Selected Topics in the Philosophy of Science, Part III: Philosophical Vacua

In the physics part of his lecture, Dr. Binswanger excludes two forms of "empty space" based on metaphysical arguments. The first form, "space outside the universe", is not an issue if, as I argue is metaphysically permissible in the previous post, space is finite but unlimited (and if it is not, I agree with Dr. Binswanger's argument). My disagreement is with his metaphysical argument against vacua within the universe itself.

Before I go into detail, I want to clearly delimit the scope of this post. I intend to argue that vacua are metaphysically permissible. That being said, given my understanding of the current knowledge of physics, I do not think vacua actually exist. In this sense I agree with Dr. Binswanger, and the only practical upshot of my disagreement is that if scientists do find evidence for an actual vacuum, I would not dismiss him out of hand (while Dr. Binswanger, at least according to this lecture, would).

Dr. Binswanger's defines a vacuum as a region where there is nothing, and for the sake of this discussion I will use that definition, though I think a better definition would be a region with no entities, as Dr. Binswanger's definition could lead to the reification of "nothing" (complete side note: Firefox's spell-check suggests "deification" in place of "reification". I find that humorously appropriate). Dr. Binswanger attacks this definition by saying there is no "region" to have the nothing. He first points out that you can't distinguish two separate points within the vacuum because there are no two things in the vacuum to distinguish. To separate point A from point B, he argues, there has to be something at A and something at B.

He goes on to recognize that you could possibly distinguish portions of a vacuum by means of a potential: the potential to put a ruler between two objects outside the vacuum without having to move the objects apart. He states that any potential has to be a potential of something (which is correct), and then claims that such a potential would have to be a potential of the vacuum, which is nothing. But why can't the potential be a potential of the entities surrounding the vacuum?

Dr. Binswanger tries to attack that possibility by saying that the potential would disappear by moving the entities together, but that very argument shows that it is in fact a potential of the entities, specifically a potential resulting from the relative locations of the entities. The fact (which Dr. Binswanger acknowledges) that moving the entities removes the potential demonstrates that the potential is dependent on the location of the entities. To put it in terms of identity, one aspect of the natures of the entities (specifically, their relative positions) gives rise to the potential of putting a ruler between them without moving the entities. Nowhere in that formulation is any attribute given to the vacuum itself, and therefore the potential rests on solid ground.

This concludes my critique of Dr. Binswanger's course. To sum up, I disagreed with the ideas that Gödel's Theorem is invalid, that space and the number of entities must necessarily be limited, and that vacua can not exist on metaphysical grounds. Despite these disagreements, I still greatly enjoyed the lecture and strongly recommend it to anyone interested in science.

Part I Part II Part III