Sunday, May 25, 2014

Everywhere, Nowhere, Extension

'Eternity' is ambiguous--it can mean either 'at all times' or 'at no time'.  In contrast, there seems to be no single term that equivocates between 'everywhere' and 'nowhere'.  Accordingly, there is no confusing Descartes's unextended God, which is nowhere, from Spinoza's extended Deity, which is everywhere.  However, contemporary Semantic Theory is more careless.  For, according to its prevailing concept of 'extension', a term somehow is both at all its instances, and, yet, is at none of them.  So, the Everywhere-Nowhere distinction helps illuminate a confusion at the heart of theories in which that concept is operative.

No comments:

Post a Comment