Theories

Let us now examine those factors which cause differences in connotation from utterance to utterance of the word ‘Fundamental.’

When two people end up referring to different objects by this word, we may extrapolate from our everyday notion of the word the fact that they are giving a certain degree of importance to two different objects; they will disagree over which object has that certain degree of importance.

(If, in a conversation, I call x more fundamental than y, I may rephrase with no violence to say that I am calling x more important than y.) What does this entail? A difference in worldview, evidently; if I claim that strings are more important/more fundamental than fields, it is because my worldview is at loggerheads with the one which gives fields fundamentality.

A difference in theory, then: One reason for difference in connotation from utterance to utterance is the theory which the person making the statement is working within. Any loosely connected set of propositions that purport to explicate the past and predict the future is called a theory. Due to reasons that may perhaps be evolutionary and survival-oriented in nature, the rationality in all of us begins forming for us theories about the way the world works. We eat empirical data and perform filtration and data-compression processes to explain as much of it in as little words as possible. It is doubtful that there exists any disposition of ours that is not a direct result of the theories we subscribe to-often the theory may lurk in our subconscious without coming forth and proclaiming itself to be the mastermind, but I cannot see how any disposition could be that no theory had anything to do with.

As a result, the connotations of any utterance we produce is a function of the theory within which we are working. Discrepancies between people for any given word may be said to be due to a difference in theory (It may admittedly also be due to a difference in symbolism—My opponent may be perversely but obstinately actually referring to strings by the utterance ‘fields’—but this is a superficial schism which we shall pass over).

We eliminate a great degree of the slipperiness of words once we open our eyes to this dependency that they have. Often, at the point of disagreement, one of the persons involved claims the ultimate: The superiority of his theory. Here is an illustration: Perhaps I am arguing with someone over whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Realizing that I am subscribing to a different theory wherein a tomato is, indeed, a vegetable, I may be shown by my opponent certain empirical evidence which my brain forcibly interprets (due to, as suggested before, a deep-seated rationalism brought on by evolution, perhaps?) as evidence of the fact that tomatoes are fruits, thus compelling me to discard my previous theory as flawed or insufficient and adopting a new theory. This explanation does not yet completely account for the great degree of variability in a word’s connotations, though. Even post the presentation of the aforementioned empirical data, I may casually refer to tomatoes as vegetables. We certainly do not usually speak austerely, as if we are at a philosophy conference. We throw around our words quite freely. Does this mean that I have immediately gone back to my previous theory? Surely not!

The process I will now attempt to explicate is a rather subtle one. What must be happening is this:

While I certainly continue believing the proposition ‘Tomatoes are fruits’, I also believe that most people mistake tomatoes to be vegetables, and that I must communicate as clearly as possible to get my tomatoes. As a result, when conversing with, say, the vegetable vendor, I speak of tomatoes as if they fall under the class of vegetables. My theory of clear communication and the misconceptions of people has temporarily won my dispositions over from my theory of tomatoes being fruits, and as a result, I refer to tomatoes as vegetables instead of fruits. I may go back to calling them fruits when no other proposition is overriding that theory, and then again to vegetables when there is, and alternate so.

Or take, for example, the biologist who alternates between calling cells fundamental and calling, say, the standard model of particle physics fundamental. This alternation is again due to a difference in context causing interplay and shuffling between theories. With respect to a theory of neurobiology, neurons would be fundamental. With respect to a theory of society, people would be fundamental. Coins, perhaps, for numismatics. (These are idealizations, but I hope my point is being delivered.)

And so I say that before one asks the question ‘What is fundamental?’ one must select a fixed theory to work within. The theory is antecedent; the question is senseless when posed without a theory to stand atop. The Quinean notion of how statements may only be said to be true with respect to a given theory extends to this. Blindly and obliviously asking such a question to ten people from wildly differing backgrounds will lead only to confusion and chaos.

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Source: Aguirre A., Foster B., Merali Z. (Eds.). What is Fundamental? Springer,2019. — 189 p.. 2019

Theories

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