The metaphysics of sets; critique of Lewis "parts of classes" (contd.)
Recorded at Sigma Club Lecture, University of Cambridge, conv. Michael Redhead (1996), featuring Michael Redhead, Alex Oliver. From the Michael Wright Collection, held by the Archive Trust for Research in Mathematical Sciences & Philosophy.
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mw0003041-cc-b_e_p- Format
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- Michael Wright Collection
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0:00 So I wonder whether this part of really addressing the intuition as you want, because as you said, this intuition has changed, and I would recommend that I read the book by Heisenberg, which is actually called The Part as a Whole. Very much done. There's nothing you can ever tell if you don't stop at the same thing. Well, you can just say that you're right, but you're not 100% right. That's not the point. In quantum mechanics you're right, you're very much right, but not 100%. There is always a probability that it's not the case. And that makes a difference when you're talking about the truth and not the truth. It's all practical purposes that you're right, but it's not fully the truth. Well, I mean, I don't want to make any decisions. I mean, the particles, it's just because we like some picture, I mean, but we can have a different picture which maybe by its relativity will be consistent. I mean, so, I mean, it's just under certain conditions that we get this paradox that the whole is more than the part. But we can dispose of this talking about this part. It's convenient to speak about confidence, but it's not completely precise. It could be not completely precise, you see.
2:30 So these are formal theories, and perhaps there is any number of objects which satisfies them, depending on exactly how we specify and define these fundamental terms of the theory, and so perhaps in that sense there is a factor to matter. We can't let this work with mereology because we already understand what it is to be a part of an originality of certain relations which may have some of the same formal features as a part of a relation, but that's probably wrong. It gives up room for that already, but that's really what we can have about this such pre-driven grip on the relations. I wonder what do you think about that? Yeah, that's a good point. It may be what they have in mind. So this would be the view that there's no intended interpretation, but rather...
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