Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Joy of this, Joy of that
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2024 12:24:59 +0000
Organization: A little, after lunch
Lines: 138
Message-ID: <vj1eqr$31v9g$14@dont-email.me>
References: <vhigot$1uakf$1@dont-email.me> <lqv3jsFgkhsU3@mid.individual.net>
 <d9f48dd4-eab8-4cf8-b163-3651be59711d@example.net>
 <vifmf1$1sj76$3@dont-email.me>
 <df71277f-b9c7-7358-c90d-27b02f8b5023@example.net>
 <vihe72$2di13$1@dont-email.me>
 <f6570ff2-9de5-8af5-2767-45e58911aaa2@example.net>
 <lr3qqvF991qU4@mid.individual.net> <vik23d$38qdo$2@dont-email.me>
 <495550f7-796e-4414-67ae-26d3f8ba16f1@example.net>
 <slrnvkvl5e.197.spamtrap42@one.localnet>
 <33442f75-5afe-ce6b-d5b2-19efc78a72d3@example.net>
 <viph19$rnso$5@dont-email.me>
 <2c1fb128-258b-7848-e896-3246674d460f@example.net>
 <lrbnamFhpcpU3@mid.individual.net>
 <2d814efc-b5f8-a1f9-d273-77016cb3cbae@example.net>
 <AoycnTASZ6Hq0Mz6nZ2dnZfqn_udnZ2d@earthlink.com>
 <ee978553-b4ea-0239-e93a-bbefa289c9d5@example.net>
 <virs73$1gno5$3@dont-email.me>
 <9cGcnY0c8c3LA8_6nZ2dnZfqnPudnZ2d@earthlink.com>
 <viutjc$2bf1r$4@dont-email.me>
 <84211166-08c2-fd90-bfea-c1203f1d09db@example.net>
 <j4qcnTlbGc6qYc76nZ2dnZfqn_ednZ2d@earthlink.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2024 13:24:59 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="d0a9fc17b6f8caea45cd793b92a18377";
	logging-data="3210544"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18+iqQVdxkhmmFWF90PgRN4gVloTHfKCMw="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:H+r6dzw4IO3aLb4Sb6YV87oPOf0=
In-Reply-To: <j4qcnTlbGc6qYc76nZ2dnZfqn_ednZ2d@earthlink.com>
Content-Language: en-GB
Bytes: 7795

On 07/12/2024 07:41, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 12/6/24 12:12 PM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 06/12/2024 06:48, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>> On 12/5/24 4:36 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>> On 05/12/2024 09:31, D wrote:
>>>>>> There is great good and great evil in man. That's what makes him 
>>>>>> so fascinating and why fighting is such a necessary sport to give 
>>>>>> an outlet for all that aggression.
>>>>>
>>>>> Only man creates the categories of good and evil.
>>>>> Science does not include them
>>>>
>>>>    The Real World exists. What any of that MEANS,
>>>>    entirely our own inventions.
>>>>
>>>>    And those inventions tend to CHANGE over time.
>>>>
>>>>    Yea, kinda Nietzsche-esque ...
>>>
>>> More Kant-ian.
>>>
>>> His metaphysics draws a clear distinction between the 
>>> 'world-in-itself' and how we perceive it. His point being that the 
>>> objects we reify it into are not actually there as discrete entities, 
>>> they are simply how we describe it to ourselves and to others.
>>>
>>> Which immediately solves the 'Theseus' ship' paradox*, as such a ship 
>>> doesn't exist, it is merely how we refer to a collection of rotting 
>>> bits of wood.
>>>
>>> (The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox 
>>> and a common thought experiment about whether an object is the same 
>>> object after having all of its original components replaced over 
>>> time, typically one after the other.
>>>
>>> In Greek mythology, Theseus, the mythical king of the city of Athens, 
>>> rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the 
>>> Minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the 
>>> Athenians would commemorate this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage 
>>> to Delos to honour Apollo. A question was raised by ancient 
>>> philosophers: After several hundreds of years of maintenance, if each 
>>> individual piece of the Ship of Theseus were replaced, one after the 
>>> other, was it still the same ship? )
>>>
>>> Modern philosophers still get their knickers in a twist over this. If 
>>> you are a died in the wool realist and materialist it is a problem 
>>> because you believe there exists such a thing as 'Theseus' Ship' in 
>>> reality.
>>
>> I would argue that the ones who most certainly do not have a problem 
>> with this are materialists. It's a bunch of atoms, and we can then 
>> make up labels. The problem guys are the platonists with their ideal 
>> heavens, concepts etc. which are forever beyond proof. The ding an 
>> sich is an absurd konzept an sich. If you postulate something which 
>> can never be known, it is kind of useless. It goes the same way as 
>> god, or a postulated first mover etc.
>>
>>> Kantians say that it's just a label: Distinct from the object that it 
>>> refers to. Meta data. A pointer.
> 
> 
>    Kant ?
> 
>    Try Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" tome.
> 
>    OK ... you'll go brain-dead after just a few
>    chapters ..... and it's like 1000 pages ......
> 
>    BUT, he kinda DID prove that our "physics" can be
>    an emergent property of ultra-zillions of 'strings'
>    humming along with simple interaction rules -
>    cellular automata math.
> 
>    Ultimately, all 'materialistic'.
> 
>    But what WE make of it all, how we LIVE in it all ...

Well I don't apply the term materialistic as strictly to that kind of view.

Although he is still stuck with 'objects and events in space time linked 
by causality' .

He hasn't really changed his metaphysics at all, merely made it 
increasingly remote with yet more dimensions to explain why it seems to 
be the way it seems to be.

(Epicycles versus heliocentrism. You CAN do it all with epicycles, but 
sticking the sun in the middle is a co-ordinate transform that really 
makes it less shitty to calculate, as the Church accepted. What they 
didn't like was Galileo claiming it was 'true'. Because it isn't. It 
just works.)

And hasn't gone as far as seeing that all of the above are in fact 
emergent properties of the consciousness that uses them as foundations 
for its thinking to map what really is, into a digestible form.

Or rather that is in fact a far simpler way to arrive at a metaphysics 
that *works*.

Bohm did all that with his theory on an 'implicate order' behind quantum 
physics. Showing that if you postulated another realm, quantum effects 
could be the emergent properties of that.

And then testing the Bell inequality showed that at least that couldn't 
be the case for *local* variables.

Physicists and mathematicians have all been trying to 'save materialism' 
from the onslaught of the Quantum world. Until recently are they 
beginning to think 'let's say we scrap materialism and think of it as an 
emergent property...what then could be the underlying reality and why do 
we see it as other than it probably is'?

They are slowly getting there.

I can't find a very interesting talk held in an annex before a big 
physical society conference on you tube any more . I suspect it simply 
hasn't had enough you tube views because no one understood it. I almost 
did. Enough to stay the course.

Suffice to say the three participants were starting to think outside the 
materialistic box to find a solution to 'what quantum physics has to 
mean' etc.

Also Sean Carroll is a very good presenter of ideas in this area. Worth 
a listen to.

I think we are probably sue for a Kuhnian 'paradigm shift'

-- 
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They 
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher