Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Terrapin Station]

Atoms are, by definition, irreducible.

Physical atoms aren't mereological atoms,

Oy vey.

In other words, what's the etymology of the term "atom"?

[Atla]

Why do people in the 21st century still talk about matter and substratum like they were anything more than reified ideas from over 2000 years ago?

Because there are good ontological reasons to do so.

If you are stuck in 19th century science, that is.

[Consul]

I believe neither in immanent universals nor in transcendent ones, because I believe properties are particulars rather than universals. I also believe that property-particulars are both generically and rigidly substrate-dependent. That is, if a is a K having the property F, then F doesn't only depend for its existence on the existence of Ks, but also on the existence of the one K which is a.

Do you believe these things because:

1. They are your personal taste; you like the cut of their jib.
2. You think that it would be logically inconsistent to believe otherwise. (as in the example above)
3. You think that this belief leads to propositions that more accurately describe and predict what is observed to be the case than possible alternative beliefs do.

Or some combination of the above?

Having thought hard about them, I believe these things because they strike me as true (correct, accurate). Alternative ontological category schemes or models are not excluded logically, but ontological plausibility and acceptability aren't just based on mere formal consistency and mere logical possibility. The concept of ontological coherence is broader and weaker than the concept of logical coherence. For example, I cannot derive a logical contradiction (p & ~p) from the concept of substrateless events or processes, but it doesn't follow that there are ontologically possible worlds where such events or processes occur. Ontological possibility includes logical possibility, but logical possibility doesn't include ontological possibility. Substrateless events or processes are formally possible, but I don't think they are really possible, their very conception striking me as ontologically incomprehensible and incoherent.

As opposed to making descriptions, making predictions isn't part of the job of ontology.

QUOTE>
"One measure of success in ontology is the extent to which a given account is internally coherent, the extent to which it fits together in sensible ways to yield a plausible picture of the universe. A second measure of an ontology’s success is the degree to which it reconciles the manifest image of the universe, the universe as we find it in the special sciences and in ordinary life, with the conception of the universe that emerges in fundamental physics, where fundamental physics is understood as being in the business of providing the deep story concerning the truthmakers for every truth that has a truthmaker. A third measure of an ontology is its success in resolving pressing philosophical puzzles."

(Heil, John. The Universe As We Find It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 288)

"Ontology sets out an even more abstract model of how the world is than theoretical physics, a model that has placeholders for scientific results and excluders for tempting confusions. Ontology and theoretical science can help one another along, we hope, with minimal harm."

(Martin, C. B. The Mind in Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 42)
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[Consul]

Physical atoms aren't mereological atoms,

Oy vey. In other words, what's the etymology of the term "atom"?

Etymologically speaking, atoms are uncuttables or indivisibles. A mereological atom is a thing lacking proper parts, so atoms in this sense are noncomposite simples. The atoms physicists and chemists talk about are not noncomposite simples, since they do have proper parts.

[Terrapin Station]

Oy vey. In other words, what's the etymology of the term "atom"?

Etymologically speaking, atoms are uncuttables or indivisibles.

Right. Which was clearly what he was referring to.

[Consul]

By the way, there are different sorts of divisibility:

QUOTE>
"It may help if I introduce the four types of division by way of an illustration drawn in terms of the most immediately familiar of Enlightenment systems, the classical physics and metaphysics of the later Newton. Consider one of Newton's indestructible extended atoms: a miniature corpuscle, perfectly solid, operating in the void. This atom cannot be physically broken apart by any natural force: unlike the grosser bodies aggregated from atoms, it is physically indivisible. Nevertheless, since it is extended it has spatially distinct parts—for instance, it has a left and a right side. So it is formally divisible. Moreover, were someone to consider these halves, they could, in their thought, designate them as two entities individuating them in mental representation, perhaps through diversity of consideration or selective attention. So it is intellectually divisible. Finally, notwithstanding their physical inseparability, there is no logical reason why those spatially distinct halves could not exist separated from one another. God, for instance, could rupture and distance the two halves, or perhaps annihilate the one part while preserving the other. So it is metaphysically divisible. Now consider Newtonian space. Like the atom, Newton's space is physically indivisible (it cannot be naturally broken apart), formally divisible (it has spatially distinct parts or subregions), and intellectually divisible (a mind could represent it as containing diverse parts). However, unlike the atom, Newtonian space is metaphysically indivisible. Not even God can separate and distance its parts: if one part is given, all are given in immutable, inseparable, and immoveable array.

(Holden, Thomas. The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 11)
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[Consul]

Etymologically speaking, atoms are uncuttables or indivisibles.

Right. Which was clearly what he was referring to.

Perhaps, but "irreducible" and "indivisible" aren't synonyms.
Anyway, physical/chemical atoms aren't mereological atoms, because they are mereologically reducible to sums/fusions of elementary particles. Whether these are ontologically reducible to bundles of physical quantities is another question.

[Terrapin Station]

Right. Which was clearly what he was referring to.

Perhaps, but "irreducible" and "indivisible" aren't synonyms.

In the context of talking about the definition of "atom," when someone says that the definition is "irreducible," you should be able to figure out that they're using the term in the sense of "indivisible." We're talking about basic comprehension skills there.

[Steve3007]

It all makes me think there there is something more than the 3 main particles.

It appears that there are. Most famous quote relating to the proliferation of particles in the standard model:

"Who ordered that?"

I guess it's a reference to meals in restaurants where unexpected dishes keep turning up at the table.

[Sy Borg]

That only shifts the problem down one level. Can you tell me about the free-floating substrate-independent qualities of the substrate itself?

:?:
A property had by a substance isn't "free-floating".

A property qua Platonic, transcendent universal is generically substrate-independent in the sense that the number of its instances can be 0, whereas a property qua Aristotelian, immanent universal is generically substrate-dependent in the sense that the number of its instances must be ≥1.

I believe neither in immanent universals nor in transcendent ones, because I believe properties are particulars rather than universals. I also believe that property-particulars are both generically and rigidly substrate-dependent. That is, if a is a K having the property F, then F doesn't only depend for its existence on the existence of Ks, but also on the existence of the one K which is a.

If you speak of matter (or energy) and its substrates. If matter has a substrate, what is the substrate's substrate? If it lacks one, then it is by definition "free-floating". It may be elephants all he way down, or may not.

Yet the divisions are ultimately based on human perceptions. Consider the categories of "liquid" and "gas". It all seems straightforward to us at our scale, but not to a million bacteria in a gas droplet. In fact, even the fairyfly, the smallest insect, essentially "swims" through the air using paddle-like wings. Consider solids. Compared with a neutron star, planets like the Earth are not solid, akin to large balls of thin gas. So, when we think of entities and their substrates, consider these relatively artificial divisions between states of what is really just one thing with zones of relative concentration and order or dissipation and chaos.

This is a long-winded way of saying that substrates and the entities they carry are fundamentally the same thing.

[Sy Borg]

If I had even a tenth of your nous about half a century ago, that is exactly what I might have said when being confused in chemistry class. Then again, our brains aren't evolved to make sense of reality, at least not beyond finding ways of staying alive long enough to do the horizontal tango and then dealing with the consequences of that act.

It all makes me think there there is something more than the 3 main particles. Whatever that might be, it does offer consistency.
When we go smaller than the 3 (electrons, neutrons, and protons) we get into the treacherous are of QM and indeterminism - no wonder if our model is less than perfect in the first place. But even with the double slot experiment we get a perfectly predictable unpredictability.
I think we are going to have to wait until someone figures out a better model. On the other end of the scale the cosmologists had improved the model from early attempts Aristotle aristarchus to Ptolemy until Newton nailed it down, but the thing keeps looking shaky. I've no doubt that we shall reach a point where further descriptive explanations fail us as the metaphors we use run out of common sense. Maybe we are here already?

It all makes me think there there is something more than the 3 main particles. Whatever that might be, it does offer consistency.
When we go smaller than the 3 (electrons, neutrons, and protons) we get into the treacherous are of QM and indeterminism - no wonder if our model is less than perfect in the first place. But even with the double slot experiment we get a perfectly predictable unpredictability.
I think we are going to have to wait until someone figures out a better model. On the other end of the scale the cosmologists had improved the model from early attempts Aristotle aristarchus to Ptolemy until Newton nailed it down, but the thing keeps looking shaky. I've no doubt that we shall reach a point where further descriptive explanations fail us as the metaphors we use run out of common sense. Maybe we are here already?[/quote]
Yes, the Standard Model may go the way of Ptolomy's geocentrism, which enjoyed primacy for over a thousand years. Over a thousand years, thousands of experts would have ridiculed the idea of heliocentrism. While the rigour of science has since improved enormously, the situation appears to remain roughly the same in relative terms - where orthodox hypotheses that are not fully substantiated are still treated as being indisputable. In truth, they are only provisionally correct.

Imagine bacteria in a body trying to describe the operations of its host. It would be full of descriptions of how certain chemical flows here, electrical signals flow there, without ever having the slightest notion that they are within a larger, conscious system in which they are part. This is not to say that we are living within a gigantic life form or that the universe itself is conscious (and these remain fringe hypotheses) but there may well be systemic dynamics that are too large (or too small, for that matter) for us to perceive.

[Gertie]

Sculptor

I think we are going to have to wait until someone figures out a better model. On the other end of the scale the cosmologists had improved the model from early attempts Aristotle aristarchus to Ptolemy until Newton nailed it down, but the thing keeps looking shaky. I've no doubt that we shall reach a point where further descriptive explanations fail us as the metaphors we use run out of common sense. Maybe we are here already?

Do you think the fact that phenomenal mental experience has no place in our current scientific model of what the universe is made of and how it works suggests we need an improved model?

Or do you think we just haven't (yet at least) discovered how it fits?

[Consul]

If you speak of matter (or energy) and its substrates. If matter has a substrate, what is the substrate's substrate? If it lacks one, then it is by definition "free-floating". It may be elephants all he way down, or may not.

Matter (material substances, materials) doesn't need a substrate because it is a substrate itself.

Yet the divisions are ultimately based on human perceptions. Consider the categories of "liquid" and "gas". It all seems straightforward to us at our scale, but not to a million bacteria in a gas droplet. In fact, even the fairyfly, the smallest insect, essentially "swims" through the air using paddle-like wings. Consider solids. Compared with a neutron star, planets like the Earth are not solid, akin to large balls of thin gas. So, when we think of entities and their substrates, consider these relatively artificial divisions between states of what is really just one thing with zones of relative concentration and order or dissipation and chaos.

This is a long-winded way of saying that substrates and the entities they carry are fundamentally the same thing.

No, they are not, because substrates or substances aren't (complexes of) attributes. Nothing, no thing can be the properties it has!

By the way, there is an incoherent conception of substances as things composed of attributes plus a "bare", i.e. (intrinsically) attributeless, substrate. The concept of an attributeless substrate of attributes or a propertyless bearer of properties is plainly self-contradictory. But this is not my conception of substrates or substances!

By the way, the concept of a substance or an object is ambiguous insofar it refers either to "thin things" or to "thick things", i.e. either to substances or objects qua substrates regarded in abstraction from their attributes or to substances or objects regarded in conjunction with their attributes. Thick things have their properties as parts, and are thus partially (but not totally) identical with them, whereas thin things do not have their properties as parts, and are thus not even partially identical with them. But they certainly possess properties, because thin things aren't bare, i.e. propertyless, things.

QUOTE>
"In the British Empiricist tradition, 'substance' has usually meant the factor of particularity, what Locke called the substratum. The great hostility to substance that you find in the British tradition has been hostility to substratum. Let us call the substratum substance in the thin sense, or the thin particular. But now notice that substance can also mean substratum plus properties. This is a usage that we associate with Aristotle and the Scholastic philosophers. Let us call this substance in the thick sense. Substratum plus properties constitutes the thick particular. Aristotle's primary substances—individual things, this man, this horse—are thick particulars."

(Armstrong, D. M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. p. 60)
<QUOTE

[Consul]

QUOTE>
"In the British Empiricist tradition, 'substance' has usually meant the factor of particularity, what Locke called the substratum. The great hostility to substance that you find in the British tradition has been hostility to substratum. Let us call the substratum substance in the thin sense, or the thin particular. But now notice that substance can also mean substratum plus properties. This is a usage that we associate with Aristotle and the Scholastic philosophers. Let us call this substance in the thick sense. Substratum plus properties constitutes the thick particular. Aristotle's primary substances—individual things, this man, this horse—are thick particulars."

(Armstrong, D. M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. p. 60)
<QUOTE

Footnote:
Armstrong himself thinks that "thick particulars" belong to the ontological category state of affairs or fact rather than to the ontological category thing or object, or substance; but I think they do belong to the latter rather than to the former.

[Sy Borg]

If you speak of matter (or energy) and its substrates. If matter has a substrate, what is the substrate's substrate? If it lacks one, then it is by definition "free-floating". It may be elephants all he way down, or may not.

Matter (material substances, materials) doesn't need a substrate because it is a substrate itself.

Yet the divisions are ultimately based on human perceptions. Consider the categories of "liquid" and "gas". It all seems straightforward to us at our scale, but not to a million bacteria in a gas droplet. In fact, even the fairyfly, the smallest insect, essentially "swims" through the air using paddle-like wings. Consider solids. Compared with a neutron star, planets like the Earth are not solid, akin to large balls of thin gas. So, when we think of entities and their substrates, consider these relatively artificial divisions between states of what is really just one thing with zones of relative concentration and order or dissipation and chaos.

This is a long-winded way of saying that substrates and the entities they carry are fundamentally the same thing.

No, they are not, because substrates or substances aren't (complexes of) attributes. Nothing, no thing can be the properties it has!

By the way, there is an incoherent conception of substances as things composed of attributes plus a "bare", i.e. (intrinsically) attributeless, substrate. The concept of an attributeless substrate of attributes or a propertyless bearer of properties is plainly self-contradictory. But this is not my conception of substrates or substances!

By the way, the concept of a substance or an object is ambiguous insofar it refers either to "thin things" or to "thick things", i.e. either to substances or objects qua substrates regarded in abstraction from their attributes or to substances or objects regarded in conjunction with their attributes. Thick things have their properties as parts, and are thus partially (but not totally) identical with them, whereas thin things do not have their properties as parts, and are thus not even partially identical with them. But they certainly possess properties, because thin things aren't bare, i.e. propertyless, things.

QUOTE>
"In the British Empiricist tradition, 'substance' has usually meant the factor of particularity, what Locke called the substratum. The great hostility to substance that you find in the British tradition has been hostility to substratum. Let us call the substratum substance in the thin sense, or the thin particular. But now notice that substance can also mean substratum plus properties. This is a usage that we associate with Aristotle and the Scholastic philosophers. Let us call this substance in the thick sense. Substratum plus properties constitutes the thick particular. Aristotle's primary substances—individual things, this man, this horse—are thick particulars."

(Armstrong, D. M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. p. 60)
<QUOTE

It's still all ultimately one thing, just as the atmosphere, ocean and land are ultimately one thing.