Source
Jaksland (2024), LIT-1673, pp. 373–377; read in NOTE-1230.
What was actually shown
The challenge. Newtonian mechanics approximates quantum mechanics well at lifeworld scales and lacks entanglement, so a quantum metaphysics seems idle there (p. 374). Barad agrees the effects are small (2007, 279) and denies the conclusion: that h/m is not zero “is the key point” (2007, 416).
The reconstruction. For that to work, the features agential realism denies must be all-or-nothing: “If an ontology lacks/contains features that cannot appear/disappear as the result of approximation then these features will be absent/present throughout the ontology regardless of scale” (p. 376). Candidates: the subject–object and word–world dualisms, representationalism, “(joint carving) notions”. The argument for the dualisms: adding particles to an electron does not reinstall the subject–object split, and negligible entanglement “is nevertheless still there” (p. 376).
The other side. Individualism “could similarly be regarded as a question of all or nothing”, yet “it seems immediately more agreeable to regard this as something that can obtain through approximation. Circumstances can be such that a fundamentally relational metaphysics can appear to be one of individuals (if they are separable enough)” (p. 376). A no-miracles argument supports approximation in general: Newtonian success would be a miracle if Newtonian metaphysics were not approximately true (pp. 376–377).
Contingency. With a much larger Planck constant quantum effects would pervade “situatedness and practice”, and the autonomy of philosophical anthropology from naturalized metaphysics “would have been lost in both directions” (p. 374). So the division Ladyman and Ross, Barnes and Mikkola draw is “a contingent matter of fact” (p. 375). This half is argued.
What this does not say
- That any feature resists approximation. “Whether there are such features remains, in my view, an open question” (p. 365).
- What metaphysical approximation is. The paper gives the Newtonian analogy and no account of an ontological feature being approximately present.
- That an ontology of individuals is approximately true. That is the author’s inclination, stated, not argued beyond the analogy.
- That the result needs agential realism. The conditional holds for any relational fundamental metaphysics; agential realism is the case.