ontological philosophy discussion

Here are some exchanges that have taken place about issues in ontological philosophy.

THE NATURE OF ONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY
November 22, 1999

Is twow a really a new way of doing philosophy or is it just a continuation of pre-socratic naturalism? -Gary Sisto

REPLY: You are right that ontological philosophy does philosophy in the same way that the Pre-Socratic philosophers did. In that sense it is not new. But these days, Pre-Socratic philosophers are not generally understood as inferring to the best ontological explanation of the world. (See, for example, Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.'s PHILOSOPHY BEFORE SOCRATES, Hackett, 1994.) And it is new in the sense that, these days, no one is doing ontological philosophy. Professional philosophers assume that epistemology is the only way to do philosophy, except for abandoning philosophy altogether in favor of simply taking sides with science or literary critics. And the influence of epistemological philosophy on science is such that no one recognizes that empirical ontology is different from empirical science. Scientists and philosophers of science both allow their ontological beliefs about the world to be determined by what is required for scientific theories to be true. That is, as if ontology were just realism about scientific theories. Thus, there is a relevant sense in which it is a new way of doing philosophy, though it would perhaps be more accurate to say a relatively new way of doing philosophy. --Phillip Scribner

I would say that Onto-Phil is a different method than what is usually practiced, but in relation to the pre-socratics it is the same method. It seems that Onto-Phil via twow picks up where Democritus left off. We now just have the advantage of over 2000 years of perspective (which includes the evolution of science, mathematics and capitalism). So rather than being a new way or even a relatively new way of doing philosophy, I would submit that it is the most ancient way of doing philosophy. It is like rediscovering what was so revolutionary to begin with about the philosophical "variation" and applying it to everything that can be known from a 20th century vantage point. - Gary Sisto

REPLY: Perhaps you are right, but if it were possible to do ontological philosophy at that time in the same way as it is now, it wouldn't be philosophy at all, but rather science. That is, it would be ontological science, or a kind of empirical science that recognizes ontology as a more basic branch than physics. There would be no need for philosophy. That is not possible, however, because science could not get itself into its present state of development without the excursion of culture into epistemological philosophy. Philosophy is what encouraged the development of mathematics, which is an essential tool enabling science to see deep into micro-level processes. And epistemological philosophy is also what led to the belief in moral principles, such as individual autonomy, that were required for capitalism. That was also necessary for science to evolve, for such moral principles are the necessary condition for capitalism to evolve, and capitalism is what supports the development of evolution of technology, that is, the application of scientific knowledge to practical control of nature. Thus, it is better to say that ontological philosophy is something different from Pre-Socratic philosophy, because what we mean by it is something that depends on knowing what science has discovered. And that depends on the evolution of epistemological philosophy. Thus, isn't it more accurate to say that ontological philosophy is a new way of doing philosophy? --Phillip Scribner

Okay. I see what you mean. Can you explain how ontology can be empirical? If ontology is really prior to science, then isn't it a priori? - Gary Sisto

REPLY: Empirical ontology isn't a prior, because it is not prior to science. Rather it is prior to physics. It is an empirical enterprise like the other branches of science, but since it infers to the simplest set of basic substances that can explain everything in the world, it is prior to physics. Physics infers to the simplest regularities that can explain what happens in the world, that is, the simplest efficient-cause explanations. It is a prior issue what the natures of the substances are that constitute the processes in which those regularities hold. --Phillip Scribner

NATURE OF ONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY
November 23, 1999

Here's the first observation about what you wrote on your opening page:

"Ontological Philosophy is an argument showing that certain truths hold necessarily of the world. It starts, not from how we know, as traditional (epistemological) philosophy does, but from what can be known empirically about the nature of the substances that constitute the world (ontology)."

Strictly speaking, is it possible to make the claim that you can empirically know the nature of a substance (and not just making the more modest claim that the term substance is a concept used to designate entities that exist independently of our perception)? I would think that you are making a rational inference from the data supplied by empirical observation that strikes the reflective subject as being very plausible. Your statement, taken at face value, commits empiricism to also making metaphysical claims.

I'm probably nit picking but it might be more precise to say that "rational knowledge of the world which is heavily supported by empirical evidence points to the existence of two substances which are the foundation of the whole world and the knowing subjects within it, and are responsible for the existence of change, causality, consciousness, goodness, evolution and an immanent god." --John Martin

REPLY: You seem to be identifying the empirical method with empiricism. But I would distinguish them. The empirical method is basically an inference to the best explanation of what is found in the world. Empiricism is a branch of epistemological philosophy that is skeptical about metaphysics and, thus, about substance. As a new way of doing philosophy, ontological philosophy is not just a critique of traditional philosophy. It starts out on its own and only after it explains the nature of reason and consciousness does it take up arguments about empiricism (or what might be called the "ontological critique of empiricism".) The way that ontological philosophy gets started on its own is by doing empirical ontology. If your point is that empirical ontology is different from empirical physics, that is surely true. It does infer to the best ontological explanation, rather than the best efficient cause explanation, of the world. To be sure, that does mean that it has to explain what it means by "ontological explanation." That is where substances come in, because substances are the basic ontological causes. But to talk about substances is not to borrow anything from rationalism or epistemological philosophy generally. They talked a lot about substances, but the concept of substance was introduced before epistemological philosophy, by the Pre-Socratics, as the arche they were seeking to discover. (Indeed, the Pre-Socratics had a better concept of the nature of substance, because they had not been confused by the metaphysics that results from Aristotle's attempt to naturalize Platonic forms.) And the Pre-Socratic concept is nothing more than the notion of entities that exist self-subsistently and is a cause of the natural world by constituting things found in it. (That is the concept that is explicated in the section of the "Foundation" called "Ontology") Hence there is nothing immodest about the claim to explain the nature of substance. Substance is a concept that is already part of our natural attitude about the world because we assume that that objects in the world exist independently of us. In order to exist independently, they must be constituted by entities that can exist on their own, independently of us, that is, self-subsistently. They are substances. What's misleading about that? --Phillip Scribner

THE NATURE OF EMPIRICAL ONTOLOGY
December 19, 1999

I'm not sure that I like how you overtly just assume the stance of empiricism. It sounds like you are preaching to the choir of scientists--a convenient shortcut. It seems to go against the way you normally go about things. I do like how you mention how it can be explained later, though. I think you should emphasize that, saying that there is a justification for it that comes later in the argument. Simply assuming it might turn off non-scientistic readers who may be coming at it from a religious, literary or traditional-philosophical/rationalistic bent. -- Gary Sisto

REPLY: It does not seem to me that the stance of empiricism is assumed. To be sure, the empirical method is one of the three basic assumptions acknowledged in establishing spatiomaterialism as the ontological foundation for this philosophical argument. But that is not to endorse empiricism.

Indeed, given how the empirical method is defined, this assumption is not even compatible with empiricism. Empiricism holds that all our knowledge comes from perception, but when you take the empirical method to be inferring to the best explanation of what is perceived, you are assuming the right to go beyond perception as far as the kind of explanation you are using will allow. Science violates the principle of empiricism by assuming that its efficient-cause explanations are valid (that is, by rejecting Hume's problem of induction). The best efficient-cause explanation is usually refers to something that is not perceived, if only a law of nature. And empirical ontology violates the principle of empiricism by assuming that its ontological-cause explanations are valid (that is, by rejecting skepticism about the existence of substances beyond their appearances in perception).

I take the empirical method to be just the way our brains work. We naturally infer to the best explanation of what we perceive. We don't usually think about it. That capacity is essential to our rationality. Though this method is explained in the end, as part of the nature of reason, that cannot be used to justify assuming the empirical method at the outset of the ontological argument, for that would beg the question. There is a justification of the empirical method, but it comes only in the end, when the ontological explanation of the world is complete, and the same can be claimed for all the parts of the argument. The completeness of the ontological explanation of the world justifies claiming the certainty that is traditionally expected of the Absolute Truth. This is what replaces self-evidence, the grounds for certainty used by epistemological philosophy. And it is compelling only to the extent that the spatiomaterialist ontological explanation really is complete, for that is what makes it clear that there can be no reason for doubting its truth. --Phillip Scribner

BELIEF IN THE IMMORTALITY OF SOULS vs ONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY
January 3, 2000

I noticed that at the APA conference last week, several people that came up to the booth were interested in ontological philosophy from a classical theistic perspective. It seems that these interlocutors could accept the many tenants of ontological philosophy's naturalistic interpretation of religious meaning. Nevertheless, their sticking point all seemed to hinge on the fact that naturalism denies the possibility of immortal souls. The classical theists seem to be saying that a finite life is not perfect and therefore loses all value if all of its capabilities somehow are not satisfied in an eternal afterlife. Isn't this just narcissism? --Gary Sisto

REPLY: In fact, in all three days that the tWoW.net booth was open at the American Philosophical Association meetings in Boston, no one who talked to us left thinking that they still had a reason to reject ontological philosophy -- except those who believe in life after death. There were three of them, as I recall, one was a protestant minister, another was a nun, and the third was a young defender of anti-determinist libertarianism on the free will issue (who was embarrassed to find, after talking to us, that the only reason he had left for believing in indeterminism was his commitment in an immortal soul).

The immortality of the soul does have a special hold on its believers for some reason. Although the belief may seem narcissistic to naturalists (that is, to anyone who believes that everything that exists is located in space and time), I think that the belief is more a cause of narcissism than its effect. The problem is that, in our culture's current incoherence about basic issues, it can easily come to appear that something mystical about the individual soul is the foundation for everything meaningful about ones life, including there being a real difference between good and bad. Once one constructs a way of dealing with the world on that foundation, everything seems threatened by denying the immortality of the soul. We should have more sympathy for them. They may be narcissists, but it requires considerably more moral courage for them to take ontological philosophy seriously than it does for naturalists.

On the other hand, it is interesting that, apart from them, no one has come up with a good reason for doubting that ontological philosophy is a new way of doing philosophy that works. Phillip Scribner, Washington, DC

CAUSE OF BELIEF IN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
January 5, 2000

Scribner's suggestion that the narcissism is more the effect than the cause of the belief in the immortal soul seems on the right track. Yet, the origination of the belief is far more interesting than seems to be given credit in Scribner's reply. More importantly, the belief in the immortal soul highlights an important kind of error that we make in philosophy, namely taking an intuition that serves a function in one area of thought and extending the explanative power of that intuition into regions for which it was not designed. Note in Wittgenstein's Tractutus propositions 6.431-6.4312. Here, the intuition about eternal life is correct in one sense. As death is not an event of life, then our life has no limits in the same sense that our visual field has no limits. Yet, this is a psychological fact about how we conceive of possibilities in that there is no state of affairs conceived by me in which I am not conceiving of that state of affairs. In this sense, there is no limit to spirit (Wittgenstein's sense, not Scribner's) as in the case of our eye. So, the failure of the belief in the immortal soul is to take this psychological fact about conceivability and to translate it into a metaphysical fact. However, there is no cause for us to take this intuition as a metaphysical fact, not due to the fact that science simply hasn't devised yet a soul-a-meter, but rather due to the fact that in a complete explanation of the whole of physical and psychological phenomena we need never refer to such a fact as the soul. The soul, then, is in a very different position than say the basic assumptions of Scribner's ontological philosophy which seem required for the explanation of the world to proceed. --Mark Bauer Denver, Co.

REPLY: Mark, you seem to be referring to the passage in which Wittgenstein says, "Our life had no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits." But can't this analogy also be used to show that the belief in the immortality of the soul must have another source? Though the limit to how far we can see is not something we find in our visual field, we know that it has a limit, for we know that we are just animals which perceive visually by way of eyes and light rays. We use such reflections to judge what we see. Likewise, though our death is not something that we can imagine occurring as an event in our lives, we know that we will die. Again, we know that we are animals, and we can correct any impression to the contrary by recognizing that things will go on in the world after we die. In other words, Wittgenstein seems to be suggesting that the belief in immortality can be attributed to the failure to conceive something that people can and normally do conceive. Perhaps you can make this seem more plausible. But for now, I am still inclined to think that the belief in immortality comes from assuming that what is really VALUABLE in life comes from some mysterious significance it has for a soul that will exist eternally outside space. It is a problem about the nature of goodness, not any simple psychological fact, that misleads people on this issue. --Phillip Scribner Washington, DC

ONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY vs EVOLUTION AND PHILOSOPHY
January 8, 2000

In response to my comments on his web site (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/KVC/) quoted below, Kent Van Cleave [mailto:KVC@compuserve.com] wrote:

SCRIBNER'S COMMENTS ON "EVOLUTION AND PHILOSOPHY": I am moved to write to you, however, because I believe that the argument for your conclusion is not adequate. It does not help to postulate valences or functions or anything similar as basic to the world, because that does not explain anything. It merely assumes it. That is what is wrong with Aristotle's belief in final causes and teleology generally. This means that, if your basic strategy of defense is correct, we might as well go back to Aristotelian teleology. (I do like your notion of valence as a disposition of a whole situation, because that too is a truth that is not recognized. But again it is just a conclusion without an adequate argument.) -Phillip Scribner

KENT VAN CLEAVE'S RESPONSE: I need to know any specific shortcomings in my arguments so I can patch them up. I should make it clear that I don't postulate valences as basic; indeed, they are derivative of the basic notion of causality. The world is the way it is, and it operates the way it does. My metaphysical (you'd probably say "ontological") commitment is that the operation of the universe is, without exception, causal. The primary value of the concept _valence_ is to insist on identifying the causally relevant elements of a _situation_ before attempting any explanation of some phenomenon. It seems obvious, I know, but it's amazing how often explanations are advanced that _don't_ include all relevant influences of the pertinent situation. Frankly, it's rather embarrassing that mankind needs the concept of valence in order to keep from leaving out essential parts of a causal explanation -- but that's life, I guess! --Kent Van Cleave

REPLY: My objection is not that you are wrong about taking what you call "valence" to be real, but that you are mistaken to think that it is as basic as you suggest. I might agree that you could infer to the "valence" of situations in much the same way that science infers to laws of nature or unobservable theoretical entities; the recognition of valences makes it possible to predict and control what happens. But "valences," like other causal connections, can be explained more deeply, in a way that demonstrates their necessity, namely, by showing how they are aspects of the substances constituting the world. Thus, though I sympathize with you despair about "mankind . . . leaving out essential parts of a causal explanation," I would chalk it up to their failure to recognize that space is a substance. What you are calling "valences" are, I believe, a variety of what I call global regularities, or regularities that hold of whole regions of space, rather than just of particular objects in space. Explaining valences ontologically has the advantage not only of showing that they are necessary (as causal connections are thought to be), but also of revealing all the aspects of the regularity involved. --Phillip Scribner Washington, DC

In response to my account of www.tWow.net, Kent Van Cleave [mailto:KVC@compuserve.com] wrote (Saturday, January 08, 2000) with the following replies:

[PHS]: There is a way of explaining the basic cause of evolutionary change that explains why the traits that evolve are good (and pursue good goals). To put it all too briefly, it is an argument that shows that evolution is necessarily change in the direction of an optimal state of maximum power which I call "natural perfection." "Good" can then be defined as what contributes to natural perfection (confirmed, as you would agree, I suspect, by how it accounts for all the goals that we believe to be good). And the reason for pursuing the good (or its normative nature) is that pursuing the good in that sense is the function of reason. This argument does not beg any questions because it does not postulate the existence of anything but the substances that can be shown empirically to constitute the natural world (namely, space and matter). --Phillip Scribner

[KVC}: There are several points here I need to quibble over -- though I sympathize with the general thrust. Your ontological philosophy is based (as I take it from reading parts of your admirable website) on just such an ad hoc assumption (meaning "adopted for the specific purpose" of explaining the universe): that space, as well as matter, is a _substance_. To your credit, you don't treat this as a matter of dogmatic belief, but as a belief whose justification is dependent on the validation of experience. You could be right -- though I am more attracted to the view that matter is a function of space-time (based on the notion of "implicate order" advanced by David Bohm, whose work you clearly appreciate). Since I take it that you don't insist that space and time are fundamentally separate aspects of the universe, we might eventually agree that space-time is the fundamental substance (and matter derivative). I'm not a physicist, though, so my position on this is quite tentative.--Kent Van Cleave

REPLY: I am reluctant to agree that taking space to be a substance is ad hoc, because it is, I believe, the crucial move in the rational pursuit of truth at this stage in history. The denial of substantivalism about space is the most basic mistake that science and philosophy are making today, indeed, the mistake that makes it possible to do philosophy in a new way. Correcting it means recognizing that space and time are "fundamentally separate aspects of the universe," because to be a substance (in the best ontological explanation of the world), space must endure through time. That means that space and time are absolute. Thus, though I cannot agree that matter will be reduced to spacetime without giving up ontological philosophy altogether, I do not deny that matter might eventually be reduced to space (with a somewhat more complex nature). (The nature of space is where I part company with Bohm: though I agree that there is a hidden variable underlying quantum mechanical phenomena, the recognition that space is a substance affords a different explanation of what it is and of the Bell Inequality. See the section on Quantum Mechanics under Change.) --Phillip Scribner

[KVC]: Next, I want to make it clear that your overall project isn't threatened by my next criticism, but I think your notion of inevitable progression toward "natural perfection" is demonstrably mistaken. In evolution, variation is introduced in unpredictable ways (I hate the term 'randomly'), and often the merits of a new trait are immediately eradicated by accidental circumstances. One result of this fact is that organisms reach "design plateaus" beyond which no further progress in the same direction is possible. As an example, spiders have brains encircling their gullets. If their brains were to grow larger, they would cut off the spider's nutrition, and that would be that. .--Kent Van Cleave

REPLY: The issue you raise here and (in your subsequent comments) is, I believe, more fundamental than you suggest. I don't see how you can show that evolution is not inevitably change in the direction of natural perfection by pointing out that the variations are unpredictable (or random)? If there are enough variations being tried out at any point in the gradual change at each stage, the most powerful new trait will evolve before long, setting the stage for the addition of further traits. Accidental circumstances cannot wipe them out, because those variations will be tried more than once. That is an aspect of evolutionary change that is clarified by explaining it as a global regularity. And it reveals that there are at least two kinds of design plateaus, those having to do with the limits imposed on the species that evolve at any evolutionary stage by their ecological niche (that is, way of obtaining free energy) and those having to do with the limits imposed on all species at their stage of evolution. Spiders are not the only species that are limited by the basic layout of the nervous system: it holds of proterostomes (invertebrates) generally. Even the octopus has a brain that encircles the gullet. (See tWoW.net, the 4th stage of evolution under Change: Reproductive Global Regularities, a section entitled, "Proterostome Development." --Phillip Scribner Washington, DC

[KVC]: There's an element of Aristotelian teleology that appears to be lurking in the notion of "natural perfection" -- his "final cause" for mankind: our divinely created potential for rational perfection. I agree that rationality is hugely important, and among the most important attributes of mankind -- but I'm afraid that its attainment is NOT the necessary consequence of our evolution, in the sense that it is preordained by the perfection of rationality rather than by other physical causes. It may indeed turn out that rational perfection emerges in mankind, but it won't be because we were somehow "intented" or "preordained" to be rational. It would be because rationality was evolutionarily valuable. .--Kent Van Cleave

REPLY: Ontological philosophy does not just postulate that evolution is change in the direction of natural perfection, but shows that, in a spatiomaterial world where the laws of physics hold, it is ontologically necessary. After showing that reproductive cycles inevitably get started on any suitable planet, it shows not only that the organisms going through those reproductive cycles gradually change in the direction of natural perfection (i.e., maximum holistic power), but also one such stage of gradual evolution inevitably gives rise to another. It is by following those stages that the inevitability of rational beings is shown. There is nothing "divinely created" or "intended" about it. It is simply ontological necessary. In order to convince me to give up this conclusions, you would have to show me what is wrong with that argument. --Phillip Scribner Washington, DC

[KVC]: As for identification of "the good" and other issues of normativity, I think we have plenty of common ground and room for discussion. My bet is that I can convince you that "good" comes from the intrinsic value in _reflexive functionality_ rather than from "natural perfection." Your main thrust doesn't require a commitment to the view you now take in this regard. .--Kent Van Cleave

REPLY: I think that we can probably come to agreement on this issue, because I suspect that what you are calling "reflexive functionality" involves, in the case of rational beings, a recognition of what is functional. That is what enables them to know what is good and what leads them to pursue the good, and it does so more clearly and completely as culture evolves. Where we disagree is on the notion of "intrinsic value," and it is, I believe, another case of my wanting to give a deeper and more complete explanation. Where you say that something has "intrinsic value," I would say that it contributes to the natural perfection of the whole of which it is part. And while you take intrinsic value to be basic, I explain contributing to the natural perfection of the whole of which it is part, ultimately, in terms of space and matter. The power and appeal of an ontological explanation is that it explains everything in the world in the same terms, including goodness. --

Phillip Scribner
Washington, DC

THE NATURE OF ONTOLOGY
Response to Kent Van Cleave on January 9, 2000:

[KVC}: On another topic, I'm curious why you treat cosmology as dealing only with the really big and really little stuff in the universe. The shorthand explanation of metaphysics I got early on was that ontology deals with WHAT exists and cosmology deals with HOW it works. Seems a reasonable division. For you, it seems that ontology does both jobs. I can see how that approach might be attractive for a view in which the essences of substances imply everything there is to know about their behavior. Is that what you have in mind? --Kent Van Cleave

Exactly right. Ontology is all encompassing, since what exists explains what happens, and I use "cosmology" as a dumping ground for the aspects of the universe that are most difficult for us to know about, the very large and the very small. My only excuse is that questions about the very large (and the very small) are currently connected with the Big Bang theory, which is a theory about the origin of the universe, or a theory in "cosmogony," and cosmogony has long been considered a main part of cosmology. --Phillip Scribner Washington, D. C.

KENT VAN CLEAVE'S NOTION OF "RELEXIVE FUNCTIONALITY"
January 14, 2000

[KVC] As for identification of "the good" and other issues of :normativity, I think we have plenty of common ground and room for discussion. My bet is that I can convince you that "good" comes from the intrinsic value in _reflexive functionality_ rather than from "natural perfection." Your main thrust doesn't require a commitment to the view you now take in this regard.

[PhS] I think that we can probably come to agreement on this issue, because I suspect that what you are calling "reflexive functionality" involves, in the case of rational beings, a recognition of what is functional. That is what enables them to know what is good and what leads them to pursue the good, and it does so more clearly and completely as culture evolves. Where we disagree is on the notion of "intrinsic value," and it is, I believe, another case of my wanting to give a deeper and more complete explanation. Where you say that something has "intrinsic value," I would say that it contributes to the natural perfection of the whole of which it is part. And while you take intrinsic value to be basic, I explain contributing to the natural perfection of the whole of which it is part, ultimately, in terms of space and matter. The power and appeal of an ontological explanation is that it explains everything in the world in the same terms, including goodness. [the last few words here were missing from the original message as posted here]

[KVC] This last claim is also one I make for metaphysical functionalism -- though in my case, everything is explained in terms of material function. It's pretty clear from your comment that you don't understand my notions of "reflexive functionality" or "intrinsic value" -- which puts you in the company of just about everybody else.... ;-) Let me elucidate.

Reflexive functionality is the physical property of "working to continue being the kind of thing that does this work." The first such thing, as far as we know, was the sort of self-reproducing molecule that we now see in RNA/DNA (or perhaps an autocatalytic set, as Stuart Kauffman has speculated, in which, for example, A enhances the production of B, B of C, and C of A). I claim that reflexive functionality IS intrinsic value, for two reasons. First, from the perspective of methodological behaviorism, the way to tell whether something is a value is to look and see whether it is being pursued -- and reflexive functionality passes this test with flying colors, and does so without appeal to any subjective opinion about what value should be, or which values are most important. Secondly, the capacity for evaluation (and therefore all varieties of subjective value) evolved as tools in the pursuit of the reflexive functionality of Life (the obviously reflexive process of "begetting begetters"). We have every reason to treat them as INSTRUMENTAL values to the extent that they fulfill that role, but where do they get any claim to being INTRINSIC? I think the sources of such claims are folk psychology and human chauvinism --neither of which provides reputable support.

So, when you suspect that my reflexive functionality "involves, in the case of rational beings, a recognition of what is functional," you're not describing my view. Reflexive functionality would be both functional and reflexive whether anyone ever knew or appreciated it. It would also be intrinsic value, for it actively pursues its continued existence as the kind of thing it is. Our opinions and beliefs about value are irrelevant to its claim to intrinsic value, although I've shown that we have good reasons to acknowledge that claim. Actually, you and I probably connect in this respect, too, for I think your notion of natural perfection is likewise independent of human opinion or belief. Three cheers for naturalized ethics!

STRUCTURALISM vs FUNCTIONALISM
January 14, 2000

Kent Van Cleave comments: Phillip, I have spotted what may be an illuminating difference in perspective between us. It has to do with a preference for either structuralism or functionalism. When one looks at the world, does one see objects (structures) and their interrelationships, or does one see processes (functions) as a unitary, dynamic flow?

I think these are probably cognitive strategies that people naturally adopt as they learn about the world, one in preference to the other. Structuralists will conceptualize processes as sequences of discrete states, while functionalists will conceptualize objects as "snapshots" of dynamic processes.

As I declare unabashedly in my "Overview of the Philosophy", I'm a functionalist. I think you might be a structuralist.

To illustrate, it looks to me like what you call "structural causes" aren't far removed conceptually from my "reflexive functionality". A particular material structure, together with physical laws, entails the emergence of certain events (e.g., replication of the structure in question through reproduction, given the needed raw materials). Now, there's a "chicken and egg" question here, and I'm willing to concede priority to the structuralists. A function, as a persistent natural process, must be preceded by the proper structure. But once it is up and running, I think the function "takes over", modifying structures to its own ends, and making them causally subordinate.

This conceptual divide, I'm convinced, lies at the heart of the now notorious war between the adaptationists (Dennett, Maynard Smith, Dawkins, et al.) and the non-adaptationists (Gould, Lewontin, Rose, et al.) The adaptationalists, I think, are functionalists, while their foes take the opposite perspective. The non-adaptationist notion, 'spandrel', is a good illustration: a trait that defies explanation as an adaptation. That's because traits are precisely the sort of thing that structuralists want to explain. Functionalists, on the other hand, may be mildly interested in a trait to whatever extent it plays some functional role. For them, a spandrel differs from an adaptation in one important way: though both are generated by genetic variation, the adaptation has been "vetted" by natural selection, while the spandrel hasn't. Being functionally neutral, its existence simply hasn't mattered. I'm introducing the term 'moxnix' (a bastardization of the German phrase "Es macht nichts", or "it doesn't matter") to refer to identifiable physical features that play no functional role, and therefore escapes natural selection.

In this light, let's consider your characterization of the prevailing concensus in evolutionary theory: that evolution "tracks environmental changes". Superficially, this is true -- but it isn't the whole story. Much evolutionary change involves adapting to an unchanging environment, and the variation upon which it depends is strictly genetic and circumstantial (e.g., factors like genetic drift). This sort of change has been the focus of the "new synthesis" in evolutionary theory, and its emphasis has been on genetic change -- NOT on change in the environment.

Punctuated equilibrium, on the other hand, focuses precisely on environmental change. In fact, Gould could claim no revolutionary insight unless there were an element of "creativity" that lay outside genetic variation.

Now, let's consider all this from the perspective of my metaphysical functionalism. All variation that matters biologically is in the "fit" (the valence) between organism and environment, and logically this can occur in two ways: change in the organism, or change in the environment. Gradualism or punctuated equilibrium. I'm tempted to add a gratuitous "DUH!"

Moving on, you make a special claim about the causal role of "reproductive cycles" (which is apparently roughly synonymous with "organisms" rather than with "periodic episodes of reproductive activity"). Reproduction often produces a surfeit of organisms that wind up competing with one another for resources and reproductive opportunities, and you see this as the dominant fodder for natural selection. Yes, Darwin DID note this intraspecies competition, which was immortalized by Spencer in his phrase "survival of the fittest". But this factor varies in importance according to the reproductive ("K") strategy adopted by a species. For insects or frogs, you bet -- it's a big factor. For dolphins, marmosets, or humans it's no big deal. Reproduction is designed in all cases to replace the current generation with a margin of error. There's nothing mysterious about this, for in periods of environmental stability there's automatic selection against profligate reproduction that might exhaust the entire local food supply.

This has a particularly unsalubrious consequence for the pursuit of "natural perfection", because those species that are candidates to become rational will also be species that have adopted "low-K" reproductive strategies that emphasize parental care and upbringing over sheer numbers of progeny.

Phillip, I hope you'll dive into my writings and be as critical (or moreso) as I have been of yours. I think there is a real opportunity here for mutual development. Best, Kent

NATURAL PERFECTION AND THE MECHANISAM OF EVOLUTION (0):
RESPONSES TO KENT VAN CLEAVE ON EVOLUTION
January 15, 2000

[PHS]: Responding to my claim that evolution leads inevitably to rational beings like us and beyond, Kent Van Cleave wrote, "I don't disagree that evolution is change in the DIRECTION of perfection. Where we disagree is on the issue of 'perfection of WHAT'. It appears to me that you see the perfection of spiritual rationality as the natural perfection toward which evolution moves organisms. This is way too teleological for me."

Before I take up your reasons, Kent, let be clear about what I am saying. It is true that I believe that the overall course of evolution leads to rational beings and that their evolution is an instance of change in the direction of natural perfection. But that is not the definition of "natural perfection." Natural perfection is defined as maximum power to control all the conditions affecting reproduction. Hence, there are many types of natural perfection, including the natural perfection of individual species, of ecologies of species, of the set of species that evolve at each stage, and of the series of stages that occur in the overall course of evolution. Accordingly, rational beings are (or become) naturally perfect in various ways, not only naturally perfect for organisms of their kind and naturally perfect because of their contribution to the ecology of which they are part, but also naturally perfect because they are a latter stage in which life itself (that is, organisms that have power to control relevant conditions at all) become naturally perfect -- though the highest state of the natural perfection of life is a stage yet to come.

Let me emphasize that none of this is teleological in the Aristotelian sense. There are no final causes. There is no "striving for perfection" nor "will to power" behind it. Nor is it anything as superficial as the Anthropic principle, for it does not hold that the world has the nature it does in order to this natural perfection to exist. Instead, it demonstrates that the nature of the world, explained ontologically, makes the evolution of maximally powerful structures of various kinds ontologically necessary (and, thus, inevitable). And it recognizes such optimal statedas a kind of perfection (or completeness) that is appropriate for a natural world made of space and matter.

Thus, the issue comes down to whether the evolution of these forms of natural perfection is ontologically necessary or not, and there I have hope that we might reach agreement, because you are already moving in that direction. Immediately following the above, Kent, you write, "There's no doubt at all that evolution tends to perfect the ecological fit between an organism and its environment; indeed, that's the thrust of my approach to evolutionary theory: focus not on the organism, nor on the environment, but on the entire system -- the situation and its valences. Whenever there is a valence for a better fit, selection will (ceteris paribus) favor accidental genetic changes in that direction."

I would urge you to be true to your own intention when you say that you want to focus on "the entire system." The entire system is not "the situation and its valences." The entire system is a planet rotating while in orbit around a star in which organisms (structures) are going through reproductive cycles. By taking the whole system into account, it is possible to see what is ontologically necessary, that is, what all is involved in the global regularity we call evolution. What you call "valences" is something that can be explained ontologically, and when their role in evolutionary change is also explained ontologically, I believe that you will see that evolutionary change does reach natural perfection in all the ways mentioned above.

Now, let me take up your points one by one.

(1) When I argue that the attainment of natural perfection comes from organisms trying out the entire range of random variations that are possible for them at that point, you object, "Logically, we can't know that the best variations WILL occur in less than infinite time (for each variation requires a finite amount of time to be introduced and spread). To claim otherwise denies the randomness (I prefer "undirectedness") of genetic change." I believe that when one looks at the structures that are evolving and how variations are tried out, it is (or will become) clear that the entire range will be tired out before long. It is not a logical matter at all, but a matter of statistics. What you seem to be suggesting is that, by the nature of the organisms, there will not be enough variations to try out all the possibilities soon enough. I would agree that if there were evolving structures that did not try out the full range of possible variations quickly enough, they would not become naturally perfection. Indeed, they would not evolve at all. They would become extinct, because they would quickly be replaced by organisms that were able to try out the full range of possible variations, for the latter organisms would soon acquire the power to control the conditions that affect their reproduction. To show that organisms will not become maximally powerful for the reason you mention, you would have to show that there cannot be organisms whose structures are capable of trying out variations quickly enough. But I believe that the structures of organisms on earth show that they are possible.

(2) When I admit that two kinds of design plateaus are encountered in evolution (one for species adapting to particular ecological niches and another for the set of species that evolves at any given stage), you suggest that what I mean is that the organisms have gotten into a state in which "you can't get there from here." But that is not what I mean. I am denying that there is any "there" to get to from here. That is, they are already naturally perfect of their kind. There is an illusion at work here. Because in most cases we know of more powerful organisms, we can imagine the organisms in question being more powerful than they are. My claims is that that is not "ontologically" possible, or not possible as a result of reproductive causation (i.e., natural selection), and thus, not what is meant by natural perfection. Both plateaus come down to the same limitation: the organisms that evolve at any given stage of evolution have a kind of structure that is able to evolve only so much power. Once they acquire that power, the only way for evolution to go on is with a basically different kind of structure, one with a higher level of part-whole complexity, one that starts a whole new stage of gradual evolution. To be sure, before that new stage begins, some of the species that have already evolved may also have reached a plateau in the sense that they do not have all the powers that have evolved among other species at their stage. But again, there is no "there" to get to from here, because the functional traits they lack would be of no use to them. For example, mole rats are sometimes blind. But they don't need to see, and the energy spend on maintaining vision would make them less powerful as a whole over their whole reproductive cycles in controlling relevant conditions.

(3) This distinction between the gradual evolution of all the species at any stage in the direction of maximum power relative to their ecological niche and the revolutionary evolution with which a new stage begins is also my answer to your doubts about the possibility of it being inevitable that rational beings will evolve. You say, "The primary difficulty is that the direction of evolution in the vast majority of cases is SPECIALIZATION, while the essence of rationality is GENERALIZATION. Where specialization is a matter of quantitative improvement, generalization is a mixed mode of change with both qualitative and quantitative elements, and it is expressed in two general forms: versatility and adaptability. These are the hallmarks of rationality."

In order to see the inevitability of rationality, you need to appreciate how different the revolutionary evolution of new stages is from the gradual evolution during each stage. It is the latter that you are thinking of, whereas the former is what makes rational beings inevitable. A new stage evolves only when the basic structure that was evolving (in many different species) at the previous stage has become so powerful that it can be organized along with many similar structures as parts of a larger structure that goes through reproductive cycles as a whole (though that higher level of part-whole complexity must also enable them to control conditions affecting reproduction that were previously beyond their control). That begins a new stage. At first they are simple, uniform and barely able to go through reproductive cycles at all, but as they impose natural selection on themselves, they gradually become more complex, diverse and powerful as they adapt to all the ecological niches possible. The series of stages is not change the direction of specialization (specialization is what occurs to species during each stage), but change in the direction of power to control a wider and wider variety of conditions. That is what eventually leads to rationality, and does so inevitably.

(4) This seems to be what you are saying is impossible. "But any claim that rationality is the necessary birthright for evolving organisms in general needs to show the necessity of a continuous path through design space whereby every change is either neutral, insignificantly detrimental, or positive in addressing the immediate demands of fitness. I doubt such a proof is possible. [THE TRACING OF THE SERIES OF STAGES IS GIVEN IN THE SECTION OF REPRODUCTIVE GLOBAL REGULARITIES.} You say that 'one such stage of gradual evolution inevitably gives rise to another,' which would appear to be a necessary step in your argument -- yet it is simply false. The sort of progression I think you're envisioning is one occasioned by a radical environmental change that forces organisms to develop new capabilities that have been merely nascent theretofore." This is the mistake that is misleading you. My claim is that changes in the environment are basically irrelevant to evolutionary change. New stages are caused by higher levels of part-whole complexity in the evolving structures, and they are made possible by the evolution of the parts of which they are composed. That is what makes it possible to trace them all the way from the beginning of evolution to rational beings (and beyond).

You are correct, however, to point out at the end that my claim about necessity is what divides us. The source of that difference is, as I have said from the beginning, the very strategy of ontological philosophy. What attracted me to your view from the beginning is the way in which you recognize the objectivity of functionality and the foundation of value. And my complaint from the beginning is your willingness to stop your explanation of evolution with the postulation of valences as basic. Every other disagreement we have comes down to that. In each case, it is a necessary truth to which I am committed because I start with the best ontological explanation of the natural world and recognize that what follows from it is a more fundamental truth than what science and ordinary practical reasoning discovers.

Phillip Scribner
Sun City, AZ

ONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY VS STRUCTURALISM: tWoW vs E&P
Reply to Kent Van Cleave on January 15, 2000

[PHS]: I would like to respond to a series of comments by Kent Van Cleave on tWoW.net in an attempt to clarify our differences and hopefully pave the way to more agreement. What makes this seem possible is our initial agreement that evolution is what explains the difference between good and bad.

Kent wrote, "Phillip, I have spotted what may be an illuminating difference in perspective between us. It has to do with a preference for either structuralism or functionalism. When one looks at the world, does one see objects (structures) and their interrelationships, or does one see processes (functions) as a unitary, dynamic flow?

"I think these are probably cognitive strategies that people naturally adopt as they learn about the world, one in preference to the other. Structuralists will conceptualize processes as sequences of discrete states, while functionalists will conceptualize objects as "snapshots" of dynamic processes.

"As I declare unabashedly in my "Overview of the Philosophy", I'm a functionalist. I think you might be a structuralist."

I understand how you can see me as a structuralist and, thus, taking a different approach from functionalists, but it seems to me that this difference is not really basic and both sides derive from the deeper foundation of ontology. What makes it seem that I am a structuralist is the very strategy of ontological philosophy, that is, starting with the simplest and fewest basic substances that can explain everything in the world and using that ontology as a foundation to demonstrate that certain propositions are ontologically necessary. As it turns out, the best ontological explanation of the world is spatiomaterialism, and the recognition that space, as well as matter, is a substance helping to constitute the world, explains why structures play such a big role in natural phenomena. All structures are ultimately spatial structures.

And on this view, one of the most important structures, as you suggest latter, are what I call "structural causes" (the unchanging structures of material objects that constrain change). They are ontological causes, and the regularities that can be traced to structural ontological causes are only one kind of global regularity that holds in a spatiomaterial world like ours. Reproductive global regularities are another, though they follow from spatiomaterialism in the same way. The ontological causes in this case are reproductive cycles (or cycles in which structural causes not only reproduce themselves but also control other conditions in the world), which are, as you recognize elsewhere, just organisms. Reproductive global regularities all involve change in the direction of maximum power to control all the conditions affecting reproduction that can be controlled. That is the source of the functional traits, in my view, and they are so pervasive that that explains ontologically the usefulness of the functionalist approach you favor. Thus, when you say that in evolutionary explanations, the difference between structuralism and functionalism involves a "chicken and egg" question, I would suggest that there is no such choice to be made. Both derive from a deeper ontological foundation. We might be able to agree about that, if we continue to take ontology seriously.

But I am less sure, when you go on to say, "A function, as a persistent natural process, must be preceded by the proper structure. But once it is up and running, I think the function "takes over", modifying structures to its own ends, and making them causally subordinate." Though I would not deny that the structures (or organisms) that evolve are able to act on the world so that they change other structures, I do not see how functions can be said to be taking over. Their power to shape things in the world to their own end is a power that they derive from their own structures, and ontological philosophy implies that natural selection (or, in its terms, reproductive causation) is responsible for that. Only with the evolution of rational animals, and only because of their enormous power, can the functional activity of organisms be the source of the organic structures that have the functions we are talking about. This may, however, be my misunderstanding of what you are saying. In any case, let me invite you again to consider the possibility and desirability of founding your view on an ontological explanation of the world, rather than on one that takes functions to be somehow basic. That is, I believe, the deeper division.

There are a couple of other points you raise I would like to mention. I do not want to insist that others have held that evolutionary change is just tracking changes in the environment (though I could quote Gould and others who have). I agree with you that it can be and usually is adaptation to an unchanging environment. I also agree with you about not making the fundamental distinction between punctuated equilibrium and less radical evolutionary changes that Gould wants to make. I agree that in both cases they are naturally selected. Where I would part company with you and with Gould is in the kind of variation that is being selected. In most cases of what are called punctuated equilibrium, what accounts for the sudden appearance of many new species is the advent of a higher level of part-whole complexity in the evolving structures. (More broadly, one of the complaints that this ontological explanation of evolutionary change would make about the received views is its assumption that all evolutionary change comes down to changes in the genetic structure. This focus on genes overlooks the levels of part-whole complexity in structures that are going through reproductive cycles, though those levels are a bit too complex to spell out here.) My point is that I believe you are right to insist that both kinds of evolutionary change are cases of what you call valence (though I would deny that either depends on changes in the environment).

Finally, I do not see how my claim that natural selection is caused by reproduction is contradicted by the recognition that organisms have different strategies for completing reproductive cycles, ranging from those that produce many offspring so that a few may surely make it to others that produce a few offspring and make sure that those few make it. In both cases, reproduction will make resources scarce, and only those that are most powerful will tend to succeed. To be sure they will have different numbers of offspring, and the numbers of offspring will be a result of natural selection. But whatever the level of reproduction, population growth will tend to make resources scarce, giving an advantage to the more powerful. How else could natural selection work when the environment does not change?

Phillip Scribner
Sun City, AZ

BASIC ISSUES IN ONTOLOGY: Including Time
January 14, 2000. Kent Van Cleave wrote:

[KVC] :There are several points here I need to quibble over -- though I sympathize with the general thrust. Your ontological philosophy is based (as I take it from reading parts of your admirable website) on just such an ad hoc assumption (meaning "adopted for the specific purpose" of explaining the universe): that space, as well as matter, is a _substance_. To your credit, you don't treat this as a matter of dogmatic belief, but as a belief whose justification is dependent on the validation of experience. You could be right though I am more attracted to the view that matter is a function of space-time (based on the notion of "implicate order" advanced by David Bohm, whose work you clearly appreciate). Since I take it that you don't insist that space and time are fundamentally separate aspects of the universe, we might eventually agree that space-time is the fundamental substance (and matter derivative). I'm not a physicist, though, so my position on this is quite tentative.

[PS] I am reluctant to agree that taking space to be a substance is ad hoc, because it is, I believe, the crucial move in the rational pursuit of truth at this stage in history. The denial of substantivalism about space is the most basic mistake that science and philosophy are making today, indeed, the mistake that makes it possible to do philosophy in a new way. Correcting it means recognizing that space and time are "fundamentally separate aspects of the universe," because to be a substance (in the best ontological explanation of the world), space must endure through time. That means that space and time are absolute. Thus, though I cannot agree that matter will be reduced to spacetime without giving up ontological philosophy altogether, I do not deny that matter might eventually be reduced to space (with a somewhat more complex nature). (The nature of space is where I part company with Bohm: though I agree that there is a hidden variable underlying quantum mechanical phenomena, the recognition that space is a substance affords a different explanation of what it is and of the Bell Inequality. See the section on Quantum Mechanics under Change.)

[KVC] If I'm not mistaken, somewhere you mention the alternative to space enduring through time (space perduring with time -- which I take to be just the notion of orthogonality of dimensions for the space-time manifold). I don't see that it's any more necessary for space (or objects in space) to endure through time in order to exist than it is for length (or objects with length) to be extended along dimensions of breadth and height in order to exist. Certainly, physical objects in our universe couldn't exist without any one of the physical dimensions of space.

Clearly, there's something special about time -- even if we decide to treat it as just another dimension of the manifold: directionality, at least in our experience. But this is a pretty big can of worms for us to be opening at this stage! ;-)

I'll need to read what you've said on the subject of the co- extensiveness of space and matter, and interaction between the two substances; at first blush, it would seem that you'll be struggling under much the same difficulties as the mind/matter dualists did. I'll definitely read your section on quantum mechanics (have begun already), and I'm very curious to see what you have to say about Bohm.

THE NATURE OF TIME
Phillip Scribner's January 25, 2000, response to Kent Van Cleave posting above.

Kent Van Cleave challenged ontological philosophy's assumption about the nature of time when he wrote:

[KVC]: If I'm not mistaken, somewhere you mention the alternative to space enduring through time (space perduring with time -- which I take to be just the notion of orthogonality of dimensions for the space-time manifold). I don't see that it's any more necessary for space (or objects in space) to endure through time in order to exist than it is for length (or objects with length) to be extended along dimensions of breadth and height in order to exist. Certainly, physical objects in our universe couldn't exist without any one of the physical dimensions of space. Clearly, there's something special about time -- even if we decide to treat it as just another dimension of the manifold: directionality, at least in our experience. But this is a pretty big can of worms for us to be opening at this stage! ;-)

[PHS]: The issue about the nature of time may be a "can of worms," but it is a can that ontologists must open, because time has to do with the nature of existence. The endurance theory holds that existence itself is in time. This entails what is sometimes called "presentism," because it holds that only the present exists. The past and the future do not exist. This is not an obscure theory, for it is simply what we ordinarily assume.

The perdurance theory holds, on the other hand, that time is another dimension, like the spatial dimensions. It can be represented as a spacetime diagram in which time is orthogonal to the all three spatial dimensions, as you point out. And thinking of it in that way does make it seem that being extended in space is no more necessary to something's existence than being extended in any other dimension.

But the 4-D spacetime diagram is a mathematical abstraction, and it is the actual, concrete world that ontologists are trying to explain. In the concrete world, time has a certain nature. As you seem willing to admit, it certainly seems to beings like us that presentism is true. The present does seem to be real in a way that the past and the future are not. It is hard to see how that could seem to be true without our actually existing in time, that is, existing only at the present moment. I am not denying that some theory can be concocted in which the uniqueness of the present is explained away as a mere appearance. I am only saying that some such theory has to be concocted, because it certainly appears to us that only the present exists. And the simplest way to explain that appearance is to assume that it is true: nothing exists but what exists at the present moment, including all the other objects in space as well as us. Ontologists who follow the empirical method must prefer the simplest explanation, if it is possible, and as tWOW.net shows (in Contemporary Physics under Change), it is possible, despite contemporary physics. Those chapter show how it is possible to explain all the phenomena described by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity on the assumption that space is a substance enduring through time and, thus, absolute. The endurance theory accepts presentism. Indeed, it must accept presentism, or else it would have to give up its ontological explanation of much of the world.

The endurance theory explains the world on the assumption that substances endure through time, never coming into existence and never going out of existence. That is a very economical explanation, because a single substance can then explain something that exists at every moment in the history of the world. By contrast the perdurance theory must postulate a different entity (a spacetime event) to "explain" the existence at each moment of such a substance (and it is not an explanation at all, because it is then just an ad hoc assumption, which explains nothing else).

The advantage of the endurance theory is most obvious when it comes to explaining the possibility of change ontologically. The endurance of substances through time is what makes that possible, for if substances have a basic relationship, like space and matter, which permits particular substance to change their spatial relations, motion can be explained ontologically. If it occurs at all, it is simply an aspect of the basic substances enduring through time with their basic relationship. Though such change involves some spatial relations coming into existence and other spatial relations going out of existence as time passes, it does not require any change in the nature of matter or space.

The desirability of such an explanation is evident in its implications. If this is how the possibility of change of spatial relations is explained, then certain other truths hold necessarily. For example, it is not possible for bits of matter to change spatial relations discontinuously. This is how ontological philosophy solves Hume's problem and explains the necessity of the connection between efficient causes and their effects.

None of this is possible on the perdurance theory, or the belief that spacetime is a substance, because that ontology postulates every moment in the career of every substance (and every point in space) separately. Though that "accounts for" all the same facts, it does not explain anything ontologically, because all those facts are included in what it assumes. Thus, it is not possible for ontologists to avoid opening this "can of worms." Unless they take a certain stand on the nature of existence and time, there is not much room for ontological explanations at all and no way for ontology to be a new way of doing philosophy.

[KVC}: I'll need to read what you've said on the subject of the co- extensiveness of space and matter, and interaction between the two substances; at first blush, it would seem that you'll be struggling under much the same difficulties as the mind/matter dualists did.

[PHS]: To be sure, space and matter must be able to exist together in some intelligible way in order to constitute the world. But it is not hard to see how space and matter are related. Space is made up of parts that can exist only when they are related to one another spatially in all the ways described by geometry, whereas bits of matter can exist independently of one another. What is problematic about assuming that each bit of matter coincides with some part of space or other? It is a far cry from the mind-body problem. There is nothing so problematic as trying to explain how a thinking substance that is incapable of being divided into parts is related to an extended substance, which is capable of being divided. Not all ontological dualisms are problematic.

Phillip Scribner Washington, DC
webmaster@twow.net

FOUNDATIONALISM
January 24, 2000

On 1/24/00 Mark Armati at nuradm01@uconnvm.uconn.edu wrote to Gary Sisto at garydsisto@aol.com:

I have taken some time to review tWoW and have at this point only one question (again, this site clearly represents a great deal of time, thought, and effort). Early in the text form the term "foundationalism" is used for which I would have expected either a formal definition or at least the kind of clarification which comes from the context of continued use throughout the text, although I could find no other instance of this word. It could be that the kind of person entering here should either know the word or be willing to look it up or even to deduce its meaning, but since you are so careful in other cases to convey the meaning of a term, it might be best to do so here as well. In any case, it is an exciting place to visit, though again I have yet to do it justice. I will continue to travel to your site as my time allows

REPLY: On 1/24/00 Gary Sisto responded: Foundationalism refers to the first step usually taken by a philosophical argument. Most philosophical theories in the grand tradition of like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, use a 2-step argument. The first part of their theories are spent justifying a foundation or a series of assumptions from which the second part can be deduced as necessary truths of the assumptions. You can either begin your system with a epistemological or an ontogical foundation. Ontological Philosophy uses the latter, which distinguishes it from most of the history of philosophy from Plato to the present. Onto-phil is more in line with pre-socratic naturalism and picks up 2000 years or so after Democritus.

Gary Sisto
NYC

NATURAL PERFECTION AND THE MECHANISM OF EVOLUTION (1)
February 13, 2000

On February 11, 2000, Kent Van Cleave posted the following comments on previous submissions to onto-phil (originally posted on the message board of his web site Evolution and Philosophy at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/KVC/):

[KVC]: Phillip, there's a lot of meat here. I'll see if I can digest a few chunks of it.... :

[PHS}: Natural perfection is defined as maximum power to control all the conditions affecting reproduction. Hence, there are many types of natural perfection, including the natural perfection of individual species, of ecologies of species, of the set of species that evolve at each stage, and of the series of stages that occur in the overall course of evolution.

[KVC} I think you should use 'maximal' instead of 'maximum' here. 'Maximum' is an absolute term that goes beyond what I think you intend. 'Maximal' is situational, and better fits the limits of circumstances you have mentioned.

[PHS] [T]he nature of the world, explained ontologically, makes the evolution of maximally powerful structures of various kinds ontologically necessary (and, thus, inevitable). And it recognizes such optimal states as a kind of perfection (or completeness) that is appropriate for a natural world made of space and matter.

Thus, the issue comes down to whether the evolution of these forms of natural perfection is ontologically necessary or not, and there I have hope that we might reach agreement, because you are already moving in that direction.

[KVC] There's_ 'maximal' -- which is better, but I still don't think it's good enough. As I'll get into in response to the rest of your message, I still think your clai/m of inevitability isn't supportable.

[PHS] I would urge you to be true to your own intention when you say that you want to focus on "the entire system." The entire system is not "the situation and its valences." The entire system is a planet rotating while in orbit around a star in which organisms (structures) are going through reproductive cycles. By taking the whole system into account, it is possible to see what is ontologically necessary, that is, what all is involved in the global regularity we call evolution.

[KVC] If I take your meaning correctly, you want to make sure I don't leave out any causal influences when I examine the situation of an organism and its potential evolutionary development. That need is exactly why I _defined_ 'situation' to include all causal influences that actually contribute to an outcome. But that needn't include everything in the Earth-Sun system; I eliminate what we might call "causal noise" -- a myriad tiny forces that ultimately cancel one another out, and include only those forces that, together, are necessary and sufficient to produce the outcome. I think that's true to my intention -- but if for some reason I haven't discovered it isn't, I need to fix it!

[PHS] What you call "valences" is something that can be explained ontologically, and when their role in evolutionary change is also explained ontologically, I believe that you will see that evolutionary change does reach natural perfection in all the ways mentioned above.

[KVC] We're probably on the same page here. _Valence_ is a purely metaphysical (I think you would say "ontological", meaning the same thing) notion, and every instance of a valence is an instantiation of the general proposition (put rather informally here) that things behave exclusively and deterministically according to their nature and the physical relations that obtain with their environment. As I've mentioned before, if people didn't persist in dreaming up non-physical causes or non-causal explanations, this obvious notion could go without saying.

Now, let me take up your points one by one.

I'll respond to each in separate messages, following herewith.

NATURAL PERFECTION AND THE MECHANISM OF EVOLUTION (2)
February 13, 2000

Later on February 11, 2000, Kent Van Cleave added these responses to earlier submissions to onto-phil (originally posted on the message board of his web site, Evolution and Philosophy at http//ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/KVC/

[PHS] (1) When I argue that the attainment of natural perfection comes from organisms trying out the entire range of random variations that are possible for them at that point, you object, "Logically, we can't know that the best variations WILL occur in less than infinite time (for each variation requires a finite amount of time to be introduced and spread). To claim otherwise denies the randomness (I prefer "undirectedness") of genetic change." I believe that when one looks at the structures that are evolving and how variations are tried out, it is (or will become) clear that the entire range will be tired out before long. It is not a logical matter at all, but a matter of statistics.

[KVC] But statistics don't yield necessary outcomes of the kind you claim. The logic of statistics is such that any outcome, however overwhelmingly probable, might not occur. If your claims were simply about overwhelming likelihood, I'd have no dispute with you. But you're claiming necessity, and I don't find support for that claim.

[PHS] What you seem to be suggesting is that, by the nature of the organisms, there will not be enough variations to try out all the possibilities soon enough.

[KVC] Not at all. I'm making no positive claim whatsoever. I'm _denying_ that a positive claim of necessity can be supported statistically.

[PHS] I would agree that if there were evolving structures that did not try out the full range of possible variations quickly enough, they would not become naturally perfection. Indeed, they would not evolve at all. They would become extinct, because they would quickly be replaced by organisms that were able to try out the full range of possible variations, for the latter organisms would soon acquire the power to control the conditions that affect their reproduction.

[KVC] There are a couple of problems here. First, we need to be careful about the phrase 'try out ... variations'. I know you don't intend to imply any intentionality here, so that's not the issue. My point is that "variation happens"; it's not introduced by the organism, but comes about through causal processes that we usually can't predict or even examine before the fact. If there's any "trying out" going on, it's the process of selection _in response to_ variations -- which is a separate issue from the question of how many of the entire range of possible variations will actually emerge.

Let's say Species A is almost perfectly suited to its niche, and that a single mutation -- one that is chemically possible under prevailing circumstances -- would, if spread through the population, make it "naturally perfect". No matter how likely it is that the mutation in question will occur, it's simply not necessary that it happen (except in the deterministic sense whereby it must happen at time t and location l, but can't possibly happen at any other time or place because the antecedent conditions and operative forces won't allow but one outcome). Absent special knowledge of the full range of forces and conditions that will cause a mutation, we can't say that it is necessary.

If that's not bad enough, we could even allow that the mutation occurs -- once or dozens of times -- but is accidentally eliminated through unfortunate events before it can spread through the population on its merits. So not even the presumption of necessary variation will definitely get us to natural perfection for the species.

[PHS] To show that organisms will not become maximally powerful for the reason you mention, you would have to show that there cannot be organisms whose structures are capable of trying out variations quickly enough. But I believe that the structures of organisms on earth show that they are possible.

[KVC] Yes, they're possible! And I wouldn't dispute the likelihood of maximal power in many cases. All I'm saying is that you can't make the leap from possibility, or even from likelihood, to necessity.

(Next point considered in a subsequent message -- but I've run out of time tonight.)

NATURAL PERFECTION AND THE MECHANISM OF EVOLUTION (3)
Response to Kent Van Cleave by Phillip Scribner on February 13, 2000:

[PHS] Kent, I find your recent two replies to my earlier comments very interesting. They reveal, I believe, the source of our disagreement, and that may make it possible for us to agree in the end. To me it seems, once again, that it depends on whether you are willing to accept a more basic ontological (or as you would say, "metaphysical") explanation of what you call "valences."

What we disagree about is whether evolution is change in the direction of a natural perfection, where "natural perfection" is defined as maximum (or "maximal," if you wish, though I don't see the difference) power to control all the conditions affecting its reproduction. I say that such change is ontologically necessary, making it inevitable that such naturally perfect states eventually come to exist.

You reply that my "claim of inevitability isn't supportable." You are apparently assuming that the foundation for my claim of ontological necessity is statistical probability, for the reason you give in the end for rejecting it is "that you can't make the leap from possibility, or even from likelihood, to necessity." Earlier you sum up your opposition by saying that you are "_denying_ that a positive claim of necessity can be supported statistically." And elsewhere you say, "But statistics don't yield necessary outcomes of the kind you claim. The logic of statistics is such that any outcome, however overwhelmingly probable, might not occur. If your claims were simply about overwhelming likelihood, I'd have no dispute with you. But you're claiming necessity, and I don't find support for that claim."

You are, I believe, misunderstanding my argument. I might even say that you have it backwards. I am not basing claims about what is ontologically necessary on statistical probability. Rather, I am showing that claims about statistical probability are themselves ontologically necessary.

To show that something is ontologically necessary is to show that is it implied by the best ontological explanation of the world. And in the case of the global regularities, what is ontologically necessary are regularities about change that hold for whole regions of space, including some regularities that are currently thought to be just a _consequence_ of statistics (as a branch of mathematics). But the same ontological causes that show that evolutionary change is change in the direction of natural perfection also show the truth of propositions about statistical probability. What makes such novel explanations possible is space. Let me explain.

What I show at the twow.net web site is that spatiomaterialism is the best ontological explanation of the world, where the best one is the one that postulates the fewest and simplest kinds of basic substances in order to explain everything in the natural world. What is new about my ontology is the recognition that space is another substance, along with matter, helping to constitute the world. The best ontological explanation assumes that substances endure through time, because that explains change as just an aspect (or property) that the world has because it is constituted by substances. Hence, it is possible to show that certain regularities about change are ontologically necessary by showing that those regularities follow from the unchanging natures (and basic relationship) of the substances postulated. In twow.net, I show how it is possible to explain certain aspects of the basic laws of physics ontologically by the endurance of matter as a substance through time as it coincides with parts of space, and then I show that, by taking into account the unchanging nature of space, it is also possible to show the ontological necessity of regularities that hold of whole regions of space, which I call global regularities." One global regularity that is shown to be ontologically necessary in this way is the second law of thermodynamics, and it is part of the foundation from which I demonstrate the inevitability of evolution in the direction of natural perfection, or what I call the "reproductive global regularity."

The second law of thermodynamics is considered, as you know, a statistical law (based on so-called statistical mechanics). In claiming that it is ontologically necessary, I am not denying its basically statistical nature, but rather explaining that nature. Its statistical nature comes from how regularities about whole regions of space must take into consideration a wide range of different initial conditions and ways that processes can evolve. But given how many are combined in the region, certain differences cancel out, and change has an overall direction, in this case, increasing entropy. That may be represented as a quantifiable probability, but if so, it is a probability that you can bank on. If there is a finite probability, for example, that all the gas molecules is a box would suddenly all move at the same time to one corner of the box, the universe has not existed long enough (according to the Big Bang theory) for it ever to have happened. (And I argue in twow.net in the section on the SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS under EPISTEMOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CAUSATION under CHANGE that the belief that it has even a finite probability may be just an illusion that comes from taking all mathematically describable states of such as system as equally probable.)

What I am saying about evolution is similar. All the global regularities (except for the simplest, the conservation of matter) are inherently statistical in the sense that they have to do with the kinds of states that come to exist as time passes in whole regions of space. Many different processes combine in many different ways to bring about the kinds of changes involved. When I say that it is ontologically necessary that evolution involves change in the direction of natural perfection, I am saying that it is ontologically necessarily true that it is overwhelmingly probable, indeed, such a high probability of happening that you can bank on it. Chance differences among planetary systems like our own do not affect the direction or overall course of evolution. What I am challenging is your assumption that the only grounds on which we can talk about something being ontologically necessary or inevitable is when it is entailed by deterministic laws (as Laplace understood determinism). To quote from you, "Let's say Species A is almost perfectly suited to its niche, and that a single mutation -- one that is chemically possible under prevailing circumstances -- would, if spread through the population, make it 'naturally perfect'. No matter how likely it is that the mutation in question will occur, it's simply not necessary that it happen (except in the deterministic sense whereby it must happen at time t and location l, but can't possibly happen at any other time or place because the antecedent conditions and operative forces won't allow but one outcome). Absent special knowledge of the full range of forces and conditions that will cause a mutation, we can't say that it is necessary." But if you were correct, we would also have to deny that there is anything ontologically necessary about the second law of thermodynamics, for example, that it is inevitable that gas molecules released in one location will spread out to fill their container. It is just not the case that only what is determined by the laws of physics is ontologically necessary or inevitable. That kind of determinism takes only the nature of matter into account (that is, the laws of physics). It leaves out space. If you insist that global regularities are inherently statistical (because of how regions of space in general include such a wide range of particular developments), I won't quibble over terms. But I will insist that those ontological causes make the direction of change so overwhelmingly probable that that you can bank on the outcome. Their outcomes are inevitable in a real world, despite appearances to the contrary caused by the ability to write large numbers.

I think this is the core of our disagreement about natural perfection. In other words, probability is not just a branch of abstract mathematics, but has ontological causes (like the rest of mathematics), which makes it ontologically necessary. The probabilities are so great in the case of global regularities as to make the change described inevitable in the real world, and that is the sense in which the claim that evolution is an inevitable change in the direction of natural perfection is ontologically necessary.

There is, however, one further point that it may be worth making in this context, because it relates to your understanding of "valences" and may create a bridge between them and ontological philosophy.

Earlier, in reference to your explanation of the mechanism of evolution, I had urged you "to be true to your own intention when you say that you want to focus on 'the entire system.' The entire system is not 'the situation and its valences.' The entire system is a planet rotating while in orbit around a star in which organisms (structures) are going through reproductive cycles. By taking the whole system into account, it is possible to see what is ontologically necessary, that is, what all is involved in the global regularity we call evolution."

Your response to me was as follows: "If I take your meaning correctly, you want to make sure I don't leave out any causal influences when I examine the situation of an organism and its potential evolutionary development."

But that is not what I meant. I think you are taking into account all the efficient causes that are relevant in the _local_ situation you are focusing on. My point is that there is a "valence" about earlier points in the course of evolution that make relevant aspects of that situation (and all other local situations) inevitable, and valences about yet earlier points that are responsible for the previous situations, and so on back to the beginning of life. What you mean by "valence" is, as far as I can tell, a way of referring to what I explain as a global regularity, and if you recognized that valences have such an ontological foundation, you could take your valid insight back much further than you currently do. All the way back to the valences on the early planet which made the beginning of life inevitable, and all the way up to rational beings like us and beyond. That would bring us into agreement about the nature of evolutionary change and the objectivity of values.

Since we have the same insight into the objective nature of what is good, I hope this may enable us to come closer to agreement about the foundations for that position.

Phillip Scribner
webmaster@twow.net

NON-BIG BANG COSMOLOGY Webmaster's response to Contra on issues concerning a non-big-bang cosmology on 22 February 2000:

Thanks for your interest in tWoW.net. Let me address your questions.

[CONTRA] 1 If this eternal universe is infinite in space and matter (which might be implied by the above text) then would we not, in the night sky, see those infinite stars? (I know the intensity falls off with distance, but the fact that these stars are theoretically every- where around us means that their distance-caused dim- ness is counteracted by their innumerable-ness. This is only true for a starfield infinite in all directions.)

[PHS]: (1) I can see why, in an infinitely large universe, stars would appear everywhere, if stars were eternal. This is Obler's paradox. But if stars have a finite life span, the light coming from each of them is only a longish pulse of signals that is preceded by and followed by an eternity of silence. I don't believe that such pulses of light would accumulate over eternity in infinite space in the way you assume. >

[CONTRA] 2 Your concept of localized big crunches would sus- tain an infinite-time universe, except for one thing- the fact that, as the universe's supply of kinetic energy is transformed to thermal energy through inelastic particle collisions, an irreversible pro- cess that eventually leads to heat-death.

[PHS]: (2) What you call "localized big crunches" is, I think, a mis-understanding of what I mean by "local big shrinks." They are not places in the universe where matter collapses, as in the end of the universe, but rather correspond to the big bang with which the universe was supposed to begin. They are places in the universe where matter begins a cycle in which it will become a supercluster of galaxies. The universe has a steady state, because superclusters of galaxies are continually being born from such events in the vast empty spaces between superclusters of galaxies. Such new beginnings can explain all the phenomena that are currently used as evidence for a big bang (though instead of an expansion of space, they involve a shrinking of matter in absolute space). See Cosmology under Change in tWoW.net for a detailed defense of this theory.

[CONTRA] Would the fact that an infinite space does not have a defined density change the laws of thermodynamics?

Does ontological philosophy somehow change or negate Newton's laws and the laws of thermodynamics (energy conservation), similar to the way it enforces unchang- ing space on general relativity even though this vio- lates the so-called Ocham's Razor (sp?)?

[PHS]: (3) The basic laws of physics are true, according to ontological philosophy. But they describe aspects of space and matter as substances enduring through space, and they are only part of a larger truth. Spatiomaterialism makes it possible to explain the truth of the second law of thermodynamics ontologically, which shows it to be ontologically necessary in regions of space like our own, after the birth of a new supercluster of galaxies. But if there are such events as local big shrinks, as I suggest, the second law of thermodynamics would not hold of them. Each big shrink would supply an incredible quantity of new free energy which would then go through the familiar changes that lead in the direction of evenly distributed heat. That is how this would be a steady state universe.

I don't see how the belief in absolute space violates occam's razor. It explains phenomena that spacetime does not explain, notably, why the present moment is different from the past and the future and why change seems to involve properties coming into existence and going out of existence. Spacetime ontology cannot explain that. See Spatiomaterialism on the whole diagram. If you are a Christian, by the way, you might find the conclusion of the argument at tWoW.net interesting, that is, the last box on the whole diagram, about religion and the nature of God.

Phillip Scribner
Washington, DC
webmaster@twow.net

NECESSITY AND PROBABILITY, Comments by Kent Van Cleave, February 18, 2000;

Phillip, I too am seeing more and more room for agreement. I'll Just comment on a few selected statements from your last note to illustrate.

[PHS] To me it seems, once again, that it depends on whether you are willing to accept a more basic ontological (or as you would say, "metaphysical") explanation of what you call "valences."

[Kent ] In my "Metaphysical Functionalism" I explain why philosophers, like it or not, operate from a metaphysical basis when they do philosophy. They have mental models about what's in the world and how it all fits together that are quite sophisticated by the time they are equipped to wonder about it all. There is no choice but to adopt the best available model and then set about refining it (or replacing it wholesale) in response to empirical data and epistemic norms.

Sound familiar? Except for our individual preferences for the terms 'ontology' or 'metaphysics', I think we BEGAN on the same page on this count.

There's still your primary ontological claim about space being a substance, and we may never agree on that -- but I don't think it's an important chasm. After all, if I suspect that matter is a dynamic pattern of space-time (based on my rather uninformed best guess), and you agree that it is empirically problematic to find definitive preferential support for your view of matter co- extensive with space and persisting through time, then Leibniz might settle the matter by declaring the identity of indiscernibles.

Next comes the real bone of contention we've tugged on for a month or so -- the question of necessity. Taking out of context two statements from your last message, I think I can show how this, too, can be resolved.

[PHS] I say that such change is ontologically necessary, making it inevitable that such naturally perfect states eventually come to exist.

... and ...

[PHS] I am not basing claims about what is ontologically necessary on statistical probability. Rather, I am showing that claims about statistical probability are themselves ontologically necessary.

[Kent ] I agree wholeheartedly with this latter proposition! Statistics simply describe the complex causal regularities of phenomena we can't observe directly or completely. This is one reason I like Bohm's alternative to quantum mechanics it treats the statistical nature of quantum phenomena as descriptive rather than as constitutive.

I think now that our fundamental disagreement has been over statistics. I think you've been jumping from overwhelming probability to certainty, which won't gain you any points in the mathematical or philosophical communities, whatever the merits of your primary ideas.

Take the Second Law of Thermodynamics ... PLEASE! In your most recent message, you make comments about it that struck me as missing the essence of the law. I hate the presumptuous sound of that, but let's see what you think of my objections.

[PHS] The second law of thermodynamics is considered, as you know, a statistical law (based on so-called statistical mechanics). In claiming that it is ontologically necessary, I am not denying its basically statistical nature, but rather explaining that nature. Its statistical nature comes from how regularities about whole regions of space must take into consideration a wide range of different initial conditions and ways that processes can evolve. But given how many are combined in the region, certain differences cancel out, and change has an overall direction, in this case, increasing entropy. That may be represented as a quantifiable probability, but if so, it is a probability that you can bank on. If there is a finite probability, for example, that all the gas molecules is a box would suddenly all move at the same time to one corner of the box, the universe has not existed long enough (according to the Big Bang theory) for it ever to have happened. (And I argue ... that the belief that it has even a finite probability may be just an illusion that comes from taking all mathematically describable states of such as system as equally probable.)

[Kent ] There's plenty to dispute here. I think the statistical nature of the law is due simply to Newton's laws of motion (and their implications for large numbers of objects). It's a matter of simple determinism. Now, you're apparently not fond of that

[PHS] But if you were correct, we would also have to deny that there is anything ontologically necessary about the second law of thermodynamics, for example, that it is inevitable that gas molecules released in one location will spread out to fill their container.

[Kent ] The inevitable is that each molecule will follow Newton's laws, and absent artificial barriers, there is nothing to prevent inertia from carrying those molecules all around the volume available to them, and it is extremely unlikely that any sizable portion of that volume will accidentally turn up vacant.

Let's say (I haven't checked) that the probability of the molecules of 1 litre of air at 1 atm. pressure all at once occupying 1/4 of the volume availble (or, if you want, a PARTICULAR 1/4 of that volume) is one occurrence in 20 billion years -- or 100 billion; I don't care. You make it sound like the universe must wait patiently for the allotted time to pass before the event occurs -- which stands the notion of probability on its head! The single occurrence might occur in the first dozen years, for all the universe cares. Or it might occur a dozen times during that span, and then never occur again for a trillion years. Without particular knowledge about the causal forces involved, we simply can't say when a statistically possible event may occur.

On the other hand, the very existence of a bounded container with, say, a mole of molecules bouncing around in it, guarantees that any arbitrarily small volume therein will be occupied by at least some molecule at some time, given sufficient time.

[PHS] What I am saying about evolution is similar. All the global regularities (except for the simplest, the conservation of matter) are inherently statistical in the sense that they have to do with the kinds of states that come to exist as time passes in whole regions of space. Many different processes combine in many different ways to bring about the kinds of changes involved. When I say that it is ontologically necessary that evolution involves change in the direction of natural perfection, I am saying that it is ontologically necessarily true that it is overwhelmingly probable, indeed, such a high probability of happening that you can bank on it.

[Kent ] Indeed. The overwhelming _probability_ (not the result) is ontologically (metaphysically) necessary, and I'm ready to bank on it. But no particular evolutionary result is necessary, however probable -- except in the deterministic sense. So, when you go beyond claims about movement in the _direction_ of natural perfection to claims about necessarily _reaching_ natural perfection, I balk.

Necessity and inevitability are large claims. They're also unnecessary claims if one simply wants to impress upon others the actual, immense probabilities involved. Direct appeal to them should suffice. Well, that's enough for now.

What a great discussion!

Kent

NECESSITY AND PROBABILITY Comments by Phillip Scribner in response to Kent Van Cleave's latest comments, February 23, 2000:

[PHS] Our original point of agreement is that values are objective because they derive from evolution. But we disagree on what that foundation is. In order to focus on the more basic issues you raise, I will make three points, one having to do with the difference in our basic approaches to metaphysics, the second pointing out how space is essential to the ontological explanation of values, and the third challenging your claim that statistical probability is incompatible with the inevitability of what happens according to global regularities.

(1) In attempting to show that we are coming at the issue of the nature of goodness from the same page, you wrote . .

[Kent] In my "Metaphysical Functionalism" I explain why philosophers, like it or not, operate from a metaphysical basis when they do philosophy. They have mental models about what's in the world and how it all fits together that are quite sophisticated by the time they are equipped to wonder about it all. There is no choice but to adopt the best available model and then set about refining it (or replacing it wholesale) in response to empirical data and epistemic norms.

Sound familiar? Except for our individual preferences for the terms 'ontology' or 'metaphysics', I think we BEGAN on the same page on this count.

[PHS] Though I agree that we both take a metaphysical approach, I think we disagree basically about what such an approach should involve. To me, it seems that there ought to be a basement beneath the foundation that you call "metaphysics."

I agree that philosophers are actually, if only implicitly, committed to metaphysical beliefs, that is, some theory or other about what exists that seems to work for them. But that is precisely what I reject in claiming that empirical ontology is the foundation for a new way of doing philosophy. I call your approach to metaphysics "realism," because it allows one's beliefs about what exists be determined by what one finds oneself committed to as a result of his other beliefs about the world (including scientific theories about efficient causes). Realism leads some philosophers to believe in the existence of properties as well as (or instead of) substances; it leads other philosophers to believe in spacetime; and it leads still others, like yourself (because you are closer to the truth about values), to believe in valences. That may be metaphysics, but it is not what I mean by ontological philosophy.

By "ontological philosophy," I mean a two-step argument which (1) begins by inferring to the best ontological explanation of the world (that is, the best way of explaining the world as constituted by nothing but basic substances of certain kinds related in some basic way as parts of a single world), and then (2) uses that empirically justified ontology to show that certain truths about the world are ontologically necessary (in the sense of being prior to our ordinary ways of knowing about the world, including science and its theories about the causes of what happens in the world). The first step infers to spatiomaterialism, and the second step infers from spatiomaterialism.

By taking valences to be basic, you are starting with a claim about the world of a kind that ontological philosophy would defend as a conclusion of its second step. That is, as I understand it, your belief in valences is a kind of realism about evolutionary biology. Since your ontology is determined by realism, it cannot claim any ontological necessity about valences. Far from being prior to ordinary scientific knowledge, the belief in the reality of valences depends on it. That makes our views of metaphysics quite different.

(2) I believe that it is because you take ontology (or metaphysics) to be simply realism about certain other beliefs that you do not think that the issue about the nature of space is important. I am at the other extreme. Without substantivalism about space, I would admit that ontological philosophy collapses into scientific realism. You say:

[Kent] There's still your primary ontological claim about space being a substance, and we may never agree on that -- but I don't think it's an important chasm. After all, if I suspect that matter is a dynamic pattern of space-time (based on my rather uninformed best guess), and you agree that it is empirically problematic to find definitive preferential support for your view of matter co- extensive with space and persisting through time, then Leibniz might settle the matter by declaring the identity of indiscernibles.

[PHS] This chasm is more important than you think, for substantivalism about space is involved in almost every ontologically necessary truth I would defend. In particular, there is no ontological explanation of regularities without substances enduring through time, because they are demonstrated by showing that certain kinds of changes are regular because of how unchanging substances endure through time. What is ontologically impossible is impossible because it cannot be constituted by substances in that way. That goes for the laws of physics (or local regularities) as well as for global regularities, as I argue in (3) below.

But before I take that up, I want to correct a mis-understanding you have of my position. I do NOT agree that the belief in space as a substance enduring through time is "empirically problematic." On the contrary, I believe that for anyone who accepts the empirical method and takes truth to be correspondence to what exists there is no alternative but to reject the belief in spacetime in favor of absolute space and time.

The belief that spacetime corresponds to what exists is falsified by something that is obvious to any rational being who takes the time to think about it. It can be seen by both reflection and perception. Through reflection, we know what makes the present moment different from the past and the future is that the present exists, whereas the past and the future do not exist. That is the assumption on which we organize our understanding of ourselves as subjects who make choices and who are responsible for what we do in the world. We could not actually do anything in the world, if the future already existed. Similarly through perception, we know that properties (or relations) come into existence and go out of existence as time passes. That is how we understand the change that we perceive in the natural world; it is the nature of what we perceive to happen in the natural world.

Both of those observations falsify the belief in spacetime (because an ontology based on spacetime holds that all the moments in the history of every material object exist in exactly the same sense). (Nor can one argue that falsifying spacetime substantivalism leaves us with nothing, for as I show at tWoW.net, all of the predictions made by the special and general theories of relativity can be made by a theory that assumes that space and time are absolute -- and, as it turns out, explained far more intelligibly.)

What makes the belief in spacetime the current consensus, despite how it flies in the face of experience, is the deference paid to physicists on this issue. But such deference is a mistake, because their preoccupation with mathematically based laws for predicting WHAT HAPPENS makes physicists indifferent to whether their theories correspond to WHAT EXISTS. I should think that philosophers, or metaphysicians, at least, would be a bit more independent in their judgment than that.

(3) Now, the specific point on which we disagree is about the status of "laws" describing regularities about change that hold of entire regions of space, such as the second law of thermodynamics and evolutionary change. I claim that those laws (or "global regularities," as I call them) are ontologically necessary and, thus, that the future states they predict are just as inevitable as those predicted on the basis of the laws of physics alone. You, on the other hand, deny that the future states they describe can be inevitable because they are only statistically probable.

[Kent] I think now that our fundamental disagreement has been over statistics. I think you've been jumping from overwhelming probability to certainty, which won't gain you any points in the mathematical or philosophical communities, whatever the merits of your primary ideas.

[PHS] I agree with what you say about the source of our disagreement. It is about statistical probability. And this is an example of how arguing with you is so worthwhile, because it forces me to clarify what I am saying. It enables me to see that what I need to show is that we do not disagree in the way that you think.

I am not "jumping from overwhelming probability to certainty," but rather jumping from certainty to overwhelming probability. When I say that global regularities are about states that can be described statistically, I do not mean that that is ALL that can be said about them. That is what you seem to hold: if future states can be described as "overwhelmingly probable," they cannot also be inevitable (on other grounds).

To put this point more aggressively, I think that your disagreement with me about the necessity of global regularities comes from an illusion caused by statistics. The illusion is caused by assuming that statistics captures everything that is causally relevant in global regularities. It leads you to say that, in referring to the second law of thermodynamics as an example of such a global regularity, I am "missing the essence of the law." You would not be alone in saying this, because it is an illusion that nearly every philosopher of science also succumbs to. But you can see through the illusion, if you stop and think about what statistical probability is and how it is used to explain the kind of change predicted by the second law.

You echo the received view of how to explain the second law of thermodynamics:

[Kent] I think the statistical nature of the law is due simply to Newton's laws of motion (and their implications for large numbers of objects). It's a matter of simple determinism.

[PHS] I take it that what your are referring to as "their implications for large numbers of objects" are the principles of statistical probability. Hence, your claim is that those principles, together with Newton's laws, "determine" the second law. But as Boltzmann used them, those principles depend on the assumption that there is a way of describing all possible states of a system, such as a box of gas, where the molecules obey Newton's laws, and the assumption that those states are all equally probable. The probability of any kind of state is determined by the number of equally possible states that are of that kind. That gives a measure of randomness, because some kinds of states contain far more of the equally probable possible states than others. But notice that such descriptions of the system abstract from the real, physical system in two ways.

First, there is no reason to believe that the possible states of a system are finite in number. Thus, each so-called possible state is actually a whole class of possible states (in fact, an infinitely large class, given the continuousness of space and variations in momentum).

Second, these statistical descriptions of kinds of distributions in space abstract from the geometrical structures constituted by the system and how they change as time passes. Though how states follow one another is assumed to depend on how the molecules follow Newton's laws, that is not how the increase in randomness is explained. The reason that statistical mechanics gives for believing that a less random state will become more random as time passes is that future states, like any other possible state of the system, are likely to be more random than it. (To be sure, since the molecules obey the laws of physics, the system's change of location in phase space is continuous. But such continuous changes could lead to less random states as well, and the only reason that statistical mechanics gives for predicting that that will not happen is that, among all the possible states that can follow such an initial state, far more will be more random than it is.)

Now, I do not deny that this shows that the future states are LIKELY to be more random. What statistical mechanics says is true as far as it goes. But its truth does not show that change in the direction of greater randomness is not also INEVITABLE. For all we know from statistical mechanics, it could also be ontologically necessary that entropy increases, because it abstracts from aspects of the system that could be making change in that direction inevitable.

The factors that statistical mechanics overlooks are what ontological philosophy uses to show that randomness increases. It shows how the geometrical structures of the molecules in less random states tend to wipe out themselves out because of the uniform structure of the space containing them. Ironically, this is the kind of factor to which you naturally turn in trying to explain non-statistically why the 2nd law if true in the case of gas expanding in a box:

[Kent] The inevitable is that each molecule will follow Newton's laws, and absent artificial barriers, there is nothing to prevent inertia from carrying those molecules all around the volume available to them, and it is extremely unlikely that any sizable portion of that volume will accidentally turn up vacant.

[PHS] What I show in my explanation of the truth of the second law of thermodynamics (in MATERIAL GLOBAL REGULARITIES under CHANGE) is that such factors (including three causally relevant factors in all) add up for all the molecules in the box as time passes to change that is inevitability in a certain direction. In each case, it is a basically geometrical argument. The illusion that there is some finite probability that entropy will decrease comes from thinking that statistical measures tell the whole story, though, in fact, they abstract from those factors. This is where space being a substance enduring through time comes in. It is by thinking of matter and space as substances enduring through time that you can see that there are relevant factors that are not considered in arguments from statistical probability. It restores to view more concrete aspects of the process being explained.

(Nor is it a compelling refutation of the inevitability of the second law as a global regularity to appeal to Loschmidt's paradox and point out that a system that was the time-reversal of a later state of a system in which gas is released would have the molecules all moving towards a certain region. For there is no reason to believe that such an initial state would ever come about by the random motion and interaction of molecules. There is no reason to believe that all physically possible states are equally probable.)

As I understand your position, the relevance of the second law of thermodynamics is that it illustrates the role that statistical probability plays in the case of evolutionary change. Once again, the laws of physics together with the principles of statistics are supposed to be our only way of predicting what will happen in entire regions of space. But if statistics causes the illusion that entropy can increase in simple situations like a box of gas, it is at least as illusory when it is applied to evolution and used to argue that it is possible for change not to be in the direction of natural perfection.

Let me pause here to correct one misunderstanding you have of my position. You say that I "go beyond claims about movement in the _direction_ of natural perfection to claims about necessarily _reaching_ natural perfection." But that is not true. I do not claim that natural perfection is ever reached, because on the one hand, the gradual evolution during any given stage may approach natural perfection only asymptotically, and on the other, there may be further stages of evolution beyond those that lead up to beings like us. Perhaps the stages are endless. What I do claim is that change is inevitably in the direction of natural perfection, and that, I take it, is what you are disputing by your appeal to statistical probability.

But if statistical probability abstracts from the factors that are casually relevant to the simple increase in entropy, it utterly irrelevant when it comes to tracing out what happens in regions where biological structures are using free energy to control what happens. To be sure, many different causal chains are combined in any region of space where evolution is taking place. But what reason do you have for believing that chance events could keep biological organisms at some stage of evolution from acquiring any basic traits by natural selection. To use an example you mentioned, how can you know a priori that the random variations that would lead to some trait do not occur often enough to overcome the rate of accidental failures of reproduction in individuals who have it to keep the trait from evolving? Do you have some set of equally probable possible states on which to base your measurements of probability? If so what are they? How do you count them? I recognize that the appeal to principles of statistical probability is seldom challenged in this era of the worship of mathematics, but it nevertheless seems to me that in making an argument from the nature of statistics you are suffering from the illusion I have described. Once again, I believe that if you are willing to look at the geometrical structures (and in this case, spatio-temporal geometrical structures of reproductive cycles) that are involved and consider how they add up in space as time passes, you will find sufficient reason for believing that change in the direction of natural selection is inevitable. That is what I argue in REPRODUCTIVE GLOBAL REGULARITIES under CHANGE at tWoW.net. And that is the nature of the basement that I see beneath the foundation on which you base valences.

In any case, it should at least be clear that my argument for the ontological necessity of global regularities does not depend on inferring from the overwhelming statistical probability of some future state to its inevitability. Statistics has nothing to do with my argument. It is not a mathematical argument at all. It is an ontological argument, that is, about what kinds of change can be constituted by space and matter as substances enduring though time. Thus, while I agree that our disagreement about the foundation of the objectivity of values comes from a disagreement about statistics, I deny that it turns on my belief that one can argue from overwhelming probability to inevitability. It is, rather, a disagreement that has to do with the capacity of the principles of statistical probability to capture the factors that are relevant in giving change in entire regions of space a direction. And if I suggest that you are being taken in by the currently fashionable worship of mathematics, I hope you do not take offense, because I find the arguments you make interesting and so productive of deeper understanding on my part that I am eager to hear your response.

What a great discussion indeed!

Phillip Scribner
Washington, D. C.

STATISTICS AND NECESSITY Comments by Kent Van Cleave to Phillip Scribner on February 25, 2000:

[Kent] Phillip, I'm responding to your latest three messages with one reply -- possible only because I think most of their content pursued a perceived area of disagreement where there's really no problem. I'll be quoting passages that are out of context and out of order (and even one from much earlier in our discussion), but I trust that your meaning isn't distorted thereby.

[PHS] :(3) Now, the specific point on which we disagree is about the status of "laws" describing regularities about change that hold of entire regions of space, such as the second law of thermodynamics and evolutionary change. I claim that those laws (or "global regularities," as I call them) are ontologically necessary and, thus, that the future states they predict are just as inevitable as those predicted on the basis of the laws of physics alone. You, on the other hand, deny that the future states they describe can be inevitable because they are only statistically probable.

[Kent] We've never really zeroed in on your notion of global regularities, which I think includes, but isn't limited to, physical laws. Other global regularities would include the properties of substances, right? Anyway, your use of "law" above as "describing" regularities differs from the conception I have. There are concepts or expressions we have for physical regularities, and there are the regularities (or, more precisely, the causes producing them; both are called "laws" to our everlasting confusion. I take the physical causes, which are the necessary consequences of the physical nature of the universe (whatever that may turn out to be) as the REAL laws. The statements are epistemic, and deal more with our minds than with the world they respond to.

This is why I begin my "Overview" pages with a discussion of determinism. I think that my presumption that the universe is what it is, and functions as it must BECAUSE of what it is, underlies all the rest of my philosophy and must be understood before the rest can make sense. For me, determinism has nothing to do with our ability to predict events, but rather expresses the necessary unfolding of events according to the nature of the universe.

So, when you speak of 'ontological necessity' and 'global regularities', I think we're at least in the same ballpark.

Where, then, do our disagreements come from? After your most recent comments, I'm inclined to say that it ISN'T a split on the nature or import of statistics, but a question of consistency. Let's start with the statistics.

[PHS] To put this point more aggressively, I think that your disagreement with me about the necessity of global regularities comes from an illusion caused by statistics. The illusion is caused by assuming that statistics captures everything that is causally relevant in global regularities.

[Kent] This illusion is a real problem -- fortunately not mine, I think. My view of statistics, consonant with my view of 'law', is that they are in no way causal, but merely descriptive of generalities. Even as epistemic tools, they can't help us predict specific outcomes, but only allow us to make rational guesses concerning the likelihood of _classes_ of outcomes.

[PHS] You echo the received view of how to explain the second law of thermodynamics

I think the statistical nature of the law is due simply to Newton's laws of motion (and their implications for large numbers of objects). It's a matter of simple determinism.

I take it that what your are referring to as "their implications for large numbers of objects" are the principles of statistical probability. Hence, your claim is that those principles, together with Newton's laws, "determine" the second law.

[Kent] That view is so common that I can understand the tendency to interpret my comments in that light. But look again. When I say "their implications" I'm talking about Newton's laws (and not just his conception of them or his expression, but the actual causal relations) rather than principles of statistical probability. The causal necessity of physical law IS determinism, in my book. On a "flow" conception of time, outcomes are determined for all time by physical laws and initial conditions. On a manifold conception of space-time, "viewed" from outside, the entire structure exists "all at once" (smuggling in an illicit temporal term in order to express the existence, together, of all moments), and its features along the time axis are ordered according to laws that are functions of time.

[PHS] I am not "jumping from overwhelming probability to certainty," but rather jumping from certainty to overwhelming probability. When I say that global regularities are about states that can be described statistically, I do not mean that that is ALL that can be said about them. That is what you seem to hold if future states can be described as "overwhelmingly probable," they cannot also be inevitable (on other grounds).

[Kent] You begin here with a good statement of my view about the relation between necessary consequences of physical laws and our attempts to quantify them with statistics. And, because I believe that every ACTUAL event is also inevitable, and many such events belong to classes that fall into manageable statistical distributions, I fully expect many events (necessary/inevitable) to be overwhelmingly probably from an epistemic perspective.

[PHS] I do not claim that natural perfection is ever reached, because on the one hand, the gradual evolution during any given stage may approach natural perfection only asymptotically, and on the other, there may be further stages of evolution beyond those that lead up to beings like us. Perhaps the stages are endless. What I do claim is that change is inevitably in the direction of natural perfection, and that, I take it, is what you are disputing by your appeal to statistical probability.

[Kent] Seeing this, one might wonder how we ever came to disagree at all. I don't dispute it except to quibble that for any given type of evolving organism, even change in the _direction_ of natural perfection (toward the optimal filling of a valence) may be necessarily precluded by physical laws -- say, the impact of a comet. What is inevitable is that, when conditions are right, physics will force this sort of change.

Given the foregoing, maybe now you can see the difficulty I have with statements like this one from earlier in our discussion

[T]he nature of the world, explained ontologically, makes the evolution of maximally powerful structures of various kinds ontologically necessary (and, thus, inevitable).

[Kent] I think we agree that laws, or global regularities, will do this _given the right "input"_. But a particular outcome of some type that (according to our best knowledge) is overwhelmingly likely to occur may turn out to lack the requisite initial conditions. In other words, because it is possible that the global regularities that COULD produce optimally powerful biological structures CAN'T do so, for no better reason than that you can't make lemonade with kumquats. And logically, if it is possible that not even one token of any as yet nonexistent kind of organism will be produced by the necessary operation of the universe, then it is not necessary or inevitable that such things will be produced.

[PHS] To be sure, many different causal chains are combined in any region of space where evolution is taking place. But what reason do you have for believing that chance events could keep biological organisms at some stage of evolution from acquiring any basic traits by natural selection. To use an example you mentioned, how can you know a priori that the random variations that would lead to some trait do not occur often enough to overcome the rate of accidental failures of reproduction in individuals who have it to keep the trait from evolving? Do you have some set of equally probable possible states on which to base your measurements of probability?

[Kent] But I don't need to demonstrate knowledge of some counterinstance, or even to offer some more probable alternative in order to undermine a claim of necessity/inevitability. I need only demonstrate the remotest possibility of a contrary outcome. Now, this is one place where the epistemic takes on an appropriate role. Since neither of us is capable of calculating, based on knowledge of actual initial conditions and all causal relations, the actual outcome of interest, we need to rely on probabilities.

This is why I think you're jumping from overwhelming probability to necessity -- at least in incautious moments. It's not an overstatement of the claim that laws/global regularities must produce particular kinds of outcomes wherever circumstances require it. This is solid ground. But the overwhelming probability (which I obviously acknowledge) that appropriate initial conditions will arise somewhere, sometime, to allow the necessary lawful development of some evolutionary change (the filling of a valence) is all anyone has to go on. It's not enough to claim necessity.

Have I made any progress in ferreting out the source of our misunderstandings here?

Kent

ONTO-PHIL FOUNDATIONS comments by Gary sisto on February 25, 2000, to Kent and Phillip

[GDS] At the risk of adding confusion to a wonderful and most intriguing dialogue that has been going on since January, I would like to chime in.

I would like to address my points to Kent in response to the last posting on onto-phil. Kent, as a person who has been taken in by ontological philosophy and as an ardent fan of tWoW.net, I thought that maybe I could help fill in some gaps in your portrayal of some aspects of ontological philosophy. Maybe my simpler (or even facile) understanding might possibly shed some light on some issues that seem to me to be misunderstood. Again, this is from my understanding of ontological philosophy and if I am misrepresenting it, Phillip, please let me know. In the end, whether one agrees or not with ontological philosophy, I think that it is important to understand it on its own grounds before one can judge it. That is my purpose here and that is the way that I became familiar with it.

Kent, all things quoted from you were posted on onto-phil on 2/25/2000.

[Kent] We've never really zeroed in on your notion of global regularities, which I think includes, but isn't limited to, physical laws. Other global regularities would include the properties of substances, right?

[GDS] As far as I can tell, global regularities have to do with the effects that space (taken as a real continuous substance) has on matter (the other form of substance, which is discreet and contained by space and located in space) in large spatial regions (like solar systems, for instance) over time. Thus global regularities are the effects of the properties of space on the matter contained by and located in that continuous, 3-dimensional substance. <

[Kent] Anyway, your use of "law" above as "describing" regularities differs from the conception I have. There are concepts or expressions we have for physical regularities, and there are the regularities (or, more precisely, the causes producing them; both are called "laws" to our everlasting confusion. I take the physical causes, which are the necessary consequences of the physical nature of the universe (whatever that may turn out to be) as the REAL laws. The statements are epistemic, and deal more with our minds than with the world they respond to.

[GDS] Again, as far as I can tell, in tWoW regularities refer to the laws of natural science. They are regularities of experience or experiment. Epistemic in the Humean sense of constant conjunction (i.e., everytime x occurs, y follows it). Thus it is infered that x is the efficient cause of y. What you are refering to as REAL LAWS or the “physical causes which are necessary consequences of the physical nature of the universe” for ontological philosophy aren’t laws (epistemic norms) but are ontological causes. Ontological causes are the ultimate cause--the proverbial end (or beginning) of the causal chain. These are simply what the basic substances, space and matter, do and are entailed by the properties of the substances and how those substances are related to one another. Ontological causes (i.e. substances) are not epistemic in nature, but rather are causes that are entailed by the properties of the substances that come to constitute the best ontological explanation, which happens to be spatiomaterialism when all factors are taken into account. It is important to note that at this point in the argument of tWoW that epistemology is not even a factor. The entire move of ontological philosophy is to put ontology BEFORE epistemology. Traditional philosophy and science argue with the point of view that epistemology is FIRST PHILOSOPHY. For tWoW, ONTOLOGY IS FIRST PHILOSOPHY. Epistemological issues aren’t even taken up until you get to the evolution of “knowing or thinking matter.” The method here is to formulate the best ontology (of simple substances) and then let the natures of those substances determine how they manifest themselves in whole regions over time. Thus it is possible to track how things change based on a deduction from the best theory of substances.

[Kent] This is why I begin my "Overview" pages with a discussion of determinism. I think that my presumption that the universe is what it is, and functions as it must BECAUSE of what it is, underlies all the rest of my philosophy and must be understood before the rest can make sense. For me, determinism has nothing to do with our ability to predict events, but rather expresses the necessary unfolding of events according to the nature of the universe.

[GDS] I agree, but in order to understand what the universe is and how it must function you first have to do an EXPLICIT ONTOLOGY and actually describe and define what the universe is. Unless you go down to the deepest level of existence, there is no way, to use an analogy, to track the changes over time from an acorn to an oak tree. Appeal to efficient causes only doesn’t get you the nature of the universe. To get there you must appeal to ontological causes or substances.

[Kent] The causal necessity of physical law IS determinism, in my book. On a "flow" conception of time, outcomes are determined for all time by physical laws and initial conditions.

[GDS] Again, outcomes are determined by more than just physical “laws” and initial “conditions.” From an ontological perspective, they are determined by the properties of substances (that exist “in time”.) It is the ontological causes that “explain” why natural laws are true (or false) and which define any initial conditions, which ultimately can be deduced from matter and space—the supreme limiter of all conditions.

Anyway, I hope that this is helpful. I look forward to the continued enjoyment and enlightenment of the ONTO-PHIL/EVOL-PHIL dialogue (you see, it’s already been branded!).

Regards,
Gary Sisto
NYC

STATISTICS AND NECESSITY Comments by Phillip Scribner, February 26, 2000:

[PHS] In response to Kent Van Cleave and Gary Sisto on what Gary rightly calls the onto-phil/evol-phil dispute, I will simply endorse what Gary says, except for one point I would like to emphasize.

Kent asks at the end of his comments,

[Kent] Have I made any progress in ferreting out the source of our misunderstandings here?

[PHS] Not in the way you think, for that leaves us both defending the views we held before. I hold that evolution is a global regularity in which certain outcomes are inevitable, and you reject that, insisting that it can only be overwhelmingly probable. Thus, I find myself, as I have all my previous three comments, urging you to consider the possibility that our disagreement is about the nature of metaphysics. What I call ontological philosophy is the foundation of my claim that evolution is inevitable. But in each of your responses, you choose to ignore that possibility and instead just insist that our knowledge of what happens in evolution can only be a probability. For example, just before the quote above you say:

[Kent] This is why I think you're jumping from overwhelming probability to necessity -- at least in incautious moments. It's not an overstatement of the claim that laws/global regularities must produce particular kinds of outcomes wherever circumstances require it. This is solid ground. But the overwhelming probability (which I obviously acknowledge) that appropriate initial conditions will arise somewhere, sometime, to allow the necessary lawful development of some evolutionary change (the filling of a valence) is all anyone has to go on. It's not enough to claim necessity.

[PHS] It is not all that anyone has to go on. The source of the claim of necessity is what Gary says about global regularities. Though they do depend on initial conditions, the relevant initial conditions are conditions that hold of entire regions that are closed or isolated from the rest of space, and in the case of evolution, they are just that the fact that it is a planetary system of the right kind, like the solar system (where the laws of physics are assumed to hold). Global regularities are laws that describe what is regular about change in the entire region, and in the case of evolution, the sorts of factors you are calling "appropriate initial conditions" are part of what inevitably comes about according to the global regularity. Those initial conditions are not just "overwhelmingly probable," but inevitable, and thus, if the "valences" you are talking about "filling" are part of the global regularity, they are inevitable.

A lot depends, therefore, on whether what you call valences are included in what I call the "reproductive global regularity." Like most evolutionary biologists, you think of evolution as occurring in very local situations relative to some environment that is taken for granted, and if you pick out a specific enough change in a particular species, it seems that all you need to do to refute my claim of inevitability is to "demonstrate the remotest possibility of a contrary outcome" in that particular case. The particularity of the case makes it seem imaginable, and since the conceivability of countervailing factors in the specific case is the foundation for your claim that calculations of probability are in order, it is what leads to our disagreement on this issue. But if it is conceivable, then what you are calling a "valence" is not part of what I am calling the global regularity.

The reproductive global regularity predicts a series of evolutionary stages at each of which biological organisms of a distinctive kind become increasingly powerful in every possible way in controlling relevant conditions in each way that organisms of their kind can tap the free energy available on the surface of their planet. That is what is inevitable. And if you consider the nature of what is inevitable in this case, I don't believe that you can "demonstrate the remotest possibility of a contrary outcome."

For example, the impact of asteroids or comets will not do it, because if certain species are wiped out, other species will evolve to tap the free energy in their ecological niche and tend to become naturally perfect in it. Indeed, as I argue at tWoW.net, such events sometimes play an essential role in the overall course of evolution, for a catastrophic change is sometimes necessary for an inherently more powerful kind of organism to overcome the advantages of incumbency and bring about a later stage of evolution. That is what happened in the case of the extinction of the dinosaurs: the asteroid leveled the playing field so that mammals could replace the dinosaurs in their energy rich ecological niches. Catastrophes shake out the system and accelerate change in the direction of greater natural perfection of the planetary system as a whole.

To sum up, while it may be true that what you call "the filling of a valence" is not inevitable, that does not mean that the course of evolution as described by reproductive global regularities is not, for those valences may not be part of the global regularity. They may be too local and specific to be part of what is ontologically necessary. We would have to consider particulars to tell.

The kind of ontological explanation that I am defending takes a much broader view of the course of evolution because it traces evolution to more basic aspects of the world. And the source of out disagreement is not, I believe, that I am mistakenly inferring from overwhelming probability to inevitability, but rather you are failing to see that it is possible to explain evolution in a more fundamental way. That is what I have been getting at by continually asking you to consider the possibility that what you take to be metaphysically basic, including valences, has a deeper explanation and that that is what ontology and, thus, metaphysics is all about in the end.

Let me conclude by pointing out that laws of nature are just another example of this same failure. You take the laws of physics to be basic to your metaphysics, whereas ontological philosophers, as Gary explains, take them to have a deeper explanation in terms of the substances constituting the world that behave in the lawful way. As I argue in tWoW.net, just as the basic laws of physics depend on the essential nature of matter and how bits of matter are contained by space, so the global regularities for regions where such matter exists depend on the WHOLENESS of space. They are caused by how motion and interaction in accordance with those laws ADD UP in space over time, and the inevitability comes, not from statistical measures of their probability, but from changes in geometrical structures that cannot fail to occur because, ultimately, something cannot come from nothing. Without some malicious demon to bring them about, the contrary outcomes you would need to conceive are as inconceivable as matter in some region of space collapsing into a star like a super nova going backwards in time.

You reject such ontological explanations by insisting that laws of nature are "REAL laws," which you seem to see as "physical causes" of what happens. Perhaps, you can explain it, but this simply does not make much sense to me. Are you assuming that laws of nature are somehow self-subsistent? That along with the bits of matter that move and interact in law-like ways in space there is something else that is pushing them or pulling them about? Surely not. (The ancient stoics thought there was such "active matter," but it is not compatible with contemporary physics.) But, if laws of nature are not an additional substance, what are they? Are they properties or dispositions of bits of matter that must be postulated in addition to the matter itself? That saddles you with an ontology that postulates material substance and properties of them separately? But what is the nature of properties, if they are not just aspects of substances? I don't get it. It seems to me that you are just projecting science's descriptions of causal connection onto the world and reifying them as "REAL laws," as if that would explain something.

In other words, I am, once again, asking you to consider the possibility that metaphysics involves a deeper explanation than simply affirming dogmatically the existence of laws or valences. To consider the possibility that metaphysics is an explanation of everything in the world by how it is constituted by nothing but basic substances of certain kinds. I believe that if you were to take that argument seriously, you would have all the reasons you need to believe that global regularities are necessary, you would have an "account" of how values are objective (as Plato would say, not just a true belief), and what is more, you would understand why the good is good, for your would see that it ought to exist because it contributes to natural perfection.

Phillip Scribner
Washington, D. C.

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