Two Things That Are Pretty Much Completely Different

Troodon Roar

I have been trying to find an example of two things that share no properties and have no similarities with each other, and are completely different from each other. Now, I am aware that there are trivial properties that any thing will have (properties such as self-identity, being a thing, etc.), and also, if three or more things exist, which is obviously the case, then any two things, no matter how different, will share the property of both not being some other third thing. (For example, my leg hair and the Andromeda galaxy both share the property of not being Abraham Lincoln). I don’t count those kinds of properties, as they are inevitably there, and they are so trivial thay many may not even consider them to be properties. I mean significant, noteworthy, non-trivial properties (for example: being blue, being a living organism, being large or small, being square-shaped, etc., etc.).

Now, I think I have found some examples of things which most of us experience everyday that are so different that they can be said to have no non-trivial properties in common.

Odors and sounds (not the molecules and acoustic waves that cause them, but the qualia themselves) seem to be non-spatial. They have no shape, and do not seem to be spatially extended. Thus, they are very, very different from any spatially-extended object.

Let’s compare the smell of rotten eggs to a rock. I can think of nothing non-trivial they have in common. One is spatial, the other is not. One has a shape, the other is not. One has spatial extension, the other does not. One is material, the other is not. The only things they have in common are extrinsic properties (for example, that both of them can be perceived by the same mind), which I am not concerned with, and trivial properties of the sort I just described, which I am also not concerned with. I’m concerned here only with intrinsic, non-trivial properties. And I cannot think of any one that these two things share.

However, I do have one worry. I worry that my judgement that these two things have no similarities may be mistaken due to epistemic limitations on my part. Specifically, what if there is a major similarity there, but I just can’t perceive it, and if I were to encounter some bizarre alien entity completely unlike anything I have ever experienced, the odor of sulfur and the rock would reveal their similarity? I’m paranoid about this, even though it seems intuitively implausible to me, so can anyone help? Does anyone know about theories or research on the epistemology of similarity and difference?

And can anyone here think of any non-trivial intrinsic similarity between these two things? If you can, please share it. Or do you agree with me that there are none?

andrewk

can anyone here think of any non-trivial intrinsic similarity between these two things? — Troodon Roar

The trouble is that we don't know what a 'non-trivial intrinsic similarity' is. You have given examples of similarities that you regard as not being that, but examples do not a definition make. There are countless similarities between any two nouns and it is entirely a matter of personal opinion as to whether they are intrinsic or trivial.

BTW I think one can get things that are even more different by moving beyond the physical. For instance, what is the similarity between the Maastricht treaty and my memory of falling in a rockpool by the sea when I was five? Or between either of those and a rock?

Mww

↪Troodon Roar

Space and time?

I like sushi

They are broad categories. You may as well say “numbers” and “animals” are “completely different”.

Sounds require pitch, volume, tone, etc.,. Smells require pungency, sweetness, etc.,. A box requires shape, breadth, depth, etc.,. They all possess magnitudes.

Why isthis task useful to you?

coolguy8472

Nothing and Something

Tim3003

Re the egg-smell and the rock. Smells are perceptions of vapours, which consist of atoms and molecules just as rocks do. The smell is a sense perception, but so is the image of a rock which you're comparing it with. The distinction you make between the subjective smell and the objective rock is I think invalid.

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

Nothing and Something both have 'thing' in common. We can't think the concept of Not or negation without also thinking 'thing' or 'substance' or 'presence' because absence requires a contrast. Pure nothing can't be thought.

Terrapin Station

Troodon Roar

I suppose what I am asking is this:

Is the very notion of there being two things that have nothing in common except for universal, logically-necessary properties that any two things necessarily have, such as self-identity, being a thing, etc. and negative properties (such as both having the property of not being some other third thing) even logically possible?

In other words, even if we can’t imagine what it would be like, is an object that has nothing except logically-necessary or negative properties in common with, say, the Eiffel Tower, logically possible? That is, even though we can’t imagine in detail what it is like, does our ability to conceive of the idea of such an object, and describe said idea with language, imply that it exists in some possible world or worlds?

Joshs

↪Troodon Roar

This may be a historical question. It seems to me one would have to do an anthropological investigation into forms of thinking prior to the founding of Western metaphysics with the Greeks. The invention of logic and objectivity on which scientific empiricism and mathematics is based implies relational causation as inherent to objects. This makes the idea of pure, radical non-relationality incoherent. Buddhist and Hindu religious positions likely also make such a notion untenable. One would have to locate an ancient thinking with a very different idea of causality.

Troodon Roar

↪Joshs

Perhaps all objects in this universe are causally related, but I’m not referring to objects specifically in this universe. I mean any object that could theoretically exist; it doesn’t have to actually exist. It just needs to exist in some possible world or other. And the standard consensus among philosophers seems to be that entities in different possible worlds are causally unrelated to one another.

Joshs

↪Troodon Roar

How does one possible world, as in Nelson's 'Ways of Worldmaking' emerge, what are its conditions of possibility, in the imagination, other than a previous context o imagining? Put differently, is consciousness not a stream, and is there not some minimal continuity from one moment of the stream to the next, such that new worlds of possibility belong to the same stream as previous ones? And not just temporally, but also thematically? IS it ever possible for a thought to occur to us that has absolutely no contextual connection with a previous?

Troodon Roar

↪Joshs

Yes, but for my purposes, I’m not going to count that as a similarity.
You might as well say that, because we have a general concept of a “thing”, and since anything is, by definition, a thing, this means that all things have in common the fact that they can be described by us using the concept of “thing”.

For my purposes, I’m ignoring any similarities related to how they can both be present to a particular consciousness.

Joshs

↪Troodon Roar

The way that meanings emerge for us out of previous meanings goes beyond simply talking about temporal or spatial or empty categorial proximity. There is thematic overlap that is entirely missed by keeping to the restrictions of formal logic, which has to pretend that what conditions meaning can somehow be ignored when defining terms. But lets say we stick to the restrictions of logical formulation. We would still have to come up with some sort of mechanism to explain lack of relationality. We couldn't derive that from anything in the empirical world, because empirical objectivity implies causality. We couldn't find it in the mechanisms of consciousness because that has its own causality. So what kind of mechanism can we make use of that ignores both the empirical world and the world of conscious structures? Unless you want to use models from physics suggesting how something emerged from nothing. That's the closest I can think of to an empirical account of non-relationality.

Perhaps your search for pure non-relational entities is a search for pure non-meaning itself.

Troodon Roar

↪Joshs

I’m not talking about two things that have no relation. I’m talking about two things that are pretty much totally different. Obviously, being different is a relation, so if they have no relations, then they can’t be different.

What I’m asking about is two things that have nothing except logically-necessary properties and negative properties in common.

andrewk

In other words, even if we can’t imagine what it would be like, is an object that has nothing except logically-necessary or negative properties in common with, say, the Eiffel Tower, logically possible? — Troodon Roar

To make sense of the question you'd need to get a lot more precise about what you mean by property.
For instance, is being liked by a specific person a property? On the face of it, there's no obvious property shared between the Eiffel Tower and the feel of cashmere. But if Roberta loves them both then 'being loved by Roberta' may be a shared property, depending on what your precise definition of property is.

Also, excluding negative properties is unlikely to work. There are many cases in philosophy where people have tried to deliberately include or exclude negatives (eg apophatic theology). People then find loopholes all over such programs because most negatives can be recast as positives, and vice versa.

Terrapin Station

Is the very notion of there being two things that have nothing in common except for universal, logically-necessary properties that any two things necessarily have, such as self-identity, being a thing, etc. and negative properties (such as both having the property of not being some other third thing) even logically possible? — Troodon Roar

Are you familiar with nominalism? I'm just curious if you're talking about two things having identical properties.

Artemis

↪Troodon Roar

I think you need to define what you mean by "things" better. I wouldn't define the quality of odor as a thing, personally. Maybe the odor-producing particles are things, but not my brain's interpretation of those particles.

coolguy8472

↪Joshs

calling them "things" as something they have in common doesn't count per the OP (that falls under "trivial property")

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

What is the trivial property you have in mind, simply the word 'thing'?
My argument is that any concept that we think is also a contrast, an edge. A line implies that which it emerges out of, the background. Something is only something because it has an edge, a contrast, a boundary. It also emerges out of something else. The word 'nothing' would be incoherent if it didn't also imply a contrast, edge, boundary. Nothing can only be nothing because it emerges from something prior to it. It is a negation of a prior something. 'Nothing' intrinsically depends for its very meaning on 'something'. Its like darkness and light. Each means what it does only by comparison to its other.

coolguy8472

↪coolguy8472 What is the trivial property you have in mind, simply the word 'thing'?
My argument is that any concept that we think is also a contrast, an edge. A line implies that which it emerges out of, the background. Something is only something because it has an edge, a contrast, a boundary. It also emerges out of something else. The word 'nothing' would be incoherent if it didn't also imply a contrast, edge, boundary. Nothing can only be nothing because it emerges from something prior to it. It is a negation of a prior something. 'Nothing' intrinsically depends for its very meaning on 'something'. Its like darkness and light. Each means what it does only by comparison to its other. — Joshs

from the original post: "Now, I am aware that there are trivial properties that any thing will have (properties such as self-identity, being a thing, etc.), "

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

It is not just that something and nothing are both 'things', it's that the unique meaning of 'something' and 'nothing' imply each other , like darkness and light. You can see that darkness and light are related not just because they are both things but because the unique meaning of both of them implies the other.

coolguy8472

↪Joshs

Trivial difference :)

Louco

I understand the rules of your test to be:

- ignore concepts based on a materialistic point of view
- ignore concepts based on an idealistic point of view
- are there two different sensible things?

I think we should add the following:

- ignore concepts based on the senses

And now we have a more specific problem: are there two things?

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

Are you referring to darkness vs light? Do you mean trivial relation?

coolguy8472

↪Joshs

It's a trivial difference to point out that one is the absence of the other in this scenario.

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

i'm not sure I understand why in the context of light vs dark. If one is the absence of the other, don't darkness and light fall within the category of visual phenomena?

coolguy8472

↪Joshs

the first paragraph says we can't count that

I have been trying to find an example of two things that share no properties and have no similarities with each other, and are completely different from each other. Now, I am aware that there are trivial properties that any thing will have (properties such as self-identity, being a thing, etc.), and also, if three or more things exist, which is obviously the case, then any two things, no matter how different, will share the property of both not being some other third thing. (For example, my leg hair and the Andromeda galaxy both share the property of not being Abraham Lincoln). I don’t count those kinds of properties, as they are inevitably there, and they are so trivial thay many may not even consider them to be properties. I mean significant, noteworthy, non-trivial properties (for example: being blue, being a living organism, being large or small, being square-shaped, etc., etc.). — Troodon Roar

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

I mean significant, noteworthy, non-trivial properties (for example: being blue, being a living organism, being large or small, being square-shaped, etc., etc.). — Troodon Roar

. Or being a visual phenomenon.

coolguy8472

↪Joshs

too broad. And "nothing" and "something" are not visual phenomenon. There are plenty of "something"'s out there that we can't see.

Joshs

↪coolguy8472

I am not claiming that "nothing" and "something" are visual phenomena. i'm just trying to clarify whether you are arguing that 'visual phenomena' is too broad a category to count here for the darkness-light example.

Two Things That Are Pretty Much Completely Different

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