Everyone is familiar with the first few exchanges between structural realists and their opponents. The structural realists say things like “only structure exists”, “relations without relata”, and the opponents freak out...
...You can’t just continue as if you accepted this framework — by speaking of relations — but subtract the entities and hope for the best. Individuals are too embedded within the standard framework; predicate logic provides no sentences about relations that don’t also concern individuals.
https://www.eddykemingchen.net/uploads/4/6/1/3/46137503/talk_-_structural_realism__eddy_conference_.pdf
The thesis that relations are internal is admirably summed up in Karen Barad’s statement that “relata do not precede relations” (Meeting the Universe Halfway, 334). The thesis that relations are external is the claim that entities can break with whatever relations they happen to entertain to other entities at a particular moment and enter into new relations with other entities...
...What is Barad saying? On the one hand, she appears to be saying that entities, “relata”, are generated out of relations. We have the relation first, and then the entities second. On the other, she appears to be claiming that these entities, “relata”, can have no subsistence or being apart from that relation. They are what they are only in and through this relation such that they can have no being independent apart from this relation.
In my view, this thesis is a catastrophe for ontological thought, empirical investigation, and concrete practice.
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/relata-do-not-precede-relations/
If a change - swapping elements about - doesn't make a difference, then it is not really any kind of change. — apokrisis
but it's blatantly contradictory to say that there is a change which isn't a change — Metaphysician Undercover
...in between are flavors of the ontic that still believe relations must have relata. — Relativist
Even if you're right that "structural realism has to be the fundamentally correct ontology" rather than just the right epistemic attitude, it remains to be seen if the eliminativist version will blow away the others. — Relativist
If you bothered to read with care, you would see the claim is that some changes make a difference and others don't. — apokrisis
And if you understood physics, you would know that Newtonian mechanics was founded on the fact. — apokrisis
Inertial freedoms exist because nature believes in the symmetries of translation and rotation. — apokrisis
Well, I do philosophy, not physics. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. As I say, a monistic approach based on relations is no better than a monistic approach based on relata. When faced with a chicken and egg dichotomy like this, the proper resolution is not to try to win by eliminating one or other half of the dyad but instead, accept that the bigger story is the one of a triadic relation. Each half of the equation becomes now the other's cause. — apokrisis
Everyone is familiar with the first few exchanges between structural realists and their opponents. The structural realists say things like “only structure exists”, “relations without relata”, and the opponents freak out...
...You can’t just continue as if you accepted this framework — by speaking of relations — but subtract the entities and hope for the best. Individuals are too embedded within the standard framework; predicate logic provides no sentences about relations that don’t also concern individuals.
So in some way, structural realism has to be the fundamentally correct ontology. It is the picture of reality which science has arrived at. But also, its proponents are tending to sweep its obvious problem under the carpet. — apokrisis
You seem to agree with Ontic Structuralism, but why Realism? it's an obvious truism that all we experience is our experience. Then why make up a Realist metaphysics? I suggest that what makes sense is Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism. — Michael Ossipoff
I recommend reading the article at the SEP. It is a good survey of the various flavors of SR, and identifies objections to each. — Relativist
In any case, eliminativism does not require that there be relations without relata, just that the relata not be individuals. French and Krause (2006) argue that quantum particles and spacetime points are not individuals but that they are objects in a minimal sense, and they develop a non-classical logic according to which such non-individual objects can be the values of first-order variables, but ones for which the law of identity, ‘for all x, x is identical to x’, does not hold (but neither does ‘x is not identical to x’).
My takeaway is that there's more reason than ever to be agnostic to ontologies. — Relativist
Our knowledge of the world, in terms of fundamental physics, is not settled. — Relativist
Should we treat quantum fields as fundamental? Quantum field theory is not even complete, since it doesn't include gravity. Are points in spacetime "individuals"? Do we depend on haeccity for individuation? What about string theory? — Relativist
If physics doesn't have a firm answer, how can ontology? — Relativist
And as SEP says, that is how some in OSR see it too:
In any case, eliminativism does not require that there be relations without relata, just that the relata not be individuals. French and Krause (2006) argue that quantum particles and spacetime points are not individuals but that they are objects in a minimal sense, and they develop a non-classical logic according to which such non-individual objects can be the values of first-order variables, but ones for which the law of identity, ‘for all x, x is identical to x’, does not hold (but neither does ‘x is not identical to x’).
So you don't require the brute existence of primitive individuals to stand as the relata. All you require is some principle of individuation - a constraint on random accidents or chaotic variety such as for there to be something "there" to get the game of stable existence going. — apokrisis
This object which is not an individual, what is it, a multitude of objects? — Metaphysician Undercover
In OSR, objects are the individuated. So they are the result of a multiplicity of possibilities being limited. — apokrisis
French and Krause (2006) argue that quantum particles and spacetime points are not individuals but that they are objects in a minimal sense, and they develop a non-classical logic according to which such non-individual objects can be the values of first-order variables, but ones for which the law of identity, ‘for all x, x is identical to x’, does not hold (but neither does ‘x is not identical to x’).
Why do you find metaphysics such a struggle? — apokrisis
This directly opposes what you stated above — Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah. So particles and spacetime points would be objects in a minimal sense. That minimal sense would include a "violation" of the law of identity - in the sense that the principle of non-contradiction would fail to apply. It would not be the case that x is x', but nor would it be the case that x isn't x'. Thus what is being asserted is that the identity of x is fundamentally vague - under the Peircean view that vagueness is defined by the failure of the PNC to apply. — apokrisis
.”You seem to agree with Ontic Structuralism, but why Realism? it's an obvious truism that all we experience is our experience. Then why make up a Realist metaphysics? I suggest that what makes sense is Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.” — Michael Ossipoff
.
Well, I do take reality seriously.
.And so that motivates a concern to arrive at its best model. Idealism doesn't make any sense. It doesn't address the central fact of experience
.... which is that it seems divided into a part that is recalcitrant world for some reason.
.So as I say, I already accept it is about our pragmatic models of something that actually needs explaining.
.Just saying "everything is experience" explains neither the "we" that is doing the experiencing, nor the "world" that resists our wishes.
That seems an unjustifiable belief, that observers create. Reminds me of devotees of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM who consider observation to cause wave function collapse. — Relativist
Materialists think that all of Reality consists of the physical world. — Michael Ossipoff
It recognizes that there’s no reason to believe that experience isn’t the fundamental reality of the describable world. — Michael Ossipoff
Fundamental to an object's identity is it's spatial temporal location — Metaphysician Undercover
So they deny the very thing which provides the identity of an object, its spatial temporal location, as not necessary to its identity. — Metaphysician Undercover
The inability to determine the spatial temporal location of a particle, and therefore identify that particle, is a direct result of the mindset of modern physicists which makes spatial temporal location relative rather than absolute. . — Metaphysician Undercover
It seems obvious to me that they'd have to obtain in conjunction with each other. — Terrapin Station
So you want to wind physics all the way back to absolute Newtonian reference frames? Sounds legit. — apokrisis
If the identity of an object is lost, through the use of relative reference frames, then this is illogical and unacceptable as an ontological principle. — Metaphysician Undercover
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