Metaphysically impossible but logically possible?
In many place we see a hierarchy of possibilities, including the SEP:
Basically, there is nothing controversial about this, things that are logically possible are not always physically possible. For example: "I am flying faster than light". The laws of physics state that is impossible, however, it is not logically impossible, as there is nothing logically necessary about the speed of light.
However, what would something metaphysically impossible but logically possible be?
Update: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/866916
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-epistemology/
Basically, there is nothing controversial about this, things that are logically possible are not always physically possible. For example: "I am flying faster than light". The laws of physics state that is impossible, however, it is not logically impossible, as there is nothing logically necessary about the speed of light.
However, what would something metaphysically impossible but logically possible be?
Update: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/866916
Comments (218)
If Kripke is to be believed then any a posteriori necessity is metaphysically necessary even if not logically necessary, and so their inverse is metaphysically impossible even if logically possible.
How do you understand metaphysical possibility? As 1) possible iff it is true in at least one logically possible world, as 2) possible iff it is logically consisted to the laws of some particular metaphysics, or 3) as a possibility not addressed by either (1) or (2) as just described?
If (1), and if all logical possibilities pivot on the laws of thought as I believe they do, then it so far seems to me that any possibility one can think of which conforms to the laws of thought will also be metaphysically possible. If so, then one cannot have a metaphysical impossibility that is however logically possible.
If (2), then this will depend on the laws of the particular metaphysics in question. For instance, in the metaphysics of epiphenomenalism it is impossible that consciousness could alter its constituency of brain via the choices consciousness makes, this despite such top-down process being logically possible all the same.
I'm quite open to learning about possibilities that would be encompassed by alternative (3), however.
The metaphysics of mathematics seems to be the existence of a mathematical object in a mathematical structure. Not the structure itself.
There are incompatible metaphysics that each are unverifiable and unfalsifiable.
Metaphysics could be who-knows-what, just not contradictory, so that's the logic part.
Are all such metaphysics possible, then?
By Chalmers, logical = metaphysical; by Shoemaker, metaphysical = physical.
Anyway, examples would help.
Hmmm ..metaphysically impossible. If metaphysics is the doctrine of thought, the metaphysically impossible indicates a impossible thought. Any thought that occurs must be possible, but those thoughts that do not occur are not thereby impossible. Maybe they just havent happened yet.
If logic is the method of thought within the doctrine, then logically impossible just indicates an error in the method.
My guess: anything metaphysically impossible is logically impossible, but anything logically impossible must be metaphysically possible.
It's logically possible that the person who is posting as wonderer1 right now is not the same person as posted previously as wonderer1. However it isn't metaphysically possible.
Agreed, it seems that (1) does not allow for it while (2) does. I also thought of epiphenomenalism when thinking about this matter. I posted the thread to see what others had to say, as the internet gave lukewarm responses to it. But I kept the doubt in mind: is it not a matter of semantics even then? Because in epiphenomenalism, the mental changing the material is impossible within that metaphysics. But in epiphenomenalism, isn't the inability to change the material part of the definition of what is mental? And thus the mental changing the material becomes a logical contradiction within that metaphysics? Maybe that discussion ultimately boils down to some analytic X synthetic distinction, but I am eager to hear your take on it.
Quoting 180 Proof
I am not sure what that means to be honest. Could you elaborate?
I guess it is true, depending on the philosopher, we will see metaphysics overlapping with either physical or logical. Some thinkers even deny metaphysics altogether. Some examples have been given in this thread, I think the epiphenomenalism one is interesting.
Quoting wonderer1
How so?
Naming and Necessity is 43 years old now. Certainly "recent" when compared to Plato, but it's not like we're talking about last year.
For what its worth, my current thought process on the matter is along these lines:
Logical possibilityall of it pivoting on laws of thoughtpivots on what is (taken to be) ubiquitous to all subjects of awareness. This irrespective of whether subjects of awareness might hold a comprehension of what these laws of thought might be; e.g., a preadolescent child will think via the laws of thought (however imperfectly and, hence, at times, illogically) although not holding a comprehension of them.
Physical possibilitywhen divorced from any metaphysics regarding what the physical entails, e.g. materialism, idealism, or substance dualism, etc.also pivots on what is (taken to be) ubiquitously applicable to all subjects of awareness. Here, though, without a metaphysics there cannot occur a comprehension by which to make sense of physicality.
So both the logically possible and the physically possible will at root address ubiquitous actualities, actualities that are thereby universal and, in this sense, singular.
Metaphysics, on the other hand, will always make use of the logical and of the physicalat least in part, to which experiences, i.e. subjective actualities, can be added as wellto arrive at understandings regarding that which is in any way actual (including, for example, that which is actually possible). There are multiple ways metaphysics could be derived via physicality-bound (as well as, at times, experience-bound) logic. Thus resulting in multiple, often enough contradicting, metaphysical models of what is.
Each metaphysical system will then galvanize its own semantics; most of the time the validity of these metaphysics-specific semantics will be evaluated by their individual explanatory powerthis in explaining what is actual (be it laws of thought, be it the physical, or be it our sometimes discordant and sometimes commonly held experiences, which could then extend into things such as cultures, languages, etc.). And, by extension, these individual explanatory-power-endowed semantics that together form the given metaphysics then grants the given metaphysics as a whole its explanatory power.
So the individual understandings, or semantics, imbedded within a metaphysical system (such as that of epiphenomenalisms impossibility of mind affecting matter) is tied into, and is justified via, a webbing of ideally fully self-consistent semanticsall minimally conforming to what is known of logic and of physicalitythat work together to explain all that is actual. To deprive epiphenomenalism of the impossibility of mind affecting matter is to then nullify the entirety of the metaphysical webbing of understandings which epiphenomenalism is. This, were it to occur, would then leave a vacuum of explanatory power and, hence, of general understanding, for all those that previously upheld the metaphysics of epiphenomenalism.
This being a longer path toward saying that I fully agree metaphysical differences can be said to boil down to semantics. Id only add that, for one example, the particular semantic of mind in the case of epiphenomenalism appears to me inextricably bound into the entire webbing of semanticsof logic- and physicality-bound understandingswhich this one metaphysics in fact is, if not merely being a webbing of understandings from which this metaphysics is constituted.
[This, to my mind, could get deep into epistemological issues of justification: which, as per the above, I currently perceive to involve some variation of foundherentism. This being a crossbreed of foundationalism (in conforming to the laws of thought and to physicality, if not also to some aspects of experience) and coherentism (in relation to a particular metaphysics' ideal lack of self-contradiction in the understandings it holds). Likely a different issue, though.]
At any rate, this is only a rough sketch of a general idea. Still, while its likely incomplete, I nevertheless so far find it to, well to hold a fair share of explanatory powerthis in terms of the different types of modalities addressed in this thread.
The leading example I've seen of a posteriori necessity is that of "Venus = Lucifer". I so far find this fishy. Any bloke on the street will tell you that "Venus" does not equal "Lucifer". That they both in part reference the same physical planet is not the whole of the story.
Then again, who knows, maybe love does equal lucidity after all. :grin:
Try it this way: "infinite" in all cases means "not finite", where "finite" means "having an end or limit". A person in all cases is finite in both mind and body. Hence, "infinite person" is contradictory.
How do you figure not logically? To rephrase: an infinite person is at the same time and in the same sense both a) a person that does not have end or limit to mind and body (this on account of being infinite) and b) a person that does have end or limit to mind and body (this on account of being a person). This is a logical contradiction: A and not-A at the same time and in the same respect.
Please justify this so far unsupported affirmation to someone who can't comprehend it. Is any person, for one example, omnipresent bodily or omniscient mentally?
Quoting 180 Proof
Sure, but in different respects. Hence, they are not logically contradictory.
@180 Proof is right in a way. When formalised, "an infinite person" does not entail a contradiction. There is an X that is both i and p. No problem logically.
However if we think of the concept of a person, and then the concept of infinity, can they both be properties of the same subject? Well, inevitably it depends on what our concepts are. If we start with a concept of a person as a a thing with spatial limits, and infinity as without spatial limits, then an infinite person would be a conceptual impossibility. Is this what is meant by metaphysical possibility?
The sense/reference distinction. By sense its metaphysically possible that theyre different but by reference its metaphysically necessary that theyre the same.
The issue is what that X innately entails. Here, X = person. That X is both A (infinite) and not-A (finite) at the same time and in the same respect will be what the very definition of what a logical contradiction is.
The only conceivable exception I can think of would be that of the Trinity consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holly Ghost as three different persons in one omni-this-and-that-being. Some of us strongly deem this to be logically contradictory (even if some subset of such might revere Jesus Christ's being/character/etc):
Jesus Christ's body was limited to a human body, as all accounts of him attest to, for example. Jesus Christ's mind was limited to, for example, what he as a subject of awareness perceived - rather than him perceiving what all subjects of awareness perceive in a simultaneously manner, for example - this, again, as all accounts of him attest to.
The Father in Genesis II onward was limited to his walking the garden of Eden, hence was bodily limited. He was also limited in in his forethought of what the serpent, Eve, and Adam would choose to do, hence was not omniscient.
As to the holy ghost being a person, I challenge anyone to cogently explain what this could possibly mean.
All that aside, a person is commonly understood to be a human being, no?
Can you clarify the attempted distinction. Venus references love as well as a planet X. Lucifer references lucidity as well as the same planet X. The sense of each term is then obtained from the totality of what each term references - or so it so far seems to me.
It currently feels like materialism is creeping in: as though only physical referents can be deemed the actual referents of terms. This in contrast to senses being immaterial, which, in then possibly referencing immaterial attributes (such as that of love or of lucidity), aren't deemed to reference any actual givens.
In the context of this discussion the terms refer to an object in the solar system.
I get that, but then how does one obtain the necessity of equivalency between terms when they each in large part specify different things, such as in different contexts?
Rephrased, that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet speaks to the necessity of the physical item's identity being unitary irrespective of how it might be termed and, hence, referenced - but not to the necessarily equivalency of terms that can be used to address said item.
Back to a posteriori necessity, then, it is not necessary (logically, metaphysically, or physically) that the term "Venus" equates to the term "Lucifer". It is only necessary that were each separate term (each laden with its own many connotations and denotations) to happen to be used to address the same physical referent, that then and only then both terms be usable as means of referencing the same physical given. But that's a tautology: if it is true that both X and Y can be used to reference Z, then it is true that X and Y are interchangeable - and in this sense alone equivalent - only in so far as both can be used to reference Z. This tautology doesn't seem to me to then support any a posteriori necessity.
What am I not comprehending here?
The term morning star was used to refer to an object in space that appeared in the morning. The term evening star was used to refer to an object in space that appeared in the evening. Given that the object in space that appeared in the morning is the same object in space that appeared in the evening, and given that an object is necessarily itself, it then follows that the morning star is necessarily the evening star, even though this cannot be known a priori. Hence it being an a posteriori necessity.
But as I said, I think this is only the case if we consider the meaning of morning star and evening star in terms of their referent(s). I dont think this is the case if we consider the meaning of morning star and evening star in terms of their senses.
While I still find the notion of a posteriori necessity suspect for reasons aforementioned - for example, such as the issue of a term's sense(s) being precisely that which the term references - I do agree with what you here state.
A world with no existence is metaphysically impossible because metaphysics deals with existence.
A world with no existence is logically possible because logically there are possible worlds where nothing exists.
Quoting Lionino
We can see from the varied responses to the OP that the concept of metaphysics is understood in distinctly different ways within philosophy. My understanding of metaphysics comes from the way the term is employed by postmodern , post structuralist and phenomenological philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger. Whereas your Venn diagram seems to derive from Analytic approaches, if I were to draw up a diagram, metaphysics would be the circle encompassing the physical and the logical. Formal systems of logic, from Aristotle to Frege, presuppose a particular overarching metaphysical framework as their condition of possibility. Metaphysics taken in this sense refers to a gestalt framework constituting a web of interconnected elements of meaning. It is a perspectival worldview or system of values. Logic, as a historically situated cultural construction, doesnt sit outside value systems but is instead a product of a particular system . What is possible or impossible is defined on the basis of the way a metaphysical system is organized. When we move from one metaphysics to another, the criteria of possibility change along with it, including how we understand the workings of logic.
Isn't the idea of nothingness a purely metaphysical construct? Hence, a world of nothingness would then be a possible metaphysical construct - about which the only thing to be said is that nothing exists in the possible world. Akin to an empty set.
Quoting Corvus
Metaphysics can also be taken to mean a perspective, paradigm or worldview within which we make use of and interpret the meaning of such concepts as existence and logic. Without a metaphysics, we wouldnt be able to makes sense of notions like existence and logic.
But because of the concept "a world" implying the ontological entity, "a world of nothingness" would be contradiction in metaphysics.
It would be the sense of metaphysical metaphors rather than the traditional metaphysics as a subject.
Yea, I could see that use of semantics, and I for the record tend to agree with it. But I'm thinking of the question which many have philosophically asked of "why is there something rather than nothing". This question makes no sense without the metaphysical understanding of absolute nonexistence as a possibility regarding what might be the case of the world. Again, akin to an empty set ... that happens to be global. So the "ontological entity" here specified would be nothingness of itself.
Yeah that is the exact part where the contradiction arises, which voids the metaphysical ground of "a world with nothingness".
In honesty, I happen to uphold that nothingness is a logical impossibility due to unavoidable contradictions and reifications. But this is contrary to this affirmation:
Quoting Corvus
So to further in my playing the devil's advocate here, were a world of no existence to be logically possible, then why would nothingness (i.e., a world of no existence) not be metaphysically possible? (As in the possibility of there being nothing rather than something.)
Without the basic semantic rigour, all science and philosophy would lose their footings for debates, even metaphysics.
Quoting javra
If someone comes along with a concept called "a fullness of emptiness", and insist it has meanings, then we stop and wonder what it is about before even opening the metaphysics or logic books.
Because Metaphysics is all about existence. If there were no existence, Metaphysics wouldn't exist, and wouldn't have existed at all. That would be impossible for Metaphysics for its own existence.
In Modal Logic it is possible to have a possible world that nothing exists. Obviously you must be a modal realist to accept the points. If you are an anti-modalist, then that is fair enough.
Thanks for the video posting, you. Cute. This Modal Logic, which can diverge into different forms, is itself rooted in metaphysical presuppositions regarding possibility and necessity. (This in addition to conforming to the laws of thought.) So to claim that a possibility emerging from modal logic is not, by its very origin, a metaphysical possibility is to me odd. But so be it, on my part at least.
Let X = "The person who made that post as wonderer1 is the same person as the person who posted previously as wonderer1."
It is the case that X.
Therefore X is metaphysically possible.
If ~X is also metaphysically possible, then it would be the case that a logical contradiction (X and ~X) is metaphysically possible.
It is not the case that the logical contradiction (X and ~X) is metaphysically possible.
Therefore it is not the case that ~X is metaphysically possible.
It's physically possible for superman to murder and rob from those less fortunate than him (in the marvel world). It's even logically possible. But, insofar as such actions are inherently antithetical to supermans identity (any possible world in which superman does possess such traits, in a real way, he ceases to be equitable with superman in some sense). This is a poor example, but I hope you can take my point.
Is it metaphysically possible for nothing physical to exist?
Me too. Logic must be metaphysically possible.
If you take the conclusion to be a premise, I can prove that God is in my backpack making waffles too.
Interesting. That would be the case of something physically possible but metaphysically impossible.
It is possible that nothing physical to exist metaphysically such as mind, spirit, concepts ...etc.
Since I am the person who has made all the posts as wonderer1, I know X. How exactly do I get from there to God and waffles? (It is breakfast time.)
(?p ? ?¬p) ? ?(p?¬p) is invalid.
https://www.umsu.de/trees/#(~9p~1~9~3p)~5~9(p~1~3p)
I was wondering how long it would take. :wink:
Modal Logic is a branch of Logic, not Metaphysics. But logically speaking, if there was nothing existing at all, then Metaphysics wouldn't exist either. Logically it is possible, but from Metaphysical point of view, it is impossible.
Quoting javra
:cool: :pray:
It is possible to make the hypothetical claim that nothing exists. But you are doing this from the standpoint of existence. i.e. your hypothetical-logical claim of non-existence exists. You cannot hypothesize away existence just by averring the hegemony of logic. The claim is existentially-bound.
Your point sound confused in the methodology. Hypothesises are the methods for the scientific enquiries. Metaphysics and Logic do not adopt hypothesis as their methodology.
Is it metaphysically possible for something that exists to be destroyed?
It would be possible in the conceptual perspective of the destruction and changes of existences.
As Banno pointed out, your argument does not follow.
Quoting wonderer1
My point of contention is this. How do you know that it is metaphysically impossible for you now and you before are not the same person? It is even physically possible for you not to be the same person: Last Thursdayism.
You said so: "However it isn't metaphysically possible ...? that the person who is posting as wonderer1 right now is not the same person as posted previously as wonderer1."
I don't understand what this rebuttal says? If nothing exists, then nothing exists. This would include logic. A fortiori....
From the perspective of what is known to exist, however, logic can be characterized as order, versus disorder. And while order does exist, so does disorder, and the tendency to disorder. Disorder is not "logical" (by its very nature) but it does exist. The metaphysically really subsumes the logical.
So if we have some world within which exists only non-physical things, and if those non-physical things are destroyed (and in being non-physical are not subject to the law of conservation of energy), then what is left? I say that nothing is left.
It seems that either nothingness is metaphysically possible or (complete) destruction is metaphysically impossible.
Right, I was expecting someone to point that out, and I'm hardly surprised that it was Banno.
Quoting Lionino
Keep working on it. You are 'finding' problems that aren't there, and you didn't recognize the problem that was there.
Im not saying that theyd be destroyed in a physical way. If theyre spirits then theyd be destroyed in a spiritual way. If theyre magic then theyd be destroyed in a magical way. Either way theyd be destroyed leaving nothing left.
It would still say "Well prove how spirits could be destroyed in a spiritual way." or "By its nature, spirits have no capability or property for destroying." Therefore nothing is destroyed.
So youre saying its metaphysically impossible for something to be destroyed (without creating something new in its place)?
We may even be more constrained in logic than in metaphysics, for there is a lot about the world which we do not know, and perhaps cannot know, given that we have biological minds.
"I was only pretending to be dumb hah! You got trolled!"
Quoting wonderer1
I did. Just because I did not translate it to logical operators it does not mean your argument was not seen as fallacious from the start. Do I need to put that into syllogisms as well before you claim it is not the case? Try working on not appearing silly on an anonymous forum.
Me asking "How do you know that?" is not genuine desire to learn I must add, it is curiosity at how you arrived at a conclusion that goes against basic philosophy.
It depends on what "destroying" means. In physical perspective, it is possible to destroy any physical entities. But non-physical entities cannot be destroyed in physical sense. And non-physical entities have no capability destroying anything in physical sense.
But if destroying means to degrade or make something useless, then some bad language can destroy someone's motivation for doing something, and in that sense, yeah it can destroy the non-physical state. But in that sense the existence are still intact, not having been destroyed. But this would be totally different perspective which is psychological and linguistic, nothing to do with Logic or Metaphysics.
To go from a state of existence to non-existence.
Are you saying that if some object X exists then it is metaphysically impossible that at some future time T object X no longer exists (unless some new object Y takes its place)?
In this case we are talking about an object X(not a world), and it is possible for X to become non-existence through time T metaphysically. (X must not be Metaphysics itself)
So for each object that exists in some world it is metaphysically possible that at some future time T that object no longer exists.
Then it is metaphysically possible that at some future time T no object exists in that world because everything that once existed no longer exists.
Therefore it is metaphysically possible for there to be a world in which nothing exists.
A world where nothing exists (not even Metaphysics) is impossible metaphysically, because without Metaphysics, Metaphysics is impossible.
Then it must be that for at least one object X it is metaphysically impossible that at some future time T that object no longer exists.
Some object Xs existence is a metaphysical necessity. What is this object?
Yes
Youre saying that the existence of metaphysics is a metaphysical necessity?
I dont even know what this means. Are you arguing for the metaphysical necessity of Platonism?
hmmm was not thinking about Platonism as such.
But logically, how can do you Metaphysics, if Metaphysics didn't exist?
How could you even say or think of something metaphysically, if Metaphysics didn't exist?
What do you mean by doing metaphysics?
The moment that you uttered the statement "X is impossible metaphysically", you were doing metaphysics. If metaphysics didn't exist at all, what does metaphysically mean?
So because intelligent life with an appropriately expressive language is required to do metaphysics then the existence of intelligent life with an appropriately expressive language is a metaphysical necessity?
I disagree.
It is metaphysically possible for intelligent life to not exist.
The word "metaphysically" originated from metaphysics. Therefore the fact that you used the word necessitates its existence. It is a logical truth. :)
Firstly, you claimed before that non-existence is logically possible but metaphysically impossible. Now you seem to be saying that its logically impossible.
Secondly, that something is true isnt that it is necessarily true. P ? ?P is invalid.
You might as well argue that because the phrase metaphysical necessity is an English phrase then the existence of the English language (or at least the phrase metaphysical necessity) is a metaphysical (and logical) necessity. This is very obviously wrong.
I don't think there is anything. They're basically the same thing.
Non-existence is possible in a possible world where nothing exists.
Non-existence is impossible metaphysically. Please bear in mind they are different worlds.
Quoting Michael
Something which is true in a world, can be not true in another world.
Quoting Michael
You must be a modal realist to accept the points. We are using English for the discussion, so surely the semantic will affect the logic of the arguments. This is called "Use-Condition" of arguments. Nothing to do with English is a metaphysical necessity.
It is a metaphysical fact that intelligent life does exist. What you are calling a "metaphysical possibility" is in fact just a "possibility," and the exact metaphysical status of possibility is surely exactly what is in question.
If the person can't comprehend what has been said clearly (i.e. supported by the context), then that person certainly can't understand its justification.
Same as the concept "infinite person". Finally, we agree. :up:
Thats a slightly different question.
It seems like it is directly entailed by the fact the OP attempts to bridge multiple domains. By the parameters of the OP, the nature of the metaphysical, the physical, and the logical are being cross-connected. It is essentially an inter-theoretic question.
In your head surely, the only space where being finite is not an attribute included in the concept of "human".
A circle is infinite and finite in different respects just like a Mandelbrot set has finite area but infinite perimeter. There is no respect in which humans are or can be infinite.
Here's a reference:
Modal metaphysics concerns the metaphysical underpinning of our modal statements.
There could be no formalized modal logic without an underlying modal metaphysics by which modal logic is established.
This gets back into what was saying.
Apropos, to Joshs:
Quoting Joshs
I agree with your take in all respects but one. To me, the possibilities/impossibilities obtained directly from laws of thought, whatever they happen to be, will encapsulate and determine all possibilities/impossibilities obtained from metaphysics and from metaphysics-bound systems of formal logic (such as that of modal logic). This would then make the laws of thought existentially fixed - again, this irrespective of what they might happen to be.
BTW, dialetheism comes to mind as a conceivable break from the law of noncontradiction. But then again, to my knowledge, not even dialetheism questions the law of identity, which to my mind can validly be expressed as "A cannot be not-A when addressed at a singular time and in the same respect" hence equating to "A can only be A when addressed at the same time and in the same respect". But then this fits into the law of noncontradiction.
From some perspectives, everything is connected or related to everything. But from some other perspectives, they are all separate entities especially in terms of the origin of the subjects etc.
If that was not the case, then what is the point of having different branches of the subjects? Why not just call them all under one name?
This misses the entire point. Modal logic is founded upon metaphysics. These being two separate entities: modal logic as one specialized subset of metaphysics at large.
As to everything being interconnected in one way or another, I should think so. Even utterly disparate possible worlds will be interconnected by one's awareness of them, if nothing else. This doesn't prevent us from distinguishing rocks from their molecules and from their environment, though - as one example.
Quoting Lionino
Interesting. That makes me wonder. In what respect is a circle or the Mandelbrot set infinite? In the case of a fractal, it is a non-linear series where we take the product and feed it back in as input, making it recursive. We can think of pi as an infinite series also. The further we take the computation of the series , the more accurate is the calculation of the circles shape. Does this mean that the infinity of pi is a kind of infinitesimal? If we take the human body as a series of shapes and contours, dont we get into the territory of infinitesimals in mapping its topography? Arent coastlines fractals, and if so, isnt the human body composed of such fractals? Another thought: since there are no perfect circles in nature, the infinite series of pi exists only as a calculative activity of the human mind. If the mind is finite, then where does the infinity of pi exist except as a hypthesis?
Something to consider is that logic and metaphysics require a linguistic or numerical representation. These things can be defined incorrectly but be 'correct' while using this poor definition that has no basis in reality. So one could have an incorrectly defined logic but a correctly defined metaphysics that matches to reality.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/862580
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_rw-AJqpCM
I could work out the mathetical explanation with infinite series, but I slept only 4 hours today due to workload and skipped gym, so I will leave it for another day :mask:
I do not know exactly in what way they referred to the circle being infinite, but you can depict a circle as a regular polygon with infinite many side.
Quoting 180 Proof
Me: What is an example of a person in which that [metaphysically impossible to be infinite but logically possible] applies?
Him: The example I gave
His example: an infinite person
Thank you for the contribution, 360º Proof. Go troll another thread.
This seems to be tangent from the OP anyway. We are not interested in which subject is founded by which.
Quoting javra
That sounds like a perspective which is associated with the fortune tellers' world view.
In Modal Realism, all possible worlds are separate entities, to which no other worlds have access.
Quoting Lionino
In an attempt to help out:
Since a person signifies a subject, and since dogs are subjects of awareness, an example of an infinite person would be an infinite dog.
Dogs are infinite because, just like every other physical object conceivable, when they are for example mapped mathematically via geometric points, they contain an infinite quantity of geometric points.
Infinite dogs are logically possible because they exist in possible worlds. But they are metaphysically impossible because these possible worlds dont exist, ergo these worlds cannot contain metaphysics.
Such is my best roundabout understanding of the perspective so far.
I appreciate you trying to work out the example that the troll refused to elaborate (as he does every time).
I am either missing something very fundamental (and I blame my lack of sleep) in your elaboration or there is a glaring flaw. By the conception that dogs are infinite because they encompass/are an infinity of geometric points, they would be infinite, logically, metaphysically, physically already. So an infinite dog would not be metaphysically impossible because it is already physically possible by the constraints we chose.
Quoting javra
Are the definitions not confused here? Something logically possibly is something that does not entail a violation of logic, while something metaphysically possible is something that exists in a possible world, and physically possible whether it violates the known laws of physics, right? Whether that world exists is then an instantiation of the subject we are talking about, but it is apart from the question of whether something is possible or not.
Quoting Lionino
... maybe more than one, actually.
I recall reading in the esoteric forums sometime ago, that they believe everything under the sun is connected to each other even to all the celestial objects. So their motto is, "As above, so below". That's how they read the stars' movements to predict the future and people's fortunes.
That was not logic at all. That was something I read, and your point reminded me of it. :)
Again, I find a glaring logical flaw in this kind of association ... rewritten as some of your posts have so far been once replied to.
Not sure where you got that syllogism from, but it sounds meaningless, irrelevant and unintelligent. :)
I am only replying to you because you have been keep replying to me.
I have already made my points on the OP a while back, and the rest is just my replies to the questions from the interested posters.
No need to reply to me, if you see no points or cannot follow my points.
addendum to:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/862580
Though I appreciate the effort, the movie The Age of Adaline, for one example, directly contradicts it not being metaphysically possible (Adaline mysteriously stops aging due to an accident and her daughter grows older than her). Otherwise, were one to go by the typical understanding of "a child's parent" and "a parent's child" with all the ordinary presumptions intact, it's as logically possible as is a "married bachelor".
Yes, the bachelor could be married to his work, or some such, and hence not be married to a wife, but this is not in keeping with the logical contradiction that is commonly understood to be communicated by the phrasing. As can, for further example, be the case with a "circular triangle": a triangle with convex sides, which is logically possible, is not what is commonly understood by the terms - the latter understanding conveying what is logically impossible.
What is logically possible is anything that does not involve self-contradiction. Perhaps it could be said that there is a valid category of metaphysical possibility distinct form the category of physical possibility only in the context of positing that there might be existences which are not physical; that is not constrained by any physical law. Would they be constrained by metaphysical laws? Whatever the answer to that might be it seems impossible to imagine that they would not be constrained by logic.
Quoting javra
Should we count age as being the time of duration or physical change? Adaline has endured for a longer time than her daughter, regardless of whether her body has continually "aged". So, in durational terms she is always going to be older than her daughter, and since the very meanings of 'mother' and 'daughter' presuppose that the mother exists antecedently to the daughter, then to say that the child could be older than the mother would involve a logical contradiction.
Agreed. And if the daughter becomes older than the mother due to some time paradox or related, I would say it is now both metaphysically and physically possible.
If we say there are three types of time historical time, chronological time, and biological time , the main character is younger than his daugher in all but historical time.
I would say there are historical (Earth or chronological) time and phenomenological time. If biological processes would be slowed down, reduced to almost zero at near light speeds, what would a person on a craft travelling at such speeds experience? Such travel may well be physically impossible in any case, but allowing for the sake of argument its possibility, I can only imagine that during such a journey, even if it lasted a thousand years, the passengers would experience almost no time, or even no time at all, if travelling at light speed.
So, yes if that were possible then the main character would be biologically younger than his long dead daughter. On the other hand, since Earth time is really what counts for us, we would say he has been gone for a thousand years, and is thus one thousand plus years old, even though relatively unaged.
There's a fable I was acquainted with as a kid in which the hero overcomes many an obstacle to at long last arrive in a kingdom where life occurs without death and without aging (though physical changes generally speaking do occur there: folks move about, talk, etc.). Being a magical place, he looses track of time. Nevertheless, after what by all accounts is a short stay there, he becomes nostalgic and wants to see his family again - not having seen them since the commencement of his journey a long time back. Though warned against leaving the kingdom, he leaves to return to his homeland. Once he arrives back from where he started his quest, he finds that eons had gone by since his departure, with everything he once knew and loved now gone.
At this juncture in the story, should we deem the protagonist to be millennia old or, conversely, twenty-some years old?
Long story short, I don't find this question to be answerable via any one of the two options presented alone. Rather, I find the issue of his age fully relative to the conceptual context addressed. Such that in the story both appraisals of his age are simultaneously actual but in different respects.
And, although I personally find this fable far more telling in terms of possible metaphysics of time (i.e., of duration), the same can be said of Highlander movies or of any vampire story: that the the character lives for hundreds of years or more while remaining of a constant age makes conceptual (else, metaphysical) sense. These stories would all be utterly unintelligible otherwise.
This to better illustrate the following stance: The answer to the question of whether "a child can be older than her parents" - this as a metaphysical possibility - will be relative to the semantics employed for the concept of age.
Quoting Janus
As per my previous post, I agree with this in full.
An addendum for improved clearness as regards my last post, just in case it might be needed:
In the fable presented, the protagonists age as measured by his own personally experienced duration of time will factually be that of twenty-some years. This though, in the fable, relative to the duration of time as would be measured by all those he departed from on his initial quest, he will factually be millennia old. In both cases his age is yet measured by duration, but this relative to the vantages of different actual or (being now dead) potential observers. (This as can be just as validly said of various scenarios concerning time dilation within the theory of relativity.)
Also noteworthy, physical changes occur in both of these duration-grounded appraisals of the protagonists age. So the division between age as measured by duration of time and by physical changes becomes largely spurious - although I do get what you intend by the dichotomy.
Secondly, and entwined with the just mentioned, there then will not be one objectively true vantage point of the protagonists age, this such that the other vantage point becomes falsity. The protagonist will hence factually be both ages at the same time, with each age being factual from a different vantage point.
As regards metaphysical possibilities, this then to me sets the fable apart from the Adeline movie scenario - as well as from vampire stories, etc. - in terms to the metaphysics of time. It basically seems to addresses the metaphysics behind the theory of relativity without the implied physicalism (and the block universe model) that is typically ascribed to the theory.
Which then directly ties in with this:
Quoting Janus
When impartially addressed, neither the character's vantage of his own age nor our own Earth-dwelling vantage of his age is privileged. Again culminating in the conclusion that both appraisals of his age are true, i.e. conform to what is factual - but this from different vantage points of observation.
All this stands in contrast to the notion that there is a universally applicable, objective, singular time frame.
But this is not to imply there is a discord between what I've said and what you've expressed.
This puts me in mind of some of Kant's CPR i've gone over in the alst couple of days.
The relation of time is individual in that an external impression of another person doesn't exist in their time, it exists in the perceiver's time. I would think that this means we can just see any subjective notion of time as legitimate. It only exists as a relation, so there's no other benchmark.
Is that silly, or somewhat reasonable?
It is commonly enough known that we perceive time in subjective manners (the linked Wikipedia article gives a nice presentation). This I think fits into part of what you are saying. But this cant then be the only benchmark for time, otherwise there would be no way of discerning between time which is subjectively perceived (and which can vary by individual) and that time which is objectively occurring (and is equally applicable to all causally interacting, or else causally entwined, observers).
As concerns objective time, however, the same dichotomy between a relativistic time and cosmically absolute time will present itself. With all indications now pointing to time being relativistic rather than absolute. So, in extreme time dilation scenarios, for one example, an individual can still have two distinct ages that are both objective (and hence not subjective) by breaking away from a commonly shared time frame (for example, the time frame that Earth dwellers more or less all inhabit (though minor forms of time relativity still apply here on Earth)) and then subsequently rejoining it.
To illustrate the distinction between subjective and objective time via a simple example: In a given conversation, time might by going slow for one individual and might be going fast for the other (this due to each individuals separate chronoception) but will nevertheless be commonly applicable (hence, impartially applicable and, in at least this sense, objective) to both individuals in terms of the back-and-forth dialogue of the conversation - e.g., both will know who said what prior to whose reply, etc., thereby facilitating the possibility of a conversation. And if there were a clock present to both during the conversation, both could potentially pinpoint at which commonly shared, objective time a certain statement was made in durational relation to some other - this despite the differences in chronoception between the two individuals.
Its a very complex topic, this metaphysics of time. But that's my best answer so far.
And yet the claim is that the Universe began around 14 billion years ago. Time perhaps does not exist apart from change, and when you think about it the general durations of processes of change probably don't vary that significantly because no macro-objects are travelling at anywhere near the speed of light, and they also are not subject to massive time variations due to gravity either.
Unless I'm mistaken, there is no other way that estimate can be established other than via the theory of relativity - coupled, of course, with empirical evidence. So instead of contradicting the relativity of time, it will be one derivation from it.
I've already agreed to this, upheld it even before you mentioned it. But I don't see how this then contradicts the theory of relativity as regards a person potentially holding two actual ages in different respects - given the circumstances previously specified.
So that we're on the same page in terms of the theory of relativity's reality:
Quoting https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/einsteins-theory-of-relativity-critical-gps-seen-distant-stars/
The theory of relativity does operate in terms of Earths own otherwise general time frame. So if travel even between different solar systems were to be possible, it would operate in these circumstances as well.
The example I just gave of GPS evidences the significant difference between the gravitational force that a satellite is in and the gravitational force that a Earth-bound human is in. But I guess considering what is a "significant difference in different gravitational forces" would embark us too far astray.
Quoting Janus
... and in the realm of metaphysical possibility, which this thread is in part about.
I would say it would be difference great enough to make a significant difference to biological "age".
Quoting javra
We don't know what is metaphysically possible, and we only know what is physically possible given the assumption that our understanding of natural laws is correct and comprehensive.
As a friendly reminder, we do know that different ontologies are metaphysically possible.
Although we also know logically that contradictory ontologies (e.g., that of physicalism vs. that of idealism vs. that of substance dualism) cannot all be accurate models of the physical, or better yet actual, world (needless to add, this at the same time and in the same respect).
How do we know that?
Why ask such a question?
My take was stated in this post in the thread, which is itself based on this SEP entry (you can quickly look at the SEP entry's section 1's two definitions of metaphysical possibility).
I see the first as being circular and uninformative, because we don't know what worlds (if any other than our own) are possible unless we count possibility as being simply what we can coherently imagine.
I see the second as also being uninformative because we don't know what the laws of metaphysics are, unless, again, they are what we can imagine without contradiction.
In both cases if metaphysical possibility is just what we can, without contradiction, imagine, then metaphysical possibility would seem to collapse into logical possibility.
First of all, are modalities empirical claims about reality, or they normative rules of convention that refer to the use and interpretation of a model, or are they both? And besides, how does the empirical content of a model relate to the application of it's rules? Can Kripkean semantics, or any other plum-pudding depiction of possible worlds do justice to the complicated use meaning of modalities?
Consider the fact that physical impossibility cannot be empirically falsified, at least not in the naive way that people presume. For example, the physical impossibility of faster than light travel cannot be directly tested nor understood by measuring the speeds of various objects, for we cannot observe what isn't observable, and the literal claim that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light cannot be directly verified by any finite number of experiments. Nor can a philosopher directly imagine faster than light travel in a thought experiment (for what would that look like, exactly?). So both the empirical and theoretical meaning of the impossibility of faster than light travel is far from straightforward and definitely not obvious. Furthermore, the literal English meaning of "faster than light travel" cannot even be translated into the language of Special Relativity, for SR maps the English sentence "faster than light travel" to infinite Lorentz factors that are extensionally meaningless.
The empirical meaning of SR is demonstrated by the experiment and results of the Michelson Morley experiment that partly motivated it. This empirical meaning does not refer in any obvious way to the sentiment that "faster-than light travel is impossible". If a physicist is asked to describe the meaning of this impossibility, he will likely refer to empirically observable Lorentzian relations that he argues are expected to hold between observable events. In other words, his use-meaning of the "physically impossible" is in terms of the physically possible!
So physical impossibilities shouldn't be thought of in terms of impossible worlds, but rather as referring to the application of a linguistic-convention that supports the empirical interpretation of language.
There are different ontological theories; there is one ontological subject and object of study, which is existence. Having different ontological hypotheses doesn't alter the nature of the real.
What is possibility? It is "possible" that string theory is true, e.g. that it aligns with reality. It is possible that a rolled dice will come up six. Which only means that, in the actual unfolding of actual events someone rolls the dice and it comes up six. It doesn't mean that there actually are alternate realities in which every case of every event is realized. Ex hypothesi, if these alternate realities exist, they are mutually exclusive, in which case, they represent metaphysically exclusive cases. So there is still only one overriding metaphysics, that which governs each exclusive modal set. That spirals off into an infinite set of infinite universes, which is absurd. The whole nature of the universe, as quantum physics explores, is to consume these possibilities. Information decoheres from a state of superpositions to realized specific configurations which are "preferred" and which, qua pointer states, correlate with specific physical properties.
It's logically possible that abstract objects exist, but their existence is metaphysically impossible if physicalism is true.
In general one would judge as metaphysically possible, anything that is consistent with one's prior ontological commitments. If contradicted by ontological commitments, you'd judge it metaphysically impossible.
If you prefer to judge metaphysical possibility from a perspective that's devoid of ontological commitments, then metaphysical possibility = broadly logical possibility.
Of course, I must agree that physical impossibility is grounded in physical possibility; there is that which is physically possible, and the rest is not; so I'm not sure what you are aiming at with that.
I realize that an hypothesis such as that travel faster than light is impossible can never be verified by any number of observations. I was only concerned with the notion that there should, or even merely might, be physical impossibilities, regardless of whether we can know what they are or even whether there are such impossibilities.
If we adhere to the idea of universal natural law and assume that what we understand about that law is valid and reflects necessary or universal invariances, then within that context, we can talk about physical impossibilities. But the caveat will always be 'given that the laws of nature are themselves invariant".
The idea that there might be worlds (or universes) which enjoy very different laws would then transcend this notion of physical impossibility which is based on our familiar laws. So, I would refer to that as metaphysical possibility. The question then would be as to whether there should or must be any constraints on metaphysical possibility other than those of a merely logical nature.
Being fundamentally a skeptic, of course I will answer that we can raise these kinds of logically derived questions, but we cannot decidedly answer them. They remain exercises of the speculative imagination.
Yes, basically. What I meant to be specific was that he is older in historical time (1000 years or so), but younger in chronological time (because he has not lived for as long as his daughter in his experience) or as you call it durational time , and also younger in biological age because his body has aged a certain amount (equal to chronological time in this case).
In any case, the example given of a mother younger than her daughter does not fit the bill.
Quoting Janus
That would be it. Possible worlds are every state of affairs that could have been, t.i., not logically contradictory.
Quoting Janus
The laws of metaphysics do not follow necessarily from logical possibility.
Quoting Relativist
Good post. I agree. I would also raise that if physicalism is true, metaphysical possibility = physical possibility.
100% agree.
If naturalism is true, and there are laws of nature, I suggest the true natural laws would be invariant. The way they manifest might be contingent on local conditions. That's why I think its important to refer to laws of nature, as you have done, rather than the laws of physics- which are based on our current understanding, and subject to revision as we learn more.
I agree with you, but would just repeat that we don't, can't, know what the laws of metaphysics (if there be such) are. Logical possibility informs us only about what is possible, not about what is necessary.
Quoting Relativist
The Laws of nature may evolve (as Peirce thought) but if that were so they would still be invariant over long periods (unless there were some kind of "punctuated evolution" as S J Gould postulated in regard to biological evolution). The laws of nature may be understood simply as the 'observed habits of nature as formulated by us).
Of course: one ontic reality (whatever it might in fact be) and many ontologies (each with its own proposed metaphysical laws) trying to accurately map it - often enough in manners that end up being contradictory to other ontologies.
When we ask whether something is a possibility within X, we are naturally asking whether something violates the laws of X or not. Thus, to be metaphysically possible means not to violate the laws of metaphysics. That brings us to: what are the laws of metaphysics?
A quick search online gives us nothing, but the simple confusion of laws of logic with metaphysics.
I thought of the following: if the laws of metaphysics encompass physics but are contained within logic, all laws of metaphysics must attend logical laws, but be above physical laws. In order to make "metaphysically possible" meaningful, it must also be separate from both physics and logic.
So, let us search something that is not "A is A" but that at the same time is true in every possible world.
It is metaphysically possible that the speed of light is 1 meter/second, that gravity is repulsive, that uranium is more stable than helium. It seems that it is metaphysically possible that the physical elements of the universe could be any way. But what about something non-physical?
There are a few three types of objects afaik: physical, mental, abstract. We are acquainted with the former two, but abstract objects are objects that are not spatially or temporally located, and are causally inert; that is, they are not anywhere in time or space, and they don't act on anything. I personally do not think that abstract objects are real objects, but here I will assume they are [hide="Reveal"](and I give myself that freedom for reasons I could but will not elaborate on)[/hide]. Among abstract objects, we have universals, such as greenness or beauty, and numbers [hide="Reveal"](you could argue a number is a universal from an immanent realist point of view, but that is besides the point)[/hide].
Since universals such as greenness and beauty seem to invoke analytic truths, which hinge on the laws of logic, let's leave those aside to focus on numbers instead. What is it about 2 and 4 and 7 that is always true but does not hinge on its definition? That 2 always equals 2 is simply the law of identity. But then, that 1+1=2? One might say that that is a synthetic judgement, as there is nothing in 2 that evokes the definition of 1. However, if we are going off Peano arithmetic, 2 not only invokes 1 but its existence depends on it. It seems abstract objects won't very helpful.
In some previous posts epiphenomenalism is discussed, and we argue about whether the "metaphysical possibility" is not encoded into the semantics of the metaphysical system, making every metaphysical possibility into a logical possibility. What about a law for every metaphysics?
What is something that applies to every metaphysical system we could come up with, be it idealism, physicalism, Cartesian dualism, neutral monism, parallelism, etc? My immediate thought was causality. What are then the laws of causality? Well, I don't think we know any. Is it metaphysically possible that causality works backwards? Yes. Is it metaphysically possible that an effect has many causes? It seems so. I don't seem to find anything in causality that is beyond that which is determined by logic. Even if we want to say that causes can't be their own effects, how are we to prove such a statement beyond appealing to analytic truths? I don't see any way. Maybe if we look at the other two fields, we may find clues.
The laws of physics are familiar, nothing goes beyond the speed of light, gravity is an attractive force inversely proportional to the square of the distance, etc.
The laws of logic seem to invoke, to some extent, analytic truths. Of course, there is also identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, which are required for analytic judgements, those are the basic laws of logic. But it is logically impossible that a bachelor is married, or that a colour is transparent, or that a flat surface has three dimensions.
That leave us with synthetic judgements, something that neither physics (necessarily) or logic touches upon. Maybe it is the case that metaphysical laws are simply synthetic necessities.
Someone brought up Kripke's before, so such a conclusion might not be surprising. But it seems that the laws of metaphysics limit themselves only to synthetic necessities. Let us take a triangle. There is nothing about a triangle that invokes its angles adding up to 180º, because it does not always. A triangle projected on Earth can add to more than 180º. It is only when we bring Euclidian geometry into the equation that triangles' angles add up to 180º necessarily, but that law seems to derive from the semantics of Euclidian geometry constraining the semantics of "triangle". "A regular triangle's angles in Euclidean space sums 180º degrees" seems therefore to be an analytic judgement. So we have to search for things that are not only synthetic, but that also scape our definitions, no matter how hard we try to systematise them into axioms and theorems. Well, that would be it for mathematics, as the existence of nominalistic mathematics shows that mathematics does not scape our semantic games.
Therefore, if we want to find something logically possible but metaphysically impossible, we must find a violation of a metaphysical law. We [hide="Reveal"](and by 'we' I mean me)[/hide] have this intuition that metaphysical laws are synthetic necessities. To find something logically possible but metaphysically impossible, we must find a synthetic necessity and state its opposite.
Searching for a synthetic necessary judgement, I found A Defence of `Synthetic Necessary Truth by Stephen Toulmin, where the example of a knockout game is used (or better, of a raffle).
Here, we see that both Kings and Lady Margaret go to Heat 1, only if they win the game, and only one can win the game. And it is also the case that, no matter how hard they try, neither will get to Heat 2.
Even though we could argue that {2 teams in bracket 1 cannot go to the Heat 1} is inbuilt in the semantics of the game, there is nothing about the definition of Kings that implies it is in bracket 1 with Lady Margaret, thus we have a synthetic statement. If we contradict that synthetic statement, we say that both Kings and Lady Margaret can go to the semifinal. While that statement is metaphysically impossible, because it must be the case in every possible world given the rules established; it is logically possible, as the laws of logic are not violated if, say, both the winning and losing team go to the next bracket while none of the teams in the other bracket go forward, only the laws of the game are violated, which here I call metaphysical laws.
Formulating it plainer:
A: In a knock-out game decided by luck, with 4 brackets (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4) , each bracket contains two opponents, who knock each other out to go to the next bracket of 2 (2.1, 2.2), then to the bracket of 1 (final), which decides the winner.
B: Bracket 1.1 is composed of Kings and Lady Margaret (synthetic statement, given by the particular condition those two teams find themselves in).
C: It is metaphysically impossible that Bracket 2.1 is composed by Kings and Lady Margaret (derived from both the semantics of the game A and the synthetic statement B).
D: It is logically possible that Bracket 2.1 is composed by Kings and Lady Margaret (no laws of logic are summoned).
[hide="Reveal"]A draft:
That morning star and Venus mean the same thing. But a group of workers can be designated by Arxc or Bcxr, that A3x4 and B4x3 references the same worker is true, is it logically possible that it could reference a different worker? If so, what would it mean for it to mean the same worker metaphysically possibly? The meaning of those two systems is given by a language, to use the system A for example, the language maps the first element to a row and the second element to a column. To ask if A3x4 and B4x3 could reference different workers means different things. Could the system (mapping) of each be different? If we change the system, we are changing the meaning of the word bachelor to mean something that could be a married man.
Changing the way workers organise would make A3x4 and B4x3 possibly refer to different workers. The system has not changed, yet the result has.[/hide]
It turns out, relating metaphysics to synthetic necessities is obviously not original:
Quoting http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5f.htm
After doing some thinking, I am not so sure whether physicalism implies the equivalence of metaphysical and physical possibility.
Quoting Janus
I explore a bit what we could consider to be metaphysical laws on my above comment.
Quoting Janus
I agree with this. But I would like to add that, if we accept causality, aren't the changes in the laws of nature caused by something? And if so, isn't that cause something that we could consider to be a more fundamental, subjacent, law of nature?
I would also like to go back to the matter of an infinite person which 180 Proof brought up, to give it a better treatment. This is a valuable point:
Quoting bert1
I believe that 180's argument was confused as 'person' seems to mean something like us. It was also pointed out by another user:
Quoting javra
Let's assume for the sake of the argument that 'finite' is not included in the definition of 'person' (henceforth also called 'subject', so that it may also imply supernatural beings), so it does not figure a logical contradiction. If an infinite subject is that which encompasses the whole universe, it is metaphysically possible that this subject exists. If by infinite however we mean something that spans not only its world but all worlds, then it is not metaphysically possible because we know at least one world which he does not span: ours. However, I would say that by then, the definition of infinite is twisted to mean something that actually reflects "necessary (in all possible worlds)", after all.
There has to be a whole binding all the parts of something from the top-down for it to be coherent, you can't actually building anything by "combining parts" without that, despite what a pragmatic heuristic it is to think so.
What do you have in mind as something physically impossible, but metaphysically possible?
You also refer to "possible worlds". There can only be non-actual possible worlds if there is contingency in the actual world. The only known, true contingency in the world is quantum indeterminacy. Do you have something else in mind?
Yes, by possible world I mean for example, a world where the speed of light is less, the gravitational constant is 10 times greater, etc. Those are not necessary exactly because they could have been otherwise.
Conceivability does not track metaphysical possibility. What makes you think the gravitational constant (or speed of light...) could have been different? Wouldn't that entail a deeper law that produces those values?
Because it is not logically contradictory.
Infinity itself is a tricky concept. I once started a thread on the topic and got brutally pummeled by less than charitable mathematical folk for the terminology I employed. So Ill here employ different terminology for it.
We often enough think of infinity in terms of quantity. Even Cantors Absolute Infinity, for example, is postulated to a number bigger than any other quantity. Going back to its roots, though, infinity signifies that which is devoid of limits and boundaries. In this sense then, to be bound, for example, to any aspect of space (distance), time (duration), or number (quantity) is to be finite, this rather than infinite. The Ancient Greek notion of Anaximanders Apeiron gives one example of this latter notion of the infinite.
Most infinities we can think of are thereby in some respects bounded and only in some others unbounded. For example, Cantors Absolute Infinity is yet bounded to, and hence limited by, quantity. For the sake of convenience, Ill here label these bounded infinities, or else the boundedly infiniteand contrast these to unbounded infinity, or else the boundlessly infinite. A line, a geometric plane in Euclidian space, and Cantors Absolute Infinity are all then bounded infinities; whereas the Apeiron is one example of that which is boundlessly infinite.
Given all that, what then does the phrasing of an infinite subject intend to imply?
I presume that a subject entails being a subject of awareness, which I further take to entail being aware of other. If so, all subjects are boundedly infinite in some regardfor one example, their/our awareness can, I think, be safely deemed infinitely divisible in principle. For instance, I see a rock + background: the rock has infinitely many aspects I could address in principle (variations in color, texture, curvature, etc.; relations between these; similarities and dissimilarities to other things I could be aware of; etc.)given that I dont get bored in so doing and that I would so address for all eternity. And this is not to yet get into the rocks background.
We might by the just stated then affirmin a rather bizarre formulationthat all subjects (of awareness) are thereby infinite at all times for as long as they occur. This on grounds that their awareness of other, by which they are principally defined, can only so be. (I might add, I cant yet fathom of anything spatiotemporal that cant be deemed to be boundedly infinite in at least one respect; as one example previously mentioned for an infinite dog, the mapping of anything physically spatial via geometric points leads to an infinite quantity of geometric points constituting whatever it is that is being addressed, thereby making the thing boundedly infinite. But if all items in a set of items are infinite in the same respect, this characteristic ceases to be any difference between them: an infinite apple then equals a plain old apple, so there then is no reason for the adjective of infinite.)
So no, when thus understood, an infinite subject would not be a logical contradictionthereby allowing for metaphysical postulates wherein infinite subjects of awareness are interpreted to hold an awareness that encompass this world or that. (Dont we as subjects of awareness in at least some ways encompass the very possible worlds we are aware of?)
But so construing all subjects of awareness to be infinite is intuitively odd. We typically by infinite want to convey something more. I venture that oftentimes (if not always) this something more will turn out to be logically contradictory: as I find to be the case with an omniscient, else omnipresent, else omnipotent subject (of awareness).
At any rate, the notion of a boundlessly infinite subject can only be a logical contradiction: at the same time and in the same respect that addressed is a) bounded to being a subject of awareness (entailed by being a subject) and b) is in no way bounded to being a subject of awareness (entailed by being boundlessly infinite). To use the same example I previously mentioned, the Apeiron cannot logically be a subject of awareness which thereby is cognizant of things which are other than itselffor, if for no other reason, this would then limit the Apeiron to so being a subject of awareness, which contradicts the Apeiron being perfectly limitless in all respects. (While I question Anaximander's notion of the Apeiron on logical grounds, another possible to conceive of boundless infinity is that of Nirvana without remainder, this among yet others, such as the Ein Sof; none of which are subjects of awareness that thereby dwell in a duality between self and other)
(In a bit of hurry at present so Im not double checking the just written. If theres glaring mistakes in it Im sure someone will let me know.)
Here's my view:
Under physicalism, if it is truly possible for the speed of light to have differed, it would have to be because the speed of light is contingent upon some law that is more fundamental. We don't know if there is such a law, and therefore we don't know if the speed of light is truly contingent. Consequently, we can't say that an alternative speed of light is truly metaphysically (or physically) possible. We can only say an alternative is conceptually possible.
Even though I said earlier that under physicalism metaphysical and physical possibility are the same thing (to which I don't agree anymore), even under those constraints, other worlds semantics would then simply have to be based on logical possibility. So we would be talking about everything that could have been (that does not violate logic) anyway, and G being double does not violate logic.
Quoting Relativist
Right, but that law would be a law specific of this universe. Whereas there is another world in which the law is different. If we want to be physicalist about it, we can talk about multiverse.
By the way, I see now that our dialogue has been somewhat confused. Replying to this quote specifically, maybe the example I used here suffices? The concept of physical does not even begin to apply to the game set-up I would say, because it does not exist as a physical entity, so it lies outside the physical world, thence you can consider it physically impossible, just like it is physically impossible that God is good (because God is a metaphysical entity). Do you agree?
If the laws of nature have evolved then we might understand that as a kind of universal tendency towards habit-forming, just as things seems to have a universal tendency to dissipate over time. Causes are usually understood as local influences, exchanges of energy, whereas habit-forming or dissipation might be better understood as global tendencies or constraints.
Metaphysical impossibility is any proposition which violates the presupposed metaphysical theory, no different than how actual/physical possibility is predicated on our scientific theories. The main difference is that metaphysical theories are way more controversial than scientific theories (and there is absolutely no consensus on the former).
E.g.,:
For some in philosophy of mind, philosophical zombies are metaphysically impossible, but actually and logically possible.
For some theists, it is metaphysically impossible for there to be more than one god; for something to exist which is not contingent on God; etc.
For some in metaethics, it is metaphysically impossible for moral facts to exist, albeit actually and logically possible.
For physicalists, it is metaphysically impossible for there to be a mind which is more fundamental than matter (or whatever fundamental mind-independent entities constitute their theory).
And the list goes on and on, and is contingent on the specific metaphysical theory (worldview) in play.
What does 'actually possible' mean? I would have thought that metaphysical impossibility precludes actual possibility.
This is logically possible: something red which isn't coloured. They're different predicate symbols.
Is it physically possible to have a red object which is not coloured? If being coloured is interpreted as a judgment of frequency bands of light, and red as a frequency band of light, any world where judgements did not occur would have red objects which are not coloured.
Metaphysically possible? Well, if metaphysics is about coming up with an account of the world we live in and nature at the same time, any model where red objects are necessarily coloured would make it metaphysically impossible for there to be a red object with no colour. IE red objects are necessarily coloured. Which I think is, if any such thing exists, a relation between the folk notion of red and coloured in their standard uses.
Food for thought.
Actual, or also called physical, possibility is a mode of thought in modality whereof something is possible iff it does not violate the laws or currently held beliefs about nature (about the physical world).
It very well might, depending on whether one believes in a higher 'realm', so to speak, than nature herself--e.g., it is, for some theists, actually impossible for someone to jump to the moon, with nothing but their bare body, from San Francisco but it is metaphysically possible for a God-incarnate to.
This is only possible for a logic that is is purely syntactical. However such a logic would be meaningless (ex hypothesi, since meaning requires semantics). In which case so is the attribution of "possibility" to it, since possibility implies a realization.
Firstly, I would like to apologise for the overly long reply, I don't believe I will even get a reply, but it basically summarises the thread so far.
It is a good point that you drive, and we brought that up in the thread before with the example of epiphenomenalism:
Quoting javra
I then replied whether in that scenario metaphysical possibility collapses with logical possibility due to the semantics of the metaphysical system:
Quoting Lionino
To which javra astutely replied:
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
So, basically, when we say, it is metaphysically impossible for something to happen in a metaphysical system, we are saying, given a metaphysical system M and a proposition X, "In M, X is impossible", it seems that whether X is possible or not boils down to the semantics of M, that is, whether some of the properties or consequences of X are in contradiction to the axioms of M, making untrue analytic statements.
I guess you could say the same about physical statements, in a sense. But the issue is that the laws of physics are given to us through the scientific method, while metaphysical laws are not, each person has their own metaphysical views.
Let S be the system where "the speed of light is c" is an axiom and a physical statement. Then the statement P1 "In S, light goes faster than c" is logically impossible, but P2 "Light goes faster than c" is logically possible, because there is nothing about light that necessitates its speed (as we know, light goes slower in different mediums), but physically impossible (because our definition of physically possible automatically draws from our current laws of physics). Hence we end up with statements that are either logically possible and physically impossible (P2), or logically and physically impossible (P1).
On the issue of metaphysics, however, for a metaphysical system M and a self-consistent proposition X that violates the laws of that system, "In M, X" seems to be logically impossible, as I explored in the previous paragraph with physics as an example, while "It is the case that X" is a logically possible statement, because nothing about X is internally contradicting, but we cannot evaluate whether that statement is metaphysically possible or impossible because we haven't established what the laws of metaphysics are we could only say so if we established a law that has to be true in every metaphysical system, which is something I explore in this comment. So in the case of epiphenomenalism, we end up always with a logically impossible statement, and outside of epiphenomenalism or any metaphysical system, with a logically possible statement that has no evaluation in metaphysics yet. No statement that is both logically possible and metaphysically impossible.
I hope this post was not jumbled and that it was understandable to you, as I think you drive a good point that suffers from the issue I posed above. Maybe I made some grammar mistakes or skipped a word which made a sentence unintelligible; tell me so, so I can fix it.
Quoting Pantagruel
Agreed.
Wouldnt the boundaries of a metaphysical system be defined not by what it deems logically impossible, but what appears from the vantage of that metaphysics as unintelligible, senseless and incoherent? What is logically possible and impossible would seem to be reciprocally implied, and both would define what is included WITHIN the system, not what is other than it.
Aren't those the same thing?
Aye. I don't think it's possible to make red not imply coloured when you interpret those symbols with their everyday use. But ultimately, as you say, that's a semantic rather than syntactical constraint.
Is logical impossibility the same thing as nonsense? Doesn't what is logically impossible conform to the criteria of meaning that allow a judgement of its meaningful incompatibility to be made? For something to be outside of this metaphysical criteria would be for it to appear as random, chaotic, not subject to logical judgement at all.
Correct.
I wouldnt say that metaphysical impossible is derived solely from the semantics of M but, rather, the underlying meaning associated with those semantics. Semantics is just the analysis of words, not its underlying contents.
Correct, the physical/actual mode of modality is analogous to both the logical and metaphysical modes thereof: it is possibility, necessity, contingency, and impossibility juxtaposed with the presupposed mode of interpreting them.
A contention about the methodology of physics vs. metaphysics is of no concern to the definition of metaphysical impossibility.
However, as a side note, I agree that metaphysics is a much looser study than physics; however, there are actual methodological conventions which (good) metaphysicians adhere to. The difference mainly is that there is far less education on what metaphysics is let alone what the proper method is for its inquiry, so most people who engage in it do it very poorly.
No. In S, light goes faster than c is logically possible because the logic, if generated within a truth table, does not result in every result being false (e.g., there is no logical contradiction in it); whereas it is physically/actually impossible given our current scientific knowledge.
Remember, the logical mode of modality is only concerned with, well, logic, which pertains solely to the form of reasoning. P1 is just a proposition, p, which cannot itself entail a logical contradiction: you would need to demonstrate, in the form of the argumentation, that, in its most abstract, a truth-table of the formula results in false all the way down.
It will always be logically possible so long as the logic does not always produce false (e.g., has no contradiction in it), even if M is internally incoherent (viz., incoherence, as I use it here, does not refer to a logical contradiction but, rather, a looser contradiction in the system such that two propositions held as true in M seem to strongly oppose each other, although there is no logical contradiction therein).
I am not sure I followed this part, so I cant really comment.
I appreciate your response, and I hope my response here is adequate enough to address your points!
Bob
Can you elaborate on this? I am not sure what you mean by underlying contents or underlying meaning, as something that could be beyond semantics. Do you mean the relationship of that semantic content with other semantemas?
Quoting Bob Ross
But does it not have a contradiction? When I say X violates the laws of M, I mean that the proposition X is the opposite of one of the laws of M. So basically, by stating M, we state all its axioms, and by definition of X, one of its axioms would be ¬X. By stating X and M, we entail a logical contradiction therefore, no? Because we are stating X?¬X.
Quoting Bob Ross
Likewise, by stating P "light is faster than c" and S, one of whose theorems are "the speed of light is not faster than c", do we not fall in contradiction by implicitly stating P and ¬P when we say S and P?
Quoting Bob Ross
I know, that part was jumbled and it skipped part of the explanation, I have edited it but I don't think it changes much.
By the way, I feel like I have been using a more liberal definition of logical contradiction than other posters here, who seem to be using a strict definition that keeps itself to the syntaxis of an explicit P?¬P, while I am using a definition that also talks about whether one of the premises of a statement contradicts the other statement. Maybe that is what you mean by underlying contents, though I am not 100% sure. To put it in Socratic terms:
People seem to say that:
"Socrates is a human" and "Socrates is a reptile" is not a logical contradiction.
While I am saying that:
It is a contradiction because every human is a non-reptile (because they are mammals), so saying "Socrates is a human" and "Socrates is a reptile" extends to saying "Socrates is a non-reptile" and "Socrates is a reptile", which is the same as Socrates is X and not X.
In syllogism:
P1 Socrates is a human
P2 Every human is a non-reptile
C Socrates is a non-reptile
P3 (C) Socrates is a non-reptile
P4 Socrates is a reptile
It seems people are saying that P1 and P4 do not contradict, which is fair, but for me P1 and P4 do because P3 and P4 do and P3 comes from P1 through P2.
I believe that both are valid, depending on how lax the definition of logical contradiction is.
Maybe that clears up some misunderstandings, and poor Socrates, transmutating paradoxically through species.
Semantics is about wordsi.e., what is the best or chosen word to describe somethingand not the what those words reference themselves (i.e., their underlying content). Car is a word, comprised of 3 characters and is from the english language, which refers to that which we call a car: the underlying content which the word car refers to is a car (I denote the wordviz., the semanticswith quotes and the underlying content it references without it here). You may come along and say: but, bob, what you call a car would be much better described, in english, as a biscobbo and I say something to the effect of I dont even think that is a word in the english language and therefore, within the context of english, is not a better suited word to describe what I mean by a car--this is semantics.
Firstly, metaphysical impossibility does not entail that it is derived from an axiom of the system. In its most abstract, a proposition, X, is metaphysically impossible for a metaphysical theory, M, iff M ? Y ^ !(Y ^ X) [i.e., M entails a proposition, Y, which is incoherent, but not necessarily logically contradictory, with X]. In this form, it is clear that something could be metaphysically impossible yet logically possible, because Y ^ X is not a logical contradiction; instead, the argument rests on the idea that Y strongly, in a non-logical sense, opposes X.
Secondly, you threw a curveball here because you posited !X as itself simply affirmed in M, so, of course, affirming M ^ X leads to a logical contradiction (in this case). However, it is important to note that the logical contradiction here does not lead to X being logically impossible, it leads us to X ^ !X being logically impossible--which is not what you are trying to argue. This is because M ^ X leads to a logical contradiction which is only due to the fact that one also affirms M which leads to !Xso X is not logically impossible but, rather, it is logically impossible for it to be true that M ^ X in this case because it can be expanded to [M ? !X] ^ X.
My main point here is that metaphysical impossibility does not entail, necessarily, logical impossibility.
You may, then, be using it in the sense of a non-logical contradiction, which is perfectly fine; but that would not get you to logical impossibility. Only by conflating non-logical contradictions (like actual/physical and metaphysical contradictions) with logical ones would one be able to bridge that gap.
No this is a logical contradiction, not a non-logical contradiction or incoherence. The abstracted form is essentially:
? := ?x (Human
? := ?x (Human
The logical contradiction is that ? ^ ? ? ?x (!Reptile
I am not sure what you mean by incoherent here, given its many meanings, and also "opposes". Can you define it and give an example?
Yes. Consider the logical touchstone of analytic truth. If x is red then x is coloured. Its analyticity derives from the metaphysical reality of the species-genus relationship. If you denude a proposition of all connection to this categorical content, you are left with a purely formal construct that has no meaning.
By incoherence, I mean the strong opposition of two things. That I have both long and short hair, right now, seems very incoherent given the standard understanding of the property of longness and shortness with regards to hair; but it is, nevertheless, not a logical contradiction for someone to have it because the form is ?x (Bob
I think this is misleading. You cannot abstract semantic meaning from its putative external correspondences. Semantics deals with the nature of signs and the relationship to their referents.
Semantics is about meaning, which is about how and what words relate to what underlying content; and has nothing to do with that underlying content itself. Nature does not care what word you call it.
The only reason I brought it up was because another person in this thread, that I am discussing with, was thinking that the metaphysical mode of modality was tied solely to semantics of the metaphysical theory at hand, which is false.
This is not true Bob. In fact, it is not even true by your own assertion "Semantics is about wordsi.e., what is the best or chosen word to describe something". There would be no semantics without the "something" about which the word is. You can't say that semantics is both related to content and yet "has nothing to do with content." Your assertions would be (are) self-contradictory.
I see, by incoherent it seems you mean something that degenerates information within that proposition, even it is not contradictory.
With that in mind, I will reply to your post before this.
Quoting Bob Ross
It might be a curveball yes but it was what I was originally struggling to express.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right.
Quoting Bob Ross
We agree then :grin:
Quoting Bob Ross
Which was what I was trying to express, though in a more simplified and lax manner, when I said that "In S, P is logically impossible", which point conceded, it is not impossible as P is consistent, but indeed that "that S and P are true is logically impossible". Which ties to my point about a specific metaphysics (the second last paragraph).
I understand that [M ? !X] ^ X and (M ? Y) ^ !(Y ^ X) are different. But, if Y = !X, I believe that one implies the other, meaning ((M ? ¬X) ? X) ? ((M ? ¬X) ? ¬(X ? ¬X)).
I think the issue of the matter is what Y would be, and therefore how Y could oppose X. My argument is exactly that we can only know !(Y ^ X) if there is a contradiction in terms between Y and X, (X ? ¬X) extending from (X ? Y), and thus the only meaningful type of contradiction is logical contradiction, instead of incoherence. Using your example, whether hair is long or short is relative to one's opinion, and even to the circumstances on which it will be judged. Maybe we disagree on this issue, I do operate under a somewhat nominalistic mindset.
When we choose a certain metaphysics M, a statement that goes against it, for me, would be a statement that goes against one of the theorems of that metaphysics (t.i. logical contradiction), and assuming that every theorem of M ultimately goes back to the axioms of M, we would have (X ? ¬X) extending from (X ? Y) extending from (X ? M).
I hope my argumentation was sound and understandable.
Quoting Pantagruel
Perfectly and elegantly put :ok:
Of course the word relates to content, but another word can be swapped for that word and related to the same content; thus, the word is distinct from the content. The fact that the word relates to the content does not entail that the content is somehow modified or transformed depending on the word used. That's all I am trying to point out for the sake of the conversation I was having with the other person, and I don't think it is that controversial (but correct me if I am wrong).
The word is dependent on the content. I suppose you could say it that way too. It's distinctness comes from its dependence. What's in a name?
I believe I agree with everything except for this part. I just don't think that 'going against one of the theorems [or beliefs or statements]" in M entails necessarily a logical contradiction. I also don't see why every incoherence with M would be derivable back to, ultimately, an axiom which results in !X.
I don't see how one can "extend" !(Y ^ X) to (X ^ !X) in virtue of some axiom in M, such that every possible metaphysical theory, M, has that setup.
I don't have a problem with this: that's what I was essentially saying too.
I don't think that makes sense. Under physicalism, it is axiomatic that only physical things exist. Any statement that entails a spiritual being is contradicted by that axiom.
While it's correct to say that a spiritual being is logically possible, it's a contradiction to say a spiritual being exists & physicalism is true.
:ok:
My point is that X is not logically impossible because X is metaphysically impossible; and pointing out that !(X ^ M) doesn't help prove that it is otherwise. Just because positing X and M entails a contradiction it does not follow that X is logically impossible. I only bring this up because you said something originally along the lines of 'every metaphysical system which X contradicts, makes X logically impossible'. Metaphysical impossibility does not entail logical impossibility. That X ^ M is logically impossible is not the same as X being logically impossible, which is what you need for this to work.
Likewise, I don't even think that all propositions which are regarded as metaphysically impossible are reducible to an axiom in the metaphysical theory. To take your example, physicalism is typically the view that reality is fundamentally 'mind-independent': it may still be metaphysically impossible for their to be a spiritual being even though it does not produce a logical contradiction with this fundamental belief to the theory, as they may say it is metaphysically impossible because the being, let's say, would violate the laws of nature and, let's say, in this particular physicalist theory, everything must be natural--so spiritual beings cannot exist because that is incoherent with, not logically contradictory to, these beliefs they have.
Because for me, that is the only way to definitely go against the theorems. Other ways, such as short or long hair, are debatable and not definitive. The burden of proof would therefore be on the person who claims that there is a way to categorically oppose a theorem (nothing that is up to opinion) besides stating something that logically contradicts it.
To use physicalism as an example as well, my point, which I originally used epiphenomenalism for, runs around this:
A spiritual being is logically possible. :up:
A spiritual being is metaphysically possible. :chin:
A spiritual being is physically possible. :down:
We are able to make judgements about the first and third because we know what the laws of physics and the laws of logic are. The second requires the question of what the laws of metaphysics are. Until we define what metaphysical system we are operating under, we don't know what laws that would be (unless we find metaphysical laws that apply to every metaphysical system). If we then choose physicalism as a metaphysical system M, we are affirming M, which implies affirming all its axioms (A1, A2, A3... An) and consequently from the axioms its theorems (T1, T2, T3). Therefore, by choosing physicalism, we state A1 "there are only physical things", A1 due to the laws of logic can be rewritten to "there are no non-physical things". So, by stating P "there is a spiritual thing" which due to the definition of these words can be rewritten to "there is a non-physical thing" we are denying A1. We end up with A1 and notA1, or P and notP, which is a logical contradiction.
So, to summarise, my argument is that as soon as we choose a metaphysical system, which will have its own semantic system (such as equating "all that exists" and "physical things"), the metaphysical impossibility collapses with logical impossibility. Giving us no way of finding something logically possible but metaphysically impossible.
I agree.
Quoting Bob Ross
Both work, but one needs to be clear what one means. Your approach is appropriate when comparing metaphysical systems, mine is appropriate when considering what is possible within a metaphysical system.
Quoting Lionino
I agree.
Quoting Bob Ross
This metaphysical system is incoherent because it entails a contradiction.
What would be an example of something that is metaphysically impossible but does not reference the axioms of the operating metaphysical system?
Anything that is broadly logically impossible, such as the existence of square circles or married bachelors.
I disagree. Lets take this by analogy (to actual impossibility):
X = A human being can fly
Firstly, X is not logically impossible. Secondly, I think your line of reasoning, and correct me if I am wrong, is that X becomes logically impossible if we accept a theory in physics, P, that posits !X; but this is false.
X is not logically impossible even relative to P when !(X ^ P): instead, we just find it logically impossible to hold X and Pthis is different. If X were logically impossible in P, then the logic in P would produce, itself, (X ^ !X); which is does not in the case that P ? !X.
Instead, P ? !X because of an incoherence, not a logical contradiction in P, with positing X within P. E.g.,:
Y = X violates the law of gravity
Which, what they would want to say in this case is that, !(Y ^ X) ^ Y ? !X. P, in this case, does not produce a logical contradiction with X such that X ^ !X but, rather, that X violates the law of gravity, which Y, and posits if that is true than it is incoherent, albeit not logically contradictory, with X. It is perfectly logically validly to posit that a human being can fly and a human being can fly violates the law of gravity: nothing logically wrong with that.
I think you are conflating the logical impossibility of someone accepting X outside of the theory logically contradicting the theory (i.e., !{X ^ [P ? !X] }) with the theory itself demonstrating the logical impossibility of positing X.
In this example, it is logically possible that X but actually impossible that X; but according to your reasoning actual impossibility would collapse into logical impossibility: which does not happen here.
So, with that in mind,:
For brevity, lets say a spirit exists = X and lets assume, like you, a physicalistic theory, P, that demonstrates some incoherence with the theory and X such that !X.
1. X is logically possible and is logically possible relative to the axioms and inferences of P.
2. X is metaphysically impossible, because there is at least one proposition, Y, in P that is incoherent with X such that !(Y ^ X) ^ Y ? !X.
3. X is actually possible, since you defined it as a non-physical thing, as it does not violate the laws of nature, being above nature itself.
Hopefully that helps, let me know.
Yes, I agreed to that. X is not logically impossible, (X ^ P) is logically impossible.
Note 1: When we say "physically", we are already talking from within a framework, which are the known laws of physics.
When we say "metaphysically", there is no framework assumed so far, as we have not said which metaphysics we are operating under.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sorry, I am having lots of trouble with these two paragraphs, some sentences are not understandable.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right. I understand what you mean. That {stating a proposition P that breaks some framework F} and {stating that P breaks F} is not a logical contradiction, it is simply a proposition and an account of the facts, fair. However stating P and F is a logical contradiction.
We go back to your original comment:
Quoting Bob Ross
Likewise, stating P "minds can interact with bodies" and J "P violates parallelism" is not a logical contradiction. However neither of these statements lead to a metaphysical impossibility. J is simply a valid statement. But stating P and parallelism is a logical contradiction, in virtue of J.
Quoting Bob Ross
My reasoning is in fact that metaphysical impossibility collapses with logical impossibility. Physical impossibility does not collapse with anything for me[hide="Reveal"] perhaps in the view that the current world is necessary and the only possible world, physical possibility would collapse with metaphysical possibility[/hide].
Quoting Bob Ross
Fine.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would not say so because it does not reference physics at all, but it is not really important because this thread does not really discuss physical possibility unless for illustrative purposes, so I will move on.
Quoting Bob Ross
Here I think the issue lies. X is metaphysically impossible. But what does that mean? It is impossible because it violates a metaphysical proposition. Here, we are clearly talking about physicalism. When we accept physicalism, we state all its axioms (from A1 to An), and all its theorems (from T1 to Tn); the theorems derive from the axioms. Y is either a an axiom or a theorem here, since it is in P as you say. Unless we state P, we cannot talk about the metaphysical impossibility of X. Before we state P, X remains metaphysically possible. Throwback to Note 1.
Therefore, we are stating P. We are also stating X. Thus, we are stating P and X. As I demonstrated here:Quoting Lionino it entails logical contradiction.
Of course, only stating "X" and "X violates P" is not a logical contradiction, it is fine. But the goal of the thread was to find something logically possible and metaphysically impossible. X violating P is not a metaphysical impossibility; not only is it possible but it is also necessary. And X by itself is not a metaphysical impossibility because we have not yet stated a system (P) that denies it.
Quoting Bob Ross
A physicalist theory P that demonstrates some incoherence with itself? I don't understand.
The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines physical possibility as:
p is physically possible iff p is consistent with the laws of nature.
Broadly accepted scientific laws (including laws of physics, chemistry, biology...) are typically accepted as proxies for laws of nature, and these are therefore used to assess whether something is physically possible. This helps us differentiate the different modalities of possibility. This basis is appropriate only for those who accept the terms - that there ARE laws of nature, and that science at least approximates them. If you're going to challenge that, then there's no common ground for labellng something physically (im)possible - so that modality is off the table for discussion.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is how one might discuss different theories of natural law. Under one theory, humans flying might be physically impossible, while under another theory -it's physically possible. But it seems pointless to even discuss physical modality in this sort of context.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I'm not conflating it - I just think the discussion context is what matters. There's often common ground about using known science to identify what is physically possible. Only then does it even make sense to discuss physical possibility. If there's not this common ground, then it's meaningless to reference physical possibility - it might only make sense to discuss what is entailed by one theory of laws vs another.
P is the proposition "body can act on mind". It is simply saying that bodies can interfere with minds somehow, nothing beyond that.
M is the metaphysical framework of parallelism, a dualist theory in which there are two substances, mind and body, and the two cannot interact with each other, mind can only act on mind and body on body.
M has at least two axioms:
A = "body can only act on body"
B = "mind can only act on mind"
From A, B, and the laws of logic, we can derive several theorems, but the only ones that matter for us are:
T = "body cannot act on mind"
U = "mind cannot act on body"
P is a logically possible statement.
P is a metaphysically possible statement indeed it is, in the dualist doctrines of epiphenomenalism and interactivism.
[hide="Reveal"]Note: the English word 'and' is not used as the logical operator ?, it is used as it is in English.[/hide]
So where is the metaphysical impossibility? Well, it can only arrive if we state M ? P, I don't see any other way. But because M?(A?B) and (A?T)?(B?U) and T?¬P entail M?¬P, M ? P is a logical impossibility too.
I think we may be circling back around, and I am not sure how else to explain my point of view here other than by repeating: that !(P ^ X) does not entail X is logically impossiblenot even relative to P. You are just noting that accepting P and X results in a logical contradiction because !X is affirmed on a non-logical contradiction.
Lets take metaphysical theory, Znot, which posits that philosophical zombies are metaphysically impossible, and lets call the claim philosophical zombies can exist Z, albeit logically and actually possible. Z is considered false in Znot because it is incoherent with another proposition (or set of propositions), lets say A, that Znot affirms such that !(A ^ Z) ^ A.
This is an example of exactly what you are asking for. Z is logically possible and metaphysically impossible relative to Znot.
When you say relative to Znot, are you not stating Znot?
As in, is it really metaphysically impossible that Z, or only that (Z?nZnot)?
There is an ambiguity in phrases such as "in Znot" and "relating to Znot".
My point is exactly that Z is both logically and metaphysically possible. It is only when we state Z?Znot that we end up with a metaphysically impossibility.
Quoting Lionino
And A, for me, has to be ¬Z.
Logic is a construct, metaphysics is a concept, the concept of the real. There may be no "universal logic"; however there certainly is a universal metaphysics, the reality of the real. You cannot in any sense constrain or extend the latter by the former (which is what the notion of "possibility" seems to suggest), only characterize or represent it.
Z ^ Znot cannot be determined, without clarifying the underlying metaphysical theory N being used, to be metaphysically impossible or possible; Z is, though, relative to Znot. The metaphysical mode of modality is not used in a way such that P is metaphysically impossible iff P ^ M is metaphysically impossible: the latter is a totally different proposition than the former. P does not expand into P ^ M, and it nevertheless metaphysically impossible relative to M. By relative to M, I mean that this mode of modality is relative to the underlying metaphysical theory, M, being used. Think of it this way: Z ^ Znot = X, and X is not metaphysically impossible because Z is; nor does it make much sense to ask if Znot, being a metaphysical theory, is metaphysically impossible or not, relative to another metaphysical theoryit can be done, but it is odd.
Now, I think what you are conveying, and correct me if I am wrong, is that the justification for Z being metaphysically impossible is that we posit Znot and that is incoherent, at the least, with Z; so Z is metaphysically impossible. You represent this as Z ^ Znot, but this is not accurate because you are conflating the proposition which is metaphysically impossible with the justification for it being such. Z is metaphysically impossible, and the justification is that !(Z ^ Znot) ^ Znot ? {metaphysically impossible} . Saying Z ^ Znot is metaphysically impossible shifts the focus to a different proposition, X, which would have to be evaluated relative to a specified metaphysical theory, N.
I agree. You said previously that the underlying metaphysical theory is Znot, so I simply stuck to your choice of terminology:
Quoting Bob Ross
I knew the use of Znot would be confused with proposition not-Z but decided to stick to it anyway :razz:
Quoting Bob Ross
With the terms we are using here (I have thrown out "In M, P" in favour of "P and M"), I don't think that P relative to M means anything other than P and M.
Quoting Bob Ross
Now I don't know whether you are using Znot as a theory or a proposition. But that does seem like what my point is. Though my point is stated clearly here:
Quoting Lionino
---
Quoting Bob Ross
I will approach this section later when I have more time to think and once I have a reply of whether Znot is a metaphysical theory or a proposition.
To avoid confusion, I am going to use capital letters for theories, and lowercase for propositions.
My point is that p is metaphysically impossible != p and M are metaphysically impossible != p ^ M is metaphysically impossible != !(p ^ M).
ZNOT is a theory, not a proposition.
Alright.
Quoting Bob Ross
Right, I agree with that, maybe I caused confusion previously by exchanging "p and M are" with "p ^ M is".
To reply to the thing I meant to reply to:
Quoting Bob Ross
I think that by "!(Z ^ ZNOT) ^ ZNOT ? {metaphysically impossible}" you mean "!(z ^ ZNOT) ^ ZNOT ? {z is metaphysically impossible}".
I believe that the source of our disagreement is that, for you, z is metaphysically impossible in reference ("coherence" as you say) to the fact that !(z ^ ZNOT) ^ ZNOT. A statement (z) can be evaluated as metaphysically impossible without explicitly stating the theory ZNOT that contradicts it, through the fact that !(z ^ ZNOT), right?
Quoting Hallucinogen
How is that contradictory with reductionism? And before all, I would ask that you specify what kind of redutionism you are talking about.
Quoting Hallucinogen
I have not studied this subject sufficiently to give a reply on it specially the Chinese room experiment, it did not make an awful lot of sense to me when I last read it.
Quoting Hallucinogen
This seems to agree with my proposal earlier in the thread. That although nothing about 'semantics' implies that syntax is insufficient for it (analytic), we learn later, if we are to agree with the CR experiment, that it has to be the case that it is insufficient, and it has to be insufficient a synthetic necessity.
I admit that I have not read Collingwood, and there is a good chance I will never read one of his books back to back, like I won't to many many writers out there, but from the description given here, at a surface level I don't agree with any statement. Especially:
Quoting Pantagruel
I don't see how logic could not be our rational basis; rational discourse is destroyed without logic.
What logic? Symbolic logic? Propositional logic? Dialectical logic? You are speaking of logic as if it were an objective reality, instead of a construct. There are political logics, aesthetic logics, sociological logics. Life is a synthesis of overlapping domains of thought, not one of which is privileged. The essence of dystopian fiction is in the enforcement of a single vision of life, to the exclusion of the rest.
The notion that you can encapsulate any meaning completely is illusory, and abstraction, perhaps an ideal. Symbolic logic, pushed to its logical limits, is just so much nomenclature. As soon as you attempt to link it to practical realities, its limitations appear.
Even acquiescing that logic is a construct, there are laws of logic (and related) without which we cannot productively have discourse. Law of identity, non-contradiction, law of excluded middle, the possibility of analytic judgements, etc. It is perfectly fine that a construct is fundamental. Scientific discourse relies on non-contradiction, as does any discourse.
Yep. There are rules of discourse. The law of non-contradiction doesn't apply to dialectical logic in any non-trivial sense, since dialectics assumes that opposing viewpoints can reach a synthesis. More generally, the "rules" exist in order to facilitate social interactions, which are themselves the bases of the meanings of our existence. So the laws of reasonable discourse are in aid of reasonable social interactions, not the determinants of them.
I would not be so eager to call dialectics logic.
It is not just discourse. When I manipulate mental contents inside my mind, I cannot make an apple not be an apple, be apple and not be apple at the same time. No matter what, I can look at two rocks and see that is less than three. Language being so is a reflection of the mind. Whether there is a society around me or not, I can reason, and my reasoning is bound by some limits, which we call laws whatever their origins are.
Yes. And everything that you might think about will relate to the human existence of being part of a collective. We relate to the universe through the mechanism of our evolution. Those are the only laws that matter. People conducted the business of life long before there was any concept of logic.
I think in this case, we reach a basal point where we simply differ in opinion, which is the semantics of the adverb metaphysically.
I believe that metaphysically so far does not imply any modality automatically that we know of, as there are no laws of metaphysics. I then believe that a statement needs to explicitly reference a theory for it to be called "metaphysically impossible", because when we say "metaphysically", it does not mean "epiphenomenalistically" or "counterfactually. As an example, saying "souls are physicalistically impossible" or "bodies are idealistically impossible" is fine, but that "souls are metaphysically impossible" is incorrect. Of course, you think that souls are metaphysically impossible relative to physicalism.
You may then raise the issue that the same could be the said about physical impossibility. But when we say physically, we are automatically invoking the modality known as the laws of physics.
All in all, my argument is exactly that metaphysically does not invoke any laws like physicalistically or "dualistically" does. The adverb "metaphysically" is semantically empty until we find universal laws of metaphysics.
You, on the other hand, believe that the adverb metaphysically implicitly references a modality through the justification Znot part of !(z ^ Znot) ^ Znot, as you said previously I am conflating the proposition being metaphysically impossible with its justification.
For me, relative to is not meaningful, and the justification needs to be part of the argument, otherwise z is metaphysically impossible is not informative as it is not mentioning any specific modality, and z is metaphysically impossible relative to M is both trying to evoke a modality and not affirm it at the same time.
Quoting Bob Ross
That also ultimately depends on whether relative to is a meaningful thing to say.