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From: R. Nachmani
Subject: Phase boundaries
Date: 17 Cheshvan 5783
With respect, Reb Kovacs, your claim that the boundary exists only because we need it is precisely backward. The boundary exists in the world — the sun sets, the sky darkens, the stars emerge. These are physical facts. Our categories map onto those facts with greater or lesser precision.
The difficulty is that our categories are discrete — four phases — while the transitions are continuous. But this is a representation problem, not a metaphysical one.
Perhaps we need not four phases but a continuous measure. A number from 0 to 1, where 0 is full day and 1 is full night. The indicators would then provide evidence for where on that spectrum we are.
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