Re: The reality of entity

brodix <brodix@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

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.

I suspect this is the nub of the issue. Scientists are empirically
oriented, as indeed they should be, and so naturally focus on objects
and measurements.

However, any scientific practice is theory-laden, and this theory in
part shapes the reality of the objects we observe and measure. Usually
the implicit theory is left un-inspected, but when there are "scientific
revolutions" or when a science probes an unknown where the dominant
theory is not well established, philosophical speculation leading to a
new theoretical orientation can really change the whole direction of the
science.

I would not venture as far as Thomas Kuhn and reduce science to little
more than a consensus among peers, but the most standard of works in
traditional science insists that theory is constructed and arises
somehow from a dialectic between the scientific community and the
world. For example, a classic discussion of this is that of I. Lakatos,
"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs", in
Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, _Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge_,
Cambridge, 1970. This is a good read, although I don't entirely agree
with all of it.

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.

I don't know that time is simply a consequence of motion (of change). Of
course, we impose a time scale, but the reality of time is a hotly
contested issue. Time itself may be associated with motion, but to
suggest it is a consequence of motion, of that I'm not at all
convinced. A good discussion of the time issue is D.H. Mellor, _Real
Time II_, London, 1998.

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.

Not sure I follow this, although I suspect I'm in agreement. Yes, the
present time may not be real, in which case measurement will be
fuzzy. I'm not sure how this results from the Uncertainty Principle. In
terms of quantum states, the observation changes the object observed
because the systems are imposed. However, at the macro level in which we
live, such an effect would not be noticeable. On the other hand, if you
are thinking of a energy-time uncertainty in relativistic physics, that
also represents a scale that far exceeds our normal existence. I would
take these as offering some justification for the universality of a
probabilistic causality, but not proof. Your example seems yet a third
view, which is that our measurement affects the object measured. While
this is often pointed out and true, some have objected that it is simply
not always true and therefore is not a general principle.

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.

Well, maybe a bad example. Would the example of a meteorite get around
the issue of human intentionality?

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.

Yes. To put in in old terms, it is the contradiction of being and
becoming. I'd agree that it is difficult for us to grasp both together
in thought. The question is, is that not simply due to the limitation of
our thought? We can see a process such as the setting sun and it does
not seem at all problematic; to describe what we saw to someone else in
formal language is another thing. We can only approximate it, just as
differential calculus approximates change. In the other hand, in the
sciences we do often need ways to represent a reality that cannot be
adequately comprehended in thought, most often by the use of
mathematics. All I was suggesting above that our consciousness, which is
adapted to our daily lives, may not suffice for problems that are quite
alien to our daily life, such as quantum entanglements or a black
hole. There seems no reason not to look to theory or a mathematical
model to represent realities that cannot be adequately grasped in terms
of our ordinary thinking.

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.

Not sure I follow you here. I assume you are not making the tautological
point that there are energy fields, such as RF, all around us all the
time. I get the feeling you are also not speaking of the fact that for
our organism to maintain its far-from-equilibrium state, it must
constantly process (dissipate) energy. I see no indication that you are
thinking of cosmological dark energy. Once popular (Wilhelm Ostwald, for
example) was the view that everything can be reduced to energy, but no
believes that today.

However, I agree that the brain cannot comprehend a field, and so
Maxwell comes to our aid. And I agree that the brain must describe a
process as a sequence of system states that are somehow empirically
differentiated. But I don't see how this ties into energy, although
clearly work must be done for change to take place.

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.

Oops. The "traces" of the past that exist in the present are, of course,
not the past, but mere empirical effects. In that sense, reality has the
memory of the past in a sense. But it is not the past in any
sense. Robinson Crusoe saw Friday's footprint in the sand, and he
inferred from it that someone was on the island with him. But the
footprint surely is not Friday. That things have a time function (by
which I assume you mean McTaggert's A-time) is hotly denied (see
Mellart, for example).

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.

I don't follow. Neither the future nor the past exist. At one time the
past existed, and hopefully there will be a future. And especially if
there is not really any present (in relativistic terms), then there's no
possible way for energy to "flow" through these non-existent things.

I assume that stored information (traces) is static by definition.

No idea what you mean by energy accumulating elsewhere.

As a student some fifty years ago, I was much taken by Manfred
Engelbert's _Evolution und Revolution in der Weltgechichte_ (Recalling
it so moved me that I just ordered myself a copy of it so that I can
relive the past ;-). So for me, the couplet has a rather specific
meaning. I've no certain ideas what the alteration of evolution and
revolution might mean in physics. Phase shifts? I don't think so.

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.

Are you saying that your physicist colleagues find it hard to accept
that the present is not a time? Strange; I thought this was kind of
common currency.

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?

My interests are less cosmological ;-). The point makes a lot of sense
at the level of daily life. I realize that the big bang theory has some
problems, at least in the respect to which you refer..

(Entropy is based on usable energy is a closed system, but an infinite
universe is not closed, ...

Yes, that's true. Even if not infinite, it is not closed unless we have
space bending back on itself. However, the term "entropy" has (since
WWII) acquired a much broader meaning, or at least many real processes
are analogous to entropy change, such as the relative probability of
outcomes in relation to an initial state; such as information content
(Shannon), etc. As I suggested before, that classical thermodynamic
entropy started out in terms of closed systems, that restraint did not
last very long. Boltzmann I mentioned before, but a more recent example
would be the work of Prigogine, which can be described as the
thermodynamics of open systems.

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.

True, but I think this fourth dimension approach has fallen on hard
times in recent years. The basic issue is whether time is a property of
things (as implied by the "fourth dimension") or not. McTeggart argued
back in 1908 (?) that it was a property of things (A-Time), but I don't
know that anyone would seriously maintain that today.

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.

Who said the world was supposed to be logical? One could make a very
long list of things that are anything but logical. One of my main
interests has to do with the reality of contradictions (and I don't mean
Kantian real oppositions). Well, a basic rule of logic says there can be
no contradictions. But I have no trouble at all showing that
contradictions can be quite real.

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.

Yes, we create a time line, and so if I call up and ask what the GMT
time is here, it will be (almost) and same as what it is here. There's
no question about the practical utility of such time lines. But in
relativistic terms, there's no synchrony because there's no absolute
time reference by which to measure it.

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.

Yes, I recommend you give it a try. It's as nice an intro to statistical
mechanics of which I am aware.

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



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