SUO: Re: Life history of a rock
Ross,
I circulated that note to show further evidence against a widespread
assumption among 20th century analytic philsophers that objects are
somehow "ontologically prior" to processes. One of the worst offenders
is Quine in his book _Word and Object_, which completely ignores
processes, events, and change, either in purely physical interactions
or in interactions involving agents of any kind. Others, such as
Strawson, happily dismiss people like Davidson who dare to suggest
that events or processes might be worthy candidates for an ontology
to consider. Even today, Barry Smith is proposing an ontology that
makes "events" accidents of "substances" -- following Aristotle in
the Categories, despite the fact that Aristotle distanced himself
from that position in his later work.
Some comments on your comments:
Ross Lee Graham wrote:
> COMMENT: Tar can appear in rock form, but if you put one of these 'rocks' in a
> funnel over a period of days it pours through the funnel as if it were liquid.
> Here the time scale determines how we regard the tar....
Yes, these examples illustrate the general position I favor.
> COMMENT: For me, 'new techniques' implies methods other than radioactivity or
> isotope ratios.
That depends on how you define a "technique". In the article I cited,
the basis for the dating is radioactive uranium and thorium, but the
method (or technique) involves using an electron microscope that can
focus on vastly smaller samples than anyone was able to use before.
As a result, they can analyze samples without destroying them, and
they can examine different layers independently, instead of getting
an average date for the entire rock.
> COMMENT: Aristotle thought in terms of processes and in this sense Whitehead
> follows Aristotle. A major difference is that Aristotle used biological modeling
> in his notion of processes whereas Whitehead focuses on mind (a term many
> scholars are starting to reject).
>
> Bergson also references processes and suggests that for thought to capture
> processes requires static conceptualizations (thought objects, you might say).
> His contrast is between dynamic and static. Bergson liked to use life process
> models for his ideas (including ecosystem considerations).
To say that "Whitehead focuses on mind" is highly misleading, and
unnamed "scholars" can be found on every side of every question.
Whitehead cited Bergson and claimed that he believed that his work
was compatible with Bergson's approach (except for modifications that
were necessary to adapt it to his own framework). But Whitehead
insisted that Descartes's mind-body distinction was an unfortunate
"fallacy of misplaced concreteness". Neither of them would replace
"matter" with "mind" as the foundation for ontology.
Neither Whitehead nor Peirce distinguished "mind" as something
separate from "body". They both considered "mind" and "body" to
be descriptions (adjective-like) that could be applied to the same
phenomena when viewed from different perspectives. And they both
maintained that it was possible to find a continuity of "mind-like"
phenomena at every level from the lowest to the highest. Recent work
on the encoding of information in DNA, biosemiotics, and related
developments seems to confirm their insights.
> COMMENT: Are you interpreting 'processes' as a mode of change, or are you
> suggesting 'process' and 'change' are synonyms....
I am claiming, along with Whitehead, that the ultimate nature of what
exists can be characterized more accurately by the informal word
'process' than by the word 'object'. I don't take "change" to be
fundamental; it is just one more way of describing phenomena that
are basically process-like. For more detail, see my paper
http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm
> COMMENT: "objectively observable" and "viewpoint" seem to be an oxymoron pair....
No. Every observation is always from some point of view. The only way
to make observations repeatable by different observers is to state the
conditions and purpose of the observatations explicitly.
> 'Objective' implies an independence from viewpoints.
No. To be objective, it is necessary to state the point of view as
explicitly as possible. There is no such thing as an observation
made without any point of view.
> Your notion here of "public knowledge" sounds a little like 'intersubjective
> testability'. 'same conditions' and 'same results' are also observation
> approximations for 'same'. Differences are regarded as 'error' and sameness
> usually has some fuzzy notion of allowable difference.
In that little note, I didn't intend to go into any detail on thses
issues. But if you ask, I'll summarize my position briefly:
1. There is a "real world" that is independent of how you or I or
anybody else thinks about it.
2. There are facts about the world that can be independently verified
by different agents who repeat similar tests under similar
conditions
for similar purposes.
3. Of all the "facts" that we think we know, an enormous number of them
are true to the extent that we would be willing to stake our lives
on their veracity (as we do every day when we drive a car or fly
in an airplane).
4. However, there is no statement that we can be sure is absolutely
true without any qualification, and no statement that might not be
corrected or be replaced by a more general statement that makes
more accurate predictions in a greater number of cases.
This is roughly the position that Peirce called "finite fallibilism":
we know a lot, but we can never be sure that any particular "fact"
we think we know is true without qualification. (Although, as Peirce
said, it is easy to be certain about any particular point -- all we have
to do is to be sufficiently vague.)
John Sowa