I am sure this is a very important topic, specially after the irruption of many varieties of anti-realism (as the so called "semantical constructivism"). In my case, I am interested in the distinction between physical and social reality, because I hardly belief they have different kind of ontological and epistemological status. Besides, I don´t agreed that we can argue that the only difference is that social reality is a semantic construction.

06.06.2010 [2]

In the western tradition, an initial preference for the realistic view of physical phenomena is almost invariably framed in terms of the "Cartesian debate", if only by what such a preference rejects: notions such as solipsism, dualism, or "mental monism". However, one is defined by what one refuses as much as by what one accepts, and it's not easy to formulate a positive description of physical realism without adopting the language of physical monism. This is shown in my use of the term "mind-independent physical occurrences", but is also implicit in the notion of "phenomenal experience" itself.

The problem with mind-independence is that it's logically impossible for us to have confirmation that such and such a phenomenon is "effectively mind-independent". The crowbar of Cartesian doubt finds easy purchase in the gap between the putatively mind-independent phenomenon and the form under which the phenomenon, and the evidence for the phenomenon; is present to the mind; such doubt provides the lever which splits the world into the knowably phenomenal and the unknowably noumenal. Our Cartesian heritage leads us all too easily to the intuitive view that "the mental" stands in opposition to "the physical"; and that there is some real difference of *kind* between the two domains. We can – and I think should – ask whether such difference is anything more than a matter of the "descriptions under which" we talk about the world.

06.06.2010 [3]

The notion that a real quality of some thing can depend on it being given "under a certain description" comes from the philosophy of action, and is primarily due to Anscombe. For example, my signalling to the waiter has a real quality that cannot be reduced to the movement of my arm, yet is in some way identical to that movement (or to some movement of that type – the metaphysics gets sticky). Simply put, the relation is adverbial – "I signalled to the waiter by moving my arm"

An easily-made but none the less naïve error can slip in here: it's tempting to read "I signalled to the waiter by moving my arm" as being equivalent to something like "I moved my arm and thereby signalled to the waiter" or "I moved my arm in order to signal to the waiter". However, these reformulations introduce a relation that is not present in the original adverbial: there is both a movement of the arm AND a signalling, and the movement of the arm somehow determines that there be a signalling. Furthermore, both reformulations reply to the question "why did you move your arm?". In making such a reformulation, we're intuitively recasting the description in terms of the most easily-identified physical event with which it is correlated: movements of the arm are as "physically real" as are sneezes, involuntary spasms, piston cycles, and the actions of levers. Signallings-to-waiters, on the other hand, rely on a lot of conventional substructure, and what counts as a signalling-to-a-waiter in one cultural or social context can be either meaningless or have some other, perhaps contrary, meaning in another. A certain movement of the arm is a movement of the arm whether or not it is also a signalling-to-a-waiter, and if a particular movement of the arm is also a signalling-to-a-waiter, then the signalling-to-a-waiter must somehow supervene on or be determined by the movement of the arm in a certain socially-determined context.

Given these observations, it can be tempting to treat signallings-to-waiters as having, in some way, "less physical reality" than movements of the arm. But a moment's reflection shows that, however seductive it might seem, such prejudice is unfounded. As far as being "accounts of physical reality" is concerned, movements of the arm have no implicit claim to "physical precedence" over signallings-to-waiters. "We finished the meal; I signalled to the waiter, who brought the bill; I paid, and we left the restaurant" describes a sequence that is neither more nor less "physically real" than is a sequence described more exhaustively (and exhaustingly) in terms of bodily movements. There are no "supernatural leaps" between the (entirely physical) events of signalling, bringing the bill, paying etc. – or no more than can be reasonably accommodated by behavioural and cognitive accounts of human comportment. We can – and in most cases, do – describe almost entirely physical occurrences in terms of "actions", "reactions", and "interactions"; insofar as we are a social species whose humanity is entirely determined by social interaction, such preference is unremarkable. However, we extend such preference to our understanding of the world in general – we ask that any account of "real occurrences in the physical world" be primarily an account of "why" some event E should occur, and this investigation rapidly lead to asking "how" some distinct event F should have determined or brought about E.

Both the account which gives precedence to bodily movements and that which gives precedence to actions stand or fall on their ability to trace or to render explicit "causal" relations obtaining between the various members of the sequences described. An unthinking physicalist might complain that the "causal" structure of the action-based account is more a matter of narrative form; his more sophisticated confrère could point out that the causal structure of the bodily movement-based account is equally a matter of "appropriate narrative form". There is no reason to suppose that the universe can be exhaustively, tidily, and briefly described, and no reason whatsoever to suppose that it could receive a "general explanation" that would conform to the narrative forms imposed by "why" -. indeed, it would seem that phenomena occurring at orders of magnitude below those of our everyday experiences don't even fit our narrative intuitions concerning "how" things take place. The end of either description is, at the risk of oversimplifying, to "predict… future experience in the light of past experience" – though we could perhaps expand on Quine's remark and hold that the end is "to possess as full and as faithful a representation of the world around us, whether in order to explain past experience, to understand present experience, or to anticipate future experience". A "purely physicalist account" (note the assumption!) of signalling would allow us, for example, to build a robot waiter - or a robot which pays for dinner. An excellent innovation, no doubt; but of no value to, for example, testimony in a court of law - setting aside Asimov. An account of "what took, takes, or will take place" in the physical world is largely determined by the pragmatic ends of the account, and the "kinds of thing" to which we commit ourselves depend on the general conventions governing "that kind of description".

At this point, it might look like we're facing the dilemma of relativism: if all our accounts of the physical world conform to some "appropriate narrative form", then surely no accounts have any particular claim to "preferential status"? There are two ways of addressing this objection short of embracing full-blooded relativism. First of all, we can set some criterion by which an account A is deemed "more fundamental" with respect to some other account B – the most commonly suggested being some form of "translation" of B into the terms and structures employed in A (the term "reduction" betrays a pre-theoretical metaphysical assumption). Nonetheless, even where B can be given exhaustively in terms of the "more fundamental" vocabulary (and frequently, ontology) of A, there is always the spectre of indeterminacy – can we be certain that the expressions of A are full equivalents of the expressions of B, or is there some element that is "lost in translation"? Of course, there are a generally coherent group of physical accounts of the world that can, in principle, be intertranslated with a minimal loss of "sense" – the physical sciences; but even here there is no reason for us to hold that one science should give a more "faithful" account of physical reality than another.

This strategy is primarily a matter of showing that some discourse A is *linguistically* fundamental with respect to some other discourse B – we are dealing with different representations of the physical world, and choosing the one which best suits whatever criteria of parsimony, theoretical economy, and explanatory power we might adopt. Alternatively, we could adopt a more 'Wittgensteinian' approach:

Consider a table. The table is composed of a certain number of shaped pieces of wood joined together. Each of the shaped pieces of wood is composed of a certain quantity of wood, which is composed in turn of cells, which are composed of cellulose fibres embedded in a matrix of lignin, which in turn are composed of certain complex molecules, which are composed of certain atoms, which are composed of certain particles… yet are these atoms atoms of a "table"? Can we determine, by examination of its atomic or subatomic structure, whether we're dealing with a low table or a high bench? That a thing should be a table, and that it should be made of wood, enters differently into our accounts of the physical world than do its properties solely as "a certain mass of wood". But the account which says that John sat on a priceless and fragile coffee table thinking it was a low bench deals as fully with "physical phenomena" as does an account based on the tensile strengths of different materials. At certain times, such accounts come together, or lend mutual support to each other. Materials science tells us why the table should break, and how we might reinforce future tables to avoid such a mishap.

Different kinds of physical discourse serve different ends; and discourse about tables and signallings-to-waiters are not supposed to explain "the nature of the physical world itself", whether fundamentally or superficially. They make a commitment to the physical world, and to the putative "causal structure" of that world, but make no metaphysical claims beyond this basic assumption. Their role is neither more nor less "essential to our understanding of the world" than are the accounts of physical science: the challenge lies in determining what constitutes an " understanding of the world".

Well, well, well.

The distinction between Caesar and the life of Caesar. How about offering the latter as the bootstrapped equivalent of the former, granting the former to possess more the character of a sign for a static identificatory essence (cf secondness), v. for a dynamic process (thirdness).

BTW, David, I am engaged with the creator of a bootstrapping program for entrepreneurs to demonstrate and apply the metaphysical tantamountcies and distinctions as between stewardship and bootstrapping. This will be elaborated in a book to be finished in about a month, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, I continue to be amused at your fascination for all things Quine.

DH -- M J Cresswell (“Why Objects Exist but Events Occur”, Studia Logica, Volume 45) has suggested that we may distinguish between physical objects and (non-instantaneous) physical events by determining whether or not the "sub-interval property" applies to the entity under consideration. Thus, my copy of "An Introduction to Modal Logic" is a book at every sub-interval of its period of existence (and, logically, at every "instant" of its existence); however, a voyage from Paris to London is not a voyage from Paris to London at any sub-interval of its period of occurrence. The ontology of such entities is pretty straightforward, if we allow mereological fusion: we intuitively treat the book as an enduring three-dimensional entity having all its parts at each instant and the voyage as a perduring four-dimensional entity having a proper part at each instant of its period of existence.

CSH -- "Why objects exist..." Yes, good: objects as existing are by that fact thirdness. Here Peirce was in error but Weiss and I agree that existence defines (loosely) thirdness. "...but events occur" This is secondness for Peirce, Whitehead, Weiss and myself. The only seeming issue is that Whitehead will not permit occurrences (he is the original in using that word as a technical metaphysical term so far as I am aware) to be limited to non-instantaneous, and no doubt your author would agree since his context is with a select species of event.

The comparison of a book and a voyage is, you presume, inherently distinct as sorts of reality qua existence at the level of sub-intervals as normative species of the category or entity of reality. I think you risk an epistemic catastrophe here, David, for you do not stipulate the epistemic vantage in considering your entities. Thus, you assume that the reader agrees with your apparent presumption that a voyage is not a completed event that we can look back upon after the fashion of skimming through a book. Thus you allow that a book is not in a bootstrapping process of authorial creation but you presume a voyage must necessarily be just such. Metaphysically this will obviously not do.

The epistemic frame of reference must be defined in a way so as to precisely demonstrate where you deal with apples and apples and where not. I am not trying to be obstructionist here, but to point out that there exists a frame of reference in which the book and voyage are identical metaphysical existences from a modal vantage of analysis. It is simply not to any rational point to say that the one is comprised of directed occurences collected as an artificial amalgam (=voyage) where the other is a directed aggregate of contiguous existences IN time and space rather than THROUGH time and space. Whitehead correctly tells us that the distinction as between secondness and thirdness in respect of time phenomena is that the former treats of events IN time and space, whereas thirdness deals with periods of time and occurrences through that and within that period. To say it differently, secondness deals with a point-to-point reality-testing of entities at successive points in time, whereas in thirdness we treat them not as IN sequence but rather as completed sequences, i.e., as periods. The time is itself the amalgam, as it were.

Despite this, you can in the last sentence agree with my anaylsis in seeming disagreement with the opening comment in which you stress the distinction in the nature of reality represented by the book and the voyage. So, which is it going to be. It will NOT be both. Either your author is mistaken or you are. You cannot say that events are apples and oranges and turn right around and say that the ontology is simple and ergo they are now suddenly apples and apples.

You will correct me where I have miscomprehended your point. As I presently understand the matter, the entire matter is gibberish. Modal logic proceeds from an acute understanding of Whitehead, not Quine in any case. Further, it is still more necessarily a matter of paradigmatics as I define that term, i.e., two occurences of differing qualiia (or, if you will, properties, characteristics, etc) derived from a common essence/entity. Each must be defined with respect to the other. No way around it, period. Very earthy and very simple. What is less simple is how to characterize the levels or stages of interaction and expression of the cognates. That is the ture essence of modal philosophy.

Thus, for instance, a spinning chain takes on existence from being, thirdness from secondness. We know that velocity offers an apparent (I will argue it can be as real as apparent) existence--material aspect as if more of what gravity would influence. Thus physicists curiously were baffled that a chicken didn't have to be first frozen to do as much damage to a cockpit window as a limp fellow when velocity was accounted for. The limp fellow took on the properties of existence from motion, or, properly, existence from being.

Your characterization of book v. voyage should be couched in similar modal categories in order to be certain that you are relating epistemic frames of substantially the same kind.

Charles

I open my remarks with a brief recapitulation of the view that physical objects are the product of a "myth"; that they are "cultural posits". Given this opening, it is rather improbable that I would "presume that the comparison of a book and a voyage is inherently distinct as sorts of reality qua existence at the level of sub-intervals as normative species of the category or entity of reality". If physical objects and events are "myths", then any "inherent distinction in their 'kind' of reality" is likely to be mythical as well.

I would hold that the division of physical entities into such categories as objects, events, actual states of affairs, concrete processes or what-have-you is a matter of how we talk about the world, not a matter of how the world is (with, of course, the proviso that w clarify what we mean by "world"). As a systematic philosopher (following Kant and Peirce), you seek to found your Categories in "reality" – that is, you try to found them as if they were either mind-independent or at least a priori to mind. Such Categories are not the foundation of mind, but a theory about mind.

On closer inspection, the much-vaunted Categories of systematic philosophy deflate into *grammatical* categories, and (very roughly speaking) the type or status of an entity reflects whether it is considered as being the putative reference of a noun phrase or of a verb phrase ; whether it has adverbial or adjectival function ; whether it is considered synchronically (or perfectively) or diachronically (or imperfectively)… once again, I can only repeat the entirely trivial observation that language precedes metaphysics, and repeat that this triviality is of the greatest significance. I make this very point in the development of my ideas : "I'd hold that such rigid differentiation between "object" and "event" is of little more than linguistic import"; "such notions are undoubtedly "local", in the sense that "weight" is local".

You seem to make no distinction between my recapitulation of Cresswell's arguments and the statement of my own views on the matter. In philosophy, it is usual practice to put forward the views of others – your reaction leaves me with the impression that you yourself only quote in support of your views. I sincerely hope that this is not the case.

Perhaps my comments lacked signposting. To rectify this, the structure of my comments is :

1. A quote from Quine introducing the view that physical objects are no more "evident elements of mind-independent reality" than are, for example, the gods of Homer.

2. A brief presentation of Cresswell's account of the distinction between objects and events. I'll admit that Cresswell's account is both persuasive and seductive; however, at no point do I state that I consider it to be either a full account or an appropriate account of any real distinction "in the world". Cresswell suggests a theory which would account for the intuitive distinction between objects and events – the theory posits a real distinction between objects and events as an a priori, and sets out to account for the distinction. This is followed by

3. An equally brief exploration of the ontological apparatus that Cresswell's account would require. I would point out that none of this implies that I, personally, hold Cresswell's account to be either full or appropriate.

4. A development of the ontological remarks taking into account classical views of identity and underlining the difficulties in applying the classical notions ("Leibniz' Laws") to identity over time (the classic "Ship of Theseus" problem). My running conclusion is that (i) no other criterion can ensure the rigid identity allowed by the indiscernibility of identicals and (ii) that any alternative criteria we might choose would give some form of metaphysical (or even "physical") identity, rather than any form of logical identity. Such non-logical correlates would rather be Lewis-style "counterparts at other times" rather than "the same object at different times".

5. I then remark that, if anyone sought to defend the view that a physical object persists through time, they would probably do better to argue for perdurance rather than endurance: if they hold the endurantist view that a three-dimensional entity persists by having all its parts at each instant, then they have to account for "the same" object having "different" mutually-exclusive properties at different times. If, however, they take an entity-at-an-instant to be a three-dimensional part or stage of the entity-through-time, then the "problem" of incompatible properties vanishes. Whitehead's views are indeed a primitive form perdurantism; however, the categories employed are neither sufficient to the task assigned, nor do they accurately reflect Peirce's metaphysics (Secondness is the category of existence, Thirdness is the category of reality. This is evident from Peirce's semiotics: an index is the only kind of sign which "guarantees" the existence of its object. Thirdness concerns sense rather than reference – and Peirce explicitly rejects Meinongianism. What *sense* can give us is, when taken globally, is a "symbol of the world" (that is, "a reality") – a general representation that "faces the tribunal of experience" as a whole, and not by its parts. Internally, such a representation would be regulated by its coherence (whereas indices are individually validated by their causal relation to their object – a form of protosemantic correspondence. In Peirce, causality is a principal criterion of individuation) In Quinean epistemology, such a "global Third" would correspond to a "theory". Quine's rejection of first philosophy would be in disagreement with the Peircean notion of existence as Secondness – Quine's ontology is always relative to some theory (so, for Quine, Peirce's Secondness would be relative to a certain theory of reference).

[I would remark here that, for my part, Quine's position seems more sophisticated than Peirce's; indeed, after many years trying to refine a metaphysics from Peirce's semiotics, I turned to the Quinean view with some relief]

6. In a brief aside, I cast doubt on the well-foundedness of any account that speaks of objects "at instants", suggesting that "instants" might well be nothing more than a "philosopher's notion" (derived, in this case, from the kind of reflection typified by Augustine's "Confessions"). If this were indeed the case, then there would be a non-instantaneous minimal interval in which the book is a book and where it is meaningless to talk of the book at intervals shorter than this minimal interval – the book perdures AT LEAST for this minimal period.

We can put point (6) differently: Creswell's distinction only operates on non-instantaneous events (which, as I point out, some commentators would not even classify as events). An instantaneous event has ipso facto the trivial property of being that event at all sub-intervals of its period of occurrence; if (6) holds, and there are no "instantaneous" entities, then the lower boundary of Cresswell's distinction no longer holds – there are minimal non-instantaneous intervals in which a given event is "that event", and there are minimal non-instantaneous intervals in which a book is "that book".

What about upper boundaries to the duration of a "sub-interval"? (4) above suggests a very real problem for holding that entities remain "the same" for macroscopic intervals – their microscopic properties are in continual flux, which apparently violates Leibniz' Laws at a very fundamental level (while a book might be more than its physical parts, it is surely AT LEAST those physical parts).

Of course, Cresswell's remarks were not made with respect to the philosophy of time, and he is not concerned with founding the persistence of the book through time, but with contrasting the way the book persists with the way the event unfolds (by having distinct and dissimilar parts at different times)

***

Specific remarks:

"Thus, you assume that the reader agrees with your apparent presumption that a voyage is not a completed event that we can look back upon after the fashion of skimming through a book."

I think you misunderstand the sub-interval property. No sub-interval of a journey from Paris to London is itself a journey from Paris to London. This means that, for example, the voyage from the Gard du Nord to the French coast is (trivially) not a journey from Paris to London. There is no particular problem with seeing the journey from Paris to London atemporally as a "spatiotemporally extended entity" – the problem is that no proper part of the entity is ITSELF a journey from Paris to London. Now, while a book might also be a spatiotemporally extended entity, each proper part of the entity is ALSO a book (in which case, it cannot be "the same" book at a sub-interval and at the totality of intervals). Cresswell's article is primarily intended to disqualify non-instantaneous events from being considered on a par with physical objects; he doesn't address the metaphysical problems inherent in his intuitive understanding of "physical objects" (and particularly with respect to their persistence).

"You cannot say that events [and objects] are apples and oranges and turn right around and say that the ontology is simple and ergo they are now suddenly apples and apples."

If I follow you correctly here, you're accusing me of not being in agreement with Cresswell's analysis. Now, I like Cresswell's analysis, and find that it's a handy way of describing the intuitive distinction between non-instantaneous events and physical objects. But that doesn't mean that I lend credence to the view that there is a real, mind- or language-independent distinction between events and objects – any more than I lend credence to the mind-independent reality of Homer's gods. My opening remark concerned the MYTH of physical objects; a large part of this myth concerns a supposedly real, mind-independent distinction between objects and events (for a contemporary example of the impact of the "myth", consider the problems inherent in thinking of elementary particles as "objects"). Cresswell's analysis purports to clarify the distinction; I could have chosen papers by Peter Hacker, save that Hacker's account is less lapidary.

An event is an event because it is described as an event, ditto for physical objects. Thus, from the real grammatical distinction between "the assassination of Julius Caesar took place on March 15th 44 BC" and "Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15th 44 BC", we postulate a real metaphysical distinction between Julius Caesar and his assassination. However, an expression such as "Julius Caesar was responsible for the destruction of Gaullish civilisation" would seem to postulate an object (Caesar) as the cause of an event (the destruction of Gaullish civilisation). Evidently, the referent of "Julius Caesar" in the last example is not "Caesar as physical object", but rather "Caesar's actions" (which are, or are identical with, certain physical events). Naïve ontology is no guarantee of "entityhood".

A few final remarks – I would certainly not cite Quine as a major figure in modal logic – his resistance to the notion is well-known (a very nice presentation of the "why" can be found here http://users.utu.fi/mkeina/metsem/keskinen_turku_070508.pdf). Now, I'd go along with most of Quine's views on naturalised epistemology (though they don't, of course, exhaust "the whole of the matter"), and I'd be very wary of giving any metaphysical scope to modal logic. Modal logic is basically a handy way of dealing with counterfactuals – I'd hold the primitive notion to be that of possibility, with necessity following from the theory by negation ("not possible not"). The same can be said (in spades) for possible world analysis – PWA gives a handy way of supplying a fictive semantics for counterfactuals.

As I've pointed out to Old Bill, one can use PWA without commitment to "the reality of possible worlds", and certainly without commitment to the idea that possible worlds are fully-existing counterparts of "our world". This is the stuff of science fiction and naïve physics. It would be perhaps less misleading to talk of "possible states of affairs" – a state of affairs being the putative counterpart of a meaningful linguistic expression. Some expressions are meaningful but do not denote real occurrences ("if Cameron had got a clear majority, he wouldn't have reached an accord with Clegg") – they describe states of affairs that are possible, but not actualised. Actualised states of affairs – "facts" – are evidently a subset of possible states of affairs, just as 'true, meaningful expressions' are a subset of 'meaningful expressions'. "Facts" also included "negative facts", which are the negations of non-obtaining states of affairs, and thereby depend on our prior ability to describe non-obtaining states of affairs.

We can't imagine states of affairs without language – a state of affairs is before all else a description of "the way the world is or could be". We report what we conceive to be obtaining states of affairs in observation sentences – and, as even a superficial reading of Quine shows, such sentences are theoretical constructs. We have no guarantee that the theory is an accurate representation of any "mind-independent reality" – nor, for that matter, do we have any guarantee that the terms of the theory correspond to our sensory experience.

But it's a naïve error to think that a theory is a representation of reality (and one that no good semiotician should make). A model cannot say "the world is like this"; at best it can say "the world seems to work like this"… and even then, it's a best an approximation of the putative "underlying regularity". This is one criticism we can raise against qualia – our understanding of qualia gives them as categorised and somehow discrete experiences, as if (for example) our visual field were built up from areas of colour, like a painting (Peirce recognises this in his description of Firstness). Qualia are an abstraction from experience, not the foundation of experience. We have no guarantee that the term "yellow" actually corresponds to "this-or-that aspect of our experience and sensory memory", and not because we don't know whether other people have the same sensory experience as us – it's simply that the term "yellow" does not and cannot designate a private experience. To describe one's experience as "yellow" is meaningless – the experience is "of yellow", which is an abstraction from experience, not a description of the experience itself. What matters is our ability to use the term "yellow" efficiently, for whatever pragmatic ends we might entertain. - anything we might say about yellow is at best a correlate of certain behaviour, and not a representation of "the experience of yellow". The only way to "show yellow" is direct ostension - a complex form of abductive semiosis in which instances of a property are given to illustrate the universal they exemplify (an example would be to show various yellow coloured objects, and perhaps to show blue or red versions of the same kinds of object to show "not yellow"). Once again, this is not a matter of representing the putative internal representation, but of associating experience with certain kinds of behaviour (ostensive behaviour, linguistic behaviour) – the internal representation, like the thing-in-itself, are abstractions from observation sentences, theories of "how the world is".

Firstly : I open my remarks with a brief recapitulation of the view that physical objects are the product of a "myth"; that they are "cultural posits".

I think a working definition of "myth" would be useful here, as the typical definition would seem to be lacking, otherwise if objects are a product of myths then nothing is real or "true" including ideas which are the products of objects called brains and are communicated through objects called tongues, pens, quills, computers, brushes, etc which would also be mythical and thus nonexistent.

I think it's called "a dog chasing its tail", metaphorically speaking of course...

As for Quine's idea that physical objects are not evidence of a mind independent reality, let's say that one day someone walks up behind him and smacks him up side his head with a 2 x 4. He doesn't see it coming. He just goes from standing there thinking up how objects are no evidence of a mind independent reality, to having something that he didn't know existed, colliding with his head and giving him a very bad headache.

His mind wasn't required for that 2 x 4 to exist, but that 2 x 4 had to exist in order for him to have that headache.

I do like the fact that Cresswell could see the distinction between objects and events, especially since I use that distinction in my descriptions of the difference between space and time.

Thank you, David, for an exhaustive post. I did get the distinct impression you were in support of the elements of Cresswell in the portion I excerpted to begin my own observations. Not being entirely certain of the extent of your agreement with that excerpt throughout your discussion, however, led me to include the caveat that you should correct me if I mistake the matter, as you have indeed done, most ably as is your custom.

I quote in favor of my positions every time I get the chance simply because my positions are a distinctly minority view and so require what aid and comfort they may happen upon, and I simply state here for the record that i am generally aware of the fact that everyone here is more than well aware of the mountain of opinions and arguments contra my views in metaphysics. It is hardly necessary to quote on that, to be frank and realistic.

The recent post by M. Barnes is evidence, well delivered, I might add, that a lot of nonsense gets bandied about simply on account of the fame of the commentators (e.g. I tend to enjoy singling out Quine, obviously) favoring this or that piece of gobbledygook. I know full well you don't hold to Quine (or anybody) hook-line-and-sinker, but as you adopt aspects and indeed a general agreement with his major themes, it has seemed appropriate to offer some good-natured fun, as should you in return as you see fit.

DH: There is no particular problem with seeing the journey from Paris to London atemporally as a "spatiotemporally extended entity" – the problem is that no proper part of the entity is ITSELF a journey from Paris to London. Now, while a book might also be a spatiotemporally extended entity, each proper part of the entity is ALSO a book (in which case, it cannot be "the same" book at a sub-interval and at the totality of intervals). Cresswell's article is primarily intended to disqualify non-instantaneous events from being considered on a par with physical objects; he doesn't address the metaphysical problems inherent in his intuitive understanding of "physical objects" (and particularly with respect to their persistence).

CSH: I do not get along overly well with efforts to over-complexify or over-simplify. Metaphysics is quite difficult enough without getting out of stride, so to speak. I read the matter fairly directly and, yes, simply, but hardly simplistically. I read you as saying, (in support of Creswell, I presumed) 'Because a trip isn't real qua a book, ergo all parts of a book are book, but no part of a trip is trip.' For all the clever language and nomenclature, that is essentially what you were claiming and the burden is on you to be clear or remand the argument elsewhere.

My return was just as direct and simple: in the form of a question: Why can't we look back from the end of the vacation, write up a travel account, and suppose from this vantage that each portion was no less trip than any other, and the descriptive 'trip' only denotes a time-purpose connectedness of space-time events/occurrences. But then, isn't a book rather the same? Aren't you trying to get away with a piece of myth or magic here, namely, that the events of space-time are so different from the same translated to a modality of material representation, that we allow ourselves the luxury of granting a claim upon reality for the one and not for the other?

The events as experienced and the representation are different representations of firstness at secondness, an area where Peirce is indeed instructive. They are not 'reality' in precisely the same ways, of course. But I seem to hear you (and Creswell) arguing that they are SO different as to presuppose and require alternate universes in order to treat them side-by-side, a favorite ambit of positivists. If the events of experience are defective is some species of reality, they do not gain that specific reality by representation in the materiality of a book. The book presupposes the same space-time events. In eliminating instantaneous events Creswell was in no sense wishing away this problem. This is his problem, it seems to me, and yours as well.

You did not remark on the physical example which reasonably parallels the literary precedent. The events of motion turn into the reality of thirdness and it is mother nature doing the handiwork. If nature considers these as merely alternate modalities of a common progenitor, what are metaphysicians trying to prove when their admittedly thoroughoing arguments pretend to argue the reverse? For all the world, David, I can't see other than that you are trying to claim a reality for trips and the content of books that is different in some sense such that nature herself could not absorb the parallel. Or, to say it differently, to satisfy a theory, you would dream up ways to discomifit nature?

Peirce. looking at similar problems, concluded, wisely, that soft-realism was necessary for the very survival of his system. You are no fan of realism, that we have long known. But I fear your denials are getting doctrinaire and risk devolving into nonsense and gibberish, and in bringing Creswell to your side, whether to agree with him or not, doesn't seem to satisfy my pains at following your presentation. I must conclude either that I just didn't follow your presentation or I am not making myself clear either, or both. Perhaps some interlocutor may have something to add here.

Still I praise you for your diligence as always, and I may have been dilatory in responding, but only because for some unaccountable reason I wasn't given notification of your response. I apologize.