Re: Cerberus and Quine

examachine_at_gmail.com
Date: 02/23/05 

Date: 23 Feb 2005 07:42:31 -0800

Dear Paul,

Thank you for another one of your insightful messages. This has been
one of the finest discussions I've ever been involved in (even if we
don't agree at the end of the day)

Paul Holbach wrote:
> Let me paraphrase this passage of yours so as to reveal its true
> meaning:
>
> "A wave function is unlike an observable. A singularity os unliek an
> ordinary region in our universe. "Sum of histories" are unlike the
> present. Time is unlike space! A possibility is unlike a chair! An
> "orbit" is unlike spacecraft. A photon may be unlike a physical law.
>
> Do you discern what I mean?
>
> (Itīs especially noun phrases of the type "the existence of a F"
which
> seem to lead you astray ontologically.)
>
> Whatever entities there may be, different entities are different due
to
> having different properties, and not due to existing in different
> senses of "exist"!
>
> Is that really so hard to see ...?

No, Paul, it's definitely not hard to see, but you have to be a
Platonist to say that!

Only a Platonist would readily grant that "sum of histories" or
space-time is an object. To the nominalist that I am, these are merely
abstractions (of a very extreme kind!), not entities. So, these are
concepts! The concept of a dog does not bark! The concept of sums of
histories does not physically exist, but yes, it exists in your head as
part of the corpus of theoretical physics. [In fact we can leave aside
space-time, it's not understood well in our time!]

You say that a possibility is unlike a chair, but both are objects, but
different kinds of objects, that exist in their own right. I am hoping
that you see that only a Platonist would always grant that. For the
Platonist, a "possibility" might be just as real as a chair. For a
nominalist, this is not always so. The possibility is an abstraction we
give to properties of complex arrangements of real-world events which
sometimes have the propensity to arouse certain events, and so forth.
So, if you are indeed referring merely to the arrangement of physical
entities, "possibility" may exist, but in the usual mathematical sense,
not. (It seems)

For orbit, it's even more clear for the nominalist. The orbit, as an
object, does not exist. As a theoretical entity, it does. It's
explanatory, it's informative, but it's not an object.

Regards, 

--
Eray Ozkural

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