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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!grkermit!larry
From: larry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Objects, again. I'm still confused
Message-ID: <645@grkermit.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Sep-83 16:06:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: grkermit.645
Posted: Thu Sep  1 16:06:10 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Sep-83 21:35:17 EDT
References: <988@ittvax.UUCP>
Organization: GenRad Inc., Concord, MA
Lines: 30

Larry tells me that the room I'm looking at is not really made up of
objects.  It's made up of objects, and collections of objects.  Pardon
me for being *really* dense, but how does this change the force of my
argument (that "reality" is created by our perceptions)?
--Alan Wexelblat

What I said  (or meant to say) was that what you call an object is
arbitrary.  Normally we don't think of say, the collection of people
who's last names are wexelblat or kolodney as an object, yet you cannot
objectively (no pun intended) say why that is any less an object than
the collection of atoms that make up a toaster.

Again, there is no physical reality to the notion of object.  Objects
are just collections of matter that we associate because all the matter
in the object has some shared property.

Each of the atoms in my chair is doing its own thing, oblivious to the
notion that it is part of a chair.  All it knows about is the few atoms
near it.  Then, take the example of the atom on the surface of the
chair.  All it know about are the atoms near it, but some of those
atoms are 'air' atoms, not chair atoms.  So as far as that atom is
concerned, it is part of an object made up of 'air' atoms and 'chair'
atoms.   Of course that applies to the subatomic particles within it too, ad
infinitum.
-- 
Larry Kolodney (The Devil's Advocate)
{linus decvax}!genrad!grkermit!larry (until Sept. 8)
(ARPA) lkk@mit-ml (after sept. 1)