I personally don't see a satisfactory definition of "physicalism" in terms of an ontological commitment. — SophistiCat
That does mean that by definition we could never find anything non-physical, because anything that we could somehow find we would have to count as physical. So “physical” vs “non-physical” is really a meaninglessness distinction in the end — Pfhorrest
But at that point the word "Physical" becomes meaningless and redundant, as it should, and so will "Idealism". We'll just have "thingism"
— khaled
Hooray for thingism! (In other words, I agree.) — f64
Aristotle famously contends that every physical object is a compound of matter and form. This doctrine has been dubbed “hylomorphism”, a portmanteau of the Greek words for matter (hulê) and form (eidos or morphê). — Form vs. Matter - SEP
That's what I'm arguing against, on the basis that physics itself is currently so open-ended that it can't be considered 'closed' in the sense that 'the causal closure' argument wants to appeal to. Sure, you can keep changing the definition of what constitutes 'the physical', but then, how is that 'closed'? It amounts to unending ad hoc extensions to your basic theory. — Wayfarer
The idea that our understanding of gravity is flawed ought to be taken as a given, rather than rejected and argued against. The commonly employed representation of a center of mass, or center of gravity is so ridiculously primitive, and cannot provide anything close to a real representation of the relationship between a massive object and its gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
let's be clear that these philosophies [materialism/physicalism] grew mostly out of a rejection of things like mysticism. — Mijin
Dark matter is something predicted by our existing physical models and which appears to behave as a form of matter, nothing particularly magical about it. — Mijin
I can't emphasize enough, that the way we measure our level of understanding is in our power to make good predictions and inferences. — Mijin
But gravity OTOH, is clearly something humans understand very well. We can predict where the solar system planets will be in thousands of years time, or the return of a comet centuries from now. — Mijin
If this is not a "real representation", you'll have to explain to me what you mean by that concept. — Mijin
The so-called center of mass, or center of gravity, does not represent any real feature of an object. It's just a principle applied for the sake of facilitating predictions. — Metaphysician Undercover
In philosophy we do not judge an understanding by the ability to make predictions. — Metaphysician Undercover
Thales predicted a solar eclipse, when they did not even know back then, that the earth revolves around the sun. The capacity to predict is developed by applying mathematics to repetitive patterns which may have slight variations. — Metaphysician Undercover
Such things are composed of form (from which both information and ideas etymologically derive) and matter: — Andrew M
if you can make crude predictions then you understand the phenomenon on at least one level.
It's not all-or-nothing in science, you can have levels of understanding. — Mijin
You said that our understanding of gravity is "flawed" and "primitive". This is a claim of scientific understanding, not philosophy. — Mijin
But secondly, yes, if someone can predict the occurrence of an eclipse then they do have an understanding. — Mijin
But yes, the measure of understanding is correct predictions and inferences; if you can make crude predictions then you understand the phenomenon on at least one level.
It's not all-or-nothing in science, you can have levels of understanding. — Mijin
As a pleasing interlude, perhaps the Earth's gravity does not pull objects towards its center but rather fails to resist by its outward pressure the greater array of incoming gravitational fields while permeating objects such that those at lower elevation which experience greater gravitational field compression move slightly slower as per the observations of relativity and clocks...or maybe an ever so slight redshiftinglike effect? — Enrique
I said it as a claim of philosophical understanding. Philosophers are allowed to judge scientific principles, in case you didn't know this. — Metaphysician Undercover
...which of course I didn't. I said that prediction and inference is the measure (or test) of how much we understand something.And if you posit prediction as the highest goal for science — Metaphysician Undercover
I'm sure you respect the fact that our understanding of gravity is less than perfect, or as you imply, not "complete". Why are you incapable of proceeding logically form this premise, to conclude therefore that our understanding is "flawed". — Metaphysician Undercover
The principal flaw, which sticks out like a sore thumb to me, is the practice of modeling a physical object as having a center of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
On what principles ought we base "better" and "worse" on, in relation to levels of understanding? I think that we ought base our levels of better and worse on principles of truth and falsity. — Metaphysician Undercover
If you wish to claim that our understanding of gravity is flawed, it's on you to show how. — Mijin
It's a critical part (the critical part) of the scientific method, but not a goal in itself. — Mijin
Because "flawed" and "incomplete" are not synoyms. — Mijin
Flawed OTOH implies incorrect. — Mijin
But we know that when we do calculations like that, the answer comes out essentially the same as if we had modelled it as objects with centers of gravity. — Mijin
If you ever find your calculations are non-negligibly more accurate than physicists', then congratulations on your Nobel prize. — Mijin
I would agree with you that truth would be better than predictive power, but sadly this universe does not feature a magic scorecard that tells us when we got something right. Predictive power is the best we have. — Mijin
When did science relinquish logic from its tool box — Metaphysician Undercover
When it became apparent that lightening strikes were not Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Olympus. — jgill
I did that already, very clearly and concisely, the utilization of the concept of a center of gravity, or the center of mass. — Metaphysician Undercover
OK, so you say that whether or not the understanding which science gives us is flawed, is determined by its ability to predict, but the capacity to predict is not a goal of science. That is a great example of inconsistency, the success or failure of science in relation to understanding, is determined by the capacity to predict, but this in not its goal. — Metaphysician Undercover
Flawed does not imply incorrect. It implies imperfect, and incomplete is a type of imperfection. "Incorrect" requires a judgement of right or wrong, and a judgement of imperfect has no such implication. — Metaphysician Undercover
You'll know that the concept of "spatial expansion" only applies to space between objects, not the space within objects — Metaphysician Undercover
When did science relinquish logic from its tool box, opting to grandstand predictive power as the only principle for judgement? — Metaphysician Undercover
If anyone wishes to suggest science should be using a different methodology then step 1 is showing what this alternative method allows us to accomplish. — Mijin
It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings.
Again, please publish your data and receive your Nobel prize. If you're right and physicists are wrong, that's a big deal and you should reap those rewards. — Mijin
No inconsistency. We're simply talking about means versus ends here.
I might test whether my car's tires are inflated by kicking them. Is my goal to kick tires? — Mijin
We could argue over the semantics, but let's just say that within the context of scientific models, saying a model is "flawed" would absolutely be understood as meaning the model makes incorrect predictions or inferences in some context.
If flawed simply meant incomplete then, like I say, we could argue all of science is flawed because we can never know any model is complete. It would be, at best, a meaningless word, and at worst horribly misleading. — Mijin
This is incorrect.
All of space appears to be expanding, according to our best model. Inside the galaxy, outside the galaxy, inside your body, inside your body's nuclei.
The reason we don't see this expansion is because it is small over these scales (even over the scale of the galaxy), and swamped by the gravitational force that is binding these various things together.
Are we done here? Was all of this based on this common misconception? — Mijin
Why do the numbers which account for spatial expansion not show up in calculations concerning measured distances inside the galaxy, inside my body, and inside my body's nuclei (whatever that means), yet they do show up in calculations concerning measured distances external to galaxies? — Metaphysician Undercover
Firstly, the expansion is approximately 6 km per megaparsec per second. Scaling that to the human body, say, we get an expansion rate of around one ten thousandth of the width of a proton... This doesn't make a huge difference when calculating eg the gravitational force on a human on Earth. — Mijin
And secondly, on scales up to anything intra-galactic, the expansion is not enough to overcome gravity. — Mijin
But, since gravity falls off with the square of distance, over vast scales, galaxies can be slowly pushed apart by this expansion. — Mijin
In June 2016, NASA and ESA scientists reported that the universe was found to be expanding 5% to 9% faster than thought earlier, based on studies using the Hubble Space Telescope.[2]
While special relativity prohibits objects from moving faster than light with respect to a local reference frame where spacetime can be treated as flat and unchanging, it does not apply to situations where spacetime curvature or evolution in time become important. These situations are described by general relativity, which allows the separation between two distant objects to increase faster than the speed of light, although the definition of "separation" is different from that used in an inertial frame. This can be seen when observing distant galaxies more than the Hubble radius away from us (approximately 4.5 gigaparsecs or 14.7 billion light-years); these galaxies have a recession speed that is faster than the speed of light. — Wikipedia:Expansion of the Universe
The problem is, that the rate of expansion which you give is based in conclusions about the relation between gravity and spatial expansion derived from models which employ a center of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Cosmologists really do not know the rate of expansion, or how it might vary from one place to another, or vary from small scale to large scale, or even the simple issue of how gravity effects it, or how expansion effects gravity.. — Metaphysician Undercover
The fact is that spatial expansion is very real, and if its effects at a small scale are just incorporated into the model of gravity as one representation, called gravity, then this model is flawed, in the sense of incorrect. It is incorrect because it does not separate out the effects of expansion from the effects of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't understand why you would describe something faster than the speed of light as "slowly pushed apart". — Metaphysician Undercover
You have said that our understanding of gravity is flawed.
The theory of gravity itself does not include the suggestion that we necessarily find the center of gravity.
However, finding the center of gravity is a useful mathematical simplification, and has been proven to result in accurate predictions. — Mijin
You have this backwards.
Dark energy is a phenomenon we have discovered on the largest cosmological scales. At those scales it appears proportional to distance.
We assume this force operates on all scales, and when we do the calculations, we find that if the force is proportional to distance then it should be immeasurably small on earthly scales, and completely cancelled out by gravity within our galaxy.
So it's not that we need to prove that cosmic expansion does not have significant effects on smaller scales. It's that the null hypothesis is that there are no such effects until we see them. — Mijin
No model of gravity includes cosmic expansion. This is just flat out wrong. — Mijin
So - science doesn't know what dark matter is, what its components are, or even really that it exists, except inferentially. But whatever it is, it must be 'matter', because, ultimately, everything is — Wayfarer
Science just goes on its merry way, discovering whatever there is to be discovered, and never mind the anomalies! — Wayfarer
The question then of its material nature is nonsensical: the question is, is there good enough reason to believe a particular hypothesis is true? — Kenosha Kid
This is obviously not an honest representation of science. — Kenosha Kid
Its nature remains unknown, and until it is discovered, it still remains a conjecture. — Wayfarer
On the other hand, if we say that some future, "ideal" physics is what is meant, then the claim is rather empty, for we have no idea of what this means. The "ideal" physics may even come to define what we think of as mental as part of the physical world. In effect, physicalism by this second account becomes the circular claim that all phenomena are explicable in terms of physics because physics properly defined is whatever explains all phenomena. — Wikipedia
Right, our understanding of gravity is very clearly flawed, because all we have is a multitude of different ways of representing the effects of gravity on things, chiefly the movement of things. — Metaphysician Undercover
until we separate out the effects of gravity from the effects of spatial expansion, at small scales, we cannot even say that the effects of spatial expansion are not observable at small scales. — Metaphysician Undercover
When gravity is modeled there is no cosmic expansion. When comic expansion is modeled there is no gravity. There is no model of the very real situation in which these two coexist and are active together. — Metaphysician Undercover
If spatial expansion is real, and occurs everywhere, then there must be a distribution of points everywhere, each being a center, with space expanding from each of those points. Since the points must be distributed everywhere, they would interfere with each other, as the expanding space from one point would bump into the expanding space from another point. — Metaphysician Undercover
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