Being, Metaphysics, Ontology

A Philosophical Reflection on Sir Roger Penrose and Jordan Peterson

by Dave Seng

[Note: For the conversation between Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Jordan Peterson, click here. What follows is my reflection on the conversation.]

The deepest of all philosophic problems: Is the Kosmos an expression of intelligence rational in its inward nature, or a brute external fact pure and simple? – William James, Principles of Psychology

I recently viewed this discussion between Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Jordan Peterson on the nature of consciousness which ultimately expands to philosophical reflections on some interesting qualities and characteristics of time and the origin of the cosmos. I am not a trained physicist and I understand that Penrose may not reflect the consensus of his field. Nonetheless, Peterson and Penrose present a rational discussion of the most perennial and foundational ideas surrounding the nature of the consciousness and the universe. I also think that Penrose presents some thought provoking ideas about the world we inhabit and should be given rational and careful consideration.

Penrose and Peterson are an interesting pairing and it reflects some foundational issues regarding the relationship between science and philosophy. One thing I noticed in the discussion is that Peterson is a very much a global thinker or a speculative philosopher in the manner of Whitehead or many earlier classical philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, among others). These philosophers seek a unifying whole to all of reality and want to connect all the sciences and human experience into a consistent world view. This kind of philosopher, according to Plato “is the spectator of all time and all existence” … and will intellectually “move spontaneously towards the true being of everything.”1 As C. D. Broad explains about the nature of speculative philosophy, “The hope is that, by this means, we may be able to reach some general conclusions as to the nature of the universe, and as to our position and prospects in it.”2 In this conversation, however, we see Peterson pursuing deeper unifying metaphysical themes that focus on the nature of reality, while Penrose simply stops at the theoretical physical level. I think the reason for this is that Penrose understands that physical inductive science can only go so far. He stops at the end of his field and what it can do. On the other hand, philosophical inquiry resists empirical solutions because philosophers are seeking the meaning, truth, and logical connections of reality as a whole. Philosophers want to know what the foundation of empirical truth is and what makes it possible in the first place. These are not empirical questions. I believe this is the source of the slight frustration that Peterson demonstrates. (For what it’s worth, I thought the conversation turned much more friendly after it moved to art, which both have a love for.)

Regarding induction and observational science, Alfred North Whitehead put it this way,

Induction presupposes metaphysics. In other words, it rests upon an antecedent rationalism. You cannot have a rational justification for your appeal to history till your metaphysics has assured you that there is a history to appeal to; and likewise your conjectures as to the future presuppose some basis of knowledge that there is a future already subjected to some determinations.3

Science itself is based on metaphysical and theological principles. (I’ve written about this in the context of Lucretius, here. And professor Ken Samples has made important insights here.) Peterson was simply asking questions that physics can not answer.

A really interesting point made in the discussion, is the fact that consciousness is not computational. If consciousness is not computational, hard AI (computational self-consciousness) will ultimately fail. Researchers are still not sure how to define consciousness, or really understand what it is at all. Nonetheless, Peterson and Penrose seem think that Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems support the non-computational nature of consciousness. Briefly, Gödel’s first theorem states that there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but are unprovable within the system. Gödel’s second theorem states that the system itself cannot show its own consistency. What this means is that there must be an axiom outside the system that makes sense of the system in the first place. For a more practical illustration, Gödel uses the “liars paradox” to support his theorems. The paradox in its simplest form arises from considering the sentence “This sentence is false.” If the sentence is true, then it is false, and if it is false, then it is true. A computer can be programmed to write the sentence but it has no resources within its own system to make sense out of it. It takes a human outside the system to understand the sentence is logically self-contradictory. The earliest pioneers of programmable logic—Alfred Tarski, Alonzo Church, and Turing’s Halting Problem—all deal with aspects of this important problem. The human will never be replaced. Further, there must be something outside the system which makes sense out of the system itself. In other words, the system is ontologically dependent on an axiom outside itself that gives it meaning and significance. It appears that Peterson is acutely aware of this situation.

So what does this have to do with the discussion of cosmology at the end of the dialogue? First, I’m not really sure about Sir Roger Penrose’s conception of time and his cosmological model. I need to look into it a bit more. If he is right, however, it might pose a problem for the Kalam cosmological model. The Kalām cosmological argument runs this way:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence.

Proponents of the Kalām cosmological argument (Craig, Koontz, Pruss and others) rely on space and time as having a definite starting point and draw heavily on scientific evidence (such as the Big Bang). If Penrose is correct, however, then the universe is an infinite, which might undermine the Kalām argument. Of course, Craig and others will point to the impossibility of traversing an infinite and perhaps the second law of thermodynamics to make their case for the beginning of the universe. These are fine points points, indeed, and along with the principle of causality, do hold some significance. In the end, however, the Kalām cosmological depends on a very specific model of the universe for its validity.

There are other ways to formulate a cosmological argument that does not rely so much on one particular interpretation of the science. The Thomistic way of arguing is valid whether or not the universe is finite. This cosmological argument is sometimes called the argument from Being. It looks like this (taken from Norman Geisler’s book, God: A Philosophical Argument from Being):

1. Something exists (e.g., I do)

2. Nothing cannot produce something.

3. Therefore, something exists eternally necessarily.

A. It exists eternally because if ever there was absolutely nothing, then there would always be absolutely nothing because nothing cannot produce something.

B. It exists necessarily because everything cannot be a contingent being because all contingent beings need a cause of their existence.

4. I am not a necessary and eternal being (since I change).

5. Therefore, both God (a Necessary Being) and I (a contingent being) exist. (= theism)

It is not necessary to go into the principle of existence, or the principle of identity and the rest of the first laws of metaphysics here. What is important to note are two things—the ontological dependence of reality on God as Necessary Being and the absence of temporality as a starting point.4 The ontological dependence is necessary regardless whether or not time is infinite. On the substance of Thomistic argumentation, one philosopher puts it this way,

We know from experience that the world is contingent, that is, it depends on something outside itself for its existence. And this would be true even if the world has always been here, for an infinite collection of contingent things is no less contingent than a finite one. But there must be some unconditional, ultimate being upon which the world depends, otherwise it would have no final basis for existence.5

Aquinas argues against an infinite series, but the series he thinks is impossible is a per se series, or one that extends infinitely upwards in being. The argument from being focuses on contingency and ontological dependence and does not rely on one particular model of the universe. So if the science changes, an explanation for being is still necessary. This might be one advantage that this argument has over the Kalām cosmological argument. If Penrose is correct, time may not be the most fundamental element of reality and it seems to do some pretty strange things both at the quantum level and the macro or cosmic levels. But no one can deny that being is and it stands in front of us as a mystery which is truly one of the most enduring questions of human existence.

In the final analysis, Penrose may or may not be right in his arithmetic regarding the infinity of the universe, but he still misses the ontological weight of the issue.

I’d like to thank my friend Dr. Derek Gardner for pointing me to this video and providing inspiration for this post.

1 The Dialogues of Plato. Translated by J. Harward. Vol. 6. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1990. 374 – 375.

2Scientific Thought. New Yourk: Harcourt, Brace, 1923. 20.

3 Science and the Modern World, vol. 55, Great Books of The Western World Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993. 156.

4 I am always reminded of Exodus 3:14 – one translation of the Hebrew reads of God’s self-description “I am who causes to be” or “He who causes to be”.

5 Miller, Ed L., and Jon Jensen. Questions That Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 276.

Being, Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Ontology

Hegelian Idealism and The Modes of Existence: Part One

by Dave Seng

The prologue to this series can be found here.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a fascinating figure in the history of philosophy. Hegel provides a grand metaphysical system that encompasses all elements of reality and perennial questions. For example, Hegel believes that the role of philosophy is to explicate the development of “reason,” or “idea” as it unfolds in world history, political life, and every aspect of culture and society. According to Hegel, when exploring the philosophy of history (how one is to understand the meaning and significance of history), it is important to understand that human events are the ordered development and process of the Idea or world-mind, “The concrete Ideas, the minds of the nations, have their truth and their destiny in the concrete Idea which is absolute universality, i.e. in the world-mind” (116). Whether Hegel is discussing the philosophy of right (systems of right actions, ethics, and contractual law) or the grand purpose of human affairs in history, it is “reason,” “idea,” and world-mind that fundamentally guides reality and leads to all truth, and in fact, knows all things (165-166). Hegel explains further, “This vast congeries of volitions, interests and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the world-spirit for attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness, and realizing it” (171). Hegel’s far-reaching metaphysics touches on all reality. To further grasp Hegel’s metaphysical system, however, it is important to more closely examine his concept of the “world-mind” and its implications for understanding the world.

In both his Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History, Hegel uses the terms “world-mind” or “world-idea” and “reason” as a kind of immaterial guiding force for all reality and Being. Sometimes, he even uses the theological German term “geist” to capture this notion (88, 147, among others). For Hegel, world-mind is the one ultimate substance that binds and guides all things in the universe (163). The one essential nature or character of Being is mind. One of the great questions Hegel explores is the nature and character of reality (or what is known as “Being”). Being is the formal object of study for the metaphysician and it involves exploring reality, itself, along with how and why things exist as they do. In metaphysics, the study of being seeks to explore the ultimate foundations and causes of all that exists. The study of Being is a far-reaching inquiry which explores what it means for a thing to exist, the various ways in which a thing can exist, and the metaphysical principles which make possible a thing to exist in the first place. Being, then is not the study of one thing among the already existing things which exist; it is the study of why and how the universe is the way it is and explores the fundamental principles of its existence. In the classical Aristotelian sense, the study of reality (being) takes being as it is and attempts to carefully demonstrate the first principles of reality and describe what it means for a thing to exist.1 Through a careful understanding of ontology (what it means for a specific thing to exist), philosophers find clues for what it means for the universe to exist.

Hegel, however, does not take the classical approach of examining the properties of reality such as the logical laws of noncontradiction, identity, and excluded middle, or the various modes of existence (rational, mental, and intentional being and the relationships among being), and develop a metaphysical system from there, rather, he begins with the “world-spirit” and its organic processes and development in the universe. Hegel reduces all being to mind, idea, or world-spirit and this is why his conceptual scheme for reality is known as “idealism.” In metaphysics, idealism is any theory which reduces all reality to mind and its ideas. Idealism makes the mind or “world-mind” (in Hegel’s case) the ultimate character, or substance of reality and makes all reality mind-dependent.

As pointed out, Hegel believes that all reality is driven by a world-spirit or world-mind. This world-spirit, is not the transcendent Christian God, but a nonphysical spiritual force that is immanent, indwelt, and part of the universe itself—what is known as metaphysical monism. Since Hegel reduces all reality to only one thing, mind or spirit, his position can also be identified with theological pantheism or panentheism (the idea that all is in God). The universe is in continual change and development due to the careful guidance of the world-spirit. Hegel’s position is known as idealism because he believes that all reality is based on, or consists of spirit, idea, or mind. Hegel connects this notion to his overall understanding of idealism, “Now it is the interest of spirit that external conditions should become internal ones; that the natural and the spiritual world should be recognized in the subjective aspect belonging to intelligence; by which process the unity of subjectivity and being generally—or the idealism of existence—is established” (231). Hegel argues that idealism is established if one can reduce all reality to the subjective aspect of intelligence or mind. He believes that the subjective intelligent individual serves as a kind of microcosm of the universal world-spirit or intelligence (162-163). If the universe is reasonable, there must be an ultimate intelligence or “reason” that is at work, infused into, and guiding the universe. Humans have the intellectual capacity of discovering reason at work in reality. Hegel applies this notion of “reason” to all aspects of life and the world, including this unfolding of idealism to history and human events.

In part two we will explore how Hegel applies the notion of the world-spirit to history itself.

1 Aristotle takes the primacy of being, or the fact of existence, as his philosophical point of departure. This is the point of his famous phrase “being as being” in book IV of his Metaphysics (522).

Works Cited

Hegel, Georg. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 43. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

— Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 43. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy

Of Simple Apprehension and Concept

by Dave Seng

Now it is impossible for a thing’s being to be caused by its essential principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own being, if its being is caused—Thomas Aquinas

In previous posts, we spent some time thinking about how the intellect works and receives reality. The intellect is potency to knowledge and can only receive that which is in act (being) through sense experience. As St. Thomas reminds us, “intelligence is compared to sense, as act is to potency”.1 It is important in this discussion to understand the distinction of simple apprehension and concept because the blurring and conflating of these categories is one of the greatest errors among Idealists. We have seen that through induction and abstraction, the essence of the external object is married to the intellect. This union of essence, or universal, with the intellect is also known as, concept, idea, species or intention. For now, we will use the term concept.

There are many different kinds of concepts, of course, and it is the task of metaphysicians and logicians to catalog, classify, and put them in proper order. For classical realists, knowledge is always of being – of that which is in some order. In this way, epistemology would be better understood as the ontology of knowing—an examination of the first principles and the order of knowing reality.

In the order of knowing, the concept is not the being of the external object, it is the essence. (Being, or that which is in act, is always matter and form.) The concept resides in the intellect as the essence or universal abstracted from external reality through the senses. To confuse the concept, or idea, with being itself is the error of the idealist.

The realist philosopher Daniel Sullivan puts it this way:

It is important to recognize that while the concept is necessary to rational knowing, it is only a means by which we know, and not that which we know. It is a necessary means, just as eyeglasses may be necessary for me to see with; yet just as it is really the table I see and not the lenses of my eyeglasses, so too it is really the thing itself I know and not my concept of it. To say that the objects of my knowing are concepts rather than things would be to fall into the trap of those philosophers called Idealists. For if all we ever know is always idea, then we can never know whether or not there is anything existing outside our mind corresponding to our ideas. Thus, following the Idealist, all reality would consist of minds and the thoughts they think.2

If one does not properly make the distinction between concept and real actual being, skepticism, uncertainty, and doubt about reality results. The perennial questions of reality will always be reduced to subjectivism. One would have no certain contact with reality outside their mind.

Drawing from St. Thomas, Dr. Adler explains:

This distinction between the id quod (that which) and the id quo (that by which) of our intellectual acts prevents us from ever saying that our concepts are that which we are conscious or aware of when we understand ideas. We could not be aware of the concepts in our minds and also at the same time be aware of their intelligible objects. If we were, we could not distinguish between them, which would mean we could not affirm that such objects exist and are shared by other minds.3

Our concepts do not tell us that things are, they tell us what things are; they reveal nature or essence, not existence. “The existence of things is outside the order of concepts,” wrote St. Thomas.4 The point to remember is that the being of an idea or concept in the mind is a different mode of existence than that of the actual external object – each belongs to a different order. Physical reality and knowing are different orders. Cognitively, humans have the ability to distinguish between that which and that by which they are aware of something. This allows one to affirm or deny the reality of something through the intellectual faculty of judgment. When the mind engages in careful and critical reflection, the essence in the intellect always points back to concrete reality. (I explained a little how the faculty of judgment works in my posts on Berkeleyan Idealism. I hope to develop the idea further as we move along.)

The process by which the intellect grasps the essence or universal is what classical realists call simple apprehension: apprehension, because the mind receives and comes to understand the essential nature of the sense object; simple, because the mind naturally takes in the intentional concept without affirming or denying it through the faculty of judgment. The operation of simple apprehension is the first act of knowing.

Without these concepts firmly understood, it is easy to fall into the error of Idealism. However, the idealist must conclude that the essence, or concept, is the cause of reality (indeed, that is the very definition of Idealism) but this is impossible because no contingent being can be the cause of its own existence.

Works Cited

Adler, Mortimer. Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher’s Lexicon. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica Volume 1. The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler et al., Vol. 17, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996.

Sullivan, Daniel. An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition. Charlotte, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2009.

Wilhelmsen, Frederick D. Man’s Knowledge of Reality: An Introduction to Thomistic Epistemology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1956.

Notes

1Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Trans. by Father Laurence Shapcote of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996) 1a, q.3, art. 5.

2Daniel Sullivan, An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition (Charlotte, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2009), 79.

3 Mortimer J. Adler, Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary (New York: Scribner, 1995), S. V. Idea.

4Frederick D. Wilhemsen, Man’s Knowledge of Reality: An Introduction to Thomistic Epistemology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1956) 29.

Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy

On Metaphysical Realism, Where We Have Been, Where we Are Going

by Dave Seng

Being is the actuality of every form or nature; for goodness or humanity are spoken of as actual only because they are spoken of as being. Therefore being must be compared to essence, if the latter is distinct from the former, as act to potency. — St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 3, art. 4.

Before I go any farther, I would like to recall what we have learned in the last four posts, and explain some important concepts before we get to the distinction of apprehension and concept. A solid understanding of being will allow one to fully grasp the error of idealism.

First, we have learned the following:

1. Human beings grasp reality as it is. When the senses and the mind work together symbiotically, one correctly apprehends being.

2. Being is the first principle of reality, logic, and the order of understanding. The laws of logic are properties of being.

3. Our senses are the only connection we have to external reality, therefore our senses are the first principle of understanding.

All of the above implies that the evidence of being is lost, erased, or forgotten when philosophers wrongly separate the mind from the body. (We will get to how this develops from Descartes and various idealists, later.) One does not perceive reality by the mind alone or by the senses alone, but both working together. In the human person, form and matter can not be separated.

Definitions are always important. When I write about philosophical idealism this is what I mean:

In metaphysics, idealism is the theory that all reality consists of mind and its ideas. Idealism denies the material primacy of reality. Thus, idealism is also suspicious of knowledge built exclusively on the observation of matter. There are various kinds of idealists (which, again, we will get to later). However, most idealists fall into two schools – subjective and objective idealism. Subjective idealists such as George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) hold that ideas alone exist (although he used the term ‘idea’ in novel ways) and since all ideas only exist in the mind, all reality is mind dependent. Objective idealists such as Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) do not deny the existence of reality, but hold that one can not know it. All idealists hold that the mind is ultimate in determining reality and are suspicious of the notion that reality (being) is the determinant of order in the world.

Because being is the touchstone of all reality, I define being as the following:

The term ‘being’ most simply refers to the fact that something exists. It can be further analyzed into abstract being (e.g., ideas, mathematical entities, etc. that exist mentally, this is sometimes called subjective existence) and concrete being (e.g., people and things that can be experienced with the senses, sometimes called real existence). Aristotle taught that the study of being as being is the primary concern for the metaphysician. In the realist tradition, the fact of being and theories about it are two distinctly separate ontological and epistemological questions.

Although we will probably not get into the grammar of being for a while, I think this quote from St. Thomas is helpful as we review where we have been (I hope it will provide a little more understanding to the previous posts). That which is in act participates in being. “Being” is taken from the verb ‘to be.’ In the grammatical expression of being, realists understand it to be both a participle and verb. Aquinas explains how being is a verb:

The verb is consignifies composition, because it does not signify this principally but secondarily. Is signifies primarily that which the intellect apprehends as being absolutely actual, for in the absolute sense is means to be in act, and thus its mode of signification is that of a verb. But, since the actuality which is principally signifies is universally the actuality of every form, whether substantial or accidental, when we wish to signify that any form or any act whatever actually exists in a subject, we express that fact by this verb is. (St. Thomas, Commentary on Aristotle’s “On Interpretation,” Book I, lect. 5, end).

Keep these ideas in mind as we discover how apprehension and concept work in the intellect. My hope here is to clarify concepts as they develop and to provide further explication.