Change

Before and after

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We see ourselves perceiving the world on the basis of things ‘as they are’, ‘out there’, ‘in existence’, but there is a problem with this ‘world view’ because perception, in common with everything else, involves the coming-to-be of things that were not – and this raises a question of change which we cannot resolve ‘at source’ either by looking for a first cause or by attributing the form of the effect to its cause.

In addition, knowledge and explanation contrast radically with an external reality of objective facts now drawn into the realms of observation – but we believe that the logic and language of proof can iron out the difference.  Indeed, the grammar of explanation begs the question of a ‘deep structure’, holding everything in place, whereby all ensuing differences are seen to evolve as a result of secondary shaping influences.

However, even though causes are seen to underlie effects, those effects are not merely embedded in their causes like sculptures waiting to be released from blocks of stone.  So there is more to change than the nature of the underlying preconditions, just as there is more to the shaping influences than pure chance.  That is not to say that chance doesn’t have a part to play, but it means that evolution by chance is not the explanation.

Accordingly, whilst it may be said that everything happens by co-incidence, there is more to co-incidence than blind chance.  And whilst we rightly remain wary of accident, we know that all eventualities are contained within prevailing boundaries of possibility – anything cannot happen at any time.  In fact, no cause explains those prevailing boundaries even though we come to explain outcomes as effects belonging to causes operating within them.

Consequently, perception maps the world with contours of its making whilst perceiving itself as the effect of an objective reality.  But the very presence of perception shows that reality is subject to change – with effects arising as modified causes.  And despite our aspirations to explain change causally, causality remains subsidiary to the changing boundaries of possibility.  Then who can say that we too are not instrumental in ‘the shape of things to come’ – beginning with ourselves as mere causes on the threshold of change.

Mike Laidler

Hidden thresholds: The subtle fact of change

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Change presents the eye with a paradox – because things can be seen to change without changing – because the flow of change reveals nothing of the step to come – because a fact may be seen as one thing and another.  Consequently, change raises more questions than answers.  Some famous examples from antiquity include the paradoxes of Theseus’ ship and the heap: A heap of grains can be reduced to nothing by removing one grain at a time, but there is no definite point of change – unless one grain constitutes a heap.  The paradox of the ship is more challenging: by systematically replacing every piece of the original it ceases to be the same ship, and yet it is.  In sum, these puzzles carry an enduring message because they point to a fundamental problem of explanation that we would rather not think about – that there is more to change than its observable causes.

Shifting to the modern era, we see the same problem redefined.  Science shows us that the universe is constituted of sub-atomic particles – a fact that includes ourselves – but there is no point at which we can see those particles becoming conscious.  Indeed we do not see consciousness as a feature of the physical world until we rely upon the end result as a means of observing a world that is constituted of nothing but physical processes.  So we observe the change as an effect that may be regarded for the sake of explanation as a variation on what is – which means that things do yet do not really change.  Either way, the putative cause, namely the changing configuration of physical processes, doesn’t actually explain the untypical nature of the result – even though, logically, it must if there is no other cause to be found.

Mike Laidler

Vital factors

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No fact exists alone.  Every perceptible fact is the manifestation of a state of existence relative to the existence of other facts.  Thereby every fact is distinguishable by what it is and isn’t, including the ‘fact of existence’.  Then life is and is not a prominent feature of the way things are – because reality amounts to a continuum of changes that can be traced backwards as a convergence upon what was and forwards as a divergence from the past.  Consequently, whatever importance can or cannot be attached to the nature of ‘things in themselves’, it remains a fact that the difference they make is set within a wider reality.

In every case, we may perceive a fact in terms of its origins in something else – that is, relative to some other fact identifiable as its cause.  But even then we can never see an ‘original cause’ as it is, on its own, since every cause is manifestly incomplete in the absence of an effect.  In turn, effects are seen to make a difference when it becomes apparent that things differ from the way they were – a difference which at first contrasts with the state of ‘the cause’ as it was and afterwards with ‘the effect’ as it furthers a succession of changes.

However, causes do not explain existence.  For instance, we do not find the nature of life in the non-living states of its precursors; and it is only after its appearance that we can begin to look for its causes there.  So we perceive life as a fact that is wrapped up in a continuum of factors which we cannot explain fully in terms of the way things were – because of the essential ingredient of change. Therefore we can neither explain this vital factor retrospectively as an ‘originating cause’ nor in terms of the difference ‘it makes’, which becomes consummate only in the wake of things yet to be.

Mike Laidler

Grey matters

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We may feel that we can get to know a thing better by explaining it in terms of something else, indeed science depends upon this philosophy, but there is also a sense in which it doesn’t make sense – and the best example is ourselves.

Consider the perceived difference between our thoughts and the brain.  First we must recognise a difference in order to talk about a cause, otherwise there is nothing to talk about.  Then we suppose that the cause must explain things – especially if there is nothing else to see.  Yet something else remains evident in the change, now perceived as an effect.  However, saying that the cause has changed to create that difference leaves the fact of the change unexplained and renders the effect redundant.  Typically, we diminish the reality of the difference in order to explain it by attributing the emergent properties of the effect to the cause – as if ‘causality shows us’ that change doesn’t really occasion a shift in reality.  Thereby we conclude that new events, such as thought or consciousness, are really superficialities that cannot amount to changes in the nature of nature.  In other words, we concede, for the sake of explanation, that change is not all it seems – as if a talking nature is really not so different in kind from one that never did, now seen as the cause.

Moreover, the mind and the body amount to differences in reality which we can’t explain by supposing that reality must be a singular ‘thing’.  Indeed we are no more able to explain reality in terms of ‘things real’ than we can explain the existence of existence.  In fact, we can’t pin the ‘it’ down.  And perhaps reality is a fact we cannot define because it can also be seen to define us – in more ways than one.  So when people say that mind and body are one and the same thing, they are calling them the same in the name of an incomplete explanation – as if causality is a thing in existence that explains the origin of things in existence and automatically clears-up the problem of change.  Also, we are looking at ‘the reality’ retrospectively by leaving out of the analysis the significance of the looking – as if the change to observation can be seen as a subsidiary effect.  But we have yet to explain the change to perception, together with the evidence, of itself, of the effect that occupies an additional reality to the cause – a difference that cannot be accounted for by saying that there is no real change, as if the fact of change is subsidiary to the cause instead of the other way round.

Mike Laidler

 

The way things are

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Realists say that they respond to the facts as they are and reality as it is; however, truth, reality, fact and possibility can outdo all our expectations and logical understandings.  For instance, scientific explanations of life raise as many questions as answers; nevertheless, we tend to presume the kind of answer we are looking for by regarding life as a minor rather than a major part of an expanding universe.  On the other hand, a universe without life is conceptually less than one that is imbued, and the same applies to a living universe without the power of conceptualisation.  That being so, it is up to us to ask ourselves whether, in the fullness of possibility, reality is potentially bigger again than us and our powers of conceptualisation – just as we happen to be by comparison to the insentient fabric of the universe that subsists ‘apart from’ us.  Even so, the questions keep on stacking up, such as: is the universe expanding within different dimensions of possibility; does the power to be encompass more than one reality, and if so, are we qualified to define that power and pronounce upon the way things must be or should be according to our parochial ideas and ideals?  In short, to what extent can we get to know the nature of existence, its limits and possibilities, on the basis of the way it is for us?

We like to think that logic entreats us be realistic, whereas, in fact, logic takes its starting point from our initial presumptions about the facts.  So what can we presume about this thing called reality?  We take for granted the fact that we live in a world of things that come to be, which also suggests that things are subject to change.  Yet does it mean that things can change radically?  Is reality itself subject to change?  Is everything necessarily the same at one level yet different at another?  Can things be one thing and another?  Is reality a plurality of realities?  Must all possibilities conform to logic?  Not surprisingly, there remain fundamental questions about the nature of change that the facts as they were and are cannot answer for us, and which science struggles to explain by filling-in the gaps with a logic that states what must be the case in order for the explanation to remain logical – that is, in order to preserve the logic.  But what if it is possible for ‘the real’ to be transformed by facts to come?  What if things that are impossible in one context become possible in another – because of change – as when the chemicals that make up our bodies become a part of a knowing reality that thinks, perceives and wonders about itself?  What if change builds on chemistry, extending it into the reality of thought wherein the chemicals in our brains are and are not the cause of our capacity to consider the nature of reality, truth and logic?

The rational mind draws on logic as an absolute truth in a world it struggles to understand.  So is truth the servant of logic or logic the servant of truth?  If the latter, it would be wrong to conclude that the truth must conform to logic in order to be true – as if to restrict the nature of truth to our logical conceptualisations of what must be the case.  However, if the truth is indeed something grander and stranger than we can make it out to be, might this not alert us to the limits of logic for resolving the factual contradictions of a universe that is grander and stranger than the imagination?  For instance, it may be perfectly true to say that the space-dust of which we are constituted is and is not the cause of the living mindful panoply that is known to us and occupied by us – since the evidence shows the physical world achieving sentience rather than supplying it.  But logic continues to nag at us and aver that the facts as they were must be the ‘real’ cause.  And whilst it is true to say that an effect, such as a thought, is a particular consequence of causes identifiable in non-thinking physical states, it is not possible to say thereby that the difference between cause and effect can be explained by that fact or any number of causal convolutions, or that the cause is capable of saying anything to us unless we put the ‘words into its mouth’, with a meaning that never belonged to the facts as they were, or nature as it was.

Mike Laidler

Reading the Stones

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Being is an agent of change – redefining the facts – introducing sensibilities into a nature without, realising meanings that are inexplicable in terms of a purposeless nature or in terms of chance having charge of order. Thus we occupy a nature that is the same and different – that has changed through one nature building on another – supplying new directions.

Then in what nature lies the belief that ‘nature’ defines our beliefs and governs the reality: that reality shapes itself, evolution creates and the runes of destiny are set in stone – as if life is somehow created by unliving powers, or the passive stones engineer their building and the undeniable presence of intention remains quite unintended?

Mike Laidler

Instantiation

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Reality is a paradox – the whole that is more than the sum of its parts, the ‘is’ that is greater than the was, the cause in the effect.  

 

It seems rational to understand how things change by looking to what there was beforehand, but this doesn’t tell us what might happen next.  And when we strip away the reality we know we see another kind of reality beneath so our interest and understanding naturally centre on its discovery.  However, the fact of the difference tends to be read as a sign that the action is really taking place at a primary level – that the familiar world is somewhat ancilliary, that our discovery of the fundamentals has ‘shown us’ the true state of affairs – that change is caused.  

 

We see change as caused instead of the cause.  Thus we claim to explain the fact of change as caused by something else – by putting it down to discernible causes showing that there is nothing more to it, and by mechanising the process to confirm that the whole is no more than the sum of its parts because there is nothing else to see.  Then we proceed to identify the changed facts with the unchanged facts, by seeing the manifest ‘change’ as a mere detail compared with things in their rudimentary forms.  And, for good measure, the change to complexity is seen as the cause of the thing we need to explain, as affirming that the difference between cause and effect comes down to the change at the level of the cause, revealing causal complexities hitherto unseen.  

 

Likewise we seek to explain ourselves by referencing our thoughts, intentions and beliefs to their physical causes – to understand our actions in terms of the activities of the brain, as if the consummate properties of one state of reality can be understood in terms of the vacant properties of another – as if everything is actually something else and therefore the fact of change, the one thing we cannot really explain, doesn’t stand apart from what we know of its causes in terms of something else.  So we end up identifying, defining and explaining the nature of change by the activity of its cause; but everything is active and effects instantiate a different kind of activity in addition to the activity of their perceived causes.  Hence change is the true cause, the active cause of causality, the efficacy of the effect.  In fact everything in existence adds up to the inexplicable fact of change instantiating itself, as it was at the beginning of the universe.  

 

Ultimately, the ‘environmental causes’ of change are merely accompanying factors of change that do not explain its instantiation in terms of things changed or changing any more than they explain those environmental changes, or indeed, the initiation of an environment.  And no amount of environmental feedback can equate to or explain for us the change to cognition and explanation – though this amounts to our best attempt at understanding a potential that defies explanation, an inexplicable potential that is inherent to all things.  For the potential in change cannot be explained incidentally by the properties of things that differ, or by the differing properties of things that remain stable.  


Mike Laidler

Starting Points

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Reality is a confluence of the is, the was and the will be. We live in a universe that is going somewhere in the process of becoming more than it was. We see ourselves in two worlds – the mental and the physical. Our mental world is characterised by thoughts and feelings, but it is not a world we can easily ascribe to a physical world outside. Yet we readily explain mentality in terms of its dependence on the physical, believing there can be no other source of its existence. This is because there is a part of the physical world that we claim as ours and identify with in our thoughts, namely the brain.

So we bear witness to an externality that merges with our subjective internality; but this is not an explanation because we also know that these two realities are worlds apart, unless we mean to claim that the physical world already incorporates a primitive form of consciousness. However, no explanation has ever done justice to our perspective on the difference, a perspective that occurs only because we have crossed the threshold into subjectivity.

Then is it not feasible to take our ideas off in another direction, beginning with the idea that subjectivity is a distinct property of existence that manifests in the physical under specific conditions, an example being ourselves? But still we are left with unsolved puzzles – of the origins of subjectivity in particular and physical existence in general, which remain unexplained, yet which we temporarily believe to be explained, at least in our case, by their observable association.
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Perhaps we confound ourselves in thinking that change is explicable by tracing it to the point from which it is first observed. This is a rational notion so far as the observation of starting-points allows, but it soon becomes dubious when we try to hang onto the idea that change is explicable as a property of the things changing, as if change itself can be explained by those things as they were, unchanged and insensible – as if everything has to be the one thing, of the one nature, because it all has to have the same starting point.

© Mike Laidler 2015

Strong Personality

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It is said that science tells us who we are and how we got here, but there is also something about us that tells us what science is and where it is going.

Science teaches us there is something about personality that we overlook in treating it as a personal possession.  Personality is not a fact locked-away inside us, or a thing fixed in ‘the self’; it is also a property of nature, culture and the universe at large.  But as a property of nature, it changes the nature of nature – the nature of change being a moot point that we tend to overlook both personally and scientifically.

Everything is subject to change: we change, nature diversifies, the universe evolves, and in the process something ‘impossible’ happens – things become more than they were – and the same thing happens to the nature of nature.  Likewise, personal existence is embedded in nature yet marks a dramatic shift in the nature of nature.  It opens up new boundaries of possibility with planned designs and purposes that defy scientific definitions of what nature is and does.

Personality is a strong force for change, a power in the universe, which we treat as a weak force, mirroring our weaknesses to the extent that we regard it as belonging to us as a property confined to our nature.  However the very thing we strive to possess on our terms is the very thing we are bound to lose; whereas personal existence, as a property of the universe, endures in the nature of change as it shapes, transforms, and elevates.

Everything ‘got here’ through powers of change and everything is subject to changes that herald further expansions of power.  ‘Impossibilities’ are overcome, evincing the magnitude of change in realities and realisations newly transformed.  Staying as we are defines our incompletes and defies nature in a reality we try to make of ourselves and keep for ourselves.  Change invites us to become something more, to grow into life by leaving something behind, thereby to gain capacities and faculties we never had – as did nature ‘in itself’.

Mike Laidler