By the middle of the 1st Century BCE, the Roman had tightened their grip on the old Greek and Hellenistic empires, and the mathematical revolution of the Greeks ground to halt — storyofmathematics.com on Roman mathematics

That's an odd claim. I don't know much about the history of mathematics, but even I have heard of Alexandrian mathematicians who thrived well into the ADs, such as Diophantus (he of Diophantine equations) and Hypatia (who is pictured on our site's favicon).

Argument here is hopeless. Is there a real, live physicist who will enter the discussion and untangle this mess? — jgill

I'm not a physicist, I just play one on TV :) (Undergrad degree several decades old.) But what mess do you need untangled? Not the mess in MU's head, I hope, because that would be, as you say, hopeless - and in any event, that would require a specialist from a different field of study...

There exists a relatively non-weird take on backward causation: Laws of physics are time-reversible; if you are physicalist who believes that physics exhausts all the truths about the world, then you have to conclude that causation, if there is such a thing, is time-symmetric. It is no less true to say that the future causes the past than it is to say that the past causes the future.

(Of course, as is usual with philosophy, not everyone is a physicalist, and even among physicalists there are different takes on causation, so that the above line of reasoning will not satisfy everyone, or even most.)

Introducing numbers already imposes discreteness. Numbers are for measuring, they cannot constitute a truly continuous line. — aletheist

You are reading more into what @fdrake proposed than there is. He didn't say anything about numbers constituting a line; on the contrary, he was going with your paradigm of continuous line figures - nothing else. And he was trying to show how, with assumptions that seem reasonable even in that paradigm, you still end up with a system that is isomorphic to the set construction. (Surely, we can still talk about the lengths of those line figures? Those are all the numbers that we need to get going.) I am not sure whether it can actually work out that way, but that was the idea, if I understand him correctly.

If you automatically designate as a "crank" anyone who expresses this idea, that if it looks like and acts like a wave, then it is a wave, and a wave by definition, requires a medium, you'll never find a non-crank who could explain this idea. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are right: this isn't even cranky, this is just stupid. But I didn't say that only a crank could defend the idea that waves and fields require a medium: on the contrary, I was looking for an intelligent explanation. And I have found some some, such as McMullin's paper.

I acknowledge that historically, it made sense to think that way. Waves transmit influence, they cause action at a distance. It makes intuitive sense to think that matter is required to transmit action: you want to move something - you push it, poke it with a stick or throw a rock at it; even a monkey understands that much. Hume defined a cause in accordance with contemporary understanding as "an object precedent and contiguous to another." Of course, Newton's gravitational interaction violated this "law of causality" quite spectacularly, and indeed this issue vexed him and those who followed.

Found this paper, gives some historical perspective on the issue:

The term, ‘‘field,’’ made its first appearance in physics as a technical term in the mid-nineteenth century. But the notion of what later came to be called a field had been a long time in gestation. Early discussions of magnetism and of the cause of the ocean tides had long ago suggested the idea of a ‘‘zone of influence’’ surrounding certain bodies. Johannes Kepler’s mathematical rendering of the orbital motion of Mars encouraged him to formulate what he called ‘‘a true theory of gravity’’ involving the notion of attraction. Isaac Newton went on to construct an eminently effective dynamics, with attraction as its primary example of force. Was his a field theory? Historians of science disagree. Much depends on whether a theory consistent with the notion of action at a distance ought qualify as a ‘‘field’’ theory. Roger Boscovich and Immanuel Kant later took the Newtonian concept of attraction in new directions. It was left to Michael Faraday to propose the ‘‘physical existence’’ of lines of force and to James Clerk Maxwell to add as criterion the presence of energy as the ontological basis for a full-blown ‘‘field theory’’ of electromagnetic phenomena. — Ernan McMullin, The Origins of the Field Concept in Physics (2002)

What is the medium through which probability waves in QM travel?

How about it, physicist out there? Clarify the idea that MU advances? Waves in fields create particles? Good luck with the metaphysics of fields. — jgill

To me it seems like a quaint prejudice to insist that anything that is wave-like requires a medium. Maybe there is something to the idea; I wish there were some non-cranks here who could explain this point of view. Technically, a (physical) field is just a distribution of physical values in space - nothing less, nothing more. Why would some additional stuff smeared over space be required?

Are you vandalizing Wikipedia now? Seriously, unless you are very knowledgeable about the subject (which, no offense, you are not), don't touch anything.

I would love to hear also how I can understand "organism qua organism" better? Perhaps you can start by explaining what "organism qua organism" means to you? — Barry Z

Oh, I don't mean anything different than what you mean: a particular kind of object in the world, an entity that, using certain diagnostic criteria, can be distinguished from other, non-living entities. The precise definition doesn't matter. My point was to contrast this perspective with that of Descartes' cogito or with later thinkers' reasoning that seeks to privilege the experience of self as the most certain knowledge that you can have. By contrast, if you consider organisms the way you consider everything else out there in the world, it is not at all clear why you would want privilege them in your epistemological scheme. They certainly don't seem to be the most basic or the most intelligible things in the world (people can't even agree as to what they are, exactly).

Perhaps instead of just telling me of my deficiencies in understanding natural sciences you can explain what made you reach that conclusion? — Barry Z

Sorry to be abrupt, but it's not like you are breaking new ground here. Origin of life research has been under way for close to a century, and there are plenty of sources available to an interested layperson, from online articles and videos to books for any educational level. If the topic interests you, why not read up on it? I am not saying that science has all the answers, but it can do a lot better than the sort of armchair reasoning that you present here.

Off the top of my head, I could point to your implicit assumption that the first organism was similar to one of the presently existing organisms, and that it popped out fully formed, all at once. No one really thinks that that is how first life started. But the more glaring problems with your thesis are even more basic flaws of reasoning.

You are equivocating between two senses of random. One sense is the one with which you start when you mention physics and chemistry: here random means purposeless, unintentional. In this sense, almost everything in the universe is random (aka natural), as far as we can tell. But then, when you talk about DNA "being produced by random process," your sense of random shifts towards unorganized, patternless, chaotic. The impressively large numbers that you cite are produced using the assumption of a very simple combinatorial process, which of course is not how even the simplest physics and chemistry works.

You wouldn't say of stars, planets, mountains and rivers - or even of the dirt under your feet - that they were produced by a process resembling "a tornado in a junkyard" (to use Hoyle's infamous metaphor)? Then why would you propose such a "theory" for the formation of first DNA?

Note that what we've been discussing is not metaphysics - it is just basic science and basic reasoning.

But let's say that you are right in a sense, and that the formation of life by natural means is an extremely unlikely event, given generic conditions on Earth or in the universe at large (although the fact that the first life on Earth seems to have appeared almost as soon as its surface cooled off and stabilized enough to allow even the barest possibility of life kind of suggests otherwise). What conclusion does this warrant?

https://youtu.be/KdocQHsPCNM?t=174

"A force, of some kind," you say. What kind of force? A forcey-force? Is this what you call metaphysics?

This demonstrates the impact that empirical biological information could have on metaphysical thought. — Barry Z

This rather demonstrates a poor understanding of natural sciences. And that in turn underlines the point that I made earlier: before you can understand an organism qua organism, you need to have some understanding of the world around you. Lacking such an understanding, you are apt to come up with the sort of silliness that you wrote above about the origin of life.

Organisms are a starting point for any exploration of reality because we know with certainty they exist and what they are. — Barry Z

I would disagree with that. You are taking the Cartesian route here, correct? In that case, granting the soundness of this strategy for the sake of an argument, what you can know with certainty is the existence of some "self", which "self" is some pre-theoretic, folk concept of your mental being. But in order to conceive of yourself as an "organism" (as distinct from "ordinary physical matter"), you will need to grant a lot more than that. You will need to conceptualize the world at large; then you will need to conceptualize yourself and certain other entities as belonging to a distinct class of entities within that world. Of course, we also have some pre-theoretic intuitions about people and organisms in general, but even if you extend your warrant of certain knowledge to those folk concepts as well, they won't get you very far in your philosophical exploration. In order to come up with the more sophisticated concepts that you have hinted at here, you will first need all that knowledge about the world and its functioning,

If you are not an expert, then it is generally reasonable to defer to the opinions of experts, plural. When there is no general agreement among experts about some question, then the reasonable thing to do is to withhold judgement. You shouldn't latch on to a contested or contrarian expert opinion, just because it appeals to you (as some do). If you are talking to one expert, you can trust her to the extent to which you believe her to be representing the prevailing opinion. Of course, you can't be completely sure on that score.

When someone is using expertise in one field to help them reach a conclusion in a different field, where they lack expertise, more skepticism is warranted - especially when you are dealing with a singular opinion, rather than a consensus of multiple experts. They may well be going out on a limb and talking shit - it is pretty common actually.

In any case, expertise is not easily transferable: even if you accept an expert answer, you can never be as confident about it as someone who has worked through the solution. And you'll just have to live with that - or do the necessary learning and training, and check the reasoning yourself.

So what do you do when you are at an impasse? Well, when I see that a conversation is not working out, for whatever reason, I usually just leave. I like to think that am not here to "win" arguments.

I honestly never made it that far till now. Interesting. I need more listens. The first listen feels weird because it doesn't feel as existential and spiritually disturbed as the Messiaen I'm familiar with. — Noble Dust

It's almost a throwback to The Rite of Spring, isn't it? Messiaen was an original. I am not familiar with a lot of his work, but even from what I have heard it seems that like Stravinsky, he went his own way and did not give a crap about anyone's expectations - or such petty things as "taste" and "style." He can throw in some banality straight out of a Hollywood score - and it just works!

Yes, very ornamental, like Scriabin. I find this guy less indulgent than Scriabin though. I literally stumbled upon this guy on youtube; he apparently died at 23. If anything, I'm so curious how he could potentially have been connected with the French and Russian schools at this time, and at such a young age. Considering that ideas didn't exactly move at an internet pace at the time. But the harmonic structure feels related. — Noble Dust

It probably helped that Scriabin spent a lot of time in Europe, which was not unusual for a metropolitan Russian musician. He was very influential at that time, particularly back in Russia, which may not be obvious now, since he seems to have considerably diminished in stature. If Beethoven's shadow lay over the entire century, reaching all the way to Brahms and Dvorak, in the 20th century styles and influences began to fragment and succeed each other much more rapidly.

I am not such a big fan of Scriabin - I often find his music too busy for my taste. Indeed, it was more the harmonics that made me think of him.

Btw, word to the wise, the Medtnaculus user on youtube has a great collection of solo piano music from this era; idk if you were familiar with the legendary Hexameron youtube page a few years ago, but Medtnaculus is sort of the heir apparent (the same person, maybe?). — Noble Dust

Thanks, I am not yet used to listening to music on Youtube, but I'll check him out.

:death: Brutal. — Noble Dust

The finale is a riot of excess!

Just discovered this early modern guy yesterday: — Noble Dust

Interesting, never heard of him. Reminds me of Scriabin. Thanks!

whaaaaat — Noble Dust

Huh, another from the Scriabin/Medtner school, and also new to me. Very nice.

"21/16! Because why the fuck not?"

Turangalîla!

@Noble Dust

What about bouldering?

Even though there are rules of logic taught in academia, general human interpretation and application of negation has an aliveness to it, where it evolves and influences. — Mapping the Medium

Academia teaches more than just Aristotelian or Classical logic. More to the point, for the "general human interpretation" I would look towards linguistic and social studies more than logic and mathematics.

It would be nice if you could put some substance into your posts - more than just "here are a couple of random references, tell me what you think." Have you read these works? Can you at least write a few words about what they say and how it is relevant to the topic?

I’m trying to understand how exactly under a b-theory of time, causality still exists either in the Aristotelian sense of actualizing potential or in any other theory of change and causality. — jimmyjohns

First, I am not sure whether you are actually talking about the so-called B theory of time or about eternalism - these are not the same. According to the B theory of time, there is no objective matter of fact about the status of any particular moment of time as being past, present or future; objectively, there exist only relations between moments: prior to, simultaneous with and posterior to (setting aside relativistic complications for the time being...) According to eternalism, all things exist at all times (in some sense) - including things that are in our past or future at some given moment. These two claims are not convertible into each other, at least not without some additional assumptions. An A theorist (one who believes that past, present and future are objective properties of time) can very well be an eternalist, assuming they can make sense of things existing in the past or the future. It should be noted though that neither B theory nor eternalism are clearly defined with the glosses given above (nor would everyone agree that any clear definitions exist).

Second, I think that this potentiality vs. actuality business is peculiar to Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy; you won't find much talk about "actualization of potential" in more modern accounts of causality (but I would welcome a correction). There may be tension between some modern theories of causality and eternalism and/or B theory, but I would hesitate to name one off hand.

How can something exist “ simpliciter” in space time if all time past present future is already actual? How is anything simpler and then not simple if time is not objectively present and potentials aren’t actualized? — jimmyjohns

I think you are misreading "simpliciter": here it just means "as is, without additional qualifications." In the context of the quoted text it means that B exists, but we are not saying that it specifically exists at time t1. For a presentist existence always implies existence in the present moment. An eternalist has to additionally index existence to a particular time. So for an eternalist saying "Socratest exists" (exists simpliciter) does not commit her to saying that Socrates exists now.

I think your thesis "stick to finitism when teaching basic math" misses the obvious point of how incredibly messy and complex finitism is, both as a mathematical approach and as a practical application. The overwhelming majority of mathematical applications are based on the continuum - physics, engineering, etc. And as someone with your background knows perfectly well, and as you in fact emphasize in your post, when doing practical calculations, at some point you have to discretize those continuum models - which is not simple at all, especially if you want to do it robustly and accurately! In fact, you always want to keep them nice and continuous for as long as you can, and only discretize when all your analytical resources are exhausted, because once you do that, there's no going back.

I thought this was intended as a philosophical post, seeing as it was posted on a philosophy board. My mistake, thanks for setting me straight in such a non-insulting and mature way.

/sarcasm Welcome to my ignore list.

I would like to get a sense of what most people on here believe is the most important problem facing humanity today. — Xtrix

It is not clear what this question is asking. One way to read the question might be "What produces the most suffering for the most people now and in perpetuity?" Poverty would be a good answer, but so would death and disease, which are absent from the list. Moreover, it is not clear how granular and how proximate the answer ought to be. Poverty, for example, is a very general condition and a sink for most of the other listed issues. For example, corruption in the end produces poverty (as well as death and disease) by way of suboptimal governance.

The point of this question, which lists a hodgepodge of enduring conditions and potential threats, is also unclear. So let's say we pick one more or less general problem and wish it away. Then what?

I was torn between either climate change, poverty, or inequality, but ultimately chose poverty because the problem with inequality is that it leaves many people in poverty and the problem with climate change is that it threatens to plunge most if not all of humanity into poverty (because all wealth ultimately comes from the bounty of nature). — Pfhorrest

I am afraid the "poverty" here stands in for the opposite of thriving or happiness, making the choice rather trivial and non-specific.

I voted political corruption, because without the ability of humanity to act in its own best interests, none of the merely practical problems can even be addressed properly. Physical problems are trivial, it is psychological problems that are intractable. — unenlightened

I think you rather idealize "humanity," much in the way romantics idealized "the people" (as if there was such a thing).

I always forget that even among physicalists the reducibility of everything to fundamental physics in contentious. So I suppose that’s another presumption of this thread, and the thread itself can serve as the debate on that, as players put forward constructions of higher levels from lower ones and others challenge the accuracy of those. — Pfhorrest

To be clear, the contention isn't necessarily metaphysical. The prospects for Nagelian inter-theory reduction - the derivability of "phenomenological" theories from more "fundamental" ones - has been robustly challenged on mathematical grounds. See for instance Robert Batterman's Emergence, Singularities, and Symmetry Breaking (2010)

IIRC the mammoth Principia didn't get quite that far, although @Pfhorrest probably wouldn't want to start as far back and proceed as rigorously as W & R.

Max Tegmark in one of his mathematical universe papers sketches a hierarchical roadmap of this type (leading to fundamental physics, natch).

What's the end game - something like Quantum Field Theory? Quantum gravity? Anyway, even if we accept the premise of the "mathematical universe," there are still a couple of issues here:

1. If you are aiming at some fundamental physics, such as QFT, that still leaves out every non-fundamental theory that is not reducible to fundamental physics - which means pretty much everything, from solid state physics to derivative trading. Now, it is plausible, though still controversial, that, to the extent that they are accurate, those "special sciences" supervene on fundamental physics. However, it looks ever more certain that they cannot be built from the ground up, the way you suggest - there will be a discontinuity where you have to jump from one level to another, with no analytical bridge between the two.

2. You realize that there isn't a unique construction, even for something as basic as the integers, right? Even with set theory there's more than one way to do it.

Much to my surprise, no duplication of the experiment has been reported. — god must be atheist

Why would you find that surprising? Few experimental studies are duplicated.

Anyway, epigenetics in general is not controversial, and hasn't been for a long time (even if the OP is trying to evangelize it as if it was the latest miracle cure). But popular media and various cranks have sensationalized and distorted it to the point that honest biologists cringe when they are asked about it.

I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way ["The Notion of Subject/Object"] or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes. — Xtrix

This seems to be too thin for a philosophical basis. Can you elaborate? Not the specific meaning of "subject/object" (I think we have clarified that part), but how you think that forms the philosophical basis. A philosophical basis would have to be something substantive, non-trivial, something that is both consequential, and that could plausibly be constituted differently and have different consequences.

This sounds plausible if we don't get into details, but that doesn't amount to inevitability. Staying at the same level, unencumbered with expertise, here is an alternative scenario that may sound just as plausible: All genes that can affect sexual attraction are specific to the sex chromosomes. This, if true, would neutralize your argument.

's is the most plausible hypothesis that I have heard. It's quite possible that there is more than one pathway, including perhaps the classic site mutation, aka the "gay gene." But that couldn't be the dominant mechanism, for a number of reasons. Yes, it is not wholly impossible for gay people to reproduce, and yes, gay people may have benefited their community, and thus indirectly their gene pool. But the negative selection on the specific gene would be too strong to overcome those mitigating factors. The rest of the genome may benefit, but not the "benevolent uncle" gene, which will be selected against. However, if part of the gene pool conspires to sabotage another part, as in the scenario described by @Bitter Crank, that could be a viable strategy for evolution to pursue.

Your OP was pretty empty of substance, and you haven't added much to it in the follow-up, instead directing us to your website and podcast for details. This is the problem, not the fact that you have links in your profile.

If you want to engage with other members, then don't count on them listening to your podcast or reading your off-site posts. You are not my guru - you are some random stranger from the 'net. If you don't post anything of substance, then I am not going to chase after your teachings elsewhere.

(From what little you have revealed here, it looks like you are of those... impressionable individuals who got too enthusiastic about the ever-fashionable epigenetics. That's not as original as you might think. Geneticists who give popular talks dread the inevitable questions about epigenetics that they always receive, no matter the actual topic of their presentation.)

All I can do is invite you, and I have.

I no longer debate these things. I don't have to, or need to. — Mapping the Medium

Then why are you here? Just to plug your podcast? This is a place for discussion. If you are not interested in discussion, then go away before you are banned for spamming.

@Wayfarer is right, in natural language "A is B" can mean different things, depending on context. It can indicate class membership (people are animals), it serve as a reduction (people are [nothing other than] animals), and so on. In the case of this Spir fellow, what he has in mind would be more precisely called permanence, or more generally, invariance. That is not the same as the simple equality/identity used in logic and math. Such sloppy use of language has occasioned a lot of miserable sophistry (cf. Ayn Rand's abuse of the "principle of identity").

There is some sense in what @Mac is saying. You are right that when we assimilate the concept of equality/identity (whenever and however that happens), self-identity is assumed as part of its meaning - it doesn't have to be learned as a principle that comes in addition to the concept. If x wasn't equal to x, then "equal" would not mean what it does. Also, there isn't really a stand-alone "principle of identity" in logic - it comes as part of the package in the definition of equality (identity). However, when we formally define equality, we do have to explicitly postulate self-identity - it doesn't fall out of other postulates.

tldr: While self-identity does not have any meaning as a stand-alone principle, if we need to formalize the concept of equality, we have to state self-identity explicitly as part of its definition.

Oh boy, you are one of those 0.999... =/= 1 people. Never mind then.

And it has been agreed for the most part, that moral experience with the appearance of objectivity (which are universally shared in a deep principled sense rather than apparently inconsistent shallow comparisons) is properly basic, in the evidentialist sense — Shushi

Agreed by whom? Reformed epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga? ("Properly basic belief" is Plantinga's term that makes sense only in a very specific externalist foundationalist ("proper functionalist") epistemology that he developed, and not widely used outside of his circle, as far as I know. Reformed epistemology derives its name from Reformed theology, aka Calvinism, which tells you just how niche this thing is.) Outside this narrow context, the landscape of epistemology and moral philosophy is much more diverse than you imply.

Personally, I might agree that some of our moral beliefs are basic in the foundationalist sense, in that they are infallible, or incorrigible. We do not require justification for holding them, nor can we reject them at will. But that, of course, pulls the rug from under your challenge, because such beliefs do not require a grounding: they are the grounding.

"0.333~" represents the infinite sum 3 x 1 / 10^1 + 3 x 1 / 10^2 + 3 x 1 / 10^3 + ... + 3 x 1 / 10^inf. It does not represent its limit. — Magnus Anderson

What do you think an "infinite sum" is then if not the limit (if it exists) of the partial sums?

The standard view of the positional notation is that it is a representation of a number as a series, with digits serving as coefficients in front of the base, and their position designating the power of the base (positive before the dot, negative after the dot). But I still have no idea what you think "most people" think of it.

I can't even hazard a guess as to how you think "most people" define "0.333~" (I am more accustomed to the ... notation, but I assume you mean the same thing).

Apple=Banana is true, if the properties of apple and banana are completely identical. Certainly, they are not. So Apple≠Banana. It would explain why an apple couldn't be not an apple. But this logic is only true, if the properties of apple are identical to themselves. — Monist

You just pushed this back from X to properties of X, but that doesn't really change anything. Just do a variable substitution: let Y designate what used to be called X, and let X now be a property of Y. Everything that was said of X would still apply, since it does not actually depend on the meaning of X - it's a purely syntactical exercise. Metaphysics doesn't come into this.

Question: on a ruler one can mark units, then divide the units in half, thirds ( I think), quarters, & etc. But there is no way to mark an exact irrational length on the ruler - unless a line representing an irrational distance is constructed (like the square root of two) and marked on the ruler by direct measurement. Correct? — tim wood

Depends on what you mean by marking off distance on a ruler. If you mean real rulers and real markings, then it's kind of hard to even talk about exact distances. If you have an idealized model in mind - putting a point somewhere on a segment of a straight line, then why can't we mark off an irrational distance? If you make a mark somewhere at random, the distance it marks off is pretty much guaranteed to be an irrational number.