On Hell and Forgiveness

[Angrboda]

Don't try to guess what my endpoint is, just answer the questions.  If you prefer, we can speak of parts and wholes.  Do parts and wholes exist independent of the machinations of the mind?

I’m not trying to guess where you are going. As I said, I don’t understand what you are saying.

A simple answer to your question here, I do believe that the whole exists and the parts of things exist, outside of human conception. I believe that hydrogen and oxygen exist, as well as the combination of them known as water, apart from a persons knowledge of it.

Okay, a simple thought experiment. Let's say that you and I each have a lump of gold, me at my location, and you at yours. Now we know that these two lumps of gold are not part of the same lump of gold, the atoms from each are separated by considerable distance. Any two atoms in the respective lumps of gold are not part of the same lump of gold. Now take a single lump of gold. There will be two atoms in it that are adjacent to each other. Both atoms are a part of the same lump of gold. Between the atoms is empty space. Now suppose we start gradually expanding the space between the atoms in the lump of gold, first by 5%, then 10%, eventually by 100%, 200%, 3000% -- eventually the individual atoms will be as far apart as the lumps of gold in our respective pockets. Keep expanding and eventually the two atoms are farther apart than the entire width of the universe. The immediate question that comes to mind is, at what point do the two atoms stop being a part of the same lump of gold, but more importantly, why? What is it about the distance between them that makes one pair of atoms, separated by an arbitrary amount of empty space, different from two other atoms, equally separated by an arbitrary amount of empty space? This is similar in many ways to what is known as the Problem Of The Many, and as a glance at that page from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy will tell you, there are multiple incompatible answers to the paradox. Some suggest that this is just an example of the sorites paradox or the paradox of the heap, that it is a problem in the vagueness of the boundary, that something changes, even though there is no clear line or point at which it changes. Others disagree with this, and see the problem of the many differently. One solution which occurs to me immediately is that when the atoms are close together, they interact with each other by way of forces such as gravity and the other four forces. But this doesn't solve the problem, as no matter how far apart the atoms are, they still interact, albeit weakly, it is only a change in the strength of the interaction. To argue that it has to do with interaction would then be to assert that there is an arbitrary strength of interaction which defines whether two atoms belong to the same object or not.

Now, I don't really expect to convince you that parts and wholes do not exist. I suspect your intuitions about the matter, as well as perhaps your prior philosophical commitments make that unlikely. But if you'll recall, the original complaint was that the position that number, which requires parts and whole distinctions, being subjective was not so far fetched that, as Neo put it, no rational person would believe that number, like parts and wholes, is subjective. At minimum, I think this example, as well as the problem of the many, is not as far out as your intuitions, Steve's hyperbole, and Neo's contemptuous remarks made it out to be. If not, then what is your answer to the lump of gold problem, and your answer to the problem of the many? (And ultimately all objects are like the cloud in the problem of the many, a cloud of particles, interacting in various strengths through various forces. What makes the cloud of atoms that is my desk a whole with parts, and a cloud composed of water droplets problematic? There is the problem of the boundary in the case of the desk, as the surface of the desk trails off and it becomes difficult to say which atoms are a part of the desk, and which are not, and that indeed may be an example of the sorities paradox, yet the question remains, what makes this particular "desk-like ensemble of particles" a whole in the first place?)

Ultimately, as I said to Neo in the thread on delusion and religion, number, and the concepts it is dependent on, are a mystery. I can suggest that number, being an example of reasoning using parts and wholes, only exists in so far as we make arbitrary identity judgements, about what is a part of what, and what is a whole. But our intuitions tend to marshall against us, at the very least, and it's not entirely clear that number is subjective in its entirety, that it doesn't have an independent, objective substance of some sort. Yet when we go the other direction, and assert that number, and part/whole distinctions are objective, we run into problems in that direction as well, problems which seem equally intractable. So we're left with a mystery, I think, and to declare that number, or parts & wholes, is definitely objective, is, to my mind, to embrace an opinion that is not in any sense fully justified. At minimum, if you can't prove that number is objective, that leaves the door open, no matter how slightly, that number is subjective, as it must be one or the other, it can't be both. So, QED, as it were, I think I've shown that number and parts & wholes being a product of mind is not a view that is as far fetched as Neo and Steve made it sound. If you disagree, please explain why.

(To rephrase in terms of your example, what makes two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, close together, strongly interacting, a molecule of water, and the same group of atoms, separated by several light years of empty space, not a molecule of water?)