Re: The reality of entity

Haines,


Not sure I quite follow you here. It seems you could mean one of two
things: a) "process" should somehow be incorporated into our notion of
"entity", or b) I should have gone on to discuss process more fully
rather than put it aside.

Admittedly I'm coming from discussing this on physics forums, where
there is a very definite focus on objects and measurements. While
there is an appreciation of the inherent fuzziness of reality, it is
presented as an unknowable, rather than the fundamental dichotomy of
being and doing. Consider that if time is a consequence of motion and
the only absolute is like absolute zero to temperature, the complete
absence of it, then there is no such thing as a specific defined point
in time. It will always be inherently fuzzy, as will any further
measurement made from this reference. It relates to the Uncertainty
Principle in that there is no such measurement as "location." All you
really measure is its force by impeding it, so its "momentum" is lost.

If (a), I suggested, whether correctly or not, that "entity" is
inherently empiricist and therefore hostile any incorporation of causal
potency or relations into the essence of things. For example, a fired
bullet has kinetic energy, but that energy is represented as a property
that is external to the definition of "bullet"; it is an "accidental"
rather than essential property.

Not. The bullet exists as a consequence of the ability to fire it.

If (b), my aim was to suggest that "entity" is a one-sided
representation of things that is inadequate for any problematic that is
broad in time or space. If you are suggesting that a critique of entity
can't proceed very far without developing a notion of process, I'd be
interested in your reasons.

I guess there are many ways to approach this argument. Essentially
it's a dichotomy and it's difficult to really see both sides at the
same time. We exist in a field of energy and in order to comprehend
it, our brains process it as a series of events, like frames of film,
so it is logical to think in terms of defined terms becuse that is how
we do think. The analog side of the equation is the energy, like the
projector light illuminating the film and being part and parcel with
all the bound energy of the film itself.


Yes. You bring up a hairy and much discussed issue. I believe I'm in
agreement with you here. It is often pointed out that the past no longer
exists and the future does not yet exist. In a (rather technical) sense
one can even cast doubt on the present.

It's fuzzy.


My own take on this, for whatever it's worth, is to look at the
empirical dimension of the present as the effect in the present of what
once occurred; and the probability distribution of possible outcomes is
the existence of the future in the present. In other words, I'm agreeing
with you that there is no time dimension outside consciousness. We have
an intuitive sense of the passage of time because memory is the
empirical effect of the past. Because we are aware of a sequence of past
states, we represent that in thought as time's arrow or the flow of
time. In a way, we can "see" a process, such as the setting sun, but
have difficulty describing what we have just seen for someone else
(St. Augustine's point).

There is certainly a time function, as physical reality carries the
memory of past events, at least those not yet erased. The past is the
stored information. The future is where the energy will flow. If the
past is still open enough to fresh energy, the future is a
continuation of the past, but as the stored information becomes ever
more static, energy tends to accumulate elsewhere and the future
becomes a reaction to the past. Evolution and revolution. Spring to
winter. Winter to spring.

Yes, technically correct. On the other hand, the "present" can perhaps
not be defined in temporal terms, but as a condition. Would you be
inclined to agree with this?

Yes. Safe to say this is a bit of a defense based on previous
discussion with those of a physics background.



If I understand correctly, you are suggesting that time is a relation of
events, and no event is privileged as the time keeper. But often it is
pointed out that decreasing entropy gives direction to time and cosmic
dissipation is a reference for all else. True, this is only direction,
not a time dimension, so your basic point holds, I believe.

This gets toward a cosmology discussion, which is where I'm coming
from to begin with, as it was from trying to understand current
cosmology that I came to the conclusion the Big Bang model is based on
some flawed initial assumptions. Simply put, gravitational contraction
and spatial expansion are balanced, as far as they can be measured, so
where is the additional expansion for the universe as a whole to
expand, if what we measure is being cancelled by gravity? What I see
is a classic convective cycle of expanding energy, of which redshift
is a logical consequence and collapsing mass/structure. Until such
point the pressure ignites it and radiates the constituent energy back
out, until it cools sufficiently to start contracting again. Much more
on that, but in terms of time, the unit direction is of collapsing
mass as the information/units of time, that go from being in the
future to the past, while the energy is the process, constantly
shedding old structure and going on to new. Face of the clock going
future to past, as the hands go past to future. (Entropy is based on
usable energy is a closed system, but an infinite universe is not
closed, just trading energy around and since time is a function of
this process not the basis of it, it's meaningless to consider energy
as beginning or ending.

However, I'm therefor uncertain about your statement that "...or strings
and their vibrations, conserved energy goes toward the future, as the
information defining it recedes into the past". It seems you here
implicitly allow back in the time dimension that you had wanted to
exclude. For example, information can't "recede" into the past, for the
past no longer exists; all information must exist in the present. This
includes consciousness, for our mental information (memories) about the
past exists only in our present consciousness.

Time is a description of the process, not the basis for it, just like
temperature. Information goes from future potential to past
circumstance, as the energy that is physical reality creates and
consumes these events.

Think of the relationship between object and process as that between
a production line and product. The object/product describes a
narrative unit of time that goes from start to finish, while the
production line/process faces the other way, consuming raw material
and expelling finished product. The process of life goes from one
generation to the next, as individual lives go from being in the
future to being in the past.

But if there is no time dimension, then you can't "be" in either the
past or the future. A narrative is our subjective story about the
temporal relation of the states we hold in consciousness.

Of which modern physics has tried to argue actually exists as a
fourth dimension. The irony here, is that if you look up spacetime on
wikipedia, it is Edgar Allen Poe, master of narrative, who is given
credit for first arguing that space and "duration" are one and the
same. In discussions those with training in physics try to point out
to me that physics is non intuitive and I try arguing back that it is
such a mess because it has absorbed a number of intuitive assumptions
that are not fundamentally logical. Suffice to say, I don't have much
luck getting the point across. As I think I've said, the same
relationship exists between temperature and volume, as exists between
distance and time, but we don't try arguing they are the same because
our mental function has a more objective view of volume and
temperarure then it does of time and distance. Like windchill, it's a
triangulation on our perspective.

Of course this point is worthless in terms of modern physics, which
describes time as an actual dimension and all information subjectively
exists on it, rather than being destroyed as new information is
created.

But here you seem to slip from the issue of the ontological un-reality
of a time dimension to the practical utility for presuming such a time
dimension. Einstein argued that there is no ontological dimension
clocking events, and that even synchrony is relativistic.

Synchrony is relativistic to our subjective perspective. Try
logically arguing that London and New York do not co-exist. Einstein
proposes that time and space exist at an equal level. While I treat
time as a function of motion, similar to temperature, my argument is
that space was been misinterpreted because geometry never properly
incorporated zero as the absolute and just uses it as a marking point
between positive and negative, but the absolute is not just a
dimensionless point, as it cannot have any form of reference, even a
dimensionless one. A point is still one point. That's one, not zero.
Zero in geometry should be the blank void in which any and all points
are possible. This means that geometry defines space, it doesn't
create it. One of the points I like raising in cosmological
discussions is if space is expanding, how is it that we have a stable
lightspeed? Here is a thread at physicsforum that I started using that
point; http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=21538


John, I'm not sure I follow these interesting comments. Yes, there are
systems we speak of as organic in which the part is shaped by the whole
so as to be functional in relation to the behavior of the whole. And (if
I understand your reference to eco-system correctly), there are systems
in which the properties of the whole emerge from the interaction of its
parts. This may be a conventional distinction, but the more I think
about it, the less I understand it.

For example, I'm such an organism, and my organs function to sustain the
whole of my being, and my whole acts in a way to sustain my
parts. However, my parts originated in my genetic code, and my whole
being emerged from the nascent organs while still in the womb. I don't
know that there is any priority implied here, and the conventional
dichotomy might be meaningless. My genetic code is the product of
evolutionary history, and that history necessarily engaged the
eco-system. In other words, I'm an organism now, but only as a result of
a past in which I did not exist as an organism.

Yes and you are a projection of a larger organism. Our individuation
is like a parallel processor. The human race functions much like an
ant colony, where the individuals fit within a larger structure.
Consider my point about time. As a process our bodies are constantly
creating and shedding/consuming individual cells, so as process we go
through these series of units from past cells to future ones. Just as
the human race, as a process, goes from past generations to future
generations. The organic process, of which consciousness appears to be
an integral part, is a bottom up emergent phenomena, going forward in
the process of time. Our intellectual structure is an top down
ordering of past information. We look down from the peak of our
current knowledge, but cannot see ahead and above us, where it is that
we are going. When we run out of forward momentum, we are surpassed by
the next generation. Occasionally the entire process breaks down and
one ecosystem is replaced by another.

You loose me entirely on monotheism. I would see monotheism as a social
construct, not a reference to an independent ontological level of
existence that is outside consciousness. In my view, Okham's razor is
handy for this issue.

Ref my point about geometry. We view the center point as the source
of our reality. As organic structure, it is an intuitional progression
from viewing the group and its leaders as the source of our reality,
to symbolizing it within the cultural heritage and there are many
permutations on this and many books have been written on it, but
suffice to say, it has been a political convenience to promote the
structural apex as the great father/ god figure. Divine right of kings
and all that. The reality though, in this dichotomy of bottom up
process and top down order, is that the source is the basis, not some
ideal affixed to the top. In many ways, monotheism is a religious
singularity and actually the Big Bang theory was originally proposed
by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre. My argument about the point
not being the absolute applies here as well. A fluctuating vacuum
power by radiation would explain the expansion of space better then an
expanding singularity and while consciousness is prone to bottlenecks,
it makes sense as a field phenomena, more than a point. The neural
network being a prime example, as opposed to the assumption there is a
particular seat of consciousness within the brain.

I believe I understand your distinction of unity and unit, and "unit"
would seem to be close to what I discussed as an "entity". The term
"unity" on the other hand seems to beg the question. To be speicific, we
have different kinds of unities that are quite different things. For
example, Gestalt theory, general systems theory, a system with
decreasing entropy, conceptual general categories, etc. But I'm not sure
such unities are not always in part our mental constructions. Even
something having decreasing entropy and therefore bounded, depends on
its relation with its surroundings and therefore is not a closed system;
it seems to fall short of being an objective unity. This, I suspect, is
your point about the universe not being dissipative, since entropy is
always a relative measure, and there's nothing else against which we
might measure the universe as a whole. However, didn't Boltzmann provide
a solution to this problem? (discussed nicely in Lawrence Sklar, Physics
and Chance (Cambridge, 1993).

I'll have to look that up in my very limited free time. The only
thing coming to mind is Boltzmann's brains. Yes, any system we are
capable of defining becomes a unit when it is defined. Just like the
factory production line is one unit within the larger company. So by
definition, a process cannot be fully defined, or it is not a process,
but a unit. and of course, units are processes to their constituent
components, like your body is a process to its cells.

This isn't as clear as I'd like it, but time is tight at the moment...
I realize I probably fall in the crank category, as this is simply my
own efforts to make sense of a reality which seems determined to
define me on its terms, so I study the rules carefully. If someone
proves me wrong, I'm willing to change, as my intention has been
finding what is, not being the one to say it. Climbing up, not
stopping to look down.

John Brodix Merryman
.

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