4. Avoiding the turtles-all-the-way-down problem

What is The Structural-Systematic Philosophy?

The Structural-Systematic Philosophy (SSP) is a systematic philosophy in progress. Books developing it so far are (in English) STRUCTURE AND BEING (2008), BEING AND GOD (2011), and TOWARD A PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY OF EVERYTHING (TAPTOE; 2014). Podcasts describe the project and present details.

Avoiding the turtles-all-the-way-down-problem.
What my title terms the turtles-all-the-way-down problem is presented by Stephen Hawking as follows:
A well-known scientist, some say it was Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy.
He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun in turn orbits around the center
of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of
the room got up and said, "What you've told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported
on the back of a giant tortoise. The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the
tortoise standing on?" "You're a very clever young man, very clever," said the old lady, "but it's turtles
all the way down."
If indeed it is turtles all the way down, then there can be no comprehensive account or theory because there must be infinitely many turtles. One encounters the turtles-all-the-way-down problem if one thinks foundationally. Given that theories are collections of sentences, in a foundationally-structured theory, each sentence presented as true must be based on other sentences already accepted as true. In a foundationally-structured theory, the infinite regress problem of turtles all the way down could be solved only if there was a sentence or perhaps a collection of sentences that was or were self-evident. Contemporary philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, who assumes without argument that
theories must be foundationally-structured, reasons as follows:
The former of the good, of Agathon, is the place where all explanations stop. It is the level of the self-
explanatory. There must be such a level of the self-explanatory if reality is, as Plato has assumed it to
be, thoroughly intelligible. Explanations must penetrate the whole of what is. It's not turtles all the
way down, but rather logoi, reasons, all the way down.
According to Goldstein, it is reasons all the way down to the one self-explanatory reason, the form
of the good, yet neither Goldstein nor Plato ever explains articulates this form of the good or explains
how it could be self explanatory. She does say the following:
The best reason is in itself a self-starter, an explanation that explains itself, a causa sui, that is, cause
of itself. Spinoza, who picked up this Platonic intuition and ran all the way with it, was to put it. The
determining role of the best reason in making the world what it is, is what the goodness in truth,
beauty, and goodness consists. Goodness is interwoven with truth because the explanation for the
truth is that the truth is determined by the best reason. And the best reason works all on its own,
which is as good as it gets. The truth being determined by the best reason is ultimately capable of
explaining itself.
Unfortunately, this is simply unintelligible. There can be no causa sui, no cause of itself, nothing that causes itself, because only something that already is can cause anything else to be. As Nietzsche puts it, the cause of itself would have to "pull itself by its own hair out of the swamp of nothingness into existence." Goldstein is willing to bite this bullet:
The good is what bestows existence, he tells us in the REPUBLIC. Agathon binds the structure of
reality, whatever that reality might turn out ultimately to be. In the TIMAEUS, Plato voices skepticism
that we can never know it in its entirety. Reason's being intelligible doesn't entail it's being intelligible
to us.
Foundationalism is reinforced by metaphorical uses of relatively ordinary English terms. Theories can be said to be founded, grounded, or supported, or to have groundworks, bases, or footings, or to be subject to being undermined. Demands that philosophical theses be proved often also reinforce foundational assumptions in modern philosophy.
The analog most commonly introduced to clarify theory structure is the building with foundations. One central flaw with the building-with-foundations analogy arises from what can reasonably be termed
it's pre-Copernican status. A building resting on a foundation is a terrestrial edifice whose
structural integrity can require, but is it's also threatened by gravity, and is preserved in some, but not in the simplest cases, by its inner structuration, but also in all cases, ultimately, by the earth. The earth is presupposed simply to be stable. So even in uses of the analogy that recognize, as, for example, does Kant's CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, that foundations must be laid on solid ground presuppose that whatever underlies that ground supports it.
A first analogy that avoids this flaw is provided by D-Stix building sets. These sets include colored wooden sticks of various lengths and flexible plastic connectors, each of which has several slots into which the sticks can be securely inserted. The stability of heaps of such sticks and connectors, like that of buildings with foundations, presupposes ground and gravity, but even the simplest of linkages, that consisting of a single stick inserted into a single connector, does not. The two components are stabilized in that they remain connected when tossed into the air. As components are added to the simplest D-Sticx structure stabilizations of various sorts become possible. Adding two more sticks and two more connections in any matter whatsoever yields a structure that is stable in that none of its connections depends on either ground or gravity, but that structure is made more stable iIf it is reconfigured into a triangle. It then also maintains its shape independently of groundand ed gravity.
These D-Stix structures are of course constructed and hence require constructors. There is, however, an important sense in which the constructor does not determine structural stabilization. The sense is revealed by an example. The most stable structure that can be made with six sticks of the same length and four connectors is a tetrahedron, and this fact is independent of any constructor.
This is relevant to theorization because when theories are assessed, the most appropriate assessment is of the theories, and not of the theoreticians who formulate them.
The D-Stix analogy can also clarify the distinction between consistency and coherence. Any heap of D-Stix pieces is consistent in the sense that there will be no piece whose inclusion precludes the inclusion in the heap of any other piece, and that consistency remains unchanged if the pieces are heaped differently. As merely heaped, however, the configuration of the pieces is incoherent in the
sense that no pieces are interconnected. As pieces are interconnected, the coherence of the configuration of pieces, the coherence of the structure, increases.
D-Stix structures, considered as analogs to theories, avoid some of the most important flaws of the building-with-foundations analog, but one important way in which they are not analogous to philosophical theories is that their components can be definitively determined. They include only sticks and connectors.
A second analogy or analog, which improves on the D-Stix analogy in this respect, is that of the space station. Components of space stations, like those of D-Stix structures, are not stabilized by being grounded. The reason for this in the case of space stations is the at least frequent and possibly permanent absence of significant gravitational fields that these components must resist. The components are therefore stabilized, like those of D-Stix structures, by being interconnected. The components and their interconnections can be of various sorts and of various strengths. A wire that dangled loosely would be minimally stabilized. Securing the loose end would increase its stabilization.
Wires or girders, for example, connected to many other wires or girders, would generally be more integral to the structure then with those with fewer connections in that their disconnection
or removal would destabilize the station itself to greater degrees. Correspondingly, theses, within theoris structured as networks will vary in status in that some are more tightly and multiply interlinked, and hence more central, whereas others are more loosely and less multiply interlinked and hence more peripheral. Alterations to relatively peripheral components of the theory could improve it, whereas if superior alternatives to central components were discovered, the theory relying on those components
would presumably be an alternative theory. In addition, a space station, like a theory, could qualify as the best available at some specific time, but not as absolutely the best; the possibility of superior
alternatives could not be excluded.