On 1/3/2013 6:35 PM, nominal9 wrote:
Hello Stephen,
I'm sorry to be so late in replying, but with the holidays and also
with trying to delve a bit deeper into process philosophy wanted to
wait until; I had soemthing with sense to say.
Hi!
Its OK, I have been a bit distracted and busy as well.
First, let me say at the
outset that I've noticed some Process "folks" agree to the distinction
between, Physicality and mind but they don't think the physicality is
restricted to unmoving or shall we say.... confined substance (I
think, I ask if you agree).
I define the physical in a straightforward way: that which can be
measured and witnessed to exist physically. We can split hairs on this
later. ;-)
I have no problem at all with this... as
long as the "physicality" / mind distinction is maintaned in some
manner, I agree with that.
Are you familiar with Descartes' failed substance dualism ontology?
It failed for two reasons: it assumed that mind and body are substances
and it ignored the question: How do minds interact with each other. I
found a partial solution to those two failures. This discussion leads to
that proposal.
That leads me to my second overall
observation . That is, even inside Process Philosophy you appear to
get those who follow various "bents" that I call Idealist or Realist
or Phenomenological or Nominalist.
Yeah, there are always spectra of adherents to/of a point of view,
seems natural.
I still have to read Hole argument and Prigonine, so I'm still in the
dark but maybe you can expalin to me (scientifically ignorant in large
part, as I am) how quantum mechanics makes or allows stuff to
vanish?...
The Hole argument shows the implausibility of the idea that there
is a difference that can be known between the perception that the
physical world is actually in a singleton state or in a superposition of
almost identical states states, but from an argument that does not have
anything to do with quantum physics per se. It has to do with Leibniz
equivalence.
Seehttp://www.oliverpooley.org/uploads/7/7/5/9/7759400/handout5.pdffor
detail
orhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/Leibniz_Equivalen...
for the more laymanish explanation.
Let me ask my question this way... is the "disappeared
stuff" or component that Quantum Mechanics accounts for but can"t
"see"....definitely absent or NOT there at all ?
Slow down a bit, I think I understand your question, but let me be
sure. The 'disappeared stuff', is it something that was there and now is
not there"? QM describes quantities that have no physical realizable
aspect in the ordinary sense of a thing that you might hold in your
hand, but the world is full of 'stuff' that we cannot perceive directly;
it does not make that stuff 'invisible' or different, no?
QM demands that we do not assume a preference of a descriptive mode
of observation, no "privileged point of view" in the sense of a precise
description of the state of affairs of our world that can be known by a
finite physical entity. Relativity does the same thing, but is a
different way. Both theories together tell us that there is no such
thing as a privileged observer nor that that observer might perceive if
it actually existed. This was implications on realism. The first puts
limits on men, the second puts limits on 'gods' and daemons. ;-)
or is it
"disappeared" because, at our current stage of knowledge we lack the
"sense" instrument to be able to show the "disappeared" stuff to us...
Sorta, yeah, but how far before sufficiently advanced technology of
"state of knowledge" is indistinguishable from magic? There reaches a
point where our theories themselves are subject to rules... Logic!
The analogy I make is to the notion of telescopes and especially
microscopes... before they were developed, human knowledge had no idea
of germs... or atoms... etc.Is there a chance, even way out there in
advanced knowledge that the disappeared will appear to those who've
made the right sense tools... or genetically evolved them...
OK. But did this change in anyway the 'true nature' of the world?
HAR....In
other words, is the Process part of quantum mechanics (or other
topics) just an explanation of theory..
No, there is process built into it. The unitary evolution of the
wave function (or mathematical equivalent) is an irreducible process in
QM. The only thing that corresponds to it in everyday experience is the
flow of events that one is conscious of, after we abstract away the
parts that are self-referential. Think of how the world might appear to
the simplest life form... Could it be conscious at a very simple level?
It is hard to think of this, we are so habituated to think in
self-referential terms...
or is it an established
"observable" that will not evewr sustain any categorization as
substance (even as force) whatsover... never ever...?
It had better not or one would be peddling a load of mysterianism
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism> or worse!
On Dec 28 2012, 1:49 pm, "Stephen P. King" <stephe...@charter.net>
wrote:
On 12/28/2012 12:10 PM, nominal9 wrote:
Thanks for your reply, Stephen.... Process Philosophy is something new
(as such) to me... so I looked it up in a pretty good Philosophical
encyclopedia....Does the article below do it ("Process Philosophy")
justice, more or less?
Hi N9,
OK to shorten your handle? Yes, the article
@http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/isgreat, hitting
all the notes requires for at least an introduction.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
The "founding" notion seems to be that Process is diverse from
Substance, as a principle of order or organization....
Right. You might also wish to read the article (by the same people)
on Substance:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/
Very naively on my part.....I ask....and challenge....In seeking to
supplant "Substance" with Process... what happens to all that the
"Substance" folks... thinkers and scientists... have discovered and
learned... about... Physical Matter and .. Thought... ?
What forced me to P.P. is the Hole argument of General
Relativity:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/Itargues in
powerful ways against the notion of substance as ontologically
primitive. If space-time itself cannot be consistently defined as a
substance and the "stuffness" of my desk vanishes when I examine it
closely enough, as we learn from Quantum Mechanics, what is the point to
the very idea of a ontologically primitive substance? What does
"substance" do, other than act as a "bearer of properties" that some how
binds those properties together? Is there a better way of doing ontology
that allows an epistemology to be constructed that "makes sense" given
what our amazingly accurate physics theories tell us?
Is all that "stuff" useless and for naught?... I mean, I guess, what
do the Processists replace each and every bit of that "learned" stuff
with?
Processes generates "products": relatively invariant patterns of
relations. Ever read any Prigogine or any articles on dissipative
structures? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine
But, I will look more into it... read the abstract you gave and try to
respond better to your replies, Stephen... At first blush, looking at
the Stanford Encyclopedia article above... it looks to me like Process
Philosophy has much in common (as method, at least) with what
phenomenologists like to do... "Bracketing"
Right. Bracketing is a good way of looking at this as it allows for
the explicit reference to context, boundary and constraints. One reason
I like it is that it helps avoid tacit assumptions of omniscience.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
Personally... I don't much care for phenomenology....just saying... I
think it is too "internal" and cerebrally based... doesn't really look
at the external "thing" (physical thing especially) under examination
for its own explanations of itself (i.e., not "empirical" or inductive
[GOOD IMO] but instead abstractly "logical" and deductive[BAD IMO])
Yes, I agree.
