Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explain how the Heraclitean doctrine of universal flux must be rejected, while the notion of flux should and can be preserved. Against the reductionist account of subjectless change, a modern version of the Heraclitean doctrine advocated by revisionist metaphysics, I argue that (1) the idea of subjectless change is one that can and should be formulated in the established conceptual framework, and (2) subjectlessness is a feature that most aptly characterizes material changes. In essence, I seek to provide a proper accommodation for the notion of flux in a conceptual framework that is traditionally understood (or rather misunderstood) as decidedly excluding it.
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Notes
This is Plato’s formulation (Plato, Cratylus, 402a, 440a), and is accepted as the standard formulation. It is often coupled with another equally famous saying, “One cannot step into the same river twice” (Plato, Cratylus, 402a, Aristotle: Metaphysics, 1010a. Aristotle also mentions a revision of this by Cratylus: One cannot step into the same river even once).
Aristotle mentions the Heraclitean doctrine several times (e.g., Metaphysics 987a32, 1010a13, 1063a22) only to differentiate his notion of change from the notion of flux. One of the aims of Aristotle’s theory of change is to convince philosophers that admitting that things change is not in conflict with the principle of non-contradiction as the Heraclitean doctrine of flux he and many others think is.
So far as ordinary speech is concerned, fluid stuffs (e.g., water and air) and things like them are said to literally flow, but it seems quite impossible to stretch the sense of the word “flow” to include the movement or change of individual objects.
Henri Bergson 1971: 164 and 1988: 197. Strikingly similar views are held by William James and Bertrand Russell. James writes in Some Problems of Philosophy, “Boundaries are things that intervene: but here [in the primordial, perceptual flux] nothing intervenes save parts of the perceptual flux itself, and these are overflowed by what they separate, so that whatever we distinguish and isolate conceptually is found perceptually to telescope and compenetrate and diffuse into its neighbors. The cuts we make are purely ideal. ... Out of the original sensible muchness attention carves out objects and identifies them forever—in the sky constellations, on the earth beach, sea, cliff, bushes, grass. Out of time we cut days, nights, summers and winters.” (James 1979: 32–33.) Russell remarks, “The intellect may be compared to a carver, but it has the peculiarity of imagining the chicken was always the separate pieces into which the carving-knife divides it.” (Russell 1914: 5).
Not all event theorists associate the concept of event to the concept of change. Bennett, Kim and Lewis, for instance, think that there can be changeless events.
Quine’s view, unlike Bergson’s, is not aimed at exposing the real behind the apparent, but is rather purported to describe the same world in a different way, different from the way it has been described, that is, in terms of substances and attributes.
Geach has suggested that to construe change as a variation of the temporal parts of the whole amounts to abolishing change. See Geach 1972: 304.
See Ernest LePore and Brian P. McLaughlin 1985: 172. Unlike Davidson, however, I do not think that whether there are different conceptual schemes is determined by whether there are languages that are mutually untranslatable. Thus I do not deny the possibility of there being alternative conceptual schemes. But I do not see replacing the current conceptual scheme with another one or radically revising it could improve our understanding of the world (or the way we put it together).
Representing the dominant view of the non-reductionists, Lombard declares that it is impossible that there be subjectless events, events that are not changes in something. He asserts, “I do not see how to get a grip on the concept of an event without seeing the concept of an event as bound up with the concept of change; and I do not see how to get a grip on the concept of change without seeing change as what objects undergo.” See Lombard 1986: 242.
Sound for Locke is a quality of objects, albeit a secondary quality. R. Pasnau is among a few contemporary philosophers who subscribe to such a view. In contrast, a greater number of philosophers and scientists support the idea of sound being a property of the medium, an idea which was perhaps first advocated by Aristotle (“... voice is a certain movement of air”. On the Soul, 420b10) and underlies the wave account of sound (Galileo, Descartes), which in turn is endorsed by modern acoustics. For a relatively comprehensive survey of the various theories of sound, see Roberto Casati 2008.
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Han, X. Speaking of Flux. Acta Anal 24, 33–42 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0043-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0043-z