Citizenschallenge's Review of Hoffman's "Case Against Reality"

Philosophy
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Explain why you think it is arbitrary?

How is it based on nature?

As it relates to the topic at hand we are exploring the value of abstractions, products of the imagination.

You have a point which I will try to expand on. Is there anything in the imagination that didn’t originate somehow in nature? The answer is obviously no because to conclude otherwise would be to assert that something exists outside nature. Yet you seem perfectly happy with the term artificial which implies something not a part of nature. You say well it just means man made. If man is part of nature why make the distinction? It is relevant here because citizenschallenge as I understand him is arguing that a bit of the dualism of man and nature still exists in our thinking. I’m not saying you are making that mistake. It is why I hardly ever challenge you. Where we disagree is on how things that are not “real” in the scientific sense have value.

Every physicist I have talked to agrees that math and logic are abstract, not to be confused with the thing itself. Now you are going to ask me why is that important. To which I will once more say some things that are not “real” have value. It is related in a way to what Hoffman is saying about imagination. I don’t really care for the way he goes about it but that is a minor point.

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I asked you that. You don’t seem to want to answer basic questions or agree on common definitions. Instead, you insist that others accept your definitions. We COULD have a nice conversation about man being part of nature, or the meaning of “man-made” or any number of interesting esoteric “fun with language” topics. But you make it not fun. You claim your way of looking it is THE way, the way that is relevant to the topic, the way we should all comply with. You’ve been going in circles for over a month. I’m bored now.

23

You keep asking the same questions I give you the same answers, what would you expect?

I made no such claim but what would be the point of a conversation if we agreed on every point or definition?

I started this topic to avoid what you are complaining about. To give you someone else to talk about their ideas with. So you wouldn’t be bored talking to me. Unfortunately that is not going to happen I guess.

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Dialog

Not asking for agreement. I’m asking you to engage ideas and build on them. I’m happy to learn. Reading repetition of statements that are not backed up with anything, not so much.

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You didn’t address the main point of my last comment. You don’t have to respond to me there are other people you can have dialog with. Perhaps you will find them interesting.

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I agree with lausten. Is philosophy not founded on scientific evidence?
Without evidence how can one fashion a philosophy of the underlying principles? Then it just becomes a belief, no?

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I started a thread on this. It’s in the philosophy section, but asks where the lines are drawn.

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I’m assuming that lausten has adopted Weinberg’s attitude towards philosophy which basically is it is of little use to science. I’m making that assumption because he mentioned him. I presented a detailed argument of why that may be true for physics but less so for sciences such as biology that have to deal with complex chaotic system that are difficult to use a reductionist approach for. Over many posts I have laid out why an mechanistic approach may not be the best option. It is complicated and hard to follow. I have basically stopped trying and hoped this thread would be a way to start over.

The answer to your question I have already given. Philosophy is not science. In the same way mathematics and logic are not science. Philosophy, mathematics and logic are tools scientist can use. To be clear but I’m just repeating myself again. I believe that science is necessary for moral and ethical philosophy because of consequences. It may be necessary for the “big question” such as consciousness. As I said though philosophy has kind of moved on recently from the big questions to be more about logic and mathematics. I suspect that most people have missed that because it isn’t “interesting”. That kind of philosophy like mathematics in general are only read by people in a particular field for the most part. There are some epistemological questions that are perhaps of more interest to the general population that a philosophical perspective can be useful for.

The problem we are having, as I keep pointing out, is that we do not share a philosophy of science. You may think that is just another rabbit hole but I do not. It has to do with the importance of imagination in science. Another complex topic I scratched the surface of.

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Let’s use the definitions.

Philosophy (‘love of wisdom’ in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
Philosophy - Wikipedia

In the end, philosophy must rest on available “knowledge”.
Else it is “belief”, and that is not philosophy.

The difference lies in the method of explanation. While philosophy uses philosophical arguments and philosophical principles, science makes use of empirical data and objective evidence. Science uses empirical data to validate its theories. It takes the answers of experiment and proves them to be right or wrong.Mar 5, 2023

But all philosophy is based on “knowledge”, i.e. “science.”

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But even chaotic systems are founded on simple mathematics. It is the sheer interacting quantities that create chaotic systems , not the mathematical principles.

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A broccoli plant.
A complex growth pattern, based on a simple growth principle.

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Here is the way I would think about it. Science is a philosophy but philosophy is not a science.

I’m guessing you think I’m making an obscure and meaningless point. I wanted to wait until citizenschallenge replied to move on but we can have our own conversation.

I don’t think we want to get locked into formal definitions accept those that philosophy has worked out over many centuries. Philosophy uses it’s own definitions for the same reason that science uses the dead language of Latin. With living languages the meaning of terms tend to change over time and they lose some of their internal logic. For example philosophy has a definition of determinism that eliminates some of the vagueness of colloquial language. When you use the word determinism other philosophers know fairly precise what you mean and you don’t have to get into redefining the term as you would with colloquial language. It is a kind of shorthand. The reason I say that we shouldn’t get too locked into formal definitions is that, as you say, you can’t really separate philosophy from science because they are co-evolving culturally.

Part of that cultural evolution is that philosophy in response to criticism from scientists is becoming more focused on math and logic as opposed to the “big questions”. It is not a new “species” yet but it is moving in a direction that we can get a hint of. Science is also changing in response to philosophical critiques. You can see it in ideas such as “we live in a mathematical universe”. That transformation is also not complete.

It is my opinion that science is going back to it’s roots and becoming natural philosophy again. In part due to uncertainties raised by Quantum Mechanics but mostly due to the recognition that it is based on abstractions. It is illustrated by the concept of Mathematical fictionalism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-mathematics/

I’m not onboard with everything the article says but it gives you and idea of the questions it raises. The part I would debate is “are wholly nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatial, nontemporal, and noncausal”. Take out the word wholly and replace it with philosophically to insert the proper humility.

If you ask for the supporting arguments we will be at this for years, which I guess is ok. Unfortunately I’m old and I don’t expect to live long enough to solve it :slight_smile: In fact my argument if I proceed will be to say we don’t need to solve it. Something along the lines of what Dennett tries to address when he says the “phenomenal confusion over phenomenology”.

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From your link.

So, for instance, on the platonist view, the sentence ‘3 is prime’ provides a straightforward description of a certain object—namely, the number 3—in much the same way that the sentence ‘Mars is red’ provides a description of Mars. But whereas Mars is a physical object, the number 3 is (according to platonism) an abstract object. And abstract objects, platonists tell us, are wholly nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatial, nontemporal, and noncausal.

It describes a value. What David Bohm called “the implicate”.
This “enfolded” value (potential) may become expressed whenl it interacts physically with another object.

Thus, on this view, the number 3 exists independently of us and our thinking, but it does not exist in space or time, it is not a physical or mental object, and it does not enter into causal relations with other objects.

Again, it describes an intrinsic value, but it may become expressed during a causal relationship with other objects.

Example: the body of water in a mountain lake has an enfolded gravitational value, that may become expressed incrementally as energy through a downstream water fed generator.

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Are you familiar with David Bohm’s major work called “Wholeness and the Implicate order”? If no, I can recommend it for both its scientific and philosophical values. It describes the wave function interference in chaotic systems

AFAIK, it does away with the concept and mystery of particle/wave duality, like Schrodinger’s cat and assigns a specific value (spacetime coordinate) to a particle without the need for observation.

and the free PDF of the book:
http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/DavidBohm-WholenessAndTheImplicateOrder.pdf

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No I wasn’t aware of it, sounds interesting.

Your post is very interesting, it shows me that at least we are communicating.

Intrinsic value is certainly something we need to discuss. I like to say all values are subjective. It is a statement that can be easily misunderstood. It is related to the question of if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound? The obvious answer is it produces sound waves but what is the value of those sound waves to somebody who didn’t hear them? If someone was there and they heard the tree crack before it fell that would have obvious value to them if they happened to be standing where it was going to fall. It is the same as your example.

What is the value of the enfolded gravitational value of the elevated water to someone who is uninterested in hydro-power? The value as you put it is intrinsic but it’s meaning is subjective. That is unless you have an evolutionary perspective. Hearing and energy have an obvious value to fitness. To successfully reproduce and insure the survival of offspring the subject needs hearing and energy.

I designed highways for the state most of my life. When I was thinking of how to respond to an earlier post I was thinking of how I could use that experience as an example. Highway design starts with an evaluation of what is needed. For example how many lanes should be constructed. The design however really started before the engineer becomes involved. The values of people drive the design. Where they decided to live for example. In some ultimate sense what location would increase there individual and group fitness. They may think they are making the decision based on what would give them the most satisfaction within the limits of their resources. The question however is what are they satisfying. Satisfaction in this case means instincts or feelings, emotions. The reason for the instincts is of course fitness.

As an engineer I had to do calculations in coordination with the planning department to guess where people would live in the future. It wasn’t enough to just take existing traffic volumes to determine how many lanes were needed. Part of that calculation had to take into account what people’s values were and what they would be. There is a bit of science involved because it turns out that people’s driving behavior is fairly predictable as a group. Factors such as social economic status comes into play. Most of the other engineers rejected the entire process as not being scientific, they thought it was all guess work. Their idea of science were those things that could be reduced to their individual components and studied under controlled conditions. I have even ran into some fairly good engineers or applied scientists who didn’t believe in evolution. They had no concept of bottom up design. The type of design that people engage in when they decide where to live.

I have the feeling I have ran into the same problem here. It’s why I keep talking about solutions without comprehension which is really what evolution is. It is why in the discussion of consciousness I wanted to turn the discussion away from what consciousness is to what are the limitations of consciousness. How much of consciousness is an illusion if you like. In a way avoiding the problem of defining what it is to ask questions that have “value” subjectively. It turns out that if you take away the subject objectivity has no value.

I will try to find some time to study David Bohm’s ideas. Actually assuming intrinsic value seems like a good idea. It fits well with fitness?

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[quote=“wolfhnd, post:33, topic:10907”]
Intrinsic value is certainly something we need to discuss. I like to say all values are subjective.

I believe that is too much of generalization.
It ignores the meaning of Relativity.

I ran across this excellent posit by a person on Quora.

Relativity means that the way that an objective fact can be expressed in different ways is dependent on some condition.

Subjectivity means the way that a judgement is made is dependent on a personal feeling.

For example, you could measure the same length in inches, centimeters, kilometers, and light years. All the measurements mean the same thing, even though the number is relative to the units chosen, and this would be an example of relativity.

On the other hand, you may feel that an animal is beautiful and I may think it ugly. This is a subjective value judgement , and would be an example of subjectivity.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-relativity-and-subjectivity

Wolfhnd said:
It is a statement that can be easily misunderstood. It is related to the question of if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound? The obvious answer is it produces sound waves but what is the value of those sound waves to somebody who didn’t hear them?

Now you are describing “relativity”. A falling tree has many different causal results on its immediate environment.

Objectively, with “inherent (enfolded) values” of that tree, I am thinking more of the tree as a potential table, or a beam in a roof, or a chord of firewood, or a home for termites, or mulch for your garden, or anything that can be fashioned from wood.

All these forms (expressed patterns) are possible due to the “enfolded values” (potentials) inherent in that tree.

And more importantly, a standing tree has a continual biochemical value as a carbon (CO2) scrubber and oxygen (O) generator.

Everything that has (enfolded) values of mass, or energy, or mathematical/physical atomic/molecular interaction with other atomic/ molecular values that may or may not become expressed (unfolded) in reality.

Thus the mountain-lake’s water has an inherent value as a potential source of energy.

Hence the definition of “potential” as “that which may become reality”.
Which translates to “whereas not all potential becomes reality, all reality is preceded by potential”

And it is the value of the potential that becomes deterministic of the result.

All this is totally independent of human presence. All this started with the BB and the “unfolding” of matter from energy.

Whereas all chemistry (matter) interacts in accordance with the mathematics of their intrinsic values, it is man’s greatest accomplishment of observing, codifying, and symbolizing these relative values into human descriptive mathematics, that allows us to understand and imitate the natural interactive processes.

Note that all things and organisms interact via mathematical processing of values. Very few organisms are aware of this, but evolution via natural selection still follows mathematical processes and has allowed insects to “discover” flight long before man appeared on the scene and describe aerodynamics with human mathematics.

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I think we are on the same page. BTW excellent well written post.

Connecting physics to biology is important and that is something you seem keen on. I’m afraid I have never had much interest in physics outside of what was necessary for engineering. I suppose you could say that I had also connected physics to biology although I didn’t explicit do so.

The theory of evolution implicitly implies the above. When I substitute instincts for feelings it shouldn’t be necessary to carry the idea back to the big bang. The intermediate steps are implied but impossible to resolve.

I’m an empiricist by training and inclination but I’m also inclined to leave some room for “determinism” to be only a working theory. By that I mean that true randomness remains a possibility. I see no evidence of that even in Quantum Mechanics but physicists seem to. I would be interested in your comment on that topic.

Years ago when I posed this question in a science forum the physicist said that the universe is deterministic at large scales but indeterminate at very small scales. That seemed like a contradiction to me but I suppose that it depends on interpretation and possible a lack of interest in the question. The biologist said that true randomness wasn’t necessary to account for anything at the biological level. An equally unsatisfying response because if true randomness exists it must effect biology. In a way the answers are the same in that they are saying if true randomness exists we don’t know how it effects “practical” questions. As an engineer I’m use to that kind of perspective. Engineering works by way of approximation. We don’t know what the properties of any specific part are but we know what the general properties are. It assumes that the general properties are close enough after adding some sort of safety margin. You could say the same thing by stating that Newtonian physics is close enough for most engineering with the possible exception of nuclear engineering.

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Thank you, you are most kind.

A little addendum to the above reference to Bohmian mechanics is contained in this:

W4U said:
Hence the definition of “potential” as “that which may become reality”.
Which translates to “whereas not all potential becomes reality, all reality is preceded by potential”

I based this equation on David Bohm’s book “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” and is really worthy of perusal.

Moreover, the deBroglie/ Bohm hypothesis of a Universal Pilot wave and “guiding equation” which solves the particle/wave duality in the double slit experiment and the Schrodinger equation, and is interesting in that it was once totally rejected, but is making a comeback, along with our deeper understanding of fne scale physics.

I also want to mention my interest in Max Tegmark’s (MIT) book on a “Mathematical Universe”, as that seems to agree with Bohm’s “Implicate Order”, which suggest an underlying universal “mathematical ordering function”.

I believe that is formally explained in Chaos Theory.

Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and mathematically deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. These were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities.

Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals and self-organization.[2]
(Chaos theory - Wikipedia)

I can see that a extremely fine scales such as quantum fields, individual objects (values) may not affect anything and without a relational action with another object (value), the field may apear to be chaotic.

This is why I mentioned the BB, because that initial inflationary epoch of the universal plasma was totally chaotic and random, until the cooling allowed the formation of emergent self-organizing mathematical patterns as described by Chaos Theory.

The expressed order (deterministic pattern) is achieved by the mathematical physical interaction of two or more relational values/objects

But I admit that is speculative on my part. I don’t have the scientific chops to make any kind of formal hypothesis on this.

I’ll come back to you on the question of apparently random biological systems , which may or may not be random, but probabilistic in the same way as natural selection is a probabilistic but relationally deterministically evolved adaption to the environment.

Not all values interact with each other by the same mathematical function.
Example: attraction and repulsion are dependend on the polar orientation of the objects. It is impossible for 2 opposing negative or positive poles to attract. Instead they actively repulse each other.

When two magnets are placed with their like poles facing each other, the lines of force are in opposite directions and hence like poles repel each other. When the unlike poles of a bar magnet face each other the magnetic lines of force are in the same direction and hence unlike poles attract each other.
...

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I don’t want to put too fine a point on it but Chaos Theory has more to do with dealing with systems that appear to be chaotic than randomness itself.

I best I can tell nobody does.

I’m going to do a bit of reading and get back with you if I have any questions.

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I have starting reading the book. Will take some time :slight_smile:

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Actually I can already tell the Bohm is addressing the same question that other “rebels” are addressing. I suppose you could state it as is reality actually comprehensible or reducible? That question invokes another. Why do we care when reductionistic science has been so successful? Moore had an answer to that question and so does Bohm. I put it another way, reality is a complex chaotic system that is irreducible. As you say chaos theory tries to deal with that. To me Wolfram’s approach using computers to create patterns from initial conditions still appeals to me. What I call solutions without comprehension.

Anyway there are lots of tidbits of interesting examples of “implicated order” so I will keep reading.

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I ran into an interesting aside when trying to find a reference I needed to understand implicated order. Something I was trying to explain about logic but couldn’t make clear.

It has been suspected since long before Bell that Quantum Mechanics is in conflict with classical logic. For example, deductive logic is based on a number of assumptions, one of which is the Principle of the Excluded Middle: all statements are either true or false.

But consider the following multiple choice test question:

  1. The electron is a wave.
  2. The electron is a particle.
  3. All of the previous.
  4. None of the above.

From wave-particle duality we know that both statements 1 and 2 are both sort of true and sort of false. This seems to call into question the Principle of the Excluded Middle. Thus, some people have worked on a multi-valued logic that they hope will be more consistent with the tests of Bells’ Theorem and therefore with Quantum Mechanics. Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters has a good discussion of such a quantum logic; since numerous editions of this book exist and every chapter is numbered 0, I can’t supply a more detailed reference.

Mathematics itself can be viewed as just a branch of deductive logic, so if we revise the rules of logic we will need to devise a new mathematics

You may be interested to know that deductive logic has proved that logic is incomplete. The proof was published in 1931 by Gödel; a good reference is Hofstader’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. The key to Gödel’s work is self-reference; we shall see an example of self-reference in the next sub-section. What he proved was that any mathematics at all, unless it is trivially limited, will contain statements that are neither true nor false but simply unprovable.

https://faraday.physics.utoronto.ca/PVB/Harrison/BellsTheorem/BellsTheorem.html