Special thanks is due to Boudewijn Sirks for hosting the event at All Souls, and to the Centre for Theology, Law and Culture at Oxford for assistance with the logistics.

Programme

• William Simpson - Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science and Philosophy (Introduction)

Session 1 - Middle-Sized Things in Physics

• George Ellis - Aristotelian Causation characterises why specific things happen

• Robert Koons - Contextual Emergence, Travelling Forms, and Cosmic Substances: Evaluating the Options for Quantum Hylomorphism

• Hans Halvorson (response)

• Alyssa Ney - Middle-Sized Things in the Wave Function

• Emily Qureshi-Hurst - Many Worlds and Much Trouble: Problems raised by the Everett Interpretation for Middle-Sized beings

• William Simpson (response)

Session 2 - Middle-Sized Things in Philosophy of Mind

• Timothy O’Connor - Consciousness and the Significance of Middle-Sized Things

• Philip Goff - Pan-Agentialism and the Mystery of Psycho-Physical Harmony

• Howard Robinson (response)

• Daniel De Haan - Why Middle-Sized Causal Powers Matter for Scientific Experiments

• Jonathan Price (response)

Session 3 - Panel Discussion

Chair: Mark Harris, Reflection: Andrew Steane.

Abstracts

Session 1 - Middle-Sized Things in the Philosophy of Physics

George Ellis - Aristotelian Causation characterises why specific things happen

In my public lecture, I discuss how the universe can appear purposeless if one looks at it on either very large or very small scales, but I will argue that middle-sized things like living beings exist within the physical world as ‘open systems’, and explain how this enables purpose, meaning, and ethics to be effective in causing physical outcomes. In this paper, I will explain the way that this happens by characterising how Aristotelian causation, updated to take more recent discoveries into account, relates to upwards and downwards causation and thereby to the nature of effective causal closure. This occurs on middle-sizes in physical terms, where emergent biological function and agency is possible, as well as in society, and is the basis of ethical  behaviour - which does not exist as a category, as far as physics or microbiology is concerned. We crucially need scientists and philosophers who are open to seeing the ‘big picture’, and not merely some small part of the whole which they exclusively embrace because that happens to be their speciality.

Robert C. Koons - Contextual Emergence, Travelling Forms, and Cosmic Substances: Evaluating the Options for Quantum Hylomorphism

The neo-Aristotelian programme in natural philosophy comprises a family of theoretical frameworks that offer an alternative to quantum fundamentalism, i.e., to the metaphysical thesis that all the fundamental entities and all natural properties are represented explicitly in some model of quantum theory (whether or not supplemented by microphysical hidden variables or microphysically driven collapse mechanisms). Many of the alternative interpretations available to quantum fundamentalists have counterparts for neo-Aristotelians. I develop a taxonomy of possible Aristotelian interpretations of QM with special attention to an Aristotelian interpretation of George Ellis and Barbara Drossel’s contextual emergence, Alexander Pruss’s travelling forms model, and William Simpson’s Cosmic Hylomorphism, with some suggestions for directions of future research.

Alyssa Ney - Middle-Sized Things in the Wave Function

One of the main objections to wave function realism is that if the world is fundamentally a wave function in a high-dimensional space with the structure of a configuration space, then there is no way to ground the existence of low-dimensional, macroscopic objects. In this presentation, I will explain and elaborate on the solution to this problem presented in Ney (2021). I will also respond to criticisms of the view in recent work by David Albert.

Emily Qureshi-Hurst - Many Worlds and Much Trouble: Exploring some problems raised by the Everett Interpretation for Middle-Sized beings

According to the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, the universe contains a nondenumerable infinity of world-branches. These branches, or 'worlds', contain many different versions of each of us. In this paper, I begin to ask whether, and to what extent, Christian theism can thrive (or even survive) in such an Everettian context. I will focus on three questions: Who are we in Many Worlds? Can moral responsibility remain coherent? Why might a loving God create an Everettian multiverse? These questions sit across several core components of the theistic worldview. The first question, relating to personal identity, considers the nature of the human person and humanity’s relationship with the divine. The second question, relating to the concept of moral responsibility, concerns the role of the human being as a moral agent who must interpret and practically respond to the teachings of Christianity during the course of their earthly life. This question thus involves ethical as well as metaphysical considerations. The final question also concerns ethics. However, instead of considering the ethical parameters of the human being, it considers the moral nature of God himself. Can we reconcile Genesis' claim that creation is 'good' with what we know about the Everettian multiverse?

Session 2: Middle-Sized Things in Philosophy of Mind

Timothy O’Connor - Consciousness and the Significance of Middle-Sized Things

Many physicalists suppose that middle-sized things of many kinds are real in an ontologically significant way that, e.g., mere aggregates are not. They have that status by being 'weakly emergent’: emergent because they exhibit forms of behaviour not characteristic of entities of which they are composed, while only weakly so because their existence and powers asymmetrically wholly depend on those composing entities. Reductionists and nihilists charge that weak emergents (if such there be) are not ontologically significant because they do not make a fundamental difference to the way the world is or unfolds. I will argue that this charge is plausibly true in a world lacking strongly emergent conscious minds, but not otherwise. Weakly emergent entities enjoy a more robust ontological status by virtue of being objects of conscious practical and theoretical thought and action. Furthermore, the range of objects attaining such significance in a minded world depends on the kinds of minds in it: merely animal, human, and/or divine.

Philip Goff - Pan-Agentialism and the Mystery of Psycho-Physical Harmony

About half a dozen philosophers are currently writing on the mystery of psycho-physical harmony, but I think it’s going to change the world.  The challenge is to explain why consciousness and behaviour tend to be aligned in a rationally appropriate way. A common initial reaction to this problem is to feel that this doesn’t need explaining, or to claim that natural selection explains it. I argue that both of these reactions are mistaken. As a solution to this problem, I will defend a form of 'pan-agentialism', according to which the roots of rational agency are present at the fundamental level of reality. One of the consequences of pan-agentialism, I will argue, is that certain middle-sized things, such as organisms, must be strongly emergent entities.

Daniel De Haan - Why Middle-Sized Causal Powers Matter for Scientific Experiments

Although the discoveries and purported theoretical implications of scientific experiments are concerned with microscopic, middle-sized, and even cosmic-scale phenomena, contemporary philosophers who are realists tend to admit ‘fundamental’ reality only to microscopic or cosmic reality, while demurring the fundamentality of middle-sized things. In this talk, I aim to defend the fundamentality of (some) middle-sized things by arguing that middle-sized beings like ourselves, who explore the world through scientific enquiry, could not discover the existence and causal powers of microscopic or cosmic-sized things if they did not exercise irreducible, middle-sized causal powers. Such causal powers are deployed by scientists when they conduct controlled scientific experiments, for example, or when they fabricate the middle-sized instruments they employ in their experiments (such as lasers, reactors, particle colliders, and interferometers). If scientists and their middle-sized instruments didn’t have any fundamental, middle-sized causal powers, then they would not be able to engage in scientific experimentation, and hence they would not be able to ascertain the existence and causal powers of either micro-physical or cosmic-sized phenomena. In short, I will argue that middle-sized causal powers are a condition of the possibility of scientific inquiry.