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1. Tables are complex systems whose ultimate constituents are “charges” and
“fields of force” (Scientific realism)
4. The only properties a complex system has are the logical consequence of
properties of its ultimate constituents (Anti-emergence)
5. The only properties a table has are the logical consequence of properties of
its ultimate constituents—i.e., properties of “charges” and “fields of force”
But this contradicts premise 2. So we need to reject one of the boxed four premises.
Which one?
The first two strategies involve dismissing one of our “two tables”:
Eddington can be seen as flirting with this idea: “modern physics has,” he writes,
“…assured me that my scientific table is the only one which is really there.”
1
My framing of this issue owes a debt to James Van Cleve (“Mind-Dust or Magic? Panpsychism versus
Emergence” Philosophical Perspectives 4 (1990): 215-226, at 215-216).
• Reject Premise 1: On this view, our talk about “charges” and “fields of force”
shouldn’t be taken literally. (Compare: statisticians might tell us that “the
Average Husband has 2.2 children.” This would seem morbid if we were naïve
with respect to statistics.) In particular, talk about “charges” and “fields of force”
is, like talk about “2.2 children,” a metaphorical device we use to summarize great
amounts of experimental data.
Physicist Richard Feynman once described electrons in this way: “The electron is
a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we
can almost call it real….[B]y analogy[…] no one has ever seen the inside of a
brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has
an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of
electrons is analogous.”2
Eddington seems to also have sympathy with rethinking the relationship between the
“two tables’” properties, rather than dismissing either table: “no doubt,” he writes, the
two tables “are ultimately to be identified after some fashion.” Our remaining two
strategies suggest two such “fashions”:
• Reject Premise 4: On this view, everyday features (like color, solidity) are said to
be “emergent properties.” Whenever the right combinations of “charges” and
“force fields” arrange themselves, then—voila!—color, solidity, etc. arise Why?
They just do.
2
Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Bantam Books: NY, 1989), ch. 9 (emphasis
mine). Robert M. Pirsig puts the point more dramatically in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know…. I predict that if you think about it long enough
you will…finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity
itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense….and what that means is that
that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people’s heads! It’s a ghost!”