Historical contingency and the futility of reductionism

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Philip Thrift

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Jul 22, 2019, 5:44:21 AM7/22/19
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Why chemistry (and biology) is not physics



Partly why I'm a materialist, not a physicalist.

But this has implications for arithmetical reality (?).

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Cosmin Visan

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Jul 22, 2019, 6:46:25 AM7/22/19
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I think you make the old age confusion between epistemology and ontology.

Philip Thrift

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Jul 22, 2019, 9:26:17 AM7/22/19
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On Monday, July 22, 2019 at 5:46:25 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
I think you make the old age confusion between epistemology and ontology.

Can anything be known without a brain knowing it?

@philipthrift 

Bruno Marchal

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Jul 22, 2019, 9:31:35 AM7/22/19
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If Chemistry is not physics, it would mean that ours substitution level would be in between QM and chemistry (something slightly more complex to be sure, but it is a reasonable approximation).

Now, I am not convinced by the paper above that chemistry is not reducible to quantum mechanics, especially that chemistry count the most successful application of quantum mechanics.

I have no definite ideas on all this. The paper might confuse []p and []p & p, like 99,9998% of materialist thinkers here.

Bruno



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Bruno Marchal

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Jul 22, 2019, 10:09:08 AM7/22/19
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A brain cannot know anything, I would say.

Only a (first) person can know, and a brain can make a person manifesting itself, and its knowledge, relatively to you, but eventually, the brains that we can observe, like any piece of matter,  is better described as a map of the local histories you can access with great probabilities relative probabilities. Indeed, that is similar to the electronic orbitals, which describes the map of where the electron(s) can be found if you decide to measure their positions.

Bruno


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Philip Thrift

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Jul 22, 2019, 1:36:06 PM7/22/19
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On Monday, July 22, 2019 at 8:31:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 22 Jul 2019, at 11:44, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



Why chemistry (and biology) is not physics



Partly why I'm a materialist, not a physicalist.

But this has implications for arithmetical reality (?).

If Chemistry is not physics, it would mean that ours substitution level would be in between QM and chemistry (something slightly more complex to be sure, but it is a reasonable approximation).

Now, I am not convinced by the paper above that chemistry is not reducible to quantum mechanics, especially that chemistry count the most successful application of quantum mechanics.

I have no definite ideas on all this. The paper might confuse []p and []p & p, like 99,9998% of materialist thinkers here.

Bruno



It is a kind of a faith some have that chemistry from atoms to big organic molecules (if that is the right "spectrum" of chemical materials) can be reduced to physics. There is certainly a camp in the theoretical chemistry community that don't think it can.


There is also the list of unsolved problems in chemistry:


And then one gets to even "higher" chemistry like RNA and DNA at the "boundary" with biology.

The demarcations of physics, chemistry, biology are human made fictions of course.

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spudb...@aol.com

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Jul 22, 2019, 4:33:33 PM7/22/19
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I would say that physics is diff from inorganic chemistry and biological science, in the sense that how academics observe and measure phenomena. Its a Venn diagram in which the circles or ovals align one on top of the other, maybe off-center here and there, but the same thing. 


Bruno Marchal

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Jul 24, 2019, 5:55:11 AM7/24/19
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The demarcation between oneself  and (Löbian) number in general is a universal machine common fiction, yes.

To invoke unsolved problem to make the metaphysics more complex is not valid. It is the obscurantist move, or the filling-holes with God strategy (the “bouche-trou” conception of God).

Bruno




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Bruno Marchal

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Jul 24, 2019, 5:59:35 AM7/24/19
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On 22 Jul 2019, at 22:33, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I would say that physics is diff from inorganic chemistry and biological science, in the sense that how academics observe and measure phenomena. Its a Venn diagram in which the circles or ovals align one on top of the other, maybe off-center here and there, but the same thing. 

Biology is certainly different from physics, but that does not mean that terrestrial biology is not conceptually reducible to physics.

Like with mechanism, physics remains different from arithmetic and computer science, but is conceptually reducible to or explained by, arithmetic.

It is important to distinguish the ontology (what we assume at the start, and which is eventually shown *necessary* to assume), and the phenomenologies derived in the ontology, which does not introduce any new assumptions (only definitions).

Bruno



Philip Thrift

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Jul 24, 2019, 6:17:57 AM7/24/19
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On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 4:59:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Biology is certainly different from physics, but that does not mean that terrestrial biology is not conceptually reducible to physics.

Like with mechanism, physics remains different from arithmetic and computer science, but is conceptually reducible to or explained by, arithmetic.

It is important to distinguish the ontology (what we assume at the start, and which is eventually shown *necessary* to assume), and the phenomenologies derived in the ontology, which does not introduce any new assumptions (only definitions).

Bruno



Does "conceptually reducible" mean anything? It means nothing to me.

Start with the Standard Model in Lagrangian language:


Can one compile or translate the theories of biology into this? If so, it could be made explicit.

@philipthrift

 

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 24, 2019, 6:54:24 AM7/24/19
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"Brain" is just an idea in consciousness. If your question is "Can anything be known without a consciousness knowing it?", then again, consciousness can only know itself.

spudb...@aol.com

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Jul 24, 2019, 4:11:10 PM7/24/19
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I bet that biology is reducible to physics and the belief, since that is what it is, a belief, is one reason we have missed the boat on the life sciences apparently. We still can' (won't) bring basic physical elements and from this create organisms. My suspicion that since the days or Urey, scientists have backed off why this is not so. Unless we invoke the elan vitale? :-D 


Bruno Marchal

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Jul 25, 2019, 7:54:54 AM7/25/19
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On 24 Jul 2019, at 12:17, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 4:59:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Biology is certainly different from physics, but that does not mean that terrestrial biology is not conceptually reducible to physics.

Like with mechanism, physics remains different from arithmetic and computer science, but is conceptually reducible to or explained by, arithmetic.

It is important to distinguish the ontology (what we assume at the start, and which is eventually shown *necessary* to assume), and the phenomenologies derived in the ontology, which does not introduce any new assumptions (only definitions).

Bruno



Does "conceptually reducible" mean anything? It means nothing to me.

A theory T1, which intended domain discourse D1 is reduced to a theory T2, with domain D2, if T2 interpret D1 in D2, and proves the corresponding theorem of T1.

Basically, this means that T2 is not needed to be assumed, as T1 do the right task. Then if T1 is simpler than T2, there is again, especially if T2 looks like contradicting T1.




Start with the Standard Model in Lagrangian language:


Can one compile or translate the theories of biology into this? If so, it could be made explicit.

You need only the part on the electromagnetic interaction (photon/electron/nucleus). Chemistry is *the* big success of quantum physics. Quantum filed theory go beyond, as it explains also the internal structure of the nuclei, which does not pay a big role in biochemistry, except for the mass and gravitation which is still unsolved. 

To use Alain Connes explicit Lagrangian here, would like trying to do a coffee using string theory. Possible in theory; but not in practice.

Similarly, Mechanism explains (up to now, and until refutation) why there is consciousness and where the apparence of a physical reality comes from, in a constructive way (leading to difficult problem in pure arithmetic/mathematical logic).

Bruno




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Bruno Marchal

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Jul 25, 2019, 8:01:50 AM7/25/19
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On 24 Jul 2019, at 22:11, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I bet that biology is reducible to physics

OK. Reasonable bet in the absence of string evidence to the contrary.


and the belief, since that is what it is, a belief, is one reason we have missed the boat on the life sciences apparently. We still can' (won't) bring basic physical elements and from this create organisms. My suspicion that since the days or Urey, scientists have backed off why this is not so. Unless we invoke the elan vitale? :-D 

The élan vitale, of course, does not add anything to “we are ignorant”, and is the usual reification of ignorance done when theology felt in the trap, and is used to prevent research.

What people seems to miss is that Mechanism explains consciousness, entirely, in the sense that it explains the discourse by the machine on “consciousness” (that only thing that they know for sure), and it explains why consciousness is mysterious, and has to felt that way (and why consciousness existence is incompatible with mechanism+materialism, even in their weakest forms).

I think scientist have been able to build a virus from scratch, some years ago.

A bacteria is just far beyond current days technology. Even a complex protein is beyond our technology.

Bruno



Philip Thrift

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Jul 25, 2019, 3:55:40 PM7/25/19
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On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 7:01:50 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

A bacteria is just far beyond current days technology. Even a complex protein is beyond our technology.

Bruno

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Cosmin Visan

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Jul 26, 2019, 6:06:11 AM7/26/19
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Quite a strong belief you have within you, young padawan.
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