Ryle on microphysics and the everyday world

Science,we’re often told, gives us a description of the world radically at odds withcommon sense.  Physicist Arthur Eddington’sfamous “two tables” example illustrates the theme.  There is, on the one hand, the table familiarfrom everyday experience – the extended, colored, solid, stable thing you mightbe sitting at as you read this.  Thenthere’s the scientific table – a vast aggregate of colorless particles infields of force, mostly empty space rather a single continuous object, andrevealed by theory rather than sensory perception.  What is the relationship between them?  Should we say, as is often done, that thefirst table is an illusion and only the second real?

As philosopherGilbert Ryle showed in chapter 5 of his classic book Dilemmas,the real illusion is not the table of common sense, but rather the notion thatscience gives us any reason to doubt it. In fact, science is not even addressing the sorts of question commonsense might ask about the table, much less giving an answer that conflicts withthe one common sense would give.  And itis only conceptual confusion that makes some suppose otherwise.

Ryle’s reminders

Ryleidentifies two main sources of this confusion concerning what science tells usabout the world.  The first has to dowith the word “science” and the second with the word “world.”  For one thing, there is not even a primafacie conflict between our common sense conception of the world and the vastbulk of what falls under the label “science.” No one thinks philology casts the slightest doubt on the reality ofwords, or that botany, geology, and meteorology cast any doubt on the realityof plants, earth, or weather.  Thefindings of such areas of research are not taken to undermine our confidence inthe reality of everyday objects.  Nor aretelescopes and microscopes taken to give any reason for doubting it, despiterevealing objects vastly larger or vastly smaller than the ones we encounter ineveryday life.  Nor is what physics tellsus about middle-sized objects (pendulums, water pumps, etc.) regarded aschallenging our belief in tables and the like.

In fact,Ryle suggests, it is only two special areas of scientific study that peoplesuppose somehow casts doubt on such belief: the microstructure of materialobjects, and the physiology of perception. But even here, it is not, strictly speaking, the findings of modernscience that are the source of the problem. Similar claims about the unreality of ordinary objects were mademillennia ago on the basis of the speculations of the ancient atomists.

Why don’tthe scientific findings, any more than the speculations, cast doubt on theworld of common sense?  This brings us tothe word “world.”  When we hear tell of the world as described by microphysics,we are, says Ryle, too quick to suppose that “world” should in this context beunderstood the way it is understood by theologians when they talk about theworld’s creation, or that it should interpreted as a synonym for “cosmos.”  But we should think of it instead on themodel of phrases like “the world of poultry” as a farmer or butcher might meanit, or “the entertainment world” as a newspaper reporting on what is going onin the field of entertainment would use it. “World” in such contexts means something like “sphere of interest” or“the collection of matters pertaining to a certain subject” (such as poultry orentertainment). 

Now, no onethinks there is some conflict between “the world of poultry” or “theentertainment world” on the one hand, and the world of everyday physicalobjects on the other.  But neither isthere any conflict between the latter world and the world of facts which arethe sphere of interest of the scientist who studies the microstructure ofmatter or the physiology of perception. As with poultry or entertainment, the “world” of the latter is reallyjust a relatively small subset of all the facts that make up reality.  It is not a comprehensive description ofreality that competes with the description taken for granted by common sense.

Ryle offersa couple of analogies to illustrate the point. When economics characterizes human behavior by way of considerations ofprofit and loss, supply and demand, and so on, it is not putting forward anexhaustive characterization of the nature of human beings or of any particularhuman being.  Nor is it mischaracterizingthem.  It is simply noting what peoplewill tend to do if they are in circumstances of a certain specific sort, andare attentive to considerations of a certain specific sort.  That’s all. Similarly, when microphysics characterizes matter in the way it does, itis not to be understood as offering an exhaustive characterization of tables andother everyday physical objects, but simply calling attention to certain featuresthat are manifest under certain circumstances. That’s all.

Ryle speaksas if the average reader at the time he was writing (the early 1950s) would readilygrant that it would be a crude mistake to think that the economist’sdescription captured the entirety of human nature.  It may be doubted whether all readers todaywould be immune to such economic reductionism, but in any case, Ryle alsooffers another analogy.  He asks us toimagine an accountant who has put together an exhaustive description of thefinancial operations of a certain college – tuition, salaries, rents, costs forutilities and groundskeeping, expenditures on library books, food services,sports, special events, and so on. Suppose the description covers all the activities and assets of theinstitution and is extremely precise and useful. 

Theobjectivity, precision, comprehensiveness, and utility of this descriptionwould hardly justify the accountant in claiming that he has captured all there is to the college.  Even though there is no part of the collegethat is not referred to in his ledger, the ledger obviously doesn’t capture allthere is to those parts or to the whole they make up.  For example, even if the price of everylibrary book can be found there, the sorts of things that, say, a book reviewerwould want to know about a book will not be captured.  But neither would it be correct to say thatthe description of the college that the accountant gives is in competition withthe description that might be given by, say, a student.  Nor would it be correct to say that theaccountant’s description is mistaken.  Itis correct as far as it goes, but itis simply not meant in the first place to capture everything.

Obviously, itwould be silly so speak of there being two colleges, the way that Eddingtonspeaks of there being two tables.  Thereis just the one college, and certain features of it are focused on by thestudent for his purposes, whereas others are focused on by the accountant forhis own, different purposes.  But thesame thing is true of tables and other physical objects as common senseunderstands them and as the physicist approaches them.  There is just the one table, and the ordinaryperson in everyday life focuses on certain aspects of it, whereas physics focuseson different aspects.  That’s all.  Physics, rightly understood, no more competeswith or refutes the ordinary person’s understanding of the table than theaccountant competes with or refutes the student’s understanding of the college.

Ryle notesthat it is tempting to say that common sense and microphysics give differentbut complementary “descriptions” or “pictures” of the same reality, but heargues that even this is misleading, insofar as it implicitly attributes a fargreater commonality of purpose that actually exists between the two.  For there is no reason to think ofmicrophysics as attempting in the first place to “picture” the reality of atable or any other ordinary physical object (as opposed to explaining certainfeatures of it, or predicting its behavior under such-and-such circumstances,or figuring out how to manipulate it in certain ways – none of which entails orrequires a “picture” of its full reality).

Ryle alsonotes that nothing in what he says implies or is intended to imply any contributionto, or criticism of, scientific practice or scientific results.  It is merely a point about the fallaciousnessof certain kinds of claims made about the everyday world on the basis ofscience.

Hossenfelder and Goff

Regrettably,even seventy years after Ryle wrote, too many philosophers and scientists alikestill need a reminder of these observations, simple and obvious though theyought to be.  Physicist Brian Greeneprovided a good example nottoo long ago.  Another case in pointis a recentTwitter exchange between philosopher Philip Goff and physicistSabine Hossenfelder, and the debate on Twitter that it engendered.  To be sure, neither Hossenfelder nor Goffwould say that physics provides an exhaustive description of physicalreality.  In that way their views alignwith Ryle’s main point (albeit neither brings up Ryle).  However, they miss some of its otherimplications.

For example,Hossenfelder not only takes an instrumentalist view of physics, but seems tothink it obvious that physics just is,of its nature, instrumentalist – that when it makes reference to electrons, forexample, there is no implication whatsoever that electrons actually exist, asopposed to being merely a useful fiction for organizing observations and makingpredictions.  But while instrumentalismis certainly defensible, it seems to me a mistake to think it the obviously correct interpretation ofphysics.  This is like saying that theaccountant’s description of the college, in Ryle’s example, is obviously nothing more than a usefulfiction, and that its utility gives us no reason at all to believe that itcaptures anything really there in the college. In fact, of course, the accountant’s description does capture realfeatures of the college, even if only very abstract economic relations and farfrom all, or even the most important, features of the college.  Similarly, the utility of physics gives usreason to think it does capture real features of the world, even if they are highlyabstract structural features and very far from an exhaustive description ofnature.  I defend this epistemic structural realistinterpretation of physics in Aristotle’sRevenge.

Goff, meanwhile,himself accepts this interpretation of physics. However, he falls into another error. Physics captures only very abstract structural features of physicalreality.  But what about the otherfeatures?   What fleshes out thisabstract structure?  Goff is among thegrowing number of writers who argue for panpsychismby proposing that qualia, the characteristic features of conscious experience(the way red looks, the way coffee smells, and the like) provide a model forunderstanding the intrinsic nature of all physical reality.  He presents this as a bold solution to whatwould otherwise be a great mystery.

To see whatis wrong with this, imagine someone who noted that Ryle’s accountant providesonly a very abstract description of the college’s economic structure, and thenargued: “Something must flesh out that abstract structure.  Whatever could it be?  What a mystery!  I postulate that it is qualia that flesh it out, and thus that, strange as it may seem,the college is – from the lecture halls to the library to the cafeteria anddown to every floorboard of the gym – a panpsychist entity pulsating with consciousness!”

The main problemwith this argument is not that it leads to a ludicrous conclusion, though itcertainly does.  The problem is that itis a “solution” to something that isn’t a mystery in the first place.  Certainly, the abstractness of the accountant’sdescription of the college doesn’t pose any mystery whatsoever.  We already know what the intrinsic propertiesof the college are – they are simply those that every student, professor, administratorand janitor already knows about, just by walking around and looking at it fromday to day.  The accountant has simplyignored all this detail that we already know about, and focused instead oncertain abstract economic features.

Similarly,we already know what the intrinsic features are of tables and other ordinary physicalobjects.  They are precisely those wecome across in dealing with these objects every day.  Physics simply ignores these features andfocuses on those of which it can give a precise mathematical treatment.  There is no mystery that needs solving interms of some bizarre metaphysics like panpsychism, but merely a reminder ofwhat we already know from common sense. Ryle (like Aristotle, Aquinas, Wittgenstein, and other critics ofrevisionist metaphysics) offers precisely such a reminder.  (I have criticized Goff’s views along theselines but at greater length before, hereand here.)

Somescientists who commented on the exchange between Hossenfelder and Goff onTwitter opined that it illustrates why many scientists don’t find such discussionsfruitful.  According to one of them, thereason they are unfruitful is that they don’t help us do physics better.  But why on earth should anyone suppose thatthe only reason why a discussion between physicists and philosophers would beworthwhile would be if it helps the former do physics better?  Putting the implicit narcissism to one side,there is another problem.  As Ryle says,the point of his own remarks is not to either criticize or add to science’smethodology or results, but rather to reveal the fallaciousness of certaininferences drawn from its methodologyor results.  A scientist who thinks sucha message not worthwhile is precisely the sort of person most in need ofhearing it.

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