The Swinburne Regress and New Essentialism

The Swinburne Regress and New Essentialism Sharon R. Ford University of Queensland

Fundamental Categorical Dimensions • causal role vs. quiddity • necessary laws • Swinburne regress

categorical properties readily imaginable existing independently of behaviour multi-dimensional structural non-dispositional or non-modal the ground or realiser of the dispositional dispositional properties uni-dimensional non-structural essentially modal grounding the categorical

dispositional & categorical properties • distinct kinds of fundamental entities • both types of property play a causal role • mutually exclusive in terms of structure • i) higher-order block structure, versus • ii) fundamental categorical dimensions

Dimensions Respects in which things may be the same or different, e.g. quantities, size, shapes, duration, direction, position and time.

causal powers and capacities can also be dimensions Question: What determines the difference between categorical and powerful dimensions?

Answer: The categorical dimensions are structural Quiddity: Having some ‘nature’ independent of their causal roles

Spatial properties, such as shape and size, are known to us because things of different shape or size affect us differentially. They produce in us different patterns of sensory stimulation, so that things of different shape and size look or feel different… But if spatial, temporal, and other primary properties and relationships are not causal powers, the question arises as to how we can know about them. We can know about them, we say, because of the dependence of the quantitative laws of action of the causal powers on these relationships. If the laws of action of the causal powers were independent of such factors as size, shape, direction, duration, spatio-temporal separation, and the like, then we could never know about them (2001b, 136, 138).

The categorical dimensions of things are made manifest to us, not directly by their own powers, (for they have none), nor by our own innate capacity of perception (for nothing can perceive a quiddity directly), but by the distributed causal power of the things that possess them, and our innate capacity to learn from experience about the shape of this distribution (2008a).

For the causal powers that stimulate our senses presumably all have constant laws of action that enable us ultimately to construct accurate neural maps of the locations of their sources, and hence of many of the categorical structures [sic] things that lie within range of our senses’ (2008a).

 identity of a property given apart from causal role  identity of a property not known apart from their causal role

Question: • Can we determine the difference between categorical and powerful dimensions in terms of a passive versus active causal role, respectively? Problem: • Causal role tied to their ostensible quiddity

laws to the rescue? • ‘detailed specification’ of the categorical dimensions (2005, 470); • descriptions of the essential nature of natural kinds (2002, 59). • descriptions (not prescriptions) of the way that the essential natures of the relata (causal powers and dimensions) interact with each other.

 causal role is mutually exclusive with quiddity  i) causal role cannot be relegated to laws, since they are mere descriptions of the essential natures of their relata ii) causal role cannot be relegated to the causal powers • Q. laws to the rescue? A. No

Swinburne’s regress We recognise powers by their effects, which are recognised in terms of the properties they involve. If these properties are nothing but powers, then effects must be recognised by effects which must be recognised by effects, and so on; but at no stage are the required properties encountered.

Structure can be powerful • Alexander Bird & Stephen Mumford • Newton’s Law of Gravity: F = Gm1m2/r2 • background dependence (passive) versus background independence (active)

Quantum Gravity Models • Lee Smolin, Carlo Rovelli et al. • Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) • spin networks – spatial information embedded relationally • Sundance O. Bilson-Thompson, Fotini Markopoulou et al. • Helon Model – Braiding • fermion yielding information embedded relationally

More relational models • Alexander Bird (parallel’s Randall Dipert) • background-free topological address • identity of dispositional properties provided relationally

Abandoning strict Particle-hood • Michael Redhead - highly debated whether we can differentiate between fields and particles • particles as ‘ephemerals’ • Quantum fields • Cheshire cat’s grin without the cat • Michael Redhead, Paul Teller – particle and field concepts underdetermined in Quantum Field Theory

Paul Teller • abandons role for particularity • rejects primitive thisness • elementary particularity in the traditional qualitative sense does not exist This is… ‘One of the most profound revisions in our ultimate metaphysical weltanschauung [or worldview], that has been engendered by our most fundamental physical theory, viz. quantum mechanics’ (61-62).

Carlo Rovelli ‘Indeed, a physical particle cannot be an extended rigid object, because rigid bodies are not admitted in the theory (they transmit information faster than light), nor can it be a pointlike massive object, because such objects too are incompatible with the theory (they disappear in their own black hole). Thus, understanding the physical picture of reality offered by general relativity in terms of particles moving on a curved geometry is misleading’ (1997, 191-192). • Q2 = c2∆t2 – ∆s2 • F = Gm1m2/r2

John Gribbin • electrons – charged regions in a sea of virtual photons • quantised ripple in the electromagnetic field • Heisenberg’s principle relating energy and time - ∆E∆t≤h

Lawrence Krauss - empty space as ‘a brew of boiling, bubbling ‘particle-antiparticle pairs popping in and out of nothingness’ (2005, 108-109) • Helon Model & LQG – not ‘nothingness’ but a microtopology of some sort • light-like networks of circulating field fluctuations (gauge bosons, ‘bits’ of force, force carriers)

Primitives • i) bits of force (a.k.a. force carriers, field fluctuations, gauge bosons) • Photons; w & z; gluons; gravitons (?) • travel at the speed of light • not spatiotemporally bordered • spacetime interval = 0 • neither continuously space filling nor persistent

Primitives • ii) dimensional topology • e.g. length, breadth, height, time and interconnection of these • arbitrarily orthogonal directions of displacement

open (e.g. length, breadth and height; macro-topological) + closed (curled up, compacted; micro-topological) spatial dimensions • dimensionality is fundamental and unbounded in both the open and the closed dimensions • force carriers move through macroscopic spacetime and/or through the microtopological labyrinth

Inter-dependence of the Primitives • not strictly distinct • dynamic • gauge bosons induce and modify curvature; curvature influences gauge bosons

Networks • appear massy, manifesting rest mass • travel at less than the speed of light • support higher-order qualitative properties • absorption and emission events occur in virtue of gauge bosons (field fluctuations) entering and exiting the respective micro-topological networks

Networks as Conserved Quantities • conserved quantities (e.g. charge, spin and energy-momentum) comprised by networks of circulating gauge bosons.

Abstract Space or Micro-topology? ‘the old problem: if an atom drops to a lower energy state and emits a photon, where was the photon before that? The answer…the photon was in another world, another “abstract space”, and has become apparent at the juncture between the space(s) containing the single electron’ (1995, 182).

Summary and Conclusion • main contention: replace categorical structure with powerful structure • deny particularisation at fundamental levels, although retain quantisation • fundamental structure given as a function of quantisation rather than in terms of particularity or primitive thisness • a suitable microstructural account then allows for this structure to be considered powerful rather than categorical

Thanks for listeningAny questions or comments?

The Swinburne Regress and New Essentialism