The reason why these things appear to blend into each other is that we are lacking the capacity to distinguish them, our theories which deal with these actions are faulty, not because there is some ontic vagueness about them. The vagueness is epistemic. — Metaphysician Undercover
To me, it appears to say that symmetry maths says that when every permutation is permitted, then none are omitted. — Metaphysician Undercover
Stating that the evidence isn't conclusive isn't the same as ignoring it. Yes 'heat death' is a possibility, certainly. A possibility that we don't actually even understand that well either.So you just ignore the evidence of the Heat Death being all around us? And you ignore the fact that we can look out into the sky and see the start of the Universe because it takes billions of years for distant light to reach us? And you ignore the fact that we can create both the early and final states of the Universe to some degree in a particle collider or other experimental apparatus.
Is there no limit to your ability to ignore the observable so you can maintain your articles of faith? — apokrisis
I think you should re-read the relativity I've advanced a little bit more carefully.Well either you believe in the relativity you advanced or you don't. Or is inconsistency OK in your metaphysics? [rhetorical question] — apokrisis
I think repetition and pattern don't really get to the essence of order. Repetition and pattern are only one kind of order, more specifically the order that arises by having separate things arranged in such and such a way. But, essentially, order is a determination. This means that absolute disorder or absolute chaos must be impossible, for it entails the absence of any determination, and the absence of any determination is just non-being, nothing.
You may think of absolute chaos as two balls moving in empty space absolutely chaotically, without any rhyme or purpose. But that too isn't absolute chaos, because the balls are still determined in-themselves as balls, and also in relation to one another. So all that we're dealing with in reality will be different degrees of order - we can never deal with infinite chaos, for such a thing is incoherent - the negation of all determinations is its own negation.
The table is black. There is order. The table is not white. This seems to be a negation, but every negation is ultimately an affirmation, for nobody actually saw a table that is 'not white'. They saw a table which has some determination with regards to color - but it wasn't the color they expected - so they say it's not white. This "not white" is an underhanded way of affirming its real color. Thus, there is no pure negation. Determination is always prior to negation. — Agustino
The point I'm advancing above is the same point Aristotle advanced. Namely that order and chaos aren't a symmetrical dichotomy the way you'd want them to be. They don't both arise from an X which is both ordered and chaotic. Rather the whole point is that order is primary and chaos is secondary and relative to order. This is what Aristotle sought to show with the primacy of act over potency and form over matter. The point being that your infinite potential - your vagueness from which everything emerges - is incoherent. Your vagueness by itself is inert - in fact, non-existant. There cannot be any such vagueness - nor, if there ever was such a vagueness - could anything ever "emerge" from it. But there is something. Hence why we need a First Cause, which is entirely act and not potency.Well we have to be careful how we define those terms. Chaos and order are not opposite terms, since there is an asymmetry between the two. Chaos is a relative term. Something is chaotic in comparison to a higher degree of order. But absolute chaos, as I've mentioned in my first post in this thread, is incoherent. A minimum of order is always necessary. — Agustino
Determination in the sense we're discussing it here does not "arise". Some degree of determinacy is properly basic, it is the first cause. This is the Aristotelian primacy of act over potency.The very fact of determination would demand its dialectical "other" of indeterminancy. How could determination arise except as a departure from the undetermined? — apokrisis
I am absolutely prepared, I ask that you also be prepared to do the same.You have shown you get the logic. So be prepared to follow it through in every argument. If individuation is a thing, then so is vagueness. — apokrisis
It's not my ability to imagine "absolute chaos" that is defective, but rather that absolute chaos is a chimera - it doesn't and cannot exist.I can't help it if your ability to imagine "absolute chaos" is so improverished. — apokrisis
Dialectical reasoning as practiced by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle has nothing to do with this Hegelian version of dialectics that you're proposing here. The problem with Hegel is what the first trio critiqued way before him - he assumed that negation has an equal standing with determination, and that's false.That is what we should expect from an acceptance of dialectical reasoning. If what emerges is the opposition of two things - here, the necessary and the contingent, or purposeful creation vs meaningless existence - then the vagueness which spawned them must be a state where we can no longer tell the difference. The first cause must look as much like one as the other. The first action must be both deliberate and accidental - and so also, the least of either. — apokrisis
Again this is just a rationalisation, the equations certainly don't "blur into each other". Furthermore, our physics breaks down when we reach the singularity. We just don't know what happens. You are speculating that a quantum fluctuation gets caught into the rapid inflationary period which effectively accounts for everything that exists in the Universe today. That's possible, but it still wouldn't account for the origin - why is there a fluctuation in the first place?We now actually know that there is a "quantum Planck-scale" at which definite actions and definite accidents blur into each other indistinguishably. We can give a size to "a fundamental fluctuation". And this starting point is chimeric. It is as much the one thing as the other. And so really neither, if we are being honest. — apokrisis
Yes, you're playing the same trick here that I've mentioned before. You're just telling me you solved the problem by restating it in different words. Our initial problem was why lower degrees of order statistically lead to higher degrees of order over time. Your answer is that the fastest entropic gradient is the one that produces negentropic structures which decrease their internal entropy while increasing the entropy of the external environment much more. See what you've done? You told me that the entropic gradient (ie lower degrees of order) is such that it will lead to the formation of negentropic structure (ie higher degrees of order). But you haven't answered the question - you just restated the problem under different terms. Now the question becomes why is it that the fastest entropic gradient is the one that produces negentropic structures? Why do negentropic structures maximise the degree of entropy? We're back to square 1.I only argue that the degree of order is that which is matched to the degree of disordering. Thermodynamics is all about balance and equilibrium. Surely you've heard that mentioned?
So human society is negentropy that is matched by its capacity for entropification. For every city built, a matching amount of frictional heat must be produced. There are no perpetual motion machines. — apokrisis
I'm just pointing out that you making the dogmatic statements that you do make requires a much greater degree of certainty and evidence than we have available. If we can know how the Universe started 13.8 billion years ago, why can't we know what the weather will be like in 5 days? It's a bit far-fetched to claim we have such degree of certainty over billions of years based on data we extract today.What can I say? I thought you were a smarter fellow. But when you resort to arguments as weak as these, it just looks like you have run up the white flag. — apokrisis
Science is not in the business of "explaining" but rather establishing mechanisms via which order can arise. It cannot tell us why order arises in the first place. That's the business of meta-physics to decipher.Science is explaining the emergence of order very nicely. The ancient metaphysics of a dialectically self-organising cosmos - metaphysical naturalism - is proving true. Exhibit A is the quantum fluctuation. Exhibit B is Big Bang cosmology. — apokrisis
You have yet to show that the two dichotomous categories - act / potency or order / chaos - are really dichotomously symmetrical, because if they are not, then one of them has primacy over the other. Remember - my disagreement with you is not over your physics, but over your metaphysics, and your physics, whatever they are, have no bearing on these metaphysical issues we're discussing. I'm merely pointing out that your metaphysics is incoherent as it stands - it's self contradictory.If you want to keep doing metaphysics at this stage of human history, you've got to do a better job of keeping up with the play. The question about "first cause" goes beyond the dichotomous categories you thought were fundamental. — apokrisis
Huh? If different permutations have the same outcome, how many different outcomes would you count? — apokrisis
Symmetry maths says when every permutation is permitted, what emerges is the realisation that some arrangements can't be randomised out of existence. — apokrisis
Teleological evolution seems a bit like predestination — jorndoe
OK, so what if a semi-aware consciousness pervades all living things, and receives input from each entity's experiences — CasKev
Yes, agreed. Without a teleological end that directs occurences towards the production of increasing complexity and order this would be impossible. — Agustino
Yes, rather than defending the obvious vulnerabilities in their own theory, believers in life arising from the random interaction of chemicals take the position that creationism is being argued and attack such a position, when creationism is clearly a subsequent step beyond the one being discussed.one of the frustrating things about this debate is that to even say there might be something other than chance behind it, is to then be categorised as creationist! — Wayfarer
Apokrisis has been going around saying our impulse to order here is to dissipate heat, to increase entropy. At the molecular level, under certain stable conditions (an energy source, heat bath) matter orders itself to dissipate more energy and this puts the upward trend of evolution of matter into motion. — Nils Loc
Without order, science and reasoned inference couldn't even get out of bed. The conceit of science is that it can or might explain that order, when it first must assume it, to do any work whatever. — Wayfarer
Yes, it is a continuous exploration and experimentation via creative will. As we, and all life forms, are evolving we are learning and also trying out new things. When I learn to dance or a new Tai Chi form, or singing, or playing piano, I am actually experiment and training my whole body, all of my cellular intelligence, to do new things. This is the process of evolution. It is neither chaotic nor determined. It is exactly as we are experiencing it, a process of creative evolution. — Rich
Somewhat missing in these discussions is that science is the one that has demonstrated the Universe had a beginning. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. — apokrisis
Pulling the science thing out of the bag. There is no way anyone knows what happened when it happened before any recorded history. In fact, I dare say it is impossible to say what happened an hour ago. — Rich
There is a bit of an issue here. The mind is designing and initiating such experiments. There is creativity and intent introduced by experimenter. Such an experiment must spontaneously self-create. — Rich
There is no way anyone knows what happened when it happened before any recorded history. In fact, I dare say it is impossible to say what happened an hour ago. — Rich
In return don't confuse storytelling with science. — Rich
We don't know yet. We probably never will. — Agustino
The funny thing is that the story you always love to paint is just as much an article of faith as anything else. It too is just a story made up of a few facts we do have, which may be the wrong story. — Agustino
Namely that order and chaos aren't a symmetrical dichotomy the way you'd want them to be. They don't both arise from an X which is both ordered and chaotic. Rather the whole point is that order is primary and chaos is secondary and relative to order. This is what Aristotle sought to show with the primacy of act over potency and form over matter. The point being that your infinite potential - your vagueness from which everything emerges - is incoherent. Your vagueness by itself is inert - in fact, non-existant. There cannot be any such vagueness - nor, if there ever was such a vagueness - could anything ever "emerge" from it. But there is something. Hence why we need a First Cause, which is entirely act and not potency. — Agustino
The problem with Hegel is what the first trio critiqued way before him - he assumed that negation has an equal standing with determination, and that's false. — Agustino
Again this is just a rationalisation, the equations certainly don't "blur into each other". — Agustino
You are speculating that a quantum fluctuation gets caught into the rapid inflationary period which effectively accounts for everything that exists in the Universe today. That's possible, but it still wouldn't account for the origin - why is there a fluctuation in the first place? — Agustino
Now the question becomes why is it that the fastest entropic gradient is the one that produces negentropic structures? — Agustino
If we can know how the Universe started 13.8 billion years ago, why can't we know what the weather will be like in 5 days? — Agustino
Remember - my disagreement with you is not over your physics, but over your metaphysics, and your physics, whatever they are, have no bearing on these metaphysical issues we're discussing. — Agustino
Dialectical reasoning as practiced by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle has nothing to do with this Hegelian version of dialectics that you're proposing here. The problem with Hegel is what the first trio critiqued way before him - he assumed that negation has an equal standing with determination, and that's false. — Agustino
These days we have some pretty good cosmological models. — jorndoe
More advanced models (and metaphysics) is required to understand a self-organising cosmic heat sink. — apokrisis
So the 'entropic' theory is this - according to thermodynamics life ought not to exist at all
— Wayfarer
Why do you persist in misrepresenting the science? Thermodynamics says life must exist if it raises the local rate of entropification.
Science has measured this claim and found it to be true. Stick a thermometer in the air, and yes - thanks to all this human "order" - the planet is warming nicely. :) — apokrisis
But isn't your 'metaphysics' fundamentally a function of physics? — Wayfarer
What appears to be creativity, the exuberance of nature, some might say, is really an accidental by-product of an essentially mindless process. — Wayfarer
I challenged that point, on the grounds of it being cynical - no reply. — Wayfarer
True or false? Is that what you're driving at? — Wayfarer
How could something always have existed? But on the other hand how could nothing have existed? If nothing existed, how did something come from nothing? Surely it relies on concepts humans are not currently capable of understanding.
— CasKev
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