Interesting? Or entirely paradoxical for reductionist meaphysics? — apokrisis
Scientific and other analytic explanations tend to be reductionist, in the sense that they fit phenomena or concepts into some theoretical framework. — SophistiCat
If there is a lesson to derive from the four causes it is this pluralism of explanations — SophistiCat
there are these alternate frameworks that are sometimes exactly equivalent — SophistiCat
There are deeper and more interesting ways to make sense of such alternate explanatory frameworks. — SophistiCat
Per Feynman in (I think) SIx Easy Pieces, or maybe QED, the light takes all the paths. — tim wood
In the case of light we also discussed the question: How does the particle find the right path? From the differential point of view, it is easy to understand. Every moment it gets an acceleration and knows only what to do at that instant. But all your instincts on cause and effect go haywire when you say that the particle decides to take the path that is going to give the minimum action. Does it ‘smell’ the neighboring paths to find out whether or not they have more action? In the case of light, when we put blocks in the way so that the photons could not test all the paths, we found that they couldn’t figure out which way to go, and we had the phenomenon of diffraction.
Is the same thing true in mechanics? Is it true that the particle doesn’t just ‘take the right path’ but that it looks at all the other possible trajectories? And if by having things in the way, we don’t let it look, that we will get an analog of diffraction? The miracle of it all is, of course, that it does just that. That’s what the laws of quantum mechanics say. So our principle of least action is incompletely stated. It isn’t that a particle takes the path of least action but that it smells all the paths in the neighborhood and chooses the one that has the least action by a method analogous to the one by which light chose the shortest time.
You remember that the way light chose the shortest time was this: If it went on a path that took a different amount of time, it would arrive at a different phase. And the total amplitude at some point is the sum of contributions of amplitude for all the different ways the light can arrive. All the paths that give wildly different phases don’t add up to anything. But if you can find a whole sequence of paths which have phases almost all the same, then the little contributions will add up and you get a reasonable total amplitude to arrive. The important path becomes the one for which there are many nearby paths which give the same phase.
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html
Each of these two deals with the existence of the immaterial, which is beyond the scope of modern science. So where science doesn't go, due to its limitations, we must turn to the ancient principles, to pick up where science leaves off. Nothing procrustean, science and metaphysics just have a different scope. The latter is much more inclusive of all aspects of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover
Indeed they do.science and metaphysics just have a different scope. — Metaphysician Undercover
Did you mean science instead of "metaphysics"? In what sense does it take all the routes? Do a little research on diffraction gratings. This movement of light as a wave, capable of self-interference, like water in the ocean, I accept as a fact demonstrated by experiment.Seriously? In what sense does it actually take all the routes? You are confusing the method of calculation with the metaphysics.... All the trajectories that don't happen are virtual. They exist in concrete fashion as possibilities. And so in turn, in a contextual sense. They express the holism of the constraints being imposed on the action. — apokrisis
Are you sure the excitation and the field are different things? You seem to imply they are different.You mean like an excitation in a field perhaps? — apokrisis
Two things are clear from this: 1) whatever holism is good for, it is of no use when applied to anything as mundane as things in the world, and 2) apokrisis has apparently started a correspondence course in sarcasm but hasn't got to the part yet where they teach him that sarcasm is usually without substance, especially the eye-rolling variety. Perhaps when he gets them back around facing front, he'll reconsider the question.As to holism, I find this:
"the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts."
If you accept this, then can you explain to me what "cannot exist independently of the whole," and "is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts" mean?
— tim wood
And from the engine. I can remove parts and put them over there. They exist independently over there, yes?
— tim wood
Surprise. You can prove existence is a machine because a machine is a machine! Beautiful logic. Shame I've used up my quota of eyerolls already. — apokrisis
Sure, everything in terms of purpose. But there's a persistent mistake. Maybe an example will help me, here.The reason that anything happens, in a sense other than, "it happened as a consequence of a series of physical transformations". 'The reason why' in the sense of an overall rationale or the purpose why something exists,.. but there's a very fine and succinct one here. — Wayfarer
Which explains nothing about it. Were early humans to have seen things like that, we would never have come down the trees. If there was no purpose for knives, no need to cut, there would be no knives. And everything in the organic world conforms to that general principle. — Wayfarer
Part of the definition of a thing, is the purpose it serves - that is what makes it what it is. The ‘it just is’ is the attempt to reduce the compliexity inherent in that necessity to simple and elemental facts. And it is precisely the shortcomings of that attitude that is among the factors in the revival of interest in fourfold causation. — Wayfarer
Whereas, the 'domain of numbers' (for only one example) doesn't exist, in that sense, yet is still real, according to Platonists (including Godel and Frege.) So - real but not existent. And that is the dividing line between Platonism and everyone else, as everyone else says that 'what exists' and 'what is real' are the same. — Wayfarer
Two things are clear from this: 1) whatever holism is good for, it is of no use when applied to anything as mundane as things in the world, and 2) apokrisis has apparently started a correspondence course in sarcasm but hasn't got to the part yet where they teach him that sarcasm is usually without substance, especially the eye-rolling variety. — tim wood
Do a little research on diffraction gratings. This movement of light as a wave, capable of self-interference, like water in the ocean, I accept as a fact demonstrated by experiment. — tim wood
I think you have a problem here in that you have to show how the imagined domain relates to physical reality. — apokrisis
If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects which aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences. Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.
So the question is, how do you divide your mathematical Platonia into a part that is physically realistic (like the maths of the standard model, or the maths of quantum probability amplitudes - both extremely arcane until it was found they had this exact fit with reality) and the part which is simply an unconstrained generation of fictions? — apokrisis
What I think it means, is that mathematics is inherently a part of the structure of intelligence. So universals and logical laws are part of the fabric of our understanding, but naturalism doesn't like that, because it has already divided the world into the external object and the subject, whose intelligence has to be understood as entirely a product of the objective domain. — Wayfarer
It seems to me that the problem you have is that you're determined to say something about them (universals) being somehow real independently of the world, and yet you cannot say what you want to in any way that makes any sense. — Janus
You presume, uncritically and without qualification the "existence of the immaterial," that you imply is in or an aspect of reality. You set this existent "beyond the scope of modern science,.. due to its limitations." No problems here? On its face it's incoherent. — tim wood
Clearly there are Xs that lack the materiality that is the usual object of science. Equally clearly one can attempt to identify, qualify, and quantify these Xs. One can even attempt to think about them in an organized way and it's fair to call that kind of thinking "science" - on the bases of its methods, not its content. But all of this, no matter how well done and how useful - and history shows it can be well done and useful - remains a castle in the air, a fantasy, a fable, a story. By no means do I intend to undercut the value of these enterprises. I do mean to question the claim that they're anything more than what they are. — tim wood
I find your position akin to the Creationist who wants for Creationism a place at the table for science, going so far as to call it creation science. The trouble, of course, is that creationism is no science at all. — tim wood
Keep, then, your metaphysics. Keep it for what it is, what it's worth, and what you get out of it. I like metaphysics too, although my understanding of it differs from yours. But it's not a trump card playable outside of the confines of its own game. — tim wood
It 'relates', because it is used to make predictions and calculations. Isn't it revealed when mathematical analysis is used to generate new discoveries about nature? — Wayfarer
The movement of those objects is constrained by the laws of physics, which is what enables us to predict them. That's what I had thought you meant by 'constraints' but please tell me if I'm wrong. — Wayfarer
And he really doesn't have an answer; the word 'miracle' appears twelve times in that essay. Likewise Einstein often mused that 'the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprensible'. — Wayfarer
So, great scientists like these two, don't themselves actually have a theory about why. — Wayfarer
Where that goes against the grain, is that it is against empiricist dogma that nature ought not to be so ordered; mathematics must be somehow explicable in terms of grey matter, for it to be considered real. — Wayfarer
What I think it means, is that mathematics is inherently a part of the structure of intelligence. — Wayfarer
Where the real conflict lies, is not between that view and physics - many physicists have strongly Platonist tendencies, whether they know it or not - but with Darwinism. — Wayfarer
As Wigner says, there is something miraculous about the human ability to reason. It enables us to imagine something that has never existed before, and then manifest it. — Wayfarer
So you are starting out by granting the very things you normally strongly deny. How long before you forget what you just said here? — apokrisis
When you look at "God" in the face - come to understand the inescapable necessity of the structural principles of existence - one always ought to feel awe. It's a dazzling realisation. — apokrisis
We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. — Albert Einstein
Let's not revert to the Platonism of saying human minds discover transcendent truths. — apokrisis
Your animus against evolution and development is misplaced. — apokrisis
Maths that never cashed out in an experiment would be the definition of an austistic activity, like rhythmically beating your head against the wall. — apokrisis
So you are starting out by granting the very things you normally strongly deny. How long before you forget what you just said here? — apokrisis
The further point is that, as you acknowledge, the only possible evidence (if it is indeed accepted as such) for the ontological provenance of mathematics is delivered in a context of empirical conjecture, experiment and observation, and only in that context; a fact which is not consistent with your rejection of both empiricism and naturalism. — Janus
I am denying the empiricist dogma of 'no innate ideas'. — Wayfarer
That is why I frequently refer to the IEP article on the necessity of explaining mathematics in empirical terms - the 'indispensability argument for mathematics'. Don't you think that is ridiculous, that it has come to that? That is said to be because, and I quote, 'our best empirical theories seem to debar any knowledge of mathematical objects.' And why do 'our best theories' seem to debar that knowledge? Because 'the rationalist’s [what I'm calling Platonist] claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.' And why? Because mathematics is real, but it's not physical; its very nature is incorporeal, and the faculty which grasps it can't be understood through the one-dimensional lens of today's empiricism. That's what empiricism must deny, a priori, because according to it, everything real is physical. Ergo, having to justify mathematics in terms that empiricists will respect. I'm sure the irony is missed on most of them, as that, too, is not physical. — Wayfarer
Again - no animus against evolution, but against biologism, by the view that our abilities are circumscribed by biological ends. Evolution doesn't address the gap between surviving and living - the space in which human culture emerges - and every attempt to do so, amounts to reductionism. — Wayfarer
I'm not denying empiricism. I am denying the empiricist dogma of 'no innate ideas'. — Wayfarer
I can't make you out. You seemed smart enough to have a serious conversation. Then you so quickly degenerate into time-wasting bickering.
To deny holism in the context of quantum theory is simply Quixotic. — apokrisis
I disagree. Only if we dogmatically assert that something must be in the world to affect the world, or something must be physical in order to affect the physical, etc. But why would we hold to such an assumption? For example, ideas aren't physical, and yet they determine a large part of what physically happens - think about the ideas that guide scientists in inventing a new technology.The idea of transcendentals 'interacting with the world" necessarily carries a commitment to "another realm" apart from the world, though. — Janus
For example, ideas aren't physical, and yet they determine a large part of what physically happens - think about the ideas that guide scientists in inventing a new technology. — Agustino
And you are talking about understanding without grasping that I am not. I am simply distinguishing between phenomenon and model, and only to the extent that the one is not the other.I am the one asking you how quantum mechanics can be understood other than holistically, — apokrisis
As to holism, I find this:
"the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts."
If you accept this, then can you explain to me what "cannot exist independently of the whole," and "is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts" mean?
By "in intimate interconnection," I assume that means in terms of the function of the whole, if the whole has a function. The valves are "intimately interconnected" to the crankshaft in terms of the overall functioning of the engine, but they had better not ever touch!
And from the engine. I can remove parts and put them over there. They exist independently over there, yes? — tim wood
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