Philosophy Now Forum

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 12:47 pm In the science community, gravity is recognized as one of the four fundamental forces in the universe, plain and simple.

PhilX

Of course. It is demonstrable and measurable and for practical scientific purposes, that's all that matters. But this is a philosophy forum and we are at liberty to speculate about what causes it.

uwot wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 1:11 pm

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 12:47 pm In the science community, gravity is recognized as one of the four fundamental forces in the universe, plain and simple.

PhilX

Of course. It is demonstrable and measurable and for practical scientific purposes, that's all that matters. But this is a philosophy forum and we are at liberty to speculate about what causes it.

Speculate all you want.

Many scientists also speculate with hypotheses which they use telescopes, colliders and other instruments to explore with and confirm and (mostly) deny hypotheses.
I also speculate in my specific field in which I run tests and experiments.

A question for you. How do you confirm your speculations?

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 1:43 pmSpeculate all you want.

Many scientists also speculate with hypotheses which they use telescopes, colliders and other instruments to explore with and confirm and (mostly) deny hypotheses.
I also speculate in my specific field in which I run tests and experiments.

A question for you. How do you confirm your speculations?

PhilX

By referring to the observations made by scientists with their telescopes, colliders and other instruments.

I think the biggest mystery about gravity is why is it so weak? A theory says it loses strength in higher dimensions, but there is no evidence for this (besides the relative weakness of gravity itself).

Maybe a more interesting characteristic about gravity is it's penetrating quality. Apparently it can penetrate through any object without its force diminishing (e.g. you can weigh yourself at ground level and at the top of a building and find you weigh the same). But let me caution that because gravity is a wave, then as you move away from the object, you would experience less pull which is due to the gravity wave spreading out. All this can be established by experiment.

PhilX

thedoc wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 12:18 pm Gravity is a name that humans give to a particular phenomenon, to argue that the name or word is wrong is incorrect and pointless. Argue about the phenomenon of objects falling towards larger objects and why it happens. Saying there is no such thing as gravity is stupid in the extreme,...

What in the world are you going on about, doc? No one ever suggested that there is no such thing as gravity. We’re just trying to relate its processes to that of quantum theory.

thedoc wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 12:18 pm ...explain why one object is attracted to another.

From the highly speculative perspective of reality suggested in my earlier posts, one object is attracted to another because that’s what the software-like algorithms in the (non-local) underpinning of reality are directing them to do.

And all of us creatures who function up at the “local” level of stars and planets...

(like living participants in some kind of vast video game)

...experience the outcome of those noumenal processes as the phenomenon of gravity.

And it’s not that what we are experiencing isn’t real.

It’s just that we need a new and better definition of what the word “real” actually means.
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seeds wrote: ↑Sat Apr 21, 2018 7:00 pm ...I would go so far as to suggest that anything that exists on the opposite side of absolute nothingness can be considered as being “actual stuff” in some context or another (what else would it be?).

uwot wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 11:10 am Fair enough. I was simply trying to distinguish between materialism and idealism, or any idea that the universe is a simulation or illusory.

But that’s just it, uwot, at the deepest level of reality there is no difference between the “stuff” of materialism and the “stuff” of idealism.

And the irony is that from the perspective of pure materialism, the above statement is especially true.

And that’s because (according to materialism) literally everything (including our dreams) must surely be constructed from the same fundamental substance.

Now at the expense of not being taken seriously by introducing the concept of God into a “scientific” conversation about gravity,...

...the question is that because we humans can willfully grasp and manipulate the substance of reality within the inner-context of our own minds and literally shape it into anything we wish...

(a substance that, again, according to a strict interpretation of materialism, is the same as that which forms the stars and planets)

...then why is it so hard to believe that a higher Being (think Berkeley) could be doing something similar with the universe - as is depicted in one of my oft used illustrations?...



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seeds wrote: ↑Sat Apr 21, 2018 7:00 pm ...just as I have been suggesting regarding the nature and workings of gravity, likewise, the glass-like transparency of the so-called “ether” (which, among other things, presents itself as the empty space between the stars and planets) is just another informationally-based aspect of the coding in the seamless and interpenetrating “software” of reality.

uwot wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 11:10 am Depends what you mean by "software".

What I mean by software is that everything that we see, touch, hear, smell, or taste is founded upon a “non-local” underpinning of waveform information whose specific arrangement is what determines the specific characteristics of the 3-D phenomena we experience in the context of “local” reality.

I am speaking of nebulous and noumenal fields of information that are, again, loosely similar to that which underpins and delineates the raucous action of a video game, or that of the hologram seen in the OP.

And although I believe that the laser hologram represents the best metaphor of our situation, I nevertheless created the following series of fanciful illustrations using a DVD to help visualize the concept.

(Note: Always keep in mind that metaphors such as laser holograms and DVDs are “approximations” of what appear to be the processes that underlie reality. They are meant to be visualization tools and should be applied accordingly)...






(For a clearer view of the dialogue, click on the following link - http://www.theultimateseeds.com/whatistime.htm)

Now as all of that applies to this thread, the ultimate point is that implicit within those waving fields of coded information is everything necessary, not only to create the phenomenon of gravity (and “real” zebras), but absolutely everything else we experience up at the “local” level of reality.

However...

(and this is an extremely important “however”)

...the informational fields depicted above do not necessarily represent (as in code for) the essence of life and consciousness.

It simply codes for the phenomenal structures of reality (sand, houses, cars, bodies, brains, planets, stars, heat, light, etc.) that life and consciousness interact with.

In other words, the “stuff” (essence/energy) of consciousness may be a totally different beast that is founded upon completely different principles.
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Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:15 amI think the biggest mystery about gravity is why is it so weak? A theory says it loses strength in higher dimensions, but there is no evidence for this (besides the relative weakness of gravity itself).

There are more theories about why gravity is so weak than you can shake a stick at, including my own 'because it is refraction'.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:15 amMaybe a more interesting characteristic about gravity is it's penetrating quality. Apparently it can penetrate through any object without its force diminishing (e.g. you can weigh yourself at ground level and at the top of a building and find you weigh the same).

Depends what the floor is made of. The general rule, which you refer to below, is that the further from a source of gravity, i.e. the higher up the building, the less you weigh. Unless the building is particularly massive. Or a mountain https://academo.org/demos/gravity-map/

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:15 amBut let me caution that because gravity is a wave...

Not according to general relativity. Gravity waves are ripples in the 'fabric of spacetime' caused by particularly violent events: black holes orbiting each other, neutron stars colliding, the big bang even. Gravity, on the other hand, is the distortion of spacetime (according to GR) caused by any massive object and is essentially static. The distortion of spacetime doesn't really move through solid objects; it's more the other way round.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:15 am...then as you move away from the object, you would experience less pull which is due to the gravity wave spreading out.

Well, that's your theory.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:15 amAll this can be established by experiment.

Maybe. Do you know of any experiments that have already been done and support your wave idea?

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:03 amBut that’s just it, uwot, at the deepest level of reality there is no difference between the “stuff” of materialism and the “stuff” of idealism.

There are plenty of materialists and idealists who would disagree.

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:03 amAnd the irony is that from the perspective of pure materialism, the above statement is especially true.
And that’s because (according to materialism) literally everything (including our dreams) must surely be constructed from the same fundamental substance.

All materialism assumes is that there is some substance which itself is not 'mental', but certain configurations of which result in mental phenomena. An emergent property if you like.

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:03 amNow at the expense of not being taken seriously by introducing the concept of God into a “scientific” conversation about gravity,...

...the question is that because we humans can willfully grasp and manipulate the substance of reality within the inner-context of our own minds and literally shape it into anything we wish...

(a substance that, again, according to a strict interpretation of materialism, is the same as that which forms the stars and planets)

...then why is it so hard to believe that a higher Being (think Berkeley) could be doing something similar with the universe - as is depicted in one of my oft used illustrations?...

Personally, I have no problem with accepting that there might be a god. It's not hard to believe; I just happen not to.

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:05 amI am speaking of nebulous and noumenal fields of information that are, again, loosely similar to that which underpins and delineates the raucous action of a video game, or that of the hologram seen in the OP.

Well, at the risk of not being taken seriously by introducing a religious metaphor, I think we are singing from essentially the same hymn sheet. Where you speak of "nebulous and noumenal fields of information", I speak of nebulous and noumenal fields of stuff.

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:05 amAnd although I believe that the laser hologram represents the best metaphor of our situation, I nevertheless created the following series of fanciful illustrations using a DVD to help visualize the concept.

I think it is a good metaphor. I get how the pits in a DVD are information, but in effect, I'm just sticking to the physical description of pits as particles.

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:05 amHowever...
(and this is an extremely important “however”)
...the informational fields depicted above do not necessarily represent (as in code for) the essence of life and consciousness.

Is there any reason to believe they couldn't?

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:05 amIt simply codes for the phenomenal structures of reality (sand, houses, cars, bodies, brains, planets, stars, heat, light, etc.) that life and consciousness interact with.
In other words, the “stuff” (essence/energy) of consciousness may be a totally different beast that is founded upon completely different principles.

It may well be. Life and consciousness are bewildering phenomena and I have no idea how to explain them, but I have never seen a compelling argument that they must be separate from 'matter'. I think the problem that all 'dualist' explanations face is how do two different substances interact? Descartes, rather optimistically suggested that mind and body interact in the pineal gland. Einstein never explained how space and matter interact.
Do you have an explanation for how the 'structures of reality' and 'consciousness' interact?

seeds wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 7:02 am What in the world are you going on about, doc? No one ever suggested that there is no such thing as gravity.

You must lead a very sheltered life.

Uwot said:

"Not according to general relativity. Gravity waves are ripples in the 'fabric of spacetime' caused by particularly violent events: black holes orbiting each other, neutron stars colliding, the big bang even. Gravity, on the other hand, is the distortion of spacetime (according to GR) caused by any massive object and is essentially static. The distortion of spacetime doesn't really move through solid objects; it's more the other way round."

It's been confirmed by experiment just in the past few years that gravitational waves do exist which is said to have been predicted by Einstein so I don't know what you're talking about.

Uwot said:

"Maybe. Do you know of any experiments that have already been done and support your wave idea?"

The wave idea isn't mine. I've read from the press that four different experiments have been done and gravitational waves are completely supported by the scientific community which you're contradicting.

Uwot said:

Well, that's your theory. (gravitational waves)

Not my theory uwot.

Quoting:

"Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Maybe a more interesting characteristic about gravity is it's penetrating quality. Apparently it can penetrate through any object without its force diminishing (e.g. you can weigh yourself at ground level and at the top of a building and find you weigh the same).
Depends what the floor is made of. The general rule, which you refer to below, is that the further from a source of gravity, i.e. the higher up the building, the less you weigh. Unless the building is particularly massive. Or a mountain https://academo.org/demos/gravity-map"

The only factor is the mass, not what the floor is made of. But the building's mass is extremely small in comparison to the earth. So if I weigh in at 180 pounds at ground level, then I'll weigh in at 180 pounds at 200 feet up with an ordinary scale which is an experiment showing gravitational waves penetrate matter.

Here is what a physicist says:

"gravitational waves always travel at the speed of light. If we could go back in time, we might have named the speed of light to be the speed of gravity — the speed of light varies depending on the medium light is propagating through, where as gravity doesn’t care"

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:37 amIt's been confirmed by experiment just in the past few years that gravitational waves do exist which is said to have been predicted by Einstein so I don't know what you're talking about.

The difference between gravity and gravitational waves.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:37 amThe wave idea isn't mine. I've read from the press that four different experiments have been done and gravitational waves are completely supported by the scientific community which you're contradicting.

Yes there are a few interferometers that have detected the ripples in 'spacetime' caused by the 'particularly violent events' I referred to above. See for example: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw or https://lisa.nasa.gov

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:37 amUwot said:

Well, that's your theory. (gravitational waves)

Not my theory uwot.

It is if you are claiming that gravitational waves are responsible for gravity.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:37 amThe only factor is the mass, not what the floor is made of. But the building's mass is extremely small in comparison to the earth. So if I weigh in at 180 pounds at ground level, then I'll weigh in at 180 pounds at 200 feet up with an ordinary scale which is an experiment showing gravitational waves penetrate matter.

No it isn't. To detect gravitational waves you need an interferometer, such as LIGO, which has arms 4km (2 1/2 miles long) Physicists rarely use bathroom appliances for delicate measurements.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:37 amHere is what a physicist says:

"gravitational waves always travel at the speed of light. If we could go back in time, we might have named the speed of light to be the speed of gravity — the speed of light varies depending on the medium light is propagating through, where as gravity doesn’t care"

Who's the physicist? You should cite your sources, or at least give some context.

Uwot said:

"No it isn't. To detect gravitational waves you need an interferometer, such as LIGO, which has arms 4km (2 1/2 miles long) Physicists rarely use bathroom appliances for delicate measurements."

Bathroom scales are commonly used to weigh yourself.
The point is that gravity penetrates through any solid object. There is nothing to be gained by increasing the sensitivity of the scales to a level that are normally used in labs. You're talking about something different with LIGO. You're mixing apples with oranges.

Gravity and gravitational waves are the same thing. Within the past five years, gravitational waves have been confirmed to exist which were predicted by Einstein's theory.

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 3:31 amGravity and gravitational waves are the same thing.

It is clearly too painful to take my word for it. Over to wikipedia:
In Einstein's general theory of relativity, gravity is treated as a phenomenon resulting from the curvature of spacetime. This curvature is caused by the presence of mass. Generally, the more mass that is contained within a given volume of space, the greater the curvature of spacetime will be at the boundary of its volume. As objects with mass move around in spacetime, the curvature changes to reflect the changed locations of those objects. In certain circumstances, accelerating objects generate changes in this curvature, which propagate outwards at the speed of light in a wave-like manner. These propagating phenomena are known as gravitational waves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 3:31 amWithin the past five years, gravitational waves have been confirmed to exist which were predicted by Einstein's theory.

I suspect this will fall on deaf ears, but for anyone who doesn't have a pathological aversion to listening to people who know what they are talking about, the big deal with the discovery of gravitational waves is not that it proved the physics of general relativity; the efficacy of the mathematics is not in question. Rather it is evidence supporting the philosophical model underpinning it.
General relativity is based on the idea that the emptiness of the universe is made of some stuff. Einstein sometimes referred to this stuff as 'gravitational aether', but in the intensely positivistic paradigm of the time, the name that stuck was the one that referred to its measurable qualities: space and time, hence 'spacetime'. When physicists are trying to explain this model, they will sometimes speak of the 'fabric of spacetime' and show an image of the Earth or the Sun in a depression that their own mass has made in the 'fabric'. If you haven't seen such an illustration, you will if you bother to read the link above. In the meantime, imagine sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Your mass creates a dip in the fabric and if someone puts a ball on the edge of the fabric, it will roll towards you. That is gravity. If on the other hand, someone slaps the edge of the fabric, it will send a ripple through it like a plucked guitar string. That is a gravitational wave.