A change in velocity, momentum, or position seems to me to be a change in behaviour, every bit as much as a change in appearance or state.
The rock changes such behaviour because of the actions of external forces - which is exactly the same as the thermocouple. The thermocouple interacts with its environment. Indeed, if it didn't, it wouldn't be much use. It is struck by air molecules, and exchanges energy with them. (Or some other medium - but the principle is the same).
If you want to define behaviour as relating entirely to changes within an object, then you exclude the thermostat. Indeed, you exclude much of what a human does as well. If you have a definition that includes the thermostat then ipso facto you include the rock.
Nope.
I can claim that when you drop a rock, it isn't actually the rock that changes, it is us and the rest of the universe that shifts. And you have
no way to prove otherwise.
External properties are
relative to the observer. If you want to include the position of a rock in some behavior, it must be the behavior of the rock + observer
system.
With a thermocouple bending due to heat, the relevant properties change
regardless of any property of any observer. The molecules
within the system change position and energy relative to
each other. Because of this, one can mathematically show the behavior of the thermostat to have changed without referencing any external entities.
You can't do that with a rock that merely changes position, velocity, momentum, etc.
If the rock heats up, or breaks, or otherwise has an internal state change, then the change stops being observer relative and the behavior of
just the rock does indeed change.
Since there's a certain reluctance to define behaviour, here's my off-the-cuff attempt:
BEHAVIOUR - a change in the physical properties of an object due to its interaction with its environment.
And as with my definition of SWITCH, feel free to provide a better.
BEHAVIOR -- a change in the relative physical properties of a
system.
It's an excellent logical definition, but if you are attempting to formulate a physical theory then you need a physical definition.
Logical definitions are a superset of physical definitions.
You can take my logical definition and make it physical in any number of ways. All you have to do is replace the variables and constants with real world entities.
I did so with a thermostat. A thermostat switches because the
only time the AC is in the ON state is when the incoming power to the system and the thermostat itself are also in the ON state. And these ON states are clearly defined -- for the AC and incoming power, ON corresponds to current flowing in a given direction above a given threshold, and for the thermostat, ON corresponds to the thermocouple having bent enough to touch the contact.
I asked you to do so with a rock, to demonstrate how a rock can switch.
Have you done that yet?
Of course it is changing its state. It's movement in the thermostat which changes its state. Any physical change in an object is a change in its physical state.
Ahh, see -- you said it yourself. It's movement
in the thermostat which changes its state. Not movement
of the thermostat.
When snooker balls collide on a table, they end up with nothing changed but their position. That's how they exchange information. The components of a difference engine or an adding machine just change position, and they perform computation.
They change position relative to each other -- that's how they exchange information. Their position relative to an observer is irrelevant as far as the exchange is concerned.
I posted a picture. I think that's a fairly clear example of how hot rocks can switch events. And contrary to what you may have learned in school, volcanoes aren't made of papier-maché and food dye - they are made of rocks. They get hot and switch events.
Even if volcanoes switch, they are not a
single rock, they are a system of multiple rocks (and other stuff), and so you cannot show a rock to switch using a volcano as an example.
Kind of like how I told you a thermocouple all by itself does not switch.
