The Sciences Vs The Humanities
The sciences are concerned with what, whereas the humanities are concerned with how.
Write an elaboration of what you think this means.
Ill begin with my own elaboration:
What = existence; How = journey
The sciences are rooted in communication of existence in terms of what things are, how theyre interrelated, what they do and what functions, if any, they have.
The sciences are all about measurement. Through the lens of the sciences, to measure a thing is to contain it and thereby to know it.
The humanities are rooted in communication of voices arising from The Hard Problem: What its like to navigate and experience the material creation as a sentient being with an enduring individual point of view with personal history attached.
Through the lens of the humanities, to journey from cradle to grave is to string together a personal narrative (continuity) of emblematic, pivotal, transformative and self-defining moments.
Write an elaboration of what you think this means.
Ill begin with my own elaboration:
What = existence; How = journey
The sciences are rooted in communication of existence in terms of what things are, how theyre interrelated, what they do and what functions, if any, they have.
The sciences are all about measurement. Through the lens of the sciences, to measure a thing is to contain it and thereby to know it.
The humanities are rooted in communication of voices arising from The Hard Problem: What its like to navigate and experience the material creation as a sentient being with an enduring individual point of view with personal history attached.
Through the lens of the humanities, to journey from cradle to grave is to string together a personal narrative (continuity) of emblematic, pivotal, transformative and self-defining moments.
Comments (400)
Likewise, the humanities ask "what questions" frequently. What do human beings do when they are left in isolation, what do people think about X and Y, and so on.
We can say that quantitative aspects are quite fundamental to the sciences, this much is true and is a curious thing about them.
I suspect that the humanities exist in part to fulfill roles science simply cannot. Something about us being innately creative creatures gets expressed in all kinds of manners which are very hard to make sense of in scientific terms. We should be grateful for this, or we would have no arts.
The wedge between sciences and humanities was socially constructed after the industrial revolution and rapid development of natural sciences evoked an exaggerated belief in the methods of natural science, followed by an equally exaggerated defensive response within other areas of intellectual life.
In the Renaissance there was the science of art, and the art of science.
Sciences and humanities are not mutually exclusive, and both are concerned with "what" and "how" in their respective areas of interest.
The sciences aren't all about measurement. Biology has little to no measures outside of biochemistry.
Quoting Manuel
Quoting Manuel
Quoting Lionino
Quoting jkop
Yes. The sciences and the humanities are each seriously concerned with both "what" and "how."
Yes. The sciences and the humanities are not mutually exclusive.
Quoting ucarr
Do existence and journey represent two different modal methods of discovery?
Does science culminate in the presence of a thing understood?
Does art culminate in the experience of an enduring point of view?
Everything in the humanities is culture-bound (in the general sense) and outcomes are the policy-driving forces. These aren't problems, though.
Well, true that measurement is central to science, but so too is theory - the framework within which measurements are interpreted. The key fact in recent history being the scientific revolution and the overthrow of the medieval synthesis. Measurement was key aspect, but so too was a radically different vision of nature.
Quoting ucarr
Well, I'm sure David Chalmers would be flattered to be counted as the Founder of the Humanities, but I'm not sure it is warranted.
Mention might also be made of the famous Two Cultures speech, C. P. Snow, 1959, and the 'science wars'.
Which is why I prefer not to throw more wood on the fire... :wink:
Quoting ucarr
No. Science is concerned with science. The humanities are concerned with humans.
The give away is in the names?
Quoting ucarr
Huh? That sounds more like mysticism.
Science makes no assumptions. Blind speculation can happen but it is cast aside if no rational means of determining any kind of evidence can be unearthed. That said, there are some theories that fit observations so well that they live a bit longer than usual; Superstring Theory is one example.
Observation is key in all sciences (Empiricism).
Quoting ucarr
No. Science uses measurements based on observations. If measurements cannot be made science does not just leave it alone. We can observe changes and then speculate as to why such changes are happening. The evidence of scientific truths comes through determining a means of measuring but it is certainly not all science is.
Empiricism is fundamental to all the sciences.
Quoting ucarr
Not really. The Hard Problem is a scientific problem.
Quoting ucarr
Maybe.
In short, The Humanities are about the expression and understanding of the human condition in lived terms most often through a narrative function - although philosophy itself tends to straddle both the science and humanities through the employment of the science of logic (mathematics).
The means of accurate measuring of items like 'good' and 'bad' is obscure (and possibly a delusion?). We still measure value in human life but such measurements are so abstracted and opaque that more often than not we are misled and misguided by our sense of reasoning.
By this I simply mean that we do not possess the scope in spacial or temporal terms to pass any reasonably accurate declaration for a hard and fast 'rule' of human nature. Where we are blind the Humanities dresses us in comfort. Is there truth hidden within this comfort? I believe so.
Quoting AmadeusD
What I've underlined is succinct and insightful. Bravo. It's a clear expression of a basic value guiding the scientific process.
I know one of the best ways for testing a theory is seeing if it can make correct predictions, so I don't agree that science isn't seriously concerned with outcomes.
Science as a practice by humans in specific times and places cannot completely abstract itself from local culture.
Art, in its highest aspirations, tries to be universal and therefore beyond local culture except as an accidental association.
Quoting Wayfarer
I sense great depth of meaning in your sentence above. So far I cannot sound the deep waters here, beyond vaguely ruminating on the connections between measurement and theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
This sentence allows me to go a step further in my rumination: QM is, among other shocks, a motherlode of challenge along the axis of measurement. Its new vision of the world as theory could not have been measured in the required manner without that new vision, still today a hard thing to grasp and even harder to accept.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't mean to go that far in ascribing credit to Chalmers. I'm merely using his title to describe the still privileged human condition vis-á-vis the natural world.
I think all I meant there was that the outcomes aren't hte science, they're the indicator of success. Science, as a method, doesn't care about the outcomes. It just deals with them and moves on to new methodology. It's not motivated by the outcome, per se, but by the outcome's accuracy. Unsure if that seems like a distinction without a different to some..
Quoting ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
Since science is done presumably only by humans, the authoritatively binary distinction you seek to establish between science and art reads like an exaggeration.
By your own argument about different names, there's some sort of important difference between the two disciplines, isn't there? What do you think it is?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
I need to clarify: communication of existence is supposed to convey the fact that scientists make discoveries about what exists and, in turn, they communicate details of what exists to the public.
Quoting I like sushi
Theoretical scientists develop conjectures about things not accessible to hands-on examination by spinning out from related things that have been measured directly. At a higher level of nuance, we can surmise that theoretical conjectures are a type of measurement.
Quoting I like sushi
Is it a scientific problem that does a good job of describing what it's like to be a human endeavoring to learn truths about the natural world?
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
Yes. You seem to agree a good work of art is enduring, and it's enduring because, across the generations, human individuals continue to find promise of answers to human questions unresolved.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Your clause fragment above puts on a good show for establishing the proximity of the arts and sciences, and yet, I wonder if you feel that a description of intense prolonged neuron firing at synapses of the brain's pleasure centers is really almost the same thing as a fresh and frank description of a great shag between two characters just fallen in love. There's some sort of a big difference, isn't there?
Fair enough. And looking at it through that lens, the problem is precisely that of the relationship of quantitative measurement and qualitative judgement. That is why that annoying piece of philosophical jargon, 'qualia', is central to debates about the so-called problem of consciousness. But it's anticipated in Hume's 'is/ought' distinction. What can be measured precisely as distinct from what ought to be done. I agree with your designation of the 'hard problem' as 'what it is like to be...', as Chalmers uses exactly this expression. But I think there's a more direct expression of what he's trying to convey - he's referring to the meaning of being, or the meaning of existence. That is the philosophical issue.
(incidentally, interesting to note that German universities recognise a division that Anglo universities don't, namely Geisteswissenschaften - a set of human sciences such as philosophy, history, philology, musicology, linguistics, theater studies, literary studies. The term translated literally means something like 'sciences of the spirit'. )
Quoting AmadeusD
Take for example the discovery that light waves bend around gravitational fields; that's an outcome predicted by Relativity. It's one of the end games of Relativity as far validation is concerned. Henceforth, this bending of light waves under influence of gravity will be seen through the lens of Relativity. Isn't that a triumph not trifle of science?
Quoting AmadeusD
If you back engineer from the outcome to the theory that explains it, you see an answer in search of a question. Asking the right questions about the world we see around us is one of the seminal talents of the scientist. I don't presently see how your reasoning uncoupling answer from question is sound.
:up:
You've been clear: science is science; art is art.
Your definitions are clear: science observes and measures; art narrates living through love [math]\leftrightarrow[/math] hate and the grayscale in between.
Now, I'm waiting for you to start talking about how Newton's equations differ from the little boy who slips and tumbles down the stairs, thereafter taking comfort from his pain in mother's arms.
If you can experimentally test a stubborn observable pattern, then it is scientific.
In all other cases, it is something else.
The humanities are generally about stubborn patterns in human behavior.
The humanities are often able to successfully observe stubborn patterns, but human behavior is generally not testable. You can often still do observational studies, though.
In my opinion, the key distinction is testability.
The impossibility to test is not just a problem with human behavior.
Imagine that you have a theory about the birth of solar systems. Fantastic, but how do you test the creation of a solar system? So, how do you create one? Hence, no matter how well your theory matches observations in the universe, it will never be science.
Another example is the medical claim that the HIV virus causes AIDS. Fantastic, but how do you test this claim without deliberately injecting lots of people with the HIV virus? Hence, it will never be science either, if only, because your truly scientific experimental test report would land you in jail.
Yes, different ways (methods) and different ways of understanding what is revealed in experience.
One is more intuitive, the other theoretical. But it's all the same world. You could consider the world as a kind of humanities (we appreciate and are puzzled and want to give it some meaning) - it's just that different people go about it different ways.
:up:
Quoting ucarr
Sure, I agree that prima facie, that fact is interesting, plus part-and-parcel of talking about science. But, you'll see that in your formulation the outcome and prediction are separated. Science predicts. Outcomes are the fallout of experiments. I see a pretty relevant distinction - control.
Perhaps noting that the results are open to all for use (eg using some new discovery about how hydrogen can be broken down into water (im making this up) to solve droughts). Applications. Applied science. The methodology requires years of training and peer-review to even be taken seriously (on a high enough level, anyway. An experiment that predicts the temperature of a particuar fruit's skin under specific conditions isnt on that level, for instance). I would find it very uncomfortable to call "agreement between prediction and outcome" science, as opposed to just a fact about science. Maybe that's just me.
Falsifying one's expectations is key - another apt point that seems to illustrate that outcomes come after the science. When you're done with an epic performance of a play, you aren't still performing the play when you pick up your Tony award eight months later, for instance.
Quoting ucarr
I fully agree here, and to me, this is purely methodology. Getting the "right answers" relies on the methodology. There is extremely little a scientist can do about the outcomes of their experiments/observations, except improve methodology if they don't make sense (or, read Kuhn).
Quoting Tarskian
Regarding my thesis, going forward from what you wrote above entails assessing whether experimentation is modally existential, with the hows and whys of the details of an pattern involving existing things being ancillary to the modally existential process of experimentation.
Obviously those two things are quite different in a number of ways. An equation is abstract, where an action is not. The former can be applied in an objective sense whereas the latter is focused more on subjectivity.
I posted because your general conception of what science is seemed misguided/inaccurate.
When talking about the humanities and sciences, they are categories of subjects in academia. If you are attempting to use these categories outside of this then you need to be more concise with what your underlying point is. For me at least! :)
Yes, it means that science is an epistemic domain governed by a justification method. It really does not matter what exactly it is about as long as the justification method of testability can successfully be applied.
The same is true for mathematics. It is the epistemic domain governed by the justification method of axiomatic provability.
The humanities, on the other hand, are not an epistemic domain. They are a (collection of) subject domain(s). The humanities are generally about human behavior.
By the way, some claims about human behavior in the humanities can actually be experimentally tested -- even though this is most generally not the case.
This means that a purely formalist view is perfectly sustainable in mathematics and science:
Science is not about something. Science is actually about nothing at all.
Mathematics is not about something. Mathematics is actually about nothing at all.
On the humanities, a formalist view is not possible. The humanities are always about something.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
My thinking here is simple: we talk about science; we talk about art; sometimes we see scientific sensibilities conflicting violently with artistic sensibilities. That's a clue that the differences between the two might not be trivial. Even so, it's hard to talk rationally and generally about what is that difference.
You write well about science; you write cautiously about art:
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
When you talk about the difference between the two disciplines, you talk about art being resistant to accurate measurement. So, can you spin out a narrative of difference that illuminates the meaning of science being accurate measurement and art being touchy-feely measurement?
My claim, faulty though it be, characterizes the general difference as different modalities of method of discovery: the what modality for science; the how modality for art.
The what modality is a narration of things as things.
The how modality is a narration of things as experiences.
I can take this one:
Art has no right/wrong value. It has good/bad value (and subjective, at that). Science is the opposite. It has right/wrong values, and no good/bad values.
Art isn't even defined well enough to measure anything, additionally. Science is well-defined as a methodology of observation and measure. At any rate, science would be prior to art, if they were to be intertwined in a non-trivial way.
That is an oversimplification I feel. Science does require creativity as much as art.
There are not just TWO distinct disciplines. There is a good deal of overlap between various fields of interest within and between Science and Humanities subjects.
If you wish me to focus merely on 'accuracy of measuring' then I guess I can try, but that is not what science is. Nor would I say the humanities is just 'touchy feely' as each leaves an impression on the other (science affects humanities and humanities affects science). For this reason I would not state that the humanities 'resists' accurate measurement at all - no field of study does that. There is a history of science (humanities) as well as items like linguistics (the science of language).
'Meaning' of science in terms of accurate measurements? Mmm ... I guess the humanities is far more concerned with felt experience rather than observed experience. That would probably be the best simplistic distinction - both 'measure' in different ways. I guess it is a matter of Value; the arts are concerned with subjective value that nevertheless approaches pure abstracted ideas of beauty and such (feelings/impressions) whereas the sciences are concerned with objective value that can be formulated into an abstract 'meaning' (equation).
There is a whole sea of grey. I do not for an instance assume there is a 'black or white' to this but that such ideas of a pure black and white differentiations represent an abstraction of experience.
There are fields that are a tightly meshed combination of both, such as architecture. A good number of architectural rules have been experimentally tested for safety. Still, subjective aesthetics have always been a major consideration in the construction of new buildings. The same can be said about the design of cars or any consumer product.
:up:
Quoting AmadeusD
Well, if a fact about science is a science fact, then you must explain how a science fact is not science. Take for example electrolysis, the process of using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. That's a science fact. It's public, measurable and repeatable. This is not science you say?
How is it not the case that your argument above is not pettifogging en route to word muddle?
Quoting AmadeusD
Here I think you insert an artificial partition; the Tony Awards would be meaningless without the dramatic performances that precede it.
Quoting AmadeusD
Here you distill the war between science and art: successful navigation of right and wrong facts and right and wrong logic leads to the science and technology that produces nuclear bombs.
Detonation of nuclear bombs causes the good or bad vaporization of entire populations, enemy combatants and innocent civilians alike.
Can we see, herein, that right and wrong is concerned with what things are, whereas good and bad is concerned with the moral meaning of how things are experienced? Is this not an important difference between science and art? Does not Chris Nolan, through
Oppenheimer, spin out a narrative detailing the agony of a scientist caught in the crossfire between what he perceived as right and wrong versus good and bad?
That's right.
For millennia, humans have understood that buildings should be practical, beautiful, and sustainable, because if any of these qualities are omitted or prioritized the buildings become practical but not beautiful, or beautiful but unsustainable, or sustainable but regardless of how.
Yet the modern functionalists systematically disregarded the beautiful (or reinterpreted it as a function) as they prioritized practical qualities of planning, engineering, economy, service etc.
Other architects did the converse, became aesthetes or humanists with an interest in anthropology, sociology, ecology etc.
Nowadays many architects are neither engineers nor humanists but coordinators or sales people who use the aesthetic features of engineering or humanistic declarations for symbolic advertising purposes.
The relation between the practical, the aesthetic, and the sustainable is detached.
For example, some postmodern buildings are designed to appear sustainable (e.g. covered in solar panels, roof gardens etc.) despite being less sustainable than conventional or retrofitted buildings. There's no causal relation between the aesthetics and the sustainability and the practical reason for solar panels.
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
When you say logic and math aren't about anything at all, do you extend this application all the way to include the internal consistency of logic and math? Hasn't Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem rocked the houses of logic and math because it charges them with essential incompleteness? Doesn't this charge undermine their internal consistency? Doesn't the claim the first-order formalisms of logic and science will always generate statements internally unprovable open a wide fissure down the middle of formalism? Haven't you cited this as the crisis in math?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
Tactical simplification is a good thing; in the case of trying to examine a complex thing, simplification of complexity can be a useful method towards clarification and subsequent understanding improved.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes. This is well known. Our focus herein, however, is the task of articulating in terms both rational and general, why it is that institutions of higher learning segregate departments of the sciences from departments of the humanities. Is it mere formality, or is it formalism undergirded by an intuition of profound difference (in my opinion not yet clearly articulated into a cogent cognition)?
Quoting I like sushi
Perhaps your line of attack on the question under examination here: science vs art, lies rooted in the calculus. The differentiation/integration essentials of calculus are rational approaches to the complex and nuanced mesh of science and art. Yes, there is subtlety in the mesh, but differentiation/integration essentials are no less undeniable.
Quoting I like sushi
From your writing above I'm thinking you're not totally averse to my claim science and art differ mainly in terms of two different modalities of discovery: science leans towards objective discovery; art leans towards subjective discovery, and QM establishes where the twain shall meet!
Quoting Tarskian
:up:
I think another example is motion picture directing. In my understanding, the motion picture director is a mesh of dynamic systems engineering and aesthetic storytelling.
Given this definition of the director, motion pictures are constructed motion machines as light and shadow signifiers.
Quoting jkop
This is mediocrity turning art into by-the-numbers methodology.
Quoting jkop
Does such a causal relation exist?
Well, that is such an obvious difference that I am baffled why you would wish to point it out? If your point is merely that Art is subjective and Science is objective (broadly speaking) ... so what?
I think I at least offered something a little more nuanced by approaching what they Value rather than how objective they are. As I mentioned, Superstring Theory is only still around because it seems to solve certain problems BUT there is no objective evidence - it is purely theoretical.
Maybe you will find this interesting; I have mentioned before some time ago ...
Art does two things (1) brings temporal experience into a singular moment (2) transforms a singular moment into a continuous temporal experience.
For example, if I listen to a piece of music or watch a movie the experience becomes one unified whole, whereas if I look at a sculpture or a painting I stretch the experience out across time and animate it. Time is the medium of art.
Science does neither. Science is singularly focused on reducing data to a universally applicable formula. Time is tool not a medium for science.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting ucarr
The above is my launch into the spine of my OP.
Discovery of "what" is rooted in the nominative predication of the fact of existing things.
This nominative predication of the fact of existing things establishes "what is."
Discovery of "how" is rooted in the adverbial modification of the nominative predication of the fact of existing things.
This adverbial modification of the nominative predication of the fact of existing things narrates "what it's like" to experience "what is."
This adverbial modification elaborates both the effect and the affect of the fact of existing things. To the main point, "how" drags consciousness into the frame of the lens of discovery.
David Chalmers has enlightened us with just how profound is the difference between "what" and "how" with his seminal paper, "The Hard Problem." It delineates what is perhaps the greatest limitation of abductive reasoning from "what."
With his paper, "The Hard Problem," David Chalmers shows in stark fashion what science, so far, cannot do: it cannot objectify the personal point of view of an enduring, individual self with personal history attached. It can technologize the self via computation, but the result isn't an authentic self. Instead, it's just a simulation of the self without an autonomous self-awareness. This technical self is just a machine awaiting additional source code from humans.
There's a question whether a self-aware source code can (or would want to) liberate itself from the formalism out of which it emerges. Curiously, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem might be a harbinger pointing the way towards a definitive understanding reductive materialism is flawed. (Even if a humanoid simulation evolves to the level of undetectability, it will still be an automaton running on programmatic source code.)
If there's a grain of truth in what I've written above, then Tarskian is correct in the characterization of the Incompleteness Theorem being the cause of a crisis in science and math. Jeffrey Kaplan compounds the reality of this crisis with his exegesis of Russell's Paradox.
Kaplan_Russell's Paradox
Is there a bridge linking "what" with "how" in the context I've elaborated here?
Physics is not concerned with how at the fundamental level. We know how light propagates. A temporal change in the electric field produces the magnetic field and vice versa. That is how we explain the propagation of light. Yet we don't know at the fundamental level how a temporal change in the electric field produces the magnetic field and vice versa.
That is a typical response from a person who either does not understand an argument or does not have any argument to add something fruitful to a discussion. Do you know how a temporal change in the electric field produces the magnetic field?
Quoting ucarr
Yes, in the sense that architecture causally emerges from the building's practical, aesthetical, and sustainable qualities.
The use of an aesthetic that makes an unsustainable building appear sustainable won't make it sustainable, the causal relation is not satisfied. Likewise, minimalists used an auster practical looking aesthetic that was not so practical, often overly complicated and expensive to achieve.
Quoting jkop
So, one possible summit of a science-art mesh would be a building that's useful, ecological and beautiful.
1 This means nothing.
Quoting MoK
2 I said physics is concerned with 'how', not whether we know how this or that particular fact.
3 You then proceed to give a physical though incorrect explanation of how light propagates, self-refuting your claim that physics isn't concerned with how.
Quoting MoK
4 This phrase "temporal change" isn't used in physics.
Quoting MoK
5 That is electromagnetic induction as given by B-S's Law and L's Law. Nothing to do with propagation of the electromagnetic wave.
Quoting MoK
6 Cut the nonsensical "fundamental" out of the phrase and it is evidently wrong. Even with the "fundamental" there, one could argue it is wrong too, resorting to relativistic explanations.
Quoting MoK
lol
:rofl: :up:
It means something. It means given the laws of nature you can predict the behavior of entities. The laws of nature cannot however be explained. That is what I mean by at the fundamental level.
Quoting Lionino
Ok, so you are correcting yourself.
Quoting Lionino
I mean an explanation in terms of the laws of nature. By this, I mean given the laws of nature you can explain things but you cannot explain the laws of nature.
Quoting Lionino
It is used. Change can be temporal or spatial. By temporal I mean the strength of the electromagnetic field for example changes at a point in space by time.
Quoting Lionino
You can produce electric field if magnetic field changes by time. You can also produce magnetic field in absence of electrical current if electric field changes by time. That is how light propagate in space.
Quoting Lionino
By fundamental I mean we don't know how the laws of nature work.
Quoting Lionino
So you know!?
No, I am not. My statement is the same as before. Scroll up and read it.
Quoting MoK
No, it is not. I could control+F several physics textbook pdfs of mine with 1000+pages each and the phrase "temporal change" wouldn't appear once.
Quoting MoK
This is complete gibberish.
Quoting MoK
As I have just said, it is not, you got it completely backwards.
[hide="Reveal"]
Thanks.[/hide]
In the formalist view, mathematics is just about string manipulation.
Even though a mathematical theory -- if it is capable of arithmetical string manipulations -- cannot prove the consistency of its own string manipulations, it does not mean that these string manipulations are necessarily inconsistent.
Quoting ucarr
There are true strings that can be expressed in the language of an arithmetic-capable theory that cannot be generated (from its axioms) by means of legitimate string manipulations in the theory.
This incompleteness does not contradict the formalist view that mathematics is just about string manipulation.
By the way, formalism is just one possible view on mathematics. Platonism, for example, is also a perfectly sustainable view.
A formalist view on science is that it is just about experimental test report production. If you can produce such report about the claim, then it is science.
:grin: :up:
Quoting Tarskian
Okay. So things are well understood even if if they're not completely understood.
Quoting Tarskian
Some stuff is going on not completely explainable in one situation, but that doesn't mean pure math operations aren't copacetic.
Quoting Tarskian
Just because the universe is inherently logical and computational, that doesn't mean it's not also mysterious, or should I say, miraculous?
Even if the universe turns out to have a theory, this theory will almost surely be incomplete and therefore be able to predict just a small fraction of its facts. So, there is indeed ample scope for mysteries and miracles.
:grin: :up:
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/228806/does-g%C3%B6dels-incompleteness-theorem-really-say-anything-about-the-limitations-of
There is no ample scope for "mysteries and miracles" here beyond someone's uneducated sophistry.
Stephen Hawking, by the way, was an atheist.
Quoting Lionino
The quartet of Incompleteness Theory includes: Bertrand Russell, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, and Kurt Gödel. Russell and Gödel have something to say about the limits of axiomatic systems; Schrödinger and Heisenberg have something to say about the limits of quantized physical interactions.
Quoting Lionino
"If we knew everything about the positions of every particle in the universe, we would have a complete physics database and could predict every physical event." -- Lee Smolin
Are you bear-hugging the hard determinism of the permutations (Three-Card Molly gone cosmic) of a complete physics database?
we would still not know their velocities. Im sure thats a spurious quotation, Smolin would not endorse LaPlaces determinism.
And you start by making an obvious error. All questions are "what?" questions.
How does ice melt? = What are the processes/mechanisms that cause ice to melt?
Quoting ucarr
There are many questions that science struggles to address. How consciousness works (what are the processes of consciousness) and what it is (what it does) are scientific questions.
Any question is potentially a scientific one - scientific method can be applied to SOME degree.
Expressing emotions and blind opinions are not scientific, but we can investigate the cognitive science behind why some people do this and explore how it can be useful (in a scientific manner NOT an emotional one instilled with blind opinions).
Quoting ucarr
I think Husserl started to address this by pointing out that psychology does not deal with subjectivity - because it takes on a material objective measurement of non-material subjective content. The whole point of his phenomenology was to create a new 'science of consciousness' that explored primal concepts and better ground underlying principles for the physical sciences.
Science is defined by hard and fast rules/laws that are accurate enough to surpass mere blind opinion or singular subjective perspectives.
The Arts do not do this:
- History does not, whereas the science of Archeology does.
- Literature does not do this, whereas the science of Linguistics does.
I have a feeling you are confusing yourself by interchanging Why, How and What without appreciating that they are ALL What questions. This then lead to you holding to How for one line of questioning where it suits you whilst holding to Why for another (even though - to repeat - they are BOTH What questions).
Experiencing is experiencing. Consciousness is consciousness of ... not simply some floating item - Husserlian 'intentionality'.
Maybe you wish to ask 'What would we mean by saying Consciousnessing?' rather than relying on the term "thinking"?
As of yet, I am still unsure what you are saying and starting to think that you do not really have a clear idea of what you mean due to misapplication of terms and heuristic bias.
That is another version of Laplace's demon:
This demon cannot exist because of Cantor's generalized theorem (or "Cantor's diagonalization").
Cantor's generalized theorem says that there is no onto mapping possible between a set and its power set, even when such set has an infinite cardinality.
Noson S. Yanofsky pointed out in [i]"A Universal Approach to Self-Referential
Paradoxes, Incompleteness and Fixed Points"[/i] that the following theorems are all a consequence of Cantor's generalized theorem:
Yeah, those three (or closely related varieties of each) are the essential components of all successful structural designs. Also known as the Vitruvian Triad.
When the sciences divorced the humanities, many intellectuals (e.g. Schopenhauer) became reluctant to see architecture as an art. It just seemed too pragmatic, concerned with functions etc.
They failed to see the bigger picture, and so did many architects who arbitrarily began to reinterpret the meanings of the Vitruvian components to fit their special interests, e.g. by assuming that the beauty of what's practical is an invisible kind of beauty that can replace the Vitruvian component.
But invisible beauty doesn't interact with anything, so the architecture gets entirely determined by what's practical, or sustainable. The architecture became one-sided, brutal, or bland. But the counter-movements became equally one-sided when they prioritized beauty or sustainability at the expense of what's practical.
A building is not a machine to live in, nor a humanistic work of art, but the interplay of both. This is old ancient knowledge relevant today and forever.
I don't know what this means. I take it you are referring to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It is not about "limits of quantised physical interactions".
Quoting ucarr
This has nothing to do with what you are replying to, and I don't know what "three-card molly gone cosmic" is supposed to mean.
I imagine that a professional physicist of non-classical fields would be bewildered by this thread.
Quoting I like sushi
what | (h)w?t, (h)wät |
pronoun
1 [interrogative pronoun] asking for information specifying something: what is your name?
how1 | hou |
adverb [usually interrogative adverb]
1 in what way or manner; by what means: how does it work?
-- The Apple Dictionary
We see the two words -- like science and art -- share common ground. Does that lead you to conclude they're synonyms, or do you stop short of that conclusion? This conversation isn't trying to establish the words -- nor the disciplines -- as polar opposites.
Do you believe science and art have trivial differences which can be dismissed?
If you believe their differences lie between trivial and polar, then words with differences likewise lying between trivial and polar should be available for use in naming them.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
[math]\Rightarrow[/math] reductive materialism
Quoting I like sushi
I acknowledged this overlap long ago. Now, it's your turn to argue the point that overlap obliterates difference. After doing so, you can instruct the publishers of dictionaries in the details of the necessary revisions.
Quoting I like sushi
Why truck out your unwieldy "Consciousnessing" when we already have "perceiving"? Have you examined the differences between "perception" and "thought"? Be forewarned, there is some overlapping.
Quoting I like sushi
According to my approach, conversations here don't wear cement shoes whilst treading the rows and columns of fresh ideas in flux to new understandings.
Quoting Tarskian
So, uncountable sets prevent us from totting up the universe as a whole?
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
If I've got a glimmer of understanding of what you're trying to tell me, this is treasure trove of information.
:up: Tarskian
Quoting jkop
Quoting jkop
We're on the same page regarding the interrelationship of: science, art, ecology. Now, in this conversation, I want to detail in some stuff that talks in a rational and general manner about what the differences are between the two titans: science/art, and how those modal differences are mediated by the unifying synchro-mesh of ecology.
I don't understand how one can disprove Laplace's Demon using Cantor's theorem. Do you mind elaborating?
Quoting Lionino
"We already talked about how position and position-over-time are related in quantum mechanics. So it turns out that when your position distribution is concentrated in a single area, when you (Fourier) transform it to get the momentum, that momentum distribution is more spread out (less determinable). Similarly, if the momentum distribution is concentrated, then the position distribution is more spread out (less determinable). The reason for this, mathematically, is that the momentum distribution and the position distribution of particles in Quantum Configuration Space are the Fourier Transforms of one-another.
Position and Momentum are related mathematically, unlike in big-stuff physics (Newtonian). Heisenberg's Principle comes from the fact that Position and Momentum distributions are Fourier Transforms of one-another, which leads to a fundamental inequality in the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics that is not attributable to any kind of Observation Effect."
--Tyler Kresch
Kresch is describing an elementary particle state within a five-dimensional math space. This math space is inferred to a conjectured ontic model of an animated elementary particle.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting ucarr
In your above quote you trash personal notions of mysteries and miracles. Well, that implies everything in existence can be known scientifically. In that case, every possible event is built into a thermodynamism of matter and energy never created nor destroyed. So changing events are just rearrangements of always pre-existing matter and energy forms. Isn't that a deterministic universe?
Three-Card Molly is a street-level gambling hustle using three cups and one pea under one of the cups. The dealer reveals the initial position of the pea. The gambler stakes a bet on being able to observe the shuffling of the cups closely enough to pick the cup covering the pea after the shuffle. Since this is a game based on the mathematically fixed number of possible positions of the shuffling cups per unit of time, the final position of the pea is an example of determinism governed by a measurable probability.
This is a miniature parallel of your thermodynamically conserved universe undergoing rearrangements.*
*See Tarskian's post for a refutation of my above claim.
No, I thrashed ideologically driven drivel.
Quoting ucarr
It doesn't. There are different kinds of knowledge other than scientific.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Lionino
Yes. You're right. There are things opaque to scientific inquiry. I should've said: That implies every scientific exam, once underway and making new discoveries of truth, should realistically expect a definitive conclusion to its central questions. There should be no insoluble mysteries such as: what lies beyond a black hole's event horizon. This must follow if it's true that, as you say: There is no ample scope for "mysteries and miracles" here beyond someone's uneducated sophistry.
Quoting MoK
It was a reference to David Wolpert's and Josef Rukavicka's publications:
They apparently used Cantor's theorem directly. It sounds like they could also have used Turing's Halting Problem instead.
Noson S. Yanofsky pointed out that Cantor's theorem is implicit in a whole host of diagonalization theorems including Turing's Halting Problem:
You cannot establish an onto mapping between a set and its power set.
(The power set of a set is the set of all its subsets)
Yanofsky demonstrates in his paper that Cantor's theorem is implicit also in theorems such as Godel's incompleteness theorem and Tarski's undefinability of the truth.
Cantor originally used this diagonalization argument between the natural numbers and the real numbers (which is its power set) to prove that there is a clear distinction between the countable infinity and uncountable infinity cardinalities.
(The cardinality of a set is just the number of elements in a set)
It basically means that a set and its power set never have the same size. The power set is always larger. This is the principle that ultimately seems to be at the core of the foundational crisis in mathematics.
If you are just riffing, fair enough. If you have something explicit to say I have not seen it yet.
They is no direct question in the OP (very nebulous). There are fundamental flaws with how you outlined science. Even in the discussions you are having with others hear I see virtually nothing relevant to the misconceptions expressed in the OP.
Perhaps if you show me how you would answer the previous questions you asked of me it would elucidate what you are actually getting at. Failing that I will just leave you to it. If so, have fun :)
This is impressive thinking. :up:
"Number, space, logic- the most basic concepts of mathematics. Why are they so fundamental? Because they reflect essential features of our minds and the world around us. Mathematics has evolved from certain simple and universal properties of the world and the human brain. That our mathematics is effective for manipulating concepts is perhaps no more surprising than that our legs and good at walking."......
Rucker argues "It is evident that the thought forums of dyad, triad, and tetrad are objectively given archetypes. They correspond to the very basic numbers 2, 3, 4. The number 5 is also quite basic, and we might suppose there to be a thought form consisting of five related concepts. Let's call this form a pentad. One way of drawing a pentad is as the "quincunx" a legitimate dictionary word meaning "an arrangement of five things with one at each corner and one in the middle of a square.
This is, of course, a flattened picture. Just as the quaternity takes its truest form if we let it pop up into a three-dimensional tetrahedron, it turns out that a pentad takes its most natural shape if we let it spring out into a four-dimensional "pentahedron".
What do you think? for me that relates to so many other sources of math information that I have a hard time understanding.
Can you turn that into a four-dimensional pentahedron? That is a sincere question, not an attempt to inform anyone of anything. Here is the deal for me, I am uncomfortable with either/or arguments. either or arguments are mostly this and that. We live in a 4-dimensional reality so maybe we want to consider four dimensional patterns in statements of truth?
I heard, in India, it is assumed when we speak of one thing, we speak of its opposite. In the west we are very materialistic and seem to ignore movement and change. I Ching the Chinese Book of Change always includes the change. It takes into consideration the unfolding of seasons and climate. At times the climate will favor change and at other times the climate will prevent change.
Science is a method for ascertaining facts about hte world. Facts about science are plainly different things? I'm not sure what's missed there so I'm sorry if this seems rude. Facts about science are ones which pertain to science, the method of inquiry. Scientific facts are ones which are gleaned from that process. Pure observations about states of affairs. "There is a book on shelf" is not a scientific fact, i'm sure you'd agree. Likewise "We ran test x. We ran it y times. We got a range of s-t values which allows us to conclude ABC". Running test X is a fact about the process of science being employed. ABC is a scientific fact as a result of hte scientific method having been carried out.
Perhaps this will illuminate what i'm saying:
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
No. THe process of electrolysis is a fact about science. The measurements are 'science facts'. The method and the results are not the same kind of fact. I do not understand how you're confusing the two, and so perhaps my responses are inapt.
Quoting ucarr
I'm not sure what this is meant to mean, but there is precisely zero muddle or problems witht eh words in my account. They are straight-forward, easy to understand and delineate, and adequately refer to the two distinct things I am referring to.
Quoting ucarr
This is a non sequitur that does not relate to the discussion. No, Tony awards would not be possible without a performance, but they are plainly irrelevant to each other per se. Picking up the award is not acting a play out. Presenting your findings at a conference is not carrying out experiments under controlled conditions.
Quoting ucarr
I don't recognize anything in the above in my account. I think you've jumped some massive guns here and landed somewhere entirely alien to both what I've said, and what I intended to convey.
Quoting ucarr
No, not at all. I don't actually see how what you've said is at all illustrative of this point, ignoring that I think the point is extremely weak and bordering on nonsensical. Neither of these accounts makes any sense prima facie which presents an issue for the conclusions being drawn. They need grounding principles to become apt for any context of discussion. I do, however, note that yes, "good and bad" are different from "right and wrong". Something "right" can be "bad" for someone (i don't know an ethical account that doesn't acknowledge this). I'm not quite sure the point, there, unless you're saying that "science facts" and "facts about science" can be put into the respective boxes there? If so, could you be a little clearer about those thoughts? I might be able to get on that train, depending how you're thinking of it...
Thank you Athena. I appreciate that :) Particularly as we've often bumped up against one another.
Are they mediated? There are geometric forms that allow durability, utility, and beauty to coalesce, as in arches or catenary curves. Just being present or available satisfies a versatility that is adequate for many areas of human interest, e.g. architecture.
Health care and medicine are other areas where the wedge between the sciences and the humanities has had polarising effects on practices.
For example, the idea that consciousness is subjective, but science is objective, and therefore we can't have a science about consciousness, conflates two different senses of 'subjective'.
Consciousness is ontologically subjective as it exists only for the one who has it, but that doesn't mean epistemically subjective. We can be conscious of science, and we can have science about the conscious states of individual organisms.
Pseudo-intellectualism is looking like the most probably explanation of this person's writing. I mean look at this needless word salad:
I am prone to florid sentences myself sometimes but this is just too much for me to stomach anymore.
[/sarcasm]
What would philosophy be without dubious sentences?
A more charitable interpretation of that sentence is that it is based on the dubious assumption that art and science are opposite modes of inquiry, and somehow ecology meshes them together. But the assumption is proven wrong by the fact that both in the sciences and in the arts we use pretty much the same modes of inquiry, e.g. abductive.
?ucarr
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
You are not seeing what is here to be seen. (Notice how no one else is charging me with being vague and unfocused.)
Quoting ucarr
Summary: Science and the arts differ on the basis of "What" and "How." What = existence; How = Journey. Show me where, in the specific language of these statements, there's a lack of clarity about what I'm stating. As an example of what I'm asking for, show me how my two equations are unclear about what they're claiming.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
In your two repetitive statements above, you use "interchanging" twice. If two things are interchangeable, which is to say they can be exchanged, that can mean they're of the same type or value. It doesn't necessarily mean they are equal. You equate them when you say,
Quoting I like sushi
So, the gist of your argument seems to be the claim they are equal. Do you agree this is the point of your argument? If you don't agree to this, then you're agreeing with an argument I've already made:
Quoting ucarr
If you deny you're equating "What" and "How," then your statement:
Quoting I like sushi
implies "How" and "What" belong to the general category of "What." This means, as you know, that "How" overlaps with "What" in important ways that land it within the general category of "What." They are exchangeable but not identical. As with Venn Diagrams, some of their terrain overlaps, some of it doesn't. They both belong to the same "type," but they nonetheless are distinct "tokens" not equal.
The terrain of my claim is the grayscale that lies between two polarities, say, black and white. "What" and "How" are non-identical exchangeables, just as, by your own argument, "science" and "art" are non-identical exchangeables. This means your argument -- because of the implied meaning of its own language ("What" and "How" are distinct "tokens" of the same "type") -- for my confusion becomes your confusion (about my confusion) due to an error in judgment (about who's confused) that makes your attack irrelevant.
Quoting I like sushi
Have you ever taken a test that asks you an essay question? Essay questions are not yes/no questions, nor are they multiple choice questions where you check the correct box. Essay questions ask the person to write an essay pertinent to the issue raised by the question. This is the hardest type of question because you're on your own judgment about what is the best answer. So, yes, there is no simple, bracketed answer indicated by the question, but that's because it wants you to be expansive in the expression of your pertinent thoughts.
I know you'll be unpersuaded by my arguments here. Thank-you for your time and energy because your involvement, something requiring my defense, has empowered me to better understand what I'm trying to communicate within this conversation.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Athena
Yes. Interesting observations.
Let's look at some details:
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Athena
As it turns out, I've got a more simple answer to your request:
Quoting ucarr
Please click on the hyper-link of my name at the bottom of the above post. It'll take you to the post that contains the quote. There you'll get the context for the quote.
P.S. It's the third paragraph up from the bottom of the post.
Quoting jkop
Aye, doubt is the soul of philosophy.
Quoting jkop
Here's an interesting example of a dubious premise leading to a useful conclusion:
Quoting jkop
It's not the dubious conclusion that's useful. Instead, it's the proffered example: abductive reasoning as the modal forms of both scientific and artistic discovery. (Who says the jeering section of the bleachers isn't essential to the triumphs of (the hallowed name of your favorite philosopher here))?
This is the type of answer I'm looking for. If the answer is a good one, then the goodness of the answer is at least partial validation of the florid sentence.
Let's say abductive reasoning is the mode of inquiry of both science and art. Well, that's a general and rational statement about the identities of science and art.
Now we come to what might be the fun part. What is the difference between science and art? If we replace art with humanities, then we might have a cogent answer from 180 Proof: science is a subset of humanities.
180 Proof
So, what about the difference? We've conjectured science and art are both of the humanities. We've conjectured they're both forms of abductive reasoning. Why do they have different labels? Why do few people confuse scientists with artists?
If the difference between science and art is trivial, then one label for both will suffice, right? Wrong. I don't expect anybody to start claiming one label is adequate for both. Do you? You don't.
While I await cogent arguments to the effect the difference IS trivial, I'll proceed with the work of this conversation: articulating, in a manner both general and rational, the difference between science and art.
What if the answer lies within an articulation of a hierarchy with three levels: a) humanities; b)... c) abductive reasoning. What's the b) level? I think it goes thus: b) nominative predication vs adverbial modification of nominative predication.
Quoting ucarr
ucarr
What question? There is no question in the OP.
You threw a question at me when I asked for clarity. How about you show me how to answer it. That might actually be useful for both us in gaining some degree of mutual understanding.
Quoting ucarr
I am not in an exam (plus my first post addressed the point in the OP and the issues with your "elaboration"). Tell me if there is or isn't AND explain it concisely.
Quoting ucarr
We will see I guess.
Read my post directly above yours for the heart of what I have to say thus far. If it has any merit, we can all thank jkop for his smart and provoking input.
Also, there's plenty of detail that you, in fairness to me, should respond to in like detail.
As for the essay question, it's implied: given the prompt, what do you think?
That physics may not explain everything in our universe does not leave ample scope for miracles. "Miracle" here is used casually and sophistically, but the above fact does not leave ample scope for miracles in a Humean sense either.
This is not to say that God is refuted or atheism is true, but there being unknown facts about the universe does not say anything to us about the supernatural. It would be comedic if it would, our knowledge of the natural is lacking and based on that we make claims about a domain beyond the natural?
I can't work with Quora quotations.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay. On the one hand, a fact about the world, say, electrolysis, is different from a science face, say, the scientific method. On the other hand, would you say electrolysis is an artistic fact? We are allowed to segregate facts about the world into different categories, are we not?
Quoting AmadeusD
So, the science is all in the process of discovering, but the discovery, when made, lies outside of science? This seems to cut off the meaning of the process of discovery from the process itself. This, in turn, seems to artificially separate process from goal. How can you have a logical process for going forward if you have no idea where you're going?
Quoting AmadeusD
How can this be a non sequitur to a discussion when it responds to a topic you introduced into the discussion?
Quoting AmadeusD
How is it you're not confusing relevance with identity? Give me an argument that shows how an award for an acting performance doesn't relate to the acting performance. How can one thing be an award, i.e., recognition, for another thing it doesn't relate to?
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Let's see if your words on screen can mean something very different from the intentions within your mind:
Quoting ucarr
Quoting AmadeusD
Things are [math]\Rightarrow[/math] facts, or truth.
How sentient beings respond to truth introduces morals. This is the key to the difference between "What" and "How."
Quoting Lionino
Do you buy the existence of humanity as a miracle of improbability?
Quoting Lionino Do you deny the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was worked out as a math inequality?
[math]pq ? qp = h/(2?i)[/math]
Why shouldn't you take Quora quotations individually? It's not a cop-out to assume everyone posting there incompetent? Why are you tethered to the credentials fuss?
This is helpful. If I'm understanding correctly, abductive reasoning is used to determine which of a number of rival theories is the most simple and direct.
Quoting jkop
Can we have science about the conscious states of individual organisms that's epistemically subjective? This question is meant to ask if we can somehow somersault out of objective examination of a thing outside of us (consciousness not our own) into a subjective understanding of it? Sounds like science fiction along the lines of Star Trek's Vulcan mind meld.
And moreover, can we then somehow rationalize subjectivity as objective narration?
Now we see with these questions the profound difference between what science does and what art does. The actor and the writer, through the illusion of omniscient performance/narration, enters the mind of the character and lives that character's life subjectively.
If we want to know what something is, objectively, we turn to science.
If we want to know what it's like, subjectively, to walk a mile in another person's shoes, we turn to art.
These are two profoundly different states: the "what" versus the "how."
Unfortunately, this seems to have ignored the vast majority of what I've said, and run right into the same confusion i teased apart earlier (agreement/disagreement notwithstanding).
Electrolysis is a method for achieving the aim of (usually) electroplating metals. The resulting object would be a fact about the world (or, just to give related examples " X is currently electrolysing Y". A description of the process would be "science about science" where the fact that the process does what it does would be a "science fact". So, you can tease this into:
Electrolysis can destroy follicles achieving an aesthetic hairlessness - A fact about science. In this case, the science of aesthetic electrolysis. It can be gleaned from the basic observation of watching hte process happen.
However, "electrolysis(in this context) is the process of destroying hair follicles by running a charge through a tiny wire under the skin (and all the rest)... " is science fact. It's a description of a scientific process not apprehendable by bare observation. It requires the scientific method to deduce. THe former does not(though, you can argue that both are simply the same thing at different levels - I think we know what we're talking about. If not, Okay - we have more work to do between us :P )
Quoting ucarr
Sure. My point is to say that some facts in science are 'theoretical' not instantiated anywhere in-and-of themselves. The speed of light would be one. Whereas, "light takes x time from Sun to Earth" is fact, borne from the scientific method, that stands alone, instantiated "perfectly" in an aspect of the world.
Quoting ucarr
I think this is a slight misstatement, but overall, yes, I'd agree. The hair curler is not an object of science, as eg. But how it works, is (well, assuming that's a relatively settled description lol... I don't know it).
Quoting ucarr
Not so. What you brought up was the "meaningless"ness of the Tony Awards, without the performances they are given. This seems both incoherent (they are interdependent - teh awards are not given for no performance) and a non sequitur, because I made no comment at all abouthe meaningfulness of something. "The Tony Awards" still means "The Tony Awards" if no performances have been considered. They just will not be awarded to anyone. And so you can (hopefully) now see, that you brought in something I did not intend to be spoken about. My intention was to point out that The Tony Awards do not consist in the performances in any respect. They simple are not given sans performances. "meaningful"ness isn't relevant, as best I can tell. It's confusing meaning with meaningful.
Quoting ucarr
You are not responding to what I've said. Obviously the award relates to the performance for which it is given. My saying "I am a legal executive" relates to my legal training. They are not, in any way, overlapping elements of the world. A baseball cap is related to the manufacture process, but they are not at all the same thing. I think its possible you are confusing identity and relevance - yet reversing the onus of clarity. It certainly feels that way in your posts. For hte bolded above, I think I'll need to you pedantically explain how you got to that question. I dont assent to it, because it doesn't relate to what I've said, on my terms. I cannot answer, because it appears irrelevant and asks me to defend something I did not say.
Quoting ucarr
No. This is not correct(not quite relevant here), nor the right extrapolation of what i've said. What I've said relates to the fact that you cannot, as an artist or otherwise, call a piece of art "right or wrong". You can only indicate whether, by your subjective lights, its "good or bad". This distinction does not remove moral content. It removes the ability to judge art morally. They are very separate things.
You can, as a scientist or otherwise, call a scientific proposition "right or wrong" (i suppose this is getting to t vs T, so maybe if so we should shut it down there for another time to avoid getting weedy). You cannot call it "good or bad". Where that happens, people are using art criticism to impugn scientific validity (think Charles Murray. His actual robustness isn't relevant. the Bell Curve was judged like an exegesis). And then where people proclaim art is "bad art" they are trying to use scientific judgment schemes such as "correct" or "accurate" which is not apt.
So, with this clarity, I see that what i wrote means precisely what I had intended it to :)
Quoting ucarr
I'm unsure I agree to this. Some things are feelings. Some things are ranges. Some things are variations. Some things are multiply realized. There are pieces of art which contain scientific facts as a basis for their aesthetic quality. But only on analysis would this become obvious, and you'd assess that basis with scientific rigour, but hte piece of art overall with a critic's scheme. Truth isn't relevant to the overall picture, but it may be that the truth of the included science fact is relevant to the aesthetic of the wider piece. This changes nought here, just quite an interesting little conceptual russian doll.
Quoting ucarr
I outright reject this, unless what you're getting at is that somehow we can inherently tell shit from shinola. I don't think that's the case, and I think morals mainly come from reacting to events and feelings that follow them. Sometimes they are assented to on a social basis, rather than an analysis of any kind - but mostly, truth isn't relevant to morality Imo unless you're after an objective morality, which I reject.
Quoting ucarr
Science, the method, transcends culture. No, it is not a 'Western' idea, it is not 'chauvanistic' to think careful observation and measurement is how we come to robust conclusions about hte world. It works wherever it is carried out, and in whatever context.
The social sciences do not respond this way to the world. Carrying out an analysis of, let's say, gender divisions, will require different methodologies among the Objibwe, in Mali, in Dublin, in Tehran etc.. etc... You can't carry the same assumptions around with you to get accurate data. But you can with 'science'. Publishing though - ooof. The same compartmentalisation and disagreements occur there.
Quoting ucarr
Of course. You're, again, conflating two quite different inferences. The outcomes don't matter. The method for getting there does. But carrying out hte method correctly means "so be it" as regards the outcome. You seem to be confusing relevance and identity *wink wink*.
Quoting ucarr
as researchers they, at least, should be. You cannot aim at an outcome. You do the work. THe outcome is as it is. Researchers are human though, so obviously they're going to care. This is conflation, again.
Quoting ucarr
100% they are culture bound - but I'm unsure I get what you're asking, because this seems silly and you're not. They are based in 16th century Europe. Written in Middle English and refer to humour, politics (geo as well as local), social interactions and institutions of the time. They are completely culture-bound. That other cultures enjoy Shakespeare is a different fact with different interpretations. It could simply be the force of colonialism has hoodwinked other cultures into giving a toss. Who knows. A different conversation. (I suppose what one might want to say here, is that those plays are culture-bound but the themes are not. But then, they will exist in some cultures and not others, so still culture-bound but if a different way).
Quoting ucarr
You're confusing a political (practical) problem with an accounting problem. My descriptions of those two modes of (lets just say) are not problematic. Mein Kampf, ironically, instantiates perfectly what I mean by the distinction - the Bell Curve vs Mein Kampf.
Quoting I like sushi
That seems a bit much to me. I think confusing similar concepts is enough to explain. ucarr appears very thoughtful to me, and wanting to engage - I tend to see a lack of wanting to engage with pseudo-intellectualism (couple of other threads active rn are dead-on examples). I tend favour incompetence instead of maliciousness or deceptiveness to explain these things :P Perhaps I'm a bit sanguine as to this.
No, science is not epistemically subjective. Opinions are, for example, my opinion that 'classic jazz is better than hip-hop' is epistemically subjective.
If could be that my opinion is not just an opinion but refers to my actual experiences of classic jazz and hip-hop. We can research and compare the mental states that arise when I listen to the two styles of music, e.g. notice if my toes tap to the rhythms, check my dopamine levels, brain activity etc. and correlate the results with my reports. That's possible science about phenomena in an ontologically subjective domain.
We can also research the ontologically objective properties of the two styles of music, e.g. their structure, complexity, harmony, etc. and find out that jazz differs from hip-hop in many ways that have correlations to my behaviour and reports.
The two can be mutually exclusive.
Maybe this person is just trying to approach something extremely obscure. Kudos to them then. Whatever is going on here I see nothing in it for me. Maybe on a another topic they can discuss in a more fluid and succinct manner, or maybe not.
Have fun all :)
Will they ever be able to say "the firing of this specific number of these neurons in this part of the brain will produce this specific intensity of this emotion"? Sure, some feelings are great and others bad, but a lot of this is subjective. Sometimes i'll feel two different feelings while making a choice and they feel equally strong yet I definitely want one over the other for which reason i have no explanation. Sometimes a bad feeling can feel kind of good, and vice versa. Again, i think it's too subjective to pin down exactly, despite the dream of certain brain scientists.
That is the fine-tuning problem and most secular philosophers don't think it is a miracle (I am taking "miracle" here to mean intelligent design or sheer chance (~40%)).
Quoting ucarr
No. The HUP still is not about the "limits of quantised physical interactions". It has a clear physical meaning. There is no connection between Gödel and Heisenberg besides that they are meta about their respective fields (Gödel's more than Heisenberg's).
Quoting ucarr
My issue is not with Quora, but more that you don't seem to be competent with physics in a way that you are in a position to judge good from bad in non-authoritative sources.
No, each brain is unique. Vastly 'more unique' than the differences between our fingerprints.* Rough generalizations are a more realistic expectation.
*Edit: Talking about human brains. (In before some pedant brings up C. Elegans.)
Just using electric current to split molecules.
Agreed, it is mostly gibberish.
I'm sure you are right, at least in a forum like this.
Quoting Lionino
I do understand how annoying it can be when someone pronounces authoritatively about something I know about but they clearly don't. It is particularly tempting in philosophy because the range of competence one would like to have is way beyond what is possible for most human beings. The big difficulty is that one has to have competence in a field in order to assess how authoritative a source is.
Quoting ucarr
This was an interesting attempt at the same sort of distinction. Every subject asks "What, Where, When" (and sometimes "Who") and so it is tempting to go for a distinction in terms of subject-matter. "How" and "Why" are traditionally (in philosophy) used to distinguish between causal and rational explanations, so they look like a good basis for distinguishing between science and the rest. But ordinary use does not follow the Aristotelian distinction between efficient and final causes, so I doubt if there's any mileage in this.
Quoting Tarskian
I liked this. I agree that most disciplines are partly characterized by their domains of authority and partly by the methods they adopt. There's a link between the two, which helps.
I notice that you don't mention the justification method for the humanities. That might be because they don't all have the same justification method. But I'm sure you'll agree that they do have justification methods - just not the same ones as mathematics and the sciences. (I assume that you count literature, history and philosophy among them.)
The human sciences (psychology, sociology, economics) are particularly interesting cases because they all have the same domain and their appropriate methodologies are not clear. (In philosophy jargon, they straddle the hard problem, and so are likely to end up having to decide how to solve it or dissolve it.)
Should we not apply the some version of the same structure (domain plus method) to the arts (performing and otherwise), not to mention the various professional (law, medicine, business, accountancy etc.) and applied (engineering, architecture, medicine) subjects and the unclassifiable subjects like politics and theology?
In practice, that is not true. Competence in the field is not required, just common sense. A physics textbook by a professor from Utretch, used in physics courses internationally, is authoritative, a researcher's blogspot is not.
I don't need to know neuroscience to have the common sense to not take at face value a research paper (which isn't made for laymen) from 2011 with 2 citations and 1 no-name researcher.
Concerning original research, it depends on whether the subject has a standard justification method.
In mathematics, it does not matter who exactly proposes a theorem. The only thing that matters, is that the proof is unobjectionable. In science, it does not matter who proposes a scientific claim. The only thing that matters, is that it is supported by a reproducible experimental test report. Other fields may have other objective justification methods.
If the field does not have an objective justification method, then such original research is not a knowledge claim to begin with. In that case, no publication by whoever is authoritative.
In that sense, we can say that: if who makes the claim matters, then what he claims cannot possibly matter.
Quoting Lionino
They call it common sense for a reason. It relies for its validity on normative conventions, which are a mixed blessing. They allow for social cohesion at the expensive of the intelligibility of novel insights, especially in less conventionally oriented fields like philosophy. Sometimes what is needed is uncommon sense. As Heidegger wrote a philosophy is creatively grasped at the earliest 100 years after it arises.
Competence is over-stating it, I agree. But you are expecting more from common sense than it will deliver.
Quoting Lionino
Certainly. But I'm not Joe Public, who will say "If it is by a professor, it must be right and anything from a university is OK. Where is Utrecht? How do I find out which courses it's used on? Didn't someone once tell me that science textbooks are always out of date by the time they are printed?"
Quoting Lionino
That may be common sense to you and common sense to me. But it doesn't follow that it is common sense to everyone.
Ideally, I would do all experiments myself. But life's too short. I'm sure you agree.
Quoting Tarskian
Well, that's clear enough. What do you do for fun?
One doesn't have to be a scientist, nor to study the neurons in my brain, to be able to say what will produce this specific intensity of this emotion when I taste a piece of chili pepper. It's the chili pepper!
Quoting Gregory
Right, we sometimes form opinions and make choices in haphazard, thoughtless ways, by habit, or by going with the flow, relying on herd intelligence, or we have inherited dispositions to chose this over that, or there's social pressure, fashion etc.
I don't know, my common sense has delivered to me consistently.
Quoting Ludwig V
Well, yeah. Democratisation of knowledge wasn't the best blessing to this world. Now we have literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers to prove their case when they don't even know what a p-value is, and unfortunately such rubbish gets exposed to thousands of naïve people. But it is not like those people matter in the big picture often, so it is not too bad.
Quoting Ludwig V
Science books? Sometimes. Textbooks? That would defeat the purpose. Joe must exercise his common sense.
H'm. In respect of physics, you may be right. In respect of other matters, I'm not so sure. We all worry about fake news, don't we? This is where it originates. And it matters.
Quoting Lionino
I wouldn't dream of contradicting you. But it was a comment from a guy who qualified in physics before switching to philosophy (of science) for his Master's. He also told me that everything in the physics A-Level (School leaving) syllabus was false.
Quoting Lionino
You were fortunate. Mine was not. I had some nasty awakenings when I was young. I'm still very sceptical about what common sense tells me. But then, I'm also sceptical about what everyone tells me.
Quoting Lionino
Well, the world before the enlightenment ideal was not exactly ideal either.
Quoting Lionino
Perhaps part of the trouble is that many researchers are anxious to spread their news as widely as possible. Whether they are after fame or fortune or just research grants, I wouldn't know.
A-level are the last years of basic schooling isn't it? That sounds very wrong, but I don't know what they taught in Britain back in his time. Classical mechanics is still true, and it is taught in schools, generally correctly.
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't see that. I don't see researchers going on Youtube or Twitter to talk about their research, they are usually too busy for that. It is usually the university's journal (sometimes written by students) that writes the news pieces. Then we have MSM reporting on it, which is the bottom of the barrel.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting ucarr
These are clear statements of: my subject: How science and art differ; and of my premise: science and art, modally speaking ("What" vs "How"), differ profoundly.
Where's the connection between I like sushi's criticism and what I've written?
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting ucarr
In my conversation with I like sushi, I have failed in my attempts to do a logical mapping from his critical comments -- as with the two samples of his comments quoted above -- to evidence in my writing that validates the comments.[/quote]
When he challenges me to make a definitive statement of my subject and premise, I present them. He doesn't respond to what I presented.
When he charges me with conflating "What" and "How," I make statements clarifying their difference. Also, I ask him to support his implication that two things that overlap partially cannot also have differences. He doesn't present what I ask for.
Now he avoids his responsibilities as a critic by abandoning the conversation.
Thanks for the elaboration.
I think that he was pulling my leg by exaggerating the facts. We didn't know each other very well at the time. But you see how easy it is to get the wrong end of the stick.
I'm glad to hear that. But you did say "literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers".
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Lionino
Let me clarify; in this context, by "miracle" I mean a highly improbable or unlikely development.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Lionino
Is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle about existence or observation?
This is at the heart of the difference between Quantum Mechanics and "Big Stuff Physics"(Newtonian). The fundamental thing really is the mathematical object (the amplitude distribution) not the particle itself.
...position and position over time are related in quantum mechanics. So it turns out that when your position distribution is concentrated in a single area, when you [Fourier] transform it to get the momentum, that momentum distribution is more spread out (less determinable). Similarly, if the momentum distribution is concentrated, then the position distribution is more spread out (less determinable). The reason for this, mathematically, is that the momentum distribution and the position distribution of particles in Quantum Configuration Space are the Fourier Transforms of one-another.
Tyler Kresch
With your emphatic statement above, you're claiming to know with confidence what Bohr, Shrödinger and Feynman didn't claim to know with confidence: the inflection point merging physics as material thing with physics as math model.
Your commentary is very helpful. May it keep coming.
:smile: :up:
Quoting Joshs
:up: Your quote exhales an aroma resembling wisdom.
My deodorant must be wearing off.
Yes, and I meant literal idiots on Twitter.
Quoting ucarr
That is a spurious definition and by then we are already off-track.
Quoting ucarr
Neither.
Thanks. I hope you won't find a final comment on common sense boring. Common sense, it turns out, has a philosopohical origin and a certain level of philosophical importance. Who knew?
Quoting Wikipedia - Common Sense
I realize that Wikipedia is not the most authoritative source, but I think it is likely more authoritative than I am.
Yes, i think so! Makes it quite hard to know where the competence ends for myself too lol
miracle
noun
mir·?a·?cle ?mir-i-k?l
Synonyms of miracle - curiosity, sensation, spectacle
1
: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
the healing miracles described in the Gospels
2
: [u]an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment
The bridge is a miracle of engineering.[/u]
3
Christian Science : a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law
Merriam-Webster
Quoting ucarr
[quote= 01"Lionino;926903"]Neither.[/quote]
[quote= 02"Lionino;926828"]No. The HUP still is not about the "limits of quantised physical interactions". It has a clear physical meaning.[/quote]
Why are 01Lionino and 02 Lionino not a contradiction?
Quoting ucarr
[quote= 01"Lionino;926903"]Neither.[/quote]
The fundamental thing really is the mathematical object (the amplitude distribution) not the particle itself. Position and Momentum are inexorably tied together because we're talking about evolutions of states over time
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle tells us that we can't have this kind of information. He derived it from the mathematics as a fundamental inequality
Tyler Kresch
If you can reconcile your Neither with the two above quotes, please do so.
Well there was a guy called Comte and he camed up with this idea. That sciences deal with how and philosophy deals with why. Then Russell and a bunch of other people repeated it mindlessly. With no argument or justification, just to make an arbitrary demarcation to rule out mainly metaphysical realism. The thing is, they were ruling out scientific realism with this approach too. It got too ridiculous proportions like seriously claiming that scientific theories don't posit any real beings to exist. Sciences do look at why. It's their main question. The answers mainly consist of positing the dispositions of objects of specific natural kinds. Electrons vibrate at specific frequencies, gold melts at some temperature, humans optimally operate at some narrow range of temperatures. By assigning dispositions to specific objects we can analyse many systems in terms of their simpler components. We can isolate these simpler components in experiments to check if they really have these dispositions posited. This way we can get to an answer why a system behaves like this and not the other way. "How" doesn't differentiate anything specific about it. Humanities are also concerned with causal analysis. The grammatical structure of the sentence - we group words by kinds and assign functions and relations between them. We can infer declensions and conjugations just by using some abstract terms assigned to words. In literature we can interpret works by their leading ideas, themes and styles. We can speak of a work of art, again, in terms of synecdoches, charactonyms, tones and motifs. Once again we understand the why of a complex phenomenon, why is it artistically appealing, intellectually engaging or socially impactful. Philosophy is aware of the problem of demarcation for a long time now. And it's not without reason. Because science is just the process of understanding the first, simple principles in terms of which a complex phenomenon arises and it pretty much characterizes all intellectual endeavors.
So - all intellectual endeavours can be understood in terms of the 'simple principles' from which 'complex phenomena' arise? What about physics? It is concerned with ostensibly 'simple principles' in the form of the so-called fundamental particles and forces, but it is self-contradictory to attempt to explain everything, including abstract reasoning, purely in terms of lower-level physical processes like particles and forces. The act of doing physics itselfengaging in abstract reasoning, mathematical formulation, and conceptual understandingcannot be fully reduced to or explained in terms of these lower-level physical entities. This kind of reasoning involves higher-level cognitive processes that are on a completely different level to the so-called 'simple first principles', and in fact, we rely on those higher-level abstract skills (which I myself am almost entirely bereft of) in order to populate the now-incredibly-complex 'particle zoo' of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
Wikipedia's "no original research" policy pretty much guarantees that its pages stand or fall with the objective justification in its original sources.
For some subjects, that is solid enough.
For other subjects, the problem is that the original research itself generally lacks objective justification.
In that case, Wikipedia is still not worse than its original sources. However, it may give the false impression that the information is legitimate, while it often isn't.
Wikipedia generally does a great job linking to the original research. Reading the original research is often an excellent way of deepening your own investigation.
Thank you. :smile:
Of course physics isn't concerned with explaining abstract reasoning. Complex phenomena are by definition a result of simpler things combining. I didn't argue for physicalism by saying that, just like Aristotle didn't:
Wouldn't that be circular?
Most people who are not dualists accept that there is a physical
That's a truism. The interesting question is whether you want to add "... and nothing else". As it stands, it suggests some version of atomism. But there is the question of what usually referred to as Gestalts, which has much to recommend it.
But is abstract reasoning among those complex phenomena that are a result of simpler things combining?
:rofl:
That website constantly misquotes their supposed "sources", which definitely are not even read in its entirety.
It is impressive how you are wrong about basically everything you say, post after post. Is this some advanced trolling or a genuine condition?
1 Merriam-Webster is garbage;
2 that is a metaphorical meaning;
12 Merriam-Webster would have noted that were it not a terrible dictionary.
Even if it is somehow a valid definition, it is worthless for the argument being put forth. I won't invest my energies into explaining it. You can think about it if you want.
Quoting ucarr
Because HPU is not about either "existence" or "observation", these two mean nothing in physics.
Next you will say something about this or that. No, observation is not relevant in physics, it is interference that is relevant, and interference happens through measurement, which is how we observe things (observation in itself is irrelevant).
Should save me time.
Why not? And why does it matter to the discussion about the criterion of demarcation between why and how? There is a point in case it is a complex phenomenon studied by epistemology, psychology and cognitive sciences. They dissect the acts of mind into various layers and modules, is that surprising? My argument was - there is no demarcation between humanities and sciences. Because they share the methodology by which we understand anything whatsoever. Insofar as humanities make theories and are aimed at understanding anything. And especially the demarcation between how and why is shallow and doesn't reflect the scientific practice at all.
There is an expectation that other people will try to repeat the experiment but that is actually not necessarily the case. A lot of publications are never properly scrutinized:
Yes, I had heard about that.
I'm not surprised that people were more optimistic. There must be a lot of resistance to accepting that the system is that bad. The cost of research is going to sky-rocket if all experiments have to be done twice, by different laboratories and people. But the incentives to be careless or reckless are very high. Too much competition.
Quoting Ludwig V
Most people would use the word physical here, and then add their preferred term. Many non-dualist philosophers, however, would insert their preferred term in place of physical in order not to perpetuate a dualism implied by physicalism.
Quoting Lionino
You say Merriam-Webster is garbage. Can you cite a public and authoritative etymology for "miracle" that logically precludes this metaphorical sense of the word? I think it examples hyperbole which implies extreme improbability.
You say this metaphorical sense of the word is worthless for the following argument:
Quoting Tarskian
1) Metaphorical parallelism, even if not literal, nonetheless is logical; 2) Since our knowledge of the universe is incomplete, even the high school student knows the existence of a deity hasn't been been proven logically impossible. Especially pertinent to this incompleteness is the possibility of a higher-order of reality beyond what humanity knows as the natural world. At this higher reality, we might discover hyper-logical causes for phenomena perceived by humans as miraculous.
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Lionino
1) Can you show categorically how textbooks are authoritative but blogspots are not?
2) Can you show how your disdain for no-name researchers is something more than snobbery acting on behalf of laziness? Also, bear in mind, big-name researchers were originally no-name researchers.
3) Quoting Lionino
It's obvious that your "moment of force" exam is an entrance exam of sorts aimed at vetting the competence of candidates worthy of dialoging with you on topics from physics. Let's consider what you've written:
1) "Competence in the field is not required, just common sense."
2) "I am not interested in discussing physics with anyone before the moment of force of this high school problem is presented to me in Cartesian coordinates."
Why are these statements not an example of your: a) hypocrisy; b) self-contradiction?
Here's an elaboration of the central premise of my OP:
Discovery of "what" is rooted in the predication of the fact of existing things.
Discovery of "how" is rooted in the adverbial modification of the predication of the fact of existing things. This adverbial modification elaborates both the effect and the affect of the fact of existing things. To the main point, "how" drags [personal] consciousness into the frame of the lens of discovery.[/quote]
Please show how your "moment of force" exam is pertinent to my central premise.
If it's not pertinent to my central premise, then perhaps you should post your exam within your personal profile. Henceforth, when someone tries to dialog with you, you can refer them to your profile, explaining that you must first deem them worthy of engagement by means of examination.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting Lionino
What are the two types of interference?
In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two coherent waves are combined by adding their intensities or displacements with due consideration for their phase difference. The resultant wave may have greater intensity or lower amplitude if the two waves are in phase or out of phase, respectively.
--- Wikipedia
Though both types of interference occur when two waves meet, they produce different results. Constructive interference occurs when two waves collide and combine, but destructive interference happens when two waves collide and cancel out.
-- Britannica.com
You seem to be referring to a third type of interference, i.e., measurement interference. I'm unsure about what that is. Bear in mind, however, that the HUP is not about observer interference. No, it's an existential limitation on the availability of information via the Fourier transformations linking position and momentum measurements.
P.S. Dont bother trashing Wikipedia and Britannic.com without providing arguments showing their incorrectness.
Oops! Not well written. Perhaps the problem of finding a suitably non-committal way describing the role of physics here was clear enough? Or perhaps I shouldn't try to describe that role until I have worked out what it is.
That's a pity. I'm not interested in discussing philosophy with anyone who expects me to pass a test of any kind before they will engage. That will save me a lot of time.
Life, especially intellectual life, is messy and often annoying. But it's a lot better than an ivory tower.
But they dont. How interactions between physical objects and forces is observed and understood is completely different to what makes a valid syllogism. The nature of the methods used in science is not itself a scientific but a philosophical. Historians and philosophers are not scientists, and none the worse for not being so.
I think that the vast majority of academic papers are considered to be irrelevant. In that sense, it does not matter if the justification supplied is solid or not. Nobody cares anyway.
Computer science is one good example. I haven't run into even just one situation in which professional literature references an academic paper. These academic papers do exist. However, they are perceived as being utterly irrelevant.
Cryptocurrencies and general cryptography are another example. Professional publications tend to be heavy on abstract algebra but references to academic papers are actually nowhere to be seen.
For example, Daniel Bernstein is globally leading grandee in the field of cryptography pretty much at the level of Adi Shamir. Nowadays, Bernstein's NaCl publication is increasingly replacing existing, older algorithms: https://nacl.cr.yp.to
Bernstein also happens to be a university professor. If he had published his work in an academic paper, however, I am quite confident that it would never have taken the software engineering world by storm.
Pretty much the case in mathematics. One result is that even competent referees skim over details too often, especially if the author is a respected academic. Lots of mistakes are published, mostly non critical.
An academic paper is a terrible way of publishing research. Nobody really knows, but it seems likely that more than half of academic papers published are never read by anyone except the author and a journal editor or two. I just feel pity and admiration for the editors (and referees).
I saw one estimate that 90% are never cited by anyone. Reading a paper to your own colleagues will almost certainly get more exposure than sending it to a journal.
Of course, there's a lot of argument. I couldn't find any attempts to measure how many are irrelevant.
(Numbers are indicative only, based on the first page of a Google search)
Quoting Ioannidis, Klavans and Boyack - Nature.com
Nobody wants academic posts to be a sinecure. But it would be nice if we could incentivize them to spend their time usefully. How about rewarding them better for being good teachers than for producing research that no-one wants?
Where did I say that the mind is a result of physical objects interacting? I said it has parts, modules with different functions. Not all reduction to first principles is physicalistic. Historians do share a methodology with other scientists. They just look for particular causes of particular events instead of natural causes of common phenomena. An argument for a distinction between historians and scientists is yet to be made in this thread. You tend to assume that scientific method equals physicalistic reductionism. First of all scientists don't have a criterion of physicalty second biology, psychology, sociology, even chemistry aren't explicitly reductive. You could make an argument for physicalism from chemistry maybe, but it's not explicit in the behavior of ethanol as put out by organic chemistry that it's a quantum-mechanical standard model system. It's not even explicit that a ethanol molecule is a straight-forward sum of parts. Because quantum-mechanical molecules aren't, their behavior is not a product of the wave-functions of individual particles: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-holism/.
The OP presents an argument for the distinction of the sciences and the humanities. You may not think it's a good argument, but that is what the thread is about. And I think the assumption that scientific method generally assumes physicalist reductionism is a pretty safe, even if there are those who dissent from it or question it. The scientific status of psychology and the social sciences is often called into question because they are not so amenable to the kinds of certainty that characterise the so-called 'hard sciences'. Sure, quantum physics calls reductionism into question, I think that's been the case since 1927 (and that is an interesting SEP article, to be sure.)
The difference can be found in the justification report for the claim they are making. A historian will supply a collection of scrutinized and corroborated witness depositions while the scientist will provide an experimental test report.
The scientist must be able to control the observations recorded while that is pretty much impossible for the historian. He cannot just go to the lab and repeat the Battle of Hastings all over again.
Quoting Wayfarer
Probabilistic claims are actually fine. Claims do not need to be fully deterministic.
The problem is rather that it is sheer impossible to experimentally test human behavior.
For an experimental test report to be meaningful, it should be reasonably possible for someone else to reproduce it.
Pavlov's dog experiment, for example, is considered eminently scientific. Some claims in psychology are indeed experimentally testable with the tests being reproducible.
Freud's psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, is considered to be untestable.
The central question is therefore: Can the claim actually be experimentally and reproducibly tested?
By the way, claims in physics or chemistry that cannot be tested, are not scientific either.
Why do you think that?
Experiments with human behavior is considered really hard:
Experiments with human behavior have the same problem as experiments with computers, only worse:
The issues that occur in Turing's halting problem and Rice theorem with computers, are even worse with humans.
Testing human behavior amounts to testing a program without having access to its source code. Even with access to its source code, according to Rice theorem, the program's runtime behavior is fundamentally unpredictable. In fact, testing human behavior is even more difficult than that because a human brain is not a deterministic computer.
It may be possible to achieve this in especially designed cases only.
It is not safe since it causes you to arbitrarily reject psychology (because it doesn't even claim not to be reducible to physics, it leaves the issue unspecified) and physics itself is not making a claim of being able to reduce other sciences.
A historian can go into ground and look for artifacts, his claims are falsifiable. Doesn't a scientist aim to explain the observations he already did by coming up with a causal mechanism? And once he has a theory, he looks to disprove it. The same a historian, he comes up with a causal mechanism and looks to disprove it which is much harder because the event was singular in the past. But he still has some tools of falsifying his claims in principle. Also it's not like falsification is such an easy thing to do in hard sciences. We have the Duhem-Quine thesis.
So you have gone from it being sheerly impossible to experimentally test human behavior to not easy.
FWIW, I just experimentally tested your behavior, and found that you were capable of going from making a ridiculously hyperbolic claim, to something more reasonable. It seemed like a pretty easy experiment to conduct to me.
Archaeologist. That is a science.
And it really is not. H2O is not two hydrogen atoms together with an oxygen atom, like two boxes is one box together with another, but the resulting structure of the complex process of oxidation of hydrogen gas, the principle behind hydrogen fuel. Its representation as H2O is meaningful, but just symbolic. The same applies for any molecule.
It is possible that the prediction of the behaviour of organic molecules using hard physics is not computable, just like the behaviour of a human stomach can't be predicted using hard physics, even if we accept that we live in a purely physicalistic universe that regularly obeys the fundamental laws of physics at every level.
Fields other than physics are then justified, even if they all reduce to physics. Me riding a bike does reduce to dynamics, but I can't ride a bike by using dynamics, I need other cognitive methods.
Falsifiability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science. It must also be possible to experimentally test the falsifiable hypothesis.
I have always thought of it as much more complicated than that. Something along the following lines:-
(That is actually a quotation, which I give because it saves me time and effort. I haven't given the source because authority is irrelevant, so it would be a distraction from what matters here.)
Quoting Johnnie
This is not wrong, of course. But the use of the phrase "causal mechanism" here is an example of what happens when we get hypnotized by physics. Either questions about human behaviour are being pressed into the mould of what is appropriate for answering the questions of physics. Or the idea of a causal mechanism is being stretched to cover kinds of explanation that physics is designed to exclude. Either way, it is not helpful.
I'm sure that trotting round the argument about physicalism is great fun, but it seems like a well-known dance rather than a collaborative search for truth. I don't think it is helpful. Why don't we look at specific idea which is an interaction between a science and the humanities? That focus might allow us to see their differences more clearly.
The focus I suggest is the idea that the sciences are, in the end, social/cultural practices, as indeed the humanities are. To put it another way, the foundation of science is scientists in their social and cultural context. To put the point yet another way, physics is indeed everything, so is politics and so is economics, so is mathematics and so are art and ethics. The difference between all these approaches is not just in their subject-matter or their method; it is in what is important to them - the kinds of questions they ask and the kinds of answer they seek. Their objects of study may differ, and they may even work with different ontologies, but those differences are far from the only consideration and certainly not the predominating consideration. Understanding those differences may not answer all the questions, but I think it might enable us to ask questions more intelligently.
It depends what you mean by "scientifically". If your paradigm of science is physics, then the answer will be that you can, provided you give the kind of answer that physics requires. But that kind of answer is not available in mathematics, so the paradigm is a bit embarrassing. You need to broaden your scope to allow different ways of studying things, without worrying so much about physics or even, perhaps, what is to count as scientific.
Once you have allowed that, it becomes possible to consider what ways of studying human behaviour are appropriate, and recognize that what we accept as an explanation of human behaviour is different from both physics and mathematics; one might characterize it as the search for the reasons for behaviour, for a rationale. (Causal explanations are also sometimes appropriate here, but not necessarily of the kind that physics recognizes.)
This opens up a more interesting question than the original one, because it identifies explanation as simply the search for understanding and explores what provides understanding of each question, rather than trying to press all questions into the mould of some paradigm - or even a small number of paradigms - in favour of pursuing our real needs.
Quoting Tarskian
Astronomy seems to be a purely observational discipline, though tests are indeed possible by means of prediction. It's just that experimental tests are not possible.
Ethology seems like another candidate in which experiments are not to be expected. This is partly for methodological reasons, because the behaviour to be studied needs to focus on animal behaviour in the context of animal lives, rather than a cage in a laboratory. Again, testing by prediction is possible. Ethology does not restrict itself to explanations of the kind required by physics, but often develops what I would call rationales, rather than causes. Perhaps you don't consider it to be a science. There are studies of animal behaviour that are based on experiments, but I think you'll find they are classified under the heading of psychology.
It is primarily dedicated to objectively recording the data of sites and artifacts in meticulous detail. The conjure comes later, as with practically every other scientific endeavor.
Historians deal with the written word. I was pointing out this clear distinction as whoever posted what they need seemed to think historians were archaeologists. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they operate on completely different levels of investigation and data collection.
It is true that the work on-site is the most visible and possibly most exciting phase of the archaeologist's work. The stuff back home is less visible and possibly less exciting; but it is where the objects begin to tell their story, so it is where the finds have value. So I prefer to include both phases under the heading of archaeology. There is no other source for pre-history, so once the narratives begin to appear, history and archaeology overlap, in my view. But it's really not worth arguing about.
Quoting I like sushi
That's true. The complication is this. For periods and places where there are no contemporary text sources, there is no other source than archaeology. Where both archaeology and texts are available, the two overlap, collaborate, and supplement each other. So I would want to say that where both are available, it is not important to distinguish between them, except in respect of the objects of study - differences in method are just the consequence of that. Both aim to tell a story of what happened.
Quoting Lionino
:up:
[quote="Tarskian;927386]Even more challenging to the test designer, Jenkins adds, is to remember that taking a test is itself a behavior. This means that tests need to try to take into account the attitudes of test takers while they are taking the test.
This means some people may answer questions based on how they want to be perceived, rather than how they truly are.
One of the most difficult hurdles for researchers observing human behavior is how to deal with the reality that human test subjects are always aware they are being studied and can modify their behaviorpurposely or unconsciouslyin response.[/quote]
Dr. Paul Jenkins
Dr. Jenkins' distinction here shines light on the distinction between science discovery and humanities discovery that I'm trying to distill and generalize.
Discovery of "what" is rooted in the predication of the fact of existing things.
Can Human Behavior Be Studied Scientifically? As claimed above, it's hard to study human behavior because, according to my premise, the researcher has to negotiate a path between the dominant modes of two distinct disciplines of discovery. However, the distinction is not a simple binary, b&w polarization, and so the two modes can sometimes be made to work side-by-side.
Discovery of "how" is rooted in the adverbial modification of the predication of the fact of existing things. This adverbial modification elaborates both the effect and the affect of the fact of existing things. To the main point, "how" drags [personal] consciousness into the frame of the lens of discovery.[/quote]
It think it's beneficial for both disciplines to make use of the scientific approach: public, measurable, repeatable. I think it's beneficial for both disciplines to make use of the humanities approach: What's it like to travel through (and be changed by) the natural world on a journey with a beginning, middle and end?
Here's an earlier dialogue that speaks to the mesh of science/humanities:
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting jkop
Quoting ucarr
Quoting jkop
Quoting ucarr
Quoting jkop
Maybe a lesson here is that reductionism can be a good tactical maneuver while the researcher is in the thick of the hunt for discovery -- simplicity in theory and practice can be conditionally good -- but as a value, it should be approached with much skepticism [math]\Rightarrow[/math] necessary and sufficient.
I agree. I was trying to outline an idea and left that point out for simplicity. Once you start looking, there are a good many disciplines that need to combine and mesh rationales and causal accounts. Indeed, the two are both useful in the ordinary, "common sense" explanations of actions. Though, admittedly, we appeal to causal explanations most often, I think, when something has gone wrong. Some actions are habits, which tremble on the brink of addictions. But addictions are not purely causal, since an addict is perfectly capable of rational action; it's just that the values that are prioritized are incomprehensible to us - no, that's the wrong word.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, you've said that before. But I don't really understand what you mean. Are you getting at what I would call levels of description? So, for example, a person is a human being (animal), a body (biology), a corpse (physics). Another example would be walking down a street as exercising or getting in the beer or starting a journey of 1000 miles. To me, adverbial modification means walking purposefully, or ambling or wandering or limping. But you might mean that interpretation is much more important in humanities disciplines than in the sciences. (Actually, I wouldn't take it for granted that physics means the same thing by "interpreting the evidence" as a historian does.)
Quoting ucarr
That's true, but it's not all always about what's conscious. Tacit knowledge is one example. The sub- or un-conscious seems to be a real thing. And there's all the process of data from the senses, which clearly enables consciousness, though it isn't available to consciousness.
Quoting Tarskian
That's true, and we might learn a lot by seeing how such fields cope. Sometimes, I get the impression that they simply ignore the distinction, which sounds impossible, and yet, perhaps, it may be.
Quoting jkop
I don't quite understand "causally" here. Surely, any building "consists" of practical, sustainable, aesthetic qualities among others; architecture is the art of combining them to meet various criteria. There needs to be a discussion about aesthetics that gets over the crude observation that aesthetics is "subjective" meaning that there can be no meaningful way of understanding aesthetic qualities. There are mathematical techniques for turning subjective opinions into data, but they are only a beginning. The traditional ideas that there are certain proportions of buildings that make them beautiful are another approach.
Quoting ucarr
That may be true. I would hope it was more a matter of focus, of attending only to the context that is relevant to the task at hand.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
You express in your own words what I'm trying to communicate with my fancy language: the adverb reveals how an action is performed by an individual person with his/her unique Point Of View being the adverbial force that determines the "how" of the doing of an action: "the arrogant boy strutted boldly down the lane, scowling fiercely at anyone making eye contact. The shy maiden, seeing the lad's effrontery, blushed profusely."
The "how" of the boy's actions (strutting boldly, scowling fiercely) convey how he sees himself, i.e., his POV of himself; the "how" of the maiden's action (blushing profusely) conveys how she feels emotion in response to his personality, i.e., her POV of his character.
It's the personal POV that communicates what it's like experiencing the fact of the existence of the things of this world in an individualized way unique to one POV with one personal history that distinguishes humanities from sciences. Sure, scientists have personal experiences of discovering the fact of existing things, but it's unusual for science to be about the personal experience of those existing things. The personal account of experiencing existing things is what humanities does.
How we esteem the great scientist: for seeing the fact of what we never imagined.
How we esteem the great artist: for experiencing illumination from the conventional
Architecture consists of its components, but there are causal relations between them and the composition.
As in cooking. A cook selects specific ingredients based on their looks/taste, nutrition, structure etc. and prepares them in ways that cause the ingredients to interplay with eachother. From their interplay emerges a meal that has a specific taste, utility, and sustainability.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, good looking proportions are rare in times prioritizing maximum exploitation per square unit.
The three qualities: utility, beauty, and sustainability can be balanced or distributed, but in some cases they seem to coalesce, such as in roman arches, catenary arches.
My point was that an historian is an historian and an archaeologist is an archaeologist. Obviously they are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are distinct fields of investigation following different methodologies.
Neat, but wrong. If you want to get a high salary, Technology and Engineering or Business is what you need to study. But if you want to make real money, don't worry about studying, just get your hands on as much capital as you can, by any means possible. Science, Humanities and Arts are what make life worth living.
But, in the end, everything is related to everything. The test of Cognitive Archaeology is what it produces. There's no true or false here, only pragmatics (where the criterion is not the useful, or even the true, but only the interesting or profitable.) The issue I skated over is that subject divisions are not only about subject-matter and methodology, but also about practicalities and administrative convenience.
Then there is the issue that any subject needs to make its bread and butter. That means that ideas about education and research are essential to survival. The origin of the idea of the Humanities is the idea that there are some things that one needs to know in order to be a human being (a decent citizen of a civilized society). So their educational role was fundamental to everything else. What has changed is that nowadays, one needs to know about science in order to be a decent citizen of a civilized society.
(I'm not pretending that the concept of a
"utility, beauty, and sustainability", I would say are not components of the building, but aspects (properties) of the whole. So I agree with your sentiment, but am inclined to think that "causal relations" - which implies that they are distinct parts (components) of the whole - is not quite the right way to articulate the point.
Suddenly, I understand what you are saying. :grin:
I was interpreting "how" as asking a different question. How you got home, or How a computer works or How to make glass.
I see your point. I'm not sure what I think about it yet.
"Point of view" is an interesting concept. I think it's paradigm use is as in movies, when one talks about the camera's (audience's) point of view. The first use, of course, was in the context of (realistic) pictures and the theory of perspective, which has its place in geometry. It also occurs, I understand, in the Theory of Relativity, which proves its universal theses by proving that they are true of all possible points of view (sometimes they talk about observers). None of these uses is about actual people.
A point of view is an abstract of possible observers and ideal observers; it isn't about actual human beings. History, literature, and some approaches to language are about actual human beings, not abstract concepts. Linguistics is another interesting case that straddles the divide. (Is philosophy included here? Depends on what you mean by philosophy. Much philosophy presupposes an abstract observer, but Wittgenstein, of course, challenged that.)
Quoting Ludwig V
Dont forget Nietzsche here.
and Heideggers interpretation of Nietzsche:
I can generally agree with this. I think there has always been a disparity between those with knowhow and those not, but the information age has caused something of a hiccup I feel.
As if.... !
I did think about them. But, given that I wasn't citing anybody else, I couldn't be confident that I could summarize them with reasonable accuracy. I reckoned that my argument was inclusive enough to include them. If it was, then well and good. If it wasn't, then I couldn't be confident about whether they would support what I was trying to say. I'm quite happy that you seem to support at least the drift of my argument.
But, in both those quotations, I don't find my human beings, and I miss them. :smile:
More seriously, I think "actual human beings" are important because this is about the humanities, which are about actual human beings, as opposed to the abstract ones that Nietzsche and Heidegger seem to be talking about.
I'm not saying that they are wrong, because I don't even say that I properly comprehend what they are saying.
I'm sure there has, but that it is more a question of degree than have/havenot distinction. In the context of education policy, there are three questions:-
1. What is required to function at a minimal level?
2. What is needed to function well and effectively?
3. How much can we instil into children before they become adults?
It's pretty clear to me that what happened in WW2 blew apart the conventional argument that the humanities have a civilizing or moral force, even if we include science in the list. My suspicion is that a practical (as opposed to theoretical) understanding of civilization and morality is not gained in any classroom or theoretical study, but only by living in such a society with civilized and moral people - and even that is not a guarantee.
This opens up a huge debate. Bringing up good citizens (let's suppose that this society is at least on some winding pathway towards civilization.) is a complicated and messy business. Formal education, as we understand it, is an important part of that. Don't think that I'm trying to disparage it. But play-time and parenting are important parts as well. Beyond that, I'm very confused.
I just want to say, that I appreciate your thoughtfulness.
It's very kind of you to say so. The fact is that most of the time I feel as if I'm wading through mud. A lot of struggle for rather meagre progress.
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
This question directs some light onto what makes Tarskian's definition of philosophy interesting:
Quoting Tarskian
Tarskian helps illuminate some possible essentials of consciousness via his application of Gödel to his definition of philosophy. We're looking at a spectrum of incompleteness: a) axiomatic: Russell, Gödel; b) existential: Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg; c) cognitive: Tarskian.
If philosophy is an essential part of human nature, then human nature joins the list of incompleteness detailed above.
The components have properties, and when they interact with each other, other properties emerge. I think the utility, beauty, and sustainability of a building are Emergent Properties, and the parts, features, and configurations from which they emerge are not so distinct. They can depend on each other, or emerge from one and the same part.
For example, the durability of reinforced concrete slabs means that they can be carried by a sparse grid of columns (instead of a forest of columns or thick walls) which, in turn, enables freedom for efficient, flexible, and aesthetically varied organization of the spaces (e.g. with thin walls or open plans). Such a building is easy to change and adjust to passing trends and uses, hence sustainable. If we change the durability of the slabs then we also change the building's practical, beautiful, and sustainable properties, since they emerge from the same part and its configuration.
I agree with what you say. Indeed, it seems obvious. At present "emergent properties" seems to be pretty much a label for the undefined. I think the most useful approach is not to affix a label and try to answer the question "what is an emergent property", but to consider and understand cases and then work out how they are related. Then we'll know whether to pin one label on all the cases or maybe different labels for different, but similar cases. So your comments on reinforced concrete slabs seem entirely appropriate. The label doesn't help and can get in the way
d
Quoting ucarr
I have many problems with this - and with self-reference. Not the least of which is that I'm inclined to think that if a language cannot talk about itself, then there is something it cannot talk about, so it is incomplete. Nor is there anything wrong with self-reference. Some specific uses of it are problematic, but since I'm not committed to avoiding all logically problematic uses of language by ruling them out of court in advance, I'm not much bothered by them. I don't think they give rise to any major problems of philosophy. Logicians and mathematicians have adopted the project of constructing a language with a grammar that rules such statements out. That's their choice. But it seems clear that a language that include those possibilities is perfectly workable.
I am wondering, however, whether self-reference may not be part of the distinction between science and the humanities. There is history of history, literature about literature, philosophy about philosophy. Metamathematics is presumably about mathematics, but I'm not sure whether it is mathematics or not. But there isn't physics about physics or chemistry about chemistry. More than that, can there be science of science. I doubt if it could follow some version of scientific method, including the experimental method, so would such a discipline be scientific?
Quoting Tarskian
I'm afraid I'm completely stuck in my opinion that the example is not a philosophical statement, unless you mean that it being used as a philosophical example makes it a philosophical statement. Which I think would be unduly stretching the scope of philosophy.
For another example "This work is copyright". I think that's legal and not philosophical at all. Yet it occurs in (or at least around) philosophical texts and is about them.
Quoting Ludwig V
This calls attention to something essential in human nature: acts of communication work with logic in application. You can't communicate if you're not being logical in a public sense, which is to say logical in a way that the common people can understand.
Every academic discipline has to keep checking (and updating) its logic as it goes forward, making additions to its database. At the end of the nineteenth century, science_physics underwent a revolution with the transition from Newton to Einstein_QM. Deep ramifications about how to view the material reality are still being distilled.
Revolutionary turns in the picture of reality are best times for philosophy and philosophers.
Quoting Ludwig V
If self-reference(s) is the antecedent to "they," then I might start thinking of you as being a radical QM materialist, as I am. For what I've seen so far (not exhaustive), scientists and logicians still maintain a white knuckle grip on the Principle of Non-Contradiction. Here at TPF, many debaters think they've scored a slam dunk whenever they discover a contradiction from the opposition.
Quoting Ludwig V
More evidence of your radical inclination.
Yes, Tarskian's claim is particularly interesting in terms of its generality:
Quoting Tarskian
It dovetails with Gödel and, with a marvelous concision, translates his premise into verbal language. Now it's easy to see that all axiomatic systems, first order, generate statements not strictly proven within the scope of the axiomatic system from which they arise. This is a powerful generalization of the premise of incompletion, both axiomatic and existential.
When we apply essential incompletion to philosophy itself, so that now we're evaluating philosophy's evaluation of something else, we find ourselves at the second higher-order: evaluation of evaluation of a proposition.
What we're seeing now is the process of how ground rules keep giving rise to more ground rules. Ha, ha, ha! We must now laugh at ourselves in our quest to compile everything into one system elegant in its simplicity.
Another nemesis of the would-be wise, standing alongside of contradiction, is the infinite series.
Quoting Ludwig V
You can apply critical thinking to any predication. In some instances that might render you as a pedant, but you can do it.
Quoting Ludwig V
Indeed, it is. It's the heart of the difference. It's the heart of the challenge to the Newtonian physicist to change the vision to QM. The observer cannot be abstracted from the experiment. From this we understand there is no abstraction. Instead, there are relationships. Loop quantum gravity tells us there are atoms of discontinuous space. Seemingly continuous space is an effect of the limits of human eyes.
Now we see that incompletion generalized dovetails with the fall of abstraction, landing us in a world that demands a future created from... what?
Quoting Ludwig V
Philosophers, as we've been seeing in my post, are cognitive grammarians. Thinking about thinking amounts to examination of the ground rules for any predication.
Ground rules are the foundation supporting methodology. Therefore, any discipline that generates methodology also generates ground rules. In this way, philosophy is more inclusive than science. The methodology for the scientific method might not be scientific, but it is philosophical.
I can understand why it would seem that way, but I'll try show emergence in a different light.
Suppose I design an electronic circuit that has the property of producing accurate measurements of something. I, in principle, could explain in an enormous amount of detail, why these specific components, interconnected with each other in this specific way, results in the emergent property of the design. For such an explanation to succeed, the person I am explaining this to, would need more than a four year degree in electrical engineering provides as background knowledge.
Neither of us probably wants to go through such an explanatory process. :wink:
So it seems reasonable to me, to see understanding of emergence as something particular experts have, and that non-experts for practical purposes, have to be left with the seemingly hand-wavey explanation, "The property emerges from the physical structure of the device."
The Principle exists, but only rarely applies. You have to define your language very carefully to produce one. A fundamental rule of language appears to be to design itself to avoid the possibility f being faced by one, allowing third possibilities and shades of grey. A binary choice is almost always artificial.
A contradiction can only do harm when it has not been spotted. The self-reference paradoxes are completely transparent and consequently do no harm (so far as I can see) - except to the poor souls who think they have to "solve" it.
Compare the awkwardness about If P then Q when P is false. This is well understood. People have reacted in various ways. When it is not spotted it could do harm, but I don't see any need to get excited about it. (My solution is that truth values do not apply in this kind of case - and that is not a third truth value.
I'm not sure how serious I am here, so I reserve the right to contradict myself if you reply!
Quoting ucarr
I didn't appreciate that. I got too annoyed at the revelation that he didn't want a definition. He wanted an algorithm that would enable an AI to distinguish philosophical texts from the rest. What would be the criterion of success? THAT would be the definition.
Not that definitions are all that important. Geach, long ago, wrote a wonderful article excoriating the Euthyphro because Socrates equated not knowing what piety is with being unable to define it. He was quite right.
Quoting ucarr
I hoped you would say that. So science, in the end, is grounded in human beings. Worse than that, not in a scientific, but history and philosophy. Oh dear!
Quoting ucarr
Yes. But the observer, in my book, is not an abstraction - a point of view. (At most, a point of view is a location for a possible observer.) An observer is a person.
I'm sure you could. Thank you for letting me off the detail. I agree that the "emergent" physical property of the gate "emerges" from the design. But the design emerges from the designer. Physics cannot even recognize a design, much less apply its laws to it.
Quoting wonderer1
Yes. I like the idea that it is about particular cases, rather than some very general abstraction. Generality is there the hand-waving comes in.
Quoting SEP
So in the case of architecture, there are parts, features, and configurations from which three general properties emerge: utility, beauty, and sustainability.
Those properties are functionally separate, and they typically counteract eachother in ways that call for compromises, because the success of the composition is dependent on them.
In this sense, they are both emergent properties and components of the architecture.
The special sciences won't answer how they causally emerge, nor how a balanced or distributed composition satisfies the success of a building. Yet every effect has a cause, and for millennia we have known that buildings should be practical, beautiful, and sustainable.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
Okay. Proceeding from the observer as an always local person, if we bind the thinking of an always local person to that always local person, then it too, is always local, and the abstraction of abstract thinking starts dissolving.
If there's no omnipresent, eternal, neutral spacetime within which dynamical material things and material systems animate themselves, then we have a wide-ranging field of local events attached to the evolving relationships linking animate things.
There is no vastness of creation because material relationships pose resistance to generalization.
The simple binary of concrete/abstract hasnt dissolved away to nothing, but it has become faint.
Quoting Ludwig V
Might it be an ability to see how cognitive objects such as language, and cognition itself, per Gödel, will generate valid statements unprovable within the boundaries of supposedly axiomatic systems?
There may not be any elegant simplicity axiomatic to everything.
If we define true arithmetic as the set of all facts in arithmetic, i.e. arithmetic reality, then we can see that the set of Peano's axioms is not just a lossless "compression" of arithmetic reality.
Peano's "compression" loses a lot of information.
Godel's incompleteness theorem expresses that the set of Peano's axioms is a lossy compression of arithmetic reality.
So, Peano's axioms are equivalent to some jpeg image of the scene of which you have taken a picture.
True physics would be the set of all facts in the physical universe, i .e. physical reality.
Any proposed set of physical axioms does not need to be a lossless compression of physical reality either.
The compression is actually allowed to lose a lot -- or even most -- of the information contained in physical reality.
The compression merely needs to be sound.
If the compression deems a fact to be true, then it must indeed be verifiably true in the uncompressed reality.
The compression is allowed to be even very lossy.
If a fact appears in uncompressed reality, it is fine that it gets forgotten in the compression.
Nothing guarantees that there would be just one way to create a lossy compression of physical reality. But then again, nothing guarantees that a lossy compression even exists.
There are lots of image compression algorithms, both lossless and lossy ones:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_compression
There is absolutely no guarantee that such thing does not exist for physical reality.
Godel's theorem is in fact relatively simple. It says that the compression that we have for natural numbers is lossy (and not lossless).
Not if you want to reconstruct reality rather than a pale comparison. In any case, it sounds like you're apply concepts in data processing to "reality" which seems... off, to say the least. Is there a basis for it? I'm always interested in metaphysical speculation of that kind.
That would require the axiomatic system to be a lossless compression of the reality that it compresses.
If there is no particular given limit to the complexity of the truths that this reality can contain, then Chaitin's incompleteness theorem prevents the existence of a lossless compression of this reality.
K(s) is the complexity of a particular theorem s while L is the maximum complexity that theory S can prove. Technically, K(s) is the size in bytes of the smallest possible program that can output s, i.e. its Kolmogorov complexity.
Quoting AmadeusD
Gödel's incompleteness and Chaitin's incompleteness are indeed related. In "true but unprovable", Noson Yanofsky writes:
In simple terms, if the optimally compressed self-extracting archive of the axiomatic system is smaller than the one for the theorem, then the axiomatic system cannot prove this theorem.
In fact, last year (2023) David Zisselman even made the effort to formally prove Gödel's incompleteness theorems from Chaitin's incompleteness theorem:
The intriguing part is that Zisselman does not need Cantor's diagonalization in any shape or fashion (which above he equivalently calls "a fixed point theorem") to prove Gödel's theorems. As far as I know, nobody else has pulled that off.
Quoting AmadeusD
The foundational crisis in mathematics does indeed have a distinct metaphysical sonority to it. It describes issues in arithmetic reality but it may actually also apply to physical reality, if both realities happen to be structurally sufficiently similar.
I don't know what you mean by "bind". If a local person indulges in abstract thinking, and shares that thinking with other local and non-local thinkers, how does the abstraction of abstract thinking dissolve?
(Don't forget that is the abstract dissolves, so does the concrete.)
I have no problem with the idea that mathematical objects are real or that we can generalize from the particular to the general.
Quoting ucarr
I didn't understand a lot of the intervening ideas. But this inclines me to retort that perhaps it needs to become faint. Binary oppositions are almost always less clear and definitie than some people would like to think.
Quoting ucarr
I have a lot of difficulty with the idea of something true but unprovable. How could we know that such things exist, and if we do, how do know what they are? But this is a bit more specific and so it helps. I still haven't seen an example of such a truth and would love to do so.
Quoting ucarr
Perhaps there isn't. But isn't that just a methodological principle that applies when there are competing theories in play? In any case, it only requires us to choose the simplest of available theories, so it would be hard to refute. By the way, what is the criterion for simplicity? Kolgorov complexity?
Which is all very interesting and important. I mean that.
However, it occurred to me that, as a definition, "Statements about statements" captures far too much, but we've been over that. More important is this - Berkeley's Dialogues for example can be read as a philosophical text, but also as a historical or religious text. The difference is not in the text, but in the approach to the text. Philosophy is not simply matter of texts, but of an activity, a skill, a language game, or several language games. The disciplines are different ways of reading (in the large sense) and responding to them.
PS One can also read Berkeley as an exercise in rhetoric. The text is riddled with it.
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
Since "deem" is a synonym for "judge," we see that compression herein is a process of translation. Humans frequently talk about something being lost in translation.
Quoting Tarskian
Representation, though essential to cognition, imposes limitations. I think Gödel, Chaitin and Zisselman are examining these limitations logically. The translation from an axiomatic system to its power set necessarily entails loss, so there is no perfect alignment all the way to identity linking a term with its translation.
If these logical limitations translate to physics, then perhaps we're looking at thermo-dynamical systems that upwardly evolve to morpho-dynamics and, from there, to teleo-dynamics with translation losses occurring throughout the process.
Now we come to the need to look at the issue of the resolution of a rendering from one form to its correspondent via translation. I'm guessing that as the level of resolution rises, it approaches intersection with an infinite value, and thus there is no axiomatic system that completely represents reality.
Now we have a concept of reality as an infinite value. This leads me to see that knowing reality is always necessarily incomplete. This reasoning is my argument for seeing how the scope of incompleteness encompasses logic, math, science, philosophy and empirical cognition. The arts, in a symmetrical configuration, are limited by the items of the previous list.
We have examination of the "what," limited by the lossy representationality of cognition on the one side; on the other side we have empirical examination of "what it's like" to be a self-conscious sentient, the "how" (they are experienced) of the predications of the other side, limited by the lossy existentiality_noumenonality of being on the other side.
Wittegenstein has already confronted much of this. However, because reverential silence in the face of the creation is no fun for philosophy, here we are, confronting it again with our own words.
And now, talking out of the other side of my mouth, let me make the following speculation: if the gap between knowing and being is strategic, then we might rejoice at the unsolvable mystery of the future.
There's always another narrative awaiting expression and, it's not a case of endless cycling through repeating patterns across a fixed totality, better known as that charming misconception: universe.
No. Instead, because of strategic incompletion, a thermo-dynamic wisdom, future is empowered to be distinct in its uniqueness, existing beyond mere permutation of the fixed axioms and conserved laws of a unified system. There is distinct locality. There is no unity.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
QM tells us the observer perturbs what s/he observes. So, the cognition of a sentient keeps everything local to itself in the act of observing. Thus, seemingly far-ranging observations via mental gymnastics, what we call "knowing by reasoning alone," are mostly forestalled in their abstraction from the local_empirical to the cognitive_general.
So science, no less than politics, is local. By extension from this, then, my experience of relativistic effects cannot be identical to yours as each perturbs by observation in its own way. For this reason, we imbibe artistic works in search of a particularly unique voice, although it's understood each voice is singular.
Quoting Ludwig V
All of my ideas are simple, even if oftentimes communicated opaquely. This is a signal shortcoming of the high-speed, low-resolution feedback looping native to the intuitive learning_reasoning process that drives the content of my writing here (and elsewhere).
Quoting Ludwig V
It might help to look at some examples of a false premise leading to a true conclusion. @Tarskian can probably help you with this. (With such examples, you have a true conclusion not proven by the false premise that leads to it.)
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
If the competing theories are incommensurable, each with strengths and weaknesses, standard practice entails looking for the elegant simplicity.
Quoting Ludwig V
I suppose it means that in a given time period for a foundational theory, no one can discover a form more basic.
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig V
Here you give us a good example of statements about statements. In other words, through what lens of interpretation do you approach a given text? Well, as I've been saying, no one reads a given text exactly as another reads it. This because each individual perturbs what s/he observes individually. Thus, we have evidence cognition spins out narratives of narratives. Now we see that when we insert cognition into the "what," it becomes the "how."
If by "observer" you mean measurement and by "observes" you mean measures, then I think you're correct here about QM. Afaik, "sentience" itself cannot "perturb" quanta since classical-scale systems (e.g. brains-sensoriums) cannot directly interact with planck-scale systems. That way leads to the dark side (imo, p0m0 / Berkeleyan nonsense :sparkle:).
Isn't that old news in a new bottle? Only physicists needed QM to tell them about the specificity of observation and its distortion in the process of communication.
Quoting ucarr
You are looking at only one side of the coin. We learn to read from each other (and we learn the language that we read and communicate in) and we learn all the skills of knowledge. Sharing and correcting
.
Quoting ucarr
So "simple" means "more basic"?
Quoting 180 Proof
Yes. :up:
Quoting 180 Proof
Okay. Your helpful analysis empowers me to see that: teleology | formalism | empiricism are a triad of modes of cognition incorrectly (logically) articulated in my premise in its present state. Also, the scope of the territory claimed by my premise is too large_inclusive.
I don't understand why you include components when I thought you were saying (correctly) that utility, beauty and sustainability are the result of other components, but not one of them. I think this may be a category issue.
Quoting jkop
"Every effect has a cause" may be true, in a way. But it does not follow that every effect must have a cause which is a specific component of the building. The cause of utility might be an effect of the totality of the building as built, rather than as a collection of components.
Quoting 180 Proof
How do you characterize ontically and empirically the physicist and its experimental_inferential connection to planck-scale phenomena?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
I like to think that when I zoom out to include my premise from another one of my conversations: strategic incompleteness, the new bottle perturbs the old news into something interesting: the semi- universe, by design - I'm not making a supernatural claim here but, instead, a thermo-dynamical claim - won't let us arrive at closure for either the "what" or the "how."
Oftentimes we don't know (or appreciate) it, but we're fortunate not to arrive at a final closure for things. As a matter of fact, our happiness depends upon the continual forestalling of final closure.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, our experience is rooted within interrelationships. There seems not to be any existing thing utterly isolated and alone. There's always the hope of being understood.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
"Basic" as the criterion for "simple" expresses an ideal of efficiency and clarity and certainty.
My layman's best guess: only the interaction of the measuring-apparatus and "planck-scale phenomena" is manifestly ontic quanta (e.g. photons) "perturbing" quanta and the physicist's readings of her measurements (thereby making inferences) are empirical.
True, but I'm not saying they're components of themselves. They're components of the architecture.
Their own components result in practical, beautiful, and sustainable parts of a building, but the building won't be successful as a building by merely having such parts.
These, in turn, must be composed (e.g. balanced or distributed) in ways that make the building successful as a building.
That's composition on a more general level than the compositions of utility, beauty, and sustainability (which in turn are composed of more specific parts, features, configurations, materials, chemical compounds, atoms, or particles in fields of force).
I'm suggesting that it has been over-hyped and is rather less interesting than one would have thought, given all the fuss.
Quoting ucarr
Be fair. Sometimes we are understood, and sometimes we manage to sort out misunderstandings.
Quoting ucarr
Well, those are all good things.
Quoting jkop
Perhaps my problem is a verbal one. "Components" suggests that they are parts of the building in the sense that the roof and the windows are parts of the building. But they aren't. I would much prefer "aspects" of the building, or of the architecture, whichever you prefer.
Quoting jkop
Yes, you could have parts of the building that meet those critieria. But the basic point, I think, is that they are holistic. If we say that the frontage of the building is beautiful, that's a description of the whole frontage not of any part or segment of it. If we say that the building is very practical, we mean that the building as a whole is practical.
Short version - holistic aspects of the building.
No, its utility may become available when it's built, but just being available does not cause anything, unless it already has the property, which can attract and initiate use.
Quoting Ludwig V
Here's a sketch of different levels of composition that I'm thinking of:
Architecture is a composition of practical, beautiful, sustainable parts.
The practical, beautiful, sustainable parts of architecture are composed of materials, structures, processes.
The materials, structures, processes are composed of minerals, organic or other chemical compounds, geometries, structural design, causal chains, relations to contexts etc.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Sounds right to me too. So we have a translation from ontic to empirical. Must we always suppose there's something lost in the translation?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting ucarr
Here I'm proceeding from the notion of QM entanglement connecting observer with observed. Effect: nothing is truly unseen. In the grapevine mesh of existing things, for each thing, there's always one observer who sees that thing as it is in truth. Is this not a charming article of faith warding off depression?
Quoting Ludwig V
I need your help in understanding how I'm being unfair.
There are good reasons why it took until 1931 for Godel to discover that these things even exist. Until then, most people were pretty much convinced that they didn't exist.
In fact, Godel insisted that his theorem was intuitionistically unobjectionable because he had given a witness (example) for his existence proof.
As to be expected, the example is rather contorted.
The theorem itself says that there are logic sentences that are (true and unprovable) or (false and provable) -- assuming that they are decidable, in the context of particular theories such as Peano arithmetic.
Godel's example is:
"This is not provable."
Assuming that this sentence is decidable, it is true or false.
If it is true, then it is (true and unprovable).
If it is false, then it is (false and provable).
Hence, the sentence is (true and unprovable) or (false and provable). Therefore, it is a legitimate existence witness for his theorem.
A better example, Goodstein's theorem, was later discovered for which the theorem itself can be expressed in Peano arithmetic but the proof cannot, making it (true and unprovable) in that context.
Godelian sentences are fiendishly difficult to detect in arithmetical reality because in that context we systematically use soundness to discover truth: the sentence at hand is true because it is provable. Arithmetical vision requires calculation. It is virtually impossible to detect an arithmetical fact without calculation.
On the other hand, if we had a copy of the theory of the physical universe, observing physical Godelian facts would be trivially easy.
Unlike in arithmetical reality, in physical reality we do not need to know why exactly a physical fact occurs in order to be able to observe it.
Our eyes do not have to calculate a fact in order to see it. Our eyes just see it. We are perfectly able to see things with our eyes that we do not understand or cannot possibly predict (up to a point, of course).
Godelian facts massively outnumber provable facts. If we actually had a copy of the theory of the physical universe, we would immediately notice that most of what our eyes can see, is not provable from it.
(By the way, this is a simplification because our eyes may also use "calculations" in order to "see".)
Thank you very much for this. I hope you won't mind if someone who is neither mathematician or logician makes some ignorant comments - purely in a spirit of enquiry. Perhaps it's worth saying that I don't really have an opinion about whether Godel is right or not. It doesn't offend my sensibilities. It's way above my pay grade, so that's a legitimate possibility for me.
Quoting Tarskian
This is not contorted. It's perfectly straightforward. Self-reference. I've long held the heretical view that the "witness" is not decidable. Is there any reason to suppose it must be? Of course, you could assign a third truth value to undecidable sentences, but I suppose that would be cheating.
Quoting Tarskian
Yes. I thought that something along these lines would probably work. However, you seem to be assuming that if a theorem can be expressed, it must be true. In which case, if that assumption is correct, it is provable. Or is that idea just an assumption or an axiom or something?
Quoting Tarskian
Yes. That's what puzzled me.
Quoting Tarskian
But not knowing why my observation is true is not the same as its being unprovable. Surely that will only work if what I observe is incapable of being proved, as opposed to my not knowing how to prove it. If I knew that it was unprovable, I think I would either not believe my eyes or at least suspend judgement.
Quoting Tarskian
Well, maybe. I think most people believe that my brain does the calculations. I can see where the ball is going to land and catch it, without consciously doing any calculations or being aware of any calculation going on in my head. It's a tricky philosophical issue.
In any case, wouldn't calculations after the event prove that I did see what I saw?
Quoting Tarskian
I'm sorry I don't understand that. Do you mean that my eyes may follow heuristic principles, rather than calculations? Quite likely. But then my seeing would be an educated guess, which could be proved right (or wrong) after the event.
Yes, it is.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
You seemed a bit depressed when you said this. I was trying to be encouraging. "Be fair" is an expression I use - perhaps it is not as widely used as I thought - to signal that there is a brighter side to what seems so depressing. It's not an accusation or criticism.
Quoting Ludwig V
It's all cleared up. I like Art Garfunkel's rendering of "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life (Monty Python)." Have you heard it?
I know the song well - have done for years. It always gets a smile. Don't know if it's Art Garfunkel's rendering. How many are there?
"Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life"
Links to renderings:
Mozart Group
Eric Idle
North Korean Version
Art Garfunkel
Life of Brian
Thanks. It would be quite a festival to play all of those at the same time.
NORTH KOREAN VERSION!!!
Yes, but if you have a copy of the theory of the physical universe, you could conceivably ask a computing device to check if a given fact is provable from this theory, or not.
In absence of this theory, we indeed don't know if a fact is provable or unprovable from it.
In fact, even when we have the theory of a particular reality, such as for arithmetical reality, we still cannot figure out if something like the Riemann hypothesis is provable from it or not.
Independent from whether the Riemann hypothesis is true or not, "Is the Riemann hypothesis independent from Peano arithmetic theory?" remains an unanswered question.
In fact, a computing device is unlikely to produce a new original proof anyway. All non-trivial proofs have historically been produced manually from a particular theory.
Therefore, having a sound theory to prove a given fact from is a necessary condition to assess its provability but not a sufficient one.
What if a given fact is unprovable within a given theory, but provable within another one. Would that be consistent with Godel?
Yes, that is exactly the case for Goodstein's theorem.
The theorem itself can be expressed in the language of Peano arithmetic but the proof cannot.
The proof that there cannot be a proof for Goodstein's theorem in Peano arithmetic is deemed much harder than the proof itself:
The proof makes use of infinite ordinals. Transfinite numbers are not defined in Peano arithmetic, pushing the proof outside the capabilities of this theory. The difficulty is to prove that the proof must make use of them.
Examples for Godel's theorem are in fact always such contorted corner cases. Otherwise, they can generally not even be detected with arithmetical vision. Unlike in physical reality, in arithmetical reality we typically know that a theorem is true because we can prove it. No need for proof in physical reality to perceive its facts. That is why arithmetical reality appears so orderly to us, while in reality, it is highly chaotic, just like physical reality. We just cannot see the chaos.
OK. I think understand what is going on, even though I cannot understand the proofs. Thanks.
Quoting Tarskian
I'm not surprised.
Quoting Tarskian
I've been changing my view of mathematics for a couple of years now - since I came back to it, in fact. I no longer think of it as an eternally peaceful, ordered world, as in Plato's heaven. (Although they did already know about the irrationality of sqrt2). As you say, it's coming to look much more like physical reality.
Quoting Tarskian
Why is the Copernicus_Galileo debate with the Catholic Church (re: the earth orbiting the sun) not a counter-narrative to this claim?
Is there any literature that examines questions about the relationship between Heisenberg Uncertainty and Gödel Incompleteness?
Quoting Tarskian
Is this an example of uncertainty rooted within incompleteness?
Quoting Tarskian
Here's the really big question: Is there a foundational relationship between uncertainty, incompleteness and entropy?
Consider: The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal empirical observation concerning heat and energy interconversions. A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions of matter (or 'downhill' in terms of the temperature gradient). Another statement is: "Not all heat can be converted into work in a cyclic process."[1][2][3]
So, heat (unfocused energy) without constraints, always spontaneously flows out of an energetic system, such that necessarily only a fraction of the contained energy of a thermo-dynamical system can be converted (brought into focus) into work.
The second law of thermodynamics establishes the concept of entropy as a physical property of a thermodynamic system. It predicts whether processes are forbidden despite obeying the requirement of conservation of energy as expressed in the first law of thermodynamics and provides necessary criteria for spontaneous processes. For example, the first law allows the process of a cup falling off a table and breaking on the floor, as well as allowing the reverse process of the cup fragments coming back together and 'jumping' back onto the table, [u]while the second law allows the former and denies the latter.[/u]
So, the entropy of a thermo-dynamic system is uni-directional; it always increases; it never decreases.
The second law may be formulated by the observation that the entropy of isolated systems left to spontaneous evolution cannot decrease, as they always tend toward a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where the entropy is highest at the given internal energy.[4] An increase in the combined entropy of system and surroundings accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, often referred to in the concept of the arrow of time.[5][6]
2nd Law of Thermodynamics
That uncertainty might be rooted in incompleteness suggests a relationship between the two phenomena.
Now we want to see if we can connect uni-directional entropy as the arrow of time to this duad in order to make a very meaningful triad: uncertainty_incompleteness_arrow of time.
Does our triad tell us that entropy insures the material existence is always moving forward into a future that is never a simple cyclic repetition of past phenomena, such as an oscillation of the universe between big bang and big crunch?
Does our triad likewise tell us that our movement towards the future is more than a statistically probable permutation of conserved laws?
Does the discovery of QM tell us that our future is truly unknown and unknowable, albeit partially predictable?
Is entropy the engine driving uncertainty_incompleteness_arrow of time?
Is entropy the mortal enemy of the T.O.E.?
"Uncertainty" is epistemic, "incompleteness" is mathematical and "entropy" is physical. I don't think they are related at a deeper "foundational" level unless Max Tegmark's MUH is the case. :chin:
Quoting 180 Proof
Consider a chain of causation: a) live music is performed in a radio station studio for a live broadcast; b) the live music in the studio as rendered to radio listeners is incomplete because of noise in the transmission; c) the listeners - because of the noisy transmission - are uncertain whether three successive brass instrument solos are a flugelhorn, a trumpet and a cornet, successively, or some other configuration according to the possibilities.
Even though the parallel breaks down at b) incompleteness because, in the example, it's due to the entropy of electromagnetic transduction (albeit mathematically describable), nonetheless the physics of entropy causes the incompleteness and, in turn, the incompleteness causes the uncertainty.
Our triad, in spite of variations, remains intact.
If there is any logical equivalence, mathematical incompleteness (or undecidability) would be something equivalent to the problem in physics of the measurement of an object effecting itself what is to be measured and hence ruining what was supposed to be an objective measurement in the first place. The undecidability results simply show that not all is computable (or in the case of Gödel's theorems, provable), even if there is a correct model for the true mathematical object (namely itself).
I always give the example of trying writing something you will never in your life write.
There is a lot of text which you won't ever write, but anything you write will automatically be something you do write (and hence not in the category of all the texts you will never write). So is this a limitation on what you can write? Of course not. You can still write anything you want. It's a bit similar with the undecidability results.
Quoting ssu
If a thing is not computable, thus causing attempted measurements to terminate in undecidability, is it sound reasoning to characterize this undecidability as uncertainty (about a conjectured definitive measurement)?
Quoting ssu
Is this a logical statement: [math]\neg x[/math] ? [math]x[/math]? If so, then why is it not a logically preemptive limitation on what I can write?
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you proceeding from the premise causal relationships are not fundamental in nature?
The [math]2^{nd}[/math] law of thermo-dynamics tells us that no isolated system can convert all of its internal energy into work. Why is this statement - among its other related implications - not an implication systematic utilization of available energy is always incomplete?
If it is one of its implications, how is it the case the 2nd law of thermo-dynamics is essential to nature, but one of its implications isnt?
Nope. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/929175
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
So if, for example, the 2[math]^{nd}[/math] law of thermo-dynamics establishes that systematic utilization of heat is always incomplete, and that this unconstrained thermal energy always travels to a cooler state toward equilibrium in randomization, is there a logically sound argument claiming there is a causal relationship between entropy and incompleteness?
Possibly between entropy and incompleteness in its more traditional meaning. Not with the math variety.
This does not really make sense. entropy is basically the thing revealed empirically when we measure things temporally. Necessarily, not consequentially, the beating heart of physics is entropy (which is a place-holder for "we do not know").
I am starting to believe that what you are really getting at behind the curtains here is that science and art share common features. That the subject and object distinction is merely one of convenience.
To which I can say. Yes. And yes, it can be extremely hard to pull people away from their microscopes to look at the larger picture. To attempt this is often futile so pick your targets well.
The following paper, "Entropy, heat, and Gödel incompleteness", 2014, by Karl-Georg Schlesinger, suggests that:
The dynamic system simply "forgets" how to go back. It would have to remember too much information for that purpose:
The suggested connection would be as following:
The principle (Chaitin's incompleteness theorem) which Yanovsky mentioned in "True But Unprovable":
would apply as following:
So, entropy would be the result of the gap between the 75 pounds of the system dynamics while having only 50 pounds to explain it on the basis of axiom system A. This 25-pound shortage of explanatory power would fuel the entropy in the dynamics, as it leads to loss of information in the process, rendering the dynamics irreversible.
Schlesinger makes extensive use of the Curry-Howard correspondence ("Every proof is a program") in his paper:
The problem that I have with this view is the very strategic choice of axiom system A.
Nothing guarantees that there exists an axiom system A. Nothing guarantees that there is only one such A. In the meanwhile, entropy still occurs as a physically observable phenomenon, regardless of any choice of A.
The implicit but really strong assumption in Schlesinger's paper is that there exists exactly one lossy compression algorithm, i.e. axiom system A, for the information contained in the physical universe.
Schlesinger actually admits this problem:
If all these alternative compression algorithms always lead to the same output in terms of predicting entropy, then for all practical purposes, they are one and the same, aren't they?
What do you think of the connection that Schlesinger makes between entropy and Godelian incompleteness in "Entropy, heat, and Gödel incompleteness" (2014)?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.7433
According to Schlesinger, a physical phenomenon becomes irreversible and entropy will grow, if reversing the phenomenon would require using more information than allowed by Godel's incompleteness.
For me uncertainty refers to a situation where you don't have all the information, for example. This isn't the case. You can have all the information, yet there's no way out of this. The reason is negative self-reference. And in the case of Gödel's theorems, it's not even a direct self-reference (the statement s is not provable). What should be noted that Gödel's incompleteness theorems are sound theorems, not paradoxes. Even if many relate it to being close to the Liar paradox.
Quoting ucarr
Why would it be not logical? The undecidability results are totally logical. Not all statements are provable and not everything is computable by a Turing Machine. It is totally logical. You can call them preemptive limitations, that's fine. So a Turing Machine has this "preemptive limitation" and hence it cannot compute everything.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
This is important generally, and here more specifically. If what you say immediately above is true, then the 2[math]^{nd}[/math] law of thermo-dynamics, if, as I herein theorize, is directly and deeply tied to the always incomplete systematic utilization of heat energy for work, then there seems to me to be good reason to think incompleteness -- not the existential measurement uncertainty of the Fourier transforms applied to elementary particles, but instead the garden variety of incompleteness: not all of the potential has been utilized -- exhibits a pattern in possession of an underlying logic. If we can learn to read that underlying logic, I conjecture it will tell us a foundational story about the passage of time and events into the future.
Science: The What - the 2[math]^{nd}[/math] law of thermo-dynamics; Humanities: The How - clinical depression of the human psyche resembles the conjectured heat death of a material system wherein all is at a lifeless equilibrium, the cosmic tendency of matter energy systems. In human terms of the "how is it experienced": the no-affect grayscale of a flatlined inner emotional life.
Entropy_uncertainty_incompleteness keep our material environment alive. Life will not be understood in the terms of wholeness, completion and closure. Since vitality tends towards these things, it's natural to seek after them. I don't think we'll find them, and that's a good thing because life, the supremely good thing, depends on us not finding them.
We don't live within a universe; instead, we live within a vital approach to a universe strategically forestalled by entropy_uncertainty_incompleteness. Science and Humanities are the two great modes of experiencing the uncontainable vitality.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Please supply: known facts pertinent; corroborating evidence supporting known facts pertinent; logical analysis; valid conclusions drawn from your logical analysis.
Quoting Tarskian
I'm glad to see I've joined some estimable thinkers who have preceded me. My gratitude to Tarskian for the citations.
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
:up:
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ssu
This situation - soft uncertainty - doesn't preclude uncertainty from also being applied to:
Quoting ssu
which is hard uncertainty.
Quoting ssu
I attempt to refute your above denial (underlined) with:
Quoting ucarr
Let me attempt to clarity: I'm attempting say I can't enact the negation of what I'm doing. [math]\rightarrow[/math] Anything I write will not be something I do not write.
Quoting 180 Proof
Please use the links below to Tarskian's posts. After re-reading the posts, refute the citations referenced by Tarskian by: providing known facts pertinent; corroborating evidence supporting known facts pertinent; logical analysis; valid conclusions drawn from your logical analysis.
Tarskian_Schlesinger 1
Tarskian_Schlesinger 2
Interesting observation. I'm not sure it takes G-incompleteness to reach this point. Dynamical system structures may be just too complex to handle without going into the realm of uncountable math garbage.
If you're refusing to read Tarskian's posts linking to:
Quoting Tarskian
it's not obvious to me why you see no reason to refute Schlesinger. The title of his paper makes it clear he's worked on the question of a causal link connecting entropy and Gödel incompleteness, the very focus of my question to you.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
How does this differ from what I've asked of you?
I think that the connection Schlesinger sees, is tied more directly to Chaitin's incompleteness theorem than to Godel's theorem. (But then again, Godel is provable from Chaitin.)
We can view Peano arithmetic theory as a compressed image of arithmetical reality. Proving from PA amounts to decompressing some information of PA's reality out of its theory.
But then again, there is a serious mismatch in the amount of information between the compressed and uncompressed states of PA's reality.
The compressed state (its theory) contains only a small fraction of the total amount of information in the uncompressed state (its reality).
Our problem, however, is that we cannot see directly the decompressed state of PA, i.e. its reality. The only way to see some of it is by decompressing it.
This decompression mechanism can easily mislead us.
That is why, until Godel's 1931 publication, the positivists even insisted that we could decompress the totality of arithmetical reality from its compressed state (its theory). They really believed it.
Positivism (and scientism) therefore amount to the misguided belief that PA (or science) is a lossless compression of arithmetical (or physical) reality.
I think that Schlesinger seems to make sense.
If the forward direction of a phenomenon incorporates information that cannot be decompressed from its theory, then it will also be impossible to decompress the information needed to reverse it, rendering the phenomenon irreversible.
The only problem I have, is that this view makes the details of the compression algorithm (the underlying theory) a bit too fundamental to my taste.
This is why natural philosophy also recognises accidents or spontaneity in its metaphysics.
The ball perfectly poised on Nortons dome can never start to roll down the slope if we were to believe only in Newtons algorithmic description.
But the dynamicist will say that in a poised system, any fluctuation at all is going to break the symmetry spontaneously. There is always going to be some vibration. Any vibration. We can call that a determining factor but really it is just the inevitability of there being an accident. The accidental cant be in fact removed from the world, even if that is not what axiomatic determinism wants us to believe.
Yes.
Just like in Schlesinger paper, Calude & Stay switched from Gödel's incompleteness to Chaitin's incompleteness. Gödel is provable from Chaitin. However, Chaitin seems to possess better explanatory power when dealing with entropy or fundamental uncertainty.
So, if a theory is the compressed image of a particular (uncompressed) reality, there is potentially a mismatch between the amount of information contained in the theory versus the amount of information contained in its reality. A theory (capable of arithmetic) contains substantially less compressed information than the uncompressed reality that it describes. This theory is necessarily a lossy compression.
Proving from theory is equivalent to decompressing some information about its reality out of its compressed theory.
Heisenberg discovered that it is not possible to simultaneously "decompress" precise position and precise momentum information for a particle. So, it looks like Chaitin's incompleteness all over again.
I do not see this phenomenon as "randomness", though.
There is absolutely nothing random about arithmetic theory or arithmetical reality. Natural-number arithmetic is a completely deterministic system. Its arithmetical reality is indeed largely unpredictable but it is not random at all.
Similarly, there is absolutely no need for the physical universe to be random, for it to be largely unpredictable. It could be, but it does not have to be.
Positivism and scientism incorrectly claim this.
Axiomatic determinism does not claim this.
Even not at all.
On the contrary, axiomatic determinism fully acknowledges that an axiomatic system (capable of arithmetic) is at best a lossy compression of the reality that it describes. This lossy compression necessarily forgets most of the information contained in the uncompressed reality.
It is simply not possible to decompress and reconstruct the totality of all the information about reality out of an axiomatic system that describes it (if this axiomatic system is capable of arithmetic). That is exactly what Chaitin (and Gödel) prove about such systems.
But then again, it also does not mean that the information forgotten in the compression is "accidental" or "random". It does not even need to be. There is nothing random about arithmetical reality, while it is still full of unpredictable facts.
Randomness is not a necessary requirement for unpredictability. Incompleteness alone is already sufficient. A completely deterministic system can still be mostly unpredictable.
It makes more sense to see randomness and determinism as the complimentary limits on being. Each limit can be extremitised, but only in the effective sense, not in an absolutist sense.
Incompleteness raises much angst in the determinist. But It only takes an infinitesimal grain of chance to complete things.
The picture I have in mind goes beyond just a lossy compression - although that is a way to view it. In the hierarchy theory view, the determined and the random become the global constraints and the local freedoms. The point of this difference is that the freedoms rebuild the constraints. They are the two sides of the one whole and hence have a holistic completeness.
Steven Frank wrote this nice paper which indeed argues your point that it doesnt matter if the fine grain is considered to be deterministic or random. What matters is that microstates can be described by macroscopic constraints as they are freedoms that cant help but rebuild their global equilibrium.
When a compression algorithm forgets particular facts, it says much more about this algorithm than about these facts. Another algorithm may even include them. The term "chance" points to facts forgotten by the compression algorithm. I do not see that qualification as particularly fundamental.
Now you are making points about variety in types of compression algorithms, not about general principles.
That is actually also what Steven Frank does in his paper "The common patterns of nature". He argues that the algorithm -- in this case, the statistical distribution -- that maximizes entropy will dominate particular situations.
A statistical distribution compresses the information about a sample into just a few parameters. It is lossy. It will generally not succeed in decompressing these few parameters back into the full sample.
About the general principles, he writes:
Axiomatic theories do something similar.
The few rules in the axiomatic theory will not succeed in decompressing themselves back into the full reality. What facts from the full reality that they fail to incorporate does not say particularly much about these facts (deemed "chance", "random", ...). They rather say something about the compression technique being used, which is the principle that chooses what facts will be deemed predictable and what facts will be deemed mere "chance".
Quoting I like sushi
Followed by the possibility of uniting/transcending the differences held by many?
I simple yes/no or suffice. If it is a bit more than this then a sketchy - yet straight forward - outline would be all I need.
Thanks
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
The issue I want you to focus upon is this: for any system that does work, as it goes forward in the systematic process of doing work, the work builds up complexity of detail. This building up of complexity can be observed in two modes: phenomenal (entropy) and epistemic (logic).
Gödel and Chaitin have shown in the epistemic mode that the full scope of the evolving complexity can not be formally tied to the ground from which it emerges. This leads to the conclusion that axiomatic systems are a form of compression of complexity and that the increase of complexity is an irreversible process.
Quoting Tarskian
Here's a critical question: Is it true that the extrapolation from an axiomatic system to complexity irreversible to the axiomatic system cannot be certified, and thus axiomatic systems are both incomplete and uncertain?
If you think the answer to this question is "no," can you succinctly demonstrate your refutation?
You understand it perfectly clear. The basic issue here is the negative self-reference. And that issue is similar in Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Turings result (on the Entscheidungsproblem).
Please note that what I'm referring is that this doesn't mean that there's sentences that cannot write, let's say that you cannot refer something from "War and Peace". You can naturally refer some text from "War and Peace". There's no limitation on just what you next will write. Yet there's always those sentences you don't write, it's simply not fixed what these sentences are. Naturally everything what you write also defines all the sentences that you don't write. Hope you get my point.
This sounds perhaps trivial, but I think some people don't understand the meaning when we say that a Turing Machine cannot compute something. They immediately start assuming that some "Oracle Machine" or a "Busy Beaver" that could overcome the "limitation" of a Turing Machine and then make further assumptions what would this imply, with just assuming that the limitation is somehow overcome.
Stop. This confuses empiricism with formalism nonsense (i.e. logic is not "doing work").
More nonsense. Formalisms (axiomatic or otherwise) are abstract and therefore do not refer beyond themselves to concrete matters of fact (e.g. entropy), rather they are used as syntax for methods of precisely measuring / describing the regularities of nature. That syntax is fundamentally incomplete / undecidable (re: Gödel / Chaitin) says nothing about nature, only about the (apparently) limits of (our) rationality. In other words, that physical laws are computable does not entail that the physical universe is a computer.
I was targeting a deeper point about the reversibility of mechanics and the irreversibility of nature.
Mechanics seeks time reversible descriptions of nature. It seems to succeed which then makes the thermodynamic arrow of time a fundamental problem. So how to fix that?
The point I would make is that lossy compression is just a mechanical sieving that involves literally throwing information away. So the claim is the information did exist, it has merely been discarded and that is how any irreversibility arises.
But the other approach is says rather than actuality being discarded, the story is about possibilities getting created. As the past is being fixed as what is now actual, future possibilities explode in number.
This is what chaos theory gets at. Standard three body problem stuff. The current state of the system can only give you so much concrete information to make your future forecast. Time symmetry is broken by indeterminancy at its start rather than by information discard by its end.
Basically your efforts at future prediction execute in polynomial time but your errors at each step accumulate in exponential time.
Aaronson did a nice article Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity
Quanta also Complexity Theorys 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge
But then after arriving at a proper model of chaos, one can continue on to a larger story of order out of chaos or the topological order of dissipative structure. The idea of the mechanical sieve and its lossy compression comes back in over that foundational chaos in the form of evolution or a Darwinian selection filter.
If a system has some kind of memory, this starts to select for possibilities that coordinate. Sand being blown in the Saharan wind can start to accumulate as a now a larger structure of slowly shifting dunes. A lid gets put on random variety and so out of smaller scale chaos, or degrees of freedom, grows larger scale order, or a context of variety-taming constraints.
So the holistic picture speaks to irreversible mechanics as something rather like ... exploding quantum wavefunction indeterminancy and constraining quantum thermal decoherence.
You get the complete causal story by being able to point to the fundamentally random, and even chaotic, scale of being that then got topologically tamed by its own higher scale dynamics. A lossy algorithm is what developed over time due to natural selection. A mechanics is what emerged.
Uncertainty is a precision problem.
More precision means more information.
According to Chaitin's incompleteness, sufficiently higher precision will indeed at some point exceed the amount of information that the system can decompress.
According to the literature on the subject, both incompleteness and imprecision ("uncertainty") can be explained by the principle of lossy compression that results in a particular maximum amount of information that could ever be decompressed out of the system.
This problem becomes very apparent when trying to reverse a particular physical process. The amount of information required to do that may simply not be available, leading to the process becoming irreversible.
For example, an explosion. Can it be reversed? The problem is that the process would need to store an inordinate amount of information to even attempt that. This is a necessary (but not a sufficient) condition for the process to be reversible. Since even just the information to reverse the process is not remembered anywhere by the process, any attempt at reversing it would simply fail.
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
From your sequence of quotes here, I understand that, just as you say "Incompleteness alone is already sufficient." [to cause unpredictability].
Can we generalize to the following claim: our material creation, as we currently understand it, supports: the determinism of axiomatic systems, the incompleteness of irreversible complexity and the uncertainty of evolving dynamical systems, and, moreover, this triad of attributes is fundamental, not conditional?
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
As I understand it, an axiomatic system is a compressor. The algorithm that generates the axiomatic system has a focal point that excludes info inconsequential to the outcome the axiomatic system tries to predict.
Does a lossy axiomatic system also necessarily omit consequential facts because of measurement limitations described by Heisenberg Uncertainty?
The axiomatic system is indeed a compression (Chaitin) but we just axiomitize it without using any known compression algorithm.
The axiomatization is actually discovered by human ingenuity without any further justification.
By proving from it, however, we decompress information out of the axiomatic system . So, it is the proving from it that constitutes the decompression algorithm.
According to the Curry-Howard correspondence, a proof is indeed a program, and therefore, an algorithm. Because every proof is potentially different, the decompression algorithm is actually a collection of algorithms, usually, each painstakingly discovered.
So, the compression algorithm is unknown but some part of the decompression algorithm is discovered each time we successfully prove from the system.
Quoting ucarr
Yes, the compression result excludes information. This excluded information may be inconsequential but it may also lead to a substantial reduction in desired predictive power. It forgets facts in the reality that it describes. This may or may not be a problem for the application at hand.
The axiomatic system is the result of a compression but we don't know what algorithm led to this result. It is discovered simply by human ingenuity.
Quoting ucarr
Yes. Technically, the resulting imprecision is the due to the fundamental properties of wave functions.
However, the paper mentioned , Calude & Stay, 2004, "From Heisenberg to Gödel via Chaitin.", connects uncertainty to Chaitin's incompleteness:
They conclude that it is not possible to decompress more precise information out of an axiomatic system than the maximum precision imposed by the fundamental properties of wave functions.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting ucarr
This is how I talk about science and humanities in broad generality. The link below will take you to the post for additional context.
ucarr post
That they overlap in ways complex and nuanced I acknowledge. Their common ground has not been my focus in this conversation. What I haven't seen (I'm not implying such literature doesn't exist) is a general description of how they differ. Through both lenses: similarity and difference, the view of the comparison is complex and nuanced.
I feel a measure of satisfaction with my "What" Vs "How" binary. Again, this binary entails a complex and nuanced interweave of both "What" and "How." A loose translation into English might be: What is meets What it's like to experience what is.
This language points toward The Hard Problem. Looking objectively at subjectivity is hard to do. Is consciousness purely subjective? "Not exactly," says science when it attempts to detach the observer from the observed. QM tells us there is no purity of observational detachment.
QM entanglement tells us something about consciousness: it interweaves the objective and subjective. Does this dovetail with the holism you see?
Yes, informational incompleteness (Chaitin) and uncertainty (Heisenberg) are deemed.directly related (Calude & Stay, 2004).
The irreversibility of particular physical processes (entropy) is also deemed directly related (Schlesinger 2014) to informational incompleteness (Chaitin).
Furthermore, arithmetical incompleteness (Godel) is provable (Zisselman 2023) from informational uncertainty (Chaitin).
However, only some part of all the above is effectively provable.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
What is symbolic logic without the reader? It's marks on paper. No work. Really, it's non-existent without the writer. Logic that has meaning and works always assumes the interaction between a human and the marks on the paper: Aristotle's intelligent agent meets intelligibility. Work.
Quoting 180 Proof
"Formalisms that do not refer beyond themselves to concrete matters of fact (e.g. entropy)..." no work.
However, as above: Formalisms that have meaning and work always assume the interaction between a human and the marks on the paper: Aristotle's intelligent agent meets intelligibility. Work.
Formalisms are not abstract because, in their description of nature, they express the state of being (in this case: thinking) of human individuals who are, indeed, a part of nature, and therefore, human expression is nature expressing herself. There is no discrete bifurcation separating "abstract" human thought from nature.
"... rather they are used as syntax for methods of precisely measuring / describing the regularities of nature."
Why bother with measurement and description if there's no existential connection between abstract thought and nature? If formalisms are hermetically sealed off from nature, then, willy-nilly you can assign whatever meaning you like to whatever marks on paper you make, for all the value that has.
Both life and science are interesting. This because, within the realm of human thinking -- just another natural thing -- it's possible to be either right or wrong. Right and wrong draw their force and value from the interweave of nature as thinking and nature as object of thinking, i.e., nature looking at herself.
The test of syntax comes down to: can you speak the words trippingly from the tongue? The test of science comes down to: can you observe the predictions in nature? These tests bespeak the interweave between natural thinking and nature thinking about herself.
Quoting Tarskian quoting Calude and Stay
Calude & Stay, 2004, "From Heisenberg to Gödel via Chaitin."
The above quoted theories are interesting because they could either be right or wrong. There's something at stake. That wouldn't be the cause if human thinking weren't existentially connected to the natural world surrounding it.
:up:
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tarskian
Do you have any interest in the Beckenstein bound, from the Holographic Principle (Gerard t'Hooft)? It describes a limit to the amount of information that can be stored within an area of spacetime at the Planck scale. Among other things, this limit establishes the physical nature of information. There's an algorithm for measuring the Beckenstein bound: it's a fraction of the area of the event horizon of a black hole.
Interesting.
So what? In the context of my replies to your last few posts, that's another non sequitur.
:roll: Bad physics breeds bad philosophy.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Why are these two statements not a contradiction?
Why are "regularities of nature" not concrete matters of fact?
How are "matters of fact" concrete but not empirical?
If self-descriptions ("formalisms...do not refer beyond themselves") have nothing to do with the world (nature), instead being interested only in themselves, how are they meaningful and useful?
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Tarskian
precision | pr??siZH(?)n |
noun
technical refinement in a measurement, calculation, or specification, especially as represented by the number of digits given: a precision of six decimal figures
The Apple Dictionary
When we look at the triad of entropy_uncertainty_incompleteness through the lens of imprecision, which is about exactness, we see that the informational dimension of nature is not fully containable within human observation, whether of the scientific type, or of the humanities type.
Does this tell us something about the incompleteness of nature, or does it tell us something about the incompleteness of human cognition?
Given the limits of measurement and decompression, does 180 Proof have a cogent point?
Quoting 180 Proof
180 Proof
Does this argument cast doubt on whether we can know reality beyond its human translation?
Are the disciplines of epistemology and ontology merely products of human translations?
Is Platonic Realism correct: humans dwell within a (cognitive) dark cave, sealed off from direct and complete experience of reality? Plato, however, thought he saw a way out of shadowy perception by means of reasoning beyond appearances.
Can we hope to eventually reason beyond the current state-of-the-art observations limited by imprecision of measurement and incompleteness of decompression? Or is it the case the limited measurements of the wave function and the limited decompression of axiomatic systems reflect existential limitations embedded in nature?
Now perhaps we come to a crux of the faceoff between the sciences and the humanities. If the observer is always entangled with the observed, does that mean the two great modalities of discovery: the what and the what its like of the what are linked by the biconditional operator?
The biconditional linking sciences and humanities writ large is the biconditional linking nature and sentience.
Option 1 If humans can see nature beyond measurement and decompression limitations, then sentience is inevitable because its seeds are embedded existentially.
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Option 2 If sentience and nature are creatively and strategically incomplete, without biconditional linkage, then existential limitations of knowing and being are always in effect. Theres a gap separating the two, however, the knowing of being, and the being of knowing of being, make a close approach to each other. This close approach, always incomplete, keeps the game of sentience going creatively because the two infinities, although incommensurable, are entangled in an evolving, inexhaustible complexity.
Map-making does not "contradict" [i]using[/u] a map for navigating terrain..
The regularities of nature are concrete matters of fact from which physical laws are generalized (i.e. abstracted) physical. I haven't claimed or implied otherwise.
Where are you getting this? This question has nothing to do with what I've argued.
Incoherent strawman. Formalisms, like numbers, do not have "interests", persons who use them in specific contexts of meaning have "interests".
Quoting ucarr
No.
Idk what you mean by "translations".
No. The senses don't lie, only how we mis/interpret (mis/use) our senses lies to us (vide Epicurus et al).
I do not know. Either outcome is possible.
Possibly.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Premise - Formalism = (a technical term for) narrative
Question - When you write a map, do you simultaneously read it? If so, then reading and writing are merged as an identity. Also, they are symmetrical, which is to say, if writing and reading are merged, then reading and writing are merged (when you read something, it doesn't enter your understanding directly; you read what's written, and then your comprehension of what you've read writes what is written onto the plane of your memory).
Symmetry cannot be contradictory, but if the distinction between writing a map and reading a map is erased by symmetry, then there is contradiction, thus pointing up the illogic of your two sentences taken together.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Above you say formalisms [math]?[/math] concrete matters of fact; above you also say formalisms [math] =[/math] regularities of nature. Next you say matters of fact and regularities of nature [math] =[/math] each other. How is it your statements about formalism are not contradictory?
Quoting 180 Proof
Why is it the case that formalisms, when they measure_describe the regularities of nature, do not refer beyond themselves to concrete matters of fact_the regularities of nature?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
empirical | im?pir?k(?)l |
adjective
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic: they provided considerable empirical evidence to support their argument.
The Apple Dictionary
The empirical includes matters of fact verifiable by observation. Since logic doesn't do any observing, instead it being done by humans not theorizing abstractly but observing real things, logic, through humans, connects with the world of empirical experience, and thus my question is pertinent to your statement.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
By your own words, we see that scientific measurement (at least sometimes) is a translation from the empirical to the cognitive.
Quoting ucarr
False. Stop shadowboxing with your strawmen, you're further confusing yourself.
.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Here's your own language:
Quoting 180 Proof
Facts describe real things. As you describe formalisms:
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Formalisms measure regularities of nature. You say (above) regularities of nature are concrete matters of fact. Since formalisms measure regularities of nature, and regularities of nature are concrete matters of fact, formalisms measure concrete matters of fact.
Thus, Quoting 180 Proof
falsely denies that formalisms refer beyond themselves to concrete matters of fact (e.g. entropy).
No they don't. As I wrote: formalisms ARE USED to measure or describe the regularities of nature (e.g. arithmetic IS USED to count apples in a barrel).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/929583
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting ucarr
This is how I read your statement.
Quoting 180 Proof
This is your argument supporting your claim I mis-read your claim.
You seem to be implying that guidelines for best arrangement of signs (syntax) for the sake of effective communication are exclusively generalizations.
You propound your implied characterization by pointing out how your statement presents the critical verb "measurement" in the passive voice, whereas my statement presents it in the active voice. This emphasis on the passive voice is your effort at distancing formalisms from regularities of nature_matters of concrete fact.
Obviously, by definition of formalism, there is a chain-link of narration linking the meaning of formalisms (axiomatic or otherwise) with how they're applied directly by their agents to things in nature. The degree of elaboration of the components of the narration (and the narrative "distance" accreted) never breaks the chain-link of narration connecting the formalisms to their objects.
sine qua non | ?sin? ?kwä ?n?n, ?sin? ?kwä ?nän |
noun
an essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary: grammar and usage are the sine qua non of language teaching and learning.
ORIGIN
Latin, literally (cause) without which not.
The Apple Dictionary
In my understanding, axiomatic system = sine qua non. If something is essential to a following thing that is the consequence of the first thing, then the first thing refers beyond itself specifically to the following thing.
There appears to be an idea floating through the zeitgeist of the scientific age that generalizations, i.e., abstractions, run parallel to the concrete and specific creations of nature. In my understanding, a generalization is a thinking process that utilizes cognitive compression of multiple applications of the generalization. This cognitive process produces the axiomatic system.
Although the cognitively compressed idea, while occupying its compressed state as an abstraction, seems not to be directly tied to any one of the many objects of its meaning, this in fact is a falsehood.
Claiming formalisms do not refer beyond themselves parallels claiming the distinction between a verb in the active voice and a verb in the passive voice has no connection to the grammar specifying a distinction between the two voices.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof.
Your above quote makes it clear beyond doubt you're using the distinction of the passive voice of the verb from the active voice of the verb to defend your denial of the following:
Quoting ucarr
So, our debate over formalisms referring to things beyond themselves comes into focus here as a specific argument point you make in which you do the very thing you deny the possibility of doing: basing your defensive argument upon a grammatical formalism: English verbs have both an active and a passive voice, such that, per your argument, the grammatical formalism about the voice distinction, when it refers to that distinction in application, defends against :
Quoting ucarr
The premise behind your defensive argument is the following: formalisms (English verbs have both passive and active voice) do refer to concrete matters of fact, with the purported supporting fact in this instance being: "Because I wrote my claim with the verb in the passive voice, my claim 'formalisms do not refer beyond themselves to concrete matters' stands."
As you assume (in contradiction to what you say), formalisms do refer to things beyond themselves. So, by your own assumption (and debate maneuver), your claim to the contrary is false.
I have revised my understanding of a formalism. If I can use the form of an equation as a formalism, then I can say [math]a+b=c[/math] is an example of a formalism.
What is its relationship to the concrete numbers that plug into its variables?
There is a difference in degree between refer to and specify.
Refer to can connect one thing to another generally.
Specify connects one thing to another with a concrete exactness (precision).
A formalism can refer generally to its powerset. [math]a+b=c[/math] in reference to only itself is useless. We only know how to use an equation when we know its powerset, which tells us the range of specific (precise) numbers (referred to generally by the formalism of the abstract equation) that can plug into the abstract form of the equation.
An abstract equation might be a set; it might be the set of all possible numbers that can plug into it meaningfully.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
If formalisms refer generally to their powerset of possible concrete numbers that can plug into the abstract form of the formalism, then they do measure the regularities of nature, which is to say they are generally and existentially involved in concrete measurements of regularities of nature because they constrain the range of concrete numbers that can do the measuring.
Abstractionism does not break the chain of causality connecting, existentially, formalisms to regularities of nature.
You indicate numbers are immaterial.
What are numbers abstracted from? Is an abstraction a derivative of its antecedent? Does a number have any type of connection to matter? Can a number have an application to matter and yet have no connection to matter? Can abstract numbers measure material things without establishing any type of connection to the material thing measured?
When we use numbers, do we make some type of contact_connection with the numbers? Is there a sense of use that involves no type of contact _connection?
Does a map have some type of relationship _connection with/to terrain?
Map in the sense of formalism is distinct from map in the sense of a graphic showing a Cartesian coordinate grid of intersecting streets?
Im not trying to make a point indirectly with rhetorical questions. The questions are sincere, and I want
you to answer sincerely.
At this time, Im not trying to contest your assertions. You see Im in error re: map/terrain.
Maybe you can pick one question the one whose answer you deem most helpful and answer it.
As I've pointed out already ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/926546
In this sense, I think so: a map is an abstraction from aspects of the terrain (e.g. regularities of nature) that is instantiated in some other aspect of the terrain (e.g. observers' brains-discursive practices).
In your post to hypericin, you say math structures are an instance of info strings. By Websters, that means math structures are a concrete representation of info strings, as a freedom fighter is a concrete representation of freedom. I expect you to deny Websters definition is your intended meaning, unless youre drawing from Aristotles hylomorphism in the following way: an info string is a substantial with potential, and a math structure is an actual form immanent in the substantial potential.
What do you have to say?
Personally, (and I think this might be a common ground on this site) I am more concerned with Why, specifically. Science is about understanding the universe, humanities are about understanding our past (generally) and philosophy is about understanding where we, either as individuals or as a larger group, fit into that universe. There are discussions that don't aim to answer that question, but I feel as though that particular "Why" is the main reason people try to create or improve philosophies, or feel drawn to it.
This response was a little weird just because I didn't really know where to go with my elaboration, but I have expressed my main thoughts.
Information is connected to matter.
For example, a pendulum is able to swing back because it physically stores the information necessary to do so. An explosion does not store the information necessary to implode again. Storing the information to do so, is a necessary condition for reversibility. That is why an explosion is irreversible.
Numbers can represent some but not necessarily all of the information in the physical world required to reverse physical processes.
If some claim is information-theoretically impossible then it is also physically impossible.
I do like the lens metaphor - it seems to me to be very useful and I shall use it at every opportunity.
There are clearly hidden depths to the definition that @ucarr gave. Whether it is somehow about self-reference or formalisms, there are interesting and important issues at play. But I have a sense that this is a definition from the perspective of science. So here is a perspective from someone who studies humanities (if the term can be applied to at least some of philosophy).
Our sense that science and the humanities are different arises from the fact that there are different ontologies (which are defined by their practices and languages) in play. However, ontologies and practices don't necessarily line up neatly with the standard catalogue of subjects - or even with each other. Academic departments are, presumably, formed on the assumption that each subject/discipline is an interest group and/or a collegial group. That is not false, but it is well to remember that each subject/discipline/academic group is itself riven with battles of all sorts, in which the definition of the group itself may be at stake.
It's an intellectual mess - but then, that's a field of special interest to philosophy. From my point of view, we do well to ask, before getting embroiled in this marsh, what, in Wittgenstein's terms, our real needs are. To understand that, we need to go back to the historical (and legendary) time when the distinction was formulated, when the intellectual and framework and space for what we now call "science" was developed. This was also, at the same time, an intellectual and social battle.
Since then science has become dominant in our lives, and it is the intellectual and social space for the humanities that is at stake. (I won't mention cuckoos and eggs). The issue has not changed much. But I wonder if we would find it easier to make progress if we stopped amalgamating a complicated and multi-dimensional issue into one, and treated the various sub-issues piecemeal, leaving the grand distinction to fall into place (or to fall into disuse) as it may. That may seem boringly familiar, but I would have thought that analytic philosophers would find it of interest.
Quoting Igitur
It would, surely, be more accurate to say the science is about understanding the universe conceived of as a machine, or the universe insofar as mathematics can be applied to it. Philosophy certainly includes how we fit in, but also includes the question how far the scientific project fits in to the universe. Are you assuming that the study of literature and history are essentially philosophical? That's an interesting thought. I think there's a case to be made.
Quoting Igitur
You may be right. But, surely, in the end, the question why people are drawn to philosophy is empirical.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you both sure that the difference between you is not just a question of language. I can't see what is at stake here.
The present state of my general descriptions of the two great modes: science/humanities goes as follows: science asks: what is existence? Humanities asks: how is human?
For science the focal point is on measurement. For humanities the focal point is on consciousness.
When you measure something you contain it. Containment of existing things drives toward understanding.
When you experience something you assemble a continuity of knowing-what-its-like into a narrative of an enduring point of view, your personal history.
Every human individual is both scientist and artist. The human individual needs both the understanding of measurement and the knowing-what-its-like of a personal history in order to live. No understanding? No personal history? No life.
The scientist measures, i.e., she sounds the dimensions of a thing, thereby revealing the what of a mysterious thing that mystifies her own knowledge of the what of her being until she finally surrenders her understanding to a radically new picture of the what of the state of being of herself.
The artist assembles a continuity of knowing-what-its-like into an arc of change and discovery that is a personal history through the start of adventures, the middle section assessing battles won/lost and finally reaching the summit/plateau of a new state of the how of her being.
Logic and math cover the two great modes thus: scientifically they mark and track the what of the position of the state of being; artistically they narrate a continuity of the direction of the how of being towards a conclusion of the what-its-like to reside in validity-as-truth, or not.
In each mode, one of the greatest mysteries is the location of the inflection point linking the immaterial and the material. This linkage and its circumambient mystery establish the wholely picture of life: substance grounding immanent form endlessly variable, albeit grounded within the ambiguity that animates the what and the how.
Youre focused on the great conjunctive adverb: why?
Where does human fit into the universe? Why are we here? I think a big clue to answering that question is consciousness. Are we alone? Is our presence the universe arrived at a new plateau: the universe looking at itself?
Everyone sees the difference between one rock and two rocks. Do the solo rock and the rock duet, respectively, physically store number within themselves?
Regarding reversible dynamics becoming irreversible phenomena, is there an inflection point linking a containable volume of physical information with an uncontainable volume of physical information?
Might that inflection point be described by the Beckenstein bound?
Part of the reason why we do this is because many people view the entire point of these subjects is exactly that, to combine them, and so we are as a result, overeager to do so.Quoting Ludwig V
Agreed.
Quoting Ludwig V
I didnt think I was, but looking back, probably?
There is obviously at least some overlap with attempting to understand the past and the field that works in understanding our present knowledge and answering the deeper questions that elaborate on human nature.
It might be more accurate to say the instead of the humanitarian studies being philosophical, that philosophy is concerned with studies of all sorts, and apart from the study itself, it is also concerned with the subject matter of these studies, given that they often pose questions we try to answer.
I also realize that I am leaving out the connection between philosophy and other fields subject matter, but I hope it suffices to simply say that they are useful for understanding the world we live in (and therefore are relevant) but often not as useful for understanding ourselves in that world individually and as a collective. It would simply take too long to talk about fields individually for my patience.
I guess I havent asked these questions because I myself look at things from a religious, or more specifically, a Christian perspective.
I do, however, agree that these are important questions either way.
Thank you very much. I can get my teeth into this. I won't complain that you've sent me too much. I just hope that my reply isn't too much and that we don't lose too much in the course of discussion.
Quoting ucarr
So that's why you posited "What" and "How" at the beginning! (I'm still wondering where "Why?" fits in).
Quoting ucarr
I like the first sentence, because it explains why mathematics is so necessary to science. It is the methodological decision at the start of what we now call science.
I'm less happy with the second sentence, for reasons that may appear later.
Quoting ucarr
H'm.
Quoting ucarr
That's true. But is it relevant? I suppose we'll see.
I may be naive, but I thought the whole point of "knowing-what-it's-like" is that it can't be turned into propositional knowledge and hence not into a narrative.
I would have thought that if you were going to ask this kind of question, you would have looked at the existentialists. That's exactly their point - that the start of understanding is the lived world into which we are thrown. But I hope you are not going to turn the Humanities into a matter of personal history.
Quoting ucarr
In a sense, that's true. As a matter of history, it can't be. Or are you saying that no-one before the Egyptians invented arithmetic had a personal history? I don't think so. So it needs a bit more explanation.
Quoting ucarr
So if you assemble enough measurements, you'll develop a new understanding of yourself? I would have thought you need more than that.
Why and how did you start measuring in the first place?
Where did your pre-measurement picture of the what of the state of your own being come from?
Quoting ucarr
I can see how you are developing your starting-point. But this is perilously close to a stipulated definition. I have a feeling that it would not correspond to the actual life and practice of actual artists, never mind what they might say if you ask them.
Quoting ucarr
I'm glad you are locating logic and math as an exception in the what/how dualism and sad that you're just combining the two. I think that what you say boils down to the idea that logic and math underpin both "what" and "how", defining the permanent framework of possibility for both. Is that what you are saying?
Quoting ucarr
Not quite the hard problem, but close.
The urgent questions here are:-
Are these mysteries soluble or not?
If not, how are we to live with them? (There's no question of understanding them, is there?)
If they are, is it the artist or the scientist or both who will "solve" them? Or do we each solve them for ourselves when we construct our personal histories?
The idea that science and art are both necessary for what Aristotle would call a good human life is fine by me. ("No life" is a bit extreme, don't you think?)
My big trouble with this is that you seem to be pursuing a quite different project from the one in the title. The Humanities are not pursuing a personal project. They don't have and they don't pursue what you might call scientific objectivity. How could they? Why should they? But they do have their methods and their standards. You don't recognize that and so confuse the Humanities disciplines with the practices of the arts, which the Humanities study, but do not perform.
The idea that each of constructs a personal history based on our experience has a lot to be said for it.
But it doesn't touch any of the Humanities disciplines.
Historians would likely not call that history, but memoir - because it does not even try to be objective; nor should it. It's fine as it is. An objective personal history would be a biography, and that's a different enterprise. Memoir is a literary form and so is open to study by Literature, but it isn't the study of Literature. You seem to have forgotten that philosophy belongs here, and I'm sure you don't think that is a matter of constructing a memoir.
To be sure, the Sciences start from measurement, but measurement on its own is just data. The sciences develop theories to enable us to understand the data and it is no more than stamp-collecting without it. (Stamp-collecting isn't just gathering stamps into albums either - or at least it can become more, but that's another story).
I think you are being misled by the binary distinction between objective (science) and subjective (everything else) and by the rhetorical effect of ("What is it like to be a bat?"). That question is genius. It manages to persuade us that it can be answered yet cannot be at the same time.
Thank you for the detailed exam of my post.
Why is basic to both modes, and this conversation is about their differences, so I havent dwelt on it.
The two general meanings of the two great modes are understanding and experience.
There is much overlap between the two, so how do they differ?
The two great modes have an important difference WRT focal range: understanding has a well-defined focal range coupled with a well-defined goal, where as experience, potentially drawing from all of existence, has a focal range and pallet of goals unspecifiable.
Experience always holds the potential to explode understanding. The two modes, being in creative conflict, animate each other. New experience drives understanding forward and new understanding drives new experience forward.
What its like to be a bat.
What its like to be something is the great question that links consciousness with matter.
As we answer the question What is matter? do we discover that our deeper questions on the subject require that we answer the question what is consciousness, thereby suggesting all material road maps lead to consciousness?
Can there be an existence not known to be existence?
Does causality persist in a world without consciousness? If consciousness must filter reality to a small sample of whats there, then an unfiltered reality might have an unparsed version of relativity that features unlimited temporal differentials super-animated beyond cause and effect into simultaneous everything. That might play as a beyond-sequencing explosion of uncontainable potential. An unspeakable fullness of possibilities.
We cant answer this question, but it lends a hand with answering the question: Why is there not nothing?
Its because you ask the question.
You cant ask Why existence? if existence isnt known.
Perhaps the greatest dialog between the What and the How is the What of the How and the How of the What?
The first question in our jingling duet is What is the good life? The second question is What is the status of narrative?
Theres experience, but what experience is worthy, and how do you make it your own?
Is narrative merely descriptive, or is it also generative?
Quoting ucarr
That explains it.
Quoting ucarr
I'm taking you to mean by "focal range" because there is always an object of understanding - the "what" that I'm seeking to understand. Sometimes, I agree, there is a well-defined goal (answer). But is that true of understanding of Heidegger or Wittgenstein or even my dog? I don't think so.
Experience, on the other hand also has an object, which can be quite narrow or very wide-ranging. Experience of life is the latter, experience of frying an egg is the former. So I agree that it's focal range is unspecified. But that's because sometimes it is wide and sometimes it is narrow. So I see no difference here. I'm not at all sure that there is a goal at stake here. What would it mean to say, "I reached my goal in that experience". (Unless just having the experience is the goal, which, I think, is not what you mean).
Quoting ucarr
I can agree with that, at least as a generalization. But I would want to add that sometimes understanding drives itself forward, by asking questions. Is that wrong?
Quoting ucarr
Well, I've told you what I think about the question. To be honest, I couldn't give you a straight answer right now. One day I need to write something about it. Still, I don't think you need that question, because matter is inherently defined as "not mind" and "mind" is inherently defined as "not matter". There's no need for any other link, is there?
Quoting ucarr
It would be very satisfying if it did. "Return of the Repressed" springs to mind. The talk of the observer as a necessary part of theories in physics promises much.
Quoting ucarr
Well, there are certainly many things that exist even though they are not known to exist. So I would have though that the answer to your question is clearly Yes. Or have I misunderstood?
Quoting ucarr
Off hand, I would have thought that it must. We would not exist if it didn't. But I don't know if that's relevant because I don't understand the rest.
Quoting ucarr
Do you mean "Does causality persist in a world without consciousness?" I wouldn't have thought so. How do you think it lends a hand?
BTW I don't think "Why is there not nothing?" is answerable, because there insufficient implied context to indicate what might count as an answer.
Quoting ucarr
Your answer is a good one, because it appears to be an answer, but isn't one.
I don't think the reason why one cannot answer either version of the question is that "existence isn't known". After all the existence very many things is known, yet the question is still unanswerable.
Quoting ucarr
Which nicely illustrates why I can't understand your enthusiasm for "What?" and "How?"
Quoting ucarr
The first question is certainly a good candidate for its place. I don't see why the second is there. It has its place, but surely not this high up the ranking. Perhaps it's because you think the personal history is so important - which it is, in a way.
Quoting ucarr
Worthy of what, by what criteria? You make experiences your own by being there, awake and attentive. Or have I missed the point?
Quoting ucarr
I can't answer that because I don't know what you mean by "generative". Narrative, on the face of it, always includes description, but no description is "merely" descriptive. For example, what's left out just as significant as what's included. How things are described are just as important as what is described. "Spade", "Bloody shovel", "Agricultural implement",
Does causality exist in a world without consciousness?
Im examining whether theres an essential link between consciousness and causality. Since we cant know a world without consciousness, might that suggest there is no existence without consciousness?
Perhaps the two are always paired. That would mean matter is always consciousness-bearing, and consciousness is always matter- bearing. The relationship is a biconditional.
No, I don't buy that. We know that consciousness evolved long after the inanimate formed. We know that causation was working perfectly well during all that time, even though consciousness did not yet exist.
But I have to concede that we only know that because we've been able to assemble the evidence and formulate hypotheses and theories.
If you adopt a strong definition of existence, such as "to be is to be perceived" or, more gently "to be is to conceived", then your thesis would follow. But you have a big problem explained where we came from. Berkeley supplied that by positing God. How would you do it?
I do accept that anything that exists can be known, conceived, perceived and that there will always be more to know, conceive, perceive than we have discovered, conceived, perceived. (I think).
The pair are indeed closely linked. Consciousness or awareness is always consciousness or awareness of something - subject and object. The object can (usually) exist without a subject. I don't think that consciousness can exist without an object, but I'm not dogmatic about it.
If morals correspond to real things and thus they are objective, then the what of life, that is, the facts of life (ha ha!) can generate a type of science, the science of morality. This is what the world religious try to teach.
The enemy of morals is adaptation. Adjusting to a situation for sake of survival often scuttles morals.
Proceeding from the belief morals are objectively real, the morals and behaviors of the good are what the wise person seeks to own.
This argument is hard to sell because its so hard to concretize what is meant by goodness,
Interesting that you assume a world without consciousness is inanimate. I know you dont mean a world without motion. I think you mean a world without self-willed motion.
In a world without consciousness, when the wind pushes a rock and it rolls downhill, is that causation, or is it a potential event among infinite possible events?
If we divorce consciousness from matter, does time lose its ability to parse infinite possible events into the intelligibility of distinct events causally sequenced?
With this speculation, I imagine time in the role of universal solvent. It dissolves unintelligible infinite possibilities into the world as we perceive it, and that world is real because of our presence in it.
Existence doesnt exist without consciousness; without consciousness it is only potential existence.
This might tell us something about the what and its linkage to science: consciousness in its essence is measurement; it pairs with the existential solvency of time to render a realm of discrete things causally linked; this extracted from unintelligible infinite possibilities .
Where do we come from? The void, which, as Ive been guessing, might be the infinite possibilities of potential existence.
With this conjecture, the origin of things, including humans, might be an irreducible mystery in its particulars: every discrete, causally linked thing might necessarily be incomplete because thats the nature of being from uncontainable potential existence.
Continuing in this vein, the beginning and end of existence can only be approached, never arrived at .
The object can (usually) exist without a subject.
Can something be a self without consciousness?
Can something be an object without being an object to itself, which means its also a subject?
These questions make me wonder if there ca be discrete and real things without the consciousness of an observer.
Of course. "Consciousness", such as it is, at least is an effect output of neurologically complex body-environment interactions. In other words, imo, mind is nonmind (i.e. causal nexus)-dependent, or causally emergent phenomenon. How can it not be (sans woo-of-the-gaps idealism (e.g. "disembodied consciousness"))? :chin:
With all due respect, man, you're confusing yourself with a buttload of semantic gibberish (i.e. mismash of epistemic and ontic terms) and pseudo-scientific assumptions (e.g. "observer" = "measurement" = "consciousness"). Bad philosophy derived from bad physics. :roll:
:up: :up:
Okay, mind is emergent from non-mind.
Is causation an emergent phenomenon? Or Is it just part of the physics of nature?
When the wind moves a rock, and it rolls downhill, and we say the wind caused the rock to roll downhill, are we describing another part of the physics of the event, thus making causation somehow physical (and teleological), or do we assemble a continuity, a narrative, that is strictly a cognitive event?
No, it is inferred (read Hume ...)
It could not be anything else (read Epicurus or Spinoza ...)
Might causation be mind dependent, and perhaps emergent thereof? In a world without consciousness, might there only be sequencing of events?
Does consciousness mandate causation as a part of the pattern recognition it cant live without?
The teleology of human consciousness inserts causation into a neutral glob of things?
Its hard to think about the world without consciousness or causation, and thats why this thought experiment is fun.
Consciousness and existence being linked biconditionally is radical conjecture.
You dont allow that causation is a part of the physics of nature.
What might it be a part of?
When hydrogen interacts with oxygen and water is the result, that this is a chemical reaction that is not also a case of causation as a part of the physics of chemical reaction gives me something to think about.
Yeah, that's ancient neoplatonism ... subjective idealism (Berkeley), monadology (Leibniz) or absolute idealism (Hegel). This anti-realist thesis is conceptually incoherent (like 'panpsychism'). Read Hume & Q. Meillassoux/R. Brassier.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/584/what-are-the-major-points-of-meillassouxs-critique-of-correlationism
Also, this "conjecture" is, like teleology, without modern scientific significance, imho.
I've neither claimed nor implied this.
Pinpointing a previous event that would be the cause of a next one, the effect, is often too restrictive.
The next state in a system may be predictable from the previous state without resorting to such precise pinpointing.
I think that the notion of causality fails to allow for complex system-wide inputs leading to a particular output.
The notion of causality or simplistic thinking about causality?
Im trying to say you think causation a part of nature, but not a part of physics. I understand this to be the meaning of: [s]the physics of[/s]
You do think state changes of a system are tied to complex dynamics?
You think complex dynamics include multiple causes for a specified effect?
If so, has it been observed that sometimes increasing complexity generates to much info to account for all of it within the parameters of the complex system?
If so, can we say entropy sometimes blocks us from making a determination of causality?
In the case of dynamics with an axiomatic system logically incomplete , is causation thought to be in effect, but its info too complex for measurement ?
If a dynamical system evolves to a level of complexity beyond measurement within its parameters, does that mean it cant be cyclical?
So then the assumption is life arose from non-living earth dynamics.
This takes us to a pivot point transitioning earth from being devoid of life to being life-bearing.
Next we have scientists discovering physical evidence of lifes evolution from non-life.
Can we then generalize this uncertainty to conjecturing whether the presence of consciousness anywhere precludes a world devoid of consciousness anywhere?
This argument stands upon the foundation of the standard model being universal physics.
To clarify, the question is whether a consciousness-bearing natural world anywhere necessitates all other worlds be consciousness enabled.
Even thinking about consciousness-devoid spacetme perturbs its ontic status as no object of consciousness remains unperturbed.
This because consciousness is uncontainable.
So the presence of consciousness makes existence of consciousness-devoid spacetime undecidable.
They are linked, but they remain distinct. They are not interchangeable.
Quoting ucarr
I think that's right. But the links are complicated. Language is our clue (in philosophy), but it is our only clue and it itself tells us when something is consciousness-independent and when it isn't. Unfortunately, sometimes it is ambiguous, so sometimes the question is undecideable. Even more unfortunately, sometimes its clues are misleading. But there you go, that's life.
Right now Im going with the notion consciousness independence cannot be certified from within consciousness. It seems to me that knowledge can have no relationship with consciousness independence (CI) because knowing keeps the observer walled-in on all sides by consciousness (cons), so non-cons is forever inaccessible to cons.
This argument applies largely- but not wholly- to language, with the possibility of thinking and knowing outside of language acknowledged.
Why do you think cons-embedded language can interact with a non-cons world without perturbing it fatally?
To ask it another way, why do you think an unknown world can persist as unknown once youve observed it?
Youre right. The wording is redundant. I used the modifier because I was trying to reckon with whether you think causation natural and physical. This attempt was made in the wake of your statements about formalisms.
That's big if. I think the real point is that if we are not absolutely sure that they do and which preferences are moral and which are not, we should not pretend we know.
(PS I wrote the above yesterday and forgot to post it!)
Quoting ucarr
It depends a lot what you mean by "independence" and "from within". If you mean something like "Can we know whether our consciousness is independent of a non-conscious world, I think that's just the old question whether we can know whether or not there is an external world. If we can know there is one, I suppose we are dependent on it. If we can't know whether there is one, we can't know whether we are independent of it.
Quoting ucarr
I don't thin k language can interact with anything; language is something we do. We can interact with the non-conscious (for the most part) world, so we clearly observe it without undue damage to either side.
Quoting ucarr
I don't think an unknown world can persist as unknown once it is observed, since once it is observed, it is not unknown.
Humans will forever fight over morals because adaptation is ruthless and desires are dictatorial.
The social contract is a necessary prerequisite for a peaceable society, so an effort towards moral standards is also necessary.
For me, independence = distinct things running on parallel tracks that dont intersect. The tracks might converge and diverge at points along the way.
Regarding from within, knowing, i.e., cons, is insuperable. As for the question of the existence (ex) of an external (ext) world, this conversation is deeply concerned not with the question of an ext world , but with the deep interweave connecting the two. This translates to the question of the two great modes: subjective/objective.
I suspect what QM has done, in essence, is manipulate quantity, i.e., discrete measurement, towards existential ambiguity. Thats fascinating because scientific discovery of discrete particles for seeming continuities like radiation and vice versa for seeming things like elementary particles was a drive toward definitive boundaries, with opposite result of real boundary ambiguity affirmed.
Is a purely objective world out there? The answer to this question is ambiguous, and cons plays a central role in the fact of existential ambiguity instead of discrete boundaries being the picture on the scientific view screen.
Part of the difficulty of The Hard Problem is the global question whether cons is insuperable. If it is, then the what of experience is forever compromised by subjectivity who partially contradicts and nuances it.
Are you asking whether or not the world lacks subjects? or lacks subjective aspects? Insofar as subjects are self-reflexive, adaptive objects (which are 'entangled' to varying degrees with (all?) other objects), the unambiguous answer is 'the "objective world" also has subjective constituents'. Anyway, perhaps you can clarify precisely what you mean by "objective" are you using it as an epistemological concept or a metaphysical concept?
Your definition: ln so far as subjects are self-reflexive also has subjective constituents. does a good job of describing whats on my view screen as I try to examine the differences between science/humanities.
I now see that science is bounded by the cons of the scientist.
Since an insuperable subjectivity never grants access to things-in-themselves independent of observation, the omnipresence of cons limits science and epistemology to the human narrative, and this tells us why narrative can be generative.
Every human individual has a generative narrative of sincere beliefs. These beliefs construct the individuals world. If you believe humans are individuals, then you see why warfare can never be eliminated; there can never be a utopian social contract.
Clarify this phrase (in context, of course). Thanks.
This is the strong argument for the omnipresence of cons.
If you believe existence is complete, i.e., not strategically incomplete, then knowing the universe exists means knowing everything about existence in terms of a categorical abstraction or set, with a microscopic volume of concrete details filled in. Via abstraction, cons is omnipresent.
This is the weak argument for the omnipresence of cons.
I think it's much more complicated than that. One has to distinguish the proffered reason for the fight and what's actually going on. The interplay between morality and self-interest is very complicated but morality is always a more respectable reason for a fight than self-interest. But self-interest is a more effective motivator.
Quoting ucarr
The social contract is not always a contract. Sometimes it is a peace treaty and the stronger imposes the contract.
Quoting ucarr
OK. .So long as they don't intersect, I suppose.
Quoting ucarr
Fair enough. I'm still not sure what "insuperable" means here. I've already mentioned, I think, that I don't see that as the same problem as the Science/Humanities issue. Fortunately, there's no chair to rule things off topic.
Quoting ucarr
Yes. It was a nasty surprise.
Quoting ucarr
Are you possibly confusing our opportunities to discover things with hindrances to perceiving them? What does "purely" objective mean? (In what ways is the objectivity that we know and love impure?)
Quoting ucarr
I still can't work out what "insuperable" means, so I can't comment. This problem is not what I understood to be the Hard Problem, except that in some way, it is concerned with the interface between consciousness and it's objects (to put it that way).
Insuperable in my context here is simple: you cant know things outside of being cons, so you cant know yourself outside of being cons, so as long as you persist as yourself, the cons that empowers you to be yourself is, for you, insuperable.
The Hard Problem acknowledges that what its like to be an enduring self is resistant to the objective exam and manipulation of materialist science.
A big part of the reason for the hardness of the problem is the insuperability discussed above. Another problem of materialist science vis-a-vis selfhood is the insuperable selfhood of the scientist thwarting materialist objectivity.
This conversation is an exam of how the the two great modes differ, and The Hard Problem is that difference under a microscope.
Saying "you can't know things outside of being conscious" is like saying "you can't see things without your eyes/walk without legs." "Insuperable" implies an obstacle, but consciousness enable us to know. I simply don't get this.
Quoting ucarr
That's like complaining that sciences like physics are incapable of explaining chess or that a car can't fly. It was not designed to do that. An enduring self knows perfectly well what-it's-like to be an enduring self in the only sense of "what-it's-like" that assigns any sense to the question. It's not as strange a use of "know" as you might think. "I know Taylor Swift" may be false, but it is true of many people and there's no difficulty establishing that it's true. But it isn't propositional knowledge.
Quoting ucarr
What would it be like to thwart materialist objectivity?
Actually, doesn't relativity solve the problem, at least in one sense, by developing and solving equations that cover all possible points of view/observers?
Quoting ucarr
The Hard Problem was developed in order to disprove materialism and prove dualism. So I doubt it can be solved. Certainly it would be a lot easier (though still not easy) to dissolve it.
Im going to try NI for natural intelligence.
:meh:
Our context is talking about the interweave of existing things and NI (natural intelligence). This approach is intended to aid in our examination of the big differences between the what and the how.
As weve been talking about the what, weve been looking at the boundary of NI. I see it as the world of the pure what. This is a world without NI and without AI.
When we speculate about the nature and content of this world, of course were doing it within the scope of NI. This leads me to say we dont and cant really know a non-NI world. While its easy to think we can imagine this world as an earth-like planet devoid of life, it might be the case our NI mechanisms involve heavy filtration and alteration of incoming signals. This might distance us greatly from the raw signals. Also, even as we think about this possible distance, were, again, thinking about it within the scope the NI that makes our thoughts possible.
For these reasons, I speculate to the claim our NI is for us insuperable. So, yes, non-NI might be an obstacle in the form of a boundary.
Its extremely interesting to me you see the knowing capacity of NI as a powerful tool that pushes aside obstacles. We know NI overcomes obstacles, so its interesting to think it cannot push aside itself, and thus, ironically, its greatest obstacle might be itself.
Also interesting is how this irony re-enforces the thought the experience of NI instills a feeling of omnipresence about itself, as well as imparting a feeling of omnipresence for the subject of the NI, namely, the self holding possession of the omnipresence of the NI.
The enthusiasm about finding the T.O.E. is more evidence of this.
If you think my exam of the chief difference between what and how (i.e. what its like knowing the what of the world of my knowing) trivial, then the sense of omnipresence imparted to you by the expansiveness of your NI re: your boundless cognitive travels, puts a smile a on my face.
What would it be like to thwart materialist objectivity?
It might be like: moving a step further towards the T.O.E. and then losing your train of thought towards the big revelation as your little daughter tip toes into your study. Youre smiling as shes holding up your glass of lemonade from her birthday party.
So you're "absential materialism" (or "strategic incompleteness") is Kantian?
The uncertainty, or imprecision of our knowledge of things in themselves is another support for strategic incompleteness.
The narratives of NI cant end. Things in themselves, like their cognitive parallels, axiomatic systems, fund the generative narratives that make intelligent life possible.
Logical incompleteness, like Standard Model measurement uncertainty, stand as evidence we dont and cant know things in themselves directly or completely.
Speculation tells me knowing being not strategically incomplete parallels acceleration of matter to light speed; the equation goes to an unmanageable value.
This excess of matter and info, present stragically absentially, is always partially accessible and, as suggested by entropy, no systemization is perfectly efficient i e., no system is complete.
The second law of thermodynamics leads directly to Gódels Incompleteness.
Perhaps l should look at dark: matter_energy through this lens.
I guess I'm a broken record ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Sorry, I don't know what G.U.T. and T.O.E are. Could one of you explain?
"GUT"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory
"TOE"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything
Thanks. Obvious once you know. I can see the rationale for both projects. Beyond that, I'm not competent.
Quoting 180 Proof
I had the impression that Einstein pursued the T.O.E at one point. So how come you are so scornful of it? Especially as the G.U.T. looks like a stepping-stone to the T.O.E.
Well, I skimmed them. I'll read them more carefully.
The relationship between things-in-themselves (TIS) and NI is semi-symmetrical mirroring. This discrete symmetry transformation across the change from TIS to NI might be related to non-commutative geometry.
Example: Gödels Incompleteness shows semi-symmetrical-like mirroring of an axiomatic systems functions and derivative functions thereof not covered in the grounding functions. The semi-symmetrical inconsistency is general to first-order logical expression.
Math, like NI spins out a generative (first-order) narrative incommensurable with its source. The narratives of NI do not end, as designed by strategic incompleteness.
The material parallel to logical semi-symmetry is the entropy of inherently incomplete systemization.
If the 2nd law of thermodynamics is true, then there are no complete systems.
There is no complete work, so there can be no working towards completion of anything (GUT, T.O.E.).
Yes, Incompleteness Cosmology is bad physics. Elegant simplicity and the wholeness of validity are idealizations.
What we can know is always incomplete due to semi-symmetrical mirroring between TIS and NI.
Strategic Incompleteness lends a hand to skepticism.
If formalisms in their abstraction start looking too much like immaterial coefficients of generalizations of properties of TIS, a violation of naturalist materialism, then perhaps arguments can take recourse to the incompleteness of semi-symmetrical mirroring. Since there is no complete agreement between TIS and NI, the reality of the appearance of immaterialism might be undecidable.
Imagine a math space such that : 6+9 =/= 9+6; semi-symmetrical mirroring.
So, TIS =/= NI, and the difference i.e., imprecision_incompletion, keeps the generative narrative of cognitivity-supported human life going without a discrete ending.
Here's an article on pseudoprofundity that might be more worthwhile.
And off he goes, where he is led nobody knows. :smile:
Quoting ucarr
A non-commutative operation. Lots of them in math. For example, function composition in general: f(g(z))=/=g(f(z)). Also called non-abelian.
Does an equation exemplify symmetry?
More or less. Here is where you find reference to the term.
:up:
As jgill clarifies, this is a non-commutative operation.
What happens if we change the operator:
6+9 ~ 9+6
This is what I mean by semi-symmetrical mirroring. Since an equation exemplifies symmetry, as noted above (with some wiggle room) by jgill, we can take a statement of approximation of equivalence to be an expression of an an equivalence within a margin of error. So, let us imagine in the above statement the left side of the equation is approximated to the right side of the equation, as expressed by the right side of the equation, with, say, a 4% margin of error for the uncertain value of the right side. Instead of a discrete value, the right side is a range of possible values.
When Natural Intelligence (NI) looks at things-in-themselves (TIS), the rendering of TIS is an approximate mirroring which can be called semi-symmetrical mirroring.
We see the world through our senses and our brain as a sample of overwhelming complexity made manageable by the sample. Well, the sample is a compression algorithm, and a compression algorithm cannot compress all of the overwhelming details of uncompressed reality, and thus our perception of the world, which for us is insuperable, is necessarily incomplete.
What as a pronoun characterizes the focus of discovery within the sciences:
What exists
What functions and behaviors do things exhibit
Whats the relationship between parts and wholes
What populates the big picture
How as an adverb characterizes the focus of discovery within the humanities. The center of action, the actor giving meaning to the verb, emerges as the enduring point of view of the personal self in possession of a unique personal history. In short, how describes what its like to be a self with its own point of view, feelings, values, and judgments. Personal narratives have a short list of major turning points within the personal history of of an evolving self. This evolving self typically narrates the how or the what its like to be of:
Birth
Knowing oneself as separate from the world
Friends & Foes
Goals
Sexual awakening, rite of passage (adolescence) into adulthood
Work, love, marriage, family, home, world
Letting go of children
Retirement, old age
Death
Science and Humanities are the two great modes of consciousness and behavior.
These two faces of reality look across the 180 degrees of line separating the circle of wholeness into the two semi-circles of the facing realities.
The focus of this conversation has been the mirroring of the two realities facing each other: things-in-themselves (TIS) and consciousness (NI:natural intelligence).
What is about the content, nature and workings of existence.
How is about the conscious experience of what exists, especially including the existence of the self-referential self.
When How and What face each other, there is an equation that establishes itself as the connection linking the two half circles together into wholeness.
The What and the How share an essential attribute: incompleteness. This incompleteness characterizes how they examine What and How respectively, and also how they perceive each other. They both spin out narratives that have no ending.
Its an outrageous violation of convention and common sense to say of existence in general that there is no wholeness.
Complexity, however, can be thought about in a way that makes this very suggestion.
The mirroring symmetry of NI looking at TIS is degraded by entropy. In consequence, humans do not see the existence of the world, the What of the world completely.
Instead, humans see a sample of TIS. This sample has a compression algorithm that ejects some of the information of TIS.
General existence, acting through entropy, makes the incomplete transfer of information across the line dividing the semi-circles necessary, and it stands as the main premise motivating my initiation of this conversation.
Life will always ask you questions you can neither answer nor avoid. These unanswerable questions elevate life to something more than information. They are the spine of your personal history. They introduce you to three things you must try to make peace with while you live: what you know is incomplete, what you are is incomplete and the world is incomplete.
All three categories are waiting for you to add something, so try to be creative.
?
There is no simple situation of a Deist omnipresence who creates an initial state and then withdraws to eternal silence, with a materialist nature-as-system proceeding through state changes that populate physics.
The Schrödinger equation addresses the involvement of the observer with-a-question within the causal structure of physics. Cognition shaking hands with physics produces the events of experience.
If the equation linking cognition to existential is an imperfect symmetry, then the interweave of matter, force and thought is an entropic system with information-heat-loss that maintains fundamental incompleteness. Cognition and existential approach each other, but we dont know completely any systemization of this linkage.
The undecidability of the systemization of the cognition_existential interweave keeps us alive and going forward.
Consciousness>Question_Outcome
Who_What poses the question that activates QM towards a measurable probability of a particular final state outcome of a system?
The questioner who does an experiment to get an answer poses the question that activates QM processes towards a final state of the system i.e., an answer.
How does the questioner make a decision about what question to ask? The questioner exercises his/her will.
Use the link below to listen to Henry Stapp.
What Poses the Question?
Thoughts, ideas and feelings are necessary because the decidability of what the originality of TIS examples materially must be chosen. A decision about what exists materially must be made.
It is the uncontainableness of TIS i.e., unlimited possibilities, that demands the decision.
This is Aristotles Agent Intellect meets Intelligibility.
Life and sentience require unlimited possibilities incompletely contained strategically so that intrinsic entropy can be overcome in successive stages such that no complete systemization can endstop the future.
Strategic incompletion forestalls complete systemization, a phenomenon, if allowed to occur, that would foreclose on originality and would thus trap existence within bounds, thereby preventing an unlimited way forward.
In this way, the individual can always go forward into the future armed with the panoply of unlimited possibilities.
Strategic Incompleteness (SI) keeps human out of the reach of the calculus. You cant sum human to a limit because of thoughts, ideas and feelings,
The mass of consciousness is sagaciously hidden from the calculation with strategic absence, so theres always something that remains beyond the reach of measurement.
This is part of the end game of entropy and thermodynamic resistance to completeness of measurement, which is to say completeness of system.
The impossibility of complete measurement of consciousness goes heads up with the scourge of infinity as the diplomat who sticks his head into the lions mouth.
By seeming to be massless, NI uses escape from complete system to also sidestep the ultimate unwieldy mess of infinity.
Incompleteness resembles undecidableness, but the former is creatively future looking, whereas the latter is simply stuck.
Henry Stapp QM Demands non-Physical Consciousness
Well, Roger Penrose said in his Emperor's New Mind that the mind was not reducible to algorithms, although I must say, I bought that book and the maths was beyond me. I don't see the point of speculating about entropy and thermodynamic resistance, if it's not an attempt to make the conversation seem as if it's scientifically informed. But as far as the incomprehesibility of your true nature is concerned, and putting aside the rather idiosyncratic jargon, I think the basic intuition is the right one :up: .
// see only don't know//
I see where you're going with all of this, and even agree. You have a rather idiosyncratic way of expressing your ideas, but I do detect a convergence with some of the source materials I've been studying.
So, I would paraphrase the above by expressing it like this: Quantum physics introduced the necessity of accounting for 'the observer,' a factor previously excluded or bracketed out in classical science. This led to the well-known 'observer problem' in physics, which challenges the assumption that the objects of analysis exist independently of the observer. Although the wave equation predicts how a system evolves, it does not explain why a specific outcome crystallizes upon measurement. This explanatory gap highlighted the need to incorporate the observer into the framework. Whereas prior to the quantum revolution the idealised models of physics were taken to reveal a view of nature as it is in itself, with this development, the role of the observer had to be taken into account as well. This was one of the main causes of disagreement between Einstein's scientific realism and the anti-realist tendencies he found in the so-called Copenhagen school.
Freud once remarked that the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science, referring to the Copernican revolution, Darwins discovery of evolution, and Nietszches declaration of the death of God. In a roundabout way, perhaps the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics has given back to humanity what th Enlightenment had taken away, by placing the mind in a constitutive role in the observation of the fundamental constituents of nature.
But isnt making making a measurement simply taking a snapshot or picture of how things are at that moment in time ? Where does the observer come into it apart from the interpretation of the result.
Does the focus or attention of the conscious aware questioner lead to the answer because its/the placement/timing of the question? How much does the answer come from the "knowings" of this questioner, does the answer exist for the questioner to "answer" or is the answer attainable because the placement of the question that activated the QM process come/came from a place or state of interest, attention, or necessity/force?
It is a force to focus attention when pure interest is not present but the will is present in the way one goes about posing the question in an experiment to determine an answer. Is this assuming the answer is attainable? How is the confidence of the questioner observed and relevant [as i think worth considerations] objectively in the time that exists to attain knowledge.
Does wisdom come from the/a experience in time, or how time was experienced ( a moment of time or a clip of time ) and does a moment of time add to the clip of time, meaning an event that occurs in the whole of ones existence, life and death of a person being observed, learned based on what knowledge? The questions that come about a past life cycle include the death of the questioner to be considered? What knowings are used to ask the right questions or wrong ones? Of the self, perhaps. Either way, an answer is either the goal or an answer is not needed meaning reality of circumstances is accepted and justified based on the "knowings" of the subject in mind here detectable in the will present in these moments, events, or states that got "them" to that place...
Quoting ucarr
Hmm....so you say above, Incomplete~>stuck AND undecidableness~> future looking, resemble each other but according to what standards or template? It seems to me, that when those whom experience "future looking" and/or "simply stuck" states they is/are judged or determined by an observer and/or is this or that in the choice or in the event determined internally [making the decision to [blank]? Who determines this outcome, and is that outcome "knowable" or "unknowable" either way?
In the two things happening in the psychological mind (internally) and physical (externally), of particular interest is the timing where the outcome, with chances or possibilities that are no longer take back-able, meaning can't fix or improve upon as the internal is playing out thoughts that don't actually come into existence the way it was thought out, but the intention is traceable in the attention, focus, and the will present in the questions asked where an answer is the goal but the drive was in the question or interest. The chance is taken from/in/when the wrong decision is made but the outcome is seen externally alone while the internal process attached to that either was off to begin with (doesn't add up) or stands correct alongside in the confidence from experience attained in life at current moment.
When not considering the feelings, values, beliefs, and reasons that go along with events in experience, the chance is now transformed into a consequence or burden onto another, some times. Is this escape valid or perhaps it is not free from the bounds it started from, built upon, and left as unanswered. The answer is not for the seeking questioner unless the goal or purpose of the person is observed in the will, or process to exercise the will that is stemming from what? That drive, the questioner asking the questions started the motion and the energy is taken on by another (close to that person) in the form of remembrance of that existence from start to end when not fulfilled or escaped in time of death. The incompleteness is stuck but future looking undecidedability is not always correct in the approach.
What if someone is creatively future looking but stuck in the "thinking thoughts" that make certain decisions appealing or necessary but those that are made are of/from that with little thought in the first place, lack of will or effort or interest in this knowledge? Accepting that the knowledge is unattainable, and that death is not to be feared, to trust in the mystery of the universe still can cause a stuck-ness but not from undecided minds but the unwillingness or willingness to decide lies in their faith for certain outcomes to pan out as they ought to or as they THOUGHT ought to. The decision was made up already in lack of conscious awareness or thought to reflect upon the self and grow with time and experienced events learned from.
The decision was made, unknowingly when occurred, [because the questioner was not experimenting in the question to lead to answers, merely surviving day to day without knowing of the self to build a stance from, no place in the world, no reference, no help], so the undecidedableness is in that ability to do so rationally maybe? Instead of asking the wrong question, one might not ask the questions at all. WHY though? Do they not trust their ability to judge their own actions before they see the light of day outside of the mind? Is that awareness enough to bring the questions to the table that ought to be asked but the chance to ask them is taken in some freak accident or occurrence involving timing, place.
With surety or confidence in choice regardless of the answer is faith or hope detectable or is intuition taking over. No one seems to chose to be stuck or remain stuck, but what if no other options exist and awareness of that fact is upon that subject in questioning. Awareness causes righteous decisions, but of what exactly is the "knowings" that built this awareness to the point of surety. What is opposite of surety? Doubt...self doubt, is incompleteness but undecidedableness is leaving that up for debate or up to chance to learn self knowledge, or is that future looking the faith that backs the answer while the stuckness backs the doubt. Both will be observed to gain intel on the character of that choice, and when is it judged for how much the incompleteness or undeciedableness effects the person and how much they can handle in themselves...? After the fact?
Do the acts show how willing to keep the incompleteness, that without questioning or effort or interest/purpose that focuses attention towards the future is because of the conditions that awareness can stem from, the conditions that cause awareness levels and confidence or hope/faith in self's own decisions are observable...No question, no answer but what if the very question is co-creating an answer in the mind...observed twice, once the possibilities are actualized in reality and once the intention for that outcome was being thought, conceived? Like one outcome exists but it remains incomplete because death is not experienced in a shareable, verifiable way? Even if thought was close to the actual way it played out, it is not confirmed to what level the awareness or knowings were attained or why it matters at an objective level from this subjective experience or event.
No it's not (with the caveat that threads about quantum physics nearly always end up in the long grass.)
The revolutionary point about Heisenberg's discovery of the uncertainty principle was there was no definite way that things are, prior to the act of measurement. It isn't as if there's a particle somewhere, with the position only awaiting discovery by the observer. It's that the act of observation actually has a role in determining the objects status as a particle (because, remember, it can also appear as a wave, which is the famous wave-particle duality).
This of course is a huge mystery and the source of an enormous amount of literature and argument, but the approach that makes to the sense to my layman's understanding of it, is the 'Copenhagen interpretation', which you can read about here.
This may be true but I do not agree with Penrose's core argument:
How do humans know that a mathematical sentence is true? There is only one way: by proving it. Otherwise, it will be deemed a hypothesis and not a (true) theorem. But then again, we are still able to correctly detect some Gödel sentences, i.e. sentences that are true but not provable, but that requires a rather special situation, such as for example, in the case of the Goodstein's theorem.
The language in which Goodstein's theorem is phrased, is Peano Arithmetic theory (PA). However, the language in which its proof is phrased, is Zermelo-Fränckel set theory (ZF). Its proof uses infinite ordinals, which are defined in ZF but not in PA. Hence, Goodstein's theorem belongs to PA but its proof does not belong to PA. Its proof belongs to ZF. That is why we know that Goodstein's theorem is true in ZF and therefore also in PA. Hence, from the standpoint of PA, Goodstein's theorem is indeed true but not provable, i.e. a Gödel sentence.
A Turing machine could also use ZF to prove an otherwise unprovable theorem in PA. Therefore, it is not something that only human minds can do. What if there is no alternative theory available to prove the Gödel sentence from? In that case, both humans and the machine will not be able to know that the Gödel sentence is true. They will both consider it to be just a hypothesis.
Conclusion. The ability to see the truth of Gödel sentences is not different between human minds and Turing machines. In the general case, they will both fail to do it. That is where I fundamentally disagree with Penrose. The human mind may still be superior to Turing machines but not for its ability to see the truth of Gödelian sentences.
Well, that's cool. I don't understand either you or him.
However, isnt the Turing machine something that only exists in the minds of humans? An actual Turing machine would require infinite memory, so it is not something that could ever exist.
In all practical terms, the term "Turing machine" just means "computer". For the problem of proving a PA theorem in ZF, there is no need for infinite memory.
The thing is that computer science started almost a decade before the first computer was built.
So, in 1936, Alan Turing dreamt up a machine that could compute, studied its properties extensively, but never received a budget from the cash-strapped British government to actually build it
They could have built one later but that never happened because John Von Neumann helped designing another machine -- eventually built in 1949 -- that was much more straightforward to program, the EDVAC, sporting the first CPU. It was funded by the US Ballistic Research Laboratory.
Modern computers still use this architecture. Turing's architecture was never really built.
Theoretical computer science literature has kept referring to Turing machines, though.
You ask about the relationship between the questioner and the material world as seen through the lens of QM.
QM presents a menu of possibilities that can be calculated, with nothing definite about time, place and state of physical systems that give material things their attributes and behaviors.
The questioner wanting something, makes a decision and then takes action to achieve the goal determined by the decision. QM uncertainty resolves into a definite event under the power of a sentient human who has made a decision. Decision making is an act of will.
It is the act of will that throws the power switch to the on position that resolves QM uncertainty into material fact.
The nature of the questioner determines the nature of the question, and the nature of the question determines the nature of the answer.
If the future doesnt exist, then the will bends the symmetry of spacetime into a disequilibrium that moves toward an answer.
All answers are rooted in the disequilibrium that converts QM uncertainty into material fact.
As the Buddhists declare, material facts are neither universal nor eternal because of the disequilibrium that causes their emergence.
Incompleteness is the stage upon which creative action plays. Creative action and the stage of incompleteness occur simultaneously because creative revelation, by definition, is not foreseen, and thus the revelations of creativity cannot be known according to space and time and location until revealed creatively.
Creative revelation is radiation penetrating convention and thus amounts to highest adventure.
Creative revelation foments naked mind that returns the witness to first birthing into the world totally unknown.
We have to continue our rebirthing with naked mind bathed in creativity in our bid to fend off death.
Human looking at the world is rooted in the semi-symmetry of the disequilibrium making a unique individual possible. There will always be a chase between what exists and what can be known by the individuality that perturbs what it seeks to know with its inviduality.
The duty of each human individual is to tell narratives that entertain other individuals.
Entertainment is that simultaneous, dual motion out of the self/into the self.
When we connect with the world, our life is enriched by becoming what it has been not, and it enriches the world by giving of itself to the world that which it has been not.
Entertainment is what we do to forestall living in solitude. When you entertain someone with a narrative, you make your greatest gift, your attention to the world.
The communion of human individuals through entertainment is a banquet of the highest food, the gift of your serious attention to another sentient. This is such as we do here at TPF.
Your individuality is best kept undecidable to the degree you can manage undecidability of identity within a pragmatic world constantly demanding logical decisions.
Every individual struggles with his/her natural state of disequilibrium, an essential property of individuality. Tell as much truth about your individuality as you can withstand. In most cases, your disequilibrium with the world will be judged benign. In the minority of cases only, does the state imprison or execute individuals whose disequilibrium of individuality is judged malignant.
The sentient human looks out at the world with resolution, having made a decision to follow along a chosen path.
As the journey progresses, the world gives feedback regarding the soundness of the path chosen. Some of the feedback encourages the journey forward; some of the feedback discourages the journey backwards.
Incompleteness is a strategy for keeping the journey alive in the face of good/indifferent/ bad.
Incompleteness is the guardian of a creative future because its the guardian of unlimited possibilities. Remember, when the human makes a decision, it compels QM to resolve possibilities into material facts. Well, incompleteness eschews material facts, so an open palette of possibilities is preserved.
Since there are statements true but unprovable, there seems to be a disconnection between truth and proof.
Has the meaning of this disconnection been examined?
For example, if there is non-symmetry between a true conclusion and its logical derivation, can we ask whether this suggests semi-validity is a reality thereof?
The measurement of you is not separate from what you measure, and the measurement of what you measure is not separate from the measurement of you.
Consciousness is rooted in non-local measurement.
Adding to this perplexing complexity is the strategic incompletion of consciousness:
It counter-balances what I say above to the effect that the non-locality of consciousness protects against the very measurement it seeks to achieve.
Measurement is containment, and consciousness must include a portion of measurement as containment in order to be intelligible and therefore meaningful, but it also must strive against the final closure of complete containment (Russells Paradox).
The intentional elusiveness of consciousness is why its so hard to define. It can be itself only by avoiding being contained conclusively. Thats why you can imagine yourself as a Grizzly bear roaming through the woods. In so doing, youre amusing yourself via shape-shifting. What you can imagine you are is limited only by your imagination, which deftly employs strategic incompletion against the final closure of complete systemization.
The laws of QM dont say anything about what the question shall be.
The human must willfully choose the question to be answered by experiment.
If material facts are governed by materialist science, and if the QM laws resolve probabilities into material facts, then the absence of what the question should be until the questioner willfully determines upon a question, by Penroses argument, shows that asking a question to be answered by experiment, i.e., consciousness, must lie outside of both materialist science and the QM laws shaping material facts. In conclusion, therefore, consciousness is immaterial.
All of this elaborates why taking a measurement involves more than making a snapshot.
ucarr, I appreciate the insights as you have couldn't of put it any simpler while at the same time keeping the field of thinking open to those willing to do that while remaining highly intrigued-- I am especially with the direction and body of your thinking as you communicate them.I just wanted to say as a person who engages selectively, I have been reading along since I have joined the forum. Although, it is our first time interacting I am no stranger to your contributions. I think you have many interesting Discussions and offer fun engagement within the thread, consistently acknowledging those that do you. I see and hear you.
Instead of jumping into the replies, I want to say that I was pleased to see you refer to Henry Stapp as I have been reading his work a lot lately as I found it an easy (for me [learning style of importance?]) to get a clearer vision or visualize what was being said and/or going on; as it was introduction or hard open to QM theories/ideas and I am still doing so intentionally to gain deeper knowledge. I found Stapp easy for me to actually begin picking up what was being put down, but not to my surprise I struggle putting the pieces together to see a whole picture where QM and philosophy have a space like Humanities should be in Science. I mentioned him [stapp] twice in the "Perception" thread and referred a few papers of his, here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/926957
I am going to reply to each of your comments individually in order to how they were received but I just want to mention that you have helped me in a major way today organize some of my old notes into one coherent piece that makes more sense now combined. THANKS! Anyways, when I reply and usually comment, I am to be read as if I am talking. Meaning, I type or express words in my typing just like I talk. How should you know this? Well I just told you. If its easier to understand my style, some compare it to "thinking aloud" or "stream of consciousness" but that's always interesting to learn. Are they telling me what I am? Ha....and yet not a peep on anything deeper from the words, just recognizing a style that is...unintelligible, incoherent, or ill posed perhaps in a certain light. To those I say: Whatever, ignore this/it as you ought to. This is going to help me [ I can tell and you couldn't at this point in my mind its realized and i am typing as if nothing even occurred--in motion, fuel provided, interest, driving towards??? ]
The will I have is evident and that ensures me to continue even when the goal is not entirely clear YET with words...its being built in the mind, with effort and passion too. Power.
Again with this thread, as I followed along I found myself reading the words off the screen in a voice in my mind as I sit silently on the couch. I hear it and follow pretty easily. Does it always stick? No, no. But IN that moment, I like to think I understand where and what you are up/onto with your attention towards certain topics. I can hear the words and build the ideas in my mind, with more than will ...pure interest.
Yes, imagination is important and so it requires effort that deserves perhaps some more credit at times. I think the will in the way you mention it is interesting and to bring it up in the lens of QM consciousness. If the will is not aligned with the MIND and body (+/- (what else along with mind, body should be aligned along with will*1 when regarding it as [what? (insert blank?)] using the mind, (work?) to create something. Ideas birthed, nurtured, and adaptable. SO the potentially becomes something real...as in something real I mean, of non-material ideas in imagination efforts in mind bring those ideas, visions into something actually tangible/material. How? Perhaps it is true, an interactive process between the mind, brain, and conscious awareness that uses past experiences and knowledge attained to aid those new ones that become intelligent by our own design. Brain activity and body input/output relevant? I am not there yet, point is this is my intro to you and I have a lot to say. See me another time on that if interested (design vs designer notes) and I am open to get into it at another time.
BUT if I were to veer towards another aspect of QM, I rather jump to the relevance you are seeing in the 2nd law of thermodynamics here in respect to the place you find it within QM and why/how can it correlate with the works of Henry Stapp. I am interested in these correlations and am following to see where it goes, if not with others in my personal research and ongoing self taught/learning journey. So I will eventually get to that, as I have notes from when I was reading Sadi Carnot's "Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat" and thoughts on entropy, design, etc. I am seeing links NOW that I couldn't of known then, but did that stop me from thinking with intention and efforts in a reckless passion that brought me to put them together today? Sure as hell did not.
So as you can see in this explanation of my process that indeed NOT a soul asked for, I value doing so because of the parallels you and I have regarding interests in or relevance in Henry Stapp and 2nd law of thermodynamics. The fact that those two things caught my attention and was mentioned by you in this thread as it's still unfolding is what originally pulled me to engage here with you directly in this thread. After reading your responses today, it lead me to look into my past notes and I was able to organize and tie together two notes that came to me in different times over the last few years.
It's helpful and valued by me as you reminded me that my procrastination was not a waste of time or energy. That I may be able to be connected for deeper, clearer explanations for me first and then others, is big as that brings of course new perspectives from understanding complexities that QM takes on in explaining the consciousness and mind-body problem but at a relatable, objective level that is not popularly adapted yet by those not familiar with the maths. It is intimidating and that is limiting minds that might offer insights now...
Thanks! [9/20 452pm]
1* [i think this is knowable to a degree, measured/able]
- See here, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/921737 the exchange and if so, DO note the footnotes as it is where the will is considered deeper [by me and my inquiring mind] in thread "Perception" (pg 3/49) This discussion is the same thread I linked earlier but it was at an earlier time, a different phase of thinking for me but where ideas correlate here now with you and others possibly. That exchange with jkop and I early on is one contribution where I mention imagination, consciousness, and the will. If I go backwards from here I can trace back to that contribution and this is interesting to me because it was before I considered or thought QM might be able to be used to refine a scope of complex understandings of consciousness and the mind-body interactions making a way in the world...for my own self and not sake
(hence, its clear that since Henry Stapp is an influence I leaned towards with interest to learn something new here. And the knowledge brought to my attention aided me in my developing thoughts using the "QM lens and relations to the world" you speak finely of also, with that help I was/am able to credibly speak on what I can bring using an untainted, green and naive pov voice in philosophy. Does that offer anything to academia of philosophical logic, math, and science? Its still being observed nonetheless...
Or in more traditional Buddhist parlance, 'all compound things are subject to decay' (reputedly the last words of the Buddha.)
That's atomist parlance as well. :wink:
Proof is what mathematics uses as justification. There is always a disconnection between truth and justification.
Concerning physical truth, it is perfectly possible to observe an event or a state without being able to justify it. The absence of justification does not make the observation any less true.
However, pure reason, such as mathematics, is blind, and observation is impossible.
A mathematical fact can only be confirmed to be true because there exists a justification under the form of proof. Otherwise, it remains just a hypothesis.
For the overwhelmingly vast majority of mathematical facts, however, proof cannot even exist. There are various reasons for that (Yanofsky).
Only in exceptional corner cases, it is still possible to confirm the truth of Godelian facts, i.e. mathematical facts that are known to be true but not provable.
For example, Goodstein's theorem is unprovable in arithmetic (PA). The theorem is provable, however, in set theory (ZF). Therefore, we can confirm the theorem to be true, in both arithmetic and set theory. Hence, Goodstein's theorem has the rare Godelian status in arithmetic of being true but not provable.
Goodstein's theorem is a rare and exceptional corner case. Normally, it is not possible to do that.
For example, the Continuum Hypothesis (CH) is not provable in set theory (ZF). There is also no alternative theory available in which it is provable. Therefore, we simply cannot confirm the truth of CH.
This is an important difference between physical truth and mathematical truth.
We know physical truth because we can observe it. This is not the case for mathematical truth, because mathematics is blind. Observation is simply not possible in mathematics. Therefore, we can confirm mathematical truth only because we can prove it.
On the other hand, there is also never proof for physical truth. There is no mathematical theory of the physical universe available to prove from. Therefore, physical truth can only be confirmed by means of observation and never by means of proof.
Quoting Tarskian
In the court of law, truth is certified by proof: corroborated facts, pertinent evidence, conclusions based upon valid arguments.
Since, as you say, truth and justification are always disconnected, in the court of law, the place where justice (and therefore justification) is handed down, should we understand the burden of proof for the truth of a defendants innocence is a standard too stringent? If we know a defendant is innocent, but we cant prove it, should the defendant be declared innocent nonetheless?
In classical law, the burden of evidence is on the prosecutor:
However, for offences newly defined in modern times, this is usually not the case.
For example, for the modern offense of money laundering, the burden of evidence is placed on the defendant to argue that the money does not originate from crime.
In classical law, the offense of money laundering did not exist, and could not exist, exactly because it reverses the burden of evidence.
Most criminal offenses that were newly and recently defined in modern times require the defendant to prove that he is innocent.
Reversing the burden of evidence is in fact exactly what allowed to define these new modern offenses.
So, if it is about a criminal offense that was defined already in classical law, the defendant can count on the presumption of innocence. If it is about a modern offense, however, there is generally a presumption of guilt.
It is indeed unreasonable to expect the defendant to prove his innocence.
So, if an offense did not exist in 1800 but it exists today, then there is almost surely something wrong with it. Newly-defined modern western law is known to be unreasonable and to be in violation of classical legal traditions.
Quoting Kizzy
There is a close and important connection linking will and imagination. When I decide that I will have something in mind come about as material fact, Im entertaining intentions toward reconfiguring the material world in accordance with an idea.
We can say that the imagination is the quiver containing the arrows of will possessing pointed intentions for remaking the world. So, the bigger the quiver, the bigger the will power of its possessor.
The duet of imagination and will is especially important in situations facing a formidable barrier. In order to muster the will to do something from which we are obstructed, we must rally the imagination towards seeing the way forward to the goal. Per Castañeda, this creative exercise of will is the warriors intent. Brujos y brujas intend their visions into reality. It is said the dreaming body of the warrior can only become empowered to move with purpose via intent.
Stapp is telling us that the experimenting scientist is the western worlds version of a warrior with intent. She uses her power of seeing (ability to directly observe the luminous egg of world-building intent surrounding every conscious being) to construct the particular version of the world in which her goal is achievable.
Random epiphanies are un-intended inward movements of the point-of-assemblage that constructs the material world of the goal-oriented warrior.
We can translate this creativity via intent into our culture as an imaginative experimenter who looks beyond the hide-bound conventions of social and political correctness.
Quoting Tarskian
I think I see this is something akin to a scientist not being able to prove her theory correct. However, a naysayer to the theory, acting in the role of prosecutor, might succeed in disproving it.
The presumption of innocence or correctness can be possibly disproven, but the reverse, requiring proof across unlimited time and space, renders unfair.
So, in our courts we have two unfair situations: a) a prosecutor who knows the defendant is guilty, but loses the case due to lack of evidence; b) the defense attorney who knows the defendant is innocent, but loses the case due to lack of evidence.
Now the challenge is to see how this situation in our courts connects with Gödels Incompleteness and, going forward from there, to understand the meaning of the disconnection between truth and proof.
Requiring proof in science would indeed be unfair, if only, because there is no (axiomatic) theory to prove it from. So, we accept the scientific claim because of the inability to discover counterexamples.
The situation in mathematics is a bit different.
There is no observation possible in mathematics. Therefore, the only reason why we know that it is true, is the proof.
Proving an impossibility in mathematics is generally also hard and in the general case would also require omniscience, but it can still be done, by discovering some helpful structure that implies the impossibility.
For example, the impossibility to find a general solution for the quintic (Abel-Ruffini), took centuries of investigation. They strongly suspected that it was impossible before finally proving it. The helpful piece of structure that dramatically simplifies the proof is the Galois correspondence.
That the human individual can imagine herself to be anything the imagination can conjure and manipulate means that the position and momentum of the NI-bearing sentient is always hedged against the closure of a finalized system.
This is one of the subtle meanings of (the centrality of) the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Both position and momentum are essential to system, so their uncertainty, acting as a defense of future creativity via strategic incompleteness, mandates entropy and its function: non-closure of system.
-
Imagine a planetary system with a duet of suns orbiting each other.
Also imagine two human individuals in conversation.
These two events are parallel to each other; they are two examples of the same phenomenon. The first event is the basic form, the second event is the deluxe form.
Human conversation exemplifies NI, and NI is rooted in interacting gravitational fields.
Interacting gravitational fields- and humans in conversation- exemplify non-local position and momentum of charged particles which, at the human scale of experience, are material objects rendered with discrete boundaries due to the disequilibrium of thermodynamical constraints.
Humans, like elementary particles, are not completely localized discretely; instead, they too have a waveform mode of being; that waveform mode of being is NI.
Because humans have a waveform state of being in NI, their position and momentum has to be calculated; they are not confined to discrete position and momentum; that would be the death-trap of complete systemization.
Because humans have a waveform state of being, their calculated probability of position and momentum acts as an anchor for their identity. This is a rather scientific-sounding way of talking about the human soul and its necessity.
Topology studies manifolding of geometric spaces across symmetry, with a constant, the invariant point that anchors a geometric space as intelligible. This property of topology applied to anchoring of human as waveform is a scientific-sounding way of talking about the necessity of the human soul.
Hello correspondents,
Im asking you to examine my arguments and comment upon their merits, or lack thereof
I'm on it already! I will post my complete response as soon as I can.
Quoting Kizzy
Quoting Kizzy
Castañeda has many scholarly naysayers who have dismissed his books as new-agey populist fiction. Therefore, you owe it to yourself to explore some of Castañedas critics in order to develop an unbiased and balanced view of his writing.
One prominent Castañeda critic is Richard de Mille. His book is Castañedas Journey: The Power and the Allegory (1976).
Quoting ucarr
I wonder if that entropy might happen regardless? What could that say about "it's" function? How do we know it wasn't always supposed to be a system that's considered a "non-closure" one? Is that meaning, it's an open system? Was it always? Was it built to be? The way you word your thinking here, "the position and momentum of the NI-bearing sentient is always hedged against the closure of a finalized system.," is seemingly saying to me that placement or location of the NI-bearing sentient is what impedes upon the walls on the system, blocking them from closing. Purposefully or by chance? What do attractive connections have to do with anything here? Gravity and relativity? Is it propped open for a reason? Is that reason involving consciousness experiences or events in the human experiences?
I agree position and momentum is of relevance but time is a constraint of this movement...I am thinking: the positioning and momentum vs the place and time, where and how do they cross over, is this of any relevance regarding chance, randomness, accidents, luck? Thinking also about timing, how the speed in any direction of motion is relevant in positioning and controlled? How certain is the speed of humans at our scale, being that humans moving a certain speed is experience-able by other humans and explainable by showing other humans, humans moving at specific speeds (fast or slow) is observable by other humans and can be random or accidental when seemingly uncertain outcomes or changes cause them. Unforeseeable to us in the moment only. Directions change and speed change at the human scale and cause outcomes that are certain though after the fact, I think...it was uncertain perhaps to only them at the time.
The direction is uncertain to us at the human scale but perhaps when or if an observer could zoom/s out looking at human experiences over our start as a species until "now" or present year in time the direction is not necessary predictable to a point where it can be manipulated or reversed*[1] but perhaps just observable enough to see the potential direction based intel? Who knows if that is even worth, work, energy or thought into, just to observe US? I don't think it is that deep however, I DO think human consciousness is special even though reducible to brain functions. What is your take on the mind-body problem? If you have discussed this before in more detail and if any quotes exists' here on TPF, please refer me to where I can read them and reply accordingly.
I agree, the depth of many things especially when one has to consider QM and philosophy is not only underestimated, but often blown off completely or avoided. The reason behind that choosing is not important, I am unbothered as to WHY. I am bothered at the lack of effort or interest to know. After all it is, THE KNOWLEDGE that takes direction and can change our minds, therefore also play a role in causing physical actions.
Quoting Henry Stapp "Quantum Theory and the Role of Mind in Nature"(pg 12 of 41)
The direction is of interest, depth though is but a direction...what moves it!!!? How fast or slowly? Hot to cold? It moves? It matters! [what is this "it,"?] How can it move from you to me through online interactions? Connections and conversations are different but both require at least two. It takes two to tango! The connection is real, weak and strong. Time and effort can manipulate or change outcomes that maybe were unforeseen to occur the way they did, but not in general? Randomness? Team effort?
That can be a problem, or debated...common ground may not be found? If found and if stuck always just ASSUMING instead of imagining. Why do that though? Because it takes less work? Easy way or is it laziness? No motivation? These are people too, but why they think things or knowledge ought to be handed to them instead of learning it for self without realizing that CHANCE is robbed from them now being in that environment and state of mind at the same time.
Self knowledge being questioned is interesting. Imagine: No one exists anymore to defend your name, history, life story. Imagine the last person to ever know you, dying. That knowledge they had from your life cycle after completion, birth-death years looked back on by those in future, learning....asking, of interest? Placed perfectly to seem that way? Knowledge eventually fades away with us unless what? Energy conservation or transfer? because of? [insert position, place, time, speed?] ) The building or unfolding is of uncertainty, the idea from the physical collapse or end does not die, continues in a NEW way maybe?
It's all quite interesting...but back to it! Yes, what about conversations, that back and forth between two people online? Like when communication is done by typing/reading words back and forth from a device to another via computer screen? Do these conversations that occur over long distances via iPhone FaceTime, or webcam Skypes or Zoom meetings with devices suitable, camera and wifi differ between from face to face conversation? Is the connection still bound to them, or binding at all even though when distance causes communication to happen over the phone, webcam or device, etc. instead of face to face? What about building the connection from the internet conversation? What does that distance matter when both are tapped in? I wonder now how does/do the particles move differently and effect differently per type of conversation.
Quoting ucarr Consider a thinking stream that would stay closed and recited in the privacy of my mind, instead of being recited and put into words via typed language skills communicating thoughts being thunk in action...In mind what is happening, a re-creating a conscious experience or creating thoughts or ideas that aim towards that experience in mind (consciously aware of self in world, identity of self known to what degree? enough to act on what you believe to be your purpose?), in thought with intentions potentially able to or do change in decision making moments. Knowledge being attained that forces a restart, revaluing, a change touching the experience you are to have. Identity and knowledge relationship should be considered at length.
[1](un-take-backable damage is done, undo is not an option, irreversible)
[2]I am not asking these questions for real or needing an answer because it/they are/is obvious to me BUT these words are of immediate [seemingly immediate to me] thoughts coming as they do, for the first time in this order. Perhaps the first time all around thinking these strings of words. Is it? It is my first time thinking these thoughts I'm typing as they come to me? Just me, typing away "stream of consciousness style," and THIS is what came from my head, out of my mind, and into my hands. The hands that are doing the "work" but is not my brain working here too? Who does the heavier lifting, who is having all the fun? My mind, brain or my body? Perhaps my soul just sitting back watching... I am typing the thoughts away, away from the confines of my mind and out into the world for those to read in the form of words on a screen onto this page from the many on the World Wide Web...IT is out but only further from me still attached, it to me! It's out and about for others to see, those with access to it...for me to look back and see the distance and growth. Also to see the things that never seem to fade. This is me though, I am it. Credible, at the very least and true in my words. Until then. :grin: I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now but typing this to YOU now 617 pm 9/28/24
Of what stuff are dreams made?
Just as there is gastronomic digestion of the stomach, there is cognitive digestion of the brain.
Food in the digestive tract will break down in a certain way and, likewise, cognition will break down in a certain way.
Sometimes a dream is a coherent piece of a larger cognition breaking down. Other times a dream is a motley stew of small pieces jumbled together incoherently.
The power of dreams stems from them being bits of awareness and thus a stew of not completely localized experience.
Where you, the sentient are, is a good measure of who you are. Well, cognition opens wide the reality of where you are. Thus it opens wide the questions of who you are.
If you want to know someones location in identity, it becomes important to know what theyre thinking.
Now what might a person be thinking? The answer to that question might encompass the whole world , or even the whole universe!
This possibility points up the power and the depth of meaning to identity and location of a person of imaginative thinking.
You ask about the back and forth of human conversation, a phenomenon that argues for itself as being the highest creation of the universe to date.
Consider a handful of sand gathered on the beach. The silica within the sand supports the making of glass.
Consider a crystal chandelier and a handful of sand.
Consider the moons orbit around the Earth and a conversation between two humans.
The crystal chandelier is to the sand what the conversation is to the moons orbit around the earth.
The chandelier and the conversation respectively, are each a work up or deluxe version of the two basic things i.e., the sand and moons orbit around the earth.
A human conversation at bottom is the same thing as the moon orbiting around the earth.
Consciousness is rooted within the interaction of two gravitational fields.
As the moons gravitational field raises earths tides, and the earth stabilizes the moons location, so two conversants enrich and de-localize each other.
Where are two conversants engaged in conversation? We might see where their bodies are located in space, but we dont really know where they are until we hear what theyre saying to each other, and that might place them anywhere within the universe.