Note on Zeno's Dichotomy I. M. R.

Pinheiro1

Abstract

We here solve one of the paradoxes of Zeno, The Dichotomy. We prove that the foundation of this paradox is the same as that of The Sorites and The Liar. Basically, the extraordinary difference between exclusively human and computer language seems to never be acknowledged by the people proposing the mentioned paradoxes. Yet, if such a difference had ever been acknowledged by them, their paradoxes would be told to be simple allurements to illustrate scientific truths.

Introduction

We read in [Nick Huggett, 2010] that little is known about the original writings of Zeno of Elea, but his paradoxes became famous because people like Simplicius found ways of eternizing them. The paradox we deal with here is interesting to us because it connects directly to Mathematics, just like The Sorites does. The Dichotomy, which is considered a paradox of motion, is about describing the world objects through the real numbers. Even though there is clarity in a common person's mind regarding the extraordinary differences between the machine world (Mathematics) and the exclusively human world (whatever does not fit in there), there is difficulty of understanding this difference in the researchers' minds, as incredible as it may seem. It seems that if one starts to worry too much about abstract things, then one loses touch with the concrete world. It is also possible that those who learn the scientific truths love to have the entire world, with all that there is in it, fitting inside of them in order to feel as if they are God and can
1 P. O. Box 12396, A'Beckett st, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 8006.

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control all. The Sorites is about human beings believing that the human language is, or should be, something mechanical, not exclusively human at least sometimes. It is perhaps founded in the unacceptance of the human freedom, which not just sometimes leads to confusion in people's understanding of the others. Understanding and knowing other humans is not an easy task. The effort to understand and know a single other human being to the level that one knows oneself is so huge that only humans who are faithful and loyal to their sexual partner, therefore hold exclusive dedication in terms of emotions and highest levels of connection to them, can achieve that. The path to understanding other human beings is extremely painful, but rationality has led humanity to historically believe and declare, in the most meaningful way as possible, that it is worth it. It is obviously the case that people who do not go through that path feel freer emotionally and mentally, also experience less human pain. Death, for instance, brings levels of pain that not many human beings are able to cope with. The person who does not go through the mentioned path will not suffer with the death of others, for instance. Full detachment of similar creatures is only possible if we live in a machine world, where everything is mechanical. It is possible that trials in the justmentioned direction (full detachment) led to the appearance of all problems that remind us somehow of The Dichotomy. People who do not fear the path to understanding of others and still enjoy it will trivially see in problems such as The Sorites, The Liar, and The Dichotomy, allurements, rather than Science. Basically, Zeno seems to expose his issues with dealing with both the machine and the exclusively human world at the same time in this problem. Our source tells us that Zeno claims that there is at least one paradox of motion in the human universe through argumenting that it is impossible for us to ever reach a point X in the world if we plan to reach this point by walking first part of the way then half of whatever remains thereof. The paradigms he talks about are the mathematical description of continuity (real numbers, lines)

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and the mathematical description of limits. The issue with the just-mentioned paradigms seems to be well mentioned in [A. A. Joachim and W. D. Ross, 1984] (see [Nick Huggett, 2010]). According to our source, Zeno declares that motion does not exist because whoever is in locomotion, or whatever, must arrive at the half-way stage before they, or it, arrives at the goal. To understand what is being claimed better, we imagine an extremely fast runner of short distances, say Cathy Freeman, in need of running a short distance of meaning, say that she needs to get to the telephone booth to call 000 because her house is made of wood, does not have fire extinguishers, and is on fire (imagine Cathy before she becomes famous here). The problem is that if Cathy adopts the strategy of running and stopping, then running half of whatever remains, according to Zeno of Elea, or Zeno of Elea as told by Nick Huggett, she will never arrive at the booth, therefore she will never make the call and will then lose her entire house and her beloved grandmother (locked in the room that she could not access). Why? Suppose that the length between her house and the booth is equal to 40 meters. Cathy decides to run 10 meters and look at the house to tell the 000 people its precise state. She then decides to run half of whatever remains thereof. Well, we have 30 meters left. She will then run 15 meters in the first stage of the plan. She will have to stop again if we are following our recipe when she reaches half of what remains, that is, the 25 meters mark, with extra 15 meters ran. Now she will stop to see how much half of what remains is. Now, it is 7.5 meters. She runs that. Stops. Now, she reached the 32.5 meters mark and she will have to run 3.75 meters in the next stage. Now, she will stop precisely at the 36.25 meters mark and will have to run 1.875 meters for the other stage. Finally, because in between two real numbers there is always an infinite number of reals, she will never actually get to the 40 meters mark, even though she will always be close enough to it, allowing for us to state that she arrives (mathematically) at that point in the limit, what then, according to Zeno, told to us by

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Nick Huggett, would mean that she never arrives, never makes the call. We are told, in the Stanford Encyclopedia's writings, that the problem is that Cathy travels an infinite number of finite distances, what then must take an infinite amount of time, therefore she will never make it. Simplicius apparently said that it is a fact that Cathy does arrive at the booth, therefore such a thing cannot be scientifically plausible, like he claims that things do move, therefore this cannot be true (remember that, according to Aristotle (Stanford), Zeno actually states that motion does not exist on those grounds). Zeno apparently argued that our perceptions are faulty and we have plenty of examples to prove that to us (say the Parallax Mistake). He would then say that Science has actually proven to us that things and people do not actually move through this example. Apparently, Aristotle gave a more refined answer. He said that, as we segment the distances we run, we should segment the time that we need to run for. This way, in running half the distance, we have ran half the run's time. Because each fraction of distance has a fraction of time to match it, and all is finite, then the distances can be completed, as a sum, in a finite amount of time.

Machine language x purely human language

As we have argued profusely in our speeches about our solution to The Sorites (2000 onwards), there has to be at least one non-negligible part of the human language that can never be translated into machine language by the time it is created. Call this part reserved part of the language. Why? We are continuously adding to language because in the same way that we cannot perfectly describe a block of cement through numbers, we cannot perfectly describe all that there is in the universe through symbols. Basically, we would have to be God to be able to do it. That falls inside of our

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bubble argumentation, presented in our solution to The Liar (one can only deal with all the matters perfectly well if one is outside of the environment to which those matters belong). Notice that the universe holds continuity and so does the cement block, but our brains seems to work through segmentation when it reasons. We have limited grids for our eyes, what makes us have limited sight power, we have limited perception in all other senses, and etc. It seems that only what is not matter could possibly see all, is it not? We tend to then translate our segments of the truth into symbols, rather than the continuity, which, in terms of reasoning at least, seems to be privilege of God. Because our segmentation will never allow us to translate the continuity in the universe and in life in general, we will always need to increase our symbols to deal with our new findings. For instance, we recently have added social networking to our language believing that this is a perfect translation for frequent computer interaction between one human and another. Notwithstanding, when we hear the term, we think of interaction of humans in general, so that we need more words to get into the intended meaning of this expression. With time, people will understand that there are several like us on earth and they will then refine this term into something that shortens our processes of communication. It does not matter how much people try to predict our difficulties with understanding their invented terms, they cannot cover all possibilities, because our difficulties are definitely ours, like our minds are unique, that being the most fundamental distinction between one being and another in this world. They will only find out that after the term is circulating amongst us, what makes it impossible that we have all of our lexicon definitions deserving the label perfect. They are obviously perfect only until we find enough instances through which they are proven to be imperfect... . The Sorites is a statement of unacceptance of this dynamics, which seems to be so easy to

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understand. In what regards continuity of things, we may try to catch up with God, but the fight is, let's say, at least very unfair. When we see a continuous length, we can walk over it, we can work with it, but we cannot understand it in our minds. Because of that, we try to split that continuous length into small things that we believe we can deal with. The numbers are perceived by us as things that we fully dominate, like we certainly know what 0.5 cm is, mainly because we have created that. Notice that the creational power is attributed to God as well, so that we are definitely doing right when inserting God in this context. We feel as if we are God in what regards the numbers, like we gave them birth. Therefore, we feel comfortable dealing with them, we think that we dominate all about them. The numbers that we have created are not a perfect description of the things that there are, however. In reality, the numbers represent our dream, just like the lexicon: They are what we would like those things (that we perceive somehow) to be. Even though we have refined the numbers to the level of the infinite amount of digits after the comma, we are still not able to tell what number describes precisely the size of a cut using the ruler, for instance, because the own numbers that we have created extrapolate our perception, as incredible as it may seem. The numbers have become machine language because we ourselves are incapable of dealing with them with the needed accuracy after they reach a certain amount of decimal places, for instance. Because the numbers have been created through applying repetitive reasoning, changing them into machine language has been possible. What we really would like to say in this section is that we will be almost universally understood if

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saying 2+2 = 4 to another person, for instance, like not mattering where we are, what language the other person speaks, writing this on a board, for instance, will lead to the production of the same image that we see in our own heads, when writing that, in the other person's head. However, if we say this is beautiful, for instance, we will probably need an audience that, first of all, knows the English language. We will also need more than the mentioned sentence to produce the same image in the mind of the person who listens to us. One of the extra things that we may need is pointing to some object, for instance. Thus, 2+2 = 4 is machine language. This is beautiful is purely human language.

Different universes, different entities

The same way that we would need to have an audience that speaks English to think that we will be understood when saying this is beautiful, we would need to be inside of the mathematical universe when applying its language. On the other hand, it is obviously the case that everything that extrapolates Mathematics should be dealt with a language that makes sense in that universe, therefore with a language that also goes beyond. Problem is that half in human language is not the same as half in machine language. That is the entire problem of this supposed paradox. When we say half in the human universe, we may mean our visual half, we may mean our imaginary half (as in half ugly), or something else. To mention a reference for this sort of conversation, [Freedictionary, 2011] brings the following definition for half:

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half n. pl. halves 1. a. One of two equal parts that together constitute a whole. b. One part approximately equal to the remaining part. 2. Informal A 50-cent piece. 3. Sports a. One of the two playing periods into which certain games are divided. b. A halfback. 4. Chiefly British A school term; a semester. 5. Half an hour: a half past one. adj. 1. a. Being one of two equal parts. b. Being approximately a half. 2. Partial or incomplete: gave me a half smile. adv. 1. To the extent of exactly or nearly 50 percent: The tank is half empty. 2. Not completely or sufficiently; partly: only half right. Notice that the sense of the term, when used as a noun, option b, is one part approximately equal to the remaining part, what may mean our visual half, obviously adapted to the eye of the person using the word. Notice that our Cathy would never have such a plan in real life because she is not insane: Cathy simply wants the fire to stop and her beloved grandmother to be saved. Cathy will obviously SIMPLY RUN, also obviously without thinking too much about it. We predict that Cathy will act in the just-described way because we obviously know Cathy Freeman and she does not have any sort of mental or emotional problem that could interfere with those decisions that need to be the way we describe for her house and grandmother to have the best destiny available in that situation. As we write this, we are thinking that know is not necessarily knowing, like she may actually suffer from panic and get impaired of her logical reasoning to a point in which she cannot move, for instance. We actually do not know enough about Cathy to say what we said (speaking scientifically). The person who proposed The Sorites would then like to change the lexicon definition of knowing

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at this stage because the word has not passed the idea of what things really are to the other person. The person who proposed The Liar would believe that this is an unsolvable problem and the grandmother will always die because, logically, we end up nowhere that we can control. The person who wrote this paradox would say that the grandmother will obviously die because Cathy will obviously think in the way that they have described (by the halves) if, for instance, she is asked to do so. Notice that all their reasonings seem to be complicating life in all senses, not helping. Yet, Science is supposed to work in our favor, not against us. If we follow The Sorites story, we will freeze the real life event and will change the lexicon until we can communicate perfectly well, that is, until we see the same image (in our heads) that Cathy is seeing (in her head) when living the episode. If we follow The Liar story, we will spend eternity trying to control all involved and not only Cathy's grandma and house will unavoidably be destroyed, but also everything else, and, even so, we will not have succeeded in reaching our target. If we follow The Dichotomy story, everything and everyone will perish with the fire, so that any effort is useless (we do nothing then!). Well, it is only reasonable to think that all these stories can only be at most allurements to teach us not to think in the wrong way. Science should exist to solve our problems better, to provide us with reasonable analysis of things, and etc., not the opposite. We believe that we have scientifically proven, however, that all the supposed paradoxes here mentioned are at most scientific allurements, never scientific truths. Changing the scenario from tragic to playful, we could accept that Cathy decides to think like that, is it not? So, let's suppose that Cathy is not hungry and plans to reach her home for lunch from the booth in

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the same way (by the halves of what is missing). Cathy is a human, right? Will Cathy walk, or run, like a computer dot would? We think that the answer to the just-asked question is a no. Cathy obviously will walk, or run, respecting her visual half, even because she knows that if she uses instruments, she will not achieve accuracy that is mathematical/mechanical. In this case, Cathy will definitely arrive in a finite (and very short!) length of time, even considering the hypothesis in which her audience disagrees with her visual halves and imposes theirs. The reason why we cannot say that Cathy will be the entity walking that way is because it is humanly impossible that she does so, obviously. Just her body dimensions, per se, will make her arrive at the booth in an impossible-to-doubt way when the distance to be added is smaller than her feet size, for instance. To lift the plausibility ranking of the problem, however, let's say that we consider a computer dot instead of a human being in this path to home. And now? Now, we can safely state that the computer dot will not reach home until our eyes cannot discern between the booth and the dot, what will unavoidably happen way before the missing distance becomes 0.5678987 cm, for instance. That will also make of the time and the distance something finite, so that the dot reaches home in the same day in a matter of seconds even. Then one could argue that, for us, the dot reached home, but the computer knows that it did not. Problem is that all our computers will have limitations and will be able to deal with a maximum number of digits. Not mattering how many we insert there, they will never cover all possible decimal places available, and this has to be a universal truth because the possible decimal places available are known to be infinite in number and the definition of infinity besets our belief in us being able to reach it.

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This way, our dot will always arrive at home also for the computer, unfortunately (as for what Zeno or Aristotle may think). The amount of discernment of the audience is obviously determined by their perceptional capabilities. For the computer, however, there are no doubts that the half in our problem is the mathematical half, right? To make sure that we have exposed all the intricacies of the solution of ours, however, we must remind the reader that we have just proven that the real numbers reasoning, involving limits, will imply, in practice, that the thing will become its limit, that is, if we change contexts, and apply the variables to world objects, then we will reach the limit. Only in the abstract world of Mathematics can we state that the limit itself is at least sometimes never reached and there is a chance that it is not reached simply because we have not done a good job when laying the foundations of the limits in Mathematics.

Are we moving for real? Are things moving?

Apparently, one of the problems that Zeno had was not believing that the entities are actually moving. Therefore, is it possible that nothing moves, for instance, and movement is an illusion because of the limitations of our eyes, judgment, and etc.? Of course it is. Is it possible that we all eat excrement of the spiritual world, basically poo, and we believe that we eat different things, some really tasty (like we all live in some sort of alternative, but very similar, version of the last Matrix movie)? Of course it is as well. We must obviously accept the limitations of the human science and decide on whether it is worth

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investing in it or not... . We obviously know that all we spend years studying, perhaps even millennia, might be proven to be wrong with the revelation of simple truths to us by a different civilization, for instance (perhaps with a better eye grid?). To mention one of the most modern instances of this type, Stephen Hawking ([David Wilkinson, 2001]) has been proven to be wrong on his most famous assertion (that we will experience a big crunch in the universe in the same way that it all started with the Big Bang). Some scientists proved (see [Charley Lineweaver, 2011], for instance), in an impossible-to-doubt way (considering human perception), that the universe is actually expanding, like that expanding is all that it does, no signs of movements in the opposite direction being ever even cogitated when they check on the collected numerical data. The point is that, given all that we know about the universe, or that we think that we know, given all our limitations, we do believe that every entity moves somehow, either in passive (as for the rocks, for instance) or in active mode (as for us, humans who can move their bodies or parts of those, for instance). If we know that for sure from our science, then there is no point in inventing that we do not know, right? We obviously then seek logical explanations for the conflict to appear, not modifications in our scientific beliefs to the extent of now claiming that the entities do not actually move, just because we have already convinced ourselves, considering all that we can consider in our science, that the entities actually move. In seeking the logical explanations, we ended up with the lexicon reasoning again, just like we did with The Sorites.

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Conclusion

The Dichotomy, The Sorites, and The Liar, are interesting allurements to teach people about the differences between the purely human and the machine or mathematical world. Whilst The Sorites and The Dichotomy may be used to teach the differences between human and machine language, The Liar may be used to teach the differences between human and scientific events (what we believe to be events).

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References

A. A. Joachim and W. D. Ross. (1984). The Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes (ed.). Princeton University Press.

Charley Lineweaver. (2011). How can galaxies collide if the universe is expanding? Ask an Expert. ABC Science. Retrieved November 3 2011 from

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/08/23/3300155.htm.

David Wilkinson. (2001). God, Time & Stephen Hawking: An Exploration into Origins. Monarch Books. ISBN-10: 0825460298, ISBN-13: 978-0825460296. Retrieved November 3 2011 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-buildtime-machine.html.

Encyclopdia Britannica. (2011). Encyclopdia Britannica Online. Encyclopdia Britannica Inc. Retrieved November 1 2011 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/218600/CathyFreeman.

Marcia R. Pinheiro. (2006). A Solution to The Sorites. Semiotica, v. 2006, no. 160, pp. 307-326.

Marcia R. Pinheiro. (2011). Note on the Liar Paradox. Submitted.

Nick Huggett. (2010). Zeno's Paradoxes. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011

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http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#Dic. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2003). Retrieved November 1 2011 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/half.

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