andy-k wrote:
Ecce wrote:
>>So this seems to jibe with either a substance
>> rearrangement of what existed before (continuity
>> of "something" that is merely transformed);
===
>Some aspects of an object change quickly (become
> different) whilst other aspects change too slowly
> to notice (remain the same). The object remains
> "the same object" by virtue of those aspects that
> change too slowly to notice (i.e. it retains the
> same name -- cf. the "Ship of Theseus" problem,
> wherein no part of the ship remains the same as the
> original ship). Also cf. Heraclitus: "Panta Rhei".
Yes. There's a conservation of *placeholder* from moment to moment,
whether it's as forms that endure with minor alterations, or forms that
shift suddenly to something radically different (like a ship exploding).
>>or the brute replacement of a prior step with a new
>> one (discontinuity, no transformation -- no
>> insurance in that scenario that the new world even
>> has anything in common with the old world other
>> than faith that memories are *truth* tellers).
===
>Quantum theory is built on empirical evidence that
> elementary particles change state discontinuously,
> but I don't see the need to postulate that the
> entire cosmos changes discontinuously.
I've fancied *eternalism* or semi-eternalism off and on, so there's
nothing dire to me either about an uneven flux or lack of temporal
synchonization across the cosmos. With what might be past, present, or
future from my perspective being interwoven together so that such
classifications become rather meaningless objectively or independent of
my *flow-bound* perspective.
But those who believe in the *presentism* view of time probably wouldn't
like the loss of a universal *now*. Or even Julian Barbour for that
matter, who very much took both quantum physics and relativity into
account in "The End of Time". AFAIK from an interview he did, his
proto-theory amounts to some kind of process, in that he has multiple
states of the universe battling in evolutionary competition to become
the next "now".
>>A "third" possibility (hysteresis) would be if the
>> old condition hangs around briefly to affect the
>> configuration of the new condition and thus
>> provide a mold or *cause* for the persistance of
>> "what was". That is, the old condition isn't
>> instantly eradicated by an abrupt manifestation of
>> the new. But at first empirical consideration,
>> there seems to be no "old state" ghostly fused
>> with the "new state".
===
>The idea of cause and effect has its uses in common
> speech, but when considered philosophically we have
> an "occult connection" to account for (as Hume
> pointed out). I'm inclined to think that we
> attribute the terms 'cause' and 'effect' to aspects
> of a single process that is broken up by our own
> habits of thought and for our own convenience.
But are you reviving a *universal now* if all the uneven slash
unsynchronized "little steps" result from cognitive agents fragmenting
each "big step" of an overarching process slash sequence?
>>Actions don't float on their own (biting doesn't
>> engage in biting), so "change" defined as that
>> (non-noun) needs something engaging in the
>> transition. An action can't be abstracted away
>> from thing(s) and seem to make sense in language
>> and the empirical world. A "new world" that
>> brutely manifests to replace a "former world"
>> never engaged in a change from one condition to
>> another (it didn't exist before).
===
>How about the idea that a "thing" is nothing more
> than the collection of its "properties"?
Plastic, water, and so forth aren't exactly objects like balloons or
shoes, but *stuff*. Taken to a deeper level, that's one conception of
substance: A relational stuff that endures regardless of what emergent
forms it assumes today or tommorrow. The downside is that it's probably
difficult to capture what such primary *relations* would be in the raw
(respresenting them as interconnecting lines would only be a geometrical
substitute in appearances).
Another view, more imaginable by humans, involves primary entities like
atomists entertain; but which seems to lead to mereological nihilism,
IMO, as the *dots* in such schemes are isolated even if cognitive agents
at a higher level can intergrate and conceive them as constituting
patterns, objects and their behaviors, or various stratums (how would
the cognitive agents and their remarkable inferential integrations arise
from such a dot-matrix?).
A definition that one large dictionary gives for the philosophical
definition of substance is: "Something that underlies all phenomena; and
in which accidents or attributes inhere; something that receives
modifications and is not itself a mode". This could be the *stuff*
option, but I have a tendency to conceive it as yet another one: a
background. A crude example:
In one moment there's a scene of marbles (primary entities approach
because that's easier) arranged to compose a triangle shape. In the next
moment there's a scene of marbles composing a circle form.
John remarks: "What endured from one moment to the next is the marbles.
That's the substance."
Jane objects: "No, those aren't the same marbles. They did not alter
into another state / attribute because these are scenes (worlds, nows,
etc) of two different sets of marbles."
John remarks: "Even if the sets of marbles were not the same, both
nevertheless relied upon a background which endured from one moment to
the next, featuring marbles first configured as a triangle and then a
change of marbles configured as a circle. Same background, with an
alteration. The background is the substance that attributes (like
marbles, triangles, circles) inhere in."
The wrangling between John and Jane could continue, but stopping at the
background stage is all I intended.
posted by Ecce
