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2014-09-25
The Reality of Spatial Relations
I understand the philosophical and scientific conversations about space and time have shifted toward conversations about spacetime. Instead of following that model, I prefer to ask a common sense question about space that impacts directly on the more technical conversations we are likely to have theses days.

The question is: What, if not space, is between you and the other things around you right now? I'm talking about the furniture, objects, devices, flora or fauna or whatever happens to be about. Between you and those things there is also the atmosphere, the air that surrounds us. Air has oxygen, nitrogen and various other gasses and pollutants that compose it but we can also ask about what is between these molecules? Or inside them even? Without getting too technical, I think we all know enough about atoms to ask what is between, say the nucleus and their orbiting electrons? Or between the protons and neutrons in the nucleus? 

No matter "how far down" you might go into smaller and smaller particles there is always something between them that is not itself particulate in nature, yet still exists wherever particles are not. Even if the space between is empty, it is still space. 

Is there anything that does not coincide with some part(s) of space and still have more space between it and everything else. Even the parts of atoms have space in between them. So how can space not be a separate, continuous substance, basically opposite in nature to discrete, particulate matter? 

I don't think you can invoke spacetime as the answer because spacetime is a 4-dimensional mathematical construct where time is represented as a fourth spatial dimension in Minkowski diagrams. That cannot be between us and the books on the table. 

If space is the only answer to this common sense empirical question, then I see this as a thoroughly empirical demonstration of the reality of space. If space is real then it would explain the reality of spatial relations by showing how they correspond to the the real world. I'd be interested in any comments you'd like to share.

Thanks,
DCD

2014-09-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Quite interesting subject.

Physical space in my opinion is a primitive concept most of people understand and intuitively it has nothing to do with time as you rightly notice. If we agree that a physical object is anything physically discernible, then the space is at least what all physical objects are not.
Physical space is then a container of objects, shared and common to all observers. This space only differs for each observer by their respective metrics. 

The prominent parameter related to space is distance, which whatever way measured it remains a relation between two objects. Only mathematical abstraction defines distance between arbitrary points in empty space. 

In composite objects time seems to be a property pertaining to the state of a single object. As it is established in our world, time is a number of revolutions of the Earth taken from an arbitrary moment in history multiplied by a number of units per revolution. Surely this standard has been upgraded to something more stable. 

We know that space has properties so it is real. One particular property prevents light from propagating at infinite speed. But time that matters is the one on the objects. If some gravitational effect far from an object causes light to bend and slowing it down in a round trip experiment, it has noting to do with the local time of the object dependent on its local environment.

One can project local time to arbitrary object or point in space but this is a view that everyone is entitled to. By the same right I can project the current balance of my bank account to every point in the solar system and call it account-space. But it will not be a useful concept.

So after this lengthy presentation I basically agree with what you are saying.

I am glad you treat common sense with respect. In startling contrast to Einstein's definition is the description of the common sense by Thomas Huxley which I agree with is:

"Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organised common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit"  




2014-09-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
First just a comment, you have used space time in your question, since you have asked "What, if not space, is between you and the other things around you right now?" Right now, I suppose, means at this moment.

The answer physics gives is "that depends on the observer" in magnitude and most probably in its content, because between an observer and the things around him, there is, at least, electromagnetic radiation (if the observer can see those things) and electromagnetic radiation is subject Doopler's effect. If the laws of physics have to be independent on the observer and those imaginary experiments behind the special theory of relativity correspond to reality, then we must admit some degree of relativity of spatial relations. I mean some degree, because given two events e_1 and e_2 (not connected by a light ray) either they are absolutely separated in space, or one of them occurs before the other for any observer. If the events are connected by a light ray, then they are absolutely separated in both, space and time.

When we think of space inside atoms and molecules we are in a different situation, because furniture and our own bodies, can be situated with respect to the floor, Earth's crust, the body of a space ship or whatever we use as a body of reference to specify those spatial relations. At the level of atoms and molecules there is no such a body of reference.

2014-10-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Thanks so much Andrew. 
I'm glad you see the importance or respecting common sense. If there were no such thing, we would have nothing to explain as philosophers. Common sense is just what we commonly find in the world. If our "explanation" of time and space does not explain how common sense is possible and at least likely, then what have we really explained with our theories and observations?

However, I don't prefer to think of space as a container of things because, being unbounded, it would have to be an "infinite container" and it's not at all clear how something infinite could "bound" or "contain" anything. It's better, I think, to view the relationship between matter/energy and space as one of coinciding or coincidence: particles or fields of matter or energy are said to coincide with parts of space. Rather than just a passive container, space has the power to structure matter in three and only three dimensions. 

Space, therefore, is an active and dynamic substance that is continuous in nature, so that it can divide into an infinite number of parts, infinitely large and infinitely small. It's nature is exactly opposite to particulate or localized matter and energy, which are the things physical science has gotten quite good at measuring. This is great but it is also the source of a blind spot in physics and the derivative sciences. Physics has become blind to space. We see the trees and think that the forest is simply the distance between them.  

If, as you say, "the prominent parameter related to space is distance, which whatever way measured it remains a relation between two objects. Only mathematical abstraction defines distance between arbitrary points in empty space.", then space is not real or substantial at all. It is reduced to the spatial relations between objects. That leaves us to think it is purely a mathematical abstraction. 

But you also say, "We know that space has properties so it is real. One particular property prevents light from propagating at infinite speed."  If space is real and has properties that cause regularities in the way physical objects move with respect to each other... most especially by the gravitational force..., it cannot be simply a mathematical abstraction, can it? Abstractions don't cause anything to happen. Only substances do that.

Thanks again for your comments, Andrew. I hope to hear some more.

DCD 


2014-10-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Oscar, thanks for your comments. You have a background in physics, I assume. I agree that this is the relativistic view that physics uses. I do not subscribe to it because it equates things with the ways that we come to know them. Distance in space becomes the way an observer measures distance between objects. I can't even say "between objects in space" because "in space" appears superfluous to the measurement of distances; it is "absolute" in Einstein's terminology, because there is no way to detect its presence. The only thing we can be scientific about is the measurement. The space, as you say, depends of the observer. 
As I wrote to Andrew and will copy here for you, I "... view the relationship between matter/energy and space as one of coinciding or coincidence: particles or fields of matter or energy are said to coincide with parts of space. Rather than being just a passive container, space has the power to structure matter in three and only three dimensions. 

Space, therefore, is an active and dynamic substance that is continuous in nature, so that it can divide into an infinite number of parts, infinitely large and infinitely small. It's nature is exactly opposite to particulate or localized matter and energy, which are the things physical science has gotten quite good at measuring. This is great but it is also the source of a blind spot in physics and the derivative sciences. Physics has become blind to space. We see the trees and think that the forest is simply the distance between them."  

This blindness is an understandable and, in fact, quite fortunate development in the history of science. But it is still a blindness to the nature of things and all I'm trying to do here is help people see a better explanation of what we find in nature, when space is one of those things we find ... not just a mathematical abstraction. If space were a knowable, causative power in the world where our animals bodies evolved, it would explain why geometry seems to us to be non-empirical or analytic. Analytical geometry, invented by Descartes, represents space as the graph of ordered sets of Cartesian coordinates. It is the marriage of algebra and geometry that enabled Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Minkowski and many others to think about space and time scientifically. It was a fortunate but only a temporary solution. Not that we do understand quantum physics down to the basic particles and fields which predict all the observed properties of motion, except for mass and gravity, we may start to see the need for a more fundamental way to relate the mathematics of quantum forces with that of gravitation forces. The time frame in which to solve this "disparity problem" is the measure of how temporary the fortunate solution was.

Suffice it to say that thinking of space as a substance may offer a way to resolve this disparity. But, to do so, we have to accept that there is a common reference frame at the levels of molecules atoms and sub-atomic particles. It would also mean that there is no ubiquitous Higgs field of bosons to be exchanged with fermions, causing mass without the powers space. Instead, we can at least see empirically how there is a ubiquitous and powerful, non-material substance: space. The rest of this argument would be to show how seeing it this way is the BEST way to explain what we find when we go looking and try to let nature make the decision as much as possible. 

I welcome your further comments. Thanks.

DCD

 


2014-10-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Though Einstein did not confirm it, his STR nevertheless could be looked at as a successful disentanglement of the results of Michelson-Morley experiment which proved the absence of ether. This experiment directly challenged the idea of physical bodies dwelling and moving in an empty spatial substance which you prefer to call the real space of common people. Till then the physical motion had been restricted to the moving physical bodies, but without ether the Maxwell’s wave equations were left to describe the movement in electromagnetic field incongruent with any physical body. This experiment has left us with real oscillations of the field with nothing physical to oscillate. So it was not simply Einstein who arbitrarily decided to abandon the idea of the real space of simultaneity. Instead the STR just described the real physical consequence of the absence of oscillating material thing, i.e. the ether. And now you say that for some practical political reasons we should stick to the real space anyway, as if philosophy were supposed to serve some scientific purpose.

 

Daniel, you remind me of Freud who at one point suggested Jung to drop his ideas about collective unconsciousness because they would lead psychoanalysis into mysticism. I think you and Freud share the same fear from the mystical. Are you petrified by the consequences of abandoning the real world of science? Well this kind of fear is nowadays quite irrational since the science itself actually ruptured the real world when proved the existence of quantum fields.

 

Consciously or not, you are still devoted to the myth of science which is about the world picture of the dimensional position of man. According to this myth our present home address reads: Universe, Galaxy, the third planet from the Sun, Continent, State, Town, Street, No., Name, and the Actual Date. Notice that our scientific address includes a time dimension. The Actual Date makes a world picture which is historical. Through time dimension our address includes the cosmic epoch, geological and biological evolution and the differentiation of various specs of life. So we are a mammal, an ape, homo-sapiens of certain race, ethnicity, and sex. Beside that, the address should include the evolutionary position of our DNK chains, the history of our metabolism, the physical build from elementary particles mediated by DNA and RNA and the chromosome combinations.

                                                                                                                                

So, according to its own myth the science is an orientation device similar to a phonebook. However, this myth is sort of peculiar for its pretension on discovering the realities. It pretends to be an actual discovering of “realities” only because it is about the position which it actually creates, just as other myths create other wildest hallucinations. Real position entails discovered realities. (The position is made real by discovering the reality.) The myth of science is about hallucinated reality. Its mythic story-tings create the illusion of conscious animated organisms trying to get real orientation. This enterprise has much to do with the sense of gravity which individuates and vertically orients each plant or animal. This sense alone is responsible for telling right from wrong, vertical from slant or from horizontal. Vertical balance is good. All misbalances are bad more or less.

 

We see that science and the human individuality of a human addressee are entangled. But somebody or something inhuman should not be so much concerned with real position of human animal. Should it become obvious to you the mythic nature of science, every science or knowledge will become a myth and an inhuman scope of different ranges of myths will open.

 

I don’t feel like patronizing you but I am afraid there is no other way to bring you back into the ranks inhumans. 


2014-10-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel

In a way, I agree with you: we must keep clear the distinction between those things we attempt to describe and our mathematical fictions. The concept of particle, a mathematical point, that describes the motion of an object as whole, is an example that has been extrapolated, uncritically, I think, to the domain of atomic, nuclear, and high energy physics, altogether with concepts, like energy, which is well defined as mechanical energy in classical mechanics.

The statement E = m c^2 is synthetic if and only if we know what energy and mass are. The same is true of the statement E = h nu.

Let's assume that special relativity is true. Einstein's "gedanken experiments," which are at the foundation of Minkowski's mathematical model of space time, make use of spherical pulses of light that propagate in all directions with the same speed c. Any pulse of light, however short, has a duration dt, Suppose this pulse of light is isotropic for an observer, in such manner that, in particular, at every instant in time it is exactly contained in the space between two concentric spheres, for a given observer O. For an observer O' in motion with respect to the first this will not be true, because the source will be in motion with respect to him. Einstein made the assumption that it is impossible to send instantaneous signals from one point of space to another, which is apparently true, but he did not consider the fact that it takes time to send any signal. The invariant c^2t^2 - x^2 - y^2 -z^2 is obtained in the limit dt = 0, corresponding to a surface density of energy propagating in every direction, proportional to a delta function. For a more realistic signal, there is a system of reference where the referred pulse of light can be considered at rest (the system of reference where the pulse is always in the space between two concentric spheres) and its "motion" can be detected in any other system of reference in motion with respect to the first, v. g., by measuring the spectral power in different directions (dx dk ~ 1 ).

I see Minkowski's space as a first approximation to a space-time geometry, if its possible to formulate such a thing. Considering that general relativity assumes that space-time is locally Lorentzian, I have the same kind of doubts about its correspondence to reality.

2014-10-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Thank you Daniel,
There may be linguistic incoherence in some of the statements I have made so I want to clarify the phrases you have highlighted.

I am generally preoccupied with time and the concept of space as important as it might be, is not my point of focus at this stage. I take space for granted not trying to explain it but I am interested what others say. Inevitably, in order to interpret space-time I have to shift my focus. I have resisted to read Max Jammer's "The Concept of Space" to remain unbiased, but you got me interested in the subject so I may do it now.

A distance is a measure that relates two objects (for simplicity we exclude the  overlapping ones). 
The measure is not the property of the objects themselves as they can be substituted by other objects and the distance may still be the same. You understand, there is a bit of abstraction here as practically you can never have the same distance of two pairs of real objects if you want to be exact. Mathematically however we can enjoy these kind of scenario.

The distance has strict mathematical definition and abstract distance can be calculated for any two points in a coordinate system, but the real distance is only that between two real objects.

(I assume we accept "real" in its commonsense meaning)

The geometry alone does not tell what is in between the objects of which distance we know this way or another.  Visually we cannot detect air, but it is easy to find something is there in that space. Notably tiny objects. By eliminating those we still have something in between objects that has properties and this is at least permeability and permittivity of free space which are related to the speed of light. Even if there were no measurable properties of the vacuum, and light could propagate instantaneously from point to point, the fact that you can place more object in between the two until there is no space to do so makes that empty space real however mysterious.

What is that thing in between is subject to physical theories and logic alone may not be able to explain in detail.

Space as a container works for me through an abstraction. If I have a box that contains a particle I can conceptually increase the size of the box and make it indefinitely big. It does contain stuff does not it?
You thesis that Space  is an active and dynamic substance that is continuous in nature is a valid hypothesis. It may actually be the only continuous thing, as everything else appears to be discrete.

I think I finish at this stage although there is more I would like to explore, namely the common sense thread of your posts. May be at later date.

Andrew


2014-10-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
This is certainly an interesting topic, and I throw something in just to muddy the waters a bit. I'll have to put it into very brief and sketchy terms here.

I start with the assumption that no two states of affairs can occupy the same phase space. I further assume that in principle all things are processes and so do not have a state, or at least their state is smeared out. I also have made a case that actualities are local probability densities in ontic probability distribution.

As a result, actualities are ambivalent states in phase space. This violates the first assumption. So  processes actualize the dimensions of space and time to achieve separation. That is, space and time are secondary constructs due to the localization of actualities.

Haines Brown

2014-10-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Alex,
I crafted a longer response that somehow got lost in the clouds and disappeared. The upshot of it was that I would rather try to explain what is real or true about the world that explains why the world appears to us as it does. When we just look around, space seems to be quite real. When I ask that question I get lots of abstract theories intended to show our common sense experience to be illusory, It is the wisdom of our age to be skeptical, to doubt whatever we can. Indeed, the consistent application of this sort of caution and mistrust of anyone proposing a "truth" that is not entirely contingent and subjective, is the kind of "mythic" view you have of science. As a result, our "wisdom" is blind to the difference between things that have different locations in space and the imagined observations of an observer in a given inertial frame. 

Space, if it is a substance, is continuous and ubiquitous. Physics is blind to space because it cannot "detect" it the way it is used to detecting things: that is, as particles or fields that are discrete and local in nature. Space is intrinsically holistic, in that it can have parts and powers to structure energy in three dimensions so that, as a whole, the parts of composite objects are arranged so as to be greater than they would be if they were not so structured. 

You wrote: "Daniel, you remind me of Freud who at one point suggested Jung to drop his ideas about collective unconsciousness because they would lead psychoanalysis into mysticism. I think you and Freud share the same fear from the mystical. Are you petrified by the consequences of abandoning the real world of science? Well this kind of fear is nowadays quite irrational since the science itself actually ruptured the real world when proved the existence of quantum fields." 


You are correct to recognize a similarity between my views and Freud's comments. But I am not afraid of space. It was convenient of you to associate so freely as to reveal your unconscious fears of being gullible or of getting "roped in" to some unscientific speculation. This is exactly the kind of blindness I'm talking about! You can't even stop to consider that this theory might be a credible or even better way of thinking about space and energy/matter. You want to repeat the relativistic response because it's the one you have learned. You would rather do that than try to answer my original question directly: What, if not space, is between you and the other things around you right now? 

Einstein grew up in a world of classical physics wherein the ether was a presupposition of a ubiquitous substance or field, not identical to space, but everywhere contiguous with it. It was necessary, therefore, to try to construct an empirical experiment to detect the ethereal medium in which light propagates. We should be able to detect its "effect" on our measurements of light speed, such that it should vary as our position relative to the ether changes. The null result of the Michaelson-Morely experiment proved the ether to be undetectable by its methods. Not its non-existence, as is widely assumed.

The STR was an attempt to "save" the laws classical physics, given that the Lorenz transformations are also law-like in their ability to explain what would be observed by any imaginable observer in an inertial frame, that is, a frame of reference moving a constant velocity relative to an observer moving in another inertial frame. The ether simply became a non-factor in the equations of physics. Einstein "saw" the null result of the M-M experiment as an opportunity to factor space out of the equations of motion in "absolute space", as long as we were describing only inertial frames of reference. That's why it is a special theory and not a general one in which "arbitrary" reference frames involving any possible change in acceleration or momentum. 

STR works very well to explain inertial reference frames. But inertia is resistance to acceleration and defines what mass is. It is essential to understanding quantum fields and the quantum mechanics of every physical in the universe ... except gravitation. That's why he saw the GTR as a necessary corollary of the STR, if physics is to complete its mission of saving Newton's laws, which still are the ones we use inmost of physical science and engineering. 

Einstein called relativity a "principle". meaning it was a way of seeing things, not a verifiable prediction, based on laws of nature and not, itself, a law like Newton's or Maxwell's laws. Likewise, I would say space is a substance, part of what constitutes anything in reality, not a principle. 

I know it's very different. I'm just suggesting that it is more plausible than the relativistic approach, to "see" space as a substance, to think of it that way instead of Einstein's way of "seeing" the null result of M-M as a warrant to "relativize" what was previously thought to be absolute.

Rather than resisting my suggestion, I ask only that you try it on for size, as it were, and see how it looks on you. 

Thanks,
DCD

    
  

2014-10-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Thanks, Haines. 

What is phase space? When I look around I see objects located in space. Don't you? Not phase space, which is, as I understand it, a 6-dimensional mathematical construct used to approximate the interactions of, say, gas molecules in a closed system so as to validate Boyles law or some other statistical regularity we can observe. Maybe I am mistaken, though.

In any case, you are "assuming", as you say, the existence of phase spaces and states of affairs the occupy them. I assume that three dimensional space and energy are substances. Try as I might, I cannot imagine what other spatial dimensions there could possibly be other than length, width and depth. We can stipulate definitions of phase space but we cannot imagine what it would be like to see any more or less than the 3 spatial dimensions we are very familiar with. So I make only 2 assumptions about what exists and both of them involve things we can easily imagine to exist. 

My original question was "What, if not space, is between you and the other things around you right now?"  You seem to suggest it is "phase space", not 3-D space and that "things" like the objects in your room (and you) are processes and not things at all. 

You add a third assumption that all things are processes  and a fourth that "no two states of affairs can occupy the same phase space". 

I make only 2 assumptions and they come from common sense. I think the empirical approach would be to explain the most we can with the least number and complexity of assumptions. So why would you make more assumptions and end up explaining less of what we find when we look around in the world?

I look at questions about  space and time as empirical questions and try to answer them in an empirical way. I make only empirical assumptions and I use them to explain, in an illuminating, non-trivial way, everything we find in culture and in the natural world, including our own minds and thoughts as they appear to us as subjects. 

Trying to argue that " space and time are secondary constructs due to the localization of actualities.", based on this rather long list of non-empirical assumptions that fly in the face of common sense, doesn't help me understand space and time in an illuminated way and is not nearly as optimal an explanation as my own 2-assumption approach. I realize I have not given the complete explanation of space and time yet. But I can offer more if we ever get past these premptory efforts to overlook or dismiss it.

Thanks,
DCD  

2014-10-08
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

You raise some fundamental issues. One is your distaste for assumptions or inferences (an important difference) that fly in the face of "common sense". Is this an empiricist perspective that characterizes statements to be "truthful" if they can be inferred from phenomena? This rejection of scientific realism is referred to as folk physics or more broadly folk psychology.

It is an old respectable position that many people still hold. To resolve the debate between empiricism and scientific realism what is probably needed is some broad agreement over just what science is or does. Let me offer what I suspect will be to your liking: science is a state of mind that ultimately empowers action in the world. This might not be obvious, for example, in cosmology, but if an aim is scientific unification (another assumption that might be contested), then cosmology deepens our understanding in those sciences which more obviously do empower action. 

Common sense (but not I) might suggest that the science that supports predictions more accurate than any other is the science that most closely reflects reality. This, of course is quantum mechanics. But in many ways quantum mechanics betray folk physics. Action at a distance, for example. 

The relation of the "phenomena" constructed by our sensory organs and brain and the world that enables them remains an open question. No one any more suggests that there is an empirical correspondence between neural signals and the world. Yet somehow those signals supervene (excuse the jargon) on the world. But supervenience, or if you prefer, emergence, has yet to be explained. One might say that from the relation of our sensory organs and the world there emerges qualia, but this constant conjunction is not explanation, for qualia reduce to neither factor.   

All I'm suggesting is that because folk physics and correspondence theory are problematic today, we are obliged to attempt some justification of our starting axioms, if only in our own minds. In my remarks to which you respond, I started with "assumptions", not "facts". You were correct to point that out, but the same applies to your radical empiricism. "Common sense" in the context of the physics of space and time can only refer to the consensus among physicists (if it exists) and not to inferences drawn from our daily lives. 

Haines 


2014-10-09
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew, thanks for your thoughtful reply. RE: "Space as a container works for me through an abstraction. If I have a box that contains a particle I can conceptually increase the size of the box and make it indefinitely big. It does contain stuff does not it?"

In this example, what would contain the box? The problem I have with the analogy of space as a container is that containers are material in nature, a way of boxing things in. I'd rather say material particles coincide with space in ways that are determined by the geometrical structure of space. Further, if the present moment is real, there is a temporal aspect of this coincidence that may provide a way of explaining how substances can move and change in space, while retaining their unchanging essential natures over time. To speak of objects in space seems to imply that space is "outside" the objects, like a box would be. This, "coincidence" is a better description of this relationship between matter/energy and space than "containment". 
 
You mentioned Jammer's book, so I looked it up here:(https://arcaneknowledgeofthedeep.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/conceptsofspace.pdf)
There is a great forward to the first edition written by Albert Einstein, himself, where he clearly expresses his objections to the notion of space as an "absolute" concept. Einstein's problem with that is that, if space were to be part of the causal explanation of inertial systems, space would act on material bodies but the bodies never act on space. Such absolute concepts cannot be scientific in his view. 

He distinguishes 2 different concepts of space:

  •  (a) space is simply the order or position of material objects and nothing else. This is the relativistic view, held by Leibniz and Huygens and opposed by Newton. It makes the idea of empty space inconceivable. Space is a relational property of the bodies themselves.
  • (b) space as a container or box that, contains within is its space as a property... "it's space". If we do as you suggest and just imagine bigger and bigger boxes, we arrive at an infinite container, "in" which all material objects exist. on this concept ,"A material object not situated in space is simply inconceivable."  (Forward, p.xv).
Einstein praises Newton for opposing (a), the relativists, and their "geometrical" concept in favor of (b), the "kinematic" concept. He recognizes that Descartes' coordinate system "reconciled" the dispute, in a way, by enabling us to make all the necessary calculations and to represent them graphically. But he acknowledges that the coordinate system itself "presupposes the logically more daring concept space (b)"  (p. xv).

But the discoveries of Galileo and Newton complicate the matter because space, as (b), serves as the independent cause of the inertial behavior of bodies, if Newton's first law of motion is have "an exact meaning" (p. xvi). Einstein considers the recognition that (a) could not be the cause of inertia (the resistance to change in motion) to be one of Newton's greatest inventions because it enabled the amazingly accurate predictions of science that led to the astoundingly fruitful advances of the Industrial Revolution and modern technology.  

Yet, the null result of later experiments designed to detect (b) concept space or its "ethereal" medium of propagation that no one could have imagined in Newton's day, led Einstein to recognize the Leibniz and Huygens had a more causally inadequate view but one that now had more empirical justification. The relativists were right after all and the assumed substantivalism of Newton simply did not match the empirical data. 

When he wrote these comments in 1953, Einstein was still looking for a unified field theory to explain how, without an "empty" (b) concept space, laws of motion can be "in general covariant", this is, not dependent on any particular (special) choice of reference frame. This refers to the unaccelerated, inertial frames of Special Relativity. But without such a field we cannot explain inertia, which is the quantity defining the mass of a body. A ubiquitous field is needed to explain motion if, as seems evident, there is no evidence for (a) concept space.

Einstein's unified field theory has been abandoned by contemporary physics, which is quite happy with relativistic spacetime. Spacetime, however, cannot be the answer to my original common sense question.

Great reference to Jammers, whom I have not discussed. Einstein views his work as having historical and, perhaps, religious significance, but lying outside the scope of interests of scientists like himself.

Einstein and Descartes both rejected an empty spatial substance because they could not understand how an emptiness could be a cause of anything, and if it's not an efficient cause, science wants nothing to do with it. So they are both, in essence, plenum theorists. Reality is all filled up. String theory, quantum gravitation, gravitons and the search of the Higgs field of ubiquitous bosons all presuppose such a plenum that would explain the observed law-like, covariant "kinematic" effects of gravitational and other accelerated bodies and inertial motion.   

To date, no such field has been found.

I welcome your replies.

DCD


2014-10-09
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Great comments, Haines. Thanks,
RE: : "folk physics and correspondence theory are problematic today, we are obliged to attempt some justification of our starting axioms, if only in our own minds. In my remarks to which you respond, I started with "assumptions", not "facts". You were correct to point that out, but the same applies to your radical empiricism. "Common sense" in the context of the physics of space and time can only refer to the consensus among physicists (if it exists) and not to inferences drawn from our daily lives."


I am familiar with Paul Churchland's notion of folk psychology and his eliminative reductionism that takes references to mind as references to propositional attitudes, not to non-material objects or substances. He is committed to scientific realism or "physicalism" as the complete description of reality and regards our common sense understanding of things as just a bunch of outdated false theories we accept uncritically.

I see Churchland as outdated and physicalism as false. 

My position is not radical empiricism; Churchland's is. I don't think empirical truth is decided by the consensus of physicists at some time. But I do argue for a correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence between the world and our ideas of and about it is explained physically by the functioning of our sense organs interacting with the environment and the neurologiocal and motor functions which process this information and generate our emotional, instinctual and rational behaviors. Evolution, properly understood, can explain why these connections have a necessary, though corrigible, nature.

My preference for empirical assumptions is not just a matter of personal taste. I'm talking about the world of our common reference frame, the world we, as animals, evolved to fit into. It's not a coincidence that animal senses gather information from the world that corresponds to what actually occurs there. Given that all functionally adaptive traits are selected because they enable the on-going reproductive success of that species of organic life, it is not a contingent fact that sensory representations that correspond more closely that other are the ones more likely to be selected. It's not an accident that we see and think about the world as we do. It is necessarily the best adaptation that survives and thrives according to natural selection. And this is not a logical necessity, either. Evolution is not based on a tautology. 

To bring it back to space, my original question here asks about an empirical concept of space that is ontological in nature. It is about an "(a) space concept", as I referred to it in my reply to Andrew here today. But, unlike Einstein's "absolute" space, I'm suggesting that space is dynamic and has observable "kinetic" powers that help us understand, in an empirically illuminating way, what constitutes existence, motion and other the types of change we find in our common reference frame of three-dimensional objects moving around in space.  

Thanks,
DCD





2014-10-09
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines,
I'm not sure where you found the relevance of the conversation about space to the problem of mind'
RE:  "The relation of the "phenomena" constructed by our sensory organs and brain and the world that enables them remains an open question. No one any more suggests that there is an empirical correspondence between neural signals and the world. Yet somehow those signals supervene (excuse the jargon) on the world. But supervenience, or if you prefer, emergence, has yet to be explained. One might say that from the relation of our sensory organs and the world there emerges qualia, but this constant conjunction is not explanation, for qualia reduce to neither factor."


But if you are willing to accept my "substantialist" approach to the ontology of space and time, you may be open to the possibility of an empirical ontology of substances more generally. I speak of all substances as having 2 different sets of properties:
  1. intrinsic and extrinsic
  2. essential and accidental 
As we relate these distinctions to the nature of phenomenal properties and how they are related to physical properties of the brain, neurological systems and sensory organs, I think we can define unequivocally what these relations are. Neither emergence nor supervenience can clearly describe the "somehow" by virtue of which phenomenal properties, qualia or, generally "consciousness" appear. Both of these approaches imply a pernicious ontological dualism, whereby there is no imaginable interaction among the quantitative properties that define material bodies and qualitative properties that define consciousness.

The only intelligible relationship can be one of identity. So, if one and the same substance has both intrinsic and extrinsic properties, we could identify the quantitative properties as extrinsic, efficient-cause interactions between particles and fields of matter/energy and the qualitative properties as intrinsic, epiphenomenal effects which appear as a condition of being for animals that, as individuals, have the appropriate neurology on-board. So, consciousness could be identical to the intrinsic nature of the living brain as it has evolved on Earth and, possibly, elsewhere. 

Consciousness itself, therefore, is essential to certain kinds of animals, we humans being at least one of them.  But particular, subjective states of consciousness are accidental,. depending on the particular inputs and receptions of sense experience.

This is just a rough sketch of the solution than could provide the best possible ontological explanation of consciousness. I've covered this topic extensively in other discussions here.

Thanks,
DCD


2014-10-09
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

I hope I'm not dragging this dialog out too much, but would like to reply briefly to your posting.

I would differ with your two points that a) truth (not sure what "empirical truth" is, for truth refers to a quality of statements) is not decided by consensus of physicists and that b) the correspondence theory remains valid. But these big issues are probably OT.

However, I'd like to look at your (Kantian?) belief that we view the world in terms of a reference frame that is a product of biological evolution. The lowly E.colis has receptors that, thanks to hysteresis, informs it of whether nutrient concentration is increasing or decreasing. If the former it continues to head the direction it was going by adding a phosphate to a signal molecule; if the latter, it stops and brownian motion heads it in a new direction. This is adaptive action, but where's the reference frame?

Sorry to differ with you, but to me neurology makes clear that sensory organs respond to input by generating an electro-chemical action potential. There's no empirical correspondence between this electro-chemical impulse and its cause beyond the latter having reached a threshold level. The nervous system does differentiate the qualities of inputs by sending signals from different receptors along different paths, and each receptor is tuned to a certain quality of input. But, again, neural path choice is not the same as with the empirical qualities of the object perceived. 

But having said this, I agree that the world constructed in mind does support effective action. I could offer a complicated (OT) explanation, but much simpler is the pragmatic view of a constant conjuncture between actions and their effects. Our world may be a fantasy, but if the fantasy regularly supports effective action, what difference does it make?

I should note that I don't myself happen to agree with the pragmatic position. The reason is that I see all action as inherently improbable in reference to circumstances rather than as adaptive. If merely adaptive, life wouldn't exist to start with. It is relative reproductive success that is adaptive for populations. But perhaps we can avoid getting hung up on these side issues.

You seem to hint at the pragmatic position when you say that it is no accident that there's a regular association of our conceptions of the world views and effective action in it. However, things are a bit complicated. The extinctions show adaptation does not ensure survival. On the other hand. some bacteria have not genetically evolved for millions of years. They have lasted far longer and are far more numerous than any eukaryotes. One might conclude that it is not so much a question of survival, but of capabilities. Bacteria (and archaea) do a lot better than we do in Darwinian terms. Another complicating issue is that increasingly evolution is seen as driven as much by circumstances as by genetic inheritance (symbiogenesis or endosymbiosis,  horizontal gene transfer, epigenesis).    
 
I get nervous when human beings are inserted too tightly into a Darwinian frame. Without getting into this challenging issue, I would just say that the people I know are at least modestly creative in their daily lives, rather than just adaptive.

As for space, I thought the word empirical referred to observables, and while there may be reasons to infer that space is real, it lacks the spatio-temporal locality necessary for observation or measurement. You loose me in your last paragraph. I have no doubt that based on our actions we infer a spatial dimension. The point I tried to raise before was not whether space is real, but whether it is primary, whether it is a priori to existence or is a secondary effect of existence.
I'm not sure how one would decide whether space constitutes existence or the other way around. My inclination would be to find a consensus among physicists for an answer, but that option you reject for some reason. You seem to say that biological evolution lends support to our conception of space, but here you seem to be agreeing with me that biological existence has resulted in a spatial concept because for most animals, adaptation requires movement. That a conception of space supports effective action does not begin to answer the question, but if the concept of space arose from bio-evolution, the concept must surely be secondary rather than primary. 

2014-10-09
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

Wow, all this is getting over my head. I've no idea what "substance" is unless it way of saying that what exists, exists. 

I also don't understand the categories you brought up. I do understand that practical life requires the construction of closed categories based on properties (I know this word implies your substance) that happen to persist on the order of lifetimes. Other properties we classify as accidentals, and they help us differentiate individuals within a general category. Even the octopus has that cognitive skill. But the fact is that all properties persist only for a time that ranges from Planck to cosmic time. Whether a property is essential or accidental depends on how long you live ;-)

I find no scientific support for a mereology. You seem to be fond of ancient greek objective idealism, but you understand that I prefer looking to a scientific consensus because it hopefully supports effective action. I am less interested in correct thinking than constructive action.


2014-10-10
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines,
Substances are defined as being self-subsistent,  meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else. They are the basic units of ontology, the basic units of being. Because they are distinct, they can be counted using a system of natural numbers. You and I are substances, since we are all distinct from every other thing. But we are composite substances, composed of smaller composite substances, which are also composed of smaller substances, all the way down to the most basic substances. The basic substances are the fundamental units of existence out of which everything fond in the world is constituted.. 

We normally think of substances as material substances. Some substances are illegal; the rest are not. We can use and abuse substances. Some people are substantial, so are some contributions and the wealth of some people. You know what the word means if you understand these different usages. Substances are what exists distinctly. But what I'm suggesting here is that space is also a substance, one with an existence that is distinct from the plurality of material substances. There is only one spatial substance and it is infinite and continuous, though it does have parts.

This is an ontological dualism but it is a dualism wherein the relationship between to 2 different kinds of substances is unintelligible, as in Cartesian dualism, for example. Material substances relate to the spatial substance by coinciding with parts of it. Matter is constituted by the most basic ways in which energy can coincide with space. Physics has identified 37 of these ways, which constitute the fermions and bosons of the Standard Model.

Substances are not at all mysterious, as I describe them here. Space gives energy geometrical structure. And, because it is dynamic, energy gives space a temporal aspect. Because they are related by distinct units energy of coinciding with distinct parts of space, units of matter have definable quantities hat can be counted arithmetically. This description of substance is intelligible, illuminating and far more than simply saying "what exists, exists".

I don't see how you can confuse my position with "greek idealism", since it is clearly materialistic and goes far beyond the empirical reach of ancient Greek philosophy. I wrote my dissertation on early Greek philosophy, so I do have a fondness for it. I am also fond of scientific consensus and effective action. Assuming we think before we act, I'd be real surprised if thinking.correctly was not precisely the thing we need to do in order to act constructively. Or didn't you think of that?

Thanks,
DCD

2014-10-10
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

I  find your position rather difficult to follow.  Your initial paragraph seems entirely gratuitous. I've no ideal what is meant when you say that your position "goes far beyond the reach of ancient Greek philosophy". Perhaps, but you have not said how.

I don't know much about these things, but my impression is that "idealism" is a dualism that presumes two realities that do not commute: one is contingent and the other is not. It seems this is given either an ontological meaning (there are contingent and non-contingent realities) or an epistemological meaning (the content of mind is to a degree non-contingent). When I said "greek idealism" I had the former in mind.

My 1913 Webster dictionary says: substance is that which underlies all outward manifestations. Today it seems to me this could have two fundamentally different meanings, but in 1913 the dictionary seems to have presumed just one.

Tentatively I'd identify these two meanings as objective idealism and scientific realism. My crude and ill-informed impression of  the first is that "substance" becomes the owner, ground, holder or bearer of observable properties in relation to which it is a priori and ontologically independent. My sense of a scientific realist take on this is that it adopts an ontic monism that does not distinguish substance and properties, but does hold that some properties are unobservables.  
 
If these characterizations have any merit at all, they both leave unresolved issues. The idealist position makes an assertion about something that lacks properties and therefore is undetected by or cannot be inferred from sensory information or measurement. It posits a reality that is not material and so can make no difference in the material world and be inferred from experience. Not supported by experience, it arguably is only an artifact of one's social location.
If so, one can't expect anyone not sharing that location to find it to be at all meaningful or persuasive.

The scientific realist position seems to experience difficulty defining properties. I will not explore this because I know you would be unsympathetic. I would argue that observables are observable because they are spatio-temporally local (in modal terms, actual), while unobservables are non-local realities such as non-actual ontic probabilities. Properties I'd argue are the actualization of non-actual ontic probabilities made accessible to an actuality because of grounding by other actualities in its symmetry group. This, of course, is neither intelligible nor persuasive without some very extensive (and boring) elaboration.
 


2014-10-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines, what do you find unwarranted or unfounded in my definition of substance?DCD

2014-10-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
I was not suggesting that your definition of substance was unwarranted or unfounded, but that you don't define it.

I've troubled to go back through this entire thread to see if I could pull out a definition. You say that space, in contrast with particulars, is a continuous substance that is active and dynamic, the opposite of particulars. Unlike abstractions, substances are causal. Space and energy are substances because they have these properties. All substances have properties that are intrinsic or extrinsic, essential or accidental. You and I are substances, since we are all distinct from every other thing, but we are composite substances. We normally think of substances as material substances. Smaller substances, all the way down to the most basic substances. The basic substances are the fundamental units of existence out of which everything fond in the world is constituted.

I have two problems with all this. First, there are quite a few particular issues, but this is minor. My more serious objection to this list of properties is that it does not define substance. That is, you construct a frame in terms of which you represent the world, but do not attempt to give that frame warrant. 

Let me give a little example (I don't want to get hung up in a discussion of the specifics here). Your first mention of substance is that since things appear to us as having spatial separation, space must be a separate continuous substance, the opposite of particulars. I've no idea what the "opposite of particulars" means, and I worry about inferring ontology from epistemology. Even if it were true that space is separate and continuous, you use the word substance only as a general category that includes space. Not only does that general category seem to be your invention, but you don't say what it is. If I were to say an apple is an instance of a grue, that would mean absolutely nothing to you, would it?


2014-10-13
The Reality of Spatial Relations
You patronizing attitude comes through loud and clear, Alex. You would be better off to drop it and just respond to what I'm saying. Your use of the word "entanglement" betrays your thin grasp of the concepts in contemporary physics. You language is more figurative than literal and you still never answered my original question. I have little else to say regarding attacks like this.Cheers,
DCD

2014-10-13
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines, 
I was responding to what you wrote: "Your initial paragraph seems entirely gratuitous". Gratuitous means "unwarranted or unfounded", that is precisely what you not only "suggested" but explicitly said. Gratuitous also carries the connotation of not caring or being dismissive of the topic; and that could not be further form the truth!

Then you say you have, "... troubled to go back through this entire thread to see if I could pull out a definition." This seems gratuitous to me because the first sentence in my post was: "Substances are defined as being self-subsistent,  meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else. They are the basic units of ontology, the basic units of being. Because they are distinct, they can be counted using a system of natural numbers."

What more of a definition do you want?? You can object to it if you want. But don't say you couldn't find my definition!

RE: "Your first mention of substance is that since things appear to us as having spatial separation, space must be a separate continuous substance, the opposite of particulars."

This is your characterization of my question; not the question I asked, however. It was a bit of a trick question, I admit. The "trick" is that it asks you to reply to something that arises in everyone's common sense experience of the world, and puts the burden on you to say what, if not space, separates the things in our experience. There was no mention of substances, no definition of material substance or any philosophically rigorous terminology. If you want to use ordinary words like "space", "between" or "thing" in a philosophically rigorous way, I invite you to do so. When asked, I tried to do so, too, in a way that is arguably the best way to do it. Whether it is the best or not, is the argument we can explore here. But don't say I'm not defining my terms, please. If the definition is unwarranted or unfounded, please tell me how this is so.

If you were to say "an apple is an instance of a grue", it would mean to me that you have read about Goodman's new riddle of induction, which is no longer new. When I say "Substances are defined as being self-subsistent,  meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else.", I am not using any nonsense words like "grue", nor does Goodman's riddle apply to my language any more than it applies to saying "emeralds are green". 

Thanks,
DCD


2014-10-13
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

I was responding to what you wrote: "Your initial paragraph seems entirely gratuitous".    Gratuitous means "unwarranted or unfounded", that is precisely what you not only "suggested" but explicitly said.

Well, yes, and I apologize. I meant something less judgmental, such as not having adequate warrant.

Let me take your example and use to convey the reason for my discontent. Sorry if this seems picky, but I hope that taken as a whole it illustrates why the remark struck me as not only lacking in warrant, but does not really define anything. 

"Substances are defined as being self-subsistent..." Self-sufficient I take to mean not dependent on anything else. Two problems: a) it is definition by negation, b) I have no reason to believe such things exist. Of course, among those of a religious bent there is something that a priori is  absolute and non-contingent, but I don't happen to share their belief, or at least it does not belong in scientific discussion.

"...meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else." Because I happen to believe  that everything is both distinct and inseparable, your saying that substances are distinct naturally strikes me as a tautology. Everything that I can distinguish is distinct. In what sense other than property differentiation do you mean distinct? Some things that exist are not distinct, but their reality can be inferred either from observation or from successful practice based on their presumption.

"They are the basic units of ontology, the basic units of being." Well, yes, ontology is a science of being, but it has quite different meanings in different sciences and in philosophy. I think in the present context it needs to be defined in physical rather than philosophical terms. Also, why assume a quaint atomism? How can "being" have elemental constituents? You loose me entirely here, but more to the point, it is neither an argument nor a definition, but a statement of belief. That being this imagined "being" is a complexity made up of elemental units requires justification.
 
"Because they are distinct, they can be counted using a system of natural numbers." Well, that is common sense, but it rests on your posit of the existence of disembodied beings. But I worry that there are plenty of real physical things that are not distinct and cannot be counted. Fields, for example. But you are not speaking of physical things, but a conceptual entity, an abstract existence, and I've no idea how one counts a cognitive abstraction. 

Again, I apologize for being picky, but hopefully you better understand why I was so bewildered, although the fault may be my insensitivity to subtle argumentation. You posit something you call being, which apparently is not actual in that it is independent of any empiria, and yet despite this lack of empiria it manages to be distinct from all else. So what justifies this belief that cannot be inferred from phenomena? It seems adventurous to infer an onology from a semantic argument based on the meanings we give to words.

Haines B.

2014-10-13
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines,

RE: "Substances are defined as being self-subsistent..." Self-sufficient I take to mean not dependent on anything else. 
No, I tried to make it clear that I meant "that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else." Since I try to show how the relationship between matter/energy and space provides an intelligible ontological explanation of what we find in about ordinary experience of the world, I would deny that space or matter exist independently of the other. Existence is about how these 2 distinct substances dynamically coincide. This is no "quaint atomism", either.

 RE: "...meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else." Because I happen to believe  that everything is both distinct and inseparable, your saying that substances are distinct naturally strikes me as a tautology. 
So you add your tautology to my empirical claim and accuse me of speaking in tautologies. 

I say "Substances are defined as being self-subsistent, meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from every thing else." This is not a tautology any more than to say: Self-sufficient means "not dependent on anything else." What makes them distinct is not you "happening to believe that everything is both distinct and inseparable". They are distinct because we can count their quantities. This applies not only to particulate matter but also to quantities of energy in fields.

RE: "Because they are distinct, they can be counted using a system of natural numbers." Well, that is common sense, but it rests on your posit of the existence of disembodied beings. But I worry that there are plenty of real physical things that are not distinct and cannot be counted. Fields, for example. But you are not speaking of physical things, but a conceptual entity, an abstract existence, and I've no idea how one counts a cognitive abstraction. "

What disembodied things do you think  I'm talking about? I'm talking about the basic units of physical reality, all 37 of them in the Standard Model. The exists a vast, possibly infinite, plurality of basic substances that combine to comprise everything that exists because of how they coincide with the one "disembodied", continuous substance I'm calling "space".

I'm not talking about a cognitive abstraction at all. Everything in my ontology is empirical and might possibly be falsified.

You come up with a lot of things you say I am saying but I don't say. Things like "you posit something you call being, which apparently is not actual in that it is independent of any empiria" and I NEVER said that, nor would I!

DCD




2014-10-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Common-sense realism does have a point in asserting the reality of space. However, the epistemic question faces issues when confronted with rationalist analyses. Take for instance, the paradoxes of Zeno. They are paradoxes because the rational cannot accept the common-sense empirical notions of space. There is a modified version of it by Daniel Kolak and David Goloff called "The Incredible Shrinking Zeno" (The Experience of Philosophy, 2005) which addresses issues about the undeniability of space-in-between that you have pointed out. Kant did try to propose an epistemic solution by subjectivising Space and Time as forms of intuition. However, there have been alternative proposals as well. See my notes on "Space as the Negation of Being" and "Space as Non-Reality"

2014-10-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Domenic, thanks for your comments. 

In your article you write "Space is the negation of substance, of reality, of being; thus, space is nothing, unreality, non-being."

I prefer to say space is the opposite of matter/energy and the relationship between them is not one of negation or occupation but one of coincidence. Space is seen as one continuous substance with parts that are related to each other in all the possible ways that could be described by Euclidean geometry. If space is a real substance, instead of an negation of being as you hypothesize, then it can cause matter and energy to be structured in 3 and only 3 dimensions and, if it is also imagined to be dynamic, could explain the passage of time and the reality of the present moment. 

You theory is one way to look at it. I would argue that is is just not the best way. The criteria for deciding which theory is best are based on how much can be explained with the fewest possible assumptions about what exist. You assume one less substance than I do but I would argue that you can explain far less. Like Zeno, you end up denying the reality of change and time, as well as space. There are other and better was to resolve Zeno's paradoxes, which I could share with you if you like.

Thanks,
DCD


2014-10-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Domenic,RE: "Common-sense realism does have a point in asserting the reality of space. However, the epistemic question faces issues when confronted with rationalist analyses."


My original question is at the common sense level but my ontological theory clearly goes beyond common sense. But it tries to explain what appears to us in our common sense experience of the world in the most optimal way possible, using only empirical hypothesis and methods. I am not a rationalist philosopher like Parmenides or his student Zeno. I am a naturalistic philosopher, like Leucippus or his student, Democtitus. I argued in my dissertation that the Atomists, by postulating empty space, found a resolution to the Eleatic paradoxes. The Eleatic critique of Ionian monism exploited the fact that these earliest naturalistic philosophers thought of nature as a plenum... all filled up with the elements on earth, fire, air and water. They all tried to reduce the change and complexity of the common sense world to one substance. Parmenides' critique just takes monism to its logical conclusions, but so does Heraclitus. The Atomists added something new to the argument which actually solved the conceptual problem but, in those days, appeared to Plato and other to be no more than "a likely story". Therein hangs the tale of Western philosophy.

Now we know it was more than just a likely story and we have a tested and falsifiable quantum theory that explains, in a unified way, all the elements and forces found in the world ... except gravitation... without postulating the reality of space.

I think your negative view of space is a step backwards toward Parmenides. 

Thanks,
DCD


2014-10-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
I would certainly be interested to hear your solution of the "Incredibly Shrinking Zeno". Do you think that there is a difference between conceptual space and real space? How would you respond to Kant's solution? Are you with those who consider the mind as a tabula rasa?
BTW, I don't deny change and time. I believe space is real. But, I argue that the perception is only of a real negative. In other words, space is emptiness.

2014-10-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Domenic,
Assuming that space is an empty nothingness just recapitlates the early Greek Atomists' view.

But if we assume, instead, that space is a continuous substance with geometrical and dynamic properties, then we can understand how Zeno made a false assumption. If the arrow, or any other "body in motion", is ever not moving, it is impossible, as Zeno showed, to explain non-paradoxically, how any motion is possible.

But if all material existence is explained as the ways in which quantities of energy coincide dynamically with space, then the arrow itself is a dynamic structure and, therefore, never at rest. 

DCD

2014-10-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown

Haines,

I am not clear about processes not having a state. One of the most general definition of a process based on available dictionaries can be:"series of changes" Collins Dictionary goes even more general: process = "the course of time".

Any definition should allow us to recognise a process, irrespective whether or not we consider ourselves being a process. I believe we are, so that means there is at least one process we know quite well.

There are a few questions related to to the series of changes:
a)  Changes of what?
b)  How do we know about the change if it is not through a state of some sort?

We can argue that inertially  moving objects do not have a state as their position is relative to an observer. If we however consider a planet orbiting a star, then no matter what observer is there can be either right- or left-handed orbit, which equates to a state of the process.

Mathematical process abstractions uses variables which are states, and depending on a process some of them may be persistent such as a chemical process equilibrium concentrations.

AW

2014-10-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Daniel,

The connection of space, time and the common sense that you emphasise is very important. In order to get your questions and the point of view validated in the eyes of the world at large you need to show the common sense is worth something. The moment you mention “common sense”, many people will start ignoring you as explained later. Here there are my thoughts on the subject:

We cannot have concepts of space and time in conflict with our common sense. We can either:

a)       a) abandon science in its favour,

b)       b) turn it off, or

c)       c) try to find a way it can be reconciled with science.

We can achieve nothing pursuing option a. A large number of people discussing space and time prefer option b. I see that you pursue option c which is also my favorite. But it is a hard job given that authoritative statement attributed to Albert Einstein:

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen.
[1951, Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science by E. T. Bell, Chapter 3: ]

Nowadays we can witness the existence of a dogma that common sense is a primitive reasoning method trained on what we see and therefore susceptible to all sort of illusions. It is true that common sense can be delusional at times but it has a self-correcting capability given it more time to do it. No one sees common sense objections to Copernican system. If there were that was only out of fear to stand up to authority and commit heresy. As pointed out by science writer John Horgan:

many scientists came to see common sense as an impediment to progress not only in physics but also in other fields. [...] the British biologist Lewis Wolpert declared in his influential 1992 book "The Unnatural Nature of Science," "I would almost contend that if something fits in with common sense it almost certainly isn't science." Dr. Wolpert's view is widely shared.
[J. Horgan, "In Defence of Common Sense," New York Times, 12 August 2005]

Such position is proliferating to all levels so people taking part in online science discussions may say something like that:

"Common sense" is precisely the thing that people use to refute science. Science is exactly the opposite of common sense. "Common sense" is simply the self-fulfilment of what you think you already know.
[anonymous post in www.physicsforums.com]

Coming back to Einstein, there is some evidence of common sense doing the right thing:

As described in his Autobiographical Notes, at the age of sixteen he shows strong common-sense based beliefs:

If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic field at rest. However, there seems to be no such thing, whether on the basis of experience or according to Maxwell's equations. From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the stand-point of such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest. For how, otherwise, should the first observer know, i.e., be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion?

This is the common sense in its pure form, but this seems also true that based on prejudices laid down by the mind before he has reached eighteen.

Common sense becomes more formalised with the advances of Artificial Intelligence theories. Paraphrasing the definition given by John McCarthy in  his work Artificial Intelligence, Logic and Formalizing Common Sense in the context of computer programs, I can say:

Common sense is the ability to deduce a sufficiently wide class of immediate consequences of anything one is told and what one already knows.

This is more than just logical thinking. It may include all available tools of intellect such as analogy, statistics, heuristics, iterative refinement, plus wide range of knowledge. We can now see even better that Einstein Special Relativity was the product of his common sense despite his later sarcasm.

I fully support the idea that if common sense objects something there is a case to answer.

Thanks for your meaningful posts.

AW


2014-10-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

I am not sure you will see this post but for my own clarity I have to say this:
It is good this discussion touches various aspects of the problem and may uncover important clues which might be the key. But I think there should be a time for synthesis of all of those, followed by acceptance or elimination or improvement of your hypothesis. So I assume your working hypothesis is still that:

Space can be defined as:
"an active and dynamic substance that is continuous in nature, so that it can divide into an infinite number of parts, infinitely large and infinitely small."

The task now is to find by a systematical iterative method if your definition leads to contradictions or contains unverifiable terms or assertions. I would (and I probably will at some stage) do a systematic logical break down of the definition and then deal with it step by step.

One thing leaves me with no doubt so I take it as an axiom: Denying reality of space is the road to nowhere. Contrary to this, working on your hypothesis is an interesting exercise.

Irrespective of the resolution of the issue of "substance", I have some reservations to  the term "dynamic", because this attribute implies a change in time that adds another dimension of complexity.
If the definition of space is to include all that the electric and magnetic properties contributing to light propagation then it seems adequate. But from the logical point of view you cannot exclude that the "dynamic substance" may have bubbles containing true empty space within. I am not suggesting it is or it is not possible, but certainly could be taken into account. In such case the term "dynamic" is possibly restrictive and could be dropped from the definition only to re-appear later as a proposition if found appropriate.

AW


2014-10-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Your lack of clarity understandable, for the conventional definition raises problems. Let us start with this definition:  Process is a change over time in the state of an identity. The definition presumes the reality of identity and state. While this not my main problem with the definition, these presumptions are worth inspecting.

Do things have an "identity" independent of human (or organic) cognition?  I suspect a conventional answer is that identity a set of properties that happen to persist, as opposed to "accidental" properties that don't. A constant conjuncture of properties. However, all properties persist for some time that ranges from Planck to cosmic time. There is no objective measure of short of long time, and so persistence is subjective. We think of things as persistent if their properties last on the order of lifetimes.

In addition, a certain set of properties implies closure, as if properties were intrinsic and possessed independently of the the wider world. And yet their existence is unintelligible without reference to that wider world. The Big Bang created properties, and so properties are contingent, not supernatural essences or ideas.

A "state" is a set of values associated with a set of variables or dimensions. In space, location refers to three values assigned to a Cartesian frame. A Cartesian frame allows us to predict, that is only because we impose closure. In physics it is known that there can be many more dimensions than those known to folk psychology. String theory is an obvious example. Also variables are constructed by our sensory organs, the five senses. There is no reason to assume that things may not be accessible to them. Dark matter might be an example. We distinguish light from electromagnetic radiation, but why? A state is an artifact of subjective closure.

Process is often said to be a change in state. Suppose we have a one-dimensional entity having an arbitrary value of one. After a time interval it has a value of two. We know that change has taken place, but change itself is not a static 2-1. These are static states of beings, while process is a becoming. It we look at a process at some arbitrary time,  the processes collapses and becomes a static state at that time, but it is no longer a process.

A process is change, and change cannot be a static property values. As soon as we define its value, it is no longer a process. If we watch the setting sun and measure its angle. the moment we read it it has become something else. It is not a fixed value, but a fluid value between two poles.
Those static poles don't describe the sun's movement, but only its limits. 
 

2014-10-20
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
I don't understand why participants in this discussion are so willing to accept that it is legitimate to infer the nature of the world from "common sense". Surely this assumption is highly controversial and in need if justification.

"Common sense" I presume is a construction of the mind rather than a divine implant. Any suggestion that it corresponds to the world runs up against the problems encountered by  correspondence theory, such as its circularity. One can't say A corresponds to B without knowing what A and B are in the first place.

Philosophers and scientists do not seriously hold the commonsense (folk psychology) position that statements about the world literally describe it. They have instead been more willing to accept that there is a necessary relation between cognition and world because without it, action would be impossible. Ago ergo sum. But they don't go so far as to suggest that cognitive representations of the world are actually what the world is like, only that they support effective action.

This implies some kind of necessary relation. Bertrand Russel assumed that cognitive entities refer to real entities in the world, and statements about the world refer only to structure, to their real relations or congruence. But there is no reason to assume that cognitive entities correspond to objective entities. Many people are superstitious, and for them the existence of a deity is common sense. Does that make deities real? 

That there is a necessary relation of a cognitive state and the world does not mean that our statements thereby acquire truth value. If I stub my toe, there is a necessary relation between my pain and the rock, but pain is not a property of the rock. My own take on this is that the congruence of a conception and its object is one of systemic locking. Locking comes up frequently but seldom explained. For whatever it is worth, my personal take on this is that congruence refers to the relation of degree of (spatio-temporal)  localization in ontic probability distributions. That is, the specificity of one thing depends on the specificity of other things in its symmetry group, but its properties are of its own construction. 

Another problem is that common sense is not entirely common. This is particularly true of space and time. Saint Augustin said that he very well knows what time is, but cannot explain it to anyone else. Being non-communicable, it cannot be common sense, but is instead an intuition. For obvious reasons, to infer de re natura from intuitions is extraordinarily adventurous.

2014-10-20
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines,
Sorry, I've been  busy.

Commonsense is how the world appears to us. It is our reference frame.  I'm not trying "to infer the nature of the world from common sense, as you seem to think. The purpose of my question was to demonstrate that space is just as much a part of the world we experience as are the objects located in it. 

Further, space is always perceived in 3 and only 3 dimensions. I'm suggesting that this is not an accident but a necessary consequence of the way in which neurological evolution occurs. Our common sense brains necessarily represent things in 3 dimensions only because we evolved in a world that is fundamentally 3-dimensional. Our common sense reference frame on nature is a construction of the brain. But, because it is the result of evolution, our brain is a machine constructed by nature. 

The three-dimensionality with which we necessarily perceive is not an accident of nature. The neurology of perception went on for a very long time before humans even came into the evolutionary picture. To become any extant species is to pass the ultimate "reality test". It is to be shaped by nature based on the ability to perform highly adaptive behaviors that ensure the completion of continuous cycles of reproduction, where only those reproductive solutions that best fit the rest of the world are naturally selected. Our brains are far from accidents. They are ancient machines that we think were brand new when we were born.

I look for ways to explain everything on the assumption that only energy and space are substances. 

I appreciate your comments. 

DCD


2014-10-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
It is impossible to explain time without explaining space, energy and matter, too. What exists is not a collection of static objects that somehow move around relative to each other.
What exists are spatiotemporal structures that endure through the present moment, as time passes. Do you think that the present moment really exists?  Do our bodies exist as time passes? Doesn't the present moment also require a present location" 

But the physics of "spacetime" means that you cannot separate space and time and the the present moment does not really exist at all. All there is for spacetime is an eternity of 4-d spacetime coordinates, none of them any more real than any others. 

Thanks,
DCD

2014-10-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

> Commonsense is how the world appears to us. It is our reference frame.  I'm not trying
> "to infer the nature of the world from common sense, as you seem to think.

I owe you an apology for the presumption. So you here make a statement not about ontology, but  about epistemology, that what is known as "common sense" refers to how the mind processes phenomena.

> space is just as much a part of the world we experience as are the objects located in it.

I have trouble following this. With one important exception I'll not explore here, the mind doesn't  really experience the world, but only phenomena. That is, our sensory organs are affected to a limited degree to a specific kind of influence. There is a sensory organ that is sensitive to photons and can discriminate their energy levels. This is converted to a digital electro-chemical action potential (although there may be some transmission of analog signals as well) and transmitted to the brain by neurons. This digital signal registers in the brain and the cognitive effect can be  a symbol such as the word "green". In some cultures there is a richer discrimination of colors and in some a lesser discrimination. So the symbol for color is in part a cultural artifact. It also does not mean the grass is green, but that photons of a certain energy are not being absorbed by it and impinge on the optic nerve.  

But is space a phenomenon? Of course not. We experience things as separated, and there is good reason in physics to assume that all actualities are separated in principle. But we don't experience what separates actualities, but only their being separation.  

Apparently your statement about space is not meant to be scientific or ontological. When you say that space is part of the world, this "world" is not what lies outside cognition, but refers to the cognitive frame constructed by the mind. You proceed to say that the mind constructs a three dimensional Cartesian space. Here I'd inject an argument that biological life is based on making choices, on action in relation to circumstance that supports life. Purposeful action must presume consistency and predictability even though it is a poor representation of the actual world we  experience that is full of surprises. Cognition closes or frames the world so that variables acquire values needed for cognitive processing, even though all things are in reality processes without values.

I had the feeling we were in agreement so far, but then you dash that hope. You say:

> brains necessarily represent things in 3 dimensions only because we evolved in a world
> that is fundamentally 3-dimensional.

You don't infer the world is Cartesian because the brain is Cartesian, but that the brain is
Cartesian because that's the way the world is. What's your warrant for saying the world is Cartesian? You seem to be saying that is not our cultural construct, but the way the outside world really is. But many creatures don't experience it that way. Unless engaged in a mat community, E. coli's world has only one dimension, and E. coli has been a lot more successful in the world than we. The Paramecium lives in a two-dimensional world, and it does quite well for itself as well.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. a) "[The] common sense reference frame on nature is a construction of the brain".  Does this mean that common sense constructs a frame for the world?
b) "[the reference frame] is the result of evolution". Does this mean the brain constructs a particular  frame because it is biologically adaptive? c) "Our brain is a machine constructed by nature". Does this mean our brain is an artifact of physical nature? While there may be some truth in each of these points, their relation is obscure.

Statement (a) is about psychology. Of course, "common sense" is not an agent and cannot do anything. So I understand your statement to be that the mind constructs a frame for experience that we refer to as common sense. Agreed, with the understanding that what is common sense to one person is nonsense for another. Nationalism and religioun are good examples. For some they represent values that are central in life; for others they are pathological.

Statement (b) seems to be the Darwinian point that natural selection weeds out maladaptive phenotypes in a population. This does not mean that all phenotypes are adaptive, but that they are not too maladaptive. This is a big different for the logic of your argument. Also, adaptation seems to refer to a functional relationship, not to an empirical identity. It may be functional to see space in Cartesian terms, but that does not mean space either exists or has three dimensions. Also, Darwinian selection works at the population level, not the individual level of your statement (a).

Statement (c) might mean that the brain functions like a Turing machine in that outcomes are unequivocally determined by their prior state. But even Turing did not apply this to biological life, which he called rather an "oracle machine" in that there is a non-mechanistic black box that makes outcomes unpredictable in principle. But is everything in nature mechanistic? Not even Newton believed that, for he was a bit of a mystic. If it were entirely mechanistic, what then is all this talk about "emergence"? But my main point is that this is a statement about the world outside the mind that lacks warrant and runs counter to common opinion. The majority still believes in the supernatural, which by definition is not mechanistic.

The logic is implied rather than stated. You seem to be saying that since neurons are physical, and cognition supervenes on neurons, our cognitive representations of the world must be true to the world. I realize you don't mean to say that all statements are necessarily true, but it is not clear why not.

I also wonder if we can say that Darwinian selection has culled the best. There have regularly been mass extinctions; 98% of life forms became extinct. Does that mean that the 2% survivors are better adapted than the 98% others? If survival defines "best", it seems that the prokaryotes, in terms of both number and length of survival, are best adapted. Are they "better" than we and have a better sense of the world than we?

As an aside I note that Darwinism no longer seems the only or even main source of phenotypic variation. Since you are apparently "into" evolution, let me recommend Jablonka and Lamb's Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005).   

> I look for ways to explain everything on the assumption that only energy and space are
> substances.

Your posited relation of psychology to ontology I find hard to follow. You start with a statement about how we frame our cognitive world, and you then seem to argue that we can infer the nature of the world from our cognitive representation of it because our cognitive representation is an artifact of the world. Why isn't the logic here circular?

You end with an ontological statement about "only energy and space are substances" (I still don't know that this "substance" is and I'm unclear about energy). Our brains are good at cooking up phantasies, but that does not mean the objective world is phantasmagorical. Our brains consist of neurons, and neurons are made up of organic compounds, but that does not mean my representation of the world reduces to so many carbon-based molecules.

Looking at the issue more broadly, it seems the mind constructs a mental representation of the world. The first issue is whether there is any relation of that representation and an objective world to which it refers. There are those who deny there is an  "objective world" or that it is at all knowable: science is merely an ideology, a power game. I suspect you and I agree in our response to this. I suspect we also agree that there is a real determinant world out there (but I doubt you would agree with my suggestion that the causal lawfulness of the cosmos is an artifact of Renaissance mysticism). The issue is the relation of our cognitive representations and the reality to which they refer. I assume we would a agree there is a necessary or determinant relation, for otherwise intentional action would be impossible. So the issue becomes the nature of this relation.  And here we part ways, but perhaps that is because I'm misunderstanding your intent.

2014-10-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew, you raise a question about my rather provocative statement that processes don't have a state. Of course I'm not speaking of definitions (which reflect folk psychology), but physical processes in terms of science. The context of your remarks suggests you understand that.

Let me offer a little example to illustrate my thinking here. I'm standing on the Brooklyn Bridge and dropping a bottle containing a message into the East River to find out where it will end up. The maximum height of the bottle is my height above the river, but the bottle has not dropped yet, and so at this point in time I see it as in a static state rather than being a process. Eventually my bottle will probably land in the water, but that is a counterfactual prediction, not a statement of fact. As I speak, my bottle is between those two points, one I view as static and the other as hypothetical.

The question is what is the bottle's "state" at any moment between those points? I assume you will allow a reduction of state (the numerical values we assign to an entity's variables) to merely the number of feet the bottle happens to be above the water. To ascertain this value, I take a photograph of its fall and calculate the distance above water. But during that microsecond in which I take the picture, it is in motion and so it is both at the calculated position and acquiring another. Its real position is fluid, a flow. My point is that its state, where the value of height is a number, is an artifact of measurement (the photograph) and a break in the flow of time into a particular instant.

A change in measured state (a difference in the bottle's height between two moments in time that we impose) implies that a change in state has occurred. I can infer that a change in state has occurred because the results of measurement at two constructed static states differ. An analogy might be measurement in quantum mechanics: measurement causes the wave function to collapse to become the value for a variable; without measurement the wave function has no value.
Another example is a mathematical function such as f=ma. What is the value of "a" here? I has none until we specify values for m and a. 

Cognitive processing by an observer requires that info from sensory organs be segmented. I believe this is a commonplace in neurology. Cognition requires the construction of static values. We can only think in terms of static states (leaving the rest to poets and mystics). Calculus enables us to calculate changes at infinitesimally small moments, but these moments remain a mathematical construct. The moment we measure or observe a process it is becoming something else. This is what distinguishes being and becoming.

I presume that in principle all things are processes. You raise a counter example of an equilibrium process, but I'm not quite sure of your intent here. All chemical compounds are temporary. The oldest on earth are perhaps topaz micro-crystals. But if we go back far enough, not only did topaz not exist, but even its atoms and ultimately not even elementary particles. They ceased being  probabilities to become actual and acquire mass only because of the Higgs field. Or does your example point to the conservation of values in a symmetry group?  But all reality arises from broken symmetries. In all this I find it hard to discover anything that is absolutely permanent. I did not trouble to mention quantum fluctuation, which also suggests that a static state is an artificial construct. 

If in principle all things are processes, then nothing really has a state although an observer can only see the world in terms of them. So this is naturally the source of dictionary definitions. Of course my point was brought up in ancient Greek philosophy and so is hardly novel.   
Some things may seem to persist for a while and thus acquire a state. But persistence is a function of time. They are only changing too slowly for us to perceive.


2014-10-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines,

"You don't infer the world is Cartesian because the brain is Cartesian, but that the brain is Cartesian because that's the way the world is. What's your warrant for saying the world is Cartesian? You seem to be saying that is not our cultural construct, but the way the outside world really is. But many creatures don't experience it that way. "

The warrant for the truth of saying the world is Cartesian is really the conclusion of a very extended argument. There are many objections to that view, some of which you have stated here, that would have to be addressed and disposed of before anyone would be "warranted" is stating its truth. 

I am suggesting it to you, now, only as an assumption of this empirical ontology. I think the philosophical exercise, generally, is to state empirical hypotheses about the nature of being that, if true, would explain in an illuminating and non-trivial way, what we find in the world through sense experience and our ability to reason about it.

I am assuming the existence of only 2 things: energy and space. Most of you will agree that energy exists. But you are no better off than Thales was when he assumed water was the basic element that explained the other three elemental substances found in nature (earth, wind and fire -- not the 70's disco group). But I digress.... As the Eleatics were quick to point out, if these tangible, observable elements constituted everything that exists ("What is"), then motion and change are just unintelligible notions. Democritus agreed: a world all filled up leaves no possibility of motion and, therefore, of change or even time. Therefore, he reasoned, there must also be a void, an empty space between the "uncut-able" things (atoms) that made motion, change and the passage of time a theoretical possibility. In his day this was an illuminating story. Plato even dubbed it to be a "likely" one. But one that we could never "know" to be true because they were simply too small to observe. Plato's Rationalism turned Democritus' Atomism into an oddity of ancient philosophical history. But his idea that there must be something between atoms (or fermions and bosons) remains something baked in deeply to the cultural construct we call modern science. The question I asked arises in common sense and pretty quickly becomes a question about common sense.

"I also wonder if we can say that Darwinian selection has culled the best. There have regularly been mass extinctions; 98% of life forms became extinct. Does that mean that the 2% survivors are better adapted than the 98% others? 


Absolutely it does! That is entirely the point of evolution: the animals and plants we find here now (including the variant homo sapiens sapiens) are the best of the best. These adaptations are the ones that have taken everything into account, so as to continue to reproduce reproducing plants and animals like themselves over very, very long spans of time. Not infinite or endless, to be sure. But long enough to try out all the possible variations of adaptations to fit in their parts of the world better than all the other possible variants did.   
 
If survival defines "best", it seems that the prokaryotes, in terms of both number and length of survival, are best adapted. Are they "better" than we and have a better sense of the world than we?"



No, not at all. Number and length of survival are not the only criteria of "life" or even the "value" that you seem to want to attach to my use of "best". What extant species are best at is completing cycles of reproduction in regions of space where resources are finite and population growth determines who gets the scarce resources needed to keep completing cycles of reproduction ... and who doesn't. This eventually brings about the extinction of all the other species that we do not find living here now. 



"b) "[the reference frame] is the result of evolution". Does this mean the brain constructs a particular  frame because it is biologically adaptive? c) "Our brain is a machine constructed by nature". Does this mean our brain is an artifact of physical nature? While there may be some truth in each of these points, their relation is obscure. "


Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Every species is a ancient, perfectly constructed reproducing machine, turning out sometimes imperfect copies of its perfected mechanics. It's perfection is the result of a very long competitive process, wherein the less perfect but possible variations got their chance to compete for dominance. When we find today (including us) are the winners. The ones that fit in the best along with everything else. That our eyesight, for example, evolved to be "sensitive" to what we call the "visible spectrum" is not accidental coincidence or a tautology. It represents only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (between 400 and 700 nanometers) but it is just the range of frequencies needed to detect changes in our environment that are useful in selecting adaptive behaviors that contribute to sustainable reproduction. Darkness is any frequency of electromagnetism outside of this range. White light is the combination of all of them. Some animals need sensitivity to wavelengths outside this range and so their adaptations enable that. Nature selects only what is needed for each species to be sustained. If we processed, say, ultra-violet light as color rather than darkness, it would be useless in detecting change or motion that have some impact on our reproductive survival. There are no "ultra-violet" predators or foods about and we have another sensory organ that is sensitive to it: our skin. 

It is these kinds of necessary connections between how we perceive the world and the world the we perceive that Empiricism is blinded to. The basic assumption of Empiricism is pretty well stated by you "the mind doesn't  really experience the world, but only phenomena". You even state it as if it were some sort of self-evident truth. To me, it is clearly an assumption. Your account of the physics, optics and biology of the process of seeing is not that different from the one I gave above. But then you make the leap to somehow identify the physical properties and processes with something you call "phenomena" which something else you call "the mind" performs some operation on phenomena wherein  it "experiences' phenomena. This is not physics or biology or any sort of "empirical" claim at all. This is in fact how we encounter the philosophical problem of mind as critical realists about perception. But what Empiricism ends up with is just more Rationalist metaphysics that starts with the same mistake that Descartes made when he reflected on his experience and thought he could deduce an ontological distinction between thinking substance and extended substance. Cartesian coordinates can map any extended thing, including the spaces between them. But minds, ideas and God cannot be located anywhere in space, are known indubitably and only by reflection, "Je pense, donc je suis.", as he put it. From that point forward modern philosophy has felt obliged to start its inquiries from the point of view of an individual subject, reflecting on the nature of its own experience. History shows that, once put into that intellectual box, getting out is not an easy intellectual exercise. You offer a perfect example of someone stuck in this box when you say, "the mind doesn't  really experience the world, but only phenomena" or "The first issue is whether there is any relation of that representation and an objective world to which it refers. There are those who deny there is an  "objective world" or that it is at all knowable: science is merely an ideology, a power game." 

"Those people" who deny the objective world are suffering from a metaphysical appearance, a cultural construct, as I see it, called Empiricism. It underlies both Phenomenalism and Phenomenology alike. And it lead otherwise smart people to believe things like "the causal lawfulness of the cosmos is an artifact of Renaissance mysticism." Really?? Statements like that display an obsession with epistemology to the exclusion of ontology. Of course that derives historically from how Platonic Rationalism prevailed over its pre-Socratic alternatives, like Atomism, which offered only a probabilistic, empirical solution to questions that Plato and most people thought should be answered with a kind of certainty that only mathematics and especially geometry could provide.

All the metaphysics and epistemology of Medieval and Renaissance philosophy derive from Plato's and, later, Aristotle's ancient arguments. These were used by the Church and others to suppress new empirical inquiries that were fallible and falsifiable, unlike the certainty conveyed by the ancient, infallible authorities. In case you haven't noticed this science denial is alive and (sickly) well among those who want to re-write textbooks the recount the science of evolution and climate change, for instance. 

I reject any wisdom that derives from authority alone. If you want to know something, use your imagination to construct empirical hypotheses that would explain it and test those hypotheses against all the other hypotheses. The best hypotheses will be the ones that explain the most about what we find with the simplest set of assumptions. 

I hope this clarifies our parting of ways in a constructive manner. This is a far cry from providing sufficient warrants that prove the truth of what I am saying. But it is a beginning that, I hope, clarifies my assumptions and suggests a method by which these things can be settled with empirical arguments.

I appreciate your interest.

DCD 


2014-10-22
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew, your statement

"One thing leaves me with no doubt so I take it as an axiom: Denying reality of space is the road to nowhere. Contrary to this, working on your hypothesis is an interesting exercise."


leaves me wondering exactly what you mean. I can isolate 4 assertions there:
  1. something you do not doubt at all you take to be an axiom
  2. one such statement is Denying reality of space is the road to nowhere.
  3. you seem to think that "my hypothesis" is contrary to the statement in 3
  4. you find this interesting.
However, I assert, rather than deny, the reality of space. I would agree that relativism about space is a dead-end theory, if that's what you are saying.

The reality of space is not a self-evident statement to me but it is a thought-worthy assumption of this ontology. So I guess you could call it an axiom in that sense. 

But I take the assertion that space is a substance to be an empirical hypothesis that could be falsified. It might be an assumption that contradicts others or doesn't explain anything in a non-trivial way. It might even be falsified by a scientific experiment. It might rely on a concept of substance that is nothing more than collections of properties. But these are all things that we can speak of clearly and rationally at the same time we are speaking empirically. We can let nature determine the answers to our questions as much as possible.

I find it interesting, too.

Thanks for your interest, Andrew.

DCD
  

  


2014-10-22
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

I find little reason to accept most of your assertions, and I find many hard to understand. This reduces the issue to the warrant for our statements.  However, since this issue is not germane to the thread, I limit myself to a brief statement of my own position without intending to open a new thread.

"I reject any wisdom that derives from authority alone."

I agree with you here if you mean that one should always be a bit skeptical of convention. Given this, it nevertheless seems that the bulk of what we believe and the starting point of any discussion must be a convention or consensus of authorities even if authority end being challenged. Intellectual anarchism offers no basis for constructive dialog. If you refuse to accept any appeal to authority for statements, I don't know how to engage you.  

"If you want to know something, use your imagination to construct empirical hypotheses that would explain it and test those hypotheses against all the other hypotheses."

I assume first that only hypotheses about closed systems are testable, and I have yet to meet a fully closed system. For example, in historiography, no explanatory hypothesis is testable. Second, "empirical hypotheses" are inferred from observables, not deduced from them. That is, all hypotheses have starting axioms that are conventional (even a Kuhnian paradigm shift preserves much convention). All theories also include unobservables (for example, in the science that makes more accurate predictions than any other, quantum electrodynamics, theory and observable data are inseparable).

You have every right to defend what appears to be ancient aether theory, but I can't engage you in dialog unless you are willing to put it into terms of modern science. Of course, not everyone finds an appeal to science acceptable, and rejection of science as a master narrative seems the fashion among postmodernists. However, I have no choice but to appeal to science. This is not because I lay claim to scientific expertise, but because as a member of the working class my primary concern is constructive action in the world, and knowledge that informs such action constitutes science. 

2014-10-22
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,
I apologise to you and to other readers for my confusing statement which meant something entirely different. I am not surprised you found it "interesting". My non-English background and the lack of sleep may have contributed to this.

1."Axiom" in my post means: 
"an unprovable rule [assertion] or first principle accepted as true because it is self-evident or particularly useful" [Webster] with the emphasis on "particularly useful".

My axiom is: "Denying the reality of space is the road to nowhere". That means I can reject such denials from considerations. 

"Real" for me means subjectively experienced by many individuals.

2. The intended meaning: Denying the reality of space is the road to nowhere. Contrary to denying the reality of space, your hypothesis is interesting and therefore working on is an interesting intellectual exercise for me." 

3 Your hypothesis is not contrary to my axiom  as you say.

4 Interesting as described in 2.

Once again I apologise for distorting my original intentions.

AW

 

2014-10-23
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines,
I wrote a 12 paragraph reply to you, addressing your critiques and questions. You cherry-picked the next to the last paragraph and chose to make quibbling objections, taking it out of the context in which it was written. You are reading way too much into it.

When I said "I reject any wisdom that derives from authority alone." I was referencing the previous paragraph where I was talking about the Creationists who deny evolution and the radical conservatives who deny climate change on the basis of a fallacious appeal to authority alone, without any concern for the science of the matter. Instead of replying to this and the bulk of what I wrote, you chose to invent some meaning I didn't intend and then try to portray me as an intellectual anarchist because of it.  

"Second, "empirical hypotheses" are inferred from observables, not deduced from them." 



Where did I ever say empirical hypotheses are deduced from observables? You seem to want to school me in philosophy of science when this is not at all necessary. A hypothesis is an assumption that may or may not be an inference. It just has to be plausible enough to function as the premise in an argument. Conclusions are either deductively or inductively inferred from premises. I also never denied that some things are unobservable and I don't see how this tangent is even relevant to what I wrote to you,

I am not defending an ancient ether theory at all, giving me even more reason to think you aren't paying much attention to my argument. i have used terms of modern science and I'm not denying any of its empirical data. I'm disagreeing with the elimination of space from the empirical understanding of nature, not because I want to reiterate the views of early Greek philosophy or any ancient theory but because the hypothesis of a spatial substance is arguably a better way to think about it.

I'd like to you to reply to the rest of what I said in the previous post.

Thanks,
DCD 
  


2014-10-23
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,

I didn't "cherry pick"; I simply did not respond to any of your points. We were so obviously not communicating that I tried to address the foundation of any dialog, how we lend warrant our statements. I'm sorry you misunderstood my intent.

I now see that one reason I didn't respond to your remarks is that you were addressing points raised by others that I had not troubled to read. For example, your first sentence was a quotation, but all I knew it wasn't of me. In our dialog, creationism never came up, and so I lacked a context for your remark about authority. I didn't read the comments of others because my only interest was your definition and rationale for the category of substance. My not finding either was perhaps my fault.   

I initially asked for a justification for your ontological category of "substance". If space is reified as an independent substance, does this not define "aether"? And yet you distance yourself from aether theory.

You gave the impression that you defend the ontological category of space on the basis of philosophy and common sense. I inferred from this you meant it as a metaphysical rather than physical category. At that point dialog broke down. Analytic philosophy has the virtue of pursing cogent definitions for terms, but I didn't find them in your remarks. If your philosophical approach instead implied an objective idealism, I find that unintelligible. The common sense argument that because we experience things as separate, space must be an independent existent is why I brought up folk psychology. You did not seem to understand or agree with how folk psychology explains "common sense". I was trying to show why we can't infer ontology from common sense..

I would have understood your argument had you put it in scientific terms, and that can certainly be done. For example, over the years I've always found David Bohm's arguments interesting, and I gather his "wholeness" has been construed as an aether theory. I don't see quantum vacuum probability fluctuations as an aether because I find it hard to reconcile them with the notion of spatial distance, but I suppose the case could be made. If you raised these or any other scientific reason to believe that space is an independent substance, I missed it.

 

2014-10-23
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew, if all you are saying is that space is subjectively experienced by humans, then we are not on the same page about what constitutes reality more broadly. you sound like a subjectivist here and nothing could be farther away from my position.
Thanks,
DCD

2014-10-23
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Haines Brown
Haines, 

I really don't have time to waste conversing with you if you are not going to read what I write. I don't think I misquoted you but if I did, I apologize. However, it was still relevant to our discussion or I wouldn't have put it there. Please read and try to pay closer attention to what I'm telling you. You read me selectively, make assumptions and draw bad inferences from things I say and then criticize me for your spurious logic. 

You do seem to be genuinely interested, though, so I'll try to address some of the things I know you said right here. I will bold them.


"I initially asked for a justification for your ontological category of "substance". If space is reified as an independent substance, does this not define "aether"? And yet you distance yourself from aether theory." 


This is another of your misunderstandings. Even in the debate about space within classical physics the "aether" and "space" were not considered to be the same thing. I have never used that word as a substitute or consequence of the spatial substance I refer to. I don't have a "reified" view of space as some abstraction, concocted our of concrete particulars. I also did not call it "independent". I defined substance in my post here on 10-10-2014
 
"Substances are defined as being self-subsistent,  meaning that they have an existence that is distinct from everything else. They are the basic units of ontology, the basic units of being. Because they are distinct, they can be counted using a system of natural numbers. You and I are substances on this definition, since we are both an identity distinct from every other thing. But we are composite substances, composed of smaller composite substances, which are also composed of smaller substances, all the way down to the most basic substances. The basic substances are the fundamental units of existence out of which everything found in the world is constituted." 

I'll add now that I don't think space and energy (the 2 substances in this "dualistic pluralism") exist independently of one another because it is their inter-action that explains the equations of quantum physics in an ontological way that is arguably better than the current epistemological approach assumed by most scientists.  

If you want to question my views, please question the views I actually express here. I am making a complex, highly technical ontological argument that has specific premises, and conclusions that follow from them, according to an explicit inductive methodology called the empirical method. My argument begins in common sense and is designed to explain how and why the world does appear to us in this way. But the explanation goes far beyond what we find in our ordinary experience of the world. You can observe that in this carefully-worded definition of substance that takes us beyond even the commonly accepted conventions of philosophy, especially those of analytic philosophy. If you consider yourself one of those philosophers and think you are the only ones who have ,"the virtue of pursing cogent definitions for terms,....
whatever real word "pursing" is supposed to be..., I believe my definitions are unambiguous and falsifiable. "Cogency" is a characteristic of inductive arguments that have 
  1. true premises and are 
  2. inferentially strong (meaning highly probable, likely, similar, etc.)
So you use of "cogent" is ambiguous when you apply it to the semantic meaning of an individual term. But, given your usage of "cogent", I'll say my definitions are cogent, despite the fact that you " ...didn't find them [cogent definitions] in [my] remarks. You didn't find them because you didn't read them in some cases.

"You gave the impression that you defend the ontological category of space on the basis of philosophy and common sense. "


I am attempting to do just that. But I've explained above how my argument is not just folk psychology or naive realism. I want to emphasize, though, that common sense is where we begin and where we finally end up, but, we hope, with a deeper understanding of what constitutes this common sense world that is our human,non-inertial reference frame. You might call common sense "pre-scientific" and I would be OK with that since my views only make sense in the context of modern science. 

But that usage is a bit condescending and derogatory for my taste and I'll tell you why. Modern science began in the 1600's with Galileo, Newton and the rest, about 500 years ago. That's maybe 18 generations or so? Well, we have been humans, building cultures that enable our on-going reproduction, for about 40,000 generations. Common sense got us through the first 39,980 or so, almost all of it without any written language. It is also everything we find when we experience the world. Science is an idea, a way of thinking about things. But is is a special way in that we can leave the decision up to nature about which hypotheses best predict the future or explain things to us in an illuminating manner. That's whats make science empirical, to the extent that it is. But common sense is also empirical and refined enough to have produced modern science. An illuminating philosophical explanation should end up giving us a better and deeper understanding of this common sense world that we still inhabit. 

"I inferred from this you meant it as a metaphysical rather than physical category."
Again, another weak or invalid inference, depending on whether yours was an inductive or deductive inference. How would you define the difference between metaphysical and physical categories anyway? 

"If your philosophical approach instead implied an objective idealism, I find that unintelligible."

It did not imply that at all. I would find objective idealism  a difficult , if not unintelligible view, myself. Of course, I find your inference that I would hold such a belief based on what I've said equally difficult or even unintelligible. This is what I keep finding in your remarks, though: misrepresenting what I say as some ridiculous remark and then taking me to task for believing your misrepresentation!

"The common sense argument that because we experience things as separate, space must be an independent existent is why I brought up folk psychology. You did not seem to understand or agree with how folk psychology explains "common sense". I was trying to show why we can't infer ontology from common sense.. "

So I can see why you might mistake my view, as you characterize it, for folk psychology. But I think I've already shown here that I'm not trying to infer ontology from common sense. I am making an inductive inference that begins with common sense because that's all we could ever have to begin with, unless you want to admit some axiomatic or self-evident principle some super-intelligent philosopher dreams up from which we can deduce some sort of rationalist metaphysics that show common sense to be a mere appearance. We've been trying to come up with that one since Plato's theory of forms. I just prefer to try another approach: empirical ontology and metaphysics. 
The fact that we experience things separately is not a sufficient warrant for believing that space is a substance. Rather, my argument is that to accept the hypothesis (assumption) that space is a substance offers a better way of understanding why the world appears to us as separate objects in three-dimensional space, as it does.

"...over the years I've always found David Bohm's arguments interesting, and I gather his "wholeness" has been construed as an aether theory. I don't see quantum vacuum probability fluctuations as an aether because I find it hard to reconcile them with the notion of spatial distance, but I suppose the case could be made. If you raised these or any other scientific reason to believe that space is an independent substance, I missed it."

Glad you mentioned David Bohm. I'm not that familiar with Bohm, so I found this video interview with him that seems quite relevant to our conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDKB7GcHNac

Glad you mentioned David Bohm. He is very interested in ontology, or what he refers to as the question about "the nature of reality" as opposed to Niels Bohr's view, which he initially accepted, that is based on epistemology. Epistemological philosophy says all we can discuss is our knowledge of reality... not reality itself. You seem like an epistemology guy to me, Haines, like all analytic philosophers. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that. 

Starting around 4:40 in this video, he begins a brief outline of his philosophy of science and relates it directly to his work in quantum physics. He describes how he came to reject Niels Bohr's approach and looked for a way to describe the actual processes that are measured and observed and implied by the mathematics of quantum physics. I'm struck by his ideas (5:47) about the implicate and explicate orders and the "movement" by which the implicate unfolds into the explicate order and the explicate enfolds the implicate order. This bears a strong resemblance to the distinctions I've made between the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of substances. Bohm is one of the few physicists who sees beyond the epistemological mindset of most scientists. If you follow me this far, I'll explain how I might differ with him, too. But thanks for introducing him into our conversation. 

He does speak of space as something that is a part of reality as a whole. And he looks for a more holistic way of viewing the world than the fragmented, analytical approach of science and cultural criticism generally. These days we are all, culturally, post-modernists who deconstruct things into elemental, disconnected phenomena. Science won't talk about reality. They "leave that to the philosophers" for the more part. Of course, that means they simply dismiss questions about reality from the universe of their discourse as "unscientific". "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil", in other words. Bohm can see how entirely question-begging this underlying logic is. 

If you watch that video and then get back to me, I hope you will see that you have missed a lot in what I've said so far.  

I do appreciate your interest.

DCD

 


2014-10-28
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,
I respectfully disagree with your qualification of my statement. 

If I have said:  Real = "existent or relating to actual existence" would you agree?

I would not because for me this would only be a definition of a synonym explaining nothing unless you can define "existent". In common dictionaries the definitions of "existence" or "existent" is nothing but circular or interchangeable with real. You need to embrace ontology to say what exists or not and there is more than one opinion about it as we know.

What about Real = not imaginary?

A bit better. If I have invented a fictitious object that has never has been experienced by me, it would be 100% not real. It is harder to say for things we gradually become aware in our mental development. 

The entity like space I experience the moment I become aware of the world around me. When I mature to study science and philosophy I refine this experience by building more coherent knowledge. When similar experience is shared by other humans that is an indication for me that space or anything for that matter might be seen as an objectively existing= real entity. It is worth then to spend my precious time to discuss it. 

It is not my position that there are no facts, only beliefs and personal experience. On the contrary I try to eradicate beliefs from my mind. But where the facts are missing of they are fuzzy, beliefs naturally feel the gap and may even be good thing. But what are scientific facts? I have developed necessary perspective to this term after reading Ludwig Fleck's work.

Thus avoiding commitment to a particular ontology I find space likely to be an objective entity because many other people share similar experience.

I don't like labeling but I acknowledge its classification value in systematic cataloging of knowledge. If you insist to apply qualification of my scientific or philosophical views "constructive pragmatic skeptic" would be a better choice. Nothing I take for granted unless it makes sense to me and I am not sentimentally attached to my views just because they are mine.

Thank you for this interesting thread, which becomes a real pleasure for me to read on daily basis but I am not sure If I am in a position to constructively contribute to its progress. After all I am a constructive skeptic.

AW

 

2014-10-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew

While I think ontology is the primary subject  matter of philosophy, you seem very pleased with yourself to avoid it. 
 
"Thus avoiding commitment to a particular ontology I find space likely to be an objective entity because many other people share similar experience."

But, even worse, you go on to say that your reason for believing in the objectivity  of space is because "...many other people  share similar experience." Many people shared the experience of the earth being flat. But no one can avoid the experiencing the world in 3 and only 3 dimensions. We can't even imagine how it could be experienced otherwise. We know that non-Euclidean geometries are non-contradictory and mathematically coherent. But we cannot use spatial imagination to picture what that would be. Your pragmatic skepticism cannot be skeptical about that.

"It is not my position that there are no facts, only beliefs and personal experience.... But what are scientific facts?"


So, you do seem to be skeptical about the nature or the validity of scientific facts. At the same time, you maintain that you don't deny are there are facts. You can't have it both ways. You seem to suggest that scientific facts are just another set of beliefs based on personal experience to be skeptical about. In that they are empirical facts we must always realize that they might be falsified, so we can be skeptical in the sense of continually putting them to the test. But that kind of skepticism does not serve to undermine empirical beliefs; it serves to increase our confidence in what stands up to the long-term tests of ongoing and shared experience. 

You should be able to characterize your position as it relates to other positions, especially if you wish to persuade people who hold those other positions.  You say "constructive pragmatic skeptic"  is a better fit than "subjectivist" but I don't see your position as "constructive" in any significant way. 

You say "Nothing I take for granted unless it makes sense to me and I am not sentimentally attached to my views just because they are mine."

OK, so you are back to "what makes sense to me" but you insist that your sentimental attachments to your views are based on something other than just uncritical self-affirmation. What, then, is the line of reasoning or intuition that makes your belief any less subjective. "Subjectivist" still seems more right to be because you have nothing "substantial" out of which to construct anything except maybe a logical or conceptual "construction". But by arguing that space and energy (which has a material equivalent) are 2 different kinds of substances out of which EVERYTHING is constructed, it is possible to talk empirically and quantitatively about all of reality, everything that exists.

I am pragmatic and skeptical, too. But I can show, were you cannot, how the world is constructed at its most fundamental level. You never get beyond the subject or the "inter-subjective", at best. "Objective" to you just means "what a lot of people think." Ontology can explain the nature of objectivity because it can defend a correspondence theory of truth. Epistemology cannot do this because the "knowledge" it discovers is justified either demonstratively or empirically. If it is demonstrative, it is true by definition or stipulation and is, therefore, trivial or "analytic": If it is empirical it might be falsified, that is, not true. The only necessary connections between meaningfully assertive propositions is a logical, trivial one. The empiricist reduces philosophy to epistemology and happily "avoids" ontology and the derivative metaphysical issues that follow. To understand my view, you have to be wiling to try to see things differently than you are used to. Empiricism tried to and succeeded in discrediting metaphysics by having it for lunch on Hume's fork. There's nothing left for philosophy to discover about the nature of the reality we experience that cannot be discovered by empirical science. Without any discoveries, philosophy is left to analyze the logical and linguistic constructions by which we attempt to justify one belief over another. I eschew this point of view and choose, instead, to try to work out an empirical theory of being (ontology) that might might give an empirical theory of everything real, including subjects like us and how we actually come to know about it, and act in it in morally responsible and even beautiful ways.

I'm glad the topic interests you and I appreciate your comments.

DCD
 
 

2014-11-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Note to Editor:

Between '79 and '80 I worked on trying to distil Russell's Analysis of Matter and find a logical equivalent to the mathematical expression of a unit of Spacetime. I worked on this problem until I left McMaster University in Canada to the US. I visited McMaster recently and my interest in this subject has been rekindled. I spoke to my thesis advisor who still happens to teach at the University and I am planning to finish the thesis after over 30 years. My language may be rusty and the academic jargon may be frayed on the edges, however I would like to contribute some thinking in this area.
George R Willy

The Einsteinian space or spacetime worked when the mathematics met the empirical during the now famous  Eddington's experiment. The question is could just a 4 dimensional geometry sufficie to formulate the theory without making time the fourth dimension. Einstein borrowed from a prodigious supply of multidimensional geometries  Reimann/Gauss had worked on without actually giving any of the dimensions corresponding values in nature. This leads us to ponder the nature of a unit in the spacetime continuum. Under the Euclidean system we knew that a point was a location in space. What is its equivalent in spacetime? Can we give it a logical meaning or a physical meaning? Additionally can this manifold work without time as its 4th dimension? I am hoping that there are many pondering this question


2014-11-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Tēnā koe Daniel
I am extremely interested in this discussion as it directly relates to research I am currentlyengaged in.

Apart from the rest of the very interesting discussion, this caught my attention.

" to try to work out an empirical theory of being (ontology) that might might give an empirical theory of everything real, including subjects like us and how we actually come to know about it, and act in it in morally responsible and even beautiful ways."


My current research is around Indigenous Philosophy, with a particular focus on contemporary Māori philosophy

I'm very interested in the distinction you make between ontology and epistemology.  I see that any philosophy has three sides, Ontology, Epistemology and Axiology, which are completely interactive. Acting in morally responsible ways is a major part of indigenous philosophy, and I want to place this at the base, but not necessarily the ground, of the philosophy. The use value of knowledge is important in indigenous thinking, (See Brian Burkhart, Shawn Wilson and others. I can give specific references if you require.)  Indigenous ethics can best be seen as values-based ethics, so having a value (albeit a use value) at the base fits well with indigenous axiologies. (A slight wander).  I am not sure I want to make such a big distinction between the three sides of the triangle, as to change one side is to make changes to them all. 

So,  to look at your question about space, I am grounding this indigenous philosophy on Interaction, and I believe that may well provide some avenues  to explore  western philosophical concepts as well. In many ways, Descartes' "I think therefore I am' crystalizes western philosophical thinking on these issues, and places answers to questions of epistemology in the mind.  This presents western philosophy with the issue of how the mind (or better, the perceptual input) reflects or otherwise the real world which may or may not exist around us.  (A bit brief and simplistic, but you will see the point.) 

Now, I think Descartes missed something, and this is what the indigenous philosophies offer the rest of the philosophical world. Descartes missed the point that we all interact with something.  We all breath, we all eat, we all excrete the waste products. The only way that we are able to stop interacting is to actually interact (put a gun at our heads and pull the trigger, jump off a building ... these are all interactions).  We can attempt to stop breathing, but when we lose consciousness we start breathing again.  We can passively, in a sense, refuse to eat, and eventually we will stop interacting (starve to death). In the meantime we will continue to interact (breath at least). And to reach "I think, therefore I am" Descartes had to interact, not only with what we might call the physical world, he also had to interact with the social world in order to learn a language, to think, and then to formulate 'I think, therefore I am'. Interaction, therefore is the real basis of trhe philosophical triangle.

To deny that we interact is, to my mind, to deny that we exist.

All else in the ontology and epistemology (and axiology) triangle are part of the cultures that we grow up and live in. (I'm using Feyerabend's Farewell To Reason and Against Method, among others, to support this argument for culturally-based ontologies and epistemologies)

So, if the basis of our ontologies and epistemologies is interactive, then it is also experiential. (Note that I am not basing this on experience, but rather on interaction.  Experience belongs inside the cultural positions, not the philosophical base.)  But to return to space (and time).   Space is learnt/discovered through interactions - the child reaches out and experiences different positions in relation to other objects. (That sounds really bad in indigenous terms, because the first space a child interacts with is the space between themselves and their mother, and mothers are not objects.)

Because we interact with whatever it is around us, then space is experiential and also relational. Relationships are a huge part of any indigenous philosophy.  But in terms we are discussing here, space defines the relationships between objects.   Space, in our terms, can also be tapu or noa (usually defined as sacred and not-sacred, but that's a poor translation.)  Tapu and noa really express a relation idea between ourselves, the people/objects we interact with, and the rest of the world as seen in our terms, and defines how we interact within that space.

Time also becomes interactive and experiential.  We  first experience the time when we are hungry and the time when we are not, (similarly sleeping/not sleeping .. etc.)  The day/night cycle, the lunar cycle and finally the solar cycle.  In this way, if time is interactive and experiential, then it is also cyclic, an important point in indigenous thinking.  (Linear time belongs to the European-centered cultures, which derive from the Middle Eastern Monotheistic systems and from, largely, Greek Philosophies and the concepts of a linear history moving towards some future goal.)

So, from an indigenous perspective space is interactive, experiential and relational. 

So, from an indigenous perspective, Einsteinian space (to use a common term,) is useful in some circumstaces, Newtonian space is useful in some circumstances, and the reality is, that for most people, space is interactive and relational. Reality???   Hmm .. I am still not sure.  

However, I would be interested in exploring the concept of basing western world epistemologies on 'interaction', as I think (somewhat presumptively) that this potentially offers a way through some of the epistemological/ontological quagmire western philosophy seems to have got itself into in the mind/body split. That issue, for a start, disappears.  An epistemology based on interaction does not need a theory of mind to explain itself. 

I want to suggest that just about everything we want to say can be predicated with "When I interact I see (observe) this occurring ..."  Interaction here can be an observation, but it can also be an actual intervention.  "When I shine a light at the sub-atomic level (interact) I see this occurring ..."

I will appreciate the discussion.   


2014-11-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Daniel,

Thank you for your honest opinions.

There are various reasons I came to this forum and one of them is to learn. No one yet seemed to have questioned my integrity face to face so I take your words as a unique valuable lesson. It is like exploring your own CT scan. I think this goes a bit off track of your main objective but I am encouraged by your kind words that you appreciate my comments although I am wondering why.

I want to comment on your last response just to get some closure with an intent not populate your thread with my personal profile data any more after this message. 

If you wish the exchange on general matters rather than the nature of space, my contact email is available on my profile.

I am not the only one avoiding ontology. Some are saying that “by pursuing epistemological account of science” it is unavoidable that implicit ontology still emerges.

The reason for the avoidance is that none of ontological systems I am aware of is conclusive. I should embrace a consistent system or invent a new one and I doubt I can live that long. Perheaps “avoiding” is not the best word and I would rather use term “deferring”. I am a big supporter of iterative development of ideas and stepwise refinement. So when I need to decide if something exists I use a primitive ontology of my own compilation and take all intelligent agents in my brain to use all available data and heuristic methods then vote about likelihood of that. For example I see it highly unlikely that time (as duration) should have the status of existence. It is not that the opinion of majority plays any role in this, but when I see confirmation of my rough ideas independently supported by others, this is an additional point in favour of my idea making it more likely to be objective.

I am not sure what I would do at the time when “many people shared the experience of the earth being flat”.  It is highly hypothetical. I am thinking of now, trying to find the equivalent concept today. I have to say for example, that I am not convinced by scientific consensus about reality of time travel neither that time exists as an independent entity let alone it is the 4th dimension of space. That makes me an outcast right now. But for the reason of my understanding of time I find your reservations to spacetime reinforcing my view although you arrive at your view from different premises.

So this is not the commonality of opinions that affects my opinion but I like to see mine converging with some others, which supports my sense of objectivity. I see nothing wrong with this.

As for the scientific facts I am not all skeptical. I know they are facts but not always sure which ones. I apply my best judgment and a weight factor based on available data and my own experience. Nothing is ever black and white. I am a great enthusiast of fuzzy logic. You need to be skeptical knowing that most of research publications is likely to be wrong (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-scientific-papers-are-probably-wrong.html#.VFI3NPmUfh4). To invoke some examples: Eggs have been banned because of cholesterol for more than 30 years and they are good now. Black holes are getting whiter and event horizon ceases to exist in them (http://www.nature.com/news/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-1.14583)

So I “can have them both ways”. I carefully evaluate scientific facts before labeling them as credible. With the absence of incriminating evidence I follow the mainstream consensus.

If you do not see me as constructive so be it, but I distance myself from destructive skeptics whose only objective in life is to propagate doubt and show the ego and this is relatively easy to do. It may take a constructive skeptic a life time to prove that he is.

There is more interesting things you say in your message but I am not yet ready to form an opinion and this message gets rather long. The last thing in relation with two of your statements:

 

But by arguing that space and energy (which has a material equivalent) are 2 different kinds of substances out of which EVERYTHING is constructed, it is possible to talk empirically and quantitatively about all of reality, everything that exists.

I doubt there is enough grounds to claim any knowledge of EVERYTHING. Visible universe may be. How do you know there is nothing beyond, let alone God? Do you think Big Bang is an ultimate explanation?

What makes you think energy is the ultimate concept to be given an ontological status? For me it is a useful computational figure related to particles and fields - mostly a complex measure of some of their behaviour. Note that I do not question space.

The dimensionality of energy in SI is [kg m2/s2 ] It is possible to change the system of units (following little known suggestions from Maxwell) such that kilogram is replaced by m3/s2 Then energy is [m5/s4 ] Quite a complex relation. This makes me suspicious that a complex thing can be the underlying elementary substance.

There's nothing left for philosophy to discover about the nature of the reality we experience that cannot be discovered by empirical science.

I am surprised that being a professional philosopher you say this. On the contrary, I think philosophy may challenge and verify science or take it out of its comfort zone to stimulate new discoveries. In fact in my investigation on the nature of time I look for inspirations. Philosophers appear to be more open minded than scientists but many scientists disregard philosophy.

Respectfully yours

AW


2014-11-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,It takes a while for my posts to appear here.
I have found something out of the box that may be of interest to you:
"A study of the structure of ether, vacuum, vacuum 
quanta, space quanta and space layers as nature‘s 
ontological background."
by  Arno Gorgels,

Mathematical Physics, Institute isn Potsdam, Germany.
 
Abstract
In this work, the three-dimensional massless region which has traditionally been called ether or vacuum, void or space 
is subjected to a pure mathematical-physical approach. This is based upon the set theory of infinite sets developed by 
Georg Cantor [5] in the nineteenth century. Thus, an interesting new ether model is developed. For this paper, the 
expressions ether, vacuum and space are used to describe different properties of the ether. 

This is available through ResearcGate website.
I have no other way to contact you
Regards,
AW

2014-11-08
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Thanks Andrew. I'll check it out. DCD

2014-11-10
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel
The universe is composed of three things:
1. local centers of mass-energy
2. diffuse regions of mass-energy
3. the background vacuum field

Local centers are called particles.
Diffuse regions are called fields.

Between particles are fields of mass-energy. (If I ever say mass or energy alone, it is just a figure of speech. All mass is equivalent to energy and vice versa. All mass has energy, all energy has mass. The word 'has' in this is complex, but lets leave this for now.)

The fields between particles include the three forces described by the standard model of particle physics, which is quantum field theory and special relativity. These are the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. The first two are rather local, the latter is less so. Each force has localizations in QFT called resonances, and are the gauge boson particles like gluons for the strong nuclear and photons for EM. That is because in QFT there is no action at a distance, hence 'fields' are actually particles.

Remember, when we say 'particles' we do not mean tiny billiard balls; we mean quantum particles, which are not like billiard balls.

The universe is permeated by EM and gravity fields between all particles, in our own room and out in intergalactic 'space'. Gravity fields, described by the general theory of relativity, permeates all of space, and remember, it is mass-energy.

There is also the foundational quantum background vacuum in all space even without consideration of our 4 fields (lets not get into the 5th dark one yet). The vacuum is not empty; it is full.

Does this muddy the waters enough for you? This is the foundation. Now, what is it you are trying to determine?

--Robert

2014-11-10
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel
The universe is composed of three things:
1. local centers of mass-energy
2. diffuse regions of mass-energy
3. the background vacuum field

Local centers are called particles.
Diffuse regions are called fields.

Between particles are fields of mass-energy. (If I ever say mass or energy alone, it is just a figure of speech. All mass is equivalent to energy and vice versa. All mass has energy, all energy has mass. The word 'has' in this is complex, but lets leave this for now.)

The fields between particles include the three forces described by the standard model of particle physics, which is quantum field theory and special relativity. These are the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. The first two are rather local, the latter is less so. Each force has localizations in QFT called resonances, and are the gauge boson particles like gluons for the strong nuclear and photons for EM. That is because in QFT there is no action at a distance, hence 'fields' are actually particles.

Remember, when we say 'particles' we do not mean tiny billiard balls; we mean quantum particles, which are not like billiard balls.

The universe is permeated by EM and gravity fields between all particles, in our own room and out in intergalactic 'space'. Gravity fields, described by the general theory of relativity, permeates all of space, and remember, it is mass-energy.

There is also the foundational quantum background vacuum in all space even without consideration of our 4 fields (lets not get into the 5th dark one yet). The vacuum is not empty; it is full.

Does this muddy the waters enough for you? This is the foundation. Now, what is it you are trying to determine?

--Robert

2014-11-12
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
In one sense spacetime postulate worked because the Einsteinian model pretty much denies the existence of such a thing. Instead space or spacetime is described as an expression of the relationship between quantities of matter. That is the behavior of space is merely the conduct of matter. Space-time is the expression of the sum total of the behavior of matter! I am not entirely sure but Russell may have hinted at this when he used Eddington's model of the theory and declared that space may just be a structure created by matter. George R Willy

2014-11-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,

If "... space may just be a structure created by matter" isn't it just as plausible to ask, as I am suggesting, whether or not matter is a structure created by its coincidence with space?

Denying the reality of space is empirically counter-intuitive, as my original question here suggests. But physicists are often eager to deny the intuitive appearances of common sense because their more detailed and precise scientific observations take priority over the limited approximations of the "naked eye". Sometimes, also, it is the requirements of a set of equations (e.g., quantum or classical mechanics)
that constitute a mathematical model describing regularities about change that cause scientists to postulate the existence of things like dark mater or the ubiquitous Higgs boson field.

Spacetime is just another such denial of what common sense tells us must be true somehow. Indeed, this is what physics always tries to do. Special relativity is just a way of affirming Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, while finding a way to make the math work out by applying the Lorenz transformations. So the math works but, in the process, we lose the reality of the present moment to an infinite eternity of spacetime coordinates, each one just as real or not as any other.The here and now is just an illusion of our limited senses and reasoning ability. 

Now I'm not saying that common sense gives us the deepest and most accurate or scientific understanding of reality. But I think we have to explain AT LEAST that much in whatever theory we eventually do end up with. We have to explain why it appears to us as it does. If space is real and plays a causal role in biological evolution, it makes sense that space would appear to intelligent animals to be real. But if spacetime is real, instead, it's hard to understand why time would appear to be passing as it does or why events would appear in the one-directional way in which they do in our common sense experience. Also, given the history of science and the affinity of scientists like Einstein and many others for the philosophical theories of Hume, Compte and the Vienna Circle, it's easy to understand why those people would be more concerned with the relations among "bodies" that can be observed than the non-observable spaces between them.

All I'm saying, at this point, is that the substantial reality of space, in addition to material substances is at least as plausible as the counter-intuitive but common notion these days that space may just be a structure created by matter.

Thanks for you attention to this,

DCD     

  

2014-11-15
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Robert, so what you propose is a plenum theory?DCD

2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
I noticed some interesting and sometimes profound insights into the philosophy/physics of space. The compulsion to view space as a container or an envelop I believe is an evolutionary adaptation probably quite averse to reality. The death of ether (Maxwell) forced Einstein to develop the General Theory. I think space died with ether. The General Theory explained gravity as a path an object took in relation to another object. Space became the description of this path albeit four dimensional. In other words the relationship between an object and traditional space was turned on its head. Instead of  no space no object now it is no object no space
George R Willy

2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Dear Daniel
I fully agree that the 4D spacetime is only a useful mathematical representation. You also say:

So the math works but, in the process, we lose the reality of the present moment to an infinite eternity of spacetime coordinates, each one just as real or not as any other.The here and now is just an illusion of our limited senses and reasoning ability.

Although the concept of eliminating  "Now" comes from high profile physicists e.g Eddington's:
We have abolished the Now lines, and in the absolute world the present (Now) is restricted to Here-Now.
This is only a posture which has little justification if at all. The Now lines are still in every Minkowski's diagram albeit they appear to be relative to a given inertial frame.

There is nothing in Special relativity to prevent the concept of Now being meaningful. What cannot be immediately reached, can be reached by planning. When we have demonstrated spacecraft rendezvousing a comet we have a detailed mapping of the moment it touches down and the time in the space centre as well whatever clock it carries. 
If there is such thing like the absolute simultaneity (which I currently support) then "Now" is also a clean logical result.
Evidence is accumulating it may be the case despite mainstream denials.

The issue is still not settled as it can be seen in current publications such as that of Polish physicists Ciborowski and Wlodarczyk:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.6102.pdf  

The problem of instantaneous gravitational interactions as promoted by Tom Van Flanders is also not convincingly disproved.

Regards,

AW




2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,Thank you for your thoughtful response to my posts. Your position that intuitive understanding of space or time or any of the other dimensions can compete with the mathematical models created by Einstein and his contemporaries does make sense at one level. That is the mathematical models have no more authority than the empirical verification of them. Mathematics if it is right can assure internal consistency but it cannot assure truth. (Wittgenstein?) Einstein's Mathematics had to wait Eddingrton's experiment to be verified. Eddington I think had to rely heavily on the intuitive perceptions to set up the experiment! If your position is that modern physics is only a competing paradigm to the intuitive one I think you are right. I am still not convinced a la Popper/Kuhn, that Einstein's theories are the final word on spacetime or even reality. I do not think he believed it either. 

Philosophy and then science clarify and further refine common sense or intuition. Do they succeed in doing so?  Or do they only substitute a new set of intuitions aided by mathematics which itself is built on intuitions? Looking forward to advancing this thought on this blog!
George 


2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
I am not proposing something quite as speculative as a metaphysical plenum theory. I am just proposing quantum field theory, which is an accepted, established and mature theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy


2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel 

I have encountered an opinion which is quite the opposite I would be inclined to approve.

Charles Francis · 46.27 · 17.14 · Jesus College, Cambridge

The quantum formalism, and especially Feynman rules,  makes sense if we don't fabricate space at all, except as relationships in matter, and does not make any sense any other way (which is why they tell you that there is no interpretation in physics any more). When there is no matter, there is nothing to have a relationship and there is no space. Not easy to think about, but at least the logical consequences, when one learns the maths to derive them, correctly match observation.

My addition is that there would be no time and no velocity as well.

I would be interested in your comments

AW




2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew,
As far as I can see, the denial of space, matter, time and motion does not leave science or philosophy with much to explain or to explain with. While this notion is not new or even very difficult to conceptualize, I see no reason at all to prefer it to the theory that space and matter are both real things. 

The job of science and philosophy is to understand what constitutes the everyday life and existence shared by beings like us. We should be trying to explain better what we are as beings and how our particular kind of being fits in with the rest of the world. This is not the same thing as matching up the logical consequences of mathematical arguments with scientific observations in a controlled system of laboratory operations.

You are not a mathematical construct and neither am I. So what we are made of cannot be a mathematical abstraction that requires values expressed only by imaginary numbers. There must be something substantial that is both cause and effect and cause.... in order to provide a basis for any causal explanations.

Your views also betray an underlying elitism in your comment that they may be too difficult for anyone to understand unless "one learns the maths to derive them...." I think I understand your postion very well but just don't see any reason to accept it, even if "the maths" work out.

I hope you can appreciate my comments.
Thanks,
DCD


2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Ian Stuart
Ian,
Tēnā koe, Hello, to you too. Thanks for your thoughts and observations. I like your project of relating contemporary philosophical discussion to indigenous cultures. The Mairoi culture is a good place to focus because it stayed relatively unaffected by the expansion of Western cultures to the rest of the world.

Just one brief comment in reply to your emphasis on interaction. Interaction is a more basic process than experience, observation or anything at the animal or human level of existence. My suggestion here is that matter and space interact at the most basic level of existence described by the Standard Model. Further, I argue that the interaction or relationship they have, as 2 distinct kinds of substances, is one of coincidence: matter (or distinct quanta of energy) coincide with parts of space in ways that exhibit the powers of both kinds of substances.

The Maori notion of mana as a spiritual substance that gives them powers and status in the world. This status is represented in facial tattoos, the head being the most sacred body part and that tattoo shapes designed to represent the human body. This is a good example for me, in fact, because it reinforces the idea that "spiritual" or social powers can be explained on the assumption that the only substances are material and spatial. If this is true, you cannot reduce space to relations of material bodies and you also cannot reduce matter to immaterial or spiritual existence. 

Thanks,
DCD        


2014-12-01
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Robert,
Thanks for the link on Vacuum Energy. Here's another one that yours led me to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_catastrophe.
This link refers to what is called the " Vacuum Catastrophe". The discrepancy between the predicted "vacuum energy density" and the relevant data derived from the Voyager spacecraft, has been termed "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics."

So to suggest that your proposal is any less speculative than a "metaphysical plenum theory" (whatever you mean by that) is not well-supported by the scientific facts of the matter. 

But, apart from all that, my question to you about a plenum theory was based solely on what you said. You are committed to some kind of plenum theory, as I see it, and your choice of Vacuum Energy is no more plausible to me than Descartes or Parmenides. You could have trotted out the ubiquitous Higgs field, but there is no real evidence for that, either.

You can speculate and postulate a plenum or vacuum energy if you want. But I can argue that it is simpler and more optimal to postulate matter and space as distinct, irreducible basic substances that, together, define and explain the nature of being, knowledge, beauty and goodness by their relationship of coincidence. It is an extended argument, but it is designed to show how the famous discrepancies of physics, like the Vacuum Catastrophe, entanglement, or the huge disparity between quantum physics and General Relativity, Science is so very paradoxical at its core that scientists see anomalous observations as CONFIRMING their basic theories!

If science were not so completely blinded to the existence of space by its own history, it might be easier to get scientists to consider a different approach than expands the empirical method to philosophical reasoning about the nature of being: empirical ontology.

This is why I laugh when your present your "catastrophic" views as "accepted, established and mature theory", in an effort to discredit my views without even considering them as plausible alternatives.

Thanks,
DCD   


2014-12-04
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,
Yes, I agree this is the (short) history of the GTR. Unfortunately, we are still left with the disparity between quantum physics, which deals only with inertial (unaccelerated) reference frames, and the entirely incompatible set of equations Einstein developed to account for "arbitrary" or accelerated reference frames. The ultimate justification of the dualistic matter-space model I am discussing would be the resolution of this disparity problem. 

Einstein, who resisted quantum mechanics as long as he could,  sought a unified field theory to resolve the disparity... but such unity has not been forthcoming from his GTR, which even he saw as only a partial solution. We still don't really understand what gravity is ... or mass either, for that matter... or how it appears to be action at a distance. Despite it's many obvious successes, physics is becoming a bit rotten at the core. What I am suggesting in this thread is the current "blindness" to space (which your reply to me fits to a "T") is preventing any possible solution to the disparity problem from ever being found.

Thanks,
DCD

2014-12-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
Kia ora George
Philosophy and then science clarify and further refine common sense or intuition. Do they succeed in doing so?  Or do they only substitute a new set of intuitions aided by mathematics which itself is built on intuitions?

I believe they do the latter.  They substitute a new set of intuitions aided by mathematics.  In Western thinking (short-hand for; the philosophies and knowledge groupings of the European-derived cultures) the link between mind/body or mind/world is tenuous at best. For me, this is best expressed in Feyerabend's work Against Method and Farewell to Reason and in his letters with Lakatos (Motterlini, M. (Ed.). (1999a). For and Against Method: Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.)



Ernst Mach (Mach, E. (1914 (2012)). The Analysis of Senstions, and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical. Chicago: Open Court. pp. 1, 26-28, 83, 304)  and Albert Einstein both emphasis the role intuition plays in their work. (Sorry, I can't attribute Einstein here as my library is in boxes on my garage floor).

Einstein also says 

The first step in setting up a ‘real external world’ is the formation of the concept of bodily objects and bodily objects of various kinds. Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occurring complexes of sense impressions .. and we correlate them to a concept – the concept of the bodily object. Considered logically, this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to: but it is a free creation of the human (or animal) mind. On the other hand, this concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
                The second step is to be found in the fact that, in our thinking (which determines our expectations) we attribute to this concept of the bodily object a significance which is, to a high degree, independent of the sense impressions which originally give rise to it. This is what we mean when we attribute to the bodily objects a “real existence”. The justification of such a setting rests exclusively on the fact that, by means of such concepts and mental relations between the, we are able to orient ourselves in the labyrinth of sense impressions. These notions and relations, although free mental creations, appear to us as stronger and more unalterable than the individual sense experience itself, the character of which as anything other than the result of an illusion or hallucination is never completely guaranteed. On the other hand, these concepts and relations, and indeed the postulation of real objects and, generally speaking, of the existence of ‘the real world’ have justification only insofar as they are connected with sense impressions between which they form mental connections. (Cited from Feyerabend, 1987, Farewell to Reason,London: Verso  pp. 204-205)

If respected scientists rely in intuition, and on "free mental creations'  then they are also negating the supposed empiricist basis of their work as their findings/results/descriptions are based on essentially internal/mental concepts which may, or may not, be related to any external reality.  

At best I believe that science and mathematics gives us good working models of the world.  Models on which we are able to build actions and interactions. But does science accurately describe "reality"?   Who knows.  And we may never be able to answer that question. 


2014-12-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Sorry I was not more clear.
The problem with inconsistency with the QFT and GTR are deep philosophical issues. Their resolution is hoped to be found at the Planck scale. However, in the context of effective field theories (EFT)--which is mentioned in the Wiki article on the vacuum catastrophe, yet you did not mention--the differences between these two clusters of our best theories can be understood.

EFTs are pseudo-independent theories that are generally hierarchically related to energy scales. At the highest energy scale--the Planck scale--QFT and GTR are bound with symmetry into some form of string or loop theory, and are unified as a single theory. However, it is a mistake to see this as a theory of everything. (Here I am following Tian Yu Cao, 1997 and 1999, and Cao and Schweber 1993) rather than a theory simply of that energy scale. The theories are only pseudo-independent because certain general principles (conservation and symmetry, principle of least action in Hamilton's Principle, etc) are common to all. However, each provide their own descriptions of their own phenomenal domains.

Any theory of the Planck scale is currently a developing theory, or simply mathematics until evidence arises. These are distinguished from the EFTs which describe accepted, mature and established theories (here I follow Rohrlich 1988, 1996, Rohrlich and Hardin 1983, Batterman 1995, 2002, and others). The latter theories are known to describe, predict and explain comprehensively and accurately, and the entities that are described are known to exist, like rocks and chairs--the basic furniture of our world.

We must take the developing theories with significant grains of skeptical salt. Remember, QFT and GTR are clusters of interrelated theories, instantiated models of particular EFT domains. Many of them are accepted, mature and established, including QED, QCD, various models of stars and galaxies. Where they have problems are at the highest energy scales, including the background zero-point energy background field. We have some evidence--e.g. the Casimir Effect--that there is some kind of 'plenum' if you will, some kind of substantial field. QFT predicts such a field, and GTR predicts such a field--in GTR spacetime is substantial. However, at these energy scales the theories are developing, and are not mature, etc. Hence, we don't know the full nature of the zero-point energy. The theory of dark energy is now assumed as further evidence of this field, although again it is a very developing theory, and therefore should not be held as known.

You must distinguish the parts of theories that are known with some degree of certainty (short of the Matrix/Cartesian skepticism) and those which are acknowledged by all scientists as being at the cutting edge.

2014-12-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,I want to approach this issue from a slightly different angle. While physics makes grand claims of explaining nature or reality it is really a mathematician's toy. What physics really does is measure. As long as its measurements are verified or verifiable it is happy and smug. Newtonian physics was smug for a long time because there were no challenges to its measurements. Any claim that nature was built to last by Newton in other words it was Newtonian was really irrelevant. What mattered was did the measurements come out OK. Well as we sped a little faster Newtonian measurements began to fray. So we introduced another measuring tape. It seemed to have worked. Thus physics is about metrics not about nature or reality. Grander claims than these are mere brag. 

Mathematics of course is our measuring tape. Unlike philosophy mathematics limits our inquiry by the rigorous rules by which it behaves. While mathematics is the best tool there is to the Human to express findings of physics, it also cuts off inquiry in areas where it cannot go. In that sense discussions that are underway in this forum free from mathematics is more likely to resolve the GTR/Quantum conundrums. It is of course now well known that Einstein credited Hume with assisting him to look at  physics beyond its entrenched assumptions. 

The space that we perceive may well be the real thing, except we now have a few measuring problems.

George

2014-12-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Daniel,

I found something that might be interesting for your Space research.

I quote it verbatim from a discussion thread I was following. These are the words of Sergey Shevchenko from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences:

firstly is necessary to define/ understand – what is the space? and what is the time?


Both notions are Meta-physical notions and so can be properly defined only in the “Information as Absolute” conception,http://viXra.org/abs/1402.0173 .

From the conception follows that all/everything what exist in our Universe and outside is/are some informational patterns that are elements of the ultimately fundamental absolutely infinite Set “Information”. In the Set Space and Time are universal rules/ possibilities for existence of any informational text – some “grammar rules/possibilities”


So the space and time are different and control different conditions for the existence of an information – space for fixed information and (time) – for changing information.

In the concrete sub-Set “Matter”, the space-time possibilities are realized as (3+1) Euclidian empty [logical] container, where the informational system “Matter” evolves. At that to create this system in a seems utmost simple way – by using binary codes, it is necessary, as that C. F. Weizsäcker found, for the space being 3D. For the Time is necessary to act as two times – “true time” and “coordinate time”. The coordinate time is the 4-th dimension of the spacetime.


More see “Space and Time” http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.0003 and corresponding references in the paper.

Regards,

AW



2014-12-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,
Thanks, but the problems I am suggesting are inherent in the current smug self-understanding that is contemporary physics derive from the belief that "physics is about metrics not about nature or reality". This a basic philosophical assumption (Hume's, in fact) which you state as if it were something physics tells us is true. That all that matters is if "the measurements come out right". Do we measure the the distance between points A and B or do we measure the linear extent of the spatial substance existing between them? To physics it is the same measurement. To philosophy is it a difference between competing claims in ontology and epistemology.

Physicists are smug in their dismissal of such problems and non-scientific or non-empirical. Therefore, they can smugly use these arguments to justify how, as you say, "it also cuts off inquiry in areas where it cannot go." However, I do not consider this conversation to be one that is cut off from mathematics. Rather, it includes a critique of mathematics which explains it as an empirical rather than as a formal discipline. The rules of addition, subtraction and multiplication can be better understood as inductive generalizations that derive from regularities in the experience of counting distinct objects located in space. When I count 4 or them and then count another 4 of them, it is the same as counting 8 of them! Or 40 million of them....

Physics cuts off not only ITS inquiry into areas where it cannot go, as the paradigm model for "empirical knowledge", it cuts off ALL such inquiry, essentially discrediting philosophy in ITS claims of explaining nature or reality. Hume's fork is still forking us all!. It forked Einstein REEEL good, LOL.

Seriously, though, Empiricism is the underlying flaw in the scientific self-understanding and, because that belief is held uncritically by scientists and Physcialist philosophers of science, any errors it contains are seeded into any "science" that derives from it. 

The inability to think about space as a substance is a kind of blindness that results from accepting a philosophical claim without really questioning it at all. Here is the defining quote from "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" 

If we take in our hand any Volume; of Divinity or School Metaphysics, for Instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract Reasoning concerning Quantity or Number? No. Does it contain any experimental Reasoning concerning Matter of Fact and Existence? No. Commit it then to the Flames: For it can contain nothing but Sophistry and Illusion.
Perhaps Hume was not recommending an actual reverse bonfire of the vanities but, in effect, he has silenced any naysayers and the concept of space has been relegated to the ashes of forgotten history. Forked senseless, as it were. :)
If you remember Newton's rotating bucket experiment you know that he seriously considered the case for substantivalism regarding space. Fortunately for physics, he chose to side with Leibniz over Descartes because he knew nothing of the internal nature of "bodies" nor that of "space". He could measure certain things about the bodies with great enough precision; and that was all that was needed to fuel the amazing engineering and technological accomplishments that clearly came form his laws of motion and derivative theories.   

However, despite these successes, the problems that fueled the substantivalism still remain today in the form of the disparity problem, free will vs.determinism debate and the problem explaining how consciousness fits into the physical universe,

Thanks,
DCD  
    


2014-12-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Andrew, I certainly agree we need to define space and time and that they are distinct aspects of what exists. But to say that what exists absolutely is data of information is unimaginably idealistic. Like the Pythagorean mystics or Platonism. 
So, I appreciate the reference but my position that matter and space are both substances is quite different.

Thanks.
DCD

2014-12-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Ooops

2015-01-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
The key issue here appears to be what is the 'reality' of space as a corporeal feature of the universe.

 There is a strong feeling in the mathematical physicist community that the apparent separation between large scale objects (and inter alia all 'entities')  is an energy field. The difference between one entity  and the next is simply one of energy density. What is labelled 'space' is simply a low density energy field capable of interacting and being interacted with by higher density fields. Proving this argument is beyond  a forum discussion but suffice it to say  pure vacuums are not part of the physical universe if they can exist at all.

So, 'space' can exist if it is seen as an energy field. But what of time?

There is a very simple, if rather crude, technique for displaying the temporal dimensionality of energy fields. Ask one's self the following question: If I have all the space in the universe to move my arm but precisely and exactly zero time, I cannot make the movement.  The field mechanical equations cannot be constructed without the temporal dimension. The reverse proposition creates the same problem: All the time in the universe but precisely and exactly zero space. Remembering energy fields are not constant and attenuate, it is possible to construct an argument that 'time' is a metaphor for energy field attenuation.

So, one could think there is a prima facie case for,  Minkowski Space-time being an undifferentiated ontological phenomena..

Unfortunately, Minkowski Space-Time suffers from a critical challenge it struggles to meet.

All energy fields, including Space-Time must evolve through a life cycle characterised as an emission/absorption history. The reason for this is the simple axiom that all physical phenomena must have or be emitting and have absorbed or be absorbing to be part of the causally connected universe which is the subject of physics. Even dark matter, dark energy et al are axiomatically encompassed by this requirement. As such Space-Time ebbs and flows in the causally linked interaction soup which our universe is.

So, Space does not exist in any empirical sense. Neither does time. We are dealing with variable density energy fields with 'time' used as a metaphor for the attenuation of the fields.

All this leaves us with the rather intriguing thought that high density fields emit (and absorb) what is anecdotally called Space-Time.

I hope this offers a slightly different perspective for your consideration.

2015-01-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
This conversation is missing a substantial problem. Let me take one set of comments as a jumping off point:
"Physics cuts off not only ITS inquiry into areas where it cannot go"
Of course this is the case. If it can't go there, then there is nowhere to go.
And continuing
"it cuts off ALL such inquiry, essentially discrediting philosophy in ITS claims of explaining nature or reality."
Of course physicists make a distinction between physics and philosophy. So do good philosophers.

Okay, let's get this straight. In physics there is the mathematical formalism and then there is the interpretation. To be empirical, science matches the theory's predictions which come from the mathematical formalism with measurements. If they match--if there is correspondence--then we have some verification of the theory. Accumulation of correspondence provides further verification.

How do we get to the metaphysical reality--the actual nature of the physical world which underlies the correspondences, which explain them? We do so with an interpretation. An interpretation is of necessity philosophical, not solely empirical.

We must make a distinction between the theory and its interpretation. One is science and one is philosophy. People have been trying to come up with justified interpretations of QM and GTR for 100 years. It is still difficult. However, the way it works is that very sophisticated philosophers of physics analyze the theory, the mathematics, the measurements and mix that with Hume, Kant, and all the 250 years of philosophy of science that has developed to the present, especially in the last 50 years. They are then able to get new hypotheses for the physicists.

Without verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses the philosophy is useless to an empirical science. That is one of the many really good reasons why philosophy has such a bad rep with physicists. It is earned by coming up with unverifiable and unfalsifiable blatantly imprecise statements.

In the hands of these sophisticated philosophers of physics, you get substantivalism which is the substantial nature of space.

However, it is fully acknowledged by GTR physicist-mathematicians that the theory has two components: the manifold--which is your 'substance' of spactime--and the metric. The manifold is a dynamic and substantive entity rather than merely a geometric coordinate system used to index events. These are interpretations of the mathematical formalism, but they are fairly well accepted.

Nonetheless, there are still controversies about the substantial nature of spacetime, and there is no hint of 'smugness' or dismissal of either the physics or the philosophy of physics in these conversations between physicists and philosophers of physics. I suggest you read those philosophers of physics on this topic, starting with John Norton's :Philosophy of Space and Time" in Merrilee and Salmon's intro to phil sci, and John's "What Can We Learn about the Ontology of Space and Time from the Theory of Relativity?” http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000138/ and Earman, John and John Norton (1987) “What price spacetime substantivalism: the hole story” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38(4):515-525 and "Michael Friedman's Foundation of Space-Time Theories. You could also try George Ellis' recent work on the relationship between GTR and QM.

2015-01-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,Hold the fork I am not done yet! I think the Ontological questions are several layers below the questions physics is raising. They are real and legitimate but quickly leave the realm of physics because the only tool we have to advance them is logic and the consensus on the assumptions we make in the regimes of logic we employ or the premises of our postulates are beyond the reach of verification. What I am proposing is that we shake down the assumptions physicists make within the paradigms of physics. Allowing mathematics to crawl up to it when it can. I think physics at this time needs a philosopher's eye. The explosion or implosion of the Quantum field with a plethora of particles has a broken mirror to hold up to the world. Efforts to explain each shard of the mirror with more and more sophisticated math has only placed physics on top of the tower of Babel. What is required is some clear thinking philosophy. What is a particle, what is a field, what is a force have all been mathematized, but no one knows what they mean. It is a philosophical leap not a quantum leap that is going to reunite the Babblers. 

Thus whether space is a substance from an ontological point of view or even epistemological point of view is a serious inquiry but I do not think it advances the problem of space in the context of current physics. The training of a philosopher in better suited to solve these issues than the math intensive training physicists get. But the inquiry must remain the in the vicinity of the current paradigms!

George

2015-01-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Ian Stuart
Kia ora Ian or in my language Vanakkam!. 
I think your position that we may never know the real world since we receive all our information through our senses and there is no independent way of verifying if the real world is how we perceive it is valid. The bridge, our senses, to the world outside has become some kind of an autistic prison and an impenetrable wall. The introduction of the concept of a soul or Plato's forms or even Kant's a priori knowledge have helped but not brought us closer to reality. 

The mystics who claim direct knowledge of God and reality die without telling us what they saw. Physics by how it predicts conduct of particles all the way to the universe has now the best claim to knowledge but it is in disarray grappling with concepts they are unable to reconcile. 

God may be playing dice and if so we are all gamblers. Leaving Einstein at the door was it literal or was it figurative? 

George 

2015-01-03
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Thank you Martyn. Your post seems very much correct. I have only a few nuances to which I would like to reply.

First, please elaborate on your statement:
"All energy fields, including Space-Time must evolve through a life cycle characterised as an emission/absorption history. The reason for this is the simple axiom that all physical phenomena must have or be emitting and have absorbed or be absorbing to be part of the causally connected universe which is the subject of physics."
I am not sure of the meaning, the axiom, the characterization. Please provide technical terms, if not references.

Also, to say that "space does not exist in any empirical sense" and Neither does time, yet we are dealing with variable density energy fields suggests that the energy fields is spacetime. That is how both GTR and QFT define it, don't they?

Additionally, In your second paragraph, Indeed the difference between particles as the higher density energy fields and the energy-filled space energy density (ED) is one of degree. They are both non-zero. However, I have done the calculations. I don't have them in front of me, but the comparative ED of a proton and the space around it, dense with EM, gravity and any other stray force fields cum gauge bosons that happen to be passing, shows that the ED of hadrons, at least, so far outstrips that of the space as to be in an entirely different domain of application. Many orders of magnitude quantitatively suggest significant differences qualitatively, i.e. in what they actually are.

Of course then when we get entirely up to the energy density of the 17 (including Higgs) elementary particles for which we have no indication even at very high energy experiments of structure, the ED must be enormous (Which is how and why Feynman et all utilized renormalization and why QFT adopted the pluralist domain hierarchy of effective field theories (EFT) from condensed matter physics using the decoupling theorem. Particles and space are dealt with by different EFT, just as gravity and the several EFT of QFT are all thought to be EFT of some elusive quantum gravity (QG). I suspect that we will find that QG doesn't answer all things, just covers its domain, taking over from the lower density EFT at its border to the Planck scale. Beyond that I doubt we will go, since that will find us the fundamental nature of spacetime.

Yet that 'fundamental' nature will not answer all our questions, as the EFT approach suggests; we still need other theories in other domains because things are ontologically different there, not just epistemically, e.g. computationally. At least this is the pluralist stance, which has significant justification. See Cao's works.

2015-01-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Martyn Reeves
Martyn,
Sorry, I just saw this post. 

My position is that space is known empirically, just as "corporeal" bodies are known. We see the space between objects, don't we? We understand the properties of space through geometry, just as we understand bodies by the laws of motion. The microstructure of matter is known by empirical inferences from lab experimental data; so is the nature of space known by empirical inferences to the best explanation of what is observed. 

Time is very problematic of physics to explain. Spacetime is essentially a denial that what exists is the present moment. All spacetime coordinates are equally "real" for all eternity. The present moment has no special ontological standing. I simply don't buy that as the best empirical explanation of what appears to us in experience. 

A substance dualism of space actually solves ontological puzzles if you follow it out.

Thanks, DCD

2015-01-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,I think physics and philosophy, as in ontology, are distinct disciplines but both are empirical.

DCD

2015-01-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Robert,
Why do you think imagining an omnipresent Higgs boson field is any more "empirical" than to imagine that space is a dynamic substance with powers that cause matter and energy to have the structures we observe them to have?

Thanks,
DCD

2015-01-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Martyn Reeves
“Energy” in it self is an obscure thing; it has no substance and yet it is conceived of as an existing quality of intensity.  The obscurity of energy corresponds with the identity of energy and light. This identity, as a single entity, creates the outside. GTR is dealing with space-time divergences which don’t make any conceptual sense and are usually dealt with as singularities. They are neither substantial nor conceivable, therefore they are nonentities. Yet, they are allegedly influencing on the metric of space-time dimensions. The greatest part of their influence consists of rendering the space-time to be a nonentity too.  However, the Outside is a real thing and its becoming is a real process. Light creates outside as a wavelike process of visible history of photons. This process goes at the speed which is ultimate in all reference systems at every space-time location. GTR acknowledges this speed as a limiting speed of every space-time dimensional divergence, (which perhaps fits your ideas about attenuation). Becoming of the Outside requires energy and so justifies for the energy-light identity.  There are inconsistencies in visible histories of photons, and every inconsistency in the story of photon histories means a discontinuity. These discontinuities require for the Fifth Dimension which, I’m afraid, is the death. From the transcendental point of view, death is the most dramatic pure sense. Death is given a priory.  It is on the outside of the outside. So we have the Light, the Outside, and the Death. Light creates outside while all that remains on the outside of outside is death, and there is no other death than the death of light. Light is mortal and yet it is eternal, the continuity of discontinuity, an endurance of disconnection, of inconsistency. Corpuscular light consists of mortal photons in the 5th Dimension, and their death is observed as a photoelectric effect which occurs upon their stepping down into space-time (or a 4D-manyfold, if you prefer). Wavelike light exists as visible 4D-pictures of photon histories, and it is observed in the guise of interference patterns which perform like pigments in the outside.
Perhaps the Light, the Outside, and the Death, may give some substance to your fine thoughts.
A.M.


2015-01-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
R.A.P.: “… the theory /GTR/ has two components, the manifold … and the metric. The manifold is a dynamic and substantive entity … These are interpretations of the mathematical formalism, but they are fairly well accepted.”
I think your distinction between “two components” of GTR is somewhat inaccurate. The metric itself participates in the manifold since there is no metrics without some kind of measuring sticks which are members of the manifold. So, if the manifold is so and so, then so is the metric too.
What I strongly disagree with is your claim that “these are interpretations of mathematical formalism.” Well, “they” are not. They are interpretations of experimental measurements. Mathematics is only predicting the expected results and most of the time “mathematical formalism” is predicting the results of utterly unfeasible experimental measurements. So the theory is mostly about hypothetical correspondences. But, whenever the gold is struck we interpret the measurement not the formalism.
Philosophy of science escapes free from the mathematical straitjacket and discuses the real physics. The real physics starts from given contingent facts such as the light, the outside, and the death (please see my response to Martin).  Let me give you an example of falsifiable hypothesis that philosophy might provide for physicists. Starting from the above premises one easily derive the electromagnetic nature of the outside. This would be a theoretical prediction that the outside and the EM field are one and the same thing. Now, this hypothesis is falsifiable because one can search for the in-congruence between the EM field and the outside. This philosophical hypothesis then mobilizes physicists to prove the opposite and as long as they fail the hypothesis remains both valid and falsifiable.
A. M.


2015-02-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Martyn,
Thank you for lending your Mathematics and Physics to this lonely discussion. Daniel's dogged defense of traditional space and time has forced us to examine the very foundations of physics. I went back and looked at Russell's 'Analysis of Matter' and I found that he has pulled apart the physics which was quite new at the time with his profound understanding of mathematics having only recently established the new field of mathematical logic. His effort seems to be to test the internal consistency of physics as a logical system and then examine the mathematics that was interpreting the new physics. He then tries to see how much of the structures posited by physics have counterparts in reality. I think the conclusions reached by Russell deserves some play in our quest here to understand space-time. 

. Your offer to turn all space and time or space time into fields is generous and may satisfy the scientist who is willing to limit his inquiry where math ends. But I think our search dares into areas where math has not gone yet. In fact GTR ventured out there and then the math got in the way. Minkowski's space time was not exactly what Einstein had in mind. He liked the elegance of the Geometry but he was not sure that it reflected the reality he envisioned. He called it " superfluous erudition". Introducing energy fields to stand in place of space or space time sneaks in ether again! 

The use of Riemann geometry and the subsequent Minkowski manifold gave space time a Geometric flavor. But algebraic models used to explain the same can lead us into territories well beyond reality since algebra is freer in its expressions than geometry. Algebra or algebratised geometry can juggle with innumerable values without any correspondence to reality. It is for this reason that Russell resorted to geometry when he set out to flesh out GTR. His position was that Geometry had better boundaries with reality than did algebra. 

There is also the issue about whether the math used to interpret is adequate and even limiting. This what Weinberg had to say:

"In learning general relativity, and then in teaching it to classes at Berkeley and MIT, I became dissatisfied with what seemed to be the usual approach to the subject. I found that in most textbooks geometric ideas were given a starring role, so that a student… would come away with an impression that this had something to do with the fact that space-time is a Riemannian [curved] manifold. Of course, this was Einstein’s point of view, and his preeminent genius necessarily shapes our understanding of the theory he created. However, I believe that the geometrical approach has driven a wedge between general relativity and [Quantum Field Theory]. As long as it could be hoped, as Einstein did hope, that matter would eventually be understood in geometrical terms, it made sense to give Riemannian geometry a primary role in describing the theory of gravitation. But now the passage of time has taught us not to expect that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions can be understood in geometrical terms, and too great an emphasis on geometry can only obscure the deep connections between gravitation and the rest of phys­ics…  [My] book sets out the theory of gravitation according to what I think is its inner logic as a branch of physics, and not according to its historical development. It is certainly a historical fact that when Albert Einstein was working out general relativity, there was at hand a preexist­ing mathe­matical formalism, that of Riemannian geometry, that he could and did take over whole. However, this historical fact does not mean that the essence of general relativity necessarily consists in the application of Riemannian geometry to physical space and time. In my view, it is much more useful to regard general relativity above all as a theory of gravita­tion, whose connection with geometry arises from the peculiar empirical properties of gravitation. – S. Weinberg (W1972, p. vii, p.3)

So the issue is whether what Daniel has doggedly defended, the intuitive space, still means something. I think, space whether it is an evolutionary development meant for survival or something real out there, what seems to me to be real is that we measure something out there. Whether it has substance or not,  really does not matter. The measurements of distance or other dimensions we know of are needed only because we need them more to use them for practical reasons than to explain them. Declaring that space-time is relative has freed us to measure more things more accurately

George

2015-02-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
"My suggestion here is that matter and space interact at the most basic level of existence described by the Standard Model. Further, I argue that the interaction or relationship they have, as 2 distinct kinds of substances, is one of coincidence: matter (or distinct quanta of energy) coincide with parts of space in ways that exhibit the powers of both kinds of substances."


Yes.  As I work through my own project I am starting to see just how an interactive base changes things considerably.    There does seem to be quite a lot of linear thinking in western philosophy and thinking, but moving to the interactive world seems to (or is starting to) make more sense.   I have particularly noticed this in terms of the question "Which comes first?"   This can be seen in; "Which is first Ontology or Epistemology?"  (for instance Sire  in Naming the Elephant) or the critique of Descartes' "I think, therefore I am.  Does the thinking create the I, or does the I do the thinking?"  

I want to say "the I and the Thinking interact ... "    

So interaction is recognised in indigenous thinking and does seem to work in western approaches as well, providing a more explanatory  base and models which seem to provide more useful answers.

2015-02-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
"God may be playing dice and if so we are all gamblers. Leaving Einstein at the door was it literal or was it figurative? "

I'm sorry George, but I am not the Ian Stuart who wrote the book.  
I'm interested in why you say Physics has the best claim to knowledge ...  I use Feyerabend's work (especially Against Method  and Farewell to Reason).  I generally accept his arguments, which would discount Physics as having any stronger claim to knowledge than any other discipline.

Using Lakatos' concept of Research Projects (The Method of Scientific Research Programmes), Physics is certainly producing results, but that does not mean that there is any link between Physics and reality.  Physics is one representation of reality (albeit a useful one) but there is really nothing to suggest it is a correct one. 


2015-02-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Ian Stuart
(Sorry, I can't attribute Einstein here as my library is in boxes on my garage floor) 


My comments were directed at this comment you made in your post. I do not think I confused you with any author. Nevertheless if you look at my longer post by way of a response to another post, there I agree with your position that reality and physics may not be as close as physicist would make us believe. My statement that physics has the best claim to knowledge was made in a very narrow context. The knowledge I was referring to is the knowledge physics offers from measurements it makes and the predictions it makes based on them. I was not referring to anything beyond this. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to narrow my scope. 

George

2015-04-22
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,
Sorry, but I was unaware of your replies to Martyn and your references to my suggestion here that space is a substance. Guess I'm not all that "dogged" in monitoring this discussion.

I see the phrase "space or space time" used several times in your post, as if the difference between them were indeterminate or negligible. However, the concept of spacetime (it is one word, not two) cannot be understood as as a purely formal or geometrical construct, if it is to be considered as a basis for explaining what we find in our experience of the world. Unless physics itself is viewed as a formal construct, spacetime must have some ontological status or substantial nature that parallels, in some way, the substantial nature of particulate matter or energy fields. 

The problem with this is that spacetime, as a concept, entails that the present moment ,,, the one your are experiencing right now, for instance ... does not exist. The spacetime coordinates of the present moment are no more real than those of the past or the future. They are just different coordinates on an imaginary, 4-dimensional, modified Cartesian (3-dimensional) grid, where the temporal nature of reality is expressed as another line on a graph. In this way, every real event that could ever occur in the present, past or future can be represented as a set of points on a "worldline" for every event that occurs or could occur. All of these points are equally real, so the present moment is not the only thing that exists. 

When I assess my own experience as a living being, born in the last millennium, living the first century of the current one and unlikely ever to make it the the next one, I cannot find anything more basic than the assumption that I am some kind of substantial, cognitive and conscious being that endures through time in each moment as time is present. If you accept spacetime, you give up the present moment as real. 

You might want to call this "intuitive space" because I am describing here what it is like for me to exist and what, I imagine, it is like for you and all of my readers to exist in your own present moments. I would resist that designation because it suggests that space is the same thing as my awareness or "intuition" that space is real. I suggest, instead, we call it "substantial space", implying that space is just as real or substantial as matter or energy. Both kinds of substances exist only in the present moment as time passes, 

If matter and space were both substantial, but never moved or changed in any way, the present moment would be eternal. You might consider each bundle of spacetime coordinates as eternal in the same way, existing in themselves but with no causal or any other relations to any other set of coordinates. Each set could account for or "document" each difference but in this form of "eternalism" each set is "monadic" in a sense similar to Leibnitz's self-subsistent monads. They are intrinsically substantial but have no extrinsic relations to other monads, other than through the pre-established harmony built into God's creation of the world. Science doesn't allow God into its equations, of course, so spacetime bundles have no extrinsic relations to other bundles. If there were no change, this would not be problematic. However, if change is real, then the present moment is finite and particular, giving it a determinate existence. This argument is not intuitive, though, is is ontological.

But if we speak only of spacetime, the present moment cannot be real. Our sense of the passage of time is essentially illusory, perhaps an "accident" of our particular kind of biological evolution. Physics, in its current form, has no use for the present moment or substances that endure through the passage of time. All of this has been replaced by spacetime in physics. And why not? The Special Theory of Relativity (STR), interpreted as relativistic spacetime coordinates, along with Dirac's equation applies very well to quantum mechanics, where the Lorenz transformation equations explain our measurements of intertial (unaccelerated) reference frames. 

But to explain acceleration, including the resistance to it which we define as "mass", the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) is required. The mathematics of the STR and GTR are notoriously incompatible on all current models and neither none of them can explain mass. (The Higgs boson field still has yet to be unambiguously identified in LHC experiments.) In my view, the only way to unify these theories is to assert the substantial reality of space, but not as simply an inert medium for matter and energy to move around in. Space, like matter, would need to have powers that structure that possible ways in which matter or energy can coincide with any of its parts... that is to exist in a determinate form, at some place, at some time. 

This notion of substantial space is not found in the published literature but I do not claim authorship of it, These are not my original ideas but, since they are still unpublished, attribution of the source is problematic. I find the arguments to be convincing to me and, on that basis, I try to share the arguments without worrying too much about whose arguments they are. That would be a ad hominim element anyway.

I do appreciate your acknowledgement of my arguments, though call them a "dogged defense of traditional space and time" really misses my point of doing ontology in a way that is more basic than physics. In my view, space does not reduce to measurements of distance any more than mass reduces to measurements of resistance to acceleration. The reduction of ontology to epistemology was a useful one for modern science, as was the dominance of relationism over substantivialism in the 18th century debate. It has allowed physics to ignore or simply overlook space as the "thing" being measured as the distance between objects. With spacetime, even the present moment is a relativistic construct. 

The STR, GTR and spacetime are convenient and amazingly useful constructs that enabled the rise of modern science b basically taking certain "things" off the table. These included not only space but also the internal constitution of what Newton called "bodies". All of his formulas refer to them, as if they were real and measurable parts of the world we actually live in. The were "solid" and impenetrable, much like the "uncuttable" atoms of the ancient Greek, Democritus. They were not thought of as "idealist" monads but as material, physical constituents of the world we live in. If Newton had hypothesized about space or the internal constitution of his "bodies", physics would have been bogged down in speculations for which there was little or no empirical support and science may not have advanced as it did.

Now (in the present) things have changed. The Standard Model has defined the internal construction of atomic elements in a way that explains and predicts all observed properties of matter and energy, using the STR. Now we also have the GTR which explains acceleration resulting from gravitation as the warping of spacetime. Both theories are illuminating and explanatory of the phenomena they describe. But they are woefully incompatible because they contradict one another: if one is true, the other one must be false. 

I am not talking "traditional" views here at all, except that acceptance of this contradiction has become the received tradition. Indeed, the tradition has come to welcome such contradictions and paradoxes as the norm and to view anyone who wants to step outside the tradition to explain this anomaly as naive or uninformed. I am neither of these things but I am tenaciously determined to pursue this line of ontological inquiry.

I hope it hasn't been too long to get a reply from you.

Thanks,
DCD  
     

2015-06-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Our 'space' is coexistent with the gravitational and electromagnetic fields. There are the properties of the Standard Model(s) and of general relativity present in 'space', perhaps, in some views, they are even what 'defined' space. The space between the atomic nuclei and electrons in their orbitals is not empty.

2015-06-03
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Roger Duronio
Roger,
Thanks for your reply.

So you are saying there is no space between atomic nuclei and their electrons, only distance? Would you call this is a plenum theory, wherein reality is thought to be completely full? 

DCD

2015-06-03
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Not at all. I'm saying the measurable, and calculable distance between the nuclei and the electrons is also a volume that contains something: the electromagnetic field. The electrons push on each other and are pulled by the protons. There is an energy 'equilibrium' when the atom is in its lowest state because it cannot give up a quantum of energy and get to a lower state. So the atoms don't fall apart, they stay in the stable, non-decaying lowest energy state unless the electrons get excited by absorbing quanta of energy equal to the next highest, or higher energy level of the atom.    Basically, the space is not empty because the QED field, a field of force, is there between the nucleus and the 'orbiting' electrons.

2015-06-09
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,
I noticed that the interest in this discussion seemed to have waned some. There is so much to explore and I wonder if similar discussions are being had in other forums. I thought the best way to respond to your post is to attempt a blow by blow answer.

George,
Sorry, but I was unaware of your replies to Martyn and your references to my suggestion here that space is a substance. Guess I'm not all that "dogged" in monitoring this discussion.

I wish you were as dogged in keeping up with the posts as you are of your ontological argument!!!

I see the phrase "space or space time" used several times in your post, as if the difference between them were indeterminate or negligible. However, the concept of spacetime (it is one word, not two) cannot be understood as as a purely formal or geometrical construct, if it is to be considered as a basis for explaining what we find in our experience of the world. Unless physics itself is viewed as a formal construct, spacetime must have some ontological status or substantial nature that parallels, in some way, the substantial nature of particulate matter or energy fields. 

I confess to the interchangeable use of spacetime/space/time etc. Modern physics indeed is considered a formal construct by some. Eddington's interpretation of GTR does indeed render GTR a formal construct. It is this interpretation that Russell found to be a convenient starting point to develop his epistemological monism. Analysis of Matter and his Analysis of Mind head in that direction. Any claim to these constructs being consistent with reality let alone our perception have never been taken seriously. 

The problem with this is that spacetime, as a concept, entails that the present moment ,,, the one your are experiencing right now, for instance ... does not exist. The spacetime coordinates of the present moment are no more real than those of the past or the future. They are just different coordinates on an imaginary, 4-dimensional, modified Cartesian (3-dimensional) grid, where the temporal nature of reality is expressed as another line on a graph. In this way, every real event that could ever occur in the present, past or future can be represented as a set of points on a "worldline" for every event that occurs or could occur. All of these points are equally real, so the present moment is not the only thing that exists. 

When I assess my own experience as a living being, born in the last millennium, living the first century of the current one and unlikely ever to make it the the next one, I cannot find anything more basic than the assumption that I am some kind of substantial, cognitive and conscious being that endures through time in each moment as time is present. If you accept spacetime, you give up the present moment as real. 

I am not entirely sure that space time somehow creates discrete points on a world line so that there is really no temporal connection between them and therefore no distinction between past, present or future. I am not sure of the math here, but I believe since time is one of the dimensions in this coordinate integral calculus of a 4 dimensional nature gives it the necessary temporal quality. But even if I grant you your conclusions how will a Cartesian grid be any different? How will you distinguish 'then now and after' in the Cartesian manifold? From what I have seen Russell and others have adequately dealt with this issue.

You might want to call this "intuitive space" because I am describing here what it is like for me to exist and what, I imagine, it is like for you and all of my readers to exist in your own present moments. I would resist that designation because it suggests that space is the same thing as my awareness or "intuition" that space is real. I suggest, instead, we call it "substantial space", implying that space is just as real or substantial as matter or energy. Both kinds of substances exist only in the present moment as time passes, 

As I had argued earlier physics is indeed a formal construct and its correspondence with our perceptions when they occur are confirmation of the their reliability. However if measurements are a subset of perception then the correspondence between modern physics and perception become closer relatives. 

If matter and space were both substantial, but never moved or changed in any way, the present moment would be eternal. You might consider each bundle of spacetime coordinates as eternal in the same way, existing in themselves but with no causal or any other relations to any other set of coordinates. Each set could account for or "document" each difference but in this form of "eternalism" each set is "monadic" in a sense similar to Leibnitz's self-subsistent monads. They are intrinsically substantial but have no extrinsic relations to other monads, other than through the pre-established harmony built into God's creation of the world. Science doesn't allow God into its equations, of course, so spacetime bundles have no extrinsic relations to other bundles. If there were no change, this would not be problematic. However, if change is real, then the present moment is finite and particular, giving it a determinate existence. This argument is not intuitive, though, is is ontological.

You seem to reintroduce Zeno's paradox in a new bottle. Your 'eternalism '  smacks of Zeno's Arrow paradox. Just as Zeno's paradox was unknotted by the application of modern calculus so was motion in GTR albeit with a 4 dimensional version.

But if we speak only of spacetime, the present moment cannot be real. Our sense of the passage of time is essentially illusory, perhaps an "accident" of our particular kind of biological evolution. Physics, in its current form, has no use for the present moment or substances that endure through the passage of time. All of this has been replaced by spacetime in physics. And why not? The Special Theory of Relativity (STR), interpreted as relativistic spacetime coordinates, along with Dirac's equation applies very well to quantum mechanics, where the Lorenz transformation equations explain our measurements of intertial (unaccelerated) reference frames. 

But to explain acceleration, including the resistance to it which we define as "mass", the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) is required. The mathematics of the STR and GTR are notoriously incompatible on all current models and neither none of them can explain mass. (The Higgs boson field still has yet to be unambiguously identified in LHC experiments.) In my view, the only way to unify these theories is to assert the substantial reality of space, but not as simply an inert medium for matter and energy to move around in. Space, like matter, would need to have powers that structure that possible ways in which matter or energy can coincide with any of its parts... that is to exist in a determinate form, at some place, at some time. 

This notion of substantial space is not found in the published literature but I do not claim authorship of it, These are not my original ideas but, since they are still unpublished, attribution of the source is problematic. I find the arguments to be convincing to me and, on that basis, I try to share the arguments without worrying too much about whose arguments they are. That would be a ad hominim element anyway.

I do appreciate your acknowledgement of my arguments, though call them a "dogged defense of traditional space and time" really misses my point of doing ontology in a way that is more basic than physics. In my view, space does not reduce to measurements of distance any more than mass reduces to measurements of resistance to acceleration. The reduction of ontology to epistemology was a useful one for modern science, as was the dominance of relationism over substantivialism in the 18th century debate. It has allowed physics to ignore or simply overlook space as the "thing" being measured as the distance between objects. With spacetime, even the present moment is a relativistic construct. 

If space exists in the same way mass exists then we can make that happen by defining 'exists' in a certain way. Your juxtaposition of space and mass in your post;
"space does not reduce to measurements of distance any more than mass reduces to measurements of resistance to acceleration." is an interesting one but one would say they are apples and oranges. The migration from ontology to epistemology was a refinement of logic. Much of this work was done by British analytical philosophers.Result of the clippings by Ocham's Razor! Finding substance beneath the structure is not futile but currently unnecessary. If you are seeking an answer to space in the realm of substance your inquiry belongs to ontology however that may banish it from analysis. 'I perceive therefore it exists ' ( with apologies to Descartes) may be a return to Plato's theory of forms.  Analytical philosophy was an evolution from classical philosophy where the analytical tools were a hodgepodge  of Aristotelian logic. 


The STR, GTR and spacetime are convenient and amazingly useful constructs that enabled the rise of modern science b basically taking certain "things" off the table. These included not only space but also the internal constitution of what Newton called "bodies". All of his formulas refer to them, as if they were real and measurable parts of the world we actually live in. The were "solid" and impenetrable, much like the "uncuttable" atoms of the ancient Greek, Democritus. They were not thought of as "idealist" monads but as material, physical constituents of the world we live in. If Newton had hypothesized about space or the internal constitution of his "bodies", physics would have been bogged down in speculations for which there was little or no empirical support and science may not have advanced as it did.

Now (in the present) things have changed. The Standard Model has defined the internal construction of atomic elements in a way that explains and predicts all observed properties of matter and energy, using the STR. Now we also have the GTR which explains acceleration resulting from gravitation as the warping of spacetime. Both theories are illuminating and explanatory of the phenomena they describe. But they are woefully incompatible because they contradict one another: if one is true, the other one must be false. 

I am not talking "traditional" views here at all, except that acceptance of this contradiction has become the received tradition. Indeed, the tradition has come to welcome such contradictions and paradoxes as the norm and to view anyone who wants to step outside the tradition to explain this anomaly as naive or uninformed. I am neither of these things but I am tenaciously determined to pursue this line of ontological inquiry.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by contradiction between STR and GTR. One dealt with velocity and the other with acceleration. In any event I think you are claiming space to be a substance in some undefined form. Even if it is from a logical standpoint there may not be any need to go there. Treating it as a geometric construct for purely metric purposes suffices the science and most certainly the physics. Going beyond that may be in violation of Ocham's Razor. We could bleed to death. 


You give this forum its energy. Keep it coming!


George


2015-06-10
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,I had bolded all my answers. Only the once at the end seemed to have been picked up. I wonder if the editors can restore the bold types.
George

2015-06-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George (and others maybe),
Thank you for the encouraging words. They are seldom heard here, so I appreciate any energy that someone else will add.

However, you persist in the "...interchangeable use of spacetime/space/time etc." and the belief that "Modern physics indeed is ... a formal construct...." which your endorsement of "Eddington's interpretation of GTR ,,, as ..."a formal construct" suggests, This is the usual response I get to this theory. Russell's "epistemological monism" and  his "Analysis of Matter and his Analysis of Mind" all head in the wrong direction, as I see it. These constructs are NOT consistent with reality, yet the views I express here have never been taken seriously. It is typical to appeal appeal to Russell or or some other epistemologist to make the kind of dismissive remarks you and others make here. 

Contrary to your assumptions, I am actually agreeing with you that: "The migration from ontology to epistemology was a refinement of logic. Much of this work was done by British analytical philosophers. Result of the clippings by Ocham's Razor!"
This migration was a practical necessity because the lively debate over substantivialism vs. relativism was fought to a standoff. Newton still believed that space had to do something to explain his "rotating bucket" experiment. But his Principia  just puts the argument aside and accepts relativism as a working assumption. Since they had no inkling of quantum mechanics and it's decomposition of Newton's solid "bodies" which behave in the ways his laws of motion and gravitation predict, it was the only practical solution the could enable the subsequent advancements made on the basis of classical physics. Given the historical conditions of discovery, putting space aside was just the right thing to do. 

Up until the Michaelson-Morley experiment most everyone believed it would find differences in the measured velocity of light, resulting from the motion of the earth around the sun and through an ether-like medium they believed to exist. When the experiment yielded its null result, Lorentz derived his transformation equations to show the real effects of relativistic velocities on matter but Einstein found it much more elegant simply to assume the null result as his "light principle", that "c" is a constant in every inertial frame. With that, the notion that there is a present moment in which everything in the universe exists at the same time in that moment, was eliminated from physics. The can be no simultaneity at a distance and so, the present moment is gone forever. There are only spacetime coordinates, but no substantial space and no "here-and now" to reality. Spacetime ontology is the denial of the present moment and the assertion of an eternal continuum of 4-dimensional spacetime events, plotted along the world-lines of Minkowski diagrams. The present moment is gone forever into eternity. 

Thus, spacetime has become a mantra in physics. Most people who are not theoretical physicists don't even understand what it means and the physicists simply ridicule anyone who doesn't doesn't accept it as uninformed or "unrefined" thinkers. But let me remind you that inertial (that is, constant) velocity and acceleration (not constant) are both aspects of the natural world and are not at all "incompatible", like the "apples and oranges" metaphor suggests. But the PHYSICS, meaning the math and logic of these formal, computational systems, is hopelessly "lost in translation" from one set of equations to the other. String theory has been pretty much abandoned and quantum gravitation is the angle most are pursuing now. But, to me, they are blindly searching about in the darkness of their unacknowledged ontological mistakes. The ontological error of overlooking space as a substantial and powerful factor in constituting what exists, keeps physicists blind to its substantial nature and stuck behind an immovable barrier to scientific advancement. 

Physics has ceded its empirical foundation to a bunch of math geeks who make up formal systems and then go looking for evidence to prove them. The Higgs boson is another example of this. Having actually discovered 36 "sub-atomic particles" that explain everything about electromagnetism and inertial motion except mass, physicists, following Higgs, postulate the existence of a 37th particle, more like a ubiquitous field, that is supposed to explain how anything can have mass. When we measure mass as "resistance to acceleration", we see we are running into the STR/GTR incompatibility problem again. Indeed, they awarded the Nobel to Higgs, even though the experimentation at CERN has not isolated the spin properties of the the particle they did find. This is crucial experimental work and, if they are able to find the Higgs field virtually everywhere (as opposed to nowhere), it makes the theory that space is a distinct substance from matter unnecessary and overly complex.

So this is an ontological theory that can be falsified by experimental results. That would still leave physics with an incompatibility problem in its GTR and STR but space, as a substance would be dispensable. However, if the LHC does not definitively isolate the Higgs, the dualist theory I suggest can unify physics by offering the optimal approach as an ontological explanation, fully consistent with our observations but in an empirically illuminating and logically consistent way. Contemporary physics can do neither of these things.

I hope you all find these comments lively enough to merit not being ignored.

Thanks, 
DCD 

  


2015-06-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Roger Duronio
Roger,
I understand fields and localized excitations of energy. But are you claiming that if I am standing in a magnetometer at the airport, for instance, the magnetic field fills up all the space between me and the magnets? 

If so, then yours is a plenum theory, like Descartes had. He calls it "extended substance" and it simply fills up everything we "thinking substances" perceive as physical or material substances. The plenum's fullness is how he explains gravity.  

One alternative is to assert the existence of the void or empty space, as the Greek atomists and Newton, the substantivialist, did. The only other alternative is relativism. Liebniz and Einstein are both relativists in this sense, though they develop their arguments differently. 

So if, as you say "the space is not empty because the QED field, a field of force, is there between the nucleus and the 'orbiting' electrons.", it must be full and you have a plenum theory. I guess you will have to find "room" for the ubiquitous Higgs field "in there", too. Otherwise, you have dispensed entirely with space and things that endure through changes in their contingent relations as they exist in each present moment. You would have replaced reality, as we once thought we knew it, with an eternal spacetime continuum. As I argued in my reply to George today, there is a blindness that grew up historically in the development of science and was, quite fortunately, ignored for centuries as science advanced into its present, awesomely powerful, state. But, as we push the limits of empirical knowledge into the very smallest parts and expand it to its greatest extents of the big bang , dark matter and dark energy, we have reached a point where our theories of the big and the small do not fit together at all.

All I am suggesting in this thread is that a re-imagined concept of substantial space offers possible solutions to these quandaries of incompatibility.  

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

DCD  


2016-07-05
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
current opinion in physics is that field (space) can exist without any particles in it. but particles cannot exist without field. perhaps that can be used as departure point.

2016-07-05
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
The problem with the 'new' physics is that our common sense experiential perceptions of concepts like space, particles or fields have been changed radically. Understanding them even as a logical structure is problematic. At some point the explanation gets reduced to a mathematical formula. This formula and its derivatives seem internally consistent within the insular logic of mathematics and seem to be consistent with the physics derived from this frame of reference. What has not been answered is whether this new paradigm, is just another model to replace Newton's model or does it indeed explain nature as it is. Daniel was persisting in the view that no matter how obtuse physics gets it must be consistent with perception. Alfred Whitehead was headed in that direction. I am glad you revived this thread.
George

2016-07-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
New Physics or Standard Model of Physics did not explain anything. it unable to answer any 'why' question. we need to know something else to answer it. And continuing research gives nothing so far.
new physics is consistent with perception, because we deal with 'observables'. that does not means that as  a result of observation we going to be able to explain what we have observed. we can create extensions to new model and hypothesize this and that for next 50 years.

for example Newton discovered gravitation, but as extension, we now know from Standard Model that gravitation is a weakest form of all fundamental interactions and we can measure it. what we dont know 'why' gravitation is so weak. it is complete uncertanty.

2016-07-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Sergey,

Thanks for the belated reply. Perhaps it can be used as a point of departure because if there is no space between 2 particles then they are not 2 "separate" entities, but only 1. The Pauli exclusion principle applies in this way to fermions but not bosons. But even a field of bosons, like the supposed Higgs field, does not constitute the space between fermions.

-DCD  

2016-07-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Sergey,

Even a Higgs field would not constitute the space between fermions.
Thanks for the comment.
DCD

2016-07-06
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
Thanks, George. It might  be more accurate to say that perception has to be consistent with physics, since perception is a evolutionary product of the physical universe, not some kind of cultural accident of convenience that is unnecessary. The fact that we can imagine, naturalistically, only 3 spatial dimensions is a necessary consequences of their BEING no more or no less than 3 spatial dimensions in nature. Had there actually been more or less than 3, then THAT is what we would be able to perceive.

DCD  



2016-07-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Sergey,

Thanks for you comments. However, I think some of your terms need clarification.

To "explain" in science means to offer an explanatory theory that shows how things happen, not why they happen. "How-theories" mention precise causal conditions and mathematically expressed laws of nature which determine precise outcomes and may or may not fit with models or analogies we can understand in common sense. It is enough that we can predict precise outcomes of experiments or other tests of the theory, even if we don't understand "why", at least not yet. But even for this kind of why-question, the scientific answer will be another how-theory, given at a more basic level of organization.

By "why", we usually mean to ask "for what purpose" did this occur? Science explains "how" and it intentionally avoids looking for teleological or purposeful "final causes" that explain "why" things happen. Aristotle observed that we have to understand the consequences of things in order to explain them thoroughly. This is especially true of organic or "living" things. But it is also quite natural to see things as the intended results of some purposeful agent, when we try to understand or explain them.

But, as you know, modern science begins with the rejection of final causes as "scientific" because we cannot observe and measure future events. So antecedent or "efficient" causes are the only ones that science can use. All it ever does is hypothesize and test hypotheses by their empirical outcomes. So, back to our topic, there is no "test" for space in this sense. Even the LHC is a "collider" that measures the results of near-light speed collisions of elementary particles, in units of strong force, weak force and electromagnetic force. Space is an "absolute", to use Einstein's term, because it does not result in anything, it doesn't cause anything to happen that we can measure in these units. So, in contemporary physics, absolute space is replaced by relative space, that, is the distance we can measure between things in space and time. We speak only of spacetime and avoid references to space and time, as we do to final causes.

My approach is to regard spacetime as an ontological theory, flawed by the disparity between special and general relativity that exists in contemporary physics. It's pretty easy to see how we got here but not so easy to explain why we would be satisfied with this piecemeal, and arguably ad-hoc, explanation. One key component of any good scientific explanation is in its consistency with other things we know. General relativity is often credited with providing this kind of unified explanation for many things, from the perihelion of Mercury and black holes, to gravitational waves and the curved-spacetime model of the physical universe. Yet, the mathematical and logical inconsistencies between it's accounts of the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces in the Standard Model of elementary particles and it's account of gravity in the GTR, leaves contemporary physics with a fundamental failure to provide theories consistent with other things that are known.

I argue that spacetime ontology is the mistake that causes this inconsistency. I argue further that we can use our perception-based, naturalistic imagination to see or think of space as an independent and opposite kind of a substance to matter. Matter is finite. Space is infinite. Matter is, therefore, particulate, while space is holistic. Both matter and space are dynamic and inter-active with each other. In that way, they affect each other. Space accelerates energy without mass at the speed of light. Matter is energy with mass and it moves through space more slowly, depending on how massive it is and, of course, any other forces acting on it. The present moment in time, in spacetime ontology, is an illusion. There is nothing any more real about this moment than any other because all are reduced to 4-dimensional spacetime coordinates or "world-lines". This "eternalism" is thoroughly opposed to the "presentism" we normally take to be true as we continue to live in the present moments of out lives. Like this one right now; and the one you will have 24 hours from now. To give this up is to give up a lot of explanatory power to perform the tasks of any ontology. All I am arguing here, though, is that this is an imaginable alternative to a spacetime ontology that is, logically and mathematically, a self-contradiction.

DCD

2016-07-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov

Dear Sergey,

The concept of space is strictly related to the concept of nature. No nature, no space, says the science.  I’m afraid you are being still restricted to the philosophy of nature and the problem of the reality of nature. But the concept of reality and the problems going with this concept are by now a long forgotten history. If there is no reality then there is no nature and there is no receptacle holding this reality or nature, or any kind of substance. There are no such things.  One should not bother with “the reality of special relations” anymore because these relations proved to be imaginary. Nature had been replaced by imagination long while ago. As I like to say: Everything real is imaginary and everything imaginary is real. What is exciting about modern physics is finding the way to develop scientific theories in spite the imaginary character of reality. The science of imagination began by scintilla which struck Einstein in 1905.  Perhaps he wasn’t fully aware of it, but he had managed to replace the three traditional concepts of reality, nature and receptacle with just one concept of light. The science of imagination, which I prefer to call “real physics”, is all about light. Light manifests itself in two different incarnations, or aspects. On one aspect it manifests itself as the seeing of (sub-critical) 4D image of the outside and on another as the seeing of an idea, or meaning, or categorical imperative, conveyed by the conservation low of the speed of light. Underlying any universal constant there is conservation low underpinning that constant.

If you want to learn more about real physics just type in your browser: Metaphysics of Light by Aleksandar Milenkovic.

Best wishes


2016-07-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
field is a condition in space, but space is primary. time and matter created at the same time when universe is created, but space existed always. Problems with classical dynamics - it is determenistic, but we now know that nature is not determenistic. there is spontaneity and randomnes in Higgs field. 
Prigogine proposed extension to classical dynamics which is not determenistic. his idea was based on evolution of transformation operators. if universe evolve then operators can evolve too, in this way product of evolution is not a product of evolution, but product of evolution of operators. 


2016-07-07
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Sergey,

We agree that space is eternal and infinite. It that all you mean by "primary"? I would add that space is also substantial.

I never said anything about Classical dynamics or randomness and don't see how they would affect what I did say about space being a substance.

As to Prigogine and evolution, you seem to be using that term ambiguously and not analogously to it's primary use in biology. The universe does not evolve, though it does change and has, at least once, produced a planet where biological evolution can and does occur. I don't know what a transformation operator is, but I suspect it is a mathematical or technical term accepted by an academic community. If that is evolution, it is cultural evolution.

I appreciate your comments.

Thanks,
DCD 
 

2016-07-08
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Aleksandar,

So you being a figment of my imagination and you being a real person are equivalent statements, to you?

Physics does not require the kind of idealistic spin you want to put on it. Space is a part of nature, along with matter. Light is not what constitutes observable reality nor is "seeing" an idea, meaning or moral principle anything but an analogy.

I prefer realist ontologies to idealistic epistemologies because I not forgotten reality or the history of our different theories of reality.

Thanks,
DCD




2016-07-08
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel, my posts on moderation (as I'm new here) and appears with delay. my last post was intended as a coment on your previouse post. I need some more time to answer on last one.
I agree with most of your arguments. difference between classical dynamics and extension of Prigogin is very important one. because it lead to paradigm of integrability/non-integrability. I belive some seriouse shift from current stagnated mentality is possible. we created integrated system of knowledge, but outside world is non-integrable.  

2016-07-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Thanks, Sergey. Take your time. You can chew on this too.

Prigogine's positions are essentially Emergentist, as I read them. For me, if you want to do science, Reductionism is the only way to go. That requires that everything be reducible to physical science and its laws, which apply throughout the universe. Therefore everything is capable of being integrated with everything else.

That means the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, the Standard Model of sub-atomic particles, Special and General Relativity can be integrated with one another mathematically and ontologically, as all describing the same intelligible world. It's a tall order, no doubt.

But it's not as tall as the bootless plan out by Prigogine.  If we created have an integrated system of knowledge, but outside world our knowledge is of is non-integrable, then what we call science can never be true of the world we live in. It's true that science is NOT integrated in its current state of knowledge. This is my whole point in harping on the disparity of GTR and Quantum Mechanics.  Moreover, by including matter AHD space in its empirical ontology, science can be fully integrated into a theory of everything, one that integrates not only physics but all the other physical and social sciences, economics, religion, art by completing the tasks of philosophy.

The key is to see space empirically as a substance with powers, similar to matter in that regard.

Thanks,
DCD  

 

2016-07-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Dear SergeyIn what way time has been created at the same time when the universe? How one can prove such conjecture?

What makes people think time as used in physical equation exists in any other way than a reference to a changing state. The concept of change logically precedes the concept of time. Time is derived as a measure of experience of changes in relation do a reference change such as rotating Earth.

The artificial cluster of time reference and geometry of space for mathematical convenience has no corresponding entity in nature.

2016-07-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Thanks, Sergey. Take your time. You can chew on this too.

Prigogine's positions are essentially Emergentist, as I read them. For me, if you want to do science, Reductionism is the only way to go. That requires that everything be reducible to physical science and its laws, which apply throughout the universe. Therefore everything is capable of being integrated with everything else.

That means the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, the Standard Model of sub-atomic particles, Special and General Relativity can be integrated with one another mathematically and ontologically, as all describing the same intelligible world. It's a tall order, no doubt.

But it's not as tall as the bootless plan out by Prigogine.  If we created have an integrated system of knowledge, but outside world our knowledge is of is non-integrable, then what we call science can never be true of the world we live in. It's true that science is NOT integrated in its current state of knowledge. This is my whole point in harping on the disparity of GTR and Quantum Mechanics.  Moreover, by including matter AHD space in its empirical ontology, science can be fully integrated into a theory of everything, one that integrates not only physics but all the other physical and social sciences, economics, religion, art by completing the tasks of philosophy.

The key is to see space empirically as a substance with powers, similar to matter in that regard.

Thanks,
DCD  

 

2016-07-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Daniel,

'To &explain& in science means to offer an explanatory theory that shows how things happen'

before we reach explanatory theory many things can happen. we have to choose right type of representation and transformation operators, and that is detrimental to what kind of theory we get. what we are going to use on this stage can gives theory which explain and integrates with our previous knowledge or theory which do not explanatory and do non-integrable. My argument is that in philosophy that kind non-integrable not explanatory theory can have immense value. That sounds crazy, but that kind of theory we got now in physics. Standard Theory even to not gives masses of particles it have to be detected experimentally.  

Graham Harman said in one lecture, - problem with Kants thing in itself that he did not pushed it far enough. How thing in itself can be pushed further. By giving it interactions and by parametrising dynamics of these interactions via transformation operators. Nothing exist without interactions. By carefully choosing type of operators we can design theory what would be arbitrary to classical dynamics and provide analytic continuity and that way never arrive at the point where there  is no interactions. Most definitely that will be theory which do not integrate well with our previous theories and perhaps opening new domain of uncertainties. 

thanks

Sergey


2016-07-11
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

DCD: “So you being a figment of my imagination and you being a real person are equivalent statements, to you?”

Well yes, they are equivalent indeed as far as they are both completely meaningless. What do you mean by “your imagination” or “real person”.  This is nothing but noise and I think we have been through this before.

DCD: “Physics does not require the kind of idealistic spin you want to put on it.”

Perhaps physics neither requires string theory or the concept of holographic universe. I wonder if you are still imagining that vacuum is some piece of empty space.

DCD: “Light is not what constitutes observable reality…”

There is nothing what constitutes observable reality because there is no reality. However, I must say that I have oversimplified things in my addressing to Sergei. Namely, subcritical imaginal realm occurs only on the verge of death.

But on the other hand why don’t you spare half hour of your time to go through 6 pages of the essay of mine which I have mentioned to Sergey.


2016-07-12
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Dear Daniel,

thanks for your comments. I agree reductionism can be used to discover singular limits of some particular theory. also this singular limit is usually can be a phenomenological connection point between different theories.  But even if we will create some unified theory, and be able to mathematise it, will we be able to understand it, proof it, or verify that proof. for example recent proof of the boolean Pythagorean Triples problem generated by super computer was 200 terrabites in size. &which begs the question, does it really exist?& Quentin Meillassoux argues that everything can be mathematised, perhaps that is true, but reducing philosophy to physics, would that not means end of philosophy. and for what reason? philosophy can be even more productive in producing uncertainties, then physics.

DCD: &If we created have an integrated system of knowledge, but outside world our knowledge is  of   is non-integrable, then what we call science can never be true of the world we live in.&

or, our system of knowledge is wrong. that is what have been proven by Prigogin in case of many concepts of Newtonian physics like reversibility of time etc.  it is not that just state of sciences non-integrable. non-integrability is a law. this question briefly discussed in Prigogin's IS FUTURE

GIVEN?

best

Sergey


2016-07-18
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Sergey Ershov
Sergey,

I thank you for the thoughtful comments but don't have time right now to address all of them. I'll say just that I am certainly NOT proposing anything that would mean the end of philosophy by reducing it to physics. Asserting that space and matter are both substances, but of opposite natures, actually subsumes empirical science, including physics, to empirical ontology. It makes philosophy empirical, as it was at its birth in the Milesian naturalists ancient Greece. The Eleatic, Pythagoreans and Platonists eventually won the day and dovetailed nicely with Christian monotheism. My view is in the tradition of Democritus, whose solution to the philosophical disputes of his day has actually been confirmed by future empirical research, unlike Plato's.

Philosophy is a way of seeing things, a way that empirical science, itself, does not have. Bacon's arguments against Scholasticism are not scientific arguments. They are ontological. epistemological and ethical arguments. Newton assumed there are no final causes to calculate for in his mathematical expressions of measurable physical regularities. Contemporary physics assumes that space is like final causes in that it need not be figured in its calculations. Empirical ontology argues otherwise.

More later.

DCD     

2016-07-18
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Aleksander,

I did read your essay but it did not change my view that you have concocted an idealistic ontology, which you call a kind of "panpsychism"... meaning everything is mind. It is full of figurative language, like "information-thing", to which you try to attribute some of quantitative value. It is far too abstract and obtuse to provide any explanatory value to me.

I mean, I know you think these things ... which is fine. And maybe they seem explanatory to you. But you assert them as if there were self-evident truths, or somehow empirical, instead of your fanciful reconstruction of a few bits of knowledge derived from physics.

Information is an abstract term we over-use in our information age. But it is not a basic component of physical reality. Perception of light and conception of ideas like information are highly evolved functions of some biological species on Earth. That means that, in the beginning there was no intelligence or mental activity taking place. No programming or data processing, no psyche or mind at work, only the physical processes themselves.

Thanks,

DCD




2016-07-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Daniel,

I appreciate very much that you did read my essay. However, I find your critics rather inaccurate. It’s a news for me to hear that I’m developing some “idealistic ontology” which I call “a kind of ‘panpsychism’ … meaning everything is mind”.  No, I am developing physics which I call “real physics”, and I certainly don’t mean everything is mind. I’m afraid you’ve missed my point entirely. Notion of Mind I leave to Cartesian dualism. Real physics is an inhumane science; it pretends to be about the inhumane soul.

And now about my “fanciful reconstruction of a few bits of knowledge /wisdom/ derived from physics”.  Well, I could agree with that, but then again this doesn’t exclude the self-evident truths a priory. When I assert that there is something else besides Death, I think I assert one self-evident truth.  Please let me know if you have some doubts about this statement. I deem it important since I’ve made it the departure point of real physics. This something else is on the outside of death. I think the outside and the light are one and the same thing, and there is a conservation of the speed of light, or of the speed of the meaning of that conservation, or information, etc.

Thanks again for reading “Metaphysics of Light by Aleksandar Milenkovic”.


2016-07-20
The Reality of Spatial Relations
There has been a robust return to this blog. This time there seems to be a marked departure from the kinds of analysis we previously engaged in : namely plucking ontology from the mathematical physics of Einsteinian construction. While philosophy is a tolerant host, western philosophy has introduced powerful logical tools to carve out discourses that can be studied within fairly well defined boundaries. 
Allotting space or time or light meanings, which may have significance within a defined context, nevertheless offend reason when the context is not given or if given it is nebulous. Thus I am unable to respond to the recent posts in any significant way. Except those of Daniel who has breathed substance into space. This claim is an ontological question stabbing physics deep into its bowels. I will post my response to that in my next post.
George

2016-07-21
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy

George,

Should I presume that you had read my “Metaphysics of Light”?  Because if you had and if you are still uncertain whether the context was given or not “or if given it is nebulous”, that would made me unable to respond, too. Just let me know what the case is. Of course I don’t think you are obliged to read my stuff, but then why should you complain for being unable to respond?

I don’t care much for “powerful logical tools” or the “discourses that can be studied within fairly well established boundaries “. Especially after we had “breathed substance into space “.

Nevertheless, I’m eager to see your “response to that”.


2016-07-28
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
Dear George and Daniel,
FIrstly, may I thank you for continuing the debate over the last fifteen months. I have found it in turn informative, engaging and occasionally alarming. 

Secondly, may I support George's response to the forum's departure to mysticism.

Philosophy, mathematics and Physics have a common intellectual heritage which has had significant success over millennia. Mysticism has a much longer history but has made no contribution to the development of humanity at large or aided us in improving the clarity with which we perceive the world. (I draw a distinction here between mysticism and religions with robust theological structures).

In pursuit of simplicity, the problems with space/time could be characterised as an inability to find a rigorous formalism which allows us to pass from continuous algebra to discrete algebra. 

An example may assist. Field theory (regardless of flavour) has been developed by physics to deal with 'action at a distance'.  Action at a distance is a metaphor for the causal framework enveloping entities articulated through formalisms of mechanics (quantum, Newtonian et al).

The wave particle duality issue is similar to intuitive reflections of space and time - notions of the present moment as opposed to the continuum of space-time.  We struggle to cope with simultaneously incongruent phenomena.

Mathematical and philosophical logic may contribute here through a re-kindled interest in multi-valued logic from which may emerge a new algebraic formalism capable of dispelling these issues.

May I offer my heart felt encouragement in your endeavours.

2016-07-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Martyn Reeves
MR: " Action at a distance is a metaphor for the causal framework enveloping entities articulated through formalisms of mechanics ..."

Please think harder about what you've just said.

AM



2016-07-29
The Reality of Spatial Relations
I must confess myself confused by your reply.
My comment about the nature of ' action at a distance' is not new. A few explanatory remarks may assist you.

'Action at a distance' refers to forces initiating interactions, these forces emanating from another phenomena.  The four fundamental forces of  nature are obvious examples. Any elementary textbook on general physics will help with expanding on these topics if you are interested.

The phrase 'causal framework ' refers to the fact that there are causal relations where there are forces, fields and phenomena. The proof of this is immediately obvious.  The mechanics formalisms describe all of these to varying degrees of accuracy but none trivial. 

Your injunction to ' think harder' about these issues implies a lack of familiarity with current themes in mathematical physics.

On a separate note, I have taken the liberty of reading the essay you offered to George titled the Metaphysics of Light.

It is not a contribution to science or physics as normally understood and so I am not qualified to comment on it.


2016-08-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Martyn Reeves

So you are familiar with “current themes in mathematical physics”? I and some other simpletons thought that the action at distance might have been spooky, but now to our great relief we learn it is only a metaphor and at the same time it “refers to forces initiating interactions”.

Think harder anyway, it’s always a good thing to do.


2016-08-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,

Thanks for recognizing that this ontological claim (that space is a substance) is, nonetheless, fundamental to the empirical science of physics. This is possible only because the ontological claim is an empirical one, meaning it can be falsified or verified by empirical methods. What I offer is an argument to the best empirical ontological explanation of what empirical science has discovered. Science is decidedly about observations and which mathematical formulations of equivalence allow precise predictions of precisely observed, public and repeatable experimental results.

We observe objects in space. We don't observe any objects not in space. We cannot even imagine, try as we might, an object that has a front and a back but no sides. We have words that describe that but we cannot imagine what it would look like. Or one that has sides but no top or bottom. Even data acquired from the LHC or the Hubble is formed into visual images that we see in 3 spatial dimensions. no more and no less. Space is basic to how we see things ... literally.

Now it is, of course, possible that Kant was right and this is a fact about the mind and not a fact about the nature of being. Any future "metaphysic" or ontology, such as the one I am proposing, fails because it presumes to know that which cannot be know, namely, the nature of the thing (substance) in itself. Substance, like space and time, is best explained as a category of the mind, not as a component of some noumenal reality beyond the phenomena of our experience.

Empirical ontology, however, does not fall to this argument against a realistic ontology. That's because "mind" is not the Cartesian res cogitans, assumed by rationalists, empiricists, Kantians, phenomenologists and existentialists alike. Rather mind is brain, which evolves in nature. Thus, the fact that space is so basic to perception and how we can even imagine objects in nature, is explained by the premise that we perceive things only on 3 dimensions because the objects we perceive actually exist in 3 dimensional space. The empirical burden of the argument is to show that it is the BEST explanation of what we observe in our normal common sense observations and in our most educated scientific observations, as well.

I am not disputing or trying to correct the empirical findings of physics. Assuming that space is a substance gives us a better way, arguably the best way, to understand and explain the often anomalous results science finds. Empirical ontology offers an alternative to the implicit ontology of physics (known as "spacetime ontology") that solves the disparity problem, and offers better explanations of the data used to support the existence of the Higgs boson and gravitational waves. More on that another time.

Thanks for your comments and replies.

DCD             

2016-08-02
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Martyn Reeves
Martyn,
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. This is a lonely pursuit only a few of us are engaged at the intersection of Mathematics, Physics and philosophy. While mathematicians and physicists operate within an internally consistent framework ( I know the Russell Paradox and General Theory vs quantum mechanics fly in the face of this assumption), philosophy takes the discourse to the edge of reason in chasing the foundations of Mathematics and Physics until they squeal for life. My mathematics is not as developed as yours however I am intrigued by your suggestion that we may need new algebras to deal with the conundrums of modern physics. I think we don't even have a geometry to reconcile the fault lines in modern physics let alone algebras. The Unified Field Theory was an attempt to find common ground. But to respond to your inquiry about  'action at a distance' which assumes a causal agent somehow we have assumed that a medium was required. Newton found ether until Michelson and Morley debunked that theory. Einstein's four dimensional manifold which I understand Mikowski captured in his geometry was not quite faithful to Einstein's formulation, however because of its elegance it was adopted later by Einstein as well. Somehow it appears to me that we have sneaked in ether back again with this manifold. 

My point to Martyn is, why do we look to space or space-time to offer an explanation for 'action at a distance' when distance has been redefined and is defined by the behavior of the interacting bodies. Distance at a distance is now a phenomenon defined by the nature of the 'action'. Continuous and discrete behavior will require new mathematics but I am not sure if we have to introduce substantivialism to explain any of this as Daniel has suggested. 

Daniel, I read your posts and your force of arguments are compelling however you have not anywhere indicated the nature of the substance space is made of, except to distinguish it from matter. Is it wave, field, particle or does it belong to a still undefined class of substance? I think if we succeed in developing a mathematics that can accommodate discrete and continuous existence we may have solved the relativity/quantum issues. I think Martyn was suggesting that a new algebra should be pursued. After which we have to work on reconciling the new mathematics with our perception to get the blessing at the altar of Nature and Daniel! 

Aleksandar, I did attempt to read your paper. I was not able to fully comprehend what you were trying to say. It may be entirely my inadequacy. Can you give us all a shorter version of your thesis
an elevator pitch so to speak, so we can at least begin to address our critique. In my cursory read, I found something interesting but was unable to tell if it was because I was imposing some of my thinking on it. 

Looking forward to continuing this important conversation.

George

2016-08-03
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,

RE: "I think if we succeed in developing a mathematics that can accommodate discrete and continuous existence we may have solved the relativity/quantum issues. I think Martyn was suggesting that a new algebra should be pursued. After which we have to work on reconciling the new mathematics with our perception to get the blessing at the altar of Nature and Daniel! "

Have you ever considered that the solution might not be one of mathematics? I know mathematics is the accepted language of physics, which attempts to reduce the laws by which things move and interact to mathematical formulas that predict experimental results. But you might also call this "thinking inside the mathematical box".

I am suggesting we consider that empirical ontology can assert the existence of a spatial substance, leading to a more basic branch of science than physics can fathom from within its mathematical box. I am suggesting that physics cannot solve the disparity problem from within the box, beginning with quantum forces or with gravity. There can be no unifying math, so look elsewhere for a solution.

I'm not asking you to look for God, some mystical revelation or paradoxical post-modern deconstruction of the problem. I'm asking you to look to space in a positive way. As if it were something, rather than nothing. A component of reality, not the absence of it. Not an "absolute" or "inert" void that is neither cause nor effect; but the part of being that gives inherent structure and motion to matter and energy.

WHY does matter move at a constant angular momentum forever, unless perturbed by some external force? It's Newton's first law of motion, which physics takes to be the deepest knowledge we can have of this apparently universal phenomenon. But why wouldn't it just move randomly? There is nothing inherent in the moving object itself that explains this. But an inherently 3-dimensional holistic substance, with its own inherent motion at the speed of light could explain that. But you have to think outside the box of mathematics even to consider such a possibility.

You raise good questions.

Thanks,
DCD  
 

2016-08-03
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
Thanks for your thoughtful reply and good questions.

RE: "Continuous and discrete behavior will require new mathematics but I am not sure if we have to introduce substantivialism to explain any of this as Daniel has suggested. 

Daniel, I read your posts and your force of arguments are compelling however you have not anywhere indicated the nature of the substance space is made of, except to distinguish it from matter. Is it wave, field, particle or does it belong to a still undefined class of substance?"

George, you are quite right that I have not tried to describe the nature of the spatial substance. I was hoping someone would ask me that sometime, so I'm very glad you did. Waves, fields or particles are all different forms of matter/energy and essentially localized phenomena. There's a wave over there and a particle right here in this field. All of them have some sort of spatial location relative to one another. So none of them can BE space, which is, by its nature, holistic, continuous, infinite, eternal and universal. Therefore, it doesn't expand, contract or warp. But it does change. Thus, it is not static or "absolute", as Einstein and other normally assume. Rather, it is dynamic and has powers. Space is opposite in nature to matter and it is by the inter-action of these two distinct substances that we can explain the nature of being or existence. The space I imagine has an inherent motion at the speed of light and  inherent 3-dimensional structure that is not recognized by physics, which recognizes only particulate things.

Physics overlooks space because it does not know how to look for it and does not want to look for it. It seems like a violation of Occam's razor to postulate an invisible, undetectable "metaphysical" substance. So why even bother looking for such an idol of the theater, as Bacon would call it? Yet, it is an imaginable and empirical hypothesis to assume that space is substantial and a real component of what makes up the universe we live in and experience.  My argument justifies making these assumptions by showing how doing so leads us to the best explanation of the whole world and everything in it as integrated parts of a single system, including the subjects like us who eventually come to know about it.

There is still a lot more to say about the nature of space, so I hope you have some other questions, too. But I also hope it's clear by now that this theory about space and matter is not  the "substantivalism" that Newton and Leibniz were debating about.

DCD 

2016-08-08
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy

George,

There is more than one thesis in my “Metaphysics of Light”. So I’m just going to mention three of them.

1.      Mathematics contains its own dynamics. An evidence for this kind of dynamics is the imaginary unit (i). It has an oscillatory polarity which makes it impossible to square the imaginary unit of self identical polarity. So, imaginary unit is dynamical and alive. This dynamics spills over into all complex numbers and functions. I have even tried, rather naively, to calculate the quantity which would account for the duration of this ultimately fast flipping over of polarity. It would make the ultimately short duration and consequently the ultimately short distance, equivalent to Plank’s distance. Perhaps Dirac’s delta function holds some dynamical, self propelling, properties too. I wouldn’t know that; I’m not a mathematician.

2.      Death should be recognized as a physical factor. I really think death is the substance of gravitation and acceleration. Every change and every process is provoked and lured by death. All actual duration (should we say “occasion”, after Whitehead) are finite. They case to exist and literally die.  Speaking about death, I even think Kant failed to notice that there was a third pure sense, i.e. the pure sense of death. Aren’t we all going to experience death eventually?

3.      Death underpins the extension. “There is becoming of continuity, but there is no continuity of becoming”.  I just can’t stop repeating this sentence of Whitehead. Its last part: “… there is no continuity of becoming”, is actually saying that there is Death (in the Universe). However, it’s first, affirmative, part: “There is becoming of continuity …,” is saying there is the duration of self-identity. This duration is finite because it is in the process of becoming which is oriented toward its end (or death).

I would also like to turn your attention to the fact that there is something else besides death. That something else is on the outside of death. It stands before death, as we all know. You have surely noticed my effort to develop some theory of the becoming of the outside. This is where the metaphysics of light comes about. The outside has atomic structure. Elementary atomic units of the outside are the actual occasions of photons and their life histories. For the purpose of my theory I introduce the fifth dimension which is free from 4D space-time and is equivalent to death. It would take too long to elaborate this theory here.

I also skipped to mention “information-things” and “story-things”, but I wouldn’t mind discussing this theme as well.Universal constants and information-things are the same. Conservation lows are the archetypes of information. They bring about some observable changes.which are due to obeying these lows. Therefore information is a thing which imposes the force of categorical imperative to respect some universal constant.

AM


2016-08-08
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel,Thanks for the rapid fire response compelling as usual and encyclopedic in its breadth. However giving our evolutionary developments which are merely adaptations for survival, infallibility seems like a medieval departure from science and perhaps logic. Our history of knowledge has been a demonstration of how our perceptions have been wrong. The earth centric astronomy, the flat earth geography, even Newtonian physics crumbled under better measurements as we developed tools to better assess the dimensions. When now the explanations have become counter-intuitive because we are entering an arena of unseeable  particles and unexperienceable speeds it may not be prudent for us to seek refuge under 'human perception'. If humans were bats our perception of the world would be quite different. Why then should physics not be built on how bats see the world or how flies see it with multi eyes? While Einstein's paradigm is no more legitimate than Newton's one, the paradigm that explains more reigns. As of now Einstein's paradigm rules even as Quantum physics has laid it challenge to Einstein. 

Our job as philosophers is to force the physicists or any scientist for that matter to explain their science and their mathematics, even when experiments based on them confirm their theories. It is for that reason that we are debating here as to what space is all about. Mikowski's space-time manifold is good geometry, but if we assumed that to be true what is space? What is time? The action at a distance is no longer a mystery because distance is now a function of matter. Space is no longer an independent phenomenon. Yet there are lingering doubts about this theory.It has not explained everything including the question of nature of space. It seems to me sometimes that we have replaced space with a space-time geometry as if this bending continuum was some kind of substance. Ether in 4 dimensions! This appears to me like the introduction of substantivalism that you are advocating. But like in this theory, your attempt also fails to tell us what the nature of this manifold is. Is it a wave, particle, or something we can bite into. For instance recently there was confirmation of a gravitational wave, however I had thought gravity was the path created by the interplay of two or more bodies of matter along the space-time manifold and had no existence outside of that. In other words it was merely the geometry of space- time. 

Daniel in other words I am asking you to tell us what space is, is it a substance different 
from the Eintein/Mikowski model. 

Looking forward to your response and others who have written on this, especially Martyn.
George

2016-08-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,

Thanks for your good questions. I'll try to answer them best I can.

But I have to question your assumption that I am somehow asserting or arguing that any empirical enterprise is infallible. Neither ontology or physical science should ever even WANT to make that claim. I completely agree with you that "Our history of knowledge has been a demonstration of how our perceptions have been wrong." But what you fail to recognize is that this statement assumes we have gotten it right now, or at least gotten it more right than we had it before. That's how we know we were wrong!

Further, calling our biological and cultural evolution "merely adaptations for survival" is selling short what evolution does to make living things ever-more powerful as completing their cycles of evolution. Evolution, in a literal sense, perfects the adaptations that enable survival of species, as an globally integrated system. That we perceive and think as we do is definitely NOT a mere accident. Nature has plenty of time to try out EVERY possible survival strategy, and to test for their ability to reproduce those same survival strategies over many thousands or millions of generations. Yes, the new trials are just random variations on a pre-exiting theme of biological success. But the natural selection process always picks the best competitor and rewards it with on-going life. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course. There is no intelligent choosing on nature's part, except in the sense that intelligence is one thing that is selected, because of it's obvious survival value. If our perceptions and conceptions were not able to guide animal behaviors toward mostly accurate and reliable ideas about how to get around in the world, they would not be likely to have been selected now, would they? To an extent, of course, they are all "convenient fictions", useful tools or models to give us a "sense of understanding".  

But Newtonian mechanics did not "crumble" under the physics of the 20th-21st century. The whole point of STR, GTR and QM is to show precisely what adjustments to it are needed to make it SEEM to us that it is still true in our inertial or accelerated frames of reference. The Lorentz transformations, Minkowski diagrams, warped spacetime and gravitational waves are all mathematical formulations that account for the non-Newtonian observations we make, in a way that is consistent with Newtonian laws. The biggest problem for physics is that they don't seem to be able to find ONE set of formulas that accounts for both relativity and QM.

Assuming the substantial nature of space is what would enable physics to resolve this disparity. In a pervious post I tried to describe how to "see' and think about space substantially. I don't want to go over that again now. I'll just say that IF space were a dynamic (changing) substance, having an inherent light-speed motion, with which particles of matter coincide, the ability to resist moving at the speed of light would define inertia and mass as the effects of the inter-action of matter and space. So, yes, space is a substance that has powers; matter is a different substance, having different powers. Spacetime is NOT a substance; it is a mathematical model, for which there is no referent "thing". "Spacetime ontology" reduces us to a set of spacetime coordinates, where one of the coordinates represents time spatially. But space IS something that time IS NOT. So spacetime is a concept based on a fallacy from the outset.

It reminds me of the Ontological argument for God. It's like because we can have a concept of something so clear and distinct as a perfect being or a heuristic cosmological model of space, time and matter that seems to fit together so well with the other things we know, deep breath..., because of this it must be real and somehow representational of what is real in the most basic way. But, like Christian theology, spacetime ontology does not match with the more commonsense notions we have about truth, beauty and goodness.

If spacetime is real, what we like to call "the present moment" or the "here-and-now" are just illusions. Every 4-D "timeline" in the present, past or future is equally real, "all the time" or "eternally". Eternity is real; the present moment, not so much.

To me, any theory that requires you to deny something that basic to everyone's empirical phenomena, will end up having to explain away more than it would ultimately explain. This is also how it is with most popular conspiracy theories or ancient alien hypotheses. Their wild premises require more explanation than the things, like building the pyramids or killing Kennedy, that they tried to explain in the first place.

I hope this addresses, somewhat, your request for me "to tell us what space is, and how it is a substance different from the Eintein/Mikowski model".

I always look forward to some good replies.

DCD 
     

  

2016-08-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
To George and the editors.

I earned a PhD in Philosophy in 1982 and have taught philosophy in several colleges and universities. I STARTED this thread a couple of years ago. Yet, for some reason, the editors decided months ago that I should not have what they call "Pro Status" here. According to their definition, "An author is considered professional if he/she either a) has a doctorate in philosophy...." So they are clearly wrong by their own standard.

I have complained several times about this and all they ever do is approve my posts one at a time. They probably won't approve this one for posting but maybe they will finally tell me why I am being disrespected by having my conversations interrupted in this way.

DCD


2016-08-16
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
To all:

Well they did post this but, of course, no explanation. A reasonable inductive inference would leave to the conclusion that they don't even read these posts they supposedly are monitoring t exclude "non-professionals".

Anyway, my apologies to George and other colleagues who may also find this a difficult way to have a conversation.   

DCD

2016-09-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis

Hello Daniel et al.,

I just came across this interesting discussion.

Daniel, I like your method of reasoning. I am also inclined to support your position that: "Space, therefore, is an active and dynamic substance that is continuous in nature", but I disagree that "it can divide into an infinite number of parts, infinitely large and infinitely small". The concept of infinity is an abstract one that exists only in the mind of mathematicians, and since you have conferred space with reality it cannot share in this abstraction. This is what Zeno partly demonstrated with his Dichotomy Argument - a runner will never reach his goal if there are an infinite number of points to be traversed to his destination. And some have extended this and demonstrated that if there is no very first point, the race cannot even commence.

As you pointed out in the earliest post, "No matter "how far down" you might go into smaller and smaller particles there is always something between them that is not itself particulate in nature"; which with your permission I modify to:

"No matter "how far down" you might go into smaller and smaller particles there is always something between them that is not itself of the same nature"

Your dilemma arises from your wonder what could separate Space into discreteness? Space cannot do its own separation. Just as the air and other atoms cannot separate themselves into a discrete nature but require something of a different nature to do which Space does. Your resignation into the conclusion of a continuous nature of Space probably stems from the inability to apprehend what could do this separation of space into a discrete nature.

But if we look deeper, could Time not do this separation? Are the atoms of space which the Greeks like Euclid called 'points' and the Pythagoreans called 'monads' which are continuous (by the fact that Space cannot separate them, Space itself being constituted of points) eternally existing objects? If not, can the varying duration of existence not separate Space into discreteness and disrupt its otherwise continuous nature? Could this wriggling nature, capable of causing a shortening and extension of lines not give rise to the active and dynamic nature you mentioned? I have thought deeply about these matters and using the kind of reasoning that you subscribe to I believe we can come to some agreement.

Regards,

Akinbo


2016-09-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Akinbo Ojo
Thank you for your response to my discussion, Akimbo. By my "method of reasoning" do you mean my empirical way of reasoning? I hope so because that is my intended method for reasoning about the kind of ontology that recognizes space and matter/energy as two distinct, co-existing substances which, together, constitute everything there is.

Time, in this view, is not another substance in the mix, nor can it replace space and the role it plays in the composition of being.

Having said that, I'll have to think about your reply some more before I can comment any further.

Thanks again.
DCD  

2016-09-14
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Akinbo Ojo
Thank you for your response to my discussion, Akimbo. By my "method of reasoning" do you mean my empirical way of reasoning? I hope so because that is my intended method for reasoning about the kind of ontology that recognizes space and matter/energy as two distinct, co-existing substances which, together, constitute everything there is.

Time, in this view, is not another substance in the mix, nor can it replace space and the role it plays in the composition of being.

Having said that, I'll have to think about your reply some more before I can comment any further.

Thanks again.
DCD  

2016-09-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
I have been out of pocket some as I have got busy with a few things including some travel. I have nevertheless read all of the postings. First I want to address  Daniel's complaint of not being treated as a professional with the attendant privileges. When Daniel enumerated his credentials it is quite evident that he should be given the privileges he is seeking. Not only because he has earned it but because he acts as the catalyst to this forum. He draws from theology and physics with equal ease and visits them with thinking that challenge physics in a way that beckons common sense back to physics. Giving him professional status should be a no brainer!
My respect and curiosity for what Daniel says is not meant to give him a free pass. In philosophy no one gets a free pass. Your position that space is some kind of substance even able to interact with matter is intriguing but is not tenable under a Newtonian or Einsteinian model. I got the feeling that you were even going further and proffering a position that with this view of space you may even be able to reconcile STR/GTR/QM. I do not know how the math of that will look but it will be interesting to see. It will also require us to describe this new entity and give it character. Will we have to introduce new particles, fields, or do we have to completely rewrite physics. 

I think this discussion is worth having!
George

2016-09-19
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
The fact someone's model is not tenable under a Newtonian or Einsteinian model is not automatically wrong. Was Copernican model wrong in relation to the Ptolemean model? I think philosophical approach can enrich physics. After all the philosophers invented the concept of conventional nature of Einstein's "simultaneity" which physicists are still denying. I am trying to get the answer to the following question:
We have large number of instances of physical objects coexisting but how many instances or timespaces do we have? If many, how do they follow those objects and if they shrink how long it takes to do it when the object moves from rest?
In most discusions I took part, physicts maintain Lorentz contraction aplies to space.
Do they know what they are talking about?


2016-09-22
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Thanks, Andrew. You are correct to point out that I am suggesting an alternative to Einstein and Newton, so it's not surprising that this alternative would not fit within their concepts of space. I am asking readers to imagine something differently that they are used to, To physics, space is a vacuous concept... pun intended. It is thought to be an unscientific notion because you can't perform experiments on it. It is "absolute", in Einstein's sense, because there is no way to detect its presence experimentally. This is true. My suggestion about space does not need a laboratory experiment to be understood. It is about how we think about space and imagining its possible properties in a new way. Both ways are equally consistent with what we observe in our experiments. But thinking of space as an active and dynamic substance that is continuous in nature and has powers to structure and accelerate matter, enables empirical science to explain all of its observations consistently in one unified theory of everything. Indeed, it is "a more inclusive everything" than the fabled TOE that scienstis have promised but never delivered, because it also can explain the nature of ethics (what ought to be) and gives an illuminating hypothesis about the nature of consciousness.

Rather than contrasting physics and philosophy as 2 distinct disciplines, I prefer to think of empirical ontology and  metaphysics as the foundations of empirical all knowledge ( scientia ) and, therefore, sciences themselves.

Lorenz distortions (expansions and contractions) apply to measurements of length, time and mass... but not space. If space is infinite and continuous, it cannot expand or contract. But it can affect the different ways in which matter and energy and travel through space in ways that account for the non-Newtonian phenomena that we were able to observe because of Einstein's relativity theories. He had to perform what he called "thought experiments" in order to imagine the mathematical solutions he proposed to the anomalies observed in the Michaelson-Morley experiment, designed to detect changes I the measured velocity of light. 

What I am suggesting here is another thought experiment, asking you to imagine that space is powerful, not inert, and that it affects and is affected by how matter moves in it. For instance, imagine that space has an inherent three-dimensional (3D)structure. We don't observe that structure because we, as bodies in space, are part of it and are structured in that way ourselves. We never get outside a 3D universe to observe it, as we subjects would observe any distinct object in space. That's why it seems inert to us and unaffected by anything we do. It's also why we think of its properties as analytic, rather than synthetic. It seems somehow necessarily true that the Pythagorean Theorem holds everywhere we look and doesn't seem to depend on observing every right triangle in the universe for us to know it's true.

But maybe (meaning we can imagine it without contradiction) it holds true everywhere because space has an inherent 3D structure that it imposes even the tiniest bit of matter that happens to coincide with some part of the infinitely divisible space. Maybe the observable invariance of the speed of light is due to the inherent motion of space which accelerates light energy ("non-inertial matter" or photons) to that velocity always and everywhere. We can imagine these things and more.  

This kind of imagining does take some effort, which means it requires a certain psychological willingness to think in this way. The normal reaction to this kind of thought experiment is to scoff at it as naïve or uneducated and reject the effort out of hand. Anyone interested in and capable of even having this conversation with me already has a lot on their mind and might not think they have the psychological or cognitive time and memory space to engage in the exercise at all. But it's really not that difficult if you have a willingness to consider new ideas. It's pretty amazing how so few philosophers actually have this willingness as something they get from their training.

Space is a substance? Huh ... imagine that! 

Please.

DCD 
  

2016-09-23
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,

Thanks for your interest in the discussion, for your encouraging words (seldom heard here) and, especially, the no-free-pass.   

I'm not proposing a total re-write of physics. This substantial model of space does not reject the observations and experimental results of contemporary physics and other sciences. It simply offers an arguably better way of understanding the experimental results. The current spacetime model contains well-documented failures to find a unified and consistent mathematical expression of all of the empirical data and laws of nature discovered by modern science. I am suggesting, not yet proposing, that by imagining space as a substance with these properties we can find a way to unify the mathematics of SRT, GTR and QM. See my recent reply to Andrew for more about that.

Thanks,
DCD 

2016-09-23
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Dear Daniel,
I have other few more words to support the legitimate nature of your inquiry about space. What physical space attributes are depends on who you ask. The modern physics response on the existence of the absolute space is not a single statement but a spectrum of statements often mutually exclusive.

Firstly, it is rarely defined what space is. Definition is a choice of words that trigger human reasoning about relations between mental models of entities present in the definition. 

The words themselves are just symbols without meaning. Ultimately the content of our brains determine what the definition means. Common human experience may cause that some definition are acceptable for most people.

I have asked a question through my ReseachGate account:
Is there a solid proof of non existence of the absolute reference frame or no one has found the proof yet?, which may be relevant.

There were many interesting answers. Some of them pointing out impossibility to prove nonexistence of something. Some others indicating that the change of paradigm is imminent.

Alexander E Kaplan from Johns Hopkins University writes:
Folks, it looks to me that all the argument about "what is needed by physics" or even of "type of matter is not yet known to us" has no substance and is just beating around bushes. It is all hand-waving,  whereas  by now trivial and profoundly studied both in observation and theory FACT is the existence of a universal "substance" -- Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, or CMB (read about it in Wikipedia, if you have no other sources, or the names of Gamov, Alpher, Herman, Penzias and Wilson ) in respect to which ANY motion can be measured with great precision. And it DOES constitute a PREFERABLE frame , e. g. it can decelerate cosmic particles, even baryons (look for so called   Greizen, Zatsepin, Kuzmin -- GZK -- effect, whereby CMB  strongly affects high-energy baryons'  energy decay facilitated by the pion production  via so called Delta-resonance of a baryon and high-energy photons via secondary production of virtual electron-positron  pairs, resulting in the existence of an upper limit of the energy of cosmic rays ... 
Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_a_solid_proof_of_non_existence_of_the_absolute_reference_frame_or_no_one_has_found_the_proof_yet 

In another thread Christian Baumgarten from Paul Scherrer Institut says
he has developed a theory of "apparent" spacetime from first principles:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265849272_Minkowski_Spacetime_and_QED_from_Ontology_of_Time

He says:
I do not "explain" why space is not absolute - instead I show that we can derive relativity and Lorentz transformations from a few fundamental principles. I can hardly summarize that in a few sentences, but one conclusion is that spacetime is structured by the dominant kind of interaction, i.e. electromagnetism, which itself is structured by Hamiltonian equations of motion of generalized abstract variables.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Would_someone_explain_why_is_space_not_absolute/1

Relativity related views are often found ambiguous and tailored to the beliefs in a given context and this way you can locally correct opinions that contradict themselves globally. Human mind easily copes with contradiction. One objective study shows how incomprehensible nature of relative simultaneity is managed in the mind of university students and I assume it is similar at large.

Rachel E. Scherr, Peter S. Shaffer, and Stamatis Vokos from Department of Physics, University of Washington:
This article reports on an investigation of student understanding of the concept of time in special relativity. A series of research tasks are discussed that illustrate, step-by-step, how student reasoning of fundamental concepts of relativity was probed. The results indicate that after standard instruction students at all academic levels have serious difficulties with the relativity of simultaneity and with the role of observers in inertial reference frames. Evidence is presented that suggests many students construct a conceptual framework in which the ideas of absolute simultaneity and the relativity of simultaneity harmoniously co-exist. © 2001 American Association of Physics Teachers. @DOI: 10.1119/1.1371254#


That is why it is so hard to discuss time, space, relativity etc

Finally an unlikely support of absolute space emerges by saying:
Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.
Albert Einstein 5th of May 1920 at the University of Leiden. Ether and the Theory of Relativity. published by Methuen&Co. Ltd, London, in 1922.


2016-09-25
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Hi Andrew,

You're right to point out how belief in absolute space is not something where there is much agreement in contemporary physics. Rather, the conversation has shifted over to mapping spacetime coordinates, instead of locating objects in space and time. This is an offense to common sense and the source of mathematical incoherence in theoretical physics, in my view.

Einstein was aware of this, as reflected in the statement above. The GTR renders space "unthinkable", unless there is also an "ether" (ethereal substance?) to act as a medium for the propagation of light. Yet, the ether, itself, is not "ponderable media", because it does not have "parts which may be tracked through time".
,
So the upshot of this is, we cannot explain the propagation of light without assuming an additional substance which is itself imponderable. With a plan like that, what could possibly go wrong? LOL. No surprise, then, that close to 100 years later we still have this underlying inconsistency and disparity in physics.

My hypothesis is to try imagine how space might be a substantial, ponderable medium for the propagation of light. This is worth doing because the GTR necessarily invokes spacetime, which is an abstract mathematical construct and cannot actually be anything that exists in the physical world. Space, as I am suggesting we try to imagine it here, CAN be a part of the physical universe.

Thank you for supporting the value of the topic.

DCD.   
 

2016-09-26
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Daniel/ Andrew,I support your endeavor to decipher the riddle how space might be a ponderable medium for light propagation. In pursuing this laudable endeavor, take note as well that it is a necessary consequence that such space must have a solid or quasi-solid like nature because transverse waves are not possible in liquid-like or gas-like media.
For light to also travel at its very high speed and frequency such a solid-like medium must also be more rigid than steel and more compact than lead... I tussled with this from p.64 in my book.

It is this riddle that Einstein was pondering in the Leiden lecture Andrew was referring to: "It appeared beyond question that light must be interpreted as a vibratory process in an elastic, inert medium filling up universal space. It also seemed to be a necessary consequence of the fact that light is capable of polarization that this medium, the ether, must be of the nature of a solid body, because transverse waves are not possible in a fluid, but only in a solid. Thus the physicists were bound to arrive at the theory of the "quasi-rigid" luminiferous ether, the parts of which can carry out no movements relatively to one another except the small movements of deformation which correspond to light-waves".
Akinbo

2016-09-27
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Andrew Wutke
Daniel and Andrew,
I am beginning to convert to Daniel's view that space or space time may be substantive. While Daniel is leaning to a psychological argument to establish the ontology of space, which is quite legitimate, I think there seems to be an explanation right within physics to support Daniel's position. The psychology and the epistemology we have developed either through evolution of our species or for some other reason, may still be the reason we have such difficulty looking at space from the outside. It is like not being able to see our own eyes with our eyes. But that line of thinking even if we were able to make a breakthrough will lend us something that may not be relevant or useful to physics. Daniel's thought experiment on the other hand puts space back firmly in the realm of physics to which I will return now. 

I had always thought that space-time manifold whether Minkowski's model or Einstein's model reintroduced ether back into physics even though there was celebration at some point at the demise of ether at the hands of Einstein. This premature news of the death of ether, was announced by the formalists. They interpreted GT to have created a geometry that clearly defined the interaction between bodies of matter. The four dimensional  fabric that was woven around all of the bodies in the universe was space time and gravity was merely a path created by this interplay. If in fact there was substance in this canvas it was  logically irrelevant. This was the position of Russell who derived this from Eddington's version of the theory. 

However reading Einstein's 1920 presentation 'Ether and the Theory of Relativity' cited by Andrew here, I was astounded on how Einstein with no apologies, reintroduces ether by way of the gravitational field. He removes Loretntz' version of ether by saying that while space can exist without electromagnetic fields it cannot without gravitational field. A magnificent speech without the mathematical slight of hand used to obfuscate the meanings. Only a true genius can formulate something this complex in such simple language. 

Now that we have a declaration from the master himself that space-time is substantial I am willing to explore further Daniel's view. I of course have not kept up with the literature since the late 70s, I am curious about contemporary thinking in this field. 

George

2016-09-27
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to Daniel Davis
Yesterday I made some comments on Einstein's Ether and Relativity presentation. I understood it to mean that ether is alive and well and in GTR it is even more alive. I was surprised to hear this from Einstein himself since I had thought the  Michelson - Morley experiment had exploded this myth. To Einstein, propagation of light and other waves/particles still required a medium. Of course AE was proposing a different kind of ether, different from what Newton  had reluctantly proposed. Nevertheless he also was proposing an ether that allowed itself to become a medium and yet did not participate in the activities of the user. He suggests that Lorentz had proposed that the electromagnetic fields was the ether and then suggested they could not perform that function as they also participated in the action of the user. ( I think). Then he proposes that ether was probably the space-time structure created by GTR. If space-time was such a thing then any body of matter was able to create a space time manifold that was infinite and the interaction with other bodies of mass together created the space-time for our universe. I am not suggesting that infinite space-time is required. If space time is a sum total of the gravitational field(s) created by all the matter in the universe then it is conceivable that there be finite space-time. Which is more difficult to conceive than the infinite variety.
The problems Einstein faced and I am sure contemporary theorists are facing now about space are:

1. Is space a special relationship between matter. A relationship that allows us to measure distance, speed, acceleration etc.?

2. Is it a sum total of the relationships of the interaction of all the matter in the universe? Our gravitational field? 

3. Is it the original bubble from which universe formed during the big bang? It has got as big as the universe as the universe expanded. 

If in fact space-time is equivalent to the gravitational field as I think Einstein suggests then it is finite, and unlike an electro-magnetic field it cannot be directly detected which may lend itself for the use that Newton used it namely action at a distance. This in a curious way makes Newton stand on his apple injured head! Ether was created to explain gravitation since it could not be detected as a separate force, however now we are embracing gravitation a la GTR as the new ether! If GTR gravitation can explain intervals, contraction, expansion etc. which I can see it can, we may get closer to the unified field theory. 

Hope this will begin some serious discussions on the nature of space.
George

2016-09-27
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
Dear GeorgeWe seem to be at mercy of science declaring something one day and revoking on another, but I see how many philosophers retain some scepticism to scientific positions. After all everything should be falsifiable.
I guess that without invalidating the relativity theories the absolute space can reappear. It seems more and more scientists consider Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, frame as that elusive absolute frame.
When it comes to time I have my reservations.The time space in my opinion is only a mathematical abstraction. So I support David in rejecting time as a part of space. While space is real, time is not a part of it but this is a relation between states of objects enclosed by space. The fact time is combined with space is just a mathematical convenience. When we ponder about time in special relativity and take a look at a moving rod which from one system perspective has its two ends simultaneously present while in the other no part of the same rod exists at the same time, one end is in different time than the other, and we begin to loose the sense of temporal logic. 
The key to these strange effect is Einstein's synchronisation of clocks. The clock in the moving system must be so tuned that the light speed becomes the same in all direction. Einstein time is a convention as it is claimed by Reichenbach and his followers, and it is a very clever convention. 
Einstein reasoned about clocks not time as it can be understood from the following:
A clock at rest relative to the system of inertia defines a local time. The local times of all space points taken together are the “time,” which belongs to the selected system of inertia, if a means is given to “set” these clocks relative to each other. One sees that a priori it is not at all necessary that the “times” thus defined in different inertial systems
agree with one another.

Einstein, The Saturday Review 1949

So clearly states of devices true or imaginary projected on all space from any observer reference is the time. So how come it is a real world 4-th dimension that we do not see.
It looks Einstein's mind has been hijacked by matematicians for whom everything that is mathematically defined exists.
What we call relative simultaneity is relative synchroneity of clocks. This has been reflected by the first English Translation of Einstein's Work by  M.N. Saha and S.N. Bose
in Calcutta University, where the famous paragraph "Definition of Simutaneity" has been translated as "Definition of Synchronism"


2016-09-30
The Reality of Spatial Relations
Reply to George Willy
George,

Thanks for your well-considered contributions to the topic. I'm glad we can agree that there is some value in imagining space as substantial and in what its specific substantial nature might be. In that regard, let me address your 3 questions.

1. Rather than understand the relationship between space and matter only as  "a relationship that allows us to measure distance, speed, acceleration etc.", I suggest we think of matter as "coinciding with parts of space". Matter, which can be either inertial or non-inertial, brings its energy to the interaction and space brings its inherent structure to impose on bits of matter, as they impose charges and fields on space. 

2, The sum total of all the measured quantities (to which you would have to add momentum, position, mass, charge, spin, and color,  .,, all are properties of matter at any given time and place. But that sum, whatever it was, would not include the efficient cause supplied by space to everything coinciding with it: structure. Without its 3D holistic structure, the forces of nature would be randomized over some indeterminate n-dimensional space. Its inherent motion that accelerates all non-inertial, movable matter to equal its own is the velocity we measure as the universal speed of light.

3. Better to think of space and infinite and eternal. Maybe there was more than one big bang. Or maybe the existence of our universe came about in another empirically imaginable but different, way. The Big Bang Theory is a speculative theory that has plausibility based on current data. To tie all of cosmology to it, at the beginning of our analysis seems to impose unnecessary limits ... something cosmologists have to be careful about applying to "everything". 

Maybe space does act on agents ("users"). Not in ways measurable by AE, like length, mass, etc. but in ways that make any measurement possible (as you originally suggested). There could be no rigid rods (or slippery slopes), no electric charges, no volumes, no standard beacons or g -forces ... were it not for the structure and order that this very substantial space imposes everywhere on matter. Matter coinciding with space explains HOW all these measurements are possible and WHAT they are measurements OF.

If space is infinitely divisible, how can it not also be infinitely expansive? If it's already infinite in both directions, how can it possibly expand or contract any more??

The inherent motion of substantial space is the missing "ether" that Einstein knew had to be there. He thought of space only as inert, powerless and inactive because it couldn't be measured as matter could. This began what I've called the blindness of physics to space.

The obsessive allegiance to the mantra of spacetime is approaching group neurosis or maybe even delusion or hallucination. Maybe by practicing how to see through this blindness with the set of "ontological goggles" I'm offering, physicists will see their way through to a more unified view of relativity and quantum mechanics. It's not a matter of new sub-atomic particles, black holes, galactic clusters or dark matter and energy.  Nor is it some new predictive mathematical formula or new geometry. It's a different way of seeing all that, with empirical  imagination only.

Thank you for your attention. Comments, please.

DCD