George F. R. Ellis - Metaphysics vs. Materialism?

Metaphysics asks the most profound questions, then uses sophisticated philosophical analysis to seek the deepest truths. What happens when metaphysics trains its analytical guns on 'materialism', the claim that only the physical is real? What are the metaphysical arguments for and against materialism?



George Francis Rayner Ellis is the Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[Paraselene_Tao]

I don't think this topic can be handled in 8 minutes or even 800 minutes. This is a very long and nuanced topic that takes roughly 800 hours to understand. Most people never even begin to look into this issue about reality. Here we all are though. Thank you for being here with me.

[bennyskim]

This guy is great - a modern Plato! I like that he views the underlying principles as "more real" than what actually happens because the laws are always true, no matter how you look at it, where actual events are only true when they happen, and even then - only from one perspective. There are many more realities where specific events don't happen, but because they can happen, the causal structures that make them happen are at least more persistent - or at least precede those so-called "actual" events.

If we are to understand the universe as relativistic - meaning even concepts like "order of events" depend on your velocity, location, etc. - then platonic idealism is no longer an outdated philosophy, but is a great companion to relativity.

[peterells]

This was fascinating, but I have a couple of remarks:
(1) I'm not keen on the title of the video because materialism/physicalism are themselves metaphysical systems.
(2) Qualia (such as pain) are real - they have causal effects - but they are neither physical nor abstract.

[Appleblade]

Nice discussion... it seems compatible with Plato's own views in the Timaeus. There Plato employs the demiurge ... an individual being / god... to impress the Forms on matter in creation. But Plato also says that The Good (the Form Goodness) shares. That sounds like an abstract object doing something. And to get a bit Maritainian... all the abstract Forms exist, and existing is verb, or an act, so...

[SandipChitale]

Reductionism was also implied in the discussion of materialism or physicalism, which unfortunately was not clarified; thus, the discussion did not really address the intent of the question. And one way to think about reductionism is to ask - do higher-level things contradict lower-level things?

George seems to start the analysis in the middle of the chain of causation despite several attempts by Robert to point it out.

[RubelliteFae]

I'm wondering if Ellis is a dualist and Kuhn was presenting him only with two monistic possibilities.

The whole point of material monism is to say that things like ideas (whether real or otherwise) are emergent from some arrangement of matter-energy. This is in opposition to *either* the possibility that there are two (or more) types of fundamental things—matter-energy and, for example, spirit—which is dualism or the possibility that there is one type of fundamental thing and it isn't matter-energy, which is idealistic monism.

[patientson]

Senior man, please don't take this the wrong way. You bullied Advanced computer and mathematics professor, however I still love to hear your interviews.

[theautodidacticlayman]

3:45 THIS IS INCREDIBLE, I’VE BEEN SAYING SOMETHING LIKE THIS FOR ABOUT A YEAR NOW! I need to check out that book.

[piehound]

Sliding his definitions in a strange way . . . strange things make him happy. hahhahahahaaha. Me too.

[bakedalaska]

does George's reasoning here (no pun intended) open-up an argument in response to William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument. As I recall Craig's argues that abstract objects have no causal powers, e.g. and hence the cause of the universe must have been an unembodied mind. But if abstract objects have causal powers and if some abstract objects exist timelessly, it is possible that the cause of the physical universe was an object object that brought the universe into being?

[TerryBollinger]

0:57 GE _“… anything [that has] a causal effect on the physical world must be … real._ 1:14 _Ideas are real because ideas have causal effects. For instance, an airplane exists and flies because it was an idea … developed and made real.”_

George F. R. Ellis, most would readily agree that X, Y, Z, and T are real, but a question for you: Are they physical or abstract? Special relativity says an experimentally well-defined XYZT definition depends not only on how the observer is moving but on arbitrary orientation choices made by that observer. Even that definition of XYZT is useful only as long as the observer can maintain that orientation precisely.

So how is the _idea_ of XYZT different from the _idea_ of an airplane, other than in scale and the number of open parameters? And what does _that_ say about the relationship between physics and reality?

[claudetaillefer]

Like many of my fellow mathematicians, I'm a proponent of full-blooded Platonism. Unlike Brower, I believe that mathematics is not a creation of the mind. It seems to me that mathematical objects can't reside in the mathematician's brain or in any other physical object or device: they must somehow be publicly and equally accessible to all minds. To argue otherwise leads to contradictions, but also, and perhaps more importantly, leaves one wondering how mathematical experience and knowledge can be shared. Brower's thesis of the incommunicability of mathematical experience is not only implausible but self-defeating. However, I cannot satisfactorily answer Beneceraff's epistemic challenge to Platonism and explain how the mind can grasp abstract mathematical objects and gain knowledge of them. As for causation, Ellis' definition is so broad that anything can be regarded as endowed with causal powers. I'm always a little suspicious of explanations based on causation, because I don't think we have a satisfactory theory of causation. Substituting one fuzzy concept for another hardly advances the debate. The criterion of "reality" as something endowed with causal power doesn't seem very convincing to me.

[AggroChip]

I suppose a naturalistic argument would be that ideas themselves are the product of brain activity and so are caused physical laws.
So you could say: "aeroplanes are the creation of physical brain activity and physical man-power, all caused by the fundamental physical laws of particles etc.

But I can understand that there feels to be a 'jumping a gap' here, the gap being the realm of ideas. It's this gap that is our subjective experience that seems to be outside the domain of reductive natural laws. I guess this comes down to what's known as the "hard problem" of consciousness. I think this hard problem will mean there will always be metaphysical explanations as well as physical explanations of the cosmos.

I feel this is what caused the confusion at the end of this debate.

I invite any commentors here to add further insight to what I'm trying to say.

[ili]

But everything with causal power was caused by a myriad of phenomena, so the real question is: “What’s an example of something that is not real?” .. My view is that the world is transient and therefore only conventionally real, not ultimately real. Another related question: What constitutes a “real” job?

[davidtate]

I wish you would have a interview with Brian Cox an astronomer but I don't know what kind of questions you would ask him.

[davidrandell]

Galilean relative motion has the earth approaching- expanding at 16 feet per second per second constant- the released object: gravity. The expanding electrons do it all. “The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon.

[sunroad]

Money is actually "a piece of paper in your pocket" - if you cannot go to the petrol station and exchange it with gasoline, say, owing to there is no fuels in the station.
""In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most"
Wailing.

[mosesexodus]

​Modern Quantum Physics has shown that reality is based on probability:
​
A statistical impossibility is defined as “a probability that is so low as to not be worthy of mentioning. Sometimes it is quoted as 1/10^50 although the cutoff is inherently arbitrary. Although not truly impossible the probability is low enough so as to not bear mention in a Rational, Reasonable argument." The probability of finding one particular atom out of all of the atoms in the universe has been estimated to be 1/10^80. The probability of just one (1) functional 150 amino acid protein chain forming by chance is 1/10^164. It has been calculated that the probability of DNA forming by chance is 1/10^119, 000. The probability of random chance protein-protein linkages in a cell is 1/10^79, 000, 000, 000. Based on just these three cellular components, it would be far more Rational and Reasonable to conclude that the cell was not formed by un-directed random natural processes. Note: Abiogenesis Hypothesis posits that un-directed random natural processes, i.e. random chance formation, of molecules led to living organisms. Natural selection has no effect on individual atoms and molecules on the micro scale in a prebiotic environment. (*For reference, peptides/proteins can vary in size from 3 amino acid chains to 34, 000 amino acid chains. Some scientists consider 300-400 amino acid protein chains to be the average size. There are 42, 000, 000 protein molecules in just one (1) simple cell, each protein requiring precise assembly. There are approx. 30, 000, 000, 000, 000 cells in the human body.)

Of all the physical laws and constants, just the Cosmological Constant alone is tuned to a level of 1/10^120; not to mention the fine-tuning of the Mass-Energy distribution of early universe which is 1/10^10^123. Therefore, in the fine-tuning argument, it would be more Rational and Reasonable to conclude that the multi-verse is not the correct answer. On the other hand, it has been scientifically proven numerous times that Consciousness does indeed collapse the wave function to cause information waves of probability/potentiality to become particle/matter with 1/1 probability. A rational and reasonable person could therefore conclude that the answer is consciousness.

A "Miracle" is considered to be an event with a probability of occurrence of 1/10^6. Abiogenesis, RNA World Hypothesis, and Multiverse would all far, far, far exceed any "Miracle". Yet, these extremely irrational and unreasonable hypotheses are what some of the world’s top scientists ‘must’ believe in because of a prior commitment to a strictly arbitrary, subjective, biased, narrow, limiting, materialistic ideology / worldview.

Every idea, number, concept, thought, theory, mathematical equation, abstraction, qualia, etc. existing within and expressed by anyone is "Immaterial" or "Non-material". The very idea or concept of "Materialism" is an immaterial entity and by it's own definition does not exist. Modern science seems to be stuck in archaic, subjective, biased, incomplete ideologies that have inadequately attempted to define the "nature of reality" or the "reality of nature" for millennia. A Paradigm Shift in ‘Science’ is needed for humanity to advance. A major part of this Science Paradigm Shift would be the formal acknowledgment by the scientific community of the existence of "Immaterial" or "Non-material" entities as verified and confirmed by observation of the universe and discoveries in Quantum Physics.)

[tedgrant]

It's easy to be confused about software and hardware.
In fact, software is a special arrangement of hardware.
For example 6 eggs. The eggs are hardware. The 6 is software.

[cocolasticot]

I'm inclined to see an "idea" as information. Then I would agree, it's real in that sense, as it can be broken down into a physical thing (sound or EM waves etc.) that the brain can receive and trigger a causal chain.