Episode 123, ‘The Building Blocks of Reality’ with Donnchadh O'Conaill (Part II - Further Analysis and Discussion)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 604 Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is the underlying nature of reality? For Thales, the essence of the world was water; for the Stoics, it was Logos; for Heraclitus, the universe consisted, fundamentally, of fire, life-energy, or the ‘thinking faculty’. The search for the building blocks of our world has a rich philosophical history and, today is intertwined with cutting-edge research in the physical sciences. In this episode, we’ll be focusing on those who defend the idea of substances. According to this view, at the heart of our cosmos exist simple, independent, ungrounded entities (called ‘substances’) from which everything else in the world is made and sustained. Perhaps these are particles, strings, or space–time; maybe they’re consciousness, selves, or gods.
Our guide to substances and the nature of reality is Dr Donnchadh O’Conaill, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Dr O’Conaill – currently working on the Swiss National Science Foundation project, The Subject of Experiences – has made several important contributions to the literature, including through his recent book, Substance, published by Cambridge University Press.
As we shall see, Dr O’Conaill is a leading scholar on the role and nature of substances, as well as the contentious question of their existence. Ultimately, that’s our focus: whether the world depends on independent, ungrounded entities and what these hidden entities might look like.
Contents
Part I. Substance
Part II. Further Analysis and Discussion
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan |
| 0:05.3 | Scicast |
| 0:08.2 | Part 2, further analysis and discussion. |
| 0:24.4 | In our last installment, we spoke about the sorts of things that might fulfill the role of the world's fundamental constituents. |
| 0:31.0 | That is, we aim to develop an understanding of the building blocks of our world. |
| 0:34.9 | At the very bottom level, what is there? |
| 0:37.6 | What lies at the bedrock of our universe? |
| 0:40.1 | We discussed some historical examples, from the atomists to modern day physics, |
| 0:44.1 | and our wonderful guest, Donica, described the various criteria |
| 0:47.4 | that these fundamental constituents must fulfill, |
| 0:50.0 | and some of the reasons for thinking these things exist in the first place. |
| 0:54.1 | Now, I'd like to begin this installment by discussing the question of whether or not we need to |
| 0:58.2 | introduce these simple, independent, ultimate entities in the first place. |
| 1:02.2 | So take this quotation from Tim Maudlin, for example, that you cite yourself in your book, |
| 1:07.2 | Dunica, who thinks that this is sort of a non-problem for modern-day physics. |
| 1:12.4 | As he says, it explains the structure of things in the world in terms of fiber bundles. |
| 1:18.4 | Tim writes, modern electromagnetic theory holds that what we call the electromagnetic field |
| 1:24.6 | just is the connection of fiber bundles. If one asks whether in this picture |
| 1:30.0 | the electromagnetic field is a substance, it doesn't seem very useful. Okay, then. So if the world |
| 1:35.8 | exists as an electromagnetic field and this field is not made up of these independent simple |
| 1:41.5 | particles, does this mean that we can just forget about this conversation |
| 1:45.8 | about substances, Donica? |
... |
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