cognitive powers. (CPR A11/B25 and Prol 4: 373n.)
(ii) Cognitive Idealism: necessarily, all the proper objects of rational human cognition are nothing but sensory appearances or phenomena, i.e., mind-dependent, spatiotemporal, directly perceivable, manifestly real objects, and never things-in-themselves or noumena, i.e., mind-independent, non-sensible, non-spatiotemporal, real essences constituted by intrinsic non-relational properties. (CPR A369 and Prol 4: 293-294, 375)
Now (i) + (ii) also = Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in metaphysics:
Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus…. (CPR Bxvi),
which I will rationally reconstruct as The Conformity Thesis:
It’s not the case that rational human minds passively conform to the objects they cognize, as in classical Rationalism and classical Empiricism. On the contrary, necessarily, all the proper objects of rational human cognition conform to—i.e., they have the same form or structure as, or are isomorphic to—the forms or structures that are non-empirically generated by our innately specified spontaneous cognitive capacities. So necessarily, the essential forms or structures of the manifestly real world we cognize are mind-dependent.
In this way, all versions of transcendental idealism hold that the manifestly real world we directly perceive conforms to the non-empirical forms or structures of our innately specified cognitive capacities in some modally robust sense.
Many Kantians are also committed to strong transcendental idealism, aka STI, which says: (i) things-in-themselves (aka “noumena,” or Really Real things, i.e., things as they could exist in a “lonely” way, altogether independently of rational human minds or anything else, by virtue of their intrinsic non-relational properties) really exist and cause our perceptions, although rational human cognizers only ever perceive mere appearances or subjective phenomena, (ii) rational human cognizers actually impose the non-empirical structures of their innate cognitive capacities onto the manifestly real world they cognize, i.e., necessarily, all the essential forms or structures of the proper objects of human cognition are literally type-identical to the a priori forms or structures that are non-empirically generated by our innately specified spontaneous cognitive capacities, and (iii) necessarily, if either all rational human cognizers went out of existence or all minded beings of any kind went out of existence, then so would the manifestly real world they cognize, and if either no rational human cognizers had ever existed or no minded beings of any kind had ever existed, then the manifestly real world would never have existed. But I think that STI is clearly objectively false. More specifically, I think that it’s clearly objectively false that if either all actual human minds, including mine, or all other kinds of minds, went out of existence, then the manifestly real world would necessarily go out of existence too. I think that it is clearly false that, for example, the actual existence of Pike’s Peak—a 14,000 foot mountain near Colorado Springs, CO, USA, with a cog railway that runs right to the summit (Wikipedia, 2022l)—strictly depends on the actual existence of human minds, including mine, or on the actual existence of any other kinds of minds. Clearly, I think, Pike’s Peak can exist even if everyone, and every minded being, including myself, does not actually exist, and in fact I think that Pike’s Peak actually existed millions of years before any conscious minds of any kind existed, including of course the conscious minds of all rational human animals, obviously including mine. In this way, clearly, a great many things, including mountains like Pike’s Peak, exist objectively—for example, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, kings, seas that do not boil, and pigs without wings. They are, all of them, neither subjective (i.e., strictly dependent on individual minds of any kind) nor relative (i.e., strictly dependent on cultures or societies of any kind). It’s clear that they are all objectively manifestly real, and to that extent, mind-independent. So STI is clearly objectively false. QED.
On the contrary, then, I believe that Kantians should be committed instead to the objective truth of WTI, which says: (i) things-in-themselves/noumena are logically possible, but at the same time it is knowably unknowable and unprovable whether noumena/things-in-themselves exist or not, hence for the purposes of an adequate anthropocentric or “human-faced” metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, they can be ignored (= radical agnosticism and methodological eliminativism about noumena/things-in-themselves), (ii) necessarily, all the proper objects of rational human cognition have the same forms or structures as—i.e., they are isomorphic to—the forms or structures that are non-empirically generated by our innately-specified spontaneous cognitive capacities, but at the same time those manifestly real worldly forms or structures are not literally type-identical to those a priori cognitive forms or structures (= the isomorphism-without-type-identity thesis), (iii) it’s a necessary condition of the existence of the manifestly real world that if some rational human animals were to exist in that world, then they would know that world a priori and also a posteriori, at least to some extent (= the counterfactual knowability thesis), and (iv) the manifestly real world has at some earlier times existed without rational human minded animals, or any other minded beings, to know it, and could exist even if no rational human minded animals, or any other minded beings, ever existed to know it, even though some rational human animals now actually exist in that manifestly real world (for example, I [R.H.]), who do in fact know it a priori (for example, by my knowing some simple necessary truths of logic and mathematics, and also by my knowing that necessarily, if I’m thinking, then I actually exist) and also a posteriori, at least to some extent (= the existential thesis).
Here’s a slightly more precise formulation of WTI’s crucial thesis (iii), the counterfactual knowability thesis:
Ap □ (∀x) (∃y) [MRWx → {(RHAy & MRWy) □→ Kyx}]
Definitions:
Ap □ = a priori necessarily
P □→ Q = If P were the case, then Q would be the case
MRWx = x belongs to the manifestly real world
MRWy = y belongs to the manifestly real world
RHAy = y is a rational human animal
Kyx = y knows x a priori and also a posteriori, at least to some extent
Natural Language Translation:
A priori necessarily, anything that belongs to the manifestly real world is such that if some rational human animals were to exist in that world, then they would know that thing and that world a priori and also a posteriori, at least to some extent.
And here are two crucial implications of this thesis. First, the counterfactual knowability thesis holds even if no rational human minded animals, or any other minded beings, actually exist, or ever actually existed.[vi] Second, if anything is such that rational human minded animals are unable to know it, at least to some extent—for example, things-in-themselves or noumena—then that thing does not belong to the manifestly real world. The first crucial implication conveys the weak mind-independence and ontic integrity of the manifestly real world. The manifestly real world is what it is, even no minds actually exist or ever actually existed. And the second crucial implication conveys the weak mind-dependence and inherent knowability of the manifestly real world. The manifestly real world is what it is, only in relation to actual or possible rational “human, all-too-human” animal minds like ours. The single upshot of the two crucial implications is that the manifestly real world is as real as anything can ever possibly be, on the reasonable assumption that some epistemic-luck-resistant, global-new-evil-demon-skepticism-resistant rational human knowledge of that world is actual or really possible. Or more precisely, and perhaps most surprisingly of all for anti-Kantians: any epistemically tenable realism—that is, any realism that’s truly capable of avoiding epistemic luck (i.e., the merely accidental connection between truth and conscious belief) and global-new-evil-demon-skepticism (i.e., the worry that in a nearby possible world we’d have the very same beliefs and the same apparent evidence for holding those beliefs, but they’d all be false, hence we aren’t rationally justified in holding those beliefs in the actual world [Cohen, 1984])—requires WTI (Hanna, 2015a: chs. 6-8).
The Moderate Anthropic Principle, which, as we’ve seen, is equivalent with Weak Transcendental Idealism, distinctively gets between The Weak Anthropic Principle and The Strong Anthropic Principle, and also adequately explains the real possibility of contemporary physics as a natural science. MAP is therefore a theoretically unique anthropic principle (i.e., categorically it’s neither WAP nor SAP) that’s not only philosophically defensible in that it equally avoids the Scylla of materialism/physicalism, universal natural determinism/indeterminism, and universal natural mechanism, and the Charybdis of classical theism, but also scientifically respectable in the strong sense that it extends the Standard Models in a way that enables physics to explain physics as a natural science that includes human a priori knowledge of necessary truths of logic and mathematics, human a priori knowledge of natural laws (see section 1.1 above), and also human a posteriori knowledge of contingent empirical/observational facts. Obviously, if physics can’t explain physics, then it’s explanatorily incomplete. In section 4.3, I argued that a neo-organicist re-interpretation of the Bohmian hidden variables approach to quantum mechanics, together with creative piety, not only metaphysically/ontologically but also epistemically completes quantum mechanics and The Standard Models of cosmology and particle physics. So The Moderate Anthropic Principle further completes physics in this self-explanatory respect.
NOTES
[i] Ade PAR et al. (Planck Collaboration). Planck 2013 results. I Overview of products and scientific results. Astronomy and Astrophysics. 2014;571:A1, 48pp. (Robson, 2022: footnote 1).
[ii] Gottfried K, Weisskopf VF. Concepts of Particle Physics. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press; 1984. 189pp. (Robson, 2022: footnote 2).
[iii] Einstein A. The basics of general relativity theory. Annals of Physics. 1916;49:769-822. (Robson, 2022: footnote 3).
[iv] Robson BA. The generation model of particle physics. In: Kennedy E, editor. Particle Physics. Rijeka: InTech; 2012. pp. 1-28. (Robson, 2022: footnote 4).
[v] I’ve imported some of Simon’s infratextual references into my main text.
[vi] It’s generally believed that not only Kant himself, but also all Kantians, must accept STI. For example, in Realistic Rationalism, Jerrold Katz claims that “however Kant’s transcendental idealism is understood, it locates the ground of [real] facts within ourselves in at least the minimal sense that it entails that such facts could not have existed if we (or other intelligent beings) had not existed” (Katz, 1998: p. 9, underlining added). But in fact that’s not correct: although this claim is true of STI, it’s false of WTI.
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