infinitely decomposable world?
Can the world be divided ad infinitum? Here’s a paper that wrestles with the matter: Physicalism in an infinitely decomposable world, Erkenntnis (2006) by Barbara Montero.
Abstract
Might the world be structured, as Leibniz thought, so that every part of matter is divided ad infinitum? The Physicist David Bohm accepted infinitely decomposable matter, and even Steven Weinberg, a staunch supporter of the idea that science is converging on a final theory, admits the possibility of an endless chain of ever more fundamental theories. However, if there is no fundamental level, physicalism, thought of as the view that everything is determined by fundamental phenomena and that all fundamental phenomena are physical, turns out false, for in such a world, there are no fundamental phenomena, and so fundamental phenomena determine nothing. While some take physicalism necessarily to posit a fundamental level, here I present a thesis of physicalism that allows for its truth even in an infinitely decomposable world.
Infinitely decomposable, infinitely non-decomposable, or infinitely nearly decomposable?
Peter Klein
February 7, 2011 at 4:57 am
On the one hand, most arguments about physicalism are tedious defenses of reductionism. On the other hand, how cool is it that we now invoke zombies (or p-zombies, a subspecies known as philosophical zombies!) as a thought experiment to argue against such reductionism! See David Chalmers’ website: http://consc.net/zombies.html .
Randy
February 7, 2011 at 2:52 pm
If folks happen to be interested, here’s a related paper (that also has some of the key citations in this area):
Schaffer, J. 2003. Is There a Fundamental Level? Noûs 37:498–517. http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/fundamental.pdf
teppo
February 7, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Scott Aaronson on how weird a classical (i.e non-quantum) world would be:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/29649?&in=45:19&out=47:29
Wonks Anonymous
February 7, 2011 at 5:19 pm