What's your ontology?

[Perfection]

Because a hole results from the continuity of arrangement of other things. Take those things away and where is the hole? If a hole existed it'd still be there...

What's so bad about arrangment dependency? Take away a planet its moon no longer exists (at least as a moon). You may object by saying "Well, you incredibly sexy beast, after such a transformation that which was a hole doesn't exist as anything", to which I'd reply "Dude, it does exist, as 'the place where the hole was'".

So now hole is just an alternative word for 'space'?

Nope, because it's a very special type of space.

 

[Mise]

Here's the definition I googled:


So it has to be volatile, and common to all combustible substances, and released as flame. Well, kerosene is volatile and released "as" (well, at least "in") flame, but isn't common to all or even most combustible substances. And some combustible substances, like charcoal, don't contain any volatiles. So no matter how you look at it, some of the defining traits of phlogiston go unfulfilled.

They're fulfilled by phlogiston.

EDIT: I'll elaborate, now that I have a bit of time.

I ask you what a hole is. You show me Fifty's left shoe, which doesn't have a perforation in it, and Fifty's right shoe, which has a perforation 5cm in diameter. Fifty puts on both shoes, and you pour water over them. Fifty's right foot gets wet; his left doesn't. You explain it by saying: "the thin-air space in <this> location allowed the foot to get wet, while the shoe was around the rest of the foot".

You ask me what phlogiston is. I show you a rock, and some wood. I light a match under both. The wood sets on fire, producing a flame; the rock doesn't. I explain it by saying: "the phlogiston in the wood allowed the wood to produce a flame."

How do we determine which, if any, of those explanations are true?

 

[brennan]

What's so bad about arrangment dependency? Take away a planet its moon no longer exists (at least as a moon). You may object by saying "Well, you incredibly sexy beast, after such a transformation that which was a hole doesn't exist as anything", to which I'd reply "Dude, it does exist, as 'the place where the hole was'".

Nope, because it's a very special type of space.

Well, you incredibly sexy beast, after such a transformation a moonstill exists, we just don't call it a moon anymore. There's an awful lotof actual substance there. The same is not true of a hole, which is just a label you apply to a region of space that temporarily impinges upon your perception due to the arrangement of other things. When you perceive a hole, you are not actually perceiving the presence/existence of something.

 

[Ayatollah So]

You explain it by saying: "the thin-air space in <this> location allowed the foot to get wet, while the shoe was around the rest of the foot".

You ask me what phlogiston is. I show you a rock, and some wood. I light a match under both. The wood sets on fire, producing a flame; the rock doesn't. I explain it by saying: "the phlogiston in the wood allowed the wood to produce a flame."

How do we determine which, if any, of those explanations are true?

I'm not sure I get it. Are you doubting that thin air was in <this> location, and/or that the shoe was in <that> location? Are you doubting that such a combination of facts would fulfill the ordinary English speaker's concept of a "hole"?

Or are you proposing that the phlogiston-advocate boils down the definition of "phlogiston" to "whatever it is, of any form, that explains burning"? In which case, the guy is using "phlogiston" idiosyncratically, and his term means what chemists call "Gibbs free energy".