Anti-Reductionist Philosophy of Science Against Mechanism, #4.

(Murray, 2024)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2. Cronin-Walker Assembly Theory and the Anti-Reductionist Turn

3. Physics is Not Causally Closed: Nicolas Gisin’s Anti-Mechanism

5. Donald Hoffman’s Case Against Reality: There are No Brains

6. Colin McGinn’s Basic Structures of Reality: A Philosophical Analysis of Physics-Based Metaphysics and Structural Realism

7. Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: A Defense of Teleological Naturalism and a Critique of Materialist Reductionism

8. Kevin Mitchell’s Free Agents: A Biological Case Against Mechanistic Determinism

9. Conclusion

The essay below will be published in six installments; this, the fourth, contains sections 5 and 6.

But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of the essay, including the REFERENCES, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.

5. Donald Hoffman’s Case Against Reality: There are No Brains

Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at UC Irvine, presents a radical challenge to our understanding of perception and reality in his work, and main book, The Case Against Reality (2020). His central thesis rests on several interconnected arguments, which fundamentally challenge the mechanistic worldview, as follows.

1. The Interface Theory of Perception (ITP)

Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception argues that our perceptual systems function like a computer desktop interface, showing us useful icons rather than the underlying reality. Just as desktop icons hide the complex computational processes occurring within a computer, so too our evolved perceptions hide the true structure of reality behind a simplified, actionable interface.

2. The Fitness-Beats-Truth (FBT) Theorem

The mathematical foundation of Hoffman’s argument is the Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem, which demonstrates through evolutionary game theory that natural selection favors perceptual strategies that maximize fitness payoff rather than those that accurately represent objective reality. Using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms, Hoffman and his collaborators found that “veridical perceptions”—strategies based on to the “true structure” of the world—are routinely dominated by nonveridical fitness-based strategies.

3. Conscious Realism

Hoffman proposes “conscious realism”: the view that “objective reality” is just the points of view of conscious agents. This represents a form of idealism in which consciousness, rather than matter, constitutes the fundamental substrate of reality.

4. Evolution as Reality-Hiding Mechanism

Hoffman suggests that evolution may have shaped our perceptions to create an interface analogous to a computer desktop interface, where objects like snakes, and even the moon, may be mere icons that guide our behavior.

How Hoffman’s Position Undermines Mechanism

Hoffman’s arguments present several fundamental challenges to mechanistic theories, as follows.

1. Causal Efficacy of Physical Properties

Classical mechanism assumes that physical properties and structures have genuine causal power. However, if Hoffman is correct that we never perceive reality as it truly is, then our entire scientific understanding of physical mechanisms, from molecular interactions to neural processes, might be fundamentally misconceived. We would be studying the properties of our perceptual interface rather than the underlying causal structures.

2. Reductive Physicalism

Mechanism typically embraces physicalism, the view that mental phenomena can ultimately be reduced to or explained by physical processes. Hoffman’s conscious realism inverts this relationship, making consciousness fundamental and physical objects derivative constructs of our perceptual interface. This directly contradicts mechanistic attempts to explain consciousness through neural mechanisms.

3. Scientific Realism

Mechanism depends on scientific realism, namely, the assumption that our scientific theories approximately describe mind-independent reality. If the FBT theorem is correct and veridical perceptions are generically driven to extinction, then our scientific instruments and measurements, being extensions of our evolved perceptual systems, might also be systematically misleading us about reality’s true nature.

4. Mechanistic Explanation

The mechanistic worldview seeks to explain phenomena through the interaction of parts according to physical laws. But if space, time, and physical objects are merely interface elements rather than fundamental features of reality, then mechanistic explanations become explanations of appearances rather than of reality itself.

5. The Problem of Epistemic Access

Mechanism assumes we can gain knowledge about reality through empirical investigation. Hoffman’s view suggests a deeper skeptical problem: if our perceptual and cognitive apparatus systematically distorts reality for adaptive purposes, how can we ever transcend these limitations to gain genuine knowledge of the world as it truly is? This leads to the problem of epistemological skepticism, and the issue of whether an “external” reality exists at all.

Critical Considerations

While Hoffman’s arguments are philosophically provocative, they face several challenges, as follows.

Self-Refutation Concerns: Critics argue that if our evolved cognitive capacities are systematically misleading, this would undermine the reliability of the evolutionary theorising and mathematical reasoning that supports Hoffman’s own position. True, but it also undermines mechanism as well, as a type of Samson option.

Pragmatic Consequences: The practical success of science and technology based on mechanistic assumptions suggests that our perceptions, while perhaps not perfectly veridical, must track reality with sufficient accuracy in order to enable effective action.

Alternative Interpretations: The FBT theorem might be interpreted more modestly as showing that perception is selective and simplified rather than fundamentally illusory.

Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality presents a sophisticated challenge to the mechanistic worldview by questioning the fundamental assumptions about the relationship between perception, knowledge, and reality that underpin mechanistic science. If true, it cuts the epistemic ground from under mechanism in a most profound way. We will not attempt to decide that question here, but leave it as one more challenge to mechanism.

6. Colin McGinn’s Basic Structures of Reality: A Philosophical Analysis of Physics-Based Metaphysics and Structural Realism

Colin McGinn’s Basic Structures of Reality (McGinn, 2011) represents a significant philosophical undertaking that bridges contemporary physics and fundamental metaphysics. In this collection of essays, McGinn, known primarily for his work in philosophy of mind and “new mysterianism,” ventures into the philosophy of physics in order to examine the most basic categories of reality, via philosophical reflections on fundamental physics. This section provides a brief analysis of McGinn’s arguments, examining his defense of structural realism, his epistemological skepticism about physical knowledge, and his broader philosophical project of understanding the limits of human cognition in comprehending reality’s fundamental nature.

The book’s central thesis extends McGinn’s mysterian philosophy beyond consciousness to encompass our understanding of physical reality itself. McGinn defends a version of “structuralism”: the thesis that our knowledge is partial and that we may never fully comprehend the intrinsic nature of the physical world described by modern physics.

McGinn is best known for his work in philosophy of mind, and in particular for what is known as “the new mysterianism,” the idea that the human mind is not equipped to solve the problem of consciousness. This perspective, which argues for cognitive closure, meaning that we cannot in principle understand the nature of consciousness, provides the philosophical foundation for his approach to fundamental physics.

McGinn’s “mysterian” outlook acknowledges that human intelligence is a local, contingent, temporal, and practical feature of human existence, pointing to inevitable limitations in our capacity to understand reality’s fundamental nature.

The Extension to Physical Reality

In Basic Structures of Reality, McGinn extends his mysterian insights beyond consciousness to encompass our understanding of physical reality itself. The book represents an attempt to determine, through philosophical analysis of basic physics, how much we can genuinely know about the world physics describes. Here are its core philosophical arguments.

1. Structural Realism and the Limits of Physical Knowledge

McGinn’s central philosophical position in the book is a defense of structural realism, the view that our scientific knowledge captures only the structural or relational properties of reality, not its intrinsic nature. This position emerges from several interconnected arguments, as follows.

The Epistemic Argument: Our knowledge of physical reality is necessarily mediated through observational instruments and mathematical representations. We can know how things relate to each other and how they behave, but not what they intrinsically are.

The Historical Argument: The history of physics shows repeated paradigm shifts where supposedly fundamental properties (like absolute space, caloric fluid, or ether) are revealed to be misconceptions. This suggests that current physics may similarly misrepresent reality’s intrinsic nature.

The Representational Argument: Mathematical physics provides formal structures that successfully predict and control phenomena, but these structures may bear no resemblance to the intrinsic qualities of what they describe.

2. The Nature of Matter

McGinn covers such topics as the definition of matter, the nature of space, motion, gravity, electromagnetic fields, the character of physical knowledge, and consciousness and meaning. His analysis of matter proceeds through several stages, as follows.

Traditional Conceptions: McGinn examines how our common-sense understanding of matter as solid, impenetrable substance has been progressively undermined by modern physics.

Quantum Mechanical Challenges: Quantum mechanics suggests that matter, at its most fundamental level, consists of entities that violate classical intuitions about substantiality, locality, and definiteness.

Structural Residue: What remains after these conceptual revolutions is purely structural information, equations describing how “matter” behaves and relates, but no positive conception of what it intrinsically is.

3. Space, Time, and Motion

McGinn’s treatment of spatiotemporal concepts continues his structuralist theme, as follows.

The Reality of Space: Following the development from Newton through Einstein to contemporary quantum gravity theories, McGinn explores whether space is a substantial arena for physical events or merely a network of relations.

Temporal Puzzles: The nature of time, particularly the problem of temporal direction and the relationship between physical and psychological time, receives careful analysis.

Motion and Change: Classical concepts of motion become problematic in relativity and quantum mechanics, leading McGinn to question whether we can understand motion beyond its mathematical description.

4. Forces and Fields

McGinn’s analysis of fundamental forces reveals the depth of our ignorance about physical reality, as follows.

Gravitational Mystery: Despite Einstein’s geometrical reinterpretation of gravity, McGinn argues that we still lack insight into why spacetime curves or what this curvature intrinsically involves. There is no mechanism by which matter supposedly curves space-time.

Electromagnetic Fields: The concept of field, while mathematically precise and empirically successful, remains conceptually obscure, we can describe how fields behave but not what they are.

Fundamental Interactions: The Standard Model describes four fundamental forces through mathematical formalism, but provides no intuitive understanding of their intrinsic nature.

5. Consciousness and Physical Reality

Drawing on his expertise in philosophy of mind, McGinn addresses the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, as follows.

The Integration Problem: How does subjective experience relate to objective physical processes? McGinn suggests this may be unknowable due to the fundamental mismatch between first-person and third-person perspectives.

Spatial Properties: Consciousness lacks extension and other spatial properties. But how can this be, if it arises from matter in space? This puzzle exemplifies the deep mysteries surrounding mind-matter interaction.

Emergentism vs. Fundamentalism: McGinn explores whether consciousness is an emergent property of complex physical systems or requires revision of our understanding of physical reality itself.

Methodological Approach

Historical Perspective

Throughout, McGinn maintains an historical perspective and seeks to determine how much we really know of the world described by physics. This historical approach serves several functions, as follows.

Conceptual Genealogy: Tracing how fundamental concepts developed reveals their contingent and revisable nature.

Pattern Recognition: Historical analysis reveals recurring patterns of conceptual revolution that suggest future revisions may be inevitable.

Epistemic Humility: Understanding past errors encourages appropriate skepticism about current theories. In an era of confident claims about scientific progress, McGinn’s mysterian perspective provides a valuable counterbalance, encouraging appropriate humility about human cognitive limitations. While McGinn has been strongly criticized for some aspects of his book—for example, regarding his view of matter as impenetrable (McKenzie, 2013)—defects aside, the core questions raised here do pose problems for mechanism. The project of mechanism is imperialistic in its scope so McGinn offers an epistemic challenge to its knowledge claims. The “mystery” that has produced the “hard problem of consciousness” also applies to much of physical reality, so the mystery of consciousness is not an isolated issue. Matter, force, energy and space-time are also “mysterious.”

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