4 ms·
I cringed every time he referenced Physics. It's something I've seen other philosophers do in an attempt to legitimize their beliefs by implying that they codif
by jschwartzi 12y ago
I cringed every time he referenced Physics. It's something I've seen other philosophers do in an attempt to legitimize their beliefs by implying that they codify the natural order.
In truth, dynamic emptiness has absolutely nothing to do with quantum froth, which could be described using any objects and still make sense. This concept of some unseen physical manifestation of the model arises because of the terms a theoretician chose to identify elements of his mathematical model. They're essentially undefined terms, given meaning by their context in the larger physical system.
A lot of people get lost in the undefined terms, thinking that because we use a familiar word for the term, that the item in the model which the term identifies somehow actually exists. Actually there's no proof that the quantum froth exists as physical object, any more than that light is somehow both a wave and a particle. Rather, wave/particle "duality" is a consequence of different mathematical models which happen to generate results which are consistent with observation.
The "duality" doesn't actually exist, and the way light behaves is so incredibly nuanced that people dedicate their lives to modeling and testing it. Waveness and Particleness are models which produce mathematics consistent with the natural world.
In the cases where more than one mathematical model fits the same set of observations, scientific controversies arise. A Physical theory is accepted when the mathematical model produces results which are consistent with observation, and sufficient experimental work has been done to rule out other mathematical models with overlapping explanatory power.
My thermodynamics professor opened all of his classes by saying "Everything I am about to tell you is a carefully constructed series of lies."
- jjb123 12y agoTruth is not to be found by picking everything to pieces like a spoilt child. -from this very article
- Steven_Bukal 12y agoWhy not? Picking everything to pieces is exactly what those people (theoretical and practical scientists) who seem to have the most success in approximating truth do. These are the methods that best produce accurate predictions about the future and best produce designs for new technologies that actually work.
- coldtea 12y agoThat's not "truth" though, that's "reality" or "the physical world" and the two notions are quite different.
- Steven_Bukal 12y agoBeliefs are what we use to model how the world is and what the results of actions and experiments will be. Reality is what actually determines those results, regardless of what we might believe. Truth is then the set of beliefs about the world that accurately model reality. And I'll say it again, the scientists who spend decades picking things to pieces are the ones who end up with the most accurate beliefs. They find the most truth.
- coldtea 12y ago>Truth is then the set of beliefs about the world that accurately model reality. That's just one of the definitions of truth, and a quite naive one at that. Not just philosophy, even epistemology have not been using this for ages.
- Steven_Bukal 12y agoIt's a correspondence definition. And actually I understand correspondence has been one of the most popular theories of truth since Plato and Aristotle, continuing to the present.
- jschwartzi 12y agoIt's also known as Analysis, which is the opposite of Synthesis. Analytic thinking is central to science.
- patcon 12y agoA child who knows his toys well might find it tough to ignore liberties taken in discussing them. As someone interested in mindfulness for its own pursuits, I want to learn what's in my teacher's head, rather than listen to them try unsuccessfully to tie that to what's firmly in mine. I'm sorry to say it's distracting :)
- davesque 12y agoI find that pill very hard to swallow. It's just too self-serving. Any religious figure is going to try to convince people not to pay any attention to the "man behind the curtain."