Why Major Books Have Vanished throughout History?
Daily Life Philosophical Questions
There are many possible answers to this question. One of them is that book owners, who held important key works in their collections, also had menial employees. After one's maid comes to organise the library, which had been already carefully and methodically organised, one will never find any important reference ever again during his mortal existence.
The Didache, for instance, took centuries to remerge. Perhaps, the persons, who were in charge to take the dust out of Presbyters' private libraries, had been relocating its samples for centuries and centuries, so that scholars always had trouble in finding it. (Bryennios had probably fired his helpers and thus became lucky to rediscover it. After all it was not lost. Rather, it was just saved in a place none could guess!)
La tristesse apparente des psychopathes
Est-ce que les psychopathes ont des moments de dépression?
Pour les psychopathes, on ne peut pas parler de dépression classique puisqu'il ne peut y avoir référence aux interdits, ni culpabilité. La dépression du psychopathe est plutôt d'ordre narcissique, et le passage à l'acte en est une composante. L'histoire du psychopathe est faite d'histoires qui sont en plein dans la réalité et dans le principe de plaisir, en dehors de tout interdit et de toute culpabilité. La mythomanie est une façon de gommer la réalité pour l'aménager, la transformer. La construction psychopathique se distingue de la construction psychotique. En effet la psychose n'aura pas besoin d'éléments extérieurs: elle reconstruit et crée tout son monde, ce n'est pas une adaptation. Chez le psychopathe, on ne retrouve pas la logique du paranoïaque, la longue et fine construction de son délire. La construction du psychopathe touche les éléments ponctuels et les transforme, les embellit pour passer à d'autres par la suite. On retrouvera à la fois des aspects hystériques, paranoïaques, des passages à l'acte, choses que l'on ne voit pas ensemble dans aucune autre maladie (accès au dossier " psychose état-limite névrose ").
Le psychopathe utilisera 6 principaux mécanismes de défense :
- Le clivage en bon et mauvais objet, permettant d'éviter la confrontation du patient à son ambivalence affective. Cela lui évite l'angoisse et la dépression narcissique. Le mécanisme du clivage protège contre le sentiment d'incomplétude. La construction psychique du psychopathe ménagera un premier secteur adapté au milieu qui ne peut faire l'objet de blessures narcissiques et un deuxième secteur continuellement blessé. Le clivage lui permet de résoudre son angoisse interne et empêche la dissociation. L'intolérance à la frustration est une conséquence du clivage.
- L'idéalisation. Cela concerne les Objets externes qui doivent apparaître comme étant parfaits, hors de portée de tout risque de destruction, destruction que le sujet lui-même pourrait en fait causer. Il y a méconnaissance de toute agressivité envers ces Objets, qui alimentent aussi une gratification narcissique. Quand un psychopathe se rend compte que l'Objet en question n'est pas si parfait que ça, la relation casse. Il y aura une tension entre ces deux extrêmes que sont l'Objet parfait et l'Objet mauvais.
- L'identification projective. C'est un mécanisme en rapport avec le clivage. Les images de Soi perçues comme étant mauvaises seront externalisées. Le psychopathe a une grande difficulté à établir les limites entre Soi et l'Objet, entre l'interne et l'externe, et ceci explique la fragilisation du Moi. Ces patients auront toujours besoin de contrôler l'Objet pour s'en protéger, et l'Autre sera donc forcément perçu comme dangereux.
- Le déni, concernant surtout les émotions. Les actes n'ont pas de valeur émotive. Le passage à l'acte existe en lui-même sans valeur interne. Il n'y a pas de déni de la réalité.
- L'omnipotence, en rapport avec le narcissisme exacerbé.
- La forclusion. C'est la séparation du sens et de la chose. Le signifiant est mis à l'extérieur. C'est une sorte de clivage concernant l'ensemble "Signifiant/signifié".
Le psychopathe a toujours besoin de tester, d'appréhender la réalité. D'une manière générale, il ne souffre pas, il n'a pas de demande. Ce sont les autres qui souffrent.
Source:
Psychiatrie Infirmière
On Reverse Engineering
The Discussion About whether recent advances in science and technology have benefited from Extra-terrestrial sources is becoming more curious and challenges the fact-speculation divide.
Does Reverse Engineering (of ET Technology) Work?
Reverse engineering is the process of analysing a finished product of an unknown technology and creating replica or similar, which presupposes finding an appropriate manufacture process.
According to what many in the world believe, one of the most coveted technologies of reverse engineering is the propulsion system of extraterrestrial UFOs. more
See also:
Pensée bouleversante
Does Reverse Engineering (of ET Technology) Work?
Reverse engineering is the process of analysing a finished product of an unknown technology and creating replica or similar, which presupposes finding an appropriate manufacture process.
According to what many in the world believe, one of the most coveted technologies of reverse engineering is the propulsion system of extraterrestrial UFOs. The rumours say that both civilian and military projects, which watch the extra-terrestrial UFO flight patterns and characteristics and possible contacts, seek to reverse engineer the navigation and propulsion systems, which assumedly involves anti-gravity and very high speeds.
One of the possible and relatively successful results of the backtracking of alien technology, if they really exist, might be the idea of Ion thrusters, which uses beams of ions for propulsion, taking advantage of the high charge-to- mass ratio of ions to accelerate. They reduce the amount of reaction mass required but increasing the amount of power required, so that, in comparison with traditional chemical rockets, they have greater fuel efficiency but they are generally constrained to very low thrusts by the available power. In other words, they are very slow to pick up speed, but over the long haul they can deliver 10 times as much thrust per pound of fuel.
There are several kinds of ionic propellers, one of them is the electrostatic thruster that emit ionised atoms of xenon (producing an eerie blue shine). Nasa’s Deep Space 1, which was launched on the 24th of October of the year1998, used this kind of propulsion system.
Plasma or Hall effect thrusters constitute a different and even more perplexing type of advanced propulsion, in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field in a plasma discharge with a radial magnetic field. This kind of system uses electrons to accelerate the ions to produce thrust, and neutralise them ions in the plume. The former Soviet Union had already developed the concept of a Hall thruster into an efficient propulsion device and had used it for decades for station keeping. Now he European Space Agency 's satellite Smart 1uses it as well.
A third kind of Ion thruster is the Field Emission Electric Propulsion (FEEP ), which, according to science fiction, is the closest to the principle of Flying Saucers. It uses liquid metal (usually either caesium or indium) as a propellant, and consists of an emitter and an accelerator electrode. A potential difference on the order of 10 kV is applied between the two, which generates a strong electric field at the tip of the metal surface. The field extracts ions, which then are accelerated to high velocities, typically more than 100 km/s. A separate electron source is required to keep the spacecraft electrically neutral.
Officially, these systems have been under development since the 1950's. But the amazing progress in the field almost seems a science fiction text, and the suspicion that it somehow grew out of Reverse Engineering labs gets less implausible day by day.
Is There Daylight between Existence and Non-Existence?
By Uriah Kriegel
A discussion from another blog
Consider Jim, Jim’s shadow, and Jim’s ghost. According to common wisdom, Jim is a real thing, Jim’s ghost is not, and Jim’s shadow has some sort of intermediate status (“lower” than Jim’s but “higher” than Jim’s ghost’s). Perhaps the folk would say that Jim’s shadow is real alright, but it is not quite a thing.
Philosophers, however, tend to push us to choose between putting Jim’s shadow in one category with Jim’s ghost or in one with Jim. The notion that existence may have three rather than two ‘states’ or ‘values’ is deemed unintelligible. And with good reason: the notion seems mysterious. But I can’t shake my feeling that at the end it must be right.
I’m thinking about this in connection with the disputes going on about the status of artifacts and other ‘medium-sized dry goods’ (MSG). On the one hand, some people (e.g., Heller) hold that only subatomic particles exist, and the MSG don’t. On the other side, some people (e.g., Thomasson) hold that the MSG exist just as much as subatomic particles. I have a vague feeling that if we had a general account of the ‘intermediate ontological status’, it would apply nicely to the MSG and may be a satisfactory compromise.
(I’m told that Sidelle’s view goes something like that, and maybe Chisholm had similar things to say, but I’m not familiar with the relevant material.)
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under Metaphysics .
Responses to “Is There Daylight between Existence and Non-Existence?”
Tony Marmo Says:
July 14th, 2005 at 5:52 am
In which sense Jim’s shadow would be equiparable to his ghost? A shadow is an effect of light against his physical body. It exists as a phenomenon, but it is not Jim. Jim’s ghost to those who believe in ghosts would be Jim after death. Perhaps, you use the word shadow in another sense.
Stargazer Says:
July 14th, 2005 at 8:48 am
It all depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.
Plato and Aristotle, for instance, would count Jim’s shadow as less of a being than Jim because each defines ‘being’ in such a way as to diminish that of the shadow. The being of the shadow is derivative of the ‘really real’ (universal form or individual substance respectively).
For my part, I see no reason to deny that the Jim and his shadow are equal with respect to their existence. Qua being, as they say, what does Jim possess that his shadow lacks?
What is Heller’s rationale for denying existence to physical complexes? And what claim do subatomic particles have on simplicity (for that matter, what is meant by ’simplicity’)? They are not physically simple? Even something like Hertz’s point-masses don’t seem to be physically simple. They have parts in the sense of dimensions, i.e., they have sides — it makes sense to say that I am to the right or to the left of a point-mass.
Tony Marmo Says:
July 14th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Yeah, you got right on the target, Stargazer. I have roughly had the same kind of questioning in my comments on paper about the (in-) existence of artistic work ( The Destruction Problem ). Which is to say, we all have to agree that when we think of sub-atomic particles and Quantum Physics in general, most of our notions about existence are challenged, like the one (repeated by Barber and Caplan) that something comes to existence at a certain (determinable) point-instant, etc.
Briefly, if I can make myself clear, we cannot pretend to be still in the 18th century and play the naive guys, as if we still lived in an Euclidean Universe where Classical Physics rule. Everything that seemed common sense back there has been already put upside down, sort of say.
Jeff Medina Says:
July 14th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
To Uriah:
Jim’s shadow is a area of lesser electromagnetic reflectivity relative to the surface adjacent to its boundaries. Unless you feel like saying electromagnetic waves don’t exist, or somehow ‘exist less’ than Jim or Uriah or Jeff, how is it that a shadow, which can be exhaustively defined in terms of various things which we agree exist (Jim, a light, a surface), might be said to have less than full existence?
To Stargazer:
It doesn’t make sense to say you’re to the left or right of a point-mass in any objective sense. “To the left of” is utterly dependent on orientability (having a distinct ‘front/back’, relative to which left & right are defined — cf. the perfectly sensible question “Your left or my left?”, which is only asked when the two persons are differently-facing).
Point-masses have no fronts or backs, and hence no left & right, so it only seems to make sense to say you’re to the left or right of a point-mass by way of transposition — you note that the point-mass is to *your* right, and hence by default *you* are to *its* left. But that’s just anthropomorphic error, not anything informative about point-masses.
Stargazer Says:
July 15th, 2005 at 7:45 am
Jeff,
I don’t see that “dependence on orientability” is of any relevance here. Let’s dispense with talk of right and left. Consider the following example: a point-mass X is between John and Jane.
If point-masses did not have sides (i.e., if they didn’t have a surface, if they didn’t have extention), then it would not make sense to say that John is on one side of X and Jane is on the other. That is, using X as a point of reference, it would be impossible to give the relational positions of other objects.
It is my (humble) opinion that an “extensionless physical point” is mere nonsense (on a par with 11-dimensional “space”). Any physical body has extension.
Stargazer Says:
July 15th, 2005 at 7:48 am
Make that “extension” throughout.
Jeff Medina Says:
July 15th, 2005 at 8:15 am
Stargazer said, “a point-mass X is between John and Jane”
and
“If point-masses did not have sides […], it would not make sense to say that John is on one side of X and Jane is on the other.”
Given two objects, A & B, a third object, P, is said to be between A and B iff there is a straight line, AB, connecting A & B, that intersects with P.
This definition works for both mathematically precise & physical uses of “between.” (Although the physical usage loses precision on occasion due to human error & approximation.)
The mathematical application of this definition works perfectly well for *points defined in mathematics as 0-dimensional*, and you’d be laughed out of the room if you told a group of mathematicians that a point P wasn’t between two N-dimensional objects (for N in the non-negative integers) because to be between two objects, P has to have sides.
So either your intuition is off — “extensionless physical point” is not nonsense at all (or, if it is nonsense, it isn’t for the reasons you’ve stated) — or you’ve proven not only that all physical point-masses have extension, but also that vast amounts of mathematics are fundamentally flawed for assuming 0-dimensional (extensionless) points can rest directly between two other propertly placed mathematical objects. This mathematics would have to be thoroughly revised, should you be correct; a revelation matching Gödel’s or Weil’s in significance.
Stargazer Says:
July 15th, 2005 at 8:43 am
Jeff writes: “So either your intuition is off — ‘extensionless physical point’ is not nonsense at all (or, if it is nonsense, it isn’t for the reasons you’ve stated) — or you’ve proven not only that all physical point-masses have extension, but also that vast amounts of mathematics are fundamentally flawed for assuming 0-dimensional (extensionless) points can rest directly between two other propertly placed mathematical objects.” There is a third possibility. Let me reply illustrate it with the following quote from Wittgenstein’s Blue Book:
It might be found practical to call a certain state of decay in a tooth, not accompanied by what we commonly call toothache, “unconscious toothache” and to use in such a case the expression that we have toothache, but don’t know it. It is in just this sense that psychoanalysis talks of unconscious thoughts, acts of volition, etc. Now is it wrong in this sense to say that I have toothache but don’t know it? There is nothing wrong about it, as it is just a new terminology and can at any time be retranslated into ordinary language. On the other hand it obviously makes use of the word “to know” in a new way. If you wish to examine how this expression is used it is helpful to ask yourself “what in this case is the process of getting to know like?” “What do we call ‘getting to know’ or, ‘finding out’?” It isn’t wrong, according to our new convention, to say “I have unconscious toothache”. For what more can you ask of your notation than that it should distinguish between a bad tooth which doesn’t give you toothache and one which does? But the new expression misleads us by calling up pictures and analogies which make it difficult for us to go through with our convention. And it is extremely difficult to discard these pictures unless we are constantly watchful; particularly difficult when, in philosophizing, we contemplate what we say about things. Thus, by the expression “unconscious toothache” you may either be misled into thinking that a stupendous discovery has been made, a discovery which in a sense altogether bewilders our understanding; or else you may be extremely puzzled by the expression (the puzzlement of philosophy) and perhaps ask such a question as “How is unconscious toothache possible?” You may then be tempted to deny the possibility of unconscious toothache; but the scientist will tell you that it is a proved fact that there is such a thing, and he will say it like a man who is destroying a common prejudice. He will say: “Surely it’s quite simple; there are other things which you don’t know of, and there can also be toothache which you don’t know of. It is just a new discovery”. You won’t be satisfied, but you won’t know what to answer. This situation constantly arises between the scientist and the philosopher.
It seems to me that, whatever the mathematician is talking about with “0-dimensional points”, he is not talking about physical points.
Uriah Says:
July 15th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
Everybody:
Here’s the worry about a shadow, or one way to articulate it. A shadow is not an abstract entity. But it also doesn’t have spatial volume - it doesn’t take any space. How can a non-abstract entity exist without taking any space?
Relatedly, the shadow doesn’t have any proprietary causal powers. It has inherited causal powers (e.g., to cause perceptions of shadow), but no non-inherited ones. Some would argue that no entities should be posited that do not bring into the world new causal powers. If so, the shadow doesn’t exist.
Tony Marmo Says:
July 16th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
This reminds me of the title of a recent paper by Mark Sharlow, I am an Abstraction, therefore I am (which I cannot link to because Sharlow asks People not to redistribute), perhaps a ‘post-modern version’ of Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum.
Well, Uriah, in Optics things are not exactly like that. When you look at some image in a mirror you see objects not only in perspective (like in a painting), you see distance, which is in elementary Physics called virtual distance. Yet there is no volume, unless you want to talk about virtual volume. The image works just like the real object. This makes a lot of difference, e.g.: people affected by myopia, when they take out the spectacles, know that if they look at a painting with perspective they can still see everything in the painting, if they look closely. However, if they, without their spectacles, look closely at ta mirror, they will not be able to see the reflection of the distant objects, just like if they looked at the so called real things.
What is the image of something in a mirror? It is an effect of the laws of Optics, certainly. Does an effect exist? Shadows result from the refraction of light, when light cannot pass throughout something opaque. Does the effect of refraction exist? I think it depends on how Optics fits into your conceptions of existence. But I shall let the Physics experts speak their minds.
Brian Says:
July 18th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Tony may be onto something in bringing mirror images into the thread. Shadows and reflections are similar in at least one important way, and thinking about the analogy may shed some light on the shadow problem (yuk yuk).
Uriah writes: “How can a non-abstract entity exist without taking any space?” Neither Jim’s shadow nor a Jim’s reflection takes up any space. However, both the shadow and the reflection require the existence of some object that itself takes up space. A reflection can’t exist without a reflector, and a shadow can’t exist without being cast onto some surface. Perhaps we ought to think about shadows and reflections not as objects in their own right, but rather as modes, states, or properties of the objects onto which they are cast. In this spirit, I submit the following.
When I look at myself in the mirror, I see only two things: the mirror, and myself. I do not additionally see a third thing, ‘my reflection,’ over and above myself. Similarly, when Jim’s shadow is cast onto the ground, there are two things: Jim, and a darkish Jim-shaped patch of ground. There is not a third thing, “Jim’s shadow,” over and above the patch of ground onto which it is cast. These mysterious ‘third objects’ are mere illusions.
Audiences attending early motion pictures fell prey to the same kind of illusion. Indeed, the illusion is what made movies so thrilling. It was as if Charlie Chaplin (for e.g.) were right there, moving around inside the screen. But no one was in the screen. Charlie was lounging in his Hollywood home, and the cleverly illuminated screen hung motionless.
On this view, we might say that “Jim’s shadow is real alright, but it is not quite a thing.” The shadow is not an object, but rather a state or property of the ground. I’m not sure how or whether this fits with the artifact/MSG debates, of which I am ignorant. Probably I’m way off the mark.
Uriah Says:
July 19th, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Brian:
Welcome to our humble blog! I like your analogy, and I think it lends support to the thesis that shadows don’t exist. Reflections don’t exist, and part of the way to appreciate this is to note, as you do, that when I see myself in the mirror I don’t see two object, a person and a reflection. Rather, I see a person by seeing a reflection, just as Berkley hears a coach by hearing its sound, without it following that three are two objects heard.
(I don’t actually hold that shadows don’t exist. I’m just trying to motivate the idea that ascribing existence to them is problematic.)
THE COLD CIVIL WAR
Why were the Winners angry?
Spartan aristocracy used to annually declare war against the Helots, their slaves, whom they kept under control with the help of the Krypteia (the Spartan secret police). Nowadays, things do not seem much different in the so called modern societies.
The Paulista Avenue is one of the most important streets of Sao Paulo and one of the epitomes of the opulence and social-economic divide of the World. It concentrates many institutions that represent the wealthy population of the entire world. After a football match, the poor fans of the winning team, the Sao Paulo Football Club, decided to celebrate their victory by committing several criminal acts, including generalised vandalism, larceny, arson and physical assault. The Police intervened and the hooligans simply counter-stroke with defiance and more violence.
Note that this is not about the fans of the loosing team, who were frustrated about their defeat. That was the manner the winners decided to celebrate their achievement. People are still trying to find out why. The fact coincides with the ongoing investigation of a great political scandal.
The truth is simple and obvious: the social economic deterioration of the Country, which has been worsened by both the present and the preceding governments' policies has created a climate of generalised hatred. It is an ongoing Civil War without organised militias or guerrilla groups. The perception that politicians only take money from the poor and make them poorer and poorer is undeniable and corresponds to the facts. The masses react by displaying pure anger. They do not need specific targets, strategies, leaders or ideology: they hate, they want avengeance, they re-tribute with the same violence they are subject to.
Comparisons with the despotism of Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham are evident: The current minimal wage is below 150 US dollars per month. The previous government had endeavoured all efforts to eliminate Fair Labour Standards altogether, with some degree of success, and cut retirement pensions. The present government has also cut retirement pensions again. Both governments have increased taxes that were already high. Both of them have kept interest rates high. All financial resources that should go to Education, Public Health and Social Sectors have been re-directed to pay debts. But the President has increased his expenditures with travels abroad and the current scandals are about millions of US dollars diverted from governmental agencies to bribe members of Congress, to enrich private companies illegally, to wash money and to finance partisan structures and electoral campaign.
In response to the current social unrest the government is promising more of the same recessive policies. The same policies that have increased the revolt of the poor.
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
14 JUILLET: Vive La Liberté
Liberté, Liberté chérie
Combats avec tes défenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
On connaît rarement l'année 1880 qui marque pour la France la consécration du 14 Juillet comme fête nationale. Voici les textes fondateurs : comme le dit Henri Martin, rapporteur au Sénat de la loi du 6 juillet faisant du 14 juillet une "journée Fête Nationale annuelle", "ce jour-là, le 14 juillet 1790, a fait, je ne veux pas dire l’âme de la France [...] mais la révolution a donné à la France conscience d’elle-même".
En 1878, le ministère Dufaure avait fixé au 30 juin une fête parisienne en l’honneur de la République. Elle est immortalisée par un tableau de Claude Monet. Le 14 juillet 1879 prend un caractère semi-officiel. Après une revue des troupes à Longchamp (le 13 juillet), une réception est organisée le 14 à la Chambre des députés à l’initiative de Gambetta qui la préside, une fête républicaine a lieu au pré Catelan en présence de Louis Blanc et de Victor Hugo. Dans toute la France, note Le Figaro : "on a beaucoup banqueté en l’honneur de la Bastille" (16 juillet 1879).
Le 21 mai 1880, Benjamin Raspail dépose une proposition de loi signée par 64 députés, selon laquelle " la République adopte comme jour de fête nationale annuelle le 14 juillet ". L’Assemblée vote le texte dans ses séances des 21 mai et 8 juin ; le Sénat l’approuve dans ses séances des 27 et 29 juin 1880 à la majorité de 173 contre 64, après qu’une proposition en faveur du 4 août eut été refusée.
La loi est promulguée le 6 juillet 1880. Le ministre de l’intérieur prescrit aux préfets de veiller à ce que cette journée " soit célébrée avec autant d’éclat que le comportent les ressources locales ".
La fête célébrée cette année-là fut à la mesure de l'événement. Source:
Le Sénat Français
PHILOSOPHY CANNOT CANCEL REALITY [2]
Here is an interesting work collected from the Online Papers in Philosophy. It is a paper about whether artworks exist and/or can be destroyed:
The Destruction Problem
By Mark G. Barber and Ben Caplan
[...]The question of whether repeatable artworks can be destroyed has been neglected in favor of the question of whether repeatable artworks can be created. For example, Realists who are both Abstractionists and Creationists face a problem, which—following Harry Deutsch (1991)—we call The Creation Problem. But, we argue, Realists who are both Abstractionists and Destructionists face a parallel problem, which we call The Destruction Problem; and, athough much has been said about The Creation Problem, little has been said about The Destruction Problem. This neglect, we think, is unfortunate. For, given the parallels between The Creation Problem and The Destruction Problem, it would be preferable to provide parallel solutions to the problems. And it turns out that the kind of solution to The Creation Problem that Deutsch offers doesn’t carry over to The Destruction Problem. So, we think, that kind of solution to The Creation Problem suffers as a result. [...]
With all due respect, it is mainly a question of how to formalise something we already know empirically. We know, for instance, that Aeschylos has written more than 70 works, but only 7 have survived to these days. The existence of the seven aforementioned artworks is a fact and cannot be denied. The destruction of the other plays by Aeschylo is also a fact and cannot be denied. The problem is then of how do we formally spell out how do we know such fact. It is an important problem, but our lack of understanding of this cannot cancel such facts.
Furthermore, I would like to highlight and specifically comment on two key passages.
•→ First:
(3) An object can be created only if it can come into existence.
An object x comes into existence only if there is a time t at which x comes into existence; x comes into existence at t only if x exists at t; and x exists at t only if x is temporally located. So x comes into existence only if x is temporally located.
If we ignored one of the most important scientific revolutions, called Quantum Physics, together with Temporal Mechanics, such claims would be plain common sense. But given the current state of the art, Scientists can easily challenge or, with relative effort, discard a claim like (3) above. Can we always determine the exact location of just anything? Can we at the same time find the precise position of a particle and its precise momentum? The answer is no. And if we detect the presence of a particle by making it collide against a plate, we determine its existence at the moment it is destroyed. Moreover, the manner the authors understand an assertion like (3) (an object comes into existence only if it is temporally located) entails that time somehow pre-existed when the Universe came into existence. Stephen Hawking in his Brief History of Time, a divulgation book, explains that this is exactly one of the problems behind Kant's antinomies about the formation of the Universe. Accordingly, time is a property of the Universe and does not pre-exist it.
Indeed, (3) could only be an absolute truth if one considers a possible world w, such as the Physics of w is entirely classical.
•→ Second:
Abstract objects, it is often thought, are neither spatially nor temporally located.
The text remits the argument for this claim to works like Katz 1998 Jerrold J. Katz’ (1998)
Realistic Rationalism: Representation and Mind (Bradford, Cambridge, MA: MIT). The problem is that such kind of claim only works if a pure transcendental point of view is adopted. Philosophers and Scientists alike have already adopted emanating points of view and substituted materialism for former kinds of spiritualism. Thus, abstract entities are seen as emanating from a material reality (such as a practice, genetic programming, historical evolution, etc.), and as such may have a point of origin in time. Even earlier Religious systems admitted that souls could have an origin at time. So, there is no strong a priori Philosophical reason to believe that we cannot distinguish between different kinds of abstract objects, and that all abstract objects are of the same sempiternal or atemporal kind in such sense.
Methinks the most important Philosophical question the authors somehow touch is the implementation of the Accessibility View, whereby
x comes into existence when it becomes cognitively accessible. Accordingly, concrete cases like that of a particle that become cognitively accessible when they are destroyed (e.g. when they collide against a plate) are much more crucial and problematic and relevant. This is something I would like to see discussed.
