 Hello, my friends. This is the 82nd episode of Patterson in Pursuit. Coming to you this week in video, if you're watching this on YouTube, hello, if you're listening to this on the podcast and you'd like to see my face talk and a little square on the screen, head over to YouTube.com slash Steve Patterson for a very special episode because not doing a breakdown of one of the interviews that I have conducted, doing a breakdown of somebody else's interview for the first time. And I'm hoping if this goes well and you guys enjoy it, this can be a regular thing. There's so much content online that could use some good critical commentary, good philosophic commentary. And so why not? The appropriate place to begin a new series is with the best philosophic series of all time. It's not Patterson in Pursuit. Patterson in Pursuit is number two. The best philosophic series of all time is a series called Closer to Truth. It's a PBS series. If you guys haven't heard of it, I talk about it all the time. There's a guy named Robert Lawrence Coon who goes around the world interviewing intellectuals about really interesting, really important ideas. He takes kind of a skeptical approach. It was largely the inspiration for this show. I loved that show so much that I thought, man, I want to do something similar. So as I have stopped my travels around the world, I'm going to try to do more video interview content, and this is a great place to start. Plus, you guys can send me clips, philosophic clips of commentary, whether it's philosophy or politics, economics, whatever. And if it works, I'll do some real-time commentary. So this interview is of David Chalmers, who's a philosopher at NYU. He's known for being a dualist. He's got some pretty good ideas. He's the guy that coined the term the hard problem of consciousness, which is a term that gets thrown around all the time. And we're talking this week, the title of the video is called Are There Things Not Material? So we're talking about metaphysics and ontology, what types of things are there in the world of anything. Here we go. Dave, in trying to discern reality, which is either an obsession or a compulsion of mind, I'm not sure which. The philosophical question of what things really exist is a question that almost is the most fundamental thing you can ask. It's a question that most people think is ridiculous. But how do you look upon that? As you look upon your world and as you've envisioned it, what things really exist? What is there in the world? I think this is a really interesting question. I mean, the world does contain some stuff. It does contain some things, but is there an ultimate catalog of all the things that exist? You know, my hand, my shoe, my hair, this room, the number two, the planet Venus. Could we draw up a list, an inventory of all the things that exist in the world? So I think there's got to be something wrong with that question. The world has a nature. What we're doing in science and philosophy is studying the nature of the world. Maybe it even has a fundamental nature. There's physics, and maybe there's consciousness, and who knows what there is at the fundamental level. And then there's any number of ways of carving this world up into entities. So my own view is there's not one privileged way of carving the world up into things, into you, into me, into my shoe, into my hand, any number of different ways of taking all this dough and carving it up. Okay, so I agree with some of that. I disagree with some of that. But it's a really interesting kind of way to start things off here. What types of things exist in the world? The common sense perspective is that, at the very least, there are physical objects that the world kind of comes prepackaged into physical objects. Like I have this battery here in front of me. The common sense notion is, well, of course, at least one battery exists in the world. It's right here. And the boundaries of the battery are something that are objective and determined by the laws of physics. But I don't actually think that quite works. It runs into a bunch of philosophic problems. So for example, if I scratch off a little bit of the battery, some of the atoms change, is it the same battery? There are some answers to that question, I think that are a bit more wonky than others. But if you've been listening to my show for a bit, you know, I don't have the perspective that ordinary physical objects have any kind of mind independent existence. I think they're kind of artificial conceptual boundaries around fundamental units of stuff. But what's interesting is he is, I think, taking a similar perspective. He says, you know, there's a lot of ways you can carve up the dough. So in other words, the mind is the thing that's carving up what exists into smaller objects. But I do disagree with some with this idea that you couldn't, in principle, list off the objects that exist. So from my perspective, there is a physical world, physical world is something like a three dimensional grid. And in that grid, you have fundamental units of space time or fundamental units of geometry that are in a particular state. When you get a bunch of fundamental units that are arranged in a particular way, you get atoms. When you arrange those atoms in a particular way, you get ordinary objects. So what fundamentally exists is the units of matter in a particular state. And if that's true, then you could, in principle, list off all of the independently existing physical phenomena in the world. You could have a list of, think about it like a massive Sudoku puzzle, right? Like a three dimensional Sudoku puzzle. In each unit of physical existence, you have something in a particular state. And then you could say, you know, if you were, if you had a very large list, you could essentially fit them all in there. So I don't see any problem with that. Just to say that some boundaries are conceptual, maybe most boundaries are conceptual, doesn't mean that all boundaries are conceptual. There's a field of philosophy, you know, ontology, where you say, what's the number of things and what are the things? I think, you know, there's no answer to that question. You can't count them. There's just a way the world is. OK, that does seem like a statement to me. I'm sure we can count them. If it's the case that the physical space is fundamentally reducible to units and you have a particular amount of units in a particular area of space, then you should be in principle, you should be able to count them. Now, maybe what he means to say is something like, because the composite boundaries that we come up with are conceptual, they're kind of arbitrary, there's no absolute limit. So I might carve up space this way, you carve up space that way, and therefore we have two different mutually exclusive objects. Are they also on the list? And I think that's a valid point. Maybe you could say something like, there's no upper maximum in terms of the ways that your mind can carve up physical reality. OK, I might agree with that. But to say that in principle, like physical space itself or physical units of space time themselves are not quantifiable, I just don't see the reason for thinking that. And the other part of that question, he said, you know, how many things are there and what is their nature? I think it's pretty clear that we can also theorize about the nature of things. So physical experience, for example, like sensory experiences. They have a particular nature. We call them mental phenomena or sensory phenomena. And I think that's an accurate insight into what exists in the world, at least mental phenomena exist in the world. Well, but what about categories of things? Are there things we can distinguish from other things? You said numbers. Yeah. There's a material world. There are things that are made of particles. And there are 10 to the 80th number of particles, supposedly 10 to the 90th number of photons in the visible universe. And let's take that. And so there are things made of that. And that's a category. Is that a separable category? I think you can introduce all the categories you like. You know, if you want to talk about numbers, you can. If you want to talk about people, you can. You want to talk about sentences, you can. You want to talk about unicorns, or maybe you can't. So maybe there are some rules. But within reason, you can define up all the entities you like. And within a framework. Interesting phrase. You can define up all the entities that you like. So in other words, all these different ontological categories are created and constructed by the mind, that the dough is out there and we're the ones carving it up. This is an idea that goes back to the ancient Greeks. I did a video a couple of months ago, or maybe a long time ago now, I think about it, called unifying the plural into the simple. And there's a, like I said, there's an old idea, which is that all in the universe is one, just dough. And the mind makes the divisions between things. We kind of, we define them into existence. But there's not a perspective, which is my perspective, that I've seen anywhere, even in the ancient Greeks, and it's kind of the opposite. It's to say that the world doesn't come as one, the world comes up as many as plurality. Or if we're talking about physical phenomena, the world comes in just an incomprehensible amount of base units. When we treat the fundamentals as composite, that's where our mind is kind of bringing new entities into existence. So for example, going back to the battery, what I'm saying, what really exists in the world is objectively a bunch of fundamental units that make this battery. But what brings the battery itself into existence is my mind, right? So that's just, the battery is a way of referencing a bunch of fundamental units. This is why I call unifying the plural into the simple. What exists is plurality, and our minds are the things that say, oh, we're gonna unify this into one object. An example that I've also given is constellations. So if you think about what is the metaphysical status of constellations in the sky? Well, you have the individual stars, and then do you have constellations that exist in addition to the stars? Or is it just the stars that exist if you treat the stars as kind of fundamental units? And I'd say, well, what actually exists are just stars, and your mind is playing connect the dots with the stars. You're carving up some particular area of space, saying, ah, that is Orion. Without your mind, Orion wouldn't exist, but the stars would still exist. So if that's true, if that perspective is true, then what is fundamental is plurality, and we're the things that are unifying all of the little bits of dope sticking it into one thing. Within a given conceptual framework for talking about things, you can say, sure, I acknowledge those things. But now the philosophers, like the mathematician, sure, there are numbers. Now the philosopher steps back and says, but are there really numbers? Do they really exist? Now what are they asking here? And saying, you know, well, sure, the mathematician says there are four prime numbers less than 10, so there are numbers. But now the philosophers, do those numbers really exist? You know, up in the Platonic third realm are they entities? Somehow that's the wrong question, you know? So I love the example because, you know, I've got a lot of thoughts about the philosophy of math. That's actually, it's a really good example because I don't know if David Chalmers knows this, probably not because this is not his area of study, but depending on your metaphysical conception of mathematics, you get different mathematical structures. So whether or not what a number is is a Platonic object will yield different actual mathematical structures than whether or not a number is a mind-dependent conceptual unit. To be specific, if it's the case that numbers are conceptual constructions and don't exist separate of our minds, then you don't get anything like actualized infinities or completed infinities. You can't have an infinite totality. That doesn't make any sense. If what numbers are is a construction. You can't complete an infinite series in your mind. You can't conceptualize all of an infinite anything. If you don't get infinite sets, then you don't get, well, quite a number of conclusions of modern math. You certainly don't get different sizes of infinite sets, which is something that is a standard part of math. So the only way that you can even try to rescue the concept of something like completed infinities would be to say, oh, numbers exist out there in the Platonic realm. So I don't know if, so I guess that's why I would also disagree with Chalmers here, is that I think it's a really important question to ask even for the sake of the mathematics. What is the metaphysical status of numbers? You can do mathematics. You can say there are four prime numbers, less than 10, without needing to bring in this further realm of the entities that exist. Absolutely, and mind. Except when you're talking about infinity, independently. But you can define things that are made of particles. That's a category. Yeah, I think actually the fundamental level. I mean, the place I take these questions most seriously is at the fundamental level in, say, in physics. You know, it defines certain entities, some particles that you need for physics. Maybe those things exist fundamentally. Anything above that, I think that's kind of, that's bookkeeping. You know, what is it that was Lord Kelvin who said that there's physics and then there's stamp collecting. You know, there's like, there's physics and there's different ways of carving it up. So that sounds very similar to what I was saying earlier that at the very least, maybe you have a fundamental entities, but he says there's the rest of bookkeeping. That's a good quote. I think you're getting it. It's taxonomy is the way that I would put it. And the mental reality in doing that. Now in my view, maybe there's physics as consciousness. Well, that's important. And the stamp collecting. Because now you've made suddenly two big categories. And so, you know, because you're involved in consciousness and you've done some wonderful work there, that's important to you. So therefore you have two categories. So maybe somebody else has done something else in prime numbers or abstract objects. And they think their category is the most important in consciousness that they don't potentially care about. I think, you know, we really need to care about the fundamental level. That's a really good point. And I got a couple of thoughts on the topic. So this is also, by the way, why I really like David Traumers, because I think he's correct in saying that consciousness is fundamental, which is one of the things that he's known for. Yeah, OK, a couple of things on that topic. So one is the status of categories. Is it the case that in the world there exist multiple types of things? I don't think that's a way that our mind works. Our mind puts little conceptual categories. We say this is of a type. This is of another type. But in general, I don't think there are many objective taxonomic distinctions in the world. I think most of it is bookkeeping. However, that's not necessarily true. There might be a handful of ontological, categorical distinctions between things, specifically when we're talking about conscious phenomena and physical phenomena. So I think Traumers is right here. And, you know, Kuhn is trying to kind of box him in and say, oh, hey, you're only saying that you think consciousness is fundamental because you work in consciousness. That's a reasonable objection. But I think actually Traumers is right here. Consciousness is, if anything, is fundamental. From our perspectives, it must be consciousness. That's this conversation I had with Dr. Kastrup not that long ago. He got it. I've had a couple more conversations where people kind of get this idea very clearly that physical phenomena is a different category from mental phenomena. Physical phenomena is a theorized abstract world that we come up with to try to explain the mental phenomena and the conscious phenomena that we experience. So if it's the case that any theory about the world, any ontology of the world, says that the only things that are real are physical phenomena, and there's no such thing as mental phenomena as we describe them. There's no subjective first person experience, that theory is necessarily certainly wrong because it misses the essence of what physical phenomena are, which is theoretical entities or theoretical objects that are designed to explain a phenomena we experience. So consciousness, if anything is fundamental, if any category is objective, it is conscious phenomena. Things that, feelings, sensory experiences, thoughts, all are, the internal movie that's being played, that is the thing that we can know exists. Of reality, the fundamental natural properties in the world, and I think, you know, we need properties of things to have. They have physical properties, they have consciousness properties, and so I'm not sure the entities though is the right way to think about it. The world is a giant bunch of stuff. It's a giant flux of process in a big universe. I'm not sure that it actually comes carved into entities, and if it does, they're the entities at the fundamental level, like the particles, maybe some mines. I like that, right? Particles and mines, I mean, I agree with that, but to say that the universe comes as a bunch of stuff, depends on what you mean by a bunch of stuff. That means two things. You could say that the universe comes as a plurality, and that's what he means. The universe is a bunch of different phenomena out there. That's just how it comes, and we carve it up into entities, or he could mean the exact opposite, which is to say it comes as a bunch of stuff. In other words, it comes as one thing all packaged together for us, and then we carve off the little pieces of dough to construct entities where there are none. So that's kind of an ambiguous way of phrasing. It comes as a bunch of stuff. Well, what is a bunch? Is it the case that the bunch was there prior to your mind existing, or is it the case that the bunch is something that your mind is doing? Your mind is kind of the conceptual glue sticking all this dough together, which is, the latter is what I think. So what are you saying? You're saying the universe is, there's only one thing, and it's the universe, and that we in our maybe very limited mental capacity are slicing it in odd ways when it's unslicable? I think there's just totally different perspectives on the world, so here's one perspective. There's one universe, and everything else is just slices of it. Here's another perspective. There's a zillion particles in the world, and everything, including the whole universe, is built up from that. What I'm saying is both of those perspectives are equally right and equally wrong. There's no choosing between them. That one was hard for me. Equally right and equally wrong, there's no choosing between them. I have a hard time parsing out exactly what that means. I mean, it sounds cool, it sounds deep, but I don't know exactly what that means, and they seem mutually exclusive. In fact, they seem logically mutually exclusive, that it's either the case that the universe comes as one and we separate it, or it's the case that the universe comes separated and we bundle it as one. I'm not sure how those two things can be integrated, but he says it in such a charming way it's hard not to believe him. Which means that there is no sense of reality to it. I mean, you can't, there's nothing fundamental to either perspective. There's a way things are, there's reality. There's an ultimate way that things are around us. It's the mistake of trying to slice it into entities. That's where I think sometimes philosophy goes wrong. But you slice it off consciousness. I slice it into properties, different ways, different aspects of the world. People feel a certain way, things have size, things have motion, they have properties. But why think there's a distinguished carving of the world into entities? This is again interesting, and I don't fully understand what he means, but I'm not saying in here that there's any kind of internal incoherence or anything. But what is a property then? Does the property exist in addition to the phenomena that the property is attached to? To me, a property seems like a way of describing a phenomena that we experience. Properties, I don't think necessarily properties exist in the world, unless maybe you're talking about the fundamental properties of position and state if you're talking about physical phenomena. But, and so when I, I've got this orange object over here in the corner of my visual field. Is it the case that there is an object with the property of being orange? I mean, that's kind of a way we might talk, but I think it's a better way to say, well, it is the case that when I say there's the object has a property, I'm really just describing phenomena in my visual field that there was a uniqueness to that part of my visual field versus other parts of my visual field. And to talk about it as not an entity seems odd to me. If anything, when we are dividing up something like our visual field, we are directly creating entities kind of in a sensible way. So I kind of like, if we're talking, go back to the battery example. I very much like the idea of saying I'm referencing this part of my visual field as an entity and that is actually the entity. So like the idea of the thing is the thing. I'm okay with that. Which, I mean, that wouldn't mean there are no entities, it would just mean that a lot of entities are mind dependent. And how, if we're distinguishing properties from entities, how would the word substance or stuffs deal with both of those? Where would that fit in? Well, there's stuff which can be carved into entities and there's stuff which has properties. You know, stuff is, you know, the stuff of consciousness and the stuff of matter. You know, it's a multi-aspected, multi-faceted stuff. But again, why think that there's a thing? There's not a thing which all that stuff constitutes. There's not a set of things into which this stuff gets carved. There's just stuff. That's what the world is. So, how does one have access to that knowledge? Is it not the case that I guess maybe what he's getting at is this. And, David, if you're watching this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I think what he's getting at is to say that the entities which we have carved are not fundamental. The stuff out of which we carved the entities is fundamental. I think that's what he's communicating there. Is that imposing on reality the constructs of our mind? And I mean, that's a view. That's a view that some people think that the equations of physics are not, you know, representing real reality, but it just are sort of models of observation. I think that, you know, entity talk, we can't help think in terms of entities. It's our way of carving up the world. And we have our own framework for doing this, the framework of ordinary objects. So, I think in terms of, you know, hands and heads and chairs and so on, but I don't think there's anything privileged about my way of carving up the world into entities of Martian. Might carve it up completely differently, seeing patterns in the air as entities. So, I don't think either of us is like getting at the privileged way of carving up the world. Mm, well put, except I think it's wrong, because there's one exception, which is the individual who carves up the world at the fundamental level. So, if you've got the aliens, I think it's an excellent way to put it that other conceptual schemes might divide the world up differently. So, the distinction between the hand and the forearm. Well, is there, you know, the human distinction might be the objectively, it might not be the objectively correct one, it's just kind of the human convention. Some Martian might see this whole thing as one object. That's a good example, but there is one objectively correct position, which is to say, if some critter had access to the position and state of every single fundamental physical unit and had some kind of way of representing that, and that's what they meant by their terms, that would actually be the correct way of describing the phenomena, the physical phenomena that exists. You can just represent all this stuff in the world in many different ways, all equally good. Is the question a useful one? I'm not certain it is. It's interesting to think about for a philosopher. We're interested in science and finding how the world is. One thing we do find is there's multiple equivalently good descriptions of the world. And I think this question of how to carve the world up into entities may just be one of finding multiple descriptions of the world that are equally good. One thing, a thousand things, a million things. As long as it all describes the world, they're all equally good. By what metric are they equally good? Are they all equally true or are they all equally practical? So there are all kinds of worldviews out there which carve up the world differently. They say different types of things exist and they derive different, let's say, ethical theories from their belief in the existence of different types of objects. I wouldn't say they're all equally true. They're all equally practical for living your daily life. They give you a kind of structure and a perspective on which to navigate the world. That doesn't mean they're necessarily true. Yeah. The reason why I have sensed that this question is important, even if you're right, Jan, you may be, is that it may enable us to see things that we haven't seen before, to visualize the sense of reality in a different way than what we're commonly perceived to do. So, for example? I don't know. I can't make progress beyond that, but I'm saying that to deal with this kind of question may enable us to see that there's something. If physical reality is one thing, if abstract objects are something else, if consciousness is a third thing, that it's not an abstract object, that it's not part of the material world, maybe that's another thing. Maybe there's a spiritual world where gods live and angels and demons. Yeah, I mean, people think that, so at least I got to address it. So now I can conceptualize four or five different big categories. Now, maybe this whole thing is nonsense. Multiple aspects of reality. I think it's a good way to think about it. Yeah, there's the physical aspect and the mental aspect and perhaps the abstract, the mathematical aspect. And then we can ask, how do all these aspects of reality relate to each other, which is the most fundamental, which is derivative? And I think that's a fine task for, say, a metaphysician, organizing the categories of reality to engage in. I mean, Aristotle thought there were four, right? It was earth and air and fire and water. And maybe a modern physicalist thinks there's one. It's all just atoms. I think that's a really fascinating question to ask. What are the fundamental aspects of reality? I'm just not sure we need to divide the world into things to do that. So that's the interview. Great, excellent, 10 minutes. But on that point, I also disagree. I mean, I like what Robert was saying, that depending on your perspective of what types of things exist, you can draw very different conclusions about how to live your life in the world. They both mentioned spirituality. Is it the case that there are angels and demons? Is it the case that there could be such an entity that is not corporal, but exists and is monitoring your life? And if you do things the way that he doesn't like, he's going to punish you for eternity? Seems like a pretty big question. Seems like you'd have to dive into metaphysics of what types of things exist and then try to answer those questions before you can come up with a really solid answer. I think on the one hand, I like the agnosticism. I'm saying, well, maybe my way of carving up the world is not objectively correct. Maybe you have another way of carving up the world which is equally good. I think that's good humble position, but I just don't think it's absolute, right? So again, in my position, it is the case that there is an objective position and state of every physical phenomena in existence. You can bundle them together in different ways, but they themselves are out there. And I'd say the same thing about mental phenomena. It is the case that mental phenomena are in particular states. So if somebody were to say, it is not the case, Steve, that you are experiencing the phenomena of looking at redness in your visual field, I'd say, well, you're wrong. I mean, your theory about what types of things exist in the world are certainly wrong because I am actually having that experience. So I guess my position is a little bit less polite, a little bit less nice, but I hope you guys enjoyed that brief interview breakdown, a fascinating topic. And one of the guys that hopefully I was gonna have on the show at some point, David Chalmers, I think any duelists out there in the world making careful arguments, I think, need a platform because we live in a world right now where physicalism is the dominant metaphysical worldview and I think it's got some pretty big shortcomings. That's something that David talks a lot about and one of the few philosophers who I respect on this particular topic. So that is all for the 82nd episode of Patterson in Pursuit. If you like this style, please let me know. Shoot me an email, leave a YouTube comment. If you'd like me to break down particular videos you think are interesting from anybody on any topic, I'll take a look and maybe it'll be the next video breakdown. I'm definitely gonna be doing a lot more in the Closer to Truth series because that way, if you guys aren't familiar with the Closer to Truth series, you'll be able to listen to the interviews and the commentary at the same time, which is, even if you don't like what I have to say, you're gonna like the interviews. So that's all for me today. I'll see you guys next week.