Re: BHA: Re: Identity and change

[Louis Irwin <lirwin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tobin,

>If the *sense* of pi cannot change--or more generally, if there exists any
>object for which any *one* of your senses of change "is not an option" (as
>in your example, the number 2)--then your claim that "everything changes" is
>false.  If not every aspect of some thing can change, then not everything
>changes.  Or you don't really mean "everything."  All the rest is a red
>herring.

I said that the number 2 (and pi is no different in this respect, both
being numbers) is not subject to causal impact, so it cannot "change" in
sense 3a, namely by a change in a non-essential relational property that
produces a cuasal impact in the thing said to change.  So yes, there are
things that do not "change" in the sense involving 1, 2 and 3a, and not
everything "changes" in that sense.  But in the sense including 3b, namely
non-essential relational properties of any kind, everything does indeed
change, or at least so I argued.  How important is that to the subject of
negation and absence?  Perhaps not much, but recall I expressly said I was
quibbling with Colin's self-described minor point.

There is a basis on which you could offer an authentic critique of my
position.
Consider the recent nuclear detonations in India.  No one in the West knew
about them (or let us at least so assume), so the events leading up to the
detonations were external events with no causal impact on us in the West and
were like the rock in Arizona that has no causal impact on events in
Cambridge.  Let's suppose that the West's lack of advance knowledge was
critical to the ability of India to have brought off the detonations, so the
absence of impact of India's preparations, a non-essential relational
property with no causal impact, was causally efficacious in India prior to
the
detonations.

You and Colin say that an *absence* of change (in the sense of 1, 2, 3a)
was causally efficacious, while I say that the *presence* of change (in
sense 3b) was.  Now my 3b presence is in effect defined to be the same as
your 1,2,3a absence.  You might criticize me for clouding matters by always
trying to find a causally efficacious presence rather than dealing directly
with a causally efficacious absence.  (I say "directly", because my
definition of the presence of a 3b change presumes absence.)  I accept the
force of that critique, which is quite different from the business about pi
etc., although I don't know if I will mend my evil ways about how to use
"change".

Louis Irwin



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