So Many Pages of Nonsense

Here is the culmination of many weeks of work:

Time, Again and Again

The problem with time is that it is hard to define what time is. To most people, relative time is the only thing that matters to them. What a clock shows is all they perceive time as. This is an interesting thought as what a clock shows has almost nothing to do with time. All it really does is give a frame of reference for the movement of the earth around the sun and the rotation of the earth. The real question has to do with time as a reference point for the past, present and future. What arises is this: is this the case that time exists? Can we be sure if the past actually existed? I feel that approaching this problem carefully that it is not about a yes or no answer, it is about how you phrase the question you ask. Many different people have their own opinion on the matter that I will go over but I don’t agree with them. At the end of this paper I culminate everything into a theory that I agree with. So, I will first give some background on opinions about time’s existence.

Borges approaches the idea of time’s existence through “A New Refutation of Time.” He starts off the story by saying that time is a delusion. Borges explains that time does not exist and that the only thing that exists is experiences and through experience and its recollection.[1] According to Borges, the negations of idealism can be extended to time. Borges uses the Humean ideal that there is not anything that exists past the human recollection of senses, experience and recollection. Hume states that man is nothing but knowledge and a collection of sensations and that any shared perception proves time is nonexistent since the repetition would destroy its linear sequence.[2]

With all this in mind, can time truly exist? I feel the way Borges approaches this topic is flawed. While I do believe that experiences are the key to understanding time, I feel that basing the nonexistence of time on the idea that we are nothing but experiences is not applicable. The human brain can create experiences that feel real (Q memories; mentioned later in this paper) so, the fact that can create sensations that can be the same as someone else. This does not disprove time, it just further negates the validity of human memory; once again negating the usefulness of witness testimony in trials.

Another way of questioning the existence of time, as according to J.J.C. Smart, is the question of whether or not time flows or passes[3]. To say that time passes means that you need to have a kind of “supertime” (referred to by Smart as “hyper-time-flow”) for time to flow inside of. And then this “supertime” would need another “super-supertime” to flow in which creates a regression that does not truly answer the question.[4] This regression can be used to prove that time does not exist. If time cannot pass, how can there be time in the first place? What this regress does is try to prove that explaining time through measurement is not valid. Our consciousness cannot advance into the future since you cannot tell how far it advances.

The problem with this theory is that the idea of time flowing is simply a metaphor and should not be considered to be exactly how time passes. The question that this brings up is does time even move? If it does, how does it pass? One theory on this idea is shown through J. M. E. McTaggart’s “A” and “B” series.

The “A” series asserts that things move from the future to the present to the past; time acting as a river, with us being pulled along by the passage of the “A” series of time. The “B” series states that things are either “earlier than,” “simultaneous with” or “later than.” McTaggart states that the “B” series is completely dependent upon the “A” series to exist. The “A” series provides an event relative to the now for the “B” series to relate those particular events to. The problem with the “A” series is that it is self-contradictory because things are never everything at the same time, so time is unreal. And, if the “A” series is nonexistent, the “B” series does not exist.[5] With this in mind, Horwich finds a hole in McTaggart’s theory.

Horwich brings up a counter argument for the nonexistence of the “B” series. He implies that the “B” series exists because time in it does not need the genuine change that the “A” series to exist. This is true because Horwich states that time can pass without change. [6] This brings up yet another theory on time that Shoemaker talks about on the idea of time without change.

Shoemaker states that there can be time passing without change with say, a temporal time freeze. There are opposing views on whether or not time passes in a time freeze. If the world were to freeze for a million years, we would not experience a second of it because we would be frozen in time. The only way that one could feasibly know about the time freeze is if there was an outside party. Is this even true? It makes sense that there would need to be an outside party to see a time freeze, but isn’t describing it as a “million year time freeze” give it an amount of time? This is where problems and counter arguments come from.

Can you have time without change? If this is true, how do you know that the time passed at all? Shoemaker’s view on time without change is presented in an example that involves a “local freeze.” The example he gives is a world where there are areas that freeze and nothing else in the world freezes. The only way the people in the frozen area know that they froze is when the people in the unfrozen area tell them. Shoemaker theorizes that because there were people watching and know that the freeze happened that time froze for the people inside of the freeze.[7] This is how Shoemaker explains time without change. Sure time passes when those people were frozen! We were moving weren’t we? They simply didn’t experience the time passing but it did! The only problem arises when Shoemaker extends his example to creating a universe where there are three regions that encompass the entire world that, though some means of keeping time, they know freeze at intervals of every three, four and five years for a year’s time. During each freeze, which they know when it is going to happen, the other two regions are unaffecting but are aware of the freeze so we can say that time passes when they were frozen because there were outside observers. The only problem comes from when sixty years pass[8]. In sixty years, the freezes with sync up and all three regions, encompassing the entire world, freeze all at once for one year. What happens then is everyone in the world is unaware if there was a freeze or not. You can say that there was because of the evidence shown, but without an outside observer, you can’t know for sure. This is the most important part of Shoemaker’s example. It is outside observers that make these things real. Without one, you can’t be sure of anything. This connects with time with the idea that people and references make time real. How does one know time exists? Well, you were reading the last sentence a few seconds before this one. That is now in the past and now this sentence is in the present until you continue with the next one where this one will be in the past. I feel, using Shoemaker’s example, that time is relative to a person noticing it.

Another point of view on the existence is another viewpoint on the theory of time’s nonexistence. According to Borges’ “Avatars of the Tortoise,” time and motion is logically impossible. Borges shows this though Zeno’s paradoxes relating to the race between Achilles and the tortoise. In a pure logical sense, Achilles cannot catch the tortoise because he is always catching up. The only problem with this is that when you look at it from a practical sense, of course he can catch the tortoise. It is just when you look at the situation from a mathematical viewpoint does this contradiction occur. What Zeno tries to do is negate our understanding of space-time with problems that supposedly contradict it.

In actuality, it is in the way the problem is set up is where Zeno gets his argument from. When Achilles’ speed is directly dependent on the tortoise’s speed, this is true, but a person’s speed is usually not dependant on the speed someone else. If I race someone slower than me, I do not run any slower when I measure my speed in miles per hour rather than based upon the speed of my opponent. If I can run fifteen miles per hour, I can still run that if I am racing someone that runs fourteen miles per hour or if I race a car that can go fifty miles per hour. When the measured speed of Achilles is based on the speed of the tortoise, Zeon’s paradox seems to be true but when it is measured in a way that is separate from the race, it becomes obvious that Achilles can catch the tortoise. So, this story does not do much in disproving time’s existence.

I feel the best way to figuring out whether or not time exists is to find out if time travel is actually possible. If time travel is possible, you can say time exists because what else would you be traveling through if you are a time traveler. By harnessing the power of the fourth dimension, you can prove that time exists just like you can prove that depth (the third dimension) exists by having two objects at different intervals and knowing which one is closer.

Through books and movies, the idea of time travel has been a popular one of science fiction. The idea of zapping back to a previous time and seeing what color the dinosaurs were or seeing pivotal points in history and then zapping back to their original time to tell everyone what they saw is something that many people dream about doing. The truth is, if it is possible, that time travel is much more complicated than that. It has been theorized by Martin Gardner that universes may be a plentiful as blackberries.[9] Gardner states that there might be an infinite amount of universes where every decision a person could make in a situation is made and any nuances that are possible have happened. It is this idea that allows time travel to be possible. If a person would go back in time, be it though a wormhole, black hole or plutonium-powered De Lorean[10], they would go back to a different timeline rather than their own. The reasoning for this is it prevents certain paradoxes from happening. The most classic example for the reasoning of this theory is called the “grandfather paradox.[11]” If you were able to go back in time of your own timeline and shoot your grandfather, you would cease to exist as your father would not have the chance to conceive you. The problem with this is if you cease to exist, how would you shoot your own grandfather? This paradox is the reason for the “grandfather paradox” to exist.

So, time travel is possible in theory thanks to the “grandfather paradox” so our insipid time traveler cannot ruin his own existence. When he reaches eighty-eight miles per hour[12] he will be transported to another point in another time line, most likely not able to return to his own time line as the infinite number of time lines/universes would prevent him from finding his own one. It is this theory that prevents the idea that time travel is not possible because people would have come back in time by now. In reality, (based on the Many Worlds and Grandfather paradox theories) any time traveler would be in one of the infinite time lines, missing ours due to the many different time lines that they could hit other than ours.

Another way to think of time is rethinking how we think about the word time itself. J. J. C. Smart approached this idea with introducing the tenseless verb. This is a verb that is best described as existing in the fourth dimension. It is neither in the past, present or future. It is in the now. The now is simply something that we know exists, existed in the past and we predict will exist in the future. What J.J.C. Smart is trying to say with his tenseless verbs is simply this: the world is a four-dimensional system of entities in space-time and “past” and “future” are anthropocentric as they are based simply on human experience. The “now” explains the existence of tenseless verbs and that the world is of a space-time manifold.[13]

So, with all this in mind, questioning whether or not time exists is a question that cannot be answered from a human perspective. When we look at time, we can’t help but look at it in an epistemological sense. We define time three ways (past, present, future) and we quest to put time in these three holes. What Smart does for the theories of time is basically state that we have been looking at theories of time completely wrong. It is not if there is a past, present or future, it is if there is a now, was a now or if there is going to be a now. When looked at in this fashion, everything I said up above has absolutely no meaning. But, that is the nature of philosophy and well, J.J.C. Smart could just be wrong. So, either way, we still can’t tell if any one of these philosophers is correct. All we know is that they might be on the right track but it is hard to say when every explanation seems to contradict the other.

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[1] A New Refutation of Time(Labyrinths) : Jorge Luis Borges, pg. 221

[2] A New Refutation of Time (Labyrinths) : Jorge Luis Borges, pg. 222

[3] The Space-Time World: J. J. C. Smart, pg. 499-500

[4] The Space-Time World: J. J. C. Smart, pg. 499

[5] The Nature of Existence: J. M. E. McTaggart, pg. 459

[6] Asymmetries in Time: Paul Horwitch, pg. 477

[7] Time without Change: Sydney Shoemaker, pgs. 68-69

[8] Time without Change: Sydney Shoemaker, pg. 70

[9] Multiverses and Blackberries: Martin Gardner, pg. 1

[10] The time-traveling car from Back to the Future: http://imdb.com/title/tt0088763/

[11] Grandfather Paradox: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/grandfather_paradox.html

[12] The speed that the De Lorean time machine needed to reach to travel back in time

[13] The Space-Time World: J. J. C. Smart, pg. 508-509

Paper Four: Identity

When I think of myself, I think of a human being that has my consciousness. The “me” that I refer to whenever that idea comes up is the current vessel that carries my thoughts and keeps them alive. This distinction comes from the fact that when every second passes, I am a different person and therefore should have a different title to refer to myself as. My personhood does not change, but everything about my body and mind change. This “loose identity” is what allows us to refer to an entity that changes constantly by the same name.

This idea of a thing being completely different when there is any change is best shown in the example of the ship of Theseus. Theseus’ ship is sitting in a harbor to honor his memory. Because it is made of wood, the wood planks need to be changed periodically so the ship stays afloat. It gets to a point where every bit of wood has been replaced.[1] Is this still the ship of Theseus? At what point did it stop being his ship and become something else? To me, the ship stopped being the ship of Theseus as soon as the first plank was replaced. For something to truly be something, it can’t survive change. All that survives is the name. Forever, that ship will be the ship of Theseus simply because that is what it was initially so everyone refers to it as such. This is the same with people. You as a six year old and you as a sixty year old are completely different things. But, you are still referred to by the same name. This is same for the ship. All of this is for simplicity’s sake and so that things would not be confusing as everything would need to be renamed as it changed each time.

Something that Parfit touches upon is the idea of personal identity. This biggest point that Parfit touches upon is the idea of q-memory. Q-memories are memories that you have about certain events, whether or not they are true. It is how you saw a situation, remembered a situation or how you perceived a situation.[2] A good example of this is any witness to a murder trial would be giving their testimony based on q-memory. A witness that gives false information, not false of their own will, but false on the actual truth of the situation. They did not lie; the information they gave is just what their q-memories told them.

Where q-memories relate to identity is on recalling upon you in the past. We relate to our past selves in how we remember ourselves. When a person would go about remembering their last birthday, they would remember them in the past rather than just the event. It is not “oh, that was my birthday,” it is more “oh, there I am when I just turned twenty-three. That was four months ago.” What I am trying to get at is the language used. It’s “me when I was twenty-three” not “someone else that was of twenty-three years old at the time who I used to identify myself with but I am no longer that person even though I still carry the same title that that person carried.” The first statement is based upon q-memories. The memory is something you believe that was a past experience that you relate a memory to, the memory did happen and you believe that the memory you are sure happened was a memory that you were involved in and that you experienced.[3]

With this in mind, what validity is there that the only memories that you have are q-memories? I feel this is true, but an argument against this could be remembering an event from photographs and another person rather than just trying it on your own. The only problem with this is that first off, with the person to person connection, it would be conflicting q-memories. Sure, you could agree on many things that happened, but no two people could possibly see an event in the exact same way. Even with pictures, interpretation can differ and no two people could truly agree about a situation without some concessions on either side.

Snowdon touches upon identity by relating humans and animals and asking is there a difference between the two. His idea of personal identity is weighing where we draw the line between Homo sapiens as humans or animals in the world.[4] All of this hinges on identity. Without trying to be too technical, we are humans and animals, but I feel what matters is how a person sees him or herself. When you see a person mindlessly polluting a river, you can see that they don’t see themselves as animals. I feel it’s our technology that has caused us to forget about our roots. It is so easy to look at an animal and not be able to connect with them at all.

What Snowdon says is that we are persons and animals. We are essentially animals and we are essentially people. This idea is well represented in the idea of Cartesian dualism. It goes as follows[5]:

1-I am a mind [“person”/ psychological entity]

2-I have a body à Animal

3- I am essentially a mind

4- I am essentially a body

Where the secret lies in all of this is in the use of the word “essentially.” What is meant by essentially is for all intents and purposes the stated is what is believed. It is a way to have something that is essentially an absolute without the problems of absolutes. What all the above stated means is the mind is what makes you a person and the body you have is what makes you an animal. So, the answer to the question is that we are both an animal and a person.

So, where does this leave us? I was asked to explain who I am now, who I was and who I am going to be in the future. All of these representations of me are completely different people, and this is the point I am trying to make. I in the past am exactly that: I in the past. I am not the same person that I was at my first birthday as I will not be the same person I am today, tomorrow. Identity is just a way to keep us all sane. We are animals, we are people. We are the people we were in the past and we aren’t. Identity can be considered the most open-ended thing in all of metaphysics simply because what identity means differs from person to person. So, who am I? I am me. I am an animal who is also a person, I am not who I was five years ago, I won’t be the person I am now in five years in the future. I am not the same person right as I was when I started this paper as I won’t be when I hand it in as I won’t be when you read it. I, like everyone else (I assume) am the constantly-changing entity that goes by my original title to prevent confusion and to make it easier on everyone and myself.

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[1] Introduction to Identity pg. 528

[2] “Personal Identity”, Parfit pg. 568

[3] Class notes 11/15 – as relating to Parfit’s “Personal Identity” and explanation of q-memories

[4] “Persons, animals and ourselves,” P.F. Snowdon pg. 578

[5] Class notes 11/29, in response to second half of Persons, animals and ourselves,”

Time

This is going to transform into a ten page paper that I hope is good enough to hand into the philosophy conference. Here's to me!

Paper Three: Time

Part One:

In Avatars of the tortoise, Borges brings up the idea that space and motion are logically impossible. Borges shows this though Zeno’s paradoxes relating to the race between Achilles and the tortoise. In a pure logical sense, Achilles cannot catch the tortoise because he is always catching up. The only problem with this is that when you look at it from a practical sense, of course he can catch the tortoise.[1] It is just when you look at the situation from a mathematical viewpoint does this contradiction occur. What Zeno tries to do is negate our understanding of space-time with problems that supposedly contradict it. In reality, it is in the way the problem is set up is where Zeno gets his argument from. When Achilles’ speed is directly dependent on the tortoise’s speed, this is true, but a person’s speed is usually not dependant on the speed someone else. If I race someone slower than me, I do not run any slower when I measure my speed in miles per hour rather than based upon the speed of my opponent. If I can run fifteen miles per hour, I can still run that if I am racing someone that runs fourteen miles per hour or if I race a car that can go fifty miles per hour. When the measured speed of Achilles is based on the speed of the tortoise, Zeon’s paradox seems to be true but when a

At the end of Avatars of the Tortoise, Borges states that we have dreamt up the world and only through contradictory aspects of the world do we know this. Where Borges is going with this is very similar to the “fire test[2]” in another Borges story. The “fire test” relates to an aspect of the world that does not hurt you because of your own nonexistence. Borges is saying that the contradictions that come about are the clues that this world is the dream of a dreamer or something along those lines. The problem I have with this is that it is too simple to explain anything we find as unexplainable just simply impossible and not search for the true answer. There are many things in this world that are impossible to explain that are contradictory. One example is that there are stars in the universe that are older than the universe itself and the though process of what was before the Big Bang and many other questions that we are incapable of explaining at this point in time. To simply chalk them up as truly impossible to answer and as evidence that the world we are living in is imaginary is a poor excuse in my opinion.

In reality, the unknown is simply aspects of the universe that are far beyond our own human comprehension and to say that we created them to prove that we do not exist is just another example of the resounding arrogance and pride of man.

Part Two:

Is time real? Borges states in “A New Refutation of Time” that time is a delusion. Borges explains that time does not exist and that the only thing that exists is experiences.[3] According to Borges, the negations of idealism can be extended to time. Borges uses the Humean ideal that there is not anything that exists past the human recollection on senses. Hume states that man is nothing but a collection of sensations and that any shared perception proves time is nonexistent since the repetition would destroy its linear sequence.[4]

With all this in mind, can time truly exist? The problem with that question is that there are many aspects of time that have varying degrees of validity.

One view on time is questioning on whether or not it flows or passes. To say that time passes means that you need to have a kind of “supertime” for time to flow inside of. And then this “supertime” would need another “super-supertime” to flow in which creates a regression that does not truly answer the question.[5] This regression can be used to prove that time does not exist. If time cannot pass, how can there be time in the first place?

Another view of time is through J. M. E. McTaggart’s “A” and “B” series. The “A” series asserts that things move from the future to the present to the past; time acting as a treadmill. The “B” series states that things are either “earlier than,” “simultaneous with” or “later than.” The “B” series is completely dependent upon the “A” series to exist. The problem with the “A” series is that it is self-contradictory. Things are never everything at the same time, so time is unreal. And, if the “A” series is nonexistent, therefore the “B” series does not exist.[6] Horwich finds a hole in McTaggart’s theory.

Horwitch brings up a counter argument for the nonexistence of the “B” series. He states that the “B” series exists because time in it does not need the genuine change that the “A” series to exist. This is true because Horwitch states that time can pass without change. This brings up yet another theory on time that Shoemaker talks about.[7]

Shoemaker states that there can be time passing without change with say, a temporal time freeze. There are opposing views on whether or not time passes in a time freeze. If the world were to freeze for a million years, we would not experience a second of it because we would be frozen in time. The only way that one could feasibly know about the time freeze is if there was an outside party. Is this even true? It makes sense that there would need to be an outside party to see a time freeze, but isn’t describing it as a “million year time freeze” give it an amount of time? This is where problems and counter arguments come from.

To prevent the risk of further tangents, I feel I should present my side in the war of time’s existence. I believe that time does exist but only in the present now. The present is the only thing that I can be truly sure of. The past could or could not have happened and the future is uncertain until it is the present. In my own opinion, the treadmill theory of time makes a great deal of sense. We never exist in the past or the future. Our present turns into the past and the future turns into the present which ends up being the past. Does the idea of time freezes negate the existence of time? I don’t see why it would. The idea that makes the most sense to me is that time exists simply because we think it exists.

Before recorded history, time had no meaning. When a day passed and you were still alive, it was a day that was accomplished, but no longer mattered. I would speculate that every day that a prehistoric man lived would be about the same as the last one barring any lasting injury. To them, time meant nothing so I feel it simply didn’t exist for them. All they were interested in was living to see the next day and nothing else really mattered. Today there still survive a few groups of hunter-gatherers; do you think that time has any significance to them? To them it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t need to. It is simply not necessary for their existence. This same theory can be applied to pretty much anything. Take a higher deity, for example. There are many people that do not believe that there is a god who is watching over all of us. To them, the deity does not exist, but does it exist outside of their consciousness? It is still up for discussion if that even matters.

I feel that necessity is the ultimate question we should be trying to answer. If time exists, it exists only if someone is there to perceive it. It is the old “if a tree falls in the woods” question again. Time only exists if we make it, or need it to exist. Does that mean that if no one believed in time it would cease to exist? Sure it does, but then again no it doesn’t. Did time exist before people discovered it? If it didn’t, how could man have discovered it? This is where epistemology screws everything up. How do we know anything at all? We do not. All I feel that we know is the present. So, to me, the only thing that exists is the present. The past is subject to discussion and the future is not true until it is the present.

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[1] Class Notes 10/16

[2] The Circular Ruins pg. 50

[3] A New Refutation of Time pg. 221

[4] Class Notes 10/18

[5] Class Notes 10/23

[6] Class Notes 10/30

[7] Class Notes 10/30

At least someone will get it

A friend of mine that used to work at the Friendly Local Gaming Shop until he left for better employment told me this story, and it's one of the best stories I have ever heard.

He's sitting on nine mana, looking for one more land so he can cast and crack Mindslaver in the same turn, hence not letting his opponent get a chance to obliterate the Slaver before it goes online. His opponent casts Fireball, gets him down to 8, and then casts Eternal Witness and returns Fireball with nine mana up next turn. My friend frowns at this situation, but draws his card hoping to hit a land or some other solution. His Draw was Tooth and Nail and he had the mana to cast and entwine it. However, the question was What to get? Darksteel Colossus wouldn't work and he didn't have a Platinum Angel in the deck to fetch, let alone have it stick long enough to find a solution to the Fireball. However, he remembered that he had a pair of Bottle Gnomes stashed away in the deck somewhere, so he decides to put his chips down. He taps his mana, and declares in the loudest voice he could make while being within tournament standards, "Tooth and Nail, Entwined for Bottle Gnomes." EVERYBODY, including the head judge, rushed for the table to see if they heard right. They did, and my friend drops a pair of Beverages on the field.

The opponent draws, and then starts to look flustered. No matter how he figured the math, he could not kill him this turn. So he drops a creature (I forgot what it was!) and passes turn. My friend's turn, draws a Forest (which he still has framed in his house) and lays it down and cracks slaver. He takes his opponent's turn, swings into his bottle gnomes, wipes field, and burns himself with the Fireball. It's then a complete swing for my friend, concluding the match in my friend's favor.

After the match, my friend picks up his cards and heads to his next match, or at least to wait for it. The opponent sits there, cards still laid out on the table, untouched, unmoving. Five minutes later, a friend of the opponent walks up and says "Hey man, what happened?" The opponent, without even blinking or moving just mumbles:

"Bottle Gnomes."

The Question of Universals

“It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the existence of universals…[the] issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely and the objectivity of any opinion we frame to ourselves.[1]” What is it about universals that causes all of this conflict? What exactly is a universal?

Universals are intended to explain features shared by individuals.[2] This can simply be explained as qualities that multiple things have. The idea that they are universal stems from the fact that multiple things can have the same quality. When you see an object that is red, you know that is not the only object in the world that is red. Many objects have the quality of red, or show the quality of redness. Universals can be best explained as abstract generals. They are things that have no location in space-time and apply to more than one thing.[3]

In reality, universals do not explain features shared by individuals. The first problem arises with attribute agreement.[4] Many different things can possess the same attributes. Many walls are white, many shirts are black and many cars are red. To say that these objects possess the quality of whiteness, blackness and redness is wrong on the idea of predicate. You cannot attach an abstract attribute to a particular or general term.[5] You can’t have a general term be describing a specific term. What that does is makes the general description specific which makes the universal pointless. The mere idea of a universal is what makes it impossible to exist in the first place. You can’t have a concrete idea be described in a general fashion.

This denouncement of universals is the reasoning for nominalism. Nominalism is the ideal that you don’t assume that language gives ontological commitment to anything.[6] In simpler terms, nominalism is the belief that only particulars exist and there is no need for anything that refers to an independently existing universal.[7] The motivation for nominalism is that universals are illogical and do not actually explain anything. An object having the quality of redness does not explain what the difference is between a red car and a red shirt.

Another reason for nominalism is that they can explain the features of the world that universals are set to explain. First off, according to Morean facts, things have properties, but properties exist only in the things that they are properties of.[8] What this means is things have certain properties simple because they have certain properties. This seems like it means nothing, but what it does is calls forth the regress of instantiation. X is a property of A. X is an instance of A because it is an instance of being an instance of A and so on forever.[9] Every sentence explains the previous, but it has no end. This is how a property is simply a property of what it is a property of.

Another aspect of universals that nominalism does a better job of explaining is instance of shared properties. Where universals do no explain why they can use general terms to be specific, nominalism simply explains it as two or more things having the same property is a simple fact about things. It is philosophically primitive as it simply does not need further explanation.[10] It is just simply true. The fire truck and the tomato are both considered to be red. That is the end of the discussion. We simply accept the primitive nature and the fact that they are both considered to be red, opposed to having redness.

To summarize, universals are supposed to explain features shared by individuals. Where it is wrong is on the subject of attribute agreement. Multiple things can share the same attributes. What nominalism does is actually explains the properties that universals are trying to explain but though the idea of the instance of shared properties. Nominalism succeeds where universals fail simply because nominalism can explain how multiple things can have the same properties while universals cannot.

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[1] Platonism Quotes Handout /Simon Blackburn, Think, Oxford University Press, 1999, page 268

[2] http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/u.htm#uni

[3] Class notes 9/20

[4] Class notes 9/20

[5] Class notes 9/20

[6] Class notes 9/27

[7] http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/n9.htm#nomi

[8] Class notes 9/27

[9] Class notes 9/27

[10] Class notes 9/27

Suchness and Thisness

Metaphysics

Can there be suchness without thisness? Can there be thisness without suchness? These two questions were brought up by Aristotle’s theory of substances. According to Aristotle, suchness can be defined as the qualities of a substance and thisness can be defined as the substance itself. For the two questions at the start of this paragraph, they are simply asking about the existence of a bare suchness or thisness. This causes the question to be raised: if bare suchness or thisness exists, does it imply the existence of said suchness and thisness? According to Aristotle, bare suchness or thisness cannot exist. A quality cannot exist without a substance to give a quality to and substances are nothing without their qualities. With this in mind, there are others that disagree with Aristotle’s theory.

The answers to these questions vary depending on who you ask. To the bundle theorist, the idea of a substance is not necessary as all objects are simply made up of their qualities (they believe that everything is a bundle of qualities) and to remove certain qualities will change the object. There exists no substrata and to remove all the qualities of an object will leave you with nothing left. Therefore, according to the bundle theorist, what makes a thing the thing it is, is its suchness. At what point can you have the same qualities of a substance and not have the exact same substance? Here comes in the identity of indiscernibles. If two things have the exact same qualities, can they be different things? Their placement in space-time can also be a factor in defining their possibility in difference, but to the bundle theorist, they cannot be different things as if their qualities are exactly the same; their placement in space-time is not a factor. To the bundle theorist, only suchness exists so therefore, there can be suchness without thisness but because of their belief of the nonexistence of thisness, there cannot be bare thisness.

To the substratum theorist, there can exist substance without any qualities. They cannot define the object that is left when all of the qualities are removed, but they theorize that something does indeed exist. They state that what makes a thing what it is, is its thisness. This is because removing the qualities does not affect the initial substance and the bare substance that would exist would still be the initial thing. They disagree with the bundle theorist as they believe in the existence of bare substances.

Myself, I feel there is validity in both theories of thisness and suchness. Taken at values not far beyond the metaphysical realm, the bundle theorist’s view makes perfect sense. Take a favored Kochian[5] example of a trash can in a classroom. If you take qualities away from the trash can, be its hollowness, its ability to keep trash inside of it, does it still remain a trash can? Most people would agree that it would no longer be able to fulfill its duties as a trash can so therefore no longer is a trash can, but it would become whatever removing certain qualities would make it. Go on an extreme and flatten out the trash can into a circular piece of metal. It can no longer hold trash, so is it still a trash can? It is at this point where I disagree with the bundle theorists. Sure, the trash can is no longer useful in containing trash, but it still carries the label trash can. If someone were to enter the room, they would probably exclaim “what happened to this trash can?” According to the bundle theorist, it is no longer a trash can, but because of what it used to be, it retained its trash can qualities. Who is right? On the surface, it is easy to simply say that the passerby is just wrong, but to a room with a bundle theorist and substratum theorist arguing it might tilt the favor in the substratum theorist’s direction. The only problem is that there cannot be a definite right answer as either side cannot fully prove their theory to its fullest extent. All they can do is debate into their perpetual stalemate.

It is after all of this where one tries to place him or herself into these theories. This creates more problems with the bundle theorists. A quality a person can have is having hair. If one were to shave off all hair on their body, they lose the quality of having hair. Are they the same person? I would think yes. A bundle theorist that dislikes being proven wrong might say that they changes and went from person with hair to the hairless. This can be debated but what about qualities of personality that are not concrete? A person is in love and then falls out of it, did they lose the quality of being in love, or are they the same person? As more and more layers are added, the more complex it becomes. Relating this to you is even harder.

Am I an individual? Depends on how you look at it. From the grandest perspective, we are dust specks of dust specks to dust specks. We are simply yet another chain of carbon in the immensity that is the universe. On the most personal scale, we are all our own person. We have memories, feelings, wants, desires and dreams. So, when you go beyond your own consciousness, you cease to be an individual. As soon as you look around the world around you, you become another nameless face that makes up the world. So, when I think about it, I am an individual. There will never be another person exactly like me with my thought processes and my body, but in the grand scale of things, do I matter? In reality every animal simply exists to reproduce and make sure my genetic material passes along and nothing else. Whatever we do is simply extra things that we put value on.

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[5]Of relating to the teachings of one Michael Koch

Intelligence: What does it Truly Mean?

This is a final paper I wrote for my Psychology 101 class.

What is intelligence? David G. Myers defines intelligence as the mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations (Myers 310.) This is a very broad definition and therefore is the best one to define a subject that has as large gray area as theories of intelligence does.

A large factor that affects whether or not society deems someone to be intelligent is the college bias. This is the mindset that anyone that went to college and/or graduate school in entitled to be considered more intelligent than someone that didn’t go to college at all. This is because people value book smarts and the knowing of facts more than the ability to use those facts and general knowledge to solve problems. People would be quick to say that Albert Einstein is more intelligent than your average electrician. In reality, they are of equal intelligence as they excel in their own fields. You wouldn’t expect the electrician to be able to explain what a black hole is composed of in the same way you should not expect Einstein to be able to know how to rewire an entire house. They excel in their own areas, and therefore have intelligence in those areas. Human beings, being the competitive animals that they are, strive find a way to measure intelligence. The problem that arises when humans try to test intelligence is when they run into the testing bias.

The testing bias is an unavoidable factor of intelligence tests that causes them to favor one group over another. For example, a person who is a visual learner is asked to listen to a reading and answer questions accordingly. Because of they way their brain works, they would probably do poorly on the test than if they were allowed to read the passage. This is an example of a bias. As it stands, there is no way to create a perfect and unbiased intelligence test. This is why intelligence tests should be taken with a grain of salt. What intelligence tests, more specifically ones that measure IQ, really measure is a person’s mental capacity. IQ reflects a person’s ability and speed of understanding more than actual knowledge. Ability to understand and what a person knows are both aspects of intelligence that come from different directions. This idea is represented well in the phenomenon of the child prodigy.

Child prodigies are children that at very young age show signs of accelerated understanding of the world around them. They have very high IQ’s and usually treasure their time in school more than other children. Most of them skip grades and go on to higher learning at a much earlier time than other children their age. Worldwide there are about ninety of these prodigies and many of them are latent to their abilities as their brilliance can go unnoticed for many years if the right stimulus is not given to them (Summers.)

Sho Yano is a child prodigy that can almost be considered the stereotype for all other prodigies. His gift was noticed early by his mother who started Sho off with teaching him piano at the age of three. From there, Sho’s abilities began to blossom. At age four Sho was playing the complex works of Mozart with great ease. From there, Sho was home schooled by his mother and went off to pass the SAT’s with an astounding score of 1500 out of 1600 at the mere age of eight years old. From there, Sho was accepted into college at nine and graduated at age twelve, needing only three years to complete his curriculum. The thought of a child going into college when at the same time his peers are toiling away with fractions and decimals is an amazing sight to behold. Currently, Sho is in medical school, going for is doctorate and Ph.D. at the same time. He estimates that he will be done with medical school when he is about nineteen, having completed seven years of medical school. He estimates his IQ to be in excess of two hundred (Prodigies ...on 60 Minutes.)

Greg Smith is another prodigy who isn’t as advanced as Sho but is advanced enough to be graduating high school at age nine. His parents also discovered his gift early when he was only fourteen months old. They said that he was able to repeat verbatim books read to him by his parents. At eighteen months, Greg was already able to do addition and subtraction. His IQ has yet to have a number put to it, but it is in the top ¼-1/2 percentile. In 2006, Greg graduated college with a masters in mathematics and is not sure where his future is going to take him (Prodigies ...on 60 Minutes.)

Jay Greenberg is a prodigy that excels in music theory rather than math and science. He has been described as a master composer on par with Mozart. His brain understands complex music theory as second nature. He says that his music is all being written in his head and what he composes is just writing down his thoughts as they come by. When he was eleven, he received a full scholarship for music school and took classes at ages eleven through twelve that most third year college students were taking. At the age of twelve he had written a multi-faceted orchestral piece for a full orchestra in just a few hours (Prodigies ...on 60 Minutes.)

What makes these three children different than the rest of us? You can say that they are simply smarter than us, but it isn’t as cut and dry as that. The way that their brains are wired allows them to understand complex ideas with more ease than the rest of us. But, does that mean that they are more intelligent? Maybe; but maybe not. When put into perspective, these children have it easier than the rest of us, but it does not mean that they are above us. Everyone is capable of achieving what these boys have but those people cannot do it in the same time frame as the prodigies can. Their brains allow them to understand something that would take an average person about a week to learn in about an hour. Both parties learn the same information but one is able to do more in the time frame it takes the other to learn the same thing. Given an infinite amount of time and perseverance, anyone of any IQ should be able to graduate medical school. How long it takes them depends on the person’s IQ. As IQ increases, so does a person’s ability and speed to understand information and vice versa. So, in one light these prodigies are smarter than us and in another, they are just getting a head start on us but we are able to catch up in due time.

One interesting theory about child prodigies is if they go into more difficult fields of expertise because they think that is what is expected of them by society. The mainstream media seems to concentrate on prodigies that excel in fields that society has deemed difficult like math, science and music theory. Prodigies that excel in literature and art seem to be out of the limelight. It is an interesting theory that has yet to have explored but history has shown us that the prodigies that excel in literature and art are not praised until they become adults. One example of this is H.G Lovecraft. He was able to recite poetry at age two, was reading by age three and was writing stories by age seven. He then became famous during his adulthood when his works were starting to be noticed and published (Penguin Classics.)

On the other spectrum of brilliance we have Savant Syndrome. This is a condition where a person with an overall limited mental ability excels in a certain skill (Myers 310.) Most people with savant syndrome are autistic which scientists think is one of the keys to people having savant syndrome. Autism sufferers usually have poor social skills, narrow interests and a love of repetition. The fact that people with savant syndrome usually excel in one very specific field further supports this theory.

Kim Peek is the most famous person with savant syndrome on earth. Kim became widely know after the move Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman was released and the world became aware that savant syndrome existed. Kim possesses a memory that is unmatched by any other person on earth. His brain contains an exorbitant amount of information that Kim can access at a moment’s notice. He has memorized over seventy-six hundred books, knows all United States zip and area codes and posses the ability to instantly know the day of the week of any date in history. He is described as a super savant as he does not have one area of expertise; he is spread about many subjects. His father says that he has fifteen subjects of expertise and the only thing he cannot do is logic out math equations. Kim has all this expertise but because of his condition and his poor coordination, he is unable to do simple tasks like brushing his teeth, combing his hair and getting dressed. He is forced to rely on his father for all of his daily needs. Kim’s gift was noticed at an early age as he was diagnosed with severe mental retardation. His parents were advised to drop him off in a mental institution and to forget about him for good. Luckily for Kim, his parents thought against this and raised him at their home, where his gift was made apparent. According to his father, Kim was reading at the age of two and he knew the alphabet at the age of three. Through brain scans, it has been found that Kim is completely missing his corpus callosum, which means that Kim posses a split brain. The fibers that make up his corpus callosum have traveled else ware in odd directions. This might be the secret to Kim’s amazing memory. What we know for sure is that Kim’s split brain is the reason why he can read at such an alarming pace. According to his father, Kim can read a page that would take the average person three minutes to read in about ten seconds. The way he reads is peculiar as well. He is able to read both pages of a book at once and retain about ninety-eight percent of the data. Kim has this amazing memory, but the ability to apply it is where the argument of whether or not the he is truly intelligent comes up. Because of his condition, it is very hard for Kim to follow directions and any task where new thinking is involved (one where he can’t call upon facts to solve) gives him incredible problems. As it stands, Kim would be able to get a perfect score on a multiple-choice test but if the test called for his own opinion or abstract application of what he has learned; he would be hard-pressed to successfully pass the test (Kim Peek - The Real Rain Man.)

Another savant that is starting to get world-wide recognition is Daniel Tammet. His savantdom is in mathematics. He is able to do complex calculations in his head and go to more decimal places than the average computer can. How Daniel differs from Kim is that his autism is not as strong so he is able to explain what is happening in his head. According to Daniel, he sees numbers as small sparks that go off in his brain. Every number all the way up to ten thousand has its own unique color, texture, shape and form. This means that Daniel shows signs of synesthesia but his thought process is unlike anything that has ever been documented. When Daniel sees a large figure, he sees it as a long landscape that forms the number. Each number has its own shape and size so what Daniel does in his head is simply read the landscape that appears and interprets what number is passing by in his brain. His memory is also very impressive as well. He has become a master of language with learning ten languages, including Icelandic; which he was able to learn in a week’s time. He has even gotten to the point where he is working on creating his own language. Even though Daniel is able to express himself; he is still autistic and therefore has an autistic brain. This explains the problems he had during his infancy and childhood. One day when he was a small child, Daniel suffered from terrible seizure that caused him significant brain damage. After that, Daniel would experience incidents where he would be screaming non-stop and wouldn’t stop unless his parents wrapped him up in a sheet and rocked him to sleep. Behavioral scientists attest his liking of being rocked to autism’s need for repetition. His childhood was also different as Daniel would easily become fixated upon numbers as he was trying to understand what his brain was showing him. He would just watch children play hopscotch and count their steps as his affinity for numbers grew. This caused him to become alienated and introverted in school; something that he still deals with to this day. Daniel’s explanation of his thought process has helped scientists further understand what goes on in a savant’s brain. He is living proof that a person with autism thinks in pictures rather than words. Daniel’s explanations of his thoughts have given scientists a better idea of what happens in the savants’ brains that are unable to explain what their though process is like. (Daniel Tammet - The Boy With The Incredible Brain.)

Alonzo Clemons is a savant that is unlike Kim and Daniel. His skill lies in his sculpting ability. He is able to perfectly sculpt any animal he has seen for just a few seconds without having to reference the subject a second time. Most of his references that he sculpts from are pictures he has seen in books. Like other savants, Alonzo thinks in pictures and can transform a two dimensional picture into a three dimensional image. It is almost like Alonzo is just copying the image he sees in his head rather than sculpting from mere thoughts. One of his caretakers has attested that Alonzo is compelled to sculpt rather than do it for pleasure. She recalled an incident where Alonzo was in a mental institution and has his clay taken away. He was instructed that when he learned to tie his shoes and comb his hair that he would be able to get his clay back. Alonzo figured out that if he broke the window in his room that a maintenance worker would replace the window and administer putty around the window. Alonzo would proceed to pick that putty out of the window frame and sculpt with it. Alonzo has left brain hemisphere damage which prevents him from being able to easily form sentences, makes him unable to learn how to read and he cannot understand mathematics (Savant syndrome, Beautiful minds.)

The findings from Daniel applied to Alonzo and Kim gives a better idea of savantdom. It also supports the theory that there are latent savants out there that are unable to show their skills to the world. This is easily seen when you theorize what would happen if Kim and Alonzo switched abilities. Kim, with his poor motor skills would be hard-pressed to sculpt as Alonzo with his inability to read would be unable to fully harness his amazing memory.

What I have been leaving off on these paragraphs is a deeper look on whether or not these savants are really intelligent. In one light, they are. They are able to do things on par with computers and in such a way that no one else is capable of. In another light, they are simply nothing but computers, spitting back stored information or recreating imagines they see in their heads. The lack of the ability to apply their knowledge is what makes one consider whether or not it is intelligence.

On a personal note, I feel that intelligence applies to anyone with a skill. As stated above, given the right situation, anyone is capable of anything. Therefore, everyone is capable of intelligence and they already possess the potential for greatness.