Is There Progress in Philosophy?

[Obvious Leo]

So is this energy gravity?

YES. That's the very point I'm making, although more precisely this energy resides in the inversely logarithmic relationship between gravity and time. In fact this principle is already very well understood in conventional physics where the gravitational potential energy of the cosmos is precisely equivalent to its kinetic or "free" energy. However since quantum field theory ignores gravity altogether, this gravitational potential energy goes by a different name. The mathematicians manage to confuse everybody by instead calling it the "vacuum energy of empty space". Jesus wept!!

Risto. A useful distinction between mathematics and philosophy, thank you. The same distinction also applies between mathematics and science so physics is not in fact a science at all. It is a branch of applied mathematics which is only able to model a narrative of the universe which must first be specified in advance. This is an inherently tautologous methodology because the mathematical representations thus devised can make no statements whatsoever about the truth value of the original pre-determined narrative. The example I often use is the geo-centric cosmology of Ptolemy. This obsolete model is just as mathematically valid today as it was for the the 1400 years before the heliocentric model displaced it. In fact all of modern cosmology and astrophysics could proceed unhindered on the assumption that the earth lies at the centre of the solar system. The only difference is that that the mathematics would be fiendishly more complicated so the Copernican model is simply preferred on the grounds of Occam economy.

[Greta]

So is this energy gravity?

YES. That's the very point I'm making, although more precisely this energy resides in the inversely logarithmic relationship between gravity and time. In fact this principle is already very well understood in conventional physics where the gravitational potential energy of the cosmos is precisely equivalent to its kinetic or "free" energy. However since quantum field theory ignores gravity altogether, this gravitational potential energy goes by a different name. The mathematicians manage to confuse everybody by instead calling it the "vacuum energy of empty space". Jesus wept!!

The energy between cosmic bodies is not just gravitational but also EM.

Re: the OP, there must be progress in philosophy. For instance, Kant and Wittgenstein either debunked or expanded upon Socrates, Descartes and other early philosophers. If nothing else, definitions are continually refined as as part of, and affected by, our constantly growing bodies knowledge.

[Skip]

Re: the OP, there must be progress in philosophy. For instance, Kant and Wittgenstein either debunked or expanded upon Socrates, Descartes and other early philosophers. If nothing else, definitions are continually refined as as part of, and affected by, our constantly growing bodies knowledge.

That's what I'm not sure about.
For a start, I'm unconvinced that definitions are more refined and lucid now than they were two thousand years ago. Languages change over time, usage changes; old texts are translated more or less accurately, taught more or less faithfully to the original, interpreted and adapted to different cultural sensibilities. Does that improve them? Update them? I don't know.

It seems to me, rather, that new kinds of knowledge give rise to their own specialized branches of philosophy. In those specific areas, where a body of philosophical thought and argument can be held up next to its subject matter, applied and tested - there, you can measure progress.

Philosophers go in and out of fashion. New ones are born, made, admired and reviled, then pushed aside by the next generation.
But, somehow, no matter how archaic and unverifiable, dogmas never really seem to go away.
And the unanswerable questions are no closer to a definitive, universally acceptable solution.

[Greta]

Re: the OP, there must be progress in philosophy. For instance, Kant and Wittgenstein either debunked or expanded upon Socrates, Descartes and other early philosophers. If nothing else, definitions are continually refined as as part of, and affected by, our constantly growing bodies knowledge.

That's what I'm not sure about.
For a start, I'm unconvinced that definitions are more refined and lucid now than they were two thousand years ago. Languages change over time, usage changes; old texts are translated more or less accurately, taught more or less faithfully to the original, interpreted and adapted to different cultural sensibilities. Does that improve them? Update them? I don't know.

It seems to me, rather, that new kinds of knowledge give rise to their own specialized branches of philosophy. In those specific areas, where a body of philosophical thought and argument can be held up next to its subject matter, applied and tested - there, you can measure progress.

Philosophers go in and out of fashion. New ones are born, made, admired and reviled, then pushed aside by the next generation.
But, somehow, no matter how archaic and unverifiable, dogmas never really seem to go away.
And the unanswerable questions are no closer to a definitive, universally acceptable solution.

You will know more about that than I do. Religion persists because it's efficacious in providing people comfort when they suffer - and organised religion provides a steady of supply of suffering to overcome :)

[Obvious Leo]

The energy between cosmic bodies is not just gravitational but also EM.

EM is a property of matter and thus not fundamental. In other words it is an effect rather a cause at the fundamental scale, although clearly it is causal at the scale of the emergent hierarchy above it.

[Skip]

You will know more about that than I do. Religion persists because it's efficacious in providing people comfort when they suffer - and organised religion provides a steady of supply of suffering to overcome

True - but I wasn't talking about religion. There are dogmas in all fields of inquiry and even in the arts.

[Risto]

Then, we may ask: Should there be progress in philosophy?

I think there should. The word "progress" means moving forward toward a goal. If philosophy has goals, it should progress. If it has goals and doesn't progress, it's useless. The goals may never be reached, but at least in principle, there should be movement toward them. Do you reject that it has goals?

[Skip]

I think there should. The word "progress" means moving forward toward a goal. If philosophy has goals, it should progress. If it has goals and doesn't progress, it's useless. The goals may never be reached, but at least in principle, there should be movement toward them. Do you reject that it has goals?

I don't reject the idea of philosophy having goals; I question whether specific goals have ever been articulated or located by the - what? profession? fraternity? community? - of philosophers.

I'm thinking it more likely that each philosopher envisions a goal for himself. Even more likely that what each philosopher embarks upon - very possibly before he even realizes that he is a philosopher - is a quest, with no clearly-defined destination, but an inner compulsion: to understand and explain Life, the Universe and Everything. The process or undertaking, as well as the obstacles and struggles, will vary greatly by individual and culture and historical period.

Meanwhile, the ... ah ... consumers have certain expectations; hope and demand certain kinds of enlightenment from their philosophers. And that, too, varies with the times and circumstances: people have different concerns and perplexities, according to how they experience the world.

I'm suggesting that maybe philosophy doesn't have one big goal at the end of civilization, but different tasks and functions in each of the societies it informs.

[PoeticUniverse]

Smolin's way to creep forward:

The ideas we have discussed in this book generate a new direction for research in quantum foundations framed by the following hypotheses:

1. Quantum mechanics is a theory of subsystems of the universe. As it is framed within the Newtonian paradigm it cannot be extended to a theory of the universe as a whole. Hence, there can be no quantum theory of cosmology within conventional quantum mechanics.

2. Quantum mechanics must then be an approximation to a truly cosmological theory, formulated outside of the Newtonian paradigm, derivable as an approximation to that theory by truncating it to a description of subsystems.

3. The hidden variables then do not refer to a more detailed description of an individual quantum system. They must instead be a description of relationships between that subsystem and the rest of the universe that are lost in the truncation of the cosmological theory that yields quantum mechanics. This is consonant with the results of theorems by Bell and Kochen–Specter that any hidden variables be non-local and contextual.

4. The governing cosmological theory must be a relational theory, hence the hidden variables must concern relations between the subsystem and the rest of the universe.

5. The cosmological theory must have a distinguished global time. This is consistent with the result of Valentini that any hidden-variables theory have a preferred global time, which can be observed in experimental tests that distinguish the hidden-variables theory from quantum mechanics [49]. The global time can and generally is invisible to experiments in which the predictions of the hidden-variables theory and quantum mechanics coincide.

6. No reference to anything outside the universe should be required to explain anything within the universe. Applied to quantum mechanics this means that no imaginary ensemble can be utilized to explain any real experiment in nature.


Here is what we know about the theory we are searching for:

*  It will not be based on the Newtonian paradigm. It will neither have a fixed, timeless configuration space nor describe evolution in terms of fixed, timeless laws.

*  It will embrace the reality of time, in the form of the hypothesis that all that is real is real in a moment, which is one of a succession of moments. The objectivity of the distinction between the present and the future requires that this time manifest itself as a global, but relational, time coordinate.

*  The elementary excitations and their interactions will be described by laws that evolve in this real time.

*  The distinction between law and state will be relative and approximate, as both state and law must be properties of the present moment.

*  The fundamental theory will not be quantum mechanical, but quantum mechanics will emerge in the case of small subsystems.

*  The fundamental theory will not exist in space, but space will be emergent in some eras of the universe.

*  The new theory will be framed by the principle of sufficient reason and its consequences, including the principle of the identity of the indiscernible, the principle of explanatory closure, the principle of no unreciprocated actions, and the absence of ideal or absolute elements.

*  Mathematics will be a tool to formulate and develop aspects of it but in a way that makes it impossible to identify a mathematical object that is a complete mirror of the history of the universe.

[Greta]

The energy between cosmic bodies is not just gravitational but also EM.

EM is a property of matter and thus not fundamental. In other words it is an effect rather a cause at the fundamental scale, although clearly it is causal at the scale of the emergent hierarchy above it.

Reality as we know it so far was once compressed and relatively highly homogeneous than today. All the forces were one. As the universe expanded and cooled in that first second of inflation, the four fundamental forces split. I assume you consider the splitting off of the nuclear forces and EM to not be a split, but early emergence.

I admit that that idea is beguiling of a contracted universe shrunk down to an infinitesimal plasma at the bottom of the most immense gravity well, an ultranova running in impossibly slow motion before some threshold is reached and inflation resumes.

[Obvious Leo]

I assume you consider the splitting off of the nuclear forces and EM to not be a split, but early emergence.

Exactly, except that gravity is not a force. The strong and weak forces, as well as E/M are merely emergent manifestations of the relativistic gravitational motion of the subatomic particles moving at very close to light-speed. You could say that relativistic gravitational motion is the causal agent of these "forces", although the forces themselves are purely descriptive and epistemic notions. If we figure out a better way of modelling our observations these "forces" will go the way of phlogiston, as will the luminiferous aether needed as a medium for them. After all the only thing that's relevant in these forces is particle exchange anyway.

Guth's superluminal inflation is an unnecessary hypothesis in such a model because the subatomic particles have no spatial extension.

The earliest phase of the universe was certainly highly homogeneous but not perfectly so there was an initial temporal asymmetry to mandate causality. In other words, NO SINGULARITY.

[Greta]

I assume you consider the splitting off of the nuclear forces and EM to not be a split, but early emergence.

Exactly, except that gravity is not a force. The strong and weak forces, as well as E/M are merely emergent manifestations of the relativistic gravitational motion of the subatomic particles moving at very close to light-speed. You could say that relativistic gravitational motion is the causal agent of these "forces", although the forces themselves are purely descriptive and epistemic notions.

Yet gravity emerged first at a time when the universe was too hot for fundamental particles to form. So what would gravitational motion be acting on prior to EM's emergence?

[Obvious Leo]

Yet gravity emerged first at a time when the universe was too hot for fundamental particles to form.

In a way, yes, but to think of gravity as emergent is very wrong-headed in a process model. Because time and gravity are quantised equivalently they must be thought of as two different ways of expressing the same physical phenomenon, namely the rate of change in a physical process at the Planck scale. From E=mcc we already know that this rate is synonymous with the speed of light and from GR we already know that this is also the speed of causality at the cosmological scale. This is a very significant unification of concepts because it incorporates GR into the subatomic world by making the relativistic gravitational motion of particles the CAUSE of the other three fundamental "forces" rather than an effect of them.

So what would gravitational motion be acting on prior to EM's emergence?

This is where you need to stretch your conceptual horizon somewhat and understand exactly what a fractal gravity/time dimension is. Attempting to project this notion into the 3D Cartesian space is something that simply cannot be done because in a fractal process all that exists at the Planck scale are quanta of information. Even at the next hierarchical level, being that of the subatomic particles, such a spatial projection leads to nothing but metaphysical nonsense and ridiculous paradoxes related to locality and non-locality. The whole idea of "locality" at this scale truly has no meaning so we must think of the speed of gravity/time as being synonymous with the speed of light which can then quite literally be defined as the processing speed of a reality which is continuously being MADE. The easiest way to understand this idea is through Conway's "Game of Life" model at the Planck scale enfolded into the Mandelbrot set at the emergent scales above it, meaning that all motion is in the time dimension ONLY.

This idea cannot possibly be wrong, Greta, because it makes "quantum" entanglement a perfectly straigtforward feature of GR and not in the least bit weird. It also yields an easily testable prediction which would unambiguously falsify SR so this is more than simply a navel- gazing exercise.

[Greta]

Yet gravity emerged first at a time when the universe was too hot for fundamental particles to form.

In a way, yes, but to think of gravity as emergent is very wrong-headed in a process model. Because time and gravity are quantised equivalently they must be thought of as two different ways of expressing the same physical phenomenon, namely the rate of change in a physical process at the Planck scale. From E=mcc we already know that this rate is synonymous with the speed of light and from GR we already know that this is also the speed of causality at the cosmological scale. This is a very significant unification of concepts because it incorporates GR into the subatomic world by making the relativistic gravitational motion of particles the CAUSE of the other three fundamental "forces" rather than an effect of them.

Okay. So we have this near-singularity (but never an actual singularity) that always changes at an exponential rate, and this not-quite-singularity can be said to be an undifferentiated amalgam of what we now call time, gravity and information. As it slowly bounces from this "ground zero" state, the exponential changes eventually reach a stage where our primate perception can notice that something is happening.

I'd like to consider the nature of this near-singularity of time, gravity and information. The whole process has a biological feel to it. As with gestation, there is an enormous amount of activity in the egg and zygote stages before dividing/particulating, and once the divisions that's when the tempo of change increases.

Howzat?

[Obvious Leo]

Okay. So we have this near-singularity (but never an actual singularity) that always changes at an exponential rate, and this not-quite-singularity can be said to be an undifferentiated amalgam of what we now call time, gravity and information. As it slowly bounces from this "ground zero" state, the exponential changes eventually reach a stage where our primate perception can notice that something is happening.

This is a very elegant way of putting it, Greta, because it describes the non-linearity of such a self-causal process. We now describe reality in terms of a self-organising and holistic SYSTEM, which is diametrically opposite to that demanded by physics and its models of Newtonian bottom-up reductionist determinism. The patterns of organisation which we perceive in nature are determined at the Planck scale solely by the fundamental asymmetry which obtains between time and gravity and it is this alone which drives the mechnism for self-causation.

However the "not-quite singularity" which sets the ball rolling is quite a different concept from the actual singularity which is still being used to model the big bang, even though it is known to be false. In a bounce cosmology the big bang is a state of MAXIMUM entropy whereas in the singularity model the big bang is a state of minimum entropy and this paradigm shift in our understanding of the initial state defines our cosmos as a dissipative structure, where the arrow of entropy always tends towards progressively more complex emergent manifestations of matter and energy. The universe evolves from the simple to the complex for the sole reason that it cannot do otherwise and the only law needed to drive this decrease in entropy is the meta-law of cause and effect. The Newtonian paradigm simply cannot accommodate this systems way of thinking because it uses only the linear classical mathematics of the gigantic unwinding clock instead of the non-linear mathematics of the self-causal network. Whereas spacetime physics is law-mandated the real universe is self-mandating and it is only the observer who models these self-organising patterns in nature in terms of physical "laws".

I'd like to consider the nature of this near-singularity of time, gravity and information. The whole process has a biological feel to it. As with gestation, there is an enormous amount of activity in the egg and zygote stages before dividing/particulating, and once the divisions that's when the tempo of change increases.

Howzat?

Magnificent. Think like a biologist and all this becomes sublimely bloody obvious. Biologists nowadays make no metaphysical distinction between "living" and "non-living" matter because such terms are nothing more than convenient metrics to describe informational complexity. Physicists should be thinking in the same holistic way where each embedded hierarchy of complexity has properties which are greater than the sum of its parts and thus constitutes its own causal domain.

The "tempo of change" is a very useful notion in complexity theory because in non-linear determinism effects can be raised to a power of their cause. The strong nuclear force is a good example at the subatomic scale but biology is replete with such examples at macro scales.