Transcript What is Matter? - Barbara Gail Montero

What is Matter?
Barbara Gail Montero
City University of New York
Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities
November 16, 2015
There is an old joke about matter....
It’s not true!
However, after grappling with the concept of
matter, an answer I will suggest to the
question “what is matter,” will resonate, to a
degree, with both of the intended meanings
of the response, “never mind.”
So what is matter?
People use the term in a variety of ways.
The plan:
• Briefly present eleven different conceptions of
matter.
• Examine which, if any, captures what the
materialist/physicalist means when she claims
that “everything, including consciousness, is
material.”
• Ponder the philosophical relevance of these
results.
Why is the question “what is matter?” philosophically
important?
Many reasons, but I shall focus on one: we need an
understanding of what matter is in order to understand the
thesis of materialism (everything, including the mind, is
composed of matter).
Why is it important to understand materialism?
According to the contemporary philosopher Hillary Putnam:
“Materialism is the only metaphysical picture that has
contemporary “clout.”
But there are much more important reasons as well.
From historical conceptions, most of which have
some echo today, to contemporary uses of the term
in physics, philosophy and everyday language.
*Matter in contrast to form
“Statuary is the art of giving matter form.”
Aristotle contrasted matter and form: form gives
actuality to matter, like the whole gives actuality to
its parts.
Tight connection between matter and form.
*Matter as extension
René Descartes (1596-1650) writes: “extension in length,
breadth, and thickness constitutes the nature of corporeal
substance (Principles of Philosophy).
He contrasted matter (res extensa) with mind (res cognitans).
Note that his conception of res extensa is fairly mathematical
and thus abstract.
“Colours, odours, savours and the rest of such things, were
merely sensations existing in my thought” (Reply to the Sixth
Objection).
*Matter in contrast to pure ideas
John Locke (1632-1704 ) made a distinction
between primary qualities and secondary
qualities.
George Berkeley (1685-1753) argued, however,
that we can never know that the substance or
matter behind the secondary qualities exists and
is better done without.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) didn’t buy it:
From James Boswell’s (1791) biography of Johnson:
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for
some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious
sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that
everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that
though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is
impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity
with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with
mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from
it, “I refute it thus.”
If you can kick it, it’s matter.
*Matter as what fills empty space.
This is a bit complicated since there is both a sense in which matter,
itself, is mostly empty space and a sense in which empty space is
teaming with matter.
Matter is mostly empty space in the sense that the sold objects that
we see around us are mostly empty space, in the sense that, as Sir
Arthur Eddington (1928) put it, his writing table—which “has
extension...[and] is comparatively permanent [and] above
all...substantial—is nonetheless “mostly emptiness.”
Empty space teaming with matter: We have, for example, plenty of 02
molecules in the “empty space” in this room. And even outside of our
atmosphere, even in intergalactic space, one comes across molecules,
if only rarely. Moreover, in all that space between the molecules,
space is not empty but rather replete with the electric and
gravitational fields.
Nonetheless, there is a conception of matter as what
would fail to exist in a perfect vacuum,
“A vacuum is a space devoid of matter.”
This is a negative definition, telling us what matter is not:
a perfect vacuum. But negative definitions are
sometimes acceptable: what is darkness? The absence of
light.
Of course, it is not clear that a perfect vacuum is possible.
A variation of matter as what fills empty space:
what came into existence at the big bang:
Fred Hoyle, who coined the phrase big bang
(though was also a doubter) explained it as “the
hypothesis that all the matter in the universe
was created in one big bang at a particular time
in the remote past” (Hoyle 1949).
*Matter as concrete.
Concreta exist in space or time. (You’ll see why these are separated
presently.) Abstracta exist in neither time nor space.
Some problems: The equator is not an actual line around the earth so
might seem abstract. However, it did come into existence at a certain
time.
You can call the equator and other such objects “mixed objects.”
Ye have a conception of matter (or at least of what matter isn’t) in
claims such as:
“The abstract world of mathematics is a world entirely devoid of
matter.”
*Matter as math
Tegmark’s (2014) idea that the world is made
out of equations:
“Our physical world not only is described by
mathematics, but it is mathematics.”
How can it have mass? Mass is a number.
*Matter as opposed to antimatter.
Antimatter is like matter, but reversed: the same mass as
matter but with opposite qualities, such as charge.
From the CERN press office: “The big bang should have
created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the
early universe. But today, everything we see from the
smallest life forms on Earth to the largest stellar objects is
made almost entirely of matter.
But one also finds: ordinary matter as opposed to
antimatter
*Matter as Mass
“Photons are not made out of matter.”
Along similar, though not identical lines:
“Matter is affected by the four fundamental forces:
gravitation, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force,
weak nuclear force.”
Not quite the same as mass=matter since the
mediators of the weak nuclear force, the W and Z
bosons, have mass.
*Matter as Energy
“Then came the theories of special and general relativity.
Matter and energy were suddenly brought into a kind of
equivalence, famously described by Einstein’s equation
E=mc2.”
But note that the term “matter” doesn’t occur in the
equation.
And there is also matter in contrast to Energy.
“Only about 4% of the visible universe is ordinary matter;
about 23% is dark matter, and about 73% dark energy.”
*Matter as whatever it is that physics studies.
“Matter is whatever physics studies and the
object of study of physics is matter: there is no
independent general definition of matter, apart
from its fitting into the methodology of
measurement and controlled experimentation.”
*Matter as whatever exists
What the big bang brought into existence on
one picture.
God, light and the whole shebang on another.
Take Matter as opposed to antimatter out of
the running.
Which or the remaining conceptions ground
materialism (everything is matter) and the mindbody problem (how could the mind be made of
matter)?
Which conception is such that if not everything is
matter, then materialism is false?
Let’s vote:
1.Matter in contrast to form
2.Matter as extension
3.Matter in contrast to pure ideas
4.Matter as what fills empty space
5.Matter as concrete
6.Matter as math
7.Matter as Mass
8.Matter as Energy
9. Matter as whatever it is that physics studies
10.Matter as whatever exists
Matter in contrast to form.
Aristotle held that the soul was the form of the body (De Anima Bk. II).
Resembles Functionalism (for example, pain just is pain-behavior plus
other mental states, such as the hope that it will stop).
Materialism would not be defeated if form exists.
What we want is a conception of matter such that if there exists
something that is not made out of matter, materialism is false.
My criterion for adequacy: what would best make sense of the current
debate. The Cartesian soul should turn as immaterial.
*Matter as extension
Point particles
Abstracts
What gives rise to space-time
Could an immaterial soul have extension?
*Matter in contrast to pure ideas
If idealism is true, materialism is false.
But is this the only way for materialism to be
false?
*Matter as what fills empty space
Certainly a very reasonable conception of
matter. But:
If a pure vacuum exists, then materialism is
false?
If there were nothing, materialism wouldn’t be
false.
The falsity of materialism seems to turn on the
existence of a nonmaterial object.
*Matter as concrete
Similar considerations as those applied to
matter as extension.
One further problem: if immaterial souls were to
exists in time but not in space, materialism
should be false yet such souls would be
concrete. (Concrete opposes abstract, which is
neither spatial nor temporal.)
*Matter as math
This is close to Bertrand Russell’s “structural realism.” But
Russell’s conclusion is that “physics does not assume the
existence of matter."
David Chalmers: “current physics characterizes its
underlying properties (such as mass and charge) in terms
of abstract structures and relations, but it leaves open
their intrinsic natures”(2002, p. 259).
But if there is something beyond structure and relations,
why must it be immaterial?
*Matter as Mass
Why should the immaterial soul be barred from having mass?
Materialismusstreit (the controversy over materialism)
Physiologist Rudolph Wagner aimed to discredit materialism by
weighing brains, claiming that if the mind is purely material, more
intelligent people should be endowed with heavier brains.
Data didn’t support his hypothesis according to his materialist
opponent Carl Vogt (1864).
The attempt brings out the concept of an immaterial mind as having
mass.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the physician Duncan
McDougal had a similar idea: do people get lighter at the moment of
death?
*Matter as Energy
Sometimes matter is contrasted with energy:
The view that the universe consists only of
organized matter and energy
Main problem, there could be immaterial
energy.
*Matter as whatever it is that physics studies
This captures a commonly expressed view
among philosophers:
Materialism (or physicalism) is the view that the
fundamental nature of the world is given to us
by physics.
But what physics do we have in mind?
Hempel’s dilemma:
Either we understand the physics at issue as today’s, in which
case physicalism is almost certainly false, or we understand it
in terms of a future physics, in which case the thesis is
excessively vague.
Beyond this, if physicalism is defined in terms of a true and
complete theory of the universe, the thesis of physicalism is
trivially true, for what else is a true and complete physics but
one that accounts for the fundamental nature of everything?
Furthermore, if physics posits fundamental mental
phenomena, the existence of what at least many would see as
nonphysical phenomena turns out to be consistent with
physicalism.
*Matter as whatever exists
The central line of defense for this view is that, as
Isaac Newton pointed out in the seventeenth
century, the more we learn about matter, the
stranger it seems:
Before Newton, causation was thought to occur
only via contact.
Causation was a problem for Descartes’ theory of mind and body.
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia writes:
[I]t seems every determination of movement happens from an
impulsion of the thing moved, according to the manner in which it is
pushed by that which moves it, or else, depends on the qualification
and figure of the superficies of this latter. Contact is required for the
first two conditions, and extension for the third. You entirely exclude
extension from your notion of the soul, and contact seems to me
incompatible with an immaterial thing (May 1643).
Basically: since an unextended mind can never make contact with an
extended body, mind-body causation seems impossible.
Descartes’ new he was bested so wrote back saying that it was
probably best that she does not think about such things.
But Newton’s discovery of gravity changed this.
That one body may act upon another at a distance
through a vacuum, without the mediation of any
thing else. . . is to me so great an absurdity, that I
believe no man who has in philosophical matters a
competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it
(Newton to Bently, 1962 correspondence).
Einstein’s (1915) theory of general relativity superseded
Newtonian gravity. However, in terms of the intelligibility of
matter, things have only gone from the absurd to the
ridiculous.
Noam Chomsky (1993, p. 41) puts it well:
It is difficult to arrive at a “delimitation of ‘the physical,’ [or of
matter] that excludes Fregean ‘thoughts’ in principle, but
includes mathematical objects that ‘push each other about,’
massless particles, curved space-time, infinite onedimensional strings in 10-dimensional space, and whatever
will be contrived tomorrow.”
A number of philosophers have thought that the difficulty
of drawing a line between matter and mind has some
serious implications for the mind-body problem:
In an underappreciated passage of his Encyclopaedia
Gottlieb Hegel (1830/1971, §389) tells us: “the soul is no
separate immaterial entity,” not because the soul or mind
is material in the sense of solid, weighty matter, but
rather because matter is far less material than is often
presumed.
“in modern times, even the physicists have found
matters grow thinner in their hands,”
Now the question of mind–body dualism dissolves:
“[T]he question of the immateriality of the soul has
no interest, except where, on the one hand, matter
is resolved as something true, and mind conceived
as a thing, on the other.”
As matter thins, so does the problem of the relation
between mind and matter, for if matter is, as Hegel
sees it, just as mysterious as mind, there is no
question of either materialism or immaterialism.
And Hegel sees this as solving the type of problem Princess
Elizabeth raised for Descartes:
In Hegel’s words, “the usual answer [as to how to understand
the interdependence between mind and body], perhaps, was
to call it an incomprehensible mystery; and, indeed, if we take
them to be absolutely antithetical and absolutely
independent, they are as impenetrable to each other as one
piece of matter to another, each being supposed to be found
only in the pores of the other, i.e. where the other is not.”
But physics then, and even more so today, fails to suggest a
conception of matter, wherein matter is diametrically
opposed to mind.
Today we have Time Crane and Hugh Mellor: “There is no
question of physicalism.”
Noam Chomsky’s point: whenever we accept something
as actually existing, we call it material or physical.
This dissolves the mind-body problem rather than solves
the problem of explaining what grounds the mind-body
problem.
Is there anything else?
Physics may have blurred the line between mind and
matter, but we can still make a distinction between mind
and everything that is not the mind, between the mental
and the nonmental.
Fundamental material objects as those that are not
mental.
What is matter? “Never mind” in the sense that it is not
mental
This is sometimes called the “via negativa”
definition of the physical or material.
And the via negativa definition of materialism
does capture to a large degree what most
contemporary philosophers have in mind when
they either uphold or denounce materialism.
But there is also a sense in which the other meaning of “never mind” is
the correct answer to the question “What is matter?”
Though not entirely irrelevant, it does not matter much what we call a
metaphysical view, whether we identify the mind as material or
immaterial.
What matters is our understanding of the nature of the mind:
For example:
Did consciousness evolve on earth from more simple nonconscious
entities?
I see this as our contemporary mind-body problem and I think it
remains even after the physicists have thinned out matter to its limit.
And our answer to it arguably affects our attitude towards religion, our
lives, and our world view.
Those are matters that matter.
Thank you