Yesterday I re-posted (with a few small edits) a Substack post from last September about my basic metaphysical stance: physicalism and realism. I’d posted here about the latter back in 2018 [see Realism], but the more recent Substack post reflects eight more years of thought on the matter.
My view has evolved some without really changing. I’m still committed to physicalism and realism. Nothing I’ve learned or heard argued has persuaded me towards idealism or anti-realism.
In this re-post I’m focusing on a couple of philosophical topics that have gotten a little under my skin:
The Colorful View from Nowhere
At risk of losing subscribers, possibly even friends, I confess that in the last decade or so I have lost much of my former reverence for philosophy. Or rather, to be blunt, for philosophers. My issue isn’t with philosophical analysis — aka critical and logical thinking — but with the human tendency to build cloud castles.
We live in an era of increasing detachment from physical reality. My response to this has been essentially positivist — “show me the money.” String theory, supersymmetry, eternalism, panpsychism? Show me some physical evidence. These benighted days, I have ever less tolerance for speculation and theory.
Some human endeavors are concrete and measurable. If we build a bridge or a rocket, we have clear objective ways to judge its quality. Other human endeavors are abstract and difficult to measure. Artists, managers, psychiatrists, spiritual leaders, … and philosophers have in common that their work is judged, at least in part, subjectively.
Which I think has two effects. Firstly, it makes being very good at such work more of a challenge than building something according to time-tested knowledge (if not an actual blueprint). Even inventors have the physics textbook to guide them. It’s harder to be a good artist, manager, … or philosopher. Secondly, it makes these fields subject to bullshit artists capable of convincing people their work is good.
And not just bullshit artists — people knowingly involved in a con — but in this era of increasing detachment from physical reality, those who build castles on the clouds of their own physically unfounded beliefs. Ideas with no evidential support, only (at best) an argument.
One thing we know about humans is that they are utterly brilliant at logically justifying what they’ve already decided to believe.
[To see this at its worst delve into the racist and enslaver apologia of the past. Or “Christian” writings about witchcraft. Or any Trump supporter.]
Two Things
In this post I want to push back on two things I’ve heard modern philosophers say that I find illogical and perhaps a result of mental tunnel vision:
- “There’s no such thing as color.” or “Color exists only in our minds.”
- “There is no ‘View from Nowhere’.”
I think the first is much like the question about a tree falling in the forest — the answer is trivial once we define “sound”.
I think the second reflects a metaphysical view that I not only don’t share but find difficult to even comprehend.
Color and Color Perception
We perceive color because our eyes receive certain wavelengths of electromagnetic energy (aka “light”). Alternately, we can refer to photons with certain energies. Both descriptions work, though neither quite describe the full situation.
Importantly, note that any number of instruments can detect EM energy (aka light aka photons). This is a persistent, lawful, universal aspect of our apparent reality. Light, in fact, is the main way we can know the reality in which we exist. Light carries information.
Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound?
Depends on how we define a sound. If a sound means mechanical vibrations in a certain frequency range — vibrations that potentially are experienced as sound by a variety of life forms and instruments — then yes, absolutely, no question, a falling tree makes a sound.
If sound means only what is experienced by sentient (not necessarily sapient) beings, then such a being is obviously necessary for there to be “sound”. The question then becomes, do deer and bears count? How about squirrels? Insects? They react to sound, so… they must count, right? What about plant life or bacteria? It would seem here the answer is yes merely in virtue of the constant presence of microbial life.
I think defining sound as a phenomenon makes a simple and reasonable definition a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
[Defining sound as physical vibration requires some consideration for electrical and magnetic representations of sound. They’re an interesting bridge because we can perceive them visually, but they must be converted to physical vibration (speakers, headphones) for us to hear them.]
Likewise, color
If we define color as the wavelength of light — or the energy of photons — then color is an objective property of light. As with sound, various living organisms and instruments can detect and differentiate the wavelengths of light.
[Mantis shrimp have much better color perception than we do.]
With the interesting exception of video screens, just about everything we see is due to reflected light — light that has bounced off whatever it is we’re seeing. So, the color of that light is due to [A] the color(s) of the light(s) shining on the object we’re seeing, and [B] the physical properties of that object.
[An older exception is when we look directly at a light-producing object such as a candle flame or lightbulb. Then we’re experiencing photons without them having reflected off an object and are seeing whatever wavelengths the light source produces.]
If red light shines on an object that only reflects blue wavelengths, the object looks black because it doesn’t reflect any red wavelengths. If red light shines on an object that reflects all colors the object looks red because the light source contains only red wavelengths. (In blue light, it would look blue, and only in white light would it look white.)
In this view color is an objective property due to light and the reflective properties of materials. Objective in that all living things or instruments capable of detecting and differentiating photons will agree on the phenomenon.
[“Agree” within the context of their respective ability to detect and differentiate. As a simple example, a color-blind person might disagree two color patches are different (when in fact they reflect different wavelengths), but they would agree the patches exist and have color. A black-and-white camera would agree the patches exist but could only compare their respective luminance values.]
As with sound, if color is (rather circularly, in my opinion) defined as what a sentient being experiences, then it’s obviously subjective. (But what about plants? They’re sensitive to color. So are some chemicals, such as those used to make film for color photography.)
I just don’t see value in defining light (or sound) subjectively. Given that immaterial things respond to it, defining it subjectively even seems factually incorrect. Every description would necessarily vary. Humans generally make terrible eyewitnesses.
The View from Nowhere
The other thing philosophers say that annoys me involves the concept of “the view from nowhere” — that it’s incoherent because it doesn’t exist.
What actually seems contested here is the very notion of an objective view. And from what I can tell, by extension, also the notion of objective reality.
A realist point of view holds that reality is “out there”, that we are merely brief passengers through it. The world existed before us; it exists after us. In particular, our minds do not determine external reality, only our perceived reality.
Consider the Grand Canyon. It can be viewed from many angles, from the air, from either rim, or from within the canyon. Consider all the people who have seen it from myriad vantage points. Not to mention all the photos, films, and videos.
Combine and synthesize all those real views with the infinite number of possible views which exist as potential viewpoints even when no one is there to take in that view at the moment. This is the “view from nowhere” — in fact, a view from anywhere.
It’s akin to having a 3D computer model of a scene where you can put the “camera” anywhere to render the scene from that point of view. That 3D model is, in a sense, the “view from nowhere” (or better stated, the “view from anywhere”).
To me the notion means nothing more than that reality is objective and “out there” and we can potentially see it from any point of view.
Idealism
These notions about color perception or subjectivity seem to come from an idealist point of view. Under physicalism, both are trivially resolved: color is an objective measurable property; reality has an objective basis. QED.
Under physicalism, the persistence and lawfulness of the reality we experience are inherent properties of physical reality, but they are hard to explain under idealism. If reality is due to our minds, given the variety of minds, how can reality be — without exception — persistent and lawful? The notorious (and accurate) perceptions about “designed by a committee” should make any collective mental creation of ours shifting and chaotic.
And how did it exist before us (or after us)? Idealists sometimes float “the mind of God” as the mentality that holds it all together, but that is a religious belief. I’ve even heard the pretzel notion of a mind of God, but not actually God.
[Whatever that means.]
There is the transcendental idealism due to Immanuel Kant, but that refers to his (at the time revolutionary but now taken for granted) idea that the only reality we can know is the model we create in our mind based on nerve signals, the structure of our evolved brains, logic, and past experience. But Kant was a realist — he believed in noumena as the basis for the phenomena we experience.
[What Kant really meant is a much-contested favorite debate topic among philosophers, and here you get my take on it. Your milage may vary.]
Idealism holds that mind and ideas are primary and physical reality secondary. I find that too contradictory to my experience and training in physics — to the physical evidence — to consider it a sensible, or even coherent, metaphysics.
To be blunt, I also find it arrogant (or at the least, Ptolemaic). The idea that a human mind is primary to this incredible and broad physical universe strikes me as presumptuous and small-minded in the extreme.
And very human.
Lack of Physics Training
I believe a key problem is that philosophers analyzing physical phenomena need to have at least some training in physics. Lack of physical understanding at the time is why Hume was wrong about causality and Berkeley about matter. Kant had access to better science, but even he was wrong about geometry.
Human minds are largely unchanged in 10,000 years, and what the great thinkers thought about the human condition is as relevant today as it ever was. But, as evidenced by our technology, our understanding of physical reality has grown enormously in that time. So, analysis of physical reality — time, space, matter — must keep up with our current scientific views.
[I think a problem with some modern philosophers considering the physical aspects of reality is an over-reverence for the ancients. What they had to say about human thought is relevant, but often what they had to say about physical reality isn’t anymore.]
Our analysis depends on our knowledge as well as logic. The infamous “garbage in, garbage out”. No matter how smart we are, if science says there are four elements, earth, water, air, fire, our analysis of physical reality is necessarily incomplete. Perhaps even later shown incorrect.
I think that, without some physics training, modern philosophers can’t hope to discern what might be flawed in the reasoning of the ancient and older philosophers. Or in their own reasoning.
For good or ill we live in a scientific and technological world. I think our philosophy must reflect that.
§ §
Stay physical, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
∇
Logos con carne 
And what do you think?