Individuating substances by their matter

According to traditional Aristotelianism, what makes you and me be distinct entities is that although we are of the same species, we’re made of distinct chunks of matter.

Here is a quick initial problem with this. The matter in us changes. It is quite possible that someone has different matter at age 1 and at age 20, and so by the Aristotelian individuation criterion, they are a different entity of the same species at ages 1 and 20, which is false.

One way out of this is to embrace presentism. But presentism is incompatible with the Aristotelian conviction that truth supervenes on being.

Another move is to narrow down the individuation criterion to say that:

1. Conspecifics x and y are made distinct by their being simultaneously made of different chunks of matter.

There are two problems with this move.

First, time travel. If at age 20, with different matter, you enter a time machine and travel back to meet yourself back when you were 1, then 20-year-old you and 1-year-old you are made of different chunks of matter at the same time. And while many problems about time travel are solved by moving from external to internal time, that doesn’t work here. For one cannot say that matter individuates x and y at the same internal time, since internal time is a concept that only makes sense when you are dealing with a single substance.

Second, relativity theory and teleportation (which is also kind of like time travel). Suppose that by age 20 you have different matter from what you had at age 1. Then God teleports 20-year-old you 100 light-years away instantly or nearly instantly (with respect to some reference frame). Then there will be a reference frame with respect to which it is true that the teleported 20-year-old you is simultaneous with 1-year-old you. So either simultaneity with respect to that reference frame doesn’t count—and that leads us to a privileged reference frame, contrary at least to the spirit of relativity—or else you are not yourself, which is absurd.

While one can swallow the idea that time travel is impossible, spacelike teleportation seems clearly possible.

Here is another move: we replace (1) with:

2. Conspecifics x and y are made distinct by their originating in distinct chunks of matter.

And 20-year-old you, no matter how they travel in space and/or time, has originated in the same chunk of matter as 1-year-old you.

This move has a cost: it requires that we be somewhat non-realist about substantial change. Full-blown realism about substantial change requires the matter to stay in existence while the substance changes. But if matter can stay in existence when its substance perishes, then that matter could be re-formed into another substance of the same species, which would violate the origination-restricted indviduation criterion. On (2), we have to accept the theory that the matter of a thing perishes when the substance does. This removes one of the major motivations behind positing matter: namely, that matter is supposed to explain why a corpse looks like the living body (viz., because it is allegedly made of the same matter).

Note, too, that (2) has a serious ambiguity once we have insisted that matter does not survive substantial change. By the chunk of matter that a substance originates in, do we mean the last chunk of matter before the substance’s existence or the first chunk of matter in the substance?

If we mean the last chunk of matter before the substance’s existence, there are two problems. First, it seems ad hoc to single out one aspect of the causes of the substance—the earlier matter—as doing the individuating. It seems better to individuate by means of the causes, applying the converse of the essentiality of origins. Second, it seems possible for an object to come into existence without prior matter. (If God exists, this is clear, since God creates ex nihilo. If God doesn’t exist, then very likely the world came into existence ex nihilo.) But then it seems quite possible for two objects of the same species to come into existence without prior matter. (Though if one wants to dispute this, one might point to the fact that a literal reading of the biblical creation account has God making the first two humans out of chunks of preexisting matter—soil and rib respectively. Maybe there is a deep metaphysical reason why this has to be so, and perhaps the initial ex nihilo created things had to be all of different species. But I just don’t find the latter requirement that plausible.)

So perhaps in (2) we mean the first chunk of matter in the substance. But if matter does not survive substantial change, then it seems plausible that the identity of the substance is prior to the identity of its initial matter, and hence the identity of the substance cannot come from its initial matter. This isn’t a very strong argument. Maybe the initial matter is prior to the substance, and has an identity of its own, while later matter is posterior to the substance.

So, our best version of the Aristotelian individuation account is this:

3. Conspecifics x and y are made distinct by their each having a different first chunk of matter.

Finally, it is interesting to note that (2) and (3) are only plausible if it is impossible for a material substance to have no beginning. But our best account for why a material substance cannot have a beginning is causal finitism. So those who like the Aristotelian account of individuation—I am not one of them—have another reason to accept causal finitism.

Perdurance, physicalism and relativity

Here is a very plausible thesis:

1. Exactly one object is a primary bearer of my present mental states.

This is a problem for the conjunction of standard perdurance, physicalism and special relativity. For according to standard perdurance on physicalism:

2. The primary bearers of my mental states are time slices.

Now consider all the time-slices of me that include my present mental states. There will be many of them, since there will be one corresponding to each reference frame. On relativistic grounds none of them is special. Thus:

3. Either all or none of them are the primary bearers of my present mental states.

If all of them are the primary bearers of my present mental states, we violate 1. If none of them are, then there is no primary bearer of my present mental states by 2, which also violates 1.

Subjective sameness of choice situations and Molinism

Suppose that Alice on a street corner sells Bob a “Rolex” for $15. Bob goes home and his wife Carla says: “You got scammed!” Bob takes the “Rolex” to a jeweller and finds that it is indeed a Rolex. He goes back to Carla and says: “No, I got a good deal!” But Carla says: “But if it was a fake, you would have bought it, too.”

Here is Carla’s reasoning behind her counterfactual. A typical fake would have looked the same as the real thing to Bob, and so the counterfactual situation where Bob is offered the fake would have been subjectively the same to Bob. And Carla subscribes to this principle:

1. If you were instead in a different situation that was subjectively identical to the one you were in, you would have chosen the same way.

I find (1) pretty plausible, and it seems to nicely come out as true on a Lewis-style account of counterfactuals in terms of similarity of worlds (with approximate match counting as similarity).

But I doubt a Molinist should accept (1). For the Molinist does not think that counterfactuals of free will are grounded in similarity of worlds (except of the trivial sort, where truth values of counterfactuals count as part of the similarity).

Manual Star Tracker

My Instructable for a simple manual star tracker for astrophotography is now up. The idea is that you manually rotate a knob together in sync with a stopwatch to compensate for the earth's rotation. There is little that is innovative, except for the fact that I accidentally found that a carriage bolt head compensates for tangent error very nicely.

Wii Remote Lightgun

The Wii Remote sort of works like a lightgun, but not quite. It has a camera that can track four infrared LEDs, but the LEDs it uses are normally arranged in a straight line in the Wii sensor bar, which is mathematically insufficient for figuring out where exactly the Wii Remote is pointed. If, however, we put two infrared LEDs on top of a TV and two on the bottom, then one could use homography calculations to figure out where the Wii Remote is pointing, and use it as a lightgun. I wrote some code for my Raspberry PI that does this, and together with a 3D printable handle and sights the Wii Remote becomes a nice lightgun for retro games. Instructions are here.

Lying to save lives

I’m imagining a conversation between Alice, who thinks it is permissible to lie to Nazis to protect innocents, and a Nazi. Alice has just lied to the Nazi to protect innocents hiding in her house. The Nazi then asks her: “Do you think it is permissible to lie to protect innocents from people like me?” If Alice says “Yes”, the Nazi will discount her statement, search her house and find innocents. So, she has to say “No.” But then the Nazi goes on to ask: “Why not? Isn’t life more important than truth? And I know that you think me an unjust aggressor (no, don’t deny it, I know you know it, but I’m not going to get you just for that).” And now Alice has to either cave and say that she does think it permissible to lie to unjust aggressors, in which case the game is up, and the innocents will die, or she has to exercise her philosophical mind to find the best arguments she can for a moral conclusion that she believes to be perverse. The latter seems really bad.

Or imagine that Alice thinks that the only way she will convince the Nazi that she is telling the truth in her initial lie is by adding lies about how much she appreciates the Nazi’s fearless work against Jews. That also seems really wrong to me.

Or imagine that Alice’s non-Nazi friend Bob can’t keep secrets and asks her if she is hiding any Jews. Moreover, Alice knows that Bob knows that Alice fearlessly does what she thinks is right. And so Bob will conclude that Alice is hiding Jews unless he thinks Alice believes Jews deserve death. And if Bob comes to believe that Alice is hiding Jews, the game will be up through no fault of Bob’s, since Bob can’t keep secrets. Now it looks like the only way Alice can keep the innocents she is hiding safe is by advocating genocide to Bob.

It is very intuitive that a Nazi at the door doesn’t deserve the truth about who is living in that house. And yet at the same time, it seems like everyone deserves the truth about what is right and wrong. But at the same time, it is difficult to limit a permission of lying to the former kinds of cases. There is a slippery slope here, with two stable positions: an absolutist prohibition on lying and a consequentialist calculus. An in-between position will be difficult to specify and defend.

More on Double Effect and statistical reasoning

Consider this case:

1. You are fighting a just war. There are 1000 people facing you and you have very good, but fallible, reason to think of each that they are an unjust aggressor that you are permitted to kill. At the same time, on statistical grounds you know one of the thousand is innocent. You kill the thousand for standard military reasons.

This is justifiable, assuming nothing defeats the standard military reasons.

2. You are fighting a just war. There are 1000 people facing you and you have very good, but fallible, reason to think of each that they are an unjust aggressor that you are permitted to kill. At the same time, on statistical grounds you know one of the thousand is innocent. Moreover, the enemy is superstitious and thinks the number 1000 is especially significant, so that if you kill 1000, they will instantly surrender.

Now this case is tricky. At first, it seems like it’s an easier case than (1). After all, you have two separate reasons: the usual military reasons for killing unjust aggressors and the fact that if you kill them all, the enemy will instantly surrender. But it’s trickier than that. The problem is that if you simply kill the thousand for the standard military reasons, then you can intend to kill each one qua aggressor—for you have good reason to think of each that they are an aggressor, even though you know you are mistaken about each one. But if you act on the enemy’s superstition, you are intending to kill each one simpliciter, not just qua aggressor, for all 1000 need to be dead for the plan to be fulfilled. In particular, the one who is innocent needs to be dead, too, in order for your plan to be fulfilled. But when you acted on the standard military reasons, you didn’t need the innocent one to be dead—as that one wasn’t a problem.

So, in case (2) you cannot legitimately act on the enemy’s superstition and reason: “I will kill these 1000 in order that there be 1000 dead, which will trigger surrender.” For then the success of your action plan depends on the death of the innocents among the 1000, and not just on the death of the guilty. (I am not worried here about the moral problem of exploiting the enemy’s superstition. If you are, you can modify the case.)

That doesn’t mean you can’t take that superstition into account in a way. For instance, while military motives might be primary, you might have a defeater for these motives, such as that the mission is really dangerous. But the fact that the mission would end the war could defeat the reasons coming from the danger. This would be a Kamm-style triple effect case. (A more difficult question: could the fact that the enemy will surrender, thereby saving much bloodshed, defeat the reason against the action coming from the death of the innocent? I suspect not, but it’s a tough question.)

The above case pushes me to the idea that killing is one of those acts that can only be permissibly be done for certain kinds of reasons.

Double Effect and the death penalty

Each of the ten million densely populated planets in Empress Alice’s vast intergalactic empire has an average of one person on death row who has exhausted all appeals. Empress Alice’s justice system is a really good one, but she knows it to be fallible like all justice systems, and her statistics show there is one in a million chance that someone sentenced to death who exhausted all appeals is nonetheless innocent. So Alice knows that of the hundred million people on death row, at least one is innocent (assuming independence, the probability that all are guilty is 0.999999^10000000 = 0.000045). (If we think, as I do, that under ordinary circumstances the death penalty is unjustified, we may suppose that the empire is suffering from extraordinary circumstances such that roughly one case per planet of the death penalty is justified.)

Every year, there is a Day of Justice. On that day, the Empress issues the order that all who are on death row and have exhausted appeals are to be executed.

So, the Empress intentionally kills a million people. That by itself sounds terrible, but we have to remember that she has ten million planets each with billions of people in her empire. Alice is a morally sensitive person, and she is weighed down by unspeakable grief over what justice requires of her, but being an Empress she must do justice.

But what is worse, the Empress knows that at least one (and probably a couple more) of the million people she intentionally kills is innocent. And yet it seems wrong to intentionally kill those who are innocent.

Now, it seems that I’ve just committed a serious slip in reasoning. I’ve moved from the claim that Alice intentionally kills the million people to the claim that each was intentionally killed. Let’s say that Bob is one of the handful of innocents. Then Alice does not intentionally kill Bob, because she does not know anything about Bob specifically. Well, but that can be remedied. We may suppose that for a month prior to Justice Day, the Empress spends all her waking hours looking at the photo of every person she is to have executed, and praying a quick and specific prayer for them. At some point in the month, she did look at Bob’s photo and prayed: “God, have mercy on Bob and give comfort to his victims and his family.” We may even suppose that Alice has a photographic memory and when she issued her order, she saw all million people before her mind’s eye. That shouldn’t make any moral difference to the justification of the executions, though it adds to Alice’s imperial burden.

Perhaps the thing to say is this: Alice did a wrong unknowingly. A few of the people she had executed should not have been executed, but since she did not know who they were, she did not do wrong in intentionally killing them. But the worrying thing is that Alice also did know that she was doing a wrong. She knew that one of the people was innocent.

But maybe here I am sliding back and forth between two actions: the overarching “Execute them all” action, and the specific actions of killing Bob, Carl, and all the other people whose faces bring tears to the tips of Alice’s tentacles. The overarching action is not wrong, but it is known to include a wrong component. The specific actions include some that are wrong, but they are not known to be such.

But we (and Alice) are not home free yet. For Alice’s overarching action clearly is an action that she foresees to result in the deaths of innocents. Thus, its justification requires something like the Principle of Double Effect. Now one of the conditions in the Principle of Double Effect is that none of the means be evil. But killing Bob (and Carl and all the others) is indeed a means to executing “all who have been sentenced to death and have exhausted their appeals”. So among the means, there are some that are bad. And the Empress knows this. She just doesn’t know which ones.

Can we get Alice off the hook by saying that she is intending only the deaths of the guilty? But how is she planning to kill the guilty, if not by means of “executing them all”? And she who intends the end intends the means, so if she intends to kill the guilty by “executing them all”, she must be intending to execute them all.

This seems to be a serious problem for Double Effect.

One possible solution is this. Alice really is only intending the deaths of the guilty. And the means that she intends to this end are: Kill the guilty Bob, kill the guilty Carl, and so on for about a million others. Each of these means is legitimate. But she also knows that some of the means will fail. For since Bob is not guilty, killing the guilty Bob will fail. It is weird to have an action that is overall successful but some of the means to which fail. But that can still happen: think of cases where there is a multiply redundant safety procedure, which is overall successful even though some of the means in it fail.

Continuity of time and causation

In a standard causal deterministic system, given three times t₁ < t₂ < t₃, the state of the system at t₁ causes the state of the system at t₃ by means of the state of the state of system at t₂. If time is infinitely subdivided, then the state of the system at t₂ causes the state of the system at t₃ by means of the state of the system at t_2.5 (where t₂ < t_2.5 < t₃), and so on. This is an infinite regress. And it’s vicious, because it’s a dependency regress.

Here is one way to see that it’s a dependency regress. Imagine a really unpleasant situation where you need to kill Hitler, but the only way to kill Hitler is to initiate a continuous causal chain that proceeds through Hitler’s uncountably many henchmen, set up so that at every time strictly between t₁ and t₂ a henchman dies, and their death is caused by the death of each previously dead henchman; at t₁, Himmler is directly shot by you, and at t₂, Hitler dies because of the previous henchman deaths. It is clear that in this case every henchman’s death is intended as a means to Hitler’s death. This matters morally. If it turns out that any person in the causal chain is actually innocent, then the Principle of Double Effect will not allow you to kill Hitler by killing Himmler. For the causal chain from Himmler’s death through to Hitler’s proceeds by means of that innocent. But an outcome depends on its means, so a regress of means is a dependency regress.

If there are no vicious infinite regresses, it follows that one cannot have deterministic causal chains intimately tied to infinitely subdivided time. In fact, I think nothing hangs on determinism here.

Observation, collapse and circularity

The following four premises seem to be contradictory:

1. An observation of an event E is caused by the event E.

2. Observation causes collapse.

3. What is observed is the collapsed state.

4. There is no circular causation.

Here is my first attempt to get out of this, on behalf of those attracted to the observation-causes-collapse view. For concreteness, let’s suppose that we’re observing an electron in a mixed up-down spin state, and suppose that we observe that it’s in the up state. Distinguish these two events:

• O₁: Observing whether the electron is in an up or a down state.

• O₂: Observing the electron to be in an up state.

Then I think what the defender of observation-causes-collapse can say this: O₁ causes the collapsed state which in turn causes O₂. But this is rather strange. For O₁ and O₂ actually seem to be the same coarse-grained event, which makes that coarse-grained event be its own cause! Another way to see the problem is to note that O₁ is the disjunctive event of observing the electron to be in the up state or observing the electron to be in the down state. But then O₂ grounds O₁: disjunctions are grounded in their true disjunct(s). But then O₁ is causally prior to its grounds, which seems absurd.

A second attempt: deny (3). Compare Elizabeth Anscombe’s theory that an intention to ϕ in the successful case constitutes one’s knowledge that one will ϕ or Thomas Aquinas’s theory that God’s knowledge of the world is the cause of the world’s being as it is. On these cases, the direction of fit in the knowledge is reversed. Observation of quantum phenomena could be like that.

Third attempt: cut up an act of observation into two parts. Metaphorically speaking, we could imagine the mind querying the world: “Is the electron in an up or a down state?” In response, reality collapses, and the mind observes that reality is in an up state. Thus, we have a query event Q and an observation-proper O₂. It is Q that causes collapse, and P is then the observation of the collapse. This solves the circularity problem, but strictly speaking it’s incorrect to say that observation causes collapse. Rather, it is the pre-observation query event Q that causes collapse. And if simultaneous causation is possible, then Q and O₂ may be simultaneous.

I think the second and third attempts are the way to go, assuming we're keeping the basic idea behind observation-causes-collapse.

Consciousness causing collapse and temporally extended conscious states

I have recently been arguing that states of consciousness are not localized to specific times. Instead, during an interval of times of non-zero length, say from t₁ to t₂, there can be a fact of the matter how many states of a particular sort have occurred.

It’s now occurred to me that there is an interesting difficulty for conjoining this theory with the consciousness-causes-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics. Let t₂ be the earliest time at which it is correct to say that a collapse-causing consciousness state Q has happened, and suppose that Q does not occur at t₂ but over an interval of times ending at t₂. Then when does collapse happen? Suppose that collapse happens at a time t < t₂. Then we have a problem for consciousness-causes-collapse. For by time t there has yet to have been a conscious state. If God were to annihilate the universe right after t₂, there would be no conscious state, and yet the collapse would presumably have already occurred. So the collapse wasn’t caused by consciousness—unless there is backwards causation, which is counterintuitive.

So collapse can only happen at a time t ≥ t₂. If collapse happens at a time t > t₂, then either there is backwards causation or else the conscious state cannot count as an observation of the collapsed state, since the collapsed state is occurring after the conscious state. Again dismissing backwards causation, and assuming that the conscious states that cause collapse are observations, it follows that the collapse must occur precisely at t = t₂.

But now we have something weird: The bulk of the conscious state that causes collapse occurs before t₂. Yet only what is happening at t₂ can be caused by the collapse. So the very last moment of the temporally-extended conscious state has to be what makes the difference as to the qualitative content of the conscious state—say, whether it is a consciousness of a red light or a green light. That’s a bit strange, but not impossible.

Wobble board, gamified

Last year, I made an adjustable wobble board for balance practice: a plywood disc with a 3D-printed plastic dome rocker. One thing that I always wanted was some sort of a device that would measure how long I was staying up on the board, detecting when the board edge hit the ground. I imagined things like switches under the board or even a camera trained on the board.

But what I forgot is that I already carry the electronics for the detection in my pocket. A smartphone has an accelerometer, and so if it’s placed on the board, it can measure the board angle and thus detect the edge’s approximately touching the ground. I adapted my stopwatch app to start and stop based on accelerometer values, and made this Android app. Now all I need to do is lay my phone on the board, and when the board straightens out the timer starts, going on until the board hits the ground. There are voice announcements as to how long I’ve been on the board, and a voice announcement of the final time.

Source code is here.

Instructions on building the wobble board and links to the 3D printable files are here.

One forgets how many things can be done with a phone.

I think my best time is just under a minute, with the board set to a 19 degree maximum angle.

Gamification

Most philosophers don’t talk much about games. But games actually highlight one of the really amazing powers of the human being: the power to create norms and to create new forms of well-being.

Lately I’ve been playing this vague game with vague rules and vague non-numerical points when out and about:

• Gain bonus points if I can stay at least nine feet away from non-family members in circumstances in which normally I would come within that distance of them; more points the further away I can be, though no extra bonus past 12 feet.

• Win game if I avoid inhaling or exhaling within six feet of a non-family member. (And of course I have to be careful that the first breath past the requisite distance be moderate in size rather than a big huff.)

When the game goes well, it’s delightful, and adds value to life. On an ordinary walk around campus, I almost always win the game now. Last time I went shopping at Aldi, I would have won (having had to hold my breath a few times), except that I think I mumbled “Thank you” within six feet of the checkout worker (admittedly, if memory serves, I think I mumbled it quietly, trying to minimize the amount of breath going out, and then stepped back for the inhalation after the words; and of course I was wearing a mask, but it's still a defeat). Victory, or even near-victory, at the social distancing game is an extra good in life, only available because I imposed these game norms on myself, in addition to the legal and prudential norms that are independent of my will. Yesterday, I think I won the game all day despite going on a bike ride and a hike, attending Mass (we sat in the vestibule, in chairs at least nine feet away from anybody else, and the few times someone was passing by I held my breath), and playing tennis with a grad student. That's satisfying to reflect on. (At the same time, playing a game also generally adds a bit of extra stress, since there is the possibility, and sometimes actuality, of defeat. And it's hard to concentrate on the Mass while all the time looking around for someone who might be approaching within the forbidden distance. And, no, I didn't actually think of it as a game when I was at Mass, but rather as a duty of social responsibility.)

I think the only other person in my family who has gamified social distancing is my seven-year-old.

Aristotle's optimism and pessimism

Aristotle seems to accept these three claims:

1. For the most part, things behave in a natural way.

2. Most people are bad.

3. To behave well is to behave in accordance with your nature.

I always thought there was a contradiction between (1) and (2) given (3). But actually whether there is a contradiction depends on the reference class of the “For the most part” operator in (1). Suppose the reference class is all behaviors of all things. Then it is quite likely that most of these behaviors are natural, bad human behaviors being far outnumbered by the natural behaviors of insects and elementary particles.

Back when I thought there was a contradiction, I assumed the reference class was the behaviors of a particular kind of thing, a sheep or a human, say. That may be correct exegetically, but even so it does not yield a contradiction. For morally significant activity is only a small fraction of the activity of a human being. Leibniz thought that about three quarters of the time we behaved as mere animals. That’s likely an underestimate. So even if all our morally significant activity is bad, it may be far outnumbered by non-moral activity, and hence it may well be that most activity of humans is good. But when we say that a human is good or bad, we only refer to their moral activity.

The only hope for a contradiction is to take the reference class of (1) to be all the activities of every subsystem type. Even so, I do not know that there is a contradiction. For to say that a person is bad is not to say that the majority of their morally significant actions are bad. Suppose that Monday in the morning Bob kicked a neighbor’s puppy. At noon, she sent a harsh and false email to a struggling student saying that he had never seen worse work than theirs. At three, he googled for articles in obscure Romanian journals that I could translate and plagiarize. And in the evening he cheated while playing chess with his daughter in order that she might never win. It would be fair to say that Bob am very bad person indeed, but that’s only on the strength of four morally significant actions. There were many other morally significant actions Bob engaged in. Each time he was asked a question, he had the possibility of lying. When driving, he had the possibility of murder. He did many things that were morally neutral and no doubt a number of things that were good. But the four bad things he did were enough to show that he was a bad person.

Our standards for moral okayness are much higher than the standards for a hard calculus exam where you just need to get more than half the questions right.

See also the quote from George MacDonald here.

The Need for Human Nature

A popular article of mine on “The Need for Human Nature” has just been posted on Sapientia. One can think of it as a precis of the main ideas in my in-progress Norms, Natures, and God book.