Change
Publié le 22/02/2012
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shape of a thing does not count as intrinsic on the above criterion since having shape is, arguably, not logically
independent of the existence of the containing space.
An alternative means of strengthening the Cambridge criterion employs the notion of causality.
A genuine change
in an object must, on this account, involve causal consequences contiguous to the object.
This is not true of, for
example, becoming an aunt or becoming famous - the effects of such 'changes' need not be near the object in
question.
Instead of defining real change in terms of intrinsic properties, we could define the intrinsic properties of
an object as those whose alteration must involve contiguous effects.
On this account, shape turns out, as we would
expect, to be an intrinsic property of an object.
But we cannot simply define real change in x as alteration which
must have effects contiguous to x.
The 'must' in italics is surely weaker than a logical must: there is no
contradiction in supposing a change in mass, for example, to have no contiguous effects.
But then if 'must' means
instead 'must according to physical laws' then some mere Cambridge changes would pass the causal criterion.
If x
undergoes the Cambridge change of becoming less massive than some y as a result of y's increase in mass, then
this must (in the physical sense) have gravitational consequences, however small, in x's vicinity.
However, the
chain of events leading to these effects in x's vicinity must have started in y's vicinity, so we could modify the
account as follows: a real change in an object is such that, if it has effects, these must (in the physical sense) be
mediated by effects contiguous to that object.
2 Change and the passage of time
In developing his famous argument for the unreality of time, McTaggart ( 1927 ) quotes, and proceeds to criticize,
Russell's definition of change ( McTaggart, J.
§2 ).
McTaggart's first criticism is, in effect, that real change
must involve, not difference in truth-value between different propositions, but alteration in truth-value of the same
proposition.
Suppose, to use McTaggart's example, a poker is hot on Monday and cold thereafter.
Now it is true at
all times that the poker is hot on that particular Monday and cold thereafter, so these facts about the poker do not
change.
The only real change consists of the fact that the poker's being hot is first a present state and then a past
state.
In other words, real change implies the passage of time.
Why should we accept this objection of McTaggart's ? Let us describe the event of the poker's cooling down, that
is its being hot at T and cold at T', as a first-order change.
Then McTaggart seems to require a second-order
change: the change in the event as it shifts from future to present to past.
So it remains to be seen why someone
who denies the existence of second-order change, but accepts first-order change, should be thought to be denying
change altogether.
McTaggart, however, has another objection.
We can construct a spatial analogue of Russell's Cambridge change:
there are two spatial points, S and S', such that the proposition 'At S [for example, London] the Greenwich
meridian is within the UK' is true, while the proposition 'At S' [for example, Paris] the Greenwich meridian is.
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Liens utiles
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