Jesus, the Foundation of Science

[Touchstone]

So I went back and looked up the Young slit experiment, and admittedly, in a very unscholarly way, tried to grasp the gist of it (yes, I did a google search on it.)

From what I could gather, there is nothing about it that challenges the principle of non-contradiction. Prima facie it looks as though there is just a dispute about the nature of light. Some say, because of the way the light is difracted, it is made up of particles and others say of it consists of waves.

This seems far different from stating that they both are and are not at the same time in the same way in reference to the same thing.

Again, I did not dig very deep, but if there are some who claim that light is both wave and not a wave, or both made up of particles and not particles at the same time in the same way in reference to the same thing, then we might run into a legitimate challenge of non-contradiction.

hecd, you can probably tell me if my unscholarly search is not telling me the whole story, so I’ll leave it to you if I messed up in summarizing it.

I think you’re right in summarizing the implications as being “about the nature of light”, but I think you may have missed the implications of the experiment (or rather, the physics models that were develop in its wake) with respect to the law of non-contradiction.

Without getting to wrapped up in the details, the issue to consider (from my POV, hecd2 may have a completely different take on this) is that the reason the two slit test produce interference patterns is because the photons “en route” make that term problematic. The photon as it goes is both “nowhere” and “everywhere”, a putative contradiction to our intuitive understanding.

It’s not resolvable by supposing that “everywhere” and “nowhere” are really synonymous in some sense. Because the photon exists as a probability wave, it tries literally every possible path between its start and endpoints in the universe, but it does so probabilistically, which means the probabilities are distributed heavily near and around the photon gun and the paper catching the interference patterns. It’s much more ‘right here’ than 'way over in the Andromeda Galaxy.

All of which to say, the photon offends our sense of mutual exclusion, the Law of Non-Contradiction. We invoke the Law of non-Contradiction in support of locality and the persistence of objects. This object x has a discrete location – even if it is amorphous, moving, gaseous. The same X is not both ‘here’ and ‘there’ and in fact ‘everywhere’ to varying degrees. Real physics at fundamental levels simply mocks what Aquinas took to indubitable facts of nature around him. He couldn’t have known during his time, but the very physics Aquinas ground his metaphysics in was nothing like he supposed, trapped in the observations at huge macro scales as he was. The warrant for his most basic premises was badly mistaken, and nature isn’t like he supposed at all at its fundamental levels.

We can look at quantum entanglement and other features of quantum physics, but the metaphysical import of the double-slit experiment is (at least) that naive consistency and a straightforward understanding of the Law of Non-Contradiction are quaint artifacts of our huge size. At human scales, those understandings are practical, useful, necessary (for intelligibility). But those rules just don’t apply at the Planck layer.

The Law of Non-Contradiction is offended at several levels by this experiment. Light is both a wave and a particle, and yet, a wave is not a particle, and in fact, what we mean by ‘wave’ excludes what we mean by ‘particle’, and vice versa.

The photons in the experiment, before wave function collapse, are NOWHERE as photons, and simultaneously everywhere as photons.

The Law of Non-Contradiction is a crucial, useful tool. But it’s utility and applicability, at least in a straightforward understanding of the principle, hold well at our scales, but fails to be useful at other (more fundamental) scales of reality. That doesn’t diminish it’s value to us in day-to-day life, but that realization cuts self-indulgent metaphysics to ribbons. An Aquinas-like grounding for “how the world works” in terms of physics looks childish, backwards now. The world in terms of physics doesn’t really work in anything like the way Aquinas took for granted.

-TS

 

[The_Exodus]

He couldn’t have known during his time, but the very physics Aquinas ground his metaphysics in was nothing like he supposed, trapped in the observations at huge macro scales as he was.

Aquinas did not ground his metaphysics in physics. It was the opposite. This is your fundamental error in assessing his thought. You seem to think that physics can somehow trump metaphysics, when the opposite is the case. Physics is essentially subordinate to any sort of metaphysical thinking we do, which has to do with being as being, or what is potentially possible in the realm of reality.

Physics has to do with the motion and change of being, but it already assumes the validity and meaning of being as something that the mind grasps in reality.

touchstone:

The Law of Non-Contradiction is offended at several levels by this experiment.

I, for one, see no reason – indeed I think it impossible – to debate someone who thinks the law of contradiction is violated in reality. Perhaps you do not exist, and so perhaps your post, similarly, does not exist either?

touchstone:

Light is both a wave and a particle, and yet, a wave is not a particle, and in fact, what we mean by ‘wave’ excludes what we mean by ‘particle’, and vice versa.

My father is both a human and a male. There is nothing impliticly contradictory in assigning different characteristics to a certain substance which are not inherently opposed to one another. And if we happen to erect a scientific system in which such characteristics do seem contradictory, we ought to think ourselves ignorant and in error.

Unless we want to speak absurdities.

touchstone:

The Law of Non-Contradiction is a crucial, useful tool. But it’s utility and applicability, at least in a straightforward understanding of the principle, hold well at our scales, but fails to be useful at other (more fundamental) scales of reality.

I don’t know why “smaller” is necessarily more “fundamental.”

I wish you would just come right out and say you are a Kantian, btw.

 

[Touchstone]

Aquinas did not ground his metaphysics in physics. It was the opposite. This is your fundamental error in assessing his thought. You seem to think that physics can somehow trump metaphysics, when the opposite is the case. Physics is essentially subordinate to any sort of metaphysical thinking we do, which has to do with being as being, or what is potentially possible in the realm of reality.

Its the subordination that makes it primary. When Aquinas says “aquinas whatever is moved is moved by another”, even and especially when he connects that to a metaphysical principle (e.g. "But nothing can be moved from a state of potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality…"), the foundation is physics, the hum-drum everyday models of life built in the minds of humans stumbling around the joint.

Another way to see the dependency you’re missing – the transcendental relationship – is simply to look at the language you (and Aquinas, and Aristotle, and I, and…) use. “Motion”. “Heat”. “Snub”. “Curve”. Ok those are words from Aquinas commenting on Aristotle’s Physics, IIRC, but the building blocks of language here, and conceptually, therefore, are mundane, physical. That is where Aquinas begins, like any human who must draw on the senses.

Any metaphysical insight or conjecture builds upon one’s physics model. It may be “superior” in an abstractive sense, but Aquinas’ physics, like Aristotle’s before him, and yours and mine are the GROUNDS for any metaphysics developed. And Aquinas, like Aristotle whom he admired so, were not ambiguous about that at all. It all begins with practical experience with the real world, and conjectures start from there.

But that just what was misplaced for Aquinas. At his scale, he wasn’t experiencing a fundamental physic, but a huge statistical ensemble, fundamental physics coalescing in staggering numbers of interactions and events. That’s trouble, because the fundamental layer is far different that what physic Aquinas or Aristotle had to draw on, and not just different, *crazy *different.

Physics has to do with the motion and change of being, but it already assumes the validity and meaning of being as something that the mind grasps in reality.

“meaning of being” isn’t even a meaningful concept after the analysis. Neither is “validity”. Those are vacuous terms to end with, let alone start with. Physics is the study of matter and motion, and I think that is a formulation that goes right back Aristotle. We look, we see motion percepts, we think and build models that establish regularities, rules, behaviors that can account for motion of matter. Whatever “actuality” and “potentiality” we may want to assign as a meta-physic needs a physic as its predicate. That’s why the term “meta-physic” is structured as it is – “meta-” is predicated on a physic.

I, for one, see no reason – indeed I think it impossible – to debate someone who thinks the law of contradiction is violated in reality. Perhaps you do not exist, and so perhaps your post, similarly, does not exist either?

Well, perhaps, and any anti-realist (I am not one) can probably give you a good go at that, depending on what you mean by “exist” (and that term is really squishy and vague on this forum).

But no matter – apply your principles, whatever they are. What divides “exist” from “not-exist” in your view? Can both apply to another person, based on your experience in the world, and the principles you draw from that experience? If not, then it seems you must have some criterion that obtains, and you just need to apply that (if any real remedy is needed at all, that is).

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

The Exodus:

My father is both a human and a male. There is nothing impliticly contradictory in assigning different characteristics to a certain substance which are not inherently opposed to one another.

Yes, but if you define what you (or, a physicist) means by “particle”, you necessarily are describing something that is “not-wave”. And vice versa. To suggest that human/male is analogous to particle/wave is to misunderstand what is being denoted by “particle” and “wave”.

That doesn’t mean some future model can’t coalesce these and render the contradiction just apparent. M-Theory provides a fairly elegant framework for ‘de-contradicting’ this, or at least making it less sharp a contradiction. But that’s conjecture as of now, and what we have “in the bag” in terms of knowledge and experience has us embracing concepts that are independently performative and substantially exclusive with respect to one another.

If that makes you decide you have to declare reality invalid, based on your particular metaphysics, go ahead. But the photon ain’t the least bit impressed by your complaint. It is what it is.

And if we happen to erect a scientific system in which such characteristics do seem contradictory, we ought to think ourselves ignorant and in error.

And we do! But we don’t declare our experiences invalid because it doesn’t accord with some metaphysical principle we have fetishized. We think in language and symbols and concepts, so while we understand that if we are to reach a unified, non-contradictory and coherent model we will need to find things to change, we can’t just assume our eyes/instruments are fooling us as the necessary scapegoat. That is a/the problem often, but we also need imagination for models and language that aren’t so brittle and simplistic.

Unless we want to speak absurdities.

Do I need to trot out Feynman? “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t understand quantum mechanics”. Feynman wasn’t dissing the intelligence or carefulness of physicists. He was commenting on the “absurdity” of QM. Viewed from a classic/Aristotelian/Thomist model, it’s patently absurd. QM is not like macro physics, the rules and “logic” are totally different. Not just behaviorally different, but logically different. The rules are crazy from a classical perspective. Your worst nightmare come true.

I don’t know why “smaller” is necessarily more “fundamental.”

Smaller isn’t necessarily more fundamental. Smallness is an artifact of the fundamentality of QM. QM is more fundamental because it governs at the lowest level
what happens at the higher levels (the level you and I experience). The interference patterns on the paper in the double slit experiment get that way because of what happens at the quantum layer, NOT the other way around. That makes QM fundamental, logically prior to macrophysics. Macrophysics is a model of how huge QM statistical and probabilistic ensembles resolve in real-time.

I wish you would just come right out and say you are a Kantian, btw.

Well, I can point out a litany of beefs and major fails I assign to Kant. But Kant is a uniquely broad philosopher. For what we usually engage on. I’m definitely more Kantian than you, which I realize is not saying much. Like many philosophers, Kant strikes me as quote potent at critiquing prior and surrounding philosophies, not so good at proposing a positive model himself. Easier to criticise than propose solutions, right? I think he’s pretty much right on in his assault on dogmatic rationalist metaphysics, and that pretty much makes me a “Kantian” in that respect in these conversations, because that does seem to be what I’m pushing against, here, often.

But I’m as likely to take one who identifies themselves as a “Kantian” (I don’t) to task as to agree with her. Kant, like Aquinas, just is obsolesced on major points by modern science. He’s been rendered quaint in many ways, if not to the extent Aquinas and Aristotle have.

-TS

 

[hecd2]

This is true. What Aquinas means, according to the sources I’ve read, is based on a metaphysical axiom that “every being desires to preserve itself.” Now, he is not speaking of “conscious” desire, but a sort of innate striving to be, which, he claims, can be found in all levels of matter. Even inorganic matter “desires” to preserve its nature. This is why he spoke as he did about fire. Its “nature” is to “rise.” This may be a crude example, but the point he is making has to do with substance and action. Every substance we observe – whether man or molecule – tends to exist in a particular way. It strives to “be itself” so to speak. The plant, for instance, strives to blossom. This would be the “best result.” But the particular best result does not always follow, for the plant may be destroyed in a storm.

What you describe here does correspond with what I understand of Aquinas’s stance, and it’s just what I’m taking issue with. Aquinas and Aristotle could get away with talking, in their time, about innate striving in inanimate objects and about their desire to preserve their nature, but this way of looking at the world is anachronistic. It’s a kind of explanation that is no explanation. Why do things fall - because it’s their nature to be in the centre of the world; why does fire rise - because it’s in its nature to strive to the heavens; why do some plants flower - because it’s in their nature to do so. Aquinas here sees a created order, and one in which things have essential properties that are unconnected to one another. For him, these properties are discernible but directly God-given and God-sustained. He simply doesn’t see the underlying structure that gives these entities their properties, the structure that modern science works to uncover. The necessary methodological materialism of modern science is quite an alien way of thinking for him. Not only was his physics naive (and of its age), but the metaphysics he derives from it is damaged, fatally in my view, by this fact.

Now we would give different sorts of answers to these questions - not just different answers, but answers that have a completely different epistemic foundation. We’d say something about the universal law of gravitation or curvature of space time as an overarching explanation not just for objects falling on earth but for many other phenomena in the world. We’d say something about the chemical reactions in fire, the release of energy, the consequence for the temperature of the gases in the neighbourhood, the emission of light by hot bodies and Charles’s law all of which are empirically justified and broad in application to explain why fire on earth rises. To the last question, we’d talk about genetics and molecular biology, we’d talk about the evolution of various reproductive strategies, we’d talk about strategies for pollination and so on, all of which are based on principles that have broad application, to explain why a particular class of plant bears flowers.

You might legitimately challenge me to explain where the underlying structure comes from, and that’s fair enough, but that’s not the argument here. The argument here is about the governance of specific properties in individual entities and my view is that a modern understanding of the processes that give rise to properties defuses his argument.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

hecd2:

They are blind because they do not act to a purpose (an end). They act as they act according to some rules (and finding those rules is called natural science), but they are blind to outcomes. They are process driven and not outcome driven.

But the rules presuppose an outcome. Any “rule” or type of behavior one may discover about a certain substance, necessarily involves an outcome towards which that substance is “tending.”

I don’t think so. I’m trying to understand how I can see such a stark difference between purposeful outcome-driven change and purposeless process-driven change and you don’t. The rules don’t presuppose an outcome - the outcome is a consequence of the rules. The rules aren’t there as a description or a recipe of how to get to a particular outcome. You are thinking about rules in a rather Thomist way (see previous post) - as a description of a behaviour of a particular entity in a particular circumstance or perhaps as a prescription for it. The scientist doesn’t think about it that way, but about the underlying connections that lead to behaviour across a wide range circumstances, including circumstances which are unrealised. Consistent behaviour at one level (rules) lead to behaviour that is more complex at another level (Stephen Wolfram has some snazzy demonstrations of what that means here), and complex behaviour requires more than one rule to predict it. You need to specify both the rules and the initial conditions to predict behaviour, and a scientist would say the behaviour of a particular entity differs from circumstance to circumstance and depends on the circumstance and the rules. The rules apply regardless of the outcome which can be different in different circumstances. The universal law of gravitation determines that sometimes entities fall to earth and sometimes they don’t. Entities don’t have an innate desire to fall to earth and shaking off this thinking was what got Newton his chips.

Should I take infinite hotness to mean infinite temperature?

I don’t believe so, because that makes me at least think of numbers on a thermometer. Think of hotness as “the quality of being hot.”

Well, we’re going to struggle with this one . Something having an infinite temperature is at least a concept that we can entertain - an actually infinite temperature might be unrealisable for various reasons but at least we can sort of envisage it. What is the quality of being hot though, that is not measured by temperature? Sorry that I’m struggling to understand you.

If we are talking about a property on a scale, x, whereby it is meaningful to talk about more x or less x or even infinite x, why would you shy away from numbers? - in science, we talk about things being more x or less x to the extent that we can quantify x. To say there is a thing called hotness which is the quality of being hot, (on its own the quality of being hot is meaningless - there is no way to determine what a statement about an object being hot means outside of a context) which can be more or less or even infinite, but which is unquantifiable is incoherent.

So would you say that if Aquinas’s statements that fire embodies this hypothetical infinite temperature, that the concept of relative temperature depends on it, and that this infinite temperature embodied in fire is the cause of all hot things - that if these statements are false to fact (as they are) that the Fourth Way should escape unscathed?

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “false to fact.”

I mean that these claims a) that fire is an embodiment of infinite hotness ‘(maximum heat’ in the translation - I’m using your term here); b) that unless we can entertain an actual infinite hotness then the concept of relative hotness is meaningless; and c) that fire as infinite hotness is the cause of all hot things; that all these claims are belied by facts.

What Aquinas says about hotness can be said about other qualities, say, of desirableness, or goodness, or beauty, justice, etc…

I think that since his understanding of the thermodynamics is imperfect (to put it mildly) then any extrapolation to abstract qualities is bound to be flawed at source.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Because supposing the proposition were true results in an absurdity. If there were no first cause, there could be no subsequent causes. If there was nothing fundamentally first, there would be nothing after.

There are repies from JP2A and you on the infinite chain arguments (thanks for that) that I have no time to think about now - I’m possibly going to be out of time for a while and will try to come back then - although things might well have moved on unrecognisably by then.

Alec

 

[hecd2]

So I went back and looked up the Young slit experiment, and admittedly, in a very unscholarly way, tried to grasp the gist of it (yes, I did a google search on it.)

From what I could gather, there is nothing about it that challenges the principle of non-contradiction. Prima facie it looks as though there is just a dispute about the nature of light. Some say, because of the way the light is difracted, it is made up of particles and others say of it consists of waves.

This seems far different from stating that they both are and are not at the same time in the same way in reference to the same thing.

Again, I did not dig very deep, but if there are some who claim that light is both wave and not a wave, or both made up of particles and not particles at the same time in the same way in reference to the same thing, then we might run into a legitimate challenge of non-contradiction.

hecd, you can probably tell me if my unscholarly search is not telling me the whole story, so I’ll leave it to you if I messed up in summarizing it.

It’s good that you took the time. I see that Touchstone has picked this up and is explaining the position as I see it very well. So just a quick note here to emphasise that the implications of the quantised Young’s slit experiment are far more profound than a disagreement between people as to whether light is a particle or a wave. The scenario where there are people who conclude from the Young’s experiment and other experiments that light is made up of particles and not particles and waves and not waves at the same time is exactly the one which follows (and I am one of those people). In quantised Young’s we can see individual particles arriving at points on the screen (whenever we detect individual light particles they are always localised to a point in space), but the particles aggregate together to make up a pattern (it’s a number density pattern) that can only be explained by that particle going through both slits at once and by it possessing wave-like properties. (If we do the Young’s experiment with a machine gun and bullets, we get a result that is different and intuitive - no interference pattern results and the bullets act always and completely as particles). If we block one of the slits, the particles of light continue to arrive at the screen, passing through the unblocked slit, but somehow they “know” that the other slit is now blocked and no longer develop the interference pattern.

Does it demolish the non-contradiction axiom - well, it’s certainly troublesome for it at those scales and we might postulate that our so-far smug certainty in the unassailability of non-contradiction in ALL circumstances might result from the fact that we don’t usually see these effects at our scale (acknowledging the potential problems that arise if we let non-contradiction slip ever so little - but these are the facts and we have to deal with them somehow).

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

hecd2:

I prefer my example which is not ambiguous in this way: All human cells replicate by division. Humans are composed entirely of cells. Therefore humans replicate by division".

I would dispute the second premise: that humans are composed “entirely” of cells. Could you explain what you mean?

Some of my thoughts: as soon as you say “human,” you would be distinguishing it from all its components – you would be, to use scholastic language, be giving the substance and listing some of its accidents.

Ach. Should have known better than to use “human”. This is a biological syllogism - we’re talking materially here. Replace human with dog if you like; or mammal. Cells replicate by division. Mammals are entities that are composed of cells - they are multicellular organisms. Therefore mammals replicate by division. There is the syllogism and it’s fallacious. Not because the second premise is wrong - there are some trivial senses in which you could argue that but it’s not the key point, but the syllogism is fallacious at a deeper level. It is fallacious because replication by division is not expansive - merely because all parts do it doesn’t mean it applies to the whole. Applying that consideration to the world, it is potentially fallacious to conclude that some observed behaviour of all parts of the world applies to the world itself.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[LogisticsBranch]

There’s been mention of Aristotle on this page. I wanted to share some information that I thought valuable. A few excerpts from An Introduction to Logic for Students of Physics and Engineering by Joseph C. Kolecki, Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio - NASA/TP—2004-212491:

1. Basics of Aristotelian Logic
   Mediate Versus Immediate Inference
   Aristotelian logic uses arguments called syllogisms.
   This section introduces syllogisms and the concepts involving their use and construction. Hypothetical logic, discussed in the first section of this report, was mainly developed during the 19th century for use in mathematics because during this time developments in
   mathematics increased more than they had in previous centuries. Therefore, the logic of mathematics had to be formalized in an agreed-upon system.

Aristotelian logic is used in the news, the courtroom, and other nonmathematical disciplines. Because Aristotle was concerned with a different set of problems than those of the 19th century mathematicians, he developed his logic accordingly. Thus, we will discover
that many of the rules developed for hypothetical logic were also developed for Aristotelian logic.

Let us begin with concept of inference as it relates to argument. To infer implies that we have a subject we wish to speak about and a predicate we wish to apply to the subject. When we infer something, we draw a conclusion based on given statements that we take to be true. For example, given the statements All Greeks are philosophers. . . .Pg.13

1. Definition by Genus and Species
   When hypothetical logic was introduced in the first section of this report, we spoke of making definitions. Recall that we had to define the terms that would be used to build the logical system. Aristotle was very concerned with definition and wrote a great deal about it. The following summarizes what he had to say.

Definitions are the starting point of most philosophical and mathematical arguments. To construct a definition, we first have to select a “universe of discourse” in which the argument can take place. Suppose that we are talking about your new golden retriever. The universe of discourse might be the set of all dogs. Within the set of all dogs we may then speak of the set of all retrievers, and within the set of all retrievers, the set of all golden retrievers, and
within this set, your particular retriever.

Each paring down requires recognition of both general and specific characteristics. Aristotle called these general and specific characteristics genus and species, respectively. An Aristotelian definition is a proposition (or set of propositions) that involves the concepts of genus and species. In defining the term “tree,” we recognize the various species of trees as
oak, maple, pine, and so on. In defining a maple tree, on the other hand, we recognize the various species as red, silver, or Japanese.

A genus is a class of a certain kind that can be partitioned into smaller equivalence subclasses of species. A class is a set of objects having some element or elements in common, and it may generally be partitioned into species by further dividing among
these common elements. The set union of all the species in a class comprises the class itself. The set intersection of any two species is the null set. Example of null set.All trees have trunks, roots, and foliage. The set of all trees is a class (genus). Foliage may be subdivided into leaves and needles; hence, the class trees may be partitioned into the
subclasses (species): trees with leaves and trees with needles. The set union of these subclasses is the original class. Their intersection is the null set. Aristotle’s definition of a term by genus and species first specifies a characteristic belonging to the genus of the term being defined. A second characteristic, the differentia, is then added to indicate the species. The characteristic supplied by the differentia distinguishes the term being defined from all other terms belonging to the same genus. Example of differentia.The genus is again trees.
The differentia are needles and leaves. The genus is predicated of the species but not conversely. For example, we say, “A tree has leaves,” not “Leaves has a tree.” The species term contains more information than the genus term. . . .
gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2004/TP-2004-212491.pdf
Science floats on . . . Hope people will once again review what I wrote on page 2!
I’ve got a ton of stuff to do outside of here. Hope to return one day in the future. Best wishes to all. A gentle :wave:from this woman.

 

[The_Exodus]

Its the subordination that makes it primary. When Aquinas says “aquinas whatever is moved is moved by another”, even and especially when he connects that to a metaphysical principle (e.g. "But nothing can be moved from a state of potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality…"), the foundation is physics, the hum-drum everyday models of life built in the minds of humans stumbling around the joint.

Not at all. The potency/actuality metaphysics is a philosophy of being. It seeks to reconcile the phenomena of becoming with that of being and non-being, which is what the Greeks were so concerned with.

touchstone:

Another way to see the dependency you’re missing – the transcendental relationship – is simply to look at the language you…

Language presupposed being, not vice versa.

touchstone:

Any metaphysical insight or conjecture builds upon one’s physics model. It may be “superior” in an abstractive sense, but Aquinas’ physics, like Aristotle’s before him, and yours and mine are the GROUNDS for any metaphysics developed.

Obviously. I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that their systems are built on observed phenomena, but being qua being, and other intelligible concepts, are known intuitively by the mind, not the senses.

touchstone:

But that just what was misplaced for Aquinas. At his scale, he wasn’t experiencing a fundamental physic, but a huge statistical ensemble, fundamental physics coalescing in staggering numbers of interactions and events. That’s trouble, because the fundamental layer is far different that what physic Aquinas or Aristotle had to draw on, and not just different, *crazy *different.

You keep saying it’s far different. How so, precisely?

“meaning of being” isn’t even a meaningful concept after the analysis. Neither is “validity”. Those are vacuous terms to end with, let alone start with.

For one ignorant of the history of metaphysics, or for a Kantian, or anyone after Descartes, perhaps. But not to me, nor a vast number of minds.

touchstone:

Well, perhaps

Perhaps you or your post does not exist?

touchstone:

But no matter – apply your principles, whatever they are. What divides “exist” from “not-exist” in your view?

What exists has being. What does not exist does not have being. I see that as a perfectly understandable definition. I see no reason to “go behind” it, as it is intuitively intelligible to me. I just “see” it to be reasonable, as I do other first principles.

 

[The_Exodus]

That doesn’t mean some future model can’t coalesce these and render the contradiction just apparent.

Then, in my mind, we ought to hold out for a future theory. Science has proved our “supposed contradictory intuitions” wrong time after time. Indeed, every error rests on a supposed contradiction in the mind. I hand the guy at the drive through $10, and my meal was $5, so I expect $5 back. He gives me $4. Turns out, my meal was actually $6.

touchstone:

If that makes you decide you have to declare reality invalid, based on your particular metaphysics, go ahead. But the photon ain’t the least bit impressed by your complaint. It is what it is.

“It is what it is” implies it has some potential intelligibility in your mind. Otherwise, “it is what is it” would be equivalent to “it is not what it is,” which would be nonsense. You are implicitly assuming that the photon has being, that it does not violate the law of contradiction, and are holding onto this truth so rigorously (indeed, the mind cannot help but to), that you deny the principle in words because you cannot fully grasp its nature.

Yet you are assuming it has a nature, and thus it is what it is.

Further, my metaphysics by no means involves saying reality is “invalid,” but only our current understanding of it.

touchstone:

And we do! But we don’t declare our experiences invalid because it doesn’t accord with some metaphysical principle we have fetishized.

And yet that is exactly what you are doing – whether you realize it or not – when you justify our ignorance due to the fact that the photon “is what it is.” Either you are right, and it is what it is, or that phrase is meaningless.

touchstone:

He was commenting on the “absurdity” of QM. Viewed from a classic/Aristotelian/Thomist model, it’s patently absurd. QM is not like macro physics, the rules and “logic” are totally different. Not just behaviorally different, but logically different. The rules are crazy from a classical perspective. Your worst nightmare come true.

I am not bothered in the slightest by what physicists say about the “absurdity” of QM. All the above is simply unintelligible to me, meaningless rhetoric. If you have an actual ground or reason you want to bring forth, I am all ears, however.

touchstone:

I think he’s pretty much right on in his assault on dogmatic rationalist metaphysics, and that pretty much makes me a “Kantian” in that respect in these conversations, because that does seem to be what I’m pushing against, here, often.

In what respect do you agree with his critique?

 

[The_Exodus]

What you describe here does correspond with what I understand of Aquinas’s stance, and it’s just what I’m taking issue with. Aquinas and Aristotle could get away with talking, in their time, about innate striving in inanimate objects and about their desire to preserve their nature, but this way of looking at the world is anachronistic.

They are extremely old notions. But that doesn’t invalidate them, necessarily.
hec:

We’d say something about the universal law of gravitation or curvature of space time as an overarching explanation not just for objects falling on earth but for many other phenomena in the world. We’d say something about the chemical reactions in fire, the release of energy, the consequence for the temperature of the gases in the neighbourhood, the emission of light by hot bodies and Charles’s law all of which are empirically justified and broad in application to explain why fire on earth rises. To the last question, we’d talk about genetics and molecular biology, we’d talk about the evolution of various reproductive strategies, we’d talk about strategies for pollination and so on, all of which are based on principles that have broad application, to explain why a particular class of plant bears flowers.

I understand your point. But it seems to me that it is the same idea dressed up in more modern language. I find it impossible to describe the process of a substance, without thinking that process is “going somewhere.” Chemical reactions, evolution, emission of light, etc, are all processes that are acting towards their repsective ends.

Now, I do think gravity presents a problem. But I don’t think the answer is to speak of gravity as something “graspable.” It seems to me to describe a relationship. It is nothing physical (in fact, in the past I’ve argued on these forums that we have just as much reason to believe in an Aristotlean God as we do to believe in gravity.) In that sense, I don’t see how we can actually say that gravity (viewed in a relationship way) actually causes anything. Can we say this? It seems to me like a formula which, without variables, won’t ever calculate anything.

I am open to your thoughts and criticisms on this and don’t have any definite intuitions.
hec:

You might legitimately challenge me to explain where the underlying structure comes from, and that’s fair enough, but that’s not the argument here. The argument here is about the governance of specific properties in individual entities and my view is that a modern understanding of the processes that give rise to properties defuses his argument.

I guess I just fail to see how your explanation avoids Thomas’ implications. Such processes, however much more complex he thought them to be, are still processes which “do” something. Now, if what they did was totally unintelligible, or not able to be predicted, that would be one thing. But they’re not. They’re reasonable processes, which we can predict. And this is enough, it seems to me, to justify the claim that “inanimate objects act for an end.”

 

[The_Exodus]

I don’t think so. I’m trying to understand how I can see such a stark difference between purposeful outcome-driven change and purposeless process-driven change and you don’t.

It is odd, is it not, that we look at the same idea, and both think that we understand each idea, and yet come down on different sides of the fense.
hec:

The rules don’t presuppose an outcome - the outcome is a consequence of the rules.

Then in that case, would not the “rules” become the intelligible guiding principles? And would it not still follow that inanimate objects are guided toward an end – even if by “rules”?
hec:

The rules aren’t there as a description or a recipe of how to get to a particular outcome. You are thinking about rules in a rather Thomist way (see previous post) - as a description of a behaviour of a particular entity in a particular circumstance or perhaps as a prescription for it.

The way I understand “rules” or “laws of nature” is that they are simply the relationship between substances and the processes which substances undergo, perform, act, etc.
hec:

The rules apply regardless of the outcome which can be different in different circumstances. The universal law of gravitation determines that sometimes entities fall to earth and sometimes they don’t. Entities don’t have an innate desire to fall to earth and shaking off this thinking was what got Newton his chips.

I think I see where we’re disagreeing.

I’m not saying that, if you were to take a stone and put it in a rocket, that it ought to fall because “it is its nature to fall.” I do not deny that the laws or rules of nature which pervade the universe, all factor in with the performance of a substance. It is man’s nature to breathe, for instance, but put him in the water and he cannot do so. Is he still a man?

But that does not negate the fact that we do see things acting toward some end, here and now in their current state. Because that state may change, does not mean that they therefore did not act toward an end in their initial state. Indeed, they would act toward some different end – Aquinas would say one which does not result in the best outcome.
hec:

Something having an infinite temperature is at least a concept that we can entertain - an actually infinite temperature might be unrealisable for various reasons but at least we can sort of envisage it. What is the quality of being hot though, that is not measured by temperature? Sorry that I’m struggling to understand you.

When I think of “temperature” I mentally picture a thermometer. When I think of “hot” I think of the quality of hotness, as I personally experience it. It is the latter experience which JP2, I think, asked you to imagine. You have experienced different degrees of hotness. Luke-warm, hot, and “holy $#@!.” Now, think of a being which possessed such an experience in an infinite mode. That is the idea St. Thomas is getting at. Not the *specific *quality, but the *mode *in which the quality can be imagined to exist.
hec:

If we are talking about a property on a scale, x, whereby it is meaningful to talk about more x or less x or even infinite x, why would you shy away from numbers?

Because I have no idea how to quantify the quality of hotness, without resorting to “temperature” which makes me think of a thermometer. This may be my subjective bent of mind though.
hec:

I mean that these claims a) that fire is an embodiment of infinite hotness ‘(maximum heat’ in the translation - I’m using your term here); b) that unless we can entertain an actual infinite hotness then the concept of relative hotness is meaningless; and c) that fire as infinite hotness is the cause of all hot things; that all these claims are belied by facts.
I think that since his understanding of the thermodynamics is imperfect (to put it mildly) then any extrapolation to abstract qualities is bound to be flawed at source.

The point he was driving at doesn’t really rest on thermodynamics. He sees hotness as a certain quality of being.

At any rate, I don’t have much more to offer on these points than what I’ve said before. I think it better I leave them alone and speak more towards the other points you’ve raised.

 

[Touchstone]

Not at all. The potency/actuality metaphysics is a philosophy of being. It seeks to reconcile the phenomena of becoming with that of being and non-being, which is what the Greeks were so concerned with.

The philosophy of being is fine enterprise, but its vacuous on its own, ungrounded by physics. “Being” is transitive, and requires a direct object, even if its unstated, and implicit for us (we “be” in the world). If I want to advance a “philosophy of through”, you’d rightly ask me “Through WHAT?” “Through” isn’t meaningful or coherent in a void, it needs a context to be meaningful.

Same thing is true with any notion of “being”. To “be” isn’t meaningful without a semantic container, a context in which one can “be”, and have that understood as a meaningful term. “Being” presupposes a physical context, or a pseudo-physical context, something that at least steals the concepts from a physical milieu to give “being” meaning.

Else, we have empty tautologies, just as we find with “essence”. Essence, being, fatuously that which gives a baseball its “baseball-ness”. Being is that which establishes “being-ness”. It signifies nothing unless until it finds a physical predicate.

Language presupposed being, not vice versa.

Yes, but that’s a logical dependency, not a conceptual/philosophical one. One must be in order to use language. But one must be able to use language before one can talk, or think about “being”. You’re confusing being itself (the territory) with the concept of being (the map). Any concept of being – any philosophy – is preceded by language, necessarily.

Obviously. I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that their systems are built on observed phenomena, but being qua being, and other intelligible concepts, are known intuitively by the mind, not the senses.

I don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction. My brain is the million-generation refined result of my forebears, honed the hard way, through brutal, deadly trial and error, and it inherits the distilled natural wiring that enables me to think, to do visual integration, to think in terms of meta-representation. That wiring is formed and functional even before I can think as an infant; it’s the infrastructure I need to think. But it’s wiring, it’s physical, a legacy of hundreds of thousands of preceding generations, and derives every bit as much from the senses as anything I add from my experience. You and I “stand on the sense-shoulders of all those who came before us”, so to speak. If you buy into mainstream science.

You keep saying it’s far different. How so, precisely?

Wow, that’s broad. I’ll just quote a paragraph that launched a 500 message discussion on a physics email loop I’m on several years ago:

discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time

Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality. If so, then what is time? And why is it so obviously and tyrannically omnipresent in our own experience? “The meaning of time has become terribly problematic in contemporary physics,” says Simon Saunders, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.”

That’s just a retail blurb of the work done on one aspect of QM, and there are probably a dozen ways to take that observation, and a dozen similar areas where classical physics gets thrown out the window at the Planck layer. Forget most of what you think you know at macro scales. We can spin that into a separate thread if you like.

For one ignorant of the history of metaphysics, or for a Kantian, or anyone after Descartes, perhaps. But not to me, nor a vast number of minds.

I’m not talking about “I feel that has meaning to me”. I’m talking about defining the discrete referents in the language used. If you want to try, I’m happy to tear that kind of language apart for the unattached fluff it is.

Perhaps you or your post does not exist?

That’s not my view. But if you go find a committed anti-realist… The larger point was the term is problematic outside of materialism, “not-exist” doesn’t entail anything so far as I can tell in that view.

What exists has being. What does not exist does not have being. I see that as a perfectly understandable definition. I see no reason to “go behind” it, as it is intuitively intelligible to me. I just “see” it to be reasonable, as I do other first principles.

It’s a trivial tautology. You haven’t added any conceptual value at all. I take you to be serious, based on good, engaged discussion we had going on. If I read this as a “first reponse” from some poster I didn’t know, though, I think it was a bit of obnoxious attempts to yank my chain.

-TS

 

[The_Exodus]

The philosophy of being is fine enterprise, but its vacuous on its own, ungrounded by physics.

See my post 72, in which I point out that it is meaningless to say a photon “is what it is” unless you grant that the law of contradiction is applicable to reality. You need this law even to disown it.

“Being” is transitive, and requires a direct object, even if its unstated, and implicit for us (we “be” in the world). If I want to advance a “philosophy of through”, you’d rightly ask me “Through WHAT?” “Through” isn’t meaningful or coherent in a void, it needs a context to be meaningful.

Yet would you deny that “through” is a meaningful word? It is certainly analogous and vague, but I can very much imagine a quality of “through.”

“Being” presupposes a physical context, or a pseudo-physical context, something that at least steals the concepts from a physical milieu to give “being” meaning.

I’ve never denied this. In fact, I think the *only *understanding of being we have is through such a context. We see being through the spectacles of matter.

touchstone:

Else, we have empty tautologies, just as we find with “essence”…It signifies nothing unless until it finds a physical predicate.

Essence and being are terms intuitively known by the mind - through the senses also yes, but only accidentally. They are intellectual conceptions, like “square” or “motion” or “change” or “true” or “desirable.” You can always point to certain things which happen to have such qualities, but you cannot point to the qualities themselves. This is because “pointing to” is to beg the senses for what they do not and cannot give.

This is what is meant by saying that being is essentially intelligible and accidentally sensible. We sense being through the senses, but the senses themselves do not know being, just like they do not know other conceptions.

Thus, when you want me to demonstrate such things, you’re asking me to make orange juice out of lemons, and attacking a man of straw.

Would you expect me to be able to point to the concept of “change”? Certainly, I could point to this or that changing thing, but not “change” as such. What about something that is not so easy to dismiss as an apriori synthetic, like “I”? Do you want me to be able to point to “I” to show that I exist? Do you have to do so in order to conclude you exist?

touchstone:

Yes, but that’s a logical dependency, not a conceptual/philosophical one. One must be in order to use language. But one must be able to use language before one can talk, or think about “being”.

I can imagine thinking without using language. In fact, some of my deepest thinking involves this. Language presupposes both being and experience, logically and conceptually.

touchstone:

But it’s wiring, it’s physical, a legacy of hundreds of thousands of preceding generations, and derives every bit as much from the senses as anything I add from my experience. You and I “stand on the sense-shoulders of all those who came before us”, so to speak. If you buy into mainstream science.

The fact that we’re wired a certain way says nothing at all to contradict my point.

touchstone:

Wow, that’s broad. I’ll just quote a paragraph that launched a 500 message discussion on a physics email loop I’m on several years ago:

Why link me to a 500 message discussion? Can you not give me a single ground for thinking the law of contradiction does not hold true at “more fundamental” levels of reality? A mark mastery in a certain subject is the ability to break it down easily for the less learned, like myself.

touchstone:

That’s just a retail blurb of the work done on one aspect of QM, and there are probably a dozen ways to take that observation, and a dozen similar areas where classical physics gets thrown out the window at the Planck layer. Forget most of what you think you know at macro scales. We can spin that into a separate thread if you like

There are many physicists who deny that smaller levels of reality actually violate the law of contradiction.

But besides that, all I’ve heard you say so far has seemed like an appeal ad populum. Why not simply give me good reason to think what you say is true yourself?

touchstone:

“not-exist” doesn’t entail anything so far as I can tell in that view.

So you have always existed? You never did not exist? Has your knowledge of this fact always existed as well?

touchstone:

It’s a trivial tautology.

It’s not trivial in the least, for it describes a specific act that the intellect makes upon perceiving reality. It may be a tautology, but only in the sense that all knowledge is tautological after it has been grasped. I think you simply do not understand the distinction I’m making.

 

[Touchstone]

See my post 72, in which I point out that it is meaningless to say a photon “is what it is” unless you grant that the law of contradiction is applicable to reality. You need this law even to disown it.

“Is what it is” just separates extramental reality from dependency on my mind, or yours. It may be self-contradictory, chaotic, unintelligible in some respects, and that wouldn’t change the ontology – it is separate from my thinking about it, or yours, or either of our demands that it “behave” so as to be intelligible.

The laws you rely on are tools for your mind. Nature is not beholden to your notions. They may be correct and useful, and we apparently have many that are, but if not, that’s your problem. Nature doesn’t care if you upset that quantum mechanics doesn’t fit neatly into your cognitive categories.

Yet would you deny that “through” is a meaningful word?

It is on it’s own, without reference to other objects! “Through” and “being” are dependent on something else that has subject standing in relation to another object or objects. In isolation, it’s babbling.

It is certainly analogous and vague, but I can very much imagine a quality of “through.”

Not without something to “go through” or to provide a relative motion or change of some kind.

I’ve never denied this. In fact, I think the *only *understanding of being we have is through such a context. We see being through the spectacles of matter.

Ok, well then any “philosophy of being” depends transcendentally on one’s fundamental physics. It has to. “Philosophy of being” is incoherent on its own, just as “philosophy of through” without any objects to move or change in relation to each other. It’s using a transitive verb without a direct object.

Essence and being are terms intuitively known by the mind - through the senses also yes, but only accidentally.

Perhaps, but the important relationship is the logical dependency; one’s intuitions depend on the sense experience, logically. There is no intuitive “through” for one who has never seen or sensed an object. There’s a language/concept difficulty, but also the poverty of sense. There is nothing to ground one’s semantics. You’re speaking like words and concepts exist in the mind free of referents and semantic relationships.

They are intellectual conceptions, like “square” or “motion” or “change” or “true” or “desirable.” You can always point to certain things which happen to have such qualities, but you cannot point to the qualities themselves. This is because “pointing to” is to beg the senses for what they do not and cannot give.

Sure, but it’s not a problem. It’s just abstraction. “Walking” doesn’t exist as a discrete object or substance. And yet, we can demonstrate “walking”, as a particular concerted set of movements of the body. It’s an abstraction, the name for a phenomenal pattern we use to refer to it. Motion isn’t a “thing” or a substance, by any semantics we can ground. It’s just a pattern we name and assign to a category (another abstraction) of phenomena. Same goes for “true”. You are enumerating abstract concepts.

As above, though, the patterns and abstractions all get grounded in something, some semantic base. And that requires phenomena, sense, percept. Again, our physics as the product of our sense experience are the ground of everything else.

This is what is meant by saying that being is essentially intelligible and accidentally sensible. We sense being through the senses, but the senses themselves do not know being, just like they do not know other conceptions.

Right. You’re just talking about abstraction and meta-representation. Try this – build an abstraction, without anything to abstract FROM? Can you do that? If yes, then I think you’ve got a point to consider. If not, then I suggest you have mistaken cart and horse; intelligibiilty depends transcendentally on an (name removed by moderator)ut field to make sense of (pardon the dangling proposition).

Thus, when you want me to demonstrate such things, you’re asking me to make orange juice out of lemons, and attacking a man of straw.

I’m demonstrating that the inversion you’ve got happening between abstraction and the grounds for abstraction. If abstraction is not dependent on something to abstract from, then you should be able to “abstract in a void”. But as you note, that’s a logical problem, which is precisely why I’m asking for it, to show you logical error in your chain. Physics as sense-processing logical precedes and grounds all that. Abstraction is great. But it’s the conclusion, the end point, the product, not some magical superstitious quality you begin with and go find things aim your abstractor at.

Would you expect me to be able to point to the concept of “change”? Certainly, I could point to this or that changing thing, but not “change” as such. What about something that is not so easy to dismiss as an apriori synthetic, like “I”? Do you want me to be able to point to “I” to show that I exist? Do you have to do so in order to conclude you exist?

I would say you need to be conscious – that means aware of one’s physical surroundings and processing external stimuli to a) think and process via language and then b) to develop and affirm a concept of “I”. Once again, physics grounds metaphysics, not the other way around. That’s why “metaphysics” is a structured as a word the way it is (prefixed with ‘meta-’).

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

The Exodus:

I can imagine thinking without using language. In fact, some of my deepest thinking involves this. Language presupposes both being and experience, logically and conceptually.

Well, the deeper you think, the more perfectly you rely on language, and the concepts language enables. Thinking to yourself may not involve audible speech, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t using language just as heavily as if you were. “Cat” is not a “word” in your brain. It’s a set of electrical patterns, and “word” is just a handy label for that. You are using those semantic graphs and language structures either way, semantics and structures you are wired for biologically, thanks to the senses of your forebears distilled and passed down in your genes, and which you provide semantic cargo for from your first moments of consciousness as you begin to model physics around you. Far before visual integration has begun, or you’ve learned English, etc.

The fact that we’re wired a certain way says nothing at all to contradict my point.

I think it undercuts your superstition about your intution, being perhaps some supernatural can’t-say-what that provides you with pre-sense reasoning.

Why link me to a 500 message discussion? Can you not give me a single ground for thinking the law of contradiction does not hold true at “more fundamental” levels of reality? A mark mastery in a certain subject is the ability to break it down easily for the less learned, like myself.

I didn’t link to the discussion. It was just a news article that I became aware of from an extended discussion that this article sparked on a science email loop. This is a topic I really enjoy and am comfortable with, but it’s heavy, way to heavy to address in a passing comment here. Perhaps another thread to pursue it.

There are many physicists who deny that smaller levels of reality actually violate the law of contradiction.

I don’t doubt that there are. But that doesn’t help you. It’s the ones that are reporting back the problems that are trouble for you. Unless you’re simply going to say your intuition DOES rule all of the universe, including its fundamental structure and behavior, and thus conclude the scientists who confirm your bias are the “true scotsman” in the field, there’s a serious dissonance for you to address. Even (and especially if we grant that it’s an open question – that’s a problem. We have contradictions that can’t (yet) be dismissed. We don’t know that they will be dismissed, or that they are dismissable. Life goes on, and the contradictions happily occur at Planck scales, which leaves our macrophysics nice and tidy by comparison.

But Aqiuinas and Aristotle were clueless, as are we if we just go by our macrophysical sight and intuitions.

But besides that, all I’ve heard you say so far has seemed like an appeal ad populum. Why not simply give me good reason to think what you say is true yourself?

There’s no ad populum. You can and should go read up on this yourself. It’s not hard to find serious treatments on this by physicists who’ve been studying and hammering away at this for decades. Try and understand it, and that’s all you need. If you do, you cannot get very far toward some understanding without having to confront evidence, dynamics, observations that make our macrophysical intuitions and conceits problematic. The world at Planck scales is entirely unlike the world at macro scales.

If the universe occurred originally at Planck scales, just for a what-if, all the Thomist grounding for metaphysics vanishes. It was crude as a matter of macrophysics (he was born when he was born!) but the foundation he built all his notions on isn’t a foundation like he supposed.

So you have always existed? You never did not exist? Has your knowledge of this fact always existed as well?

I’m a materialist, and can point to a coherent and objective set of principles for “exist”. Even in hard cases like with probability waves in QM, the principles provide practical distinctions. The nebulous semantics of “exist” are not problems I’m carrying around (IMO), but are necessary baggage that a theist (or at least a Catholic) must lug around everywhere.

It’s not trivial in the least, for it describes a specific act that the intellect makes upon perceiving reality.

It does no such thing. There is nothing “specific” or “act” implicated in “being qua being”, unless you throw out “being qua being” as a trivium and address the natural physics – being extended in space/time, for example, or exhibiting the characterists of metabolism (if we are talking about ‘being as organic life’).

Being all on its own is an abstraction without the basis for abstraction. If you point me to a specific, real act, I don’t need and can’t use ‘being’ apart from that. The act and our descriptions of that are the semantics for being, and ‘being’ as a concept derives from phenomena, and thus is meaningless without it.

It may be a tautology, but only in the sense that all knowledge is tautological after it has been grasped. I think you simply do not understand the distinction I’m making.

It’s a TRIVIAL tautology, I think is what I said. It doesn’t connect to the real world. It simply echoes itself – being is existence is being. Which is exactly as meaningful as “being is purff is being”, which is exactly as meaningful as “torg is purff is torg”. The labels you use are empty unless and until you can ground them in something real, something we can abstract from to provide semantic content for those labels.

-TS

 

[The_Exodus]

it is separate from my thinking about it, or yours, or either of our demands that it “behave” so as to be intelligible.

No doubt. But it still is. *It still is. *

You even say so yourself, and cannot help but say so. The problem is that any notion you have of “is” is necessarily bound by your mental abstraction and intuition of being, and, consequently, the law of contradiction.

Now, if you can imagine a contradictory being, you would by all means be justified in claiming that nature “is what it is” while also being potentially contradictory. But you can’t do this. You can’t then go on to make any positive objections – or even agnostic ones – in the manner of: “it is itself, and therefore not bound by my mental constructions, and therefore possibly violative of the law of contradiction,” because they lack coherence, and still rely on the fundamental assertion that you are admitting all along that Nature is.

You’re the one speaking nonsense. You are saying that Nature “is” and yet twisting that “is” to mean “is not,” and while at the same time clinging to some non-contradictory notion of “is”: the one that is intuively known by the mind – the one you cannot help but use in every other sentence, and in every possible thought you will ever experience.

Shout it from the rooftops. That is absurd.

You would have to entirely erase the word “is” from your mind and commit yourself to eternal silence in order to justify what you’re claiming about the possible nature of reality.

 

[Touchstone]

No doubt. But it still is. *It still is. *

You even say so yourself, and cannot help but say so. The problem is that any notion you have of “is” is necessarily bound by your mental abstraction and intuition of being, and, consequently, the law of contradiction.

OK, I think I can see where the basic rift is occurring, here. The way you’ve phrased this, I agree. That is, the law of non-contradiction is part of my mental abstraction set – a tool in my mind for making sense of the world around me.

But that places the law of contradiction in my mind, not as physical law or some governing natural principle, right? That’s my understanding, and it seems here that you agree, judging by this sentence of yours. But below, and elsewhere, then again, it seems you are placing the law of non-contradiction “externally” as some kind of physical principle, part of the structure of reality itself, and your intuition (the abstraction in your mind) is somehow metaphysically clairvoyant in “seeing” that physical law, the object of your intuition.

A simple step forward is an answer to this question, I think: If we agree that the law of contradiction is a mental abstraction, just the presence of that intuition has NO metaphysical control over reality, right? The abstraction may be wonderfully useful, partly useful, or not useful at all, but in any case, nature itself is not dependent on your and my abstraction we call the “law of non-contradiction”, correct?

Now, if you can imagine a contradictory being, you would by all means be justified in claiming that nature “is what it is” while also being potentially contradictory.

I can imagine a contradictory being – a photon. That’s the whole point of the discussion about Young’s experiment above. It “exists” and “not-exists” in the same respect at the same time, and it’s not just semantics. The mathematical formalisms of QM are the grounds for that assessment, backed up by empirical observation.

The contradiction may be merely apparent, which is, I think, why you use “potentially contradictory”. We may find some harmonization for that doesn’t have us looking at “X AND not-X” at turn after turn. But for all we know it may be a fundamental offense to our macrophysical, human-centric intuitions.

But you can’t do this.

I think I can, have, and just did. Even if you throw in with scientists who confirm your intuitions (there is no problem for the law of non-contradiction, and there can’t be), the scientists who DO see problems are at least imagining contradictory scenarios and descriptions based on their math and observations.

You can’t then go on to make any positive objections – or even agnostic ones – in the manner of: “it is itself, and therefore not bound by my mental constructions, and therefore possibly violative of the law of contradiction,” because they lack coherence, and still rely on the fundamental assertion that you are admitting all along that Nature is.

See above. This would just mean that my notion of “is” is conceited at some level. It works fine for driving my car to work. It’s a fail for making pronouncements about the fundamental nature of the universe, or the necessity of a Prime Mover, etc. That’s fine, I still get my car to work, and get on with my business, but my mental abstraction of “is” – something I need to make sense of the world, works great for the context I’ve evolved in, but runs out of gas outside of that bubble, if only at the extremes.

You’re the one speaking nonsense. You are saying that Nature “is” and yet twisting that “is” to mean “is not,” and while at the same time clinging to some non-contradictory notion of “is”: the one that is intuively known by the mind – the one you cannot help but use in every other sentence, and in every possible thought you will ever experience.

That is an abstraction as much as the law of non-contradiction, the idea that say, the persistence of objects as a concept is highly useful at macro scales and not useful at all at quantum/fundamental levels. If I have that concept, I understand “is” to be more complex than in more brittle or simplistic models. And indeed this is what the evidence appears to demand. When I say a photon “is”, there’s both some different and qualified semantics that go along with that that make “is” different – far different, in some cases – than the baseball that “is” in my hand as a huge macro-object.

This is the ramifications of physics. “Is” is a concept we can and have made good headway on as something we rectify with our maths and experiments, but it’s complex, and it makes Scholastic notions of “is” look child-like, insofar as they were meaningful at all in the first place.

You would have to entirely erase the word “is” from your mind and commit yourself to eternal silence in order to justify what you’re claiming about the possible nature of reality.

No, it’s not an all or nothing proposition. As we discussed in another thread, naive set theory has a couple of blatant contradictions that proceed from it, but it’s fantastical useful in a practical sense, even so. The fundamental problems we run into with QM in terms of our intuitions are “limited” in their impact for us just because the problems occur as a matter of quanta; at the size of a baseball in your hand, this profound insight becomes a non-issue because the statistics and probabilities that must be resolved for such a huge object make the problem disappear. The devil is in the details, and the problems with “is” as we naively think about it are real errors on our part, but happily we are largely insulated from that as a day-to-day problem.

It really creates problems for people getting ahead of themselves in metaphysics, philosophy and theology. But catching a baseball and plotting its arc through the air brings no problem with “is”.

-TS