Friday, December 06, 2019

Immortal jellyfish in zero energy ontology








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Anonymous said...

Dear Matti,
how does ZEO deal with the Parmenides paradox?

An important italian philosopher (Emanuele Severino) has presented in our days a renewed formulation of the impossibility of every change, that Greek philosopher Parmenides had presented for the first time in early fifth century BC.

Considering a specific thing (let's say X) which is determined as a "unity" of informations, shapes and energy states, we can say "it has become a different thing" because we experience it is "changed".

Indeed behind this simple idea of ​​"change", to a more careful consideration, we must recognize that we are contradicting ourselves: infact the necessary condition to be able to say that over time "X has become something else (a different thing)" is that (X = not-X): this is a clear contradiction because we are identifying X and not-X. This contradiction is not solved even if we say that, over time, some aspects of X had become a nothing because we are identifying X (an existence) and nothing (the inexistence).

It would seem that the only way to resolve the contradiction is to say that X has remained totally unchanged: X = X, but in this way we have to negate the changing.

How does ZEO deal with this formulation of Parmenides paradox?
Is changing real or is it an impossible contradicion ?

Matti Pitkänen said...

As a physicist I do not find myself in Parmenides paradox. X has become a new state does not mean X=not-X. Severino identifies state
as concept with its particular representative X and this is category error.

Physicist introduces more general notion: quantum state. Quantally: Quantum state X has become quantum state Y. No paradox. "Becoming" means quantum..

Same classically: classical time evolution leads from classical state X to Y. Now "becoming" means continuous time evolution.