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An apple is a single unit though. An apple is made up of constituent parts, but it is a singular thing. If you argue against an Apple being singular then you
by sethc2 6y ago
An apple is a single unit though.
An apple is made up of constituent parts, but it is a singular thing.
If you argue against an Apple being singular then you are essentially professing that nothing is singular.
When you take a bite out of an apple you now have a subset of an apple “an apple with a bite out of it”.
To me saying God made the integers is more akin to saying, there is and there isn’t, and all else is built upon the difference.
- beebmam 6y agoAn apple is an abstraction. It's a combination of chemicals bonded together. Those chemicals are composed of atoms which are bonded together, each of which are composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Those particles are composed of quarks, and so on. An apple is a singular thing because it is useful for us to think of an apple as a singular thing in most contexts. It is not a singular thing when it is more useful to look deeper.
- ralfd 6y agoThen take quarks. They are a fundamental particle with no known substructure. They are a single unit and they are countable.
- teucris 6y agoSure, but metaphysically, I’m positing that the whole concept of a unit or particle is a human thing.
- theinverseidea 6y agoAre you suggesting no one thing exists outside of your mind?
- teucris 6y agoYes. Not to say nothing exists though or that there is no meaning. To get really out of the realm of HN, no one thing can be proven to exist outside of our collective hallucination. That hallucination has reliable rules, thankfully, so things can be proven to exist inside it.