humanities.philosophy.objectivism

David Schwartz wrote:

> On Mar 30, 3:45 pm, Mark N wrote:
>
>>
>>>They never were, period. There simply never were indivisible atoms.
>>>The original meaning of the term "atom" was indivisible. That we now
>>>call something divisible an "atom" is simply an odd quirk of language.
>>>What we really learned is that what we previously called atoms are
>>>simply not atoms.
>>
>>Well, it's true that they are not really indivisible. But I don't think
>>it's right to say that they are not really atoms. The reference of
>>"atoms" is fixed, not by its etymology or by the assumption that
>>originally motivated the name, but by the actual things that people have
>>used that word to "point to," which are the things that we have called,
>>and still do call, atoms. The word "atom" has referred to the same thing
>>for a long time, at least for as long as the basic facts of chemistry
>>have been understood.
>
> I am not sure that's a fair thing to say.

Actually, I think that what I said there was fair (i.e., accurate), but
I now see that it doesn't really speak to your point. (The ancient
Greeks didn't understand the basic facts of chemistry.)

> The word "atom" meant
> indivisible. It's just as reasonable an argument to say that what the
> Greek's called "atoms" really referred to the things we now think are
> indivisible, such as quarks. However, it's also fair to argue that
> they thought an atom was the smallest bit of gold that was still gold.
>
> The problem is, the concept "atom" had two equally strong ways of
> referring to its referents that now refer to different groups of
> things. Indivisibility now refers to fundamental particles. However,
> retaining the property of the element refers to atoms.
>
> It's a 50/50 split.

Your point seems to be that it's possible for people to build false
assumptions into a concept, to such an extent that the concept fails to
have any referent, or at least, fails to have an unambiguous referent.

I don't deny that that's possible. But surely that's not the case with
all of our concepts? I'm not sure what you think follows from the fact
that that kind of thing happens *sometimes*.

[...]

>>>The "indivisibility" of the things the word "atom" referred to was a
>>>property of the model, not of the things themselves.
>>
>>There is no such thing as the indivisibility of the things the word
>>"atom" referred to. IOW, the phrase that forms the subject of your
>>sentence, taken at face value, appears to be non-referring. That being
>>the case, it's difficult for me to determine what you are trying to say
>>here. If you're saying that atoms never had the property of
>>indivisibility, even though they were at one time modeled as
>>indivisible, then of course I agree.
>
> Well, if by "atoms" they referred to whatever was indivisible (which
> is a perfectly reasonable claim) then they always were indivisible.
>
> The point is, this is all crap. The Greek's concept of an "atom" was
> part of an incorrect model, period.

Well, it's not just that the model was "incorrect." You are claiming
that the model was so badly flawed that the concept can't properly be
said to have had any referent. But that's not true of all concepts that
are associated with "incorrect" models, is it? I mean, you wouldn't deny
that it's possible for a person to refer to a thing, while having some
mistaken beliefs about that thing, would you?

> "Atoms" were a figment of the
> Greek's imagination, borne of a combination of correct information and
> lack of information. They modeled behavior, but there aren't really
> any atoms, not the way the Greeks meant it.
>
> The same is likely true for many of our cognitive models. That doesn't
> make them invalid, but it means they are what they are -- imperfect
> cognitive models with predictive validity.

OK. So, *if* it is true that there is some fatal flaw in our concept of
the Sun, or in our concept of the Earth, or in our concept of size,
*then* "The Sun is bigger than the Earth" may not refer to anything
except our flawed models of reality. But if there is no such flaw, then...

Mark


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