That they have spatial & temporal extension of some sort? — Marchesk
...the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present (i.e. 20th) century.
This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus
Why do you think the Modern World is so weird? — Wayfarer
Because people think a reality tv show host would make for a good president? — Marchesk
where the white coats saying the ultimate truth was only atoms in the void before the bubble chambers? — Marchesk
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
Heisenberg has holed that idea beneath the waterline, but most people seem to believe that it's still true. It's just that hardly anyone has caught up yet. — Wayfarer
And when it comes to the universe, you have to run the entire thing to see what happens. — Marchesk
Husserl said that each moment of experienced time( time consciousness) was a tripartite structure of retention, Immediate presentation and protention. In order to experience any 'now' , we are also experiencing g the passing of the just prior now, in he form of retention, a kind of trace of memory. The now also has a protentional component, an anticipating or intending beyond itself into the future. If you think about it, this makes some sense. Awareness is situated as anticipatory, as being directed toward the future. — Joshs
The fact of the matter is that experienced reality never repeats itself exactly, not our perceptions moment to moment or our conceptually accessible world. So we are already used to the idea, from our own experience of it, that the future is going to evade our attempts to precisely duplicate our present or past. Rather than making future reality, however you want to characterize
it, nonexistent, it does the opposite. EX-istence moment to moment implies a certain aspect of non-predictability, of exceeding the past in some qualitative way. But that isnt normally a problem for us. For instance, our perceptual system is designed to optimize for regularities, patterns, consistencies in the flux of incoming sensation. So we don't normally notice the fact that our perceptual world is not self-identical moment to moment. It apppears that way to us because our perceptions abstract the regularities. — Joshs
That is what the physical world is, a reality of constant flux, out of which we are able to extract and construct regularities.
If we try to turn these regularities into determinisms, we may preserve a prectability at the cost of a meaningful understanding of a constantly developing world. — Joshs
I suppose for me multiplicity could work as an irreducible presupposition for the thinking of any reality, but number is already a derived, and more complex term. — Joshs
I suppose for me multiplicity could work as an irreducible presupposition for the thinking of any reality, but number is already a derived, and more complex term. — Joshs
In ordinary parlance to say that there are. for example, multiple sheep is exactly the same as to say there are a number of sheep. I'm not claiming that an elaborated concept of number is inherent in nature (although if we are part of nature and such a concept is in us then in that restricted sense it is inherent) but that multiplicity (the fact that there are numbers of things) in nature which is inherent is the prior and necessary condition for any elaborated concepts of number. — Janus
What is my claim is that if the future is part of reality, and existent, then we must allow that the non-physical is part of reality and existent. And I see no reason to exclude the future from reality. So rather than excluding the future as unreal, and non-existent, we allow, from our experience of anticipation, that the future is very real, and existent, just like we allow from our experience of memory, that the past is very real. But this necessitates that the non-physical is also very real. — Metaphysician Undercover
This doesn't follow, because the future, when it becomes present will be physical in just the same sense as the present is and the past was. — Janus
It is better to say that the future is non-actual; it exists only as potential, and if nature is not deterministic; what it will be is not yet determined. — Janus
To say that the future becomes present is contradictory therefore. — Metaphysician Undercover
We cannot say that the future is non-actual, because the future is just as real as the past. — Metaphysician Undercover
.I'm wondering how your model of if-then abstractions as a description of reality accounts for what it is that these abstractions are derived from. I don't mean an external world of material objects. I mean the moment to moment experiences that constitute all of our awarenesses, of changing perceptual features, of affective valenced dispositions and inclinations, of fragments of meanings, etc. Aren’t these building blocks of the abstract facts that populate your system in some sense more real than the concepts derived from them?
.I guess I'm wondering how your world changes and evolves. Is it through trying on for size new ways of talking about the world?
Although you're trying hard not to, I think you're putting the cart before the horse in placing abstract logic before the world. — Joshs
They did emerge from a living world context, but when we engage with that world in an attempt to understand it , we are participating in the further evolution of that world rather than representing it. — Joshs
The basic idea is that what we experience moment to moment is not objects in the world, and it's not yet objects of thought. It's qualitative variations of meaning. The psychologist George Kelly defines our perceiving of the world in terms of constructs. A construct is simply a way in which two things(meanings) are alike and differ from a third. To be awake and experiencing the world is to be always construing. And to be construing is always to be construing something new, and slightly different from what came before. Piaget had a similar notion. He said that to experience something is to assimilate it into one's system of understanding. But at the same time it is to accommodate ones system of understanding to the unique aspects of what it is that one is assimilating. So, assimilation always implies accommodation. — Joshs
In my view, "numbers" are abstract concepts that exist in the mind. Ontologically, they exist as particular mental abstracts in the form of brain processes. That means that "numbers" are dependent on minds; they are not independent of minds. If that were so, then that would obviously mean they exist extra-mentally. — numberjohnny5
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