METAPHYSICS Problems, Paradoxes and Puzzles, SOLVED? Bob Doyle The Information Philosopher “beyond logic and language” This book on the web metaphysicist.com informationphilosophers.com/metaphysics METAPHYSICS Problems, Paradoxes and Puzzles, SOLVED? Bob Doyle The Information Philosopher “beyond logic and language” First edition, 2016 © 2016, Bob Doyle, The Information Philosopher All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means (including photo- copying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without the prior permission of The Information Philosopher. Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.) Names: Doyle, Bob, 1936- Title: Metaphysics : problems, paradoxes, and puzzles, solved? / Bob Doyle, the Information Philosopher. Other Titles: Metaphysics : problems, paradoxes, puzzles Description: First edition. | Cambridge, MA, USA : I-Phi Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: ISBN 978-0-9835802-6-3 | ISBN 978-0-9835802-2-5 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Metaphysics. Classification: LCC BD111 .D69 2016 (print) | LCC BD111 (ebook) | DDC 110--dc23 I-Phi Press 77 Huron Avenue Cambridge, MA, USA Dedication To all the metaphysicians on the Metaphysicist.com website. Special thanks to many who have sent suggestions and corrections to ensure that their work is presented as accurately as possible for the students and young professionals who use the Metaphysicist and Information Philosopher websites as an entry point into some great intellectual problems that they may help to clarify and teach to others in the coming decades. Information is like love. Giving it to others does not reduce it. It is not a scarce economic good. Sharing it increases the total information in human minds. Information wants to be free. Bob Doyle Cambridge, MA December, 2016 vi Metaphysics Contents Contents vii Contents Preface xi How To Use This Book With The Metaphysicist Website 1 1. Introduction 3 How We Proceed 11 2. Abstract Entities 13 Information as a Physical Cause 16; The Idea of Abstraction 17; Colors as Abstract Entities 18 3. Being and Becoming 21 Being and Becoming in Modern Physics 22 4. Causality 25 What Counts as a Cause? 26; The Problem of Induction 30; Induction and the Scientific Method 31 5. Chance 35 The Discovery of Ontological Chance 43 6. Change 47 Cosmic Change as the Growth of Information Structures 50 7. Coinciding Objects 55 An Information Analysis of “Coinciding Objects” 59 8. Composition 63 Temporal Parts 66; Mereology 67; Mereological Essentialism 69; Biomereological Essentialism 72; Composition as Holism and Emergence 73 9. Constitution 75 Is Constitution Identity? 75 10. Essentialism 79 Intrinsic Information as Essence 79; Natural Kinds and Mereological Essentialism 80 11. Free Will 83 The Two-Stage Model of Free Will 85; Does Ontological Chance Threaten Free Will? 92 12. God and Immortality 95 No Creator, But There Was/Is A Creation 96; The Ergod 97; The Problem of Immortality 98 13. Identity 101 Information Identity 101; A Criterion for Identity 101; A Criterion for Essence 103; Background of the Problem 104; Leibniz 107; Leib- niz’s Laws 108; Frege 109; Peirce 111; Principia Mathematica 112; Wittgenstein 113; Frank Ramsey on Identity 114; Willard Van Orman Quine on Identity 115; Ruth Barcan Marcus 120; David Wiggins 121; Saul Kripke on Identity 122; Peter Geach on Relative Identity 125; viii Metaphysics David Lewis 126; Relative Identity 126; A = A 129; Identity through Time 130; Changes in Time 131; Personal Identity 132; Identity and Biology 132; Vague Identity 133 14. Individuation 135 The History of Individuation 135; The Biology of Individuation 139; Individuation and Quantum Mechanics 140 15. Mind-Body Problem 143 The Problem of Mental Causation 144; Mind as an Experience Recorder and Reproducer 146; Consciousness a Property of Mind 149 16. Modality 151 Actual Possibles and Possible Possibles 155; The Many Possible Worlds in Our Actual World 156; Necessity of Identity and the Limits of Necessitism 157; Modal Realism and Possible Worlds 159 17. Necessity (or Contingency) 161 The Logical Necessity of the Analytic and the A Priori 161; The Logical Ne- cessity of Necessity 162; The Necessity of Identity 165; Separating Necessity from Analyticity and A Prioricity 167; Necessity and Free Will 170; No Logical Necessity in the Material World 172; Necessitism 173 18. Persistence 175 Perdurance 177; Endurance 179; Temporal Parts? 179 19. Possibility 181 Actual Possibles 183; Actualism 184; Possibilities in Quantum Mechan- ics 185; Shannon and Quantum Indeterminism 186; An Information Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics 189; Possible Worlds 190; Other Possible Worlds 193 20. Space and Time 195 Space and Time in Quantum Physics 196; Nonlocality and Entangle- ment 200; Visualizing Entanglement 201; Can Metaphysics Solve the EPR Paradox? 203 21. Universals 207 The One and the Many 211 22.Vagueness 213 Vagueness and the Two-Slit Experiment 215 23. Wave-Particle Duality 217 The Heart of the Puzzle 218; The History of Waves and Particles 221; Dueling Wave and Particle Theories 222; Dirac on Wave-Particle Duality 225 24. The Debtor’s Paradox 227 Information Philosophy Resolves the Debtor’s Paradox 229 Contents ix 25. Dion and Theon 233 What Chrysippus May Have Been Doing 234; An Information Philosophy Analysis 237 26. Frege’s Puzzle 241 Names and Reference 243; Quine’s Paradoxes 244; The New Theory of Reference 246 27. The Growing Argument 249 28. The Infinite Regress 253 29. Porphyry’s Fateful Question 257 30. The Problem of the Many 259 Peter Unger 261; Peter Geach 262 31. The Ship of Theseus 265 How Information Philosophy Resolves the Paradox 265; How to Make Two Ships Out of One. 266 32. Sorites Puzzle 269 Liar Paradox 271 33. The Statue and the Clay 273 How to Make Two Out of One 275 34. Tibbles, the Cat 279 35. Metaphysicians 285 David M. Armstrong 285; Michael Burke 287; Rudolf Carnap 292; David Chalmers 293; Roderick Chisholm 296; René Descartes 298; Peter Geach 300; David Hume 302; Immanuel Kant 304; Saul Kripke 305; David Lewis 315; E. Jonathan Lowe 316; Ruth Barcan Marcus 318; Trenton Merricks 319; Huw Price 323; Willard Van Orman Quine 325; Michael Rea 330; Alan Sidelle 332; Ted Sider 335; Peter Unger 339; Peter van Inwagen 340; Timothy Williamson 349 36. A History of Metaphysics 353 The Presocratics 353; Socrates and Plato 354; Aristotle 354; The Sto- ics 356; Academic Skeptics 360; The Scholastics 360; Descartes 361; Leibniz 361; The Empiricists 364; Kant 365; Positivisms 366; Linguistic Analysis 369; Modal Logic 370; The Necessity of Identity 374; David Wiggins on Identity 375; Saul Kripke on Identity 377; David Lewis on Identity 378; Modal Logic and Possible Worlds 379; Why Modal Logic Is Not Metaphysics 381; The Return of Metaphysics and Its Paradoxes 384 Great Problems Solved? 387 Bibliography 397 Index 404 x Metaphysics Preface Preface Preface xi Preface Metaphysics has been rejuvenated in the past few decades, after nearly a century of attacks from logical positivists, logical empiri- cists, behaviorists, and eliminative materialists, with their loud Preface cries that metaphysics is “meaningless” or “non-sense.” Traditional metaphysicians asked questions about the funda- mental nature of physical reality. Modern metaphysicians claim to be looking into the foundations of metaphysics, sometimes called meta-metaphysics. Similarly, they are looking for a new basis for ontology, a meta-ontology. They are also engaged in a critical review of why attacks on metaphysics were so successful in the past century. Some see many years of what can be looked at today as just verbal quibbling, what Kant once called “word-juggling “ (Wortklauberei). Can the analysis of language, of concepts and their precise definitions, yield truths about the world? Many famous debates now appear to have been metaphysicians talking past each other, captivated by their elaborate conceptual schemes and dense jargon. Others think metaphysics might have had a more scientific approach. Although few moderns draw much of metaphysical importance from today’s sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, or psychol- ogy, for example, some do like a methodology of hypothetical axiomatic systems that may even offer the kind of experimental testing that is the watchword of modern science. Some view the “naturalization” of epistemology by Willard Van Orman Quine as a step toward a more scientific metaphys- ics, but others criticize the limited “extensional” approach of Quine and Rudolf Carnap, in which meaning and truth of our words are to be found in the members of sets of objects. Other “intensionalists” find meaning located in human inten- tions, either in initial speech acts or final interpretations of mean- ings in relevant contexts, but both of these are vulnerable to charges of relativism from modern skeptics. Proponents look to philosophers of science who are impressed by interpretations of xii Metaphysics Preface Figure iv-1. A taxonomy of metaphysical problems, puzzles, and paradoxes. Preface xiii quantum physics that may indicate that reality is not an external, observer-independent entity. Perhaps the most significant development in the rebirth of metaphysics has been the reintroduction of modal thinking that Preface had been a vital part since Aristotle, but was more or less forgotten since the late-nineteenth century creation of second-order propo- sitional logic by Gottlob Frege. Quine opposed the reintroduction of modality, but parallel to the existential and universal quantifiers he thought sufficed, modal logicians have added operators for possibility and necessity. Next to ∃, “there exists” or “for some,” and ∀, “for all,” modal logicians have added operators for ◊ “possibly” and ☐ “necessarily.” Necessity is defined as propositions true in all possible worlds. Possibility is defined as propositions true in some possible worlds. But there is no room in the new modal logic and its many possible worlds for contingent statements, about the future for example, propositions that are not yet either true or false.