Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
- The Beast
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
- Consul
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
If there are extended atoms of space at the Planck level with some nonzero volume, they lack spatial parts (or formal parts, as Thomas Holden would call them); but every region of space with a volume larger than the Planck volume does have spatial parts.Steve3007 wrote: ↑July 9th, 2020, 5:36 amIt is the part that I've highlighted in bold that seems most concerned with what I've been saying over the last few posts. It seems incoherent to me to propose that a spatially extended object cannot be considered to have spatially distinct parts/bits/sections/slices which could be the subject of "selective attention", as the quote above puts it, for the purpose of measurement. As I said, measuring an object with a ruler involves aligning parts/bits/sections/slices of the ruler with parts/bits/sections/slices of the object.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
Ontological truth: the universe has no parts.Steve3007 wrote: ↑July 9th, 2020, 10:55 amOK. So in what field of study is it perfectly fine?Atla wrote:That's perfectly fine as long we aren't doing ontology.
Are you saying that the Earth having two hemispheres is a useful model but is not a truth about the way that the universe is?
If so, can you give an example of something that you regard as an ontological truth?
(truth = as far as we can tell right now etc. etc.)
But it's pretty much impossible to do any study in any field without dividing the universe into parts.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
If we start talking about "atoms of space" I think we'll just complicate things, since that opens up the separate issue of whether we can regard space as a thing. If this conversation is going to continue in any form, I'd prefer to stick to lumps of matter and not get bogged down in specific physics technicalities like the Planck length.Consul wrote:If there are extended atoms of space at the Planck level with some nonzero volume, they lack spatial parts...
For the same reason, I'm not talking about Quantum Mechanics here. When I said earlier that a part/section of an object can be allowed to become arbitrarily small (but not zero), such that measurements can become arbitrarily accurate (but not 100% accurate), I'm aware that QM contradicts that for empirical reasons. Measurements of various pairs of quantities cannot become arbitrarily accurate. They are limited by the non-zero value of Planck's constant. But I'm not talking about that.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
Not always, I only checked it once. I guess it's easier to troll this way, but if you want I can uncheck it.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
OK. So you're talking about the epistemological necessity for reductionism.Atla wrote:Ontological truth: the universe has no parts.
(truth = as far as we can tell right now etc. etc.)
But it's pretty much impossible to do any study in any field without dividing the universe into parts.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
No. Don't worry about it. Just curious.Atla wrote:I guess it's easier to troll this way, but if you want I can uncheck it.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
So what's your take on Terrapin Station's thought experiment about a universe containing a single particle, with no parts/bits/sections/slices, but which he says is growing, and is therefore moving, but to which the notion of speed, he says, cannot be applied?Atla wrote:Ontological truth: the universe has no parts.
I presume you would say that the real universe is actually like that (apart from the speed thing, perhaps), but that in order to find out useful stuff about it, we can conceptually (but not ontologically) divide it into parts.
For myself, as I've said more than once, I think his thought experiment is internally incoherent for various reasons.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
The universe having parts simply means that you could, say, slice an orange in two, or take a pill out of a bottle and put it in your mouth instead.
If you want to claim that those things aren't possible, you've got some heavy lifting in front of you.
- The Beast
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
I'm not sure how to answer that. Two minor issues are that I neither think that a universe can consist of only a single particle (as that may lack symmetry), nor that a universe can actually grow (as I think that change is a supernatural idea), instead the more relevant issue is whether or not our universe is pixelated.Steve3007 wrote: ↑July 9th, 2020, 11:24 amSo what's your take on Terrapin Station's thought experiment about a universe containing a single particle, with no parts/bits/sections/slices, but which he says is growing, and is therefore moving, but to which the notion of speed, he says, cannot be applied?Atla wrote:Ontological truth: the universe has no parts.
I presume you would say that the real universe is actually like that (apart from the speed thing, perhaps), but that in order to find out useful stuff about it, we can conceptually (but not ontologically) divide it into parts.
For myself, as I've said more than once, I think his thought experiment is internally incoherent for various reasons.
But aside from that, I think that whatever an universe is "made of", those things exist in relation to each other. In other words, there is no external measure by which we can tell that the universe is growing. Growth would probably have to be an internal rearrangement of the universe, and in that case, for all practical purposes, the universe needs to have "parts", even if they are identical parts.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
I've only got time to look at this one part for now. I can see why you would think that the idea that a universe can grow would be "supernatural". I'm not sure I agree in the case of the real universe, but I agree with respect to TS's single homogeneous particle universe. That's one of my objections to the coherence of that thought experiment.Atla wrote:nor that a universe can actually grow (as I think that change is a supernatural idea)
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
The universe may be one big extended simple substance, in which case it lacks substantial parts, i.e. parts which are substances themselves and independent building blocks of the universe. But it would still have spatial parts. However, in the case of a whole composed of substantial parts the substantial parts are ontologically prior to and independent of the whole, whereas in the case of a whole without substantial parts but with spatial parts, the whole is ontologically prior to the spatial parts and they are dependent on the whole. Extended simples aren't composed of their spatial parts like a brick wall is composed of bricks, which exist independently of and separably from the wall.
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Re: Can Physicalism be defined non-instrumentally?
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