Scott Mayers wrote:You keep begging the stupidity of math and logic here as functionally unmeaningful here, Leo. If you don't find such thinking rational, you can't expect value of using it to defend your own position. If numbers, math, models, laws, or any logical means are allowed, why should anyone trust what you have to say regarding them? What is your basis in reasoning at all?
I believe math reflects natural logic and that no logic is really possible in modern language; at least no logic that can be communicated. All utterances are deconstructed so logic is destroyed in the process. We can think logically to the extent our own thoughts can't be deconstructed but we can't communicate logic or logically.
Perhaps you confused this for ObviousLeo's beliefs.
"Closure" is a concept from logic which has similar related terms like, "finite", as an older related term. The concept describes how something is complete, finished, or understood similarly to a noun. By contrast, "non-closure" refers to something incomplete and acts without an end, as a verb that stands by itself. A noun is a closed concept. A sentence is also a closed concept but requires such closure when it has at least a verb AND a noun, as a subject. A sentence can then become a noun that can be replaced into a new sentence.
In logic, the closed concepts are any premise, and the logic being used is completed when the premises are connected (as verbs) to the conclusion. The argument using the premises and connected logic are the logical sentence while the conclusion acts as another premise (as a noun) that can be used in other further arguments.
Reality is unclosed with respect to time. The term 'time' can both be a verb and a noun. Yet what Leo suggests makes time a verb. And sentences with ONLY such a concept lack meaning because they are not appropriately closed. A closed concept has to be used initially just as premises in an argument. But if "time" were to act as a noun, although the idea makes sense to us when we compare how things (as nouns) change, only if these things are considered real, could you infer "time" as a conclusion to be real. This is because we only understand things or ideas if we at least perceive them.
I say that both closed ideas and non-closed ideas are required to make sense of anything. However, I begin with nothingness as it already implies a closed and non-closed concept by default of what it is. Time biases us only a world where we already exist but disrespects origins as if we are special and privileged. Time also is best described as a fourth dimension at least so that we can use the first three to describe what things are before we use them to describe them moving through time.
For instance, in practice, we cannot make a motion picture before learning how to make individual frames. The proof of this is that photography first had to evolve and then motion pictures became a derivative of using individual frames to create the effect of these things through time. This is why I see it absurd to reverse it and is why even science and math begins statically before introducing dynamic things. The motion picture camera wasn't designed first and then photography afterwards. While it is possible to describe things beginning in a dynamic concept of time first, it is more odd and harder to demonstrate how this could be the case naturally.
However, note that some past theories did try this too. For some, like certain Greek myths have, they thought that Chronos (various spellings exist) came first (a term we derive "chronology" to.) Leo lacks a background in the logic that I do. And while he may think he can defend time as all there is, he is lacking any rational means to grasp fixed things in terms of logic alone. Nothingness is a type of dynamic concept as well but has the added value that it doesn't need time and it biases us to having to define objects that have this as processes without closure.
In a way, he is also indirectly supporting the same 'form' or 'law' concept of a generality prior to having real components. For instance, if we argue for verb-type realities that come first, it would be like saying the idea of flying planes comes before requiring a plane to assure it possible. I'm not against this as I defend Platonic Forms. Yet I include both objects and actions as being necessary to reality.
Another way to think of this is how you could try to define time. We might do this by attempting to use a number line with labeled points on it. But if we labeled such coordinates, we use things like numbers that represent copies of some unit. Time might be described as that which occurs WHEN (begging time) something begins at some point and moves to that point plus one. This gets too complex and circular. Wouldn't it be better to define an origin (a zero) and some unit (a one) that can then be used to define all other concepts that define a line first? But since we interpret time as humans as things changing in space, we have to begin with defining distances without time first, create a model that defines where objects can lie using three dimensions (like spacial pictures) before we define sets of pictures (as another dimension) to make sense of time.
Beating (as in something that keeps time) might require to be possible, but a heart, for instance, is needed prior to being able to justify it as 'beating'.
Time is required to be possible, but requires coordinates of three-dimensional things prior to being able to be meaningful or true. And note that things in such space require the variability or fluidity of space first in order to allow things that could later exist to move through it.
Where space can exist without time, time can only exist only if space is there first. And space must be something that is both what allows it to be of substance (matter) or a nothing (empty).
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Darwin was a clown as well, as it's not random mutation, rather calculable mutation, that epigenetics is starting to unfold.
I agree that mutation is one of the major drivers of species change but I believe the biggest driver in most species most of the time is population bottlenecks. It is not survival of the fittest, genes, or mere chance that determine which individuals survive. It is behavior. Of course there are always deaths and births of individuals in every species so day to day changes have aspects of these bottlenecks. Change is simply much much more pronounced when large percentages of species die. This is why there are no missing links; the missing link never existed at all. If mutation were the largest driver than both types would be found concurrent. No doubt mutation is a major and primary cause of change but it's rather presumptuous of us to assume that mutations are necessarily random. I wouldn't use terms like they are experiments of nature but there's no reason conditions or unknown forces don't cause mutation.
If you think about the aggregate behavior and the many genes that can become mutated in a species it begins to become clear just how impossibly complex these things are. They can't be modeled any more than a cloud can be predicted or placed in a mould. A cloud can't even be explained except in very general terms. How does one identify each individual water molecule or its trajectory? What are the odds it will look like a horse to some specific ten year old at any given moment? Reality is too complex to model and our attempts are just wrong as proven by the inability to make predictions. We don't notice because of the perspective imparted by the language in which we think. Ancient people referred to our languages as "confused".
Actually, I don't like the word mutation either, as it seems to indicate a change in something which is other than what is normal. Where I see that change is in fact the norm. Life on earth, with all it's variable conditions, can only ever vary, relative to those varying conditions. In other words, environment is everything when it comes to life on planet earth.
SpheresOfBalance wrote: In other words, environment is everything when it comes to life on planet earth.
Enviroment is everything to the species but behavior is everything to the individuals which comprise the species. "Species" don't really exist except as collections of individuals which share characteristics. I believe behavior is closely associated with genes.
Perspective is always everything when communicating. The reality lies outside semantics and language.
We may not differ so much here except semantically.
Jaded Sage wrote:There was this really smart guy who used the word myth instead of model. Concerning individual worldviews, it seems myth is a more apt description.
"Model" is a derivative of "mode"; "mood" is an emotional derivative of this too.
"mode" is a term that we think of regarding optional methods if or where they exist. So by default, "model" often implies optional perceptive devices that can alter and aid in describing the same thing by variable means. One's "mood" also reflects the idea that one can behave or think differently depending on different states of mind.
While you might think this is "myth", you are free to ascribe myths as being models too. But to But are ALL models "myths"?
Scott Mayers wrote:But to But are ALL models "myths"?
In science the answer is a resounding Yes, in the sense that they contain no intrinsic truth value. A model is a construct of the human consciousness and is thus a MAP of the world around us and no more.
Scott Mayers wrote:But to But are ALL models "myths"?
In science the answer is a resounding Yes, in the sense that they contain no intrinsic truth value. A model is a construct of the human consciousness and is thus a MAP of the world around us and no more.
How the hell did I say, "But to But.." Looks like I'm studd-d-derring.
While partially true that others in science state this, I don't agree to their terminology to what "truth" is as often they interpret this much different than others conventionally. For instance, I find it unacceptable to hear this at the same time the same person then mentions that they agree to "facts" as being real. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism. I agree to much of this as explained there with specific disagreements to some particular points.
To me, given the concern to question what is true or not, even our own mind in thought OR sense information are all 'models' in a strict sense. To the 'myth' response, I was saying that the meaning of "Most myths" can be possibly completely contained in what is a "model", but that "ALL models" are not "myths". As such Jaded was only intending to associate myths with models. Myths have emotional significance that lack relevance to the models we are discussing regarding truth with respect to nature itself.
If we contain our discussion to science, as I thought we were, then we always come up with the problem that the model currently in vogue is assumed to be somehow representative of some ultimate "Truth". This has never been the case in the entire history of science so there is no valid reason to suppose that it is any more true now nor that it will be any more true in the future. Science is simply a METHOD by which we model our external environment so that we can make meaningful statements about the behaviour of matter and energy within it. History teaches us that in the advance of human knowledge we continually invent better and better ways of doing this, but to suggest that this method must be bringing us closer to some notion of an objective "Truth" is logically unsustainable.
Obvious Leo wrote:If we contain our discussion to science, as I thought we were, then we always come up with the problem that the model currently in vogue is assumed to be somehow representative of some ultimate "Truth". This has never been the case in the entire history of science so there is no valid reason to suppose that it is any more true now nor that it will be any more true in the future. Science is simply a METHOD by which we model our external environment so that we can make meaningful statements about the behaviour of matter and energy within it. History teaches us that in the advance of human knowledge we continually invent better and better ways of doing this, but to suggest that this method must be bringing us closer to some notion of an objective "Truth" is logically unsustainable.
I'm simultaneously discussing this in scienceforums.net as I am finding others who are raising my points here in contention to others there too. I disagree to your newfound opinion to keep philosophy and science segregated. The reason the "method" as we use in today's paradigm is about politics and economy. They decided to separate this through a great and long struggle to functionally disable the trend towards the losses of productive students in the "practice" of science and prevent the depth of idealized thinking that brought on the World Wars and Communism. It was also thought that if institutions could demarcate the distinction to evade wrangling with certain dissenting religious beliefs from interfering in the dialect of science, it would be a more productive means to proceed.
So the abandonment of "truth" is merely a divisive means to hide the nature of science through institutions by begging new definitions against philosophical inquisitions. But with respect to the fringe areas (meaning Cosmological or Atomic) sciences where this is still needed, only the privileged members of authorities are permitted the luxury of open and free thought. But this kind of thinking is reversed to the traditional process of learning logic to argument skills to .....practice for rote learning (trusting the theorems by practicing with them by faith first) and procedure (to pump out the labor-factor of the science -- you need more trained scientists with skills useful as robotic soldiers in the method, not competitive thinkers) and a belief in authority (enhancing one to think in terms of inductive supports for arguments with less deductive ones).
If "truth" is not a function of science, then they have to defer completely to those who DO place it up front. While one may argue a faith that no truths are certain, this very belief is in severe contradiction as it asserts the confidence in 'truth' needed to trust such a claim.
Scott Mayers wrote: I disagree to your newfound opinion to keep philosophy and science segregated.
When did I ever say this? I have always scrupulously maintained that science and philosophy are two sides of the same coin and my above opinion is basic Kant 101 which any philosophy undergraduate would be expected to understand.
Scott Mayers wrote: I disagree to your newfound opinion to keep philosophy and science segregated.
When did I ever say this? I have always scrupulously maintained that science and philosophy are two sides of the same coin and my above opinion is basic Kant 101 which any philosophy undergraduate would be expected to understand.
I understand this. But in your agreement to science being not a function of "truth" is simply derived from the very reason why science segregated themselves from philosophy. They wanted to redesignate the title of 'science' to appeal strictly to practice of observation, procedure, and efficiency without the baggage of formal logic that is intrinsic to the traditional underlying course of philosophy. They traded it for inductive logic and why those like Popper sought for a means to find science work without the drawbacks of inductive problems. Instead of positing a proof through a deductive bottom up approach, he suggested that science could only "deduce" when or where something could be disproved. This is the origin of the final stages to the separation of science from philosophy. And it yet appears to be what you are supporting in contrast to not seeing it as the very justification to segregation/demarcation. To recombine them, we need to bring back the allowance to prove things from first principles that definitively appeal to closure (or certainty) to 'truth'.
We still need the method for the top-down processes (present paradigm) in order to hint at what kind of deductive argument we need. But then we use philosophy to present the bottom-up deductive argument that provides certain closure if possible. This is where the significant difference now lies.
Everything we understand and/or percieve is a model. For example, we see a rock. The rock does not enter our brain. We form a model of it and that is what we understand. The rock has no secondary qualities (Locke,color etc). We see the rock from a particular perspective and then form a 3 dimensional model of it. If models are rejected then any knowledge is ruled out.
