Science as Metaphysics
I have come to believe that consciousness is the manifestation or enactment of a "self-formed being." Then the enactment of an epistemology is at the same time the realization of an ontology. Even if my beliefs are wrong, I must at the very least know what my own beliefs are. You have to start somewhere.
Modern epistemology leans ever further towards an objective-scientific gloss. But the nature of scientific knowledge itself has evolved steadily. Indeed, Kuhn's notion of the ongoing paradigm shift within science leads to the idea that scientific knowledge (as a feature of the overall context of the life-world) is itself a kind of paradigm.
Consider the emerging notion of the metaverse. This is an essentially new ontology (since it claims to redefine the notion of what is real at the most basic level). It is a metaphysical position that coincides with the emergence of a new scientific paradigm, one wherein emphasis has shifted from observation to simulation or modeling.
The scope and scale of our scientific understanding has reached the limits of what can easily be observed from the perspective of a single human observer (both in time and space). Modeling or simulation is the best way to transcend the limits of observation. And modeling only highlights the role of consciousness in creating the scientific view of reality, a paradox that emerged rather conspicuously in the observational phase of quantum physics.
Modern epistemology leans ever further towards an objective-scientific gloss. But the nature of scientific knowledge itself has evolved steadily. Indeed, Kuhn's notion of the ongoing paradigm shift within science leads to the idea that scientific knowledge (as a feature of the overall context of the life-world) is itself a kind of paradigm.
Consider the emerging notion of the metaverse. This is an essentially new ontology (since it claims to redefine the notion of what is real at the most basic level). It is a metaphysical position that coincides with the emergence of a new scientific paradigm, one wherein emphasis has shifted from observation to simulation or modeling.
The scope and scale of our scientific understanding has reached the limits of what can easily be observed from the perspective of a single human observer (both in time and space). Modeling or simulation is the best way to transcend the limits of observation. And modeling only highlights the role of consciousness in creating the scientific view of reality, a paradox that emerged rather conspicuously in the observational phase of quantum physics.
Comments (201)
The role of measurement, perhaps.
This seems a gross oversimplification that does justice to neither.
Can you amplify this?
An experiment is performed. A machine registers the outcome. This is when the "collapse" occurs. An hour later a scientist reads the measurement - his reading doesn't mystically create an answer. Mathematically, a superposition means a variety of possible answers arising from a solution of an equation. One is correct.
If I am wrong a physicist on TPF can correct me. :smile:
I admit, I am wrong at times!
Inasmuch as the machine was created and deployed by human intention, I don't think this successfully detaches the observer from the event, do you? It's definitely interesting.
There's your philosophical wiggle room! Have at it. :cool:
Did you know that quite recently, scientists were able to create an entirely new phase state of matter that resists quantum decoherence by bombarding atoms in a quantum computer with a laser pulse sequence based on Fibonnaci numbers? Now that is math for you, try explaining that!
New phase of matter
Haven't a clue. It's Greek to me.
Maybe it's Magick.
Maybe; but is also true.
Quoting jgill
:100:
This looks interesting, but it's pretty lengthy. I've only skimmed it.
Criticism and the methodology of Scientific Research Programs
[The metaphysics of science is] the philosophical study of the general metaphysical notions that are applied in all our scientific disciplines....This modal suggestion, that the metaphysics of science is an investigation of the metaphysical preconditions of science, has rather a Kantian flavour. But arguably, the idea that certain metaphysical phenomena are necessary for science was present in ancient thinking, as we will now see.
What is the metaphysics of science, Mumford & Tigby
If metaphysics (qua ontology) is the science of being, then it must have universal relevance. Frankly, there are a lot of terminological niceties in philosophy that give rise to a great variety of competing interpretations. The fact that this is so means that anyone who argues vehemently from some terminological standpoint (such as propositional logic) is really only appealing to lack of consensus as an authority.
How is the metaverse science? It's technology and a dubious one at that, if you have in mind Zuckerberg's version of it.
I perceive a tendency to conflate technology with science - it has some similarities, for example, much new tech would not be possible without scientific breakthroughs, but it does not follow that the technology itself is science, I don't think.
Science has no metaphysics. It is neutral in this regard. We choose, if we so wish, to add metaphysics to science. Everyone has a metaphysics after all, even if they dislike it.
Philosophy, and in particular metaphysics, has been killed off again and again, day after day, the deed done by a variety of assassins: eighteenth-century empiricists, Hegel, Marx, positivists of every hue, Wittgenstein, and so on. But behold, after all these massacres the poor thing rises from the grave, oblivious to the fact that it is supposed to be dead, and starts walking. Where it is going it admittedly does not know, and nor does anyone else, but that is a different question. - Leszek Ko?akowski, "Our Merry Apocalypse," Is God Happy? :death: :yikes:
That metaphysics could be seen as a destructive threat for positivism... (?)
I am lost, sorry...
Yes, as does science, implicitly. That is the gist.
If it does, which I don't think is clear at all, then I'd argue that the metaphysics of science is bound to be argued for one's own personal metaphysical preferences: it can be defended as materialism, verifications, rationalistic idealism, transcendental idealism, eliminitavist, dualist, and so on.
Inasmuch as metaphysics purports to examine the nature of being, and being necessarily exists, then the subject-matter of metaphysics is incontestably real. In which case metaphysics is not different in kind from science, but only degree. Metaphysics must be an attempt to conceptualize the nature of reality insofar as that is not yet well-captured by science. Which certainly covers a lot of ground. However the notion of metaphysics as somehow distinct or separate from physics is misleading, a strawman.
Modern science is a methodology, whose primary result is knowledge. Obviously, knowledge predates modern science. Science has carved out a domain, but it is far from being universal. Indeed, modern science operates by way of abstractions and approximations, which is why its products are 'facts' whose accuracy is fundamentally limited by the physical constraints of instruments, and 'theories' which are only ever a 'currently best description' of something. So the question is really, is it legitimate to pursue knowledge in domains where science, for various reasons, is unable to operate? Where events transpire either too quickly or too slowly to be effectively observed and analyzed, for example. In fact, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the trend is precisely to expand science beyond such limits by means of modeling, a method which has been assimilated by science. At the end of a day, a scientific theory is a model. But so could a metaphysical theory be construed.
So, yes, metaphysics isn't modern science, because it attempts to go beyond some of the limits of modern science. Of which there are many. Certainly the metaphysics of consciousness springs to mind.
I think "science is founded on" pragmatic, or working, assumptions like that one. Such a "metaphysical position", however, may be a categorical generalization that has been subsequently deduced from scientific practices and findings.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/739670
Yes, IME, the results of science are only provisional (fallibilistic) and eliminable, not proven.
Quoting Pantagruel
Maybe "metaphysics" only makes explicit (i.e. problematizes) "the limits" presuppositions "of modern science" ...
Ive found this précis to be quite accurate:
[quote=Edward Dougherty; https://strangenotions.com/the-real-war-on-science/] Modern science emerged in the seventeenth century with two fundamental ideas: planned experiments (Francis Bacon) and the mathematical representation of relations among phenomena (Galileo). This basic experimental-mathematical epistemology evolved until, in the first half of the twentieth century, it took a stringent form involving (1) a mathematical theory constituting scientific knowledge, (2) a formal operational correspondence between the theory and quantitative empirical measurements, and (3) predictions of future measurements based on the theory. The truth (validity) of the theory is judged based on the concordance between the predictions and the observations. While the epistemological details are subtle and require expertise relating to experimental protocol, mathematical modeling, and statistical analysis, the general notion of scientific knowledge is expressed in these three requirements.
Science is neither rationalism nor empiricism. It includes both in a particular way. In demanding quantitative predictions of future experience, science requires formulation of mathematical models whose relations can be tested against future observations. Prediction is a product of reason, but reason grounded in the empirical. Hans Reichenbach summarizes the connection: Observation informs us about the past and the present, reason foretells the future.
The demand for quantitative prediction places a burden on the scientist. Mathematical theories must be formulated and be precisely tied to empirical measurements. Of course, it would be much easier to construct rational theories to explain nature without empirical validation or to perform experiments and process data without a rigorous theoretical framework. On their own, either process may be difficult and require substantial ingenuity. The theories can involve deep mathematics, and the data may be obtained by amazing technologies and processed by massive computer algorithms. Both contribute to scientific knowledge, indeed, are necessary for knowledge concerning complex systems such as those encountered in biology. However, each on its own does not constitute a scientific theory. In a famous aphorism, Immanuel Kant stated, Concepts without percepts are blind; percepts without concepts are empty.[/quote]
Further to that, scientific method embodies a great many axioms, at least some of which are metaphysical, which, however, are not visible to science itself, as theyre not considered to be amongst the objects of scientific analysis. This is explored by philosophers of science like Michael Polanyi. According to Polanyi, science operates within a set of boundary conditions that define the limits of scientific inquiry. These boundary conditions refer to the assumptions, tacit knowledge, and frameworks that shape scientific investigations. They represent the underlying principles and presuppositions upon which scientific knowledge is built.
Polanyi argued that these boundary conditions are not explicitly derived from scientific evidence or observation alone. Instead, they are influenced by personal and tacit knowledge, which includes subjective experiences, intuitions, and individual perspectives, and are often tacitly, but enormously, influential in what are considered to be valid questions for scientific research. In arriving at these, scientists rely on their personal judgments, commitments, and values when formulating hypotheses, designing experiments, and interpreting results.
Furthermore, Polanyi emphasized that the boundary conditions of science are not fixed or static but can evolve over time. As scientific knowledge progresses, new discoveries, theories, and paradigms emerge, challenging existing boundary conditions and expanding the frontiers of scientific inquiry.
I think that's right and that's what I've more or less concluded after looking at the topic rather carefully for 4 years and still to this day. I also agree that metaphysics is "real" and is related to the nature of being.
I do not think it follows that metaphysics must be connected to physics, but it is helpful to the framework if what you conclude from a system of metaphysics does not contradict physics, otherwise your system is bad.
Two further comments:
1) I believe that we have restricted the scope of or knowledge to such a degree, that what was thought to be "capturable" by human thought turned out to be less than we expected: Descartes, Leibniz, etc. We know much less that they aimed for.
2) Yes, there is merit in the idea that it can be thought of as an attempt to conceptualize reality "ahead of physics", in a way. Which is why I believe the notion of "things in itself", for instance, or maybe idea of the ground of the given in experience are ideal candidates for modern metaphysics, more so the former idea.
The problem is that it seems to me we can only speak on these things on an "as if" basis, or negatively, as it were, saying what it can't be. Going beyond this would be going beyond what we can know in principle.
So, mostly agree, with minor reservations.
:up:
Its not a subject or a tradition.
To claim any field or tradition is the sole possessor of the ability to establish facts, is cult-like thinking.
Yes. The term "metaphysics" is tainted by association with medieval Catholic theology, which is anathema (against belief) for empirical scientists. That's why I have proposed a modern meaning for the term, spelled "Meta-Physics", and defined as the science of the non-physical. By "non-physical" I include all Theories & Conjectures & Models & Metaphors used by scientists and philosophers to describe abstract concepts that have been de-fleshed of any material substance, with only a skeleton of logic remaining. Does any of that make sense to you?
No.
:zip:
Can you name a few of those axioms you think are indispensable to modern science?
Quoting 180 Proof
:up: I think the basic axiom of science is that nature is intelligible, and it could be argued that this is derived from the Christian idea that nature, being created by God, is a 'book' that is meant to be 'read' by his "crown of creation": us.
Beyond that being, possibly, along with the proto-scientific speculations of the Pre-Socratics, the explanation for why science developed in the West, and not for example in China, which in the 10th century was technologically well ahead of Europe, I agree with you what you seem to be suggesting: that science today only relies on the whole body of its previous knowledge and does not rely on any metaphysical assumptions. That is to say, you can be a practicing scientist and a Buddhist, Christian, atheist, nazi, or whatever, and your practice will not necessarily be hindered by your metaphysical beliefs.
Does your one word response mean that "metaphysics" is irrevocably tainted by its association with Christian theology? In my Information-centric thesis, I've played around with other, less provocative, words (e.g. "mental" ; "non-physical", etc) for the abstract/immaterial topics (e.g. substance, quality, quantity, relation) included in Aristotle's treatise on Nature ; that was later categorized by theologians as "after" the books about physical entities, such as animals. But none of them resonated with me like the "meta" notion, and most abstract terminology is a "no-no" for materialistic philosophizing. Maybe, the visceral antipathy toward an ancient word is why Zuckerberg's Metaverse didn't pan out as he hoped. "Meta" no longer means merely "after" or "next" or "beyond" or "alongside"; it has come to imply pseudoscience or unreal or unimportant or irrelevant. Hence a perfectly fitting philosophical distinction was stigmatized for post-enlightenment thinkers.
Ironically, that taboo term is still on the books as an essential topic of study for Philosophers*1. For me, it's simply the study of non-things, such as Ideas, Concepts, Mental, Causation, etc. Yet, in the belief system of modern Materialism, all of those non-entities are inexplicably lumped under the heading of Matter, and excluded from the obvious heading of Metaphysical. But even the term "subject matter" is biased toward a simplistic materialistic worldview*2. Which may be why Chalmers labeled immaterial Consciousness as the Not Easy Problem.
So, for those of us on this forum, who want to discuss the contents of Minds (ideas, meanings, concepts, etc) are expected to avoid such taboo terms as "spirit", "soul", and "metaphysics". But I haven't yet found any evidence for a physical Atom of Mind, equivalent to the Atoms of Matter, that are now portrayed, by quantum physicists, as a non-local Field. The closest I've come to an "atom" of Mind, is what Information scientists call a "bit" of information. Yet, that term is merely an acronym for "binary digit", and is completely abstract, with no material substance, only metaphysical meaning. Oooops, I did it again. :smile:
*1. Metaphysical - Longer definition: Metaphysics is a type of philosophy or study that uses broad concepts to help define reality and our understanding of it. Metaphysical studies generally seek to explain inherent or universal elements of reality which are not easily discovered or experienced in our everyday life.
https://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/metaph-body.html
*2. It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject-matter: metaphysics was the science that studied being as such or the first causes of things or things that do not change. It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, for two reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysicsfirst causes or unchanging thingswould now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Second, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging thingsthe problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
*3. Aristotle. metaphysics : he calls it first philosophy and defines it as the discipline that studies being as being.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/first-philosophy
Note -- The second "being" refers to everything in general, the essence of existence, instead a particular being knowable by the physical senses.
No. It is not tainted by its association with Christian theology and I also want to say that you are wrong, with all due respect to you. Parmenides started talking about metaphysics over 450 years before Christianity. Did you know what Parmenides and his contemporaries wanted to know? The ultimate reality -- what is the smallest unit they could reduce existence and still be true to the real.
And therefore, the below is also a disastrous attempt to understand metaphysics:
Quoting Gnomon
You are falling into the camps of the analytics and the continental. You don't know it yet, but that's where you're heading. I have no objection to the direction you're moving, but please do not re-design the metaphysics as if you've found an undiscovered truth that could finally save it from itself. It does not need saving.
If you want to de-legitimize this system of philosophy, launch a whole new approach -- or better yet, defend the analytics. Or talk about the continental, and its attack on the metaphysical methodology -- its lack of worthwhile philosophical problem.
That was Democritus and Leucippus, the atomists. Parmenides was not an atomist.
The reason I inferred that the word "metaphysics" was "tainted by its association with Christian theology" is that, on this forum, any mention of the word seems to polarize the dialog into politicized camps. I doubt that association with pagan Parmenides would evoke such a visceral dislike.
But thanks for mentioning Parmenides. In the quote below*1, his metaphysical topics are exactly the breakdown that I propose in my thesis ; especially the Mind/Matter relationship. Some of the most passionate defenders of Materialism, seem to define "Mind" as a physical phenomenon. In which case, I'm not allowed to address the non-physical aspects of Reality, such as Ideas, Concepts, Feelings, Meanings. With "all due respect", you seem to be making the same erroneous presumption about my intention. :smile:
*1. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.
https://www.parmenides.me/metaphysics
Quoting L'éléphant
I have no formal training in philosophy, and do not concern myself with its "camps". Instead, it's my learned interlocutors who seem to polarize the discussion into a debate between pragmatic materialistic secular Physics, and theoretical immaterial religious Metaphysics. The latter is deemed "immaterial", hence irrelevant, and not worth discussing.
Although the mental/ideal Metaphysics I want to talk about is entirely secular & scientific, it is typically dismissed as a religious & irrational topic. So, I end-up spending most of my time denying that I'm talking about emotion-driven religious doctrines. That should be obvious though, since all of my quotes & links are to professional scientists & philosophers ; not to anti-science apologists. Yet the prejudice against Metaphysics keeps me on my back foot in non-physical topical threads. And attempts, such as this, to set the record straight are often dismissed as "whining".
I have no intention of "redesigning" Metaphysics, but to use it as a general category of non-physical topics for discussion. That's how Aristotle's works*2 were parsed by later philosophers & theologians : Physics = animals, plants, minerals, motion, etc ; and Meta-Physics = Categories, Principles, Being, Causation, Potential/Actual, Substance/Essence. So, I'm making exactly the distinctions that Parmenides presumably made, according to the quote above : Mind & Matter, Substance & Attributes, Potential & Actual.
The "whole new approach" to Physics/Metaphysics is not my invention. Instead, my amateur philosophical thesis is based on the "new worldview" emerging from Quantum & Information sciences*3. For example, the Einsteinian "Quantum Revolution" in the early 20th century, which undermined the authority of Newtonian Classical Mechanics. That radical revision of worldview has resulted in the 21st century reality of computers & moon rockets instead of hand-drawn star-charts & steam-powered locomotives. Parallel to that upheaval in physical science, the Information theory of Shannon has set in motion a radically different concept of mental contents.
Therefore, by "scientific Metaphysics" I simply refer to such "weird" quantum notions as Superposition/Entanglement, and shape-shifting Information in both mental & material forms. These are not religious concepts, but their metaphysical implications have been gladly received by both Christian apologists and New Age gurus. Most, if not all of the quantum pioneers resorted to Eastern philosophical notions in their attempts to make sense of the counter-intuitive (non-mechanical) meta-physical aspects of quantum reality. They were roundly abused for heretical betrayal of classical Materialism & Mechanism, along with erroneous imputations of religious motives.
Just as Bohr & Heisenberg had no intention of undermining Classical Metaphysics, in their observer-centered Copenhagen interpretation, I am not trying to "de-legitimize" Philosophy or Science. I just want to talk about non-physical topics without being labeled a traitor to the received belief system of Materialism. I have replied to accusations of anti-science motives, by asserting that, for practical purposes, I am a Materialist ; but for theoretical reasons, I am a Metaphysicalist. :smile:
*2. the treatise we know as Aristotles Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotles works. The title metaphysicsliterally, after the Physicsvery likely indicated the place the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in the philosophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
*3. A New Kind of Science :
The quantum revolution makes a radical break with classical physical science.
https://academic.oup.com/book/2738/chapter-abstract/143208750?redirectedFrom=fulltext
I wasn't referring to atomism. Here's a passage from a synthesis by Scott Austin, on Parmenides:
The synthesis goes on to say that Parmenides rejected the sensible world. But here is where the ambiguity is laid out -- the mortals believe in the sensible reality, but it is not "what is" according to him.
I'm not here to argue about what the heck Parmenides wanted -- after all, if he was saying that the truth has "definitiveness" in it, it is similar to saying that it has sensible qualities. And sensible qualities, we all know in the modern day, are those we come to know from sense perception, not logic.
Quoting Gnomon
I still don't know why you have received such reactions. What forums did you go to? Because, here, it would be out of place to label you as religious and irrational, unless, of course, you're talking about religion and theism.
There's no prejudice here against metaphysics. This is a philosophy forum.
Quoting Gnomon
Quoting Gnomon
You can't talk about a metaphysical theory without using a justification from both the material (sensible) world and concepts (object of the intellect). I just gave you Parmenides who couldn't stay away from shaping the truth into something we mortals could grasp, even though he purportedly rejected the sensible world.
Edit:
Quoting Gnomon
Funny you chose superposition -- easily mistaken to be non-physical, even if to be taken as an experimental truth. Quantum notions are physical.
Oh. I took that to be the meaning of the 'smallest unit', which is typically considered the atom.
Quoting L'éléphant
Quoting L'éléphant
Parmenides was a mystic. He had more in common with the Vedic sages than with moderns.
I guess you haven't been paying attention. If you really care to know, just peruse the few posts below of exchanges with @Gnomon where, after hundreds of previous exchanges with him over the last few years, he had finally copped to his own crypto-"Panendeism"-of-the-gaps sophistry. :mask:
two months ago ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/792659
three months ago ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781656
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/783039
four months ago ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781098
That's what I thought when I began to post on TPF a few years ago. Until then, I had little experience dialoging with philosophical thinkers. Most of my friends & colleagues avoided controversial topics, and most of my reading was in the physical sciences. That's why I described myself as ingenuous in the notes below. In recent years though, I have learned that Materialism seems to be the Monism for many modern philosophers, and that the most fervent of those believers exemplify the derogatory category of Scientism. Which was unknown to me before TPF.
I have tried on several occasions to clarify my non-religious usage of the term "metaphysics" for those who criticize the idea as incompatible with their wholly Physical (corporeal, tangible) worldview. But to no avail, because ingrained belief systems are resistant to change. FYI, FWIW, this is a sample review of my reasons for using that taboo term, when referring to the Mental/Rational/Philosophical aspects of reality, instead of Material/Sensory/Scientific phenomena : :smile:
THE MODERN MEANING OF METAPHYSICS
In my experience on TPF, posters with a Materialistic worldview are quick to object to my idiosyncratic usage of the ancient theological term "metaphysics". But I have no formal training in philosophy, so after retirement, when I began to develop my personal worldview (based on quantum & information science) I was naive about the prejudicial baggage attached to that term, beyond its literal meaning (Nature : volume 2). Ingenuously, I began to use that word in reference to the same sub-category of reality that Aristotle was discussing in his later books on Nature : Human Nature*1 (how philosophical humans perceive & categorize the world).
Of course, I was aware that early Catholic theologians --- who were not primarily interested in Aristotle's first books on the mundane aspects of Nature (phusis) --- simply distinguished the later works under the general heading of "metaphysics", meaning "after the physical stuff". By imputation though, the term "metaphysical" came to mean "super-natural"*2. Which, for a hard Materialist, means "not-real", hence "false" and "misleading". For the practical purposes of Science, I admit to being a soft Materialist*2. Yet, for philosophical purposes, I am a moderate Mentalist (mind stuff).
[s][/s]
For the theologians, with a religious agenda, what made Human Nature special is the incorporation of an incorporeal Soul. But, for my philosophical thesis, I have no need for that hypothesis. Instead, the uniqueness of humanity is merely a metaphysical-but-not-spiritual talent for Imagining & Reasoning, which is head & shoulders above the mental abilities of any animal. Therefore, I wrote down my personal interpretation of the philosophical implications of 20th century Quantum Physics & Information Theory under the heading of Enformationism. The -ism ending was intended to posit a 21st century worldview, to supersede the outdated ancient philosophies of Materialism (Atomism) and Spiritualism (supernaturalism)*3. The key insight is that Information is essentially a form of (physical but not material) Energy (negentropy), which is able to transform into Mass, which we experience as Matter. Thesis & blog provide technical references.
That emerging philosophical worldview can be interpreted as an update of 17th century Classical Physicalism*4 with the non-mechanical aspects of Quantum Physics (Atoms now characterized as amorphous Fields of information). And to re-interpret ancient Spiritualism in terms of modern Information Theory (both Conscious experience & Physical bodies composed of Integrated Information bits : Holism). It's a good thing that I am not fanatical about my personal worldview. Because most Materialists & Spiritualists are not aware that their own belief systems are going out of style, as quantum Science reveals the immaterial foundations of mundane reality. :nerd:
*1. Human Nature :
From a Materialist perspective, humans are simply animals, nothing more, especially no additional Soul. But from a Metaphysical perspective, humans are the apex animals on the only planet in the cosmos known to have non-physical phenomena. Most of those immaterial aspects, such as consciousness, are shared with other living creatures. Yet, our mental prowess seems to stem from our physical uniqueness : bipedal upright posture, which allowed for big brains, and exceptional visual acuity. Together, those advantages resulted in two special talents : Reasoning and Imagination. By combining those natural gifts, humans have developed a unique ability for seeing that which is not apparent (imagination), and for discerning the invisible generalities & universalities & interconnections in the world around them (inference). Together those faculties have produced collective behaviors not found in other animals : Materialist Science (technology) and Metaphysical Philosophy (wisdom).
*2. As a pragmatic Materialist, when I walk on solid ground, I believe that it will support my weight, even though I have been told by quantum scientists that material substances are mostly empty space --- filled with mathematical Fields instead of massive stuff .
Practically all of the matter we see and interact with is made of atoms, which are mostly empty space. Then why is reality so... solid? https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/matter-mostly-empty-space/
*3. Supernatural :
I am not aware of anything in the world that is super-natural. However, my philosophical reasoning runs into a physical dead-end at the beginning of space-time, which defines the boundaries of empirical science. Yet philosophy is not governed by the laws of physics, but by the rules of reason & speculation, which can literally go out of this world, in search of Multiverses & Many Worlds, and even supernatural deities.
In his empirical work, Isaac Newton laid down his own guidelines for experimental philosophy*4. Yet, for his speculative philosophy, he admitted to belief in a God that is not subject to physical evidence. Ironically, apart from his publications on gravity and optics, Newton was also a biblical scholar, religious mystic, and alchemist. https://www.aip.org/initialconditions/episode-10-newton-you-didnt-know
*4. Newton's Naturalistic Rules of Reason :
[i]No more causes of natural things should be admitted than are both true and sufficient to explain their phenomena.
1. Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same.
2. Those qualities of bodies that cannot be intended and remitted and that belong to all bodies on which experiments can be made, should be taken as qualities of all bodies universally.
3. In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true not withstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exception.[/i]
https://blogofthecosmos.com/2016/01/27/mortals-rejoice-at-so-great-an-ornament-of-the-human-race/
I might have led you to that idea. Apologies.
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree. They had a notion of the atoms, in physics, but couldn't articulate it as we moderns articulate it. They were warm, but didn't quite get to the physics part of it. Speaking of which, earlier I said Parmenides was not an atomist. Well, all his musings point to that, actually.
Quoting 180 Proof
:smile: And I suppose, contagious? Ergh, I mean the mask.
Quoting Gnomon
Ouf! Is this your thesis? That's fine. But "enformationism" is not gonna cut it. You want it as raw as possible, and information is processed data. You've got layers and layers there to uncover. Did you not read the Parmenides passage? That's why I posted it here. They took the time to nail down the raw data until they could no longer go any further.
For example, atomism works as a theory because it's .. well.. the atom. I'm not saying I agree with it, but the theory sticks because they got it as raw as possible. Naturalism is similar. When we talk about the natural forces, or the physical laws of nature, you can't argue this down any further, if your point is to unravel what's in the physical laws or what's in the natural forces. They're a given.
But information, like I said, is processed data. They don't mimic the first principles or primary force, or fundamental unit. I mean, we put in a lot of creative license into it. You know the old mantra, garbage in garbage out -- I mean, sure we can balance the bank, in a manner of speaking; make it look pretty for the investors. But are the numbers accurate? I can make it appear like everything is in order, but with incorrect data.
Pre-note : the radical ideas posited below are not scientific statements, but Cosmology conjectures.
Claude Shannon's early 20th century notion of Information might be something like "processed data", yet he quantified information in terms of Entropy (which is the undoing of order/organization)*1. However the inverse of Entropy is Negentropy, which is essentially organizing Energy. From that insight, scientists have developed mathematical theories equating Information with Energy*2. Quantum physicists have discovered that Information is much more than mere passive data. So your information about Information seems to be out of date.
The Enformationism thesis is based on 21st century AD Quantum & Information science, not on 5th century BC philosophical Ontology. The passage you quoted --- "The Parmenidean version of ultimate reality is thus one from which all distinction, difference, change, and plurality have been excluded" --- denies the reality of Change*3, which is what Energy does, and Entropy undoes. (Energy = causation & transformation & enformation). Hence, if your own personal worldview is also static & unchanging, you will never understand the multiple roles of causal Information in the world. However, If you are interested in how the world is organized & enformed (naturally), the thesis & blog provide references & links with scientific support for equating Information with Energy & Causation*4.
Therefore, my "point? is not to "unravel physical laws". Quantum Physics has already unraveled some of the presumptions of Classical Physics*5. So, if your physical worldview is classical, it's a few centuries out of date. As stated in previous posts, my "point" is to update (not replace) the dominant Materialism of modern Philosophy, with new information from Quantum Science and post-Shannon Information Theory*6. :cool:
PS___You shouldn't depend on for information about Enformationism. He seems to be well-read in ancient Philosophy, but not in modern Science. Despite what he says, the Enformationism thesis is compatible with Naturalism, all the way back to the Big Bang. Apparently, he has read the thesis & blog & post links, only enough to scan for hot-button terms such as "panendeism" (which is explicitly discussed, not disguised). Apparently the philosophical implications of the thesis are contrary to his personal worldview (Parmenadean?). So, he has made it his mission on TPF to defend his fossilized belief system (Naturalism, Materialism, Realism, you name it) from fresh new information . He thinly disguises his disgust with sophistry. That's why I no longer engage in his word games.
*1. Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. Entropy also describes how much energy is not available to do work. The more disordered a system and higher the entropy, the less of a system's energy is available to do work.
https://openstax.org/books/physics/pages/12-3-second-law-of-thermodynamics-entropy
*2. Why is energy information?
[i]The idea that information is related to Energy (or Entropy, equivalently) is due to Landauer (1961) who investigated the question of the physical limitations for a computing engine. He found that the acquisition of information through a measurement required a dissipation of at least (kT??ln?2) energy for each bit of information gathered. Van Neumann in 1949 already qualitatively suggested that energy dissipation is necessary to process information.
In statistical mechanics there is a concept of information conservation; meaning - as a thermodynamical system evolves the information is conserved. The status of a thermodynamical system is in principle reversible if I just have enough capacity to measure a status in detail. If I know at time t the exact position and momentum of all particles, I can theoretically figure out the status at t-1 using the laws of mechanics. THUS INFORMATION IS CONSERVED.[/i]
https://www.quora.com/Is-information-energy
*3. According to Parmenides, everything that exists is permanent, ungenerated, indestructible, and unchanging. According to traditional interpretation (no longer universally accepted, but still common) Parmenides goes even further, denying that there is such a thing as plurality.
https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/parm1.htm
Note --- In Plato's philosophy, what is unchanging is not Reality, but Ideality, not Nature, but Supernature.
*4. A proposed experimental test for the mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
In 2019, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/sci/article/2022/9/091111/2849001/A-proposed-experimental-test-for-the-mass-energy
*5. Though classical mechanics is false, as relativity and quantum mechanics reveal, there are many reasons for philosophers to continue investigating its proper interpretation (i.e., what the world would be like if classical mechanics were true).
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/classical-mechanics-philosophy
*6. Information theory in Post-Shannon period
https://shannon.engr.tamu.edu/front-page/
:clap: :lol: Thanks for proving my point about you compulsively projecting your own defects on anyone who step by step calls you out on your BS, Gnomon. You "don't engage with" me because you have displayed these last few years how incapable you are of honest, informed & cogent dialectic. And your poor reasoning begins with your confessed god-of-the-gaps fallacy that's pointed out in a previous post...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/812298
postscript (from four months ago):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/775528
post-postscript: I'd love to formally debate you with a moderator here on TFP, Gnomon, on any philosophical and/or scientific points of disagreement ... Of course, however, you're too scared of submitting your dogmatic woo-woo to rigorous cross-examination, so ... :sweat:
:up:
As I noted in the post above, the equation of Energy & Information is ultimately a philosophical Cosmological conjecture, not a scientific assertion.
I apologize for dumping all that "information" on you in my previous posts. The Enformationism thesis is quite complex and based on cutting-edge science. So, for most people it probably sounds like gobbledygook. FYI, since I'm retired, and not in an academic or scientific environment, I'm using this forum as a supply of guinea-pigs to test my outlandish ideas. Incredulous responses give me feedback to chew on. I have no animus toward , but his impassioned Black vs White reactions, are not useful for my research purposes. Note the smilie in all my posts. :smile:
Having made my apologies, I hope you will forgive me for dumping on you some Cosmological ideas that are also new to me. In april/may 2023 Philosophy Now magazine, the question of the month is "what is time?" And the very first reply gave me food for thought along Enformationism lines. "Time needs to exist for change to happen. This means time must have existed before the Big Bang." The same could be said for Energy : the cause of Causation. In my thesis, I refer to the role of Energy in & after the Big Bang as EnFormAction (the power to enform and transform). In that case, I can go on to equate Generic Information with Cosmic Time.
That reply also said that "Time may be considered a one-way valve, preventing us from going backwards". Ironically, by equating Time with Energy, some scientists have proposed that Entropy is, in effect, Energy (change) going backwards. Yet we are not used to thinking in those terms. Perhaps, because Energy (positive change) and Entropy (negative change) typically cancel each other out, so that the net Energy state of the universe is a balanced equation.
The reply concludes, referring to cosmic Time, with : "It is the catalyst that allows energy and matter to move, combine, and break apart, creating the universe, and through entropy, destroying it". Again, that sounds like my multifunction concept of EnFormAction. The definition below is just one of many ways I have tried to explain the expanded role of mundane Information, beyond Shannon's inert data. Its relationship to Life & Mind & Consciousness & Self may require a lot more explication. But only if you feel ready to dive deeper into philosophical Cosmology. :nerd:
PS__I expect 180 will zoom-in on the hot-button words (e.g. Soul, Chi, Spirit) as evidence of a religious agenda. If so, he is missing the philosophical point of using well-known words in un-conventional ways and different contexts, as usual.
EnFormAction : [i]the creative power to enform; to cause transformations from one form to another.
1. As the generic power of creation (Big Bang, Singularity), it turns eternal Potential into temporal Actual, it transforms Platonic Forms into physical Things.
2. As physical energy (Causation), it is the power to cause changes in material structure.
3. As condensed energy (Matter), it is light speed vibrations slowed down to more stable states.
4. As animating energy (elan vital, Chi), it is the power to cause complex matter to self-move.
5. As mental energy (Consciousness; knowing), it is the power to store & process incoming information as meaning relative to self.
6. As self-awareness (Self-consciousness; Will-Power), it is the power to make intentional changes to self and environment.
7. As the holistic expression of the human Self (Soul), it is the essence or pattern that defines you as a person (Chi, Spirit).
https://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html
Since we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot (perhaps with a little push from ), I think it would improve our communication to look more closely at the terms that have become a stumbling block. As a starter, please explain, in your own words, what you think the Enformationism Thesis is all about. With that information, I may be able to see why you say "enformationism is not gonna cut it". What do you think Enformationism is trying to "cut"? Do you view it as a "new scientific paradigm", or a "disguised theological premise", or what?
Another term that is often an obstacle to philosophical dialog is Metaphysics. In the OP of this thread, Pantagruel said, "This is an essentially new ontology (since it claims to redefine the notion of what is real at the most basic level). It is a metaphysical position that coincides with the emergence of a new scientific paradigm". What do you think he meant by "metaphysical"? Some TPF posters apparently interpret that ancient term to mean "theology" or "antiscience". But, as I noted in a previous post, I use it in the mundane & philosophical sense of topics that are not covered by physical science. For example, the OP of this thread seems to imply that the study of non-physical Consciousness could be considered Scientific from a broader perspective, in which both Physics and Metaphysics are sub-categories of universal Philosophy.
In the quote below, from the second post in this thread, 180 defines metaphysics in terms of "categorical statements", by contrast to Science as "hypothetical propositions". That's actually a good point --- if you equate Metaphysics with Philosophy, rather than Religion. Yes, Reductive Science tends to focus on Particulars, while Holistic Philosophy searches for General/Universals --- as in Kant's Categorical Imperative. But how would Science rationalize & categorize its observations without the General Principles we know as Natural Laws? Leibniz defined "Universal Science" as a branch of metaphysics, and asserted that the "universal science" is the true logic. Isn't the point of Reductive Science to discover the particular facts that conform to general laws and add-up to universal principles? Why can't Science & Metaphysics work together : producing both Hypotheses and Categoricals? Why would 180 describe "science as metaphysics" as "incoherent"? :smile:
180proof :
You don't make a case for "science as metaphysics" besides, the phrase seems incoherent insofar as the latter consists of categorical statements (ideas) and the former hypothetical propositions (explanations).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13474/science-as-metaphysics/p1
Well, first off, "Enformationism" is a made-up word for something like information. Not a problem at all. But I believe this has to do with the information theory which has been done by the likes of Shannon. I have not read Shannon, I looked up the origin of this school of thought. Here's a simple summary of what it means:
So far so good.
But you wanted to make this information theory to be a school of thought in metaphysics. Listen, I read your posts about energy information. Again, not a problem. I don't care about the mechanics and the precision you want to present it. I'm not here to argue about the correct syntax or cause and effect of what happens when a computing engine is pushed to its limit. Dissipation of energy? Fine. I don't care about how much energy the storage and transmission of information takes up. The bit coin harvesting has become a household name so that even a 12 year old knows how to protest against how much energy is wasted.
But I do not agree with your supposition that the information theory -- under the protection of science -- could actually be a metaphysical view. This is an abuse of philosophy. You said:
Quoting Gnomon
...and therefore can pass off as a metaphysical speculation on the nature of existence? Energy, if you recall is a property, and as such, a regulative law. But energy applies to every entity. Think of what you're trying to answer when you try to answer the metaphysical problems. Aristotle, Plato, Descartes have all tried and succeeded in narrowing down what it is to exist -- or what it the essence of an entity like a human being.
How exactly is energy the ultimate existence? Because energy doesn't happen as a causal theory. It is also not the essence of an entity as it is present in all and everything.
:100:
Again, when I use the term "metaphysics" I'm not referring to scholastic theology. Instead, I have developed a personal worldview --- by adopting the scientific equation of mental Information (meaning) with physical Energy (causation)*1 --- that informs everything I say on this forum. To avoid such misconceptions on this thread, let's just drop the term "metaphysical" and use the term "non-physical". If you don't believe there is anything in the world that is "not physical", perhaps we can discuss that metaphysical assumption in a rational philosophical manner --- without any religious preconceptions or connotations. I'm not trying to impose my views on you, but merely to share views in the usual manner of a philosophical forum.
In any case, Enformationism is not a "school of thought", but merely the foundation of my own philosophy. There is no creed or dogma, just a few reinterpretations of both ancient religious beliefs, and classical scientific ideologies. My understanding of the broad implications of an Information-centric worldview is still evolving. For example, the notion that "Time is Energy" is so new to me that I am currently writing a blog post on the topic.
Therefore, you don't need to feel that your own personal belief system is threatened by my personal worldview. If you are a Naturalist, or a Materialist, or a Physicalist, that's OK with me. As I said before : "for all practical purposes I am a Materialist, but for philosophical reasons I am a Mentalist". Enformationism is not an attempt to replace or displace any of those reductive scientific approaches to understanding the world. Reductionism is a necessary technique for delving into the mysteries of the natural world, but it's not so good for philosophical understanding of the confounding complexities of the cultural world of the mind. That's why Systems Theory*2 has emerged as a scientific method for dealing with both social & physical Complexity.
As a holistic personal philosophy, Enformationism will not show you what atoms are made of, or how to create a cell phone. It is, however, a proposed, philosophical & non-religious, alternative to the belief systems (creeds) that are associated with those scientific methods (e.g Scientism). But no one is going to force an Information-Centric*3 worldview upon you. And no Pope is going to condemn you to Hell, if you don't profess your faith in an official deity. :smile:
*1. The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
Landauers principle formulated in 1961 states that logical irreversibility implies physical irreversibility and demonstrated that information is physical. Here we formulate a new principle of mass-energy-information equivalence proposing that a bit of information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/9/9/095206/1076232/The-mass-energy-information-equivalence-principle
Note --- AIP is the American Institute of Physics, not a religious organization
*2. Systems Theory :
Holistic perspective: Systems Theory emphasizes the importance of understanding the whole system and how its components interact, rather than just focusing on individual parts. This involves looking at the big picture and understanding how all the parts of the system work together to achieve the overall goal.
https://www.evalcommunity.com/career-center/systems-theory/
*3. The term "information-centric" is most often used in a technical sense for discussions of computer networking. But it is also used in a philosophical sense by thinkers exploring the margins of Information Theory
Quoting L'éléphant
Enformationism may not be a "metaphysical view" according to your definition, but it is according to the definition I include within the thesis : Metaphysics = mental Philosophy as contrasted with physical Science*4. By that, I mean Philosophy is the study of Ideas, not Objects. Philosophy also looks for general or universal principles that exist only in minds, instead of particular or atomic things that exist in physical forms. Perhaps, if in place of "metaphysics" you will read "mental" or "non-physical", you will avoid getting the wrong impression of what I'm talking about.
By "under the protection of science" I infer that you think Enformationism is an attempt to disguise religious beliefs with a scientific cloak. That attitude came as a surprise to me when began to counter-attack my holistic thesis, as-if it was a blasphemy toward his own (reductive??) belief system. If the shoe fits, I suppose he should wear it ; but it ain't my shoe that hurts his tender foot. It's his own imaginary shoe. :joke:
*4. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, including the first principles of: being or existence, identity and change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, and possibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
Note --- Enformationism agrees with quantum physicist John A. Wheeler that Information ("bit") is more fundamental than Matter ("it"). Does 180 accuse him of religious motives?
I agree ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/792659
@L'elephant
I appreciate you presenting credibility challenges to the Enformationism thesis. That's the point of philosophical dialogue. In early exchanges with he offered some food for thought. But now he has decided to simply portray Gnomon as a New Age nut, who believes in mystical energies. So he is satisfied to just caricature a variety anti-science beliefs that he tries to pin on me. That label allows him to argue from his own inherent superiority. His rationale is ridicule. However, if you will take the time to look at the links I post to support my unorthodox ideas, you will see that I always quote credentialed scientists & philosophers instead of Old Age or New Age religious or mystical authorities. You are free to take-up your incredulity with the quoted experts.
I won't attempt to address all those "doesn't" & "not" presumptions, but I will give you a link to a couple of philosophical/scientific opinions that Energy is the fundamental principle of the world*1. I combined those opinion sources because, technically, Reductive Science is not supposed posit such universal principles, just observe & record. Generalization is the role of Theory & Philosophy. As an amateur philosopher, you are entitled to disagree with these opinions. But you'll have to argue against their evidence. 180proveit sometimes sounds like he has access to an authoritative Bible of Scientism, with the final answer to such philosophical conjectures. But I suppose it's a secret document, because he's never revealed the source.
Here's a brief sample of personal opinions from individual scientists saying that Energy is the fundamental principle of the universe*2. This is not a survey off all scientists, from which you'd get a variety of pro & con opinions. Fortunately, Science is not a democratic enterprise where facts are determined by popular vote. Anyway, my notion of Energy is not mystical, but merely a combination of Empirical Science and Theoretical Philosophy. Both physical observation and mental generalization.
The Big Bang theory was a scientific rationale for astronomical observations, right back to the bang itself. Beyond that point it became a philosophical free-for-all. But most Cosmologists are forced to agree that two fundamental, non-contingent, requirements must have existed prior to the sudden emergence of Space & Time : Causal Energy*3 and Limiting Laws. In my thesis, both of those ab-original principles are forms of Generic Information : the power to enform (change + organization). In subsequent events, Energy does the causing & changing, while Laws do the organizing. Those fundamental principles are Physical only by association with the science of Physics, not due to any material substance. If such philo-scientific ideas are not too repellent to you, I can link you to posts & articles that go into much more depth, both scientifically and philosophically. :smile:
*1. What's Really Fundamental In Physics? :
Energy ends up being justified as a fundamental principle because of mass the rest energy of particles respects the Energy Principle, but isn't a consequence of the motion of smaller things that can be described with force and momentum.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/10/26/whats-really-fundamental-in-physics/?sh=5f9ee62f61fb
*2. Is energy the fundamental basis of the universe? :
Both fields and energy are fundamental: Everything (and certainly every quantum field) contains energy, and the universe is made of quantum fields.
https://www.quora.com/Is-energy-the-fundamental-basis-of-the-universe
*3. Causation and the flow of energy :
I argue for a third program, a physicalistic reduction of the causal relation to one of energy-momentum transference in the technical sense of physics.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00174894
FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICS AND MENTA-PHYSICS
Yes, some quantum physicists are playing around with teleportation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
The criticism you have been insensitive to is that this is a metaphysics of fundamental substance and so another stab at monistic reductionism. Yet physics itself has moved on to a more properly holistic view of substance as the emergent product of a structure of relations. The Cosmos is a triadic system - the pincer movement of necessity acting on possibility to result in substantial actuality - rather than substance itself being the fundamental, and hence question-begging, ground of being.
So you are reading monism into ideas about information-entropy that are in fact descriptions of this triadic systems metaphysics.
Substantial being arises hylomorphically as informational constraints impinge on material uncertainty. Atoms of being - the fundamental particles - emerge out of the murk of the Big Bang as its global dimensionality becomes stably constrained enough to thus also contain stabilised local degrees of freedom. The determinate or decohered excitations we call bosons and fermions.
The cosmos has to cool and expand to undergo the phase transitions where the global dimensionality is flat enough for local excitations to be point-like enough.
So that is the kind of thing I find absent from your enactionism. It just reads as a caricature of where the science has been heading. It doesnt engage with the actual metaphysics - the kind familiar since Anaximander and Aristotle - that physics has been trudging towards since the great shocks of quantum mechanics and relativity.
You get a harsh reaction from me for this reason. It would be OK if you understood the systems view and yet could still argue for some monistic and reductionist interpretation in the light of that.
But instead, you show you want to reduce things towards information as though that somehow allows for the double monism of Cartesian substance - a realm of mind that somehow runs alongside the realm of matter.
In physics, information and entropy are instead complementary frames for measuring reality in terms of Planck units. And Planck units are what encode the triadic relation at the heart of the Cosmos. Planck units combine local quantum indeterminacy, global gravitational curvature, and the third thing of the lightspeed interaction of the two.
So in talking about information, you are talking about this reciprocal connection between the geometric spacetime container and its localised fluctuations or excitations. You are not talking about a new kind of fundamental substance but about the fundamentally of a triadic relation in which substantial being is an emergent property.
On the one hand, there is thus the adoption of information theory as the new way to smuggle Cartesian dualism back into public discourse. It sounds sciency and its easy to quote-mine.
On the other hand there is serious metaphysics that responds to where physics and cosmology has taken us. We can instead see how Aristotles hylomorphism and four cause thinking are panning out pretty well. We can see how the likes of Schelling and Peirce were on the money. We can see how systems science and its structuralism is carrying the day.
Ironically, a "holistic view of substance as the emergent product of a structure of relations"*1 *2 is a good summary of the Enformationism thesis. So, I don't see your criticism as negative, but as supportive of the thesis. It is indeed a "metaphysics of fundamental substance", in a sense similar to Spinoza's "monistic reductionism"*3. I also identify Generic Information with the amorphous Fields*4 of quantum physics (electromagnetic, gravitational, quantum), from which defined physical forms (particles) may emerge. Does that cutting-edge physics fit your "moved-on" description? Perhaps you have only been exposed to bits & pieces of the thesis in various forum threads on specific topics, instead of seeing the whole thesis in its native format. :nerd:
*1. Information is not a thing, but a holistic structure of interrelationships between things :
Data is a collection of facts, while information puts those facts into context.
https://bloomfire.com/blog/data-vs-information/
*2. Information relationships are mathematical ratios :
Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Note --- Relationship = Ratio = Proportion = Statistical Ratio = "for the purpose of inferring proportions in a whole from those in a representative sample".
*3. Benedict de Spinoza: Metaphysics :
Spinoza, however, rejects this traditional view and argues instead that there is only one substance, called God or Nature.
https://iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/
Note -- Spinoza's substance is monistic & universal, but it has local corporeal instances (affections).
*4. The Universe as an Information Field :
An approach to a unified theory of everything! . . . "Information"is the only fundamental reality in this universe - everything we see and experience can ultimately always be described in terms of "State" , that is, a set of attributes, and the values of those attributes, pertaining to the entity in question.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/universe-information-field-approach-unified-theory-everything-singh/
Quoting apokrisis
I'm not sure what "that" refers to, but I assume it has something to do with using physical examples instead of metaphysical arguments. Yet that approach is necessary when I'm dialoging with posters holding a Materialistic/Pluralistic worldview. Besides, lacking formal training in philosophy, I'm more familiar with Science & Physics than with Philosophy & Metaphysics. So, if you can contribute some meta-physics to fill my deficiency, I'd appreciate it. Ironically, "Causal Absence"*5 is a metaphysical topic I discuss in theBothAnd Blog. :smile:
*5. Power of Absence :
Causation In Absentia
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page17.html
Quoting apokrisis Did you see the "triad" diagram in my previous post? Is that what I am "not talking" about? Again, perhaps you can supply the deficit in my brief overview. :wink:
Quoting apokrisis
Where did you get that erroneous idea? Cartesian Dualism is the exact opposite of the Information Holism of the Enformationism thesis. Perhaps you can "smuggle" some of your own theory into this thread on Monism. :cool:
It is this kind of conflation that illustrates the problem.
Sure Shannon produced the reciprocal maths to model information. Certainty could be quantified in terms of 1/uncertainty. The smaller your uncertainty, the greater your certainty. And vice versa.
But Shannon was talking about the certainty of have received a signal coming across a noisy channel. The question is whether a symbol was just transmitted, rather than whether this symbol was meaningful. A binary code then reveals itself to be the crisper way to transmit a stream of symbols as the contrast is maximised. You only have to chose between a sharp pair of choices like a tone or its absence, a 1 or a 0.
Of course when humans are sending messages to each other, the effort involved suggests a stream of symbols is intended to have some mutually comprehensible interpretation. A binary code will at least minimise the noise and maximise the certainty of the message as it was written for sending.
But you now jump from a point about Shannon's definition of a bit to this guff about "meaningful mind-stuff". You conflate a mathematical claim the epistemology of a model with this ontic assumption about "the mind" being this kind of physically general "stuff" that has the intrinsic property of being meaningful of having "sensory" qualities such as feelings and impressions.
This is an abuse of Shannon and a failure to supply a theory of meaning, such as to be found in the science of semiotics. You simply conflate Shannon's epistemology of quantification with the all to familiar speculative metaphysics where folk like to claim "information has qualitative properties". Somehow or other, information conceived of as a string of transmitted bits just has a substantial being of the kind that can shape a realm of material events.
You want to get away with this because modern information theory appears to say that Planck-scale bits really do in-form reality in a physicalist fashion. You have the holographic principle and quantum field theory appearing to support this "substantial stuff" notion.
But what I say you miss is that that Shannon and Jaynes laid the ground for a new epistemology of physics with their reciprocal work on information theory and statistical mechanics. The notion of information has become twinned with the notion of entropy. And neither of these want to make a naive claim about any kind of substantial stuff. Instead, both are about stepping back from the naive realism which sees the world as being "physical" in the way it appears to our sensory models. A realm of tables, chairs, duck, rabbits, cats and mat ... the world of "medium-sized dry goods" as Austin puts it.
We weren't getting anywhere in immersing ourselves in our direct-seeming sensuous and qualitative impression of reality as Kant argued. And so physical theory has stepped back into a self-conscious epistemic modesty that frames acts of quantification in formal mathematical constructs.
And the great thing is that this turn in thought is holistic. It gets us back to Aristotle's hylomorphism of form and matter. We learn to describe the world in terms of its information content and its entropy content both being metrics that make the least claims on a substantial and qualitative ontology.
This is very clean. Feelings are subjective. We each exist in our own noumenal reality model. But counting its and bits is as objective as we can get.
We can account for the globally-constraining forms of the world, and the locally-constructing events of the world, in the neutral language of definite ticks on a dial and our probabilistic models of a system with its countable microstates.
Information tells us if it was highly likely that there was just some event. Entropy analysis can then tell us how improbable it was. From the two, we can extract a thermodynamic notion of time, energy and change. The world runs downhill if its symmetry is broken in terms of a source and sink.
But anyway, the key point here is that science is backing away from naive realism to understand the world of abstract quantification. Just a mathematical model and its habits of measurement. Epistemic method replaces ontic claims about what is "really out there". This is what information and entropy are all about.
To suggest information or entropy are then "the real thing in itself" is to completely misrepresent the scientific enterprise. They are not new terms for substantial being. They are part of the journey away from that kind of naive realism which deals in matter or mind as the essential qualitative categories of nature.
The physicist Richard Muller, in Quora, expresses the opinion that current physicists are being misled by the graceful dynamics and beauty of mathematics. He argues that nature is a bit rougher in texture, with topics like String theory taking precedence over what is in fact real, not merely an intellectual sheen over fact. I assume he is thinking of quantum theory in particular.
At least superficially, this is contra to Wigner's famous piece on the unreasonable effectiveness. Perhaps not.
This is where the Cassirer that I am currently reading starts. Being, as the original impetus of philosophical reflection, is actually "consciousness of the unity of being" - i.e. abstraction, what is common to all beings across all modalities of being. The universe is revealed in and through cognition itself.
Quoting apokrisis
Im curious if youre familiar with the work of any of the so-called New Materialists, such as physicist and feminist philosopher Karen Barad, and what you think of them. They reject both naive realism and the exclusive reliance on discursive language and social construction among post-structuralists like Foucault.
Yes. "To Conflate" means to combine two or more separate things into one concept. That's the job description of philosophical inference and holistic thinking. In this case, abstract mathematical information combined with concrete "ontic" entities into a unique unified cosmology : physics + metaphysics. Or, in other words, Energy into Matter into Mind into Weltanshauung. And that is what cutting edge Quantum theories are pointing to. Not directly, but implicitly, so someone has to do the conflation. And the Enformationism thesis combines lots of those implications into the inference : that Generic (causal) information (power to enform) is equivalent to Energy, which transforms into Matter, and eventually emerges in complex entities as Mind*1.
For a Reductive thinker such a notion is unthinkable. But Holistic (or Systems) thinking can discover properties of an integrated system that go beyond anything found in its parts. For example, a human brain is a complex integrated system of neural & supportive cells, that are not in themselves conscious. But working together, they produce the ontic phenomenon that we call "Awareness" or "Aboutness". However, a Materialistic worldview or a Reductive Analysis of Awareness will never find an explanation for the evolutionary emergence of Life & Mind from a purely physical Big Bang. But a "Big Conception" might point the way.
So yes, Enformationism is my own personal philosophical conflation. It begins with the novel conclusion, from post-Shannon Information Theory, that Generic Information*2 is the fundamental substance of the universe, which we know primarily in its physical activities as "Energy". This is not common knowledge, so in my posts, I have to provide lots of links to the inferences of scientists, who are pushing the envelope of Information Theory. The thesis began the explication of a core insight : that Information >> Energy >> Matter >> Mind. And the BothAnd blog continues to explore the philosophical implications of that conflation, in areas such as Monism and Metaphysics. If a non-dual notion of Matter & Mind doesn't appeal to you though, then you won't be motivated to investigate further into the controversial thesis of Enformationism. :smile:
*1. Information is :
[i]*** Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
*** For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathematical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such.
*** When spelled with an I, Information is a noun, referring to data & things. When spelled with an E, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
*2. Generic Information : I coined this term to distinguish causal Information from inert Shannon Information. It's similar to the ancient notion of Panpsychism (all is information), but with supporting scientific evidence and without the mystical extravagances. As you put it : "the mind" being this kind of physically general "stuff"
Note -- the little-known Casual aspect of Information is supported in the news that "In 2019, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy," https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/information-energy-mass-equivalence/
Cassirer is on the right page. What we would be wanting to move from is the rather particular view of the linguistic human to the abstract as could be imagined view of the mathematical model.
So we engage in the question of being already based in the frame of linguistic inquiry which has its basic established categories, such as the selves who inquire, and the kind of material being that is of the same general spatiotemporal scale as us human inquirers.
If I ask about the generality of my reality, I already am forced by language to think there is this reasoning self surrounded by all kinds of material stuffs. Things that are hard or soft, sticky or slick, metallic or fleshy, heavy or light. My physics, in its abstraction, is based on the inductive generalisation from this level of experience - this naive realism.
But since Ancient Greece started the ball rolling, we have been learning to see the world through the pure abstractions of numbers rather than words. The self and its concrete impressions are meant to drop out of this new level of inquiry into being. Reality is reduced to its hard logical structures and the acts of measurement - the business of counting - which are the local accidents of these global and logically necessary structures.
So that is why Newton started off talking about pushes and pulls. Action as force. The world as seen by the kind of agency that is a human thinking in terms of material and effective causes. We then generalised to categories of forceful substsnce like gravity, electromagnetism, caloric heat.
But then under the influence of the abstracting mathematical perspective, we moved on to notions about gravity being geometry, action being quantum probabilities, thermodynamics being statistics.
We were left with some logical mathematical structure that would apply to any incarnation of a type of being, and the equation variables that let you slot in the values that were the accidents - the measurements, the numbers - which would particularise these general models.
So that is why the shift to the pure numbers of information-entropy are how we should expect scientific progress to be made. They measure the residual uncertainty of the observable world in terms of our logically certain theories of absolutely generalised structure.
Thus in terms of abstraction, or induction from impressions, we have to see that humans have indeed stepped up a level in our semiotic technology in going from the everyday linguistic frame of philosophising to the symbolic as possible logical-mathematical frame of analysis.
We no longer look directly at the world through our collective notions of what it is like to be a human having sensory impressions, but instead focus our eyes on the numbers coming up on dials and scribbling the digits into the slots of our equations. And thus see reality more truly. :grin:
Not my bag. I had a quick skim of her agential realism.
As a pragmatist and biosemiotician, I would be making the totalising argument that the modelling relation is indeed on the side of the necessary and the general as a natural structure. PoMo instead has the interest in arguing the opposite - stressing thr plurality, contingency and particularity of agents who model their realities, even in this co-constructing fashion of Copenhagenist quantum mechanics.
So we might agree that there is something more going on in the collapse of the wave function. But biosemiotics now provides the maximally general theory of that in Pattees epistemic cut. It boils down to the general possibility of imposing the constraints of a mechanical switch on a quantum process - or exactly the thing of a measuring device that turns a material event into an abstract number.
Measurement forces quantum decoherence across the final line by constraining its probabilities to good enough from an agents point of view certainties. We get the numbers that fit our classical equations. And we can get stuff done.
But this isnt something special to humans and their new world of mechanical co-construction of their nature. It is the basis of life and mind - or agency - in general.
An enzyme is doing the same quantum mechanical trick. It is a mechanical switch that makes a measurement when it deforms and forces two molecules close enough together that a desired reaction must certainly happen as its quantum probability approaches 1.
So human agency is just more of the same from the biosemiotic point of view. In stepping up the levels of abstraction - from genes, to neurons, to words, to numbers - it is just following its own natural structural evolution towards maximal modelling abstraction, and hence maximal causal control over the time and place of acts of thermal decoherence.
PoMo recognises that we are semiotic creatures. But it wants to define us primarily as linguistic creatures. It is uncomfortable at the thought we might be biological creatures - generalised blobs of genes and neurons - or now becoming technological creatures, intelligences shaped by the inhuman forces of maths, machines, rationality, entropy dissipation.
And fair enough given the reality that most folk live lives that are primarily linguistic and socially-ordered.
But as metaphysics, I prefer the totalising discourse that can see the fact that life and mind are generally the same thing in terms of being rational entropic structure, even as it clicks through its evolutionary gears in stepping up its levels of encoding from genes, to neurons, to words, and to numbers.
It definitely isnt. Holism is about the triadic story of the unity of opposites. Dialectics. You have to break a symmetry and discover its new equilibrium balance. You have to dichotomise and discover how this then leads to a self-stabilising asymmetry - a world where thesis and antithesis can persist as balanced synthesis.
Conflating is failing to make this kind of systems argument and simply claiming two different things are the same thing just because youve said that.
Quoting Gnomon
All a bunch of hand-waving glued together by the causal placeholder of emergence.
Complexity is more than just complication. And I dont see that you understand that.
Quoting Gnomon
This is what I mean. My approach of biosemiosis can specify exactly where the line gets crossed at the microphysical level to turn a molecule into a message. Pattees epistemic cut. There is a theory with biophysical evidence to be debated, not merely handwaving about things popping out because more is different, or whatever.
I didn't intend to get into a technical argument about Dialectics or Biosemiotics or Triadics. I have no expertise in those arcane fields. Following your example though, I could accuse you of "hand-waving" or babbling, due to the use of technical terminology that I am not familiar with : "You have to dichotomise and discover how this then leads to a self-stabilising asymmetry". Do I really "have to"?
My "hand-waving" is coming from a completely different direction : Quantum Theory & Information Theory. Like your own personal favorite theories, Enformationism is complex, and can't be adequately explained in a forum post. That's why, for those who are really interested, I provide links to more complete explanations, and provide definitions for uncommon terminology right there in the post. Since you don't seem to be curious about other alternative theories for uniting Physics & Metaphysics --- I'll just dialog with other posters, who don't already have final answers of their own. :smile:
PS__As I understand your "hand waving", most of your holistic, triadic, and dialectic views are subsumed in the Enformationism thesis. They are just peripheral to the main course of Generic universal Information. As I get time, I may investigate the Biosemiotics approach, which "can specify exactly where the line gets crossed at the microphysical level to turn a molecule into a message". But my interest is more in the general philosophical implications, than in the particular scientific details.
Hand-waving : An incomplete, inadequate, superficial, surface, incomplete, or partial explanation
Basically it amounts to covering your ears.
An great idea there. You have nicely tied up ontology with epistemology. Which makes perfect sense as you cant have one without the other, especially to the grander idea of meta verse.
This is crudely manifested by current corporations albeit badly so.
If our reality is based on layers of abstraction then the buck has to stop somewhere if you are to entertain notions of simulation or simulacra (which i!m not familiar with)
In philosophy, energy cannot be the fundamental existent as it is not a thing.
1. It is not a thing like perceptible thing.
2. It is not a result of a logical meditation, like Descartes's. dualism.
3. It is not any of Aristotle's 4 causes:
a. material
b. efficient
c. formal
d. final
4. It is not a perception out of ordinary experience.
What it is, is a capacity or a measurement for a thing to do work.
I think you are misunderstanding what energy is. In science, energy "exists". But in metaphysics, energy is not a categorical substance or entity or thing.
When you say that energy is the fundamental thing in the universe, it is like saying inches or miles is the fundamental thing in the universe.
How would you conflate the current idea that matter = energy?
Metaphysicaly speaking of course conscious effort to think is that not energy in some form or something else entirely?
Perhaps I wasnt clear, ideas themselves require no energy to be elucidated or thought yet there must be something producing them could that not be some type of energy?
Assumption can be dangerous. Think deeper. Is energy a cause of ideas? I refer you to Aristotle's 4 causes.
Cause 4 seems to answer the question fully. With material and efficient answering equally well, as brains and ideas are products of material minds. Cause 1.a
Question answered I guess. The rest seems to be a question for neuroscience when it comes to the thinking of ideas. But as was made clear by the four causes, 4 is the perfect answer here.
No. Inches & miles are conventional measures of space, not space itself.
If you want the details behind the Energy is Fundamental concept, you'll have to consult the scientists who came to that conclusion*1. But not all scientists agree*2. Yet, the notion that a mathematical Field is popping with Virtual (not yet real) Energy, while spookier, is in agreement with my general thesis.
Anyway, what's fundamental for theoretical Philosophy (Causation) may not necessarily be fundamental for empirical Physics (Effects). Actually, for my thesis I begin with Generic Information (power to cause change in form) as the fundamental force in the universe. So, what we know as physical Energy is merely one of many forms derived from that First Cause. By "fundamental", I'm not talking about quantitative measurements, but about qualitative essences*3. :smile:
*1. What's Really Fundamental In Physics? :
In the end, almost none of this matters for the introductory physics courses, where we can mostly get away with the loose operational definition of "fundamental" as "the most basic elements you need to solve the kinds of problems you're interested in."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/10/26/whats-really-fundamental-in-physics/?sh=28fa9fca61fb
*2. Fields are fundamental :
Energy is a derived quantity, not a fundamental one. Specifically, energy is an example of a conserved current derived from Noether's theorem. The most fundamental things in the universe, at least according to modern Standard Model orthodoxy, are the following: Quantum fields.
https://www.quora.com/Is-energy-the-fundamental-basis-of-the-universe
*3. Essence :
the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character.
___Oxford
Yes, but for metaphysical (mental) questions, I prefer to use the more philosophical term "Cause" instead of the scientific notion of "Energy". While related, they are not the same thing. :smile:
Cause? But what causes a cause ? I can only assume its self caused and material as per Aristotle though an an unconscious one. Not too sure about this though from a metaphysical perspective because Im making an assumption that it comes from my unconscious somewhere
[quote=Ash, a severed head]I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.[/quote]
Re: @Gnomon
(handwaving wankery)
Plato and Aristotle used the term "First Cause" to explain, without hard evidence, what causes a physical cause in the world. Apparently they simply traced the chain of causation back to a hypothetical Uncaused Cause or Unmoved Mover. So yes, the First Cause must be self-caused or self-existent. But that sounds like a God, so it will be knee-jerked as blasphemous to the Materialist/Physicalist belief system, in which the world "just is", without further philosophical conjecture. Perhaps such a metaphysical notion "comes from your unconscious", but for the Greek philosophers it was supposed to come from the conscious exercise of Reason/Logic. :smile:
It's far more parsimonious and reasonable to posit that the cosmos "just is" (i.e. eternal, though changing), as Aristotle did in Books I & VIII of his Physics^^, than to confabulate any nonevident and redundant terms (e.g. "first cause", "unmoved mover" from the posthumous kluge of Aristotle's "Metaphysics").
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_of_the_world ^^
Proclus, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Giordano Bruno & Spinoza, for example, agree (more or less) with Aristotle's "eternal cosmos" rather than his "first cause" fiat. No "materialists/reductivists" required. And further relegating "the first cause" to history's dustbin is modern cosmology's model of eternal inflation by Alan Guth and Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmos as well as the Hartle-Hawking's No Boundary proposal.
@Gnomon :eyes: :sweat:
Thanks! I just got back from a road trip (to see the iconic Canadian band "Lighthouse - they rocked the roof off) where I found some excellent used books. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge looks relevant to this topic, per the cover notes: "Even in the exact sciences, "knowing" is an art, of which the skill of the knower, guided by his personal commitment and his passionate sense of increasing contact with reality, is a logically necessary part."
This holistic view of knowledge and "increasing contact with reality" exemplifies the metaphysical project; it's also similar to the Cassirer I'm currently reading. I also picked up a book on the metaphysics of R.G. Collingwood (Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics) that I hope will also prove edifying.
How so? Energy is not a cause.
Quoting Gnomon
Energy is a measure of capacity, not the thing it is measuring. It is not a cause. It cannot be a cause. It is also not a thing that exists as if it has a categorical substance. Please define "energy". If energy exists, it's because there are things!
I suppose you are restricting the term "cause" to some particular traditional definition. But and Gnomon are simply including a modern term from physics in the ancient notion of "causation". Because, as you say, it's not a physical thing, most attempts to define what-Energy-is are quite vague : ability, capacity, etc. Plato & Aristotle were forced to use gods or other metaphors to define their notion of Causation. Even the Wiki definition below sounds a bit mysterious or ghostly*1.
Some people still think of Energy as a material substance or fluid of some kind. But it's now clear that Energy does not have a material existence. Instead, it is merely a (mathematical??) relationship between things*2. Not a thing itself. And the kind of relationship is Causal (change). The expanded post-Shannon theory of Information has equated mental (meaningful) Information with physical causal Energy*3. What kind of relationship can cause a change of form in a thing? A causal relationship?
If the ability or capacity or power or force that we refer to as Energy is not a Cause, what is it? Isn't Causation what Energy does? Yet Energy is only detectable in its causal effects, not in its per se identity. So yes, if there were no material things, there would be no causal relationships, that we call "energy". One way to define that interrelationship is E=MC^2, where the constant "C" is a dimensionless ratio*4. But a Ratio is not a physical thing, it's a metaphysical idea. No? :smile:
*1. Aristotle considers the formal "cause" (?????, eîdos) as describing the pattern or form which when present makes matter into a particular type of thing, which we recognize as being of that particular type.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes
Note -- The terms "pattern" & "form" in this definition imply that a Cause is the power to enform : to change the defining pattern or conceptual form of a thing. Thus placing Causation & Energy into the broader post-Shannon category of general Information, that allows a mind to "recognize" a type of thing, but can also change the form of the thing, to place it into a different category (e.g. phase change). If you are only aware of the narrow Shannon definition of Information, this may not make sense. But even Shannon noticed the relationship of Information to Entropy (the inverse of Energy).
*2. Can energy exist by itself? :
Energy is relative, but what's interesting that for any observer, it's always conserved. No matter what the interactions are, energy is never seen to exist on its own, but only as part of a system
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/25/ask-ethan-is-there-any-such-thing-as-pure-energy/?sh=3d889e43762a
Note -- Hence, Energy is a Holistic (mathematical/metaphysical) relationship between elements & systems
*3. Energy & Information :
Research into the relation between energy and information goes back many years, but the era of precise yet general quantification of information began only with Claude E. Shannon's famous 1948 paper "The Mathematical Theory of Communication." . . . . recent advances in information theory how why information is needed for transformations of energy.
https://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/Energy-and-Information.pdf
*4. Dimensionless Ratio :
A dimensionless ratio calculated by dividing the amount of useful energy provided by a given activity by the culturally mediated energy dissipated in providing it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/dimensionless-ratio
How else are you defining it then?
Quoting Gnomon
Then it fails to be a thing (being a thing would qualify it as a candidate for the fundamental reality or existent.
Quoting Gnomon
That's for you to explain in this thread. I'm waiting for an explanation as to why it is a cause, and why it is fundamental.
Quoting Gnomon
If it's relative, then it cannot be a cause. It's also contradictory to "conserved".
Food for thought for you: Gravity is also just there. Why is gravity not the ultimate reality?
Really? I had the idea that since e=mc[sup]2[/sup] that energy - which is interchangeable with matter through said equation - was THE fundamental existent.
Incidentally the definition of energy is 'the capacity to do work'. Very simple. So it's not an object as such, but it has definite and measurable existence. The power grid would be in all kinds of trouble if it didn't.
I was hoping you would tell me where you got the idea of Causation without Energy : "Energy is not a cause". Philosopher David Hume discussed the mysteries of Causation at a time before scientists had pieced together our modern notion of Energy. He referred to the producer of causation as an "illusion"*1, but Einstein might say it is a "stubborn illusion", that there is some kind of physical "connection" between Cause & Effect*2. Now we know that Energy is physical only as a subjective inference by Physicists, not an objective observation of a material substance flowing from one to the other.
Some people still imagine Energy as a fluid flowing*3 in a conduit (medium, ether) of some kind. But it's actually only a metaphorical "influence" (inflow). In my own thesis I define Energy as a form of Information (power to cause change in form or state), which is also a causal interrelationship (e.g. organization)*4, not a thing in itself. You could say that Energy/Causation is "science as metaphysics" *5. Energy is Aristotle's Efficient Cause. :smile:
*1. Causes, Causity, and Energy :
Our ordinary concept of causality isas David Hume wisely underscoredthe concept in which an event or change produces another event or change. This production is the central core of causation, and the objective component of it Hume analyzed as constant conjunction. As is well known, Hume emphasized that our notion of production or causation has a subjective component, namely, the illusion of a certain necessity in the connection between cause and effect.[/b]
*2. David Hume: Causation :
Causation is a relation between objects that we employ in our reasoning in order to yield less than demonstrative knowledge of the world beyond our immediate impressions.
https://iep.utm.edu/hume-causation/
Note --- The products of reasoning are metaphysical ideas, not physical things
*3. Causation and the flow of energy :
Causation has traditionally been analyzed either as a relation of nomic dependence or as arelation of counterfactual dependence. I argue for a third program, a physicalistic reduction of the causal relation to one of energy-momentum transference in the technical sense of physics.
https://philpapers.org/rec/FAICAT
Note --- "Nomic" dependence is how natural laws work. And those Laws are relationships, not material objects. If so, you could conclude that Energy (the medium of causation) is a Natural Law. Energy as "counterfactual dependence" again sounds like an illusion to me. But it's an almost universal illusion, due to our experience with "momentum transference". Yet again Momentum is not a material substance, but a relationship (mathematical ratio) between a Cause and an Effect : product of the mass and velocity. Both of which are relative, not independent objects.
*4. Information as Organization :
Data is defined as individual facts, while information is the organization and interpretation of those facts.
https://bloomfire.com/blog/data-vs-information/
Note --- to organize is to change pattern of interrelationships
*5. Is energy a substance or a fluid? :
Energy is not a substance, not something in the sense of some thing. Energy often appears to be a substance that flows, for example if charging a battery or an electrical capacitor.
https://www.science20.com/sascha_vongehr/energy_is_not_a_substance_and_how_to_easily_understand_this-231370
Note --- Energy is a metaphysical metaphor, not a physical substance
Exactly. And that capacity is measured against the incapacity of a "gone to thermal equilibrium" system to do work. So energy as a measurable concept is derived from the more fundamental thing of entropy.
But oh wait. Entropy can't be fundamental as the Big Bang had to be some kind of highly negentropic and Planck energy dense state so that it could then unwind down to a Heat Death.
But oh wait. The kinetic energy of the Big Bang seems to have been in perfect balance with its gravitational potential energy, and hence its expansion was adiabatic, not really increasing or decreasing the total cosmic entropy count as the Universe flatly expands and coasts towards absolute zero degrees in infinite time.
But oh wait. The KE and PE doesn't quite add up to this flat balance after all. It seems there is this extra dark energy that now ensures the Universe reaches its energyless heat death condition in finite time. The trajectory is faintly hyperbolic rather than flat. The Universe will wind up closed by its holographic information limits the de Sitter solution where space keeps expanding, but this space will be empty of everything but the faint sizzle of the quantum vacuum itself. A kind of content that is only virtual.
But oh wait. Be sure that science still has a bit of distance to digging its way down to the bottom of all this metaphysics.
Entropy and information are concepts getting us somewhere. But that is mainly to the next level of intelligible, or counterfactually-posed, questioning.
Apparently, the status of Energy is still debated by physicists. For example a mathematician might assert that "Energy is a derived quantity, not a fundamental one." Yet, a Physicist might insist that "Both force and energy are concepts which are frame-dependent". As a mathematical equation or physical formulation --- E=MC^2 --- that relativity might be true. But derived from what? Perhaps our physical notion of Energy is derived from observations of actual Causation. Which is still not a material thing, but the implicit invisible directional process underlying physical change.
Energy per se does not tell us anything about Existence. It's only about Change & Evolution. Consequently, some kind of philosophical pre-Bang First Cause is necessary to explain the Ontology of both Material existence and Effective causation. But that's even more Mysterious than even immaterial mathematical conceptual Energy. Therefore, I have concluded that Metaphysical EnFormAction (the potential to convert Possible into Actual, Ideal into Real, Energy into Matter) is the Ontological fundamental. Yet, even that material Causation might be secondary to ontological Creation.
All that aside, I still agree with you that Energy (the concept) is epistemologically fundamental to the science of Physics, which is all about Change. Yet, in this Science as Metaphysics thread, to avoid misunderstandings, we may need to specify whether we are talking about Physics (science ; energy) or about Meta-Physics (philosophy ; enformation). :smile:
In other words, we're talking either about hypothetical explanations for physical systems¹ or about categorical interpretations² of those explanations, respectively; the latter (metaphysics) says nothing about the objects¹ of the former (physics) but only about how to construct² a 'coherent, presuppositional / systematic synopsis' of the former. Any attempt to say 'more than physics about phusis' rather than 'generalizing from² physics about phusis' is pseudo-physics (woo) rather than metaphysics (reason). Like all X-of-the-gaps fiats (& other crackpottery), Gnomon, your so-called "Enformer" does not solve any problem in fundamental physics or cosmology and, in philosophy, merely substitutes an unknowable for a known unknown, which via infinite regress, only begs the question (Why is there anything at all? "Because the Enformer enforms all". :roll: :shade: :sweat:)
The object of metaphysics is not to synopsize science. Rather, to link what is unlinked. It is the boundary of knowledge at the current limits of abstraction. Increasing technical and epistemic expertise results in a practical expansion of domains of enacted knowledge. What once was alchemy and religion and folklore becomes organic chemistry and medicine. A grand unified theory would unite the quantum and cosmic domains. It's metaphysics until it isn't.
It seems wrong to say that alchemy, religion and folklore became chemistry and medicine. In keeping with the idea of significant paradigm shifts in human thought and investigation "were replaced by chemistry and medicine" seems more apt.
I agree that what might be classed as metaphysical speculation (abductive reasoning or extrapolating imaginable possibilities) certainly plays a role in science, but I can think of no examples of metaphysics becoming science.
:up:
Metaphysics becomes science in the same way poetry becomes music or literature becomes dance, through a shift in modality of expression.
I don't think poetry actually becomes music or literature dance, but poetry may inspire music and literature dance, just as metaphysics may inspire science.
E. A. Burtt's book, "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science," published in 1924, analyzes the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of science, particularly focusing on the transition from the classical worldview to the emerging scientific worldview of the early 20th century. Burtt traces the historical development of scientific thought from the ancient Greeks highlighting the significant changes in worldview brought about by figures like Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, and others, leading to the rise of modern physical science. Burtt examines the prevailing mechanistic view of the universe that emerged during the scientific revolution. He discusses how scientists started to view the world as a vast machine governed by mathematical laws and how they sought to explain natural phenomena in terms of mechanistic processes and metaphors
He explores the epistemological foundations of science and the centrality of the concept of objectivity. He investigates how the scientific method aims to eliminate subjective biases and opinions in favor of objective observation, experimentation, and the formulation of laws based on empirical evidence.
He critically examines reductionism, the approach of reducing complex phenomena to their fundamental constituents, and materialism, the philosophical position that everything can be reduced to physical matter. He delves into the implications of these philosophical positions on the understanding of reality and the limitations they may impose on scientific inquiry.
He discusses the concepts of causality and determinism in science. He explores how the Newtonian worldview assumed a deterministic universe governed by precise cause-and-effect relationships and how subsequent developments, such as quantum mechanics, have undermined this understanding.
Burtt examines the role of mathematics in modern physics and its significance as a tool for understanding and describing the natural world. He reflects on the relationship between mathematics and reality, considering whether mathematics is merely a human invention or an inherent aspect of the universe.
Throughout the book, Burtt highlights the limitations of scientific inquiry and the boundaries of what science can explain. He emphasizes the need for a broader metaphysical framework that goes beyond science to address fundamental questions about existence, meaning, and values.
-
Much has happened since the publication of this book, but the themes Burtt addresses are still relevant to the discussion. But I would say that the 1927 Solvay Conference coming shortly after this book was published was the watershed between modernism and post-modernism.
That's a very interesting point. So often I've heard people say that chemistry evolved from alchemy and astronomy evolved from astrology. I'm interested in your use of the word 'replaced' as in, I imagine, 'superseded' by? What happens in this process of replacement? Are paradigm shifts still seen as an appropriate way to describe the evolution of human thought models? I wonder what the process was that led alchemy to be superseded by chemistry - was alchemy in any way foundational in this process?
Metaphysics is the outside borders of science. It's an epistemological distinction. The idea that reality consists of four elements is completely erroneous. But the concept of the four elements was a metaphysical characterization of the nature of being. Just as science itself consists of metaphysical presuppositions. That metaphysical characterization was displaced when scientific understanding revealed the underlying atomic nature of all such physical phenomena. And the boundaries of metaphysics were pushed back further. Paradigm-shifting, as you described. Science more replaces metaphysics or perhaps validates a certain set of metaphysical presuppositions, I guess you would say. Then the metaphysical question gets asked at a higher level of abstraction.
Yep. Metaphysics reasons about possible worlds, cashing out as general logical argument. Science reasons about the actual world, cashing out in terms of models and measurements.
One grounds the other to the degree that the distinction is rather arbitrary. And indeed. they used to be combined as natural philosophy. That they seem separate is only because science has exploded as a human practice.
Of course there is then those who give another contemporary definition of metaphysics as that which enjoys the prestige of an academic discipline, but then gives them social licence to go around claiming ... anything. Especially if it puts upstart science in its place.
Dark matter might be as bad an example as you could pick for science and its willingness to follow the Peicean method of rational inquiry. There is something to explain - why the observable mass density of the Universe is too light to do the job of creating the observably flat balancing act. This is cashed out in the maths of predictive theories. Science then looks and starts throwing even its favourite babies out as they fail the test - like the supersymmetry which would have been such a neat discovery for the string theory camp.
Where has science done anything but follow the book on this?
And in what sense do you think any particle or force is directly observed? Isnt having a gravitational signature coupled to the lack of an electromagnetic one enough to say there is something to be explained?
THE TITLE OF THIS POST IS HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A SYSTEM OF METAPHYSICS IN WHICH THE ONTOLOGY IS THE ISSUE.
But, for the moment, I want to address this even though it has nothing to do with the topic:
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you serious? The equation calls for the measure/quantity contained "in this matter" to come up with "that capacity" in joules. You're confusing identity with the equivalence.
@Pantagruel's post above is an excellent introduction to what a metaphysical system should be.
Quoting Gnomon
Rule 1. Thingness is a metaphysical must have, if you're going to have an ontology. Without the thingness, it's either an accidental feature or a conditional feature which must depend on other essences for it to exist. Determinate things are what we call things in metaphysics.
Quoting Gnomon
Rule 2. Causation is at the heart of a metaphysical system -- and it is what we know as scientific causation that involves the physical/material entities. Without a thing that can cause something or in relation with causes, it has no essential existence.
Quoting Gnomon
Rule 3: The Doctrine of Haecceity. That tree is a tree. Treeness is what makes a tree a tree. Use haecceity to assign an identity to a thing. There is mindness in "mind" as explained by Descartes or Kant. If you cannot have a uniqueness of a substance, then you don't have a system. All you have is a parasite feature that cannot exist without the other features. It is a conditional existence. Haecceity also calls for the "wholeness" -- the mind is a whole thing. If you posit that the mind exists, then it is the measure of all things.
Quoting Gnomon
Rule 4: Prehension is what you are talking about and facts are what we spit out when we have enough prehension of a thing or phenomenon. We use language to put together a statement of facts. Information is our own expression of the thing that caused us to have this epistemic values. Your metaphysical system is working well if you could come up with data or information in the process of your existence. So, if the mind is the thing, then the mind perceives, makes logical connections, makes hypotheses, puts together a coherent explanation of the world.
It seems reasonable to me to say, insofar, as alchemy dealt with substances, which chemistry also does, that in that sense chemistry evolved from or out of alchemy, and similarly with astrology and astronomy. But both alchemy and astrology (more so the latter) still exist as disciplines, which science does not take seriously.
So, I see it as being the case that the mainstream paradigm has shifted, and not only in those disciplines, but overall, to the kind of empirical model of investigation, observation, conjecture and experiment which characterizes science as we know it today.
The central aspect of modern science is the postulating of mechanistic causal hypothetical explanations for observed phenomena, which entail predictions about what should be observed if those hypotheses are true. Alchemy and astrology do not involve those kinds of hypotheses, so that's why I speak of a paradigm shift.
So, to answer the question as to whether alchemy was foundational in the advent of chemistry, I would say only insofar as it had enabled its practitioners to be familiar with the general characteristics of the substances it dealt with, like melting points and reactions with other substances and so on; things which can be directly observed. Same with astrology; mapping the stars and recording their movements and so on.
Cool. Sounds like we are on the same page. Of course, the Jungian view of alchemy was it was an allegory for the search for God.
Quoting Janus
Yep, pretty sure I mostly agree with your summary.
As I said earlier I agree with Popper that metaphysical speculation can inspire scientific investigation, but I think this would only apply to metaphysical speculation which is informed by science and takes off from places where current scientific knowledge reaches its limits.
I don't agree that the idea that reality consists of four elements is completely erroneous, though, it is reflected in the modern understanding that matter can be solid, liquid, gas or plasma. The idea expresses what the ancients actually observed, different modes of phenomena.
Yes, insofar as we reach the limits of current scientific capabilities. I think that the science of the mind is hitting a wall now, and that quantum physics is coming up on that same wall as far as the link between the observer and the observed.
Right, we don't know whether the observer collapses the wave function or whether it occurs all the time on account of any macroscopic interaction, or whether the collapse is even a real phenomenon or an artefact of human conceptual understanding. And I think that as long as we remain in the dualistic mode of thinking in terms of observer and observed, subjects and objects, we will never understand the real nature of things, which I tend to think is non-dual. That said I wonder whether any other mode of thought or understanding is even possible. Maybe we can instinctively 'get a feel' for the nature of things, but as soon as we try to render that feel into discursive terms the confusions, inconsistencies and aporias emerge.
Perhaps there is a mode of certainty that transcends discursive understanding.
Interesting. What would be an example of this in action?
Quoting Pantagruel
I wouldn't say "intellectual intuition" so much as well "trained and tested intuition", though admittedly some might see those as fairly synonymous. Have you read Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?
(source)
Is there an example of such a thing you can identify? Is there anything that couldn't be justified by using such an intuitive approach?
Telling a lie while believing otherwise -- your pulse betrays you. The brain sometimes has its own motivation. Hence, there are times you make mistakes in the process of executing a particular action: you forgot to turn off the light when you exited your house, you forgot to lock your door, you missed your exit on the road.
Edit: intuition is a very private conscious deliberation -- private is the key word. When you know the subject well, your intuition will also be strong, so strong that you act on it confidently.
Science was once called natural philosophy, and for good reason. I think its exactly that, at its core. You have to assume a naturalism, or even a materialism, to be doing science. The very concept of nature, of material, etc., is within the realm of metaphysics.
Maybe this is somewhat close to what youre getting at? Otherwise Ive not fully understood.
Damn you! You are not going to allow me to escape having this discussion, are you? :wink:
So suppose I said I had such a "sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding"? Now I admit that the "which lead to" bit, only fits with a bit of squinting. I didn't propagate my insight to any significant extent. So my insight only lead to relevant scientific breakthroughs, in the sense that other people gaining similar insight over the last 36 years has resulted in a lot of scientific progress.
Now suppose that insight was about how minds emerge from the physical interactions occurring in neural networks.
How would that discussion go?
I wouldn't be approaching things from a foundationalist perspective. As an anti-foundationalist I'm fine with settling for, whatever passes for the consensus of physicists, as a definiton of physical. I think we could have an informative discussion while leaving the definition of physical a bit fuzzy.
I dont think there is one. There are major gaps and conundrums in physics, even without considering the very tenuous connection it might have with how or if mind emerges from neural networks, and the implications of that. I think the sense of what is physical, in this context, is post-Cartesian. This is the view that emerges from first of all dividing the world into the two domains of extended matter and thinking substance and then by demonstrating the conceptual difficulties with the thinking substance (a.k.a. ghost in the machine.) So having eliminated that problematical conception of the mind, there is purportedly nothing left other than the physical in terms of which mind can be explained.
Do you think that is near the mark?
No, I don't. However, before I go into detail, do you think one of us should start a new OP? Or is there an old thread of yours appropriate to discuss things in?
I'm pretty sure that was Kepler, not Copernicus.
Quoting Pantagruel
A mode of feeling certain or of being certain? You cannot be certain of any discursive understanding unless it is true by definition, as is the case with mathematics. Scientific or empirical knowledge can never be absolutely certain, although almost-certainty is possible in the context of experience; for example, if I am standing in the rain I can be certain that it is raining where I am standing (leaving aside the seemingly tiny possibility that I am being elaborately hoaxed).
Like Gautama I could feel absolutely certain that I have reached perfect enlightenment, but I could never be absolutely certain of that, discursively speaking, because it's always possible that I am delusional.
So, the odd thing is that even if we can have intuitive intellectual knowledge of reality, we cannot be certain that we can, no matter how certain we might feel about it.
:100: :up:
I stand corrected. :pray:
Quoting Janus
Which brings us right back to scepticism 101.
Any objection to your thread being used as Wayfarer and I have been discussing?
That's true. I'm not sure about you, but I don't see skepticism as being a bad thing. I like the idea of letting go of the need to know, being able to live with uncertainty and thus cultivating ataraxia. I see that stance above as all as truthful in being able to live in accordance with our actual situation.
The Cassirer I'm just reading talks about how the inherent non-self-evidentiality of perception means that the perception of the real-objective must be a function of the apprehension of the entire "system of general laws", which he clearly demarcates as separate from science. This would be a good example of a kind of foundational certainty, which is conveyed holistically, as it were.
Quoting Pantagruel
I'm not sure what this means. Can you restate it in simple or clearer language?
Cassirer also describes how this functions through a cyclical dialectic of analysis and synthesis. It is from the first few pages of the first chapter of Volume 2, Mythical Thinking. I can put together a more comprehensive synopsis, but you can read the source text in the meantime if you are interested.
https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Cassirer_Ernst_The_Philosophy_of_Symbolic_Forms_2_Mythical_Thought.pdf
Pages 29 to 32.
How about this?
What is - Quoting Pantagruel Is this a reference to the lack of justification for realism?
What is - Quoting Pantagruel Is this a reference to a Kantian things as they appear?
What is - Quoting Pantagruel This one has me stumped.
I'm also not sure how that answers my question - Quoting Tom Storm
It seems to me that an initiative approach can be used to justify any position anyone might wish to make at any time. No?
Originally I was commenting on this - Quoting Pantagruel
I guess some people might consider perception in this light? Sorry to be pedantic - I was intrigued by the point.
Did you attempt to read the source text I supplied? I am working on a synopsis but it will take some time. I have about 15 excerpts noted but it will take some time to assemble those into a cohesive presentation.
All I was asking about was a plain English account of what you have already written in 3-4 sentences. I'm not asking for any additional work. If you are unable to clarify it further, that's ok too, we can move on.
As I said, I am working on it. An additional point that you might find engaging is the intuition of causality as a foundational element. Causality is certainly a plausible fundamental category for empirical consciousness. But remember that there are different kinds or modes of causality. Formal and final causes don't fit within a strictly materialist framework, but they do emerge in plain sight for a cultural consciousness. So our apprehension of reality is the overall causal-intuition supported by the 'system of general laws' (Cassirer identifies this to clarify that what we are seeing is not just one example of one law being instantiated, but rather, our sensory experience is always composite, so many laws of different types of universals and particulars are always involved) including the formal/final dimension which transcends the boundaries of science. I elaborate somewhat on Cassirer.
I've attempted to summarize my points as concisely as possible with respect to the source text. I had wanted to explore the idea of the fundamentality of the idea of causality (in all of its aspects) and the cyclical project of analysis and synthesis, but this would have required several days, not hours, of work.
Quotations are from Continental Divide (CD - Harvard Press 2010) and The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms volume 2 (PSF2 - Routledge 2021)
Real-objectivity - the Realm of Reality
In its modern sense, physics is the science which studies matter in its most fundamental form. In other words, the properties of matter at the most abstract or general level. Science, as the collective knowledge about nature (phusis) has evolved into a myriad of unique and discrete sciences, wherein knowledge is pursued and validated through the use of the scientific method. Scientific progress and technical power derive from the application of general laws to specific cases. Understanding the general principles whereby (models of) neural networks operate facilitates the construction of simulated intelligences. Understanding the principles of evolutionary biology and organic chemistry facilitates techniques like gene splicing. Understanding the principles of general mechanics facilitates the use of levers and wheels. In each case, the power of the science of a domain is a function of the specificity of the domain. But each of these domains is the product of the formation of a complex system out of more basic elements. So while the face of modern science is best known in the miracles of gene-therapies, AI, and rocket engines, the overarching project of modern science is to understand what it is that connects the myriad of specifics in the most general way. Physical sciences can all be seen as specialized subsets of physics, the science of the most basic properties of matter.
Except that the apparent regularities of matter are entangled with the conceptualizing influence of the experiencing mind.
The earliest use of the term metaphysics was not by Aristotle, but by a later editor of his works, denoting those writings in his collection which came "after" (meta) physics. This purely positional identification quickly assimilated the additional apparently mystical sense of "beyond physics." In its earliest (pre-Socratic) usage, phusis (nature, becoming) contrasted with nomos (law, human convention). Thus Kant's observation of a fundamental mental orientation which is the "precondition for concept-formation" and hence structuring the conceptual regularities that characterize the becoming of nature (phusis), is adumbrated by the original sense in which nomos stands apart from phusis.
If the domain of nature (qua observed) is itself generalized to include the realm of the observer, then we have proceeded beyond physics to metaphysics. Reductive materialism sees the sciences of man as just further examples of highly specific theoretical realms. Culture emerging from psychology and biology just as chemistry emerges from physics. But is the mind, qua observer, a material product first? Or is it integrally involved in the construction of observed reality?
Insofar as the world is cognized, it is cognized in terms of regularities. In Kantian terms, "the world is intelligible...only thanks to certain conditions that we impose on it a priori." (CD, p7) Kant also identifies a mental orientation which is the "precondition for concept-formation although it is not itself conceptual." (CD, p.5) Peter Gordon suggests that "the orientations that lie at the very heart of conceptual argument seem...to precede thinking...at a level we might call preconceptual...[embracing] metaphor and affect. (CD 5-6)
I can do no better than cite Cassirer at length.
It is one of the first and essential insights of critical philosophy that objects are not "given" to consciousness in a rigid, finished state, nakedly in themselves, but that the relation of representation to the object presupposes an independent, spontaneous act of consciousness. The object does not exist before and outside of synthetic unity but is rather constituted only through it - it is no shaped form that consciousness itself simply imposes and impresses, but rather, it is the result of a forming that takes place by virtue of the basic medium of consciousness, by virtue of the conditions of intuition and pure thinking....Every such worldview is possible only through specific acts of objectivization, the reshaping of mere "impressions" into intrinsically determinate and configured "representations." (PSF2, p. 37)
And
what we call the world of our perception is already not simply nor self-evidently given from the outset but "is" only insofar as it has passed through certain basic theoretical acts, grasped through the world, by which it is apprehended and determined....If we ascribe a certain size, a certain position, and a certain distance to things in space, we are not thereby speaking about a simple datum of sense impression but are situating the sensible data in an interconnection of relations and a coherent system, one that proves ultimately to be nothing other than a judgment-complex. Every organization in space presupposes an organization in judgement....The transition from the world of immediate sense impression to the mediated world of intuitive "representation"...is based on the fact that in the fleeting, always the same series of impressions, the constant relationships in which they stand and according to which they recur, must gradually be emphasized as something independent...These constant relationships now form the fixed structure and, as it were, the fixed framework of "objectivity"....for critical contemplation, [the naive] assertion of constant things and properties dissolves when one traces them back to their origins and to their ultimate logical grounds, to the certainty of such relationships....The being of the objects of experience is constituted in and through them....every apprehension of a particular empirical "thing"...contains within it an act of evaluation. The empirical "reality," the fixed core of "objective" being, in difference to the world of mere representation or imagination, stands out in that the permanent is more and more sharply and clearly distinguished over against the fluid, the constant against the variable. (PSF2, pp. 38-40)
And regarding holism, objective-validition being confirmed by the "entire system of general laws."
The individual sense impression is not simply taken for what it is and immediately gives; rather, it is questioned as to what extent it is confirmed by the whole of experience...Only if it can withstand this inquiry and this critical test is it considered to be included in the REALM OF REALITY....Thus, the boundaries between the "objective" and the merely "subjective" are not rigidly determined from the beginning but instead are formed and determined only in the continuing process of experience and its theoretical foundation....what we call objective being is constantly displaced in order to be restored in a modified and renewed shape. (PSF2, pp.40)
What we call objective being - i,e the logical form of experiential thinking which is science - is constantly displaced in order to be restored in a modified and renewed shape. This is the sense in which I have been linking science and metaphysics. In a way that is consistent with the notions of the metaphysical research project and the paradigm shift, as others have mentioned. And the confirmation of specific contents of consciousness by the whole of experience suggests that the relative concreteness of our experiences is a function of the comprehensiveness of our theory of reality in its most abstract scope.
There are a lot of interesting aspects to this. Progression through a cyclical dialectic of analysis and synthesis, which Cassirer discusses. This is one of my own core tenets, which I feel completely resolves the inherent antinomies that form the basis of so much philosophical dispute, expressible ultimately as the paradox of mind and matter. Also the notion of the fundamental category of causality, in both its material and teleological evidence. Metaphor, myth, magic. Lots of room for metaphysical analysis there.
Thanks Pantagruel.
Getting back to this:
Quoting Wayfarer
I interpret the sentence I bolded to be suggesting that I am proposing a sort of 'physicalism of the gaps'. That is not at all the case. What I would like to see is more people developing the cognitive toolkit to recognize that an understanding of human thought and consciousness, as supervening on physical processes, is extraordinarily explanatory and not just a simplistic parsimony.
Sure there are gaps and conundrums in all sciences and not just physics, but despite there being unknowns in many areas, I think it is important to understand what Sean Carroll was attempting to communicate with his article, The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood.
The connection between physics, and the information processing that occurs in neural networks, is no more tenuous than the connection between physics, and the information processing occuring in the device you are using to read this post. However, the ability to recognize the explanatory power of neural networks in understanding human thought, supervenes on a fairly broad knowledge of science generally. So I don't hold out much hope of this being persuasive to people who lack the knowledge base required for such recognition to occur.
Still it seems worth trying to communicate this idea, despite the difficulty in doing so, and perhaps talking about things at the level of psychology might be somewhat effective at conveying aspects of my thinking on this subject. Have you read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?
Quoting Janus
I tend to agree with this. If only for the fact that most metaphysical views or scientific theories make no difference to how I live my life or what choices I make.
Quoting wonderer1
As far as your broader point is concerned, I can do no better than to cite @Pantagruel's excellent post immediately above yours, especially the lengthy passages from Ernst Cassirer, who eloquently states what I would struggle to articulate. I think what it brings out, is the sense in which critical philosophical reflection subverts the belief that the objective science can 'explain' the nature of existence as experienced. These of course are themes and ideas which have been considerably elaborated in existentialism and phenomenology.
As regards Sean Carroll, I'll only observe that physicists do indeed have a tendency to take the world as given, whilst overlooking or neglecting the role that the observer has in the interpretation and synthesis of meaning which is constitutive of our knowledge of the world. (I made some comments on one of Sean Carroll's blog posts here (although be warned contains references to controversial topics and thinkers.) He's plainly an influential science populariser and physicist, but I wonder if he would get Cassirer's point.)
If we could somehow know the absolute truth about "life, the universe and everything" then it might make a difference to how we live our lives. But as it is there is just a plethora of competing ideas, some of which we may find more attractive than others.
One thing that seems to me to be absurd, and perhaps even unethical, is to live one's life with the expectation and aim of gaining merit for an existence after death; I think that idea has the potential of radically devaluing this life.
That said, if otherwise reasonably responsible individuals want to hope for an afterlife because it comforts them and makes the inevitable rigours of this life easier to bear, and their ideas do no harm in this life, then I find it hard to argue with that. Whatever works, and we are all different, right?
Couldn't agree more.
Quoting Janus
I think so.
I'm sure they nevertheless have at least a subliminal influence in our worldview and self-understanding.
I will add that the principle difference between the neo-Kantian Cassirer, and standard view of physicalism, is that the latter sees mind and being as the emergent products of physical processes which are understood to be inherently non-intentional and non-teleological. The former recognises the role of mind in the constitution of the world which is the context within which all judgements about what constitutes 'the physical' are made. Mind is, in this sense, ontologically prior to the physical, not in the sense of being a class of object or substance that temporally exists before the physical, but as the fundamental ground for which and in which the physical is made manifest.
Of course, it goes without saying that a human is a kind of mess of preconceptions and enculturations.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no issues with this account. I don't know where I sit precisely. I do believe we 'construct' the world, our cognitive apparatus has foibles and limitations and there is embodied cognition - along the lines of phenomenology. I'm not sure any of this matters to how I go about my daily business.
Are you using "non-intentional" in the sense of intentionality or in a sense related to motivation, or other?
If in the sense of intentionality, then I could make a case that intentionality supervenes on neural networks. It seems likely it would take some charitable consideration and effort on your part to understand it, but it is well worth understanding for those interested in understanding themselves. (Particularly if interested in the nature of intuition.)
Of course we all have different brains, and as a consequence, different constellations of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. This impacts what we find interesting, and I'm certainly not suggesting you should be interested in the things I'm interested in.
Bummer, it'd make it easier to communicate some things to you if you had. Yes, Kahneman is quite brilliant, and presents important things to understand about intuition, and does so a whole lot better than I could.
Anyway, maybe we could switch to discussing the argument from reason that you mentioned?
No worries, I very much appreciate the courteous manner in which you post.
As for the differences between our views, I start from what might be called a counter-cultural orientation. I understand that scientific naturalism is regarded as normative for many epistemological claims in our culture but in keeping with the OP, I am critical of science as a metaphysic. In very summary terms, scientific methodology has yielded many amazing and indispensable discoveries and innovations, but it doesn't necessarily comprehend or address the problems of philosophy, and the attempt to squeeze those problems into the procrustean bed of the objective sciences has deleterious consequences. That's my overall take.
Quoting wonderer1
I'm planning to create an OP, but it's going to take a few days. It's a deep topic.
I'm looking forward to it. :up:
Yes, scientism becoming the predominant view.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-99403-7?fbclid=IwAR25Wl-rdb1Pt0E2Z6Xngg5__x0xcG0xYq0XwDkUuYNIhMqRq7kP2QYcsFU
This is great issue. Even without the collapse, it's still interesting.
At the moment, I don't think the 'answer' is complete or whole or intelligible apart from its place in the human project of physics.
I think the difficulty here is the red herring of independence of physics and its objects from any particular embodied physicist.
I think we are tempted to make a mistake of trying to 'see around' all physicists at the same time and then think we can still talk about a 'measurement.' It's subtle point, but I think we are smuggling in our own current brain-activity and cultural training when we imagine 'numbers' appearing on a screen and no one in the room ----except we are in that room (as security cameras?), and the room itself is in our imagination.
( As an empiricist, I'm compelled to question stories that aren't backed by human experience. In a certain sense, measurements without measurers are ghost stories. Along these lines, ain't no world to speak of without a living human brain around....)
I think you make an important point, but of course I say that there's entanglement and interdependence.
In some sense, spirit is a self-modification of nature, an emergence from nature (cultural beings emerged from subcultural beginnings, presumably by evolution). And in another sense, nature is a product of spirit (the concept of nature is cultural, developed within the timebinding Conversation of spirit).
:up:
Hence the 'foolishness' of the philosopher who 'wastes time' on such things --and yet the intention is to write nonfiction.
The fundamental condition of existence is alterity. (c)
It is a classic theme. Derrida tried to make difference god.
Is Reality is a self-differentiating self-perceiving self-thinking godstuff ? Maybe kinda sorta ?
Or Saussure: Language is a system of differences without positive elements. But this structuralism is like taking an X-ray of a language. Useful fiction. Abstraction.
It doesn't matter how we carve the chess pieces if we give them their usual roles. But we need to carve them in some way or another. Same deal with information that moves from medium to medium, or the conceptual content that moves from language to language. [ Pure information is the 'same' bad idea as pure matter without a subject. (Structurally speaking .) ]
A group of physicists devise an experiment, including a device to measure the outcome. They perform the experiment, then cluster around the computer screen to read the result - they all agree they see the same thing. The experiment is replicated numerous times, with the same result. How is this "dependence" upon a particular "embodied" scientist?
Perhaps I'm not interpreting what you say properly.
It's a weird point, so I'm not surprised if I didn't find the best words.
Actually I'm saying that the meaningfulness of the measurement is independent of any particular physicist. It doesn't have to be Larry or Susan. But it has to be somebody.
I make my case by saying that we have no experience whatsoever of a world apart from the one entangled with our networked timebinding human nervous systems.
We are tempted to forget this because the embodied subject is left out for practical reasons. It doesn't matter if Larry or Susan was watching the machine. We trust them both. The subject becomes 'transparent' to a physicist long accustomed to a godlike view of an artificial videogame Euclidean space. Because his body is not before his eyes that stare at symbols that help him think of that imaginary space, he forgets that such a space was never available without his body's help.
That way of expressing it came to me as a consequence of listening to one of Kastrup's talks, along the lines that the appearance of living organisms is also the initial appearance of 'otherness'. The very first thing that any proto-organism has to do is enact the boundary between itself and the environment. If there were no boundary, it is simply subject to whatever chemical and physical influences act on it - it would dissolve or break up. Whereas an organism has to maintain itself (which is homeostasis), seek nutrition, avoid threats, and replicate. That is the origin of the self-other divide.
Quoting jgill
But that is precisely what has been called into question by experiments that confirm the observer-dependency of results in quantum mechanics, which challenge the principle that all observers see the same facts. Objective Reality Doesn't Exist, Quantum Experiment Shows.
Also why I insist that the ego is flesh. I think it's this basic bodily boundary that inspires us to further develop the tradition of the 'soul' -- of a responsible discursive subject existing with a new intensity in the dimension of time, capable of making and keeping promises. One soul per body too. Did it have to be that way ? Or was it just far more convenient to train a brain to be one person ?
The boundary is not enacted by the proto-organism; it is always already enacted to enable the existence of the organism before it can do any of its own enacting.
Quoting plaque flag
One brain per body, no?
A lot depends upon the idea of "superposition", which has a simple mathematical interpretation. I remain unconvinced, and Wigner himself criticized "Wigner's Friend". I refuse to succumb to the woo surrounding this - but that's just me and I don't have a physics background.
Is it impossible for a brain to be trained to run two personalities? It'd probably be difficult, but maybe possible, if folks were mean enough to experiment on children that way. Two discursive selves would be held responsible for the coherence of two different sets of beliefs/claims. Maybe there's Weekend Willy and Weekday Walt.
Quoting plaque flag
Some of the studies on dissociative personality disorder showed that the brain of subject who had a blind alter did not show any effects associated with visual stimulation when the blind alter personality was tested.
The well-documented cases of multiple personality disorder show that one person may experience being multiple personalities. From the common perspective it is one person, and the multiple personalities are a disordering of what is the 'normal' order.
It seems reasonable to think that animals also have a sense of self, not many senses of many selves, judging by the general predictability of their behaviors.
:up:
'One is one around here' or one is mentally ill.
~R.G. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics
But don't simulation or modelling at the end of the day need observation to be meaningful? Simulation and modelling unobserved by humans don't exist, therefore meaningless?
Absolutely. Models don't exclude the modeler and the modeled, they unite them.
Also simulation or modeling can only be of that which is observed else it would be simulation or modeling of nothing.
Quoting Janus
Simulation or modelling are ideal for verification, testing, demonstration and presentation of the theories. However, they still need hypotheses, data collection, and experiments before establishing scientific theories. Whatever the case, they all need observation by humans who record and monitor the process, and simulation and modelling wouldn't replace observation in science.
Yes. Bearing in mind that
...the work of observing facts is really done by the senses with assistance from the intellect. What the positivists called observing facts is really historical thinking, which is a complex process involving numerous presuppositions
~Essay in Metaphysics
What do you mean by historical thinking?
Quoting Pantagruel
Could you elaborate further? What numerous presuppositions for what, and why?
Quoting Corvus
Observation takes place through an apparatus of perception, which includes not just telescopes and microscopes, but conceptual apparatuses of interpretation.
Of course there is a sense in which our perceptions are always already interpretations. But we are blind to how the body/brain does that. It is pre-cognitive and so cannot be taken into account.
Observation is historical thinking sounded vague. From the common sense, observation is perceptual act looking for data and collecting data from the phenomenon in the world. Not quite sure what you mean by observation is theory laden either. All thought is the product of its history of conceptualization? It needs explanation as well.
Quoting Pantagruel
Perhaps you could elaborate further on the points from the original text?
This sounds like an abstract waffle. You need to explain it further how and why observation is conceptual apparatuses of interpretation. Why do you need concept and interpretation when you are looking for and collecting data?
As I said, it is a well-known concept; there is actually a wiki on it. I would start with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness
Thanks for the link. Yes, it is an informative content for the point. I agree with the article's point saying
"Theory-ladenness poses a problem for the confirmation of scientific theories since the observational evidence may already implicitly presuppose the thesis it is supposed to justify. This effect can present a challenge for reaching scientific consensus if the disagreeing parties make different observations due to their different theoretical backgrounds."
This is fundamental to a philosopher like Collingwood, for example, and his notion of "absolute presuppositions," which are the epistemological cornerstone of his metaphysics.
There are also a ton of hits on TPF if you search "theory-laden".
What motivates and guides the search for and organization of data? How do we determine what is actually data and what is irrelevant?
Are they not presupposed in all scientific observations? Reiterating those sounds like just stating the obvious. No scientific observations would be done without all that predetermined and pre-equipped unless they are done by bunch of bird watchers, trainspotters, or sports spectators.
Presuppositions are conceptual in nature. And the kinds of presuppositions necessary to do what I outlined are specific to the particular task. Science isnt monolithic in its methods or presuppositions. Different empirical endeavors develop their own methodological practices, their own criteria for what constitutes data and how to collect and organize it.
Again, it sounds vague. What is your definition of concept? Why are presuppositions are conceptual?
Are all presuppositions conceptual in nature?
It here being observation, and observation is pre-cognitive? If so, I agree, from which follows that apparatus of perception, which includes ( ) conceptual apparatuses of interpretation, is false.
But I'd suggest there must be account, however mere .that is to say, trivially given . it may be.
Quoting Janus
I would agree with this as well, iff interpretation here is meant as judgement. Experience is the common character of already interpreted perceptions, but not all perceptions result in determined experience, so always interpreted cannot be imposed on experience. Judgement fits both always and already, and .added bonus judgement is the very epitome of conceptual apparatuses functionality.
"It" denotes how the body/ brain is apparently affected by the environment to produce perceptual experiences. We can tell the scientific story about how that happens, but that account is post hoc. If you would call that pre-cognitive affection "observation' then we would be talking about the same thing.
Quoting Mww
I guess it depends on how you intend the word "experience" to be taken. We can say the organism experiences the pre-cognitve affect of the environment and we can refer to the already interpreted perceptions as experiences. It seems to be the "seeing as" which I refer to as "interpretation" that you denote by "judgement"?
Language can be problematic. Meaning is not as transparently obvious as we would like it to be.