Notes for beginners
Ian Campbell
there. Please they are not authoritative so check ARI or some other
source for the official word.
Cheers
METAPHYSICS
Existence Exists
In the given there is no existence, no consciousness, there is only
the table exists, the chair exists, the tree exists, /existence
exists/. [1, 2]
That is, the given is not simply "table, chair, tree" - the given is
"the table exists, the chair exists, the tree exists." The given has
/structure/. Structure implies concepts. [3, 4]
Existence and Consciousness as Implicit Concepts
So the concepts of "existence" and "consciousness" are not given to us
directly - they are learned. They are implied in our every awareness,
but still learned.
The concept "existence" is the integration over time of every X in the
"X exists" structures. The concept "consciousness" is similarly
formed over the structures as a whole.
Existence is Identity
The concept "existence" or "pure existence" then is an abstraction.
What is actually given is always something specific - a table, a
chair, a tree. /To be is to be something/. Existence is Identity.
Consciousness is Identification
Likewise, there is no such thing as "pure" consciousness.
Consciousness is always consciousness /of/ something. Therefore
consciousness can not precede existence[5].
EPISTEMOLOGY
Logic as the means to knowledge
If existence is identity then contradictions can not exist [6].
The essence of Aristotle's Logic is avoiding contradiction - ie. Logic
affirms the primacy of existence.
In existence, a door can be open or closed, but not both at once. In
logic, a thing can be something (A) or something else (~A) but not two
things at once (A v ~A). "False" corresponds to non-existence.
The given as the standard of the true
Logic will help you avoid contradiction, but the standard of truth is
necessarily the given.
If existence has primacy then knowledge requires proof. But you can
not prove something true without something else you already know is
true to derive the truth of the new thing from. If you try otherwise,
the best you can hope for is internal consistency, and if everything
in your system turns out proven, there must be a cycle somewhere.
The only way to complete the proof is to introduce at least one
existent that is given, that does not itself need to be proven because
it is not derived - it just is. Or, once you have some thoughts
already proven based on a given, you could use those. But somewhere in
the system must be at least one given, and as the uncompromising
existent, it will determine the nature of the whole system.
ETHICS
The alternative of existence or non-existence as necessary for value
An ethics is a system of values. Only certain existents can be values
- those which are alternatives[7].
A value /system/ takes a selection of these alternatives and arranges
them in a hierarchy. A system of alternatives requires a fundamental
alternative for the same reason a system of existents needs a given:
to set the standard and avoid circularity.
I quote Ayn Rand: "There is only one fundamental alternative in the
universe: existence or nonexistence..."
Just as we have no choice about the fact that there is the given, and
what about what constitutes it, we have no choice about the fact that
there is only one fundamental alternative and what that alternative
is. We can not change it, only identify it.
The quote continues: " ... and it pertains to a single class of
entities: to living organisms...It is only the concept of 'Life' that
makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity
that things can be good or evil."
Life is a process of self-sustaining action required to stay in
existence . Life or death corresponds to existence or non-existence.
Only living organisms face the fundamental alternative, so only they
can form value systems, and only by making the life of the individual
their highest value.
POLITICS
Laissez-faire Capitalism as the only moral political system
Politics is morality applied in a social context.
It is the metaphysical fact of "life of the individual" which makes
morality possible. Not "good of the collective" or "glory of the
emperor" etc. As such, what capitialism represents is the
subordination of society to moral law. It is a system which forces
society to behave itself with respect to the individual - forces it to
be moral.
It does this through the following mechanisms: Individual Rights,
Private Property, Money.
Money represents trade, the principal that in order to get someone to
do something you must trade value for value - you can not force them.
Money represents the banishment of physical force from human
relationships.
The only legitimate functions of government are: Police (to protect
the individual from domestic threats), Military (to protect the
individual from foreign threats), The Courts (to put the use of
retaliatory force under objective control).
Any political system which advocates the sacrifice of the individual
to the group (all variants of socialism and communism) is objectively
evil, and must be fought by all good men.
Advocates of capitalism can often be heard defending it on practical
grounds as the system which gives most people toaster ovens. This is
fine, but not what makes it great. What makes it great is that for the
first time in history we have a system which stands up for the
individual in the face of the group, instead of sacrificing the
individual to it.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Such is the form of (what is later conceptualised as) man's
consciousness. Contrast with a purely perceptual consciousness that
simply becomes the object of awareness, fully and completely. Man's
awareness has structure.
[2] Therefore the starting point is not a void - the realm of
non-existence is not an alternative to the realm of existence.
[3] A concept is a mental identification of similarity amongst
existents. The method of concept formation is measurement omission.
Concepts are therefore only possible over commensurable
characteristics.
[4] If I tell you Bob is taller than Jack and Jack is taller than Joe,
then the knowledge that Bob is taller than Jack is implicit. That is,
all the information required to draw that conclusion is already known,
all that is required to realize the additional information is a
certain mental focus. A concept is implicit as soon as one has
identified (isolated) the existents that will later constitute the
concept.
[5] This principle is known as the primacy of existence.
[6] A contradiction is the assertion that something is simultaneously
in two states. For example to assert that a door is both open and
closed is a contradiction. In reality it must be either closed or
open.
[7] In this context an alternative does not mean a choice, it means a
thing - a thing that requires work to obtain. There are certain things
that one will "obtain" regardless of how one acts. In such situations
morality doesn't apply. It doesn't make sense to judge someone for
obeying the law of gravity, for example.
Peter Kinane
602.36...@posting.google.com>...
> Here are some notes on Objectivism for any new people or lurkers out
> there. Please they are not authoritative so check ARI or some other
> source for the official word.
> Cheers
Here is a reply for the benefit of any new people or lurkers out
there:
>
>
>
> METAPHYSICS
>
> Existence Exists
>
> In the given there is no existence, no consciousness, there is only
> the table exists, the chair exists, the tree exists, /existence
> exists/. [1, 2]
>
> That is, the given is not simply "table, chair, tree" - the given is
> "the table exists, the chair exists, the tree exists." The given has
> /structure/. Structure implies concepts. [3, 4]
This is the world of a primal organism.
A simple or primal organism is a (biological) system which is somewhat
stable in form, whether through a process of repairing, shedding or
renewal, etc. This particularly is so of the senses it features, such
as sight, sound, etc. Through this control or stabilisation character
development effects. However, at the level of the primal organism, it
comes at the price of delusion.
That which is constant, such as the beat of ones heart, or the scent
of the air, is pretty much unnoticed. So, also, the rather constant
faculties of senses are not factored into the attention of a primal
organism - perhaps because it does not have sufficiently developed
attention into which to factor such complexities. This 'unnoticed
factor', or omission in the condition of the organism makes the
phenomena which it senses, such as "that is a tree" or " that is a
rock", seem like definitive, independent, objective phenomena, or if
you prefer, as "something specific". And, at some level of value, that
"it senses them". So, the organism is deluded about itself and 'the
world', or more precisely, its world is a simple objective world.
Primal organisms exist even in technically advanced environments.
The principles I've outlined above are taken from my system, which you
may find from here:
http://www.effectuationism.com/thesis.htm#Through
and this is a direct quotation:
"A Simple Organism Identifies a Recurring Phenomenon: The evolution /
development of phenomena / organisms with the capacity to retain
comparative
constancy of some of their features, in effect a nerve, perhaps by
repairing, or
shedding, or regenerating would facilitate effectuation of 'definitive
identification'.
The repeated harvesting, or effectuation of perceptions through
impaction with such
a constant faculty would make 'the phenomenon' harvested / identified
seem more
definite and categorical, as well as that which does the harvesting -
the subject
phenomenon. This definity of identification of I 'and' Other, albeit
the identification
/ perception reflexive, should enhance the impulse for durability /
viability / security,
and thereby for influence upon 'Other' and evolution. Consequently,
pressure for
more and more data and therein for more / better nerves or senses
effects. Thereby
the sense / concept of I and Other, indeed of I and many Others
becomes
pronounced. The primal organism through innocence of the role of its
senses
develops a sense / 'attitude' of a world of definite, stable
phenomena; a world of
things in themselves. This 'attitude' would further reinforce the
demarcatory drive,
the drive for form(ul)ation, for stability, for security. It would be
conducive to the
potential effectuation of Categoricalist Philosophy. (Indeed, it might
well be
conducive to subjugating others. If so, then in an age of press-button
world
annihilation, with the buttons becoming more widespread, its survival
/ advancement
value may be in decline).
Such simple organisms might also be able to propagate much of the
constancy of
their nature as well as that, or those parts which are more variable.
Perhaps this
would have some potential for, would make a contribution to 'Cross
Organism /
Individual Referral to Third Parties', which shall be outlined
presently.
The sensitivities which one develops determines the world which 'one
perceives',
which effects, and consequently how one evolves henceforth. Fate gives
rise to
phenomena which in turn influence fate henceforth".
Peter Kinane
http://www.effectuationism.com/
Charlie Morriss U of A
> In existence, a door can be open or closed, but not both at once. In
> logic, a thing can be something (A) or something else (~A) but not two
> things at once (A v ~A). "False" corresponds to non-existence.
This is not correct. You have written ( A v ~A) which is translated in the
metalanguage as "Either A or not A" in which case A can be true or ~A can be
true, and therefore the statement can be true.
I believe what you meant to symbolize is (A ^ ~A) which is translated in the
metalanguage as "Both A and not A." In this case both A and ~A can be true.
>
> If existence has primacy then knowledge requires proof. But you can
> not prove something true without something else you already know is
> true to derive the truth of the new thing from. If you try otherwise,
> the best you can hope for is internal consistency, and if everything
> in your system turns out proven, there must be a cycle somewhere.
>
> The only way to complete the proof is to introduce at least one
> existent that is given, that does not itself need to be proven because
> it is not derived - it just is. Or, once you have some thoughts
> already proven based on a given, you could use those. But somewhere in
> the system must be at least one given, and as the uncompromising
> existent, it will determine the nature of the whole system.
It appears to me that this describes the root of Foundationalism. See
Descartes "Meditations." Is Foundationalism generally considered to be an
integral part of Objectivism?
> I quote Ayn Rand: "There is only one fundamental alternative in the
> universe: existence or nonexistence..."
Although I love Ayn Rand, I've got to say that this passage is a little
messy. If given P and Q, it seems incorrect to say that "There is only one
alternative P or Q." It seems like pragmatically and logically it would be
necessary to say:
"Given P and Q, there is only one alternative to P or Q. The alternative to
P must necessarily be Q and the alternative to Q must necessarily be P."
A choice of two does not make one alternative.
Lastly, are these direct quotes or paraphrases of Ayn Rand? If so, I am
interested in learning more. What was the source of these quotations or
paraphrases?
Thanks for your help.
--
Charlie Morriss
University of Arizona
Undergraduate Philosophy
Robert Kolker
Charlie Morriss U of A wrote:
> I believe what you meant to symbolize is (A ^ ~A) which is translated in the
> metalanguage as "Both A and not A." In this case both A and ~A can be true.
In temporal logic (one of the modal logics) a thing can be A and not-A
but not at the same time. For example the light in my room is both and
and off (particulary if it blinks). But not at the same instant. However
time cannot be reduced to a point (Hiesenberg Uncertain Principle). The
narrower the time interval the more uncertain the energy. Incidentally,
logic in which the principle of non-contradiction holds does very badly
at resolving the dissonance between particles and waves. If light is a
particle then double slit interference should not occur. If light is a
wave then local light spots (such as darken photographic emulusion)
should not occur. The problem is with our mode of description, of
course, and not the underlying reality.
Keep in mind that we formulated logic to function at our scale of
existence. If we were quantum entities we might have come up with a
different logic. For various quantum logical alternatives see
-Interpreting the Quantum World- by Jeffy Bub.
It is well that Ayn Rand never involved herself deeply with quantum
physics. Had she done so, it would have unhinged her.
Bob Kolker
Ian Campbell
0cf...@posting.google.com>...
> A simple or primal organism is a (biological) system which is somewhat
> stable in form, whether through a process of repairing, shedding or
> renewal, etc. This particularly is so of the senses it features, such
> as sight, sound, etc. Through this control or stabilisation character
> development effects. However, at the level of the primal organism, it
> comes at the price of delusion.
Peter,
Your theory of perception may or may not be true - that is a question
for science.
However, the conclusion that the world is a delusion must be false. We
don't need science for this, we just need to remember the derivations
of the concepts involved. A delusion is a false belief. But true and
false don't apply to the given, the given is the standard of true and
false.
If that sounds like a play on words to you, let me emphasize that
"delusion" is a /concept/ - unlike the given it's usage is subject to
restrictions - in order to maintain its ties to reality. The usage of
"delusion" you are attempting is not valid.
http://www.nathanielbranden.net/ess/ton04.html
Cheers,
--
Ian Campbell
Ian Campbell
HY8a.30263$Pa.28...@news2.west.cox.net>...
> I believe what you meant to symbolize is (A ^ ~A) which is translated in the
> metalanguage as "Both A and not A." In this case both A and ~A can be true.
I wanted to symbolize the impossibility of the door being open and
closed at the same time. I believe exclusive-or is the correct
formulation. The two states of the door are mutually exclusive: A v
~A.
The door was just an example, the point is that logic mimics
reality...
> ...
> It appears to me that this describes the root of Foundationalism. See
> Descartes "Meditations." Is Foundationalism generally considered to be an
> integral part of Objectivism?
I don't know sorry - I'm not familiar with classifications of
philisophical systems.
>...
> Lastly, are these direct quotes or paraphrases of Ayn Rand? If so, I am
> interested in learning more. What was the source of these quotations or
> paraphrases?
They are direct quotes - see Atlas Shrugged p931 or Virtue of
Selfishness p15.
Cheers,
--
Ian Campbell
Acar
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E64A8DF...@attbi.com...
>
> It is well that Ayn Rand never involved herself deeply with quantum
> physics. Had she done so, it would have unhinged her.
There is another solution to that. Just call it junk science or opt for
alternative para-Creationist theories.
x
Robert Kolker
Acar wrote:
>>It is well that Ayn Rand never involved herself deeply with quantum
>>physics. Had she done so, it would have unhinged her.
>
>
> There is another solution to that. Just call it junk science or opt for
> alternative para-Creationist theories.
Quantum theory is totally upheld by experiment. It is just the opposite
of junk science. It is the most accurate theory of matter and radiation
every proposed. It's only defect is that it has not been properly
extended to include gravitational interactions. Furthermore quantum
field theory requires the special theory of relativity, which itself has
been upheld by experiment. STR is verified everytime a particle
accelearator is booted up.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Acar wrote:
>
> There is another solution to that. Just call it junk science or opt for
> alternative para-Creationist theories.
Aha! I detect a note of irony here. Am I right?
Bob Kolker
> x
Acar
It's not just a note, Bob. It's an orchestral tutti up and down the scale
several octaves..
x
x
x
Robert Kolker
Acar wrote:
>
> It's not just a note, Bob. It's an orchestral tutti up and down the scale
> several octaves..
>
Forgive and forbear. I am tune deaf. What is a tutti?
Bob Kolker
Peter Kinane
0549.5...@posting.google.com...
> Peter Kinane <pki...@iol.ie> wrote in message news:<d8097fcc.0303031445.1e
> 0cf...@posting.google.com>...
> > A simple or primal organism is a (biological) system which is somewhat
> > stable in form, whether through a process of repairing, shedding or
> > renewal, etc. This particularly is so of the senses it features, such
> > as sight, sound, etc. Through this control or stabilisation character
> > development effects. However, at the level of the primal organism, it
> > comes at the price of delusion.
>
> Peter,
>
> Your theory of perception may or may not be true - that is a question
> for science.
>
> However, the conclusion that the world is a delusion must be false.
Ian,
You snipped very severely.
At the end of the paragraph which followed that which you retained
above, I said:
"So, the organism is deluded about itself and 'the
world', or more precisely, its world is a simple[,] objective world".
The paragraph in full:
"That which is constant, such as the beat of ones heart, or the scent
of the air, is pretty much unnoticed. So, also, the rather constant
faculties of senses are not factored into the attention of a primal
organism - perhaps because it does not have sufficiently developed
attention into which to factor such complexities. This 'unnoticed
factor', or omission in the condition of the organism makes the
phenomena which it senses, such as "that is a tree" or " that is a
rock", seem like definitive, independent, objective phenomena, or if
you prefer, as "something specific". And, at some level of value, that
"it senses them". So, the organism is deluded about itself and 'the
world', or more precisely, its world is a simple objective world".
I am at a loss to see how, from this, you arrive at "the conclusion
that the world is a delusion must be false". You seem to have failed
to surface from 'Objectivism' to take a look at the criticism which I
made.
Perhaps you are up to making another effort?
We
> don't need science for this, we just need to remember the derivations
> of the concepts involved. A delusion is a false belief. But true and
> false don't apply to the given, the given is the standard of true and
> false.
>
> If that sounds like a play on words to you, let me emphasize that
> "delusion" is a /concept/ - unlike the given it's usage is subject to
> restrictions - in order to maintain its ties to reality. The usage of
> "delusion" you are attempting is not valid.
> http://www.nathanielbranden.net/ess/ton04.html
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Ian Campbell
Peter Kinane
http://www.effectuationism.com/
Acar
Ian Campbell
d40...@posting.google.com>...
> The paragraph in full:
> "That which is constant, such as the beat of ones heart, or the scent
> of the air, is pretty much unnoticed. So, also, the rather constant
> faculties of senses are not factored into the attention of a primal
> organism - perhaps because it does not have sufficiently developed
> attention into which to factor such complexities. This 'unnoticed
> factor', or omission in the condition of the organism makes the
> phenomena which it senses, such as "that is a tree" or " that is a
> rock", seem like definitive, independent, objective phenomena, or if
> you prefer, as "something specific". And, at some level of value, that
> "it senses them". So, the organism is deluded about itself and 'the
> world', or more precisely, its world is a simple objective world".
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that observer/observed split is a
delusion caused by lack of awareness of the sense apparatus in-between.
That may well be the reason we percieve the world in the form we do, but that
is a question for science. Regardless, the split is not a delusion, it just
"is." Please see the article I linked about "stolen concept."
Cheers,
--
Ian Campbell
Charlie Morriss U of A
>
>
> Charlie Morriss U of A wrote:
> > I believe what you meant to symbolize is (A ^ ~A) which is translated in
the
> > metalanguage as "Both A and not A." In this case both A and ~A can be
true.
>
> In temporal logic (one of the modal logics) a thing can be A and not-A
> but not at the same time. For example the light in my room is both and
> and off (particulary if it blinks). But not at the same instant. However
> time cannot be reduced to a point (Hiesenberg Uncertain Principle).
The post to which I replied, inferred that a thing could (P v ~P) at the
same time. This is fundamentally different from the uncertainty principal,
and was most likely a typo.
> narrower the time interval the more uncertain the energy. Incidentally,
> logic in which the principle of non-contradiction holds does very badly
> at resolving the dissonance between particles and waves. If light is a
> particle then double slit interference should not occur. If light is a
> wave then local light spots (such as darken photographic emulusion)
> should not occur. The problem is with our mode of description, of
> course, and not the underlying reality.
>
> Keep in mind that we formulated logic to function at our scale of
> existence. If we were quantum entities we might have come up with a
> different logic. For various quantum logical alternatives see
> -Interpreting the Quantum World- by Jeffy Bub.
There is an infinite number of logics. (Invent a rule. Invent a second rule.
Then you're on your way.)
Charlie Morriss U of A
"Acar" <g...@d-g-s.com> wrote in message
news:b%49a.290719$i73.57...@twister.neo.rr.com...
Whoa! Are you calling logic and/or quantum physics "junk science"? Could you
please explain why Ayn Rand would have felt this way?
Charlie Morriss U of A
news:<4
> HY8a.30263$Pa.28...@news2.west.cox.net>...
> > I believe what you meant to symbolize is (A ^ ~A) which is translated in
the
> > metalanguage as "Both A and not A." In this case both A and ~A can be
true.
>
> I wanted to symbolize the impossibility of the door being open and
> closed at the same time. I believe exclusive-or is the correct
> formulation. The two states of the door are mutually exclusive: A v
> ~A.
The correct symbolization of exclusive or (XOR) is:
(A v ~A) ^ (A ^ ~A)
This can be translated as:
"A or not A but not both A and not A"
In more simplistic terms, XOR can be remembered with this simple statement:
"With your dinner you can have apple pie or chocolate cake but not both
apple pie and chocolate cake."
> The door was just an example, the point is that logic mimics
> reality...
I am not sure what you mean by "logic mimics reality." What is reality? How
does logic mimic such a thing as reality? What is it to mimic?
>
> > ...
> > It appears to me that this describes the root of Foundationalism. See
> > Descartes "Meditations." Is Foundationalism generally considered to be
an
> > integral part of Objectivism?
>
> I don't know sorry - I'm not familiar with classifications of
> philisophical systems.
Foundationalism is an idea about the answer to the question: How do I know
that everything I perceive actually exists? The answer came in the 1700s to
a fellow named Descartes. Basically he realized that he could doubt almost
everything....he could doubt that what he saw might be a dream, an illusion,
a distortion, a hallucination, etc. However, the one thing he could not
doubt (and you cannot doubt either), is that he did not exist. (You cannot
doubt that you exist because there must necessarily exist a "you" to do the
doubting).
Foundationalism says that, if you can be certain of at least one thing, then
you might be able to infer other things from it. So, if you can infer that
you exist, you might be able to infer that other things exist, because of
that "founding" thought, and so on.
All other knowledge is empirical; inferred by experiences with no absolute
certainty.
Robert Kolker
Charlie Morriss U of A wrote:
> Whoa! Are you calling logic and/or quantum physics "junk science"? Could you
> please explain why Ayn Rand would have felt this way?
>
He is yanking your chain. I fell for it too. Ayn Rand was convinced that
Aristotelean disjunctions applied to Existence down to the root. Barring
the discovery of so-called hidden variables, Aristotle was wrong and so
was Rand. Classical disjunctive logic might not apply at the quantum
level, but it was never formulated to work there in the first place.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E65D75A...@attbi.com...
>.. Aristotle was wrong and so
> was Rand. Classical disjunctive logic might not apply at the quantum
> level, but it was never formulated to work there in the first place.
Nonsense.
Whatever exists at the quantum level, exists - and it exists as it exists,
i.e. it has an identity. And that identity is what is...and not something
else. The phoney philosophical application of quantum physics is a stolen
concept. You want to be able to assert on the one hand that the process of
measuring quantum phenomena renders it impossible for us to measure quantum
phenomena while at the same time claiming that the nature of quantum
phenomena is such that we cannot measure it, i.e. that it has a specific
identity - and not any other - which makes us unable to know precisely what
that identity is and which therefore according to physicists means it does
not have an identity. This is a contradiction in terms. It is also a blatant
example of the primacy of consciousness.
Aristotle, whom you are constantly maligning, could have told you this 2,000
years ago and as I, completely ignorant of physics can tell you now, and
that anyone else now or for an eternity can tell you.
There is apparently a mental bloc, willfull or otherwise, among many of you
to grasping the absolutism of axioms.
I will also add that this view of quantum physics is pure Kantianism in case
anyone needs even more evidence of the corruption of his modern influence.
It is a beautiful example of an alleged "thing-in-itself" which we can never
know. The fact that given our current state of knowledge we cannot know the
exact location of certain quantum phenomena at any given precise time is in
fact knowing a great deal about it - the proof of which is that it has not
hindered the steady advance of our knowledge of quantum physics.
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> news:3E65D75A...@attbi.com...
>
>
>>.. Aristotle was wrong and so
>>was Rand. Classical disjunctive logic might not apply at the quantum
>>level, but it was never formulated to work there in the first place.
>
>
> Nonsense.
If you assume a photon goes through one slit or the other it cannot
produce an interference pattern. So it most go through both slits. But a
particle cannot do that. So a photon is either both a particle and and
wave or neither a particle nor a wave or it is a particle that takes
every possible path (this is the basis of Feynam's sum over all
histories method). The fact is thate plain old logic cannot account for
the interference pattern produced by the double slit experiment.
Now either we give up Aristotelean logic at the quantum level or we
pretend that we never saw the interference patterns. What do you recommend?
>
> Aristotle, whom you are constantly maligning, could have told you this 2,000
> years ago and as I, completely ignorant of physics can tell you now, and
> that anyone else now or for an eternity can tell you.
This is the same Aristotle who never counted female teeth or checked any
of his conclusions which is why he never got motion right. Ever.
>
> There is apparently a mental bloc, willfull or otherwise, among many of you
> to grasping the absolutism of axioms.
When an axiom collides with an observed fact, we dump the axiom. In
science facts rule, theories serve. The only a priori requirement in
physics is that the theories do not contain a logical contradiction.
Quantum electrodynamics is mathematically consistent and totally opposed
to common sense. Since quantum electrodymics has been supported by
experiment for the last 70 years or so, we have to say goodbye to common
sense.
>
> I will also add that this view of quantum physics is pure Kantianism in case
> anyone needs even more evidence of the corruption of his modern influence.
Then why is quantum electrodynamics correct to twelve decimal places?
Why is it the most successful physical theory ever formulated? Why is
it the the computer you are typing your nonsense on has components
predicted by and measured by quantum electrodynamics? Good old logic
says an electron cannot penetrate a potential barrier if it is large
enough. The facts say just the opposite. Now which is it going to be.
Facts or what you claim is applicable logic? You can't have it both ways.
> It is a beautiful example of an alleged "thing-in-itself" which we can never
> know. The fact that given our current state of knowledge we cannot know the
> exact location of certain quantum phenomena at any given precise time is in
> fact knowing a great deal about it - the proof of which is that it has not
> hindered the steady advance of our knowledge of quantum physics.
You have given perfect proof why it is well that Rand never came to
grips with quantum theory. She would have become unhinged, just as you
have. When confronted with a FACT!!!!!! you steadfastly deny the FACT
and re-assert your principles.
Check your premises.
The double slit experiment is what separates the scientists from the
philosophers. The philosophers have been an albatross around the neck of
science since before Aristotle, who never understood the physical world
he and the rest of us live in. His physics ain't worth shit. That is
because he never checked his conclusions against reality. He prefered
principles to facts.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>> know. The fact that given our current state of knowledge we cannot know the
> exact location of certain quantum phenomena at any given precise time is in
> fact knowing a great deal about it - the proof of which is that it has not
> hindered the steady advance of our knowledge of quantum physics.
First you say quantum physics is Kantian nonsense, then you point out
the advance of knowledge and technology. Can you say disonance? Sure you
can.
You have to get the uncertainty principle right in the first place. The
very act of measuring a quantum object for its location upsets its
momentum. If you measure for the momentum you dont see the position
clearly. The underlying reality is that we can't know without measuring
and measuring is an interaction of one system with another. There is no
such thing as Platonic knowledge. To know is to measure. To measure is
to interact.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> Nonsense.
>
> Whatever exists at the quantum level, exists - and it exists as it exists,
> i.e. it has an identity. And that identity is what is...and not something
> else. The phoney philosophical application of quantum physics is a stolen
> concept. You want to be able to assert on the one hand that the process of
> measuring quantum phenomena renders it impossible for us to measure quantum
> phenomena while at the same time claiming that the nature of quantum
> phenomena is such that we cannot measure it, i.e. that it has a specific
> identity - and not any other - which makes us unable to know precisely what
> that identity is and which therefore according to physicists means it does
> not have an identity. This is a contradiction in terms. It is also a blatant
> example of the primacy of consciousness.
Strawman! What I did say was that the law of the exluded middle
(disjunction) does not hold or appears not to hold at the quantum level.
I also pointed out to you that if you apply disjunction to the double
slit experiment you wind up with a contradiction. Now all physical
theories require non-contradiction. Nothing can be both definitely true
and definitely false at the same instant. But tertium non datur is a
different matter. The law of the excluded middle (either A or not A)
does not hold. In the case of an indeterminated quantum state (this is
the instance for which Schroedinger invented his cat conundrum), one
cannot say prior to observation which of several possible definite
states an particle in an indefenite state will settle on. One can only
give the odds for each of the possible states and the associated
measurements.
[Google on Hermitean operators, eigenvectors and eigenstates for details].
If you pass a stream of electrons thru a Stern-Gerlach magnet the best
you can say is the electron will settle on spin up with probability 1/2
or spin down with probability 1/2. The unmeasured electron does not have
a definite spin state if it has been measured for some complimentary
property before hand. That is just the way the world is. It is
unintuitive because at the size and mass scale we live, we see things
rather definitely most of the time. But even determinate processes put
out chaotic unpredictable results at the large scale. Turbulence is a
good example.
Now you might say that it is not the identity of the object that is
indeterminate but only our knowledge of it. David Bohm and Louis de
Broigle formulated a determinate form of quantum theory in which
probability is only a measure of ignorance and not objective
indeterminism. It so happens that an experiment has been performed which
falsifies Bohm's version of QM, the one with the defnite ontology. So
for the time being weirdenss and nondisjunctiveness is ahead 1 to 0. If
there is a way of bringing a definite ontology back, know one knows how
and it is not for lack of trying either.
The problem with Objectivists when confronted with a portion of reality
that does not conform to their principles is that they curse the reality
and bless the principles. I think that is very perverse. Remember facts
rule, principles and theories serve. A properly done measurement or
experiment is the Last Word on the matter, not axioms or theories. There
is more in heaven and earth than is dream't of in your philosophy. (Hamlet).
Bob Kolker
Charles Novins
> Now you might say that it is not the identity of the object that is
indeterminate but only our knowledge of it. David Bohm and Louis de Broigle
formulated a determinate form of quantum theory in which probability is only
a measure of ignorance and not objective indeterminism. It so happens that
an experiment has been performed which falsifies Bohm's version of QM, the
one with the defnite ontology. So for the time being weirdenss and
nondisjunctiveness is ahead 1 to 0. If there is a way of bringing a
definite ontology back, know one knows how and it is not for lack of trying
either.
CHARLES NOVINS:
This paragraph anticipates my objection, but I still don't quite get it.
Obviously, uncertainty (in the Heisenberg sense) does not suggest to me that
things do not exist with identity, and so on. You seem to be saying that
this experiment proves that uncertainty is not merely an inability to gain
knowledge, but is instead a property of the thing-in-itself. That is, it
exists without identity. I thought Heisenberg and QM were epistemology
problems, not metaphysical. Seems a bit much, and...
BOB KOLKER:
> The problem with Objectivists when confronted with a portion of reality
that does not conform to their principles is that they curse the reality and
bless the principles.
CHARLES NOVINS:
Perhaps, but reason, logic, and common sense are what seem "violated" here,
no more or less than Objectivism itself. You have actually stated that
"common sense" is broached. But are you saying that identity itself is
falsified at the quantum level?
I am NOT questioning quantum physics (as everyone misunderstood Acar's
sarcasm), just your application of its implications for the axiom of
identity.
Heisenberg Uncertainty never struck me as particularly anti-intuitive to
begin with; what is so freakish about the fact that activity (measurement)
interacts with other activity (the thing being measured) and the former
changes the latter slightly?
Assuming I do not try to observe or measure the latter, are you saying QM
tells us that it really isn't there, or that it isn't what it is, or that it
is two different things in two different places at the same instant?
BOB KOLKER:
A properly done measurement or experiment is the Last Word on the matter,
not axioms or theories.
CHARLES NOVINS:
Not if that experiment calls into question the very validity of
experimentation itself.
BOB KOLKER:
There is more in heaven and earth than is dream't of in your philosophy.
(Hamlet).
CHARLES NOVINS:
I'm not convinced that anomalous results mean that ..."weirdenss and
nondisjunctiveness is ahead." The fact that QM is experimentally valid at
its level does not say to me that we must re-shape our most fundamental view
of reality. Maybe QM needs to be expanded or modified to encompass all the
rest of what we know, instead of the other way around.
In any event, I am not a physicist, so please respond in layman's terms
insofar as possible.
Larry Allen
@attbi.com>...
Well reasoned and well spoken response Bob. Hard to argue with such a
clear presentation.
However, let us not slander the philosopher lacking scientific
credibility without giving equal time to the slandering of the
scientist lacking philosophical credibility.
The former belongs the fundamental question of why camp, the later
belonging to the fundamental question of what. The scientist says this
is what is so, the philosopher says this is why it is so. When the
scientist attempts to explain the why, he or she treads upon the
philosophers territory. When the philosopher attempts to explain the
what, he or she treads upon the scientists.
Indeed, this distinction is more often than not overlooked, or never
perceived to begin with. Nonetheless it exists.
The reason it exists is because the human condition demands it.
We are equipped with the capacity to experience thought, and the
capacity to experience emotion. Which capacities we engage to the
fullest of our ability.
Thus there can be, and is, expressions of thought absent emotion,
emotion absent thought, thoughtful emotion and emotional thought.
I count 4.
Makes for great drama.
Larry Allen
Robert Kolker
Charles Novins wrote:
> CHARLES NOVINS:
> I'm not convinced that anomalous results mean that ..."weirdenss and
> nondisjunctiveness is ahead." The fact that QM is experimentally valid at
> its level does not say to me that we must re-shape our most fundamental view
> of reality. Maybe QM needs to be expanded or modified to encompass all the
> rest of what we know, instead of the other way around.
Quantum Electrodynamics is the most accurate, best tested physical
theory every formulated (and that includes Relativity, special and
general). Its results are simply not consistent with the law of the
excluded middle. What to do? The facts are the facts. Ordinary
Aristotelian logic is simply inadequate to deal with the double slit
experiments. But keep in mind that logic has to do with the way we think
and the way we process language. It is not a theory about the world. It
is a theory about propostions which make assertions about the world.
The literature on the theory is vast. For a non-physicist or
non-mathematician I would recommend -QED- by Richard Feynman and the
first 3 chapters of volume 3 of the Feynman lectures. These are not to
demanding mathematically, but they get the ideas across.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Charles Novins" <p...@witty.com> wrote in message
news:-B6cnSTCzZw...@comcast.com...
> "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> BOB KOLKER:
> A properly done measurement or experiment is the Last Word on the matter,
> not axioms or theories.
>
> CHARLES NOVINS:
> Not if that experiment calls into question the very validity of
> experimentation itself.
Yes, exactly.
Measurement presupposes that you are measuring something by a specific
standard of measurement and experimentation that you have a specific
standard of method and proof, i.e. they presuppose the axioms which it is
suggested could be denied by them.
You can do experiments from today till doomsday and it will still be the
case that a thing is what it is and that it cannot be something else at the
same time in the same respect - and, in fact, as you say, the very process
of experimentation presupposes that is the case. Or in other words the Law
of Identity and the Law of Contradiction are indisputable and absolute.
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> of experimentation presupposes that is the case. Or in other words the Law
> of Identity and the Law of Contradiction are indisputable and absolute.
>
The law of non contradiction is not at issue (as I keep on telling you).
It is the law of the excluded middle. It just does not apply in quantum
land. Rail and rail, but the facts stand.
If you can reconcile the double slit experiment which produces
interfence not only with photons, but with massive particles (electrons
and protons) with the law of the excluded middle, you ought to publish
your results. Even when photons and electrons are shot into a double
slit -one at a time- interference patterns are still produced. Go
figure. As the King of Siam said, Is Puzzlement.
And if you think the double slit is strange, consider the Ahronov-Bohm
effect (look it up with Google). That is double weird, but it is true.
Bob Kolker
David Schwartz
> If you assume a photon goes through one slit or the other it cannot
> produce an interference pattern.
Correct.
> So it most go through both slits.
To some extent, it must go through both slits. It obviously doesn't "go
through" in the conventional understanding of going through. What this
proves is that our simplistic notion of "going through" is deficient at
the quantum level. Much as a simplistic notion of a "flat earth" is
deficient at a larger level.
> But a
> particle cannot do that.
You mean a particle as we previously understood it cannot do that. It
cannot go through both slits in the naive sense of going through.
> So a photon is either both a particle and and
> wave or neither a particle nor a wave or it is a particle that takes
> every possible path (this is the basis of Feynam's sum over all
> histories method).
It's not a particle or a wave, it's a photon and has the
characteristics it has. It cannot be perfectly modeled as a wave or as a
particle. It has some of the attributes of both.
> The fact is thate plain old logic cannot account for
> the interference pattern produced by the double slit experiment.
Huh? Why do you say "plain old logic" can't? Where's the conflict with
logic?
> Now either we give up Aristotelean logic at the quantum level or we
> pretend that we never saw the interference patterns. What do you recommend?
We do neither. The conflict is imagined by you.
> > Aristotle, whom you are constantly maligning, could have told you this
> > 2,000
> > years ago and as I, completely ignorant of physics can tell you now, and
> > that anyone else now or for an eternity can tell you.
> This is the same Aristotle who never counted female teeth or checked any
> of his conclusions which is why he never got motion right. Ever.
Only Zeno came anywhere near getting motion right. People today still
get it wrong, convinced that you can complete an infinite number of
things before breakfast *in* *physical* *reality*.
> The double slit experiment is what separates the scientists from the
> philosophers. The philosophers have been an albatross around the neck of
> science since before Aristotle, who never understood the physical world
> he and the rest of us live in. His physics ain't worth shit. That is
> because he never checked his conclusions against reality. He prefered
> principles to facts.
There are no conflicts between the double slit experiment and any
philosophical axioms.
DS
Robert Kolker
David Schwartz wrote:
> Only Zeno came anywhere near getting motion right. People today still
> get it wrong, convinced that you can complete an infinite number of
> things before breakfast *in* *physical* *reality*.
Zeno got nothing right. He did not know what a limit is or a convergent
series is. The so-called Zeno paradox is not a paradox and yes we go
through an infinite number of points every time we twich. Motion is
possible, achilles does catch up with the turtle and makes soup out of
him, the arrow does move. The trajectory of an arrow is a continuous
differentiable mapping from the unit interval into 3 space.
None of the Greek philosophers got infinity right. In fact the Greeks
denied infinite sets. Cantor got infinity right.
Next question?
> There are no conflicts between the double slit experiment and any
> philosophical axioms.
If the particle went through the right slit then it did not go through
the left. If through the left then not the right. If either of these,
then interference should not occur. Then it went through neither of
them, in which case there are no hits and the back screen, but there
are. So it went through both of the slits, in which case the quantum
particle is not a quantum particle because a quantum particle cannot
split so it must be a wave or so the story goes. But it is probably
neither and eventually we will have to extend our kit of metaphors to
cover the matter properly.
You go figure it out. I am partisan of the "shut up and calculate"
school of pragmatists. If it works use it, if it doesn't fix or replace it.
In the mean time, the Dirac formulation predicts the interference
perfectly. The math works fine, but the logic is a little strange. There
is a moral here. I dont use a hammer to insert a screw into a piece of
wood. I use a screwdriver (because it works). I don't use Aristotelean
disjunction to analyze the double slit experiment, I use the Direc
formulation (because it works). The moral of the story is use the right
tool for the job, not the wrong tool.
If you must use logic use the right kind.
Here is a reference:
"At its core, quantum mechanics can be regarded as a non-classical
probability calculus resting upon a non-classical propositional logic.
More specifically, in quantum mechanics each probability-bearing
proposition of the form "the value of physical quantity A lies in the
range B" is represented by a projection operator on a Hilbert space H.
These form a non-Boolean -- in particular, non-distributive --
orthocomplemented lattice. Quantum-mechanical states correspond exactly
to probability measures (suitably defined) on this lattice.
What are we to make of this? Some have argued that the empirical success
of quantum mechanics calls for a revolution in logic itself. This view
is associated with the demand for a realistic interpretation of quantum
mechanics, i.e., one not grounded in any primitive notion of
measurement. Against this, there is a long tradition of interpreting
quantum mechanics operationally, that is, as being precisely a theory of
measurement. On this latter view, it is not surprising that a "logic" of
measurement-outcomes, in a setting where not all measurements are
compatible, should prove not to be Boolean. Rather, the mystery is why
it should have the particular non-Boolean structure that it does in
quantum mechanics. A substantial literature has grown up around the
programme of giving some independent motivation for this structure --
ideally, by deriving it from more primitive and plausible axioms
governing a generalized probability theory."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog
The logic is not Aristotelian, but (good news!) the principle of non
contradiction holds. That is the only a priori restraint on a scientific
theory. It has to be internally consistent. The only other constraints
are a poseteriori. Scientific theories must be testable and they must
pass experimental muster.
Now I leave you with this riddle. How does the physics department differ
from the philosophy department? Answer: In the physics department they
have wastebaskets and the department members use them.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E6652BD...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> > of experimentation presupposes that is the case. Or in other words the
Law
> > of Identity and the Law of Contradiction are indisputable and absolute.
> >
>
> The law of non contradiction is not at issue (as I keep on telling you).
> It is the law of the excluded middle. It just does not apply in quantum
> land.
Nonsense. The Excluded Middle is just another perspective on Identity and
Non-Contradiction. You cannot have the one without the other.
> Rail and rail, but the facts stand.
You mean the facts are what they are and not something else at the same time
in the same respect? They either are what they are ...or they aren't. So the
facts stand, right?
> If you can reconcile the double slit experiment ..
I don't have to. It's a matter for physics and has nothing whatever to do
with the validity of the basic axioms. What happens with this phenomenon
happens...and it only happens as it does because of the nature of the
particles involved. They don't stop in the middle of these experiments and
sing operatic arias, do they? They don't stand on their heads and beg for
quarters, do they?
> And if you think the double slit is strange, consider the Ahronov-Bohm
> effect (look it up with Google). That is double weird, but it is true.
So? Is it what it is - or isn't it? How can you know what this effect is
unless....you know what this effect is? It is that effect....and not some
other. Right?
He may not have been able to count teeth, but Aristotle knew this far more
important thing 2,000 years ago. It is time you did.
Btw, is water solid, liquid, or steam? Does the fact that it can be one or
the other violate any of the basic axioms?
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> Btw, is water solid, liquid, or steam? Does the fact that it can be one or
> the other violate any of the basic axioms?
At the triple point of water, all three.
"The triple point of water is the most important defining thermometric
fixed point used in the calibration of thermometers to the International
Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) for practical and theoretical reasons
[1]
Triple points of various materials (3-phase equilibria between solid,
liquid and vapor phases) are independent of ambient pressure.
The triple point of water is the sole realizable defining fixed point
common to the Kelvin Thermodynamic Temperature Scale (KTTS) and the
ITS-90. Its assigned value on these Scales is 273.16 K (0.01 C)."
See: http://www.its-90.com/wtpguide.html
And don't forget the plasma state, a 4-th state of matter.
Bob Kolker
Arnold
[Arnold]
Remember the experiment where the researcher was checking
the effect of amputation on hearing. After he had cut off
the last of the frogs legs, and noted that they didn't jump
anymore at a loud noise, he came to the conclusion they
were deaf.
His facts were correct. The frogs no longer jumped. However
his conclusions were the weak point in his experiment.
> If you can reconcile the double slit experiment which
produces
> interfence not only with photons, but with massive
particles (electrons
> and protons) with the law of the excluded middle, you
ought to publish > your results.
I doubt Fred is questioning that the frogs no longer jump.
He is saying that the conclusions are not justified, in
particular when they undermine what is known. Yes it is all
very strange to see, but that should be a warning to be
very careful not to jump to conclusions, instead admit it
is a strangeness we are not able to account for - yet.
--
Arnold
Ian Campbell
@attbi.com>...
> Now you might say that it is not the identity of the object that is
> indeterminate but only our knowledge of it. David Bohm and Louis de
> Broigle formulated a determinate form of quantum theory in which
> probability is only a measure of ignorance and not objective
> indeterminism. It so happens that an experiment has been performed which
> falsifies Bohm's version of QM, the one with the defnite ontology. So
> for the time being weirdenss and nondisjunctiveness is ahead 1 to 0. If
> there is a way of bringing a definite ontology back, know one knows how
> and it is not for lack of trying either.
Have you heard about the recent experiments in quantum teleportation?
These guys have been able to make exact copies of light particles.
Like the reporter in the article below, I am wondering how you can
copy something that doesn't have identity...
--------
Advances are being made in teleportation
By Kenneth Chang
The New York Times
Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called
"spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of
light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile
away.
Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved
particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of
unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few dozen miles.
The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones,
letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber
found in fiber-optic cables.
"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom
wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics
professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of a
recent article in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the
long distance."
The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the
"Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to
planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to
imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But
teleporting something from the everyday world -- a human, for example,
which contains more than a trillion atoms -- is highly unlikely, if
not impossible.
Even with the light particles, or photons, about one in a thousand
were received at the other side.
"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said
about human teleportation.
Still, the experiments show that scientists can overcome a seemingly
insurmountable conceptual barrier, the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle. The principle states that the location and velocity of a
particle cannot both be precisely measured at the same time. That
would seem to make it impossible to teleport anything, even single
particles, because without knowing their exact specifications they
cannot be copied somewhere else.
Devised in 1993 by scientists led by Dr. Charles H. Bennett of the IBM
Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., quantum
teleportation produces pairs of "entangled" light particles that can
be thought of as a pair of encoding and decoding rings. A message is
combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to
the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message.
Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher
the message.
Other encoding techniques using quantum cryptography are simpler, and
a more immediate use for teleportation would be as a repeater. Photons
almost always peter out after traveling about 50 miles through optical
fiber. Teleportation would enable the creation of copies every 50
miles or so, letting the message be sent across an unlimited distance.
-------
Cheers,
--
Ian Campbell
Peter Kinane
> Peter Kinane <pki...@iol.ie> wrote in message news:<d8097fcc.0303041255.5a
> d40...@posting.google.com>...
> > The paragraph in full:
> > "That which is constant, such as the beat of ones heart, or the scent
> > of the air, is pretty much unnoticed. So, also, the rather constant
> > faculties of senses are not factored into the attention of a primal
> > organism - perhaps because it does not have sufficiently developed
> > attention into which to factor such complexities. This 'unnoticed
> > factor', or omission in the condition of the organism makes the
> > phenomena which it senses, such as "that is a tree" or " that is a
> > rock", seem like definitive, independent, objective phenomena, or if
> > you prefer, as "something specific". And, at some level of value, that
> > "it senses them". So, the organism is deluded about itself and 'the
> > world', or more precisely, its world is a simple objective world".
>
> If I understand you correctly, you are saying that observer/observed spli
> t is a
> delusion caused by lack of awareness of the sense apparatus in-between.
You slightly understand me. I'd better emphasise that my position is
not so much that it is a delusion as "more precisely, its world is a
simple objective world". Also, the reason/cause is not simply "lack of
awareness of the sense apparatus in-between". (As I imply above: "that
it senses them" is problematic). Such an explanation would be loaded
with concepts which are a consequence, or, more precisely, a feature
of the "simple, objective world". However, it may be regarded as a
slight part of the cause (of what I should have stated as the
_ultimate_ effect).
You are correct in that I am "saying that observer/observed split is"
problematic - for the effectuation of, may I say, an advanced effect.
So, if you are happy to pursue this matter with me then perhaps we
should focus on my last sentence, as my earlier, _entry_ posts, etc.
are not pure enough to permit efficient progress. Or better still,
read my system.
>
> That may well be the reason we perceive the world in the form we do, but that
> is a question for science.
Excuse me if I emphasise that I do not subscribe to the idea of neat,
independent packages, such as "a question for science" or "a question
for philosophy".
Regardless, the split is not a delusion, it just
See above.
> "is." Please see the article I linked about "stolen concept."
>
I've looked at the article, and, with respect, I stand by my
criticisms above. May I say, much as Bob Kolter does, elsewhere in
this thread, that all of one's concepts should be open to reform -
including what you (seem to) mean by "man's sensory perceptions". (As
I say the "observer/observed split is" problematic - for the
effectuation of, may I say, an advanced effect"). The same goes for
the concept(s) "an idea accepted for logical reasons".
In return, please see the system at my URL - a system which is
radically original, and which is more easily conceived by reading it
than by guessing at it, or by presuming that it is not original.
--
Peter Kinane
http://www.effectuationism.com/
Peter Kinane
5...@attbi.com...
> your results. Even when photons and electrons are shot into a double
> slit -one at a time- interference patterns are still produced. Go
> figure. As the King of Siam said, Is Puzzlement.
Could you, or someone, please recommend a site that features pictures
of such interfernce? For instance, does the interference suggest
almost equal force 'through' each slit?
Perhaps you could also write a line or two on what the "photon" is
acting (at the far side(s) of the slit)? (Also, I presume the
experiment presumes a vacuum?).
Guess I should look it up in Google.
>
> And if you think the double slit is strange, consider the Ahronov-Bohm
> effect (look it up with Google). That is double weird, but it is true.
>
Peter Kinane
http://www.effectuationism.com/
David Schwartz
> David Schwartz wrote:
> > Only Zeno came anywhere near getting motion right. People today still
> > get it wrong, convinced that you can complete an infinite number of
> > things before breakfast *in* *physical* *reality*.
> Zeno got nothing right. He did not know what a limit is or a convergent
> series is.
Which is fine, because these mathematical concepts deriving from
existent infinities have no place in physical reality.
> The so-called Zeno paradox is not a paradox and yes we go
> through an infinite number of points every time we twich.
No, we don't. It is literally nonsense to argue that actual physical
completion of an infinity number of things followed by more things.
> Motion is
> possible, achilles does catch up with the turtle and makes soup out of
> him, the arrow does move. The trajectory of an arrow is a continuous
> differentiable mapping from the unit interval into 3 space.
No, it's not. It can be modelled that way, but it's not that way. It
cannot be. No physical process can complete an actually infinite number
of steps.
> > There are no conflicts between the double slit experiment and any
> > philosophical axioms.
> If the particle went through the right slit then it did not go through
> the left. If through the left then not the right. If either of these,
> then interference should not occur. Then it went through neither of
> them, in which case there are no hits and the back screen, but there
> are. So it went through both of the slits, in which case the quantum
> particle is not a quantum particle because a quantum particle cannot
> split so it must be a wave or so the story goes. But it is probably
> neither and eventually we will have to extend our kit of metaphors to
> cover the matter properly.
You're just talking nonsense. There is no "particle" here. There's an
electron that does what it does. And it doesn't "go through" either slit
or both slits. It does what it does. Modelling the electron as a
particle has some validity, but it's not perfect because electrons are
electrons. Modelling the travelling of the electron as "going through
both slits" may have some validity or it may not. But the electron
really does what it actually does, and anything but what the electron
actually does will be a model that will have some level of validity but
will never be perfect.
In both cases, you are trying to eat recipes. You cannot do that.
You can model the electron as a particle to the extent that this helps
you understand it. You shouldn't to the extent that it obscures such an
attempt. But an electron isn't "really" a particle, it's really an
electron.
> You go figure it out. I am partisan of the "shut up and calculate"
> school of pragmatists. If it works use it, if it doesn't fix or replace it.
Exactly!
> In the mean time, the Dirac formulation predicts the interference
> perfectly. The math works fine, but the logic is a little strange. There
> is a moral here. I dont use a hammer to insert a screw into a piece of
> wood. I use a screwdriver (because it works). I don't use Aristotelean
> disjunction to analyze the double slit experiment, I use the Direc
> formulation (because it works). The moral of the story is use the right
> tool for the job, not the wrong tool.
>
> If you must use logic use the right kind.
Logic isn't the problem. There's no failure of logic. There's simply an
attempt to force an inappropriate *PHYSICAL* model on reality.
> "At its core, quantum mechanics can be regarded as a non-classical
> probability calculus resting upon a non-classical propositional logic.
> More specifically, in quantum mechanics each probability-bearing
> proposition of the form "the value of physical quantity A lies in the
> range B" is represented by a projection operator on a Hilbert space H.
> These form a non-Boolean -- in particular, non-distributive --
> orthocomplemented lattice. Quantum-mechanical states correspond exactly
> to probability measures (suitably defined) on this lattice.
That's a great statement.
> What are we to make of this? Some have argued that the empirical success
> of quantum mechanics calls for a revolution in logic itself. This view
> is associated with the demand for a realistic interpretation of quantum
> mechanics, i.e., one not grounded in any primitive notion of
> measurement. Against this, there is a long tradition of interpreting
> quantum mechanics operationally, that is, as being precisely a theory of
> measurement. On this latter view, it is not surprising that a "logic" of
> measurement-outcomes, in a setting where not all measurements are
> compatible, should prove not to be Boolean. Rather, the mystery is why
> it should have the particular non-Boolean structure that it does in
> quantum mechanics. A substantial literature has grown up around the
> programme of giving some independent motivation for this structure --
> ideally, by deriving it from more primitive and plausible axioms
> governing a generalized probability theory."
All formal logical systems are models. They should be used where they
work well and shouldn't be used where they don't. Logic is not reason
because reason is the manipulation of meaning and the vouching for or
against of claims.
> The logic is not Aristotelian, but (good news!) the principle of non
> contradiction holds. That is the only a priori restraint on a scientific
> theory. It has to be internally consistent. The only other constraints
> are a poseteriori. Scientific theories must be testable and they must
> pass experimental muster.
> Now I leave you with this riddle. How does the physics department differ
> from the philosophy department? Answer: In the physics department they
> have wastebaskets and the department members use them.
You'll eat those words when we have conclusive proof that time and
space are quantizied and prove finally that Zeno was right -- a priori.
DS
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>>>
>>
>>The law of non contradiction is not at issue (as I keep on telling you).
>>It is the law of the excluded middle. It just does not apply in quantum
>>land.
>
>
> Nonsense. The Excluded Middle is just another perspective on Identity and
> Non-Contradiction. You cannot have the one without the other.
No, it is not. There are logics in which the law of non contradiction
holds and the law of the excluded middle does not. Intuitionistic Logic
(a very bad name for it btw) being one example. There exist logics in
which there are propostions P, such that neither P nor ~P is provable,
but P v ~P is provable.
>
>
>>Rail and rail, but the facts stand.
>
>
> You mean the facts are what they are and not something else at the same time
> in the same respect? They either are what they are ...or they aren't. So the
> facts stand, right?
You keep confusing the law of non contradiction with the law of the
excluded middle. Why do you do that? There are logics in which these are
NOT equivalent. You think Aristotlelean logic is the only logic? Wrong.
Quantum indeterminate states are examples where it is not the case where
something is so or it is not. What do you call it when P is true with
probability 1/2 and P is false with probability 1/2. Or where the spin
of the electron is up with probablity 1/2 and and down with probability
1/2 and where the only two spin states are up and down?
Lest you think non Aristotelean logics (logics where the law of the
excluded middle does not hold) are mere formal curiosities, a Japanese
firm has designed a washing machine which is controlled by fuzzy logic
circuits. In fuzzy logic (so-called) the law of the excluded middle does
not hold. This washingmachine gets clothes cleaner than a conventional
washer. Think of fuzzy logic as a logic where the paradox of the beard
does not exist. Or GOOGLE on "fuzzy logic" to get the details. There are
also electronic circuits which have three states, instead of the usual two.
See:
http://www.item.uni-bremen.de/research/papers/paper.pdf/Frank.Poehl/itsw99/
itsw99.pdf
Then there are topologies which are quite consistent where there exist
sets which are both closed and open and sets which are neither (which is
the usual case. For example the interval [0,1) of all x >=0 and < 1).
Then there are infinite valued logics of which probabilistic logics are
an instance.
Your attitude toward logic is very similar to the die-hards who could
not get used to the idea of non Euclidean geometry. Kant was one of
these. He insisted that Euclidean geometry was -necessarily true-. Not
the case at all. You insist logic is necessarily Aristotelean. It is not
the case at all.
Now I ask you once again, why can't you reconcile the fact the Quantum
Field Theory is the all time champ of physical theories and yet is not
reconcilable with Plain Old Aristotelean Logic? Why is that? Why do you
insist on stuffing everything into your sclerotic metaphysical
catagories when they do not fit. You should read the legend of
Procrustes sometimes. It is very applicable to your attitude.
There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy.
There may be forms of matter which are not like any we have ever seen
around our solar system (so-called dark matter, a bad name but that is
what it is called). The only clue we have is the gravitational effect it
has on ordinary matter. This is only hypothetical at the moment, but a
definte possibility. Something new and unlike anything we have ever seen
or measured. If such stuff exists (and it is an if) it might not fit
into any philosophyical or metaphysical category we have. That is
nothing new. Look at particles in quantum states. Very weird compared to
what we are used to at our scale of size and time. Or anti-matter.
Before 1932 no one had ever seen it in the lab but Dirac guessed its
existence on purely theoretical grounds. It was finally seen in 1932 in
a cloud chamber. Nowadays anti-matter is as common as popcorn.
If you run into a fact that contradicts your philosphy, fix your
philsophy. Theories and philosophies come and go, but facts are forever.
Bob Kolker
P.S. I owe you a brief description of the Aharonov-Bohm effect
discovered around 1960. A beam of electrons is split so that it runs
around a cylindrer in which there is a magnetic field completely trapped
in the cylinder so that none of it is on the outside. Yet the megnetic
field inside the cylinder causes a phase shift interference effect when
the split stream of electrons are rejoined. At no time does an electron
in either stream interact with the megnetic field trapped in the
cylinder (the method of trapping, I will not go into, but it is a sound
seal) yet the magnetic field influences the electrons. Very strange. It
is as if the electrons can sense the magnetic field by telepathy (excuse
this crude anthropomorphism) yet there is no interaction at all. Go
figure. Like Shakespear said, there is more in heaven and earth than is
dreamt of in our philosophy. How can A affect B if A and B do not
physically interact? Yet is happens. If there is an interaction it is
of a kind not defined for plain old electromagentic fields. Go figure.
Robert Kolker
Ian Campbell wrote:
> Have you heard about the recent experiments in quantum teleportation?
> These guys have been able to make exact copies of light particles.
> Like the reporter in the article below, I am wondering how you can
> copy something that doesn't have identity...
It was the quantum state that was "teleported" not the particle. Here
is a case where television science fiction shows help name real things.
Not necessarily a good thing.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Peter Kinane wrote:
>
> Guess I should look it up in Google.
Do. What happens is that an interference pattern is built up over time.
When the particles are shot through the slit apparatus they register on
a back screen. The pattern of "hits" is built up over time and they show
the same stripe pattern of interference as a full bore beam with
jillions of particles. The reason why this is done is to eliminate the
interference that would occur if the particles jostle each other.
Shooting them through one at a time eliminates this possibility.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
David Schwartz wrote:
>
> You'll eat those words when we have conclusive proof that time and
> space are quantizied and prove finally that Zeno was right -- a priori.
The day that happens I will gladly admit my error (being the pragmatist
that I am. I never argue with what works). I probably will not live to
see it, and you probably will not live to see it either. If, however,
it happens sooner than that, pray do spread the good news. Of course if
reality is grainy then one will have to explain why smeared out math
works so well.
And if Zeno was right, it was purely by accident because like Aristotle,
he didn't check either. The Greeks were arrogant that way. The believed
a a good argument was sufficient to get to the truth. Not so. One cannot
deduce reality a priori. You can only get it a posteriori. One has to
look and then learn.
On the basis of what we know today, we can safely say Zeno was full of
shit, like most of the Greeks except Archimedes, Euclid and their
friends at Alexandria. The mathematicians were the good guys. The
philosophers, as usual, were the fools.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
David Schwartz wrote:
>
> You'll eat those words when we have conclusive proof that time and
> space are quantizied and prove finally that Zeno was right -- a priori.
No one is right a priori. One knows he is right after things are checked
against reality. All scientific truths are a posteriori. Experiments
will never go away. Theories will come and go, but facts are forever.
It just occured to me that if reality is really gritty and grainy that
is good news and bad news. The good news is that we will not have
renomralization problems with our theories. We will be able to use lower
bound cut offs for nasty integrals. The bad news is that the grain is
probably so fine that trying to do discrete mathatics will be
intractable so we will still be using analysis based on compact and
continous manifolds. Example: some of the deepest theorems in number
theory are proved using analytic techniques. You can't get any more
discrete than integers, yet to prove anything important you have to go
into analytic domains and imbed the the theorems there. So smooth
mathematics will still be the order of the day. Which means we will
still be using Cantorian set theory and the axiom of choice.
You will also note we do all our gas physics statistically or
extensively. No one in his right mind would try to figure out how a mole
weight of gas with 10^24 molecules will behave by starting out with the
initial positions and velocities of the molecules. We will use
statistical and extensive methods forever because anything else is a
practical impossibility.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E6684D...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> >
> > Btw, is water solid, liquid, or steam? Does the fact that it can be one
or
> > the other violate any of the basic axioms?
>
> At the triple point of water, all three.
Oops, I guess there goes logic, huh?
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E668FC1...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> >>>
> >>
> >>The law of non contradiction is not at issue (as I keep on telling you).
> >>It is the law of the excluded middle. It just does not apply in quantum
> >>land.
> >
> >
> > Nonsense. The Excluded Middle is just another perspective on Identity
and
> > Non-Contradiction. You cannot have the one without the other.
> > You mean the facts are what they are and not something else at the same
time
> > in the same respect? They either are what they are ...or they aren't. So
the
> > facts stand, right?
>
> You keep confusing the law of non contradiction with the law of the
> excluded middle.
Either something is ....or isn't is the law of excluded of middle, which is
what I said.
> Quantum indeterminate states are examples where it is not the case where
> something is so or it is not. What do you call it when P is true with
> probability 1/2 and P is false with probability 1/2. Or where the spin
> of the electron is up with probablity 1/2 and and down with probability
> 1/2 and where the only two spin states are up and down?
I call it that we need to learn more. Since when did our state of ignorance
determine what exists?
>
> Lest you think non Aristotelean logics (logics where the law of the
> excluded middle does not hold) are mere formal curiosities, a Japanese
> firm has designed a washing machine which is controlled by fuzzy logic
> circuits. In fuzzy logic (so-called) the law of the excluded middle does
> not hold.
You are confusing philosophical logic with computer programming and
equivocating like crazy.
> Now I ask you once again, why can't you reconcile the fact the Quantum
> Field Theory is the all time champ of physical theories and yet is not
> reconcilable with Plain Old Aristotelean Logic?
It is not reconcilable to physicists who are ignorant of philosophy and/or
corrupted by Kantianism and who are apparently committed, as you clearly
are, to the primacy of consciousness - to someone who thinks that logic only
applies to our thought and is not based on reality.
>..Something new and unlike anything we have ever seen
> or measured. If such stuff exists...
It will have an identity. It will be what it is and not something else. If
it weren't you couldn't measure it, let alone ever discover it.
Do you know what a stolen concept is?
>... How can A affect B if A and B do not
> physically interact? Yet is happens. If there is an interaction it is
> of a kind not defined for plain old electromagentic fields. Go figure.
You go figure. You're the physicist, not me. It has nothing whatever to do
with philosophy. Whatever that phenomena is ....it is what is....and not
something else.
What you are discussing may in fact be rocket science, but what I am
discussing isn't. It's not that difficult, Bob.
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> Oops, I guess there goes logic, huh?
You just picked a bad example.
Bob Kolker
Charlie Morriss U of A
"Fred Weiss" <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:b451op$fg5$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net...> news:3E65D75A...@attbi.com...
>
>> I will also add that this view of quantum physics is pure Kantianism in
case
> anyone needs even more evidence of the corruption of his modern influence.
I would suggest that quantum physics is physics, and that Kant was a
philosopher.
You can't explain quantum physics with a discussion of philosophy and you
can't explain Kant with a discussion of quantum physics.
Think about it.
--
Charlie Morriss
University of Arizona
Undergraduate Philosophy
Ian Campbell
8ac...@posting.google.com>...
> ...
> In return, please see the system at my URL - a system which is
> radically original, and which is more easily conceived by reading it
> than by guessing at it, or by presuming that it is not original.
OK - I'll check it out.
Cheers,
--
Ian Campbell
Ian Campbell
@attbi.com>...
> It was the quantum state that was "teleported" not the particle. Here
> is a case where television science fiction shows help name real things.
> Not necessarily a good thing.
Not quite the same, but I actually thought it v. cool when I found out
shuttle Enterprise was named after the starship!
Cheers,
--
Ian Campbell
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E66A8E8...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> >
> > Oops, I guess there goes logic, huh?
>
> You just picked a bad example.
I was being sarcastic. Are you actually suggesting there *does* go logic?
Look, what you're not getting is if that is the case it undercuts everything
you are saying as well. Because, you know, either what you are saying is
true or not; either applies to reality or it doesn't - and it can't be both
at the same time in the same respect.
Is what you are saying true and logical, based on reality and applying to
reality - or is it just blather or in accordance with some standard of truth
and by some logic in some alternate universe of your own imagining?
You can't have this both ways - or as they say, "have your cake and eat it,
too".
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> news:3E66A8E8...@attbi.com...
>
>>
>>Fred Weiss wrote:
>>
>>>Oops, I guess there goes logic, huh?
>>
>>You just picked a bad example.
>
>
> I was being sarcastic. Are you actually suggesting there *does* go logic?
No. I was suggesting that the state of water example was not apropos to
the point you were making. Logic is not going anywhere. It is here to
stay. The principle of non-contradiction is the rock upon which all of
our effective theories mathematical and scientific are built [1]. In
some mathematical theories the principle of the excluded middle does not
hold. In such theories P v ~P is provable but neither P nor ~P are
provable. But the theory is consistent. One cannot deduce P & ~P.
Bob Kolker
[1]. There is a variant of logic called paraconsistent logic in which
inconsistencies are permitted but inference is weakend so that one
cannot infer any old well formed formula. To the best of my knowledge,
paraconsistent logics have never figured in any useful scientific or
mathematical theory. There is one possible use I have come across. In a
database in which inconsistent data have been entered there is a
heuristic form of inference which allows probable inferences to be drawn
even those the underlying data is not totally consistent. This could be
useful for using corrupted data bases until they are properly fixed up.
David Schwartz
> David Schwartz wrote:
> > You'll eat those words when we have conclusive proof that time and
> > space are quantizied and prove finally that Zeno was right -- a priori.
> The day that happens I will gladly admit my error (being the pragmatist
> that I am. I never argue with what works). I probably will not live to
> see it, and you probably will not live to see it either. If, however,
> it happens sooner than that, pray do spread the good news. Of course if
> reality is grainy then one will have to explain why smeared out math
> works so well.
The same reason other approximations (like instantaneous action at a
distance) work so well.
> And if Zeno was right, it was purely by accident because like Aristotle,
> he didn't check either. The Greeks were arrogant that way. The believed
> a a good argument was sufficient to get to the truth. Not so. One cannot
> deduce reality a priori. You can only get it a posteriori. One has to
> look and then learn.
This is wrong for two reasons. First, it's not really a priori. All
reasoning begins with reality whether it intends to or not. Second, you
can get at reality that way, it's just extremely difficult. Reality
can't be anything other than what it is.
> On the basis of what we know today, we can safely say Zeno was full of
> shit, like most of the Greeks except Archimedes, Euclid and their
> friends at Alexandria. The mathematicians were the good guys. The
> philosophers, as usual, were the fools.
Except that Zeno realized something that even you don't realize. An
actual physical process cannot complete an actually infinite number of
steps and then go on to do something else. The actual is finite.
DS
Robert Kolker
David Schwartz wrote:
>
> Except that Zeno realized something that even you don't realize. An
> actual physical process cannot complete an actually infinite number of
We do it every second of every day. Wake up! Motion exists. Zeno was wrong.
> steps and then go on to do something else. The actual is finite.
Have it your way. As entities hop from discrete atom to discrete atom
they wink in and out of existence and never have any idea of it. Sounds
much like a good story. It is as good as a compact continuous space.
Given that continuous math works, there is no evidence whatsoever for a
smallest distance, I think it is safe to go on thinking that reality is
continuous and compact. At least until there is evidence to the
contrary. Besides which we will never generate enough energy to get
resolution down to Planck length, so the question is moot. How about an
atomic accelerator that is 10^18 times as big as any we have, because
that is what it would take to get down to plank length which is what?
about 10^-35 meters?
Bob Kolker
Peter Kinane
2115.5...@posting.google.com...
OK. Don't be surprised if it takes quite a while.
Cheers,
Peter Kinane
0...@attbi.com...
I'm unlikely to get deeply into it, so no need to indulge me further.
But I'll just post these few comments:
Part of the reason I asked about the "force 'through' each slit" and
"on what the "photon" is
acting (at the far side(s) of the slit)" was because 'of the
possibility' that the background was sending out force(s) which acted
on the photon or electron. That in effect, despite the experiment
presuming to study one electron at the time event, there may have been
jillions of 'energy', or waves, regardless - albeit provided,
compliments of nature, just waiting for action to effect form (of a
detectable type).
I guess this line of thought, if it has any potential, raises the
issues that the given environment is not so much a vacuum (in the
extreme degree 'required' here) as an equilibrium and that the
background is not very definitively bounded.
Peter Kinane
http://www.effectuationism.com/
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E67920...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> > "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> > news:3E66A8E8...@attbi.com...
> >
> >>
> >>Fred Weiss wrote:
> >>
> >>>Oops, I guess there goes logic, huh?
> >>
> >>You just picked a bad example.
> >
> >
> > I was being sarcastic. Are you actually suggesting there *does* go
logic?
>
> No. I was suggesting that the state of water example was not apropos to
> the point you were making. Logic is not going anywhere. It is here to
> stay. The principle of non-contradiction is the rock upon which all of
> our effective theories mathematical and scientific are built.
But non-contradiction holds only because of the Law of Identity, both of
which necessarily imply Excluded Middle (and vice versa).
But let's not equivocate. Excluded Middle does not mean that there aren't
probabilities - but probability is epistemological, not ontological. It
characterizes our state of knowledge (and certain logics or computer
programs, as you have pointed out, might appropriately utilize that fact).
But what exists either exists or...it doesn't. Our knowledge of it may be
inadequate, but that's a different issue. We pursue the additional knowledge
based on the axiomatic assumption that ....it is what it is ...and not
something else (and is therefore governed by discoverable laws, etc.)
Anything else is mysticism which I assume, whatever your disagreements with
Aristotelianism and Objectivism, you do not want to endorse or sanction - in
physics or anywhere. Am I right?
Fred Weiss
Ralph Hertle
I'll agree with the sentence of yours regarding that one of Zeno's
Paradoxes. I'll expand on that and add some more thoughts.
The several of Zeno's Paradoxes were not intended to be the end-all
conclusions or laws of nature. They were, in all probability, commonly
known open questions for students that were working for advanced
degrees, and the questions were probably answered orally or in writing
by the students taking the exams.
Once you must answer those questions, you really would have had to have
been well prepared. Immediate responses that were based on any of the
popular misconceptions of the scientific principles involved were
probably given low grades. One possible answer to the problem of halving
the remaining distance could possibly have been the derivation and proof
of a concept of number that required a descending series of fractional
powers of numbers that approach a finite limiting value, and prove it on
one or two sheets of paper. There were other possible geometrical,
scientific, or philosophical answers to the same problem, for example, a
proof of the concepts that would have to properly exist if the concept
of infinity was disproved, and those answers depended upon the selection
and creativity of the student.
Kantian Post Modernists tend to be wildly impulsive in trying to
demolish or deny their opponent or the opponent's arguments with too
intricate off topic verbal traces to other people's works, and they
would have never passed Zeno's course. They don't have a clue of what
the Ancient Greek geometers were thinking.
Even Aristotle took a shot at answering some of the questions, and he
chose not to give an entire book on the subjects that many students had
probably better answered. Instead, Aristotle answered some of the
questions that were more basic to the immediate questions, and that
related to the theories that he was himself working on.
Ralph Hertle
David Schwartz wrote:
[ text omitted ]
Only Zeno came anywhere near getting motion right. People today
still get it wrong, convinced that you can complete an infinite number
of things before breakfast *in* *physical* *reality*.
[ text omitted ]
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> But non-contradiction holds only because of the Law of Identity, both of
> which necessarily imply Excluded Middle (and vice versa).
Not so. There are logics in which the principle of non contradiction
holds and in which the law of the excluded middle does not. It is only
is a paricular system of logic that the two laws are equivalent. In
Intuitionistic logic (a certain kind of formal system) the law of the
excluded middle does not hold.
>
> But let's not equivocate. Excluded Middle does not mean that there aren't
> probabilities - but probability is epistemological, not ontological. It
> characterizes our state of knowledge (and certain logics or computer
> programs, as you have pointed out, might appropriately utilize that fact).
> But what exists either exists or...it doesn't. Our knowledge of it may be
> inadequate, but that's a different issue. We pursue the additional knowledge
> based on the axiomatic assumption that ....it is what it is ...and not
> something else (and is therefore governed by discoverable laws, etc.)
We assume exactly one law as a priori given. The law of
non-contradiction. We also assume every postulate of the theory is also
a theorem, that is from P infer P. In the logic of material implication,
which is not the only possible logic, this happens to be equivlent to
the law of the excluded middle. In Intuitionistic Logic and Modal Logic
which do not use material implication, the law of the excluded middle
does not follow from the self inference.
What we want is that one cannot derive as a theorem P & ~P. There is a
reason why we need this law. If it did not hold, then any old statment
could be derived as a theorem. A system of logic that asserts
everything, essentially asserts nothing. For a system of logic to be
reasonable there must be well formed statements that are not derivable
in the logic.
>
> Anything else is mysticism which I assume, whatever your disagreements with
> Aristotelianism and Objectivism, you do not want to endorse or sanction - in
> physics or anywhere. Am I right?
If by mysticism you mean inconsistency, yes. We require two things of a
scientific theory. 1. It is consistent and 2. All of its predictions
pertaining to the world are true. Which means none of its predictions
pretaining to the world are false. An inconsistent theory must be
discarded because it will imply everything, true or false. Totally
worthless. If by mysticism you mean meaningless things are asserted, we
surely wish to exclude such from a respectable theory. In any case, a
good scientific theory will make testable predictions about the world.
If it produces statements pertaining to the world which are in principle
not testable (therefore non falsiable) then such a theory is defective.
Now a theory that meets all the tough criteria given above may still be
defective. How? There may be true things about the world which are not
predicted. In this case the theory is incomplete. As of this writing,
all of our scientific theories are incomplete. We do not have at this
time and most likely we will never have a theory of literally everything
that predicts all facts.
Another thing you will notice is that there is no way to deduce the
world a priori. Scientific theories assume only one a priori, the law of
non contradiction. All other propositions of a scientific theory must be
verified a posteriori. All the true things about the world that a
scientific theory predicts are contingently true. They happen to be true
about the world we live in. That raises some interesting questions about
possible worlds. Is it possible to have a universe in which the speed of
light is not constant? It would seem so. If one assumes a non constant
speed of light (for example) one only contradicts a fact, but no
principle of logic is violated.
That is where Kant went off the rails (as did Plato, in his own way).
For him, it was not enough that something be true. He required that it
be -necessarily true-. For him, there is only one logically possible
world, the world we have. One of the interesting things to note is that
quantum theory allows for multiple worlds to exist, which is not the
same thing as saying multiple worlds -do- exist. There is an
interpretation of quantum theory (which I do not hold with) and that is
multiple worlds do indeed exist and the seeming randomness of quantum
events are the result of determinate multiple worlds interacting. As I
said, I do not hold with this, but it is a possible intepretation in the
sense that it does not contradict quantum theory.
The bottom line is that if the world is the way it is contingently, then
it is impossible to deduce the world a priori. To come up with working
theories one must look at the world and learn about it.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Ralph Hertle wrote:
> David:
>
> I'll agree with the sentence of yours regarding that one of Zeno's
> Paradoxes. I'll expand on that and add some more thoughts.
>
> The several of Zeno's Paradoxes were not intended to be the end-all
> conclusions or laws of nature. They were, in all probability, commonly
> known open questions for students that were working for advanced
> degrees, and the questions were probably answered orally or in writing
> by the students taking the exams.
Zeno's nonsense (it is nonsense you know, because motion happens all the
time) look like paradoxes because Zeno did not know any effective
mathematics. He lacked the ideas of limits and convergence. All of
Zeno's so called paradoxes have been resolved in terms of modern
mathematics (post 1850 when limits and convergence were finally defined
rigorously).
Can an arrow that is in only one place at one instance move? Yes. Fire
and arrow and see for yourself. How does one state the matter
mathematically? Define a continuous one valued functions from the unit
interval (that represents a finite time interval) into three dimensional
Euclidean space. Problem solved. At every instant of time the arrow is
somewhere and its continuous dynamic trajectory is the function. What
problem Zeno?
Can you cross the room. Of course you can. You go halfway, then half the
remaining disticne etc ad infinitum. The time required in each step is
half the time of the prior step (assuming constant velocity). Sum up the
times and you get a finite sum which is excatly the time required, given
the length of the room and the velocity. Zeno believed that if you added
an infinite set of numbers you would get an arbitrarily large number.
Not so. Like I said Zerno no nothing of the convergence of series.
The Greeks failed at two mathematical tasks. They never got the zero and
they never understood infinity. Not at all, so they denied infinity (all
except Archimedes).
Bob Kolker
David Schwartz
> Given that continuous math works, there is no evidence whatsoever for a
> smallest distance,
I didn't say there must be a smallest distance. I said that motion
can't be continuous, which is not the same thing as these two
possibilities do not exhaust the alternatives. As for evidence that
motion cannot be continuous, there is all the evidence we need, that a
physical process could actually complete an actually infinite number of
actual steps and then go on and do more is literally meaningless.
> I think it is safe to go on thinking that reality is
> continuous and compact.
Sure, it's a great model and should absolutely be used where it has
predictive validity. Just don't eat the recipe.
> At least until there is evidence to the
> contrary. Besides which we will never generate enough energy to get
> resolution down to Planck length, so the question is moot. How about an
> atomic accelerator that is 10^18 times as big as any we have, because
> that is what it would take to get down to plank length which is what?
> about 10^-35 meters?
If all you care about is predictive validity, then it is moot. But then
don't go arguing that motion "really is" continuous. Just say that
continuous motion is a very accurate model with predictive validity.
Any number of models that had tremendous predictive validity have been
shown to not tells us how things really are when the scale gets small
enough or big enough. You would have been the one arguing that the Earth
really is flat so long as that was the model with the most predictive
validity.
In fact, in 5,000 BC, you would have been the one arguing that the
Earth was held up by an infinite succession of objects. A turtle on the
back of a dragon on the back of a duck ...
You're not bothered by actually existent infinities so long as they have
predictive validity. And the infinite succession of creatures does have
predictive validity -- it predicts that the Earth won't fall, and it
doesn't.
DS
Robert Kolker
David Schwartz wrote:
>> If all you care about is predictive validity, then it is moot. But then
> don't go arguing that motion "really is" continuous. Just say that
> continuous motion is a very accurate model with predictive validity.
Correct.
Predictive ability is the figure of merit for any physical theory. If it
does not predict right, it is no good. That is why we -test- our
theories for correctness. All other things being equal, the theory that
relates seemingly different effects and processes under a few
principles, wins the beauty contest. Theories come and theories go but
Facts are forever. Beauty is only skin deep. It makes us feel comfy with
our models which is all that theories are. Models. Educated guesses.
What reality is -really- like when we cannot measure it, only God knows
and He is not telling us. We know something about the parts we can
measure and we guess the rest.
Bob Kolker
Gordon Sollars
> Not so. There are logics in which the principle of non contradiction
> holds and in which the law of the excluded middle does not. It is only
> is a paricular system of logic that the two laws are equivalent. In
> Intuitionistic logic (a certain kind of formal system) the law of the
> excluded middle does not hold.
Poor Fred. Now you are Brouwer-beating him.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Robert Kolker
Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
>
> Poor Fred. Now you are Brouwer-beating him.
What is this? An application of modus punnens?
Bob Kolker
>
Robert Kolker
Gordon Sollars wrote:
> Poor Fred. Now you are Brouwer-beating him.
I don't think he likes my Herbrand of humor. Doing logic is tough and
uncomfortable. Like slipping in and out of a Goedel.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
> Poor Fred. Now you are Brouwer-beating him.
And I thought I was being a modal citizen. I even went as far as running
inference for him.
Bob Kolker
Lon
@attbi.com>...
> Can an arrow that is in only one place at one instance move? Yes. Fire
> and arrow and see for yourself. How does one state the matter
> mathematically? Define a continuous one valued functions from the unit
> interval (that represents a finite time interval) into three dimensional
> Euclidean space. Problem solved. At every instant of time the arrow is
> somewhere and its continuous dynamic trajectory is the function. What
> problem Zeno?
>
Actually Zeno's arrow argument presupposes discontinuous space. Other
of his arguments were addressed to continuous space. This was a paradox
meant to rule discontinuous spaces. One problem is that the argument
presupposes continuous time. So the argument turns on these asymmetric
assumptions.
On whoevers speculation of why Zeno gave his paradoxes. He was
a student of Parmenides and was attempting to defend his view that
change is impossible.
Lon
>Bob Kolker
Gordon Sollars
>
> I don't think he likes my Herbrand of humor. Doing logic is tough and
> uncomfortable. Like slipping in and out of a Goedel.
Or like spending all day in A. Church.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Charles Novins
Gordon Sollars wrote:
Poor Fred. Now you are Brouwer-beating him.
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E680D...@attbi.com...
David Schwartz
> Predictive ability is the figure of merit for any physical theory. If it
> does not predict right, it is no good. That is why we -test- our
> theories for correctness. All other things being equal, the theory that
> relates seemingly different effects and processes under a few
> principles, wins the beauty contest. Theories come and theories go but
> Facts are forever. Beauty is only skin deep. It makes us feel comfy with
> our models which is all that theories are. Models. Educated guesses.
> What reality is -really- like when we cannot measure it, only God knows
> and He is not telling us. We know something about the parts we can
> measure and we guess the rest.
But philosophy has the ability to tell us what reality is really like.
This is the difference between science and philosophy. Sadly, no
everything is within the scope of philosophy.
DS
HPO JURY = Malenor
<ralph....@verizon.net> wrote:
>David:
[...]
>Kantian Post Modernists tend to be wildly impulsive in trying to
>demolish or deny their opponent or the opponent's arguments with too
>intricate off topic verbal traces to other people's works, and they
>would have never passed Zeno's course. They don't have a clue of what
>the Ancient Greek geometers were thinking.
Name a Post Modernist who claims to be a Kantian.
Ralph Hertle
Name a Kantian, Pragmatist, or Post Modernist who either is, or claims
to be, sure about any fact, method, or knowledge whatsoever. Their basic
claims are that reason and knowledge are ineffective if not impossible.
Their claims are ultimately based on social agreement and political
authority, all of which claims are never certain at any time, place,
circumstance, or context.
My understanding is that Post Modernism is a derivative of Pragmatism,
and that is based on Kant's theories, and which in turn, are ultimately
based on Platonism. There is a rat's maze of links and exceptions, I am
sure, however, I understand that the main points of these philosophies
are common to one another.
The Aristotelian tradition and Objectivist philosophical approach
differs from all their main points, e.g., meta., epist., esth, ethics,
pol, logic, world view, and more.
Ralph Hertle
Robert Kolker
David Schwartz wrote:
> But philosophy has the ability to tell us what reality is really like.
The hell it does. Look at the historical track record of philosophy vis
a vis real honest to god science and you will see it is a miserable
failure. [*][**] Where the philosophers were right they were unoriginal
and where they were original they were almost always wrong. Do you know
why? Because philosophers do not experiment. That is why.
The -best- philosophy can do for us is help us articulate what we
-think- reality is like.
Philosophy is mostly a waste of time[***]. It does not produce valid
physical theories[****], and it does not produce mousetraps. It is both
a theoretical and practical waste of time.
Bob Kolker
[*] Major exception. I. Kant, of all people, guessed at the same
planetary forming nebular hypothesis as did LaPlace.
[**] Not one ancient philosopher got motion right. None of them got the
solar system right. Kepler, who was an astraloger made the break through
and Newton who was an alchemist and fiddled with biblical codes invented
modern physics. Galileo did his bit. He was a musician and a school
teacher. He invented experimentation in the modern sense. None of them
were philosophers in the way Plato and Aristotle were.
[***] Major exceptions. The fields of logic, semantics and semiotics. In
these areas philosophy has proved at least semi-useful.
[****] Rudolph Carnap tried to reduce physics to an excercise in
symbolic logic, like any stalwart Logical Positivist. He failed. Physics
is one area in which philosophers have failed to produce anything useful
Robert Kolker
Ralph Hertle wrote:
> and that is based on Kant's theories, and which in turn, are ultimately
> based on Platonism. There is a rat's maze of links and exceptions, I am
Do not knock Platonism too hard. Just about every mathematician who ever
lived is a closet Platonist. They really think their abstractions exist
in an ideal way. They have to. How hard would a mathematician work if
all he thought he did was to manipulate the neural patterns of his brain?
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Lon wrote:
> On whoevers speculation of why Zeno gave his paradoxes. He was
> a student of Parmenides and was attempting to defend his view that
> change is impossible.
Meanwhile he grew older and changed his underwear. Was it all a dream?
Do you wonder that I have a low opinion of philosphers?
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Lon wrote:
>
> Actually Zeno's arrow argument presupposes discontinuous space.
This approach has its own problems. It would make reality like a
blinking light display (remember how the words would run around the old
New York Times building display?). Between points or blinks, where would
entities be? No where I guess. That would mean the world is re-created
at every discrete instant. How is permanence possible?
Others have tried this Zenoic approach. Read -A New Kind of Science- by
Wolfram. Now matter how you dress it up, it does not make sense and
there is no evidence to support this approach in any case.
Bob Kolker
Charles Novins
> [***] Major exceptions. The fields of logic, semantics and semiotics. In
these areas philosophy has proved at least semi-useful.
CHARLES NOVINS:
I see, apart from logic, philosophy has been of little use.
Since the excluded middle is obviously bullshit, I say we just dump logic
altogether. Let science march on without logic!
Robert Kolker
How long did it take you to think of that one? Come Kleene now. If you
want to say Post it on this NG. If you just want to go Turing around,
the heck with you, for you will not Curry any favors here.
Bob Kolker
>
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E67D708...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> >
> > But non-contradiction holds only because of the Law of Identity, both of
> > which necessarily imply Excluded Middle (and vice versa).
>
> Not so.
Really? So if I said it was in fact "so", what would you say? It's either
"so" or "not so". Right?
I've asked you before: do you know what a stolen concept is?
>There are logics ...
There either are....or there aren't. Right?
> We assume exactly one law as a priori given. The law of
> non-contradiction.
First of all it is not "a priori", but that aside, what does that law state:
that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.
Why is that? Because a thing is itself and it cannot be something else at
the same time and in the same respect. If it could then the Law of
Non-Contradiction wouldn't hold. So the Law of Non-Contradiction presupposes
the Law of Identity. Those laws imply necessarily that something either is
the case or it isn't the case, either a fact or not a fact, and it cannot be
both at the same time and in the same respect, that it cannot be one thing
and at the same time be another thing.
If you recall, when Objectivists argue for "contextual certainty" everyone
gets into an uproar because they perceive it as *a violation of the Law of
Excluded Middle*. It is not. The criticism confuses the epistemological with
the ontological, but if it were the case that it violated it, then the
criticism would be valid and the theory false.
>... We require two things of a
> scientific theory. 1. It is consistent and 2. All of its predictions
> pertaining to the world are true. Which means none of its predictions
> pretaining to the world are false. An inconsistent theory must be
> discarded because it will imply everything, true or false.
...and it can only be....one or the other.
> Now a theory that meets all the tough criteria given above may still be
> ... incomplete. As of this writing, all of our scientific theories are
incomplete. We do not
> have at this time and most likely we will never have a theory of literally
everything
> that predicts all facts.
Not "most likely". It never will. That would presuppose omniscience. So you
are correct. But you seem to be implying that this contradicts the Law of
Excluded Middle. It does not. That would be confusing the epistemological
and ontological - something which in fact you do often confuse. As in the
statement below:
> The bottom line is that if the world is the way it is contingently, then
> it is impossible to deduce the world a priori. To come up with working
> theories one must look at the world and learn about it.
>
> Bob Kolker
This is a rather blatant conflation of the epistemological with the
ontological - which I might add is a philosophical, not a scientific,
question. I mention that only because of your recent rant against philosophy
(incidentally, you constantly steal that concept, also, i.e. deny it at the
same time you use it, i.e. reject philosophical pronoucements while at the
same time making them - the denial of philosophy is a ....philosophy).
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> news:3E67D708...@attbi.com...
>
>>
>>Fred Weiss wrote:
>>
>>>But non-contradiction holds only because of the Law of Identity, both of
>>>which necessarily imply Excluded Middle (and vice versa).
>>
>>Not so.
>
>
> Really? So if I said it was in fact "so", what would you say? It's either
> "so" or "not so". Right?
>
> I've asked you before: do you know what a stolen concept is?
But I do know of a logic where non contradiction holds (cant derive
P&~P) but where the law of the excluded middle does not hold. Brouer's
System.
Now what will it take to convince you that the law of the excluded
middle does not follow from the law of non contradiction in every
logical system?
In systems using material implication i.e. where p -> q means the same
thing as ~p v q it does follow. But not all logical systems use material
implication.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> But non-contradiction holds only because of the Law of Identity, both of
> which necessarily imply Excluded Middle (and vice versa).
Not true in some formal logical systems.
Do you know about non Euclidian Geometry? If you can cope with non
Euclidean Geometry what is troubling you about non exclusionary logic.
And what do you do with a system of logic that has no negation? There
are such systems. The definition of consistency in those system is:
there exist a valid formula not derivable from the postulates. The
unfelicitous characteristic of inconsistent systems is the everything
thing is derivable (I am excluding paraconsistent logics from this
discusion).
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Charles Novins wrote:
>
> Since the excluded middle is obviously bullshit, I say we just dump logic
Only in the domain of strict constructionism. Standard math uses
classical logic and the Axiom of Choice.
> altogether. Let science march on without logic!
I am almost with you on that. Two cheers for Reductionism.
Bob Kolker
Gordon Sollars
>
>
> Gordon Sollars wrote:
> > Poor Fred. Now you are Brouwer-beating him.
>
> How long did it take you to think of that one? Come Kleene now. If you
Suppes I tell you - no, that would be too Pat. Perhaps a small clue - a
Hintikka - would be better.
No, I ain't Quine a do it.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Robert Kolker
Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
> No, I ain't Quine a do it.
>
Hey dude! Why did you apply the Cut Rule to my quote?
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E68A330...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> > "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> > news:3E67D708...@attbi.com...
> >
> >>
> >>Fred Weiss wrote:
> >>
> >>>But non-contradiction holds only because of the Law of Identity, both
of
> >>>which necessarily imply Excluded Middle (and vice versa).
> >>
> >>Not so.
> >
> >
> > Really? So if I said it was in fact "so", what would you say? It's
either
> > "so" or "not so". Right?
> >
> > I've asked you before: do you know what a stolen concept is?
>
> But I do know of a logic where non contradiction holds (cant derive
> P&~P) but where the law of the excluded middle does not hold. Brouer's
> System.
>
> Now what will it take to convince you that the law of the excluded
> middle does not follow from the law of non contradiction in every
> logical system?
The issue isn't whether it does or doesn't apply in every "logical system".
It is whether it applies to the *real world* or not. Brouwer's system as I
understand it was purely for the purpose of solving certain mathematical
problems (just as "fuzzy logic" has apparently been found useful in some
computer programs).
So what it will take to convince me is you delivering up something in the
real world which both is and isn't at the same time and in the same
respect - and to do so without equivocation. Let me emphasize the issue is
*the real world*, not the state of our knowledge of it.
The reason why I emphasize the real world in this instance is because
obviously not everything in the realm of our knowledge is either flat-out
true or false. There is a great deal of which we are uncertain in varying
degrees. If there are some "logics" which help us deal with this, e.g.
probabilities, in some areas of knowledge or technology, I have nothing
against it. But that has nothing to do with reality and in fact, since they
implicitly deal with the limitations of our knowledge, they are implicitly
assuming and presupposing that - so if you once again attempt to deny it you
will once again be stealing concepts as you have been from the start of this
discussion and as you necessarily will for now and eternity.
Fred Weiss
Tom Clarke
> "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> news:3E67D708...@attbi.com...
> > We assume exactly one law as a priori given. The law of
> > non-contradiction.
> First of all it is not "a priori", but that aside, what does that law state:
> that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.
> Why is that? Because a thing is itself and it cannot be something else at
> the same time and in the same respect.
You say the law holds because the law holds. This is circular.
> If it could then the Law of
> Non-Contradiction wouldn't hold.
But I think the key to your error in saying that the law of
non-contradiction and quantum mechanics is in the word "be".
You are assuming that at the quantum level particles exist in the same
way that you observe that keys of your keyboard exist. You do not observe
any of the keys in front of you to be both "U" and ":" at the same time.
But a photon can be both in the state of going through slit A and going
through slit B at the same time, although it is not observed directly.
Of course to make it all consistent, if you check, you will find that
the particle goes through only one of A or B but then the interference
pattern is destroyed.
You might think of the situation as being sort of like if you pressed
"U" and ":" and got the U with an umlaut over it, but nevertheless
if you look to see which key you pressed first you find the result on
the screen is either "U" or ":" but not the umlauted U. But if you
don't pay attention to which was first you get the U with the umlaut.
Strange, but non-contradictory. Not even a problem for identity.
Part of the "U" keys identity is that it produced a U-umlaut in conjuction
with ":" in addition to producing "U" when pressed alone.
> So the Law of Non-Contradiction presupposes
> the Law of Identity.
I don't see how this follows at all. Physics has found that things like
superpositions of electron, muon and tau neutrinos really do exist. If they
didn't exist then the flux of neutrinos from the sun should be three
times higher than it is implying that the sun is not producing enough
energy in its core and will soon collapse.
> Those laws imply necessarily that something either is
> the case or it isn't the case, either a fact or not a fact, and it cannot be
> both at the same time and in the same respect, that it cannot be one thing
> and at the same time be another thing.
The odd things comes in that when you measure or detect the
particle it will be found to be an electron neutrino, a muon neutrino,
or a tau neutrino.
This might sound like support for an earlier statement you made that
the issue is epistemological not ontological. But for the neutrinos,
only electron neutrinos are produced in the sun and on the way to
earth they mix into the superposition of the three types accouting
for missing electron neutrinos detected at earth.
Measure at sun=all electron
Measure at earth = superposition of electron/muon/tau
How can this be epistemological?
> If you recall, when Objectivists argue for "contextual certainty" everyone
> gets into an uproar because they perceive it as *a violation of the Law of
> Excluded Middle*. It is not. The criticism confuses the epistemological with
> the ontological, but if it were the case that it violated it, then the
> criticism would be valid and the theory false.
Claiming epistemology is a way out for "contextual certainty",
but physics doesn't have that option int he case of neutrinos.
[Aside: I started lookin in on hpo a few years ago because I thought
a philosophy names "objectivism" might know something about how
to address the interpretation of QM. I found it generally didn't but
the debates were often interesting.
Now I'm wondering again. If the "law of identity" as interpreted
by Objectivism applies epistemologically but not ontologically, does
this help with QM interpretation problem?]
.......
> > The bottom line is that if the world is the way it is contingently, then
> > it is impossible to deduce the world a priori. To come up with working
> > theories one must look at the world and learn about it.
> This is a rather blatant conflation of the epistemological with the
> ontological - which I might add is a philosophical, not a scientific,
> question.
Which is philosophical? The conflation or the epistemological or
the ontological?
> I mention that only because of your recent rant against philosophy
> (incidentally, you constantly steal that concept, also, i.e. deny it at the
> same time you use it, i.e. reject philosophical pronoucements while at the
> same time making them - the denial of philosophy is a ....philosophy).
Aside to Robert. Don't reject all philosophy.
The most wildly successful branch of philosophy, Natural Philosophy,
has come to be called Science.
Tom Clarke
HPO JURY = Malenor
<ralph....@verizon.net> wrote:
>Malenor:
>
>Name a Kantian, Pragmatist, or Post Modernist who either is, or claims
>to be, sure about any fact, method, or knowledge whatsoever. Their basic
>claims are that reason and knowledge are ineffective if not impossible.
They have their different ideas about reason. A true skeptic is a
philosophical rarity. On the other side, there is the faith, held not
only by Rand but Leibniz among others, that the universe is completely
knowable. In between these two dogmatic poles are various degrees of
what can be known and what can't which philosophers bicker over. To
say that reason is limited is at least to point to something that we
can know, obviating any true skepticism on the face of it.
>Their claims are ultimately based on social agreement and political
>authority, all of which claims are never certain at any time, place,
>circumstance, or context.
That is a Modernist approach. Kant was interested in the eternal to
the extent that it was actualizable through the temporal. Nothing
there about politics or society.
>My understanding is that Post Modernism is a derivative of Pragmatism,
>and that is based on Kant's theories, and which in turn, are ultimately
>based on Platonism. There is a rat's maze of links and exceptions, I am
>sure, however, I understand that the main points of these philosophies
>are common to one another.
>The Aristotelian tradition and Objectivist philosophical approach
>differs from all their main points, e.g., meta., epist., esth, ethics,
>pol, logic, world view, and more.
In other words, Plato leads to Kant, which leads to Pragmatism, which
leads to its dead-end in Post-modernism. This intellectual genealogy
is too general, too vague, therefore obscure. But Kant never rejected
Aristotle, he utilized his logic and his categories. Kant was highly
critical of Plato, moreso than he was critical of Aristotle. The
20th-century intellectual scene was rife with anti-Kantianism. He was
almost every intellectual's favorite whipping-boy, and his books were
burned by dictators. I have never seen an instance where a dictator
invoked Kantianism in order to justify his reign, and Hitler, a great
proponent of "duty," was an extreme anti-Kantian.
My conclusion is that such dictators understood something about Kant
that has not been grasped by Rand and her Randroids. A collectivist
would look down upon Kant's notion of "duty" (which was not Kant's
term anyway) as overly individualistic, placing too much emphasis on
individual conscience, individual thought. And of course Kant's
clarion call for political freedom would be abhorrent to him.
Of course the Objectivist argument is that Kant was inconsistent in
his Critiques. But I have studied them and where there may be an
inconsistency it is not at any deep part of the architectonic. The
only inconsistency I can think of is the one concerning the
subjectivity versus objectivity of sensation, a dichotomy of
judgments, where he took one position in the CPR and the opposite
position in the CJ. In the latter work he eliminated this dichotomy
completely in order to solve the problem of how aesthetic judgments
become universal demands, thus objectifying them.
But the alleged inconsistency claimed by Objectivism concerning Kant's
Critical period was demolished by Susan Neiman in her work "The Unity
of Reason":
"A constitutive version of the idea of the Unconditioned would lead to
a political quietism that Kant is committed to avoid. The assertion
that the world is ordered according to divine purposes would result in
an acquiescence to the present state of [political] reality and a
limitation of human freedom, most cogently expressed by Leibniz: 'If
we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should
find that it is impossible to make it better than it is.' "
Thus Leibniz requires that, in order to have knowledge, man must have
knowledge of the Unconditioned, that is, that which lies outside the
knowable universe -- leading to a passive view of human nature as a
product of forces which are already perfected. Kant takes the opposite
perspective in order to thoroughly commit himself to the possibility
of human, political freedom. The tie between the metaphysics and the
politics is made.
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> The issue isn't whether it does or doesn't apply in every "logical system".
> It is whether it applies to the *real world* or not.
Logic is about judgements or assertions. Logic is the
science/art/discipline of valid inferences. Formal systems of logic
expose the underlying skeleton of forms and rules. Formal statements can
be mapped or associated to actual statements, some of which may be
statements about the world. The only constraint upon a formal system is
that a false statement shall not be inferred from one or more true
statements, where false and true refer to the quality of statements vis
a vis the world. This is a restatement of the law of non contradiction.
Logic does not and never has applied directly to the world, but only
what is asserted about the world by sentients beings such as we are,
capable of saying something about the world.
If there were no conscious sentient beings in the world, there would be
no logic but the world would keep on grinding away.
> Brouwer's system as I
> understand it was purely for the purpose of solving certain mathematical
> problems (just as "fuzzy logic" has apparently been found useful in some
> computer programs).
>
> So what it will take to convince me is you delivering up something in the
> real world which both is and isn't at the same time and in the same
> respect - and to do so without equivocation. Let me emphasize the issue is
> *the real world*, not the state of our knowledge of it.
There are no negations in the real world. (Remember, Nothing is not
another kind of Something). Negation is something that sentients do,
using their brains. Negations apply to assertions/
judgments/propositions. They do not apply to facts. Facts are by their
nature atomic and positive. Facts are, plain and simple. Statements
purporting to assert facts or combinations of facts are succeptable to
negation and other logical operations.
Let me make an analogy. Addition is something one does to numbers. One
does not add apples or oranges. One adds the cardinal number of sets of
these things. One apple plus one apple does not add in the real world.
It takes sentients like us to do the adding. The poor apples just exist
(unless we make applesauce or eat them).
Likewise, logical operations such as negation, conjunction, disjunction
and so forth are performed on assertions/statements/propositions/etc..
Logic pertains to meaningful utterances (when the logic is instantiated
as a model of something) not to things themselves. Of course,
propostions may become objects to a higher order or metatheory. Thus, a
metatheory is a theory about a theory or classes of theories.
>
> The reason why I emphasize the real world in this instance is because
> obviously not everything in the realm of our knowledge is either flat-out
> true or false.
The real world is what it is regardless of what we say or do not say
about it. Nothing we say about the real world can change its underlying
state or nature. But we can regulate and restrict what we say about the
world so that we do not end up by saying nonsensical things or
contradictiory. things. Or worse trying to take actions based on nonsense.
The error Objectivists make is to assume logic is about the world
directly. It is not. It is about the world indirectly through the
assertions we make about the world.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Tom Clarke wrote:
>> Aside to Robert. Don't reject all philosophy.
> The most wildly successful branch of philosophy, Natural Philosophy,
> has come to be called Science.
It changed its name and went into the Protection Program. Protection
from nonsense that is. Since the figure of merit for a science is that
its predictions are supported by experiment or observation (or at least
not contradicted by such), science has departed from its gaseous and
flatulent forebear, metaphysics.
Bob Kolker
David Schwartz
Logic is a model of reason, to be used when it's effective and when it
applies.
DS
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E68E31B...@attbi.com...
> The real world is what it is regardless of what we say or do not say
> about it. Nothing we say about the real world can change its underlying
> state or nature. But we can regulate and restrict what we say about the
> world so that we do not end up by saying nonsensical things or
> contradictiory. things. Or worse trying to take actions based on
nonsense.
>
> The error Objectivists make is to assume logic is about the world
> directly. It is not. It is about the world indirectly through the
> assertions we make about the world.
Well of course - or close to that. But if you think "Objectivists" are in
error on this you are not grasping what I'm saying. Logic is about making
our statements in accord with the world. We don't want our statements to be
contradictory because *contradictions cannot exist*. If contradictions could
exist what difference would it make if our statements were or weren't -
however such a state as that is obviously and necessarily an impossibility.
The reason this is so is because of the Law of Identity - a thing is itself.
So, that being the case, assuming a statement/assertion isn't nonsense, it
is either true or false. It is either in accord with the world or it isn't.
And that's because that's the way the world is. Our knowledge may be
uncertain. It might be the case that "maybe" given the state of our
knowledge but *nothing actually exists 'maybe'*. It either exists or it
doesn't. The precise nature of its existence may be unknown by us or we may
be uncertain about it. But what in fact it is....it is....and not something
else (at the same time and in the same respect). Nothing is a "maybe" or a
"sorta" or a "kinda". Those are descriptions of our state of knowledge and
it is rank primacy of consciousness to impute these states of our knowledge
to the world. You of all people should know that. And that applies to
quantum physics - as much as to anything else. If it didn't apply to quantum
physics then it wouldn't be science, it would be voodoo. You're the one
giving (gratuitous) speeches about the virtues of science. Well, is it
science - or is it voodoo?
That someone has dreamed up "logics" which serve some useful purpose in
mathematics or computer programming has nothing whatever to do with this. It
doesn't change the way the world is. It would be like saying since there is
something called "Chaos Theory", which I'll assume has some validity, that
therefore the world is chaotic. Do you think the world is - actually -
chaotic?
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
> That someone has dreamed up "logics" which serve some useful purpose in
> mathematics or computer programming has nothing whatever to do with this. It
> doesn't change the way the world is. It would be like saying since there is
> something called "Chaos Theory", which I'll assume has some validity, that
> therefore the world is chaotic. Do you think the world is - actually -
> chaotic?
In this sense. A conscious being who can only calculate with a finite
number of decimal places cannot make long term predictions about results
from initial conditions known to only a finite number of places. Chaos
implies unpredictablity, even where the underlying processes are
determinate. Meanwhile the world goes on doing what it does and does not
worry about how many decimal places can be held at once. The world has
all the decimal places it needs, if it could need anything.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> The reason this is so is because of the Law of Identity - a thing is itself.
How do you reconcile this statement with changing things. In short, how
do you deal with Heraklitus?
Bob Kolker
Lon
@attbi.com>...
To a degree you miss the point. It is not that Zeno advocated
discontinuous space. He knew that opponents of Parmenides were
divided into the believers in continuous space, and the believers
in discontintuous space. So quite properly he designed arguments
against each. The arrow argument happens to be against discontinuos
space, while Achilles and the Turtle is against continuous space.
Of ocurse this says nothing about the quality of the arguments
themself. You seem to be endorsing his criticism of the discontinuous
space, so you are with him on half of his paradoxes.
Your conviction that space must be continuous seems to be more
philosophic than physical, so to answer your question from the
other post, I am not quite clear why you have such problems with
philosophers. Physicists often wind up with views closer to
the ancients than philosophers.
Lon
Robert Kolker
Lon wrote:
> To a degree you miss the point. It is not that Zeno advocated
> discontinuous space. He knew that opponents of Parmenides were
> divided into the believers in continuous space, and the believers
> in discontintuous space. So quite properly he designed arguments
> against each. The arrow argument happens to be against discontinuos
> space, while Achilles and the Turtle is against continuous space.
A and T argument is a failure as it can be reconciled continuously using
limits and convergence. Zeno looses, the modern mathematicians win.
> Of ocurse this says nothing about the quality of the arguments
> themself. You seem to be endorsing his criticism of the discontinuous
> space, so you are with him on half of his paradoxes.
> Your conviction that space must be continuous seems to be more
> philosophic than physical,
It is pragmatic. A continous model of reality produces results supported
by experiment. End of story. I am interested in What Works, not what
sounds smart or nice.
> so to answer your question from the
> other post, I am not quite clear why you have such problems with
> philosophers. Physicists often wind up with views closer to
> the ancients than philosophers.
No they don't. They check their conclusions. Name two ancient Greek
philosophers who ever did that.
Bob Kolker
Don Watkins III
>> The reason this is so is because of the Law of Identity - a thing is
>itself.
Bob Kolker writes:
>How do you reconcile this statement with changing things. In short, how
>do you deal with Heraklitus?
Change is simply A becoming B because of C.
In other words, it's something with identity being affected by something else
with identity and becoming something else with identity.
Don Watkins
http://www.don-watkins.com
http://donwatkins.blogspot.com
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E690045...@attbi.com...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> > That someone has dreamed up "logics" which serve some useful purpose in
> > mathematics or computer programming has nothing whatever to do with
this. It
> > doesn't change the way the world is. It would be like saying since there
is
> > something called "Chaos Theory", which I'll assume has some validity,
that
> > therefore the world is chaotic. Do you think the world is - actually -
> > chaotic?
>
> In this sense. A conscious being who can only calculate with a finite
> number of decimal places cannot make long term predictions about results
> from initial conditions known to only a finite number of places. Chaos
> implies unpredictablity, even where the underlying processes are
> determinate.
Well, you've just answered the question. Regardless of the limitations of
our knowledge, "the underlying processes are determinate". It is just that
the processes are so incredibly complex it will be at the very least a long,
long time requiring major advances of technology (super, super computers)
before we could fully grasp them. It is not that the world itself is
chaotic.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E690167...@attbi.com...
Don't equivocate.
I distinctly remember you answering this yourself some time ago. Am I not
remembering correctly? Didn't you correctly say that you can't step in the
"same" river twice when viewed as its discrete elements but you can when
viewed from its boundaries, i.e. there is an equivocation of "same".
There's also the cute answer.
Heraclitus: "You can't step into the same river twice"
Cute Answer: What river?
Fred Weiss
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> Well, you've just answered the question. Regardless of the limitations of
> our knowledge, "the underlying processes are determinate". It is just that
> the processes are so incredibly complex it will be at the very least a long,
> long time requiring major advances of technology (super, super computers)
> before we could fully grasp them. It is not that the world itself is
> chaotic.
Supercomputers will not help. The predictions for chaotic processes go
to hell very quickly. That is why we will never have long range weather
forecasts. As to determinate processes, the subatomic processes of
radiation are probably truly indeterminate. Why is it thought so?
Because if there were determining factors (so called "hidden variables")
a set of inequalities discovered by J.S. Bell would hold. But
-experiment- shows these inequalities are violated. The conclusion then
is that reality is neither determinate nor local. All of the evidence
seems to point this way at the subatomic level. The sterling success of
quantum theory gives further credence to the proposition that reality at
the sub atomic level is not determinate. Which does NOT mean that things
happen willy nilly. On the contrary the odds associated with outcomes of
observations are very well known and are superlatively supported by
expermental evidence.
That statistics associated with fermions (i.e. particles with spin
having multiples of 1/2) are so accurate that the periodic table of
elements is predicted with uncanny accuracy. If Mendele'ev had quantum
theory he could have filled out the entire periodic table of elements
single handed. He did excellently well with purely empirical data, but
using the Pauli exclusion principle one can get the electron
arrangements of all elements right on the button and predict most of
their properties. It is truly amazaing.
Strangely enough, quantum theory is NOT chaotic. The evolution of
quantum states is described by the Schroedinger equation and quantum
statest are linear. Chaotic processes (like turbulence and weather) are
associated with very non-linear processes, which even if determinate
cannot be predicted over long time horizones accurately. And that is why
the best weather forecasts go out maybe a week to ten days tops. Chaos
is a nonlinear dependence on initial conditions.
Bob Kolker
Robert Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> I distinctly remember you answering this yourself some time ago. Am I not
> remembering correctly? Didn't you correctly say that you can't step in the
> "same" river twice when viewed as its discrete elements but you can when
> viewed from its boundaries, i.e. there is an equivocation of "same".
There is even a deeper principle which includes this as a trivial
example. One of the central theorems of field theory is a theorem by
Emmy Noether which says that a group of transformations which leave a
Langrangian (that is a special functions which describes physical
action) invariant imply the existence of a quantity that is held
constant by elements of the transformation group.
What this means in broader terms is that transformations, changes,
symmetries that leave physical laws invariant (their form remains the
same under transformation) imply there exists quanties which do not
change under these transformations. So within a very general condition,
change and constancy go hand in hand. You might even say they are dual
to each other. The existence of conserved quantities imply groups of
transformations (changes) that leave physical law intact and conversely.
So there is no contradiction between constancy and change. You just have
to know what changes and what is constant for things to make sense. The
late Robert Nozick has written a book dedicated to this theme entitled
-Invariance-.
Bottom line: the seeming contradiction between change and constancy is
illusary. There is no contradiction. And yes, the river does exist. The
molecules of water may change from second to second but the shape and
flows remain the same.
Bob Kolker
HPO JURY = Malenor
<bobk...@attbi.com> wrote:
>Ralph Hertle wrote:
>> and that is based on Kant's theories, and which in turn, are ultimately
>> based on Platonism. There is a rat's maze of links and exceptions, I am
>Do not knock Platonism too hard. Just about every mathematician who ever
>lived is a closet Platonist. They really think their abstractions exist
>in an ideal way. They have to. How hard would a mathematician work if
>all he thought he did was to manipulate the neural patterns of his brain?
That's a very interesting, and agreeable, statement. In fact,
neo-Platonism was far more responsible for the Renaissance than
Aristotelianism. Aristotle's theory of motion and scientific method
had to be rejected even for science to begin. But it was an
interesting statement coming from a materialist such as yourself.
Arnold
>
> The error Objectivists make is to assume logic is about
the world
> directly. It is not. It is about the world indirectly
through the
> assertions we make about the world.
Directly, true. So just how much does it have to do with
real world indirectly? What is the point of logic without
relevance to what exists? Surely logic is a system of
mental processing that must in the end have some relevance
to the world we live in. Two and Two may be dealing with
abstracts, but those abstracts tell us that two apples plus
two apples is four apples. _Real_ apples.
--
Arnold
Fred Weiss
"Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3E694369...@attbi.com...
>...we will never have long range weather forecasts.
I'll remind you of that in 100 years.
Did you happen to notice the announcement today that some researchers have
just again broken the "Internet speed record"? Apparently they have
developed a way to speed up transmissions so that you could download two DVD
movies in a minute. I didn't know this but apparently they've been doubling
Internet speeds every year since 1984. So if that continues in about 20
years I imagine that downloading two movies in a minute won't sound like
much, not when we'll be able to download in the same time every movie ever
made in any language.
>... The sterling success of
> quantum theory gives further credence to the proposition that reality at
> the sub atomic level is not determinate. Which does NOT mean that things
> happen willy nilly. On the contrary the odds associated with outcomes of
> observations are very well known and are superlatively supported by
> expermental evidence.
>
> That statistics associated with fermions (i.e. particles with spin
> having multiples of 1/2) are so accurate that the periodic table of
> elements is predicted with uncanny accuracy. .....<etc>
You do have this fondness for contradicting yourself. I wonder if, like
empathy, Acorn thinks it's in your genes (he's another one with a fondness
for it), though I can't offhand think of why evolution would have selected
for that trait. Can you?
Fred Weiss