Philosophical Ontology and Computational Models

David Westland

The second Whitehead lecture of the autumn term 2014 will be given by David Westland, Dept Philosophy, University of Durham, at 4pm Wednesday 8th October and will be entitled "Philosophical Ontology and Computational Models".

An abstract for the lecture and short biography for the speaker are appended below. The lecture will take place at 4pm on Wednesday 8th October in room Richard Hoggart Building RHB137a at Goldsmiths College .

DATE: Wednesday 8th October, 2014 T

ITLE: Philosophical Ontology and Computational Models

SPEAKER: David Westland

ABSTRACT: Models of computation (e.g. finite state machines, cellular automata) have been used extensively in the so-called 'digital physics' movement, as well as some areas of applied ontology. But their use has not extended very well to analytic ontology, where philosophers propose and attempt to answer general questions concerning the possible structures of reality. In this discussion I would like to introduce a domain of mainstream philosophy that is currently receiving a great deal of attention: the properties and laws debate. The basic problem of this discussion is how to understand the fundamental nature of predicates (e.g. 'is round') and their close connection to behavior (e.g. 'round entities tend to roll down inclined planes'). A dominant view, which is based upon David Hume's empiricist philosophy, is that laws of nature are mere descriptions of the world, where the world itself is construed as a vast pattern of objects that are characterised by properties and relations. Importantly, advocates of this approach deny that causes 'bring about' their effects in any serious sense, such that there is no real explanation for the occurrence of a specific event. Common sense suggests that striking a match 'necessitates' its ignition, but the neo-Humean tradition proposes that the distribution of events is completely accidental. My central aim in this discussion, however, is to support a rival position (termed dispositionalism), according to which the natures of properties are intimately connected with their behavior. So construed, properties are 'active' entities that are called upon to explain events. That said, I suggest that the dispositionalist project is subject to severe difficulties because it is presently committing itself to a 'list' conception of ontology. By this I mean that philosophers are approaching ontology as a business of postulating what kinds of entity exist (i.e. dispositional predicates such as 'roundness') and merely linking these entities up with certain truths (i.e. propositions of behavior such as 'round entities, ceteris paribus, roll down inclined planes'). The promising response, I argue, is to rethink the basic blueprint of a properties and laws ontology in terms of a finite state machine, where if-then imperatives are used to construct future times (modelled as outputs) on the basis of laws of nature (modelled as a transition table) and present times (modelled as inputs). The core idea is that this computational approach to ontology offers a favorable setting for understanding reality as a 'self-active' phenomenon, whereby the key dispositionalist notions of explanation and activity are properly realised. I conclude with some remarks on the relationship between cellular automata and the central questions of the properties and laws debate.

BRIEF BIO: David Westland is currently based at the Dept. of Philosophy at the University of Durham, where he has worked closely with Dr. Sophie Gibb and - before his untimely death in January 2014 - the Internationally renowned metaphysician Professor E. J. (Jonathan) Lowe on the topic of ontological structuralism and natural laws. David's research has focused around modal issues in anti-Humeanism, dynamic theories of time, and the connection between computational models and analytic ontology.