Scientific realism about mass

While I’ve grown up as a scientific realist, and been trained as one as a philosophy graduate student, and I suppose I still identify as one, I’ve been finding it more difficult to say what scientific realism claims.

For instance, what does it mean to be a realist about mass in a Newtonian context? A naive thought is that for each physical object, there is a positive real number, the mass of the object, which mathematically enters into the laws of nature such as F = ma and F = Gm₁m₂/r². But that seems to commit one to there being some odd objective facts, such as to which objects have the property that the square of their masses is less than their mass—a property that barely seems to make any sense, since normally in physics, we don’t compare masses with squares of masses, as they are measured in different units.

A more sophisticated thought is that there is a determinable mass, and a family of determinates, with various mathematical relations between them, with the family isomorphic with the positive real numbers with respect to the relations, but without necessarily a single isomorphism being privileged. But this more sophisticated thought is much more philosophy than physics: physicists hypothesize entities like forces and particles and the like, but not such entities like determinables and determinates. Indeed, this approach commits one to the denial of nominalism, and surely realism about mass in a Newtonian context shouldn’t commit one to such a controversial metaphysical thesis.

Is there some alternative? Maybe, but I don’t know.

A reading of 1 Corinthians 14:33b-34a

1 Corinthians 14:33b-34a is one of the “hard texts” of the New Testament. The RSV translates it as:

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches.

Besides the fact that this is a hard saying, a textual difficulty is that earlier in the letter, at 11:5, Paul has no objection to women prophesying or praying (it seems very likely that praying would be out loud), though it has been suggested that this was outside of a liturgical context. Nor does later Church practice prohibit women from joining in vocal prayer during the liturgy.

I assume that the second "the churches" means "the churches of Corinth", while the first "the churches" refers to the churches more generally. And yesterday at our Department Bible study, I was struck by the fact that the “As” (Greek hōs) that begins the text can be read as “In the manner of”. On that reading, the first sentence of the hard text does not say that women should keep silent in the Corinthian churches. Rather, it says that women should keep silent in the Corinthian churches in the way and to the extent to which they keep silent in the other churches. In other words, women should only speak up in Corinthian liturgies at the points at which women speak up in non-Corinthian liturgies. This is compatible with women having various speaking roles—but only as long as they have these roles in “all the churches of the saints.”

(Note, however, that some versions punctuate differently, and make “As in all the churches of the saints” qualify what came earlier rather than what comes afterwards. My reading requires the RSV’s punctuation. Of course, the original has no punctuation.)

On this reading, the first sentence of the text is an application of a principle of liturgical uniformity between the churches, and Paul could equally well have said the same thing about the men. But the text suggests to me that there was some particular problem, which we can only speculate about, that specifically involved disorderly liturgical participation by Corinthian women, in addition to other problems of disorderly participation that Paul discusses earlier in the chapter.

The difficulty for my reading is the next sentence, however:

For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. (1 Cor. 14:34b, RSV)

I would want to read this with “speak” restricted to the kinds of speech not found in the other churches. Perhaps in the other churches, there was no “chatting in the pews”, or socializing during the liturgy (Mowczko in a very nice summary of interpretations notes that this is St. John Chrystostom’s interpretation).

Another interpretation is that “the law” here is Roman law or Corinthian custom (though I don’t know that in Koine Greek “nomos” can still cover custom, like it can in classical Greek), so that Paul is reprising a motif of noting that the Corinthians are behaving badly even by their own cultural standards.

I don’t know that my reading is right. I think it is a little bit more natural to read the Greek as having a complete prohibition on women speaking, but my reading seems to be grammatically permissible, and one must balance naturalness of language with consistency in a text (in this case, consistency with 11:5). And in the case of a Biblical text, I also want an interpretation compatible with divine inspiration.

Contraception, liturgy and self-giving

Alice has a paper due the day after Thanksgiving. She’s already gotten all the extensions she can, and she can’t get it done except by working through Thanksgiving. She is thinking of not going to the big Thanksgiving dinner that her grandfather organizes every year, even though it brings together relatives she hasn’t heard from for a long time, has much warm family fellowship, and great food. But then she has an idea: “It’s better to attend distractedly than not at all. The table is big and my laptop is small, so I can easily put my laptop beside a plate, and then I can write all the way through dinner and finish my paper. And I’m good at multitasking, so I can still have an ear out for interesting bits of conversation, and occasionally I can put a forkful of food in my mouth or make a friendly remark to someone. It would be permissible for me to skip the dinner completely, and this is better than skipping it.”

Bob has a major exam on Wednesday. It is his habit to attend Mass daily, both for the spiritual benefits and because there is an incredible organist. He could skip Tuesday Mass, but reasons much as Alice does: “If I skip Mass, I get none of the spiritual and musical benefits. I’ll just bring my tablet, sit in the back pew so the bright screen doesn’t disturb anybody, study hard and I’ll at least get some of the benefits of Mass. After all, there is nothing wrong with my skipping Tuesday Mass, and this is better.”

Alice is being obtuse about human relationships and Bob doesn’t understand the kind of participation the Mass requires. There are some activities that one should give oneself pretty completely to—or not do them at all.

What if Bob says something like this? “But I go to Mass on many days when I’ve already spent hours working hard, and I’m really exhausted, and barely able to pay any attention to what the priest says. There is nothing morally wrong with attending Mass on days like that. But today I’m still fresh, and multitasking today I can participate at least as well as singletasking on a bad day.” And Alice can say something very similar—after all, very tired people can go to Thanksgiving dinner, too.

But that’s still not an excuse. For when one goes to Thanksgiving dinner or Mass, one should give oneself to it as much as one can (within some reasonable limit of what counts as “enough”). Both Alice and Bob are going to be deliberately withholding themselves from participation. But on the days when they attended while really tired, they weren’t doing that—they were giving what they could (it would be different if Bob ran a marathon in order to be too tired to follow the Gospel reading!).

Now, consider a common response to John Paul II’s argument that contraception is wrong because it deliberately blocks the total self-giving in sex. “Granted, contraception blocks an aspect of the union as one body. But a partial union is better than no union at all, and a couple is morally permitted to refrain from union for good reasons.” But that’s like Alice’s and Bob’s initial argument. And there is a case that can be made that sex is a liturgical kind of act, akin to Thanksgiving dinner or the Mass, and that in these kinds of liturgical acts one can’t participate while blocking an aspect of one’s participation—one needs to give one’s all, or not at all. It is better not to have sex at all than to have it while blocking one’s participation.

And then there is the riposte: “But the Catholic Church says it’s permissible to have sex while infertile. And contracepted sex has in it everything that infertile sex does.” But that riposte is just like Bob’s suggestion that studying at Mass with his tablet still leaves him as much (or more!) function as attending Mass on the days when he is really tired. Yes, that’s true, but it misses the liturgical meaning of deliberately distracting oneself with the tablet.

If it is objected that sex isn’t analogous to Thanksgiving dinner or the Mass (though I think it is), we could think about the case of Carl who is a professional movie reviewer. His wife would like to have sex with him, but he needs to watch and review a boring movie by tomorrow. So he sets up a laptop by the bed, and unites with his wife while watching the movie. Ugh! It would be better not to have sex at all.

Determinates vs. values

Spot has a mass of 10kg, while Felix has a mass of 8kg. The standard Platonic way to model the facts expressed by this is to say that Spot and Felix both have the determinable property of mass and they also have the determinate properties mass-of-10kg and mass-of-8kg, respectively. But there is another Platonic way to model these facts. Rephrase the beginning statement as: "Spot masses 10kg while Felix masses 8kg." The natural First Order Logic rendering of the English is now: Masses(spot, 10kg) and Masses(felix, 8kg). In other words, there is a relation between Spot and Felix, on the one hand, and the two respective values of 10kg and 8kg, on the other.

The determinate property approach multiplies properties: for each possible mass value, it requires a property of having mass of that value. The value approach, on the other hand, introduces a new class of entities, mass-values. So far, it looks like Ockham's razor favors the standard determinate property approach, since we don't want to multiply classes of entities.

However, the determinate property approach has some further ideology. It requires a determinable-determinate relation, which holds between having mass and having mass m. The mass-value approach doesn't require that. We can define having mass in terms of quantification: to have mass is to mass something (∃x Masses(spot, x)). Moreover, the value approach might be able to greatly reduce the number of values it posits. For instance, mass, length and charge values could all simply be real numbers in a natural unit system like Planck units. If one thinks that the Platonist needs mathematical objects like numbers anyway, the additional commitment to values comes for free. Further, the determinate property approach requires positing either a privileged bijection relation (or set of bijection relations) between mass values and non-negative real numbers or enough mathematical-type relations between mass determinates (e.g., a relation of one mass determinate being the sum of two or more mass determinates) to make sense of the mathematics in laws of physics like F=Gmm'/r².

There is also a potential major epistemological bonus for the value approach if the values are real numbers. Standing in a mass relation to a particular real number will be causally relevant. Thus, real numbers lose the inertness, the lack of connection to concrete beings like us, that is at the heart of the epistemological problems for mathematical Platonism.

All that said, I'm not enough of a Platonist to like the story. Is there a non-Platonic version of the story? Maybe. Here's one wacky possibility after all: Values are non-spatiotemporal contingent and concrete beings. They may even be numbers, contingent and concrete nonetheless.

More about functionalism about location

Functionalism about location holds that any sufficiently natural relation, say between objects and points in a topological space, that has the right formal properties (and, maybe, interacts the right way with causation) is a location relation.

Here is an argument against functionalism. Functionalism is false for other fundamental physical determinables: it is false for mass, charge, charm, etc. There is a possible world where some force other than electromagnetic is based on a determinable other than charge, but where the force and determinable follow structurally the same laws. By induction, functionalism is probably false for location.

Some will reject this argument precisely because they accept something like functionalism for the other physical determinables, and hence deny the thought experiment about the non-electromagnetic force--they will say that if the laws are structurally the same, the properties are literally the same.

I think there is a way to counter the above argument by pointing out a disanalogy between location and other fundamental physical determinables (this disanalogy goes against the spirit of this post, alas). Let's say we live in an Einsteinian world. A Newtonian world still might have been actual. But, plausibly, the Newtonian world's "mass" is a different determinable from our world's mass. Here's why. In our world, mass is the very same determinable as energy (one could deny this by making it a nomic coextensiveness, but I like the way of identity here). In the Newtonian world "mass" is a different determinable from "energy". Therefore either (a) Newtonian "mass" is a different determinable from mass, or (b) Newtonian "energy" is a different determinable from energy, or (c) both (a) and (b). Of these, the symmetry of (c) is pleasing. More generally, it is very plausible that fundamental physical determinables like mass-energy, charge, charm or wavefunction are all law bound: you change the relevant laws (namely, those that make reference to these determinables) significantly, and you don't have instances of these determinables.

But location does not appear to be law bound. "Location" in a Newtonian spacetime and a relativistic spacetime are used univocally. You can have a set of really weird laws, with a really weird 2.478-dimensional space (for fractional dimensions, see, e.g., here), and yet still have location. Maybe there are some formal constraints on the laws needed for locations to be instantiated, but intuitively these are lax.

Plausibly, natural (in the David Lewis sense of not being gerrymandered) physical determinables that are not law bound are functional. If location is a natural physical determinable, which is very plausible on an absolutist view of spacetime, then it is, plausibly, functional. I think an analogous argument can be run on relationism, except that the fundamentality constraint is a bit less plausible there.

One might question the claim that natural physical determinables that are not law bound are functional. After all, if the claim is plausible with the "physical", isn't it equally plausible without "physical"? But the dualist denies the claim that natural determinables that are not law bound are functional. For instance, awareness seems to be a natural determinable (whose determinates are of a form like being aware of/that ..., and nothing else), but the dualist is apt to deny that it's functional.

In any case, one interesting result transpires from the above. It is an important question whether location is law bound. If we could resolve that, we would be some ways towards a good account of spacetime (if it is law bound, proposals like this one might have some hope, if based on a better physics). The account I give above of law boundedness is rather provisory, and a better account is also needed.

Christ's sacrifice and presentism

After it took place, Christ's sacrifice had never ceased to be a part of reality. But Christ's sacrifice did not continue to be always a part of the present. (Christ's sacrifice is present during the Mass, but there have been times, since Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, during which no Mass was being celebrated.) Hence, the present and reality are not coextensive.

Whether this contradicts presentism depends on what one makes of the imprecise predicates "is a part of reality" and "is a part of the present".

Two kinds of responsibility

I hire Jack the mad brainwasher to capture a random Wacoite and brainwash the victim into burning up a local hardware store's stock of ramin dowels.[note 1] Jack captures Bob and brainwashes him into this, and as a result Bob promptly burns up the local hardware store's stock of ramin dowels. I am responsible for several things, notably:

1. my hiring Jack to fulfill such-and-such purposes
2. Jack's brainwashing the victim
3. the victim's burning of the dowels
4. the dowels' ceasing to exist.

Of these four things, however, only (1) is an action of mine. Items (2) and (3) are actions, but not my actions: I don't brainwash the victim or burn the dowels, but I have the victim be brainwashed and have the dowels burned. However, (2)-(4) are intended and foreseen consequences of my action, and indeed my hiring Jack to fulfill such-and-such purposes is my having the victim brainwashed and my having the victim burn the dowels. Thus, I am fully responsible for (1)-(4). But the responsibility involved in (1) differs in kind from that in (2)-(4). For in (1), I am responsible in a normal first-person-action sort of way. I am not merely responsible for the occurrence of Jack's being hired: I freely and with responsibility hire Jack. And it is by freely and with responsibility hiring Jack that I assume responsibility for (2)-(4).

Actions (2) and (3) are ones I am responsible for, but I am responsible for them in the way one is responsible for occurrences or events, and not in the way one is normally responsible in a first-person-action sort of way. And of course (4) is not an action at all. We might call my responsibility for (2)-(4) "event-responsibility", while my responsibility for (1) is "agency-responsibility". Observe also that Jack is agency-responsible for (2) and event-responsible for (3) and (4), while (unless there is some further backstory) Bob is not responsible in any way for any of (1)-(4).

Now, I think it plausible that agency-responsibility is intrinsically a different kind of responsibility from event-responsibility. For instance, event-responsibility does not essentially depend on my mental state during the event I am responsible for, but agency-responsibility does essentially depend on my mental state during the action I am agency-responsible for. I could be dead by the time the event I am event-responsible for occurs. There is even a little tense difference. If I am event-responsible for an event E at t₂, by virtue of an action of mine that I undertook at an earlier time t₁, the better thing to say at t₂ is that I was responsible for E. (This is particularly clear in backwards-causation cases. If in the year 2020 Smith sends a bomb backwards in time in a time-machine, and it explodes in the year 2009, in 2009 we could correctly say: "Smith is not yet responsible for this explosion." He will be responsible for it in 2020.)

Normally, I have agency-responsibility for my actions and event-responsibility for their consequences. But it is also possible for me to have event-responsibility but not agency-responsibility for my own actions. For suppose that the Wacoite that Jack randomly kidnaps happens to be me. I think I am no more agency-responsible for the burning of the dowels than Bob was in the original story. I am in exactly the same boat as Bob was. (We can even tweak the story so I am just as surprised as Bob was. For I could have my memory of my hiring Jack wiped as soon as I've hired Jack so that I wouldn't give my part in the plot away.) While the action of burning the ramin happens is done by me, it is not done by me in such a way that I would be agency-responsible for it. But I am event-responsible for it, exactly as I was in the case where Bob did it.[note 2]

If I am right about this, then some examples in the literature (e.g., in Randolph Clarke's response to van Inwagen's omission-centered versions of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities) in which one is responsible even though at the time of the action or omission one cannot act otherwise, where one is responsible for the action or omission because one is responsible for the impaired mental state that led to it, conflate two distinct kinds of responsibility. In cases where one's action or omission results from a severely impaired mental state that one has freely and responsibly produced, one may be agency-responsible for the production of the mental state, but one is only event-responsible for the action or omission flowing from the mental state. As far as one's responsibility goes, that action or omission could just as well have been done by a third party in whom one produced the mental state.

A more difficult question is about cases where with responsibility I produce a normal mental state that then constrains me to do something. Do I then bear only event-responsibility, or do I bear agency-responsibility? Do the souls in heaven bear agency-responsibility for acting rightly (as such) or only event-responsibility? (There is also the divine case, but I think divine simplicity complicates that case further, so it might go different from the souls-in-heaven case.) My incompatibilist inclinations based on the above discussion push me to thinking that even when one induces a normal mental state that determines an action, one only has event-responsibility for the resulting action. But the case in heaven might be different, because there could be miracles involved. It could, for instance, be the case that just as, plausibly, Christ's sacrifice of the Cross is really present at Mass[note 3], so too our graced earthly decision to follow Christ is present in our heavenly life and the heavenly decision to act rightly is numerically identical with our conclusive earthly decision.

The `Aqedah and the male-only priesthood

It seems to me it would have been less appropriate for God to ask Sarah to sacrifice a daughter than to ask Abraham to sacrifice a son. I don't have an argument for this—that's just how it seems to me. But if this is right, then it is not an accident that in the `Aqedah (the binding of Isaac) the two persons involved are male. But the `Aqedah is a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. While with respect to the Incarnation as such, Christ's maleness might be reasonably argued to be incidental, if my intuition about the `Aqedah is right, then it is plausible that with respect to the sacrifice of Christ, the maleness is not incidental. And if so, then since what is central to the priesthood is the offering, in persona Christi and in an unbloody way, of the one sacrifice of the Cross[note 1], it seems quite appropriate that the priest be male, since he represents one whose maleness is not accidental in this context, and participates in Christ's sacrificial activity to which activity Christ's maleness is not accidental.

Is this sexist? Here is a way of thinking about this. Suppose that part of the reason God asked Abraham to sacrifice a son rather than asking Sarah to sacrifice a daughter had to do with Abraham and Isaac's maleness (leave aside the accidental fact that Sarah perhaps didn't have a daughter, since God could easily have fixed that). Would it follow that God discriminated against Sarah in asking Abraham to make the sacrifice? Surely not: one can at least equally well say that it was Abraham who was discriminated against by being asked to make the sacrifice.[note 2] The restriction of conscription to males does not discriminate against women, but against men, since it is upon men that it imposes a duty that it does not impose on women. Similarly, if God restricted who he requires to become priests to men, it is not obvious that this would be a form of discrimination against women.