(WIP) I'm Starting to Think (Ontic) Strucutral Realism is Just Kind of True

My recent foray into some ontology.

One of the first questions to answer in philosophy is inevietably, “what is anything?” Probably the second is “how do we know anything?” These two monsterous questions bring forth the field of ontology and epistemology, the study of being and knowing, respectively. I intend to focus mostly on ontology here; in doing so, I’m going to make a debatable but probably necassary assumption: we have enough epistemic ability to come to conclusions about reality itself, and even if it’s always possible reality turns out to be an illusion, simulation, etc I’m going to assume that there are meaningfully different postions on ontology with real consequences and predictions. That is to say, I don’t want to just say “but everything as we know it could be wrong!” I’m assuming things we think to know are largely true.

I should note I’m by no means an experienced philosopher, nor really training to be (rigorous as math can be). Consider this some loose takes on things I’ve been musing over. Most of this will not involve extensive citations, discussion of contemporary literature, or even historical influences.

I see largely two broad ontologic categories out there:

• Idealism: Mind over matter; some form of consciousness or identity is fundamental. This category includes pantheistic or pantheistic visions where reality is identified as some component of God. Physical “stuff” is actually mental experience or mental states (perhaps thoughts of God?) somehow coming together in ways that appear stable to us.
• Materialism: There is some fundamental “stuff” or “energy” out there that does things, and we’re a result of that.

Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) is technically a materialist philsophy, but often can sound a lot like an idealistic one. The fundamental thrust of the theory is this:

Structure is fundamental.

Essentially, OSR posits that an object is not reducible to some typical kind of “stuff” constituting its properties. Instead, every object is inherently defined by its relations to other objects. As an example, consider an apple in your hand. What defines that specific apple? You might start listing out things such as its:

• Position (relative to you)
• Color
• Smell
• Shape
• Melting point
• Taste
• Weight
• Aerodynamics when you throw it at your sibling
• Cell Tissue

We learn of these things about the apple directly (through our senses) or indirectly (through science we perform on it). OSR simply posits that our apple is literally defined by those things. There is no hidden “essence” behind the apple, just all the properties we ascertain. The apple “is what it does,” or “it is what other things describe it as”.

It’s worth noting that you probably agree that it does make sense to describe “what the apple does” and “how other things describe the apple”. In fact, whenever we talk about the apple, we practically by definition use the structure of the apple, not its internal properties or essences or its fundamental parts - assuming these descriptors are interchangable.

But Isn’t This Just Epistemic?

To steelman a non-OSR adherent at this point, they could make the very accurate claim that all these facts about the apple are “higher-order” developments that come from the fundamental stuff of reality. For instance, the apple is made up of cells, which are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made of charges, which are made of … whatever the fundamental stuff is. Let’s call it “reality goo” - for the idealist, some kind of mental state, for the typical materialist, something we might discover in physics.

A non-OSR opponent would make the important point that, in some sense, all these properties of position, color, shape, etc are just ways our brain have come to understand and know these things what’s happening at the celluar, molecular, atomic level. That is, our description of the apple as having some taste is just a way we group these lower-level facts into digestible knowledge. The apple is a higher-level abstraction that, although very useful and perhaps “socially real” within human society, it is nonetheless just a grouping of all the gobbledygook below it. The apple is a helpful and cool label we put on the world goo.

There is a verison of Structural Realism focusing on this epistemic component of Structural Realism: aptly named Epistemic Structural Realism (ESR). This view formed largely before OSR and was hammered out by John Worrall as a philosophy of science. Worrall observed how, across different points in science, a discovery was able to “uncover the deeper layer” behind some model while the model still remained. For instance, Newtonian mechanics was replaced by relativistic mechanics in the 1900’s, yet the model Newton develeoped is still “true” at non-relativistic speeds. Similarly, the relativistic mechanics we use today might be better explained by loop quantum gravity or whatever, yet the relativistic mechanics we observe and model are still “true.”

There is a deeper point an OSR skeptic should make here about how all models are just “approximiations” to the “deepest essence” of an object. I agree - but it’s important to think about what the “deepest essence” we’re trying to discover actually is.

Ultimately, when we describe and model an object, what are we trying to do? Fundamentally, we are trying to figure out what that thing does to other things! (notice there is a side conversation to be had about pragmatism here). That is why I believe OSR is the best ontology. Given how natural this line of thought feels to me, I’m starting to think OSR is just kind how to look at the world.

Holding to OSR

So, how do I respond to the claim that all the nice structures we see and use with objects are more like a label than identity? I would note that any deeper understanding we have is still relational. That is, when we attempt to describe the apple as anything “more fundamental,” we rely on relational structure all the same. To describe an apple’s aerodynamics, we rely on mathematical models, which we accept model the real world. To describe the cell tissue of an apple, we rely on mental pictures we have of what a cell is and does - mental pictures we derived from doing science on cells in real life. We haven’t actually escaped any form of relational foundation - just put it somewherelse.

What makes the cell more real than the apple? The quark more real than the apple? If we find it (big if!) the world goo itself more real than the apple? We’re still relying on a whole web of direct experiences, abstractions, scientific experiments and even other people to actually know anything about anything else. Even to know the world goo, we would have to make a nice model using things we already know about.

The whole universe, thus, is a big web. In some sense, OSR is simply saying: “Yes, the apple is an abstraction of the thing below it. But the stuff below it is also an abstraction from other things!”

At this point, this may sound very idealist, who may argue that the apple is indeed an abstraction ultimately stemming from conscious experience. This is the argument the basis of our entire knowledge about anything comes from mental states. It’s a pretty short jump from what we’re talking about right now. An idealist would just note that, for all these abstractions, they all bottom out at one place: mental experiences.

However, I find myself falling victim to the standard reasons one might reject conscious experience as the world goo: our conscious experience (or at least, the ability of conscious experience to affect reality, granting some non-material conscious existence in a soul) seems entirely dependent upon real-world states. Succiently, something being foundational to my epistemology doesn’t mean it’s foundational ontologically. My mental states are much more a component to reality than the driver of reality. I will admit idealism is pretty close to beating out OSR to me in my mind.

I believe that most materialist explanations, similarly, aren’t letting emergence be the reality-defining property that it is. When it comes to our observations in every field - biology, mathematics, physics, medicine, and so on - pretty much all we see is new behaviors emerging from lower-order rules.

It does, thus, strike me as incredibly possible our conscious experience is actually emergent from other relations; in fact, all we ever see is relations grouping up to form more relations. This doesn’t settle too much about consciousness, nor

God in OSR

I believe God in OSR is something criminally underexplored (I found like one journal article concerning the concept in Google Scholar search?). There is still the (vaguely-formed) question: “Where do all the relations come from?” Or in another way, “What are the structures logically dependent on?”

I think God as expressed by Christianity may actually be the correct answer. Notice there is a terrifically beautiful expectation and explanation of the Trinity, assuming this view is correct. Some formulations of the Trinity describe God the Father only by His relation to God the Son; for instance, in [view here] the Son is literally defined by His submission to the Father, and the Spirit is defined by His procession from the Father and Son, thus constituting 3 persons where instead of a floatier “God-essence” they share, they are defined by their relations. This view sits right at home within OSR, but might need some work to iron out orthodoxy. I’ll let that be your calling in life.

Similarly, assuming OSR is correct, it would a bit funny if the fundamental entity was a “simple” (I understand we’re opening a new can of worms here) entity, indivisible in His existience. God here would practically break OSR; being an object defined by an essence instead of its relations. Perhaps God does get this ability - I’m not going to tell Him what to do - but it still seems more likely to me we’d require a “relational” foundation to reality under OSR.