Quantum Non-Linearity: Relational Ontology

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Relational Ontology

This blog entry on Relational Ontology really goes back to this post where I discussed some ideas advanced by Jonathan Kopel in a pre-published paper which in published form was to be titled "A Note Regarding Relational Ontology in Chemistry". As I essentially agreed with the drift of Jonathan's thoughts, and after some discussion, he suggested that I might like to follow up his ideas with a paper of my own. I am currently giving this project some thought and below are some initial notes to this end; I hope eventually to flesh out these notes into a full paper. As Jonathan's take on RO majors on the subject of chemical bonds I thought his paper lent itself well to a quantum mechanical treatment of RO and that is my emphasis here. This subject also fits in well with my post entitled "Jottings on Reality, the Paranormal and Chaoskampf" where I advance the idea that the complexity of reality is irreducible in as much as reality makes little coherent sense without the existence of the complexities of sentience to perceive that reality.

Proposal for a paper on Relational Ontology

This paper will cover:

Hypostatic identity: I will be arguing against this vitalistic concept which locates identity in "substance".

Identical particles: Quantum statistics treats particles as though they are bits in a binary string. Bits have no hypostatic identity; they exist by virtue of relatedness.

Schrodinger equation: The multi-particle Schrodinger Equation treats multi-particle systems as if they are one object.

Fields and particle bonding: The field term in a multi-particle Schrodinger equation is a function of all the positions of all the particles.

Models and approximations: Real world examples of the Schrodinger equation are likely to be computationally irreducible and therefore treatable only via a cluster of metaphorical models and approximations.

Conclusions: The analytical inseparability of the objects described by the Schrodinger equation and the likely computational irreduciblity of its solutions necessitates a relational ontological perspective. RO is a point of view which guides one’s thinking about ontology and enables one to come to terms with analytical difficulties brought about by the hard-core relatedness of the cosmos. Ultimate reality is not reducible to bits and pieces or a hidden hypostatic property of matter but is found in the relations within an assumed up and running complexity. Complexity, that is relatedness writ large, must be treated as an a priori feature of the cosmos. This complexity cannot be rationalised away as just an incidental and unnecessary epiphenomenon of an elemental hypostatic reality.

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.

Quantum Non-Linearity

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Relational Ontology

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION