Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

modern-day search often takes inspiration from computers, where ‘bits’ can be made to take on any number of different functions as the ‘structure’ of computer programmes allows. And, of course, there can be many layers in this process — which suits the analogies quite well.

Another avenue in the search for an ultimate substrate is mathematics. We will explore a bit later the importance of understanding how mathematics ‘corresponds’ to physical reality. On this view, it’s mathematics and physical laws that determine how reality appears to us because these are just building the underlying and more fundamental level beneath, which is the ‘true’ stuff of the universe.

In a more general sense, it could be said that we only believe in truth because we believe in correspondence. If we did not see any alignment between our thoughts and the world that we experience then we’d have a hard time making any sense of the world at all.

A further avenue is that consciousness provides the ground for reality. A simple way to think about panpsychism, for instance, is just that consciousness is the substrate that makes sense of — that grounds — the relations explored by science. (We’ll get to panpsychism in a future chapter.)

An intriguing question can be asked at this point — and that is: If we know of things only through their qualities — then what exactly is there left of a substance that is real? This is the basis of the second of our truth options above — the view that reality is just an illusion — idealism.

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