Non-Physical Reality
NON-PHYSICAL REALITY
Are there any non-physical aspects of reality that are proper topics of calm collegial philosophical dialog? Can such ideas be discussed without eye-rolling, name-calling, mud-slinging, ideological labeling, and anathematizing? Is philosophical dialog even doable in the current climate of polarized Us vs Them & Orthodox vs Heretical posturing? Has modern Philosophy become "politics by other means"?
Clauswitz : "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means."
In recent years, several scientists have questioned our traditional understanding of Reality, both intuitive and academic. Here's just a few, writing in the last 25 years. Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli : Reality Is Not What It Seems (quantum reality); mathematical physicist Roger Penrose : Road to Reality (quantum ideality) ; neuroscientist Terrence Deacon : Incomplete Nature (causal absence); theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek : The Lightness of Being (deep structure of reality) ; astrophysicist Mario Livio : Is God a Mathematician? (scaffolding of reality) ; quantum computer scientist Seth Lloyd : Programming the Universe (universe is information processor) ; cognitive psychologist Don Hoffman : The Case Against Reality (reality is an illusion) ; astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser : The Dancing Universe (mythology, spirituality & science). All question the classical physical model of reality. It may be as outdated as the solar system model of an atom. And the list could go on & on. But notice, no reductive empirical materialists in the list. These theoretical scientists are more like philosophers. Are they all barking up a non-existent tree? Or are they pointing to a universal intrinsic, perhaps immaterial, essence of Reality, more fundamental than sub-atomic particles? *1
The traditional division of opinion on Reality has been along the lines of Cartesian & Christian Soul/Body Dualism versus Scientific Materialistic Monism. But there are other perspectives, such as Eastern Non-Dualism, that is more philosophical than religious. By looking at the pros & cons of each model of reality, we may be able to discover some common ground, or at least some reasonable overlap in perspectives.
What I'm proposing here is an approach that has been used to help resolve incompatible theories in Consciousness studies. It's called “Adversarial Cooperation”, and was originated by Daniel Kahneman for behavioral economics. *2. It's mostly an attitude of mutual respect among colleagues working toward the same ultimate goal, although perhaps by various paths.
Yes, this is a sneaky way to raise metaphysical questions by addressing them as physical questions. Discuss among yourselves. But only if you can be civil. :smile:
*1. [i]Second, since we acquire information of the world through measurement, and our sense of what is real depends crucially on this information, information is the very essence of reality.
___Marcelo Gleiser, physicist & astronomer
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/01/19/133037010/searching-for-the-essence-of-physical-reality
Note -- he finds Seth Lloyd's notion that information is fundamental to be questionable. Instead, he thinks that Mind must precede Information. Ironically, the Enformationism Thesis agrees with both of them.
*2. In science, adversarial collaboration is a term used when two or more scientists with opposing views work together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_collaboration
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology. It is one of the first major works of the branch of western philosophy known as metaphysics. ___Wikipedia
Are there any non-physical aspects of reality that are proper topics of calm collegial philosophical dialog? Can such ideas be discussed without eye-rolling, name-calling, mud-slinging, ideological labeling, and anathematizing? Is philosophical dialog even doable in the current climate of polarized Us vs Them & Orthodox vs Heretical posturing? Has modern Philosophy become "politics by other means"?
Clauswitz : "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means."
In recent years, several scientists have questioned our traditional understanding of Reality, both intuitive and academic. Here's just a few, writing in the last 25 years. Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli : Reality Is Not What It Seems (quantum reality); mathematical physicist Roger Penrose : Road to Reality (quantum ideality) ; neuroscientist Terrence Deacon : Incomplete Nature (causal absence); theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek : The Lightness of Being (deep structure of reality) ; astrophysicist Mario Livio : Is God a Mathematician? (scaffolding of reality) ; quantum computer scientist Seth Lloyd : Programming the Universe (universe is information processor) ; cognitive psychologist Don Hoffman : The Case Against Reality (reality is an illusion) ; astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser : The Dancing Universe (mythology, spirituality & science). All question the classical physical model of reality. It may be as outdated as the solar system model of an atom. And the list could go on & on. But notice, no reductive empirical materialists in the list. These theoretical scientists are more like philosophers. Are they all barking up a non-existent tree? Or are they pointing to a universal intrinsic, perhaps immaterial, essence of Reality, more fundamental than sub-atomic particles? *1
The traditional division of opinion on Reality has been along the lines of Cartesian & Christian Soul/Body Dualism versus Scientific Materialistic Monism. But there are other perspectives, such as Eastern Non-Dualism, that is more philosophical than religious. By looking at the pros & cons of each model of reality, we may be able to discover some common ground, or at least some reasonable overlap in perspectives.
What I'm proposing here is an approach that has been used to help resolve incompatible theories in Consciousness studies. It's called “Adversarial Cooperation”, and was originated by Daniel Kahneman for behavioral economics. *2. It's mostly an attitude of mutual respect among colleagues working toward the same ultimate goal, although perhaps by various paths.
Yes, this is a sneaky way to raise metaphysical questions by addressing them as physical questions. Discuss among yourselves. But only if you can be civil. :smile:
*1. [i]Second, since we acquire information of the world through measurement, and our sense of what is real depends crucially on this information, information is the very essence of reality.
___Marcelo Gleiser, physicist & astronomer
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/01/19/133037010/searching-for-the-essence-of-physical-reality
Note -- he finds Seth Lloyd's notion that information is fundamental to be questionable. Instead, he thinks that Mind must precede Information. Ironically, the Enformationism Thesis agrees with both of them.
*2. In science, adversarial collaboration is a term used when two or more scientists with opposing views work together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_collaboration
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology. It is one of the first major works of the branch of western philosophy known as metaphysics. ___Wikipedia
Comments (202)
Quoting Gnomon
René Descartes was the first modern - or at least, that's how it was taught to me at UniSyd. Cartesian dualism is very different to hylomorphism, which is making a comeback in contemporary metaphysics and even philosophy of biology.
Quoting Gnomon
Wouldn't be too sure about that. Note this review of Wilczek, which says 'Wilczek, like Rovelli, is a reductionistic materialist. Although Wilczek occasionally tries to hedge his bets, the materialism is unavoidable.'
But sterling effort, nonetheless.
Can we take a modern, science-informed perspective on the topics that Aristotle covered in the second volume of his encyclopedia on Nature (Reality as known in the 5th century BC). For example : Substance & Essence. Although he defined "substance" in terms of the essential qualities of a thing, today that term is associated with a quantity of massy Matter, as distinguished from the immaterial Design or Conceptual Pattern of a thing. It's partly that reversal of meaning between then & now that make communication on metaphyical topics so fraught. So, I suggest that we be careful to define terms such as "substance" as scientific (matter) or philosophical (essence), depending on the application.
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology. It is one of the first major works of the branch of western philosophy known as metaphysics. ___Wikipedia
In the TPF thread labeled What is Metaphysics, yet again, the posts divided neatly into two camps : Physics (sense) versus Non-Physics (nonsense). I tried to avoid that Black vs White polarization by adding a hyphen to the word : Meta-Physics. I was hoping we could discuss the topics that Aristotle covered in his second volume, instead of the first volume -- both under the heading of Nature (phusis). But the ideological divide turned-out to be too stark. So, I next suggested another spelling variation to suggest a distinction between Matter & Mind : Menta-Physics. But that ploy was also rejected, apparently because some Materialists are absolute Monists : all that is real is Physical, because Matter is the "fundamental substance" of nature. And that worldview categorically rejects Cartesian Dualism. Consequently, my attempt to philosophically focus on subjective ideas instead of objective things was blocked at every turn.
But, since my personal worldview includes both the tangible evidence of massy things, and the intangile inferences of massless concepts, I'm still looking for an inoffensive term that might bypass the (physical vs spiritual) prejudice attached to an old technical term of philosophy to describe the aspects of human experience that don't fit under the reductive microsope of Physics. So, instead of "Mental", which is associated with "Soul", I tried to focus on the "Logical-Mathematical" aspects of Nature. Yet again, I was foiled, because Materialists place that topic under the purview of Science, as opposed to Philosophy or Religion. And despite its lack of massy stuff, it's considered an honorary material substance, as in Quantum Fields.
My next attempt at re-labelling the immaterial subject-(non)matter of my interest, I proposed the amorphous category of "Non-Physical". Yet again, I was surprised that someone had beat me to it -- it's already a thing. Unfortunately, it's usually associated with Theology, and Spirituality. So, my attempts to Include Psychology under the heading of Philosophy were blocked at every turn. The Protestant split from Catholic hegemony was paralleled by a rupture between Theoretical Philosophy and Empirical Science. And, for some, never the twain shall meet again.
Therefore centuries after the empirical Enlightenment, the human Mind remains in the shadows of an impoverished ghetto : Psychology. Which has now been gentrified under the label of Neuro-Science. Ironically, even some prominent neuroscientists have admitted that their study of reductive neuron networks is peripheral to their actual interest in the Mind as a whole system *1. Brain-mapping is not the same as understanding the Mind. "The map is not the terrain". So, they propose to study the mind as a Complex Adaptive System *2, using the methods of General Systems Theory. Ironically, that offshoot of modern materialist Science, is essentially the same approach as the Holism that is associated with Eastern religions and Western New Age cults. So, for hard Materialists, even Systems Theory is suspect, as it's more theoretical & metaphorical than empirical & mathematical. But that's because a complex system has emergent Qualities that are not measurable as intrinsic Properties (Quanta).
Since some researchers have concluded that even Neuroscience will never resolve the "Hard Problem" of soft sensibility, where do we go from here? Must we abandon the quest to understand ourselves? Or will we continue on diverging paths of conservative Science and liberal Philosophy? That's not a poll question. :smile:
*1. Can Neuroscience reveal the true nature of consciousness ?
The problem: finding the neural correlate of consciousness isn’t going to solve anything
https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness05/LammeNeuroscience.pdf
*2. Complex adaptive systems thinking (CAST) is a different approach to analysis that takes into account the features and elements of a system, how they work together and how they influence each other. ... Multiple Perspectives: personal beliefs, world views, voices, knowledge and culture that exist in a system.
Yes. Most of the theoretical scientists on my list attempt to avoid losing their materialist credentials, even as they undermine the foundations of Materialism. A few are brave enough to describe their explorations beyond the pale as "philosophical". Yet, even fewer would use the term "metaphysics" to describe their hypothetical postulations. :joke:
No.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, if you keep the insults to yourself.
Quoting Gnomon
100%, and necessary as well, or we're all fucked and in a hurry.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, which is why it isn't philosophy. The power seekers usurped the tradition long ago. They're the ones trying to convince the your lying eyes don't see them, because they can't even be trusted to see reality.
Quoting Gnomon
Actually, they do not. Not in any sense that violates the mechanics and understandings of the macroscopic reality that quanta amass. The macroscopic, material understandings of matter, time, and energy are all still the framework within which reality is understood and physics is practiced with precise results. Furthermore, mysteries and ignorance surrounding the nature of quanta DOES NOT imply that the material reality within which you live, whose impregnable laws are used on a daily basis to produce cars, radio equipment, space flights, and power, is not what it has arranged itself to be. There is not simply minimal evidence to suggest, but none whatsoever at all anywhere that suggests the existence of a reality that is not of material composition.
Quoting Gnomon
Really? Any proof? Does outdated mean negated? What exactly are we meaning?
Quoting Gnomon
You're first clue that they're not onto something.
Quoting Gnomon
No, it isn't. Measurement is the essence of accurately assessed perception. Reality doesn't care about measurements in an active way, only in a chemically balanced way; regression toward the mean.
That should give us plenty to discuss, I'd say.
Well, I suppose we have nothing to discuss then. :smile:
Quoting Garrett Travers
If you'll check out the books listed, you'll see that they do question classical mechanics. That's why they place Quantum Mechanics in a special category. Because it's not mechanical at all in the old fashioned sense. Each in his own way is trying to reconcile the mysterious aspects of quantum physics with the common-sense of macro physics. But, quantum phenomena don't simply "amass" (add-up to) macro physics.
FWIW, my own intuitive view of the world is still classical. So, I have to take the weirdness of the quantum realm on faith in the priests of physics. Whose pronouncements are constantly changing to adapt to new discoveries. :cool:
Quoting Garrett Travers
Great! Glad to hear that pushing the boundaries of Science and Philosophy are not heretical to some posters. Too many on the forum express their exegesis of the science -- without quoting book, chapter & verse -- and instantly reject any unfamiliar interpretations. :chin:
Quoting Garrett Travers
Are you saying that these highly credentialed scientists are wrong to question orthodoxy? That they are crying "wolf" when there is no wolf? Have you read any of their books? Admittedly, their cutting-edge ideas are not yet in the officially sanctioned textbooks. But you could say that about any new paradigms in science. :nerd:
Quoting Garrett Travers
Perhaps, I haven't interviewed Reality to get her opinion. But scientists & philosophers do care about measurements. The problem with quantum measurements is that they are open to interpretation. When I suggest that Aristotle understood the power of Potential long before modern science noticed the Power of Absence, I get boos for quoting ignorant dead white men. :wink:
Incomplete Nature :
A central thesis of the book is that absence can still be efficacious.
biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature
Quantum mysteries dissolve if possibilities are realities :
“Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously,”
[i]And that, in a nutshell, is pretty much the same as the logic underlying the new interpretation of quantum physics. In the new paper, three scientists argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. It is perhaps less of a full-blown interpretation than a new philosophical framework for contemplating those quantum mysteries. At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of “reality” is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.
“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an
extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,”[/i]
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/quantum-mysteries-dissolve-if-possibilities-are-realities
You misunderstand. Yes, they question classical and relativistic mechanics only in relation to how quantum behavior break them, which is exclusive to quantum operations. They do not question classical and relativistic mechanics qua classical and relativistic mechanics. Nor, have they discovered enough about the nature of quantum mechanics to conclude that classical and relativistic mechanics are to be, for some reason, negated, or that reality is not materially composed. No, this is not a true assertion.
Quoting Gnomon
Exactly my point.
Quoting Gnomon
Which is awesome, but they're coming to nonsensical conclusions. For example, gravitational waves were literally just detected for the first time a few years ago. That means Einstein predicted the nature of universal phenomena beyond the grave. Quantum philosophical thought is going to have to do better than what is on offer to negate that.
Quoting Gnomon
True, but this is a point of ignorance, not an argument of a given proposition on the nature of reality.
Quoting Gnomon
Never do such a thing.
Quoting Gnomon
Precisely the reason you don't do the above listed action.
Quoting Gnomon
No, its elemental to our species' continued homeostasis. I simply disregard the idea that confusion on a subject implies the truth of an assertion predicated on that ignorance. It's a bit like Newton and calculus, you see?
Quoting Gnomon
There is more mysticism on this website, in the form of its participants, than in any Church I have ever been to.
Quoting Gnomon
No, I'm saying their questions do not constitute answers, or arguments. And I am correct about that.
Quoting Gnomon
Quite possibly.
No.
I do say that, and require evidence to change my mind. Meaning prediction, experiment, and falsifiability. Otherwise, it's just religion.
Quoting Gnomon
Oh, I can't read what you mean in this message over the action you implemented to type it.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, it is called the quantum measurement problem. One problem with trying to measure quanta is the fact that quantume existence is below the very surface of reality, it's the energy and particles that form planets and biological life-forms. It's beneath microscopic. They simply occupy a different section of reality from macroscopic material. It will be some time before we figure this out.
Quoting Gnomon
No, you get boos because you've just insulted the philosophy they live by, which is subjectivism, irrationalism, and mysticism. The only reality they can justifiably trust, is the one that is verified for them through human to human interaction. Thus, they are dominated by the altruistic subjectivism that has covered the world in shadow. And the next time someone uses the term "White," as a pejorative, tell the racist to fuck off. It'll be good for you.
Quoting Gnomon
....To...?
Quoting Gnomon
It is, when placed in the context of quantum comparison. Not that it is so limited as to be negated.
Quoting Gnomon
You can't mean that reality is so broad and sophisticated as to be expanded to cover inductively observable phenomena!? I'd have never guessed.
Quoting Gnomon
So, "real" applies to potentialities if they end up actually being real? Profound.
Quoting Gnomon
......... Hmm..... I think we're getting somewhere.
Quoting Gnomon
....... Nope, lost it. I'll help.
Let's cover this nonsense argument:
1. Potentialities are useful metrics if those potentialities emerge as inductively observable phenomena
2. Usefulness of potentialities implies an expansion of the concept of reality
3. That concept should include objects that will never appear as inductively observable phenomena
You see how this is an invalid argument, and makes no sense besides?
Yeah, but first you're going to have to explain precisely – not merely assert or quote what others assert as stand-ins for – what you mean, G, by "reality" and "non-physical".
I have Penrose's book (2004) and have read portions over the last few years. The subtitle is "A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe" , and I don't find him in general questioning our traditional understanding of reality, only trying to explain how we have reached such understandings and how math has been indispensable in this process. However, his discussions of quantum effects becomes more speculative.
The book is immense, over 1,000 pages, so it's doubtful very many readers have read it all.
Meaning mutually exclusive terms.
No serious physicist questions our understanding of reality. Our understanding of reality literally allowed us to create macroscopic machines that can hurdle the very objects in question at speeds beyond comprehension and shatter them for further study. It is nonsense.
:rofl:
Oh, sorry. I meant physicist. No physicist questions the training in universal mechanics they've received that they employ to successfully build particle accelerators to smash the very quanta in question.
One of the best books I've read about that is Quantum: Bohr, Einstein and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality, by Manjit Kumar. Note the title: Bohr and Einstein, the two greatest phycists of their time, or any time, debating the nature of reality. Einstein maintained a strictly realist attitude, he couldn't accept that quantum theory could be complete so long as the uncertainty principle had to be admitted. 'Does the moon continue to exist when we're not looking at it?' he asked, in exasperation. Bohr, along with Werner Heisenberg and several others, developed what is called the Copenhagen interpretation, which is *not* a scientific theory, but a reflection on the meaning of quantum physics. I think the best overall exponent of that view was Heisenberg himself, who was a very clear and competent philosopher, apart from being a great physicist. (Have a read of The Debate between Plato and Democritus.)
I'm not going to try and summarise all of that, but it's critical to realise that 'the nature of reality' is exactly what is at stake in all of these. Heck, the last book I read on it is by Adam Becker, and its title is 'What is Real?'
Not any kind of doubt that negates the already established and utilized framework that allow us to create the required tools to investigate those quanta and their mechanical nature. Physicists are not attempting to negate those systems, but discover where they are compatible, because they clearly are because they are observed within the same domain of existence as the rest of material compositional elements of reality. It isn't bullshit.
Quoting Wayfarer
And he predicted gravitational waves from the grave. Such a prediction is compatible with the confusion induced by the uncertainty principle, it does not negate the material understandings of reality that were employed by Einstein to accurately predict something beyond the comprehensive ability of most physicists of his day.
Quoting Wayfarer
The moon is macroscopic, quanta are below microscopic. This question is equivalent to asking "do humans just mitotically separate?" Or, the famous strawman question about apes posited to Huxley. It's simple vexation in the face of something confusing, which isn't an argument for anything.
Quoting Wayfarer
And? Don't care.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, it's not under any legitimate threat at all. And never will be. In time, quanta will be inderstood in a manner compatible with already established understandings, just like Newton was for Einstein, and Einstein was for Bohrs. But, keep trying I guess. Science doesn't agree with you, but hey I'm not going to stop you from entertaining interesting pathways of thought induced by confusion.
You show no understanding of why Einstein was compelled to ask that rhetorical question
Quoting Garrett Travers
In that case, you have nothing interesting to say. You're just here to beat a drum.
Sure I do, it's called confusion at a perceived incompatibility with known facts. He was wrong.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure I do, just not to someone who deeply desires something that reality has not placed on offer. You see, it is clear that you desire very deeply for reality to not be real, and I already know it is, because to even question its existence from within its domain of existence, is to accept it as existing to be questioned, plus physics which verifies the truth value of my proposition. But, do your make-believe thing, it won't bother me, friend.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Be warned, mortals. Garrett has spoken. :naughty:
Be warned, rational folk. We have someone here that thinks certain humans were infallible and MUST be taken at their word, even though they can be demonstrably shown to be incorrect. :halo:
They actually were wrong about what they were wrong about, by the by. Both of them ended up denouncing much of their own theoretical frameworks later in life, so....
I think there's a lot more to learn about this before we start speculating about "non-physical reality." What takes place at the quantum level isn't necessarily the "reality" we live in anyway.
:100: :fire:
You misunderstood. I did not assert that these scientists were claiming that "reality is not materially composed", Instead, they are beginning to explore some of the emergent holistic (systems) features of the material world, that cannot be understood reductively. Some of them are focusing on the Mental phenomena that are associated with a material substrate, but are not in themselves physical objects, and not composed of particles. Others, are trying to make sense of some Quantum phenomena, such as Entanglement, that seem to arise from collective properties instead of from particular components.
Since the useful concept of Holism was quickly adopted by various believers in body/mind dualism, most scientists now prefer the term Systems Theory. But, it's the same thing by another name. And integrated systems don't yield their secrets to reductive methods of dissection into isolated parts. So, I'm merely trying to remove the stigma from this "New Physics", so we can discuss it's philosophical implications without recriminations. :smile:
The New Physics :
The term new physics refers to a range of fundamental developments and paradigm shifts that occurred in the physical sciences during the last half of the twentieth century.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/new-physics
Quoting Garrett Travers
The sciences of Systems are inherently Holistic & philosophical & somewhat subjective, so the classical methods of reductive science don't work for them. And, the "evidence" is mostly circumstantial. The authors of the books noted above are highly trained scientists, but they are forced to use philosophical methods to parse & collate the few reliable facts they are turning up in their studies. Some of them even reluctantly admit that they are dabbling in theoretical philosophy (search for causes), which is often denigrated by empirical scientists (study of effects) -- and ironically by some posters on this Philosophical Forum who use "feckless" argument instead of effective experiment. :nerd:
Science vs Natural Philosophy :
They began to separate in the 19th century, when the term science was coined, and over the course of the 19th century, it replaced “natural philosopher.” The two had begun to branch out earlier than that with the development of the hypothetico-deductive model, which locks science into a particular epistemology,
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/when-did-science-and-philosophy-separate-into-different-fields-of-study.html
Quoting Garrett Travers
You are using philosophical methods to argue against the conclusions of a group of credentialed scientists, including Werner Heisenberg. But, you miss their point. They may not be using the term "Potentia" in the "non-sense" way you allege. They are indeed pushing the boundaries of 19th century science, but don't you think their intelligence deserves a bit more respect.? :wink:
I haven't read the book, but from reviews I get the impression that his Mathematical Reality is essentially the same thing as Virtual Reality. If that is not questioning our traditional understanding of reality (Materialism & Atomism) I don't know what it's all about. :cool:
Mathematical Reality :
[i]Quantum theory has been used in support of materialism, as well, to give us a proposed material theory of consciousness. Sir Roger Penrose, the British mathematician, and theoretical physicist has argued that it is quantum effects that give rise to the sense we have of free will. . . .
Dualism—that there’s more to reality than just matter and energy—has to solve the problem of interaction. How do material objects and ideas work with each other if they are completely different? Materialism has no such problem because there is only one kind of thing, but it has its own challenge—free will.[/i]
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/what-is-the-material-theory-of-consciousness-and-free-will/
Since when do philosophers wait for more facts before they start "speculating"? Besides, the authors of the books referenced are pragmatic scientists, who were forced by the counter-intuitive "facts" they dug-up to speculate on what they might mean for our intuitive worldview and our incomplete "standard theory" of reality. Scientist have been trying over the last century to reconcile Relativity and Quantum models of reality. How much longer do we need to wait? Anyway, on this forum of philosophical dilettantes, we don't do empirical, we do conjecture. And Quantum un-reality is a fervid ferment of speculation, even among those who eschew philosophy. :smile:
Emergent Space-Time :
"A growing number of physicists . . . are increasingly converging on a profound idea : space -- and perhaps even time -- is not fundamental, Instead, space and time my be emergent. . . . While quantum physics treats space and time as immutable, general relativity warps them for breakfast."
Scientific American magazine, Feb 2022
Note -- Sci-fi novelists dramatically speculate on the possible implications of such scientific profundities all the time. So, why can't prosaic philosophers dabble in such open questions?
Oh, I see. I am in 100% accord with this analysis.
Quoting Gnomon
Do we have an example of systems that are wholly misunderstood in the face of inductive investigation?
Quoting Gnomon
No, not until it is clear what they mean by "pushing the boundaries," using propositions that are reliant on those boundaries as a matter of arranging their propositions to begin with. Intelligence is respected when it aligns with the quality of investigatory output, not when it does not. It's like asking me if I respect people's heigth, I don't. I make no conclusions on the premise of immutable characteristics.
Well put and I think it's an important point. What we call reality is at human scale. How could it be anything else?
When they don't, philosophers tend to spout the most egregiously fact-free nonsense liberally spackled with woo-of-the-gaps. To wit:
[quote=Marcus Tullius Cicero]There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.[/quote]
In other words, "before" gathering "more facts" (dots), Gnomon, 'connecting (speculating on) the dots (facts)' tends to yield far less intelligible – less soundly inferred – concepts than those conceptions attained after gathering more facts (dots).
Well, it's proportional to the capacity of human(s) orientational resolution. The scale is beyond comprehension. But, enough data can be exctracted by the human brain to test for broader processes that our brains do not initially generate. And so on in a feedbackloop.
Fucking brilliantly put, friend. Pure gas. It's time we started bring the torch to the anti-philosophies of the world.
I'll one up you:
When they don't we end with people thinking Kant, Marx, and Nietzsche were real philosophers.
:broken:
I know it hurts, buddy, but they gotta fuckin go, hehaha.
Alas, all too often they disregard facts entirely, except perhaps when they face them in day-to-day life and have no option but to acknowledge them by their conduct, at least.
Quoting Gnomon
I regret I haven't read the works you refer to, but just what is that supposed to mean? What is it about what they've dug up that would throw our lives into disarray, make any difference to what we do or how or why we do it, lead us to doubt in any practical sense the world of which we're a part and which we and other humans have interacted with, every moment, all our lives? Will we suddenly encounter cats that are both dead and alive, once we know what they've discovered?
Could be. I'm only commenting on parts of his gigantic book I've read. Mostly it is what you would expect of a mathematical physicist: lots of physics math, some of which is like traditional math, some beyond my pay grade. Math physicists mostly search for math to predict the results the experimentalists are getting. But some dabble in philosophy of reality. Some conjure up woo.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
I have that book, also. It too is gigantic, over 1,000 pages, and devoted to Wolfram's mathematical approach to physical reality: elementary cellular automata. I've read parts, but again I doubt that more than a few have read the entire tome (that used to be a cocktail party joke). I wrote several programs in BASIC to produce the automata he suggests in the complex plane, and got interesting imagery. But as a fundamental concept explaining physical reality his ideas have failed.
Good! The problem with Systems Theory is that, like all Holistic attempts to understand Nature, General & Universal concepts are not knowable by sensory observation or reductive analysis. Instead, we develop such mental models of reality by rational inference from direct personal experience, or from second-hand learning from other envelope pushers.. The next Theory of Everything will never be a confirmed fact, but merely a new target to shoot down.
That's why scientists, who make general judgments about whole sub-categories of Nature, are going beyond the empirical evidence to make metaphysical philosophical postulations. They can't possibly observe every possible combination of elements. And they are seldom testable with current technology. So, they fill-in the gaps in direct knowledge with the imaginary links of pattern recognition (inference). This knowledge-of-the-gaps is so instinctive for humans that we hardly notice when we cross the line between empirical evidence and theoretical speculation.
The scientists, in the books I listed above, are professional empiricists, but their topics of study are on the cutting-edge of technology, Some focus on Abstract Math (string & loop theory), others on Quantum Weirdness (entanglement), and a few on Consciousness (the last frontier of science). Consequently, like all philosophical postulations, they are open to challenge. You might call them "un-settled science": And they are often accused of dabbling in Metaphysics. But. I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, even if it challenges my "settled" opinion of how the world should work.
Science evolves & advances by pushing the boundaries of the current world map. And yet, just as in politics, conservatives typically accuse the pushy pioneers of "pseudoscience", or even worse "metaphysics". And it seems to be true, historically, that unfettered liberal minds do tend to make discoveries before the plodders, who don't stick their necks out. For example, Einstein was not a practicing scientist when he published his five papers that turned the classical world upside down. So, I'd be careful not to label those long-neck scientists as anti-scientific. Unless they claim to see the promised land from the mountain of Metaphysics.
The purpose of this thread is not to propagandize pseudoscience, but to translate the fringey findings of Science into meaningful philosophical concepts. For example, Hoffman's provocative assertion that "Reality is an Illusion", makes a lot of sense to me. And, I understand that he is not denying our common sense model of material reality, but merely noting that that notion is a map, not the territory. :smile:
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes. Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_universals
Note -- Einstein's Block Time is not an empirical observation, but a universal extrapolation. But is it Real?
Consciousness: The Final Frontier :
Understanding consciousness may be the greatest challenge posed to science.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-self-organization-and-neuroscience/201804/consciousness-the-final-frontier
Science advances one funeral at a time :
[i]Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
TERRA INCOGNITA
Excellent! Saves me the trouble of reading it.
Quoting Gnomon
Gonna butt in here with some of my homespun analysis. Universals don't exist, but they're real. They're real as constraints and possibilities, the forms that things must take in order to exist. But they're not real on the level of existent things, their reality is of a different order to phenomena. Current philosophy cannot accomodate that because it has a univocal conception of existence - something either exists or it doesn't. But the sense in which universals are real, is different to the sense in which things exist. This is, for example, there can be no consensus on the nature of scientific laws - everyone acknowledges they exist, but there's no explanation of what they are.
It means that what you think of as capital "S" Science is a moving target. And these envelope-pushers may know something you don't. For example, Deacon has postulated the counter-intuitive notion of "causal absence". Check it out. But hold your prejudice until you understand what he's talking about. :wink:
Incomplete Nature : How Mind Emerged from Matter
[i]is a 2011 book by biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon. The book covers topics in biosemiotics, philosophy of mind, and the origins of life. Broadly, the book seeks to naturalistically explain "aboutness", that is, concepts like intentionality, meaning, normativity, purpose, and function; which Deacon groups together and labels as ententional phenomena. . . .
The book expands upon the classical conceptions of work and information in order to give an account of ententionality that is consistent with eliminative materialism and yet does not seek to explain away or pass off as epiphenominal the non-physical properties of life.[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature
Yes, It's that dual meaning of "exist" & "real" that causes us to talk past each other. Some deny the existence of "a different order of phenomena". AFAIK for almost 14 billion years, there were no minds, and hence no Universals or General Concepts and no Ideas or Ideals. When your dog is looking pensive, is he pondering Universals? Is your talking parrot a philosopher?
"Constraints" and "absences" are essential to Deacon's book Incomplete Nature. But some can't wrap their matter-based worldview around the notion of nothingness. But even the ancient Atomists were forced to assume a Void for their atoms to move around in. No void, no motion, no change, no evolution. :smile:
But even in the absence of any mind, five is a prime number, and the law of the excluded middle will hold. Our simian ancestors could not have grasped that, but h. sapiens can. But that doesn't mean that by our grasping of such things they begin to exist, rather, they're discovered by us.
That is why in some sense universals are possibilities; they're the attributes or forms something must have in order to exist. For instance, the 'idea of a wing' is such that it must be able to suspend a body in flight. So pterodactyl wings, flying lizard wings, bird wings, and bat wings, all have the same general form, even though they evolved by completely different evolutionary pathways. They're converging on a possibility which is the necessary form if the winged creature is going to take flight.
:brow:
Brits (& Aussies?) call that "taking the piss".
Quoting Wayfarer
I.e. Kant's platonic 'transcendental reifications' ...
"Universals" do subsist, but until we grasp them, they do not exist – stand out – for us. Is it your position, Wayf, that they are "real but do not exist" (à la Meinong)? If so, sketch what "real" means to you in this instance as distinct from "exist".
My position is that "universals" are not real (i.e. they are not 'ineluctable, subject/language-invariant, non-tautologies') yet they do subsist (e.g. fictions) :point:
Consider this alternative: It's [X] the applications of, or uses for, our abstractions (i.e. grammars e.g. expressions, "valid moves") abstract & concrete objects that work (discerned from those that do not work) which are "discovered" (re: pragmatics) whereas [Y] the expressions of abstractions themselves (i.e. logical spaces e.g. systems, "games") are invented. I think [Y] the latter begin (via reflective equilibria?) as particular (trial and error) heuristics from / by which deduceable algorithms subsequently emerge as generalizations abstracted inductively from [X] the former. In other words, "universals" are abstracted from "instantiations" – [Y] generalizations from [X] particulars – like maps abstracted from territories; it makes no more sense to say that [Y] generalizations are logically (or causally) prior to [X] particulars (e.g. platonism) than it does to say maps (forms, possibilities) are logically (or causally) prior to territories (facts, actualities).
(NB: This interpretation, I believe, is more pragmatic (e.g. Witty, Dewey, Hocking, Haack ...) than merely nominalist – which assumes actualism as well as rejects possibilism (or the usual transcendental arguments & platonisms) and positivism too.)
But engineers, and the like, are dealing on the one hand in theoretical possibilities, but on the other, if they get their calculations wrong, then buildings collapse or rockets explode. Those factors are not fictions. They come from 'peering into the realm of the possible' - extrapolating from known factors to possible outcomes by way of mathematical reasoning. That has Platonist origins, and it's the reason why the scientific revolution happened in the West, not China or India.
The 'reality of number' was my first post on the previous forum, and yours the first response. Overall it was the best interaction we were to have. :chin:
Generally, "exist" is a spatial-temporal concept. To exist is to be describable in spatial-temporal terms. The concept of "real" allows for truth in referring to things which cannot be described as having spatial temporal positioning. So for example, fictitious characters are real, but we cannot say that these characters exist. This allows that we can make truthful statements about things which have no spatial-temporal existence.
This, or any similar mode of classification allows for the reality of things which transcend spatial-temporal existence. It is necessary to allow for this because we do not know whether our concepts of space and time encompass all the possibilities of reality. And as Wayfarer points out, "possibility" itself is not something which can be included within spatial-temporal existence. So we have problems like quantum entanglement, which demonstrate very clearly to us, that reality transcends what we know as spatial-temporal existence. So we allow that the concept of "reality" extends to cover things outside the realm of "physical", because "physical", as an attribute is necessarily limited in its application. Therefore "reality" encompasses the non-physical.
Quoting 180 Proof
There is no point to excluding universals from reality, as you propose. Then you still have to assign something to universals in order to bring them into the realm of intelligibility, i.e. being intelligible. To say that they "subsist", but are not real, is not a good use of the word "subsist", and usage like this is why I have so much difficulty understanding you. "Subsist" is normally used to refer to the temporal extension of existence, to continue to be alive or exist, through time. This necessitates that the thing which subsists also exists. But you are saying that the thing which subsists is not real, so you imply a not real thing which exists. Why make "existence" the more general concept, such that it extends to include things which are not real?
"Money" may be the most ubiquitous fiction on the planet and its an abstraction that has long been far more effective at shaping the concrete world than swords & ships, bullets & bombs. :roll:
First, my previous post is a response to Wayfarer's position on "universals" and I sought clarification on his usage of terms. However interesting your use of those concepts may be, MU, I'm only concerned with Wayfarers at the moment. Second, I qualified my use of "subsists" with a parenthetical "à la Meinong", so take issue with his work instead. Third, your last paragraph makes no sense in the context of what I wrote in my post.
I'm sure there may be many interesting implications from these works. I'm just wondering if they make any difference to how we live our lives on a day to day basis (which seems, to me, to involve reality).
This would be an issue of theories that don't imply that level of analysis as a prinicple. Not of systems theories, or holistic theories. Truly holistic theories are adaptive to all new objectively verified phenomena, like science, and philosophy. If you have a theory that does not embody this principle, it is by definition dogma, and not philosophy.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, this is the very definition of what cosnciousness was developed to do. However, what people don't uderstand is that consciousness is ALWAYS reviewing data for concept generation. Meaning, any concept at all that can actually be used in reality to discover truth of any kind, is absolutely essential to incorporate and use alongside ALL other conceptual frameworks that allow for the same results across domains inquiry. You see what I'm saying to you?
Quoting Gnomon
Yep, nothing wrong with postulates, but everything wrong with any conclusion not predicated on verified phenomena.
Quoting Gnomon
Philosophy IS unsettled science, and non-dismissive of seemingly contrary, but observably compatible theories and phenomena in reality, is neither. Meaning, quantum mechanics doesn't violate relativity, it enhances it. String Theory does, however, because contradicts both without observation. Along some dimension, it is self evident that relativity and quantum mechanics MUST be compatible, thereby morphing our physics system into multiple dimensions of understanding of the nature of the very same reality within which they emerge.
Quoting Gnomon
Man's greatest murder, and I will not fucking stand for it for another day in my life. I will ridicule and rationally destroy it of the face of the earth with pleasure for the rest of my days.
Quoting Gnomon
Always give pursuit the benefit of the doubt. Never give conclusions such a benefit.
Quoting Gnomon
Ah, but it wasn't just his papers, was it? Our dear Einstein labored in passion in coffee shops, scribbling in note books ad nauseum to develop a theory that seemed to make sense, but science doesn't play with "seem," neither does philosophy. And at those times in his life, Einstein was nothing short of a pristine example of both, and he fucking knew it. He knew it so god damn much that he predicted the effect of gravity on photons, dude. And predicted gravitational waves from the grave. A-Pex Predator. And it was THAT, the conjunction of theory and observational verification, that forever defined him as relavent in the history of philosophy. Forever will we have Eisntein's relativity in our philosophical zeitgeist, forever will our systems of thought demand compatibility with that discovery.
Quoting Gnomon
Ah, but reduction finds it's way back home. Read above what I have posted to you here again, and come back and read this statement of yours: "a map, not the territory." You sure it isn't..... both? Or, more than both?
What sounds more likely? That reality isn't real? That reality is only a map? That reality is only a territory? Reality is only a force? Reality is only a system? Reality is only chemical reactions? Reality is only a cognitive synthesis? etc.. Or, my friend, is it FAR more likely, that reality is, in fact, a conglomeration of literally every aspect of what those concepts mean to us that are compatible with one another, as well as observable within the same domain of existence? With what you KNOW of reality, not what you think or desire, with what you KNOW, which of our two theses sounds most likely? And which of our two theses do you think can be shown the quickest to be most closely approximating the truth? Think about this one before you answer, dear fellow. I really want you to compute this question and give the most genuine thoughts on the subject that have ever crossed your mind.
Best to start with what can be elucidated than to go on to something which isn't clearly posed.
"Albert Einstein was a lady's man
While he was working on his universal plan
He was making out like Charlie Sheen
He was a genius."
--Warren Zevon
Sorry. I just like Zevon, and couldn't help but think of these lines. Couldn't help but type them as well, it seems.
Hell yeah, rock on.
Unless you are a professor of Consciousness Studies, you are not likely to put food on the table by understanding Non-physical Reality. But, if you are an amateur philosopher, like me, that deeper understanding of reality, may make a difference in how you perceive & conceive the puzzling world around you. That, in turn could make you a better person (wisdom & virtue) in your day-to-day dealings with other people. Besides, it might give you fodder for contentious TPF topics. Do, you have something more important to do with your time on Earth? If so, why are you wasting it on feckless Philosophy? :smile:
Do you really require objective verification for all of your beliefs? Most people get their technical knowledge second & third hand. So, they must trust their sources. I am not a practicing scientist, so my understanding of abstruse topics, such as we discuss here, is verified only by comparing one expert opinion to another. That's why I read widely. And I actively look for opinions that are different from my own : this forum, for example. That's how you learn. But there are not enough minutes in eternity to "verify" all sources, or for critical analysis of every "fact". So, I suspect that like most folks, even you remember mostly those "facts" that seem to agree with your prior beliefs, as vetted by the Availabilty Heurstic. :smile:
The Influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597883710447.
Availabilty Heurstic :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
Quoting Garrett Travers
Whoa! That sounds like Antihumanism or Transhumanism or even Antinatalism. Which means you won't rest until the scourge of irrational caveman intuition is eradicated from the planet. It must be frustrating to share the world with imperfect people who are not as logical as Mr. Spock, or as computational as Commander Data, or as intolerant as GT. My condolences. :sad:
PS___It's a good thing we are not in the same room. My occasional lapses into instinct might get me exterminated.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Hey, you're not arguing with me. that's a quote from Alfred Korzybski. His point was that your mental model of the world is a figment of your imagination, not a miniature clone of reality. And he would probably agree with Don Hoffman, that your model of Reality is an "illusion". Or with Carlo Rovelli, that Reality is "not what it seems". However, they are not denying the existence of both mental Maps and material Territories in the same world, but in different forms. Each has its place in the grand scheme of things . . . an non-things. :cool:
Map vs Territory :
This quote comes from Alfred Korzybski, father of general semantics: “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness”. To sum up, our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our own “map”.
http://intercultural-learning.eu/Portfolio-Item/the-map-is-not-the-territory/
Sure. Even setting aside ontological disputes, physicalism vs idealism vs dualism, you have the whole question of modality.
I think the realm of the possible, but as of yet not actual is somewhat of a no man's land. In this area you'll see physicalists and idealists standing side by side to argue the non-reality of the "possible," while an equally mixed company argue in favor of a "many worlds," based logic that allows them to make truth claims about possibilities.
I also find modality more interesting than most topics in metaphysics in general. I don't have a strong opinion on realism versus nominalism. Trope theory attribute nominalism looks great until you encounter the problem of the identity of numerically distinct indiscernibles. But then universals need a universal of haecceity, some sort of unmodified substratum of being, to attach their universals to in order to get around the indiscerniblity issue, and this ends up equally troubled by incoherence. Aristotlean substance seems too subjective. Ontology is a mess.
Modality though: there is something for the most out to lunch continental philosopher or the most hardcore logician to get into there.
Barring none, whatsoever.
Quoting Gnomon
I've no issue observing science and relying on such terms, papers, research, etc. If it arises that such sources are actually fabrications, then I'll change my tune and start again, no problem.
Quoting Gnomon
I do to, but I've grown weary of clear fabrications spreading.
Quoting Gnomon
I do, my philosophy is adaptive, I don't do the keeping of beliefs if they are shown to be wrong. Just for an example, I only found out this past week that Epicurus' communes were Anarcho-Capitalistic in nature, being the first Capitalist societies in history that I know of, but also that Marx directly plagiarised the idea from him and twisted its principles. I had been riding with the idea that the socialists themselves had generated the conceptual understanding of private property and free exchange and Feudalism and all that. Complete bullshit.
Quoting Gnomon
No, I said rationally, as in logic and reason. Only collectivists are those things. You'll notice that here soon with Russia, full frontal display incoming.
Quoting Gnomon
Thank you, but I don't need the condolences. It's actually the people that DON'T value the human consciousness that are miserable. That's why they keep rioting, spreading racial hatred, fighting for power, leaving american humans to die in the middle east, sending american humans to die near russia, raping children in churches and highscools, killing eachother in churches and highschools, bickering over which despicable terrorist organization is less terroristy than the other, overdosing, killing themselves. This is the world the collectivists want, they must have it. But, it isn't the rational who are miserable, my dear fellow. Just see how miserable the Epicureans were, before the miserable slaughtered them in the name hatred of the human consciousness, in faith to a god that demands such hatred and provides no evidence of his existence except corpses beyond count.
Quoting Gnomon
Wow, I wonder what model of reality was used to come to that objective assertion about the nature of reality.
Quoting Gnomon
There's where you should investigate. Non things aren't things, that's why you can't find any, and if you did, they would immediately become things, and not non things. Weird how reality just doesn't give a fuck about people's thoughts.
I'm not so sure. Does a theory of infinite compositions of complex functions exist? Why yes, it does exist. I should know. Lots of other examples.
My reply is similar to Wayfarer's, but if we go deeper you'll see that I differ significantly in opinion, from Wayfarer. As I defined "exist" as spatial-temporal, you'll see that I attribute "existence" to the physical manifestation, which is the symbolization, in its physical form. This leaves "grasping the theory", or understanding it, as something which the rational mind does somewhat separately, from the theory itself, which is exterior to the mind, existing in its physical form.
The problem I find, is that if we say that the theory itself, is what exists within the human mind, as that which is understood, or the understanding which the mind has, then we have to account for particular differences in understanding between individual people. The fact that such differences in the way that different people understand "the same" theory are very real, is evident from this forum. So if "the theory" exists within the rational mind, manifested as the activity which is "understanding", then we cannot accurately call it "the theory" any more, because each person has one's own unique interpretation of what is called "the theory", so we would have a multitude of different instances of the same theory. Therefore I prefer to refer to the physical manifestation as "the theory", so that we are justified in having one united theory, instead of a multitude of different related theories in different minds.
However, you'll see that my way of understanding, and expressing what constitutes "the theory", does not completely resolve the problem of differences. We might have different expressions, different written formulas, or even different instances of physical occurrence, of what we would call "the same theory", just like we say "2" is "the same" symbol each time we see this physical appearance, despite it being different instances. We really ought to say each time we see a 2 that it is the same type of symbol as the other time, and not actually the same symbol.
What I think though, is that this way of looking at it gives us a more realistic approach to the fundamental difference between expressing a theory, and interpreting a theory. These two are necessarily very different from each other, because interpreting (understanding) is necessarily prior in time to expressing what is understood. So the expression, which is "the theory" is the result, or effect, of the act of understanding.
I believe this gives us a better approach toward understanding the reality of what I would call the creation of a theory, and what Wayfarer would probably call the discovery of a theory. I would say that the theory is created when the symbols are given their appropriate relations to each other, in the physical medium. This means that the theory is actually a representation of the non-physical which remains within the mind. But the non-physical here is the process by which the physical representation (the theory itself) is created. Wayfarer would probably say that the theory itself is within the mind, as a non-physical thing, intelligible object, discovered by the mind. The substantial difference, is that I posit a non-physical activity, which is the cause of a physical thing (the theory in its physical manifestation), while Wayfarer posits a non-physical static immaterial object called the theory. (Correct me if I'm wrong please )
I think there's a place for philosophy even in living as we do.
Not so. This "theory" is composed of a number of specific theorems not open to individual interpretation. But the "meaning" of this theory certainly is an individual's prerogative.
A more philosophical "theory" might fit your description.
Not really. The meaning of 'object' in 'intelligible object' is kind of allegorical - a theory isn't really 'an object' except in the metaphorical sense, like when you say, 'the object of the exercise'. As I said, it is something able to be grasped by a rational mind, but not existent like a hammer or a screwdriver. But nevertheless, it is real independently of your or my mind or anyone's mind. As Augustine says:
Which is similar to the kind of Platonism that Frege advocated. The problem for empiricists and materialists is that such 'objects' are non-physical but real, so they can't accept that. In actual fact the fundamental elements of reason itself - ideas, in the true sense - are themselves intellectual in nature, not physical. Our experience and judgement always contains elements of both the sensory and the intellectual, but empiricism will only admit the reality of the sensory and will insist that the intelligible must be dependent on or produced from that (which is then explained with reference to evolutionary theory). But this is a backwards way of looking at it (as explained by Maritain.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Bertrand Russell addresses this:
[quote=Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy - The World of Universals]It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea'... also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.[/quote]
Bolds added. So, for example, no two people can really disagree about fundamental physical laws, like the laws of motion; it's not a matter of opinion how they will determine the outcome of motion. In fact, that is the very meaning of 'objectivity'. But in many areas of science, for example atomic physics and evolutionary theory, there is enormous scope for disagreement about what the theories mean.
As I said, I believe a theorem is literally the terms that state it. Therefore any and all theories or theorems are open to individual interpretation. Each of us understands them according to one's own experience of learning and practicing. You can state that one must understand the words in a specific way (provide definitions), but then the words of the definitions need definitions, etc., ad infinitum. And we do not avoid the reality of individual interpretation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I do not accept this argument, because what is common to all who think is that they have ideas, but we all have different ideas. So I think it is wrong to say that we all grasp the same thing, we clearly have different ideas. My discussions on this forum with a number of mathematicians has indicated very clearly to me that we do not even understand basic concepts of arithmetic like "+" and "=" in the very same way as each other. And since there is a multiplicity of number systems we do not even understand symbols like "2" in the very same way.
So I've come to what I believe is a more realistic view, that each mind constructs its own understanding which is unique and particular to the person, dependent on each individual's learning process. This is why standardized education is so important in our societies, to create the degree of sameness in our thinking patterns, which is required for us to properly understand each other, and have standard "concepts". I, for instance, cannot understand 180proof's use of the English language, because the thinking patterns which are supposed to be represented by the words are unintelligible to me.
Quoting Wayfarer
I definitely agree that the fundamental elements of reasoning are non-physical. But I disagree on the character of these non-physical features, and their position in reality. I believe that the fundamental feature, which is at its base non-physical, is the act of thinking. I also believe in a fundamental difference, a categorical separation between an act, and an object. An act is a change over a temporal duration, while an object is what stays the same over temporal duration.
And this is why the non-physical, which has active existence within the human being, ought not be represented as an object. The active, non-physical element (soul, if you like) uses physical objects as signs or symbols for recognition, but is itself not physical yet still active. Think of this as an activity without an object engaged in the activity, because it is a completely non-physical activity. It does have a physical effect though, it creates the signs and symbols.
I believe this is exactly what is the case. No two men think the very same thing, nor does one man ever think the very same thing twice. Aristotle made this point in the part of "On The Soul" which we were discussing in the other thread. So Russell's conclusion here is the opposite of what it should be. What leads him to assert an "object" of thought, instead of simply an activity called "thought", is the idea that two different men think the very same thing when thinking whiteness. We do not though, my images of whiteness which I employ when thinking whiteness, are different from yours.
In reality, the "object" of thought is the word, "white". That's what stays the same, as an object, the symbol. And when I hold that object, or a mental representation of it, within my mind, asking what is the meaning of "white", i.e. what is whiteness, I produce images or descriptions, which are not the same as the ones you would produce when asking yourself what is whiteness.
Quoting Wayfarer
I conclude you have not encountered me discussing fundamental laws of motion on this forum, clear evidence that two people can disagree on such laws. Take Newton's first law of motion for example. People claim it's a brute fact which cannot be otherwise. But I argue that Newton actually stated that the truth of his first law requires the will of God. This is because it is a statement about what has been, in the past, and it assumes the premise that what has been in the past, will continue to be so, into the future, necessarily, if not caused to change. In reality though, the nature of free will demonstrates that we cannot take the continuity of physical existence, from past to future, for granted. When reality is understood in this way, we see Newton's first law in a completely different way. A cause, "God's will" is required for the continuity of existence which we call "inertia". And many theologians and mystics assume that God must recreate the material world anew, at each passing moment of time, so Newton's first law of motion requires the will of God to be true.
Not true. I may open a math paper on a topic with which I am unfamiliar and guess at what it is about, but this in no way opens the theorems therein in any professional sense to individual interpretations. Yes, I may interpret them the wrong way, just as you have on countless occasions misinterpreted the simplest of mathematical symbolism. If I were to insist it was my right to reinterpret results I would be ridiculed for my stance - as I should be.
I don't see how you can believe that what goes on in the minds of two different people, when they read the very same thing, is the same. Pass two people the same proposition or axiom and have them each explain it. They will not explain it with the exact same expressions. Therefore they do not have the same interpretation. It's a very simple and obvious fact which you seem to be in denial of.
Quoting jgill
That you believe there's a boundary, by which you can classify some interpretations as "the wrong way", and some as the right way, is clear evidence that you really recognize that each interpretation is particular to the individual, and you have some means for judging the differences between them. Obviously, if such variance exists, so that you can reject some interpretations as unconventional, or inconsistent with some norm, or standard, therefore "wrong", then you recognize the reality of particular differences, and you are simply in denial of what you actually apprehend as the reality.
Suppose there is such a boundary, which constitutes a division between the right way and the wrong way to interpret a symbol, or set of symbols, or a pattern of symbols. Your claim is that there is only one right way, and everything other than that is the wrong way. What do you suppose is the standard, the criterion which you could refer to in each case of each different theorem, to make the judgement that the person's interpretation corresponds exactly with the criterion, therefore exactly as every other person's, who correctly interprets the theorem, so it is the right interpretation. Unless you can produce this criterion, and demonstrate your mode of judgement, then your claim is no better than a claim that a rock here, and a rock on the other side of the earth are the exact same rock. But to judge two distinct things as the same is very clearly a mistake if truth is what you're looking for. So it appears like it's just an assumption you make, for a metaphysical convenience, some sort of pragmatist principle, but your convenience leads you away from the true reality of the situation.
The fact they may explain it using slightly different words does not imply they interpret a theorem differently. Even if they do there is a specific interpretation that is correct.
Of course, I am thinking of theorems I have created (or discovered) that have simple mathematical ideas most mathematicians would agree upon. If you asked me to explain symplectic geometry after a brief exposure to the subject I would surely botch it up. That doesn't mean my interpretation is on some kind of par with an accurate appraisal of SG.
This discussion concerns the obvious: yes, we may interpret differently. No, all interpretations are not correct according to some recognized authority. But it leads to a more challenging notion: intentional ambiguities, like neckers cube. And I recently posted a short note concerning a math expression that implies two distinct conclusions depending on how one interprets it. Both interpretations are correct simultaneously.
I don't see how you could argue this point. An interpretation is how one explains the meaning of something. To use different words to explain something is to provide a different explanation. Therefore using different words implies a different interpretation.
Quoting jgill
It's not that we may interpret differently, it's that no two people will produce the same interpretation of the same set of symbols, so we necessarily interpret differently. This is the difference between a particular and a universal. Each interpretation is particular, unique to the individual, just like each material object is particular. You might say that they are close enough, to say that they are "the same", just like all rocks are "the same", being rocks, but this is a misuse of "the same". The point being that the different members of a universal cannot truthfully be said to be the same. Likewise, when there is a universal understanding of your theorem, we cannot say that each member who understands in that way, has the same understanding, because "the way" is universal, and each member who participates in that universal is a particular, with a particular understanding. So as Aristotle explained, we ignore the accidentals of the particulars, when understanding the essence, which is the universal. In other words, we can ignore the accidentals of a particular interpretation, to say that it meets the criteria of the universal, and is therefore correct.
Quoting jgill
I would argue that intentional ambiguity results in neither one being correct. This is because the intention is to allow the appearance that either one could be correct. Therefore the intention must be to ensure that neither one is the correct one, to allow the apparent possibility that either one is correct. And if the intention is that neither one is correct, then the proper reading is that neither one is correct. This is consistent with Aristotle's fundamental principles of logic. Possibility violates the law of excluded middle, but not the law of non contradiction. So in some cases, to say that both are correct would be a violation of the law of non contradiction, and to say that neither is correct would violate the law of excluded middle. Intentional ambiguity produces the latter, neither is correct, because the correct interpretation is to apprehend the intentional ambiguity.
But in the case of simple maths, it's impossible to disagree that the sum of two and two is four, obviously (although I have an ominous feeling..... :scream: )
(Cambridge English Dictionary)
Quoting Wayfarer
How could you!!!!! :worry:
No, because numbers aren't defined by their arbitrary, corporeally delimited, a priori applications.
Step 2: Demonstrate that the nonphysical is not just possible, but actual. This is where nonphysicalists trip up. For a universe in which the only sense there is are eyes, how do I prove the existence of something that can't be seen or is invisible?
Yes I agree, but the point is that agreement does not imply "the same". That I agree with you indicates a specific type of relationship between us, it does not mean that the non-physical aspect of me is the same as the non-physical aspect of you. I would say that there is a relationship between the non-physical aspect within me, and the non-physical aspect within you, which constitutes agreement . But it appears to me, like you want to say that the non-physical within you is the same as the non-physical within me, that somehow each one of us grasps within our minds, the very same non-physical conception.
Despite our agreement on that simple point, the difference between you and I, in our understanding of this matter, is a difference of temporal relation, causation. I would say that human minds, in their relations with other minds (communication) are the cause of existence of conceptions. So I locate the conception itself within the physical world, a shared thing, along with other artifacts, which exist as representations (Plato's reflections) of the non-physical reality within the human minds that create them. I think you would say that each human mind apprehends the same non-physical reality. The issue I have with this, is that from your perspective we have to understand how the immaterial realm acts on the human mind, allowing itself to be understood by the human mind, in a way similar to the way that the sense world acts on the senses. So we'd have to assume intelligible objects acting on the human mind, in a way analogous to the way that sense objects act on the senses. But experience demonstrates to us that intelligible objects are acquired through the means of sensation instead of being directly produced by the mind from the non-physical realm.
From my perspective we have no need to say that the non-physical realm is acting on the non-physical aspect of the human being, because the non-physical aspect of the human being (the soul) is what is active in the creative act. The physical aspects of the human being, sense organs etc., are acted upon, and this contributes to to the soul's understanding, influencing it, but the soul as the non-physical part, is what acts to create.
I believe it is important to proceed in this way, to recognize the reality that we do not have any approach to the non-physical except through our internal self. And, when we approach the non-physical through introspection, self-reflection, or whatever internal means, we approach a fundamental division between oneself and others. This is the separation which unless we bridge it through the medium (communication), we are lead toward solipsism. And I believe, that when we grasp this internal isolation of the non-physical aspect within us, we must come to realize that there are no universal non-physical intelligible objects which are acting equally on us all, internally, from the non-physical realm, causing us to understand them. Our only means for unifying the non-physical, which underlies the existence of each one of us, is relationships made through the medium, what Christians call love. Assuming an underlying relationship between us, through the non-physical realm, is the fatal mistake of taking love for granted. Instead, our relationships must be cultivated through the medium, or else they dissolve.
Quoting jgill
I have no problem with this. But as I explained, "to suggest more than one meaning at the same time", implies that none of the suggested meanings is the correct one not that they are both correct. That there is a number of correct meanings is an illusion (a suggestion, or proposition) created by the author, you could consider it a type of deception. Meaning is what is meant or intended by the author. So you and I might discuss endlessly the intended meaning of a piece which is ambiguous, each of us claiming to have "the correct interpretation". However, since the ambiguity is intentional, then the author intended neither one nor the other of the interpreted meanings. We cannot say that the author intended both because that would be contradictory, saying that the author performed two incompatible acts of intention at the same time. Therefore we must conclude that in the case of intentional ambiguity neither is the correct interpretation. The correct interpretation is to recognize that the meaning is intentionally ambiguous.
Let me try another way of explanation Wayfarer. See if you can ignore all the riff raff around you, the entire physical world, and place yourself squarely within the reality of the non-physical. I think you'll find that there is a separation between your non-physical reality, and that of others, you and I are not connected through the non-physical. I can assume, from my experience, that you do have a non-physical aspect, just like I do, but my non-physical aspect does not connect directly to yours. In mathematical terms, the non-physical is a non-dimensional point, which is distinct from another non-dimensional point, related to each other by a dimensional (physical) line. If the points were directly connected there would be no need for the line.
This separation is a real problem in metaphysics because it implies that the non-physical is a multiplicity rather than the commonly assumed "One", as Neo-Platonism proposes. Plato's "The Sophist" explores this problem of the relationship between "One" and "multiplicity". Unless we can somehow overcome this separation, the bridge through or across the medium, which I proposed above, then the proposed non-physical "One" is unreal.
As far as I'm concerned you're in a muddle, and I'm not going to waste any time on it.
Your conclusion does not logically follow. I have a mathematical expression that can be interpreted two distinct ways, each of which is valid and "correct". However, it is a novel idea and something I haven't seen in math before. Maybe I'm wrong? Who knows . . .
I am not a materialist or a physicalist. Your post seems to be more of a lamentation over the current state of philosophy, and frankly, the current state of the world.Quoting Gnomon
I do not know the answer to this question. For I fear that the immaterial, or the metaphysical, or the non-physical, or whatever we want to call it, is long gone trampled underfoot by the immense pressure of the materialist or the physicalist. In my view, it is interesting that the primary cause for this total rejection of the non-physical is well, non-physical.
Sad, but true. Philosophy has become polarized around political positions, usually hinging on the definition of "admissible evidence". See the thread below for more on that angle.
Political worldviews are non-physical, hence not amenable to scientific methods. That's why, after all these years of ascendant physical science, we are still forced to debate Meta-physical questions, for which there are no final answers . And even that ancient term for philosophical analysis is politically fraught. Yet, I reserve "Physics" for Natural questions, and "Meta-Physics" (i.e. Philosophy) for Cultural questions, that arise from the human condition as animals with self-pondering brains. :smile:
Are there thoughts?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12586/are-there-thoughts
Ignoring me? Okay. It safe to assume (you know as well) that the OP is nothing but vacuous twaddle which answering these questions will expose. :shade:
Being valid does not necessarily imply "correct", because the conclusion must also be sound. In the case of meaning, the true meaning is the one intended by the author, that is what is meant. In the case of intentional ambiguity, not one nor the other interpretation, though they are each "valid" interpretations, is intended to be the correct one. Therefore we can conclude that the true meaning is that neither is the correct one.
What does it mean to be objective and material, if you may explain?
What I've been arguing is very simple: that meaning, or acts of interpretation, can't be accounted for in any type of materialist of physicalist philosophy. Of course, the materialist will always insist on being shown a non-physical thing, but there are no non-physical things.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What is matter? Nowadays it boils down to the standard model of particle physics. Note: model. It's a group of mathematical theorems that are tested against observation, nowadays mainly in the monstrously-expensive Large Hadron Collider. But, within these models, there is no ultimate physical point-particle or unit. Maybe strings, maybe branes, or some other model. The model has many gaps and conundrums, which of course I'm not qualfied to comment on the specifics of, other than that their existence is acknowledged.
As for objectivity, of course it is true that objectivity is a desireable attribute, in judges, scholars, and scientists, as well as in life generally. But just as there is no ultimate object to be found in physics, there is not ultimate objectivity in any general sense. With physics, again, there are vast and incommensurable disagreements about the meaning of physical theories, and no objective way of adjuticating each is correct. (See The Most Embarrasing Graph in Modern Physics.)
My observation about you is that you are arguing for what I call 'handrail materialism' - it gives you something to hang on to. You have this desparate need to convince everyone - but yourself, most of all - that science and objectivity are the supreme and only arbiters of truth. And as long as you cling to that, you're not actually thinking philosphically at all.
Objective : not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Material: denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit.
Thank you, continuing on with further questions.
1. What is a fact?
2. What does it mean to be "physical"?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In my case the true meaning is a dual observation: giving one piece of information when viewing from one perspective, and another when viewing from the other perspective. Take a Necker cube for example. It can be seen two ways, each a valid cube. What is "the meaning intended by the author"?
Matter is the substance of which all physical objects are composed. The density of matter is the ratio of its mass to volume and is a measure of the composition of matter and the compactness of the constituent entities in it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/matter-physics
Quoting Wayfarer
That model is a conceptual framework of human reference that informs human behaviors of interaction with the self-evident and emergents subtances in the Universe that we are ourselves composed of. Not that which whose frameworks declare it so, or not.
Quoting Wayfarer
Exactly.
Quoting Wayfarer
Constructed with matter, used to fling matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
Matter is neither defined by such a reduction, nor is such a reduction required to define matter as the substances that comprise the universe. We live in it everyday. You would know, you just used your material body to send that message.
Quoting Wayfarer
Disagreements, gaps in knowledge, or otherwise confusions about any aspects of theortical deliberations on matter, are in no way indicative of a non-material-existence, nor an argument against material-existence. One would need to develop a supported theory for specifically non-material-existence separately to make its case. Simply drawing attention to problems within the framework used to accrue undeniable data, including every single human's everyday day experience, is not an argument against said framework.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nobody said anything about "ultimate." Nor is it required. The universe is arranged in complex systems of energy, matter, quanta, space, time, nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. "Ultimate reality" is a fake term meaning nothing in such a system.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, that's what you're arguing for in the opposite direction. You're the one with zero evidence that reality isn't material, not the other way around. This is called "handrail projection."
Quoting Wayfarer
No, they are just superior methods of discovering the objective truth that was there before we developed the methods. Nothing to do with arbitration.
Quoting Wayfarer
Asserting things without evidence is not an argument. This is an assertion. What you mean to say is "in my opinion unsupported by any presentable fact..." Nohing more. You'll need to support your claims.
No problem,
Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
Physical: relating to physics or the operation of natural forces generally.
Together they make: forces of reality that have been demonstrated to be true.
Isn't that a self-contradictory position to take? If meaning and acts of interpretation are physically inexplicable, it implies the existence of a nonphysical thing, oui?
No, it implies you lack the capacity to accurately describe what you are attempting to, which would imply that you're talking about something. Nobody needs to interpret things that aren't real, that's why there's always another made up answer that works just fine for every claim of, no shit, real not-real things. You can't explain reality, but that means that my not being able to demonstrate non-reality, is stronger reason to believe in non-reality than reality, even though me simply talking to you demonstrates reality. It's nonsense.
This is a philosophy forum, I don't come here for lessons in high-school physics.
Quoting Agent Smith
Right. Hence, dualisms of various schools. That is not self-contradictory but it contradicts materialism.
This isn't an argument. This is a reduction fallacy, an ad hominem fallacy, and an appeal to stone fallacy all at once.... In response to basic facts....
This is how you signal to someone that you are not engaging anything in a philosophical manner.
She's the world's premier philosopher. And you are disengaging because your position has been defeated. And for some reason, even though you were just called out for ad hominem, you decided to do so again in whatever petty way you thought would be successful. This is because you're angry that Ayn Rand is a superior philosopher to the Buddah, or Kant, or Plato, in every single way conceivable.
If you thinking that is the price to pay for never talking to you again, I'm very happy for you to think it.
Yeah, I mean it's clear you cannot contend with empiricism and materialism. It's not that I think as much, I'm quite literally watching you run away from a discussion because of basic facts of physics.
I'm happy just knowing that the nonphysical is possible i.e. it doesn't entail a contradiction as such.
The next step would be to prove that if possible that p then necessary that p [?p [math]\rightarrow[/math] ?p] aka Modal Realism.
hehaha! :rofl:
I'm not kidding when I say that this is what my brain responds with in essence with people who deny reality in any way. It's confounding to me.
:broken: :broken: :broken:
I think what you're grappling with is how to even think about it. The way you originally phrased the question was 'are there non-physical things?' To which I think the answer is 'no'. And I think that this way of thinking about the problem goes back to Cartesian dualism, in particular. Why? Because of Descartes' 'res cogitans', which means literally 'thinking thing' which tends to make an object of the thinking subject, treating it as a 'that', as some mysterious 'stuff'. Unravelling all of that confusion is the key here in my opinion.
Yep, you could say that. I'm basically interested in broad outlines, an overall skeletal framework that gives me something to work with. Thanks for the interesting convo.
:up:
Don't be such a baby, I was just trying to piss off what's his face. Nobody is the "premier" philosopher. But, this whole "she wasn't a philosopher" business is in fact bullshit. She was a fabulous empiricist and nobody has ever presented me with an argument strong enough to deny it other than "I hate her!" propositions. I'll have any that you have if you wanna tackle the subject. I've actually got it up on a thread with Marx, Fouccault, and Kant, if you wanna take a look.
You sound like Jehova witnesses pointing people to them running away from the basic facts of God.
According to Wikipedia, the Necker cube is an ambiguous drawing, "it can be interpreted to have either the lower-left or the upper-right square as its front side". My argument is that neither of the two possible interpretations is the correct one. and that is what is intended by the artist.
The reason why I say that they cannot both be correct, is because the two interpretations contradict each other. If we say that both are correct, then we say that the drawing depicts an object which has both, the lower left, and also the upper right, as the front side. Clearly this is contradictory. And, the fact that this is wrong, is evident from the way we see it. At any time, we must see the drawing as one or the other, and we cannot see it as both, at the same time. This is also evident in the case of drawings like Wittgenstein's proposed duck-rabbit.
To avoid this contradiction, which results from the claim that both are the correct interpretation, we have to say that neither is the correct interpretation. And, this interpretation, that neither is correct, is consistent with the intent of the artist. when such ambiguity is the intent. The artist intends that both interpretations are equally possible, therefore the intention is that neither one is the correct one. Clearly, since the the artist intends that each of the two is an acceptable interpretation, then the artist intends that neither is the correct one. If we were to say that the artist actually intends that we interpret both as correct, at the same time, then the artist intends contradiction, and that would be necessarily an act of deception by the artist. So to avoid the conclusion that the artist is engaged in deception, we can say that the artist intends that neither is the correct one.
Why do you keep bringing up the word correct? The only thing correct is one gets two pieces of information from one image, like my mathematical example (a bit too complicated to relate here) - one expression yields two pieces of math information depending on how it is interpreted (seen).
This topic has run its course for me. You can have the last word. :roll:
Well. It looks like my question has been answered . . . . in the negative. Empirical Science versus Theoretical Philosophy is non-negotiable . . . for the emotional extremists among us. It's just as polarized & politicized as Western society in general.
Fortunately though, warfare in non-physical cyber-space doesn't have physical fatalities, just metaphysical casualties. So, our bloody-but-unbowed souls will survive this thread to fight again on another controversial topic. Can I at least have the last word? :joke:
Good, thank you
1. What is true, what is truth, and how do we discover or determine them?
2. What is considered to be "natural"?
"Correct" was your word.
Quoting jgill
So I tried to explain to you that the proper interpretation of intentional ambiguity would be that neither interpretation is correct, rather than your claim that contradictory interpretations could be simultaneously correct, in violation of the law of non-contradiction.
I'm not up to speed on modal theories. Are Realism & Idealism merely different modes of thinking, or modes of being? Aristotle seemed to view Potential & Actual as different modes of being. But hard-core Materialists might dismiss "Potential" & "Possible" as meaning "un-Real" and "non-Existent", hence not worth thinking about, even by feckless Philosophers. Can you expand on the application of modality to the question of Non-Physical Reality? :smile:
PS__For example, a button-pushing comeback above says :
"No, it implies you lack the capacity to accurately describe what you are attempting to, which would imply that you're talking about something."
This seems to be asserting that scientific communication should be limited to proper nouns referring to real things. That might eliminate a lot of mis-understanding caused by the casual use of metaphors, analogies, and allusions in vernacular language. But it would also forestall any discussion of Invisible or Non-Physical aspects of perceived & conceived Reality. For example, Einstein's paradigm-challenging theories were presented in two forms : Mathematics and Metaphors. How does Modal theory account for poetic Metaphors in place of prosaic Facts? :smile:
On the Problem and Promise of Metaphor Use in Science and Science Communication :
The language of science is largely metaphorical. Scientists rely on metaphor and analogy to make sense of scientific phenomena and communicate their findings to each other and to the public. Yet, despite their utility, metaphors can also constrain scientific reasoning, contribute to public misunderstandings, and, at times, inadvertently reinforce stereotypes and messages that undermine the goals of inclusive science.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5969428/
What does modality mean in research?
Modality means that there is reference to actualization of a situation in a world that is not represented as being the factual world.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276273181_The_definition_of_modality
Complementary, not contradictory.
Your example was the Necker cube. As I quoted from Wikipedia the two possible interpretations exclude each other by way of contradiction. They do not complement each other. This is generally the case with intentional ambiguity. If one interpretation is correct, it would exclude the possibility that another is correct. I don't know how an author could attach two distinct meanings to the exact same symbol without contradiction. I'll listen if you'll explain how you think it is possible.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Hey. Could you explain what you mean by "regression towards the mean"?
Yeah, the natural inclination for systems in the universe to, by the properties of universal forces and materials, approach an equilibrated state, or absolute zero in a closed state.
If one expects two pieces of information simultaneously, yes. But with a slight passage of time one perceives cube#1, then a moment later cube#2. Two different objects arising from one symbol.
I know that the same person can perceive one, then the other, but this will only incline the perceiver to wonder which is the correct interpretation. And, a number of perceivers might interpret ambiguity differently, and be inclined to discuss which is correct. So in an attempt to find out which is correct, we try to determine what was meant by the author. However, as implied by "intentional ambiguity", the author meant to be ambiguous, therefore ambiguity is what was meant, and this implies no correct interpretation.
The issue is to absolve the author from the charge of deception. That is what I've been describing. We can say that the author intended contradictory interpretations, but that constitutes deception. I also believe that if the author intended the symbol to mean one thing at one moment, and another thing at another moment, this would also constitute deception because the author provides no indication as to when we're supposed to interpret which. So I do not believe the author can be absolved from blame in this way. The only way which I've been able to find, to justify the intentional use of ambiguity, is to recognize that the author's intention is something completely different from cube#1 or cube #2. Therefore, what is symbolized by the drawing (the meaning of it) cannot be interpreted as cube#1 nor cube#2, nor can we say that it is both, as the author is showing to us, something completely different from cube#1 and cube #2. What the author is showing to us is ambiguity, hence the intent is to be ambiguous, and what is meant, or the meaning itself, is ambiguous. And "ambiguous" implies something completely different from cube#1, or cube#2, or both, it is none of the above.
The subject is not insignificant, because intentional ambiguity is much more common than many people would expect, and to identify it takes experience. We find an abundance of it in Wittgenstein for example, and the trend is for interpreters to argue 'my interpretation is the correct interpretation'. And the problem is that we can argue endlessly 'the correct interpretation', and diligently apply principles in an attempt to determine 'the correct interpretation', without recognizing that this is a fruitless process because there is no correct interpretation. And to say that there is a multitude of correct interpretations does not solve the problem, it just creates another problem, because they contradict each other, and it's impossible for the author to intend contradictory things.
Furthermore, 'a multitude of correct interpretations' doesn't accurately describe what the author is doing with intentional ambiguity, and that's why 'no correct interpretation" is a much better description. Understanding intentional interpretation as 'no correct interpretation' gives us a far better approach to the true nature of meaning, by revealing the open ended aspect of "meaning". What I mean by "open ended aspect", is the way that the perceiver creates meaning for an encountered symbol which was not intended by the author. From this perspective we see that experience, training, education, and convention, act to put boundaries to this creative aspect of the mind. So when a person encounters a bunch of symbols, one's mind will create a meaning, an interpretation of the pattern of symbols, which is conditioned by one's experience. Your past experience has created boundaries as to where your mind can go with your interpretation. When there is words which you are not too familiar with, your boundaries may be too narrow, or too broad, and the result is misunderstanding what was meant. From this perspective meaning is inherently imprecise.
[math]F=\frac{tK}{a-\left( a-\frac{tK}{r} \right)}[/math], [math]b=a-\frac{tK}{r}[/math] provide information about b - something called a bifurcation - but when reduced to lowest terms using very simple algebra all that is left is [math]F=r[/math], which is also relevant information about F. A kind of double entendre I suppose, or maybe something much more elementary. Your suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks, jgill. As you may know, I am not into interpretations of mathematical symbols and formulations, having rejected such dogmatism in high school (smoked too much weed). I've had enough difficulty interpreting English as it is.
From my simple mind, I would say that in the one interpretation, you treat "b" as an undefined symbol, an unknown, and you resolve to determine the unknown, so it gives you "information about b". In the other interpretation you treat "b" as a known, a defined operation (or some such thing) called a bifurcation, and so you apply that rule, the bifurcation, resulting in "F=r". The issue then is whether the meaning of "b" is truly defined in the applied algebra, or does the algebra just use a method to dissolve the issue.
Yeah, it's different from what you describe. I gave your F a fair amount of thought. If we set the nominator 1 and write F=1/(a-(a-1/r)) (=r), what have we done with r? Say r=10. We can take a=1. This gives 1 and 9/10. Is that the bi in bifurcation? I can't see a parabole, as you write.
Being familiar with some of my posts, you probably already have a good idea of what I would say about this proposal. The idea of one point becoming two points, without a clearly defined division (division of a point appearing to be impossible), is simple contradiction, in the first place.
Here's a link to the short note. This is a technical subject and probably not appropriate for TPF. If there are other questions it's best if they come through messaging.
What's philosophical is the idea of a dimensionless point producing an offspring. This happens as the value of t goes from 0 to 1. Like b(t) = a(1+t).
That's so incoherent it's actually funny.
:cool:
(you can see this happening in the first note I linked) :wink:
Cool stuff! Especially the arrow pictures are telling. And the light brown picture is intriguing! All from iterating MT? Are the centers in these arrow fields the two points from one?
I think aliens, actually, prove scientific materialism false. How can someone prove everyone else is not an alien without common sense. You can't get this knowledge from science. Everything has to be thought out by a materialism and no faith can save them unless a more mystical side of reality is considered (Spinoza, Hegel, ect)
In the context of this thread, is a zero-dimension point considered to be Real or Ideal, Physical or non-Physical? As a philosophical or mathematical thought-experiment, the notion of "nothing producing something" might be a valid ideal concept. But as a scientific observation it might be as unrealistic as a vacuum fluctuation popping a particle of matter into existence.
As I understand it, a Virtual Particle is equivalent to a dimensionless point. It works mathematically, but does it exist in reality? And that raises the old conundrum : "is mathematics real or invented?" My question is serious, because the answer could shed some light on the OP topic. :smile:
Is math invented or discovered? :
Mathematics is an intricate fusion of inventions and discoveries. Concepts are generally invented, and even though all the correct relations among them existed before their discovery, humans still chose which ones to study. ___Mario Livio, theoretical astrophysicist
https://www.sfu.ca/~rpyke/cafe/livio.pdf
Q : are "correct relations" equivalent to logical relationships?
Are virtual particles really constantly popping in and out of existence? Or are they merely a mathematical bookkeeping device for quantum mechanics? :
Virtual particles are indeed real particles. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particles in all possible ways. These predictions are very well understood and tested. ___Gordon Kane, theoretical physicist
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/
I would say a zdp is both real and ideal, but not physically real. As for vps, they are excitations of the underlying quantum fields, so perhaps zdps are as well.
It's all Greek to me. I just try to do the math. :cool:
A vacuum fluctuation can be seen as an eternal presence of a particle in the vacuum. It oscillates in time with a non-fixed energy-momentum relation ([math]E^2-p^2=m^2[/math]). Only a real particle or superstrong gravity with an horizon can promote it to a real status. So it's not the vacuum that creates but the non-vacuum or its curvature.
A particle doesn't change continuously into other particles. Rather, it couples with the omnipresent field of virtual particles, by means of it charge. So the electron interacts with other electrons by interacting with the virtual photon field between them. And this virtual photon field can, on its turn, interact with virtual electrons which again can couple to photons. Zillions of couplings are involved in an interaction between two electrons. Can you imagine? All at the same time.
What is this concept of "a particle in the vacuum"? Is it a vacuum, which is not really a vacuum because there is something there, which must be a particle, but it's not really a particle because it has no location? So it's not really a vacuum, nor is there a particle, just convenient terms.
That's coming close to what I was getting at. The linked quote below indicates that a Virtual Particle is treated as-if it's "Real", but it doesn't add your qualification : "but not physically real". So my question, is "in what sense is a non-physical object Real?. Is that faux reality an equivocation?
Since Quantum Fields consist of dimensionless-points-in-space, they are "real" only in the sense that they have the Potential to produce physical particles. So, it seems that a mathematically-defined Field is deemed capable of creating mathematical (virtual ; un-real?) particles from nothing-but-numbers. Yet, Aristotle contrasted "Potential" with "Actual". So, you could say that the statistical-possibility-for-future-existence "exists" only as the hypothetical power to create Actual (now) particles from mathematical Probability (predictability). Ouch! I grok what you mean by "it's Greek to me".
I understand "as-if" to mean "hypothetically" or "metaphorically". As you noted, and as the VP definition below indicates, such conceptual objects are "not physically real". But isn't it misleading to label such abstract notions as "real". When I use the philosophical terms "Ideal" or "Meta-Physical" for such common conceptual abstractions as "Zero" & "infinity", I get protests for employing a religious term, even though I'm [s]not[/s] using it in a strictly philosophical context. [edited to strike out "not"]
Therefore, I've been searching for a viable alternative term to mean "non-physical reality". "Virtual" and "Essential" do indeed refer to abstractions, such as " "excellence, potency, efficacy". Even "Mathematical" or "Statistical" refer to non-physical or not-yet-actual abstractions. But they have traditional non-philosophical scientific currency. So, I guess the "real" question could be expressed as, for example : A> "Is Mathematics Real, or is it Metaphysical, in the sense defined below?" or B> "does a Virtual Particle have physical form?" How can we distinguish between Physical Reality and Virtual Reality? Is it OK for philosophers to postulate in terms of "non-physical Ideality", or "beyond-physical-reality"? :brow:
Is a Virtual Particle Real ? :
[i]Compared to actual particles — It is not. "Real particles" are better understood to be excitations of the underlying quantum fields. . . . .
Since it is possible to perform quantum field theory calculations completely absent virtual particles being referenced in the math used, as seen in lattice field theory, then it is believed virtual particles are simply a mathematical tool.[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle
What keeps space empty? :
Perfectly "empty" space will always have vacuum energy, the Higgs field, and spacetime curvature.
https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2012/12/20/what-keeps-space-empty/
Q : do those mathematical entities actually occupy space?
Aristotle describes potentiality and actuality, or potency and action, as one of several distinctions between things that exist or do not exist. In a sense, a thing that exists potentially does not exist, but the potential does exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality
As-If Fallacy :
Offering a poorly supported claim about what might have happened in the past or future, if (the hypothetical part) circumstances or conditions were different. The fallacy also entails treating future hypothetical situations as if they are fact.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Hypothesis-Contrary-to-Fact
Virtual :
The meaning "being something in essence or effect, though not actually or in fact"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/virtual
Metaphysical : adjective. without material form or substance.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/metaphysical
You could say that the point signifies something. So it's similar to when some one draws a map, and marks a point to signify a city. The point signifies something, but what it signifies does not at all resemble a point. The spacetime is mapped and the designated points signify something, an aspect of that which is being mapped
A virtual particle just runs around in time with disentangled energy and momentum (off-shell). On all paths at once (or oscillating between all fast). Time does not go forwards nor backwards for them. They are time, they are vacuum. No, correction. The can serve as timekeepers. As clocks that themselves have no temporal direction.
If you understand what the fields stand for, it turns out that the particle shows up again. Quantum fields are
operator valued distributions. These operators operate on a product of Hilbert spaces, that is Fock space. They create or destroy particle wavefunctions (or wavefunctionals), which add up to represent all particle states with definite energy and momentum, meaning that free particles are not moving on one fixed path but many at once, or shifting between them rapidly.
The vision of a point particle moving in space is a popular image of such excitation, ad is the image of a particle pair appearing and disappearing, which in reality is one particle always being there.
I would alter this slightly by saying the correct relations among them come into existence when the concepts do. Then these are sought out.
Yes. An immaterial grid-point in empty space is like the symbol "X" (unknown) which serves as a stand-in for a real number, that is un-realized until calculated. I assume that, for a physicist, defining a Virtual Particle as a mathematical point, is essentially an ellipsis, a blank to be filled-in at a later date. So it points toward something imaginary, that could be realized, but not yet physically real.
Using Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature terminology, a non-dimensional point on a Quantum Field grid is "Absential". But would I be understood, if instead of labeling a non-physical concept as "Meta-Physical", I called it "Absential"? For example, "the general, non-specific philosophical notion of 'Being' is Absential" ; a potential existence at a point in space to be specified later". Perhaps, "non-being" would be, not only non-physical, but also non-potential, or impossible.
I'm sorry, but I'm confusing myself with the limitations of common language, which is necessarily Materialistic, and forces abstract concepts, like "LOGOS" and "Logic", to be expressed in physical metaphors or analogies. That's why the term "Meta-Physical" seems to me more concise & intuitive : implying something non-physical, yet meaningful. It's too bad, such a useful comparative term has acquired a negative association with flesh-less Spirits & Ghosts, instead of with matter-less Ideas & Abstractions. :smile:
Ellipsis :
[i]1. the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues
2. a set of dots indicating an omission.[/i].
Absential :
[i]1. the state of a thing not yet realized
2. un-realized potential[/i]
Virtual particles are as real as real particles. They have space-pervading presence, and are not moving forward nor backward in time. They are just circulating, oscillating, fluctuating in time. They do this with a momentum and energy that are independent of one another, so they can have energy with zero momentum, momentum without energy, or, in short, any momentum value combined with any energy. Its mathematically described by a propagator propagating a combination of all possible free particles with all possible momenta and energies (or positions and times). It's this "glue", this "condensate" charged particles couple to when interacting. So an interaction is not by an the exchange, the emission and absorption of virtual particles, as often read in popular treatments (and causing a lot of confusion), but by coupling to them. The same popular writings say that the vacuum is filled with particle pairs popping in and out of existence. There are no pairs involved. Only single particles. :smile:
If so, why give one of them an un-real name? I'm aware that mathematical theorists treat "Virtual" Particles as-if they are real. But the differentiating name they pinned on them belies their reality from a common sense perspective. This is just one of many paradoxes emanating from the Pandora's Box of quantum science. They make our world seem to be an mirage of many delusions, as contrasted with the mundane Actual Reality of classical science. Biologists & Chemists are still mostly working in the old-fashioned Real world. But Physicists seem to be exploring a sci-fi fantasy realm of parallel Realities.
Ironically, Aristotle made the same real/unreal distinction 2500 years ago, when he defined the meanings of "Actual" and "Potential". So, which is it : is the "Real" world Potential or Actual or both? As a non-mathematical layman, I have been forced to punt on that either/or question, and to view paradoxical reality in terms of the BothAnd Principle. Reality is a system of systems, but only the more familiar material aspects seem really Real, and the immaterial, non-physical parts seem weird, or surreal, or imaginary. :gasp:
Virtual :
[i]1. almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition.
2. not physically existing as such . . .[/i]
Sir Roger Penrose details three different kinds of reality :
The three levels are Proto Energy which is energy as pure vibration, Proto TimeSpace where space and time become a single point looping with no direction, and Proto Matter where matter is infinite potentialities.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/kbnkqx/explore-the-subatomic-world-of-energy-fields-in-virtual-reality
The Paradox of Reality :
It was interesting to read great scientific minds like Prof Roger Penrose grapple with the apparent paradox of reality. . . . . Objective, impersonal reality, untainted by private sensation, must ever remain an inference and construct, however successfully these may seem to approximate to that reality. . . . We mortals are heir to illusion...but at least we may strive to avoid delusion.
https://ronaldtkwong.com/news/TheParadoxofReality.html
Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Note -- Apparently, our world is neither Actual nor Potential, but both simultaneously. However, the Actual stuff of reality is physical, while the Potential essence of reality of non-physical (mathematical, ideal, meta-physical, etc.). So, Physical Reality is merely the sensory part of the whole world, and Virtual Reality is the imaginary or ideal aspect of the world system.
Quoting EugeneW
Yes, but energy-without-momentum is what we know as Potential energy, as contrasted with the Kinetic (or Actual) energy of moving matter. For example a typical car battery has 12 volts of Potential, but when no current is flowing there is no Actual physical work being done. That reminds me of the storage box used by the Ghost Hunters to trap poltergeists so they can do no harm. :joke:
Can you have energy but no momentum?
Yes, something can have energy without having momentum. Momentum is defined as the mass of an object times its velocity. Even in a rest state, when momentum is zero, Body still has potential energy, U=mgh (where, m= mass of body). Hence, it is possible to have energy without having momentum.
https://www.quora.com/Can-something-have-energy-without-having-momentum
Well, they have unreal properties. Or rather, non-intuitive properties. Like energy (not potential) without momentum and momentum without energy. Off-shell, that is. But beside that, they are as real as real particles (which are on-shell). Iif a virtual particle had fixed a momentum energy relation it would be a real particle. The vacuum is filled with these particles. Why should a field fluctuation be less real than an excitation? If one wants to call virtual particles unreal, then so are real particles.
That is the problem with "mass". It's just not at all understood by physicists. Momentum is the product of mass and velocity. But then we have "energy" which could be velocity without mass, hence velocity with no momentum. If there is no mass which is moving, then what is the velocity attributed to? What a mess physicists have found themselves in, due to the adaptation of speculative theories which are not grounded in sound ontology.
Maybe all particles are basically massless. Maybe them interacting renders mass. Massless virtual photons (a closed propagator line in a Feynman diagram, a "bubble") can have energy without momentum and momentum without energy, and in between. They can even have negative energies and momenta. Charged real fields interact by coupling to the virtual photon field (which can interact with virtual charged fields, which can couple to virtual photons, etc...), which adjusts its energies and momenta to the interaction.
This would be very strange, because "interactions" are explained in terms of the fundamental property of mass, inertia, according to Newton's first law. Now you are proposing a type of "interaction" which is completely free from Newton's first law. This would mean "interactions" involving no mass, the consequences of which, mass and its primary feature inertia, are created from nothing ("nothing" being whatever things that are not subject to Newton's first law).
Yes. But that paradoxical description reminds me of the bible verse : "by their fruits ye shall know them". In the case of sub-atomic particles -- especially Virtual particles -- we only know them by their properties. So, if their properties are "unreal" or "non-intuitive", why call them "real". That seems to undermine our commonsense understanding of Reality. I suspect that they are treated as-if real, because the logical alternative label would be "Ideal". And that name could imply a ghostly figment of imagination. Hence not kosher for a scientific concept.
However, I prefer to think of Ideal Concepts in terms of Information Theory. Not just Shannon's reductive definition of empty carriers of abstract data, but the more general notion of "Information" as meaning in a mind. From that perspective, a Virtual Particle would be the mathematical definition of a possible thing in terms of Potential physical properties. But "possibility" is not a physical state, it's a mental inference. And I'm trying to make sense of that not-quite physical state as a philosophical concept.
It seems that a Virtual Particle exists only in a statistical sense, as a fractional or uncertain reality : e.g. 50% probability of being detected under specified conditions. In more vernacular terms, VP exists as a prediction of a future state. In it's current un-real state, it is not measurable. So, I conclude that VP exists only as an idea in the mind of a mathematician. And it's that Ideal state that I'm trying to label as "non-physical reality". The idea of VP certainly exists in our world, but it has no physical properties. What would you call that non-physical Mental kind of existence? :smile:
What is Information? :
Information is stimuli that has meaning in some context for its receiver.
https://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com › definition › infor...
Probability is a mathematical language used to discuss uncertain events and probability plays a key role in statistics.
https://www.stat.uci.edu/what-is-statistics/
Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
2. Some modern mathematicians find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Mathematical platonism is any metaphysical account of mathematics that implies mathematical entities exist, that they are abstract, and that they are independent of all our rational activities.
https://iep.utm.edu/mathplat/
Well, if a number of massless particles form a bound state, you have concentrated energy, i.e. mass.
I think that to properly interact, real particles have to tap into the pool (by means of their charge) of potential changes in motion. Because the motions involved are infinite the virtual pool has to deliver infinite possibilities of momenta and energy (or positions and times). Virtual particles encompass all energies and momenta needed for the interaction at hand. :smile:
I don't understand your use of "momenta". Momentum requires mass. All these virtual particles with infinite possibilities, doesn't produce any mass.
Virtual photons can transfer momentum and energy. Independently (not on mass shell).
Yes, so it seems. But their energy is their momentum. A virtual photon can have independent values of both though. That's why it's called virtual.
I found that statement puzzling. But, I'm not qualified to comment on such technicalities that are way over my head. So, I Googled the first phrase above, and got this article on various "virtual" questions. It shows a Feynman diagram of a "a virtual photon, which transfers momentum from one to the other." Yet that "tidy" explanation is followed by a "but" clause.
The impression I got was that Actual particles act like bullets (to transmit momentum), but Virtual particles seem to transfer momentum in some other manner. The physical bullet metaphor is intuitive, but the non-physical non-bullet analogy is a mystery to me. It implies that a VP is like a bullet, except when it's not. You seem to be more knowledgeable on VP topics. Can you elucidate? :smile:
Some Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Particles :
This is a seemingly tidy explanation. Forces don't happen because of any sort of action at a distance, they happen because of virtual particles that spew out of things and hit other things, knocking them around. But this is misleading. Virtual particles are really not just like classical bullets.
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/virtual_particles.html
Energy, Momentum and Mass-Shell :
Let us state here clearly, to avoid confusion, that when we speak of the mass of a particle we always mean the mass measured when the particle is at rest, not the apparent mass when it moves at high energy.
http://www.hep.fsu.edu/~wahl/artic/physics/VeltmanPartphys/9789812563026_0005.pdf
Q--- Does a Virtual Particle have rest mass?
Quoting Agent Smith
When you say "there are no actual infinities" I assume you mean that we space-time humans have no sensory experience of unboundedness. Everything in our evolving world is finite & temporary. That's why the notion of spacelessness & timelessness seemed absurd to early philosophers. However, as a useful mathematical concept, we no longer have a problem with the idea of Infinity, or of Zero : nothingness.
Similar absurd, but serviceable, ideas are also encountered in Quantum Theory. For example, a Virtual Particle can be substituted for a Real Particle in calculations. So, some physicists will confidently assert that a VP is just as "real" as an ordinary particle. I guess they mean that a non-physical bit of mind-stuff is mathematically interchangeable with a physical speck of matter. Yet, they may not accept some non-mathematical philosophical notions (e.g. metaphors) as equivalent, in a thought experiment, to a physical object.
"Infinity" and "Virtual Particle" are both abstract non-physical mental metaphors serving as a stand-in for Real Things. Likewise, Plato's notion of "Forms", somehow existing in an Ideal Realm, is metaphorical. It's useful as a philosophical tool for understanding the difference between Potential Perfection and Actual Imperfection. But, in what sense does an Idea exist? It's like Potential Voltage of a battery, impotent until put into circulation, i.e. a circuit from Possible to Actual. The notion of "Eternal Forms" may seem non-sensical, unless you take the concept of Potential seriously.
That's why Materialists think, "if it's not physical, it's literally inconsequential". But they seem to forget the power of Potential. An idea locked in a mind, may be useless. But once in circulation, as a Meme, an idea (whose time has come) may be more powerful than Putin's armies. Am I correct, in assuming that you had something like that in mind by labeling the "idea of infinity" as "non-physical"? "Infinity" is an unrealized Platonic Form, which serves as a repository of Potential for "Time", which has not always existed. :smile:
PS___Sorry, because of the on-going "Non-Physical" thread, I may have gone-off your un-bounded map in a different direction. :wink:
“Nothing else in the world…not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo,
The Absurdity of Infinity :
don’t let anyone tell you that mathematics models the real world exactly, or is an empirical science, or, at its core, is an “applied” subject. It simply isn’t, and never will be.
https://wanderingmathematician.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/the-absurdity-of-infinity/
THE CASE AGAINST INFINITY :
[i]mathematicians should abandon the use of infinity in making calculations in favor of a
more logically consistent alternative. . . . Fortunately, such a concept is available to us—a concept called indefiniteness.[/i]
https://philpapers.org/archive/SEWTCA
CYCLIC TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BEGININGLESS & ENDLESS INFINITY
Try considering "infinity" in this way Gnomon. It is a principle established for the purpose of allowing us to measure anything, or everything. There can be no quantity greater than what we can count, because we allow the numbers to continue indefinitely. Further, any quality which can be quantified, such as spatial extension, size, will be measurable, because we allow this principle, that numbers can extend beyond any physical thing. Therefore any, and every physical thing is deemed as measurable, because of this principle, numbers are infinite.
Now in modern mathematics, axioms have been produced which attempt to make infinity itself something which can be measured. But since "infinite" is correctly attributed to the tool by which we measure, allowing anything and everything to be measurable, and we now make it a thing being measured, we effectively create a thing which cannot be measured, infinity itself. Infinity is something which the mathematical axioms pretend to measure, but which really cannot be measured (this is the sophistry of the mathemagjicians).
That infinity cannot be measured is demonstrable logically. The first proposed infinite measuring system, the natural numbers for example, would require a larger infinite measuring system, to measure it. This would thwart the first infinite measuring system's capacity to measure anything, with the proposition that there is something larger, which by definition, it cannot measure, i.e. the system larger than the infinite system, proposed as the means to measure the infinite system. Now the meaning and purpose of "infinite", as the tool which can measure anything, is lost, because we now assume that the infinite numbers cannot measure everything, because there is something bigger which measures it.
This produces the principle that there is always something bigger than the measuring system applied, something which cannot be measured by that measuring system, a bigger measuring system, and our measuring capacity to measure everything, has been thwarted. We have posited the principle that our measuring system is not big enough, by allowing that it can, itself, be measured by a bigger system. So this is a new feature of any measuring system, subject to that axiom, it can be measured by a bigger system. Therefore we always have to come up with a new system to measure the last. So there is always a need to produce bigger and bigger infinities in an attempt to measure everything, and we proceed toward an infinite regress of larger and larger infinities, measuring systems. In reality, the definition of "infinite" has been altered, to switch it from a principle which allows us to measure anything, to make it something which can be measured, when we haven't provided ourselves with the tool to measure it. And of course this is self-defeating.
It is the seed that springs forth physical reality
It is the place that people dwell when they stress about things or have ideas about things
It is the place where the imagination is God and nothing is more powerful than it.
What's your avatar? I love it!
In that sense, "Infinity" may be used in a similar manner to "Googolplex", or my tongue-in-cheek usage of "Zillions". :joke:
A googolplex is the number 10googol, or equivalently, 10(10100) or 1010,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 .
Zillions :
an extremely large number of people or things.
I just can't shake the oxymoronic sense of the term "non-physical reality" proposed in the OP, and therefore the 6 pages of mostly incoherent gibberish which has followed.
I am in love with Susan. Susan is in love with me. Consequent to our love, we do a lot of things in physical reality, many of which we would never do in physical reality should we lack love.
To me the existence of non-physical real things is proven by their causal links to physical reality. And it is a two-way causation: physical reality potentially causes changes in non-physical reality, and non-physical reality potentially causes changes in physical reality.
It's oxymoronic and gibberish only when you speak a language which uses the word reality as a synonym for physical world. Reality contains more than what physics tells us though. The non-psychal reality is an epiphenomenon. It's contingent to or emerging from magic reality. If I love Suzan, where is the physical reality of that feeling. It's a wise comment made by forum member godmustbeanatheist (if there are more gods they might be theists in love).
Maybe. How do you know this to be the case?
I'm part of reality. Wtf are D-Kers? Is it a D-cherry?
I have searched for lil D-ker. Is it Crosby?
(Power set)
Embedded in the rationals embedded in the reals. Not so much going bigger above than counting more points between natural numbers.
But your analysis is interesting.
It's my opinion. There is a fundamental needlessness when mathematics employs multiple infinities. We might say that a thing could be infinite in this respect, and infinite in another respect, but quantitative is one category, so there is really no need for numerous quantitative infinities.
For example, if there is an infinite number of points between any two points, then why would there be a need for another infinite number of points between each one of those points between the two points. That's basic redundancy. And to say that the second bunch of infinities, the infinity of infinities, is somehow different from the first infinity, really makes no sense.
What is the definition of a causal relationship in these definitions?
Nonsubjectivity as a criteria would appear to make many theories in quantum foundations non-physical. But it certainly seems the physical can't be both local and objective due to expirments in Bell Inequalities. For example: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw9832
It's the question if this is the case.
In QM by "observer" I understand measurement apparatus (re: interaction of different systems).and not "consciousness"..
Then you understand it wrongly. That's exactly what not is meant. An observer is always conscious. An apparatus stays in superposition till an observer looks at it.
so on ... ad infinitum? :roll:
Exactly! Wigner's friend and all that. Only hidden variables offer a realistic escape. Objective collapse.
I even answered it for you 180booze! Hidden variables to stop the regress and send it backwards.
Quoting EugeneW
Gremlins & poltergeists! :monkey: :lol:
Space! What else? Could harbor Gremlins...
Haha! He couldn't find his shaving gel. Space is hard to shave....
That's not the case with mathematics. The axioms are not produced with the intent of representing 'what is the case'. And the ones which get accepted are the ones which prove to be useful. So they are produced by imagination, and accepted by pragmaticism, and there is no question of if what they say is the case.
There are some versions where conciousness does cause wave function collapse, or there is Quantum Bayesianism, which shifts the ground to conciousness, but in general you are correct.
However, the relevance of conciousness is not the part that makes objective measurements impossible. If you attempt to set up clever experiments to measure the same thing from different places, and the measurement of the same physical entity changes by observation point in ways not related to the effects of your measurements on the entity (Bell inequalities and variants are normally used to test this sort of thing), you can show mathematically that:
1. No hidden variables can account for the correlations of entangled entities unless those hidden variables are non-local (e.g., Bohm, Pilot Wave Theories, etc., but these theories imply hyper determinism and no free choice in what is measured to begin with). Only recently have experiments shown that non-locality cannot be simply faster than light, its speed must be infinite, something that shows up in the formalism; or
2. The theory can be local if you follow Everett and don't assume wave function collapse (or decoherence in normal terms). This actually is the straight forward interpretation of Schrodinger's Equation. The wave function should persist. The introduction of collapse was always ad-hoc, essentially a philosophical addition that was a common sense take on what "must happen," to have observations "make sense." It's an addition highly influenced by Mach and the birth of logical positivism around the time, and so is also a theory where subjectivity is absolutely essential. That is, in Bohr's interpretations, it is meaningless to even talk of things not observed by an observer.
But if you assume this may be dogma, and that there is no arbitrary split between macro and micro scales, then observers, be they photoreceptors or conciousness, should just get entangled with what they observer. So all events happen. The main argument against this line isn't based on the formalism, but that "we don't split, we don't observe two outcomes."
That is exactly what the equation and formalism predicts though. Many Worlds variants are seen as the "cooky ones," but actually are removing ad hoc additions based on classical bias, retain locality, and remain realist.
Arguments against Many Worlds from common sense were countered by Everett by comparisons to the claim that "the Earth was once thought to be the center of the universe because we didn't "feel" it move," but this was dogma. And indeed, for a long time, Ptolemaic astronomy continued to predict many events better than Copernican astronomy, but sticking with the former and attempting to prove it eventually proved it to be the better theory, so lack of observation to fully support these variants today doesn't necissarily mean they are wrong. Indeed, the same sorts of issues show up in all interpretations, but with more ad hoc explanation to fit human preconceptions of what "must be the case "
However, in more recent experiments, it begins to appear that different observers will see an "objectively" different in ways that ditching locality and free choice won't explain. Ironically, Everett's universal wave function still gets around this issue, maintaining realism and locality, but at the cost of things that don't happen, happening in other worlds.
Aside from this issue, modal interpretations introduce things that "may happen," as physical entities. However, I don't know if these dynamical entities are likely to hit your bar for being causal, although obviously they can be modeled.
The whole concept of causality, as commonly conceived, also needs a twist when there is non-local, infinite speed causality that does not, to my knowledge, suppose a gauge field or any "entanglement boson."
Information centric theories deal with this causal issue neatly and we get decoherence instead of the ad hoc collapse, but at the cost of making reality essentially informational. While this has the benefit of possibly explaining conciousness and subjectivity emerging, it comes at the cost of objective frames being nonsense, information is always relational between systems.
Which means non-local hidden variables are possible. Why should infinite lightspeed be a problem? As long as no information is propagated this should be no problem. I think hidden variables is the only viable theory in which you can embed QM. No measurement problem, no many worlds, only advantages. Why is hyperdeterminism a problem? The will needs determination to be free. We are not determined by deterministic processes. We are the process.
So you can build up a, say, 1d continuum with aleph1 0d points?
That's the question. What if it's determined to measure different aspects of a piece of reality, like looking at a hologram from various angles (Bohm)?
See, I always thought the Many Worlds Interpretation sounded bonkers, but have come around on it. I didn't understand the formalism of the Schrodinger equation, (I still don't lol), but I recently read a book on quantum foundations, which led me to a bunch of journal articles and eventuality to actually opening this textbook I bought a long time ago, and feel like I sort of get it now. This is turn made me appreciate it a lot more.
There doesn't seem to be as much in the way of good reasons, aside from intuition, to be assuming wave function collapse. When we open Schrodinger's box, we should be getting entangled with the simultaneously dead and alive cat. In this view, decoherence would represent extremely high levels of correlation that make apparent quantum behavior at larger scales essentially nearly infinitely unlikely.
The problems I still see are:
1. If we're part of a universal wave function, why do we still observe quantum entanglement? This is probably a lack of understanding on my part but it seems like a regress of wave functions within wave functions.
2. This interpretation seems to create all sorts of problems for objectivity too. Other "worlds" are real, physical entities, but we can observe then or measure them, and they don't have causal relationships "for us." They can only be modeled. I know there are some proposed ways to test MWI but I don't fully understand them. It seems like much of reality would then be inaccessible however.
MWI is as bonkers as the guy who invented it. Can't wrap my head around the fact that people have faith in such a weird fantasy. And it doesn't even resolve what its made for. Maintaining unitary evolution. The branching points introduce the same weirdness as the so-called problem it tries to get rid of. The only viable interpretation is the objective collapse interpretation, equivalent to hidden variables.
Why should the cat be entangled with the poison device in the first place? If the device is a vial with poison connected to a Geiger counter, the cat will simply die when the poison is released by a count and stay alive if not. Regardless if we look or make a measurement. It's the standard interpretation (fundamental probability without an underlying mechanism as in the throwing of a die) that causes this mayhem.
It's far less "bonkers" than ideas like "god" or "life after life" or "substance dualism" and those who believe in such woo-of-the-gaps nonsense.
Well, gods or a life after this life (or before this life) is something which I can imagine at least, and if considered closer the only logical conclusion, if all gaps are closed. If a woo of the gaps is to be considered, I'd go for the MWI...
:cool:
Because that's how Schrodinger's Equation works. You don't get multiple waves interacting, you get a single wave function describing the system.
Objective collapse theories have certainly been useful in clarifying many things about QM, but there are a number of things that do not particularly recommend them.
They don't work with relativity, they don't conserve energy, and they don't do one of the jobs their creators had in mind for them, describing "what is really happening," when we get information about quantum states.
Another difficulty is determining when spontaneous collapse should be occuring. Macroscopic drumheads have been entangled, a molocule of over 2,000 atoms has been entangled, a cloud of 15 trillion atoms has been entangled. This seems like it could be a death blow to GRW (TEQ in Europe is testing similar things so more information should be coming). The question becomes, "where is the demarcation where objective collapse should be occuring?" Current objective answers don't seem to be holding up. As technology improves, it seems more and more like the size at which we can detect quantum activity will keep increasing.How is the amplification mechanism supposed to account for these macroscopic quantum states though?
Second, I'm not totally sure how it is supposed to deal with decoherence. If the wave function is a measure of a particle's mass, smeared out across infinite space, how does this mass become more local on a gradient? This seems to assume the mass is relocating faster than light, or non-locally, but perhaps I misunderstand it. This shift also means energy is increasing, which is why it violates conservation.
More problematic, experiments on consecutive quantum measurements of a system don't give us a view of collapse as representative of a Markov chain. That is, information about prior states isn't vanishing as in conventional collapse. So, for objective collapse versions following to old model, this seems to be another blow (more so for Copenhagen).
Diosi-Penrose objective collapse was recently falsified by experiment, so at least that form of a gravity dependent mechanism seems out.
Non-local hidden variable theories offer the same outcomes as standard interpretations. Interactions between particles offer the key to collapse and entanglement. The cat in the cage is entangled wìth the device of doom not with a state being alive and one being dead. The cat enters the cage alive, and the device is in a superposition. If there is any kind of interaction in the device, internal or with an external source, there is a collapse which might kill the cat or not. In hidden variable theory, the cat, or the past of the Earth, simply are not in superposition states until measured.
I think you are mixing up your concepts here. Things that are observed are not in superposition, they have distinct values. Superposition is pre- observation, including in Objective Collapse. Only in MWI do observed particles remain in superposition.
Second, Objective Collapse does predict different outcomes from QM. That is what makes it exciting, different forms should be testable in the fairly near future. GRW has already been tested, it just happened to be falsified by the results. You may be thinking of Pilot Wave theory, which does not differ in its predictions.
Objective collapse also has nothing to do with concious observers.
The problem of concious observers seems unfalsifiable and unprovable. To know the results of any experiment requires someone to see the read outs of the test. However, this problem isn't unique to QM, it's true of all empircism.
On a related note, there is an argument to be made here that physicalism is tying itself into knots throwing ad hoc explanations of the apparent absence of an objective reality independent of observation (i.e. one observers observation's change what another will observe) at the wall hoping something sticks. However, if idealist ontologies have a leg up in this arena, they still seem to have a problem with explaining why the extrinsic mental representations of concious organisms take the forms they do, so they have their own major problems even if they can deal with QM and the Hard Problem more clearly.
Since recent experiments have left even less doubt of this "quantum weirdness," it seems now that the world is non-local and not objective. This isn't a problem for scientific inquiry, but it does show the relevance of Humple's Dilemma.
Before the observation they are in superposition. Then the observation project the state on one of the eigenstates. The measurement of position collapse the wavefunction to a limited domain in space. In the hidden variable picture this collapse is a true, non-mathematical non-local happening. There are experiments planned to discern between the classical standard approach and this hidden variable theory. They give tiny empirical differences but modern equipment can't measure these differences yet and it's very expensive.
The cat in the cage is never in a superposition with the poison device. This happens only in the standard interpretation.
:smile:
:up: What ought to be the case! Math is an invention! Felicific calculus! Kind courtesy of Jeremy Bentham (presently mummified in University College London). All that's needed now is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Note: Read backwards/forwards, I fail to recall. Ask an expert (on Quora).