right, so you saying table is concrete and photon is not is... not quite it then is it? — flannel jesus
It takes the word out of the context of mathematics, it doesn't bring metaphor into mathematics. — Metaphysician Undercover
I actually think a table is MORE abstract than a photon. — flannel jesus
sorry buddy, "table" is a concept in the English language, and concepts are something abstract. — flannel jesus
So give me an example of something material. — flannel jesus
Surely mathematical concepts cannot be classified as metaphorical. — Metaphysician Undercover
Words need boundaries. Words without boundaries are usually words without meaning. If everything is immaterial, the designation "immaterial" has no weight. — flannel jesus
Sure, BUT if you're calling photons "immaterial" as if to compare them to something abstract, I think that's a mistake. Matter or not, mass or not, they're a part of physics. — flannel jesus
An alternative conception of concepts takes concepts to be abstract objects of one type or another.
I think "photon" is a concept created in an attempt to explain the photoelectric effect. — Metaphysician Undercover
"In his article on the use of metaphors in physics (November issue, page 17), Robert P Crease describes several interesting trees but fails to notice the wood all around him. What is a scientific theory if not a grand metaphor for the real world it aims to describe? Theories are generally formulated in mathematical terms, and it is difficult to see how it could be argued that, for example, F = ma "is" the motion of an object in any literal sense. Scientific metaphors possess uniquely powerful descriptive and predictive potential, but they are metaphors nonetheless. If scientific theories were as real as the world they describe, they would not change with time (which they do, occasionally). I would even go so far as to suggest that an equation like F = ma is a culturally specific metaphor, in that it can only have meaning in a society that practices mathematical quantification in the way that ours does. Before I'm dismissed as a loopy radical, I should point out that I'm a professional physicist who has been using mathematical metaphors to describe the real world for the last twenty years!"
In other words, "force" is purely conceptual. It is only one of a number of conceptions which can be applied toward representing the effects of gravity, but not the only one. "Force" doesn't represent gravity, it is a method of categorizing the effects of gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
I made no conclusion about God. — Metaphysician Undercover
That article also says unambiguously that photons are STUFF, like matter. So if we're going by that article, photons are material, as are electrons and protons and neutrons — flannel jesus
But energy is not itself stuff; it is something that all stuff has.
Photons are stuff; energy is not.
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume (Wikipedia - Matter)
If matter just is energy then, then photons are material. Are electrons, protons and neutrons material in your opinion? — Janus
That would be an invalid inference. — Janus
So we have two very different ways to conceive what you call "gravitational force". One is as a force, the other as a property of spacetime. The latter is distinctly not "a force" — Metaphysician Undercover
Gravity is the force by which a planet or other body draws objects toward its center. The force of gravity keeps all of the planets in orbit around the sun.
===============================================================================Gravity isn't a force, it's the curvature of space-time caused by the presence of mass-energy.
Can you agree that a person can know one's past and cannot know one's future, and because of this we ought to conclude that there is a real difference between past and future? — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think those two examples constitute two different meanings. They are applying the same definition of "immaterial" to refer to different things......................................And if such things are believed to be real, independent and not merely conceptual, then we'd have a belief in the real existence of the immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover
The immateriality of God simply means that God is not composed of material.
If a human observer cannot know the future, but can know the past, this implies a real difference between future and past. How can a determinist adequately account for this difference? — Metaphysician Undercover
If the determinist laws (the laws of physics which support one's belief in determinism), are not believed to extend to all parts of the universe, then how is the belief in determinism supported — Metaphysician Undercover
Wouldn't it be possible that nondeterministic activity reigned in some part of the universe, and there could be some interaction between the various parts? — Metaphysician Undercover
The question is, what supports the belief that the supposed hidden variables are deterministic. — Metaphysician Undercover
A person who believes in free will, and the reality of the immaterial in general, does not allow that Newton's first law extends to a living body moved by final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover
But the immaterial things are the philosophically more interesting. These include consciousness, thoughts, words, meanings, concepts, numbers, emotions, intentions, volitions, moral principles, aesthetic experiences, and more. What would philosophy be without them?
The immateriality of God simply means that God is not composed of material. In other words, God is not made of any kind of matter, material, or substance which entails that he cannot be seen.
What causes the stone to fall is gravity. "Force" is not an independent thing in the world which causes anything. "Force" is a mathematical concept, how we quantify the effects of things like gravity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Actually that's untrue, because without ontological commitment to universal quantification over absolute infinity, one cannot distinguish the hypothesis of determinism from its anti-thesis. — sime
Yes, that is perfectly reasonable as an informal description of gravity when describing a particular case of motion in the concrete rather than in the abstract — sime
as Russell observed, in such cases the concept of causality can be eliminated from the description. — sime
But determinism takes the causal "determination" of movement by gravity literally, universally and outside of the context of humans determining outcomes — sime
The thesis that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.
and in a way that requires suspension of Humean skepticism due to the determinist's apparent ontological commitment to universal quantification over generally infinite domains. — sime
The distance (amount of space) between any two things at some "point in time" is not dependent on perception, even though the measurement of that distance can be said to be so. — Janus
How is "several possible futures" consistent with determinism? — Metaphysician Undercover
Meanwhile, "God's Will" is a sound theory, supported by the experience of every human being who makes choices. And "superdeterminism" is just the pie-in -the-sky clutching at straws of deluded determinists. — Metaphysician Undercover
On the other hand, we can say that Newton's first law applies only to the aspects of the universe which our sense capacities allow us to observe................................we have no reason to believe that it behaves in the same way as the part which we can observe. — Metaphysician Undercover
That sounds just like "God's Will". However, there is one big difference. "God's Will" is consistent with human experience of choice, free will, the known difference between past and future, and our knowledge of final cause, while "superdeterminism" is not. — Metaphysician Undercover
a commitment to determinism looks like a metaphysical commitment to the objective existence of intentional forces of agency (i.e. spirits) that exist above and beyond the physically describable aspects of substances. — sime
What is a table to you, is a meal to a termite, and a landing place to a bird. — Wayfarer
Without wanting to wade into the endless quantum quandries...................................But it seems irrefutable nowadays, that at a fundamental level, physical reality is not fully determined. — Wayfarer
Newton's laws cannot account for the reality of free will, where the cause of motion is internal to the body which accelerates. — Metaphysician Undercover
The mind does make mistakes, but it is a lot cleverer than that. It judges the size of distant objects by comparing their height with other objects in the field of vision. It knows the actual height of the other objects, so it can work out the height of the unknown object.
So, yes, it creates a perception, but not necessarily a false one. — Ludwig V
The relation just is the amount of actual space between them. That is, if you allow that space exists mind-independently, which I find it most plausible to think. — Janus
And did it occur to you that your understanding that she is bored might be erroneous? — L'éléphant
The point is that universals are not “in the mind” — not mere thoughts or conventions. — Wayfarer
Very good. What's your criterion for something to exist in the world? Colours, for example, occupy space - admittedly in two dimensions - and have definite locations. — Ludwig V
Your mind is not a spatial object - it occupies no space whatever. The physical substrate of your mind is in your brain (though I prefer to say that it is your entire body). — Ludwig V
But then, how can the relationship "next to" be between between the ship and the quay? It is true that we can see that the ship is next to the quay, and you might choose to describe that as having the ship and the quay and the relationship between them in your mind in some sense. But that doesn't mean that your mind has created any of them. — Ludwig V
I see that you have decided that the relationship is between the ship and the bollard. — Ludwig V
But for me Bradley's mistake is thinking of the relation as if it were an entity in its own right - an object corresponding to R. — Ludwig V
So you can be reassured that the ship is securely next to the quay and physics will prevent it from moving. You can decide where the relationship is — Ludwig V
The actual distinction Kant makes is between empirical realism and transcendental idealism..............................................For Kant, empirical realism means that objects of experience - the phenomena we encounter in space and time - are real within the empirical domain. When we perceive a tree or a rock, these objects have objective reality as appearances. — Wayfarer
Bertrand Russell has a chapter called World of Universals in his early Problems of Philosophy, which I often refer to. — Wayfarer
Bertrand Russell: Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it.
That's why I say that all forms of realism are grounded in idealism. — Metaphysician Undercover
When a body is caused to accelerate, it may continue to accelerate long after that cause has ceased acting. — Metaphysician Undercover
So everything in our world except for rock, water and gas, was created by our cousins and ancestors. Their minds literally created/caused these things. — Punshhh
The first living organisms on Earth were one-celled organisms known as prokaryotes, which emerged between 3.5 and 4.1 billion years ago.
https://www.naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins
The issue isn’t whether the dinosaur existed before humans. It’s that the meaning of ‘T. rex’, it’s place in our world, is a product of our engagement now. That’s the intertwining I’m pointing to. Empirical knowledge is not a passive representing of what’s out there. — Joshs
Well of course, a belief is not evidence of the thing believed..........................However, beliefs do influence the way that we behave. And, I argue that this is in a non-deterministic way. — Metaphysician Undercover
I will argue that all forms of realism are reducible to, or dependent on Platonic realism, for ontological support. So, if you are a realist, you are a Platonist. — Metaphysician Undercover
It's very evident here, that you have no idea what "force" actually means...Very clearly it is a human creation. — Metaphysician Undercover
(Newton's) second law says that when an external force acts on a body, it produces an acceleration (change in velocity) of the body in the direction of the force. The magnitude of the acceleration is directly proportional to the magnitude of the external force and inversely proportional to the quantity of matter in the body.
That's a silly question. It is presumably an attempt to explain what Bradley meant, but it is very unhelpful, amounting to mystification. It can't be what Bradley was saying. — Ludwig V
Some philosophers are wary of admitting relations because they are difficult to locate. Glasgow is west of Edinburgh. This tells us something about the locations of these two cities. But where is the relation that holds between them in virtue of which Glasgow is west of Edinburgh? The relation can’t be in one city at the expense of the other, nor in each of them taken separately, since then we lose sight of the fact that the relation holds between them (McTaggart 1920: §80). Rather the relation must somehow share the divided locations of Glasgow and Edinburgh without itself being divided.
Is it that he never gave his opinion, or that his answer is implicit in his later work, but has been missed by many because they are still looking for answers within the old binary: either mind or world, either inside or outside? — Joshs