That's OK. The new paradigm --- that all is Information --- is a radical departure from the conventional scientific worldview of Materialism, and the ancient worldview of Spiritualism. Like Quantum Theory it departs from classical doctrines on reality. It also shifts the meaning of many common terms, such as "space" & "substance". But it is an emerging theory among some prominent scientists.↪Gnomon
That makes no sense to me; as in, your post is opaque. — Banno
I agree with that argument too. Which is why I say the matter of origination can only be solved by adding a logic of vagueness to our metaphysical tool kit.
Both formal and material cause have to arise in the same moment. They in fact must emerge as the two aspects of a shared symmetry breaking. And time (as spacetime) also emerges. — apokrisis
Again, you are ignoring the contradiction involved in "time emerges". Time must already be passing for anything to emerge, so time is necessarily prior to emergence. — Metaphysician Undercover
You are not properly distinguishing the active from the passive. — Metaphysician Undercover
The immaterial is separate and distinct from the material in the very same way that the future is separate and distinct from the past. — Metaphysician Undercover
What we understand, in a mysticism based metaphysics, is that the entire material universe is created anew with each passing moment of time. This is a necessary conclusion derived from the nature of freewill. The freewill has the power to interfere with the continuity of material existence at any moment in time — Metaphysician Undercover
If time is what is emergent, then it is necessary that nothing be happening before it gets started. The idea of "before" becomes the incoherent claim here — apokrisis
You presume time to be eternal. Thus there is always a "before". Hence time is proven to be eternal. Your argument is a simple tautology. — apokrisis
A thermal model of time is about the emergence of a global asymmetry - an arrow of time pointed from the now towards the after - the present towards the future. So the past, the before, is a backwards projection. It is imagining the arrow reversed. And reversed to negative infinity.
Yet the reality - according to science - is that time travel (in a backward direction) is unphysical. And the Big Bang was an origin point for a thermal arrow of time.
Yes, we can still ask where the heat to drive that great spatial expansion and thus create an arrow of time, a gradient of change, could have come from. What was "before" that?
But this is no longer a conventional notion of a temporal "before" anymore than it is a conventional notion of "what could have been hotter" than the Planck heat, or "shorter" than the Planck distance, or "slower" than the speed of light. — apokrisis
Every such conventional notion fuses at the Planck scale - the scale of physical unification. The asymmetries are turned back into a single collective symmetry. There is no longer a before, a shorter, a hotter, a slower. All such definite coordinates are lost in the symmetry of a logical vagueness. That to which the principle of non-contradiction (PNC) now fails to apply.
Before the PNC applied, there is a time when it didn't. That is the "before" here. — apokrisis
It is a claim of a theistic model. And a naturalistic model has become the one that has produced all the useful physics here. — apokrisis
Epicycles to explain away a metaphysics that is provenly unphysical. It feels like an explanation being expanded but it is a confusion being compounded. — apokrisis
By "overboard" do you mean he goes beyond current materialist doctrine into speculations on quantum queerness? If so, I agree. And I find it to make a lot of sense, at least as far as Quantum theory can make sense.Paul Davies goes a wee bit overboard on occasion, — jorndoe
I take it that you don't approve of Scientific Speculation and Metaphysical Philosophy? Davies doesn't ask you to take what he says "wholesale". You are expected to take a scientific analytical approach, up to the point where Reductive analysis bogs down in Holistic metaphysics, such as Quantum Entanglement. QE doesn't "make sense", but it does seem to be a fact of physics. So Davies uses Information theory to peer into the mists of murk beyond classical Newtonian physics. :smile:it's just another sample "all-embracing monstrous metaphysical vision" when taken wholesale. — jorndoe
. The scientific community hijacks and restricts the use of "time" to conform to their empirical observations, i.e. they define time in relation to the material world. — Metaphysician Undercover
Hypostatization is the fallacy of Reification : ascribing reality to abstractions. But recent neurological studies are finding that what we humans take for reality is actually a figment of our imagination : an abstraction. Cognitive Psychologist Donald Hoffman has produced a novel theory of perception that sounds a lot like the ancient Buddhist teaching of Maya (illusion). If you are not familiar with that notion, the book review linked below will give you a brief glimpse from a non-Buddhist perspective. But, if you have any interest in cutting-edge Information theory and Consciousness science, I recommend that you read the book for yourself. :cool:Regarding the Information thing (paraphrasing Gamez), by wholesale I meant thorough all-embracing hypostatization, but that wasn't about Davies. — jorndoe
Yes, we can consider this a contest between pragmatic naturalism and dogmatic theism if you like. One holds consequences here in the real world. The other not so much. — apokrisis
Your approach is, who cares if this naturalist metaphysics leads us into contradiction... — Metaphysician Undercover
The PNC is a case in point. — apokrisis
But that is why pragmatism – particular in the Peircean sense - is the royal route to "truth". — apokrisis
Your reaction to Peirce's relaxation of the PNC is telling. He makes the PNC an emergent limit whereas you cling to it as a brute fact. — apokrisis
Sure, you can have an argument against that. But it has to be better than: "I don't like the challenge it creates for my necessary presumptions". — apokrisis
If you can show me how knowing the truth is possible when the PNC is violated, then I might give up that necessary presumption. — Metaphysician Undercover
The PNC is not about "truth". It is about "validity". Or indeed, merely about "computability". — apokrisis
But it is quite reasonable to question the claim the world in fact is divided quite so crisply. — apokrisis
Indeed, that is the very thing that quantum indeterminism has challenged in the most fundamental way. If two particles are entangled, there is no fact of the matter as to their individual identity. They happily embody contradictory identities - until the further thing of a wavefunction collapse. A thermal measurement. — apokrisis
So right there is a canonical modern example of how reality is vague (a quantum potential in which identity is accepting of contradictions). — apokrisis
So a logic of vagueness, in which the PNC becomes an emergent feature of classical reality, has direct empirical proof now. — apokrisis
Yes. Idealism is an ancient philosophical worldview that never went away. To me, Hoffman's theory seems to be an update of Kant's Transcendental Idealism. However, Hoffman calls it Model Dependent Realism. I suspect that the notion of "transcendence" does not fit your worldview. So you may dismiss Hoffman as an occultist, but he is an MIT educated occultist.Hoffman is just re-casting age-old idealism (mental monism) in the image of a couple odd theses of his.
I suppose, if you really think this holds water, then you could put together a concise and short argument in a new opening post. (y)
Keep in mind, if Hoffman wants to raise this stuff to science, then the requisite falsifiability criteria and such applies. — jorndoe
Further, the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle, provide guidelines as to what we can truthfully say about any identified object. — Metaphysician Undercover
Perhaps a more scientific pair of definitions would be that anything is 'general' in so far as the principle of the excluded middle does not apply to it and is 'vague' in so far as the principle of contradiction does not apply to it.
Thus, although it is true that "Any proposition you please, 'once you have determined its identity', is either true or false"; yet 'so long as it remains indeterminate and so without identity', it need neither be true that any proposition you please is true, nor that any proposition you please is false.
So likewise, while it is false that "A proposition 'whose identity I have determined' is both true and false", yet until it is determinate, it may be true that a proposition is true and that a proposition is false.
C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 5.448
Thus, although it is true that "Any proposition you please, 'once you have determined its identity', is either true or false"; yet 'so long as it remains indeterminate and so without identity', it need neither be true that any proposition you please is true, nor that any proposition you please is false.
That is rather the point. Peirce was highlighting the presumption you have “truthfully” identified an object. Some concrete particular under the first law. And he was drawing out the logical implications of the corollary - the case when the principle of identity doesn’t apply. — apokrisis
This is exactly what I was talking about. If you take the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle out of context, remove them from their relationship with the law of identity, you no longer have anything to ground truth or falsity in, no substance. Without identity truth and falsity is not relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover
We can never simply assume that the law of identity has been truthfully applied, Peirce was correct in this, and it's the starting point for skepticism. — Metaphysician Undercover
It makes no sense to conclude that the law of identity cannot be applied, because that just demonstrates a lack of effort. — Metaphysician Undercover
You are reading it backwards. — apokrisis
A logical definition of vagueness (and generality) is what helps ground your desired "truth-telling" apparatus. It tells you the conditions under which the laws of thought will fail - ensuring you do what is needed to fix those holes. — apokrisis
So you have to establish that you are dealing with a concrete case where a binary judgement can apply. The thing in question has to be that thing and no other thing. You can't simply presume it. You have to check it. — apokrisis
And what does that effort look like? — apokrisis
Probability is not consistent with the three laws, when maintained as three, because identity of an object gives us determinateness. — Metaphysician Undercover
Further, the author of your referred article, Robert Lane, explains how Peirce allows that the term of predication might be defined in a multitude of ways. — Metaphysician Undercover
Notice how Robert Lane provides no indication, throughout that article, as to how Peirce shows any respect whatsoever to the law of identity in his discussion of the LNC and LEM. — Metaphysician Undercover
The conclusion I draw is that yes, we can't presume complete determinism. But nor do we then need to lapse into complete indeterminism.
Pragmatisim is the middle path of constructing a theory of logic in which indeterminism is what gets constrained.
As an ontology, that says reality is foundationally indeterminate, and yet emergently determinate. And the determinate aspect is not merely something passively existent (as often is taken to be the case with emergence - ie: supervenient or epiphenomenal). It is an active regulatory power. The power of emergent habit. The power of formal and final cause to really shape indeterminate potential into an actualised reality.
So it is a logical system large enough to speak of the world we find ourselves in - complete with its indeterminant potentials and determining contraints. — apokrisis
A fluctuation has to be a fluctuation in something - or so it would seem.
This is precisely the obvious hole in the vogue for accounts of the Big Bang as simply a rather large quantum fluctuation. Even if a quantum field is treated as the most abstract thing possible, the field seems to have to pre-date its fluctuation. Verbally at least, we remain trapped in the "prime mover" and "first efficient cause" maze you so enjoy. — apokrisis
A step further is "potential" properly understood as a true vagueness. A fluctuation is a spontaneity that is not caused by "the past". It is called for by the finality of its own future - the world it starts to reveal. This is one of the things that smashes the conventional notion of time you prefer to employ. — apokrisis
However when we get to ontological questions about the machinery of creation, then this background to the laws of thought become relevant. The details of how things really work can no longer be brushed under the carpet, or shoved in a black box labelled "God". — apokrisis
If we look at reality, as we know it, to find out what distinguishes or separates the determinate from the indeterminate, we see that the past is determinate, and the future indeterminate, with the present separating these two. — Metaphysician Undercover
If I understand Peirce correctly, he wants to take one step further, and say that the present, which separates the determinate past from the indeterminate future (LEM not applicable), is itself a "vague" division. So at this time, the present, the LNC does not apply. So we have a determinate past, an indeterminate future which can only be predicted through generalizations (LEM not applicable), and a present which violates the LNC. — Metaphysician Undercover
Suppose we take a many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, does this say that the sea battle both will and will not occur? — Metaphysician Undercover
This is the problem with wave theory. A wave needs a medium, and electromagnetism is understood by wave theory. Denying that there is a medium, and insisting that the activity is "wavelike" doesn't solve the problem. — Metaphysician Undercover
Appealing to God is not to brush things under the carpet, but to realize the true nature of time, and how the first act must necessarily be an intentional act, final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover
Or rather that the past is the determining context. The future is created by what then becomes determinate due to the application of these constraints. — apokrisis
The present is the "now" where global historical constraints are acting on residual indeterminacy to fix it as some new actualised event. So the present is defined by the actualisation of a local potential via the limitations of global historical context. — apokrisis
Potential becomes increasingly restricted or constrained over time as it realised in particular happenings. — apokrisis
Events remove possibilities from the world. And so shape more clearly the possibilities that remain. — apokrisis
Time thus arises as the macroscale description of this directional flow. Potential becomes increasingly restricted or constrained over time as it realised in particular happenings. The business of change takes on an increasingly determinate character - even if there thus also has to be a residual indeterminancy to give this temporal trajectory something further to be determined by contextual acts of determination. — apokrisis
The present as an act of local actualisation has to emerge from the interaction of what is past (the development of some global contextual condition) and what is future (the indeterminancy still to be shaped - but not eliminated - by that process of actualisation). — apokrisis
But vagueness would describe the state of things at the beginning of time because the indeterminism in the system is macro. There is no history of actualisation as yet, and so no determining context in play.
However by the time you get halfway through the life of the Comos - as we are in the present era - then it has grown so large and cold that it is most of the way to having only a microscale indeterminacy. The potential has been so squeezed that you can only really see it at the quantum level of physical events.
At the macroscale, the Cosmos is now getting close to the other end of its time - its classically fixed state of maximum possible global determinacy. It has arrived at what Peirce calls generality. (Or continuity, or synechism, etc).
Don't worry. It all makes sense. — apokrisis
But who wants to go with the MWI? — apokrisis
Alternatively, this is pragmatism. Accepting that we can only model reality. And so what matters is that the model works. It can solve our practical problems. — apokrisis
So can you lift the carpet and provide the detail of who is God and how He does these things? What first act did He perform with the Big Bang? What intent we can read into its unfolding symmetry breaking? How much choice did He have over the maths of the situation? — apokrisis
The problem here is that you do not account for the acting free will, final cause. It does not act according to these constraints, the determining context. It acts according to what is desired for the future. Yes it is constrained, but the primary objective is to bring about what is desired, regardless of constraints. — Metaphysician Undercover
"Potential" is a human conception which is perspective dependent. An apple hanging in the tree has potential energy due to the force of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Theories about entropy and heat death, only describe potential from the human perspective, the human capacity to harness energy. — Metaphysician Undercover
But at the first moment in time there is necessarily no past. Can you apprehend this? — Metaphysician Undercover
Pragmaticism does not produce good metaphysics. — Metaphysician Undercover
That is only a problem from your theistic presumptions. It is the basic inconsistency in theism or idealism that my version of physicalism resolves. — apokrisis
Finality is not about "free will". — apokrisis
You don't understand Peirce's metaphysics yet. But this is the guts of it. — apokrisis
So at the beginning everything is the same "size" and so indistinct or vague. — apokrisis
In the Heat Depth, the visible universe has reached its maximum extent due to the inherent limits of its holographic event horizons - technical jargon for the distance any light ray can reach before the ground under it is moving so fast that effectively it winds up standing still ... as is the case when you fall into a Black Hole.
And it has also reached its minimum average energy density as every location within that spread of spacetime now has a temperature of 0 degrees K and so the only material action is a faint quantum rustle of virtual particles. — apokrisis
So this is a very different conception of "time" than your Newtonian one. It is not a collection of instants - truncated or endless. — apokrisis
It is the only test of bad metaphysical theories. — apokrisis
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