Philosophy Now Forum

bytesplicer wrote:Hello there

I've been thinking quite a bit about the various 'end points' in our thinking; something from nothing, life after death, consciousness, religion and the general nature of reality, etc. etc. While I haven't arrived at any answers, it does seem to me that all the meaty questions seem to converge with the concept of energy, or rather that energy is the brick wall we hit when thinking on such things. Energy is of course a very important topic in science, but looking at the idea more closely highlights the limits in our thinking (and consequently our science) that leads to the circular questions that continue to confound us.

Our observations and scientific knowledge are all constructed as relationships. This is how we seem to 'see' and think about the universe. Similarly, mathematics/numbers are a language for describing relationships, many of which correspond closely to relationships we observe in nature. The culmination of this web of relationships is the concept of energy, which ties all our physical knowledge together by describing an overall relationship between everything (conservation of energy), as well as specific relationships between things at arbitrary scales (that we have so far observed and catalogued through science). This is useful scientifically, as the concept allows us to describe and predict how things work around us 'within' our universe. Beyond this, the idea is philosophically useful as it allows us to discuss non-scientific things in the context of science, by working out the relationships involved and hence whether the thing we're talking about can be described as energy or not. Free will, for example, could in principle be examined in the context of energy by looking for violations of the energy laws within our brain (which otherwise would seem to follow the deterministic rules that the rest of the universe seems to follow), allowing us to do things 'of our own volition' rather than simply drifting with the flow of energy.

bytesplicer wrote:The upshot of all this is that energy may represent the ultimate barrier in our knowledge, and least as long as we remain relational thinkers. Whether looking at the standard model (or any other theory of everything) or God, what you're left with is a circular, relational description that can't really say what anything is or where it came from (either because of circularity or the appearance of something from nothing, or effect without cause). Energy itself is the ultimate expression of this conundrum.

i blame blame wrote:No violation of energy laws within our brain, or anywhere else, have been discovered so far. Free will can also be refuted.

i blame blame wrote:Why energy? There are other physical quantities which, to our current understanding are also conserved throughout the universe, like momentum and angular momentum, electric and color charge.

On the subject of free-will being refuted, can you point me in the direction of material on this? Are you talking about the neurological experiments that showed neuron firing before intention? A total refutation would be big news!

bytesplicer wrote:Hi there, thanks for the reply!
I mostly agree with this, as I'm pretty much totally onboard when it comes to the energy laws, I believe they are more fundamental as a description than particles or strings or what not. The reason I'm not 100% (aside from the obvious complexities involved) is simply because of a few bits and pieces I've read involving weak interactions, where apparently violations have been observed indirectly, below an uncertainty threshold of time and distance. Because it's below this particular threshold, the books can be balanced before the effect propogates into the universe at large. I'm not sure I believe this, but smarter minds than mine say it may be so so it's something to think about.

bytesplicer wrote:On the subject of free-will being refuted, can you point me in the direction of material on this? Are you talking about the neurological experiments that showed neuron firing before intention? A total refutation would be big news!

bytesplicer wrote:This is really just a matter of naming. As I understand it, the term energy really boils down to a mathematical description of the relationships between arbitrary regions of our universe and our universe as a whole.

bytesplicer wrote:We don't know what this energy thing is, or where it came from, or even if it is one thing or not, but we do know how various 'configurations' of it relate to each other (for example, any scientific measurement).

bytesplicer wrote:You could name it anything really, but energy is the term science has adopted for this principle so it makes sense to stick with it. The other physical quantities you describe are again all only definable as relationships, and in particular they all seem to obey the energy conservation laws so seem to be under the same abstract umbrella (energy), they are all processes that involve the conservation of energy. In short, all those things you describe are ultimately also describable as energy interactions, or energy under a different name and from a particular viewpoint.

bytesplicer wrote:As I say in another thread, information is probably a more appropriate word, but to me they are essentially synonyms in the context of describing reality.

bytesplicer wrote:Color charge, a name picked because we don't really have any sensible language (besides mathematics) to describe the relationship involved, sort of epitomises the disembodied abstract nature of it all. These charges describe the relationships between quarks and gluons. We have names like proton and neutron to describe relationships between aggregates of quarks and gluons, and so forth, up through atoms and molecules, then onto aggregates of them like people, things planets, up to galaxies, galactic clusters, supergalactic clusters and so on. Ultimately this naming scheme, in either direction (because it's all relative to us in the end) either terminates at a point where we can go no further, or we can find new things to name forever. This is like the halting problem in computing, you don't really know if you can't go further because there's nothing to find or because you're not looking in the right place. We can't see the edges, or the top or bottom of our reality, everything we know is based on relational description. This leads us to an abstract relational description as the only way to make sense of it all (because our brains also seem to work on relational descriptions between the energy of our nervous system and our environment), and energy seems the best candidate (so far).

bytesplicer wrote:All the phenomenon I've described just there, on all the different scales, all still obey the energy laws. As it strides all the scales (where things like electric charge do not) this also suggest it is more universal (or maybe just more abstract).

bytesplicer wrote:Energy seems to be the best overall description we have for all the relationships we see in nature, everything seems to ultimately boil down to it.

If there's a relationship between things, then energy is the best description we have (expressed as mathematics, the language of relations).

bytesplicer wrote:At the same time this whole structure of relationships that we call science bottoms out (as with science in general) where the relationships either can't be seen or don't exist (god, free will, the soul, pre-big-bang etc). Again, like the halting problem, this is why we have so much trouble dealing with these concepts, and can't know whether the relationships ultimately don't exist or whether we're just blind to them.
Btw, +1 on your signature quote.

i blame blame wrote:

bytesplicer wrote:Hi there, thanks for the reply!
I mostly agree with this, as I'm pretty much totally onboard when it comes to the energy laws, I believe they are more fundamental as a description than particles or strings or what not. The reason I'm not 100% (aside from the obvious complexities involved) is simply because of a few bits and pieces I've read involving weak interactions, where apparently violations have been observed indirectly, below an uncertainty threshold of time and distance. Because it's below this particular threshold, the books can be balanced before the effect propogates into the universe at large. I'm not sure I believe this, but smarter minds than mine say it may be so so it's something to think about.

Sorry, yes, I should have noted that on very small scales, particles, carrying energy can come into existence from nothing and disappear again.

Is it possible these 'virtual particles' are formed by the collision of yet smaller particles, or some other mechanism? Or is it taken as gospel that they really do come out of 'nowhere'? Either way is, of course, troublesome. You'll always need smaller particles, or the idea of something from nothing (or mechanism without explanation). Can an end-point be found?

bytesplicer wrote:On the subject of free-will being refuted, can you point me in the direction of material on this?
Are you talking about the neurological experiments that showed neuron firing before intention? A total refutation would be big news!

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=408
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1372
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1142
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=412

Whoa. That's a lot of material! Had to only skim through but I saw a lot of opinion, but no refutation of free-will. May have missed it, is there a particular post within those threads? Alternatively, I'll wait for it to be on the news then retreat to my bunker as the world goes mad!

bytesplicer wrote:This is really just a matter of naming. As I understand it, the term energy really boils down to a mathematical description of the relationships between arbitrary regions of our universe and our universe as a whole.

Why arbitrary? It's usually relationships between objects or "regions", rather than between a region and the whole universe.

What I mean here is that you can define energy as the relationship between regions. When a change occurs between two regions, you must also consider further regions attached to the ones you're considering, a change in one results in a change in the other. Carrying this to its conclusion, as the conservation law does, shows that any arbitrary regions you define must be related. All regions are related to all other regions and thus to the universe as a whole. Put another way, change one region and the effect of that change will (eventually) propagate throughout the entire universe.

bytesplicer wrote:We don't know what this energy thing is, or where it came from, or even if it is one thing or not, but we do know how various 'configurations' of it relate to each other (for example, any scientific measurement).

We know what it is, the ability of a system to perform work. We don't know where anything came from. That depends on what you mean by "thing".

'The ability of a system to perform work' is the textbook definition of energy, something that has been settled on because we don't know what it is that is actually doing the work. Is it an ability possessed by stuff or is it the stuff itself, or both, or neither? We don't know. Where does the ability to do work come from? We don't know. This definition highlights the circular nature of our knowledge. Try now defining what work is, and keep going. All scientific theories have this problem arising from the issue of definition, and all necessarily converge to an abstract, energy. Whether you use the name energy or not, this is the end-point in our thinking of physical systems, describing only how they relate, but not their actual nature. We do not know what energy is, and thanks to that definition, many do not know that they do not know.

bytesplicer wrote:You could name it anything really, but energy is the term science has adopted for this principle so it makes sense to stick with it. The other physical quantities you describe are again all only definable as relationships, and in particular they all seem to obey the energy conservation laws so seem to be under the same abstract umbrella (energy), they are all processes that involve the conservation of energy. In short, all those things you describe are ultimately also describable as energy interactions, or energy under a different name and from a particular viewpoint.

All processes that involve conservation of energy also involve conservation of momentum and charge. There is no reason to give energy the status of "umbrella". Momentum and charge are physical quantities that are different from energy.

Momentum is only conserved as long as there is enough energy in the system to allow for it, perfect elastic collisions with no loss of energy only exist as a theoretical baseline. In reality, the loss of energy to friction, heat and sound ensures diminishing returns in terms of momentum. You can argue that the momentum is conserved, being transferred to smaller particles such as surrounding air, but each of these interactions also results in heat/friction and a diminishing return in momentum. Energy conservation can describe the full state of this system at all times (with momentum being a part of that description), momentum cannot.

Momentum results from an energy imbalance (a net force), just as with any change we observe, a region with 'more' energy balancing itself out with surrounding regions of 'lesser' energy. When energy is balanced (which of course we'll never see, due to the energy imbalance between the earth and sun, the sun and neighbouring stars, our galaxy and neighbouring galaxies) there is no momentum.

These arguments also apply to charge (electro or colour), which again, ultimately comes down to an energy imbalance.

While you can say both are different from energy they appear, at least to my addled brain, to be emergent phenomenon 'derived' from energy imbalances. Nothing happens without an energy imbalance.

bytesplicer wrote:As I say in another thread, information is probably a more appropriate word, but to me they are essentially synonyms in the context of describing reality.

Are you claiming that energy and information are synonymous?

Yes, ultimately our science is all based upon relational information. Energy can only be expressed symbolically, either as a number or variable. What of the reality out there, the 'stuff' we observe? Again, we don't know what the stuff is, only the relationships between the stuff, and we only know those in terms of equations and numbers, again information.

bytesplicer wrote:Color charge, a name picked because we don't really have any sensible language (besides mathematics) to describe the relationship involved, sort of epitomises the disembodied abstract nature of it all.

These charges describe the relationships between quarks and gluons. We have names like proton and neutron to describe relationships between aggregates of quarks and gluons, and so forth, up through atoms and molecules, then onto aggregates of them like people, things planets, up to galaxies, galactic clusters, supergalactic clusters and so on.

Ultimately this naming scheme, in either direction (because it's all relative to us in the end) either terminates at a point where we can go no further, or we can find new things to name forever. This is like the halting problem in computing, you don't really know if you can't go further because there's nothing to find or because you're not looking in the right place. We can't see the edges, or the top or bottom of our reality, everything we know is based on relational description. This leads us to an abstract relational description as the only way to make sense of it all (because our brains also seem to work on relational descriptions between the energy of our nervous system and our environment), and energy seems the best candidate (so far).

The best candidate for what?

A theory of everything. Energy already fulfills the criteria, while highlighting the inevitable weakness of such a theory. It explains all physical phenomenon in a relational manner, while representing a dead end reached either through circularity/recursiveness or the acceptance of something from nothing. Particle/force and string models, in fact, any model you care to name, all suffer from this problem. Take the issue with the Higgs. Another level of description used to explain why we have matter, but leaving us with the question as to why we have the Higgs. All we're doing by adding new levels of description is adding more descriptions of relationships on different scales. This is useful in itself of course, but leaves us no closer to any kind of truth. All we can realistically achieve through science is a comprehensive framework of relationships, internally consistent but unable to explain themselves from an external absolute perspective (like how did this all happen? with any explanation demanding further explanation).

bytesplicer wrote:All the phenomenon I've described just there, on all the different scales, all still obey the energy laws. As it strides all the scales (where things like electric charge do not) this also suggest it is more universal (or maybe just more abstract).

You mean we deal with energy when dealing with galactic clusters, but not with electric charge? We do however deal with momentum when analyzing both galactic clusters and electrons.

No, that's not what I mean. We're dealing with energy in both (and in all) cases, and, as I mentioned earlier, this is happening across all scales. The interactions of charged particles involves a transfer of energy, but the particles themselves are also part of a larger scale transfer of energy (between the galaxy in which they reside, and the neighbouring galaxies in the cluster). All physical phenomenon involve a transfer of energy, even by the energy definition of 'the ability to perform work'. Energy itself is the important holistic mystery, looking at isolated systems simply shows you how 'energy behaves' under those circumstances.

Momenta and charges do however always have an energy associated with them, while in a number of physical problems, energy is not associated with something other than charge or momentum.

So, all momenta and charge have associated energy. Is the reverse true, does all energy have associated momentum and charge?

bytesplicer wrote:Energy seems to be the best overall description we have for all the relationships we see in nature, everything seems to ultimately boil down to it.

If there's a relationship between things, then energy is the best description we have (expressed as mathematics, the
language of relations).

Then why are so many other physical quantities needed to make sense of the world?

Reductionist artifacts. We are seeing these diverse quantities because we 'chop up' the phenomenon we observe and look at them (measure them) in isolation. Because the systems we employ never take into account 'the whole' we get errors in our calculations. Many constants are introduced to balance equations.

Thinking of it another way. The goal of science is to reduce these physical quantities to one over-riding principle
(unified theory). Say science is successful in achieving this, with one fundamental constant being the basis of
everything. You're left with a dead-end, the constant explains everything but there is no explanation for the constant.

Energy, whether as a mechanisms or as a stuff, can account for all physical phenomenon. If you could fully account for all energy interactions, you could see the patterns in transfers that result in the physical quantities, particles and
forces. But you'd still be left with the problem of what energy actually is in an absolute sense. Energy is the
single, overriding mechanism that science is searching for, but is itself a logical dead-end. Whatever mechanism science ends up with (assuming this mechanism exists) to describe the patterns of change we observe, will still be at a loss in determining the nature and origin of that mechanism. This is the situation we see with energy. Plumbing further into the depths may reveal more, but again we'll always be left with the relational question as to origin and nature, and a question equivalent to 'what is energy?'.

bytesplicer wrote:At the same time this whole structure of relationships that we call science bottoms out (as with
science in general) where the relationships either can't be seen or don't exist (god, free will, the soul, pre-big-bang
etc). Again, like the halting problem, this is why we have so much trouble dealing with these concepts, and can't know whether the relationships ultimately don't exist or whether we're just blind to them.
Btw, +1 on your signature quote.

Cheers.

bytesplicer wrote: Is it possible these 'virtual particles' are formed by the collision of yet smaller particles, or some other mechanism? Or is it taken as gospel that they really do come out of 'nowhere'? Either way is, of course, troublesome. You'll always need smaller particles, or the idea of something from nothing (or mechanism without explanation). Can an end-point be found?

bytesplicer wrote: Whoa. That's a lot of material! Had to only skim through but I saw a lot of opinion, but no refutation of free-will. May have missed it, is there a particular post within those threads? Alternatively, I'll wait for it to be on the news then retreat to my bunker as the world goes mad!

bytesplicer wrote: What I mean here is that you can define energy as the relationship between regions. When a change occurs between two regions, you must also consider further regions attached to the ones you're considering, a change in one results in a change in the other. Carrying this to its conclusion, as the conservation law does, shows that any arbitrary regions you define must be related. All regions are related to all other regions and thus to the universe as a whole. Put another way, change one region and the effect of that change will (eventually) propagate throughout the entire universe.

bytesplicer wrote: 'The ability of a system to perform work' is the textbook definition of energy, something that has been settled on because we don't know what it is that is actually doing the work. Is it an ability possessed by stuff or is it the stuff itself, or both, or neither? We don't know. Where does the ability to do work come from? We don't know. This definition highlights the circular nature of our knowledge. Try now defining what work is, and keep going. All scientific theories have this problem arising from the issue of definition, and all necessarily converge to an abstract, energy. Whether you use the name energy or not, this is the end-point in our thinking of physical systems, describing only how they relate, but not their actual nature. We do not know what energy is, and thanks to that definition, many do not know that they do not know.

bytesplicer wrote: Momentum is only conserved as long as there is enough energy in the system to allow for it, perfect elastic collisions with no loss of energy only exist as a theoretical baseline. In reality, the loss of energy to friction, heat and sound ensures diminishing returns in terms of momentum. You can argue that the momentum is conserved, being transferred to smaller particles such as surrounding air, but each of these interactions also results in heat/friction and a diminishing return in momentum. Energy conservation can describe the full state of this system at all times (with momentum being a part of that description), momentum cannot.

Sorry, yes, I should have noted that on very small scales, particles, carrying energy can come into existence from nothing and disappear again.

Izzywizzy wrote: Are we all supposed to take on faith your assertion it is from nothing?

Izzywizzy wrote:where is your scientific evidence?