That All Events are Unique

There are two tendencies of pure analytic reason (pure reason in the manner in which Kant defined it) that are not in harmony and, in fact, are in conflict if not contradiction. It is a rule of analytic logic that any proposition, or its denial, must be true. Thus, either "It is raining" or "It is not raining" must be true under all circumstances and times. But there is another rational tendency, based upon the mathematics of magnitude, that conflicts with this. For we suppose that for any given stimulus of our senses, the magnitude of that stimulus is infinitely divisible. If a light bulb is between 80 and 100 watts bright, pure reason supposes that between those 80 and 100 watts there be an infinitely divisible gradation in its brightness. It can be 90 watts bright, 90.5 watts bright, 90.55 watts bright, divided on to infinity. It does not matter whether indeed it is impossible, according to physical laws, for this gradation of brightness to be infinitely divided. It may be that between 90.555 watts bright and 90.5552, there is an "all or nothing" step that it is impossible to increase halfway according to physical laws that govern light waves. This may well be in the physical world, but this does not bar us from intellectually conceiving the light being 90.5555 watts bright, 90.55555 watts bright, and so on, forever. Rationally we can conceive of infinite divisibility of the gradations of brightness, and in fact reason demands this mode of thinking, much in the way that it is absurd for there to be a finite number of decimals between 1.1 and 1.2 in mathematics. In the same way, it may be physically impossible for an object to go faster than the speed of light; but conceptually, there is no fastest speed possible. All we need to do to conceive of a speed faster than light is to contemplate the number of minutes it takes for the sun's light to reach the Earth, then suppose it gets there in half the time.

So we have, on the one hand, an all-or-nothing manner of thinking, in which either "It is raining" or "It is not raining" must always be true, in a black and white, clear-cut manner. On the other hand we have the rational inability to conceive of magnitudes of a given circumstance being other than infinitely divisible from one state to another, at least in the realm of the conceptual, if not the material. These two tendencies of our pure reason conflict in the following way. Let us take our former proposition, "It is raining, or it is not raining." Suppose it is indeed raining. We shall mentally subtract from that state of rain a single molecule of water. Is it still raining? Certainly it is. So we shall subtract another single molecule. One by one we take them away. If we take away 90% of the water it shall not be raining anymore, but drizzling. But if we take away the molecules a single one at a time, we must suppose that it went from "Raining" to "Not raining" based upon a single molecule of water being subtracted from the rain. We subtracted them one at a time, and so if either "It is raining" or "It is not raining" must be true, after each molecule's subtraction from the rain, we end up with the absurdity that the difference between rain and not rain depends upon a single water molecule being present or not.

It does not help us at all to suppose there is a no-man's-land between rain and not rain either. For supposing there is a third state between the two, a state of "Neither raining nor not raining". Of course this is absurd thinking but let us suppose it anyway. In this case we have merely added a third state, and the difference between "Raining" and "Neither raining nor not raining" depends upon the solitary molecule of water as well. If there is indeed a third state between the two, this third state ("Neither raining nor not raining") must have sharp lines of definition, cutting it off from "Raining" on the one side and "Not raining" on the other; both of which still end up hinging on that same molecule of water, just as we had between "Raining" and "Not raining" formerly.

So far we have dealt with the logical rule of the excluded middle versus the conceptual possibility of infinitely divisible magnitude. But there is another rational tendency that represents a similar conflict - the categorization of objects. There are here another pair of tendencies of analytic reason that are two sides of the same coin. These are the tendencies to make groups of objects based on similarities between them, and distinguish them based upon differences. It is common knowledge that for every object, it is in some sense similar to all other objects, and in some other sense unique. I am clean-shaven, and white. I can either be said to fall into the class of "white men" and be shown similar to them, or I may be classed among "clean-shaven men" which would put me in the same category as many black men, and at the same time exclude me from certain bearded white men, which I was formerly grouped among, in the other class to which I belong. Likewise I am a writer, which classes me among certain Chinese; or I may be said to be American, which excludes those Chinese and allows me to be grouped among certain Americans who do not write, from whom I was formerly excluded.

I think it is obvious that this must be what Kant would call a regulative, and not constitutive, tendency of pure reason. There are no purely objective classes that are more valid than others. The criteria for such classes are only valid from a given arbitrary perspective, and there are no quite strictly objective criteria for what things must be grouped among what things, and just why. Biology groups primates together as opposed to marsupials, but that is due to the arbitrary criteria they have for grouping animals together. Their criteria are based upon things like similarities in skeletal structure and having more recent common ancestors, and thus closer genetic codes. But it would be just as valid to use intelligence rather than these other things as criteria, so that we would be grouped as more similar to bottlenose dolphins than to chimpanzees. It is only a rational tendency to pick out similarities and differences in objects, either for the purpose of grouping together or distinguishing; but the criteria by which these classes are grouped or distinguished are ultimately arbitrary, with none of them being objective or ultimately more valid than any others. Had biologists only seen behavior as more pertinent to their science than genetic makeup and skeletal structure, human beings might be thought more similar to birds than to mountain gorillas, since our behavior of building houses is more analogous to birds building nests than to gorillas sleeping out in the open.

The rational tendency to group and distinguish objects is ultimately what Kant would (and did) call regulative functions of reason and not constitutive of objective reality. And the rational tendency to be compelled to believe that it must be either raining or not raining, with no middle ground, is counterpoised to the rational tendency to conceive infinite divisibility in every magnitude between "rain" and "not rain". Likewise the rational tendency to group things together, or distinguish them apart, has no strictly objective criteria; but such grouping and distinguishing is based upon ultimately arbitrary bases. For any two given objects anywhere in the universe, they must be at one and the same time alike and distinct, depending upon what criteria we are using to either group them together or distinguish them apart. From what has been said in the first paragraphs of this essay in would seem that between the idea of strict truth to every proposition or its inverse, and infinitely divisible magnitude between every state, there is a logical conflict. So now we must either reduce one of these tendencies to the level of a regulative rational exercise which does not apply to the world in-itself, or find some compromise or synthesis in which these rational tendencies can coexist.

The answer, I believe, is along the lines of the following. It is not quite the case that "It is raining" or "It is not raining" must be true. The answer comes to us in the discussion of classes of things and genera, groups based on arbitrary criteria. Just as it is a false analogy to group all men into one class, each being unique and equally able to be grouped into a separate class (of "clean-shaven men", or "bald men", or "Americans"), so too is it a false analogy to group together two instances of "rain" as if they objectively stand with something in common. If I call a given state of windy rain "windy" rather than "raining", now this same event is classed with a windy dry day, and excluded from raining events that have still air. It is a false analogy to group together "events of raining" as much as it is to group together "events that are windy". Truly speaking, in terms of objectivity, every event is unique. There are differences and similarities in each event to every other; but ultimately they are each distinct, and their likenesses are mere false analogies between them, having no objective basis. Thus every state of rain is different from every other, and it is only the human rational apparatus that sees analogy between them. We may as easily group a given state of rain, if it happens to be on the beach, as a "beach event", to be grouped with a sunny day at the seaside somewhere else, and to be excluded from a raining event in the mountains. For in nature in-itself there is no universal "things that are rainy", but each and every state of rain is unique from every other, with only artificial analogies between them. In this way, should we subtract water molecules from the rain one by one, it becomes only an arbitrary function of the mind to decide just when it becomes no longer a "raining" event. We may draw the line anywhere we wish; there is truly no right place to draw the line, because the entire class of "raining events" is merely a human abstraction, grouping events together that do not stand in similarity together beyond a human classification that has no objective criteria. Whatever the number of molecules of water in the air, there will be the state that there will be; to name it "rain" would be to relate it to events other than itself, which is a merely regulative function of the human mind.

Every state of rain, no matter the magnitude of rain, is what it is absolutely, having nil to do with other states of rain. So, since to name it "rain" in the first place functions only to class it among other things that are like it, we see that these are false analogies, false connections between events that are every one of them unique. Each state of rain simply is the state that it is; to name it "rain" or not is a false analogy to begin with: no matter the nature of the rain present here, it has naught to do with any "rain event" elsewhere. It is only a regulative--not objective--function of reason to call it "rain", and group it among other states when, strictly speaking, it is different and unique from every one of them. For any given state of rain, it is a false analogy even to name it "rain" - and in some other world where we had godlike intellects, we could do away with such false analogies between events. In such a fantastical world we could have a separate name for each and every event in the cosmos, with no need to draw false analogies between them, such as we do with our human language.

In this way, we need not show why there must be a distinct qualitative difference between "rain" and "not rain" when the difference hinges upon a given solitary water molecule, since it was a question of human linguistic definition in the first place, and is not based on any real class of "raining events" that exists anywhere but within human convention and language. Each raining event is unique; each object is unique; and it is only a regulative function of reason to point out similarities between them, when there is no real objective basis for doing so. Thus, there are no such things as "raining events" as they apply to several meteorological states; that term itself merely picks out a similarity between events that are in themselves each distinct absolutely. It is only a human function of the mind to draw connections between them, connections that have no basis in these events in-themselves.

There is, then, no such thing as "rain" as it applies to a multitude of separate, entirely distinct events. The idea of "rain" is a human abstraction having no bearing on events that are actually each unique and individual, every one distinct from every other, every one simply what it is no matter whether we name it "rain" or not, with no analogy grouping them all within a single class, beyond the level of a regulative rational and linguistic function.

Angelhaunt.net: Because earth's madness is heaven's sense.