Does the universe care what we think?
Considering ontological realism.
Re-Assembling Reality #17a, by Mike Brownnutt and David A. Palmer
The monster that lives under my bed. My imaginary friend. My past life as the emperor of France. The way the guy on the train looked at me. These things haunt me, console me, drive me on, or hold me back.
But when I raise this fact, what do people say?
“That’s not real! You’re making it up! It’s all in your head!”
If such people are correct, then the bad news I must face is that I was never emperor of France. The good news is that we have a starting point for defining what is real: real things are outside your head. Real things are not made up.
If we take this as a starting point for defining what is real, we find ontological realism:
Ontological realism
Ontological realism is committed to a thing’s mind-independent existence. [1]
This means that a thing’s existence does not depend on what we think about it. It does not depend on the evidence we have for it, our ability to comprehend it, our ability to observe it, or our opinion of it.
Aliens and ontological realism
A straw poll among students at the University of Hong Kong showed that they (almost) all thought that rocks were real, while their views on aliens were consistent with a coin toss.
Of course, we were mean in our poll, because we simply asked, “Are aliens real?” Some students objected that we should have asked the question “Do you think aliens are real?” But that is a different question. That would tell us something about the students, rather than telling us something about aliens.
Aliens, if they exist, swimming in the seas of Europa as it orbits Jupiter, do not care what students at HKU think. If we have no evidence for aliens on Europa, the aliens living there neither know nor care that we are ignorant. If we do one day obtain evidence for their existence, we would become less ignorant, but the aliens would not have changed. They existed the day before we had evidence for them, and they would still exist the day after. A person who is committed to this view — that an alien’s existence is independent of their own knowledge or opinion — is being ontologically realist.
What if we do not believe that aliens exist, though? Should we then be anti-realist about aliens?
No. An ontological realist who does not believes in aliens is committed to the claim that the aliens’ non-existence is independent of their own knowledge or opinion. There are not complex chemicals in the seas of Europa desperately wanting to evolve into organic life, but unable to do so because people on earth believe that aliens don’t exist. Chemicals on Europa don’t care what we think.
An ontological realist is committed to the idea that, if a thing exists, its existing is independent of her opinion. And if a thing does not exist, its non-existence is independent of her opinion. When we say that rocks exist and unicorns do not exist, both claims take an ontologically realist position.
Monetary value and ontological anti-realism
At first glance, we seem to have the bases covered: Things like rocks existing and things like unicorns not existing are both ontologically realist positions. What is left for anti-realism?
Let us consider money. Or, more precisely, monetary value.
A twenty dollar bill — that piece of paper that you can hold in your hand — may be ontologically real. It exists even if you stop believing in it. But its value — the fact that this piece of paper is worth twenty dollars — is a social convention. Everyone in Hong Kong agrees that this piece of paper is worth twenty dollars and a cup of coffee is worth twenty dollars. They also believe that you can can swap a piece of paper for a cup of coffee, and that this is not crazy.
But what if people stopped believing that? What if they instead believed that blue pieces of paper were an abomination and should be burned? What if they believed that gold was the only suitable token of exchange? Or what if they believed that coffee could only be exchanged for coffee or the sweat of ones brow?
There is some sense in which a twenty dollar bill really is worth twenty dollars. Money makes the world go round. And yet monetary value does not exist independent of a collective societal agreement. It does not exist independently of people’s minds. As such, we are ontologically anti-realist regarding monetary value.
Gods and ontological (anti-)realism
Some strands of Buddhism, notably the Madhyamaka school, are ontologically anti-realist. According to this school, while we conventionally experience different things as having their own existence and identity, this is an illusion: all phenomena, including our selves, are the ephemeral results of other phenomena. Nothing has independent existence; everything is ultimately empty. This applies to deities as well: Buddhists worship them, experience them, and visualise them in meditation. But, ultimately, they are as dependent and empty as everything else. And even this “emptiness” itself, is not an independent or transcendental reality.
By contrast, most strands of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i faith have a strongly ontologically realist view of God. They consider that God’s existence is absolutely independent of us, or of what we know of Him or think of Him.
Sometimes, these Abrahamic religions describe God in very human terms, as having very human emotions and feelings. At other times, they say that He is so totally other that we cannot conceive of Him. It seems that they therefore hold wildly diverging and even contradictory views on how to conceive of God.
Skeptics may point to such discordant positions and insist that this is evidence that Abraham’s God is not real. The ontologically realist position taken by Abrahamic faiths, however, protects them from this conclusion. An ontologically realist position severs the link between what we know or believe about a thing, and the thing itself. From an ontologically realist position, it is a moot point how, or even whether, you can conceive of God, just as it is moot whether you have evidence for aliens. Neither God nor the aliens care (existentially) what you think, or how clever you are. If they exist, your opinion does not change that. And if they don’t exist, your belief in their existence will not call them into being. Under ontological realism, whether or not God exists is completely independent of what people believe, disbelieve, imagine, or conceive about Him.
Electrons and anti-realism
Given Richard Dawkins’ cut his teeth on consideration of Abrahamic religions, and these are strongly realist, it is interesting that Dawkins himself insists that religion occupies itself with things that are not real. Even more striking, however, is his claim that science, by contrast, deals with what is real. We say “striking,” because it skips over the fact that modern science offers one of the most extreme examples of ontological anti-realism going.
Under Newtonian mechanics, a particle, such as an electron, has properties such as position, velocity, energy, and the like. We might not know what energy a given electron has. But that ignorance limits us, not the electron. We might, for one reason or another, not be able to know what the electron’s position is. But that incompetence limits us, not the electron. The electron doesn’t care what we think. Its existence is independent of our minds.
Within the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, however, if the position of a particle has not been measured, then the particle does not have a position. It isn’t just that we don’t know what the particle’s position is: there is no such property as the position of a particle whose position has not been measured. The existence of quantum particles and events, along with any of their properties, is dependent on our ability to observe them. This is ontologically anti-realist.
Blurring the dichotomy
Time and again in this series, we find ourselves with apparent dichotomies, and the suggestion that one member of the dichotomy belongs to science and the other belongs to religion. We then find that as soon as we scratch below the surface, this simple picture collapses. First, we find we cannot simply align science with one end of the dichotomy and religion with the other; both science and religion draw on both sides of the dichotomy. Second, we find that the apparent dichotomy is much less clear cut that we might initially imagine.
In this Essay we have found — as we might have come to expect — that some things (such as Newtonian mechanics) can be counted as science while being ontologically realist, while others (such as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics) can be counted as science while being ontologically anti-realist. Moreover, some things (like Christian views of God) are religious and ontologically realist, while others (like Madhyamaka Buddhism) are religious and ontologically anti-realist.
The pattern we have observed elsewhere in this series might lead us to suspect that even within a single framework, even considering a single idea within that framework, the dichotomy can be blurred to the point of collapse. Indeed, this not only happens, but happens commonly. Let us consider some examples, drawing on natural science, social science, and religion.
What is a tree?
What is a tree? And does “the thing which is a tree” exist independent of our minds?
Clearly, when you engage with a tree, there is something there. Monetary value is not something you can kick. But you can kick a tree. And when you hurt your foot, it is hard to accept that the cause of your pain is purely a product of your mind. A tree is made of real atoms; carbon and oxygen and hydrogen. This is not social convention we agree among ourselves, like the value of a bank note. It is a property of the world outside our heads.
A tree can be used as fuel, or as shade. These, too, are properties of a tree. But they do not exist independent of social convention. The property of being a fuel only exists in our heads.
Certainly a tree is flammable. This is a property of a tree which exists independent of my opinion. But being flammable is not the same as being fuel. Many things are flammable, without being fuel: people, books, flags.
We can burn a flag, just as easily as we can burn a stick, but we do not. Flag burning draws attention to itself and declares that something is amiss. We send press photographers to take pictures of people burning flags exactly because flags are not fuel.
The chemistry of combustion says we can burn books as easily as wood, they keep us just as warm, and they burn just as bright. And yet book burning cries out, throughout history and across cultures, from the Qin dynasty to Nazi Germany, exactly because books, while flammable, are not fuel.
The property of being a fuel is certainly connected to the property of being flammable. I cannot make anything I want into a fuel, simply by force of will. I cannot decide that I will burn rocks to keep warm. And yet the property of being a fuel is also connected to cultural ideas, constraints, and assumptions.
When we say that a tree is fuel, we cannot step outside of the world to avoid being confronted with things which are mind-independent. So we cannot simply say we are purely anti-realist about the tree. We must engage with the world.
But when we say that the tree is fuel, we also cannot step outside of our heads to avoid being confronted with things that are mind-dependent. So we cannot simply say that we are we are purely realist about the tree. We must engage with the culture.
When I interact with a tree, I am interacting with a physical object outside my head. But I am also acting with a picture inside my head. This is not only true regarding the tree-as-fuel. It also holds with respect to the tree as a source of food, or shade, or building material; a tree as a boundary marker, or as a connection with our ancestors, or with generations yet unborn. Even if I attempt to strip my mind of all cultural pre-conditioning, and engage with the tree as nothing but an object of no greater significance than being an object — even if I were able to do that, that would still be a mental image of the tree which conditions my interaction with it.
Having gotten this far, it should be no great leap to realise that trees are not special in this regard. Rocks, mobile phones, a friend, the hole in the ozone layer, evolution theory… all of these things simultaneously have one foot in mind-independent reality, and one foot in the socially constructed world inside our own heads.
Indeed, having gotten this far, we look back at where we started and realise that these hybrids are the rule, rather than the exception. Being knocked unconscious by a rock is a pretty pure connection with mind-independent reality. The monetary value of your online bank balance is pretty independent of the universe outside of people’s heads. But most other things are somewhere in between.
Sex and gender
Historically, the terms “sex” and “gender” have been used interchangeably. Now it is more common to group things about which we want to be ontologically realist under sex and things about which we want to be ontologically anti-realist under gender. A realist position regarding sex states that a person’s sex and all characteristics pertaining to their sex are entirely independent of human constructions. An anti-realist position regarding gender states that a person’s gender is constructed by social convention or individual choice, regardless of the features of their body.
Whether or not a person has XY sex chromosomes is not up for negotiation. It is not something which society decides upon, or something which an individual chooses for themselves. A person with XY chromosomes is male. That is their sex. We can be ontologically realist realist about this: sex exists outside our heads.
Whether or not a person grows their hair long is up for negotiation. There may be a societal norm, or a person may choose for themselves. In some societies, having long hair is viewed as feminine. This relates to their gender. We can be ontologically anti-realist about this. Gender only exists inside our heads.
The division between sex and gender — realist and anti-realist, outside our heads and inside our heads — is simple. Except things are not quite that simple.
Whether or not a person has XY sex chromosomes is not up for negotiation. What is up for negotiation is whether or not having XY chromosomes is either necessary or sufficient to make someone male.
Prior to the 20th century, no-one thought to ask about chromosomes. No one knew about chromosomes before the end of the 19th century, and it took a while to work out that they were related to sex. Fortunately, humanity had not had to wait until the discovery of genetic sex determination before saying that some people were male and others were female. People were declared male or female based on phenotypical traits, such as whether or not they had had a penis.
Genotypic sex is so closely correlated to phenotypic sex that most of the time it does not make a difference which convention one uses. However, the correlation is not perfect, and it is entirely for a person to be (for example) phenotypically female and genotypically male. Biology may exist outside of our heads, but where do the categories exist?
Under a realist view of sex categories, categories such as male and female exist, out there, in the world, independent of human thinking. This would be the case if, for example, the categories were God-given. It is in this manner that some people interpret Genesis 1:27: “God created mankind in his own image… male and female he created them.” There are two biological sexes, male and female, because God says so. Human opinion is irrelevant.
Simply being realist about the number of categories, of course, does not end the discussion. One would still need to establish whether God was speaking of genotypic sex, phenotypic sex, or some other demarcation.
There are also other realist views: a person might say that there are “really” three categories, or many categories, or one category, or that sex is “really” a spectrum. On the realist view, it is not for society to decide what answer they will adopt. The right answer (whichever one that is) is a property of the world ‘out there’.
Conversely, even while being realist about the mind-independent existence of a penis, one might take an anti-realist view regarding sex categories: the decision to make having a penis a qualifying characteristic of being admitted to the category of ‘male’ is a human convention.
It becomes clear from this discussion that, regarding questions of sex and gender, it is difficult to neatly — much less definitively — separate out the parts that are ‘out there in the world’ from the parts that are ‘in our heads’. Moreover, we are not well able to separate out the parts that should remain the exclusive domain of religion, or natural science, or social science.
Gods who care what you think
A few final examples of situations which blur the boundaries between realist and anti-realist perspectives can be found with considerations of gods for whom it (existentially) matters what you think.
Many religious traditions are somewhere in between the radical realism of the Abrahamic religions and the radical anti-realism of Madhyamaka Buddhism. In Chinese religion, there are many deities, and they exist regardless of what you know or think about them. Many of them, such as Wong Tai Sin, were once historical figures. They became deities after people started worshiping them. These deities depend on humans to feed them with offerings. The more people feed a deity with offerings, the more powerful the deity grows. Wong Tai Sin was an obscure Daoist master before a few people started worshiping him in Hong Kong about a century ago — but he became the most popular god in Hong Kong; and his popularity has increased his efficacy. Now, if you’re looking for a god to help you solve your problem, local people are likely to tell you that Wong Tai Sin is your best bet.
Chinese religion is somewhere between ontological realism and anti-realism — it considers that many deities are real historical figures who exist independently of what others think of them; and yet, it also considers that, to a great degree, they are dependent on what humans think of them, and that they derive their divine power from what humans think of them.
[1] Chakravartty, Anjan (2017). “Scientific Realism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Chakravarty uses the term “metaphysical realism.” In academic philosophy, metaphysics is the branch of inquiry that considers the fundamental nature of reality. However, since the the term “metaphysical” is based on a dualism between what is “physical” and what is “beyond the physical,” it can be problematic for engaging in a discussion that does not take for granted the physical, or the duality between the physical and non-physical, as the starting point for thinking about the world. Thus, in our discussion, we prefer the term “ontological realism”.
This essay and the Re-Assembling Reality Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9061 Science and Religion: Questioning Truth, Knowledge and Life, with the support of the Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum and the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
