Preface
I write primarily for myself, so I have no concern about telegraphing right up that, to me, this particular essay suffers from two serious flaws if it were intended for wide readership: it is too long and labours some points to the point of tedium. It has taken me months to write, on and off. Coming back to it periodically every few days, dissatisfied as I was with aspects of it, I deleted and rewrote large sections until I was satisfied I had expressed what I wanted to as clearly as I could. I write often simply to clarify thoughts to myself without any particular audience in mind - unlike with my podcast/Youtube series where I have evolved into making things for an audience - albeit a specific kind of audience in mind (but happily it seems it has broader appeal). But in the case of this present essay the audience was very much an audience of one: myself. So, I don’t expect it to be entertaining or even particularly engaging on the whole. It seeks to answer a number of interrelated questions all concerning aspects of the distinction between what might be called ideas and atoms: or the physical and the abstract. Rather too much can too easily be made of this, as if endorsing the reality of the abstract was to suggest a supernatural realm and rejecting physics for magic. But it nevertheless might seem reasonable to be drawn on questions about where abstract reality exists if it is not physical? That’s the wrong question, as it turns out. Abstract reality exists in reality - which is just to say that if we take seriously the notion that the Big Bang was an event that brought into being space, time, matter and energy - it brought into being reality, including abstract reality - but not everything in that reality is made out of atoms...but everything can be represented in atoms and can have effects on atoms. Gravity - not made of atoms, but affects atoms and the explanation for gravity - expressed in atoms of ink on a page (possibly) - or light - not made of atoms, but it can affect atoms. So too abstract entities. For example the numeral “2” is (often) made of the absence of light on a pixelated white screen representing the number 2. The number is the abstraction. The numeral conjures in the mind an idea of the number and allows the idea of that ideal to be transmitted. But while the numeral 2 is right there —> 2 - it is on the screen, asking “where” the number 2 is, is an illusion of the language rather like asking “When is the electron?” There may be a sense in which we can speak of electrons coming into being post the big bang, or speak of when a specific electron is emitted during beta decay, but this is just to say that “When is the electron?” has only superficially the grammatically correct form of a sentence and needs correction and qualification if we are to make sense of it. So it is with “Where is the number 2?” or more broadly “If abstractions exist, where do they exist?”. But although some questions can suck us into a singularity of pseudo-ponderings over the meaningless, there are many more useful probative things to ask about connections between ideas, ideals, abstractions and physical reality.
What problem am I trying to solve?
My central concern here, which led me down all kinds of related avenues that seemed to be required to get to my eventual destination, was to respond to concerns about having ideals or striving for ideals. In particular: is it impractical sometimes to strive for certain principled positions?
For example, I think it would be ideal if everyone was always reasonable and never violent when settling disputes. This ideal, let’s call it “perfect reasonableness” does not say one should desire a state which is entirely devoid of emotion (I do not think a state without joy or contentment is at all desirable or reasonable). But this ideal of “perfect reasonableness” is not a state we are in now and some people may make the case that it could be some kind of impossible state - for whatever reason (I would not agree) - but that would not matter. An ideal is not a place we wish to leap to in one giant step for mankind. It is, rather, a place to shoot for - the far off horizon we make our way towards. We know we are not there yet as a ciliation - but it is a place to aim for. This conjures in my mind something like Sam Harris’ conception of “the moral landscape” where he imagines “the worst possible suffering for everyone” as being a state we should want to move away from - anywhere, in any direction. Now I criticise that kind of thinking here in the moral landscape challenge. But there is absolutely something to be said for “avoiding greater suffering and moving towards greater joy or fun”. I think it a physically possible state to extract out violence between people. I have managed it in my own personal life - I have for many years. Many of us have. It is a sign of being "civilised". I imagine other people who turn to violence could learn not to, or at fist at least not to quite so frequently. And, eventually, never initiate it. And if no one ever initiated violence, no one would ever need to respond with violence. The problem of “solving disputes using violence” is a soluble one. But I do not imagine we can get there tomorrow. But we can get there incrementally - and this is the point I shall be discussing more than any other. A principle is something to work towards incrementally, not something to throw away all existing structures and practises for today in the hope of revolutionary change tomorrow.
For each old terrorist, rapist or bully that dies, an innocent child is born into a better world where terrorism, rape and bullying is less than what it was before. This trend in morality will continue as people converge on the idea that: reason is good, desirable and best for everyone, while hurting other people just to get what you want is bad for you as well as your victims and wider society. In particular the problem I am seeking to solve here is whether certain moral or political stances that allow for the most rapid progress, which is stable over time, can be defended and pursued without having to be defended against the charge “that cannot possibly work in practise”. For example, the charge from many that perfect capitalism is not possible because we must have a welfare state, often gets bogged down in concerns that the defender of capitalism intends, if only they could, to reduce taxation rates across the board to zero tomorrow and eliminate the government benefits of all pensioners the day after. All evils are due to lack of knowledge and we can undo evil - but it will be best done incrementally because, notwithstanding anything else - we can be wrong about what is evil. So sometimes our purported solutions will themselves need to be corrected and if we leap too fast into implementing some grand plan to cure our ills, only to find we've caused more harm than good - the bigger the leap, the worse the damage. Fast, yet small (and so more easily reversible/correctable) changes are what is needed.
The ideals of “freedom” and “non-coercion” and “fairness” or “justice” are just that: ideals. They are the perfect Platonic forms that do not obtain perfectly in all situations at all times. Indeed, far from it. People are not broadly in a state of perfect freedom, they are coerced in many ways from many sides, things are not always fair and justice is not always the remedy. But this does not mean we should not pursue those things just because their perfect forms seem to be unattainable. Much may seem unattainable, yet worth pursuing anyways. Intergalactic space travel, time travel, personal fusion power reactors, the elimination of envy. These are all soluble problems - and may seem so far off as to barely be worth committing resources to - intellectual or otherwise. But an optimistic worldview says that if law of physics does not stand in the way, nothing can prevent us from achieving a solution to any problem, except our choice to not pursue the solution.
Ideal ideas - necessary truth and the physical world
Are all ideals a kind of idea? Or do some ideals stand apart from what anyone ever thinks about them? Of all the perfect “Platonic” ideals are out there do we know of some imperfectly and some not at all? In the case of mathematics we know this must be true. Mathematics is a domain in which humanity is forever coming to imperfectly understand some new concept and then use that imperfect understanding to glimpse that which might never have been guessed at before.
The entire field of so-called “Complex Analysis” could not have been imagined before anyone conceived of how to manipulate negative roots. There really is a domain of perfect Platonic ideals - necessary truths - and mathematics seeks to come to some imperfect understandings of that subject matter.
Perfect justice or perfect freedom really are some kind of abstract concepts like mathematical truths. They exist, but their connections to physical reality and how they affect physical reality depends in large part on what we understand both physical reality to be and what we understand (imperfectly) those abstractions to be. The relationship between the abstract and the physical is two-way. We can use the perfectly abstract to model the actually physical and we are forever bound to use the physical (namely our brains, computers and otherwise) to come to understand those perfect abstract ideals better. How does some of this work in practise? Onto part 2 ->
I write primarily for myself, so I have no concern about telegraphing right up that, to me, this particular essay suffers from two serious flaws if it were intended for wide readership: it is too long and labours some points to the point of tedium. It has taken me months to write, on and off. Coming back to it periodically every few days, dissatisfied as I was with aspects of it, I deleted and rewrote large sections until I was satisfied I had expressed what I wanted to as clearly as I could. I write often simply to clarify thoughts to myself without any particular audience in mind - unlike with my podcast/Youtube series where I have evolved into making things for an audience - albeit a specific kind of audience in mind (but happily it seems it has broader appeal). But in the case of this present essay the audience was very much an audience of one: myself. So, I don’t expect it to be entertaining or even particularly engaging on the whole. It seeks to answer a number of interrelated questions all concerning aspects of the distinction between what might be called ideas and atoms: or the physical and the abstract. Rather too much can too easily be made of this, as if endorsing the reality of the abstract was to suggest a supernatural realm and rejecting physics for magic. But it nevertheless might seem reasonable to be drawn on questions about where abstract reality exists if it is not physical? That’s the wrong question, as it turns out. Abstract reality exists in reality - which is just to say that if we take seriously the notion that the Big Bang was an event that brought into being space, time, matter and energy - it brought into being reality, including abstract reality - but not everything in that reality is made out of atoms...but everything can be represented in atoms and can have effects on atoms. Gravity - not made of atoms, but affects atoms and the explanation for gravity - expressed in atoms of ink on a page (possibly) - or light - not made of atoms, but it can affect atoms. So too abstract entities. For example the numeral “2” is (often) made of the absence of light on a pixelated white screen representing the number 2. The number is the abstraction. The numeral conjures in the mind an idea of the number and allows the idea of that ideal to be transmitted. But while the numeral 2 is right there —> 2 - it is on the screen, asking “where” the number 2 is, is an illusion of the language rather like asking “When is the electron?” There may be a sense in which we can speak of electrons coming into being post the big bang, or speak of when a specific electron is emitted during beta decay, but this is just to say that “When is the electron?” has only superficially the grammatically correct form of a sentence and needs correction and qualification if we are to make sense of it. So it is with “Where is the number 2?” or more broadly “If abstractions exist, where do they exist?”. But although some questions can suck us into a singularity of pseudo-ponderings over the meaningless, there are many more useful probative things to ask about connections between ideas, ideals, abstractions and physical reality.
What problem am I trying to solve?
My central concern here, which led me down all kinds of related avenues that seemed to be required to get to my eventual destination, was to respond to concerns about having ideals or striving for ideals. In particular: is it impractical sometimes to strive for certain principled positions?
For example, I think it would be ideal if everyone was always reasonable and never violent when settling disputes. This ideal, let’s call it “perfect reasonableness” does not say one should desire a state which is entirely devoid of emotion (I do not think a state without joy or contentment is at all desirable or reasonable). But this ideal of “perfect reasonableness” is not a state we are in now and some people may make the case that it could be some kind of impossible state - for whatever reason (I would not agree) - but that would not matter. An ideal is not a place we wish to leap to in one giant step for mankind. It is, rather, a place to shoot for - the far off horizon we make our way towards. We know we are not there yet as a ciliation - but it is a place to aim for. This conjures in my mind something like Sam Harris’ conception of “the moral landscape” where he imagines “the worst possible suffering for everyone” as being a state we should want to move away from - anywhere, in any direction. Now I criticise that kind of thinking here in the moral landscape challenge. But there is absolutely something to be said for “avoiding greater suffering and moving towards greater joy or fun”. I think it a physically possible state to extract out violence between people. I have managed it in my own personal life - I have for many years. Many of us have. It is a sign of being "civilised". I imagine other people who turn to violence could learn not to, or at fist at least not to quite so frequently. And, eventually, never initiate it. And if no one ever initiated violence, no one would ever need to respond with violence. The problem of “solving disputes using violence” is a soluble one. But I do not imagine we can get there tomorrow. But we can get there incrementally - and this is the point I shall be discussing more than any other. A principle is something to work towards incrementally, not something to throw away all existing structures and practises for today in the hope of revolutionary change tomorrow.
For each old terrorist, rapist or bully that dies, an innocent child is born into a better world where terrorism, rape and bullying is less than what it was before. This trend in morality will continue as people converge on the idea that: reason is good, desirable and best for everyone, while hurting other people just to get what you want is bad for you as well as your victims and wider society. In particular the problem I am seeking to solve here is whether certain moral or political stances that allow for the most rapid progress, which is stable over time, can be defended and pursued without having to be defended against the charge “that cannot possibly work in practise”. For example, the charge from many that perfect capitalism is not possible because we must have a welfare state, often gets bogged down in concerns that the defender of capitalism intends, if only they could, to reduce taxation rates across the board to zero tomorrow and eliminate the government benefits of all pensioners the day after. All evils are due to lack of knowledge and we can undo evil - but it will be best done incrementally because, notwithstanding anything else - we can be wrong about what is evil. So sometimes our purported solutions will themselves need to be corrected and if we leap too fast into implementing some grand plan to cure our ills, only to find we've caused more harm than good - the bigger the leap, the worse the damage. Fast, yet small (and so more easily reversible/correctable) changes are what is needed.
The ideals of “freedom” and “non-coercion” and “fairness” or “justice” are just that: ideals. They are the perfect Platonic forms that do not obtain perfectly in all situations at all times. Indeed, far from it. People are not broadly in a state of perfect freedom, they are coerced in many ways from many sides, things are not always fair and justice is not always the remedy. But this does not mean we should not pursue those things just because their perfect forms seem to be unattainable. Much may seem unattainable, yet worth pursuing anyways. Intergalactic space travel, time travel, personal fusion power reactors, the elimination of envy. These are all soluble problems - and may seem so far off as to barely be worth committing resources to - intellectual or otherwise. But an optimistic worldview says that if law of physics does not stand in the way, nothing can prevent us from achieving a solution to any problem, except our choice to not pursue the solution.
Ideal ideas - necessary truth and the physical world
Are all ideals a kind of idea? Or do some ideals stand apart from what anyone ever thinks about them? Of all the perfect “Platonic” ideals are out there do we know of some imperfectly and some not at all? In the case of mathematics we know this must be true. Mathematics is a domain in which humanity is forever coming to imperfectly understand some new concept and then use that imperfect understanding to glimpse that which might never have been guessed at before.
The entire field of so-called “Complex Analysis” could not have been imagined before anyone conceived of how to manipulate negative roots. There really is a domain of perfect Platonic ideals - necessary truths - and mathematics seeks to come to some imperfect understandings of that subject matter.
Perfect justice or perfect freedom really are some kind of abstract concepts like mathematical truths. They exist, but their connections to physical reality and how they affect physical reality depends in large part on what we understand both physical reality to be and what we understand (imperfectly) those abstractions to be. The relationship between the abstract and the physical is two-way. We can use the perfectly abstract to model the actually physical and we are forever bound to use the physical (namely our brains, computers and otherwise) to come to understand those perfect abstract ideals better. How does some of this work in practise? Onto part 2 ->