SUO: Re: One Stone Makes a Beach
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Menzel" <cmenzel@tamu.edu>
> On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 01:08:28PM -0700, Dace wrote:
> > [Tom Johnston wrote:]
> > > And I think that Wittgenstein had, if not the answer, at least a
> > > really creative suggestion. He suggested that we are held captive by
> > > the Aristotelian notion of a substance and its essential nature, and
> > > then with its accidental properties. When the essential nature
> > > changes, the thing becomes a new thing (of a different kind). When
> > > an accidental property changes, the thing is still the same thing,
> > > of the same kind. Repaint my car, and it's still a car, and it's the
> > > same car it was before I painted it.
> > >
> > > But suppose I take it to Monster Garage (a TV series), and they
> > > transform it into a three-wheeled vehicle. Is it still a car? How
> > > about a chopping it down further and making a two-wheeled vehicle
> > > with an engine and a place to sit. Hasn't my car become a motorcycle
> > > now? If so, when did that change happen?
> >
> > The problem with this approach is the assumption that "car" and
> > "motorcycle" are things that actually exist in the world. They do
> > not. If "carness" is the property that makes something a car, then
> > cars exist in our minds. What exists in the world is not carness but
> > atoms and molecues arranged in a manner such that we can get inside
> > this set of molecules and transport ourselves to a destination of our
> > choosing. This set of molecules is a "car" to the extent that it
> > corresponds to our idea of what a car is. So the transformation from
> > "car" to "motorcycle" is entirely arbitrary. It changes from one to
> > the other when we decide it has changed. In reality it's just one set
> > of molecules that's been gradually altered into another set.
> > ...
>
> All of which, interesting as it might be over a latte at the corner
> coffeeshop, is utterly irrelevant to the engineering project that is the
> focus of this group. The task is to axiomatize useful ways of
> conceiving the world as reflected in the ways that real people doing
> real work in real domains talk about it.
This is precisely the issue that triggered my original comments. The
trouble with axiomatizing the world in terms of "real people doing real
work" is that real work is carried out in real time, and ever since Einstein
we're stuck with spacetime. Hence the conflict between "3D" and "4D."
Here's the passage that got me started on this topic, posted by Matthew West
in response to Adam Pease:
> 3D and 4D are "classical" positions, and they are incompatible.
> 3D says that objects are wholly present at each point in time they
> exist (i.e. there is no part of them teporally extended) whereas
> 4D says that things have temporal parts.
In claiming a thing is "present," the 3D position takes the literal, common
sense view of time. Time is real, and as you exist in this "moment," you
take up three dimensions of space. 3D is perfectly at odds with 4D because
it asserts the asbolute nature of space and time, whereas 4D asserts their
relativity. A more clear-cut contradiction could hardly be imagined.
But there's another approach that preserves the common sense view without
conflicting with 4D. What if, as Bergson suggested, only time is absolute
but not space? It may seem that a half contradiciton is no better than a
full contradiciton, but look at it a little more closely. If space is not
absolute, then it exists strictly in relation to time, that is, on a
continuum with time. In other words, to get to 4D we need only deny that
space is absolute. Time can remain absolute, its existence contingent on
nothing outside itself. This preserves the common sense reality of time, as
we experience it "moment to moment."
Thus, if we stand 3D on its head and refer to it as "RealTime," the conflict
with 4D vanishes. Time simply exists in relation to itself as well as to
space.
I might add that we run up against a similar conundrum in regard to the
mind/body problem. Do we axiomatize according to "experiences," a concept
that has no meaning in neural research? Or do we axiomatize according to
the needs of neuroresearchers? Clearly, the common sense and scientific
views are incompatible. Mind has properties, such as representation, that
cannot ever be understood from a material standpoint. How can a molecule
"represent" another molecule? After all, matter is simple: An atom is an
atom-- no more, no less. So, if we want to keep mind, we must posit it
*alongside* brain, a position which is no more tenable now than it was in
Descartes' day.
Again, there's a way around this: Mind is an object in RealTime, while brain
is an object in SpaceTime. Or, more precisely, the object BrainMind is
perceived as "mind" from the point of view of RealTime and "brain" from the
point of view of SpaceTime.
What is mind but a personalized version of time? Instead of the present, we
have consciousness. Instead of the past, we have memory. Instead of the
future, we have will. The very meaning of the common sense notion of "the
self" is that the mind, like time, exists in relation to *itself.* Just as
the absolute nature of time (RealTime) in no way conflicts with its
relativity to space (SpaceTime), the absolute nature of mind in no way
conflicts with its relativity to brain.
> "What exists in the world",
> for this project, is whatever such people say exists, regardless of what
> you might deduce a priori from your highfalutin first principles. Go
> tell the knowledge engineers at Chrysler there aren't REALLY any cars.
> They'll laugh you out of the building.
Ha ha. Yes, of course.
Ted Dace