Timocrates wrote:

​Space has no distance? But if no distance, then it is not extended either; therefore, it is not and cannot be either limited or unlimited. So why assert this at all? Are you confusing space with a geometric point? I think you have to be if you have anything in mind at all. Space has neither actuality nor potentiality? So you are asserting that space is just literally nothing and that nothing not only can be but actually is unlimited? It's actually unlimited  even though it has no actuality? Or maybe you mean it is potentially unlimited but it has no potentiality?

Let me try to clarify. As I said before, space is unlimited in the sense that one can in theory travel in a fixed direction forever. Space is literally nothing, so it has no actualities and no potentialities. It is no more ontic than a married bachelor

Locomotion is (in part) possible because material objects have finite extension.

​

Timocrates wrote:

But regardless, my proof still stands because as you say space is nothing and if two objects are separated from each other but space is as you say nothing they cannot actually be separate from each other because there is nothing in between the objects since space is not distance. According to you only other actual objects can make for actual distances. So even if you are correct that distance is attributed to objects rather than space, space is a meaningless concept because it cannot even be thought of as that which is in between two locally separated objects. So why do you even speak of space when you deny it exists at all? What is the point of speaking of space when for you space is just actually body? And how can actual bodies be "negative realities"?

Forget the phrase "negative reality" as it has hindered the dialogue more than it has helped. Surely a good time then to dispense with it hereafter.

It does not follow from the fact that space is nothing, that therefore it is a meaningless concept. After all one sense of "space" is the negation of material objects. So for example, take your two objects to be 30cm cubes separated by 30cm. That means a third cube of the same size could theoretically be inserted between them to produce 90cm of continuous horizontal extension.

Rulers and measuring tapes are often used to quantify extension (length, height, width). But they can also be used to quantify negative extension. For example, how much room there is for some object, or how much sand a bucket can carry.

surroundx wrote:

ficino wrote:

I don't think Taylor's book is very accessible, so if you are interested in a fuller summary and quotations, I'll paste in more of my notes from it.

That would be very much appreciated, thank you

Here are notes I typed from two places in Taylor's commentary on Aristotle's doctrine of place. What I typed is what you get! Hope it's useful.

Cf. Taylor Comm. pp. 435-436, ad Timaeus 62c3-63c8: Aristotle kept to a single heaven with earth at its centre. “Aristotle is thus morally responsible for the whole subsequent secular confusion of ideas about weight. Adopting Plato’s preference for a single οὐρανός, he evades the blunder of putting an earth at rest in ‘absolute space’ at its centre. ‘Up’ now means in the direction along any radius of this οὐρανός from its centre to its circumference, ‘down’ direction along a radius from circumference to centre. (Ar. is aware therefore, that up and down at different places on the earth’s surface are different directions.) Ar. then insists that two of the four ‘simple bodies’, earth and fire, if left to themselves move ‘down’, i.e. ‘towards the centre’ and ‘up’, ‘away from the centre’ respectively. Consequently earth is absolutely ‘heavy’, fire absolutely ‘light’. As for the other two, water is relatively heavy, because, left to itself, it moves ‘down’ until it is in contact with the region of earth, air is relatively light, because, left to itself, it moves ‘up’ until it reaches the region next ‘below’ that of fire. See de Caelo Δ. 311a16 [he quotes] In other words when we call ‘fire’ ‘light’, we do not mean simply, as we do on Timaeus’ view or that of our own day, that it is not so heavy as something else (e.g. not so heavy as water or wood or stone). Fire is not heavy at all; its lightness is no more the lack of weight than the whiteness of snow is the lack of black. Indeed, Aristotle sometimes uses arguments which imply the paradox that, no volume of air, however great, could weigh anything at all. (n. 1 Taylor talks about air detained below its proper region “will always, if unimpeded, ascend to that region, whereas water will not ascend beyond its own region. Hence he thinks it absurd to say that any volume of air whatever can be as heavy as a given volume of water. His argument is that ‘the more there is of it, the faster it rises’. Apparently the reasoning is that even a small quantity of air will make its way up, if set free, from the bottom of a large body of water, and therefore must be ‘lighter’ than the whole volume of the water. It is forgotten that all that is proved is that the air is lighter than its own bulk of water.”) E.g. de Caelo Δ. 308b27 [he quotes]  436 (This is meant as a refutation of Timaeus, who has just been reproached for holding that ‘there can be some volume of air which is heavier than water’, and the context shows that this means only ‘heavier than some volume of water’, loc. cit. b25 ἔσται τι πλῆθος ἀέρος ὃ βαρύτερον ὕδατος ἔσται). The ‘celestial body’ of which the ‘spheres’ are made is then supposed to have neither weight nor lightness, as it moves neither ‘down’ or ‘up’ but round and round.
     Plato’s theory—or that of Timaeus—is the best worked out which the Greeks have left us. It makes weight, as it really is, a secondary thing, and assumes that the weight of any body depends on its position relative to others. A true theory could not have been worked out in the absence of the all-important conception of mass as a natural invariant… The superiority of the Timaeus over Aristotle in its account of τὸ βαρύ and τὸ κοῦφον is just that it recognizes that there is no absolute weight or lightness, and consequently no division of bodies into ‘heavy’ ones with a natural motion in one sense, and ‘light’ ones with a natural movement in the opposite sense.”
 

From Taylor's Appendix:
     It seems as though place also has some causal role. At Physics 208b3-8, Ari says that place can be filled at different times by different things, so it is something different from any of them. Taylor, Comm. on Timaeus, 665, says  “He goes on, in virtue of his belief in an ‘absolute’ up and down, to ascribe a distinctive δύναμις or causal activity to the different regions of space, the up and the down, the right and the left, the before and behind, which he regards as the ‘parts’ of an ‘absolute’ space. ‘For each <of the four kinds of body> is carried (φέρεται) to its own place, if left to itself (μὴ κωλυόμενον), one up and another down, but up and down and the rest of the six διαστάσεις are ‘parts’ or ‘forms’ (μέρη καὶ εἴδη) of place. These distinctions are not merely relative to ourselves (οὐ μόνον πρὸς ἡμᾶς), but there is a real distinction in nature (ἐν δὲ τῇ φύσει διώρισται χωρὶς ἕκαστον). It is not just any direction that is ‘up’, but the direction in which fire and light things move; similarly ‘down’ is not just any direction but that of heavy bodies and earth, so we see that the distinction is not merely one of position but of influence, (ὡς οὐ τῇ θέσει διαφέροντα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ δυνάμει, 208b11-22).
     Aristotle, in fact, attributes to the different regions of ‘absolute’ space a sort of power of ‘attracting’ different kinds of body.” Taylor points out that this doctrine conflicts with Aristotle’s admission that up and down are relative to where you are on the globe. 667 But Taylor goes on to ask how place can be the cause of anything – what does it explain? He says Ari presumably thinks the inconsistency w/ Ari’s statements about the powers of the διαστάσεις “is supposed to disappear when we remember that the movements of light things up and of heavy things down are ‘natural’, i.e. arise from an inner tendency within these bodies themselves.  (n. 1 “The tendency is a mere tendency. A ‘simple body’ does not move up or down unless it is already out of its ‘proper place’. When it is in that place it simply stays there. The tendency only becomes actual in virtue of a displacement of the body, and this displacement is not initiated from within but from without. Without the efficient causality of the revolution of the heavenly ‘spheres’, and in particular, without the obliquity of the Ecliptic (λοξὸς κύκλος), there would be no movement in the sublunary world and no γένεσις or φθορά of perishable things. (See de Generatione B. c. 10 with Mr. Joachim’s Commentary.) This is how Aristotle reconciles the ‘natural’ motion of the simple bodies with the view that inanimate things can only be set moving from without.”)  669 Simplicius explained what happens when air is turned to water: topos can’t be identified with form or matter, since then it would be lost, which is unthinkable. When a gas is liquified, it loses its form as a gas, and there is a change of volume to a smaller one for the liquid. But there is the same amount of stuff. So place is not matter or form. Taylor goes on to develop remarks about how Ari’s doctrine of space conflicts with his cosmology.



 

I have to say that you are making something out of nothing.  Aristotle was referring to the "nothing" of Parmenides.  I don't think you have a proper understanding of that definition.

Nothing is non existence and things that do not exist do not have size.

bmiller wrote:

I have to say that you are making something out of nothing.  Aristotle was referring to the "nothing" of Parmenides.  I don't think you have a proper understanding of that definition.

Nothing is non existence and things that do not exist do not have size.

I'm well aware of what nothing means. I'm not a Lawrence Krauss-type atheist (arguably he knows what it really means, but it serves his "dialectic" to misuse the term).

It is not that things which do not exist have size, it is that the negation of things can vary in size.

From the fact that there is not anything between two cubes, it does not follow that they are adjoined.

surroundx wrote:

bmiller wrote:

I have to say that you are making something out of nothing.  Aristotle was referring to the "nothing" of Parmenides.  I don't think you have a proper understanding of that definition.

Nothing is non existence and things that do not exist do not have size.

I'm well aware of what nothing means. I'm not a Lawrence Krauss-type atheist (arguably he knows what it really means, but it serves his "dialectic" to misuse the term).

It is not that things which do not exist have size, it is that the negation of things can vary in size.

From the fact that there is not anything between two cubes, it does not follow that they are adjoined.

Please give more details for this:
"It is not that things which do not exist have size, it is that the negation of things can vary in size."

What do you consider the difference between "things which do not exist" and "the negation of things"?

I'm interested in your reasoning.