Immovable

This document provides general guidelines and basic administrative procedures for University personnel to follow with regard to the purchase, sale, and lease, or otherwise acquisition/disposition of immovable property including buildings, land and mineral resources. (See PPM FP-VI.IV.-1a for additional information).

immovable

The announcer at the time was Gorilla Monsoon and quite possibly had the best quote in wrestling. He called the match "The irresistible force meeting the immovable object" and that quote will forever be played in WrestleMania promos for the rest of time.

The ECJ has ruled in Fonden Marselisborg Lystbådehavn and Case C-166/05 Heger [2006] that an area which is wholly or partly underwater can itself be categorised as immovable property that can be leased or let.

What could possibly be so immovable against these powerful shockwaves? When I came to the Center for Astrophysics in 2018 to research G21.5-0.9 under Dr. Pat Slane, we already suspected that the answer might be related to variations in the loose gas and dust outside the supernova remnant, otherwise known as the interstellar medium.

Studying how the U.S.-China Trade War affect MNCs in China is a bit like trying to figure out what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The Trade War transformed trade from a cornerstone of stability in the U.S.-China relationship to a source of uncertainty and risk. The fact that policymakers in Washington and Beijing are increasingly obsessed about vulnerabilities from economic interdependence poses unprecedented political risks for MNCs. At the same time, China continues to attract record volumes of foreign investment due to its high-quality infrastructure, skilled labor, and the promise of its vast domestic market. In our working paper, Dr. Samantha Vortherms (UCI) and I set out to examine the balance of these two contradictory trends by analyzing a new dataset on all foreign-invested enterprises registered in China between 2014 and 2019. We implement difference-in-difference design to isolate the impact of increased political risks on MNC exit due to the onset of the US-China Trade war.

In this paper I present a novel supertask in a Newtonian universe that destroys and creates infinite masses and energies, showing thereby that we can have infinite indeterminism. Previous supertasks have managed only to destroy or create finite masses and energies, thereby giving cases of only finite indeterminism. In the Nothing from Infinity paradox we will see an infinitude of finite masses and an infinitude of energy disappear entirely, and do so despite the conservation of energy in all collisions. I then show how this leads to the Infinity from Nothing paradox, in which we have the spontaneous eruption of infinite mass and energy out of nothing. I conclude by showing how our supertask models at least something of an old conundrum, the question of what happens when the immovable object meets the irresistible force.

Previous supertasks in Newtonian universes have managed only to destroy or create finite masses and energies, thereby giving cases of only finite indeterminism. They have usually offered only a single argument to their paradoxical conclusions, making them vulnerable to single rebuttals. In this paper I present a novel supertask that destroys and creates infinite masses and energies, showing thereby that we can have infinite indeterminism. In the Nothing from Infinity paradox we will see an infinitude of finite masses and an infinitude of energy disappear entirely, and do so despite the conservation of energy in all collisions. Furthermore, the paradox can be based on each of four different continuity principles and as a result there are four independent arguments to the paradoxical conclusion. Consequently it raises significant challenges to the metaphysical principles on which it rests, with a special robustness because there is no single path to its resolution. I then show how this leads to the Infinity from Nothing paradox, in which we have the spontaneous eruption of infinite mass and energy out of nothing. I conclude by showing how our supertask models at least something of an old conundrum, the question of what happens when the immovable object meets the irresistible force. This has often been thought to be simply contradictory and therefore a weak paradox, and we shall see a question arises over the exact relation of our model to the paradox that our ancestors had in mind. Nevertheless, the fact that a version of it can be given a formal model shows the easy dismissal may be too quick.

So I think the paradox hopes to pose a more general problem than merely one that arises solely in terms of the scientific concept of force, the problem of the conflict between an immovable object and any irresistible power to cause motion. One variety of the paradox would be given in terms of the scientific concept of force, and perhaps all when spelt out scientifically would entail the exertion of irresistible force (scientifically understood) in the causal chain, but others may be given in other terms.

Under this interpretation, the paradox as originally presented and as standardly promulgated deploys the informal concept of force which, when analysed, amounts to a power of an object to bring about the motion of another object. The meeting of an immovable object and an irresistible force is then the occasion of the exercise or manifestation of that power on an immovable object.

This interpretation seems essentially correct to me but I can see that some might think it amounts to substituting the paradox of the immovable object meeting the irresistible power to cause motion for the original paradox. Supposing that objection to be correct, it is still evident that any irresistible power to cause motion entails, when manifested, an irresistible force and hence any paradox of the immovable object meeting the irresistible power to cause motion has embedded in it the paradox of the immovable object meeting the irresistible force (this is essentially the embedding that Sorensen exploits above). Consequently, I take it that if I exhibit a model of the paradox of an immovable object meeting an irresistible power to cause motion I have, if only implicitly, exhibited a model of the paradox of the immovable object meeting the irresistible force.

With these thoughts in mind, and granted a mereological fusion principle that for a plurality of particles there is an object that is their fusion, the model is evident.Footnote 30 Our immovable object, IO, is the fusion of the Ms and our possessor of irresistible power that exerts irresistible force, IF, is the fusion of the Fs.

We could reject the claim that IO has been compressed. The argument to compression must assume that IO cannot acquire new parts but IO is a fusion of the particles, not a set of particles. Nothing in our fusion principle rules out IO absorbing additional particlesFootnote 34 and nothing about immovability entails that an immovable object cannot acquire new parts. Neither mass nor particle number help determine identity conditions for IO, since both are infinite, so spatial boundary may be the better criterion for identity.Footnote 35 In that case and granted that we accept objects can increase by accumulating new matter IO has absorbed p as a new constituent that occupies the original position of m1. As a consequence, although its original constituents are confined to (0,1/2], IO itself has not been compressed.Footnote 36 The possibility of growth is a central part of our common-sense mereological beliefs so it is not an unreasonable assumption. What is required to show IO to be movable is to displace it but, on this assumption, IO has not been displaced. It is exactly where it was before. Admittedly that assumption faces the deep and interesting difficulties of the paradox of increase (e.g. see Olson 2006).Footnote 37

My earlier defence of the initial condition of the supertask suffices, granted our fusion principle, to show the possible initial co-existence of IO and IF. This alone proves the possible co-existence of an immovable object and an irresistible power to cause motion. The consequence of that initial condition is that IO and IF will meet and the outcome of their meeting will depend on the outcome of the meeting of the Ms and Fs. Granted the correctness of the earlier arguments, what happens when IO and IF meet?

We considered first an argument that the Ms absorbed the energy of the Fs. This would amount to the entire energy grounding the irresistible force being absorbed by the immovable object, which, if right, would seem to be a triumph for the immovable object.

We can reject that triumph by considering what happened to the Fs. We proved that they too went out of existence and again, unless IF came to be composed by something else that would prove that IF went out of existence. Finally, since we proved that all of the Ms and the Fs went out of existence, there was nothing left for IO or IF to become composed by, and hence we can conclude the result of the immovable object meeting the irresistible force is both going out of existence.

What then is the interest of this model? The paradox of the immovable object and the irresistible force has been generally regarded as a weak paradox (see my definition Shackel 2008:49), a thin and trivially illusory paradox of omnipotence.Footnote 38 The contradiction I started with is taken to prove that a possible world with one cannot have the other. Yet I have offered a model in which an immovable object and an irresistible force coexist and meet. We must grant, of course, that the obscurity of the ancient and medieval concepts means the exact relation of this model to their paradox is indeterminate. Nevertheless, I have shown what the relevant omnipotence concepts could mean when applied to Newtonian universes. The application of a simple mereological principle to our supertask gave two objects to which those concepts properly apply. The formality of the model allowed me to give a variety of precise and independent histories of their meeting (correlate to the variety and independence of continuity principles considered in the underlying supertask). Each history confirms one of the standard thoughts about the paradox, namely that if they coexist their meeting results in annihilation. So we now have an interpretation of the immovable object meeting the irresistible force in a Newtonian universe and we know what happens when they meet. It remains paradoxical because the annihilation of the infinite is absurd on its face. 041b061a72