Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!husc6!ut-sally!im4u!milano!wex From: wex@milano.UUCP Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Dwyer's Response to Templeton on Objectivism (part 4 of 9) Message-ID: <2472@milano.UUCP> Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 12:55:08 EDT Article-I.D.: milano.2472 Posted: Thu Oct 2 12:55:08 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 08:28:25 EDT References: <152@vixie.UUCP> Sender: wex@milano.UUCP Distribution: world Organization: MCC, Austin, TX Lines: 99 In article <152@vixie.UUCP>, dwyer@vixie.UUCP (Bill Dwyer) writes: > > A Response to Brad Templeton's Criticisms of Objectivism > > by William Dwyer > > (part 4 of 9) > > "PROBLEM 4: Is the law of identity being proved meaningless?" > > Templeton cites recent experiments that violate "Bell's famous inequality", > a violation which allegedly implies one of the following possibilities: > > A) Faster than light communication. > > In order for faster than light communication to be possible, it must be con- > sistent with the law of causality... And no valid scientific inferences > are possible that repudiate the law of universal causation -- a principle > on which all scientific induction depends. Two points: I think Bill Dwyer doesn't quite understand what FTL communication may mean. FTL travel (whether of information or whatever) implies time-travel. Thus we could have effects occurring *before* their "causes"! I also don't understand what he means by "the law of universal causation" and what it has to do with the Objectivist identity axiom. > B) The Copenhagen Interpretation. > - things DON'T have a specific nature. It is meaningless to > propose that they do. > "A is approximately A" - will this be the new slogan? How about > "A has a high probability of being A"? > > ...To say that "A is approximately A" would be meaningless itself, if A were > not A. For if A were not A, if it had no identity, how could one identify > it as being approximately anything? Dwyer's problem here is that he doesn't understand what Templeton means by "approximately". Templeton means "to the first approximation"; that is, what we call A may not actually turn out to be the case if we look too closely at it. Thus, the statement "that is A" is *not* a statement about how things really are, but rather is a statement of human convenience. > If a thing is not itself but only approximately itself, then if it is > "approximately A", does that mean then that it is approximately > "approximately A"? And if so, does that in turn mean that it is > approximately "approximately 'approximately A'"? Evidently. We are thus > led to an infinite regress, in other words, to a contradiction. No. Look at again from the viewpoint I presented above. To say that "A is approximately A" *does not* say that it is approximately "approximately A". No regress (which, by the way, is not the same as a contradiction!). > The statement "A has a high probability of being A" is no better. Is it > TRUE that "A has a high probability of being A" or is it merely highly > probable? Once again, you're not seeing Brad's viewpoint. To say "A has a high probability of being A" is to say that making identifications in the real world is not a certain business. It says nothing about English sentences, which have no trouble remaining true or false. Thus the sentence I quoted is true if the Copenhagen interpretation is correct, false otherwise. No probability is involved. > D) No local variables > All particles that were ever related are forever related. By the > Big Bang theory, that's the whole universe. No entity has an > independent existence. A is A now only applies to the whole > universe, and as such it's not very meaningful. "The universe is > the universe." - That I'll agree with. > > I don't follow this either. To say that things are related is not to say > that they do not have separate identities. A man may be related in some way > to an asteroid, but that does not mean that a man is not a man, as distinct > from an asteroid. Besides, if things do not have separate identities, how > is it that we can say they are related? A relationship only applies between > things that are in some sense separate and distinct. Otherwise, what is it > that we have a relationship between? It is only because different things > have similarities that the concept of "relationship" is possible or > meaningful. This is a little harder to "get". What Brad is saying is this: By some theory we are all part of the same "stuff". If you look at things from a certain viewpoint, all that we call "things" are part of one thing. This is another way of making the same point that was first made: what we call "A" has less to do with reality than it does with human convenience. The same thing can be said of relationships - they are just human notational conveniences, not reflections of "what's really out there." This is important because Objectivism claims to be making metaphysical statements (ie statements about the way things really are). Gary is showing how that might be a false claim. -- Alan Wexelblat ARPA: WEX@MCC.ARPA or WEX@MCC.COM UUCP: {seismo, harvard, gatech, pyramid, &c.}!ut-sally!im4u!milano!wex "True victory is victory over oneself."