A few days ago I laid out three views about the nature of space-time. Here’s a quick summary of those views. For those of you who read the last post, you can probably skip down to the section titled “They are There”
Relationalism – Space is not real. Talk about space is reducible to talk about objects.
Strong Substantivalism
Space is a real, genuine entity. Objects that occupy space are real. Regions of space are distinct from the objects that occupy them.Weak Substantivalism
Space is a real, genuine entity. And material objects JUST ARE regions of space.
In my last post, I briefly mentioned some counter-intuitive consequences for Weak Substantivalism, and I promised to offer more. Here are some more.
They are There
The pronoun ‘they’ is an indexical that when used in a particular context can pick out a group of objects. The pronoun ‘there’ is an indexical that when used in a particular context can pick out a region of space (and I assume a scattered region).
Suppose I use ‘they’ in a particular context to pick out Alex, Bobbi, Sam, and Jackson. Suppose I then use ‘there’ to pick out the region of space that I think they occupy. Here are some odd consequences of Weak Substantivalism.
First: My use of ‘they’ and ‘there’ are synonymous. That alone is a little odd.
Second: ‘They are watching’ is synonymous with ‘There are watching’
Now of course this assumes some kind of direct reference theory meaning and compositionality of meaning. Those seem like OK assumptions to me, but suppose you’re not convinced that these consequences are problematic. You might reject my linguistic assumptions, or (if you accept the assumptions) employ a Ways-Millian strategy.
If you are not worried about the above consequences, we can generate some consequences that may still seem problematic to you. I assume that, according to Weak Substantivalism, location relations would collapse into identity relations. Assuming that’s true, consider the following proposition.
(B) They are there
It seems that if Weak Substantivalism is true, then (B) is an identity claim. It sure doesn’t seem like an identity claim. Furthermore, assuming identity is necessary – (B) would be necessary. It certainly doesn’t seem like a necessary truth. I’ve got some more counter-intuitive consequences for Weak Substantivalism. Stay tuned.
[Update: Here are some more counter-intuitive consequences for Weak Substantivalism]
It just occurred to me that the weak substantivalist could make a clever move here.
The location relation for the weak substantivalist could collapse into a part-whole relation, rather than an identity relation.
So for example, when we say ‘Andy is in the living room’ – that’s certainly not saying that Andy is identical to the living room. It could be saying, says the weak substantivalist, that Andy is a part of the living room. (Also, odd).
Nevertheless, I think that I am essentially a part of me. So, provided I can succeed in picking out the region of space that is entirely occupied by a person and say
(C) He is there
I will have expressed something that is metaphysically necessary – if the location relation collapses to the part-whole relation instead of the identity relation.
The counter-intuitive consequence remains whether the location relation collapses to the identity relation or the part-whole relation.
The language of your world is incredibly confusing to the casual outsider. I suppose it is that way with all things jargon, but still, these terms are jarring. I’m not even sure I can pronounce Substantivalism. I’ve got Weak down though.
I know. I hate the jargon, but one thing I do like about “Substantivalism” is that it’s at least sounds close to what the view is.
The idea is that space is a substance…hence the name.
I am actually optimistic that many philosophical problems/puzzles can be broken down so that the casual outsider can understand, so if anything I ever say makes no sense – please let me know.
I know a way out of your puzzle for the weak substantivalist. You say that ‘They are wathcing’ is synonymous with ‘There are watching’. The substantivalis can deny this while still maintaining that the referent of ‘They’ and ‘There’ in this particular context is the same. Here is how we do it. we divide the predicates of english into two categories. The first category includes ‘are watching’, ‘are eating’ and all other predicates that we normally associate with physical objects. The second category includes ‘is a subregion of space’, ‘has no subregions’ and all other predicates that we normally associate with regions of space. Now we have a syntactic rule which says that when we use the word ‘they’ in the subject position, the predicate has to be one of the first category predicates (otherwise the sentence is grammatically incorrect and fails to express a proposition). We also add a syntactic rule that says that whenever we use the word ‘there’ in the subject position, the predicate has to be one of the second category predicates (otherwise the sentence is grammatically incorrect and fails to express a proposition). Thus, although ‘they’ and ‘there’ have the same semantic content in the context in question, we can avoid saying that those two troublesome sentences mean the same thing.
–Joshua
Joshua,
That’s pretty good. I like that.
I’ve got some other posts where I try to tighten the bolts with counterintuitive consequences that I’m more worried about.
In those posts – ‘there’ occurs in the predicate slot and seems clearly applicable in English to what we regard as physical objects and what we regard as regions of space. It’s not clear this will work there, but I have to think more about it.
That said, I have to think more about this way out for the substantivalist with regard to the sentences above.
I’ve been thinking about the ones where ‘there’ appears in the predicative position. The first one seems to have a small technical problem. ‘They are there’ cannot be an identity claim since ‘they’ picks out a plurality and ‘there’ does not. However, you can easily consider the sentence ‘it is there’. This sentence certainly doesn’t seem like an identity claim. But, if weak substantivalism is true, then it is an identity claim. Perhaps the Weak Substantivalist can just bite the bullet with that one.
I am not as worried about the turnip shaped region one. If the region is one that a bag of turnips could exactly fit into, then there is a problem. We can take the sentence ‘Andrew could have been there’ (where ‘there’ refers to the turnip shaped region) in two ways. On one reading it is true just in case you are exactly in that region. But, it is impossible for you to be exactly in a turnip shaped region. So, it is not possibly true. On the other hand, it might be taken in the following way: it is true just in case you roughly fit into the turnip shaped region. But, then you can roughly fit into it without being a turnip. So, there is no problem.
Joshua
If ‘they’ picks out a plurality and ‘there’ doesn’t – that seems like more problems for substantivalism.
But you’re right – singular pronouns make the case more clearly – I’ve been using ‘he’ instead of ‘they’ in a recent draft of the paper I’m working on.
I used the turnip shaped bag to pay homage to the “I could not have been a turnip” talk that you seen in the literature. I could have just as easily used a statue that is a perfect shape duplicate of you. You could have exactly occupied the region of that statue. The points would go through just the same.
Thanks for the comments you’ve given me so far. These are helpful.
I like the statue example better than the turnips example. But, I am still worried that you cannot exactly fit into a statue shaped region. One move that a weak substantivalist can make is a kind of Moorean shift. You argue as follows:
1. If (WS) is true and I could have fit into a statue shaped region, then I could have been a statue.
2. WS is true
3. I could have fit into a statue shaped region.
4. So, I could have been a statue.
The Moorean shift would involve claiming that the denial of (3) is more plausible than accepting (4). In fact, it seems that very few people would accept that a person could have fit into a statue shaped region and there doesn’t seem to be a strong reason to believe that the Weak Substantivalist should believe otherwise.
There is a related problem for WS though. Suppose that R is a region that I do not exactly occupy but could have exactly occupied. Then, although I do not exactly occupy R, I could have. But, WS seems to be committed to the thesis that necessarily, if x exactly occupies y, then x is identical to y. Contingent identity follows straightforwardly from these claims. This seems bad.
Incidentally, have read Shaffer’s papers on this topic. The paper is called “Spacetime the One Substance” and it can be found at:
http://people.umass.edu/schaffer/Papers.htm
I thought you might be interested in reading it
–Joshua
Joshua,
That last consequence seems very bad. Thanks for the heads up on the Schaffer paper.
Another worry I have about my objections is that the WS may be able to simply appeal to counterpart theory to avoid some of the objections. (Although, I’d regard that as a cost if that were the only way out)