---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303216503207071746/" "AStratelates", "1303216503207071746", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" ( 0): Delicious irony, you’ve made at least three metaphysical claims that are not sensible without the metaphysical. Metaphysics always buries it’s undertakers. twitter.com/jswillims21/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303221228111622145/" "feanorm", "1303221228111622145", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303216503207071746" ( 1): Per your comparison to geometry, what is an example of a metaphysical axiom? I think the other person may be arguing that metaphysics/theology can only produce tautologies and nothing useful or “real.” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303221412379852801/" "AStratelates", "1303221412379852801", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303221228111622145" ( 2): Change occurs and is real. Things are made out of actuality and potentiality. Things are either necessary or contingent. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303222903912177664/" "feanorm", "1303222903912177664", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303221412379852801" ( 3): Can those be verified by our human experience? In particular, could you expand on or provide a link to clarification on necessary/contingent? Perhaps there’s a third thing? How would one question your predicates is I think what I’m wondering on that other guy’s behalf. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303223309446688769/" "AStratelates", "1303223309446688769", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303222903912177664" ( 4): Everything in our daily life is contingent on something creating it. Some of our mental interactions with platonic things show things that may be necessary. The others are more easily verified by human experience I think. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303224222530048006/" "feanorm", "1303224222530048006", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303223309446688769" ( 5): I’m sorry, I’m unfamiliar with some vocab here. I don’t know this meaning of platonic. Regarding daily life things, are you referring to ideas something like “prime mover?” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303224395490492416/" "AStratelates", "1303224395490492416", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303224222530048006" ( 6): I mean things like numbers. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303225295487619072/" "feanorm", "1303225295487619072", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303224395490492416" ( 7): I guess one could counter-argue “something something solipsism” or “there is no absolute truth, only subjective experience, some of which can be shared, but even perception of that sharing is subjective, so metaphysics is always describing more the perceiver than the perceived.” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303225381974159361/" "feanorm", "1303225381974159361", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303225295487619072" ( 7): “Ergo useless.” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303225467965595648/" "AStratelates", "1303225467965595648", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303225381974159361" ( 8): Yes. But those have other issues. :) ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303226084981440513/" "feanorm", "1303226084981440513", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303225467965595648" ( 9): I’m sure you’d say so ;-). I’ve found, though, ironically enough, that solipsism took me right back into belief in an objective reality: it’s as good as real to me, so I HAVE to work within it. And in my brain in a jar, the story of Jesus exists and the consequences are “real.” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303216901825474561/" "jswillims21", "1303216901825474561", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303216503207071746" ( 1): Could you list those metaphysical claims for us? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303217305954824193/" "AStratelates", "1303217305954824193", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303216901825474561" ( 2): Any references to universals, emptiness, conjecture and evidence. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303217458178908161/" "jswillims21", "1303217458178908161", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303217305954824193" ( 3): I asked you to list my specific instances of metaphysical claims. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303217913336274944/" "AStratelates", "1303217913336274944", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303217458178908161" ( 4): 1. > There is no evidence for anything metaphysical 2. > It is all conjecture 3. > it is all empty assertions ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303218231050633216/" "jswillims21", "1303218231050633216", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303217913336274944" ( 5): Those aren't metaphysical assertions. Metaphysics literally means beyond the physical and sensible world. That means there can be no evidence. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303218529714405379/" "AStratelates", "1303218529714405379", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303218231050633216" ( 6): Metaphysical means non-physical. None of the things you described are physical. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303218822497931265/" "jswillims21", "1303218822497931265", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303218529714405379" ( 7): What did I describe that wasn't physical? In fact, I drew a line between what isn't physical and therefore empty metaphysics, and the physical which we can know. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303219038760230919/" "AStratelates", "1303219038760230919", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303218822497931265" ( 8): Evidence. Assertions. Conjectures. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303219378520031232/" "jswillims21", "1303219378520031232", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303219038760230919" ( 9): Those are words. Evidence is information that is verifiable. Assertions is the opposite of evidence, and used in the delineation between physical and the pretend world of metaphysics. Are you sure you know what metaphysics is? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303219464033333254/" "AStratelates", "1303219464033333254", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303219378520031232" ( 10): Words aren’t physical either. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303219715754668032/" "jswillims21", "1303219715754668032", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303219464033333254" ( 11): No? Then how do my ears sense them. How do I produce them without a body? How does somebody receive them without senses? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303220209642217472/" "AStratelates", "1303220209642217472", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303219715754668032" ( 12): By decoding them from instances which are the formal cause of either written or spoken words. By manipulating them your mind. By sensing them with your mind. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303220326340452353/" "jswillims21", "1303220326340452353", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303220209642217472" ( 13): Written and spoken are physical. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303220466971107328/" "AStratelates", "1303220466971107328", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303220326340452353" ( 14): Sure. But words aren’t. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303220820379078656/" "jswillims21", "1303220820379078656", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303220466971107328" ( 15): How do you separate a word from its physical utterance? What you seem to be getting at is abstraction from the physical utterance, but that abstraction starts with a physical cause. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303221111228788743/" "AStratelates", "1303221111228788743", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303220820379078656" ( 16): Through the mental ability to separate formal from material cause. How do you know that, rather than the physical cause starting with the abstraction? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/CSonnenberg6/status/1303222443729850368/" "CSonnenberg6", "1303222443729850368", "Chris Sonnenberg" <- "1303221111228788743" ( 17): Would this be similar to imagining Batman calling your name? There is no functional hearing, no memory recollection, no material cause, just the mental abstraction? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303222727570931713/" "AStratelates", "1303222727570931713", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303222443729850368" ( 18): Yes. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303222872559812608/" "jswillims21", "1303222872559812608", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303222727570931713" ( 19): So why should I take you at all seriously in the 21st century? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303223013903495170/" "AStratelates", "1303223013903495170", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303222872559812608" ( 20): Because I’m often correct. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303223066969989120/" "jswillims21", "1303223066969989120", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303223013903495170" ( 21): When? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303223503068381184/" "AStratelates", "1303223503068381184", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303223066969989120" ( 22): At all times. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303223690377781248/" "jswillims21", "1303223690377781248", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303223503068381184" ( 23): Sure. The truth is you lack the intellectual background to have anything of importance or relevance in the 21st century. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303223869587685376/" "AStratelates", "1303223869587685376", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303223690377781248" ( 24): What a relief. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303223982733303808/" "jswillims21", "1303223982733303808", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303223869587685376" ( 25): If that's your goal. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303224145996443649/" "AStratelates", "1303224145996443649", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303223982733303808" ( 26): My goal is correctness. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303224252167053317/" "jswillims21", "1303224252167053317", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303224145996443649" ( 27): That's an entirely different matter, and one where you have failed. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303224587996393473/" "AStratelates", "1303224587996393473", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303224252167053317" ( 28): Awesome. I love my failures, since I always learn something important from them. Can you please point to what I have said that’s incorrect? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303225017740734464/" "jswillims21", "1303225017740734464", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303224587996393473" ( 29): That i made metaphysical statements. Could you point to something you said that was correct? All I see in you is a retreat from the reality of today and into a make believe world of gods and metaphysics where you can imagine correctness to be anything at all. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303225319323623425/" "AStratelates", "1303225319323623425", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303225017740734464" ( 30): Ah. Well that is valuable information. Thank you! ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303225555651829762/" "jswillims21", "1303225555651829762", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303225319323623425" ( 31): Do with it as you will. We all choose our own paths. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/AStratelates/status/1303225647100080128/" "AStratelates", "1303225647100080128", "Andrew Stratelates ☦ن✝️ (Trad Anglican)" <- "1303225555651829762" ( 32): I shall. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Dudlinger/status/1303238115004383232/" "Dudlinger", "1303238115004383232", "Huntep Dudlinger" <- "1303225017740734464" ( 30): Hey, while reading your conversation I was wondering: you do know that metaphysics is a branch of philosophy and not ghosts and stuff, right? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303238463496519680/" "jswillims21", "1303238463496519680", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303238115004383232" ( 31): It is an antiquated branch of philosophy and nothing more than imaginary conjecture. One of the two major thrusts of philosophy since the enlightenment was to abandon it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/M_Christianity/status/1303305826770153472/" "M_Christianity", "1303305826770153472", "MetaChristianity" <- "1303238463496519680" ( 32): Jeff you’re avoiding the question. Meaning is not Language is not sound waves. You’re going in circles. Where is @AStratelates error? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/M_Christianity/status/1303306817594941440/" "M_Christianity", "1303306817594941440", "MetaChristianity" <- "1303305826770153472" ( 32): Jeff, Logical possibility precludes the semantic intent of [Married Bachelor] but you say it doesn’t preclude Being from Non-Being. Why? Also, you seem to insist that you see / perceive the in principle possibility of Being from Non-Being. How? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303221465697976321/" "jswillims21", "1303221465697976321", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303221111228788743" ( 17): What would be a formal cause? We can measure physical input to the senses and the subsequent manipulations in the brain. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Abrahams_Terror/status/1303222835112935424/" "Abrahams_Terror", "1303222835112935424", "A.T." <- "1303221465697976321" ( 18): pic.twitter.com/ofCaX7OYdc ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303220709569814528/" "feanorm", "1303220709569814528", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303220326340452353" ( 14): That’s just how they are represented and experienced, but their essence exists independent of any specific expression/articulation/manifestation. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/ron_gaul/status/1303220946719956992/" "ron_gaul", "1303220946719956992", "Ron Gaul 🌹" <- "1303220709569814528" ( 15): What does that even mean? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303221673496375297/" "feanorm", "1303221673496375297", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303220946719956992" ( 16): For example, the number “2” can be represented countless ways. It can be pronounced “dos” or written as II or “this many” (holds up fingers), but “two-ness” exists independently of any of these particular means of communicating that idea between people. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303326918171938818/" "seiveviour", "1303326918171938818", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303221673496375297" ( 17): Hence "2-nesses" being is necessary, and not contingent, in order to be intelligible. In a way, metaphysics isn't just beyond the physical, it is more real than reality. Triangles, numbers, & really any essences universally exists, even if there were no minds to decipher it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303341361870114817/" "jswillims21", "1303341361870114817", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303326918171938818" ( 18): Triangles and numbers only exist in our subjective understanding. They are not real, but mere conditions for our construction of representations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303348864246743041/" "seiveviour", "1303348864246743041", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303341361870114817" ( 19): They are real as mental objects, and are universally and necessarily true, as triangularity is to all that is intelligible as a triangle. If there wasn't something that in essence was universally & necessarily triangular to begin with, how could we decipher it from our senses? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303351183545962500/" "feanorm", "1303351183545962500", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303348864246743041" ( 20): “Who said anything has to make sense?” Or “who said that perception aligns with reality?” Perhaps their point is that all perception / consciousness is a bit like touching an elephant: what you think it is depends on where you’re touching and no one has the whole picture. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303351588422144000/" "feanorm", "1303351588422144000", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303351183545962500" ( 20): Or maybe that there isn’t even a “picture” to be had. Or the “picture” is of a higher dimensionality, if you will, than our perception, so we can understand truth, only the facade that is made available to us by our senses. I don’t want to speak for them. Just guessing. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303353092172394496/" "seiveviour", "1303353092172394496", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303351588422144000" ( 21): Ok, but then we're wading into idealism, which has it's own problems. I'd think all sides are in favor saving an intelligible, physical world, no? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303401045821980672/" "jswillims21", "1303401045821980672", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303348864246743041" ( 20): No, they are imaginary as mental objects. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303415539449106438/" "seiveviour", "1303415539449106438", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303401045821980672" ( 21): So there really is nothing that it is to be triangular? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/feanorm/status/1303344479575912449/" "feanorm", "1303344479575912449", "Amir Mikhak" <- "1303341361870114817" ( 19): Sure. And if everyone has the same or common enough to be indistinguishable from another’s subjective understanding, perhaps due to “hardware” similarities, how is that effectually different from an “objective” reality? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/ron_gaul/status/1303342427529502724/" "ron_gaul", "1303342427529502724", "Ron Gaul 🌹" <- "1303326918171938818" ( 18): The objective world exists independent of our consciousness, that’s a simpler explanation of reality ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303342872196939776/" "jswillims21", "1303342872196939776", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303342427529502724" ( 19): Hey Ron, that joker blocked me again last night too. He tends to do that when he's trapped. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/ron_gaul/status/1303343997679796225/" "ron_gaul", "1303343997679796225", "Ron Gaul 🌹" <- "1303342872196939776" ( 20): Same one that blocked me? He comes on soooo grisly angry w this fake firmness like he has intellect. Then he scoots off once he knows that we’re on to him ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/DubiisLibertas/status/1303228055633244161/" "DubiisLibertas", "1303228055633244161", "Andre📤" <- "1303219464033333254" ( 11): he/she is super close.. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/DubiisLibertas/status/1303227826515128325/" "DubiisLibertas", "1303227826515128325", "Andre📤" <- "1303218231050633216" ( 6): they’ll get it soon..well at least one would hope so. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Martin17773/status/1303220036899803136/" "Martin17773", "1303220036899803136", "Martin Gregory Snigg" <- "1303216503207071746" ( 1): lol ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Martin17773/status/1303219980545081344/" "Martin17773", "1303219980545081344", "Martin Gregory Snigg" <- "1303216503207071746" ( 1): They think metaphysics is something you get at the New Age section of a mass-dumb book store chain. twitter.com/Martin17773/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303325100913995778/" "stablecross", "1303325100913995778", "wrf3" <- "1303216503207071746" ( 1): @jswillims21: show me physical evidence for ∞. You won't be able to do it, yet you can't escape it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303341059905290246/" "jswillims21", "1303341059905290246", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303325100913995778" ( 2): There is no evidence for infinity or finiteness. Read Kant's First Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303357473491910656/" "stablecross", "1303357473491910656", "wrf3" <- "1303341059905290246" ( 3): P.S. Kant never met Heisenberg or Bohr. Nature is quantized. Finite “lumps”. Infinite fields. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303400291790880769/" "jswillims21", "1303400291790880769", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303357473491910656" ( 4): What relevance does their never meeting have to anything I wrote. Quantum field theory shows quanta to be no more than concentrated energy along a quantum field. It really is a wave. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303401783503597569/" "stablecross", "1303401783503597569", "wrf3" <- "1303400291790880769" ( 5): The relevance depends on how you’re defining metaphysics, as well as your comment about Kant. As to the quantum wave, it’s a wave of complex probability amplitudes. It doesn’t _physically_ exist (i.e. it can’t be measured, unlike an EM field, which can). ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303402897108021248/" "jswillims21", "1303402897108021248", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303401783503597569" ( 6): Wrong. We measure them all the time, such as the waves of the electromagnetic field. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303408410852036608/" "stablecross", "1303408410852036608", "wrf3" <- "1303402897108021248" ( 7): Wrong. motls.blogspot.com/2019/07/theres… “The answer is that ψ(x,y,z,t) isn't observable. ... it is an element of the Hilbert space itself.” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303425071869034497/" "jswillims21", "1303425071869034497", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303408410852036608" ( 8): That refers to particles in quantum mechanics, not the waves of fields. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303426591561863168/" "stablecross", "1303426591561863168", "wrf3" <- "1303425071869034497" ( 9): 2/ so if these “products of the imagination” aren’t real, then the descriptions of Nature aren’t real. Physics is “just pretend”. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303427528275750913/" "jswillims21", "1303427528275750913", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303426591561863168" ( 10): There is a correspondence between our representations of nature and nature. I explained last night how that works. Sense data is conditioned by the external thing. Our faculties of the understanding standing construct a representation of that through by operating on the sense.. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303428404570738691/" "stablecross", "1303428404570738691", "wrf3" <- "1303427528275750913" ( 11): Of course there’s a correspondence. But what you’re evading is that the correspondence is between things that don’t physically exist and things that do. Reality encompasses both. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303428988665241605/" "jswillims21", "1303428988665241605", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303428404570738691" ( 12): Now you are really confused. The correspondence is between something in the world that exists and our representation of it. We can't have a representation without something that exists in nature providing its sense data. Without that the existing thing, we are merely.. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303429407307182080/" "jswillims21", "1303429407307182080", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303428988665241605" ( 12): engaged in empty metaphysics and not a description of nature. In your example of collapsing wave function of particles, you are in fact focusing on the problem of mathematical representation of things that transcend our innate senses of space and time. The result is as much.. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303436141845192708/" "stablecross", "1303436141845192708", "wrf3" <- "1303429407307182080" ( 13): So isn't talking about things that transcend our innate senses ... metaphysics? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303438398670209024/" "jswillims21", "1303438398670209024", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303436141845192708" ( 14): Yes, and that is the weakness of quantum mechanics, which is approximate and provisional. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303440357972152322/" "stablecross", "1303440357972152322", "wrf3" <- "1303438398670209024" ( 15): And how, exactly, do you know that? The real honest-to-God physicist whose link I already provided says that QM is foundational and complete: motls.blogspot.com/2019/08/basic-… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303441007061729283/" "jswillims21", "1303441007061729283", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303440357972152322" ( 16): No prominent physicist believes that, if for no other reason than quantum mechanics contradicts relativity. It also hasn't really come to grips with wave collapse or superposition. It has constructed a practical representation that works well enough for most practical purposes, ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303441201450889217/" "jswillims21", "1303441201450889217", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303441007061729283" ( 16): but falls far short of comprehending fundamental existence. For that purpose, most physicists now work in quantum field theory instead. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303442172512006144/" "stablecross", "1303442172512006144", "wrf3" <- "1303441007061729283" ( 17): What makes you think there is anything more to wave collapse (which isn't a physical collapse of a physical wave) or superposition? And yes, relativity and QM don't co-exist nicely, except in string theory. String theory has all of the quantum weirdness that we've come to love. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303442478851411973/" "jswillims21", "1303442478851411973", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303442172512006144" ( 18): I'm going to lunch and will respond in detail when I get back. But preliminarily, string theory doesn't really resolve the contradiction either. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303438719685398530/" "jswillims21", "1303438719685398530", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303436141845192708" ( 14): Have you ever read Eugene Wigner on the approximate and provisional nature of mathematical physics? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303429577314906115/" "jswillims21", "1303429577314906115", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303429407307182080" ( 12): metaphysical speculation as description of nature. That just means it isn't fully understood. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303436343901593601/" "stablecross", "1303436343901593601", "wrf3" <- "1303429577314906115" ( 13): That you think reality can be fully understood, instead of forever containing pockets of mystery, is a metaphysical statement. As well as an article of faith. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303440221871243266/" "jswillims21", "1303440221871243266", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303436343901593601" ( 14): I think just the opposite, reality can never be fully understood. Metaphysics is the attempt to claim an understanding of what cannot be understood. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303440922760359938/" "stablecross", "1303440922760359938", "wrf3" <- "1303440221871243266" ( 15): What cannot be understood? The moment you answer you're making a metaphysical statement. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303441499485614083/" "jswillims21", "1303441499485614083", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303440922760359938" ( 16): You still fail to grasp the nature of metaphysics. It is not a metaphysical statement to say you don't know something. It is a metaphysical statement to use empty concepts to explain what we don't understand. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303442709462552576/" "stablecross", "1303442709462552576", "wrf3" <- "1303441499485614083" ( 17): You miss the point. "I think reality can never be fully understood" is a metaphysical statement about what you think reality is really like. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303442950450565126/" "jswillims21", "1303442950450565126", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303442709462552576" ( 18): No, it is experientially derived. Again, I'll go into detail when I get back. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303436015059771392/" "stablecross", "1303436015059771392", "wrf3" <- "1303429407307182080" ( 13): Did you define metaphysics for us? Because now you're using "empty metaphysics", which would imply "non-empty metaphysics". But I'm not sure your definition allows for "non-empty metaphysics". ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303438252247052289/" "jswillims21", "1303438252247052289", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303436015059771392" ( 14): All metaphysics is empty as ideas with no physical content., ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303438975252791302/" "stablecross", "1303438975252791302", "wrf3" <- "1303438252247052289" ( 15): So what was the physical content of this statement? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303440506060496897/" "jswillims21", "1303440506060496897", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303438975252791302" ( 16): Our inner sense of our understanding as regards sense data. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303435702353494018/" "stablecross", "1303435702353494018", "wrf3" <- "1303428988665241605" ( 13): Right. The representation uses things that don't physically exist. It doesn't matter if it's the unbounded series for computing 𝜋 or the quantum wave function. Reality requires you to use things that don't physically exist to describe things that do. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303438124291371010/" "jswillims21", "1303438124291371010", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303435702353494018" ( 14): Metaphysical statements use things that don't resist. Non-metaphysical does not. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303427754130636800/" "jswillims21", "1303427754130636800", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303427528275750913" ( 10): data. That gives us information about nature, even if the representation isn't the same thing as nature. You really need to read Kant. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303426239454117889/" "stablecross", "1303426239454117889", "wrf3" <- "1303425071869034497" ( 9): 1/ I wasn’t referring to the particles. The waves don’t physically exist. Infinity (likely) doesn’t physically exist. So we are faced with a reality where we are forced to use the unphysical to describe the physical. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303427099194204160/" "jswillims21", "1303427099194204160", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303426239454117889" ( 10): You are referring to wave functions of particles, not the waves of quantum fields. And the waves do actually exist. Radios wouldn't work if they didn't, and you distinguish between them all the time through the imaging of color. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303427880404357124/" "stablecross", "1303427880404357124", "wrf3" <- "1303427099194204160" ( 11): Do read the link I already provided. Once your misconceptions are cleared up then we can make further progress in this argument. twitter.com/stablecross/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303428031462154241/" "jswillims21", "1303428031462154241", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303427880404357124" ( 12): I did. It is talking about the collapsible wave functions of quanta. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303429056625545217/" "stablecross", "1303429056625545217", "wrf3" <- "1303428031462154241" ( 13): And you clearly understood that it isn’t a physically measurable object like an electromagnetic field? There is nothing that physically collapses? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303430054848925696/" "jswillims21", "1303430054848925696", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303429056625545217" ( 14): It is at best a metaphor for something that is beyond our abilities to conceptualize. Quantum mechanics does indeed verge into metaphysics because we are not able to thing outside space and time, yet superposition does so we imagine a collapse when we observe it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303430446773088256/" "jswillims21", "1303430446773088256", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303430054848925696" ( 14): Again, my examples had to do with quantum fields, such as the electromagnetic field, which is measurable. But your example does indeed contain metaphysics that stands in for what we cannot conceive. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303431148039790594/" "jswillims21", "1303431148039790594", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303430446773088256" ( 14): In fact, in quantum field theory, quanta don't really exist as entities separate from the quantum field, but are just pooling of energy. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303437217092775940/" "stablecross", "1303437217092775940", "wrf3" <- "1303430054848925696" ( 15): How can quantum mechanics "verge into metaphysics" when you've said: twitter.com/jswillims21/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303346093539893248/" "stablecross", "1303346093539893248", "wrf3" <- "1303341059905290246" ( 3): While there may, or may not, be physical evidence for ♾ (the path light takes may be evidence for), the idea of infinity is fundamental to our descriptions of Nature. You can’t do quantum mechanics without it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303329698706083845/" "seiveviour", "1303329698706083845", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303325100913995778" ( 2): Oh he'll quantify it a million ways from Tuesday (vibrations, sound waves neurochemical cellular actions and reactions), but how it's qualified propisitionally he won't be able to do without already using metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303341494150008832/" "jswillims21", "1303341494150008832", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303329698706083845" ( 3): What metaphysics did I use? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303347048083853313/" "stablecross", "1303347048083853313", "wrf3" <- "1303341494150008832" ( 4): Would you be so kind as to define what _you_ mean by “metaphysics”? Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303401462777745410/" "jswillims21", "1303401462777745410", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303347048083853313" ( 5): Metaphysics is separate from physics as the non-sensible claimed conditions of the physical or its ultimate truth. In reality, it exists only in the imagination and has no reality at all. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303402594224742403/" "stablecross", "1303402594224742403", "wrf3" <- "1303401462777745410" ( 6): So the description of Nature isn’t real? Physics is “just pretend”? Your tweets have no reality at all? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303403106932338688/" "jswillims21", "1303403106932338688", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303402594224742403" ( 7): Could you quote what you think I wrote that would lead to that conclusion. Perhaps I can dispel your misunderstanding. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303409068019769345/" "stablecross", "1303409068019769345", "wrf3" <- "1303403106932338688" ( 8): I can quote what you wrote exactly: “In reality, it exists only in the imagination and has no reality at all.” ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303425326316478465/" "jswillims21", "1303425326316478465", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303409068019769345" ( 9): That quote had nothing to do with the reality of nature. It had to do with a priori ideas. Now I see your confusion. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303356556554141698/" "seiveviour", "1303356556554141698", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303347048083853313" ( 5): Mine is: "...the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality." - From Wikipedia article on Metaphysics ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303400818264223750/" "jswillims21", "1303400818264223750", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303356556554141698" ( 6): 😂😂😂 Well, if Wikipedia says so I guess I can just forget Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein - all of whom were at the disadvantage of not having access to Wikipedia when they wrote. I'm sure they would have thought otherwise if they had. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303414172810608640/" "seiveviour", "1303414172810608640", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303400818264223750" ( 7): Ad hominem. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303425479161110530/" "jswillims21", "1303425479161110530", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303414172810608640" ( 8): You might want to look up ad hominem. It doesn't mean what you think. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303441240994852868/" "seiveviour", "1303441240994852868", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303425479161110530" ( 9): Yeah, I guess your right. You didn't attack me. Yet, the fallacy is similar; you attacked the source - not the substance of what was said. I thought it was a good, neutral definition of metaphysics. But I see from your prior posts we are not working from the same definition. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303442000767782919/" "jswillims21", "1303442000767782919", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303441240994852868" ( 10): It is a woefully incomplete definition, and quite different from what Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Nietasche, Hume and Kant, among others, mean by metaphysics. Metaphysics is understood as resorting to purely imaginary ideas and assertions in contrast to representations derived... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303442072016424962/" "jswillims21", "1303442072016424962", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303442000767782919" ( 10): directly from sense data. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303443134286831619/" "stablecross", "1303443134286831619", "wrf3" <- "1303442072016424962" ( 11): Where does the idea of infinity (i.e. an endless process) come from? It certainly isn't from sense data. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303443589285007367/" "jswillims21", "1303443589285007367", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303443134286831619" ( 12): It certainly isn't and is a mere metaphysical artifact (or in Kant's terminology, a transcendental illusion) of the limits of our ability to apply our inner senses of time and space to all of reality. The whole question of infinite/finite is illusory. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303446261358620672/" "stablecross", "1303446261358620672", "wrf3" <- "1303443589285007367" ( 13): What does "metaphysical artifact" mean? If infinity is an illusion, why is it a necessary illusion? e^i𝜋 + 1 = 0 is full of infinity. We can't escape in math, in physics, or our minds. (In fact, we only "know" infinity because it's pre-wired into our brains). ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303498992093933574/" "jswillims21", "1303498992093933574", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303446261358620672" ( 14): 1/Why would you think something "pre-wired” in our brain necessarily describes physical reality? A rational thought does not endow its subject with existential reality. There is much that we can think that doesn’t exist. There is even much without which we cannot think that ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303499115926638593/" "jswillims21", "1303499115926638593", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303498992093933574" ( 14): 2/ doesn’t really exist. In his paper “On Non Euclidean Geometry” Henri Poincare showed four different geometries that were perfectly internally coherent yet contradicted the premises of each other. This illustrated the provisional nature of rationally constructed systems as ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303499208004120578/" "jswillims21", "1303499208004120578", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303499115926638593" ( 14): 3/ opposed to a coherent description of reality. In “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”, Eugene Wigner used Poincare as a starting point in considering the relationship between purely rational thought and physical reality, and demonstrated how ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303507480132100096/" "stablecross", "1303507480132100096", "wrf3" <- "1303499208004120578" ( 15): 4/ You wrote, "that is very different from infinity actually existing". It depends on what you mean by "actually existing". What is the relationship between nature and descriptions of nature? Is it a tree with roots on one end, branching up and out, fading into nothingness... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303534487540817922/" "jswillims21", "1303534487540817922", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303507480132100096" ( 16): What is the relationship between nature and mathematical description is what I just addressed, You ignored it and didn't read either of the links I provided. Rather than repeating myself, I ask you why there would be any relationship at all? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303644490138222592/" "stablecross", "1303644490138222592", "wrf3" <- "1303534487540817922" ( 17): 5/ This would be a third geometry. At this point, is there any reason to say why one philosophical geometry is to be preferred over another, other than personal preference? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303899333520220160/" "jswillims21", "1303899333520220160", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303644490138222592" ( 18): 1/ That certainly is the right question. And perhaps all systematic understandings are somewhat arbitrary, or at best provisional, as Wigner hints. To answer this, I need to go back to your first point regarding infinity and illusion. You ask: if infinity is illusion, and ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303899488592031745/" "jswillims21", "1303899488592031745", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303899333520220160" ( 18): 2/ infinity is deeply embedded in our descriptions, then isn’t everything illusion? A central question to be sure, but we need to keep in mind the key distinction between knowledge gained of the world through the senses and pure a priori ideas. Wigner gave an account of the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303899768003985410/" "jswillims21", "1303899768003985410", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303899488592031745" ( 18): 3/ connection we also find in Kant, which entails a two-way causality that gives us solid information about the world around us. It’s important to keep in mind that solid information is nothing like complete information or the one true and complete understanding of the world. For ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900019007860740/" "jswillims21", "1303900019007860740", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303899768003985410" ( 18): 4/ example, to apply the number 2 to events in the world, we need for the world to suggest to us two events with observable similarities. But only through editing out the information that brings to fore the differences between the two events can we apply the pure a priori ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900159806509056/" "jswillims21", "1303900159806509056", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900019007860740" ( 18): 5/ concept of two to them. From the beginning there is a physical connection between our understanding and reality, but also it is from the beginning approximate. Or as Heidegger puts it, we make the proto-metaphysical leap from A is A to A=A, and in so doing we lose the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900304283500544/" "jswillims21", "1303900304283500544", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900159806509056" ( 18): 6/ essential nature A. Wigner further develops this idea in his discussion of the increase in error in our approximations the further we remove ourselves from the initial sense data of the events presented by the world, and along with that the increase in incomprehensible ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900432629141505/" "jswillims21", "1303900432629141505", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900304283500544" ( 18): 7/ mathematical results. This suggest both the notion that mathematics along with our a priori faculties that create pure mathematics are useful approximations whose origin is probably best described as an evolutionary adaptation that allowed us to manipulate our environment in ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900562526797826/" "jswillims21", "1303900562526797826", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900432629141505" ( 18): 8/ the savannah through shorthand representations of our surroundings. Mathematics and logical/objective inquiry into the universe emerged from this initially practical application, and the limits of this adaptation become clear as we try to understand universal truths. We end up ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304093277386227712/" "stablecross", "1304093277386227712", "wrf3" <- "1303900562526797826" ( 19): What are universal truths? "α is α" must be one. Correct descriptions of nature are another. Where does that leave ∞? You have to have it to describe Nature, but it doesn't physically exist. Is it universally true that 0.99999... = 1? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304247073102065666/" "jswillims21", "1304247073102065666", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304093277386227712" ( 20): 1/ There are no objective universal truths. As Wigner pointed out, laws of nature are provisional and limited to the delimitation of time, space, and chosen events. A is A is a condition of thought that in reality is limited to the one event for as along as that event exists. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304383650121814020/" "stablecross", "1304383650121814020", "wrf3" <- "1304247073102065666" ( 21): "There are no objective universal truths". How is that not a self-defeating statement? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304596111936704512/" "jswillims21", "1304596111936704512", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304383650121814020" ( 22): No. Saying there is no evidence that something exists is not comparable to proclaiming universal existence of something. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304754342105198593/" "stablecross", "1304754342105198593", "wrf3" <- "1304596111936704512" ( 23): You didn't say "there is no evidence of objective universal truths". Had you said, "all truth is subjective", I might have agreed with you. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304981424995471360/" "jswillims21", "1304981424995471360", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304754342105198593" ( 24): Subjective misses the point. As Wigner, Poincare, and many others have demonstrated, everything we consider universal is really relative to limited space, time, and chosen events to observe. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305095847395446784/" "stablecross", "1305095847395446784", "wrf3" <- "1304981424995471360" ( 25): 2/ observe exist in an infinite Hilbert space of complex probability amplitudes. We can't measure them, because the moment we do, the "waveform" collapses, but they have to exist, since we can't do quantum computing without them. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305363889400545284/" "jswillims21", "1305363889400545284", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305095847395446784" ( 26): Hilbert space isn't real. It is an imaginary tool to describe what we cannot imagine. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305485220456665089/" "stablecross", "1305485220456665089", "wrf3" <- "1305363889400545284" ( 27): Then how does quantum computation work? How do these imaginary waveforms interfere with each other so that Shor's algorithm can factor numbers faster than any classical computer? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683700496183297/" "jswillims21", "1305683700496183297", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305485220456665089" ( 28): A better question is when will those models break down, which are incomplete, breakdown and be replace by newer approximations. The point to keep in mind is what we imagine as waveforms do correspond to something real, but that reality is not the same as our representations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305845890914099200/" "stablecross", "1305845890914099200", "wrf3" <- "1305683700496183297" ( 29): There may be a better question, but please answer the one that was asked. Because you have the situation of something that is real that cannot be measured - i.e. you have something that is real that you can't experience, yet it can be put to use. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305901758028419072/" "stablecross", "1305901758028419072", "wrf3" <- "1305845890914099200" ( 29): The whole point of quantum computing is that there exists something that you can describe, and the description clearly works, but you can't experience the work without destroying the work. The work is outside experience, but not outside description. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095002926428160/" "jswillims21", "1306095002926428160", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305901758028419072" ( 30): 1/I’ll just address a few of your responses and skip over the ones that are simply going in circles. I’ll also point out that you have misstated or misunderstood my position at every step. I suspect this is your first encounter with post Enlightenment thought as you seem unaware ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095151106977792/" "jswillims21", "1306095151106977792", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095002926428160" ( 30): 2/ of most of the concepts. Over the decades I strove to keep up with science and mathematics as they can inform philosophy. The strangeness of physics presents unmatched opportunities for philosophy at this moment. I regret that few mathematicians and scientists have ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095300403179520/" "jswillims21", "1306095300403179520", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095151106977792" ( 30): 3/ reciprocated with an understanding of philosophy, which always precedes other fields by clearing and setting the grounds for thinking in any age. First, some basic concepts: 1. There is a crucial difference between a priori ideas and sensibilities and experience of the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095440593596417/" "jswillims21", "1306095440593596417", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095300403179520" ( 30): 4/ external world. The a priori is no more than our evolved forms and conditions of objective thought, and on its own tells us nothing about the world. Its only job is to format the chaotic sense data into a comprehensible representation. That representation corresponds to and ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095578166759424/" "jswillims21", "1306095578166759424", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095440593596417" ( 30): 5/approximates whatever external thing stimulated the sense but is in no way equal to it. It seems to us that the order imposed on the sense data actually exists in the world because we have no other way to think it, but there is no reason at all to assume that our secondary ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095723159617537/" "jswillims21", "1306095723159617537", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095578166759424" ( 30): 6/ reworking and simplification of the chaos through reason, space and time actually exists outside our subjective consciousness. 2. The contemporary model in neuroscience describes a brain with no independent knowledge of the world. It sits in a dark box with no windows and ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095845444595713/" "jswillims21", "1306095845444595713", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095723159617537" ( 30): 7/ has only electric impulses to furnish it with information. The brain’s job is to try to make some sense of these mere electric impulses to create pictures and predict what happens next. All of the pictures and predictions are creations enabled by various evolved functions of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306095973484167168/" "jswillims21", "1306095973484167168", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095845444595713" ( 30): 8/ the brain. Certain wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, for example, create electric impulses along the optic nerve and become imagined as specific colors, which do not exist in reality outside us. They also become drawn in the imagination in space and time, again ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096087602810880/" "jswillims21", "1306096087602810880", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306095973484167168" ( 30): 9/ evolved sensibilities that do not exist outside us but serve as graphic representations that we can grasp. There is no reason to assume that exists outside our consciousness either. In short, we have no direct intuition of anything at all outside our consciousness, but only ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096217777229824/" "jswillims21", "1306096217777229824", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096087602810880" ( 30): 10/ imaginings of sense data in the forms we evolved for practical survival. Neuroscience further demonstrates the purely subjective nature of these representations through experimentation by showing the elasticity of our senses of space and time, and the varying degrees of how ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096369753624578/" "jswillims21", "1306096369753624578", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096217777229824" ( 30): 11/ much we omit in our perceptions, under the law of expectations. If we temporarily inhibit the brains ability to expect and predict, much more confusion is allowed to into the representations. More interesting is the role of expectation, which often furnishes representations ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096490000121856/" "jswillims21", "1306096490000121856", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096369753624578" ( 30): 12/ not actually given in the sense data but reasonably expected to be there. It is why eye-witness testimony is so unreliable. When the ability to reasonably expect becomes inhibited in experiments, what we think of as psychotic hallucination appears as faulty expected ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096629464870913/" "jswillims21", "1306096629464870913", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096490000121856" ( 30): 13/ representations. The conclusion is that our everyday experience is projected hallucination onto the world, and sanity is merely the difference in reliability of the expectations. In light of the above, how would you still demonstrate how reason, mathematics, etc. could ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096753574322176/" "jswillims21", "1306096753574322176", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096629464870913" ( 30): 14/ simultaneously also exist in external reality? 3. Our esthetic experience of the world as hominids developed before our evolved reason. We have two modes of thought, and they serve different purposes, but both start with sense data. Your claim that reason is simultaneous ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306096881953636359/" "jswillims21", "1306096881953636359", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096753574322176" ( 30): 15/ with experience contradicts the fact that hominids existed for millions of years and experienced without reason. Further, we still do so all the time. It all depends on what mode of thought we are employing at that moment. Esthetic experience gives us an immediate reaction to ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097000761491459/" "jswillims21", "1306097000761491459", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306096881953636359" ( 30): 16/ the experience of the external world and is more profound in its effect. It is true to the extent that it is immediate and not distorted. Reasoned thought gives us a superficial and limited view of reality that is practical in nature. It allows us to focus only on what is ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097171167666176/" "jswillims21", "1306097171167666176", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097000761491459" ( 30): 17/relevant to our practical actions and filters out the confusion that would inhibit our response. It is correct to the degree there is correspondence between the external thing and our representation. Esthetic knowledge is never correct and rational knowledge is never true. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097305343406080/" "jswillims21", "1306097305343406080", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097171167666176" ( 30): 18/ 4. Language plays a fundamental role in both modes, but each requires a different type of language. Esthetic experience engenders poetic language, which is never language rationally thought out, but rather letting Being itself reveal itself through us by speaking poetically ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097432229548033/" "jswillims21", "1306097432229548033", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097305343406080" ( 30): 19/ through us. The same goes for music. No great music was ever rationally conceived, but rather results from being open to the vibrations revealed to the musician. Any real poet or musician knows that intuitively. Every inauthentic one tries to construct a work, which never ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097551121108993/" "jswillims21", "1306097551121108993", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097432229548033" ( 30): 20/ ends well. I spent my younger years as a professional jazz musician and know this experience well. Rational language is abstracted from experience and practical. It is the language of technology and science. It’s often a dehydration of language, i.e. language with the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097659313348608/" "jswillims21", "1306097659313348608", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097551121108993" ( 30): 21/ originating music of poetry rung out of it. The purpose of this language is to improve our chance of survival, not truth. 5. Both modes have their place. Without the poetry and music of experience we become uprooted from the profound nature of the world and our essence as ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097755861983232/" "jswillims21", "1306097755861983232", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097659313348608" ( 30): 22/ human beings. Without the rational representations and related language, we decrease our chance for survival. Being inclined toward the esthetic, I recall the line from Hölderlin’s poem “In Lieblicher Bläue” which goes to these two modes: ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306097822748598272/" "jswillims21", "1306097822748598272", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306097755861983232" ( 30): 23/ Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch, wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306250595372863488/" "stablecross", "1306250595372863488", "wrf3" <- "1306097659313348608" ( 31): 2/ It doesn't matter if the net takes the left branch or the right branch, but whatever branch it takes had better lead to your survival. That is, you won't survive if you get the most basic identities wrong. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306250207877885952/" "stablecross", "1306250207877885952", "wrf3" <- "1306097659313348608" ( 31): 1/ You have to say that, because there in your system there is no rational truth. It's nonsense, though. Rational truth and survival are fundamentally connected. Your neural network has to be able process the question "is symbol δ symbol γ" and branch based on the output. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306249316437299209/" "stablecross", "1306249316437299209", "wrf3" <- "1306097171167666176" ( 31): The statement "rational knowledge is never true" is utterly incoherent. If that's where your meanderings have taken you, you've fallen off the cliff, it's a long way down, and I hope you have a parachute. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306248567846318081/" "stablecross", "1306248567846318081", "wrf3" <- "1306097000761491459" ( 31): Oh, come on. Your sense data of nature is just as "sketchy" as your "mental" data. There's a blind spot in the center of your eye, for goodness sake. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306399284380798979/" "jswillims21", "1306399284380798979", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306248567846318081" ( 32): I have no idea what distinction you are attempting here. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306635271795077122/" "stablecross", "1306635271795077122", "wrf3" <- "1306399284380798979" ( 33): Your experience of the external world is distorted. It's only through the brains computational ability to "fix up" your experience that you have any reliability experiences at all. But the ability to "fix up" your sense data requires computation and that requires truth. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306248259292233735/" "stablecross", "1306248259292233735", "wrf3" <- "1306096881953636359" ( 31): Yes, we do so. But there's nothing in nature (except an expression of a generational fallacy) that says that one must be subject to the other. You can actually choose. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306246995368128513/" "stablecross", "1306246995368128513", "wrf3" <- "1306096753574322176" ( 31): 1/ Because reason is mechanical operation of combination and selection on meaningless symbols (they can be atoms, for all we care). Meaning is just the association of one symbol with another. The combination and selection of symbols can be strung together in a network. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306399844081250304/" "jswillims21", "1306399844081250304", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306246995368128513" ( 32): That is an odd statement. It implies there is no meaning at all in the world, but rather merely a mental game of equations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306575539583418368/" "stablecross", "1306575539583418368", "wrf3" <- "1306399844081250304" ( 33): "A mental game of equations" (which is a swirling of atoms in certain ways) is how meaning is formed. So, of course there's meaning. And we can have shared meaning because a) we have a shared "reality" and b) we can communicate our meaning with others with respect to nature. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306247990097711111/" "stablecross", "1306247990097711111", "wrf3" <- "1306096753574322176" ( 31): Just because something evolved later doesn't mean that something is less "real" than experience. Not only do you make a compositional fallacy of "internal/external", you make a genealogical fallacy. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306399617404342272/" "jswillims21", "1306399617404342272", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306247990097711111" ( 32): Could you actually draw out the fallacies? Also, your first sentence in no way relates to anything I wrote. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306546735649566720/" "stablecross", "1306546735649566720", "wrf3" <- "1306399617404342272" ( 33): 1/ It shouldn't be hard. First, you make a distinction between internal/external for thoughts vs. experiences. "Inside your head" vs. "out in the world". But it's the same nature in both places, the same atoms, same principles. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306547370717478912/" "stablecross", "1306547370717478912", "wrf3" <- "1306399617404342272" ( 33): 2/ There's a special arrangement in your head, but the fact that it's in your head is just an accident of location. Second, just because reason (supposedly) evolved later, doesn't mean that reason is second class to experience. It's all part of nature. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306547750272667649/" "stablecross", "1306547750272667649", "wrf3" <- "1306399617404342272" ( 33): 3/ Furthermore, you miss the relationship between reason and experience. Yesterday, my dog went outside, and on the way back he saw a flower petal on the ground. He sniffed, then came back inside.". ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306548340197412864/" "stablecross", "1306548340197412864", "wrf3" <- "1306399617404342272" ( 33): 4/ The point is, inside his neural net he made the distinction between "food"/"not food". That's a physical computation on sense data which requires reason. Just because my dog has a smaller mental space than I do, doesn't mean my dog doesn't reason. He does. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306548711032578049/" "stablecross", "1306548711032578049", "wrf3" <- "1306399617404342272" ( 33): 5/ While he can communicate with an extremely limited vocabulary, he can't describe what he's doing the way we can. But you can't conclude from that that he doesn't reason. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306247510223138818/" "stablecross", "1306247510223138818", "wrf3" <- "1306096753574322176" ( 31): 2/ "truth", then, is the selection of one network path over another (the "false" path). And the "true" path is based on the identify of "symbols". That all of this happens inside your brain is just a whim of nature. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306244645689733121/" "stablecross", "1306244645689733121", "wrf3" <- "1306095973484167168" ( 31): 1/ All that's happening is that you're putting a label (which is a physical operation) on an analog to analog conversion. Anything that has a similar analog to analog conversion, if it has the ability to label, can slap a label on that conversion. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306400325566427142/" "jswillims21", "1306400325566427142", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306244645689733121" ( 32): This is a great example of you misunderstanding the point. Our sensation of blue is not a label but a mental sensation that occurs involuntarily. It is a representation of something in a way that does not exist outside our subjective understanding. There is no blue in reality. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306576381061464064/" "stablecross", "1306576381061464064", "wrf3" <- "1306400325566427142" ( 33): 1/ You misunderstood my point. "Blue" is the label we put on the "involuntary mental sensation." I can convert this label to sound (or other forms), so you and I can share -- and possibly even agree on -- a label for our shared sensations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306576485369569282/" "stablecross", "1306576485369569282", "wrf3" <- "1306400325566427142" ( 33): 2/ So the label does exist in reality, since we both exist in reality (well, at least I do. I think.) ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306244945972547585/" "stablecross", "1306244945972547585", "wrf3" <- "1306095973484167168" ( 31): 2/ If there's a way to share labels, then there's a way to share "meaning." So the only thing that's "inside" is an analog to analog conversion. There's nothing special about that. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306243265012924416/" "stablecross", "1306243265012924416", "wrf3" <- "1306095723159617537" ( 31): But only because the first step of dividing nature into internal and external is a wrong step. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306243604793495552/" "stablecross", "1306243604793495552", "wrf3" <- "1306095723159617537" ( 31): Why would it have independent knowledge of the world? It can't -- since it's dependent on the world. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306242948556881922/" "stablecross", "1306242948556881922", "wrf3" <- "1306095440593596417" ( 31): Why do you think there's a difference between the world inside your skull and the external world? It's all the same nature. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306242249152438272/" "stablecross", "1306242249152438272", "wrf3" <- "1306095300403179520" ( 31): This is clearly false. Your "a priori" ideas are a product of the wiring of your brain, which is just nature swirling around inside your skull instead of outside of it. Your "a priori" ideas are as much an experience of nature as is temperature, or sweetness. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306241725757874177/" "stablecross", "1306241725757874177", "wrf3" <- "1306095002926428160" ( 31): 2/ But that's how these things usually go. And twitter isn't a great medium for resolving these deep disagreements. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306396461920333826/" "jswillims21", "1306396461920333826", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306241725757874177" ( 32): 1/ You don't really push back, but merely repeat your false understanding of my position. In your latest responses almost every one rests on your failure to note the difference I use between true and correct. That an objective representation cannot be true does not imply it is ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306396945297158146/" "jswillims21", "1306396945297158146", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306396461920333826" ( 32): 2/ false, but rather that it can be correct. It can be falsified presenting contradictions between the representation and the thing being represented. You also fail to understand the approximate and provisional nature of mathematical models, as demonstrated by Wigner and ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306397526849921030/" "jswillims21", "1306397526849921030", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306396945297158146" ( 32): 3/ Poincare. I do agree that Twitter is an unworkable format and offer a space on my blog to continue if you wish. Last, I have repeatedly ask you how you would justify the applicability of mathematics and reason to the external world and have given Wigner's argument against an ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306397661449326594/" "jswillims21", "1306397661449326594", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306397526849921030" ( 32): existential connection. I have yet to hear how you would establish such a connection. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306636142536790022/" "stablecross", "1306636142536790022", "wrf3" <- "1306397661449326594" ( 33): 6/ Note: I appreciate the offer to continue on your blog. I've just made the first test run of some code to fetch an entire tree of tweets. I want to be able to put them in .dot format and draw graphs of the conversations so that I can see deadends, loops, unanswered questions. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306816953252818945/" "jswillims21", "1306816953252818945", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306636142536790022" ( 34): I'll post my reply on my blog and leave a link here, but I won't be able to do it until tomorrow. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306899935313506304/" "stablecross", "1306899935313506304", "wrf3" <- "1306816953252818945" ( 35): No worries. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1307150448533667840/" "jswillims21", "1307150448533667840", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306636142536790022" ( 34): 1/ I opened up a discussion on the blog. I restated my epistemological stance to reclarify and focused on two of your responses which get to the crux of the disagreement. We can of course go on to the rest of them after we clarify this issue. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1307150500748554240/" "jswillims21", "1307150500748554240", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1307150448533667840" ( 34): toolateforthegods.com/2020/09/18/con… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306628798826381313/" "stablecross", "1306628798826381313", "wrf3" <- "1306397661449326594" ( 33): 1/ First, I object to the difference that you use between "true" and "correct". Given two symbols, δ and β, is is both true and correct to say "symbol δ is symbol δ" and "symbol δ is not symbol β." If you deny that nature can distinguish between symbols, then you've lost ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306629560419717121/" "stablecross", "1306629560419717121", "wrf3" <- "1306397661449326594" ( 33): 2/ ... all basis for truth. Without this basis, you don't have computation, and without computation, you don't have reason. I'm a mathematician. I understand mathematical models. I understand pattern matching and, it's subset, curve fitting. ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306629946236960771/" "stablecross", "1306629946236960771", "wrf3" <- "1306397661449326594" ( 33): 3/ That there are complex objects that require complex pattern matching, which sometimes require matching within an epsilon, ignores the fact that there are simple objects with simple pattern matching. As I just said, pattern matching requires computation, ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306630593422163968/" "stablecross", "1306630593422163968", "wrf3" <- "1306397661449326594" ( 33): 4/ ... computation requires the ability to distinguish between arbitrary symbols. Computation is the combination and selection of arbitrary symbols, as well as selection of "paths" through the computation. Truth is the selection of one path over another. To make things ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306630778512650247/" "stablecross", "1306630778512650247", "wrf3" <- "1306397661449326594" ( 33): 5/ "work", the "true" paths are set up such that the identity "δ is δ" is taken. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306241689519116288/" "stablecross", "1306241689519116288", "wrf3" <- "1306095002926428160" ( 31): 1/ Oh, I understand your concepts. I just think they're either incoherent and/or flat out wrong. When I push back, the result is that you experience what you think is a misunderstanding on my part. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305095367978037248/" "stablecross", "1305095367978037248", "wrf3" <- "1304981424995471360" ( 25): 1/ First, it's also relative to the limited space between your ears which, despite what it sees, has a self-evident notion of endlessness. That notion of endlessness is "baked" into all of our descriptions of what we see. e^𝒾𝜋 + 1 = 0. 2/ Those events which we choose to ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305363745376526337/" "jswillims21", "1305363745376526337", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305095367978037248" ( 26): 1/. That it is a condition of our objective thought in no way implies it is real. It only means it forms how we approximate through our representations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305484804343975938/" "stablecross", "1305484804343975938", "wrf3" <- "1305363745376526337" ( 27): It no way implies that it isn't real, either. Right? Your philosophy is inconsistent. It either holds that there are no true descriptions of reality or, if there are, that true descriptions of reality aren't "really real"--yet they are just as much a part of reality as you are. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683333272293376/" "jswillims21", "1305683333272293376", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305484804343975938" ( 28): 1/ Again, you could not have given a worse description of my stance. Let me put it this way: we have two modes of knowledge: aesthetic, which is by far the oldest mode, and the later evolution of reason. Esthetic knowledge comes directly from experience and is our primordial ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683420790620162/" "jswillims21", "1305683420790620162", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305683333272293376" ( 28): 2/ sense of the world. Reason developed much later as a practical adaptation that greatly simplifies our surroundings into a rough sketch focused on what was most important at that moment for survival. We have extended both since into emergent approaches to understanding the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683515292426242/" "jswillims21", "1305683515292426242", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305683420790620162" ( 28): 3/ greater universe, reason leading to metaphysics and technology, esthetics leading to the arts and authentic philosophy (as opposed to metaphysics). The rational approach constructs the illusion of an orderly world. The esthetic approach gives us the experience of an ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683580081917952/" "jswillims21", "1305683580081917952", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305683515292426242" ( 28): 4/ unfathomable manifold of being. Further, philosophers such as Burke and Hume have given convincing demonstrations that our everyday experience is one of esthetic convictions which we then try to defend rationally. Esthetic experience is primary. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305845160304144384/" "stablecross", "1305845160304144384", "wrf3" <- "1305683333272293376" ( 29): You're making a "rational/experiential" distinction that _doesn't exist_. You experience rationality just as much as you experience heat, or sweetness, or redness. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306099382031446018/" "jswillims21", "1306099382031446018", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305845160304144384" ( 30): No, that never happens. There simply is no sensation of rationality in the way there is sensation of a burn. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306252357181767687/" "stablecross", "1306252357181767687", "wrf3" <- "1306099382031446018" ( 31): It's more akin to the sensation of light. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306398278565736449/" "jswillims21", "1306398278565736449", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306252357181767687" ( 32): It is literally nothing like that. Light has specialized receptors which transmit its sensation to the brain to be imagnined. There is nothing comparable for reason. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306544861844320256/" "stablecross", "1306544861844320256", "wrf3" <- "1306398278565736449" ( 33): 1/ How do you know it is literally nothing like that? Do you not experience your thoughts? Rain is the motion of atoms in ways that you can feel on your skin. Reason is the motion of atoms in other, more constrained, ways. If you don't experience that motion, you can't reason. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305095958628368385/" "stablecross", "1305095958628368385", "wrf3" <- "1304981424995471360" ( 25): 3/ What is the nature of this Hilbert space with respect to reality? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305364305328701441/" "jswillims21", "1305364305328701441", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305095958628368385" ( 26): A mathematical construct with no real existence outside the imagination. Just as any number is an imaginary approximation of what are really separate beings. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305486077516492800/" "stablecross", "1305486077516492800", "wrf3" <- "1305364305328701441" ( 27): If this is so, then language, likewise, has no existence outside the imagination. Either this "conversation" is purely in your own mind or it's purely in mine. If I start drinking now, copiously, I might come to hold that it's in mine in a few hours. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683846084669445/" "jswillims21", "1305683846084669445", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305486077516492800" ( 28): 1/ You entirely missed the distinction between a priori and sense data, as well as the nature of language. Mathematics is a priori as no more than a condition of your understanding. It takes an incomprehensible manifold of sense data and simplifies it into a very approximate ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683958974349312/" "jswillims21", "1305683958974349312", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305683846084669445" ( 28): 2/ picture to enable action. Language is not a priori, but conditioned by sense of the external world, until we unground it through metaphysics and it loses its meaning. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305846935362981889/" "stablecross", "1305846935362981889", "wrf3" <- "1305683958974349312" ( 29): Language and math are the same thing. You can't have one as "a priori" and the other not. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306099182353121286/" "jswillims21", "1306099182353121286", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305846935362981889" ( 30): No, they are quite different, Language came about long before mathematics. There is no mathematics in poetry. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306252070958379008/" "stablecross", "1306252070958379008", "wrf3" <- "1306099182353121286" ( 31): You can't have poetry or mathematics without the lambda calculus, which is the "esperanto" of nature. It's a language on which every other language can be built. No mathematics in poetry? As a mathematician and a software engineer, surely you jest. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306398585806827523/" "jswillims21", "1306398585806827523", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306252070958379008" ( 32): No, there isn't. Some try to measure poetry mathematically and entirely miss the meaning and experience. Even worse, some who would be poets count the meter and produce dreadful results entirely empty of any poetry. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306545548611252224/" "stablecross", "1306545548611252224", "wrf3" <- "1306398585806827523" ( 33): Math is just a specialized language. There are shallow mathematical descriptions of the process of poetry and there are deeper mathematical descriptions of the process of poetry. You're in the shallow end of the math pool and are missing the deeper end. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304247382897500160/" "jswillims21", "1304247382897500160", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304247073102065666" ( 20): 2/ That is is a subjective condition of objective/rational thought it gives the illusion of a universal law. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304384212561256453/" "stablecross", "1304384212561256453", "wrf3" <- "1304247382897500160" ( 21): If our descriptions of reality are illusory, then why can't we say that reality itself is illusory? It's all illusion? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595989777522688/" "jswillims21", "1304595989777522688", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304384212561256453" ( 22): In a sense it really is. But when the understanding is working as it should, there will be a certain degree of correspondence between our illusion and reality that offers some approximate knowledge of the world due to the uniqueness of any particular sense data shaped by that... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304753346297778177/" "stablecross", "1304753346297778177", "wrf3" <- "1304595989777522688" ( 23): Wait. If reality is, in a sense illusion, then your understanding is also in a sense illusion. So your answer is illusion. Your sense data, the particular event, your approximate knowledge, even survival (and death!) is an illusion. It's illusion all the way down. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304981063832408064/" "jswillims21", "1304981063832408064", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304753346297778177" ( 24): But you missed the part about not mere illusion due to the correspondence to the physical world through the unique configuration of sense data formed by the real event. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305094652173979649/" "stablecross", "1305094652173979649", "wrf3" <- "1304981063832408064" ( 25): Why do you think that the correspondence is real? Why do you think the event is real? I understand the desire to do so, but you can't get there without some a priori self-reflection. Since you bring up Wigner, et. al. in another reply, I'll have more to say about this, there. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305362906427650048/" "jswillims21", "1305362906427650048", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305094652173979649" ( 26): 1/ I have explained this several times. Because we can measure sense data before it reaches our senses and we can measure the brain activity it stimulates. Every event that stimulates our senses does so in a unique way upon which our faculties of the understanding distinguish it ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305363387577257987/" "jswillims21", "1305363387577257987", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305362906427650048" ( 26): From other events. If there were no correspondence it would have provided no adaptive advantage and we would not have been able to distinguish between predator and prey, nor could we have ever achieved any technology. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305484048190640130/" "stablecross", "1305484048190640130", "wrf3" <- "1305363387577257987" ( 27): I understand that. But your genes have not only "embedded" the idea of survival, but also the idea of endlessness. You embrace the one (even though you have the freedom to reject it); yet reject the other (even though you have the freedom to embrace it). Why? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305683152648708097/" "jswillims21", "1305683152648708097", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305484048190640130" ( 28): The fact that genes have embedded logic and its resulting math in us in no way implies they lead to truth or are universal. It only implies they proved useful for practical survival. We have already discussed that. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304596027509530627/" "jswillims21", "1304596027509530627", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304595989777522688" ( 22): particular event. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900686686523392/" "jswillims21", "1303900686686523392", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900562526797826" ( 18): 9/ with the contradictory systems, each of which loses its applicability when we exceed its assumed spatial, temporal, and chosen event limits as Wigner described in the limitation of the principles of invariability. Remember that Wigner moved the metaphysical question of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900800213749766/" "jswillims21", "1303900800213749766", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900686686523392" ( 18): 10/ applicability from the metaphysical to the epistemological, i.e. the Empirical Law of Epistemology, which then focused this entire issue resting on the application of purely subjective ideas which can never signify ontological existence to the sense data that does give ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900885962166272/" "jswillims21", "1303900885962166272", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900800213749766" ( 18): 11/ testimony of external reality. So how do we choose between them? I suggest that first, we recognize that the closer we are to observed reality (sense data suggested by the world) the closer we are to truth. That means that every geometry is relative to its limited realm of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303900969349132290/" "jswillims21", "1303900969349132290", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900885962166272" ( 18): 12/ observable universe. Second, I suggest that pure concepts such as infinity are useful to the extent they support a coherent system, but we should recognize that it is no more than an idea with no external existence of its own and any system to which it lends a hand in the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303901088240852993/" "jswillims21", "1303901088240852993", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303900969349132290" ( 18): 13/ construction is provisional. We should never conflate our a priori ideas, which exist only as adaptive tools to create vastly simplified representations in order to foster our ability to manipulate the environment, with external ontological truths. End ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304096733501120512/" "stablecross", "1304096733501120512", "wrf3" <- "1303901088240852993" ( 19): What "external ontological truths"? Can you list a couple? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304248727788498946/" "jswillims21", "1304248727788498946", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304096733501120512" ( 20): An ontological truth is thought that embraces an instance of Being without the attenuation inherent in A=A. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304385677681975296/" "stablecross", "1304385677681975296", "wrf3" <- "1304248727788498946" ( 21): Ok. Great definition. List at least one ontologically true thing. Reconcile that with: "there are no objective universal truths." twitter.com/jswillims21/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304596966463213570/" "jswillims21", "1304596966463213570", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304385677681975296" ( 22): 1/ Another critically important question. If ontological truth requires restoring “is” as more than a copula, what pre-Socratic Greeks called Logos and was diminished to logic through Socrates, then ontological truth will take a form other than objective since the metaphysical ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304787560539987970/" "stablecross", "1304787560539987970", "wrf3" <- "1304596966463213570" ( 23): 1/ Why might truth require restoring "is" as more than a copula? What is truth? 2a/ If subject/object dichotomy dissolves, then yes, you go beyond reason, since reason requires distinguishable objects. But once you go beyond reason, you can't talk about it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304983288172498945/" "jswillims21", "1304983288172498945", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304787560539987970" ( 24): As I already said, truth is the unmediated experience of Being as it is. You can't talk about it, but poetic language can reveal it. Shakespeare's poetic language reveals what we could never merely conceptualize. Beethoven's music reveals it in ways we could never reduce to... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304983452316569600/" "jswillims21", "1304983452316569600", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304983288172498945" ( 24): mere concepts. That is why truth is an experience, not a reasoned concept. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305101503703719937/" "stablecross", "1305101503703719937", "wrf3" <- "1304983452316569600" ( 25): 2/ But you can also pick paths based on "reason", the fundamental reason being that of identity (this object is/is not that object). So reason is built out of the "this is/is not that" experience. But you can't understand the experience without the reason. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305367473919873024/" "jswillims21", "1305367473919873024", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305101503703719937" ( 26): Beethoven, Shakespeare and Van Gogh would disagree. Reason is a late emerging faculty. We primarily respond to the world in a pre-rational mode and later try to justify it rationally. Reason is not primary. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305493008813625344/" "stablecross", "1305493008813625344", "wrf3" <- "1305367473919873024" ( 27): There is no emotional response that we cannot justify rationally. We're just monkeys flinging poo, saying ours doesn't stink and, besides, you made me do it. You are now the third atheist (I hope that's the correct label) who has made reason secondary to emotion. Fascinating. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/ron_gaul/status/1305531639129419783/" "ron_gaul", "1305531639129419783", "Ron Gaul 🌹" <- "1305493008813625344" ( 28): Didn’t human concepts like math, logic, or any kind of systematics develop after aesthetic narrative? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305561043607973888/" "stablecross", "1305561043607973888", "wrf3" <- "1305531639129419783" ( 29): No. See "Addition and subtraction by human infants", Karen Wynn, NATURE, VOL 358, 27 AUGUST 1992. If you accept the Church-Turing thesis, you can't have narrative without logic. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685946109698049/" "jswillims21", "1305685946109698049", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305561043607973888" ( 30): I see no good reason to accept that thesis. It's a prime example of the overreach of scientific reductionism. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305884463419842560/" "stablecross", "1305884463419842560", "wrf3" <- "1305685946109698049" ( 31): 1/ Some additional thoughts: It isn’t reductionism to say that what goes on inside your head is no different from what goes on inside your head. It’s the exact same nature, but with a different form. The laws of computation, by which brains work, are no different ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305898402765471744/" "stablecross", "1305898402765471744", "wrf3" <- "1305884463419842560" ( 31): "inside ... outside". 🤦‍♂️ ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306098456507944962/" "jswillims21", "1306098456507944962", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305884463419842560" ( 32): It is reductionism to assume that our consciousness can be reduced to rational thought. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306251277307908097/" "stablecross", "1306251277307908097", "wrf3" <- "1306098456507944962" ( 33): Except I didn't say that. Rational thought is part of our consciousness. But it's all ripples on the quantum pond. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305853572018569218/" "stablecross", "1305853572018569218", "wrf3" <- "1305685946109698049" ( 31): The problem you have with rejecting it is that it is how your neural net works. There simply aren't any counter-examples, except in wishful thinking. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305885222597201922/" "stablecross", "1305885222597201922", "wrf3" <- "1305853572018569218" ( 31): 2/ from the laws of physics. If they are but approximations, they are useful approximations. The empirical/rational distinction that you want to uphold is therefore false. Rationality doesn’t follow experience, they are co-equal. Aside from a rational proof ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305885766745288704/" "stablecross", "1305885766745288704", "wrf3" <- "1305853572018569218" ( 31): 3/ ... a rational proof of this (op cit), if reason follows experience, and we are rationalizing creatures, then our survival is endangered. Monkeys who fling poo will survive. Monkeys who fling nuclear weapons won’t. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685129420050432/" "jswillims21", "1305685129420050432", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305493008813625344" ( 28): 1/ I am an atheist as a result of recognizing the illusion of metaphysics in its entirety. I know of theists, however, who also recognize that esthetics is primary and reason a secondary adaptation. One of my professors in graduate school was a prominent Christian philosopher, ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685204112211972/" "jswillims21", "1305685204112211972", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305685129420050432" ( 28): 2/ Paul Recoeur, who told my how most of the prominent European theists were immersed in Nietzsche and Heidegger because those two pursued the same questions most important to theologians but in resolutely post-metaphysical approaches. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308245919582756864/" "PhiloMatters", "1308245919582756864", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1305685129420050432" ( 29): Recognizing the illusion of metaphysics is a metaphysical claim. We all need a framework by which to understand reality, or how reality reveals itself to us. That framework is metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308246532483940352/" "jswillims21", "1308246532483940352", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308245919582756864" ( 30): Not necessarily. We can ground our understanding purely in the physical. Metaphysics isn't framework but framework based on a priori or non-physical ideas. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308246770820943872/" "PhiloMatters", "1308246770820943872", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308246532483940352" ( 31): Well, physicalism is a metaphysical position. So rather than dismissing metaphysics, it would be best if you focus on defending physical as *your* metaphysical framework by which you stand. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308247188871557121/" "jswillims21", "1308247188871557121", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308246770820943872" ( 32): Not necessarily. If I limit my knowledge to the senses and resist abstracting to non physical representation, I am not employing metaphysics. I have no metaphysical framework. If you think I do, show me what it is. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308247463975817216/" "PhiloMatters", "1308247463975817216", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308247188871557121" ( 33): I just mentioned it; it's physicalism, the view that reality is solely composed of anything that the laws of physics recognize. If that's not your view, then you need to lay out what you think are the components of reality. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308247997629726720/" "jswillims21", "1308247997629726720", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308247463975817216" ( 34): That isn't my position at all. I search for truth and meaning in the physical, but I don't know how you concluded that I think everything is ultimately explicable through science. That would be a metaphysical approach, but it isn't mine. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308248599797530625/" "PhiloMatters", "1308248599797530625", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308247997629726720" ( 35): You said, "we can ground our understanding purely from the physical", and that sounds to me to be physicalism. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308249139914985472/" "jswillims21", "1308249139914985472", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308248599797530625" ( 36): There is far more in this world, and in the world of philosophy, than mere physicalism. Even within physicalism you seen unaware of non-reductive physicalism. But there is more than that too. I take Heidegger as my starting point. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308249424242438145/" "PhiloMatters", "1308249424242438145", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308249139914985472" ( 37): Well, if that's the case good for you. My only point is that no one can't escape metaphysics, even those who dismiss it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308249650584051717/" "jswillims21", "1308249650584051717", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308249424242438145" ( 38): And that view is simply wrong. You have yet to show us my metaphysical framework. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308249919535235073/" "PhiloMatters", "1308249919535235073", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308249650584051717" ( 39): It's not my duty to show you your metaphysical framework, it's up to you to discern that. This is not a guessing game, in any case. My only point is that you can't escape metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308250140441038849/" "jswillims21", "1308250140441038849", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308249919535235073" ( 40): That is probably the worst evasion on a thread overflowing with evasions. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308250452299898881/" "PhiloMatters", "1308250452299898881", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308250140441038849" ( 41): I think it's you who are overflowing with evasions. My claim and counter-argument are as clear as the necessity of metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308250706198044672/" "jswillims21", "1308250706198044672", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308250452299898881" ( 42): You have only a mere claim, but no demonstration. Are you an undergraduate? You come across severely naive and limited. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308251255731417088/" "PhiloMatters", "1308251255731417088", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308250706198044672" ( 43): So now you resort to cheap ad hominem, I see. Again, just admit that you're wrong sir. There's nothing wrong with being wrong sometimes, even in social media. Metaphysics is necessary, and you don't need rocket science to recognize that. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308251586142011392/" "jswillims21", "1308251586142011392", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308251255731417088" ( 44): I'm still waiting for your demonstration of my metaphysical framework. You claimed you made an argument, but if so it didn't make onto this timeline. Perhaps you could repeat it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308252014069964800/" "PhiloMatters", "1308252014069964800", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308251586142011392" ( 45): Why should I demonstrate your own? The only point I am making is that you have a metaphysical framework because you need to have a way by which to view and navigate the world you find yourself in. That's my only point, so just stop bashing metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308252226524188672/" "jswillims21", "1308252226524188672", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308252014069964800" ( 46): You are merely repeating a bald claim. Why should I accept it? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308252814754234371/" "PhiloMatters", "1308252814754234371", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308252226524188672" ( 47): If you can't see its truth, that's your problem. But the fact that you already lived through life up until this point means that you have certain ways of perceiving reality, and those ways point to your metaphysical framework. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308253511742828544/" "jswillims21", "1308253511742828544", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308252814754234371" ( 48): Again, you merely repeated a claim. Here all I see is some guy on Twitter using a pseudonym, apparently thinking the negation of metaphysics necessarily indicates scientific physicalism, repeating the same bald claim almost to the point of perseveration. You seem unable to make.. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308253789040893952/" "jswillims21", "1308253789040893952", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308253511742828544" ( 48): any case for your claim, but merely suggest I can't see the truth. Well, if you actually had the truth you have proven yourself incapable of demonstrating it. Once again, demonstrate my metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308255909349478401/" "PhiloMatters", "1308255909349478401", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308253789040893952" ( 49): We're going full circle now. Again, there's no need for you to prove your intelligence against a random person like me. I just want you to know that you have a metaphysics whether you explicitly recognize it or not. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308256166120771584/" "jswillims21", "1308256166120771584", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308255909349478401" ( 50): Again, a mere claim with no reason to take it seriously. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308256336375758848/" "PhiloMatters", "1308256336375758848", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308256166120771584" ( 51): Ok, what's your view of reality? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308257311283122178/" "jswillims21", "1308257311283122178", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308256336375758848" ( 52): Nothing I can put into a tweet, but if you're interested, he is something of an introduction: toolateforthegods.com/2020/09/18/con… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308257594423693312/" "PhiloMatters", "1308257594423693312", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308257311283122178" ( 53): So you have a view of reality? Then you have a metaphysics. That's how simple it is. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308257975308619777/" "jswillims21", "1308257975308619777", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308257594423693312" ( 54): What makes you think a view of reality necessarily entails metaphysics? All you did is once again repeat your empty claim. Read the link and find out., ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308258201679192064/" "PhiloMatters", "1308258201679192064", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308257975308619777" ( 55): Because that is exactly what metaphysics is: a fundamental view of reality. So what do you think metaphysics is? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308258643079507970/" "jswillims21", "1308258643079507970", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308258201679192064" ( 56): Nonphysical ideas and essences that were said to underlay physical reality. Read the link to find out. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308263157794627589/" "PhiloMatters", "1308263157794627589", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308258643079507970" ( 57): Nope, that's not how metaphysics has been understood to mean since the time of Thales. You are linking it with supernatural entities, which is only one metaphysical view of reality. Again, your metaphysics is your view of reality, of which we all humans have. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1308268689289105408/" "jswillims21", "1308268689289105408", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1308263157794627589" ( 58): Son, before you make yourself look any sillier you really should read Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. Look me up after you’ve done that and we can continue. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/status/1308273583156654081/" "PhiloMatters", "1308273583156654081", "Philosophy That Matters" <- "1308268689289105408" ( 59): Yeah, I know you're a wide reader. But that does not refute my claim that metaphysics is necessary. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1308383628943122433/" "stablecross", "1308383628943122433", "wrf3" <- "1308249650584051717" ( 39): 3/ One problem with your position is the placement of "non-physical ideas and essences" in relation to physical reality. You can place them "under" ("in the beginning was the Word", you can place them "over" ("arises solely because of a special type of swirly, tangled ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1308384562020483073/" "stablecross", "1308384562020483073", "wrf3" <- "1308249650584051717" ( 39): 4/ "... pattern among the meaningless symbols." - Hofstadter, GEB), or you can place them alongside (various types of dualism). The placement itself is metaphysics. The nature and relationship of descriptions of things to the nature and descriptions of things is metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1308381705288507392/" "stablecross", "1308381705288507392", "wrf3" <- "1308249650584051717" ( 39): 1/ There are a couple of things going on here. On the one hand, you (@jswillims21) have said, "I have no metaphysical framework" (mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/st…). On the other hand, @PhiloMatters has said, "metaphysics is a fundamental view of reality." (mobile.twitter.com/PhiloMatters/s…). ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1308382948840931334/" "stablecross", "1308382948840931334", "wrf3" <- "1308249650584051717" ( 39): 2/ On the gripping hand, you've said, metaphysics is "Nonphysical ideas and essences that were said to underlay physical reality." (mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/st…). You two are talking past each other because you don't agree on the definition of metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305100601597005824/" "stablecross", "1305100601597005824", "wrf3" <- "1304983452316569600" ( 25): 1/ Yes, I agree that truth is an experience. It's the experience of selecting one path over another. So that means that falsity is also an experience (picking the path that truth doesn't select). And you can pick paths for reasons other than reason. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305101687670091776/" "stablecross", "1305101687670091776", "wrf3" <- "1304983452316569600" ( 25): 3/ So which is more basic? The experience, or the identity relation which allows you to understand the experience? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304788324825968641/" "stablecross", "1304788324825968641", "wrf3" <- "1304596966463213570" ( 23): 2b/ You enter the realm of "apophatic theology". (Not that there's anything wrong with that). 3/ If truth is an esthetic experience, better the beauty that never fades than the one that does, right? Isn't this reason enough to fully embrace infinity? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304984018207809536/" "jswillims21", "1304984018207809536", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304788324825968641" ( 24): 1/ I don't think it is apophatic or theology. Theology requires metaphysical assertion, while here the whole point is to avoid metaphysics to focus on the experience of the real physical world. It isn't apophatic in that it doesn't focus on negation, but rather on the presence. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304984461117984770/" "jswillims21", "1304984461117984770", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304984018207809536" ( 24): Whether or not beauty that never fades is preferable is not a factor. Regardless of our preferences, we can only avail ourselves of the beauty revealed, which isn't infinite. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305103150484017152/" "stablecross", "1305103150484017152", "wrf3" <- "1304984461117984770" ( 25): How do you know? In fact, how do you know without making a metaphysical assertion? The whole point of this discussion, from my side, has been that you cannot describe reality without at least one metaphysical concept. Reality includes the metaphysics that you want to deny. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305368171688361984/" "jswillims21", "1305368171688361984", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305103150484017152" ( 26): 1/ Through the observation that all rational systems ultimately break down as their application expands. Newton/Relativity/quantum mechanics/quantum fields. Euclidean/Lubachevskian/Riemannian Geometry. It is not a metaphysical assertion because it is derived from direct ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305368427272581121/" "jswillims21", "1305368427272581121", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305368171688361984" ( 26): experience always rebelling against any imposed system. It is inductive, and therefore not metaphysical. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305368807410675712/" "jswillims21", "1305368807410675712", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305368427272581121" ( 26): From the time of Francis Bacon, the thrust has been to move away from deductive to inductive reasoning to minimize, and ultimately eliminate metaphysics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305494661839106050/" "stablecross", "1305494661839106050", "wrf3" <- "1305368427272581121" ( 27): "Always". There's that endlessness again. Expressed another way, nothing is ever good enough. That will be an epic thread in and of itself. Rebelling against the good. There's a story about that, somewhere... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685752660013063/" "jswillims21", "1305685752660013063", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305494661839106050" ( 28): I have no objection to replacing always with “always has”. Why do you equate rational constructs as “the good”? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305853103355367424/" "stablecross", "1305853103355367424", "wrf3" <- "1305685752660013063" ( 29): Replacing "always" with "always has" removes the forward looking "always will". Approximations stop when they are "good enough". If the approximations never stop, then they are never good enough. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305493976372457472/" "stablecross", "1305493976372457472", "wrf3" <- "1305368171688361984" ( 27): 1/ a. We don't yet know all rational systems. That all will break down is an assumption on your part. b. It isn't derived from direct experience because you haven't experienced all rational systems. c. Induction embeds endlessness, which is an illusion, ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685467187290112/" "jswillims21", "1305685467187290112", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305493976372457472" ( 28): 1/ The point is that every one of them has so far. That one might not in the future is a remote possibility, but when we look at the innate mechanisms of understanding in our consciousness, it is extremely doubtful. Our limitations of conditions of space, time and logic seem to ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685545872486400/" "jswillims21", "1305685545872486400", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305685467187290112" ( 28): 2/ preclude that ever happening. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305851084909543424/" "stablecross", "1305851084909543424", "wrf3" <- "1305685467187290112" ( 29): 1/ Please outline for me the "innate mechanisms of understanding in our consciousness." Provide the grounds for concluding "it is extremely doubtful." ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305851116341657603/" "stablecross", "1305851116341657603", "wrf3" <- "1305685467187290112" ( 29): 2/ It sure looks like you're straying into metaphysics, here (i.e. extending a curve into something that hasn't been experienced and may never be experienced). ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306098879507689472/" "jswillims21", "1306098879507689472", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305851116341657603" ( 30): No, again I am limiting myself to an interpretation of what has happened. I am basing a thought on experience, not on a metaphysical assertion. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306251642761883648/" "stablecross", "1306251642761883648", "wrf3" <- "1306098879507689472" ( 31): Your thoughts are your _experiences_ of the atoms swirling in your brain, just as your experience of temperature is the _experience_ of atoms swirling on your skin. You are making a dichotomy where none exists. A metaphysical dichotomy, as it were. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305494188566474754/" "stablecross", "1305494188566474754", "wrf3" <- "1305368171688361984" ( 27): 2/ ... so your conclusion is incoherent. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305685646711889920/" "jswillims21", "1305685646711889920", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305494188566474754" ( 28): Induction is silent on the question of infinity. It says nothing at all about any future events, just a look back at the past. It is rather a rational approach to the need to limit learning to the physical rather than deductions from mere metaphysical assertions. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305851890907975682/" "stablecross", "1305851890907975682", "wrf3" <- "1305685646711889920" ( 29): ??? The whole point of induction is to extend from the specific to the general. Mathematical induction absolutely needs endlessness to show results. Are you, perchance, familiar with the proof that 1+2+... +n = (n * (n + 1)) / 2 ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305471900068569089/" "stablecross", "1305471900068569089", "wrf3" <- "1304984461117984770" ( 25): You don't see it when you look inside? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305680698141966336/" "jswillims21", "1305680698141966336", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305471900068569089" ( 26): No. I perceive beauty when I look outside me. Inside I find only the empty conditions of perception. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305102577735004160/" "stablecross", "1305102577735004160", "wrf3" <- "1304984018207809536" ( 25): At this point, I'll circle back to my responses to your tweet: twitter.com/jswillims21/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304597095257640961/" "jswillims21", "1304597095257640961", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304596966463213570" ( 22): 2/ subject/object dichotomy dissolves. This leads us to a mode of knowledge more primordial than reason, and one that scientists and mathematicians are often congenitally hostile to. The answer is unmediated esthetic experience, which is the poetry of Shakespeare, the music of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304597212807258114/" "jswillims21", "1304597212807258114", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304597095257640961" ( 22): Beethoven, or the painting of Van Gogh. Truth is an esthetic experience, not an objectification, and our only access to the profundity of the universe. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304096556845424641/" "stablecross", "1304096556845424641", "wrf3" <- "1303900969349132290" ( 19): Well, that's the rub, isn't it? You want to suggest that the material is what is fundamentally true, but it can be equally argued that the concepts used to describe the material are fundamentally true. I don't think the weight of argument is enough to decide either way. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304094614257688577/" "stablecross", "1304094614257688577", "wrf3" <- "1303900686686523392" ( 19): "Assumed". That's a loaded word. If we can't tell what assumptions are right, then none of them are. Or maybe all of them are. How do we tell? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304248296907722752/" "jswillims21", "1304248296907722752", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304094614257688577" ( 20): 1/ That gets into foundationalist epistemology, which posits we can accept a premise as properly basic if it meets one of three criteria: evident to the senses, incorrigible, or self-evident. That means it is either an objectively verifiable claim or condition of thought. I ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304248449215467526/" "jswillims21", "1304248449215467526", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304248296907722752" ( 20): would go one step further and claim it must have sense data or it is merely metaphysical assertion. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304384921147002883/" "stablecross", "1304384921147002883", "wrf3" <- "1304248449215467526" ( 21): 1/ Do you consider self-reflection to be sense data, or something else? If something else, what? This is the problem you face. Infinity is "self-evident", and appears to be necessary in all of our most basic descriptions of reality. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304596321387655168/" "jswillims21", "1304596321387655168", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304384921147002883" ( 22): 1/ Self-reflection is internal sense data; thoughts as well as a kidney stone. Reflection has led philosophers such as Kant, and contemporary neuroscientists to distinguish between a priori concepts such as infinity and external reality. The sense data is our only direct ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304596567542960130/" "jswillims21", "1304596567542960130", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304596321387655168" ( 22): 2/ knowledge of reality. Infinity is an element of what we impose in order to construct a practical illusion. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304757630657732608/" "stablecross", "1304757630657732608", "wrf3" <- "1304596567542960130" ( 23): Why is the idea that infinity is a "practical illusion" less practical than the idea "infinity is really real"? Are these equally valid, equally uncompelled choices? To paraphrase the Keeper, "Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have yours. May you find your way as pleasant." ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304982020360151040/" "jswillims21", "1304982020360151040", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304757630657732608" ( 24): I used the term in a precise way: practical representations of sense data that allow us to manipulate the environment. Infinity is also practical, but as a purely metaphysical concept, it wasn't relevant to my point here. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305097216483381248/" "stablecross", "1305097216483381248", "wrf3" <- "1304982020360151040" ( 25): 2/ But more than that, infinity is _required by reality_ for us to describe reality. So why can't we say that something that meets these requirements is really real? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305365867950112770/" "jswillims21", "1305365867950112770", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305097216483381248" ( 26): 1/ Because we have no grounds to say that. All we can say is they are conditions of our evolved intellect that serve to simplify the world and approximate reality to a very limited degree. The basic reality is that the world of mathematics is a purely imaginary realm, empty of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305488557126098944/" "stablecross", "1305488557126098944", "wrf3" <- "1305365867950112770" ( 27): 2/ Your experiences are just a corresponding fiction your genes impose on you for their purposes. But the genes are a fiction, too. The only thing that you have is real is fiction. Which is fine. It's very Zen. But don't hide it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305684695720636416/" "jswillims21", "1305684695720636416", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305488557126098944" ( 28): 1/ Other than esthetically, we can never know the true nature of what we are perceiving, but merely the sketch produced by our subjective a priori capabilities. The difference between what Kant calls representation and the thing-in-itself, which exists outside space, time and our ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305684762015789059/" "jswillims21", "1305684762015789059", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305684695720636416" ( 28): 2/ reason and is unknowable rationally. We only have a approximate correspondence of some sort. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305849719864860677/" "stablecross", "1305849719864860677", "wrf3" <- "1305684695720636416" ( 29): How do you distinguish between a true nature and a false nature? How can you possibly say that something exists outside of space and time, since you can't ever experience it? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306101491011383296/" "jswillims21", "1306101491011383296", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305849719864860677" ( 30): I wouldn't know how to even understand false nature. There is essence, or nature. How could it be false? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306255520261644289/" "stablecross", "1306255520261644289", "wrf3" <- "1306101491011383296" ( 31): 1/ If there is no rational truth, then there is no rational falsity (unless everything rational is false -- which is incoherent). So then truth and falsity have to be based in experience. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306255711945531392/" "stablecross", "1306255711945531392", "wrf3" <- "1306101491011383296" ( 31): 2/ So you would have to say that "falsity" are experiences that someone don't comport with reality. Back to the unanswered question: "How can you possibly say that something exists outside of space and time, since you can't experience it?" ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305488031583997952/" "stablecross", "1305488031583997952", "wrf3" <- "1305365867950112770" ( 27): 1/ You do have grounds to say it. You can say that true descriptions of reality are just as real as reality. You have to jump through hoops to not say that. If everything you say is fiction (which you must say), then everything you experience is just as likely to be fiction. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305684404434599937/" "jswillims21", "1305684404434599937", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305488031583997952" ( 28): 1/ Just the opposite: you would have an impossible time trying to show how our representations of the world are as real as the external world which physically caused them. The former are mere neural connections. Sure, the neural connections are real, but not necessarily the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305684500555460608/" "jswillims21", "1305684500555460608", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305684404434599937" ( 28): 2/ thought they engender. How would you justify that? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305849148600733696/" "stablecross", "1305849148600733696", "wrf3" <- "1305684500555460608" ( 29): Through the duality between thing and the description of the thing, which is evident from the nature of the lambda calculus, which is what both neural connections and logic circuits use. stablecross.com/files/undecida… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305366170455990274/" "jswillims21", "1305366170455990274", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305365867950112770" ( 26): 2/ any content that would tell us anything at all about the external reality on its own. It is only a tool to create a corresponding fiction that we impose on the world for practical purposes. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305096958655238150/" "stablecross", "1305096958655238150", "wrf3" <- "1304982020360151040" ( 25): 1/ Infinity is relevant to my point: you keep making a "physical/metaphysical" distinction that is purely arbitrary. Infinity is real sense-data (since self-reflection is sense data). Infinity is practical. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305365037612236801/" "jswillims21", "1305365037612236801", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305096958655238150" ( 26): That you can imagine something does not prove existence. Metaphysical is anything that does not result from sense data. Number and logic don'tt come from sense data, but form the conditions of our objective understanding. Our emotions and internal physical sensations are sense ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305365292013498368/" "jswillims21", "1305365292013498368", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305365037612236801" ( 26): data. We cannot directly sense infinity, number, or logic. We can only construct it in our imaginations. It is the difference between a priori and physical. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305486927328694278/" "stablecross", "1305486927328694278", "wrf3" <- "1305365037612236801" ( 27): Didn't you say that self-reflection is a form of sense data? "Imagination" is the result of a physical process in a physical device. Your "a priori's" _are_ physical, because the "program" is the wiring. Your genes have arranged your wiring for survival and endlessness. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305684119809134594/" "jswillims21", "1305684119809134594", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305486927328694278" ( 28): 1/ I addressed this a few responses back. The a prioris cannot give sense data because they are the mere form that molds sense data. Self-reflection might try to look at reason, space and time as objects, but they are only traceable through our thoughts of the outside world where ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305684208673861633/" "jswillims21", "1305684208673861633", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305684119809134594" ( 28): 2/ they are in action. A much more important self-reflection is your conscious and unconscious thoughts formed by the external world and their unity of apperception. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305847679814172673/" "stablecross", "1305847679814172673", "wrf3" <- "1305684119809134594" ( 29): How do you know they "mold" sense data if you don't experience the mold? You also seem to think that there is a distinction between external action and internal thoughts. But your thoughts are just the actions of the universe. The boundary you impose is artificial. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304385191708954624/" "stablecross", "1304385191708954624", "wrf3" <- "1304248296907722752" ( 21): 2/ So you can say "it's just a convenient, but necessary fiction" or you can say "it's fundamentally real". Is there any reason, other than personal preference, to choose one over the other (or some other option not listed)? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304091161707999233/" "stablecross", "1304091161707999233", "wrf3" <- "1303900432629141505" ( 19): What is meant by "incomprehensible mathematical results"? Generally, it's extension of dimension beyond something we can visualize, it's the mental equivalent of particle/wave duality (we have no intuitive experience of quantum things) and/or it involves infinity. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304245203855908867/" "jswillims21", "1304245203855908867", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304091161707999233" ( 20): 1/ It is the result of our innate sensibilities of space and time, which are absolute conditions of our objective thought, but not wholly applicable to reality. We simply cannot conceive of objects and objective events outside of space and time. As we move away from the initial ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304245352560766976/" "jswillims21", "1304245352560766976", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304245203855908867" ( 20): 2/ observations, we learn our understandings break down because reality no longer coincides with our innate sensibilities (Wigner’s limited invariability principles). The result is inconceivable mathematical models, all of which are provisional and none of which is probably true. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304245474740899842/" "jswillims21", "1304245474740899842", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304245352560766976" ( 20): 3/ It is the inevitable product of applying reason beyond its proper limits. Much of contemporary physics is more metaphysics than true objective science. This is a particularly interesting time for epistemological and ontological philosophy because we have run up against the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304245580164665344/" "jswillims21", "1304245580164665344", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304245474740899842" ( 20): 4/ solid wall that precludes our ability to conceive. And because of that, we also lack the language to express it. Try describing a physical state with no space, time, or determinate causality without resorting to spatial and temporal terms. It’s impossible because we are ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304245648456384512/" "jswillims21", "1304245648456384512", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304245580164665344" ( 20): 5/ incapable of the concept. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304381254855536643/" "stablecross", "1304381254855536643", "wrf3" <- "1304245352560766976" ( 21): Well, that's the crux of the matter, isn't it? Why isn't infinity true and reality an approximation, instead of "stuff of experience" being true and infinity a convenient -- even necessary -- fiction? What is it about reality that it demands necessary fiction? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595196324315136/" "jswillims21", "1304595196324315136", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304381254855536643" ( 22): 1/ Reality is solid because it directly impinges on our senses and physically affects us. Physical reality demands our attention because our survival depends on it. We construct our understanding and project it onto the world as reality because that is how we evolved. It met the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304751017838276609/" "stablecross", "1304751017838276609", "wrf3" <- "1304595196324315136" ( 23): 2/ If the answer is "survival" then that can't be the right answer, since nature doesn't demand our survival. Too, my dog doesn't comprehend infinity (as best I can tell) and he gets along just fine. But he also doesn't handle math very well, either. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304979497922461696/" "jswillims21", "1304979497922461696", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304751017838276609" ( 24): 1/ We slip into illusion as soon as you bring up what the universe cares about. As far as I can tell, the universe has no capacity to care. It is we humans who care, so the question should be: why do we care about survival? The answer is it’s in our genes and we can’t help from ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305089950656991233/" "stablecross", "1305089950656991233", "wrf3" <- "1304979497922461696" ( 25): a) Of course you can help caring. Your genes have constructed a "universal" computing device which can compute any direction/goal it desires. b) Is knowledge of the world not grounded in self-reflection? c) Mathematics is most certainly grounded in knowledge of the world. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305361773713858561/" "jswillims21", "1305361773713858561", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305089950656991233" ( 26): A. No, genes from the very beginning have incessantly strove for survival. That evolves into our sense of survival. In extremely dire situations or severe depression, one might lose that care to survive, but those are exceptions. By nature, we want to survive. B. No. We learn.. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305474693206618113/" "stablecross", "1305474693206618113", "wrf3" <- "1305361773713858561" ( 27): 1/ a. Genes don't "strive". Unless you want to propose innate purpose for genes. But, if you do that, you're going to have to propose an innate purpose to nature. b. Yes, we learn. I used the word "grounded". Learning requires a root. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305681596645871618/" "jswillims21", "1305681596645871618", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305474693206618113" ( 28): 1/ Genes strive in the same sense that gravity strives to curve spacetime or gluons strive to bind quarks. It’s what they do and don’t require consciousness to do so. I can’t think of any greater force in the world than the tenaciousness of genes to live on in any way necessary. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305681690212339717/" "jswillims21", "1305681690212339717", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305681596645871618" ( 28): When we think of genes as a code or mere chemical process we display the shallowness of understanding of something we haven’t begun to fathom. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305681854570336258/" "jswillims21", "1305681854570336258", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305681690212339717" ( 28): Learning requires a root. The thing itself suggested by the world is the authentic root. Mathematics, and logic in general are not roots but subjective constructions we impose on the world. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305814377594052608/" "stablecross", "1305814377594052608", "wrf3" <- "1305681854570336258" ( 29): Now wait a minute. On the one hand, you say that our genes tenaciously impose survival on us. Why do you not also say that that our genes impose these constructions on us? These "constructions" are imposed _by Nature_ through our genes on us. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306100260264120320/" "jswillims21", "1306100260264120320", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305814377594052608" ( 30): How would you conclude from that the reason actually exists outside us? Genes did bring about reason, but only for practical survival, not metaphysical truth. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306253637245689857/" "stablecross", "1306253637245689857", "wrf3" <- "1306100260264120320" ( 31): Refer back to the answer about rational truth being related to survival by the paths our neural nets take when computing identity. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305813786323030016/" "stablecross", "1305813786323030016", "wrf3" <- "1305681596645871618" ( 29): Of course, there's a greater force. People deliberately end their lives every day. Many of them before they've reproduced. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305475023818362882/" "stablecross", "1305475023818362882", "wrf3" <- "1305361773713858561" ( 27): 2/ c. Only because you don't know the connection between the physical world and math. Just as there's a physical connection between the world and your survival, there's a physical connection between the world and math. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682017313599488/" "jswillims21", "1305682017313599488", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305475023818362882" ( 28): 1/ Then neither Kant nor Wigner know that connection either. I have stayed within the bounds of their understanding. We approximate through number events that the world suggests to us. There is no mystical connection between number and the world, merely a subjective ordering of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682095315050499/" "jswillims21", "1305682095315050499", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305682017313599488" ( 28): 2/ sense data by means of logic and number – an ordering not found outside our consciousness. In this conversation I have confined myself to Wigner’s terms although normally I would use the language of epistemology. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305840691214528514/" "stablecross", "1305840691214528514", "wrf3" <- "1305682095315050499" ( 29): 2/ If the ordering didn't exist in nature, it wouldn't exist in our consciousness. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306099890070708225/" "jswillims21", "1306099890070708225", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305840691214528514" ( 30): Please explain that in light of the longer response I did tonight. I see no way at all you could justify that claim. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306253397960650753/" "stablecross", "1306253397960650753", "wrf3" <- "1306099890070708225" ( 31): I gave a bit of it a few minutes ago. I'm sure that response will engender more. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306399073898049537/" "jswillims21", "1306399073898049537", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1306253397960650753" ( 32): Honestly, I can't find anything I would recognize as justification. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306634523606646784/" "stablecross", "1306634523606646784", "wrf3" <- "1306399073898049537" ( 33): See my reply: twitter.com/stablecross/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305840625871474688/" "stablecross", "1305840625871474688", "wrf3" <- "1305682095315050499" ( 29): 1/ The connection is that logic and number are physical operations on physical objects. The connection are the labels that we attach to these things. We then manipulate the labels, as if we were manipulating nature. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305361846174715904/" "jswillims21", "1305361846174715904", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305361773713858561" ( 26): nothing at all about the world without directly contemplating the world. C. Not at all. We can perform mathematics with no knowledge of the world at all. That is what is meant by a priori. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304979590683734016/" "jswillims21", "1304979590683734016", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304979497922461696" ( 24): 2/ caring. In the same manner, the world itself make no demands, but from our own perspective we can say that world presents challenges that we colloquially refer to as demands on us; as in “surviving that drought was demanding”. But all of this misses the point of physical ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304979655007535108/" "jswillims21", "1304979655007535108", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304979590683734016" ( 24): 3/ evidence grounding our knowledge of the world, which metaphysics, including mathematics, lacks. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595381758701568/" "jswillims21", "1304595381758701568", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304595196324315136" ( 22): 2/ adaptive need to thrive in the Savannah. The need didn’t rely on exact knowledge of all the manifold complexity of the universe. In fact, we would have been frozen in puzzlement if it had. Instead it simplified our perception of reality to focus on what would provide ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595429921902597/" "jswillims21", "1304595429921902597", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304595381758701568" ( 22): 3/ advantage at that moment. It was only later as an emergent pursuit that we applied this very approximate understanding to the universe, a task that fascinates, but demands a more developed capacity of understanding than we now possess. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304750467658838018/" "stablecross", "1304750467658838018", "wrf3" <- "1304595196324315136" ( 23): 1/ Survival isn't necessary. The universe doesn't care whether you survive. Only you do -- and that's strictly up to your preferences. There is nothing mandatory about it. The question was "what is it about reality that it demands necessary fiction?" ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304380737630744576/" "stablecross", "1304380737630744576", "wrf3" <- "1304245203855908867" ( 21): We certainly can conceive of them. Infinity is one such concept. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304594985833172992/" "jswillims21", "1304594985833172992", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304380737630744576" ( 22): 1/ You really can’t. The best we can do is imagine sequential additions to a limit. To conceive of infinity, you would have to hold the entirety of unlimited universe in your imagination. It’s impossible, just as it’s impossible to conceive of timelessness without resort to ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304742444571926530/" "stablecross", "1304742444571926530", "wrf3" <- "1304594985833172992" ( 23): You really can. Infinity is an endless process: 10 goto 10 We can fancy it up: (defun infinity (fn &rest args) (infinity fn (apply fn args))) We can't do it, but we can certainly conceive of it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304979291613126658/" "jswillims21", "1304979291613126658", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304742444571926530" ( 24): 1/ You just demonstrated the impossibility to do so. Because of the limitations of human understanding you used a process in a vain attempt to encompass what is not a process at all but an inconceivable infinite totality. That you have to continually use a process of addition ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305088741808238592/" "stablecross", "1305088741808238592", "wrf3" <- "1304979291613126658" ( 25): 2/ If you're going to define it as being inconceivable then, sure, you can't conceive of it. But your definition is also circular, while mine isn't. "Nor could your process ever get you to infinity". Infinity is not a destination. It's the endless process itself. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305360657597042691/" "jswillims21", "1305360657597042691", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305088741808238592" ( 26): No, it isn't a process at all. It is a state, and one that you cannot imagine. You keep adding onto finite states, and your ability to do so forever gives you a false illusion of infinity. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305473777246011393/" "stablecross", "1305473777246011393", "wrf3" <- "1305360657597042691" ( 27): But I _don't_ have the ability to do so forever. That ability doesn't exist in nature. But nature requires it for us to be able to describe nature. e^𝒾𝜋 + 1 = 0. Are true descriptions an illusion? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305681290633588739/" "jswillims21", "1305681290633588739", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305473777246011393" ( 28): 1/ You have confused things here a bit. Nature is in no need of our description. Infinity is what you claim our constructed representations need to make sense. Nature couldn’t care less about any of that and is under no compulsion to obey our laws of logic. I don’t share your ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305681398360141824/" "jswillims21", "1305681398360141824", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305681290633588739" ( 28): 2/ assumption that mathematical models are true descriptions. At best they are limited approximations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305813155822567424/" "stablecross", "1305813155822567424", "wrf3" <- "1305681398360141824" ( 29): 5/ Is it true that e^𝒾𝜋 + 1 = 0? If so, is this an "approximate" truth or an "actual" truth? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306100378510004225/" "jswillims21", "1306100378510004225", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305813155822567424" ( 30): It is an a priori ideal truth, not an existential truth. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306254116696584194/" "stablecross", "1306254116696584194", "wrf3" <- "1306100378510004225" ( 31): Well, sure. In your world. But nature forces these ideal truths on you. They can either be convenient hallucinations or an indication of something more. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305811702487953410/" "stablecross", "1305811702487953410", "wrf3" <- "1305681290633588739" ( 29): 2/ I also didn't say that Nature is under obligation to obey "our" laws of logic. Nature isn't under obligation to obey "our" laws of physics, either. But these laws -- both logic and physics -- are descriptions of how Nature does behave. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306100613768450048/" "jswillims21", "1306100613768450048", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305811702487953410" ( 30): Descriptions both approximate and provisional. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306254496805335041/" "stablecross", "1306254496805335041", "wrf3" <- "1306100613768450048" ( 31): Not for the laws of logic. Because logic is mechanical processes of combination and selection; and these processes are the basis of our being able to describe them. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305810568528371713/" "stablecross", "1305810568528371713", "wrf3" <- "1305681290633588739" ( 29): 1/ I never said that Nature needs our descriptions. What I said is that Nature is such that descriptions of itself are possible. And so we have to consider what relation descriptions of nature have to nature. Are they emergent or are they fundamental? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305812104063184899/" "stablecross", "1305812104063184899", "wrf3" <- "1305681290633588739" ( 29): 3/ The experience of nature and the description of nature go hand-in-hand. So if you want to say that descriptions are limited approximations, then you also say that experiences are limited approximations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305812513112707072/" "stablecross", "1305812513112707072", "wrf3" <- "1305681290633588739" ( 29): 4/ But: 1) approximations to what? 2) Is the approximation converging or diverging? For example, is it true that all elections are identical? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304979357740478465/" "jswillims21", "1304979357740478465", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304979291613126658" ( 24): 2/ proves you could never all at once conceive the entirety, nor could your process ever get you to infinity. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305088517505196032/" "stablecross", "1305088517505196032", "wrf3" <- "1304979291613126658" ( 25): 1/ I think we're arguing with different definitions. "My" definition: "infinity is an endless process". "Your" definition: "an inconceivable infinite totality." ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305360306743447552/" "jswillims21", "1305360306743447552", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305088517505196032" ( 26): We are. I have been trying to point out that your definition is not infinity, but a series of additions from one finite state to another. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305473139741274113/" "stablecross", "1305473139741274113", "wrf3" <- "1305360306743447552" ( 27): The point is that it's an _endless_ series. Clearly I'm not alone in this; even Wikipedia mentions it. In any case, here's the concept: 10 goto 10 Pick any word you like for this and we can use that. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305681091269980160/" "jswillims21", "1305681091269980160", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305473139741274113" ( 28): No, that evades the point that infinity is a state that you attempt to conceive of through a process of creating ever larger finite states. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305809586817990656/" "stablecross", "1305809586817990656", "wrf3" <- "1305681091269980160" ( 29): Infinity is not a state. If it were, it wouldn't be infinite (because states have boundaries). But, to repeat myself, pick any word you want for the idea of the endless process, and we'll go from there. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306094423579725826/" "jswillims21", "1306094423579725826", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305809586817990656" ( 30): Boundariless time and space. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306240636157296640/" "stablecross", "1306240636157296640", "wrf3" <- "1306094423579725826" ( 31): Okay. So what is the nature of reality such that you must have the idea of "boundariless time and space" to describe what you experience? You can't escape "boundariless time and space". You can either hand wave it away, or you can let it inform your experience of the true. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595034248024064/" "jswillims21", "1304595034248024064", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304594985833172992" ( 22): 2/ temporal or spatial conception. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304090638107865093/" "stablecross", "1304090638107865093", "wrf3" <- "1303900159806509056" ( 19): I'm not sure I understand what is involved between A is A and A=A. The ability to compute is based on being able to distinguish between distinct symbols. If we can't determine α is α (and not β, γ, δ ...) then we can't reason. But A=A is just chains of α is α. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304245905953034240/" "jswillims21", "1304245905953034240", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304090638107865093" ( 20): 1/ This is the crucial distinction. It is the difference between metaphysics and non-metaphysical ontology, which is almost always misunderstood among scientists and mathematicians. A is A characterizes pre-Socratic thought, which focused on the Being of what we encounter, and ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304246004510842881/" "jswillims21", "1304246004510842881", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304245905953034240" ( 20): 2/ recognized every instance of Being as unique. From the current state of language, it is hard to imagine what is meant by “is” in non-metaphysical thought, but it implies a unique and manifold instance of Being. Socratic logic replaced “is” with =, diminishing the manifold ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304246105601912832/" "jswillims21", "1304246105601912832", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304246004510842881" ( 20): 3/ instance of “is” to a mere copula – an empty equivalence that edits out the being itself. This enables computation, but it is not the original “A” that is being computed. There aren’t two A’s in reality, merely two different instances with certain similar characteristics. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304246194634403840/" "jswillims21", "1304246194634403840", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304246105601912832" ( 20): 4/ The error is letting the similarities define the totality of the two instances. The further the remove from the “is”, the greater the error in the calculations. That is what Wigner gets at when he traces the further mathematical abstractions from the original suggestion of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304246311219232774/" "jswillims21", "1304246311219232774", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304246194634403840" ( 20): 5/ event in the world, and the increasing diversion between the physics and the observable world. It certainly is true we cannot do our computations without the =, but that doesn’t mean the computations are anything more than a merely subjective ordering, and thereby ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304246422284501006/" "jswillims21", "1304246422284501006", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304246311219232774" ( 20): 6/ diminishing, of sense data which initially offers an approximated knowledge of the external world, with decreasing validity as abstraction increases. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304383131731009537/" "stablecross", "1304383131731009537", "wrf3" <- "1304246422284501006" ( 21): That's all well and good, but how close is what you're saying to what actually is? That is, should I lend credence to your statements, or just claim that your error bounds are such that what you're saying is in the realm of "decreasing validity"? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595802669625347/" "jswillims21", "1304595802669625347", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304383131731009537" ( 22): To the degree that anything I write is systematic, bring to it a healthy dose of skepticism. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304752427128635392/" "stablecross", "1304752427128635392", "wrf3" <- "1304595802669625347" ( 23): Skepticism is an acid. Unless contained, it eats everything, including itself. And so no knowledge is possible. None of us really believe that. What's the antidote to skepticism? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304980224812232705/" "jswillims21", "1304980224812232705", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304752427128635392" ( 24): There is a difference between healthy skepticism and denial, and all progress depends on it. Healthy skepticism could better be compared to solvent that eliminates grime to better show the reality underneath. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305090139778093058/" "stablecross", "1305090139778093058", "wrf3" <- "1304980224812232705" ( 25): Quantify it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305362113058267137/" "jswillims21", "1305362113058267137", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305090139778093058" ( 26): Impossible. But then authentic truth can never be quantified. Quantification necessarily implies approximation and distortion. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305475579404320768/" "stablecross", "1305475579404320768", "wrf3" <- "1305362113058267137" ( 27): What, then, is "authentic truth" if you can't describe it? You're acting as if there's an ideal out there that exists in principle, but is just beyond your grasp. Something that (ahem) _endlessly_ eludes you. Where did you get this idea and why do you think it's true? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682317898395648/" "jswillims21", "1305682317898395648", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305475579404320768" ( 28): 1/ I don’t think you could have misstated my position any worse than that. Ideals are a part of metaphysics and I definitely do not believe in anything existing in principle. Just the opposite, Truth is an unmediated experience that does not transcend into anything universal or ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682412547047433/" "jswillims21", "1305682412547047433", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305682317898395648" ( 28): 2/ ideal. The ground of truth is Being itself, which is fundamental. In experience we can know that truth esthetically, not conceptually. We might later abstract from it, but that takes us further from the immediate truth, exactly in the way Wigner describes applying the idea of ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682532478976007/" "jswillims21", "1305682532478976007", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305682412547047433" ( 28): 3/ number to separate events as inevitably resulting in approximation. Or has Heidegger puts the same notion, moving from A is A to A=A destroys the truth in the immediacy of experience by editing out most of what differentiates the different experiences. You persist in blindness ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682640247414785/" "jswillims21", "1305682640247414785", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305682532478976007" ( 28): 4/ to the difference between identity and equality. Identity never means “same as something else”. Identity is always reflexive. This idea has been a major thrust of Western thought since the enlightenment and is best described by Heidegger, and to a lesser degree, the later ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682759457878017/" "jswillims21", "1305682759457878017", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305682640247414785" ( 28): 5/ Wittgenstein. Both denied metaphysics and looked to the nature of language to understand the world. For Heidegger, authentic language was poetic language directly arising from experience. To put this in perspective, the two major thrusts in Western thought beginning with the ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305682837157408769/" "jswillims21", "1305682837157408769", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305682759457878017" ( 28): 6/ Enlightenment were: 1. the elimination of metaphysics and 2. truth as an esthetic rather than rational experience. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305843501989597184/" "stablecross", "1305843501989597184", "wrf3" <- "1305682837157408769" ( 29): Do you not experience the esthetic of rationality? Or is that missing? twitter.com/jswillims21/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306099584284925952/" "jswillims21", "1306099584284925952", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305843501989597184" ( 30): Only a very diminished shadow of beauty. Not the profundity of Beethoven. It is more a feeling of satisfaction than beauty. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306252733805146113/" "stablecross", "1306252733805146113", "wrf3" <- "1306099584284925952" ( 31): Well, if some people can be color blind, I guess others can be blind to the esthetic of rationality. Then the question becomes, is this due to nature or nurture? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305842854712037379/" "stablecross", "1305842854712037379", "wrf3" <- "1305682412547047433" ( 29): So you're saying that truth is experience that cannot be put into words, because the moment you try to describe it, you move away from truth? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306099733463695360/" "jswillims21", "1306099733463695360", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305842854712037379" ( 30): No, I explicitly said poetic language is engendered by the experience. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306253169157124097/" "stablecross", "1306253169157124097", "wrf3" <- "1306099733463695360" ( 31): I'm asking you about the experience of rational truth. But, since you've said there's no such thing as rational truth, I'm asking you about your experience of something you claim doesn't exist. The fault is mine for asking you about what you cannot see. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305841964886228992/" "stablecross", "1305841964886228992", "wrf3" <- "1305682317898395648" ( 29): When you say, "I definitely do not believe in anything existing in principle", exactly to what does "anything" refer? Ideals? Everything? If "truth is an unmediated experience" what is falsity? If the ground of truth is "Being", is "Being" universal? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1306101167651524608/" "jswillims21", "1306101167651524608", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305841964886228992" ( 30): Principles underlie rational systems, which are never true, but only approximate and provisional. Universal would be an odd word to describe Being. Being is chaotic, manifold and ever becoming. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1306254905716477955/" "stablecross", "1306254905716477955", "wrf3" <- "1306101167651524608" ( 31): Ever becoming what? One ordering principle in nature is symmetry. Another ordering principle in Nature is the law of large numbers. Those ordering principles in nature as just as much a part of nature as the chaos. How can you see the one but miss the other? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304382522835562498/" "stablecross", "1304382522835562498", "wrf3" <- "1304246105601912832" ( 21): Sure. Everything is just 27 quantum fields. And maybe we'll be able to get the number down some day. But there is still identity, even if it's identity with itself. 4gravitons.com/2018/01/26/the… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304595693718384640/" "jswillims21", "1304595693718384640", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304382522835562498" ( 22): Scientists and metaphysicians typically conflate identity with equivalence. Identity in pre-Socratic thought expresses itself through the “is”. It becomes equivalence through the =. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304751903696330753/" "stablecross", "1304751903696330753", "wrf3" <- "1304595693718384640" ( 23): ??? Equivalence is not identity. It's a statement about a relationship between objects. That is, equivalence is a function of at least two objects. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304979134070829056/" "jswillims21", "1304979134070829056", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304751903696330753" ( 24): And identity is about one event pre-objectification. That is the difference between "is" and =. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305087324842229761/" "stablecross", "1305087324842229761", "wrf3" <- "1304979134070829056" ( 25): What does "one event pre-objectification" mean? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305360074425106438/" "jswillims21", "1305360074425106438", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305087324842229761" ( 26): I use event in the sense that Wigner did, as something suggested to us by the world. Pre-0bjectification is the apprehension from the senses as "is" and not =. An experience of reality rather than objectification of it. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305472530577330177/" "stablecross", "1305472530577330177", "wrf3" <- "1305360074425106438" ( 27): How do you experience reality without being able to talk about it? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305680861560549377/" "jswillims21", "1305680861560549377", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305472530577330177" ( 28): 1/ Have you ever listened to Beethoven? There is nothing you can say about the experience that gets to the truth. That being said, poetic language does reveal truth. Non-metaphysical thinking about that truth is also possible, but there is much at the center of truth that simply ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305680922449252354/" "jswillims21", "1305680922449252354", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305680861560549377" ( 28): 2/ cannot be said. At that point it is much better to remain silent than construct metaphysical fictions. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305808639475810307/" "stablecross", "1305808639475810307", "wrf3" <- "1305680861560549377" ( 29): 1/ Have I ever listened to Beethoven? 🤦‍♂️ Notice that I asked: "How do you experience reality without being able to talk about it?" And you answered: "There is nothing you can say about the experience that gets to the truth." ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305809038291144710/" "stablecross", "1305809038291144710", "wrf3" <- "1305680861560549377" ( 29): 2/ Nevertheless, if there is nothing you can say about such an experience that gets to the truth, then that should be the case for all experience. Yet you act as if there is, in fact, some kind of truth to be discovered. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304089519864512512/" "stablecross", "1304089519864512512", "wrf3" <- "1303899768003985410" ( 19): I'm not sure what you mean by "solid". We can't escape evaluating sense data through the lens of our a priori beliefs. That implies that our evaluation of sense data is only as "solid" as our lens. If our a priori idea of infinity is illusory, then so is our evaluations. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304249153636179969/" "jswillims21", "1304249153636179969", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304089519864512512" ( 20): No, since we quite easily gain knowledge of objective representation without infinity. If I measure an object, I do not necessarily assume an infinity, but merely a scale applied to a representation. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304385940379533312/" "stablecross", "1304385940379533312", "wrf3" <- "1304249153636179969" ( 21): What's the area of a circle? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304596780785561600/" "jswillims21", "1304596780785561600", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304385940379533312" ( 22): For an imaginary circle we need to resort to a transcendental irrational number to make the system work. There are no perfect circles in nature. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1304758136377491459/" "stablecross", "1304758136377491459", "wrf3" <- "1304596780785561600" ( 23): Your mind, and the contents thereof, are a part of nature, are they not? Why don't you turn it inside-out and say that nature is an approximation of infinity? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304982306130743297/" "jswillims21", "1304982306130743297", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304758136377491459" ( 24): What do you mean by nature? If you mean the world as it really is, then the only possibility would be that our thoughts are the approximation. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1304982624482594816/" "jswillims21", "1304982624482594816", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1304982306130743297" ( 24): How would you make the case that nature is a part of infinity. It strikes me as a case of concluding your premise. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305098445733212160/" "stablecross", "1305098445733212160", "wrf3" <- "1304982624482594816" ( 25): 1/ Not a conclusion. A premise. "Infinity is really real" is as much of a _premise_ as "infinity is not really real" is a _premise_. IMO, there's a duality in play here. You can argue your case all day long, and I'll peck away at it all day long, but never succeed in ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305099458460487680/" "stablecross", "1305099458460487680", "wrf3" <- "1304982624482594816" ( 25): 2/ in forcing a contradiction. At best, all I can do is get you to question your assumptions. On the other hand, I can argue my case all day long, you can chip away at it, but never force a contradiction. I we could agree that there's a duality here, then that would be great. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305367075507122176/" "jswillims21", "1305367075507122176", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305099458460487680" ( 26): They are contradictory views of reality based on contradictory assumptions. It is always good to question your assumptions. I assure I have done so for decades. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305489937823866886/" "stablecross", "1305489937823866886", "wrf3" <- "1305367075507122176" ( 27): So have I. Do you think there's a duality at play, or do you think one set of assumptions is "right" and the other wrong, or one is more practical the other less, or maybe they're both wrong? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305097634873516034/" "stablecross", "1305097634873516034", "wrf3" <- "1304982306130743297" ( 25): Sure. As one philosopher put it, "we see through a glass, darkly." ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1305366643544072192/" "jswillims21", "1305366643544072192", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1305097634873516034" ( 26): That was the Apostle Paul, and it only reinforces the point that our limited faculties perceive reality only to a very limited and approximate degree. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1305489133134061570/" "stablecross", "1305489133134061570", "wrf3" <- "1305366643544072192" ( 27): Yes, but what is it we are perceiving? Does this endless approximation converge or diverge? If it converges, to what does it converge? How do you know? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303899633014444033/" "jswillims21", "1303899633014444033", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303899488592031745" ( 18): 3/ beginning of practical mathematics where there was an ontological bond between world events and our subjective understanding. In his words, the world “suggested events” to which we brought our a priori concept of number. This is the sense data/pure categories of understanding ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303808849451810817/" "jswillims21", "1303808849451810817", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303644490138222592" ( 18): Thank you for your thoughtful reply. It deserves a thoughtful response which I can't do until sometime this evening. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303641537964699648/" "stablecross", "1303641537964699648", "wrf3" <- "1303534487540817922" ( 17): 1/ First, I did, in fact, read the links. Well, I skimmed the second. WLC is a hack, IMO, and I wasn't particularly interested in digging deep there. As to the first link, I agreed with much of what you said. It was what you didn't say that's more interesting. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303642301911060483/" "stablecross", "1303642301911060483", "wrf3" <- "1303534487540817922" ( 17): 2/ You addressed the relationship by stating that description is an approximation to reality. In software terms, description is a second class citizen. Infinity, which is in all of our deepest descriptions, is an illusion. But if that's so, then it can be credibly claimed... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303642749464264704/" "stablecross", "1303642749464264704", "wrf3" <- "1303534487540817922" ( 17): 3/ that everything is an illusion, including our conversation. That's certainly on philosophical "geometry". One could also say that there is an accidental relationship between description and nature. Then you get your position; there is something really real, ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303643342677225473/" "stablecross", "1303643342677225473", "wrf3" <- "1303534487540817922" ( 17): 4/ ... but, at best, our descriptions only approximate it (whatever it really is. Maybe we'll never know). That's a second "geometry". A third possibility is that description and Nature are fundamentally related, so that neither is more basic than the other (a poor... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303644022414520320/" "stablecross", "1303644022414520320", "wrf3" <- "1303534487540817922" ( 17): 5/ ... analogy would be wave/particle duality that we see in QM). So if we have a nature/description duality then infinity plays an interesting role. If infinity is really real, instead of being an allusion, then physical reality is an approximation to the real. ... ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303499292041191425/" "jswillims21", "1303499292041191425", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303499208004120578" ( 14): 4/ mathematics can provide a provisional approximation of a limited scope of reality. It seems that mathematics is approximate enough to provide some explanation within bounded space, time, and carefully chosen events. Beyond that limitation, what he calls the invariability ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303499375528869889/" "jswillims21", "1303499375528869889", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303499292041191425" ( 14): 5/ principles become stretched to the breaking point and no longer hold. He holds the contradictions of Newtonian physics, Relativity and quantum mechanics as analogs to the non-Euclidean geometries. There is no unified and coherent explanation of the universe, but small and ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303499452158824449/" "jswillims21", "1303499452158824449", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303499375528869889" ( 14): 6/ bounded approximations. Your idea of infinity is necessary to make your numbers work, but that is very different from infinity actually existing. I go into more explanation here: toolateforthegods.com/2020/09/02/res… and here: toolateforthegods.com/2020/09/05/scr… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303507754556981248/" "stablecross", "1303507754556981248", "wrf3" <- "1303499452158824449" ( 15): 5/ Or is reality like Escher's Hands, interlocking, one giving rise to another? How do you know? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303506870796267525/" "stablecross", "1303506870796267525", "wrf3" <- "1303499115926638593" ( 15): 3/ Relativity shows that mass curves space, so non-Euclidean geometries do describe reality. While there may not be a coherent unified explanation of the universe as a whole (yet), they all incorporate infinities. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303505499573411842/" "stablecross", "1303505499573411842", "wrf3" <- "1303498992093933574" ( 15): 1/ I didn't use the word "necessarily". What we find, however, is that we can't describe nature without it. Yes, there is much we can think that doesn't exist, but the things we can think that are necessary to describe reality are in a different class. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/stablecross/status/1303506181760126981/" "stablecross", "1303506181760126981", "wrf3" <- "1303498992093933574" ( 15): 2/ From there, it isn't unreasonable to accept that descriptions of reality are just as real as reality. Does that make reality stranger than we might think? Sure, but reality is already stranger than we think (as quantum mechanics shows). ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/seiveviour/status/1303445518429884418/" "seiveviour", "1303445518429884418", "sieve_the_world" <- "1303442000767782919" ( 11): You and I worship different spirits. I wish you well. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Clifford9396220/status/1303218830253027328/" "Clifford9396220", "1303218830253027328", "Darth Coronas" <- "1303216503207071746" ( 1): Well you know, when you can't even recognise metaphysical claims... twitter.com/jswillims21/st… ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303219030828949504/" "jswillims21", "1303219030828949504", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303218830253027328" ( 2): And you can't produce any. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Clifford9396220/status/1303219264510255107/" "Clifford9396220", "1303219264510255107", "Darth Coronas" <- "1303219030828949504" ( 3): And how would you know that? ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303219476398301185/" "jswillims21", "1303219476398301185", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303219264510255107" ( 4): Your failure to do so. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Clifford9396220/status/1303219704526286848/" "Clifford9396220", "1303219704526286848", "Darth Coronas" <- "1303219476398301185" ( 5): You actually think that follows? You suck at logic sir. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/jswillims21/status/1303220041429774336/" "jswillims21", "1303220041429774336", "Jeffrey Williams" <- "1303219704526286848" ( 6): Sure. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/Clifford9396220/status/1303220501993545728/" "Clifford9396220", "1303220501993545728", "Darth Coronas" <- "1303220041429774336" ( 7): Indeed. ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/ron_gaul/status/1303220663851810816/" "ron_gaul", "1303220663851810816", "Ron Gaul 🌹" <- "1303220501993545728" ( 8): It’s pretty clear you have nothing but sophistry ---------- url: "http://mobile.twitter.com/SpookBoyz/status/1303351167754342401/" "SpookBoyz", "1303351167754342401", "Spookins" <- "1303220663851810816" ( 9): Or you guys are just out of your depths on this one