It was a thesis I wrote for my masters. I studied physics but was allowed to master in a philosophical part. I had to follow an extra subject of choice though. Or ain't that a thesis. A scription.

Gods'? Gods went out with togas and chariots. I wrote that entry to highlight the distinction between philosophy and physics. They have some areas in common, but they're very different disciplines. — Wayfarer

Maybe. But if we know the gods and their reason for creation, can't we know the nature if life?

Aint physics about the nature of being, the drive?

I studied physics but was allowed to master in a philosophical part. — Haglund

It's not showing. :roll:

Sorry. Couldn't resist. But you're de-railing the thread again.

Bye!

It's kind of funny that on physics forums no one has offered such response on preons as you did! — Haglund

What, they weren't skeptical?

You have to see that you come across as a crackpot, especially where your view builds off crackpots like Randell Mills and a collection of other outsiders and independent scholars.

So preons are already fringe. And your version is predicated on stuff that looks way beyond the fringe.

Your posts on the issue simply state your opinions rather than presenting a proper argument. You treat it as obvious that pretty much all mainstream physical thought is wrong. Which makes it hard to even have the beginnings of a serious discussion.

And see it from my point of view. I'm interested in how a left-field proposition like preons might stack up against the Cern-approved party line of leptoquarks as the "missing physics" behind the muon dipole discrepancy.

And I'm interested in leptoquarks as they would fill in the important gap in the first split second of the Big Bang - the time after reheating and before the Higgs symmetry breaking - when some kind of strong~electroweak gauge unity ruled.

But inflation, Higgs, and SU(2) gauge, are the type of things you just dismiss out of hand - on the basis of sources that are far off the familiar map of reality themselves.

At least I can see why we are not getting far now. :up:

The question still remains who created matter and the laws it obeys to. — Haglund

We can't even begin on this question, until we first figure out what is matter.

Until the Greek Revival / Enlightenment gave scientists the courage to abandon the age-old all-purpose explanation --- that the omniscient-omnipotent-god-concept explains all philosophical mysteries --- most sages & scientists were forced by their ignorance of ultimate causes to postulate a hypothetical First Cause, as a catch-all non-explanation. — Gnomon

It's not really a "non-explanation". The vast majority of human beings never apprehend the logical need for a "First Cause". So there is a massive explanation required, just to get to the point of recognizing the reality behind the philosophical mysteries, and the reasons for assuming the First Cause. It's not a non-explanation at all, it only appears like such to those who don't spend the time and effort to understand the explanation, and think of it as an assumption rather than a logical conclusion..

Quantum weirdness goes deeper: It implies that the logical foundations of classical science are violated in the quantum realm; and it opens up a glimpse of an unfamiliar and perhaps older aspect of nature that some call the implicate universe.
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/WritingScience/Ferris.htm
Note -- "Implicate" means implicit or inferred intentional meaning — Gnomon

This is similar to what I said above. Understanding produces specific implications. When one does not understand, then the implications are not apprehended.

Stop making shit up. I said space would be flat to the degree it ain’t curved and curved to the degree it ain’t flat. — apokrisis

That was your attempt to justify your earlier claim that space is both curved and flat. Here's a reminder:

The flatness of space is defined by the constancy of the ratio between a radius and a circumference. Only in flat space is this ratio a constant - pi. In curved space, it ranges from the 2pi of the sphere to the infinite pi of a hyperbolic geometry.

So only in flat space does some particular angle retain that value over all its scales of extension. And should you choose, instead of degrees, you can talk about angles using a more fundamental pi-based unit like radians. — apokrisis

The issue was how to measure the kind of space you might be embedded in. — apokrisis

So I'll ask you again, the question I asked back then. If space changes from being flat to being curved, which is the only way that this sort of "kinds of space" idea you propose makes sense, by what principles do you say that this is X type of space, and that is Y type of space? What you have described is just two different ways of measuring one type of space. That's why the one transposes to the other, by making pi variable.

That was your attempt to justify your earlier claim that space is both curved and flat. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where in your confusion do you see that contained in what I said?

Quite clearly I said space - as in a smoothly connected manifold - can be either flat or curved, with flatness in fact being the special case from the more general view of non-Euclidean geometry.

It’s an everyday point. Plenty of others were familiar with it.

So either, not both. Although also both in that one can be used as the basis from which to measure the other.

The natural way would be for the more general to be the basis for measuring the more particular. So flatness would be measured as a lack of curvature.

You keep then trying to add an embedding dimensionality which would allow a flat space to be seen as a curved one. In the flatness of a three dimensional realm, we can then see that the ant is crawling across the surface of the 2-sphere.

Thus the views can be treated reciprocally. However general relativity gives us good motivation to make curvature the more general case, and so go with the maths of intrinsic curvature.

The Cosmos is deemed to be flat because it has the critical mass that leaves it almost exactly poised between positive and negative curvature.

So from the point of view of how reality is, we know that space might have curvature of either kind. And yet somehow it is perfectly poised in a way that must be a fundamental clue.

So I'll ask you again, the question I asked back then. — Metaphysician Undercover

Did you really ever ask this question? Or are you just papering over your knee jerk misunderstandings?

Anyway, I’ve once more outlined the standard story and added the physical motivation. And I’m sure you will continue to rant and rave about things no one ever said.

Did you really ever ask this question? Or are you just papering over your knee jerk misunderstandings? — apokrisis

Way back, when I first engaged you, and accused you of contradiction, in saying that space was both curved and uncurved, I gave you the option of explaining how it might change from one to the other.

And as I said, to attribute both curved and uncurved to space, is contradiction, unless you can show how space changes from being curved to being uncurved or vise versa. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you went off on a tangent of sophistry, instead of addressing the issue. You said space is curved to the degree that it's not flat, and flat to the degree that it's not curved. So I explained why this is very wrong. All the degrees are within curvature, and flat has no degrees of curvature.

Anyway, I’ve once more outlined the standard story and added the physical motivation. — apokrisis

"The standard story"? You mean your standard story. It's a good bit of fiction, ("The Cosmos is deemed to be flat because it has the critical mass..."), but I'm not too interested in fiction.

Modern physics says that spacetime is mostly flat but not completely. Aristotle didn't know about modern mathematics

but I'm not too interested in fiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're an idiot.

Hey man, sorry for this brief interruption, but you're exactly the person I want to ask.

I'm trying to find literature on Peirce's reaction to some of Hume's ideas. I know there is a manuscript in which Peirce argues against Hume's argument against miracles, but surely there must be more topics discussed, such as causation, or Hume's general phil of mind.

Currently, I only have Peirce's vol.5 and 6 of his CP on hard copy.

Any idea of where to look for more info? Google isn't being particularly helpful here, or I'm searching badly.

You're an idiot. — apokrisis

As you can see, I don't much appreciate your fiction.

And I've had quite enough of your misrepresentations.

I'm trying to find literature on Peirce's reaction to some of Hume's ideas. — Manuel

That hasn't been an interest of mine. But Googling "peirce hume miracles" brings up https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/29194829.pdf as its first hit. And Cathy Legg has written other good papers.

She cites the key Peircean point:

Logically speaking, Hume's method neglects the important role played in scientific inquiry by abduction.

With this in mind, Peirce suggests a better method than Hume's for the naturalist to investigate "miraculous" testimonies: searching for the best explanation for all given facts, including the testimonies themselves.

It is important to note here that Hume's argument relies on a miracle being a violation of the laws of nature as we believe them to be. Thus, as noted earlier, Hume does not live up to his “metaphysical” definition of miracles, and relies on a rather more "epistemic" one.

Any idea of where to look for more info? — Manuel

Check out http://www.commens.org/

Yes, I skimmed that one, I suppose I'm more interested in the causation argument, and there is a paper on that, which is OK, but surely there is more to be said. Nevertheless I'll read this carefully. I'll continue my search.

Many thanks.

Check out http://www.commens.org/ — Wayfarer

Very cool, will surely check it out, looks quite interesting. Thanks!

From what I’ve read, Pierce subscribed to a form of scholastic realism i.e. accepted the reality of universals, which would put him at odds with Hume and the other empiricists. In fact he praises Berkeley and says that overall his philosophy is sound with the caveat that Berkeley was a nominalist, that is, rejected the reality of universals.

//Check out this review. //

Although Peirce was a staunch proponent of the view that human life and thought is continuous with the rest of nature, he rejected the idea that the science of inquiry is a natural science. Logic is "an a priori science of formal, universal, necessary norms that license metaphysical conclusions" (p. 23). Peirce believed that logical/mathematical proofs are independent of any results of the natural sciences and rely on what he called "diagrammatic reasoning," operations on symbolic relational constructions of a kind with the geometric diagrams Euclid used in proving his theorems of geometry. Diagrams put one in direct contact with the relations under investigation and facilitate observation and experimentation of a kind with inquiry in the natural sciences.

Yes, I skimmed that one, I suppose I'm more interested in the causation argument, — Manuel

So do you mean you are focused on the contrast in epistemologies or on Peirce’s ontic position on causation?

Hume is the big set piece epistemological debate. But if you want more on Peirce’s ontology, Menno Hulswit wrote a book. And there is a summary on Commens - http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/hulswit-menno-peirce-causality-and-causation

Peirce’s theory of causality and causation is very valuable in many respects, and perhaps even revolutionary inasmuch as it is based upon one, and only one, coherent categoreal system; contrary to the received view today (which is caught between a substance ontology and a fact ontology (see Hulswit & Sowa, 2001), Peirce’s theory is based upon an event ontology in the strictest sense of the word.

And he mentions the other scholarship.

Finally, there is the problem of Peirce’s place in the history of philosophy in respect of causation. Roth (1985) explicitly discusses the question “Did Peirce answer Hume on Necessary Connection?,” and Hookway (1992) provides some valuable insights into Peirce’s relationship to Hume, Kant and Russell.

Hulswit and Sowa (2001) situate Peirce’s theory within the context of the historical evolution of the concept of cause from Aristotle to the present discussions. The topic needs far more research, though.

Perice was an extreme genius. And would agree with him (and you) about universals. But as I said, I'm very much into Hume these days, reading a good deal.

And it seems to me that, despite the many flaws in Hume's arguments, one can certainly see why he woke Kant from his slumbers. That's not something that can be said about many people.

It's a very complex topic, and while we can say that, as Schopenhauer pointed out, we have some idea of causation from the inside, attributing to the outside world, is still as problematic as Hume pointed it out to be.

I hope Peirce has stronger arguments than what I've seen, but the literature appears to be scant.

Absolutely, nominalism makes no sense.

More on the contrast in epistemology, but with these sources you've given me (and Wayfarer too), I have some things to look into.

What, they weren't skeptical? — apokrisis

They were. But they could not offer any real ratio against it. You did better. But still not convincing. Because the model I offer is just what sub quark reality is about. The future will tell. Together with a purely geometric model of particles (so they are no points) there is nothing more to know. It's good to be a crackpot. It cracks. The pot.

And see it from my point of view. I'm interested in how a left-field proposition like preons might stack up against the Cern-approved party line of leptoquarks as the "missing physics" behind the muon dipole discrepancy. — apokrisis

Leptoquarks? Haha! What a farce. Now they mix them? You see? Sticking to the standard.... Leptons and quarks fundamental. Let's mix them! A leptoquark. Of course...

What, they weren't skeptical? — apokrisis

Yes. But no one actually knew what the model is about. Neither do you, apparently.

And I've had quite enough of your misrepresentations. — apokrisis

My direct quote is a misrepresentation? "The Cosmos is deemed to be flat because it has the critical mass..."


The problem is that the concept of "mass" which is principally a temporal concept, is fundamentally unintelligible under the principles employed in modern physics, relativity theory. The concept of time dilation makes the incoherency of "mass" in modern physics glaringly obvious.

Actually, there is continuing debate among physicists concerning this concept of relativistic mass. The debate is largely semantic: no-one doubts that the correct expression for the momentum of a particle having a rest mass m moving with velocity v→ is p→=m1−v2/c2√v→. But particle physicists especially, many of whom spend their lives measuring particle rest masses to great precision, are not keen on writing this as p→=mrelv→. They don’t like the idea of a variable mass. For one thing, it might give the impression that as it speeds up a particle balloons in size, or at least its internal structure somehow alters. In fact, a relativistic particle just undergoes Lorentz contraction along the direction of motion, like anything else. It goes from a spherical shape towards a disc like shape having the same transverse radius.

So how can this “mass increase” be understood? As usual, Einstein had it right: he remarked that every form of energy possesses inertia. The kinetic energy itself has inertia. Now “inertia” is a defining property of mass. The other fundamental property of mass is that it attracts gravitationally. Does this kinetic energy do that? To see the answer, consider a sphere filled with gas. It will generate a spherically symmetric gravitational field outside itself, of strength proportional to the total mass. If we now heat up the gas, the gas particles will have this increased (relativistic) mass, corresponding to their increased kinetic energy, and the external gravitational field will have increased proportionally. (No-one doubts this either.)

So the “relativistic mass” indeed has the two basic properties of mass: inertia and gravitational attraction. (As will become clear in the following lectures, this relativistic mass is nothing but the total energy, with the rest mass itself now seen as energy.)

On a more trivial level, some teachers object to introducing relativistic mass because they fear students will assume the kinetic energy of a relativistically moving particle is just 12mv→2 using the relativistic mass — it isn’t, as we shall see shortly.

Footnote: For anyone who might go on sometime to a more mathematically sophisticated treatment, it should be added that the rest mass plays an important role as an invariant on going from one frame of reference to another, but the "relativistic mass" used here is really just the first component (the energy) of the four dimensional energy-momentum vector of a particle, and so is not an invariant. — https://galileoandeinstein.phys.virginia.edu/lectures/mass_increase.html

Notice where the article says "As usual, Einstein had it right". This is really a mistake. Attributing mass to kinetic energy, instead of providing a true representation of the referred phenomenon, is what leaves "mass" as incoherent. At issue is the relation between gravity and inertia.

We can't even begin on this question, until we first figure out what is matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Matter consists of tiny Planck-sized spheres, filled with physical charge. If you wrap up three dimensions of a 6d space into Planck-sized circles, you're left with a 3d large space, with 6d micro structure. Like a circle on a thin cylinder. The circle being the particle. Note that you can't construct a singularity like this. How much particles are crammed on each other, it doesn't matter. No point singularity comes to be. No if you consider this 3d space (actually 6d) wrapped around a 4d (actually 7d) wormhole, then because of the negative curvature on the wormhole (like the inside of a torus), a 3d universe can inflate away on each side of that hole, that singularity.

The problem is that the concept of "mass" which is principally a temporal concept, is fundamentally unintelligible under the principles employed in modern physics, relativity theory. The concept of time dilation makes the incoherency of "mass" in modern physics glaringly obvious. — Metaphysician Undercover

A mass near the speed of light never can form a black hole. Only two in relative motion. If you consider matter to be made of massless particles, the interaction can provide mass, i.e., matter moving slower than light. In the standard model this is done by making massless matter interact with a fictitious matter field, with unbelievable properties (a non-zero value of the vacuum expectation value, for which no reason is given; it's just posited). But the mass can also emerge if massless particles interact amongst themselves. Pure kinetic energy turned massive.

A logical cause is no physical cause. A cause in a syllogism, or in a logic puzzle (of the kind of two jealous men on an island which have to take their women to another isle in a rowboat) is a mind-like cause, not a material or physical cause.

So only in the context of infinite experiments we could say something is truly random? — Haglund

If you only accept the existence of potential infinity then you believe that every process, whether real or mathematical, eventually terminates after a finite amount of time. In which case lawfulness and lawlessness are disrobed of their metaphysical status as distinguishable properties attributable to things in themselves.

E.g we might say that the eventually terminating process {1,2,3, ...} begins 'lawfully' for the first three elements and then continues unlawfully for an unspecified amount of time. Which is only to say that it looks initially similar to another well-known sequence, such as {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}, before continuing in either an unspecified fashion or in a fashion that is expected to look unfamiliar to the average person, before eventually halting.


To take a physical example, take the 'law' that every electron has the same mass. Obviously one cannot measure every electron and so the law isn't empirically verifiable. Following the positivism of Karl Popper, we might either regard "every electron has the same mass" as being as a norm of linguistic convention that is held true no matter transpires in the future, or we might regard it as being a semi-decidable empirical proposition that is falsifiable but not verifiable. What positivism took for granted is the view that the semantics of logic and language is absolutely knowable a priori without being contigent upon and epistemically restricted by the available empirical evidence, even as the world referred to by language and logic is accepted as being absolutely unknowable and empirically contingent.

But suppose we grant that the meaning of thought and language is as uncertain and as empirically contingent as the world to which it refers and instead treat logic, language and world on the same epistemological and ontological footing. Then not only will we be unable to empirically verify that every electron has the same mass, but we will also be unable to empirically establish the meaning of the word "every" in the proposition "every electron has the same mass" - for the word "every" can only be given a definite empirical interpretation in cases involving explicit enumeration over a finite number of entities, but in the present case we have no idea as to how many electrons there. Therefore the meaning of "every electron" is indefinite unless electrons are said to have the same mass by definition, in which case we have a 'law' of convention rather than of matters of fact.

In summary, if the rules of logic are treated as being empirically contingent and epistemically bound by the same principles of verification as the theories of the world they are used to formulate, then the empirical meaning of "infinite quantification" can only be interpreted as meaning 'indefinite finite quantification' as opposed to meaning 'greater than finite quantification' In which case, the question "does every electron have the same mass?" is equivalent to asking "does an undefined number of electrons have the same mass?" which falls short of describing or being supportive of the metaphysical ideas of lawfulness/lawlessness which become superfluous and cannot gain empirical footing.

On the other hand, if the rules of logic are understood to embody norms of conduct and linguistic representation, as opposed to embodying empirical contingencies, then the rules of logic do express lawfulness, namely the conduct and ethics of the logician.

It is the simultaneous presence of both types of meaning in science and logic that leads to the normative notion of "law" being misconstrued as an empirical matter of fact.

On the other hand, if the rules of logic are understood to embody norms of conduct and linguistic representation, as opposed to embodying empirical contingencies, then the rules of logic do express lawfulness, namely the conduct and ethics of the logician.

It is the simultaneous presence of both types of meaning in science and logic that leads to the normative notion of "law" being misconstrued as an empirical matter of fact. — sime

A wise conclusion an apperceptive observation. The laws of logic being contingencies themselves? Like the empirical world being contingent to the logical world? Somehow I hear Plato and his follower, the great Aristotle, speaking through you.