Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (35 page)

But if, following Faraday, we resolve particles themselves into
yet further powers, dispositions, or forces, we cannot be satisfied
with this kind of image. We have to try to understand what the cosmos contains without the mental crutch afforded by`things' of any
kind whatsoever. Hume's complaint about impenetrability-that
we need to know what it is that cannot penetrate what-then returns to haunt us. It is as if the common-sense conception of the
difference between space occupied by a body, and space not so occupied, has been displaced in favour of space of which some ifs are
true, as opposed to space of which other kinds of ifsare true. But we
hanker after something to really occupy space, whose presence
explains the differences in ifs, the differences in potentials and
powers.

We can put the problem in the terms of Chapter 2. If God creates
the physical universe, how much does he have to do? Can he get by
creating only forces? In that case the universe seems to resolve itself
into a giant set of ijs. Or does he also have to create objects, both for
the forces to act upon, and perhaps to explain how the forces arise?
If we plump for the latter, then what conception of those objects
can we have? The first conception seems to leave the universe as
some kind of huge potential, like a gigantic shimmer. Perhaps
Descartes, the mathematician, was happy with this (it is a fascinating question whether he anticipated Faraday's kind of vision). But common-sense thinking seems to demand something (something
solid) to fill the bits of space that have matter in them.

This is a problem that greatly exercised Kant, himself one of the
pioneers of the resolution of matter itself into `forces'. Kant
thought that this conception of things was the best we could ever
achieve. He thought this partly because we know of the world by
means of the senses, and the senses are essentially receptive. That is,
all they ever give us are the results of powers and forces. The senses
are not adapted to tell us what in the world underlies the distribution of powers and forces in space. They simply bring to us the
result of that distribution. Anything underlying it would have to be
entirely `noumenal'-lying behind the range of scientific investigation, and for that matter beyond the range of human experience
and thought.

Hume thought that his problem with impenetrability cast
doubt on the whole metaphysics of `the modern philosophy, although he also thinks Berkeley's own retreat into subjective idealism is entirely unbelievable. Kant too believed that the problem
required an entire rethink of the modern philosophy.

STRAIGHTJACKETS AND LAWS

There is another way of coming to appreciate the problems raised
in the last section, which is to think about a different staple of scientific understanding, the concept of a law of nature. It requires revisiting something we met in the last chapter: the lottery for the
Golden Harp.

After considering that thought-experiment, we might think
something along these lines. The thought-experiment is impressive, but perhaps it is also misleading. For it represents the situation as if the state of the world at each interval is independent of its
state at any other interval. It is just as if God tosses a six-sided die at
the end of each period, so it is a i in 6 chance whether one colour or
another comes up. Now if that were the situation, it would indeed
be a fallacy to argue that since one number (blue) has come up five
times, it is more likely to come up next time. Arguing like that is
falling for what is called the gambler's fallacy. However, in the
world as we have it we do not know that there is this kind of lottery
taking place all the time. We do not find the chaos that this would
lead us to expect. We find only the uniformities. So it is much more
probable that there is something that guarantees order through
time. There is no independent dice-tossing from time to time:
rather it is as if God made the one decision, and stuck to it. There
must be a metaphysical solution to the problem of induction, even
if there is no purely probabilistic or mathematical solution.

This may seem to help, but does it?

Part of the problem of course is that even if the universe realizes
just one law, like one decision of God, it may have been `Let's have
pattern K' rather than `Let's have pattern S'. The unchanging law
may have the kinked character. After all, we are confined to knowing about the segments that have happened so far. And arguing
that because nature has so far been uniform in some particular
way, then it is likely that it will continue to be uniform in that particular way, is making just another inductive inference, as Hume
pointed out.

But again, there is a metaphysical side to the problem. Let us call
whatever guarantees order a Straightjacket. A Straightjacket is
something like a law of nature operating over time: a directive or
guarantee that fixes the order of things. The idea then is that it is
because of this directive or guarantee that things keep on keeping
on, as we might say, in the old familiar ways. Now the problem becomes: can we have any conception of what such a Straightjacket
would he like?

The problem here is extremely similar to the problem with the
cosmological argument, discussed in Chapter 5, and indeed can be
seen to be a version of it. The things we meet in space and time, including such things as human resolutions, are inherently changeable. They may last for a long time, but in practice they cone and
go. A Straightjacket is not to be like that. For if it is in principle
changeable then its own survival through time requires explanation, and we are launched on a regress.

The situation is that we are hoping to underpin the ordinary
continuation of regularities by citing `something else', something
that makes true the fact that events must fall out as they do. But
then we turn to consider the regular continuation of that something else. If this is just a `brute fact' then it is no more likely than
what we started with-the empirical order. If it needs a different
kind of underpinning, then we are launched on a regress again. If
we say that it is `necessary' or contains its own explanation within
itself, then we face the same scepticism that was directed at the cosmological argument. We do not understand what we mean by this,
and have no principles for saying to what kind of things such a description might apply.

In other words, if a Straightjacket is the kind of thing that comes
and goes, we will be left with no reason for expecting its continuation. But have we any conception of something whose existence is
not subject to time and change? Can we even touch it, let alone embrace it, with our understandings? Aren't we once more left with
Wittgenstein's dire saying,'[A] nothing would serve just as well as
a something about which nothing could be said'? Or in Hume's
words,

The scenes of the universe are continually shifting, and one
object follows another in an uninterrupted succession; but the
power or force, which actuates the whole machine, is entirely
concealed from us, and never discovers itself in any of the sensible qualities of body.

It seems that our understandings are baffled in this too. We can
have no conception of what it is for a law of nature to hold. We can
understand the ways in which events do fall out, but never obtain
any glimmer of a conception of why they must fall out as they do.

In the last section, following Faraday and Hume, we found that
the `absolute' scientific conception of an independent reality ran
into problems of things versus their powers. We now find that our
conception of those powers themselves, underwritten by laws of
nature, is as frail as it could possibly be.

Problems with the `modern philosophy' led Berkeley to retreat
inside his own mind. He decided that the universe of our understanding was confined to our own ideas, and our own nature
as `spirits' or souls. Fortunately we are not quite alone in this subjective universe, for we can be sure (he thought) that our experiences must be injected into us by another greater spirit: God (one
can by now anticipate Hume's snort of derision at this a priori
piece of causal reasoning). But nobody has ever held that Berkeley's solution was satisfactory: it sounds too much as if Berkeley's
God just plays the role of Descartes's Evil Demon, putting us into
an entirely delusive virtual reality.

One philosopher who agreed with Berkeley's diagnosis of the
situation was Kant. Kant thought that Locke's `modern philosophy' had attempted what he called a'transcendental realism', which
is untenable. `Realism', because it insists on a real world of independent objects situated in space and time. 'Transcendental', because this world is outside our own experience, and only an object
of inference. But Kant agrees with Berkeley that the inference is too
precarious. On the Lockean position:

I am not, therefore, in a position to perceive external things,
but can only infer their existence from my inner perception,
taking the inner perception as the effect of which something
external is the proximate cause. Now the inference from a
given effect to a determinate cause is always uncertain, since
the effect may be due to more than one cause. Accordingly, as
regards the relation of the perception to its cause, it always remains doubtful whether the cause be internal or external;
whether, that is to say, all the so-called outer perceptions are
not a mere playof our innersense, or whether theystand in relation to actual external objects as their cause. At all events,
the existence of the latter is only inferred, and is open to all the dangers of inference, whereas the object of inner sense (I myself with all my representations) is immediately perceived,
and its existence does not allow of being doubted.

For Kant the priority is to get away from this `inner theatre' model.
We already met some of his approach in Chapter 4, on the self.
There, we saw that various quite complex feats of organization are
needed for self-consciousness. We have to organize our experience
not as what Kant calls a mere `rhapsody' or kaleidoscope of perceptions, but in terms of a temporal and spatial order. Only so can we
get a concept of ourselves as moving amongst an independent
world of objects situated in a space. How does Kant use this insight
to surmount the impasse left by the tradition from Descartes onwards?

Part of Kant's achievement was seeing that Locke is involved in
an untenable conception of understanding. For Locke the paradigm of understanding would be to have something in the mind
that `resembles' the features of things that cause it, like a picture.
Berkeley shared this ideal. True, he thought that the resemblance
could not really obtain (`An idea can resemble nothing but another
idea'). But he drew the consequence that we only understand the
world of our own ideas. Kant sees that when it comes to space and
time, size, shape, and the objective order, to have a concept is not to
have a mental picture. It is to have an organizing principle or rule;
a way of handling the flux of data. Having the same organizing
principles or rules could give us the same understanding of the
world in spite of differences of subjective experience.