tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.comments2022-03-25T07:20:12.468-04:00Matters of SubstanceGabriele Contessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13607158011908969169noreply@blogger.comBlogger535125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-62857060788513723932021-02-12T16:03:26.418-05:002021-02-12T16:03:26.418-05:00Can a mereological atom be extended? Perhaps it...Can a mereological atom be extended? Perhaps it's like top-down causation, except top-down extension: the extension is not in virtue of more basic parts.Joshua Rasmussenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03271147200091927898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-36703888817916217302021-02-12T16:02:28.409-05:002021-02-12T16:02:28.409-05:00Yes, that's basically the strategy Peter van I...Yes, that's basically the strategy Peter van Inwagen took when I pressed examples like these years ago...Joshua Rasmussenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03271147200091927898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-63146965665963243172021-02-12T13:41:01.525-05:002021-02-12T13:41:01.525-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joshua Rasmussenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03271147200091927898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-70209156294125607492021-02-12T13:38:15.551-05:002021-02-12T13:38:15.551-05:00Very much thinking out loud here:
perhaps 3 is fal...Very much thinking out loud here:<br />perhaps 3 is false because the only extended simples there can be are "ghostly" extended simples: penetrable, massless (and so weightless) particles, like a giant photonKit Alcockhttp://kitalcockblog.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-45255726976681234062021-02-12T13:33:59.129-05:002021-02-12T13:33:59.129-05:00Are simples mereological atoms? If so, how could a...Are simples mereological atoms? If so, how could a sum of unextended things ever yield an extended thing?Chris Menzelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11350629877252181466noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-1735881208207774162021-02-12T13:33:19.121-05:002021-02-12T13:33:19.121-05:00Can't some of the usual strategies for variati...Can't some of the usual strategies for variation in extended simples be applied here? For example, the cause acts on the left-side matter of S, but not the right side. Or the cause causes S to have the property of being unevenly weighted left-ly. Justinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05201810559474913784noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-59056654020710703952014-06-17T11:38:46.148-04:002014-06-17T11:38:46.148-04:00X exists at t0 and x exists at t1.... uhmmm, for m...X exists at t0 and x exists at t1.... uhmmm, for my money, that's a pretty paradigm case of diachronic identity. One can almost hear, X exists at t0 and x *still* exists at t1. Or X exists at t0 and x continues to exist at t1. Seems to me the phenomenon is pretty much undeflated. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-58717509080882861972014-06-17T11:29:23.751-04:002014-06-17T11:29:23.751-04:00I'm interested in this idea of connecting the ...I'm interested in this idea of connecting the primitive relation-hood of exemplification to whether or not it's intelligible for a rose to exemplify Socrates. I'm a fan of the idea that exemplification is primitive. I don't know the literature but it's hard to fathom how it could be otherwise. Could there really be an analysis/metaphysical reduction of exemplification? Wouldn't it involve some things being some ways? Which would involve exemplification? <br /><br />But I digress. I don't think the fact that exemplification is primitive really has anything to do with the intelligibility of a rose exemplifying Socrates. The notion seems to be somehow that if exemplification is primitive then anything goes - as far as intelligibility is concerned - with respect to what exemplifies what. A primitive relation - just to use the handy expression - can limit what stands in it no less than non-primitive relations or non-primitive whatevers. <br /><br />One might believe that causation is primitive but still think only events are causal; one might think belief is primitive but still think only propositions are believed. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-66866338545614139902014-06-16T13:34:35.409-04:002014-06-16T13:34:35.409-04:00Weirdo (if I may :-P),
I address those questions ...Weirdo (if I may :-P),<br /><br />I address those questions in section 5 of the paper. I doubt I can do a better job here. However, long story short: according to the non-eliminative nihilist, "a is the same F as b" does not express an identity and can be true even if some of simples referred to by "a" are not identical to any of the simples referred by "b" and vice versa.Gabriele Contessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13607158011908969169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-57384647270375548302014-06-16T12:42:49.758-04:002014-06-16T12:42:49.758-04:00Sounds like my interpretation was right - although...Sounds like my interpretation was right - although you resist some of the consequences. ;-) <br /><br />I wasn't asking about the identity of the object referred to by the cat, as you say I was, I was asking about the identity of the plurality - the simples arranged catwise. <br /><br />You say "At most it makes sense to ask questions about the identities of the simples collectively referred to as 'the cat'." I take you agree that it does make sense to ask those questions, since it does. <br /><br />I'm just asking identity questions about the cat, which you agree is a perfectly cromulent something(s) or other. To paraphrase Quine, as there is no entity without identity so there are no entities without identities. The cat, as you say, is a many rather than a one, but that doesn't make it any less amenable to the rigorous requirements of identity conditions. <br /><br />Your view, if I understand correctly, is that, as "the crowd" and "those people" co-refer, so "the cat" and "those simples" co-refer (in the right circumstances etc.). Surely if "X" and "Y" corefer then X is (identity) Y. Whether we're talking singles or multiples doesn't matter. Identity is identity. We can perfectly intelligently ask questions about the "identities" of the crowd and those people. Does the crowd persist, etc. Are the people still there surrounding that building. It's no different in principle for the cat and its "associated" plurality. Confessions of a Weirdohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07623817284199622122noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-42289877021127486512014-06-16T11:12:04.808-04:002014-06-16T11:12:04.808-04:00Hi Anonymous,
On my view, "the cat" tur...Hi Anonymous,<br /><br />On my view, "the cat" turns out not to refer to a single object that is a cat but to a plurality of objects (analogously to grammatically singular terms such as "the crowd"). So it doesn't make sense to ask questions about the identity of the object referred to by "the cat" as you do, for there is no such object. At most it make sense to ask questions about the identities of the simples collectively referred to as "the cat". Anyway, all this is explained much more clearly and extensively in the paper, so I recommend that you have a closer look at it. You might want to focus on section 5 in particular, where I discuss questions of identity.Gabriele Contessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13607158011908969169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-45200261207198255462014-06-16T09:09:52.467-04:002014-06-16T09:09:52.467-04:00I don't quite understand your view. Reading th...I don't quite understand your view. Reading this and (skimming) your paper leaves me wondering. Are you saying that the cat is (is of identity) the simples arranged catwise? I don't think this admits of a sorta kinda answer. Either they are identical or not. I don't think your view is that the cat is sorta kinda identical with the simples etc. The "all it takes to be" business suggests something short of identity. But the notion that "the cat" *refers* to the simples etc suggests identity. Since the latter seems to me the more interesting view, I'll proceed on the assumption that that's what you mean. <br /><br />If identity is the view then I think persistence is a problem, among others. I know you address this in the paper - persistence is the gradual acquisition or loss of simples with which the object is associated or identical. But once it's clear that identity is the view, the problems become more obvious. For example, while a cat can survive the acquisition or loss of parts, it's less clear whether the simples arranged catwise can. I'm inclined to think that simples (the plurality) can survive the acquisition or loss of their "members," but there are difficulties. The crowd surrounding the building can continue to exist even if it loses or gains a couple of people. But some might doubt that the simples etc can survive the loss or acquisition of some among them. <br /><br />But a bigger problem is that the simples will pretty clearly persist in conditions that the cat does not. So the simples arranged catwise will persist if they are scattered to the four corners. The cat will not. Thus the cat is not identical with the simples arranged catwise. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-52562527924828115692013-10-17T13:13:46.713-04:002013-10-17T13:13:46.713-04:00Thanks, Matthews V! My first reaction would be to ...Thanks, Matthews V! My first reaction would be to say that the issue you raise is an epistemological one (and an interesting one) but analyses of disposition ascriptions are trying to answer a semantical/metaphysical question. In any case, it seems that trying to determine whether something is an antidote to D, we have to determine if o has D in the first place and we might never be able to find out if D is necessarily (or at least always) interfered with. That doesn't mean, however, that there is no fact of the matter as to whether o has D (see the section of the paper on necessary interferences).Gabriele Contessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13607158011908969169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-41524247642210328152013-10-12T16:17:57.107-04:002013-10-12T16:17:57.107-04:00Great paper. One question, though:
Suppose we wan...Great paper. One question, though:<br /><br />Suppose we want to test an object O to see if it possesses the disposition D - contrafactually(if S, then M). We also want to test A1 and check if this is an antidote to D.<br /><br />Test #1: We put O under S & A1. O doesn't manifest M.<br />Test #2: We put O under S & ~A1. O doesn't manifest M either.<br /><br />In this case I would feel compelled to say O isn't disposed to manifest M if subject to S in the absence of A1 - which is the same as saying that A1 isn't an antidote to D. But that would be too easy. Maybe O didn't manifest M because there was another hidden antidote in the active: A2. So we could set up test #3:<br /><br />Test #3: O is subject to S & ~A1 & ~A2. O doesn't manifest M.<br /><br />So what conclusion can we draw at this point? Either A1 and A2 are antidotes to D and there is still another antidote A3 on the active, or they're not antidotes to D and O just isn't disposed to M when S. But how can we distinguish those two alternatives unless we already know the whole extension of the set of every antidote-to-D?Matthews Vnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-80817833359121451022013-05-21T05:56:57.067-04:002013-05-21T05:56:57.067-04:00I worry that what people call 'location in abs...I worry that what people call 'location in abstract space' is just the use of a spatial metaphor (or analogy) to talk about the relation of any entity whatsoever to any whole whatsoever. So, 'location'—as x's relation to the yys in whatever whole of parts you can imagine—can be described, by analogy, as x's 'location' in the whole. As such the idea that 'location' is multiply realised is not surprising.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13581822685471593228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-36045822618542730972013-05-13T18:03:05.255-04:002013-05-13T18:03:05.255-04:00Right, but I have a stronger intuition in the case...Right, but I have a stronger intuition in the case of position that there could be position in classical worlds. Intuitively, position is less tightly law-bound than, say, charge.<br /><br />So I am suspecting multiple-realizability about position (and maybe momentum, as its conjugate) but not, say, about charge. In worlds where classical electrodynamic laws hold, then, nothing has any charge, but there is instead charge*, which behaves like in our world charge does in the classical limit. But the classical worlds really do have position, though it is realized differently from how it is realized in our world.<br /><br />One could, I think, try to hold that both charge and position are on par. I doubt that one could come up with a very plausible functional characterization of charge, so that would require saying that both charge and position are law-bound, and in classical worlds nothing has any charge and nothing has location or shape. Moreover, what goes for space probably goes for time, so in classical worlds there would probably be no time or even change. This is counterintuitive. Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-76726698917398731502013-05-13T17:29:09.609-04:002013-05-13T17:29:09.609-04:00Interesting. From the perspective of quantum mecha...Interesting. From the perspective of quantum mechanics, there's nothing particularly special about "spatial location" as opposed to any other measurable property. For example, there is a momentum wavefunction representation -- and indeed, a wavefunction representation for every self-adjoint operator. So, if quantum theory justifies talk about "partial location," then it also justifies talk about "partial properties" for every measurable property of a physical system.Bryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07379669532781325751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-15773771734107452522013-05-11T10:59:22.150-04:002013-05-11T10:59:22.150-04:00The standard mathematical explanation of location ...The standard mathematical explanation of location in abstract space is that it's just set membership: 7 is in R just in case 7 is a member of R.<br /><br />In any case, the "from the inside" approach in the classical won't distinguish between momentum and position, since classically both have the same mathematical structure: they have values whose space has the structure of R^3. But I want to say what makes position position, what makes it different from momentum, or charge, etc. Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-670700673090656842013-05-10T21:20:25.697-04:002013-05-10T21:20:25.697-04:00Hi Alexander,
That sounds good for the case of lo...Hi Alexander,<br /><br />That sounds good for the case of location in physical space, but what about location in abstract spaces?<br />Take the real one-dimensional space R with its usual topology. Here it is not even clear what the capability of any real number <em>to interact with any other real number</em> would be. I assume that an interaction between a real numbers is any operation definable over the real field. But then it is not clear that the "capability" (I use scare-quotes because I'm assuming that it is a term with modal load; and such load may be difficult to conceive of when talking about necessary beings, as numbers are assumed to be) is correlated with distance, or that such a tendency might exist.<br /><br />I have the intuition that perhaps we should not try to determine what location is "from the outside" (i.e. by its effects) but "from the inside": perhaps by abstracting them from the abstract notion of space or of structure.<br /><br />Best,carloshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03631476894943998012noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-13421050868394803942013-05-10T04:05:02.613-04:002013-05-10T04:05:02.613-04:001. It seems like location in time is at least as ...1. It seems like location in time is at least as important for causal interaction. That's consistent with your story insofar as time and space location are fungible in Minkowski space, but it seems like you'd then have to take account of the asymmetry of causation and that time is usually taken as a separate variable in the wavefunction. Neither of these necessarily undermine your point, but I'm not fully envisioning how you'd mean to include them, either.<br /><br />2. Two objects can also fail to interact because they have insufficient charge or are insufficiently massive (neutrinos, say) despite being really close. Is location special because it cuts across all modes of interaction? Is there then a place for your definition of location in a world where we have a unified theory of all forces?<br /><br />3. What does location mean in the entangled case? It seems strange to give an account of location largely in quantum terms without taking account of this central quantum phenomenon. It seems like either solution to the Bell dilemma is problematic for your story because it undercuts our intuitions about either location or causality.<br /><br />None of this is to say that I have a better theory; just questions that occurred to me as I read your post.Ryan Millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05175625979264185229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-5079268358709467152013-03-28T09:32:19.521-04:002013-03-28T09:32:19.521-04:00Well, it's worse to wrong A and B than to wron...Well, it's worse to wrong A and B than to wrong A, ceteris paribus, and if I fail to respect A after having promised B to respect all people, then I wrong A and B.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-21903857734412080212013-03-26T20:08:32.623-04:002013-03-26T20:08:32.623-04:00Hi Alexander. You say,
"It seems clear to m...Hi Alexander. You say, <br /><br />"It seems clear to me that if I promise you to A, which I am anyway obligated to do, then typically I do more wrong if I fail to A than if I hadn't promised. So the promise adds to the degree of obligation."<br /><br />This assumes that it is possible to validly promise such a thing. But let's assume that it is possible. Even so, I don't see why that would add to the degree of obligation. If I promise to respect persons and then fail to do so, breaking my promise certainly adds to the *number* of wrong things that I've done, for now I've both violated a fundamental moral obligation *and* violated a promise, but the union of these two actions in a single state of affairs doesn't seem to me to add to the *intensity* of the wrongness (so to speak) of either action, nor to that of the resultant state of affairs--if we take the conjunction of the state of affairs of my breaking some other promise and the state of affairs of my violating some other fundamental moral obligation, without that promise being a promise not to violate that or any other fundamental moral obligation, the resultant conjunctive state of affairs doesn't seem any worse to me than the one we are considering, where two such violations are united.Jason Zarrihttp://www.scholardarity.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-61175556388107231762013-03-25T16:37:03.223-04:002013-03-25T16:37:03.223-04:00It seems clear to me that if I promise you to A, w...It seems clear to me that if I promise you to A, which I am anyway obligated to do, then typically I do more wrong if I fail to A than if I hadn't promised. So the promise adds to the degree of obligation.<br /><br />But this observation may undercut my argument. For it may be that the fundamental moral truths are not of the form <I ought to A> but <Failure to A is wrong in such-and-such a respect>.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-49458237065396542572013-03-23T22:02:29.464-04:002013-03-23T22:02:29.464-04:00Interesting. I think you might be right, but as yo...Interesting. I think you might be right, but as you point out this example is controversial. How would you respond to the objection that you can't validly promise to do something that you're obligated to do anyway, say because the promise seems morally defective (in the sense that your promise betrays the fact that you would otherwise give yourself the option of not doing what you're promising to do, even though you're *obligated* to do it)?Jason Zarrihttp://www.scholardarity.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8027844571839885250.post-66066864627649533772012-11-16T14:35:39.977-05:002012-11-16T14:35:39.977-05:00I am a nihilist about composition, so I think of t...I am a nihilist about composition, so I think of the stageless worm as an extended simple. <br /><br />But one could also have the view that there are stages, but they're not fundamental.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.com