To be serious, I consider all approaches to be semiotic — Janus

The advantage lies in making explicit that truth or reality are what the process of inquiry arrives at in its asymptotic limit. True is true, and real is real, once any further quibbling ceases to make a pragmatic difference. Once we cease to want to act differently.

Applying that to the OP, you could say the purpose of quantum theory is to recover Newtonian mechanics in its classical limit. That is what guides the framing of the maths.

So it is not about which is true - that Newtonian mechanics is true, or that quantum field theory is true.

It is about the dialectical certainty of being able to define how one is to be found in the dichotomous limit of the other.

Reality is both local and nonlocal. Or as is better put these days, it is local and contextual. Quantum theory takes us forward in being able to treat these two as opposing limits on ontological being - something we can concretely measure, and indeed recover from each other as measurable limits.

Of course, QFT still needs to be united with GR – as the dichotomy of the contents and the container – under QG. Or a quantum gravity theory of everything.

So the bottom of quantum theory has yet to be reached. We can recover the Newtonian classical limit from both QFT and GR, but not – in a way that yet satisfies folk – in a full QG sense.

Anyway, if classical physics appears to deny nonlocality, and quantum physics appears to demand it, then this is just a dialectical metaphysics in action. And Peircean semiotics – like any systems approach – is designed to live in that precise intellectual space.

I think it overlooks the fact that the US helped provoke this war, and that this is also a great opportunity to weaken an enemy by proxy — all under the cover of merely helping the underdogs who are being attacked by a madman. — Xtrix

I’m no fan of the US. I’ve avoided even travelling there for 25 years. But the US level of provocation was tiny compared to the level of Russian escalation.

Do you think the Obama and the Trump years somehow left Putin no choice? Or that Biden arrived and suddenly Putin saw a leader of cunning and flair? In poker terms, Putin had to go all in on whatever cards were in his hand?

Sure, Western media is going to frame events in the standard Hollywood tropes. The US has its own domestic audience to placate. And it has even had weak presidents like Bush jnr who seemed to believe his own “fighting for a free world” script.

But in this conflict, you can’t claim the US engineered events. And you can’t blame it for taking advantage if a cheap opportunity now presents itself.

Sure Ukrainians will suffer to restore their sovereignty. But that’s the game and how it works.

You might wish that humanity was somehow different from what it is. The first step would be to start by accepting it as it is with an accurate assessment.

The US doesn’t act benevolently at this scale. Russia and their ally, China, have been defying the international order, of which the US is in charge, and this is threatening to US hegemony. — Xtrix

I side with analysts like Peter Zeihan who stress that the US has always tended towards isolationism because of its geography. It just needs to secure Canada and Mexico as part of its North American hegemony and life is sweet. Anything more is gravy.

Trump was an incompetent and yet even under him the US made its major steps in this direction, weakening Nato commitments, signing targeted trade deals with Canada and Mexico, then adding in Japan, Taiwan and Korea as a sufficient bulwark against China. Russia was already fading from importance. The Gulf likewise was captive to the petrodollar. It owns a lion’s share of the US debt, and so had to suffer the Fed money printing the US out of its every economic hiccup, while also watching the US again become a hydrocarbon exporter through fracking technology.

So your geopolitical analysis builds in outdated neocon presumptions about the US’s self interests. Although that doesn’t mean that the GOP and even Hawkish democrats have necessarily caught up with that seismic swing back to a withdrawal from the wider world.

Yes, the US will defend its hegemony. It’s people believe that to be their god-given right. Every Hollywood movie is designed to reinforce the message in a nauseatingly crass fashion.

But the nature of that hegemony has changed. It doesn’t need to be the world’s policeman making the globe a safer and fairer place for even its smallest and weakest. Given climate change and technology advance, it is better off becoming the isolationist regime that always made the most self-interested geopolitical sense.

From the US view, Russia was already on death row. Let Europe and Asia suck its last drop of oil and gas.

China is also about to fall off its demographic cliff. Let it try to pivot to an economics of domestic consumption as the US pulls all its manufacturing back to cheap and reliable Mexico.

Of course it will take another 10 years for the whole US system to itself reorientate to this new reality. Trump couldn’t articulate the change. Biden only becomes convincing when he recycles the lines of his yesteryear training. This new logic of disengagement only perhaps becomes visible in events like the careless abruptness of his casting aside Afghanistan as an asset.

But anyway, judge events in Ukraine against a backdrop that has itself changed. A neocon analysis is so 1990s - even if it is true that large chunks of US institutional thinking might be still stuck in that time warp.

None of this is evident from the narrative you provide, however accurate it may otherwise be. — Xtrix

Hope I have shown that my narrative is based on the world as it is, even if that is also a world in transition.

I suspect ↪Pantagruel thinks I'm right, too. — Banno

:rofl:

Mere vitriol in the place of discussion. — Banno

Nope. Irreverence as the correct response to pomposity.

You just about employ the Royal we in your posts. You certainly rely on the booming paternal voice of first person authority - the I that is at the centre of your world and can recognise the legitimacy of no other.

Funny how upset you get about being personally attacked when your approach is so rooted in your first person framing of any debate. You bring it on yourself.

Not for you apparently. Do you consider yourself an authority to speak on behalf of others? — Janus

Is that what they call a rhetorical question? :smile:

It’s a narrative that leaves out a lot of information — information that’s equally true and relevant. — Xtrix

Feel free to make mention of what my narrative fails to incorporate. I’ve been known to change my mind. :grin:

And your posts make my point. You have a mind so narrowed by reductionist logicism that it can't even comprehend any other "other". Your insults thus have to take the form "I can't see you, therefore you don't exist". And yet we can all see you standing there with your eyes clamped shut. :lol:

But it's not an important point, so I won't argue it. — Banno

Translation: I can't argue against it, so therefore I will call it unimportant.

Always the same old, same old.

There's a sense in which "the universe can exist because it is falling into its own heat sink" begs the question - meaning it's premise assumes its conclusion — Banno

Only if you believe predicate logic to be more foundational than dialectical logic. Only if you commit to a reductionist notion of linear cause and effect that has already been empirically trashed by the advent of quantum theory.

So nope. Dynamics can have their attractors. The ends can justify their means. Future goals can solidify the paths that reach them. The principle of least action and the second law of thermodynamics can become the conclusions that exclude all other premises.

There is a whole metaphysics that is having a wonderful party here. And you stand outside like the grumbling neighbour, disturbed from his slumbers, wondering why the council noise patrol won't show up as you've requested.

Hah, yes. Putin is no longer Putin as he himself is now a fully paid up member of the cult of Putin.

The dynamic is so similar to that of Trump. Another escalation machine with cultish informational autocracy - the faking of competence as a political structure.

This kind of influencer social dynamic is breaking out everywhere in modern life. The medium is the message as they used to say.

Ukraine exploited this new information environment to spin up its own sense of national identity in double quick time. All the drone videos and cell phone intercepts.

Elon Musk is another aspect of this phenomena. The Murdochs of old had to hide their power. The new influencers become its open face so as to publicly own the resulting disinformation bubble. How dangerous will Musk eventually prove?

We are in a different era of geopolitics and its reality making realism. Those who think Ukraine is a minor special operation that now needs rational negotiation, just haven't adjusted to that fact.

It's not what we define it as, but rather what has been done thus far. — Moliere

This talks past the issue at stake. Is metaphysics a method of inquiry aimed at some goal, or is it merely a history of intellectual accidents?

You can take the dismissive or deflationary option. But it would have to be properly argued against those who say it is the dialectical opposite of that.

And whoops, if you accept that challenge, you’ve already lost it. Dialectics being the historical method that defines metaphysical inquiry as the univocal seeking of a foundation in the “unity of opposites”. :cool:

The basic idea is that the reason Putin invaded is that nobody did anything when he took Crimea. It was nothing but positive for him.

Obama has been criticized for setting the stage for the present crisis by not acting decisively then.

So the notion is that if we don't punch Russia in the nose now, it's going to continue taking things. Biden wants Putin gone. He's already publicly stated that. — frank

Yep. The danger is that Putin is locked into his own spiral of escalation. And such trajectories are exponential. Each step grows bigger and riskier. Time for him to be gone. The will of Ukraine means it would be nuts for the West not to support this opportunity if the escalation narrative holds water.

Biden says Putin is a rational actor who is now making wild miscalculations - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/11/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html

The obvious reason this could be the case is that Putin has become the victim of his own information autocracy. He has narrowed his contact with the real world to the degree even his inner circle can’t be honest with him. He presides over a systemically corrupt state - one that exists by faking competence - and now that means he no longer has the good advice and information on which to base his rational calculations. The bullshit about Russia being functionally competent is believed. Only in the battlefield is that bullshit exposed.

But Putin has to continue to fake strength and control. And indeed a purity of intention to cover up the stench of a state structure rotting away ever faster each day. To hold power, he must double down.

Better that violent energy is directed inwards right now rather than allowing it to continue spreading outwards by saying sure, take Ukraine, help yourself. We can live with these “small incursions”, even though they grow bigger each time.

How would you negotiate with someone who is rational and yet who has constructed his own echo chamber of disinformation as to the power he wields? What inflated set of terms would he be willing to accept? And having inflamed the whole of Ukraine as a nation, why would anyone expect them to accept a patently bad deal?

The West had to make a choice given the conditions that are of Putin’s doing. What is rational as its own war aim now that war is what is happening?

Crimea wasn’t a step too far. Donbas separatism wasn’t a step too far. But taking over Ukraine to add to Belarus as part of the new Russian empire expanding back towards its “rightful” place in the world is where you might want to rationally call a halt. And given the chance of a people only too eager to lead their own fight, the US at last had a chance just to spend the dollars and not get directly involved in the way that always goes wrong.

I concur with everything said, but the emergence of complex adaptive systems (and negentropy in general) is still something of a mystery. I wonder if instability is somehow being captured at the systemic level as a kind of 'power source'? — Pantagruel

Yep. How do we explain the Big Bang? My one liner is that the universe can exist because it is falling into its own heat sink.

We can view the Big Bang as a phase transition in a quantum foam. The foam is as unstructured as can be imagined. It doesn’t even have organised dimensionality. There is no spacetime container, and so no bounded quantum vacuum as its hot fluctuating content.

But this “infinite dimensional” state of foamy unboundedness could become constrained just by accident to have some dimensional order. Such localised fluctuations couldn’t be prevented. And it would turn out that any near enough three dimensional quantum vacua would have some very special properties such that it would be the ideal seed to form the kind of dissipative structure that is our Big Bang cosmos.

Only in 3D are the number of spin degrees of freedom matched by the number of translational degrees of freedom. This results in the chiral structure that is the basis of particle physics. Knots that can stay knotted and so anchor a structure of relations which becomes an expanding and cooling spacetime void.

In such a space, the first level of emergent QFT structure is a scalar field - inflation. Then that quickly breaks into a confusion of vector particles - the reheating step which begins the Big Bang proper.

So in general, you start with an everythingness that is infinite in dimensionality so effectively lacks any dimensionality. It is as unstable as anything could be. And that state must then explore all its possible arrangements just by the accidents of its fluctuations. It is then inevitable that any possible states of more persistent order will be discovered. Striking on a 3D set of constraints will produce the dialectic of spin and translation - the local and global Noether conservation symmetries that give particles with Newtonian characteristics.

If you have “stuff” spinning on the spot, that defines a location. If that stuff also moves in trajectories, that defines the metric within which momentum translates.

The next step is to produce actual gauge particles which lock in CP violation and so have an internal quantum spin structure. The vector particles become symmetry broken to produce the Standard Model’s collection of elemental, chirally separated, scraps of matter now freely spreading and collectively cooling in a heat sink universe heading for its de Sitter heat death.

Instability is what gives meaning to stabilising order. And stabilising order is inevitable if it is possible. The physics of our Universe tells us it is very possible as there was a whole cascade of phase transitions even in the Big Bang’s first trillionth of a second.

The critical step was limiting dimensionality to three dimensions, Or at least that seems the special number on a number of scores - especially as it brings the number of rotational and translational degrees of freedom into the exact balance (3+3) that could define the location of a particle within the space it can move.

Symmetry breaking ends when a new level of symmetry is found. A world fit for vector particles is what emerges from a dimensional arrangement where the local vs global degrees of freedom are balanced enough to form their own closed world of entropy transaction.

Couldn't these localized expressions of freedom be part of the universal telos? — Pantagruel

Ultimately they have to be because they must be of the nature to reconstruct the world or context that is giving them their shape. So it is a cybernetic loop. The global constraints produce the local freedoms and those degrees of freedom construct the world that has these constraints.

An equilibrium condition is where the parts freely move and collide, but the overall pressure and temperature don’t change, inject a particular hot or cold particle into this equilibrium and it is soon enough either slowed or speeded to join the collective average. It has freedom shaped to fit the system it has become part of. Even if, as the newcomer, it did make some slight difference to that collective by adding or subtracting to the average kinetic energy.

Also, contexts (of freedom and law) are themselves the products of other contexts, in a nested-hierarchical fashion. It seems that freedom is something that emerges and is defined (ie. law-constrained freedom or practical freedom) through this emergent-evolutionary process. — Pantagruel

Precisely. It is the hierarchy theory view. Stability emerges by the suppression of instability. Global constraints regulate local fluctuations. And one level of stability then becomes the source of the fluctuations that produce the next round of stabilising emergence.

Protons formed after the strong force confined quarks. Then atoms could form because protons still fluctuated enough to produce the pions that became the nuclear glue that allowed them to bind. An elemental table grew until radioactive instability became its limit. Chemistry exists as a collection of definite combinatorial freedoms because stability has been established over the course of many phase transitions and the new levels of particle order that resulted.

More tales of Russian incompetence. How the Kharkiv front was collapsed…

I do not conceive of "global constraints" as "causal" — 180 Proof

A context limits what is possible. So it is an apophatic cause. It causes by suppressing what might otherwise be the case.

Global constraints embody both formal and final cause and combine to be the downwards acting regulation in a holistic or hierarchical metaphysics.

Finality in a physical system is not a purpose but a tendency. It is what tends to happen in the context of some constraint. Rough grains of rock tend to become smooth and graded into fine sand if they are swilled in the surf for long enough. A simple expression of the second law and the tendency towards averageness with random mixing.

So natural philosophers like Stan Sathe find it normal to include telos in their cosmology. But they make the obvious distinction between the physical realm and the biosemiotic one.

Salthe's hierarchy theory claims three grades of telos, ranging from the brutely physical to the complexly mindful.

So there is a subsumption hierarchy of the form - {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.

Or in ordinary language, the three levels of {physical propensity {biological function {cognitive purpose}}}.

See for instance: http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/189/284

Well what is your ontology when it comes to the global constraints on a system?

Did you have some other story on how constraints can be causal?

justifying such notions as the fundamental distinction between kind and degree , quantity and quality. — Joshs

What was I saying other than that dichotomous distinctions are fundamental? For vagueness, the possibility of dialectical logic already spells the beginning of its end.

but a dissipative mega-structure with a sell-by date. — 180 Proof

:grin:

Exactly. The most reduced notion of a global telos that we could arrive at which would produce an entropically closed system.

So it is teleological minimalism. Yet still, a tellic ontology. Best of both worlds!

Sure. The self is a social construction. It is the collective view. It is centred on individuals in interaction until they arrive at some functional habit that is their shared constraining purpose.

That looks to be pointing to the overlap between ethics and metaphysics. A rule of thumb: metaphysics is about what is the case, ethics, about what ought be the case. — Banno

This is a reductionist manoeuvre aimed to put the self at the centre of the world. The mechanical view of nature arose by kicking final cause out of the picture. Teleology became the dirty word.

But science just hides finality from view. It is still there in the principle of least action and the second law of thermodynamics. Something has to give the Cosmos its definite direction.

In terms of an ontic “ought”, the purpose of the Universe is rather permissive. Within its optimising constraints, all kinds of local freedoms are dialectically defined as the differences that don’t make a difference to the overarching cosmic intent.

But anyway, the is/ought thing is what humans find useful to hold true so as to make explicit the freedoms that are available because the Universe has no reason to care. But at the metaphysical level, or at least the natural philosophy branch of metaphysics, we engage with the finality that the Universe actually does embody.

Ain’t logic the foundation of maths? Along with counting?

So yes. I’m never one to police academic boundaries in a reductionist fashion. I see only their developmental continuity.

It must be the case - in my epistemology - that knowledge grows in a dialectical and developmental fashion. The pragmatic dichotomy is that of reason and observation. Or more abstractly, logic and counting.

Metaphysics began with this dialectical approach - the holism of the unity of opposites. Tao and Buddhism made the same start too.

The reaction to this overarching holism was then reductionism. We had the atomistic metaphysics that paved the way for the mechanical sciences.

The next logical step after that is the unity of these new opposites. Which is what we are finding across the sciences. Physics is being forced to take holism seriously through the maths of quantum fields, topological order, gauge theory, holography, and all the rest.

So if you go back to the roots of holistic thought to check if there is any mathematics to it, then you can find that in the dialectical reasoning that prefigures the physics of symmetry breaking, phase transitions, spontaneous “order out of chaos”, and all that.

Maths is the logic of relations tied to counting - a general theory about causal theories and a general theory about quantifying variables. It is the holism of the local and global, suitably broken down into a working method.

I believe that the rise of the scientific worldview has been, at the same time, the curtailing of the of the metaphysical project. And while I am a respectful student of many sciences, I think we have elevated it too far; that in so doing, something has been lost. Modern physics and cosmology have already run into the wall of dark matter and energy. The paradox of science, that we can learn so much only to discover that we really know so little, suggests to me that the need for a return to the philosophical project is greater than ever. — Pantagruel

Good grief. Keeping up with the galloping advance of science is like trying to hang on to a rocket. You can say physics has run into a wall now that it has encountered the dark sector of "things that are there even if they don't interact". Or you can instead realise this is metaphysics made mathematical. The success of quantum field theory is so sweeping that we are able to generate predictions of particle types that don't even exist with concrete properties, and thus are pretty much unmeasurable except as the most ghostly echoes of those that do.

I would say metaphysics as an inquiry into fundamental being is in rude health. Especially to the degree that we have developed a mathematical holism which can see into what isn't even in principle "visible".

Beyond dark matter and dark energy – which are both rather substantial – physics and cosmology are engaging with the possibilities of a whole hidden sector of particles, or quantum excitations, that have to "exist" even if they could have no effect.

And to be able to think about reality in that fashion surely takes metaphysics to new places.

Vexler explaining why “competence” is such a touchy word for Putin and his rule by information autocracy….

So an organisation is 'incompetent' if even a single plan fails? — Isaac

Of course. If a single dud shell gets fired, the whole organisation can be written off as failed. I like the way you reason. :up:

So you agree with Kofman and I agree with Kofman. Amusing.

Note that I summarised his view as that Putin’s political war aims were incompetent because the Russian forces lacked the structural competence to execute them. Then on top of that, there was the incompetent execution due to poor preparation, systemic corruption, low morale, normalised sloppiness, etc, etc.

You can continue to claim competence on all these fronts if you like. Alternative facts.

what is the background against which you're measuring 'competence'? — Isaac

Plans that work because you’ve correctly prepared.

I entered this conversation at the point where there was a lot of excuses being made for Putin’s invasion. He only had limited aims. Kyiv was a feint. All the surprise at the early failures was unfair. A grinding three year war of attrition to seize a chunk of borderland already half under separatist control was the only ambition Putin ever had in mind.

I wondered who would claim such nonsense and why.

A lot of blah, blah, blah. Then a careful silence on your wild misrepresentation of Kofman’s analysis.

You cleared the threshold for incompetent argument with impressive ease. :up:

There are plenty of other posters on this forum that will take these novel ideas seriously, and challenge them in a respectful manner. — Gnomon

I would also say that I’ve tried to query your approach often enough in the past to find it is just a simplistic conflationist argument. Information and consciousness sound like they must be two faces of the same coin. So that’s what they are.

That shows in your support of Tonioni for example.

You really want to compare this guy to Michael Kofman.

Who, if you watch the interview I posted, mentions there was a lot of capabilities said to be missing, that the Russians did use successfully at the start of the war, but it was not reported at the time. — boethius

Thanks for posting that Kofman interview which flatly contradicts your talking points. That you could hear it as saying the opposite makes me quite worried about your comprehension skills.

The capabilities you are talking about are electronic warfare and cyber warfare to disrupt Ukrainian command and control. By their nature, that isn't visible. And so certainly we may find they were used. It would be surprising if they weren't. But the lack of visible effect then simply becomes another reason to suspect Russian incompetence.

So you tried to make a talking point of a passing mention that EW and cyber must of course have been employed as if this was being used as a major critique of Russian military effectiveness. But in an hour interview, Kofman nicely sums up the story of just how much went wrong for the Russians after the paratroop drop to establish a Kyiv airbridge.

In a nutshell, Putin's political incompetence – some rush of blood to the head – led to Russian generals becoming committed to a lightning expeditionary force attack that they could never appropriately scale. Decision incompetence exposed a structural lack of competence.

Kofman knocks down the talking point that the assault on Kyiv was a feint rather than a serious attempt to decapitate the Ukraine government and install a puppet regime. He points out how even after this first quick strike failed, Russia still persisted in dividing its underpowered "special operation" force, giving it the three objectives of encircling Kyiv, encircling Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, and pushing right down the coast to take Odessa.

It failed on all three objectives and wound up in the current war of attrition, with Ukraine now with all the momentum.

Kofman says this was clearly political incompetence – Putin expecting the Russian military to achieve things it wasn't equipped for. But then also he points out just how further widespread military incompetence compounded the Russian problems.

He is scathing of the sloppy navy that was supposed to be leading an amphibious assault on Odessa but instead couldn't even hold Snake Island or protect its main ship.

He is scathing of the airforce – although he says what can you expect from a force that is still stuck in the 1990s when it comes to complex operations and SEAD.

He is scathing of the army which became exposed in its incapacity to scale its operational structures with any efficiency. Even the good parts of the army were stuck in a disjointed and piecemeal mode of operation.

He points out how Russian incompetence shows through in very general ways. They knew Himars was coming but did nothing to adjust. He gives multiple examples of Russia being slow to learn where the Ukrainians have been nimble.

He ends sounding personally aggrieved about a particular case of the Russians trying to knock out a bridge with cruise missiles in a way that wouldn't even be believed in any basic officer training.

So yes Kofman's analysis is well worth listening to. But it is hard to believe you yourself sat all the way through it.

And if that were not enough, there is the threat of extinction from greenhouse gases and climate catastrophe. — yebiga

This being so, why does it matter whether you are camp West or camp Eurasia? Cheering for a team is a natural human reaction, but why not evaluate the whole of global politics through an ecological lens?

Our Western political leaders are in the habit of elevating one foreign leader after another as the latest reincarnation of Hitler. — yebiga

This is what cheering for your team looks like.

But factually, both sides make the same comparisons. So the criticism applies equally. The habit is shared.

On May 2nd, in an interview on the Ukrainian president, the Russian Foreign Minister said: “Zelensky is a Jew? Hitler also had Jewish origins. The greatest antisemites are precisely the Jews.”

https://jewishunpacked.com/can-ukraine-have-a-nazi-problem-with-a-jewish-president/

Crushing news. :up:

Burn, :rofl:

So your point is that the West should give up on its idea of World Order, Europe should only pursue economic prosperity by making peace with Russia, and the US should give up on its hegemonic role? And then we will more likely have peace? Is that it? — neomac

Excellently summarised. Just prepare for the dismissive waffle that will follow. :grin:

On my reading of the current situation in anglophone philosophy, which is admittedly limited, Ramsey cuts a wider swath than Wittgenstein. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. His star has risen rapidly. But is it for his work or his biopic potential - lost young genius and all that?

However, it is a good thing.

So, how is it then possible to interpret it metaphysically (semantically)? — Janus

Excellent question. If maths doesn’t take its semantics with it, then yes, it isn’t equiped with its own interpretive machinery. You seem to be back into mental pictures and constraining formulae of words.

When it comes to physics, the maths is a “mechanics”. So there is, in fact, the necessary inbuilt ontology. Speak in differential equations and the meaning of that can be understood in terms of the kind of machines that result.

Engineering became humanity’s great new metaphysical project!

It’s truth was comprehended in the equations thus made flesh - or at least metal and rubber. Who needs words and pictures when a Ford Mustang or Omega watch tells you … something.

But to be serious about QFT maths, you are now talking about differential equations that speak to the observational properties of a stack of particle fields in infinite Hilbert space. Just a dialectical calculus of creation and annihilation operators acting on some vacuum expectation.

Time and space are absent. So are particles. You are reduced to talking about ripples of excitation by which an electron field might produce its disturbances in a photon field. And trying to picture this is what you are told not to do as that is how you fall down rookie potholes. It will stunt your progress when it comes to using the QFT maths to dream up new kinds of particles that might be discovered at the LHC.

But of course, you still have to have intuitions to do even that. And even more so if you can’t content yourself with the idea that “shut up and calculate” at least still produces spectacular engineering from QFTs esoteric equations.

The best I’ve come across for trying to give a lay account without screwing the maths is Matt Strassler’s site - here is a post on virtual particles for example…

https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/

But definitely that is a deep question. If we are to be able to reject QM’s overly mechanical metaphysics, then it would have to speak to us in ways that get beyond the production of technology.

This is why I draw attention to the quantum biology that is indeed showing us how QM manifests in terms of biosemiosis. Living things might make for more convincing semantic objects than mechanical hardware.

I'd say that "where the science 'runs out' and the point where the metaphysical interpretations can begin" is precisely the point where scientific expertise also runs out. — Janus

Not so, especially with QM where what is being metaphysically interpreted are mathematically expressed statements.

Some things just can’t be put into words or pictures and only said as math. Quantum field theory in particular.

I think that's what we all want, and maybe why the mid-century titans of analytic philosophy, Quine and Sellars, each claimed the mantle of pragmatism at some point. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. Pragmatism is essentially AP. It aims at univocal truth claims by employing logic. But Peirce enlarged that logic (as well as laying foundations for predicate logic as well).

So I always find value in AP. At least it states it’s arguments clearly and provides examples that can substantiate its points.

Also, as Cheryl Misak recounts, Peirce had a subterranean influence on AP, even if one of limited fruitfulness in the end.

The standard story of the reception of American pragmatism in England is that Russell and Moore savaged James's theory, and that pragmatism has never fully recovered. An alternative, and underappreciated, story is told here. The brilliant Cambridge mathematician, philosopher and economist, Frank Ramsey, was in the mid-1920s heavily influenced by the almost-unheard-of Peirce and was developing a pragmatist position of great promise. He then transmitted that pragmatism to his friend Wittgenstein, although had Ramsey lived past the age of 26 to see what Wittgenstein did with that position, Ramsey would not have liked what he saw.

The more Hegelian continental tradition (at least because more Marxist) turned its back on science, or arrogated to itself the task of fixing science, rebuilding it as something else. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure. Dichotomies are meant to lead on to trichotomies in Peircean logic. Division paves the way for the holistic unity of opposites.

But in PoMo hands, dialectics became just about the paradox that every definite thing has its definite “other” … hence all truths are relative and fluid.

The generally pro-science sympathies of analytic philosophy, on the other hand, never fit comfortably with the linguistic turn, — Srap Tasmaner

And what was the linguistic turn but a caricature of semiotics?

Maybe it will embrace your dialectic yet. Maybe it already has, but it's hard to recognize in those funny clothes. — Srap Tasmaner

I’ve not seen that as yet. And besides, I am not a Hegelian so I only used “dialectics” as it is what folk are more familiar with. To be a Peircean requires fixing all Hegel’s misteps. Or at least the long messy trail of confusion left by his disciples and interpreters.

And even Peirce has to be detached from his theistic and mystical leanings. My Peirce is the one know to sciences like biosemiotics. :smile:

Agree, it's just hard to explain in what sense philosophy is a type of inquiry, lacking candidates with wide support for what its domain is. Inquiry into what? <insert crappy answer, handwaving optional> — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. But surely that is because what it has in common is the skill we call critical thinking. So it is inquiry’s general best method. And that allows its domain to be … anything and everything.

Check the history of metaphysics as it became natural philosophy and then science, we can see that it was based on the dialectal pincer movement of mathematical structure and observational evidence. Critical thinking is forming the general theory that accounts for the particular evidence.

So there is a method of inquiry. And we would then want to freely explore its every possible application.

That is why I see pragmatism as the core of the philosophical project - the right balance between the logicist and empirical tendencies.

AP can get too lost in wonder at the power of predicate logic, for example. Ironically that means it must set itself against dialectical logic as being “too metaphysical” as a boundary-policing activity.

PoMo can get lost in the observational wonder of phenomenology, affect and existential being. So it must ironically “other” even the structuralism which was its pragmatic departure point. It employs dialectics, but only to wring contradiction paradox from the resulting metaphysics.

One is the free play of syntax, the other is the free play of semantics. My usual point in any philosophy thread is that you need semiotics as a theory of meaningful utterances where syntax and semantics are in an enactive modelling relation with whatever world is under discussion.

Breathing fire is vastly overrated. Exploring the math can do that job. No need for unicorns. — jgill

Spoken like a mathematician but not a physicist or metaphysician?