January 28, 2009
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Privatives
The absence of something is not, itself, a thing, but we need a way to refer to it, or we get really confused. But naming an absence will often lead people to treat it as if it were, indeed, a thing. So we're confused either way, which seems to be humanity's default state. 'Ignorance' itself may be thought of as a privative: it's the absence of knowledge.
A difficult but stubborn feature of human thinking is involved in all this: it's known as 'reifying': making real. Imagine that because we have a word for something, then there must exist a 'thing' that corresponds to the word. What about 'bravery' and 'cowardice'? Or 'tunnel'? Indeed, what about 'hole'?
Many scientific concepts refer to things that are not real in the everyday sense that they correspond to objects. For instance, 'gravity' sounds like an explanation of planetary motion, and you vaguely wonder what it would look like if you found some, but actually it is only a word for an inverse square law attractive relationship. Or more recently, thanks to Einstein, for a tendency of objects not to move in a straight line, which we can reify as 'curved space'.
For that matter, what about 'space'? Is that a thing, or an absence?
'Debt' and 'overdraft' are very familiar privatives, and the thinking problems they cause are quite difficult. After, all, your overdraft pays your bank manager's salary, doesn't it? So how can it fail to be real? Today's derivatives market buys and sells debts and promises as if they were real -- and it reifies them as words and numbers on pieces of paper, or digits in a computer's memory. The more you think about it, the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.
From The Science of the Discworld, emphasis mine. The Buddhists are onto something.
Comments (3)
heh. welcome to my world, I've been of the firm opinion for years that at least ninety percent of most people's perception of reality is what I refer to as mental constructs. meaning not the "object" itself, but all the values, ideas, and beliefs which one attaches to and surrounds something with. That includes the absence of "something". Most people find these kind of thoughts disconcerting, and if they follow along them any distance at all, usually can stop safely before they successfully challenge their own pet beliefs. Oh look, something shiny!
From my own perception of things, I would submit that a "hole" is just as real as the mountain, both could be termed topological descriptions of matter. Or you could say one you climb on and the other you fall into, depending on your take of the universe. Both exist and don't exist at all, just as the painting of the nude, and the air that surrounds the nude both exist, embracing each other.
How about "believer" vs "non-believer"? Why does that make it seem like "believer" is the default? Drove me nuts in the inauguration speech when Obama talked about including believers and "non-believers" as well - as though people who don't believe in Christianity need to be defined. Why "non-believer" - why not "all people, including 'believers' " but even that sounds strained - belief in "what" exactly?
IT DOESN'T EXIST! Neither belief nor non-belief require definition or quantification. Why not just say "all people, regardless of their religious belief" or "regardless of where they obtain their moral codes - from their intellect or their churches"
argh.
yeah what you said! and then what do you do with those of us claiming agnosticism? That isn't belief or non-belief exactly. It's more like the suspension of either. Then the sentences trying to include all of us can get even more convoluted. Darn words, always tripping us up and making simple things hard to say! I blame the english majors.
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