The Nature of Natures

The Nature of Reality:
Quasi-Realism
Representational Realism
Existence and Natures
Knowledge of Reality
The Language of Reality

In the past, I’ve argued for the metaphysical theory of Representational Realism, the belief that Reality exists objectively, on its own, and that what we perceive is not reality, but a copy of reality constructed in our brains from the information provided by our senses. This raises the question, what is Reality really like? If our perception is just a translation of data from our senses and memories, prone to error and bias, how can we know what is really true?

Even though we can never directly perceive Reality, we can learn some things about it through reasoning. If something is objectively real, it must be well-defined. I don’t mean in terms of word definitions, but that it has a “way that it is,” also known as a nature. This is true independently of whether we know what it is or not, or even whether there is anyone in existence to do the knowing. The mysteries of science have an answer now, and that answer has always been true. Gravity followed Newton’s formula before Newton. DNA existed before Watson and Crick. The natures of things, even those which do not yet exist, are already set within Reality, and have been since the beginning of time.

So what are these natures, and what do we know about them? The most successful process for trying to figure them out is science, particularly modern physics. The nature of gravity is best described by General Relativity, and the natures of pretty much everything else in the universe, bar some as-of-yet unexplained phenomena like consciousness, are emergent from Quantum Field Theory. This is where we get the idea of the laws of physics, mathematical representations of the natures of real things. There are laws of physics for the fundamental level of nature, as well as approximations for larger systems like fluids, solids, electricity, and all kinds of stuff.

The Einstein field equation (top) and the Schrodinger equation (bottom) together describe almost all of physics as we know it.

When we talk about the laws of physics in the context of the nature of Reality, we mean the most fundamental. Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity work for the most part, but there are still places they don’t, like the centers of black holes and the first instant of the big bang. It is thought that at the base of everything there is a single true law of physics describing one all-encompassing nature of Reality, a Theory of Everything. The two major contending Theories of Everything right now are String Theory, which hypothesizes that all things are made of membranes of various dimensions and extremely tiny strings; and Loop Quantum Gravity, which hypothesizes that space and time are emergent from a certain type of mathematical connections. Neither of these theories has any evidence backing them up, so it is still an open question.

But let’s back up. How do we know everything has a nature? It may seem like I’ve sped through the logic and left a lot of room for error. So let’s think about what would happen if things did not behave according to their natures. It would mean that their existence, properties, and everything about them would be fuzzy and undefined. This is what I call quasi-real, the worldview, often unnoticed by those who have it, that reality only exists as it is understood, and anything outside of our understanding does not have a definite state of existence yet. In a quasi-realist view, scientists do not discover facts through their experiments, rather they conjure them into existence from a sort of fuzzy pool of potential realities.

One might ask whether quantum physics provides evidence of quasi-realism, and against the idea of natures. After all, you can do an experiment where you prepare two or more electrons or other particles exactly the same way, and end up with different results. But this apparent lack of a nature is just an illusion. Run the experiment enough times, and you will see that the results follow a clear distribution of probability. Take the famous double-slit experiment. When photons—light particles—are shone through two tiny openings, they will land on what seem to be random places on the other side, bending when they pass through the slits. But let enough photons through, and a clear pattern of alternating dark and light fringes appears. This pattern always appears when you shine enough light through two slits of the right size, no matter where or when you do the experiment. So although it may seem that there is something inherently non-natural about the unpredictability of individual photons, they are actually following their nature.

What about abstract things, like love, a symphony, or the appreciation of beautiful art? How can these things have a well-defined nature? The answer is tricky, because these words are used in ways that are not well-defined. But if you zoom in and isolate one concrete part of it, like how seeing the painting affects your brain and body chemistry, we can begin to see how it might be possible, that these abstract constructs are emergent from level upon level of complexity. We cannot describe a Shakespeare play at the level of quantum physics, not because it’s impossible, but because there is not enough computing power in the world to do it. The higher up the chain of emergence, the more difficult it is. When we talk about something that concretely exists, it is well-defined, whether or not its nature is possible to compute or understand in fundamental terms.

What about free will? Doesn’t the existence of choice challenge the idea of natures? You might be surprised, but free will is actually an emergent property of determinism. Think about it, you never make a decision without a reason. Sometimes you don’t know the reason, and it was your brain and body working automatically in their deterministic way. Sometimes you have an idea of the reason, partially the values you were taught as a child, which you were reminded of by a stranger smiling at you as you walked past each other, and a thousand other things adding up. The often misunderstood point of free will is that we have the ability to do things for good reasons, not for no reason at all. Now you might say there is a loophole, as we choose between actions that have good reasons and those that have bad reasons. But this choice is also based on reasons. No matter how you slice it, it’s reasons all the way down. Of course I am not saying that we don’t have free will. I’m just pointing out that free will is not a basic-level principle of reality, and it has a well-defined nature.

Many people believe in the idea of the supernatural, a layer of reality that is not bound by natural laws, but nonetheless exists. This simply doesn’t make sense. Anything that exists must have a way that it is, which is another term for nature. The average person, however, does not think about the supernatural at the philosophical level, but rather uses it to describe a collection of phenomena like ESP, ghosts, demons, angels, and God. However, the line between the supernatural and the natural is arbitrary. Many things that were once called supernatural, like the weather and the motion of the objects in the sky, were later understood by science, and so lost their supernatural status. Nowadays, the ides of the supernatural is quite different from what it was back then, and I think it safe to bet it will be more different still in the future.

Anything that exists, whether you call it supernatural or natural, has a nature, a way that it exists and interacts with the rest of reality. This does not close the door to the possibility of God or demons; quite the contrary, it brings these things into the realm of serious consideration rather than quasi-realist speculation. I don’t disbelieve in the supernatural. Rather, I don’t see the division between natural and supernatural as having any meaning. It all comes back to the fact that anything that exists must have a way that it is, a well-defined nature. For each “supernatural” thing, we can ask whether it exists, and test it empirically just like every “natural” thing. And for each, there is a definite answer that is already true.

But enough of case examples, let’s get to the center of the issue. What would it mean for something not to have a nature? Remember, an object’s “nature” in this conversation means the “way that it is.” Suggesting that something exists without having a way that it is simply makes no sense. That would mean there is no true well-defined statement that you could say about it. For instance, does it explode when wet? If yes, there must be something about its physical properties that causes it to explode, which would be part of its nature. If it does not explode, that would also be explained by its nature. But what if it only explodes sometimes? Even then we will be able to calculate the probability of it exploding in a certain amount of time based on its nature. In order for it not to have a nature, it must not act according to probability, which means it should have the same chance of exploding in the next three seconds as it does in the next ten minutes or in the next hundred trillion years. This lack of probability would not be because of our lack of information, but inherent in the object’s very being. Of course, this would apply not just to exploding, but to turning blue, transforming into a pizza, growing arms and legs and break dancing, blowing up the Earth, and every other possible thing that can happen. All this because it would have no nature preventing it from doing so, because not being able to do something is a well-defined statement about the way that it is. The fact that we have a Universe where it is possible for things to make sense is evidence that everything has a well-defined nature.

But what if something had a nature that was not well-defined? Could something deviate from its nature in small amounts, following its nature most of the time, but just once in awhile doing other things? The answer is no, because as we discussed, even having a probability counts as a nature, so the real truth would be that we are wrong about its nature, and its true nature really does explain everything it does. Take gravity for example. Newton’s theory explained planets and moons most of the time, but not all of the time. Newton predicted that all planets should orbit the sun in perfect ellipses, but the planet Mercury’s ellipse swiveled so that the point where it was farthest from the sun moved each year. Then Einstein came along with his General Theory of Relativity, a theory of gravity which worked like Newtonian gravity in weak fields, but differently in strong fields. General Relativity predicted Mercury should precess exactly as it did. Ultimately, it wasn’t that Mercury behaved in a way slightly different from its nature, but instead we weren’t quite right about what its nature was.

The key to all this is the difference between knowledge and fact. It is easy to believe that we know a lot more than we do, and therefore the vast plunges of the unknown must be inherently unknowable. However, this can be overcome if we acknowledge that no matter how certain we are about what we think we know, there is always at least a small chance that we may someday find ourselves to be not quite right, and have to amend our beliefs to better reflect the truth. Fundamental facts about natures are always true, always have been, and always will be regardless of whether we agree about them, or if anyone knows them at all. It all comes down to one simple tautology, that everything that exists has a way that it is. Though true by definition, its vastly powerful implication for knowledge and understanding goes unnoticed by so many.