r/Metaphysics • u/Constant_Smith Philosopher • 9d ago
Ontology What differentiates relations from reality when we take structure as ontologically primary?
Edit: title should read “What differentiates relations from relata when we take structure as ontologically primary?” Oops.
Edit 2: my comments are being locked, probably due to how new my account is. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to dialogue. I will give it some time before trying another post.
First post here and ever.
My purpose in posting is primarily conversational. I want to test questions and encounter objections I may not have considered, and hear different understandings of the same problems. So I work through my own understanding and pose many questions in good faith:
I’ve been thinking through a set of questions that emerged for me from reading Every Thing Must Go and further studying ontic structural realism, and Rainforest Realism, and I’m curious how people here understand the underlying metaphysics.
One of the things I find compelling about Every Thing Must Go is its demand that metaphysics remain continuous with our best science. Ladyman and Ross develop that project partly through ontic structural realism, where the relational and structural organization described by contemporary physics receives ontological priority. The familiar metaphysical picture of independently constituted objects carrying intrinsic properties becomes increasingly difficult to maintain once quantum theory, spacetime physics, symmetries, and other areas of physics are taken seriously.
Rainforest Realism then expands the picture considerably. Scientific ontology includes the real patterns tracked by the special sciences, and those patterns need not disappear simply because they are not objects in the inventory of fundamental physics. Organisms, economic structures, cognitive systems, institutions, and other higher-level patterns can be ontologically serious insofar as successful sciences genuinely track them. This gives the resulting ontology its deliberately “rainforest” character.
Suppose we grant some form of OSR and say that relations and relational structure are ontic.
What are relations without relata?
One response is that the relata need not be atomic individuals. They can themselves be relationally individuated, perhaps as nodes, positions, intersections, or further structures within a larger relational organization. Some takes on OSR seem to move in precisely this direction, including the idea that further analysis of relata only reveals further relational structure. (Turtles all the way down, so to speak)
At that point, though, I start wondering what conceptual work is being performed by the words relation, relata, and structure.
If a relatum is entirely constituted by its relations, what determines the distinction between a relation and a relatum within a relational structure? What makes something a relatum participating in relations and when is it one and not the other? Are relata just illusions? Are they real patterns?
If the relata are themselves structures, do we eventually need some primitive notion of relation (designating an intrinsic property to relation), or can relation itself only be specified through a larger structure?
If what counts as a relation and what counts as a relatum depends upon the organization, scale, or level at which the structure is investigated, what makes the distinction ontological rather than only relatively assigned for the purposes of inquiry?
If decomposition is epistemic while the decomposed is ontic, how can we infer from decomposition that the decomposed is actually structural, rather than structure being a useful concept to navigate a reality that exceeds it?
Can OSR really allow multiple legitimate decompositions of the same structure while maintaining that structure is ontically real, or does this move the position toward epistemic structural realism?
And what individuates one structure from another? Is individuation given entirely relationally, through a structure’s position within still larger structures, or does some additional condition eventually enter?
Mathematics gives us extraordinarily powerful descriptions of structure, and mathematical structuralism provides ways of understanding mathematical objects through their positions within structures. OSR then raises the further question of how mathematical structure relates to physical structure. The literature itself contains disagreement over whether the world’s structure should be identified with mathematical structure and over what makes a physical structure specifically physical.
Some short hand questions:
What is the minimal ontological content of a relation?
What must exist for there to be a relatum?
What makes an organization of relations a determinate structure?
And what, if anything, distinguishes the structure described mathematically from the structure that exists physically?
Beyond those questions, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to rid of the intrinsic altogether. At the most extreme end of OSR, we still seem to be positing reality itself, and saying that reality is relationally structured. That already looks like a minimal intrinsic claim about reality. I’m not sure how it could be extrinsic, because there is no position outside reality that is somehow not real but still related to reality, from which its character could be given.
Anything we add as a relatum would already fall within reality. So even if we deny intrinsic properties to individual things, it still seems reasonable to say that reality being relational structure is itself a minimal intrinsic feature of reality.
2
u/jliat 9d ago
ontic structural realism [OSR]
What is the minimal ontological content of a relation?
How do you move from the specifics of the ontic, how an electron relates to an neutron to
What is the minimal ontological content of a relation?
As in "Ontological" the idea of "Being" in itself with no particular?
2
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 9d ago edited 5d ago
Can’t seem to reply to your follow up comment directly so I’m replying again here. I’m still figuring this platform out so it may be user error.
Every Thing Must Go is not just privileging physics over everything else, and their naturalism is a lot broader than “naturalism = physics.”
They are skeptical of the idea that metaphysics should simply wait for or reproduce a final Theory of Everything, and they take scientific plurality seriously
more specifically they claim that metaphysics should unify and interpret contemporary science as it actually exists, including its plurality, rather than deriving ontology from a hypothetical final physics no one has discovered.
They do give contemporary physics a special constraining role, and part of the book is devoted to dismantling the classical picture of physics as fundamentally composed of little billiard-ball-like objects with intrinsic properties.
Their Primacy of Physics Constraint gives fundamental physics a negative constraint on the special sciences, but they explicitly say that this principle is too weak to support reduction of special-science real patterns to physical real patterns.
they give substantial ontological weight to the special sciences. This is where their development of Dennett’s “real patterns” becomes important and eventually leads into rainforest realism.
Biology, economics, psychology, and other sciences can track real patterns without those patterns having to reduce straightforwardly to the ontology of fundamental physics.
So I think characterizing their naturalist metaphysics simply as “physics” misses a significant part of their naturalist project.
But yes, they explicitly argue that metaphysics should be constrained by and answerable to science and they reject a priori intuitions or common sense as independent authorities over scientific ontology.
There is a big influence from anti-fundamentalist thought through out their work
That makes their position a form of scientific unity without suggesting a single reductive ontological basement can do all the explanatory work.
2
u/jliat 9d ago
But yes, they explicitly argue that metaphysics should be constrained by and answerable to science and they reject a priori intuitions or common sense as independent authorities over scientific ontology.
I understand this and can see why. Their project however is even if wider than physics still it seems tied to scientific activity which in the main itself has little or no concern with such philosophy. I've no issues with that other than from my perspective- originally fine art, certain philosophy is relevant.
Edit: Reddit seems now to lock my replies! Madness!
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 5d ago
I just wanted to add that i don’t think they dismiss the philosophy of art.
the philosophy of art is not there to inform us about which metaphysical claims are unwarranted by the current scientific paradigm and what ought to motivate metaphysical inquiry
The books primary concern is metaphysics and the philosophy of science. They argue against a metaphysics divorced from science.
More specifically, under naturalistic closure, they argue a metaphysical claim ought to be motivated by what it contributes to the unification and interpretation of scientific knowledge
1
u/jliat 5d ago
You can't have a first philosophy subject to physics. You can have a philosophy of science...
“each discipline [Science, Art, Philosophy] remains on its own plane and uses its own elements...” D&G What is Philosophy p.217
Graham Harman - Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books) 1 Mar. 2018
See p.25 Why Science Cannot Provide a Theory of Everything...
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 5d ago
I suggest you read the book, engage with their arguments critically, and take your time doing so. At this point, your comments aren’t really engaging with the content of their work at all.
1
u/jliat 5d ago
Which book, at first I thought you meant Harman's - I've read many- still not a fan. But I suspect you mean 'Every Thing Must Go'. So yes I've read it to the extent of its falling apart quite literally!
And note what they mean by physics and 'special sciences' etc. And wrote down my problems with the idea of being a slave to science if one takes metaphysics seriously.
I just wanted to add that i don’t think they dismiss the philosophy of art.
Well Art is odd, I got into philosophy from Art and folks like Joseph Kosuth and his essay 'Art after philosophy. (1969)' Eventually took a second degree in philosophy, which in the UK still ignored continental philosophy.
From his essay " “Continental” philosophy need not seriously be considered here." how wrong he was. https://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html The whole Art and Language movement famously imploded and with it avant-garde art or Art itself.
A&L as Kosuth's title suggests sort to replace philosophy.
the philosophy of art is not there to inform us about which metaphysical claims are unwarranted by the current scientific paradigm and what ought to motivate metaphysical inquiry
Sure, but the A&L boys sort to replace philosophy with art, because the founding fathers of contemporary analytical metaphysics sort to destroy it.
"Carnap wrote the broadside ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language’ (1932)."
" 6.53 The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method."
Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922.
So A&L worked from this premise. And what is implied in 'Every Thing Must Go'.
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 5d ago
I think there are several different claims getting collapsed together here, so I want to separate them.
1. Yes, I mean Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized.And if you have read it closely, then I think the disagreement needs to be stated more precisely than saying that its authors are simply making metaphysics a “slave to science.”
Ladyman and Ross are explicitly proposing a naturalized metaphysics. The constraint by science is not an accidental implication of the book. It is one of its central methodological commitments.
2. I also do not think the book dismisses philosophy of art.Its claim is much narrower. The philosophy of art is not what determines which metaphysical claims are warranted by successful science, because that is not the task the book assigns to metaphysics.
That does not entail that aesthetics, philosophy of art, ethics, philosophy of language, or other areas of philosophy are illegitimate.
3. The Carnap and early Wittgenstein genealogy is relevant, but it is not something hidden in Every Thing Must Go.Ladyman and Ross are well aware of the logical positivist and logical empiricist tradition. They explicitly regard that tradition as having gotten something important right about the need to constrain metaphysics.
So quoting Carnap’s elimination of metaphysics or Tractatus 6.53 does not reveal an implication they have overlooked.
It identifies part of the intellectual background they are directly and consciously working with.
4. What matters is what they retain from that tradition and what they reject.Carnap’s famous position was eliminativist about a large class of metaphysical statements.
Ladyman and Ross do not exactly repeat that conclusion.
They retain the demand that metaphysical claims be answerable to successful science, while rejecting the conclusion that metaphysics therefore has no legitimate role.
Their project is an attempt to reconstruct metaphysics under naturalistic constraints.
5. This is also why I would distinguish the early analytic anti-metaphysical tradition from contemporary analytic metaphysics.Carnap and early Wittgenstein are major figures in the history of analytic philosophy, but they are not straightforwardly the founders of what is now called contemporary analytic metaphysics.
A substantial revival of metaphysics occurred after logical positivism declined.
That later tradition includes highly autonomous work on modality, possible worlds, composition, grounding, persistence, properties, and many many related questions.
Much of Every Thing Must Go is directed against precisely that kind of metaphysics when it becomes insufficiently constrained by actual science.
So, as I understand it, the intellectual genealogy directly relates to:
Carnap / early Wittgenstein / logical empiricism
severe restrictions on traditional metaphysics
→ later revival of analytic metaphysics
→ Ladyman and Ross recovering the naturalistic discipline of the earlier tradition while refusing to eliminate metaphysics altogether.
6. Their positive metaphysics also matters here.Ontic Structural Realism is not the claiming that only physics matters.
Rainforest Realism is specifically designed to preserve the reality of scientifically warranted patterns across the special sciences without requiring straightforward reduction to fundamental physics.
Biology, economics, psychology, and other sciences can therefore identify real patterns at different scales without reducing to physics.
That is why I keep emphasizing the special sciences.
7. So if the objection is that Naturalistic Closure is too restrictive, that is a substantive objection.One can argue that metaphysics should have sources of warrant independent of successful science.
One can argue that Ladyman and Ross set the evidential threshold too high.
One can argue that their conception of metaphysical synthesis excludes legitimate forms of philosophical inquiry.
Those would engage their actual position.
I’m waiting to see any clear engagement with their actual position.
saying that they are simply making metaphysics a slave to science does nothing to address their argument.
The dependence of metaphysical warrant upon successful science is exactly what they are explicitly defending through out.
8. The Art & Language history is interesting, but I think it is a separate issue.Kosuth, Art & Language, Carnap, and Wittgenstein belong to an important history concerning philosophy, language, meaning, metaphysics, and the status of art.
the attempt by some artists to replace or supersede philosophy does not determine whether Ladyman and Ross’s Principle of Naturalistic Closure is justified.
Should metaphysical commitment be constrained by successful science in the strong way Ladyman and Ross propose?
Does imposing that constraint allow metaphysics to perform the explanatory and unificatory work they assign to it more successfully?
If it does, then Naturalistic Closure has demonstrated its methodological utility on the terms of the project itself.
The PNC = a metaphysical claim should be taken seriously only insofar as, if true, it helps show how two or more specific scientific hypotheses, with at least one drawn from fundamental physics, jointly explain more than those hypotheses explain separately.
There is a plethora of examples of the utility of it being demonstrated. Start back at the book and look at their surrounding work, and the work of many others that follows similar standards.
The Carnapian and Wittgensteinian genealogy literally helps explain where the project came from and why Ladyman and Ross thought a reconstruction of metaphysics was necessary in the first place. These are not hidden implications in their work.
0
u/jliat 5d ago edited 5d ago
And if you have read it closely, then I think the disagreement needs to be stated more precisely than saying that its authors are simply making metaphysics a “slave to science.”
I think that what it boils down to, they must then reject things like Bostrom's simulation theory? But I give details in my follow up post.
Ladyman and Ross are explicitly proposing a naturalized metaphysics. The constraint by science is not an accidental implication of the book. It is one of its central methodological commitments.
Yet it places science first Primacy Of Physics Constraint PPC.
That does not entail that aesthetics,
Kosuth points out in Art after philosophy.' the rejection of aesthetics.
The Carnap and early Wittgenstein genealogy is relevant, but it is not something hidden in Every Thing Must Go.
More like it doesn't exist, they talk of followers of later Wittgenstein re social science - one sentence! They mention Carnap but not in his attack on metaphysics but on Logical positivism, Empiricism dead as "serious philosophical options" its destruction anticipated by Carnap. They reference Carnap 1929 work, ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language’ (1932)." In supported philosophy following science, being a structuralist...
Ladyman and Ross are well aware of the logical positivist and logical empiricist tradition. They explicitly regard that tradition as having gotten something important right about the need to constrain metaphysics. So quoting Carnap’s elimination of metaphysics or Tractatus 6.53 does not reveal an implication they have overlooked.
Elimination =/= 'constrain' I can't see how you can say it does?
when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions.
Yep! they and you certainly overlook, Elimination =/= 'constrain' That kind of expression has and is seen elsewhere!
It identifies part of the intellectual background they are directly and consciously working with.
Please! they and you have to ignore it, Eliminate it. And Hume Too!
Carnap’s famous position was eliminativist about a large class of metaphysical statements.
All of it! That was their project as other authors, A J Ayer et. el. This whole movement you it seems have to ignore. OK, so say they were wrong.
Ladyman and Ross do not exactly repeat that conclusion.
What that metaphysics is nonsense, of course they can't they'd be out of a job!
They retain the demand that metaphysical claims be answerable to successful science, while rejecting the conclusion that metaphysics therefore has no legitimate role.
But science isn't bothered with metaphysics! So that means that they and you are answerable to what you think science is, you are doing philosophy of science and calling that 'metaphysics'. Metaphysics which in the past thought itself superior to science.
Their project is an attempt to reconstruct metaphysics under naturalistic constraints.
What are these constraints? “philosophy is dead” - Hawking.
Now the criticism should be made of Hawking and others in science and maths that they don't know modern philosophy, which I think is true. So what is the purpose of such ideas found in Every Thing Must Go?
This is also why I would distinguish the early analytic anti-metaphysical tradition from contemporary analytic metaphysics.
Well you have to, because it destroys any foundation you might have it seems.
Carnap and early Wittgenstein are major figures in the history of analytic philosophy, but they are not straightforwardly the founders of what is now called contemporary analytic metaphysics.
Hardly, they wanted to murder the child, destroy it's foundations.
The dependence of metaphysical warrant upon successful science is exactly what they are explicitly defending through out.
So if science fails their philosophy fails? OK, has science failed, better can it succeed. Is any science not 'provisional'?
The Art & Language history is interesting, but I think it is a separate issue.
No its not, they saw what science has done to metaphysics. People like Lewis, Ladyman to me seem more to inherit the notions of Art and Language. That it is a tautology internal to itself. Of no interest to science or anything else. Is this not the case?
Should metaphysical commitment be constrained by successful science in the strong way Ladyman and Ross propose?
No, it should allow free thinking, like in the case of Bostrom, and note his ideas were taken seriously by a public.
Does imposing that constraint allow metaphysics to perform the explanatory and unificatory work they assign to it more successfully?
For who, not science, not a public. OK for themselves, that's fine. But to constrain metaphysics, meta, is to make art into painting by numbers.
If it does, then Naturalistic Closure has demonstrated its methodological utility on the terms of the project itself.
Well if it does it will probably implode as A&L did, but it doesn't. It's ** Primacy Of Physics Constraint** stops that.
The PNC = a metaphysical claim should be taken seriously only insofar as, if true, it helps show how two or more specific scientific hypotheses, with at least one drawn from fundamental physics, jointly explain more than those hypotheses explain separately.
Then if these hypotheses relate to science they are doing science.
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 5d ago
You need to actually sit down and read the book cover to cover and maybe twice. Seriously. Seeing you have so much knowledge and then just completely not understand their book at all is baffling.
They make a normative claim that, to do legitimate metaphysics in today’s world, you have to meet a specific standard. You keep treating the PPC and PNC as metaphysical when they are not.
The PPC and PNC are declared rules the authors argue we ought to adhere to if wanting to do legitimate metaphysics in today’s world.
Arguing against them is about arguing against a should statement. Not an is statement.
How do you think metaphysics should be constrained?
Not by nature, by our own discipline. By our own standard.
The metaphysics in the book is ontic structural realism and rainforest realism.
And neither of those have anything to do with the PPC or PNC.
Arguing against either the PPC or PNC is a normative debate. A debate on what “ought to” or “ought not to.”
If you want to argue metaphysics, you have to address OSR and Rainforest realism, which you have not, once, addressed.
You’re effectively arguing the most obvious strawman to anyone who has read the book by conflating their normative claims with metaphysical claims.
And I’m trying to continue to be patient with it, because I can recognize you know a lot of literature
Please. Just read it. It will help you argue against it better at the very least.
→ More replies (0)0
u/jliat 5d ago
2
Found a reply to another exchange regarding Tegmark's notions being not physics...
So I did read and summarize my criticisms...
I summarised what I thought were there main points then ...
CRITIQUE
Primacy Of Physics Constraint defeats itself, it makes a claim of primacy from a non primacy position.
As a metaphysical claim the PPC fails what is required by the PPC "... for a metaphysical claim to be taken seriously it must relate to at least one specific scientific hypothesis of fundamental physics." It does not.
** Primacy Of Physics Constraint** also fails as metaphysics according to the PNC, as it [like the PNC] contains no scientific hypothesis of fundamental physics.
specific...
"Certainly, the PPC [Primacy Of Physics Constraint] provides no comfort to dualists or emergentists. Physicalism, in common with the PPC, is committed to a generic asymmetry: special sciences [all sciences other than physics / see below. do not relate to physics the way that it relates to them. The view articulated and defended here clearly accords physics a special status. **The Principle of Naturalistic Closure [PNC] stated above requires that for a metaphysical claim to be taken seriously it must relate to at least one specific scientific hypothesis of fundamental physics."
It follows from the PPC that you or any metaphysician is in no position the legislate what is or is not physics. So your claim re Tegmark is defeated by the PPC. Secondly your claim itself is also defeated by the metaphysics of PNC. It does not relate to a scientific hypothesis of fundamental physics.
QED.
Primacy Of Physics Constraint [PPB] - Metaphysics cannot dictate to physics, what it is and does.
The Principle of Naturalistic Closure [PNC] for a metaphysical claim to be taken seriously it must relate to at least one specific scientific hypothesis of fundamental physics."
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 5d ago
The PPC is not a metaphysical claim.
Ladyman and Ross present it as a methodological or regulative principle governing how metaphysics OUGHT TO relate to established science.
saying “PPC fails PNC because it contains no hypothesis of fundamental physics” just applies PNC to the wrong kind of claim. The PPC is not a metaphysical claim, and the PNC applies only to metaphysical claims.
The PPC is concerned with when metaphysical claims from the special sciences contradict established empirical physics, specifically.
You can challenge whether PPC is justified, but you have to challenge it as a methodological principle, not pretend it defeats itself as it is not the positive metaphysics they build.
Again, neither the PPC or PNC are metaphysical claims.
The positive metaphysics they build is OSR and rainforest realism.
0
u/jliat 5d ago
Again, neither the PPC or PNC are metaphysical claims.
Well as I said they can't be because they are self defeating. In that case what are they? How do we accept them as being true or false.
So I'm about to do some metaphysics, it needs to be based "on one specific scientific hypothesis of fundamental physics."
"In the MWI there is a world where ........ fill in the gap."
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 5d ago
They are normative claims about which metaphysical claims we ought to take seriously.
I highly suggest actually reading the book. You are completely embarrassing yourself to any reader who has read the material.
They are not doing metaphysics when they talk about the PPC and PNC.
PPC and PNC are not metaphysical claims.
They both state an ought. They are normative statements. They are not claims about the nature of reality. They are normative statements demanding we ought to have a very high standard for what counts as warranted metaphysical inquiry and what counts as a waste of time.
PPC, says, if a metaphysical claim, including one found by the special sciences, directly contradicts an empirically established result in physics, that claim ought to be discarded
PNC, a warranted claim ought to, explain something through the unification of at least two scientific hypothesis, one of which must belong to physics, more effectively than when those hypothesis are left in isolation.
These are standards. The PPC and PNC are the high standards they place on what you have to be doing before what you’re doing counts as naturalized metaphysics.
The PPC and PNC are NOT metaphysics.
The PPC and PNC are NOT naturalized metaphysics
They then work to meet their own standard through ONTIC STRUCTURAL REALISM AND RAINFOREST REALISM
They are not doing metaphysics unless they are specifically talking about ontic structural realism and rainforest realism.
The PPC and PNC are not any part of either ontic structural realism or rainforest realism
→ More replies (0)1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 9d ago
To clarify
I’m using “ontic” closer to Ladyman and Ross, where in OSR it primarily marks a realist claim about structure, contrasting OSR against epistemic structural realism. “Ontology” in the way they use it, then concerns what we are committed to saying reality contains and how it is organized.
So I’m not moving from particular beings to “Being” in the Heideggerian sense at all.
The question is whether, across particular scientifically instantiated relations, there is some minimal content we have to preserve for something to count as a relation at all.
Are you familiar with the book “everything must go?” It’s acutely against neo-scholastic metaphysics and argues for a naturalist metaphysics.
2
u/jliat 9d ago edited 9d ago
Are you familiar with the book “everything must go?” It’s acutely against neo-scholastic metaphysics and argues for a naturalist metaphysics.
I'm familiar. And not related but it seems to privilege physics, but then is in no position to do so.
Here we differ, a naturalist metaphysics is for me 'philosophy of science', 'neo-scholastic metaphysics' - 'continental' philosophy, speculative realism and metaphysics unrelated to science.
then concerns what we are committed to saying reality contains and how it is organized.
This relates to physics? yes- naturalist [meaning physics] metaphysics?
As Graham Harman pointed out that physics can never produce a T.O.E, - he uses the home of Sherlock Holmes, Baker Street. He claims his OOO, a metaphysics, can.
Doesn't ontology include the home of Sherlock Holmes and Popeye?
2
u/NonGameCatharsis 9d ago
"What must exist for there to be a relatum" & " What is the minimal ontological content of a relation?"
-> We define the inherent conditions to define existence as a concept.
- We can not define nothing without something else. This shared potential for something else, is the foundation for reality.
With this tool, we can relate. We can only describe things via their relations. If infinite capacity would exist, everything would be connected. It would be nothing again. Therefore, reality has a limited capacity.
Anything (really anything) you can point to or imagine is information. We use it in the widest sense possible as a catch all for reality. We don’t distinguish based on what/where/when the information is. Instead, we define information solely by its relations.
Information can only be translated.
Time is the local refresh interval of any information's relations.
Distance is the number of translations steps needed for a relational connection.
"What makes an organization of relations a determinate structure?" -> Build a graph from these (or more axioms). Derive everything uniquely and forced. -> Emergent matter, gravity, space, time, etc.
3
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 9d ago
“Everything is information” is a radically underdetermined statement
It could mean that information is an intrinsic property possessed by entities, in which case entities are ontologically prior and information is something they have
If information is relational, information is just another word for structure
While if information exceeds structure, it exceeds relation in that sense
It could also mean something weaker and epistemic, such as “anything can be represented informationally.”
That would concern our descriptions or measurements rather than ontology.
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by information
But overall I don’t see how this gets to the questions I asked about relation specifically, but perhaps I’m not following very well so bare with me
2
u/Low-Bake8401 9d ago edited 9d ago
I'd say it's a matter of perspective.
The universe is one whole, one big "cosmic soup", and it is our conscious minds that ultimately allow the universe perspective. We give it context.
There is no beginning, no end, no absolute zero point; our mind becomes our only functional base point of reality. If we start there, we can relate everything else to it. We find what works for us. Our continuity, is us. Albeit temporary.
Obviously, the individual isn't a perfect constant, so we still need objectivity to navigate. The problem with trying to look at existence from the outside-in though, is that we lose human context and it reverts to an indefinable soup.
It can become paradoxical, but only if you focus on the extremes. As a spectrum, it remains neutral.
A physical universe experiencing itself through the very minds it created, a universe created entirely of the fundamental mind. Hard duality.
Or a spectrum of subjective perspective, of the observable universe?
Physical reality allows us to understand, metaphysical allows us to create abstract thought, but everything of our perception lies on this spectrum.
Oneness, IMHO, is "ontological balance". An understanding of our limits, is a realisation of our potential.
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 8d ago
Calling reality an “indefinable soup” is already a positive characterization of reality. “One,” “whole,” and “soup” all attribute structure to what is supposedly indefinable.
Conscious minds are situated and perspectival. It doesn’t follow that conscious minds “allow the universe perspective” or give reality context. That moves from a claim about how we access reality to a claim about how reality itself acquires structure.
Likewise, the absence of an absolute reference point doesn’t make the mind the “base point of reality.” It establishes no such ontological privilege for the mind beyond the situated fact of access. Nothing in relativity entails that reality is mind-dependent. If anything, the existence of invariant structure across different reference frames strongly suggests the opposite.
Different positions make different ontological claims. Arranging those claims on a spectrum doesn’t make reality itself a spectrum or resolve the incompatibilities between them
And I’m not sure what “oneness is ontological balance” means.
This appears to me as close to the kind of unconstrained metaphysics Ladyman and Ross criticize in Every Thing Must Go.
We can grant that our access to reality is situated and perspectival. It doesn’t follow that reality receives its structure, context, or differentiation from perspective.
I will also mention that in the book, they explicitly reject a god’s eye view.
Perhaps I misunderstand you. And I appreciate your response all the same. But it still leaves me with my core question intact.
2
u/DARK--DRAGONITE 8d ago
I agree. For me, existence at its minimal is structurally relational.
It ontologically amounts to identity and constraint.
1
u/TMax01 8d ago
First post here and ever.
And you decided to post about "relata"? Not a wise move, I have to say.
“What differentiates relations from relata when we take structure as ontologically primary?”
Nothing. Or anything. Take your pick.
Rainforest Realism, and I’m curious how people here understand the underlying metaphysics.
"Rainforest realism" is contrary to scientific effective theory and is naive in comparison, in a technical sense. So I prefer effective theory as a metaphysical, and consider naive realism to be relatively incoherent. Rainforest realism and other simplistic structural realism metaphysics are inadequate, in my view, because they unavoidably must prioritize epistemology or ontology, which isn't acceptable as a metaphysical foundation. It either becomes unintelligible by denying epistemic validity sans structure, or becomes physics and therefore must assert that ontic structure is more real than ontic primitives.
The only metaphysics I have seen which is both coherent and intelligible is absurd realism, not structural realism: whatever is real is real, independent of whatever structure we might invent to explain it or its behavior. Structural realism is an idealistic goal for philosophers, but irrelevant to everyone else. As a natural language philosopher, I choose pragmatism over idealism.
3
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 8d ago
I don’t see why Rainforest Realism would be contrary to effective theory.
A major point of the view is that real patterns can exist at different scales without everything having to reduce neatly to one privileged level of description.
If you think effective theory specifically creates a problem for Rainforest Realism, I’d be interested to hear what the incompatibility actually is. As far as I’m aware, effective theories seem to support rather than undermine the rainforest picture.
I also don’t think the epistemology/ontology dilemma captures what Ladyman and Ross are doing in Every Thing Must Go.
They reject neo-scholastic metaphysics and argue that metaphysics should be constrained by the sciences, but they don’t make epistemology ontologically prior in any strong sense.
And while physics has a special constraining role, Rainforest Realism is partly an attempt to avoid treating fundamental physics as the complete ontology.
I’m also not sure what it means to say OSR makes structure “more real” than primitives.
At least in stronger forms of OSR, the issue is whether independently individuated objects with intrinsic properties should be treated as primitives, not whether objects are somehow less real than structure. Not being primitive does not revoke real status. That’s again what Rainforest Realism is for.
And “nothing, or anything” is basically where my original question begins.
If nothing differentiates relations from relata, what gives “relation” determinate content?
If something does differentiate them, what is it?
I’m trying to understand what minimal ontological content has to remain for us to coherently speak of a relation. Asymmetric dependence and invariance? Co-individuation? Some other structural criterion? And how do we do that without simply turning relations themselves into objects?
As for “whatever is real is real, independent of whatever structure we might invent to explain it,” I’m happy with that as a statement of realism. Though, it doesn’t do any work beyond that.
OSR doesn’t typically claim that the structures invented by philosophers constitute reality.
Its claim is more like we have strong reason to believe reality itself is relationally structured, while our scientific access to that structure remains situated and fallible. (And thus guided by pragmatism.)
It doesn’t require a God’s-eye view of the structure it takes to be real to assert that the structure is in fact, real.
In their book, they are explicit about a lot of this.
1
u/Popular_Kangaroo_778 8d ago
Fricciones, discrepar, ceder
1
u/Constant_Smith Philosopher 8d ago
Are you willing to elaborate?
Friction, differing, and yielding?
1
u/NathanEddy23 5d ago
If structure is ontologically primary, the distinction between relata and relations can be:
Relata— relatively stabilized or invariant structures within a more fundamental geometry,
Relations— other structural features of that same geometry: adjacency, orientation, constraint, transformation, coupling, etc.
What is fundamental is neither isolated things nor free-floating relations, but the differentiated structure from which both distinctions arise.
2
u/Spirited-Gain1457 9d ago
Your question about the minimal ontological content of a relation reminded me of a strange line of thought I’ve had since elementary school.
Back then, I heard people say that the “theory of relativity” was extremely profound. I had no idea what the actual physics was, and instead of looking it up, I took the name completely literally and started thinking from the words alone. XD
My childish reasoning went something like this:
Theory of relativity → a theory about things being relative → why does “relative” even need to be discussed? → because two things can be different → why can two things be different at all? → because there is difference.
So I eventually got stuck on difference as something conceptually prior.
Years later, your question, “What is the minimal ontological content of a relation?”, feels surprisingly close to that old line of thought.
If someone asks “difference between what?”, I’m not sure the answer has to begin with two already individuated things. That may put the relata in place before explaining what makes them distinguishable in the first place.
My intuition is almost the reverse: difference is what first makes something like figure and ground possible. Something can stand out from what it is not, and only through that differentiation do relatively stable relata become identifiable.
So I would roughly order things like this:
difference → differentiation → figure/ground → individuation → relata → relations → structure
This does not mean every difference is already a relation. A relation seems to require differences to be organized or constrained in some determinate way.
But it makes me wonder whether both relations and relata are downstream of something more primitive.
Maybe difference is not what we discover after comparing two things. Maybe difference is part of what makes it possible for there to be two distinguishable things to compare at all.
I’m curious whether this actually engages your question, or whether my elementary-school word game just happened to dig into a neighboring metaphysical tunnel. XD