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Is a hole a real thing, or just a place where something isn’t?

#1
C C Offline
https://aeon.co/ideas/is-a-hole-a-real-t...thing-isnt

EXCERPT: It seems indisputable that there are holes. For example, there are keyholes, black holes and sinkholes; and there are holes in things such as sieves, golf courses and doughnuts. [...] Are holes material things, where material things are physical (like tables and chairs), or are holes immaterial things, where immaterial things are not physical (like abstract entities)? Or are holes not even things at all?

This issue is discussed in the paper ‘Holes’ (1970) by the American philosophers Stephanie and David Lewis, which contains a dialogue between the characters Argle and Bargle. Argle is a materialist, that is, someone who rejects the existence of anything immaterial. Materialism could be seen as a plausible position for Argle to hold, since it doesn’t commit Argle to the existence of potentially weird entities that go above and beyond the material; in other words, it is ontologically parsimonious. Like Madonna, Argle is a material girl living in a material world, where all the things that exist are physical material objects.

Bargle, on the other hand, challenges Argle’s materialism by introducing two further plausible positions, namely, that holes exist and that such holes are immaterial objects. It is plausible that holes exist: we seem to perceive holes; we refer to them in our language; and they seem necessary for the existence of other things. It is also plausible that holes are immaterial things since our intuitive view of holes is that they are not tangible objects but rather seem more like gaps, and so are not material things themselves but are rather, as Tucholsky described, where the material things are not. Argle and Bargle’s debate is therefore over which of the following individually plausible but collectively inconsistent claims to reject...

MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/is-a-hole-a-real-t...thing-isnt
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#2
Syne Offline
Like space, emptiness in a box, or holding nothing, a hole is simply a relationship of material. If a material surrounds nothing, it has a hole. If a material encompasses nothing, it has a capacity to contain. And if material is isolated, it has its own relative position to other objects.
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#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
If material represents the absence of nothing is an object then a hole? Maybe there are posi-holes and  nega-holes. Hole and whole, hey they could be the same thing, all things being holey.
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#4
C C Offline
(Jul 2, 2018 12:29 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: If material represents the absence of nothing is an object then a hole?


Items like the letter "O" have a perceptually implied hole in them, though if printed on paper (etc) it is indeed literally constituted of feel-able material rather than absence of it. So the very loosely restrictive, everyday generality of the meaning of "hole" expands the possibilities even more of what the "specious" adjective below applied to "empty space" is embracing.

In projecting an abstract concept upon holes as part of utilizing them for an invention scheme, holes can serve as one of the two binary states for constituting an information pattern; and assorted other kinds of machinery roles throughout history.

Yet apart from those functional purposes, when it comes to concrete appearance the hole is just another variable instantiation of the change from "occupied space" to speciously "empty space" that occurs sporadically throughout the universe. (Needless to say, quantum fluctuations fill supposed empty space when it's not a case of invisible atmosphere, etc).

A "hole" might arguably entail a closed figure outline or boundary. We probably wouldn't immediately accuse an open-ended interruption like "U" of being a hole, for example. But if it instead represented an enclosing bottle-like container / shape or a depression in the ground, then its open-end itself becomes a hole.

A solid sphere with a tiny tunnel running completely through it is topologically equivalent to a doughnut -- they share a classification, or each can be subsumed under a more fundamental identity which is different from that of a bottle sporting its hole or opening and hollow interior. But the even more basic and general "change from occupied space to speciously empty space" is part of both torus and bottle.

~
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#5
Zinjanthropos Offline
You know CC, I hesitate to say this but many people compare an object in space to a hole that other objects tumble into, and BH's were mentioned in the OP. Is an eddy a hole in water?
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#6
C C Offline
(Jul 2, 2018 05:05 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [...] Is an eddy a hole in water?


If a depression in the ground or metal block / surface can be called a "hole", then sure. It is again an extremely liberal word or noun when not shackled down to a specific meaning in the technical nomenclature of a professional discipline.

~
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#7
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Jul 2, 2018 05:13 PM)C C Wrote:
(Jul 2, 2018 05:05 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [...] Is an eddy a hole in water?


If a depression in the ground or metal block / surface can be called a "hole", then sure. It is again an extremely liberal word or noun when not shackled down to a specific meaning in the technical nomenclature of a professional discipline.

~

Odd that an object positioned in the fabric (another loose word) of space time acts like a hole, rubber sheet analogy aside, where things can fall into from all sides. I liken it to a spherical pin cushion where all the end points of the inserted pins meet at the centre core.

Maybe I should ask Ostro this: can a hole exist in a non physical universe? Think of all those non physical places people have pondered about over the years, with non physical living entities abound, perhaps the only thing they could equate a hole to is an actual physical object .... Not that I want to give Ostro any ammunition Big Grin but talk is there was a lot of non physical before the universe came along.  Angel
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#8
C C Offline
(Jul 2, 2018 06:09 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [...] Maybe I should ask Ostro this: can a hole exist in a non physical universe? Think of all those non physical places people have pondered about over the years, with non physical living entities abound, perhaps the only thing they could equate a hole to is an actual physical object .... Not that I want to give Ostro any ammunition Big Grin but talk is there was a lot of non physical before the universe came along.  Angel


Who knows, there may be a discipline where usage of the term "hole" restrictively refers to some abstract object whose properties and relationships are expressed purely in language or symbolic signs. But usually a technical description of a "hole" will also have an empirical or phenomenal counterpart which the former was either originally derived from or which it anticipated / predicted.

Back to the other: Since a storm system, like isolated clouds, is an occasion of the atmosphere becoming visible and tangible-looking to unaided senses, the eye of a hurricane would be another instance where in everyday application one might conceive and label it as a hole. But perhaps frowned upon or forbidden in formal meteorological discourse.

~
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#9
RainbowUnicorn Offline
hole knows the theory to be missing its very core of reality
puns n noodles
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#10
Zinjanthropos Offline
Must be something because...

What gets larger, the more you take away from it?
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