Is There Progress in Philosophy?

[uwot]

I think you should try and catch up with the breaking news because it's been known for well over a century that mass is an emergent property of energy.

OK. So, what is energy? Does that just exist, or is it a property of some substance?

[Skip]

I don't mean to interrupt this discussion, I'd just like to offer a thought regarding the topic title...

I think it depends (as maybe with all things) on the scope we're talking about. If we're talking about philosophy within the human bubble we're familiar with, it seems there would be progress as we discover and define more elements and angles of what we're able to create and perceive where we are. However, if we expect that our philosophy somehow reflects what is truly beyond our human capabilities of perception and understanding, then it's surely fantasy. So our contemplations may progress within the bubble... and that's all fun and entertaining... but outside of the human bubble, our ideas likely mean nothing.

That's why it's such a good idea to agree on terms, scope, range, standards and method.
I often think philosophers are each practising a separate discipline - or at least their own custom-mixed brand of it.

[Obvious Leo]

I think you should try and catch up with the breaking news because it's been known for well over a century that mass is an emergent property of energy.

OK. So, what is energy? Does that just exist, or is it a property of some substance?

The buck must stop somewhere, uwot, and in my philosophy I regard the notions of energy and information as synonymous terms at the fundamental scale. There must be a smallest possible unit of physical reality which is no further divisible and from which the properties of all phenomena are emergent. Max Planck showed that energy must be quantised in this way and Einstein gave us the mass/energy equivalence principle. It was from these two profoundly significant developments in 20th century physics that Wheeler conceived of his "it from bit" universe and I'm saying that Wheeler was right. However Wheeler did not consider the work of von Neumann, Shannon, Turing, Conway, Mandelbrot and others and thus didn't realise that his inspired concept was defining reality as a non-linear computation. It would have taken a considerable leap of conceptual daring for him to do this, of course, because such a self-generating informational universe cannot be modelled within the spacetime paradigm which physics had mandated for itself. Physics assumes a universe which is insufficient to its own existence.

[Lacewing]

That's why it's such a good idea to agree on terms, scope, range, standards and method.

Do you think we can do all that?

I often think philosophers are each practising a separate discipline - or at least their own custom-mixed brand of it.

It does seem that way. Might that be because there are as many varied philosophies as there are people?

Have philosophers ever sat down and agreed on all the same points... or is the whole point to continually stretch/contemplate/challenge BEYOND?

[Skip]

[agree on terms, scope, range, standards and method.]
Do you think we can do all that?

No. But, once in a way, I like to bring up the possibility of trying. When someone poses an open-ended (-topped and -sided) question like this one, people tend to free-associate on it, which can be interesting and/ or meaningless.
I like to suggest a focus. Risto indulged me this time. Other times, nobody wants to play.

[ separate discipline ]
It does seem that way. Might that be because there are as many varied philosophies as there are people?

Well, there ought to be as many life-philosophies and world-views. But there aren't really so many articulated philosophies. Some categories are better defined and delineated than others - as witness Leo's speciality.
I suppose it's subject to fashion, culture and manipulation, so the number of acolytes who cluster* around any particular school of thought changes over time.

(* I picture this as bb's drawing toward magnets. The closely attached ones actually study the philosophy, read and debate every word of the oracle who made it up. The next couple of layers understand the central idea and basics, but don't have the precise vocabulary. The outer fringes understand very little but repeat the buzz-words. Maybe some scavenger sub-magnets attract away the fringe BB's with various misconstructions and perversions of the original philosophy.)

Have philosophers ever sat down and agreed on all the same points...

A Paris conference to standardize the units? I have no idea. I guess they hold conventions, though - I mean, they're too smart to miss out on such an opportunity.

or is the whole point to continually stretch/contemplate/challenge BEYOND?

Could be that, too. It sure sounds better than just soapboxing.

[Greta]

We can nevertheless draw a number of conclusions from the historical evidence. There is ample evidence that our own galaxy has eaten a number of dwarf galaxies over the past 10 billion years and there is no logical reason to suppose that bigger galaxies will not devour smaller ones as a matter of cosmological principle. This is no different from the interstellar cloud of gas and dust coalescing under the influence of gravity except being transacted on a grander scale.

Agreed, if not quite relevant to my comment.

Don't forget that mine is a bang/crunch model so imagine how slowly time must have been passing at the big bang compared with the speed at which we're hurtling into the future now.

The bounce model is only one possibility. I find the idea of an oscillating universe - whatever the model - seems like something you might expect from nature.

I plead provocation. The "stuff of space" indeed. What next. Virtual particles popping into existence out of fucking nowhere? You're surely not expecting me to seriously address such bollocks. These are mathematical constructs and not physical ones. ( as is your comment about inflation which I simply ignored.)

Provocation? Note the inverted commas I used. Note that space is never empty (which is why it's not actually "space" as such) and is full of radioactive, gravitational, nuclear and magnetic activity.

Leo, old boy, must you salivate every time you hear the "bell" like Pavlov's pooch? What's your IQ, man? Top 1-2%? Yet you "salivate" every time you read the word "space" like a dog with an IQ of bugger all! We've long agreed that space, matter and energy are the same stuff in different densities and configurations so your response to me is akin to barking at a friendly regular visitor because they might look like an intruder if you squint hard enough.

Naughty Leo!

... we've talked about this before, the actual lack of hard distinction between space, energy and matter. It's all the same stuff, part of one thing, just in different densities and configurations. That's why true space doesn't exist - it's not empty, just thinner. It's all still part of this one humungous network of "stuff" (assumed to be fundamental at Planck scale at this stage).

At the Planck scale we have only quanta of energy from which matter is emergent. Quanta of energy are zero-volume points with no spatial extension so where the hell does space come from? How many zero-volume nothings does it take to produce something with a volume? If we simply define volume as an observer effect this simplest of metaphysical questions simply vanishes.

1. We can't be sure that the Planck scale is fundamental

2. A Planck length is not zero, but 1.616×10⁻³⁵ metres

[Obvious Leo]

The bounce model is only one possibility.

It's a perfectly valid solution to the Friedmann equations and accords perfectly with the philosophies of many cultures.

1. We can't be sure that the Planck scale is fundamental

I agree. I only use the term because the concept is familiar. However the notion of the energy quanta derived by Planck are indeed fundamental and these informational quanta must operate at a finite scale, however we choose to model such behaviour.

2. A Planck length is not zero, but 1.616×10⁻³⁵ metres

An old-fashioned definition in physics which is no longer used, Greta, because ascribing a spatial extension to the behaviour of particles is meaningless in the Standard Model. Nowadays all spatial units are expressed in time intervals so the fundamental "distance" in physics is actually 5.4 x 10^ -44 SECONDS.

[uwot]

The buck must stop somewhere, uwot, and in my philosophy I regard the notions of energy and information as synonymous terms at the fundamental scale.

Fair enough. So what is this information written on?

[Obvious Leo]

The buck must stop somewhere, uwot, and in my philosophy I regard the notions of energy and information as synonymous terms at the fundamental scale.

Fair enough. So what is this information written on?

Nothing. Every informational quantum exists solely in its own temporal referential frame and its interactions with all other informational quanta are purely relational. It is these dynamic relationships which specify for physical reality.

[uwot]

The buck must stop somewhere, uwot, and in my philosophy I regard the notions of energy and information as synonymous terms at the fundamental scale.

Fair enough. So what is this information written on?

Nothing. Every informational quantum exists solely in its own temporal referential frame and its interactions with all other informational quanta are purely relational. It is these dynamic relationships which specify for physical reality.

So basically, it's an upgrade of Democritus. I still don't understand what your informational quanta are made of. When this big crunch happens, how big will it be?

[Obvious Leo]

So basically, it's an upgrade of Democritus.

Very much so, except the "bits" have a more modern definition. Obviously there's plenty of Heraclitus to be found in it as well, as well as most of the other pre-Socratics, if it comes to that. However it's also quite correct to place a fully modern interpretation on this model because I quite specifically define physical reality as a computation, a definition which I insist must be taken literally.

I still don't understand what your informational quanta are made of.

They're "bits" of energy, just as Planck defined them and Einstein proved with E=mcc. At the fundamental scale energy is all there is so you can think of the universe as the journey of quanta of energy through time/gravity.

When this big crunch happens, how big will it be?

As big as it can get, mate. The entire cosmos collapses into a universe-sized black hole. However this is a black hole without a singularity so time cannot stand still. Ever so slowly the information must leak out of it again and a new reality is born.

[uwot]

... "bits" of energy...

As I said, energy is not a thing. Every definition of energy characterises it as a property of matter and is a combination of velocity/mass/wavelength/ gravitational potential and so on. There is no such thing as 'pure energy'.

At the fundamental scale energy is all there is so you can think of the universe as the journey of quanta of energy through time/gravity.

So is this energy gravity? If not, it seems to me that you are committed to a dualist ontology, and just like Descartes, there is no mechanism to explain how they interact. The alternative is to explain how a force as feeble as gravity can give rise to forces many orders of magnitude greater, yet which act on a much smaller scale. Without a mechanism, you are reliant on some Leibnizian 'apetition', some 'spooky action at a distance'. I want to know how things work. I don't see that you are offering an explanation other than 'It just does'.

[Risto]

Have philosophers ever sat down and agreed on all the same points... or is the whole point to continually stretch/contemplate/challenge BEYOND?

I find this line of an essay from Zach Weber very compelling and I think it touches your question nicely:

"... mathematics appears to make progress because mathematicians, the people who practice mathematics, accept its results. More than content or method, this is the key difference between mathematics (and science, more generally), and philosophy: mathematicians are very different from philosophers. Mathematicians have an agreed upon method—proofs. But proofs are only compelling to people inclined to be compelled by those proofs. Literate people all along have disputed various proof techniques (geometric intuition? non-constructive proof?), inference rules (reductio ad absurdum? proof by cases?), the concepts the proof is about (infinitesimals? transfinite numbers?), and the results themselves (the intermediate value theorem). All that happens is that these people—the dissenters—become, by definition, not merely mathematicians. They become philosophers.

To illustrate, consider the following common scene: The audience arrives at the seminar, takes their seats, and listens as the speaker presents some ideas. The ideas unfold like a story—setting, main characters, the problem facing our protagonists and how the tension is resolved. The speaker is working largely from personal intuition, which is then controlled by careful argumentation. Some parts are clear, some are murky, but overall, if the talk is a decent one, the speaker has made some claims that he believes are true, or are likely to turn out to be true, and hopes the audience will agree. Up to this point, this could be a description of a mathematics or philosophy seminar equally. The disciplines have a lot in common. But then we get to the end of the presentation, and it is time for questions. Here the troubles begin.

In the mathematics seminar, there are few questions. These are short and inevitably seeking clarification, or perhaps pointing out a helpful connection. That is, the presumption is that the speaker has been correct, more or less; the seminar has been a report of new, true results in the given field. Not being experts in the same field, most of the people in the audience don’t really understand a lot of what was said in the talk (especially towards the end). Accordingly, they don’t say much. Question time lasts all of five minutes and then it is time to go back to the office and think things through. It is time to go away and derive for oneself a positive answer to the question: Why is what I just heard true? The situation is rather different in the philosophy seminar room. Question time is as long, or longer, than the presentation itself. Many people in the audience did not understand a lot of what was said in the talk (especially towards the end), but this is no hindrance at all to asking discursive, impromptu questions that may or may not terminate in an upward inflection of tone. The questions are challenges, or ‘worries’ as we call them—prodding searches for points of weakness in what was said, attempts to deflate, debunk, or even demolish whatever positive theory was just put forward. The questions are inherently critical and antagonistic, even if the questioner is polite. It is time to answer to the question: Why is what we just heard false?"

[Lacewing]

Mathematics... Why is what I just heard true? .../... Philosophy... Why is what we just heard false?"

Very interesting! I can see it. Thank you!

By this description, I am a natural-born philosopher, because I continually question what we think we know. I realize this might be irritating for some people. I'm sorry for that. Truly, as long as I've been on this planet, I've had the sense that the point of life/experience was to keep M0VING ON, because there is always more to discover and realize. Truth does not stand still. Dogma seems created because humans think they need it. Yet, it's like gazing at an old yellowing snapshot of an image in time (a cosmic "selfie" of humankind, if you will), while there's an ongoing vibrant explosion of newly created life all around/throughout us continually.

Some people (like me) are intrigued by this... while others might think it's too "out there" to have any validity. Yet, I wonder, how can we POSSIBLY think that where we "are" right now is "all there is"... when we know that humans throughout evolving history thought the SAME THING of themselves at EACH STAGE? WHEN do we stop thinking like that? Why must we believe that we're at a pinnacle (and have the truth locked down) in order for there to be meaning for us? Why can't we realize meaning in the extraordinary moments of an ongoing and ever-expanding experience?

[Skip]

Why is what we just heard false?"

I like that! Thanks, Risto.

Then, we may ask: Should there be progress in philosophy?
Is the notion of a linear path from an unremembered A to an unfathomable B relevant and useful here?