“The Ultimate Constituents of Matter,” pages 125-144
The question “what is matter?” contains an insoluble part and a soluble part, and further, we know how to find the answer to the soluble portion.
The notion that mind and matter are distinct has not been popular with philosophers since the time of Leibniz. Matter itself has been problematized by physicists, and now it looks like a sort of electromagnetic field instead of chunks of palpable stuff. Further, we have learned that the senses through which we encounter matter don’t provide a single, true reckoning: “all our senses are liable to be affected by anything which affects the brain, like alcohol or hasheesh [p. 126].” We cannot trust our senses, including common sense, on the nature of matter.
The commonsensical notions that the stuff we perceive is physical; that it exists outside of our own mind; and, that it persists even when we avert our gaze, are flawed. In particular, the belief in object persistence needs to be re-examined. Following Bergson, objects are like characters in a film: what we perceive in a film to be a persistent person fleeing the police is actually a series of momentary people in close proximity. [Russell says (p. 128) that he heard Bergson’s analogy before he (Russell) had ever seen a movie (“cinematograph”), and that his first trip to the cinema was motivated by a desire to test Bergson’s claim.] So it is with actual men, and tables, and stars. Notice how this view extends to time what we already think about space: an object that “fills” a cubic foot actually consists of many smaller objects in close proximity.
The stuff being arranged in space or time is called [by Russell] “particulars.” The relations among particulars produce the patterns we perceive, the macro objects, which are “logical constructions [p. 129].” Particulars are like individual notes in a symphony – they are ephemeral, but we take notice of their relations. A table is similar, not to a trombone, but to the role of a trombone in a symphony – and is equally amorphous.
When I see a lightning flash, though I experience the flash mentally, through the sense of vision, the flash would still exist in the same way if I were unchanged except that I had lost my mental capacity, and hence could no longer sense the flash. The thing I see is separate from my sight. But people might not accept this claim, in particular, by suggesting that objects (or attributes, like color) cannot really exist outside the mind that notes them.
What does it mean to say that something is “in” the mind? It doesn’t mean that the “thing” is there in a spatial manner (though perhaps “in the brain” does mean that, but physically existing in the brain is not what people intend when they say that a quality like color exists in the mind). Colors are not like beliefs, which seem to be mental, without an external physical manifestation. Though a fire can make us experience pain, the fire itself need not be mental, just because the experience is mediated through our senses and mind.
Those who hold that objects like tables are mental, that they depend upon the observer, mistake the body for the mind. Yes, my perception of an object changes if I squint (or use eyeglasses), but the changes “are to be explained by physiology and optics, not by psychology [p. 134].” The visual representation that I have with eyeglasses disappears when I remove the glasses, but that does not provide evidence that the object itself vanishes. Our visual representations are not “ultimate constituents of matter,” but the whole argument is rendered moot if those ultimate constituents are Bergson-esque, restricted in space and time.
Physics tells us that what we call the sun is 93 million miles away, and that the electromagnetic waves that reach our eyes were emitted from that distance some eight minutes prior to reaching us. But our experience of the sun starts not with the release of the waves, but with the last step, our brain’s coding of the information from the eyes and optic nerve.
Events have the potential to have many different causes, not a single “cause.” One set of causes of “seeing the sun” involves the eyes, nerves, and brain. But we could list other antecedents, not involving these body parts, that possess an equal causal claim. In the case of seeing the sun, we could consider the sun and our eyes and brain as “assemblages of momentary particulars [p. 137]” – that is, the matter that we often take as real is itself a “logical construction,” and the sense data of an observer is the set of particulars caught in the observer’s snapshot or film, as modified by other particulars (such as those corresponding to the observer’s brain). The universe is thus a multiplex: “there are all those [three-dimensional spaces] perceived by observers, and presumably also those which are not perceived, merely because no observer is suitably situated for perceiving them [p. 139].”
This view leads to a six-dimensional space of particulars: the space of a set of particulars (a table, say) is itself three-dimensional, and the positions among sets of particulars can be specified with a further three dimensions.
An observer has a perspective, all that the observer observes, and objects are a correlated set of particulars. One can (often) classify particulars from the perspective viewpoint or the object viewpoint. (Some particulars, like dreams, might not be subject to these dual viewpoints.) Nevertheless, “[w]e cannot define a perspective as all the data of one percipient at one time, because we wish to allow the possibility of perspectives which are not perceived by any one [p. 140].”
Cue time – in “particular,” observer-specific time. The perspective associated with a particular is all the particulars simultaneous with that particular (p. 141). The timeline associated with a particular is its “biography.” As particulars need not be perceived, biographies need not be lived. [Russell calls unlived biographies “official,” in the sense, I believe, of committee membership being ex officio.]
Consider a particular with respect to one perspective. Shift the perspective marginally, and you will get a very similar particular – and this similarity is independent of the rest of the universe. When we think of a specific “thing,” it is the continuity with neighboring perspectives, and the independence from all else, which gives us the class of particulars constituting that “thing.” Physicists generally focus on things when they examine particulars, whereas psychologists focus on the perspective and “biography” associated with one observer.
The view propounded here (concerning the connection between sense-data and the physical world) is not intended to shed light on physics – but it is intended to shed light on standard psychological or metaphysical claims of the mental underpinnings of sense-data. Those standard claims often unduly favor permanence in the constituents of things, and draw on confused views about space and sense-data. Mind is not necessary for the existence of sense data, and “sense-data are merely those among the ultimate constituents of the physical world, of which we happen to be immediately aware; they themselves are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them, which is irrelevant to their nature and to their place in physics [p. 143].”
The theory presented here suggests that there is no conflict between physics and psychology. The ultimate constituents of matter, such that physical things are a series of classes of particulars, means that physics can classify the particulars in one way when discussing matter, and psychologists can classify the particulars in another way (yielding perspectives and biographies).
Is the theory true? It could be, which is more than can be said for most alternative approaches to the question of matter. Further, the theory suggests a starting point from which a tolerable solution eventually can be devised.
The question “what is matter?” contains an insoluble part and a soluble part, and further, we know how to find the answer to the soluble portion.
The notion that mind and matter are distinct has not been popular with philosophers since the time of Leibniz. Matter itself has been problematized by physicists, and now it looks like a sort of electromagnetic field instead of chunks of palpable stuff. Further, we have learned that the senses through which we encounter matter don’t provide a single, true reckoning: “all our senses are liable to be affected by anything which affects the brain, like alcohol or hasheesh [p. 126].” We cannot trust our senses, including common sense, on the nature of matter.
The commonsensical notions that the stuff we perceive is physical; that it exists outside of our own mind; and, that it persists even when we avert our gaze, are flawed. In particular, the belief in object persistence needs to be re-examined. Following Bergson, objects are like characters in a film: what we perceive in a film to be a persistent person fleeing the police is actually a series of momentary people in close proximity. [Russell says (p. 128) that he heard Bergson’s analogy before he (Russell) had ever seen a movie (“cinematograph”), and that his first trip to the cinema was motivated by a desire to test Bergson’s claim.] So it is with actual men, and tables, and stars. Notice how this view extends to time what we already think about space: an object that “fills” a cubic foot actually consists of many smaller objects in close proximity.
The stuff being arranged in space or time is called [by Russell] “particulars.” The relations among particulars produce the patterns we perceive, the macro objects, which are “logical constructions [p. 129].” Particulars are like individual notes in a symphony – they are ephemeral, but we take notice of their relations. A table is similar, not to a trombone, but to the role of a trombone in a symphony – and is equally amorphous.
When I see a lightning flash, though I experience the flash mentally, through the sense of vision, the flash would still exist in the same way if I were unchanged except that I had lost my mental capacity, and hence could no longer sense the flash. The thing I see is separate from my sight. But people might not accept this claim, in particular, by suggesting that objects (or attributes, like color) cannot really exist outside the mind that notes them.
What does it mean to say that something is “in” the mind? It doesn’t mean that the “thing” is there in a spatial manner (though perhaps “in the brain” does mean that, but physically existing in the brain is not what people intend when they say that a quality like color exists in the mind). Colors are not like beliefs, which seem to be mental, without an external physical manifestation. Though a fire can make us experience pain, the fire itself need not be mental, just because the experience is mediated through our senses and mind.
Those who hold that objects like tables are mental, that they depend upon the observer, mistake the body for the mind. Yes, my perception of an object changes if I squint (or use eyeglasses), but the changes “are to be explained by physiology and optics, not by psychology [p. 134].” The visual representation that I have with eyeglasses disappears when I remove the glasses, but that does not provide evidence that the object itself vanishes. Our visual representations are not “ultimate constituents of matter,” but the whole argument is rendered moot if those ultimate constituents are Bergson-esque, restricted in space and time.
Physics tells us that what we call the sun is 93 million miles away, and that the electromagnetic waves that reach our eyes were emitted from that distance some eight minutes prior to reaching us. But our experience of the sun starts not with the release of the waves, but with the last step, our brain’s coding of the information from the eyes and optic nerve.
Events have the potential to have many different causes, not a single “cause.” One set of causes of “seeing the sun” involves the eyes, nerves, and brain. But we could list other antecedents, not involving these body parts, that possess an equal causal claim. In the case of seeing the sun, we could consider the sun and our eyes and brain as “assemblages of momentary particulars [p. 137]” – that is, the matter that we often take as real is itself a “logical construction,” and the sense data of an observer is the set of particulars caught in the observer’s snapshot or film, as modified by other particulars (such as those corresponding to the observer’s brain). The universe is thus a multiplex: “there are all those [three-dimensional spaces] perceived by observers, and presumably also those which are not perceived, merely because no observer is suitably situated for perceiving them [p. 139].”
This view leads to a six-dimensional space of particulars: the space of a set of particulars (a table, say) is itself three-dimensional, and the positions among sets of particulars can be specified with a further three dimensions.
An observer has a perspective, all that the observer observes, and objects are a correlated set of particulars. One can (often) classify particulars from the perspective viewpoint or the object viewpoint. (Some particulars, like dreams, might not be subject to these dual viewpoints.) Nevertheless, “[w]e cannot define a perspective as all the data of one percipient at one time, because we wish to allow the possibility of perspectives which are not perceived by any one [p. 140].”
Cue time – in “particular,” observer-specific time. The perspective associated with a particular is all the particulars simultaneous with that particular (p. 141). The timeline associated with a particular is its “biography.” As particulars need not be perceived, biographies need not be lived. [Russell calls unlived biographies “official,” in the sense, I believe, of committee membership being ex officio.]
Consider a particular with respect to one perspective. Shift the perspective marginally, and you will get a very similar particular – and this similarity is independent of the rest of the universe. When we think of a specific “thing,” it is the continuity with neighboring perspectives, and the independence from all else, which gives us the class of particulars constituting that “thing.” Physicists generally focus on things when they examine particulars, whereas psychologists focus on the perspective and “biography” associated with one observer.
The view propounded here (concerning the connection between sense-data and the physical world) is not intended to shed light on physics – but it is intended to shed light on standard psychological or metaphysical claims of the mental underpinnings of sense-data. Those standard claims often unduly favor permanence in the constituents of things, and draw on confused views about space and sense-data. Mind is not necessary for the existence of sense data, and “sense-data are merely those among the ultimate constituents of the physical world, of which we happen to be immediately aware; they themselves are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them, which is irrelevant to their nature and to their place in physics [p. 143].”
The theory presented here suggests that there is no conflict between physics and psychology. The ultimate constituents of matter, such that physical things are a series of classes of particulars, means that physics can classify the particulars in one way when discussing matter, and psychologists can classify the particulars in another way (yielding perspectives and biographies).
Is the theory true? It could be, which is more than can be said for most alternative approaches to the question of matter. Further, the theory suggests a starting point from which a tolerable solution eventually can be devised.
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