common properties of x and not

April 19, 2011 4:20 AM

when considering 'time/space', and then identifying 'time frames' as a discrete property of this. is it appopriate to then say 'time/space' and 'not time/space' share the common property of 'time frames' ?
posted by captain wibbly to Religion & Philosophy (14 answers total)

So are you asking 'If B is a property of A, is B also a property of not-A?'
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 4:46 AM on April 19, 2011

Could you explain your terms a bit better?
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:16 AM on April 19, 2011

Too head off further confusion: Here's what he's asking about.
posted by empath at 6:21 AM on April 19, 2011

You're asking a question about indiscernible objects? What do you mean by 'not time/space'? For that matter, what do you mean by 'time/space'? Do you mean the relativistic concept of a spacetime manifold or a Newtonian system?

I would think that 'not time/space' doesn't have the property of 'time frames' any more than 'not horse' has the property of 'hooves'.
posted by demiurge at 6:51 AM on April 19, 2011

Your question is unclear to me. What you seem to be asking is what le morte de bea arthur suggested.

My understanding of your question runs:

Let X = "time/space"
Let Y = "time frames"

Then is the following true?

"If Y is a discrete property of X then Y is also a discrete property of NOT(X)."

If that is indeed what you are asking then the answer would be that we cannot reach that conclusion solely from the premise "Y is a discrete property of X".

Consider a couple of cases using the same logic:

Let X = planets
Let Y = atoms

Atoms are properties of both planets and NOT(planets)

However:

Let X = cats
Let Y = human skulls

Human skulls are not properties of both cats and NOT(cats)

Which illustrates the point: if my assessment of your question is correct than the conclusion cannot be deduced from the premise.
posted by Decani at 8:48 AM on April 19, 2011

Response by poster: thanks,

sorry i was unclear (it makes sense to me :)

both
le morte de bea arthur and
Decani , have put it appropriately .


i'm not sure the Liebniz comment i used is actually appropriate :/


but if as Decani says
"Atoms are properties of both planets and NOT(planets) "
my problems with understanding this, is this i would assume NOT(atoms) would be properties of NOT(planet),
and atoms and NOT(atoms) have some sort of contradictory status. which would then make atoms NOT a common property.
posted by captain wibbly at 9:35 AM on April 19, 2011

If it is the case that [for all X if X is an A, then X has the property B], you can't go making definitive statements about a Y that is not an A. It may have property B, it might not.

All trout have scales, but just because something is not a trout doesn't mean it doesn't have scales.
posted by demiurge at 12:30 PM on April 19, 2011

atoms and NOT(atoms) have some sort of contradictory status

Only statements can be called contradictory. You can't talk about objects as contradicting one another.

So, "Something is both an atom and not an atom at the same time" is a contradiction.

But one thing being an atom and another thing being NOT an atom doesn't mean they are contradictory -- it's a misuse of language to speak that way, even. They're just different.
posted by meese at 2:02 PM on April 19, 2011

It's worth getting some of your teminology clear. Atoms are not properties of a planet. They are things out of which a planet is composed. A planet has the property of being composed of atoms. All sorts of non-planets also have the property of being composed of atoms.

Meese is correct in saying that only statements can be contradictory.

I don't think Leibniz's Law is relevant to your question.

Decani and le morte de bea arthur are right in saying that we cannot answer your question simply by considering its logical form, but I'm not sure you thought we could in the first place. In order to answer your original question, we'd need to know exactly how you are using the terms 'time/space' and 'time frame'. These aren't standard terms, so you'll need to say more about what you mean by them.
posted by painquale at 4:28 PM on April 19, 2011

Response by poster: i think I've got what I was looking for - i was looking for particular logical relationships of properties betweent A and not A.
so properties of "not time/space" are not necessarily related/unrelated to "time/space".

then in my question :)
"time frames" may or may not be a property of "not time/space".


which then leads me to a new question which i will post seperately ..

thanks berry much : )
posted by captain wibbly at 11:50 PM on April 19, 2011

Response by poster: i've just realised i made a fundamental mistake in my initial post ...

when i said "not time/space" i was not understanding my own question, and should have been saying "no time/space"
and then, what sort of relationship would their respective properties have.

I'll change demiurges argument above to hopefully represent this change. changing "NOT" to "NO"
(although i'm a bit confused about how to represent "NO X ")
--

Let X = "time/space"
Let Y = "time frames"

Then is the following true?

"If Y is a discrete property of X then Y is also a discrete property of NO X."


--
this is where my question about contradiction might make more sense :)
where it seems that A and no A have some sort of contradictory properties.
posted by captain wibbly at 6:19 AM on April 20, 2011

What does "NO X" mean? What logical properties does the "NO" operator have?
posted by demiurge at 10:03 AM on April 20, 2011

Response by poster: absence of X. maybe.
in the particular example, we were talking about time/space as a reference the Universe. thereby incorporating all properties of the Universe particularly in reference to time.

so we could look at time as an obvious way of measuring change. with time-frames being arbitrary start and end point of measurement, here being particularly the start /end point of the universe.

simply then, what relevance might time have to any existence outside of the universe (no universe) ?

to expand a bit more.
'no time/space' would be in this case particularly considering the notion that the universe has boundaries of existence.
if time/space could then be seen as one time-frame, where it has a start/end point.
ie "Y is a discrete property of X".

what could be said about properties of 'no time/space',
ie; is it true that "then Y is also a discrete property of NO X"


in particularly with reference to time-frames..

i hope that makes enough sense now :p
posted by captain wibbly at 6:08 PM on April 20, 2011

It does make more sense, but I think that your concept of "existence outside of the universe" is contradictory. The universe contains all that exists, by definition. You are going to have to redefine what "universe" means if you're going anywhere with this. Your discrete property argument is clearly not generally true, as others have demonstrated above.
posted by demiurge at 8:55 AM on April 21, 2011