Wait, but rational-delimited open intervals don't form a locale, because they aren't closed under infinite union. (For example, the union of all rational-delimited open intervals contained in (0,√2) is (0,√2) itself, which is not rational-delimited.) Of course you could talk about the locale generated by such intervals, but then it contains all open intervals and is uncountable, defeating your main point about going from countable to uncountable. Or am I missing something?
Good point; I've changed the wording to make it clear that the rational-delimited open intervals are the basis, not all the locale elements. Luckily, points can be defined as sets of basis elements containing them, since all other properties follow. (Making the locale itself countable requires weakening the definition by making the sets to form unions over countable, e.g. by requiring them to be recursively enumerable)
Another way to make it countable would be to instead go to the category of posets, Then the rational interval basis is a poset with a countable number of elements, and by the Alexandroff construction corresponds to the real line (or at least something very similar). But, this construction gives a full and faithful embedding of the category of posets to the category of spaces (which basically means you get all and only continuous maps from monotonic function).
I guess the ontology version in this case would be the category of prosets. (Personally, I'm not sure that ontology of the universe isn't a type error).
I see. In that case does the procedure for defining points stay the same, or do you need to use recursively enumerable sets of opens, giving you only countably many reals?
Reals are still defined as sets of (a, b) rational intervals. The locale contains countable unions of these, but all these are determined by which (a, b) intervals contain the real number.
Since you are aiming towards philosophy with this one, I'll share something about my intuitions around emptiness (as opposed to form, in Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy) as they relate to open sets in topology.
In my mind it has been fruitful to think of emptiness like openness and relate the two, specifically thinking of emptiness as describing the same aspect of reality that make "open" a good intuitive label for "open sets". This has helped me understand what is pointed at by "emptiness" by understanding it as "openness" and reusing my topology intuitions as a grounding point.
I'm not sure I can be more precise, so I'll have to leave it at that and hope it's helpful.
The following is an informal exposition of some mathematical concepts from Topology via Logic, with special attention to philosophical implications. Those seeking more technical detail should simply read the book.
There are, roughly, two ways of doing topology:
What laws are satisfied?
Roughly, open sets and opens both correspond to verifiable propositions. If X and Y are both verifiable, then both "X or Y" and "X and Y" are verifiable; and, indeed, even countably infinite disjunctions of verifiable statements are verifiable, by exhibiting the particular statement in the disjunction that is verified as true.
What's the philosophical interpretation of the difference between point-set topology and locale theory, then?
Thus, they correspond to fairly different metaphysics. Can these different metaphysics be converted to each other?
From assumptions about possible worlds and possible observations of it, it is possible to derive a logic of observations; from assumptions about the logical relations of different propositions, it is possible to consider a set of possible worlds and interpretations of the propositions as world-properties.
Metaphysically, we can consider point-set topology as ontology-first, and locale theory as epistemology-first. Point-set topology starts with possible worlds, corresponding to Kantian noumena; locale theory starts with verifiable propositions, corresponding to Kantian phenomena.
While the interpretation of a given point-set topology as a locale is trivial, the interpretation of a locale theory as a point-set topology is less so. What this construction yields is a way of getting from observations to possible worlds. From the set of things that can be known (and knowable logical relations between these knowables), it is possible to conjecture a consistent set of possible worlds and ways those knowables relate to the possible worlds.
Of course, the true possible worlds may be finer-grained than these consistent set; however, it cannot be coarser-grained, or else the same possible world would result in different observations. No finer potentially-observable (verifiable or falsifiable) distinctions may be made between possible worlds than the ones yielded by this transformation; making finer distinctions risks positing unreferenceable entities in a self-defeating manner.
How much extra ontological reach does this transformation yield? If the locale has a countable basis, then the point-set topology may have an uncountable point-set (specifically, of the same cardinality as the reals). The continuous can, then, be constructed from the discrete, as the underlying continuous state of affairs that could generate any given possibly-infinite set of discrete observations.
In particular, the reals may be constructed from a locale based on open intervals whose beginning/end are rational numbers. That is: a real r may be represented as a set of (a, b) pairs where a and b are rational, and a < r < b. The locale whose basis is rational-delimited open intervals (whose elements are countable unions of such open intervals, and which specifies logical relationships between them, e.g. conjunction) yields the point-set topology of the reals. (Note that, although including all countable unions of basis elements would make the locale uncountable, it is possible to weaken the notion of locale to only require unions of recursively enumerable sets, which preserves countability)
If metaphysics may be defined as the general framework bridging between ontology and epistemology, then the conversions discussed provide a metaphysics: a way of relating that-which-could-be to that-which-can-be-known.
I think this relationship is quite interesting and clarifying. I find it useful in my own present philosophical project, in terms of relating subject-centered epistemology to possible centered worlds. Ontology can reach further than epistemology, and topology provides mathematical frameworks for modeling this.
That this construction yields continuous from discrete is an added bonus, which should be quite helpful in clarifying the relation between the mental and physical. Mental phenomena must be at least partially discrete for logical epistemology to be applicable; meanwhile, physical theories including Newtonian mechanics and standard quantum theory posit that physical reality is continuous, consisting of particle positions or a wave function. Thus, relating discrete epistemology to continuous ontology is directly relevant to philosophy of science and theory of mind.