- A.J. Cotnoir

Last week I introduced some of the difficulties for determining when an object counts as physical. Part of my motivation for this comes from a persistent view I still see that links anti-physicalism with a low, ignorant level of intelligence. Often that view is coupled with the related view that the physical sciences can exhaustively explain everything there is to know about what the world is like.

But a critical mistake (among others) for physicalist, hyper-scientistic views—like some from the Enlightenment or logical positivism in the early 20th century—was confusing what science can do for what science can metaphysically claim about all of reality. The do-is confusion is a scope confusion about the boundaries of science. That’s why we have Neil DeGrasse Tysons walking around; brilliant scientists who unfortunately also make grand, metaphysical and theological claims without feeling an appropriately cringy feeling of embarrassment for venturing outside their field of expertise.

If we return to last week’s hypothetical universe that only includes two indivisible bits (my synonym for a theoretical* atom) with no parts, it’s easier to think about the central question for what we mean by physical:

Which objects or characteristics of the world depend in no way whatsoever on the human mind?

Here’s an example: ever since my kids were very young, I have shown them how to pick out Orion’s belt as part of the Orion constellation. It’s easy for even little kids to spot: three stars in a line. And from there, you can pick out the shape of the mythical hunter.

Of course, Orion as an object depends on human minds in at least three significant ways: 1) perspective, 2) perception, and 2) decisions. The thin resemblance between the constellation and the shape of a person depends on our perspective point in space, and on mentally (not physically) marking out those particular stars from others. (Note for later: resemblance is a relation, not something that is itself physical.) Zoom in close enough to any one of the stars in Orion, and you lose the resemblance.

In this analogy, bits are like stars in a constellation. In a 1-bit universe, it’s as clear as it’s going to get that there is only one object, the object is physical, and no other physical object exists.

Let’s just grant the physicalist his physical-only, 1-bit universe. But when we add another bit to make it a 2-bit universe, things get vastly more complicated for the physicalist.

For any claim that the physicalist wants to make, to be consistent with physicalism we need to see physical evidence for that claim. So there are some questions that the physicalist needs to answer, even for this simple 2-bit universe.

Imagine that these two bits do the following:

Let's say there is some "force" that "causes" the two bits to move in unison. Do we still have two objects or do we now have one? What if instead they moved like this:

The most relevant and important question we could ask for any combination of relations between these two bits is,

How exactly could we arrange these two bits so that the physical evidence, depending in no way whatsoever on the human mind, clearly and obviously shows that there is one object there?

It seems clear that, just like constellations, we are mentally grouping the two bits together and stipulating that the two bits together are one object. Maybe we have great reasons for doing so. And maybe if we multiplied 2-bit example after example in an even more complex universe with millions of similar 2-bit objects, it would seem "obvious" that many bits make up one object.

Maybe.

But I have a few more questions for the physicalist who wants to claim that everything that exists is physical.

Until next time.

Jared

*It's important to remember that a theoretical atom is not the thing that scientists discover at some point in history. A theoretical atom (what I call a bit) is an object that cannot be split into proper parts, not what scientists labeled as an "atom" that can be split into a nucleus and other parts.

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