Le 12-août-06, à 18:30, 1Z a écrit :
> Matter is a bare substrate with no properties of its own.
But how could something having no properties of its own (unlike
numbers) be arranged to give something having some property of its own?
> The question
> may well be asked at this point: what roles does it perform ? Why not
> dispense with matter and just have bundles of properties -- what does
> matter add to a merely abstract set of properties?
Good questions indeed.
> The answer is that not all bundles of possible properties are
> instantiated.
This notion of instantiation seems to me as magical as a collapse of a
wave packet after an "observation". The advantage of Everett, compared
to Copenhagen, is that "measurement or observation" are just usual
*interaction*. The advantage of comp is that "instantiation" is just
relative number theoretical relations. No need of "real"
instantiation. Such "real" instantiation will drive us toward a magical
notion of existence of ... matter.
> What matter adds to a bundle of properties is existence.
I guess you mean its "real" existence. I am already glad with the
existence of the bundle of properties, especially when it can explain
why another bundle will reacts to it in some genuine (probabilistical)
way.
> Thus the concept of matter
> is very much tied to the idea of contingency or "somethingism" -- the
> idea that only certain possible things exist.
Ah Ah ... (I guessed it). I totally agree with you here. The matter we
will find through comp is completely tied on that
contingency/possibility. It is a key point indeed. It is even very
close to what is correct in Aristotle theory of matter (comp-correct I
mean).
> The other issue matter is able to explain as a result of having no
> properties of its own is the issue of change and time. For change to be
> distinguishable from mere succession, it must be change in something.
> It could be a contingent natural law that certain properties never
> change. However, with a propertiless substrate, it becomes a logical
> necessity that the substrate endures through change; since all changes
> are changes in properties, a propertiless substrate cannot itself
> change and must endure through change.
I also agree with this, except that use numbers, and their additive and
multiplicative properties. I don't need a propertyless substrate. I
really cannot figure what you mean at all, nor can I see this in the
physical literature: a string is not propertyless, nor anything
mentionned in physical papers except perhaps Aristotle one.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Aug 14 2006 - 10:33:39 PDT