Consul wrote: ↑August 21st, 2020, 8:42 amMaterialism/Physicalism is compatible with different ontological models of the physical cosmos. What you describe is the one of ancient Greek atomism:…
An even simpler atomistic model is this one: The physical cosmos is fundamentally constituted by a finite or infinite number of eternal zero-dimensional atoms which lack intrinsic (non-relational) properties and stand in distance relations to one another, with the entire dynamics of nature being reducible to changes of those distance relations.
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"[W]e start from the idea that given a plurality of objects, there has to be a certain type of relations in virtue of which these objects make up a world. The minimalist hypothesis then is that these relations also individuate the objects, thus paving the way for the claim that there is nothing more to these objects than standing in these relations. The objects thus are simple, having no parts or any other internal structure. When it comes to the natural world, relations providing for extension—namely, distances—are first and foremost candidate for the type of relations that fulfills this task. Distances connect unextended and thus point-sized objects. If they individuate these objects, they provide for variation within a configuration of point-sized objects, with each of these objects being distinct from all the other ones by at least one distance relation that it bears to another object. In virtue of standing in distance relations, these objects then are matter points (recall the sparse Cartesian conception of the natural world as
res extensa). In order to achieve empirical adequacy, we furthermore have to stipulate that these relations change. We thus propose an ontology of the natural world that is defined by the following two axioms, and only by these two axioms.
(1)
There are distance relations that individuate simple objects—namely, matter points.
(2)
The matter points are permanent, with the distances between them changing.
We submit that these two axioms prescribe the diet that is as meagre as possible in accounting for the natural world…. Everything else then comes as a means to represent the change in the distance relations that actually occurs in a manner that is both as simple and as informative as possible."
(pp. 3-4)
"[T]he question is what is the essence of the atoms qua material entities?
We bring in
ontic structural realism to answer this question: instead of having an intrinsic essence, the atoms have a structural one. Standing in distance relations is their essence. Hence, although we propose an ontology of atomism, we draw on
holism to work that ontology out: the atoms are holistically individuated in terms of the distances among them. We conceive the distance relations as establishing the order of what coexists, thereby taking up Leibniz’s relationalist definition of space: these relations are able to distinguish the objects, thereby satisfying the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. There thus is a configuration of objects that is constituted by distance relations: by individuating the atoms, the distance relations provide for
variation within a given configuration of matter.
Over and above variation making up for a configuration of objects, there is
change, which hence is change in the relations that constitute the configuration—that is, the distances. We follow Leibniz in conceiving time as the order of that change, with that order being unique and having a direction. Mass, charge, energy, spin, wave function, etc., then, are dynamical parameters that a physical theory introduces in order to obtain a law that describes that change in a simple and informative manner. These parameters sort the atoms into different particle species on the basis of salient patterns in their relative motion. Consequently, the atoms are not intrinsically protons, electrons, neutrons, etc., but are so described because their motion exhibits certain contingent regularities. In a nutshell, some atoms do not move electronwise because they are electrons, but they can be classified as electrons because they move electronwise.
Indeed,
there is no need to admit physical properties at all. Relations do all the work. It is a misconception to set out ontic structural realism as a stance that is directed against object-oriented metaphysics (cf. Ladyman and Ross (2007) and French (2014)). Ontic structural realism is opposed to the property-oriented metaphysics that has dominated philosophy from Aristotle to today’s analytic metaphysics. Of course, if there are relations, there are objects that stand in the relations, but standing in the relations is all there is to these objects—the relations are their essence (cf. the moderate ontic structural realism set out in Esfeld (2004), Esfeld and Lam (2008, 2011))."
(p. 7)
"In a nutshell, there are distance relations individuating the matter points and thereby constituting a configuration of them, and there is change in these relations. That is all. In terms of Humeanism, the distance relations among the matter points and their change throughout the entire history of the universe are the Humean mosaic, and everything else in the natural world supervenes on that mosaic in the sense that it comes in as a means to describe that change in a manner that is both as simple and as informative as possible.
The argument for this sparse ontology is its simplicity together with its empirical adequacy: less won’t do for an ontology of the natural world; bringing in more creates new drawbacks instead of providing additional explanatory value. This sparse ontology hence amounts to a radical ontological reductionism: everything in the natural world reduces to distance relations among matter points and the change in these relations, in the sense that these relations and their change make true all the true propositions about the natural world. (By the natural world, we mean the physical, spatially extended world. We have no intention here to apply this reductionism to the mind, consciousness and normativity)."
(p. 8 )
"[T]he fundamental objects do not have an intrinsic nature, but a relational one. Relations are on the same footing as intrinsic properties in that respect. To come back to the citation from Jackson (1998) earlier, if it were mysterious what it is that stands in the relations (on the assumption that all there is to a fundamental physical object are the relations in which it stands to other such objects), then it would be mysterious in exactly the same way what it is that instantiates the intrinsic properties that are supposed to characterize the fundamental physical objects. To put it differently, in any case, bare particulars are mysterious, and the commitment to bare particulars is avoided by taking certain intrinsic properties, or certain relations to be essential for the fundamental physical objects.
We advocate moderate ontic structural realism. To our mind, there is no physical or metaphysical reason to conceive ontic structural realism as being opposed to an object-oriented metaphysics: if there are relations, there are objects that stand in the relations. In other words, ontic structural realism can admit objects, as long as all there is to the objects are the relations among them. What ontic structural realism rejects is the property-oriented metaphysics that dominates philosophy since Aristotle: the fundamental physical objects do not have an intrinsic essence. This is a conception of objects that stands on its own feet, being an alternative to both the view of objects as bare substrata and the view of objects as bundles of properties (or relations). There is a mutual ontological dependence between objects and relations: as there cannot be relations without objects that stand in the relations, so there cannot be objects without relations in which they stand. Hence, if one removed the distance relations, there would not remain bare substrata, but there would then be nothing (see Esfeld and Lam (2008, 2011))."
(p. 25)
(Esfeld, Michael, and Dirk-André Deckert.
A Minimalist Ontology of the Natural World. New York: Routledge, 2018.)
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