Does Everything Really Flow? Is Becoming an Illusion?
Hello, new here, and I am also starting out as a philosophy blogger. We have heard the philosophy that everything flows [eg, Heraclitus]. But, when 'this' becomes 'that,' it traverses something in between, such as when the color yellow becomes red it traverses orange. And whatever is traversed is not the end-point of that becoming, by definition. So, how do we attribute existence to that traversed thing, ie, in our example, the orange between the yellow and the red? I think of that traversed thing as not so much elusive, in the more obvious way that the color blue is elusive in the becoming of yellow to red. Rather, I think it is fragile, it is broken up and annihilated in the flow of becoming. But the problem then is that if yellow first becomes orange, which is then broken up, then what really becomes red? In more broader terms, if the in-between thing cannot participate in the flow of becoming because it is so fragile, then how does the end-thing result? This idea of fragility is why I have come to think that becoming is a really problematic way of looking at things. If the in-between thing is too fragile to flow, there cannot be any flow at all. I wonder what others think about my argument.
Comments (70)
I agree that the traversed substance is broken up but I do not think it is annihilated. I think yellow traverses another thing to become orange and so on. So it is not annihilated but transformed i.e the 'orangeness' of red is still there.
But if you consider yellow as the initial stage and orange as the final stage then there are still transitory phases present. Then we cannot even consider orange as a fixed state.
If physics solves Zeno's paradox by pointing to the relationship between distance and time as measured for a moving object, then maybe we can apply it to a color continuum (or perceived changes in color states) in some way.
Yes, I agree. The way I see it, all processes involving becoming have a starting point and an end point, but with transitory phases in between. So yes, between yellow and orange, there would be many shades of darker yellow before we get to orange. But the problem is why does any process of becoming end where it end and not end before? For me, it has to be because of some fragility to the transitory phases, and not because they are 'elusive.' If we think in terms of the transitory phases being elusive, we are already not thinking along-with the process and only thinking-back once the process has ended.
As to your other point, I think it is really interesting that you think an entity in becoming is broken up but not annihilated. But even when we think that it is broken up and not completely annihilated, it is still hard to see how it participates in a flow of becoming as one single thing, which it has to be, because the entity that was yellow was one single thing and the entity it becomes, ie, a red entity, is also one single thing. So, it is one entity when it is yellow, and unless it breaks up when it is orange, and then reassembles to become red, it is difficult to see how yellow becomes red via any process.
Yes, now that you mention it, it does sound like Xeno's paradox! Physics probably does have an answer for this. I might need to think this through, but here's a response: I think the difference is that when we speak of the change of position of an arrow, like Xeno does, we get the sense that that arrow is impossible to locate at any one point in space. The arrow is, in other words, elusive. But I have been trying to think becoming in terms of the fragility, and not the elusive-ness, of the in-between. Maybe this means that in becoming one need not look for where the arrow is when one does not find it at the location it is supposed to be in. Rather, in becoming, one knows exactly that orange is supposed to be 'located' between yellow and red, but it is still not there, so it must have been destroyed in [or close to] the flow of becoming. And, if that is so, ie, as soon as you say something is destroyed between the two poles in a becoming, big problems emerge for the idea of becoming itself.
Your example of color change reminds me of physical Phase Transition. The perceived shift in color is caused by a change in wavelength, and the gap "traversed" between one peak and another is insubstantial Time. Hence, those frequencies of on-off blinking (max/min; yes/no; something/nothing; positive/negative; hot/cold; energy/entropy; potential/actual) are increments of Planck Time. So there is no physical "substance" in between color states --- just the Potential for being, that I call Intention, Causation, Time in action.
However, Phase Transitions, such as water to ice, are assumed to result in intermediate physical forms. But scientists haven't been able to detect any "in between" substances". The H2O is still the same stuff, only its energy state and physical properties (functions) are different. So, I'm guessing that, like color phases, it all boils down to "on/off" or "being/non-being" or "something/nothing". And that digital "1/0" process is also found in Shannon's definition of "Information". So, what comes between the 1 and the 0? : Potential (the power to be, to exist).
Therefore, I agree that "all things flow", but the seemingly continuous process of causation and evolution is ultimately digital, or quantized as waves of maximum/minimum energy (100% -- 0%). And those change-causing waves are what we call "Energy", or what I call "Information" or "EnFormAction" in my thesis. But, don't worry if this unconventional notion doesn't make sense. It's based on my personal esoteric theory of Cosmic Information.
This is probably more than you asked for. But, in this post, I'm selfishly applying my hypothetical theory to your question about "Flow", which I hadn't considered previously. I apologize for intruding on your thread. :yikes:
Mind-Energy-Information : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page70.html
Planck Time : Planck units are not based on properties of any prototype object or particle (the choice of which is inherently arbitrary), but rather on only the properties of free space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
It's cool, your thoughts were good to hear and I am thinking about them out loud here, although the terminology is quite new to me. So, one unit of Planck time [ie, one 'blink'] is something with nothing else in between, but just the "Potential for being," as you say? But is it not true that given there was a duration, no matter how short, between the hot entity staying hot and then becoming cold, something actual happened in that duration to that entity? If there is no becoming, ie, no process- and time- based based transformation from off to on or hot to cold, then what makes us say it is the same single entity that was once hot that now is cold, or off that now is on? Without becoming, would it not be two distinct entities that have the two phases? Your thoughts were very good food for thought for me, thanks!
That's a really interesting philosophy. It seems, from your point, that the in-between phases in a supposed becoming are all a continuous part of the first point in a becoming, while the end point is an absolutely distinct point. Quite cool!
And apologies for getting Zeno's name wrong.
I like the way you said that. Did you know Stephen Hawking, in his no boundary hypothesis, put the continuous fundamentally prior in the formation of the universe? That is, time goes back through descending fractions but never has a first discrete start. To say what is south of the South Pole, you would have to be there and look up. For Hawking, the "up" is time fragmenting into space, into infinitesimals
If you are talking about a flow, then it has a direction. It is approaching some destination by departing some place.
But that then already adds the presumption the flow is marked by an irreversibility. If the flow is a spinning on the spot or movement that wobbles back and forth, then the flow is cancelling itself out. A reversible flow becomes the effective absence of a flow. It becomes indistinguishable from what we might call stasis.
On the other hand, if a flow has a direction and that is made irreversible by marking some spot that it reached, then the symmetry of "becoming" is broken. We say a change has happened. An event occurred. That is now in the past. The change has become and is now a fact about being.
Now our marking some spot is an act that might merely interrupt a flow. If the flow was from yellow to orange to red, what was stopping it continuing on elsewhere, or instead reversing itself back to yellow before we had time to check?
Or if the flow comes to its own stop, what's that about? At most it says the flow, as a direction, has ceased to have that irreversible story. The flow now spins or jitters on the spot. It is what physics would call a harmonic oscillator. It is in a constant state of becoming still, but of the symmetrical kind where the differences aren't making an irreversible difference.
So the stopping and starting points might be something we arbitrarily impose on flows so as to make an irreversible measurement that allows us to describe the world in terms of directions and points or stages transversed,
And nature itself would seem to stop and start, depending on whether a flow was symmetric or asymmetric, oscillating or getting somewhere always different.
So a self-consistent metaphysics can be constructed from a pure story of "becoming" because a flow already has the contrasting possibilities of being either reversible or irreversible.
That has major implications for our physicalist model of time of course. It seems both like another "dimension" at the micro level - a symmetric and reversible direction - but also a flow with a generalised irreversible and asymmetric direction, the one marked by the thermodynamic arrow of entropy production at the macro scale of observation.
Time (and energy) symmetry is thus basic to being able to explain particle physics in terms of quantum harmonic oscillators, or stable spin states resulting from locally broken symmetries.
And thermodynamics is then basic to explaining a Cosmos that on the macroscale is evolving in a direction marked by its cooling and expansion. A journey that is irreversible even if it does eventually peter out in the indifferent stochastic symmetry of a generalised Heat Death at the "end of time".
And how do we attribute existence to the moment in time at which that color exists? Does time flow in a continuum of instants? Or does it exist only in intervals? Bergson argued that time as we live it is in duration (durée réelle), and time for science is a matter of instants - allowing for the freezing of time for purposes of calculations, like instantaneous velocity. So the existence of "a traversed thing" is equivalent to an instant of time.
Peter Lynds had a paper published in the Foundations of Physics Letters some time back in which he proposed there are no instants of time. Some physicists thought his ideas were profound, while most others considered them rubbish. This discussion of time is analogous to dialectics concerning the existence of irrational numbers.
The Planck scale gives us a pretty dialectical answer on the notion of instants and distance.
The Planck scale - in representing the shortest possible frequency of energy - arises at the point where spinning on the spot and moving in a direction have the same size. The quantum of action is defined by the first fundamental difference - the first beat of a wavelength. Or the possible distance transversed by a light-speed particle making a single rotation.
So the action starts from the point where symmetry and asymmetry, the reversible and the irreversible, have just become "a thing". The particle can go on spinning "on the spot", so sticks out as that part of the world which is just oscillating. And the particle can go on travelling in a direction that sticks out as that part of the world where the distance just keeps getting longer.
The Planck scale is the birth of the dialectical contrast between the reversible and the irreversible as an actualised physical reality.
So Bergson was right about durations. Or if we are to talk about point-like "instants", then we have to recognise that they must already have this internal dialectical structure. An instant already marks the point where irreversibility AND reversibility have just entered the world as "a thing".
You raise interesting points; it leads me to think [or at least speculate] that a lot might depend on the specific type of process or machine that is causing the becoming. What I mean is that, for a quite sophisticated machine, maybe we are able to see the becoming for quite a long duration such that we see the orange phase between the yellow and red throughout certain moments in time before it gives way to red. So, my answer is to say that "the traversed thing" is not necessarily a point in a continuum of some kind, because one can often see some traversed thing as a single traversed thing, equivalent to an instant of time as you say, depending on such things like the speed of the process of becoming, even though one cannot see all traversed things in any becoming. I am trying to say that some of the traversed things are not elusive at all, as points on a continuum might be thought to be, but that they are fragile, and cannot participate in the flow of becoming after they have arisen. The thought is not about whether a traversed thing is 'missed by calculation' on the one hand or 'properly calculable' on the other, for it is completely there to see, completely visible and concrete, like the color orange in a yellow-to-red becoming done by a sophisticated machine...but why does orange 'give way' even after it has become visible in a particular yellow-to-red flow of becoming?
If you are asking how it happens, then it it is difference in energies of electro-magnetic waves that cause colors to change.I think you are also viewing red as a final stage but it can also be a transitory stage. Everything is ever changing.
As Heraclitus said: "You cannot step into the same river twice."
But colour experience is a psychological construct. It is a reading we impose on nature.
So yellow is produced by the brain as a measure of the relative absence of "blue" wavelength light, and an even balance of "red" and "green" wavelength energies. It is a complicated judgement.
Then orange as a hue is a reddish-yellow. Or yellowish-red. It is a further judgement about a "position" on the spectrum of "colour experience" the brain is constructing.
The physical world itself is just wavelengths that are shorter or longer - contracted or stretched - in some continuous fashion. Or at least that is our scientific conception of the world.
So the whole business of primary hues and secondary blends is a bad analogy for talking about the continuity of change.
What happens when you ask the story of how yellow turns into blue? Why does it have to pass through white to get there?
Blue certainly doesn't look like whitish yellow, or even blackish yellow. Cripes, blackish-yellow doesn't even look blackish-yellow. It looks brown!
So colour experience might get the question going. However it potentially also very misleading as colour experience has quite a weird dimensionality once you delve into the psychophysics.
It could be even more interesting to draw an analogy to the color magenta. Magenta is the color that comes after violet and before red. But it doesn't actually exist on the electromagnetic spectrum. There is no magenta wavelength.
Heh sorry I'm mostly going off on a tangent here ... not sure I really contributed anything to the conversation.
This certainly gives Planck time a new spin in my thinking. I've assumed it had more mundane characteristics in terms of light traveling a tiny distance and the four universal physical constants. I assume your first sentence above refers to an inability to measure below certain limiting dimensions.
The three Planck constants (Boltzmann's k reduces to the others) anchor everything, as Okun's Cube shows.
So the reason the Planck scale has the Planck temperature is that the Planck distance covered at the speed of light, and hence marking the Planck time, gives you an event with the energy density of the Planck frequency. :grin:
Quoting jgill
Yes. I'm treating the Planck scale as the cut-off. Obviously we don't really know what goes on. But we have some pretty good arguments.
I completely agree with this. But when I was thinking of this, I was actually thinking of a machine that stops the process of becoming at red. I think you mean that in nature generally red can also be a transitory stage, which is true, but I do wonder about the 'less-than-everything' field here.
As for the scientific explanation, I know there has to be some explanation as to how one color becomes another color. But I think my point was trying to go more into the why: why does the transitory stage between two colors give way, philosophically speaking? To me, the idea that a transitory stage is elusive is not very persuasive. So, I began to think of the entity at the transitory phase as fragile, broken up and apart, no matter how subtle the flow of becoming in which it is.
Thanks for raising this point. But I feel like you are thinking of becoming as the process between two prominent end points [for eg, two colors with wave lengths] and an elusive middle [eg, magenta]. I would say that even if all points were well-known, even if, let's say, a machine in charge of becoming made an entity magenta in color for years and years, when it finally becomes some other color, how are we to think of what happened to that magenta? It is difficult to say it was elusive, for it was there for years and years, so it is almost as if some stronger way of understanding the process is needed. So, I would say that any middle point in a becoming gets broken apart in the flow of becoming, as it is fragile, not elusive. Even if magenta is there for years and years, once that entity becomes some other color, we must come to see it as actually fragile.
If we think that yellow does not have to pass through some other color to get to blue, I think we may have the issue of whether we are dealing with the same entity when we say "it was yellow" and "it is blue." In my mind it is even more difficult to think of a continuity between a yellow entity and a blue entity if there is no becoming in between that made that yellow entity that blue entity. If something yellow became something blue, then I can say one single thing changed color. If, however, I try to think of a 'digital' type of shift from yellow to blue, without becoming, it is almost as if there are two distinct entities there, one yellow and the other blue. We can say, "It was yellow. It is blue." but are we really talking about the same "it" in both those sentences? Wouldn't their difference in color be the defining mark that would make them different entities? I don't know..I think will need to think more about this, but thanks for raising your points.
The 'it' in your t-shirt case might refer to the t-shirt.I think they can't be different entities because only their color changed but their essence of being the same t-shirt is not lost.
When we view the human body, metabolism occurs to keep us from dying.In other worlds metabolism(change) is helping us to live(constant).I think the flux is necessary to maintain the uniformness of the universe.
In my hypothesis, that intermediate "duration" between energy peaks and valleys is not Time, but Timelessness ( a state that cannot be measured in Planck units). Again, that notion is too complex, and too far above my pay grade to explain in a forum post. And the math necessary to pin it down is beyond my untrained abilities. Besides, these Ideal notions are merely incidental to the purpose of my thesis, which is to understand, in a layman's overview, how & why the Real world works as it does : to dispel the mysteries.
Anyway, I would say that the gap between waves of energy is not "actual", but Potential. In my not-yet-fully-formed thesis, the default state of BEING is timeless, eternal, Potential. So, our space-time temporal Actual world is an exception to the rule. Hence, it didn't just randomly happen as a matter of course. Instead, it was Caused by Intention or Purpose (which implies the power to produce change). Again, I don't expect that "nonsense" to be understandable from the current perspective of empirical Science. It's just a way for me to think about notions that are beyond Real, beyond Good & Evil, beyond Hot & Cold.
Regarding the problem of Continuity, if you look closely at Causation, as Hume did, there is no obvious empirical connection between the Cause and the Effect. So, I would guess that the Link is Mental, and part of the meta-physical process of En-formation, or EnFormAction. Those are terms coined specifically for my thesis of Enformationism. And you won't find them in the dictionary.
BEING is static Potential, until an intentional decision to act is made. So, the result of causal Entention is dynamic "Becoming". However, I wouldn't think too hard about such out-of-this-world concepts --- it might warp your mind, and make your brain smoke --- as it has with mine. :joke:
EnFormAction :
[i]Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (metaphorically : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility : BEING.
AKA --- The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
I think it would be both correct and incorrect to say that the flow of the universe is elusive. Let's use the night sky as an example.
If someone set out to prove that stellar constellations truly exist independent of human perception, they would ultimately fail. Even if you try to break the logic down into smaller and smaller transitional steps, the smallest step is still a leap of faith that fails to truly connect concept-A to concept-B. There's no inherent characteristic of stars that demands you must connect them together into something called "Orion's Belt". So in that sense, the flow of star constellations is forever elusive. They simply don't exist objectively.
On the other hand, it would also be wrong to claim that the night sky is completely arbitrary. People do see shapes in the stars, even when they are perceiving the shapes through different (and independent) cultural lenses. So why does this happen? What is the mechanism that somehow unites our perception into a common end result? I would say it comes from the fact that we are all using the same tools to investigate the appearance of the stars. Specifically, we all have a standard-issue set of human eyes that create our perception of what the night sky looks like. So the functionality of the human eye itself determines what shapes will appear significant to us. For example, the positioning/brightness of Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka (the stars that make up Orion's Belt) has appeared significant to many people over the years, even if the constellation is labeled by different names. In this sense, the flow of a stellar constellation is not elusive. There is a standard by which the logic moves from point A to point B. It would not be accurate to call flow "fragile", because the structure of the human eye is not fragile; we tend to keep developing the same human eyes, one generation after another. Of course, evolution dictates that the functionality of the human eye is ultimately a work-in-progress, always changing slightly. But bringing up that point just changes the time frame: when is flow fragile? Over the course of a lifetime it seems to remain stable. Or is flow ultimately fragile because it remains a moving target? Both points would seem significant to me, each in their own way.
Your question sounds like Zeno's Paradox. He assumed that the "gap" traversed between any two steps in a race (movement in space & time) is infinitely divisible. Hence, motion (and Time) is impossible. If so, are our experiences of those distinctions illusory? Are we just imagining Space & Time? Is Change even possible?
Max Planck resolved his own paradoxical situation, in the measurement of minute quantum level increments, by defining the smallest possible increments in the Real world. Hence, he excluded the unreal Ideal notions of Eternity and Infinity. Idealistic Mathematicians noted that, if you continue dividing that "gap" into smaller pieces, they eventually become infinitely small, hence irrelevant to the measure of space or time. Thus, trivializing the paradox. But Realistic physicists took a different approach and observed that if you can measure the beginning & end points of the race, the total of all intermediate steps (gaps, increments) must be finite.
Therefore, like Einstein, I suspect that the solution to the stated problem depends on your perspective --- it's all relative. The paradox results from the assumption of Infinities in the Real world. But the physical solution is found, only if you ignore idealistic Infinity. So, are asking for an Ideal answer, or a Real answer? :nerd:
Zeno's Paradox Solved??? : https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/05/05/this-is-how-physics-not-math-finally-resolves-zenos-famous-paradox/#3c8aa0b633f8
PS__"Flow" may be an interpretation, in the mind of the observer, of seemingly sequential sensations. So, the way Flow feels (continuous vs discontinuous) depends on your attitude, Realistic or Idealistic. Either/Or Paradoxes like this can keep puzzled philosophers occupied for thousands of years.
I don't know if I was thinking of sub-dividing something to reach something extremely small, such that the question of infinity is raised. Rather, I was thinking of why, in any process we call 'becoming,' where there are at least three phases, with two end-points and a middle point, the middle phase gets passed over or traversed. Is it because it is elusive, as if in a sense it was never there? I do not think this line is convincing, because you can clearly see the middle phase in some processes of becoming. While you are right that a lot of the middle phases in any becoming are elusive, and cannot be seen, because, in a sense, they are infinitely small, I believe that even when some middle phase is very evident and visible, but it gets traversed, there has to be some explanation as to why it gets traversed. The explanation that the middle phase is so small that it is Idealistically infinite only works for some entities in the middle phase but not all of them. That was why I was proposing that the middle phases which are visible and evident, that we clearly see and know as not being the final end-point, are not elusive but fragile, that is, some phase or entity which gets broken apart in the very flow of that becoming. And the problem is, if that middle phase is broken up in becoming, then what really becomes the final phase? If yellow has a clear orange as a middle phase, but that orange gets broken up in the flow of becoming, what really becomes red [assuming the whole chain of becoming is yellow-to-orange-to-red]? This is why the notion of becoming itself appears problematic for me. Instead, we are left to imagine some kind of creative force that is active after the middle phase has been traversed, that is, after orange has fragmented and broken up in the flow of becoming. Otherwise, the arising of red as an end-point in this process cannot be explained. This eventually leads to the conclusion that there is no such thing as becoming, that there are only stable beings, and that becoming is an illusion. Now, the real and ideal distinction is important here, as you suggested. However, I am not thinking of the natural world when I imagine a machine that is causing a yellow-to-orange-to-red becoming; instead, I am thinking of a specific machine which just allows one singular entity to start from yellow, traverse orange, and become red, and it can be orange for any unit or span of time--the point being that that orange is traversed, overcome, even though it is not elusive. In sum, when fragility of a middle-phase entity in the flow of becoming is the only way to explain this process, then becoming itself becomes problematic as a concept. So, I am going for a quite Real answer, as you put it.
It is a victim of the momentum of time itself. Whatever that is! I suppose if time has a kind of mass, then the expression is not completely bonkers. :cool:
I think that is very well said. The way you put it suggests that time is not that gentle a flow, and that it is not so much the middle-phase thing which is fragile, but time which is strong.
Whenever humans conceive of a continual progression as a series of steps, they implicitly digitize a whole system. For example, as someone pointed out above, the color spectrum is not inherently divided into the conventional colors of the rainbow. Instead, we tend to standardize "separate" colors for our own analytical purposes. Hence, the increments are somewhat arbitrary and relative to the perceiver. Is "Becoming" inherently a sequence of discrete stages, or is it hacked by humans into smaller segments for the sake of understanding the "elusive" middle?
The Flow of a river is usually conceived by laymen as continuous, without your one-two-three steps. But scientists and philosophers can choose to analyze that holistic Flow into the movement of discrete particles. Is the scientist right and the layman wrong? What real world example of "something in between" being overlooked or trivialized provoked you to ask the question? :smile:
Goethe vs Newton Color Theory : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours
Just as orange is "traversed" when going from red to yellow, yellow is "traversed" going from orange to green. Ergo, in terms of being "traversed" there's no difference between orange and yellow. If one has a certain quality, the other too possesses the same quality and if one is missing something, the other too is missing that thing.
Yes, if 'everything flows' is taken broadly as a principle in reality, then there are no end-points, I completely agree. But I feel like given a particular frame of reference, where there is a flow between two end-points and not before and beyond that, there has to definitely be a difference in the nature of the thing that is in the middle of the flow and the nature of the end-points. Maybe this is plainly theoretical on my part and not empirical. But, when you say "yellow keeps flowing" and then say "orange keeps flowing," then the referenced entity that keeps flowing are different in each of your statements, the point being that 'every thing,' ie each individual thing, flows, rather than 'All is one flow.' So, a similar question still stands: how does the nature of the flowing entity change from yellow flowing to orange flowing to finally red flowing in a given process? If orange was just an elusive middle phase, we would not have seen it, whether as a stable thing or as a flow, and there would have been no way to say it was "orange" flowing. Rather, we would say this process of becoming is yellow-to-red [a 'digital' kind of process] and not yellow-to-orange-to red [a process of becoming]. The question is how do we have the name and reference of an entity called orange when it is a middle-phase, regardless, I think, of whether it is a flowing middle phase or a static middle phase. We would not have it if its nature was to be completely elusive. I think we have the reference because it exists as a distinct thing, again distinct either as flowing or static, but then gets broken up in a particular flow that has red as its end-point. As for the process of becoming in my mind, I am thinking of the end-points as already pre-determined, in the sense that the end-point red is an absence of yellow and the end-point yellow is an absence of red. Now, for me, the middle-point orange is not an absence of both yellow and red, which would make it elusive. Rather, it is definitely there, for a definite duration, but it gets broken up in the flow of becoming because its nature is fragility. This is of course not a scientific fragility, like it was made of a weaker 'substance and form' than yellow or red, and I really do not know why it is fragile, only that, if it is the middle phase and yet is not elusive, it has to be considered fragile. Maybe this gets to the Buddhist-ic [I think it is Buddhist, but not sure] idea of a thing being neither A nor B and both A and B as well. Both these options are not satisfying, to me, because they ultimately paint that thing as elusive, as not having some kind of identity of its own. This is not empirically satisfying when orange is clearly there and is clearly identifiable with a label or a name: orange. So, I would say the Buddhist 'neither A nor B' and 'both A and B' are the language of elusiveness, when the more empirically satisfying language has to be the language of fragility--orange is fragile if it is the middle stage in a flow of becoming. Again, this raises all kinds of problems for the idea of becoming or flow--for any continuity between yellow and red is not there if orange, the middle point, is broken up completely. Yellow would be yellow and red would be red, with no concept of becoming to explain a relation between them, because even if yellow became orange, let's say, if that orange is fragile, it cannot possibly have become red.
There is not any thing like that to be honest :smile: . But the problem is that it is difficult to say that the idea of a 'continual progression' is 'not in the human mind' whereas the idea of digitized 'a series of steps' is. I don't see why 'continual progression' should be any more empirically established in the real world, whereas our digitized categorizations of reality is not. Why do you think so?
If I were to think about what makes me talk about the 'something in between,' I would say the names and presence of entities themselves: that in a theoretical A-to-B-to-C flow, there is a label, a name, B, and it looks a certain, unique way, and so the question of why it is there, what its nature is, and what happens to it, such that C is possible after it, is raised. To continue with the color example, if a hypothetical animal changes color from yellow to orange to red in the exact same place on its skin, what is the philosophical status of that orange, and why is the transformation to red possible in the first place if orange could have been an obstacle that prevented it? Why would things not simply have been 'digital' in the sense of shifting one step from yellow to red, and not passing something else in between yellow and red in at least three [but maybe infinitely many] steps? But yes, maybe it is a question for science and not philosophy, but to take the idea of becoming or continuity as a given is also a philosophical position, and one which I am trying to argue against here.
Actually, my view is BothAnd. Our world is both a Holistic System that works as a unit, and a swarm of Holons that work independently. The "holistic view" is top-down, while the "holon view" is bottom-up. The bottom-up view is basically that of reductive pragmatic Science, but the top-down view is more like a philosophical objective perspective from outside the universe. Perhaps, what Thomas Nagel called "The View From Nowhere".
Your original question may be motivated by a scientific desire to slice the "flow" of Change (cause & effect) into ever smaller increments. For example, the study of Phase Transitions has not yet revealed any intermediate steps between liquid water and ice. But scientists continue to carve that instantaneous "traversal" into a series of middle stages. They may, in part, want to dispel the mystery in order to make it look less like "presto change-o" magic. Yet immaterial Energy remains a mysterious force for change that can't be dissected into particles. My guess is that It may be more like bits & bytes of mental Information.
The scientists probably expect, like Zeno, to find an almost infinite sequence of smaller causes and effects between Water & Ice. But I'm not so sure. The process of EnFormAction (causal energy) may actually be more like magic than our materialistic worldviews allow. But then, I don't believe in Magic, at least not in the Real physical world. :cool:
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.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Objective View : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_View_from_Nowhere
Intermediate Phases : https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/cp/c7cp01468f#!divAbstract
No, I don't think my question was motivated by that; it was actually about 'in-between-ness' in becoming as such. A cup of tea is 'sliced' such that it is felt as hot for two minutes, cool for 24 hours and frozen for 2 minutes afterwards, let's say. Science can investigate very small increments and tell me why that change happened in terms of particles, room temperature, the external climate etc. But I am asking why it is possible for that 'change' of temperature to happen, for there to be 'in-between-ness' in reality. Basically, I am asking why there can be made at the very least three slices to any 'thing,' as this idea of becoming I have in mind seems to have it.
For someone who strictly believes in becoming, to know hot did not become cold, slices have to be made to the thing, and in those slices an observation has to be made that coldness is elusive or absent. This can be the only application of the concept of elusiveness or absence in becoming; ie, when the sought out attribute [here, cold] is completely irrelevant to the slices. So, elusiveness cannot work as an attribute for anything present in a given becoming is my basic point, and the only viable alternate option for an attribute I can apply to the middle phase is 'fragility,' which is such a concept that, if it is accepted, there can really be no becoming at all.
Quoting jgill
Quantum Hegelianism.
It's curious, but I remain unconvinced.
As if you have ever checked out the maths of the Planck constants and understood their reciprocal relations. :lol:
It’s Saturday morning. Time for Banno to run around piddling on lampposts, marking his territory.
:rofl:
Such choice prose. But so defensive.
I'm just pointing out that for the rest of us, and I include the physics community, the issue remains unsettled. Your Nobel Prize is not yet in the mail - that being the way I presume such things are done these days.
That's a different line of inquiry but, as I said, if everything flows each point in the flow is both a destination (enpoint) AND a transit point (traversed point). Your distinction is empty - has no basis.
Maybe you are questioning how the human mind can analyze seemingly unbroken processes of change into smaller bits. Plato proposed the metaphor of "carving nature at its joints", but in practice, scientists have found those "joints" elusive (as in defining a species). Yet, if you are asking about a metaphysical issue, modern psychology should be able to shed some light on our tendency to divide ongoing processes into arbitrary "beginning, middle & end". Unfortunately, I'm not aware of studies that analyze "analysis". But you might find something on Google if you look beyond the first page.
If your concern is more physical than metaphysical, then you might profit from reading Into The Cool, by Dorian Sagan. It analyzes how the natural laws of Thermodynamics cause all change in the world. On the macro scale, Energy Flow seems to be continuous, but in our imagination we can zoom-in to look at smaller & smaller pieces of that fluid process. At the very bottom limit of our mechanically-assisted perception though, that flowing stream of causation begins to break-down into the physical bits we call "quanta". At that point, philosophers will ask if reality is inherently continuous or discontinuous. This may sound disingenuous, but I think it's BothAnd. :nerd:
Carving Nature at Its Joints : https://philarchive.org/archive/SLAILF
Into The Cool : Scientists, theologians, and philosophers have all sought to answer the questions of why we are here and where we are going. Finding this natural basis of life has proved elusive, but in the eloquent and creative Into the Cool, Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan look for answers in a surprising place: the second law of thermodynamics. This second law refers to energy's inevitable tendency to change from being concentrated in one place to becoming spread out over time. In this scientific tour de force, Schneider and Sagan show how the second law is behind evolution, ecology,economics, and even life's origin.
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Cool-Energy-Flow-Thermodynamics/dp/0226739376
Continuity and Infinitesimals : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/continuity/
I think the human mind does not just "analyze" unbroken processes of change into smaller bits, because the eyes can actually 'see' reality [or nature: I use reality and nature interchangeably, if you don't mind] as broken into smaller bits. I see a piece of metal as non-rusty one day at 12 noon, a little rusty at night at 12 AM, and then the next day I see it as fully rusty 12 noon. If you really get down to looking 'microscopically' at the change by observing it continuously rather than at 12 o'clocks only [this continuous observation, by the way, would show a subjective engagement with reality, given how the periods of observation themselves have first been increased from being discrete to a status where they seem continuous], I can guess there is no joint in between, but I could at least imagine it in my mind as being a very obvious joint-based becoming of that piece of metal--like flipping a switch from "no rust" to "middle rust" to "full rust" at the three 12 o'clocks I observed them. Even if reality itself is a continuum, and the sight of smaller, joint-based parts of it is an illusion, I would now ask, inside that realm of illusion, how the middle phase is traversed. Your denial of joints in reality/nature has not denied the joints for the eyes, as I see it. As I see it, the point of asserting that reality is continuous has the implicit message that the eyes do not see it as continuous and the mind does not process it as continuous. So, what is the 'truth value' of those optic and mental perceptions and analyses; what to make of the joints therein? As for the science, I know I am probably completely wrong about all that! I was sincerely asking from the metaphysical side of things. In sum, if nature was continuous, or a flow, I would have gotten the sense of its continuity even if I observed it now, and then ten years from now, and then twenty years from now, if continuity was really its independent nature. But I am sure that if I took three photos of these three temporally distant observations of nature, and put them side by side, at least my eyes and my mind will convincingly be able to identify joints in there, though they may not be really present in that nature itself.
If you say 'everything flows,' it is as if my loud song always already exists at 12dB and that that loud song is only a transit point in something getting louder. But before my turning the dial approaches that loudness of 12dB, my song at that loudness does not even exist, so how can it flow from there? I am a little suspicious that my example of sound here might not be scientifically founded, but I am asking philosophically.
You have to prove that some things don't change, are endpoints, and can't be just another stage in the process of flow. Your volume example is a physical limit imposed by the capacity of a particular brand of player you happen to own. A different stereo system may have a different volume setting.
To be fair though, to my reckoning, the total amount of energy contained in the universe is finite and that means there's an upper limit to how loud a speaker can get.
:up: Top book.
You might like Stan Salthe’s more technical treatment in his two hierarchy theory books.
On the discrete vs continuous issue, he highlights how we can imagine reality as being composed in hierarchical fashion by levels of “cogency”.
So all entities in reality are regarded as differing scales of an integrative process. Some act of thermalisation which achieves the stability of reaching a statistical equilibrium (where micro change persists, but that changing doesn’t make a macro state difference).
A molecule might be an example of such stability. The atoms still jitter, but are sufficiently bound so that the molecule form a stable level of entification.
Now the point is that reality builds up as levels of such complexity. So say we are focused on the River Thames as our focal level of interest. That is the scale of entification we seek to understand. We then need to look to the lower and higher scales of being in which our focal scale is embedded.
These will form boundary conditions - an appearance of continuity - while also being themselves composed of discrete entities (remembering that entities are self organised coherent processes, not “things”).
So the Thames is composed of a flow of water molecules. At that scale, it is a collection of discrete entities. But for the river itself, the water blurs into the continuity of a fluid flow. If you look downwards form the scale of the river, you see just the emergent macro property which is H2O being watery. The spatiotemporal scale of the molecular action is so fast in terms of its integration that none of that internal dynamics is apparent from the distance at which we want to describe the dynamics of a river.
So looking downwards, the dynamics blur into a generality, a continuity, that covers over the detail.
Then looking upwards to the larger scale of spatiotemporal integration, the River Thames is embedded in the much greater “cogent moment” that is geological time and its punctate events. Plate tectonics is shifting the earth’s crust about to ease thermodynamic pressures. The climate is changing over lond cycles.
So the Thames exists as a stable solution to a hydrodynamic problem set by a landscape during some particular era. From the point of view in which we see the Thames as a stable entity, this is possible because those larger thermodynamic flows in which it is embedded are so large in scale that now a single whole moment fills our vision. We can’t see how the landscape was once very different, and how eventually it will be very difference again, as the earth’s crust continues to convulse and erode.
Look upwards and the big changes aren’t visible. We are inside the continuity of some very large event. Look downwards and the small changes aren’t visible. We see only the continuity of their collective behaviour.
So hierarchy theory gives a natural account of how it is BothAnd.
Nature is contrast. So it is both continuous and discrete ... these two ideal states describing the limits towards which it can tend, but never fully reach as “independent” states.
Continuity as a contrasting concept depends on discreteness in the sense that it is a measurable lack of sharp breaks. While discreteness depends likewise on a relative lack of continuity. The two limits are thus mutually dependent and neither could have had independent, stand alone, identity.
As you suggest, the mind perceives that physical objects can be broken-down into smaller pieces, and then it conceives (in imagination) that metaphysical processes can be analyzed likewise. Processes (the flow of time) are indeed natural, but they don't have obvious "joints" to guide our cutting. So, we slice & dice them as desired.
You could say that the Planck scale of Time is a "joint", but it's a human creation, not natural. So, my point is that Natural Time is continuous, but Artificial Time is discrete. Yet, no one can deny that Time is imagined by humans in terms of hours, minutes & seconds. But even those increments derived from sun cycles, are relative to our little corner of the universe, and not absolute. Even the standardized frequency of atomic clocks is an arbitrary choice from an infinite range. Beginning, Middle & End and Past, Present, & Future are human concepts, not natural increments. Are you thinking otherwise? Is there some inherent logic to a trilogy? :cool:
Time is a river : Time is a construct with which humans have struggled throughout history. Although physics after Einstein's relativity theory has somewhat taken over conceptualizing time, and generally holds that there is no such thing as that "passage" of time, and that all events are equally real, humans have traditionally seen time as consisting of [i]past, present, and future.[/i]
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-time-is-a-river
Discrete Time : In mathematical dynamics, discrete time and continuous time are two alternative frameworks within which to model variables that evolve over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_time_and_continuous_time
PS__BothAnd Principle implies that what you "see" depends on how you look at it, not necessarily on how it is essentially.
Yes, I agree that they are human concepts. Let's say a person hallucinates a river, and so, it is completely that person's river, a 'human' river. My question is, how is it possible to conduct and operate with quite plausible analysis of that hallucinated river using concepts of Beginning, Middle and End, regardless of the truth that any river is not in fact broken into such steps? Why can any statement on that river not necessarily have to reference its true nature of flow at all? How come the discrete view is not very irrelevant, in the manner in which if someone asked that person, "what's the weather like outside?" that person replied "it smells like a white light"? The discrete view has to correspond accurately to something, whether in nature or in the imagination. Even if the middle phase is a content of a human's consciousness assuming things are discrete, and not really 'out there' in nature, it is thus still a middle phase somewhere, even if it is within the thought image in an assumption. In short, the discrete view is not as lacking of a correspondence as 2+2=5 is. If someone hallucinates a river, and then says to you "I hallucinated a discrete river" you wouldn't think that river looked in their eyes any different from a real, natural river, right? If someone said, "I am beside a huge flooding river, but I view it as discrete" you would still warn them to run away from the flooding river, for you would know they were talking about a natural river, and not an 'unnatural' river with joints. That means the discrete view has some strange credibility where it is perfectly capable of corresponding to a real object, ie, the river. Really hope this made sense!
One who abides by your view still needs to make a switch from the discrete view to the continuous view and vice versa, I am assuming. But is that switch convincing when we go from discrete to continuous in some cases? For example, in some systems of length measurement, if one erases the set of discrete marks from a given reality, there are still the erasure marks themselves the still designate a discrete measure, and one only assumes that the marks are gone and one is perceiving things continuously now. For example, if you use an eraser to erase marks from a map, those white gaps signifying your erasure are still marking the map discretely. So, it is only a matter of assumption that the discrete view has been 'switched off' and the continuous view is now valid, in my given example. You might think that this example is too random and too particularly about the type of eraser I have, but I feel like my operating with one particular eraser is sufficient reason for me to think the discrete view has validity. The permanence of those discrete marks, such that their absence is itself a notable absence, means that the discrete-ness of reality cannot really ever be overcome, and in this sense it is more relevant to reality than the continuous view, which is like a reaction dependent on whether you choose to identify the gaps of erasure as discrete marks or not. The discrete is there whereas the continuous is an 'argumentative leap' based on an assumed definition of erasure. One can only go so far as to assume for the sake of some function one wants to do that the discrete marks are not relevant, but they are never any less real, in my example. Even if you physically remove a concrete entity from the fabric of reality, to vividly demonstrate the continuous view to someone, that hole where that entity was is still a discrete, concrete hole. In this sense, at least, the discrete-ness of reality seems a permanent feature, and making the switch to a continuous view is a rather 'arbitrary' project. Even if a flow completely fills that hole you have made by removing a discrete item, like let's say when you remove a big rock from the middle of a river and the river fills the hole with its own flowing water, a discrete function is seen to be active, because the river is filling a discrete hole, the river is engaging with a discrete-ness. Even if you think that rock was continuous to begin with, I think you have come to that conclusion based on the erasure of discrete marks you first made from it, which, I am trying to say, is not ever that convincing, as the gaps of erasure are themselves discrete markings, and could readily be used for a discrete measurement or process. So, discrete-ness is basic, as a point of departure for the assumption of continuity. It has to thus be a little more real, a little more true, at least. I hope this made some sense at least.
I don't know that there is any authoritative answer to your interesting question. But in my own imagination, I can speculate. First, there is a significant difference between Reality and Ideality. Reality is limited by the laws of nature, while Ideality is limited only by the loose constraints of imagination in a physical body that evolved as an adaptation to physical laws. The human mind has gone way beyond the pragmatic limitations of the physical brain. So, it can create mental models of things that "never were" but could be. Human culture --- architecture, language, technology, etc --- has broken loose from the constraints of Nature, in part by imagining Super-Nature : something better, more ideal. In other words, we are free to create un-real ideas (Utopias, Gods, Virgin Birth, etc), and then to vainly pursue them in reality. Hence, it's possible to analyze wholes into any number of parts, because humans can "see" things that are not there --- in imagination, we have X-ray vision. But, our flights of fancy remain "plausible" to the extent that we can convince others to see them too.
None of that explains our tendency to divide things into three parts. Since bi-lateral symmetry is an important feature of our world, often related to living things, we may simply be more likely to notice things with a left, right, and axis . And that tripartite imagery may incline us to imagine invisible immaterial processes with Beginning & End boundaries, plus an indefinite Middle or well-defined Axis. Or it may be simply a handy way to think of groups (wholes) that consist of more than one item : solo, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, etc . Or, It may have something to do with brain structure, or it may be simply that the number of parts gets unwieldy when you go beyond Three. The river can be easily imagined as left bank & right bank; or left, middle, & right; or as oxygen & hydrogen, or as all the millions of things swimming or dissolved in water. I'm just riffing here --- what difference does it make to you? :joke:
Bilateral Symmetry with three parts, one imaginary :
So all you are saying that a continuum only makes sense to us if we can imagine stepping along it in discrete steps.
That is my point. We can’t really imagine (or measure) the one without the other. So rather than focus on the apparent contradiction, appreciate the fundamental mutuality of the metaphysical dichotomy which is the discrete~continuous.
They might certainly be fundamentally mutually established as you say, but all sorts of value systems come in when we start using one with the other. For a start, which one does the philosopher or scientist use first, the discrete or the continuous, in their analysis? This might influence a lot of their analysis.
But my main point was that in any flow, I can easily make discrete marks, by shifting some of the flow away. But once those discrete marks have been made, I cannot really erase them at all--they are permanent, their shell remains even if their content is erased. Even if I want to make a flow where I have made discrete marks, those discrete marks end up existing in form. Since all flow can be shifted, but all discrete marks are permanent, as an analytic tool at least, discreteness is more reliable than continuity.
Don’t flows wash away discrete marks? How do you mark the surface of a river?
But the very idea of this gap involves an interval. The hole is not a dimensionless point. It is a continuous length of river bed itself.
So again, the discrete and the continuous are concepts that are opposed in a relative sense. Neither is primary. They are each needed as the measure of the "other". The contrast boils down to that between the shortest imaginable interval vs the longest imaginable interval. The infinitesimal vs the infinite.
Isn't is really the FINITE vs the infinitesimal? The infinitesimal is infinite in it's own right. It's interesting that you say that the continuous and discrete measure each other though
Everyone complains this is paradoxical. However really it only shows that you can't escape the need for the dialectic of the discrete and the continuous. The relation between two opposing extremes is the irreducible fact.
Quoting Gregory
They are reciprocal. A lack of one is the measure of the presence of the other.
I think Duns Scotus's principle of "less than a numerical unity", and the "principle of explosion" ( see Wikipedia), are relevant here (although we have to take caution), if anyone happens to know anything about these principles on this forum
This certainly seems to be true of areas of math concerned with sets and/or foundations, and probably valid in other areas of modern, abstract mathematics including analysis. Although in my subject of classical complex analysis a specific point on the Riemann sphere identifies with infinity, I've never had to deal with a discrete whole infinity and think of unboundedness in the complex plane instead.
How can a sphere be unbounded?
Riemann sphere
That's an even better example of dialectic than Zeno's paradox. Some thing can have edges but be unbounded. My conclusion is that the law of explosion is wrong.
Everything flows sounds like a metaphor for denying stasis in a dynamic world. All is change would probably be a more useful modern catch phrase. Change encompasses movement and avoids being tied to a continuous model of the world.
In what you say, the colors are fixed point objects with names. There is really no logical way to go from yellow to orange to red. If you go with physical wavelengths instead, then you can move up and down well beyond what can be seen and the color labels become obviously arbitrary.
It is static being that is an illusion.
Objects are merely repetitive patterns or events. Change (process) is the essential nature of reality.
The only thing that is completely discrete: nothingness
It's what the universe resides in and from which it comes. You don't believe anything is discrete?