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7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change

[how existence can persist even when becoming different]

29 ideas
All our concepts of change and permanence are just names, not the truth [Parmenides]
     Full Idea: All things that mortals have established, believing in their truth, are just a name: Becoming and Perishing, Being and Not-Being, and change of position, and alteration of bright colour.
     From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1-
Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Empedocles claims that things are alternately changing and at rest - that they are changing whenever love is creating a unity out of plurality, or hatred is creating plurality out of unity, and they are at rest in the times in between.
     From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 250b26
     A reaction: I suppose one must say that this an example of Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacy' - reading human emotions into the cosmos. Being constructive little creatures, we think goodness leads to construction. I'm afraid Empedocles is just wrong.
Nothing comes from non-existence, or passes into it [Democritus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Nothing comes into being from what does not exist, nor is it destroyed into what does not exist.
     From: report of Democritus (fragments/reports [c.431 BCE], A001) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.44
     A reaction: [part of a concise summary of Democritus by DL] Probably an intuition about conservation laws, rather than a speculation about the Big Bang.
How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato]
     Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something?
     From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e)
The best things (gods, healthy bodies, good souls) are least liable to change [Plato]
     Full Idea: The best things (such as a god, a healthy body, or a good soul) are least liable to alteration or change.
     From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 380e)
There seem to be two sorts of change: alteration and motion [Plato]
     Full Idea: There are two kinds of change, I think: alteration and motion.
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 181d)
There are six kinds of change: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: There are six kinds of change: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place. A change in our affections would be an example of alteration.
     From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 15a13)
True change is in a thing's logos or its matter, not in its qualities [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: In that which underlies a change there is a factor corresponding to the definition [logon] and there is a material factor. When a change is in these constitutive factors there is coming to be or passing away, but in a thing's qualities it is alteration.
     From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 317a24)
     A reaction: This seems to be a key summary of Aristotle's account of change, in the context of his hylomorphism (form-plus-matter). The logos is the account of the thing, which seems to be the definition, which seems to give the form (principle or structure).
A change in qualities is mere alteration, not true change [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: When a change occurs in the qualities [pathesi] and is accidental [sumbebekos], there is alteration (rather than true change).
     From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 317a27)
     A reaction: [tr. partly Gill] Aristotle doesn't seem to have a notion of 'properties' in quite our sense. 'Pathe' seems to mean experienced qualities, rather than genuine causal powers. Gill says 'pathe' are always accidental.
If the substratum persists, it is 'alteration'; if it doesn't, it is 'coming-to-be' or 'passing-away' [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Since we must distinguish the substratum and the property whose nature is to be predicated of the substratum,..there is alteration when the substratum persists...but when nothing perceptible persists as a substratum, this is coming-to-be and passing-away.
     From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 319b08-16)
     A reaction: As usual, Aristotle clarifies the basis of the problem, by distinguishing two different types of change. Notice the empirical character of his approach, resting on whether or not the substratum is 'perceptible'.
Nature is an active principle of change, like potentiality, but it is intrinsic to things [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Nature [phusis] is in the same genus as dunamis [power/potential], for it is an active principle of change, but not in another thing but in the thing itself qua itself.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1049a09)
     A reaction: [Gill's translation; Lawson-Tancred refers to 'A nature' rather than 'nature', which implies an essence]. It seems like phusis is intrinsic, and dunamis is relational. Two sorts of power?
Change is the implied actuality of that which exists potentially [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Change is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is potentially this actuality. Thus, the actuality of a thing's capacity for alteration, in so far as it is a capacity for alteration, is alteration.
     From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10)
     A reaction: Not very informative, until you add Idea 16114, telling us that potentiality is best seen as 'power'. Then we have 'all change is the active expression of powers', which strikes me as rather interesting.
The sophists thought a man in the Lyceum is different from that man in the marketplace [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The sophists assume that being Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum is different from being Coriscus-in-the-marketplace.
     From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b19)
     A reaction: This is what has now been called 'Cambridge change', which is merely change in relations, with no intrinsic change. It is laughed at, but it is a phenomenon worth pointing out, as long as it is not mislabelled, or misunderstood.
The totality is complete, so there is no room for it to change, and nothing extraneous to change it [Epicurus]
     Full Idea: The totality of things has always been just like it is now and always will be. For there is nothing for it to change into. For there exists nothing in addition to the totality, which could enter into it and produce the change.
     From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 39)
     A reaction: This smacks of the sort of dubious arguments that the medieval theologians fell in love with. I never thought I'd say this, but I think Epicurus needs a comprehensive course in set theory before he makes remarks like this.
Everything is changing, including yourself and the whole universe [Aurelius]
     Full Idea: All things are changing; and you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe too.
     From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 9.19)
Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: All mutation consists in motion only
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.09.06)
     A reaction: Another little gem of simplicity from Hobbes, and one with which I am inclined to agree. The value of a variable can 'change', but that may be metaphorical.
How could change consist of a conjunction of changeless facts? [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
     Full Idea: McTaggart objects, to Russell 1903, that change cannot consist of a conjunction of changeless facts.
     From: report of J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 (b)
     A reaction: I agree with McTaggart. Logicians like to model processes with domains of timeless entities, but it just won't do.
Change is not just having two different qualities at different points in some series [McTaggart]
     Full Idea: The fact that it is hot at one point in a series and cold at other points cannot give change, if neither of these facts change. If two points on a line have different properties, this doesn't give change.
     From: J.M.E. McTaggart (The Nature of Existence vol.2 [1927], 33.315-6), quoted by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 6.2
     A reaction: [The second half compresses an example about the Meridian] This objection is aimed at Russell's view, that change is just different properties at different times. I (unlike Sider) am wholly with McTaggart on this one. Change is 'dynamic'.
A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett]
     Full Idea: The idea of 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east'.
     From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5)
     A reaction: The phrase was coined in Oxford. It is a useful label with which realists can insult solipsists, idealists and other riff-raff. Four Dimensionalists seem to see time in this way. Events sit there, and we travel past them. But there are indexical events.
Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Given the Humean ontology, there is grave difficulty in making any sense at all of the concept of change with continuity as distinct from successive replacements.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6. Intro)
     A reaction: Hence the four-dimensionalist approach is basically Hume updated. The weird nature of time lurks behind this difficulty. If you can separate the moments of time, you can separate the bits of a continuous thing, and then ask how they relate.
You can't deny temporary intrinsic properties by saying the properties are relations (to times) [Lewis]
     Full Idea: To say that properties are really relations to times is to treat temporary intrinsics (such as my changing shape) as a matter of relations, but then 'intrinsic properties' would not deserve the name, and it is untenable if it denies temporary intrinsics.
     From: David Lewis (Rearrangement of Particles [1988], 1)
     A reaction: [I have compressed a paragraph; he refers to his 1986:204] If a property is meant to be a 'relation to a time', I am not sure what the relata are meant to be, and I agree with Lewis that this seems a long way from properties.
Maybe particles are unchanging, and intrinsic change in things is their rearrangement [Lowe, by Lewis]
     Full Idea: Lowe's solution the 'temporary intrinsics' problem is that particles have no temporary intrinsic properties; they may be safely supposed to endure, and large things consist of those enduring particles, undergoing rearrangement but no intrinsic change.
     From: report of E.J. Lowe (Lewis on Perdurance versus Endurance [1987]) by David Lewis - Rearrangement of Particles II
     A reaction: A mere rearrangement of particles doesn't sound the same as a change in properties, which must involve causal powers in some way.
Heraclitus says change is new creation, and Spinoza that it is just phases of the one substance [Lowe]
     Full Idea: The extreme views on change are the Heraclitan view - that every change brings into existence an entirely new entity, and destroys what existed before, and the Spinozan view - that all changes are phase changes within a single substance.
     From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 8.2)
     A reaction: The views in between are that bundles of properties shift their contents, or that many substances undergo changes in their properties. The unification of physics might be aiming to vindicate Spinoza. Temporal parts (Lewis) are close to Heraclitus.
Four theories of qualitative change are 'a is F now', or 'a is F-at-t', or 'a-at-t is F', or 'a is-at-t F' [Lowe, by PG]
     Full Idea: Qualitative change is seen as either (i) 'Presentism' - 'a is F now', or (ii) 'relational properties' - 'a is F-at-t', or (iii) 'temporal parts' - 'a-at-t is F', or (iv) 'adverbial' - 'a is-a-t F'.
     From: report of E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.44) by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: The traditional view would let a stay the same over time, and change its property (ii). Lewis favours (iii). My suspicion is that thinking collapses if you abandon the tradtional view.
Change can be of composition (the component parts), or quality (properties), or substance [Lowe]
     Full Idea: There seem to be three kinds of change: compositional change (of component parts), qualitative change (of properties), or substantial change (when underlying essence begins or ceases).
     From: E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.59)
     A reaction: Notice this gives 'components' a more prominent ontological status than usual. Is this computer a component of my study?
Traditionally, the four elements are just what persists through change [Harte,V]
     Full Idea: Earth, air, fire and water, viewed as elements, are, by tradition, the leading candidates for being the things that persist through change.
     From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 4.4)
     A reaction: Physics still offers us things that persist through change, as conservation laws.
Four-dimensional ontology has no change, since that needs an object, and time to pass [Simons]
     Full Idea: In the four-dimensional ontology there may be timeless variation, but there is no change. Change consists in an object having first one property and then another contrary one. But processes all have their properties timelessly.
     From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 3.4)
     A reaction: Possibly Simons is begging the question here. The phenomena which are traditionally labelled as 'change' are all nicely covered in the four-D account. Change is, we might say, subsumed in the shape of the space-time 'worm'.
There are real relational changes, as well as bogus 'Cambridge changes' [Simons]
     Full Idea: It is a mistake to call bogus Cambridge changes 'relational changes', since there are real relational changes, such as the changes in the relative positions and distances of several bodies.
     From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 4.1)
     A reaction: I'm not sure how you distinguish the two. If we swap seats, that is a real change. If everyone moves away from where I am sitting, is that real or Cambridge? If I notice, I might be upset, but suppose I don't notice? Nothing about me changes.
Change exists, it is causal, and it needs an explanation [Williams,NE]
     Full Idea: There is a phenomenon of change. I am starting with the assumptions that it is a causal phenomenon, and that it requires explanation.
     From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1)
     A reaction: That is, I take it, that we need a theory which explains change, rather than just describing it. Well said. Williams says, roughly, that each stage causes the next stage.