Kant starts his book The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)

Matter is the movable in space; space, which is itself movable, is termed material or relative space; that in which all motion must in the last resort be conceived (which is therefore itself absolutely immovable), is termed pure or absolute space.

That there could have been a different universe is true; that this universe could have been different is not true. — Mww

This is the sort of strawman often used to "refute" free will. The determinist will characterize the free willist as saying "What I did, could be different ", and then ask for a demonstration.

I was thinking about this, just before my internal shut-down kicked in.....did Leibniz actually call out monads as noumenal, or did Kant merely accuse him of it? I know the latter is true, but if Leibniz didn’t, then perhaps Kant was barking up the wrong side of the tree.

What say you, Good Sir?

I've only read half of Leibniz's New Essays before I figured I should read Locke before I finished this, and haven't got back to it.

With what I can recall, I don't think Leibniz speaks of noumena. He would probably be against such concepts, given his intellectual optimism.

I think Kant was arguing that Leibniz' monads were the kind of thing of which we could not have knowledge of, nor know how they could be possible.

So I'm thinking Kant was using monads as an example against the idea of "positive noumena".

Thanks

That there could have been a different universe is true; that this universe could have been different is not true — Mww

Sure. And by this interpretation of the wording, every true statement is necessarily true.

So what is meant by "If Nixon had lost the election, he wouldn't have been disgraced" ?

Is that a meaningless statement?

And he ends it.....

“....From this we can draw two conclusions: (1) All motion or rest must be merely relative; neither can be absolute. That is, matter can be thought of as moving or at rest only in relation to •matter and never in relation to •mere space without matter. It follows that absolute motion—·i.e. motion that doesn’t consist in one portion of matter changing its relation to another portion·—is simply impossible. (2) For this very reason, there can’t be, out of all the ever-wider concepts of motion or rest in relative space, one that is ·so wide as to be· valid for every appearance. ·To have such an all-purpose concept·, we have to make room in our minds for the thought of a space that isn’t nested within any larger space, i.e. an absolute space in which all relative motions are nested. In such a space everything empirical is movable,. . . .but none can be valid as absolute motion or rest. . . . So absolute space is necessary not as a concept of an actual object but as an idea that is to regulate all our thoughts about relative motion. If we want all the appearances of motion and rest to be held together by a determinate empirical concept, we must put them within the framework of the idea of absolute space...”

....in which is found the last resort, absolute space as a mere idea, not a conception, not an empirical reality. If all motion, therefore all space is relative, then absolute motion and space is impossible.

Simple as that, that something can be thought, exhibits Kant’s propensity for complementary dualisms writ large. More familiar to us as e.g., phenomena/noumena.

Agreed. What I did could only have been what I did. That I could have done otherwise is completely irrelevant, with respect to what I actually did.

I think Kant was arguing that Leibniz' monads..... — Manuel

Thanks. I was sure you’d hepa brutha get his mind right.

"If Nixon had lost the election, he wouldn't have been disgraced" ?

Is that a meaningless statement? — frank

I would say, no. I mean....he wasn’t disgraced because he won, which implies a meaning contained by the statement. Rather than meaningless, I’d say....moot. He didn’t lose, so, in the immortal words of the great James Hetfield....nothing else matters.

In juxtaposition to statements about the universe, say, this statement is conditioned by “if/then”, as opposed to “is/is not”, which permits a play of imagination in the former for eventualities with respect to different occurrences, which cannot hold for the latter.

To make the statements logically consistent, for “the universe could have been different.....”, you’d have to say, “Nixon could have lost....”, but then we’re back to the universe statement, insofar as it is the case Nixon couldn’t have lost, because he didn’t.
————-

Meaningless: that proposition in which the conceptions in the predicate and the subject have no relation to each other, re: grass is measured in temperature.

Meaningless: that conception in a subject or predicate of a proposition, that is undefined, re: all speezles are goops, but not all goops are speezles.

I’m Sister Mary Elephant, and.......CLASS DISMISSED!!!!!.....
(Grin)

would say, no. I mean....he wasn’t disgraced because he won, which implies a meaning contained by the statement. Rather than meaningless, I’d say....moot. He didn’t lose, so, in the immortal words of the great James Hetfield....nothing else matters. — Mww

It's not saying he was disgraced because he won. It's saying that if he had lost, his disgrace couldn't have happened.

If it's not meaningless, it's either true or false.

I already know the answer to the question I asked. :razz:

If it's not meaningless, it's either true or false. — frank

Agreed. In the case of Nixon, then, it is not true that if he had lost he wouldn’t have been disgraced.

The fact of his disgrace is not determinable by his win or loss; it is possible he could have been disgraced even in losing, albeit under a different set of conditions, but disgraced nonetheless.
———-

DOH!!! I just got it. Meaninglessness due to grammar. What a dope, me.

The fact of his disgrace is not determinable by his win or loss; it is possible he could have been disgraced even in losing, albeit under a different set of conditions, but disgraced nonetheless. — Mww

He wouldn't have been disgraced in the way he was.

The point is, we can imagine Nixon losing without having to say that it wouldn't have been Nixon. It's just a matter of imagination.

Likewise we can say the universe could have been different without insisting that it wouldn't have been our universe.

Your view is along the lines of actualism, which I'm also fond of. It's hard determinism. It's an altered use of "could have" though.

Kripke talks about it in Naming and Necessity.

Your view is along the lines of actualism, which I'm also fond of. It's hard determinism. It's an altered use of "could have" though. — frank

Actualism > Determinism > “could have-ism” (possiblism). One of these is not like the others.

I kind of agree on emotional grounds, but I'd like to come up with an argument that is harder forphysicalism to simply shrug off. Where all of this started, for me, was with the conviction thatideas (not information) are real in their own right, and not because they're derived from or supersede on (neuro)physical matter. — Wayfarer

Physicalists can shrug-off the power of information, only because it seems Idealistic to them. But, in the Enformationism thesis, Generic Information exists in a variety of forms, both Ideal and Real. That's the holistic-monistic-duality of the BothAnd Principle. From a reductionist perspective, reality is Either/Or (real or unreal). But in the holistic view, Reality & Ideality are two sides of the same coin. This unconventional notion is based on the science of Information, which has found that Mind Stuff (the original meaning of Information) is also the essence of Energy & Matter.

If that equation of immaterial Ideas with material Matter is true, then ghostly Ideas are just as "real" as physical objects. That identification of Mind & Matter does not compute in Classical Physics. But Quantum Physics has been forced to include the effects of minds on the behavior of sub-atomic particles. Of course, the interpretation of those experiments is still controversial. Nevertheless, I am assuming that Ideas are "real in their own right, and not because they are derived from . . . matter". In fact, in my theory, ideas have the right of priority, in that the original Singularity could not have been a physical object, but more like a program of ideas & instructions for creating a world from nothing-but the power of EnFormAction. :nerd:

Is information the fifth state of matter? :
In 2019, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy, existing as a separate state of matter, a conjecture known as the mass-energy-information equivalence principle.
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/information-energy-mass-equivalence/

A quantum case of mind over matter? :
New research proposes a way to test whether quantum entanglement is affected by consciousness.
https://insidetheperimeter.ca/a-quantum-case-of-mind-over-matter/

Generic Information :
Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic Forms.
BothAnd Blog, post 33

:cool:

So, I have a deep confusion about why philosophy sees this disconnection between logical necessity and physical causation. — Wayfarer

Logical necessity is about abstractly defined relationships between terms. E.g. If A, then B.

Physical causation is about figuring out between which particular physical phenomena which abstractly defined relationship applies. If I put socks in the drawer, they are in the drawer.

It seems to me computer science relies on the connection between the two - microprocessors basically comprise chains of logic gates to effect physical outputs.

It's still like putting socks in a drawer, just on a tiny tiny scale and super superfast.

Yes - but physical causation doesn't have to be all powerful, does it? I'm the last person who would argue that it is - I accept the reality of karma, for instance, which overflows the horizons of physicalism - but within its range of applicability, physical causation and logical necessity seem to coincide, don't they? — Wayfarer

Sure, because that's how we do physics.

I kind of agree on emotional grounds, but I'd like to come up with an argument that is harder for physicalism to simply shrug off. — Wayfarer

Why?

Actualism > Determinism > “could have-ism” (possiblism). One of these is not like the others. — Mww

You're being kind of cryptic, but I think you're suggesting that you never think about what might have been and I think you probably do, so...

Is information the fifth state of matter? :
In 2019, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy, existing as a separate state of matter, a conjecture known as the mass-energy-information equivalence principle. — Gnomon

It's my guess that when matter, particles, are in some nice shape wrt each other, the total mass is someone higher. Or, on a memory chip, if the 1's and 0's show an ordered pattern, the mass of the chip is slightly higher than if they showed randomness. What if the showed total order? Say all 1 or all 0?

However, to say that space is both flat and curved is contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

To be flat is simply to have zero curvature.

Or do you know a way to distinguish between some space which is flat, and some space which is curved? — Metaphysician Undercover

That’s where we started. Draw a triangle and see if it indeed adds up to 180 degrees.

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) researchers using data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have measured the angles of the longest triangle you can imagine. One corner is on Earth, and the other two are so far away that light has traveled about 13.3 billion years to reach us. Scientists found the angles of this triangle add up to 180°, to within small measurement uncertainties.

https://www.astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2006/10/what-is-meant-by-the-term-flat-universe-how-is-this-flatness-supported-by-measurements-of-the-cosmic-microwave-background

This is inconsistent with language as we know it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you using the royal “we”?

Plainly language evolved to switch behaviours on and off in a social setting. That is what communication boils down to. Getting folk to act in coordinated fashion.

So the problems with Pattee's proposal are numerous. — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem is that you failed to interpret the words correctly. That shows how human language indeed creates ample scope for ambiguity, disagreement, personal freedom, along with clarity, agreement and communal wisdom.

You can’t be right unless you could have been wrong. And lucky for you, when you are so persistently misunderstanding what is said, the only way is up from here. :up:

Likewise we can say the universe could have been different without insisting that it wouldn't have been our universe. — frank

I don't think so. When we look back in time, as is the case with "could have been different", it is impossible that things could have been different without altering what is now. "Our universe" refers to what is the case now, so it is impossible that things in the past could have been different without making "our universe" now, a different universe.

When we look toward the future though, instead of toward the past, we see real possibility as to what could be in the future. Because of this, the "our universe", now, which is a necessary product of the past, has numerous possibilities as to what it may lead to as "our universe" at a future time. So the one and the same universe, which is "our universe" right now, has many possibilities as to the universe it will become, at a future time. Therefore there are numerous different universes which "our universe" could become in the future. This is why free will is a valid concept, because the free will can influence which of the numerous possible universes will become "our universe" in the future.

I don't think so. When we look back in time, as is the case with "could have been different", it is impossible that things could have been different without altering what is now. "Our universe" refers to what is the case now, so it is impossible that things in the past could have been different without making "our universe" now, a different universe. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's one way to look at it. There are others.

Actualism > Determinism > “could have-ism” (possiblism). One of these is not like the others.
— Mww

You're being kind of cryptic..... — frank

Wasn’t intending to be; just pointing out doctrinal and logical oppositions.
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I think you're suggesting that you never think about what might have been and I think you probably do, so... — frank

Sure I do, you’re correct. I just like to separate what can be imagined, from what I know.

From the wandering inexplicability file, Kant treats imagination as a full-fledged cognitive faculty, so you know I’d never deny my use of it.

To be flat is simply to have zero curvature. — apokrisis

Right, and to have zero curvature is to have no curvature at all, which is a direct contradiction of having curvature, being curved.

That’s where we started. Draw a triangle and see if it indeed adds up to 180 degrees. — apokrisis

Drawing a triangle won't show me that the angles of the triangle add up to 180 degrees. The angles need to be measured. And my point was, that the numbering system, by which the degrees are measured, is completely arbitrary. A circle could have been assigned 400 degrees, 100, 1000, any number of degrees in the circle. Therefore a triangle might have any number of degrees. So drawing a triangle doesn't produce 180 degrees. Arbitrarily assigning 360 degrees to the circle ensures that a triangle will be measured by that convention, to have 180 degrees. But we could adopt any convention.

Plainly language evolved to switch behaviours on an off in a social setting. That is what communication boils down to. Getting folk to act in coordinated fashion. — apokrisis

Wow, I'm really surprised that this makes sense to an intelligent person like yourself.

The problem is that you failed to interpret the words correctly. That shows how human language indeed creates ample scope for ambiguity, disagreement, personal freedom, along with clarity, agreement and communal wisdom. — apokrisis

Look apokrisis, the fact that I can interpret the words incorrectly, is clear evidence that the sign does not do the work, as you represent Pattee's position on the matter. I do the work of interpreting the sign. If it was the sign which did the work, then whenever it appeared like a person misinterpreted a sign, we'd have to say that in reality the person received a different sign. The work done by the sign to have itself understood was different, therefore it must be a different sign because it's doing a different thing. But clearly you and I can read the very same piece of written information, and we can each interpret a different meaning. So the work is not being done by the sign, the agent is an independent reader of the sign.

If that equation of immaterial Ideas with material Matter is true, then ghostly Ideas are just as "real" as physical objects. — Gnomon

There’s nothing ‘ghostly’ about mathematical logic applied to physical processes. That enables us to peer into the domain of pure possibility and actualise something we see in material form. That’s how inventions happen!

Kant is not remembered for his work on philosophy of science. I think the relevant comments are in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Do you know what he tried to establish with his gloves in empty space?

Right, and to have zero curvature is to have no curvature at all, which is a direct contradiction of having curvature, being curved. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is the bounding limit on curvature.

And my point was, that the numbering system, by which the degrees are measured, is completely arbitrary. — Metaphysician Undercover

That point was dealt with.

the fact that I can interpret the words incorrectly, is clear evidence — Metaphysician Undercover

True that.

Do you know what he tried to establish with his gloves in empty space? — Haglund

I have precisely zero idea of what you're on about. The salient points regarding time and space are laid out in the Transcendental Doctrine of the Elements in the Critique of Pure Reason. It's a very difficult text to understand but regardless I can't see how subsequent scientific discoveries undermine the basic contentions that ' Space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves' and that 'Time is not an empirical conception'. You can peruse those sections here.

Wasn’t intending to be; just pointing out doctrinal and logical oppositions. — Mww

It's not though.

I think you're suggesting that you never think about what might have been and I think you probably do, so...
— frank

Sure I do, you’re correct. I just like to separate what can be imagined, from what I know. — Mww

Don't we all? 'What can be imagined' is all that's being talked about when we say Nixon might not have been elected or that the universe might have had other laws.

Have you never heard of his left- or right-hand glove in empty space?