To build a worthy framework we, beings that have evolved a capacity for reason, must identify the ‘really core pieces’ that make up everything — which crucially involves our own relation to everything.
I agree with the three foundational axiomatic concepts to Objectivism’s cogently lean metaphysics.
The three pieces that cover everything:
- Existence exists;
- It has/is Identity;
- The Conscious entity reading these words, identifying existence, exists (as a process).
NB, it is possible to play around with these a little: the axiom of Identity could be absorbed by both Existence and Consciousness, or all three reduced to Existence; however, understanding is all about separating things out in order to then show how those pieces function together as a whole. The most useful way to think about reality at a fundamental level is through separating out and then re-integrating these three axioms.
Then there are a few further metaphysical concepts that flesh out the mechanics, helping us see how those pieces of the puzzle fit together into a whole:
- Entity (entities/events could also be parts of a process: ultimately indistinguishable from quality or action yet, as our metaphysics must follow how we grasp things epistemologically, explanations must relate-back to clear spatial entities or temporal events rather than a fuzzy or even contradictory concept of process-bereft of entity);
- Causation (what entities do, rather than some extra process);
- Consciousness as an entity/event resulting from an information process (directly related to the reality of existence/identity).
A thread running through these conceptualisations is a way of thinking: Objectivist metaphysics are always brought back and grounded in our epistemology — how we gasp things as things as our starting point — and not a nebulous over-rationalisation (such as processes bereft of entities).
There is a further set of ideas to bear in mind:
- ‘Nothing’ can’t exist (thus suggesting that the universe of existence is an interactive oneness without gaps);
- Boundlessness (rather than ‘countable infinity’) — hard to grasp as boundlessness is beyond experience (stretching our notion of the universe as entity);
- That space and time are not themselves to be reified — abstract rather than concrete entities (boundless dimensions without inherent scale);
- That existence is primary (consciousness is always about existence).
- Free Will (volition) is necessarily real (a naturally emerging property thanks to how our information processing works — both top-down and bottom-up —ending up with genuine decision-making).
That condenses Objectivist metaphysics (at least my understanding of it).
It is lean, and hungry. It's set up to make way for science to fill in ‘how everything hangs together’.
Now, upon this metaphysical framework, I will attempt to superimpose a few key ideas drawn from one area of Information Theory (itself somewhat metaphysical: mathematics with ontology). I'm not trying to add anything extra to a svelte metaphysics, rather offer a compatible way to view the same things which might bear fruit.
It is through Information Theory that the ‘in-between axiom’ of Identity (of Existence/Entities) by Consciousness (the information process of identification) might best be described, especially following some paradigm-shifting developments in computational neuroscience over the past few years — predictive coding.
But prior to that, I think it would be useful to further clarify the relationship between two concepts: entity and process.
Metaphysically we should not prioritise process over entity — the reason being that no process can be understood without conceptually separating out its parts into entities (see last month's post regarding my critique of Richard Campbell's book). However, I think it would equally be a mistake to metaphysically over-prioritise entity over process for every situation just because our mental capacity is set up around focusing upon ‘things’.
I suggest that these two represent a false dichotomy. Entities are never really without some sort of process and processes are never really without constituent entities. It echoes the mereological debate about parts and wholes: neither is more fundamental; parts can't exist without wholes and wholes can't exist without parts — they are mutually defining concepts.
Likewise with process and entity— they too are mutually defining concepts. Just think about any entity; planet, rock, molecule. Then extend its timeframe towards infinity in each direction and it will become obvious that its existence is also a process of entity formation/destruction, no matter how much time is needed.
Moreover, our concept of space and time is also a relational process if you think about it (more on these two abstract entities via a process of fundamental differentiation in next month's blogpost).
Turning to the Consciousness side of things, there's a couple of inter-related theories of the mechanics of consciousness that revolutionise Philosophy of Mind, largely via Information Theory.
I think key developments have been Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle (FEP) as well as Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT). FEP covers the basic integrated mechanisms of conscious mathematically whilst IIT is a further development of that, showing how we can start from the richness of conscious experience and work backwards to the basic mechanisms. I view FEP as the real substance of the layered cake whilst IIT is about enjoying the icing on the top.
Karl Friston's (University College London) homepage:
This is a selective yet extensive list of his papers, articles and lectures on FEP, updated sporadically.
Giulio Tononi's homepage:
Integrated information theory (IIT) and key related papers.
Back to the Objectivist axiom of Consciousness — an emergent information process, identifying existence. Information Theory as a core methodology behind both FEP + IIT that helps to flesh out the mechanics behind Consciousness — how it all works.
Analogue / Digital
This is my own suggestion, I think the most appropriate way of differentiating the two ways that the first and third Objectivist axiom functions: analogue and digital.Consciousness — starting with the third axiom:
We don't yet know everything, but what we do know is that it functions entirely through its neural networks, a set of around one hundred billion neurones, each of these with about 7,000 synaptic connections, all these synapses essentially functioning as on/off switches. The fact that at base it is an on/off system is actually what makes it informational: it functions upon either/or — digital.
Identity — the in-between axiom:
Consciousness identifies ‘things’; perception naturally separates-out entities. In order to do this it must detect threshold differences. It functions digitally, but the actual differences that it identifies ‘out there’ are not necessarily as cut-and-dry as they seem. Those thresholds are certainly real, objective (even if they undergo recalibration), but there is always more to the Identity of that which is being identified that meets the eye. For instance, zooming-in will always reveal more. Identity is wrapped-up in difference: what something is different from is integral to what it is. It is the difference that makes the difference (that crosses a threshold that causes a cascade of neurological firing). But the process of Identity is neither wholly digital nor analogue; as with any information being processed it's a bit of both.
Existence — the primary axiom:
Existence exists ‘on all scales’. It is spatially and temporally boundless, no matter how small you go or however much you try to reach ‘the end’ of the universe, it is always mind-bogglingly never-ending. Whenever science suggests ‘an ultimate scale’ or ‘final limit’ these have always turned out to be limits of our technology and imagination rather than a digital discreteness discovered in nature. In contemporary fundamental physics things look far more like fields propagating as waves than discrete particles. For this reason I call the functioning of physical processes analogue.
Of course the analogue/digital metaphor arises from our computer age, and I'm aware of past metaphors that have tended to draw upon whatever newfangled tech seemed cutting-edge at the time in order to explain the mysteries of metaphysics (Leibniz’s mill analogy). However, I think that the digital/analogue dichotomy really does cut to the timeless core of the metaphysical difference between the mechanics of mind in contrast to all other natural processes, as well as grounding how digital information emerges from analogue fields, indeed it is the key mechanism of how Consciousness emerges from Existence.
I'm also aware of the tendency for metaphysical dichotomies to be proved false. This can be prevented in the case of the analogue/digital ‘dichotomy’ as long as it is considered as an explanation of the mechanics behind the natural ‘dichotomy’ of Existence/Consciousness — not really a dichotomy at all as Existence metaphysically contains Consciousness, so analogue metaphysically contains (is prior to) the digital.
Your thoughts on all or any of this would be very welcome.
Next month I plan to discuss a related metaphysical conundrum:
could space/time via a dynamic combination somehow become reified through difference?
Don't worry, I'll explain what I mean and why…