A good representation of what? You keep saying things like "inadequate" or "not a good representation". Some measurements are adequate for some purposes and inadequate for other purposes. You can't just raw say it's inadequate, it can only be inadequate in relation to some goal. — flannel jesus

I mean "a good representation" of what actually happened, as i said, the goal is truth, in the sense of correspondence.

Now it's not like you gave me a specific goal and I said "all we need to do is measure the location at these points in time". — flannel jesus

I gave the goal, truth. That's why Eric got sidetracked and started talking about correspondence theory of truth.

In fact measuring them at those points in time was YOUR suggestion, not mine. Don't tell me it's inadequate - tell yourself. — flannel jesus

No, I'm telling you it's inadequate. I specifically requested those points in time to demonstrate to you, the inadequacy of your technique. Of course you would not suggest those points, because that time period, the time when acceleration starts, cannot be adequately represented by your technique. And this is a very real problem for high energy physics. I'm starting to think, that just like I was fully acquainted with your measuring technique, of using averages, you were actually fully aware of the problem I am talking about. And, like tim, you simply want to ignore it, and deny that it is a problem.

So now you intentionally avoid that specified time period saying, 'that's not my problem, it's your problem, because I have no interest in that time period. My averaging method serves my purpose, and I do not care if it doesn't serve yours. So keep your problem to yourself, and don't try to make your problem my problem.' But I'm not saying it's your problem or mine, I'm saying it's a problem with the technique. It's the technique's problem.

Infinite divisibility a convenient fiction in calculus... — tim wood

I see, I need to say no more on this issue, you've stated my case for me.

He supposes (reasonably for him we may suppose) there is an interval of time so short that within it the arrow is not moving. — tim wood

This is a misrepresentation. He is not talking about a short interval of time, he is talking about a point in time. I mean, you can say that you do not believe that there is such a thing as points in time, therefore this assumption is wrong, but the problem is that we always use, and refer to, points in time when making any temporal measurements, as the start and end points of the measured period. The start point divides time into prior and posterior, such that there is no duration within that point.

And so far I do not think I have written anything you do not know perfectly well, or disagree with. — tim wood

As stated I disagree with your representation of Zeno's arrow paradox. He is very clearly talking about points in time, not infinitesimal intervals of time. And, your statement, that there is no such thing as a point in time, does not negate the fact that we use points in time for all of our measurements of time. So, you might insist that points in time are not real, they are "a convenient fiction", but as the premise for temporal measurements, you are then insisting that all temporal measurements are unsound conclusions.

Suppose objects are moving relative to each other. And, we can describe the spatial relations between objects. Would you not agree that any specific spatial relations would only exist at "a point" in time? The objects are moving, so any interval of time would not provide determinate relations. So the reason for the assumption of points in time is to provide for "truth" in spatial relations of moving objects. Without these points there is no such truth. Now, not only are temporal measurements unsound, but spatial measurements as well.

But that aided by keeping in mind that all the rules, laws, theories, and mathematics just attempts at representations of the world itself (-as-it-is-in-itself) expressed in terms of what people can understand. — tim wood

OK, so if you believe that mathematics attempts at representations of the world, and you also apprehend that calculus is based in "a convenient fiction, then it ought to be a no-brainer for you to see the deficiencies of calculus which I am pointing to. Simply put, it fails to do what mathematics "attempts" to do, in your words, give us a representation of the world. It just gives us a convenient fiction.

Why would it fail to give a good representation? The only problem with our high speed camera data for this moment in time is that it has limited resolution, so we wouldn't necessarily be able to see how it starts moving at that moment in time (I've been rounding previous measurements of distance to 2 decimal places to sort of mimick the problem of camera resolution). — flannel jesus

The camera takes two shots, one at -.1s, and one at +.1 seconds. You produce the average, the speed for that time period, but this is obviously not a good representation. In reality the thing is moving in half that time period, and not moving in the other half. Furthermore, in the half that it is moving, it's average speed must be twice as fast as what your average says for that time period. I think that's a very significant, and in some applications, potentially a very important difference. If we add to this, the fact that by the special theory of relativity simultaneity is relative, there is the potential for even more significant inaccuracy, and uncertainty.

Is calculus used to solve problems? — tim wood

Yes

And just what are the problems of Zeno's paradoxes? — tim wood

Try Wikipedia.

Achilleus gets where he's going, and faster than the tortoise. The arrow flies through the air and so forth. — tim wood

Not according to the logic applied to the premises. That's why the term "paradox" is used.

As to the arguments themselves. they all involve some faulty assumption. — tim wood

Yes, they are faulty assumptions about the continuity of space and time, which are still held. You are on the right track here. Do you see that these same faulty assumptions are still held today? Next, can you apprehend that improved mathematical axioms will not resolve the the problems created by these faulty assumptions. No matter how good the logic, false premises will always leave the conclusions unsound.

So the issue is that space and time are understood as infinitely divisible continuums, or one continuum, and so division of them, or it, may be completely arbitrary. This does not correspond with reality, hence Zeno's paradoxes. The proposed solution was "infinitesimals", but these were arbitrary, and therefore still not consistent with reality. Calculus bring "infinite" right into the mathematics, and this is a form of indefiniteness, hence uncertainty.

I was not any good at calculus, but I think calculus is what you are talking about. So question to you, MU: do you buy calculus? Or is that flawed and misleading? — tim wood

As I said, I think calculus is very useful in very many situations. However, its usefulness has limitations. and when it is employed beyond these limitations it is misleading. This I believe is the case in modern high energy physics, it is employed beyond its limits. And, I believe It is misleading because people like you will argue that the problem which has not been resolved, the problem I referred to in the exchanges between Newton, Leibniz, and Berkeley, has actually been resolved.

This is why calculus is misleading, it has produced a very acceptable work-around for the problems first exposed as Zeno's paradoxes, which is very useful in a wide range of practises. However, since it does not actually resolve the problems of Zeno's paradoxes, these problems reappear, as the uncertainty principle for example, when we reach the limits of its applicability. If one insists that the problems have been resolved, then the true nature of the uncertainty principle will not be understood.

you're asking the right questions, except instead of saying "let's look at the data and check if the acceleration is going up and down wildly" you're just saying "oh well we can't know for sure so I give up, there's nothing left to discover."

Don't give up so quick, we have a lot of data from the camera. I mean, if you WANT to remain ignorant of the pattern of how things fall by gravity, then by all means give up here. But the rest of the world is operating on many centuries worth of physics past the point that you give up. — flannel jesus

I'm not ready to give up. However, I'm already fully aware of the process you are laying out, and completely understand and respect its usefulness. Therefore I am bored and ready to move on. I can tell you however, that there is a point in time when we can know for sure that the acceleration is going up wildly, and that is at the 'zero point' in time, when motion starts.

So I will ask you now, are you fully aware and respectful of the problem that I am talking about? If so, then lets move directly to that specific problem and address it directly. In your example, there is a 'zero point' in time, the time when motion is supposed to have begun. So let's bring this zero point into your numerical expressions, and produce a "slice in time" which is the period between -.1s and +.1s. Do you agree that the averaging technique will not give a good representation of this time period? If you agree, then how do you propose that we deal with this period of time?

I didn't give this bit the attention it deserves. You said "the fact that the assumption of "constant acceleration" is adequate and useful at low rates of acceleration" - that's wonderful! If you agree that it's useful and adequate enough at low rates of acceleration, then you've accepted the only thing I really wanted you to. Gravity accelerates things at 9m/s/s, on planet earth, at least for the low rates of acceleration that we measured. — flannel jesus

The problem though is that we have no way to measure the rate of gravitational acceleration at the precise moment that a thing starts to fall, and it actually may be completely different from your calculated rate.

You go on to talk about other instances of acceleration that aren't directly caused by gravity, which I think it's fair to say is beside the point. The conversation is about how gravity accelerates things, not about how your leg muscles accelerate your own body. — flannel jesus

No, I started the conversation, as a discussion about the problem of measuring acceleration in general, that's why I referred a number of times to the effects of this problem on quantum mechanics, as the uncertainty principle. It was Eric I believe, who started talking about gravity as a specific example of acceleration, and then you. But that was brought up as an example of acceleration. It appears like you just do not want to look at the problem I mentioned.

Precisely. And the purpose of the 10 million different measuring apparatuses (apparati?) is to measure velocity. So QED we are measuring velocity. And so the statement is true per CToT. We are not dealing with your metaphysical notions of truth or falsity here. And of course it is not 10 million. Duh. — EricH

My spell check did not like "apparati". Anyway, I apprehend a slight mistake here. "The purpose of the measuring apparatus is to measure velocity" is true by coherency theory of truth, not by CToT. This is the categorical separation I referred to, and to mix them up is known as a category mistake. To state the "purpose of x is..." is to make a statement which is true or false by a stated definition, not by correspondence.

Acceleration does not cause anything. No wonder you are confused. Acceleration is a change in the velocity of an object. An object can undergo acceleration by being acted on by a force (F = ma) or by being affected by the curvature of spacetime. — EricH

I might agree to this, but you are just drawing us further away from the possibility of any truth by CToT. If acceleration is not considered to be the cause of change in velocity, being the intermediary between the prior motion and the posterior motion, and instead is just a calculated change in motion, then there is nothing real in the world which "acceleration" refers to. We can see the same issue with "energy", we can say that the word refers to something real in the world, or we can say that it's just something calculated according to a formula. You seem to be choosing the latter, which denies the possibility of correspondence truth in this subject.

No matter how finely we chop up time - or how many different ways we chop up time - we get the same results. So this is a true statement:
The velocity of our object is increasing by 9.8 m/s every second within the limits of accuracy of our measuring devices.
Again, we are using CToT, not your metaphysical notions of truth. — EricH

This is not truth by correspondence theory, it is true by coherence theory. The velocity determined is correct by the method of calculation, but this does not necessarily correspond to anything real.

So far in my analysis, I've just looked at a couple slices in time and calculated the average velocity for that slice. — flannel jesus

You are calculating the acceleration. That is the subject being discussed. The average velocity from a slice in time cannot be used in your calculation without the assumption that the acceleration in that slice is constant. Suppose that within that slice of time, the velocity varied greatly, perhaps even up and down. Then your average is completely useless as an indication of the real acceleration which is occurring. Therefore the technique is unreliable from the outset. It is only useful under the assumption of constancy.

You are the one going to fast, trying to sneak past the problem with using averages. There is no need to go any further than this, you need to look at the problem of averaging, and accept it. As you yourself explicitly stated, we cannot assume that the motion represented by the average is in any sense constant. That would be a serious logical flaw. Therefore any further extrapolations will not be able to prove anything about the acceleration within any of those slices in time, because it will be hidden by the averaging process. Do you agree with this?

So, do you agree that it is very possible that the rate of change to the speed of the thing (acceleration/deceleration) is extremely unstable within the small parts of those "slices in time"? Furthermore, since any such averaging requires a duration in time, and any duration can be broken down into shorter time periods, this problem inheres within the nature of that technique. The problem is intrinsic to the technique and is unavoidable. So it is impossible that the technique can give us a reliable representation of acceleration. And in our world of high energy practices, the most important and significant accelerations occur in very short slices of time, and this is where that technique of averaging becomes extremely inadequate.

It seems like you have a philosophical problem with measuring things and coming to any conclusion at all based on those measurements. That's not a problem for me. Perhaps this is why science doesn't speak to you, and you don't speak to science.

Science is a little messy. Measurements are a little messy. I don't have a problem with that. That's just the reality we have to deal with. If you struggle with that, perhaps that's why your idea of physics is centuries behind everyone else. — flannel jesus

I work in a field where the better the measurement is, the better the job is. So I've learned that it is always a good idea to keep looking for, and finding, new ways to clean up the bad habits of messy measurements.

Well you can't rule it out, but it is reasonable to say that all 10 million can't be broken in exactly the same way. — EricH

Unless each speedometer measures the velocity in a different way, it's very likely that they would all be inaccurate in the same way. For instance, if the car had the wrong size tires on. But for the sake of argument, let's say that each speedometer used a different technique to show the speed. Do you agree that if they each worked as intended, it's highly unlikely that they would ever all show the exact same thing, unless perhaps that might occur if the car was parked, and there was no wind, and the earth stopped spinning? !0 million different ways to measure the speed would take some serious innovations.

And I don't see the relevance of your long winded post.

However, per the CToT there is a true statement here:

"Within the accuracy of our measuring apparatus the car is moving 60 mph relative to it's outside environment". — EricH

I don't see why I'm supposed to agree to this. All measurements are fundamentally subjective, and so measuring apparatuses apply principles which are somewhat arbitrary, therefore statements about "the accuracy of our measuring apparatus" are not truth-apt. As I mentioned already, measurement principles are pragmatic, they are designed for specific purposes. So the accuracy of the measuring apparatus is always suited to the purpose it is designed for, and it is judged by its usefulness not for truth or falsity.

It's a measurement of its position at two points in time, and a calculation of it's average velocity between those two points in time. Of course it's inadequate for a job it's not meant for, and a job it's not doing. — flannel jesus

A calculation of average velocity is inadequate for producing a measurement of acceleration, and this is the "job" we are discussing and "the job it is meant for" in your example. Do you not agree?

If you determine an average speed around one second and an average speed around another second, you can ascertain how much it accelerated or decelerated between those seconds, which is what I did. — flannel jesus

That requires the assumption of "constant" acceleration which is a careless logical flaw, in your own words. And in reality, in real physical circumstances the evidence shows that acceleration is never constant in that way because of conflicting forces, like air resistance. The claim that acceleration in a vacuum is constant is completely unproven because of this faulty way of calculating it, which already assumes that it is (begs the question).

If at second one it was going X m/s, on average given the surrounding .2s, and at second two it was going Y m/s, on average given the surrounding .2s, then between 1s and 2s it must have accelerated or decelerated a certain amount. And we could even verify that by looking at some .2s intervals between 1s and 2s. We have the data from the high speed camera, we can just look you know. 1.1s - 1.3s, what was the average velocity? 1.3-1.5, 1.5-1.7, 1.7-1.9. We can just do the same process and look. — flannel jesus

Now you are taking a number of averages, each one having the problem I described, and making a further average, so you now amplify the problem

I agree that for many practical purposes the use of averages is completely acceptable. But this is not what we are discussing. We are discussing whether this use of averages provides a truthful representation, and if not, then what problems arise from trying to use it where it is inadequate.

So, the high speed cameral has limitations, and when we get to situations with things accelerating at an extremely rapid rate, in an extremely short period of time, as in the case of high energy physics, the high speed camera is inadequate. And, the fact that the assumption of "constant acceleration" is adequate and useful at low rates of acceleration where a small error is insignificant, is not proof that it would be adequate for high rates of acceleration where the small error would be greatly amplified.

You're trying to go too fast. You can go slow. We have the data from a high speed camera, we can take our time analysing it. You don't need to have a "perfect representation of everything immediately", which is what you seem to want. Just take it slow. — flannel jesus

Listen jesus, I am a natural living body, and I accelerate in an extremely unpredictable way. That's a feature of living bodies. Now, you can tell me to slow down, take it slow, but if I'm already accelerated, then it too late to prevent that acceleration which has already occurred.

This is very indicative of your attitude toward the problem of acceleration. You seem to believe that we can take measurements of the body in motion, and make averages of that motion, and say that this constitutes a measurement of the cause of that motion (acceleration). But the acceleration itself, which is the cause of the body's motion has already occurred by the time the body is moving.

So you refuse to even get close to the problem I originally brought up. The highest rate of acceleration occurs at the point in time when the body changes from being at rest to being in motion, the point when it starts to move. Do you agree, that this point in time, when motion starts, marks the highest rate of acceleration? But you cannot show this with your averaging method.

I took it slow and just built up a couple facts. — flannel jesus

Your supposed "facts" are averages, and averages are a form of estimation, which is inadequate for a rigorous, accurate, or precise measurement. So when you assume that an average is a fact, you need to account for the fact of what an average is. An average is a generalization produced from a number of instances of occurrence, which does not say anything true about any particular instance. "Truth" concerning generalizations is categorically different from "truth" concerning particular things or events.

Inadequate compared to what? — flannel jesus

It's inadequate as a representation of what is actually going on. So it is inadequate in comparison to what a true representation of what is actually going on would provide. "Average" is simply not an accurate or rigorous representation of what is the case. When it is used as a representation of what is the case, it is a sort of estimation. In your own words, it is "approximate".

Consider that to "average" is to take many times, and express it as one time, that one time being the average of the many. So for example, if the sun rises between 6;00 and 6:30 for twenty days in a row, and you take the average, it would be 6:15. The you would say that the average over all those days is 6:15. But obviously, averaging is a completely inaccurate way of trying to represent what is actually going on. Now, in your .2 duration of time, there are numerous different points of time, each of which has the thing moving at a different speed from the others, and you come up with one speed which, 9.8m/s, which is supposed to apply to all those points of time. Just like in the example of the different sunrise time, giving the same value to numerous different times, as the average of those times, is obviously extremely inaccurate.

I don't see why it's inadequate, it achieved the exact goal that I wanted it for. I now have the average speed for the .2 seconds timeframe around the 1 second mark, the 2 seconds mark, etc. That's what I wanted, that's what I got. It's perfectly adequate for achieving the goal I was hoping to achieve. — flannel jesus

It may be what you wanted, but it's useless as a means to resolving the problem I'm trying to bring to your attention. You now have a period of time, .2 seconds duration, with an average speed of 9.8 m/s during that period of time. How do you think that a determination of an average speed is at all useful toward representing acceleration?

Remember what you said to me "constant" is "a careless logical flaw". Therefore we cannot assume that the acceleration during this time period is in any way constant, because that would be a careless logical flaw. So how do you think that determining an average speed over a period of time would be at all useful toward making an accurate representation of the acceleration which occurred during that time frame?

Everyone else who has been involved in this discussions understands that the ball is accelerating continuously in the scenario under consideration. — wonderer1

This use of "continuously" is more accurately stated as "constantly", and that is what flannel has described as "a careless logical flaw".

One step at a time. Do you acknowledge that "The readout on my speedometer shows 60 mph" is a true statement per the CToT? — EricH

Sure, if that's what's there on the screen, then I agree, that's a true representation. The issue is one of interpretation though. Your claim was that this readout means that according to the speedometer the car is going 60mph. But that is not what that readout actually means, it's a faulty interpretation of what the readout means.

MU apparently disqualifies naming. We cannot name anything because we do not know what it is. — tim wood

Tim, we do not need to know what a thing is in order to name it. Just point to a thing, and assign a word, or words to it. Then the thing has a name even though there might be no one who knows what it is.

Third, if MU is right, nothing can be said about anything - and MU, if he had any intellectual integrity, would content himself with just pointing, and otherwise remain silent. — tim wood

Of course this is wrong too. After naming the thing we can say whatever we want about it, compare it to other things that have also been named, and so on. None of this requires knowing what the thing is. We do all sorts of talking about things without knowing what they are, that's how we learn. If we had to know everything before we could say anything, how could one every get to that state of being able to say anything?

we'll say this

"The digital readout on the speedometer shows 60 mph" — EricH

This says nothing about the problem we're discussing.

You haven't pointed out any logical flaws. You've made careless logical leaps that I've pointed out, and you haven't accepted the logical flaws in what you said .

Do you accept that leaping to "constant speed" was a careless logical flaw? — flannel jesus

Sure. "constant speed" was a bad use of terms, But "approximate", and "average" do not imply that the speed was anything other than constant. You have provided no representation of the movement of the object during that time period. This is the problem, you have no indication of what the object was actually doing during that time period, no representation of 'the movement of the object'. You have provided two different positions at two different times, and the object was said to be moving as it past each position, that's all Now you insist that "constant} is not a proper representation of the object's speed during that time, but you have provided no representation of a non-constant motion.

That is what I say is the problem, there is no representation of a non-constant speed. Newtonian mechanics takes constant speed (uniform motion) for granted, in his first law. A change to constant speed requires an application of force. But because uniform motion is taken for granted, the application of force cannot be properly understood. It is just represented as a change to uniform motion.

So. let's proceed as you suggest, and consider that "constant speed", or "uniform motion" is a careless logical principle. It does not actually represent anything real in the universe. It's just an ideal, and real motions are always changing all the time, so that this ideal is not a proper representation of any real motion.

Now look what you gave me.

So we find out that in that 0.2s time frame, it travelled about 1.96m, which means it was going about 9.8m/s. — flannel jesus

You provide two different positions and the thing was moving as it passed each position, and you've provided a time of passing, that's all Now you insist that "constant speed" is inappropriate for the duration. That's fine, as explained above, constant speed is just an ideal, and motion is really changing all the time. But all you have is "it was going about 9.8m/s" during that time period:. This indicates one speed during that entire time period, and we agree that "constant speed" is an inadequate representation. Do you not also agree with me, that "going about 9.8m/s" is a completely inadequate representation of what is actually going on in that time period?

No, it really doesn't. If you know the location of something at 1s, and the location of the same thing at 2s, you made the logical leap of assuming that means it had a constant speed over that duration, rather than the much more carefully thought out concept that you have the AVERAGE speed over that duration. You're making careless logical leaps and then acting as if you've disproven physics. — flannel jesus

As you said already, that "AVERAGE speed" is just an approximation. It does not accurately represent the motion of the thing over that period of time, because during that period of time the thing was accelerating. That is exactly what I am arguing, we do not have an accurate representation of acceleration. To represent a thing's average speed in the time between 1s and 2s, is not a good representation of acceleration.

It doesn't matter what problem you think there is with the example, if the measurements are real measurements that real people really obtained. These are, in fact, the sort of realistic measurements one could make to verify how the speed of a falling ball changes over time — flannel jesus

Sure, they are "real measurements, but the fact remains, that representing a thing's average speed over a period of time, does not provide a good representation of acceleration.

I'd only be interested in examining the implications with you on the condition that you accept the measurements as real raw data. — flannel jesus

I accept that these measurements can be made. But as I said, the problem is with the mathematical way of calculating. So the real question is, are you ready to accept the flaws which I have pointed out. It seems to me, like you just want to try to explain them away, by choosing different words. First you used "approximate", then when I showed you the problem with approximation, you then switched to "average".. It really makes no difference which words you choose, because the problem is very real, and you cannot make it go away by using different words to describe it.

This is not the Correspondence Theory of Truth - you have introduced the metaphysical concept of truth into the mix. If you and I are traveling in a car together and the digital display shows that the car is going 60 mph and I utter the statement "The car is going 60 mph according to the speedometer". then that is a true statement. And if you are in the back seat looking over my shoulder and say "The speedometer shows that the car is going 60 mph". then we have a mutual shared understanding and agree.

Whether the speedometer is accurate or not is irrelevant to whether the statement is true or false. — EricH

I disagree. If the speedometer is faulty, then the car is not going 60mph according to the speedometer. The speedometer is incapable of determining the speed of the car, therefore the reading does not accord with the speed and there is no such thing as 'the speed of the car "according to the speedometer". Your use of words is just trickery Eric. Face the fact, when the speedometer is broken there is no such thing as the speed of the car according to the speedometer.

I get it. No two things are ever the same. Nothing is ever measured exactly, nor can it be. But if I want to buy a pallet of 8' 2x4s per spec., I will get them, "rigorous and exact" per specification. And will it then be true to say they are 8' 2x4s, and will they truly be 8' 2x4s? Of course they will. And you may come in and say, "Oh no, they're not the same and there is no way to tell if they're even 8' 2x4s: this one is three one-millionths of an inch longer than that one, and that one,...& etc." — tim wood

Measurement of static objects is not the same as measurements of motions, so your example is not analogous, as the problem I was discussing, the issue of acceleration, does not occur. As for the 2x4s being "the same", they are clearly not the same in any rigorous application of the law of identity. They are similar, as things of "the same type" are similar.

And you will insist that you are correct, and I hold there are three responses to you. First, that you're wrong. By the applicable criteria, they are 8' 2x4s, period. Second, that you are in a very narrow sense correct, but uselessly so. With the lumber, for example, your argument is just a pig-in-the-parlor, the wrong animal in the wrong place at the wrong time. Third you are vacuously correct, in that if you insist on one inappropriate standard, then all are equally valid. Then you are headfirst down a rabbit-hole trying to say something, anything, intelligible and correct, but you have made that either empty or impossible. — tim wood

Here you contradict yourself. You say I am "vacuously" correct, and you say I am "uselessly" correct, Also you say I am "wrong". Your claim that I am wrong is not justified though. That "they are 8' 2x4s, period" means that they are all the same type, just like we are all human beings. It does not mean that they are all the same. Do you not understand the difference between being of the same type, and being the same thing?

And, the fact that you judge my correctness as unimportant or insignificant, is irrelevant to the fact that I am correct. You, like flannel jesus, simply refuse to respect the evidence which demonstrates that this problem in specific circumstances, has a significant effect on certainty. And as points out, certainty is very important to us.

You sure are, and you seem proud of it. That's your right, of course. Science doesn't speak to you, and you don't speak to it. I would say it's unfortunate that you would just remove all scientific knowledge from being a viable part of your own knowledge, but you seem happy enough with the decision. — flannel jesus

Hey, you gave me the example, as "evidence", and I showed complete respect for that evidence. The I showed you the problem, which you dismissed as a matter of approximation. That approximation becomes a significant problem under specific circumstances. So it's not me who is rejecting the evidence, it is you who is rejecting the evidence. You gave me the example, I showed you the problem within your example.

If you are interested in continuing, and examining the implications of this problem we could. Tim, above, seems to think that identifying such problems is useless, "vacuous", but as I said earlier, this very problem produces the Fourier uncertainty which forms the base of "the uncertainty principle". So denying that there is a problem, is really a denial of the evidence, and claiming that the problem is insignificant is a refusal to accept the evidence.

If you choose to reject all evidence you could see, then you will of course always have that deficiency. — flannel jesus

I don't see how this is relevant. I am not rejecting any visible evidence, I am describing deficiencies of mathematical logic.

And this would be you, MU, — tim wood

Completely false representation. Strawman.

Perhaps you imagine your truths in carved adamantine mounted on polished-granite Doric columns in a Platonic space somewhere, and being thus inaccessible, dismiss truth as not having any world-function value, being itself Platonic. And so this is not a horse, that is not a chair, nor that a tree, but all these, and all else, just poor imitations such that no truth appertains to them. Well guess what, you're just plain wrong and wrong-headed, and the proof and evidence is all the world's work that gets done using all kinds of truths. If you disagree, then how does all the world's work get done if absent truth? — tim wood

Sorry tim, I have no idea how this nonsense is in any way relevant. I've already explained how pragmatic principles are not necessarily truths. So your question has already been answered.

I said APPROXIMATE speed. — flannel jesus

I think you've stated my case for me very well, flannel. "Approximate" with respect to a representation means near, or close to what is actually the case. This does not imply truth, but the contrary, it implies a lack, or deficiency of truth. So the fact of the matter is that we just do not have an accurate, precise, or truthful representation of what acceleration actually is. And that is exactly the deficiency which I've been claiming.

And here, thinks that this sort of approximation process provides for a "rigorous foundation". Rigorous: "strictly exact or accurate". I apprehend an implied contradiction between "approximate" and "rigorous".

Can you give an example of a statement involving the mathematical measurement of some physical property of an object that you would consider to be a true statement - per the correspondence theory of truth? — EricH

No, that's what Ive been arguing, we really do not know the true physical properties of objects. I think that's what the experimentation with Bell's theorem, discussed earlier in this thread, indicated.

This seems like you're still overthinking it. You're focusing so much on abstract mathematics and not enough on concrete measurements. Galileo didn't discover acceleration due to gravity via abstract mathematics, he measured it. If you can't imagine measurements, then let me do the imagining for you. I don't believe it's particular challenging. — flannel jesus

I think that this is a misrepresentation, and this is why were having difficulty coming to agreement here. We cannot directly measure acceleration, nor can we even directly measure velocity. Determinations of these require a multitude of measurements, with an application of mathematical principles, such as averaging. Because this process of averaging is a requirement for any determination of acceleration, these determinations are not properly called "measurements" but are better represented as logical conclusions, i.e. conclusions derived from the application of logical principles to some premises. The premises might be called measurements.

So, we start out by asking, how fast was it falling approximately at 1s? We look at our high speed footage and we measure is position at 0.9s and 1.1s. We find the positions are 3.97 and 5.93 respectively (measured in meters from the starting point). So we find out that in that 0.2s time frame, it travelled about 1.96m, which means it was going about 9.8m/s. — flannel jesus

According to what I expalined above, you have taken two measurements, the position at .9s and the position at 1.1s, applied some logic, and concluded the object was moving at 9.8m/s in the duration. Of course, if the object was actually accelerating during this time period, this is not a true representation. If the object was accelerating, its velocity was different at .9s from what it was at 1.1s. But your method concludes that the object was going at the same speed for the entire .2s period, and this is contradictory to the premise that the object is accelerating. So it's very clear to me that this method of averaging does not give a true representation, regardless of assertions that it does.

So we get all our results together, and quickly notice that every time a second passes, the cube seems to be traveling 9.8m/s faster than it was traveling the previous second.

Why are these sorts of measurements, and this sort of experiment, unimaginable to you? Are they still unimaginable to you now? — flannel jesus

Well, look what you have shown me. Between .9s and and 1.1s the object was moving at a constant speed. Then it accelerated between 1.1s and 1.9s. Then between 1.9s and 2.2s it moved at a constant speed again. And so on. How is this imaginable to you? It implies that the force (gravity) acted to accelerate the object over a period of time, then it quit acting on the object for a period of time (between .9s and 1,1s) when its velocity remained constant, then it acted again, then the force quit acting again, etc.. How is this imaginable to you? Why would the force stop and start acting in complete coincidence with the timing of your measurements, when the timing of your measurements is completely arbitrary?

But you are dismissive of the map because it is not the territory, and that is an unseemly and unaccountable (on rational terms) error for someone like yourself. — tim wood

No, I am dismissive of the map because it is misleading, as I clearly explain above, in this post. And, a misleading map gets people lost.

As with the 2+2=4, you say that the 2+2 does not represent the same thing as 4, and of course it exactly represents the same thing as 4. — tim wood

I disagree that "2+2" represents the exact same thing as "4", and you're very naive to believe this. I've explained why, elsewhere. If it did represent the exact same thing, equations would be completely useless. The left side of the "=" would necessarily represent the exact same thing as the right side, and the equation would do absolutely nothing for us. But of course, that's not how we use equations in practise, the left side always represents something different from the right side, and in working out why the two distinct things are equivalent we solve a problem.

And I refute this thus: When they are doing something, are they doing that thing, or are they doing something else? If you had read a little more closely, you would have seen that Socrates did indeed find people who knew what they were doing, but not wise, because they, knowing something, thought that they knew more that they did, thus knowing something, but not wise. That is, the Oracle had told Socrates that he was the wisest, and Socrates had to discover that wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. — tim wood

Sorry, I do not follow your claimed refutation.

Now, whether you think they're actually capable of being done to your satisfaction is entirely different question from your ability to imagine a scenario where they were done to your satisfaction. — flannel jesus

I thought I explained this . The current state of "mathematics", the axioms and rules which are the current conventions, make it impossible that this could be done to my satisfaction. So I cannot imagine this scenario. You are asking me to imagine something which I am saying is impossible for me to imagine. For me to imagine this being done to my satisfaction would be to imagine it being done with something other than "mathematics".

This is very analogous to the issue with the aether in an inverse way. The nature, characteristics and properties, of "the aether" are dictated by definition, because we have no sense perception, empirical data of it. So, for the M-M experiment it was stipulated that the aether was a separate substance from the massive bodies, therefore the bodies would make a disturbance in the aether, a sort of wake. The experiments showed no such disturbance, therefore there is no "aether", as defined.

But what the experiment really indicates is that the dictated properties of the aether are incorrect. And of course this is consistent with empirical evidence, because we see that light and electromagnetism passing right through many bodies, therefore the aether must also exist within the bodies, and not be a separate substance.

So in the case of "mathematics", above, the word refers to something very real, supported by much empirical data, and usage of axioms and rules. So we have a very real thing being referred to, which we can look at, and see the properties of. This reality dictates the definition of the thing, mathematics. I'll call it a tool. Now, I look at this tool, and say that it is simply incapable of doing the job to my satisfaction. The tool referred to by "mathematics" cannot do the job I want done, and so I need a different tool. Therefore, either we can alter this tool to make it useful to my task, or we can come up with a new tool to do the task.

In the case of "aether", the situation is inverted. We cannot see, or otherwise perceive what we are looking for. We know from logic that it is there, whether it best be represented as "aether" or as "field", or whatever term. Now if we adhere to the defining terms of aether, which stipulate that aether is a substance separate from the substance of bodies, then we can know that there is no aether. But this conclusion does not help is to solve the problem. We still need to identify the medium, and learn its properties. That there is no "aether" in this case does not mean there is no medium, it just means the defining features of the medium were wrong. Likewise, when I say "mathematics" is incapable of resolving a specific problem, I do not mean that the problem is irresolvable. I mean that the defining feature of mathematics make it so that mathematics cannot resolve the problem. Therefore we need to either change the defining features of mathematics (as in the case of aether), which in this case means actually changing the tool, or, we need to come up with another tool (with a different name), like in the case of "aether", we'd give the medium a different name. .

I'm also genuinely quite amazed at the conspiratorial nature of your approach to acceleration due to gravity. Do you really not think there's sufficient evidence for it? Are the physicists of the last hundreds of years incompetent or just lying? How did we manage to make it to the moon, or send rovers to Mars, if we don't even grasp the very basics of gravity? I can't tell how sincere you are about all this. — flannel jesus

I believe that what you call "acceleration due to gravity" is not well understood by human beings. And, I explained that the fact that people have the capacity to predict motions of bodies does not imply that the true nature of those motions is well understood. So questions like "how did we manage to..." have little if any bearing on this issue. The capacity to do things does not imply that the doer understands what is being done; that is what Socrates demonstrated. In fact, Socrates demonstrated the very opposite, in no cases of people doing things, did the people adequately understand what they were doing.

But we know you, MU - and these others don't although they're learning - that you do not agree even that 2+2=4. — tim wood

This is an intentional misrepresentation. I do believe 2+2=4, and I've told you this before. What I've argued against, and strongly do not believe is that "2+2" represents the very same thing as "4". So what I do not believe is that "=" means "is the same as" which is what is argued by many here at TPF.

Mathematics, as used in the sciences at least, is the language used to try to describe with some rigor, precision, accuracy, and consistency what is happening in nature, and when done well, called a solution — tim wood

OK, we have here: "mathematics...is the language used to try to describe.. and when done well, called a solution". Notice your use of "try", and "a solution" only occurs when "done well". And, as I've described using English, one of very many languages used to describe what is happening in nature, there are aspects of nature (such as acceleration) which cannot be described by the current grammar of this language called "mathematics". So, as I've pointed out, when people use mathematics to try to describe these aspects of nature, their attempts fail, therefore this ought not be called "a solution".

Btw, as you well know there are at least several mathematicians who post here, and a characteristic of their work is the effort to demonstrate and make clear their own arguments and points about their topic, to educate and contribute to a general clarity and understanding. You on the other hand pontificate without substance, demonstration, evidence, clarity, or proof. And while you claim to understand that this is a philosophy site, you consistently refuse any substantive reply to the question, "How do you know?" — tim wood

Some mathematicians really demonstrate that they do not know what is being done with mathematics. They insist on silly principles such as the one mentioned above, that "=" means "is the same as". This indicates that they really have a very deep misunderstanding of what an equation is and what is being done by mathematicians with the use of equations. This is exactly what Socrates demonstrated many years ago, that when people are doing things, they really cannot accurately describe what they are doing, and this means that they do not know what they are doing.

Ultimately you're a waste of time, and I would like you to stop it! — tim wood

Why do you keep asking me questions if you want me to stop posting? Your use of language demonstrates a base irrationality.

What's all this talk about faith? You think people came up with the 9.8 number on faith? — flannel jesus

No, I don't think it was produced from faith. But if you told me the thing was going 9.8 metres per second after a second, and I had absolutely no understanding of how you came up with that number, but still I believed you, wouldn't this belief be based in nothing other than faith?

I think it's incredibly feasible to agree to the truth of something without fully understanding it. — flannel jesus

Sure, but the condition was understanding, not "fully" understanding. And, I really do not understand what "fully understand" would mean, because sometimes when I think that I understood something it turns out that I really did not. So "fully understand" would be a difficult concept to understand..

The same is true for the example given before about acceleration. You may not understand or even philosophically agree with certain aspects of acceleration mathematically, but without that understanding you can still acknowledge observations that say, "after dropping the bowling ball, it was going at about 9.8m/s downward after 1 second , and it was going about 19.6m/s downward after 2 seconds , and it was going about 29.4m/s downward after 3 seconds". — flannel jesus

No, that's the point, I would not agree to this. I would want to see the measuring technique, the justification for this claim, that "it was going at about 9.8m/s downward after 1 second", etc.. What I said, is that some others might accept this, as a matter of faith in some principles they hold, but I am not inclined to accept things on faith. And the point is that I do not believe that accepting somethin completely on faith is really a judgement of truth. I would say that faith provides a type of understanding, but not all types of understanding necessitate truth. I would argue that "truth" implies a special type of understanding

So if you told me that it was going " 9.8m/s downward after 1 second", and I said yeah, sure, I believe you, I would not consider that I've judged what you have said to be true, unless I have some understanding as to why you said that. If I believe that I understand why you said that, then I would say that I accept it as truth. If I have no understanding whatsoever, of why you said that, yet I still accept it, then I accept it for some reason other than believing that it is true. Many statements are accepted for reasons other than the belief that they are true.

So, the solutions offered as such by mathematics are not solutions? What do you imagine mathematics and solutions to be? — tim wood

Mathematics may provide some solutions sometimes, but in respect to the problem being discussed, the problem of acceleration, mathematics does not provide a solution. What it does is provide a "work around",. It veils the problem so that it disappears in some situations, so long as the temporal duration is not too long or too short, but then it simply reappears in other situations. As I said, the problem now reappears as the uncertainty principle, so the mathematics has clearly not resolved the problem.

"In metaphysics and philosophy of language, the correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world."

Now you are introducing the notion of understanding into the mix - and it's not clear to me what you mean here. If by the word "understanding" you mean that a statement is grammatically and syntactically correct and expresses a thought/notion that could potentially be real? Then that is trivially correct. — EricH

Let's consider the definition you provided, truth concerns how a statement relates to the world. Do you not agree, that in order to establish a relationship between a statement and the world, there are certain requirements such as 1) understanding the meaning of the statement, 2) understanding the world which the relationship is to be established with. Without these two types of understanding how could there possibly be a relationship between the statement (a bunch of letters), and a thing which is called "the world"?

But if by "understanding" you mean something more than our shared understanding of the plain language meaning of words, then this raises all sorts of questions - what do you mean by "understanding"? Can we ever fully understand anything at all? Warning! Warning! Infinite regress ahead! — EricH

I do not know what you mean by "shared understanding". To me, "understanding" is something personal. I might understand you, and you might understanding me, but this does not mean that we have a shared understanding, because each of us has a different understanding.

here's what my OED has for "understanding", and I think we could pretty much choose any of these. 1 a) the ability to understand or think, intelligence. b) the power of apprehension; the power of abstract thought. 2) an individual's perception or judgement of a situation etc. 3) an agreement; a thing agreed upon, esp. informally. Note that "understand" is defined first as perceive the meaning of (words, a person, a language, etc.) and second, perceive the significance, explanation or cause of.

It's starting to appear as if you don't know how to apply math to the situation. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) — wonderer1

I really do not believe that there is a way to successfully apply math to the situation. That's the point, it's a philosophical problem which math cannot resolve. math has its limits, and there are many problems which it cannot resolve.

In 1966, Abraham Robinson introduced Non-standard Analysis, which provided a rigorous foundation for working with infinitely small quantities. This provided another way of putting calculus on a mathematically rigorous foundation, the way it was done before the (ε, δ)-definition of limit had been fully developed. — tim wood

I already told you the problem with the "rigorous" solutions. They are not real solutions because they allow "infinite" which is fundamentally unintelligible, as indefinite, into the mathematical representations. So any mathematical model employed, using these axioms which are designed to produce a "rigorous foundation" will have indefiniteness, which is a form of unintelligibility, built into it.

This is the problem with "formalism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(philosophy_of_mathematics)) in general. In its attempt to exclude the problems involved with applying the ideal (mathematical principles) to the material (physical) world, complete with accidents which appear as indefiniteness, formalism allows the indefiniteness (unintelligibility) to inhere within the formal (logical) structure itself. The result is that the source of unintelligibility (which inevitably arises in application), is impossible to isolate and identify.

If you do not understand this, then so be it. I will not try to explain, because I've done so numerous times on this forum, and I've come to respect that those who do not understand this are in that position because they deny the issue, and refuse to accept it as a real problem. They perceive that mathematics is very useful, and cannot apprehend the possibility that it could have problems. So it's generally a misunderstanding which is supported by a closed mind, and I am incapable of influencing people like you to open your minds.

And it is equally clear that, short as the article is, you did not understand any of the rest of it either. "Berkeley did not dispute the results of calculus; he acknowledged the results were true. The thrust of his criticism was that Calculus was not more logically rigorous than religion. Berkeley concluded that the certainty of mathematics is no greater than the certainty of religion." Berkeley was writing as a Christian apologist. — tim wood

Yes, what I tried to explain is that the type of "truth" that Berkeley is talking about here is a faith based truth. It is "truth" in the sense of coherence theory. If there is coherency within the logical system it produces truth. This is why I as well, do not dispute the usefulness of things like relativity theory, and calculus. The problem is with the "false", in the sense of correspondence theory, principles which the "free-thinkers" in Berkeley's words, employed. The "free-thinkers" we can understand as the pure mathematicians who dream up mathematical axioms. The problem is that there is no requirement that any mathematical axioms be "true" in the sense of correspondence. And if the axioms prove to be useful they are accepted, and used, regardless of truthfulness (correspondence). Now we all know that the soundness of any logical argument relies on the soundness of the premises (mathematical axioms in this case), so if you prefer, we can replace "truth" with "sound", and analyze how sound the supposed "rigorous" logic is.

In this case the subject was "fluxions" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxion). According to the Wikipedia entry, this concept was central to the disagreement between Newton and Leibniz. If you have not studied this, principal disagreement between Newton and Leibniz concerned the relative importance of Newton's "momentum", as mass times velocity, and Leibniz' "vis viva" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_viva) as mass times velocity squared. As it turned out, each is important in its own way, but Leibniz' principle needed be adapted by a coefficient of a half.

Any claim of yours, then, of any problem with the maths in question here, whether mathematical, philosophical, or metaphysical, is ignorant, stupid, self-serving, and that you used it to evade a fair question on your inconsistent usages of "truth," I call vicious. — tim wood

Uh huh. As I explained, I avoid your questions because I apprehend them as rhetorical. Your questions are presented not for the purpose of finding a point of mutual agreement, from which we can proceed in a rational inquiry, but they are designed for the purpose of opening up a point of attack. And when I refuse to answer, you are reduced to ad hominem, like above, demonstrating that you are overwhelmed by emotional weakness.

These are incompatible. Reconcile them! — tim wood

I do not see the incompatibility. To represent reality in the way of correspondence (truth), requires necessarily that one has some understanding of the reality being represented. Therefore "truth" in the sense of correspondence, implies understanding.

Show your math. — wonderer1

What math? It's a philosophical problem, one which mathematics has not resolved. Look, there's a point in time, when a body at rest becomes a body accelerating. The body changes from being at rest, to being in motion at some point in time. Since the rate of increase of velocity (acceleration) is expressed as over a period of time, at this point in time, when the body changes from being at rest to being in motion, the rate of increase must be infinite because it's a number expressed over zero, x/0.

Regardless of philosophical issues, we can in fact experimentally verify, to some reasonable degree of precision, that bowling balls and pool balls both accelerate toward the ground when dropped. If you have philosophical problems with the concept of acceleration, you should separate that from your ability to look at that evidence and see what does, in fact, happen — flannel jesus

Yes of course, such objects accelerate. They must, in order to get from zero velocity to having some velocity. The problem is that we as human beings, do not have a very accurate understanding of acceleration. Our mathematical representation of it is very problematic. Read the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analyst

Notice that the article says that Berkeley's criticism of Newton was resolved with the concept of "limits". But this really doesn't solve the problem of acceleration because it places zero as a boundary, limit, which is never obtained. So the principle utilized is that there is no point in time when the object changes from being at rest to being in motion, because an infinite amount of time would pass before the boundary is crossed. So the crossing of that boundary, between rest and motion is never actually obtained by the mathematical representation.

It is this same proposition, which makes calculus logically rigorous, which also leads to the uncertainty principle, by allowing this "infinite" into the mathematical representation, and having boundaries within the modeling which cannot be crossed. You determine the momentum (motion) or you determine the position (rest), whichever one you choose to make an accurate representation of, the other approaches the boundary (infinite uncertainty).

.

Why don't you try answering his question? — tim wood

I could not answer EricH's question because the presumptions which the question was based on were false. He said "I think you would agree that that is a true statement". I could not agree that it was a true statement, for the reasons I gave. He cited a measurement, and I explained that there is a measurement problem which did not allow me to agree that his measurement was "true". Then EricH tried to say that such a complex measurement was just an observation, which it clearly is not. That makes two false presumptions. What kind of inquiry is that, asking a loaded question with two false presumptions. That's like asking me 'did you stop beating wife, again?'.

Now flannel jesus gave me a better example of "an observation". Flannel said that heavy balls when dropped, accelerate toward the ground. I agree that they "must accelerate", because they go from being held to being in motion. But this is not an observation, it's more like a conclusion of logic. I do not notice the ball accelerating when I drop it, but I conclude that it must accelerate, because it goes from zero to having some velocity.

Now EricH's question concerned the relationship between "truth" and "understanding". EricH asked if I could agree to the truth of something without any understanding of what I was agreeing to the truth of. I'm sure many people could agree to the truth of something without any understanding of it, if this agreeing is done on faith, like the way that some religious people agree to the truth of God for example. But I am not prone to such agreements, I want to understand first, before I agree.

Regardless, this is irrelevant to the point I was making. I said "truth" implies understanding. But for someone to say "I agree that this is true", and for it to actually be true, are two different things. So "I agree that X is true" does not imply understanding in the way that truth itself implies understanding.

Assume all of that is done to your satisfaction beyond all reasonable doubt. — EricH

The concept of "acceleration" involves a fundamental philosophical problem. Acceleration is the rate of increase of velocity. So if an object goes from being at rest, to moving, there is a brief period of time where its "acceleration" is necessarily infinite. This is a fundamental measurement problem, and another form of the same problem is at the heart of the uncertainty principle of quantum physics, as the uncertainty relation between time and energy in the Fourier transform.

This problem was exposed by Aristotle as the incompatibility between the concept of "being" (static) and the concept of "becoming" (active). The way that modern physics deals with this problem, through the application of calculus does not resolve the problem. It simply veils the problem by allowing the unintelligible issue, infinity, to be present within the mathematical representation.

Now, the very same philosophical problem which Newton and his contemporaries had to deal with in the relationship between bodies, becomes paramount in modern physics in its relationships of energy. The issue though, is that Newton and his contemporaries were dealing with relatively long durations of time, so the methods of calculus were adequate for covering up this problem which only increases as the period of time is shortened. Now physicists are dealing with extremely short durations of time, so the uncertainty becomes very relevant and significant. That's what the time/energy uncertainty indicates, the shorter the time period, the more uncertain any determination of energy will be.

Accordingly, using the current mathematical conventions, such calculations of acceleration will never be done "beyond all reasonable doubt", because the current convention is to allow the unintelligible (infinite) to be a part of the mathematical representation..

E.g., if I say that I observed an object in a vacuum chamber accelerating towards the center of the earth at 9.8 m/sec**2, I think you would agree that that is a true statement (it corresponds with reality). — EricH

No I don't agree with that at all, far from it in fact. Why would I just take it for granted that this is a true statement? I would have to see your justification, your measurement technique, and how you come up with "sec**2". What does "sec**2" even mean?

Furthermore, I disagree that this is "just an observation", it is actually a very complex calculation. That something is "accelerating" requires a multitude of measurements of velocity, and each measurement of velocity requires multiple determinations of spatial-temporal location.

.

Also, is there a distinction when you put the word in quotes? — EricH

I put the word in quotes, because I was talking about the meaning of that word, which I put in quotes.

Sorry, I didn't mean "the set of discernment which are not subjective." I meant, "the set of all discernments (which are necessarily made by subjects) is a set, an abstract entity," and abstract entities are generally not considered to be subjective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wouldn't say that. Only through Platonism do abstract objects lose their subjectivity. but whether or not Platonism provides us with a representation of the true nature of abstractions, is another question.

For example, we could have the set of all experiences where people experience red. The experiences are subjective, the set is an abstract object. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that is more like a fictional, or fantasy "set". To have such a set would require that all experiences be judged as to whether or not the experience was of "red". Then there would be a whole lot of undecisive experiences, is this red or is this pink, for example. Some people would say that such and such experiences are members of the set, while others would say no. So there is really no such thing as this type of fictional, or fantasy set.

Right, but the converse is generally not accepted. "If no observer notices something as a difference, then by the very fact that no difference has been noticed as a difference, the difference has, necessarily, made no differences to any observer... and so is not a difference." — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, that does not follow, because it's contradictory. You are stating that it is a difference, therefore it makes a difference to you, in your example. That's the problem, this so-called difference is imaginary and in your imagination it makes a difference or else you'd have no example. You are an observer, and it has made a difference to you, in your imagination. Whether or not it makes a difference through the means of sensation, or through the means of imagination, is not relevant.

Really, I am just looking for a good argument that says "positing inaccessible differences is sort of nonsensical." — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is nonsensical, because the very act of positing such differences is an act which designates them as accessible. To designate specific differences as inaccessible is contradictory, because designating tham as inaccessible is to provide access to them.

Both views lead to coherent accounts, just with different numbers of things in the world.

Unless someone can show how either view leads to contradiction, then the choice is arbitrary, not empirical. — Banno

If both views are coherent, but each suggests a different number of empirical objects in the world, then there is no reason to choose one or the other, accept according to empirical evidence, therefore the choice must be empirical.

We're going way off topic here, but when you use the word "truth" are referring to the Correspondence Theory of Truth? — EricH

Yes, that's what I said, truth means corresponding with reality, therefore I'm using "truth" in the sense of correspondence theory.

Since effing when has science ever been "truth-apt"? Where in any edition of the scientific method does "truth" enter in. And another question to you, what is it that you imagine "truth" to be? — tim wood

OK, so now we see a big difference between science and metaphysics. I would say metaphysics seeks truth, and truth means corresponding with reality. This would answer ''s question as well.

Prediction in itself is a usefulness, but usefulness is limited by the intended purpose, so prediction does not necessarily indicate truth. A person can successfully predict that the sun will rise the next day, using nothing but statistics. With even more information the person can predict the time and place that the sun will rise. All these predictions are based in assumptions of continuity, that things will continue to occur in the way that they have in the past. But these predictions, and the ability to predict, give no indication of an understanding of what is actually going on. This is obviously the case with quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory right now, there is a tremendous ability to predict, without any understanding of what is actually going on.

"Truth" implies an understanding of what is going on, which takes us beyond the ability to predict. What Galileo showed with relativity theory, is that an understanding of what is going on is not a requirement for the capacity to predict the notions of bodies. All that is required is an adequately formulated frame of reference, information from the past, and the fact that the bodies will continue to move as they have (as Newton's first law). So the motions of bodies can be equally predicted from distinct frames of reference, as Galileo showed with the geocentric and heliocentric models, and what is really going on (the truth) is completely irrelevant to the capacity to prediction.

This is why we have scientists like Stephen Hawking promoting ontologies like "model-dependent realism", within which the fundamental principle (or presupposition) is that there is no such thing as what is really going on. This is because pragmatic theories, such as relativity, dismiss "what is really going on" as unnecessary for making predictions. Then scientists turn to prediction as the sole purpose of science, neglecting a key part of the scientific process, which states that the usefulness of prediction is to be directed at verifying theories, and this clearly indicates that prediction ought not be the end in itself.

When prediction is not taken to be the end in itself, we clearly see the limitations to relativity theory, where it cannot accurately predict.

Metaphysics has been defined as either the study of being, which is the study of nothing at all, because if being has any predicates it ceases to be just being. — tim wood

Boy your logic skills are pathetic.

Cause is so difficult a concept to make rigorous that for a century most of science has dispensed with its use as a meaningful term, except in informal usage where it stands as a shorthand, or in the few areas it may still be used. — tim wood

Ok. now you admit it. Cause does not have a scientific definition. Why did you keep asking me for a scientific definition of cause, then ridicule me when I did not provide it? And if I would have provided you with a definition of "metaphysics", you would have made fun of it as well, based on what you now admit as your prejudice.

Your questioning is nothing but deception, trickery. The questions are intentional designed for one purpose only, and that is to trick someone into saying something which you can poke fun at. Your mode of discussion is simply disgusting.

So just to be clear, you sincerely believe that Einstein (along with the entire scientific community) misinterpreted the results of M-M and are engaging in some form of pseudoscience? — EricH

No, I believe that there is divided opinion in the "scientific community", and many members of it do not even form an opinion about this, because it is not necessary for their purposes. Most physics is applied physics, and the extremely speculative part is better known as metaphysics. The majority of scientists do not venture into this, "metaphysics", or make their opinions (if they have them) known. So I believe members of this forum are making unjustified generalizations (inductive conclusions) with statements like "along with the entire scientific community".

Here's something to consider Eric. Relativity theory was created for pragmatic purposes, and is fundamentally not truth-apt. Relativity gives us very useful principles for application, and modeling motions, but it cannot give us truth. When Galileo first developed modern relativity, he used it to show that both the geocentric, and heliocentric models of the motions of the sun and planets are compatible and equally valid, by the precepts of "relativity". However, most of us believe that there is a "truth" to the modeling of the solar system, and we know that to get to the truth of this matter, we need to go beyond what "relativity" provides for us.

Since relativity models movement as relative to an artificial frame of reference, rather than as relative to a background "space", the reality of the background is ignored. Simply put, since we do not know the reality of the background, we replace it with known frame of reference, which serves the purpose. The frame of reference is designed for the purpose, it is not designed to truthfully represent a "real" background.

This became a problem for relativity theory because things like light, and gravity, were considered as properties of the background. It made classical relativity theory inconsistent with the observed movement light. So Einstein proposed that if we make some stipulations about the speed of light relative to moving bodies, and the passage of time, we could establish compatibility between the movement of light, and the movement of bodies, and bring light and gravity to be consistent with relativity theory. This opened up a whole new field of usefulness for relativity theory, Einsteinian relativity.

The fundamental issue remains though, relativity theory is pragmatically oriented, and is designed to ignore the importance of truth. This is why we have physicists like Stephen Hawking proposing ontologies such as "model-dependent reality", and others with the idea that the universe is a "simulation". If we ignore this fundamental fact, that relativity is designed to be useful, but with its usefulness we sacrifice the possibility for truth, and instead we start to think that relativity theory is true, this induces the possibility of all sorts of strange ontologies to support the "reality" of relativity.

Now we have a backward approach to metaphysics. Instead of basing our metaphysics in strong principles directed toward truth, we direct or metaphysics away from truth to support relativity theory which denies the possibility of truth. So, as metaphysicians looking for truth, the proper approach is to observe and understand all features of reality, and build a consistent ontology accordingly. This means the influence of useful theories like relativity must not be given undue preference, because the goal is truth, which relativity is not directed toward.

I'm all done here. — T Clark

Hi T Clark, back at your favourite pastime I see. Come in, spout some pseudoscience, then state your declaration. Care to tell me what you think you have succeeded in finishing when you say you're "done".

The idea is that MU can have his aether - there is no evidence for it - as what he calls metaphysical speculation, and which I disqualify of substance in a scientific discussion. — tim wood

Have fun with your so-called "scientific discussion". I'll leave you to your pseudoscience now.

And of course Mickleson-Morley is "pseudoscience" and "blatantly false."
10 hours ago — tim wood

Tim woods, your reading skills are as bad as T. Clark's. I didn't say "Mickleson-Morley is 'pseudoscience'". I was arguing that the conclusion, that some people draw, that Michelson-Morley type experiments have proven that there is no medium for light waves, is pseudoscience.

Typical. You're asked three questions, which you ignore. You confuse "forum" with "discussion." And of course Mickleson-Morley is "pseudoscience" and "blatantly false." — tim wood

I ignored your questions because each one of them except the last requires a very long essay, and I really do not see the relevance of the material. If you want to know what "cause" and "metaphysics" mean, try looking them up. If you want to know more precisely, my use, in a specific context, then provide the context. Otherwise I'll continue to ignore such questions as unnecessary distractions. The third question I had already answered so that's why I ignored it. Here, I'll repost.

It's fundamentally different from the aether, because the aether was always understood as an independent, separate substance from the bodies which exist within it. This was the premise of the M-M experiment. Now, respecting the results of M-M, we can either say that this was a misunderstanding of the aether, and produce a new model of the aether which does not have that requirement, or we can insist that "separate substance" is essential to the conception named "aether", and therefore dismiss "aether" as inadequate, and come up with a new word to refer to the medium for light.

Clearly, "field" is inadequate because it represents the medium with random locations, arbitrary points, instead of identifying the true particles which must exist within the medium, comprising the medium, as is required to support the observed wave motion of electromagnetism. Only through identification and modeling of the true particles of the medium can an adequate understanding of it be produced. And according to what M-M indicates (no aether wind), along with what the experiments of quantum field theory indicate, all massive objects must be composed of this same medium. — Metaphysician Undercover

If that doesn't answer your third question, let me know what is lacking.

Starting with MIckleson-Morley in 1887, and successive experiments, it has become understood and accepted by anyone with at least a high school, or even junior high school, science class that the aether simply does not exist. And this is the science of the thing. — tim wood

Well, I myself, am very sound evidence that this statement is a blatant falsity. And why do you think that this is "the science of the thing" when it's really the pseudoscience of the thing. In reality, it's just a denial of what can logically be concluded from Michelson-Morley type experiments, and denial of the current body of evidence, in a hypocritical effort to adhere to some dogmatic stipulations.

This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum. . . .

The denial is like a fear of God. But good theologians have progressed far beyond this attitude of instilling fear, the conventional approach now is to cultivate the love of God. Why are scientists so primitive in their behaviour, showing outright fear of the unknown, as if they will be punished if they step off the beaten path to the slaughterhouse?

You're in a science discussion, which you are determined to derail, and your account is just that you're "doing" no science at all, but metaphysical speculation. — tim wood

This happens to be a philosophy forum, not a science forum, so the participants in any discussion are more likely to be philosophers rather than scientists. So you ought to expect that your thread would contain philosophical points of view instead of insisting that we adhere to some dogma of pseudoscience.

The fact that light can propagate as a wave through a vacuum with no medium is an established scientific fact — T Clark

I think you've been corrected on this, the proper scientific description is "wave-like behaviour".
So, I'm going to throw your line right back at you, and please, quit with this assertion of "established scientific fact".

It's pseudoscience. — T Clark

Would you say that we should take into account boredom when discussing why a nazi became a nazi? Or would you attribute the joining to a mental weakness that is exploitable by charismatic leaders heading up (not so) righteous causes? Maybe we should consider whether or not they joined because their favorite uncle said he would buy them a case of beer if they did? — ToothyMaw

Yes, all those reasons are valid possibilities, along with a myriad of others, some more prominent, some less. That you choose one as "the strongest", without any clear justification of your choice, makes it nothing but a subjective opinion.

Phenomena in the world are not constrained to behave in accordance with our definitions. Before Michelson-Morley, people did believe that a medium was required for a wave to propagate. It took them a while to be convinced otherwise. Your definition is 150 years out of date. — T Clark

This is not at all true. The physics of waves is very definite. Waves require a medium. All physicists know this, it is taught in basic high school level physics. This is why light is understood by physicists to exist as particles, photons, not as waves, and the movement of photons is understood by "wave functions", not waves

So the best analogy I can come up with is that photons are particles which also exhibit wave-like behavior. — EricH

That's right, the principles of physics force us to treat this as "wave-like behaviour". This will be the case until we determine and identify the medium, at which time we will be able to treat it as true waves, which the empirical evidence indicates that it obviously is. Consider, that thousands of years ago people understood sound to be vibrations in the air. They knew, by its behaviour, wind and sound vibrations, that "air" had to be a medium, but they could not see it, nor identify the particles which air is comprised of. Having no capacity to see or identify any particles of air did not prevent them from developing an understanding of "air" as a substance. This is the same way that we should look at the aether. The evidence, wave-like behaviour, indicates that it is there, we just have not yet been able to understand its existence.

By way of background, I'm pointing to the issue of definite descriptions, claiming that the arguments to the effects that one does not need a definite description in order for reference to function are pretty convincing. — Banno

It's very obvious that we do not need definite descriptions for proper names to work. We can just point to a thing and name it, with absolutely no description whatsoever.

The problem appears when we consider the fact that anything named in this way necessarily has a temporal continuity of existence (in traditional terms it is a "temporal object"), and so it has the property of a temporal duration.

This is a problem for "definite descriptions" because empirical evidence indicates that all temporal things are necessarily changing as time passes. So any proposed "definite description" would require an inclusion of the temporal changes to the object, in order to make the object identifiable at any time. Simply stating the description for a specific point in time would not suffice, because then the object would only be identifiable at that point in time, which would never coincide with "now" which always seems to consist of a duration of time.

The problem becomes even more difficult when we consider the nature of temporal existence, and the fact that the future consists of possibilities. Because the future consists of possibilities, any supposed "true" temporal extension of the object, into the future cannot be known. As Aristotle argued there is no truth or falsity concerning future events which are possible (future possibilities violate the law of excluded middle). Therefore this part of the object's description is necessarily "indefinite". This renders "definite descriptions" as an impossibility. So not only is it the case that definite descriptions are not necessary, they are necessarily impossible, and very definitely not the way that proper names work.

I don't have much background in Aristotle, but suspect that logic has come some way since his time. — Banno

You ought to listen to what @Leontiskos says. Aristotelean logic was the principal, if not the only, form of logic studied in European schools for hundreds of years. It forms the foundation for all modern formal logic, other than modern mathematics which under the influence of Hegel took a different approach to Aristotle's law of identity. Aristotelian logic even provided the grounds for modern modal logic, with his insistence on an exception to the law of excluded middle for future events, and the role of the potential of "matter" in the unfolding of time. The Hegelian approach is to allow that "matter" violates the law of noncontradiction (dialectical materialism), something which Aristotle was strongly opposed to. Violation of the law of noncontradiction leaves the law of identity as completely useless, which is what Hegel argued about this law, that it is in fact completely useless.

Well, I think there is two basic problems with the conclusions you draw from the experiment. First, is that you cannot necessarily say that it was a sense of duty which lead those people into that movement. Different people have different reasons for joining into such a movement. Second, is that even if all those people were moved by a sense of duty, this does not validate your claim that duty is the "single strongest motivator for action", because there is no other motivators offered for comparison.

There is no indication of what percentage of the people exposed to the movement joined the movement, and there is no indication as to what other type of motivators those people were exposed to at the same time for comparison, to show that they chose the experimental movement out of a sense of duty, over something else. So for example, it might have been the case that the people who joined the movement were just extremely bored at the time, with nothing better to do, or even that some other incentives for joining were offered, that are undisclosed to us. (The followers were students, and the conditions were of course set up by the teacher who was carrying out the experiment, so he might have set up conditions of extreme boredom in the classroom, then offered the students 'something to do'.)

If I believe what I am writing I am not operating on bad faith.

I try my best to explain my reasoning. — NOS4A2

I think it's better known as "rationalizing". When a person rationalizes it is quite likely that they do not actually believe what they are rationalizing. The rationalizing seems to be done as a way for the person to convince oneself that something which they want to believe, but they cannot quite apprehend as believable, actually is believable.

This is not a metaphysical statement. In this context it's a statement about optics, the physics of light, and it's wrong. — T Clark

You're displaying very poor reading skills T Clark. Please reread the statement you quoted. It's not at all a statement about the physics of light. I never mentioned "light" or "electromagnetism". It's a statement about what it means to be a "wave", how the concept indicated by that word is understood through normal human conventions, especially as it is used in the more specific physics of waves.

So, if light exists as a wave, which much evidence indicates, then it exists according to the principles understood by the concept signified by "wave", which i was talking about in the statement. It is a simple conclusion of deductive logic. P1, Waves have x essential properties. P2 Light exists as waves. C Therefore light has X properties.

Again - this statement is at odds with the fundamental basis of modern physics. — T Clark

It might be "at odds with the fundamental basis of modern physics" but it's a true statement about the logical conclusion we can draw from the M-M experiments, if we adhere to the premise that light exists as a wave. As the article you quoted stated, the experiment was an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through the aether. The experiments could not determine any such relative motion, and strongly indicate that there is no such relative motion. From here we can either conclude that there is no aether therefore light does not exist as waves, but for some unknown reason appears to be spookily similar to waves, or we can maintain the premise that light exists as a wave, therefore there is an aether: and from the results of those experiments we can conclude that matter moves with the aether, so that there is no such relative motion. If modern physicists have failed to draw the latter conclusion, and cannot understand why light spookily appears to exist as a wave, then that is a problem with modern physics, not a problem with my statement, which is at odds with modern physics.

I agree that a value judgement is an activity, an event. But I’m not talking about a particular value created by such a judgement - a measurement. That is a position in a hierarchical (linear) relation to our momentary involvement in that event. It is not an object. What I’m referring to is qualitative or potential value as variability, not a value as a reductionist relation to intra-action. — Possibility

Do you not agree that a "value" is the worth, desirability, or usefulness of a thing? And that this is the product of a judgement? If a particular thing has a "variable" value, then the thing has a different worth, desirability or usefulness depending on its context of existence relative to the mind that makes the judgement. How could a thing possibly have a variable value unless its value is a feature of its relationship with the mind which determines its value?

What I’m saying is we assume that value structures are dependent on the human mind, but this is a misunderstanding. The number is a measurement, a momentary intra-action with value, not value itself. It is the human mind that consists of ongoing value judgement - ongoing relationality to the inherent variability of potential/value. — Possibility

I really cannot see how you are proposing to separate the value from the judgement, in order to support you claim that it is incorrect, or a misunderstanding, to say that value structures are mind-dependent.

What you appear to be saying, is that the number produced by a measurement, is the result of an interaction between a mind, and a value, such that both the value and the mind pre-exist the judgement. When the mind and the value come into relationship with one another, the mind measures, or makes a judgement, and the result is a number. The number represents the value, but the value maintains its independent status. So numbers are not values, they are representations of values.

In order for me to understand what you are proposing, I'm going to replace "number" which is a quantitative representation of value, with "good", which is qualitative. So we have goods which exist independently of the minds which apprehend them, as independent values. I like to call these goods "objects", instead of values (but maybe you don't like this), and I reserve "value" as the result of the judgement which the mind makes concerning the independent thing, which is considered as the "good" here. But I'll consider that the independent thing, the good itself, is a value, as you propose, and allow that the mind simply makes a representation of the real value, which exists independently.

Now, let's consider the matter of "variability". From my perspective, I would say that the variability of a value is a product of the relationship between the thing being valued, and the mind which values it. Differences in this relationship are responsible for the variability of the value. Variability is a product of the process of evaluation. But your proposal does not allow this. The value is independent from the mind which evaluates, so variability must inhere within the value itself.

How do you propose that a mind could ever determine the true representation of a value if the truth is that the value itself is variable? Any determination, or representation of a value, made by a mind, could be proven to be false, because the value itself, being represented, is intrinsically variable. Therefore no representation could be the true representation, or else contradicting representations could be true. If your proposal represents the truth about the way that values exist, then it would be absolutely impossible to determine the true representation of the value, because the value itself would be inherently variable, and any representation of it, produced by a mind, would be equally true and false.

On the other hand, the way that I look at values, "value" being the result of the relationship between a thing, object, and a mind, we can readily account for variability as a result of differences within this relationship. There can be a truth about the thing, the object, and variability is just a product of differences in the variety of possible relationships between mind and object.

Accordingly, your proposal excludes the possibility of truth concerning 'that which is independent', while the way that I look at 'that which is independent' allows for the possibility of truth. This is why I say that philosophers, metaphysicians, who are seeking truth, must necessarily reject proposals such as yours, because they render truth as impossible, and they ought to proceed in a direction such as what is outlined here by me, because this direction leaves truth as possible.

The only requirements for a system are complexity and relationality. — Possibility

Not quite, #1 assumes a "working together" as a "complex whole". This implies cooperation in relation to a purpose. And this means that such a "system" is created by intention. Also, #2 expresses intention toward getting something done. Therefore both #1 and #2 express more than complexity and relationality, but also purpose and intent. That is why I say that all systems are artificial, it's simply within the nature of what "a system" is, by any conventional definition.

Stop trying to anthropomorphise the hurricane. Regardless of our models, a hurricane would not exist without certain intra-acting variables (not particular values), which also determine its duration, movement, intensity, etc. Whether or not anyone cares or understands, these variable aspects of reality are important and significant to the hurricane in its becoming. — Possibility

This clearly exemplifies the philosophically repugnant and unintelligibility of you perspective, as explained above. You position "values" as within the thing itself (the hurricane in this example), and therefore the variability of the values is also within the thing itself, rendering the truth about the thing as impossible to determine because the values themselves are indeterminate. Why did the hurricane make a last minute change which was not predicted? Because there was an amplified number of quantum fluctuations of value, which are actually impossible to predict, and this made it decide to do that.

There is the human mind governed by grammatical logic, and some external system of reality it cannot accurately represent. — Possibility

This is what is derived from your perspective, "some external system of reality it cannot accurately represent", because you place variability as inherent within that external "system". The human mind cannot possibly represent the external system of reality in a truthful way, because variability inheres within the independent reality, as contradicting properties within the thing itself. My perspective, on the other hand allows that the human mind can accurately represent the external reality because variability is a result of the relationship between the mind and the thing, it just has not yet developed that representation. Understanding this relationship, and properly representing it as a feature of our representations of reality allows for accurate representation.

It’s a refusal to posit and seek to understand a broader relational framework in which two systems can intra-act. — Possibility

the idea of two systems intra-acting is completely useless as an approach to understanding the truth about natural reality. This is because the division of nature into separate systems would be completely arbitrary so the relations between systems would not represent any true relations between true things, but arbitrary boundaries imposed for various purposes, just like "model-dependent reality". This is evident in your hurricane example. We could model a high pressure area as "a system", and a low pressure area as "a system", or two low pressure areas as "two systems", and map these distinct systems with boundaries. However, any such boundaries are completely artificial, and arbitrary, and are not truthfully representative of the true nature of the atmospheric processes.

I’m suggesting that you consider the possibility that this logical system dictated by grammatical conventions exists in a broader relational framework which includes those aspects of mathematical and scientific findings that appear to contradict within the narrow framework of grammatical logic. Consider the possibility that you’re on the wrong track, if it must stop at dualism. — Possibility

I have very often, in the past considered the possibility that I am on the wrong track, and I continue to do so today. That is why I consider your posts very seriously, as I said, an open mind is a requirement for the seeking of truth. However, I have discussed this type of metaphysics already at this forum, and the deficiencies of the approach are becoming more and more apparent. Therefore this discussion with you serves more to strengthen my opinion rather than to change my mind. It's becoming more and more apparent to me, that the reason why mathematical and scientific findings seem to contradict the narrow framework of grammatical logic (the very few true principles I've found to cling to), from which I approach, is because the logic of these fields of discipline is severely compromised.

This is completely at odds with the fundamental basis of modern physics. There's no legitimate physicist in the world who believes it. Light propagates without a medium. If you post this on a physics forum, it will be removed immediately. It's pseudoscience. — T Clark

It's not pseudoscience which I am engaged in, because I do not pretend to be doing science. I am speculating in metaphysics and not at all pretending to be doing physics. The larger problem though is with the way that many people regard physicists. If a physicist speculates in metaphysics, many individuals will believe that such speculations are actually science because the speculations are carried out by a scientist.

Clearly such speculations, even if carried out by a scientist, are not science. And in reality, unless the physicist is properly educated in metaphysics, this physicist is just an undisciplined metaphysician, practising pseudo-metaphysics. Steven Hawking is a prime example of a pseudo-metaphysician. He clearly had very little if any training in metaphysics, yet in books like "The Grand Design" he pretended to be well-versed in it.

The experiment compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through the luminiferous aether ("aether wind"). — Wikipedia - The Michaelson-Morley Experiment

This is the key point, the attempt to detect "relative motion" of matter through the ether. If it is the case that matter as well as the waves are both properties of the ether, then there would be no such relative motion, what we perceive as matter would just be a moving part of the ether. And, this is supported by quantum field theory. Particles of matter are understood as properties of the field, not distinct from (so as to move relative to) the field.

The comparison is an understandable one to bring up, I think, but this answer illuminates what I was saying above: the quantum field(s) being Lorenz invariant makes it fundamentally different from the aether — flannel jesus

It's fundamentally different from the aether, because the aether was always understood as an independent, separate substance from the bodies which exist within it. This was the premise of the M-M experiment. Now, respecting the results of M-M, we can either say that this was a misunderstanding of the aether, and produce a new model of the aether which does not have that requirement, or we can insist that "separate substance" is essential to the conception named "aether", and therefore dismiss "aether" as inadequate, and come up with a new word to refer to the medium for light.

Clearly, "field" is inadequate because it represents the medium with random locations, arbitrary points, instead of identifying the true particles which must exist within the medium, comprising the medium, as is required to support the observed wave motion of electromagnetism. Only through identification and modeling of the true particles of the medium can an adequate understanding of it be produced. And according to what M-M indicates (no aether wind), along with what the experiments of quantum field theory indicate, all massive objects must be composed of this same medium.

But a value judgement is not value as an objective structure of reality. It’s much more complex than this narrowly perceived relation configured as a linear hierarchy or sliding scale. — Possibility

OK, I will admit that it is possible to say that a value is not itself a value judgement. We can say that it is the result, or consequence of a value judgement. And, this is a necessary relation, a value does not exist independently of a value judgement, it is dependent on a value judgement, as only being capable of being produced by a value judgement. We can say, this is what a value is, what is produced from that type of judgement.

Also, please note that a value judgement, is an activity, an event. But a value, if we allow it separate existence, as something created by such a judgement, is now static, an object, because it has been separated from the agent, and the activity which created it. This is why we can say that a value is dependent on that agency, and is not properly independent from it.

To understand value, we need to take into account the capacity of non-human materiality to contribute to a broader perception of meaning. The oscillation frequency of an electron in a caesium atom matters to us ‘reading’ an atomic clock, but does this matter if no-one is ‘telling’ the time? And isn’t the number we attribute to this frequency just a value judgement - a measurement derived from our collaboration with the materiality of the clock components in ‘telling time’? The notion that meaning and value are structures exclusive to the human mind is symptomatic of grammatical conventions falling behind in understanding our broader relationality with the world. — Possibility

In this paragraph you describe value structures as being dependent on the human mind, then you conclude by saying that this is a " falling behind in understanding". But there is no other way to understand values, except as being dependent on minds, so how can this understanding be a" falling behind", rather than a moving forward. In reality, to deny that values are dependent on value judgements, which are dependent on minds, is what ought to be called a falling behind in understanding.

Agency is recognised as a property of the system itself, and these so-called ‘subjects’, ‘actions’ and ‘objects’ are all fundamentally active elements, their apparent ‘properties’ a purposeful configuration of the particular intra-action, within which we should recognise ourselves as necessarily involved. — Possibility

All systems are artificial. We have mechanical systems, logical systems, as well as representative systems such as models. But all types of systems are fundamentally artificial, therefore agency in the sense of an intentional action of an intentional being, is required for the creation of any system. So agency is prior to a system, as cause of it, and any form of agency which inheres within the system is distinct from the type of agency which acts as a cause of the system. Now we have a very obvious need for dualism, to account for these two very distinct types of agency.

A mind is not required to respond to the variability of value, only to render it as a judgement, an opinion. — Possibility

All you are saying here is that a mind is required for the existence of the value, as a value. That is exactly what I am arguing.

We can reference God if you’d like, but I would argue that God is not an actual being who makes value judgements, but is the pure, undifferentiated source of logical, qualitative and dynamic relationality, with which all judgements are but a localised (limited) intra-action of perceived meaning. — Possibility

If God does not make value judgements, then we cannot reference God as the source of values independent from human minds. Therefore we ought to accept what the inductive reasoning and evidence shows us, that there are no independent values. All values are dependent on minds of the type that are human minds.

So we understand that what is important to the hurricane are some variables and not others - regardless of how it might be perceived in terms of ‘value’. — Possibility

This is very obviously a misunderstanding. Those particular values which are called "variables" are not important to the hurricane itself, but are important to the human understanding of the hurricane. The human beings are modeling the storm as a "system" and these are the variables which are important to them in their understanding of the storm. They are not important to the storm itself, because the storm has no intention, purpose, and doesn't care about anything whatsoever.

Then how can you be sure you’re on the right road, or even heading in the right direction? — Possibility

As I said, intuition. And, very often I am on the wrong track, that's the problem with intuition, it's not super reliable. However, the open mind which is a necessary aspect of seeking the truth allows a person to readily change one's mind, as the need arises. That's the Socratic position of not knowing, the lack of certitude provides for an open mind.

That feeling of ‘repugnance’ is intuition telling you there’s something amiss, but there's no determining from affect alone whether what’s amiss is in what you’re describing or the system you’re using to describe it. And you can only critique the system from outside it. So what are you afraid of? — Possibility

I don't follow this. The whole point of dualism is to allow for this position, that the thing being described, and the system describing it, are distinct. You reject dualism, but now you use a premise which requires dualism, "you can only critique the system from outside it", to make your argument. Without dualism, there is no such thing as outside the system, so the describing would be done with the same system which is being described. I believe this is why you seem to have a hard time with the category separation between the representation and the thing represented resulting in the category mistake I've pointed to. An activity, as a type, a description, or a model, does not require a particular thing which is active, because any specific activity is a type, a universal. But a particular activity, meaning a particular instance of activity, always involves something which is active.

.

So why cling to the goal? Why not try to understand the complexity as it exists? — Possibility

Contradictions are impossible to understand. When they arise, we must respect the fact that the method being used, which creates contradiction, is faulty, rather than trying endlessly to understand what is impossible to understand.

M-M explicitly disproved that notion. If there was a substance, then M-M would have detected it. That's what eventually led to relativity. If I'm misunderstanding it then please explain. — EricH

What M-M disproved is that the relationship between massive objects, bodies, and the ether, is not as was hypothesized. That does not prove that there is no substance which is waving, it just proves that the relationship between massive objects and the substance which is waving, is not as they thought it ought to have been. I think you can read this on Wikipedia, or other online explanations of M-M.

Then, instead of trying to determine the proper relation between massive objects and the ether, the physics community decided just to dispense with the ether altogether, because that facilitated the application of Einsteinian relativity.

Ok, suppose space is the "substance there which is waving". After all, the gravitational wave observations (combined with electromagnetic observations of the source of detected gravitational wave observations) provide some pretty good evidence for space waving. — wonderer1

All right then, do you understand that a "wave" consists of an interaction of the particles which make up the substance which is the medium? So if "space" is the substance within which the waves exist, then space must be made up of particles.

That some people are highly motivated without feeling duty says nothing about the power of duty, just as the claim that, say, there are more roses in a garden than any other type of flower is not affected by the claim that there are other types of flowers in a garden. That this "garden" could hypothetically have a different composition I grant, but all of the flowers need not be roses for most of them to be. — ToothyMaw

OK, so now it's your turn to demonstrate why you believe that this particular flower, the one you call "duty", is more prolific than all the rest. I don't see how the Third Wave experiment demonstrates this.

The article says "As the movement grew outside his class and began to number in the hundreds, the experiment had spiraled out of control. " There are millions, billions of people in the world, "outside his class", "hundreds" does not represent a majority. This is more like Trumpian logic, 'I have thousands of people at my rallies, therefore the majority supports me'. You might say 'I see hundreds of people motivated by duty, therefore duty is the single strongest motivator'. You have not provided the premises required to produce your conclusion.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but the Michelson–Morley experiment disproved that idea. — EricH

I don't think you misunderstand me, but I do think you misunderstand what the M-M experiments disproved.