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NON-FOUNDATIONS OF ‘WAVICLES’ IN EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX: Bases for Quantum Physics to Evolve
(Maybe a physical-ontological Breakthrough in EPR)
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE FOUNDATIONS AGAIN (3 paragraphs)
In the first few short paragraphs we occupy ourselves with something already discussed before. If anything must exist, it must be something non-vacuous. Think of energy waves, termed variously as particles, waves, and their mixture namely wavicles. I use the theoretically more comprehensive ‘wavicles’. Are they only a pure mathematical stuff without any physical stuff within? I hope No!
In that case, even energy wavicles possess (1) some non-vacuity, i.e., Extension, which means possessing parts, and (2) some ability to cause impact, i.e., Change, from within their non-vacuous extended nature. Non-vacuity, it partially indicates existence, is not anything that mathematics can directly represent in the wavicles – for this, it needs primarily the notions of space (and time) and measurement. Nor can mathematics directly represent impact-formation as the only other universal nature of existents – for this, it needs the notion of time (and space) and measurement. Space and time are the quantity (measure) of Extension and Change respectively.
We can understand Extension as a direct ontological notion derivative from existence, but why Change, and not motion? Why is motion only derivative from Change? Section 2 responds to this question, and then Section 3 applies the result from Section 2 in the case of the EPR paradox.
2. SPECIFIC MOTION AND INNER MOTIONS IN ENTANGLED EPR WAVICLES? Let us keep the mind open!
A unit Change consists of the transition within a unit Process from the antecedent existent and the consequent existent. So, a unit Change is not merely a certain kind of motion. A transition is not merely a motion. Again, a unit Change is not a unit Process but consists of the transition within a unit Process, in which the antecedent part (cause) causes an effect on the consequent part (effect). A unit Process already involves many types and units of motion.
Causality consists in the relation between the cause and the effect. A unit causation is the minimum act of realization of a unit Process. That is, a causal unit is both the cause and effect together. The involvement of a transition, not merely of a motion, is why it is difficult to quantify a unit of Causal Process using mathematics. This will be clearer towards the end of this section.
Space is the epistemic aspect of Extension. Motion is the quantitative aspect of physical existents that is representable and, in each case, processed as the measure of a certain sort of motion, by using mathematics epistemically in terms of a certain spatially tripartite kind of displacement at the level of the kind of motion considered. All other, projected, more than three, superstring dimensions should be taken as curled in within the three, because the extra dimensions are all certain manipulation results of the original three. Time is not being multiplied in this manner, and it is just the unique epistemic, quantitative, aspect of Change.
The motion of any specific kind is merely an aspect of Change. Change involves transitions, using which we cannot mathematically manipulate existent wavicles in their constant inner happenings. The inner happenings too are motions, but are not representable as such within a given treatment of motion. One may use momentum, mass, etc., but these too do not represent the unit transition that a unit Causal Process yields.
We cannot generalize and say that everything is motion. This does not serve physics, because in physics all sorts of inner motions of a moving wavicle cannot mathematically be considered simultaneously. Moreover, a unit of Change is not equal to a unit motion of any kind, but instead, a causal unit Process involving an ontologically defined state transition. Change alone does not define a unit Process. Extension-Change together define a unit Process as a Causal unit. This is to be noted well here.
That is, in the case of quasi-unobservable but proved-to-be existent wavicles (termed unobservables in order to distinguish them from direct observables), Change involves existent wavicles with some motion and the ability to cause some motion, each of which has further parts, these parts too are in motion, and they too possess the ability to cause motion, etc. ad libitum.
[But if any physicist now prefers to take a wavicle (say, a photon, a neutrino, a graviton) as indivisible, or merely as energy quantity without physical extension, or as a vacuous stuff, I shall keep a distance from him/her, because I should fear being heckled! Moreover, I do not prefer to entertain questions like: Why to bother so much with conceptual complications, man? Do you not know that doing physics does not mean this sort of “philosophical” talk?]
The difference between motion and Change is as follows. One (kind of) motion is just one instance of motion irrespective of the fact that its inner parts also undergo and at the same time effect other motions outwards. But Change is that state of existents in which every existent involves not merely one sort of motion but ever more minute (inner and inwards) or broader (from outside and outwards) sort of motions with respect to any one existent with whatever overall size, motion, mass, momentum, energy, etc., and involves a transition in each unit Change.
Size, motion, mass, momentum, energy, etc. are all bound by conventional scales and comparison with other similar quantities from within a physical context, engendering an epistemic context which too is based on an epistemic context of physical processes which in turn are based on these same quantities. Hence, these quantities cannot involve the whole transition of an entity that the concept of Change can represent. Hence, Change, as one of the two highest implications of To Be and hence as one of the physical-ontological Categories along with Extension, cannot be substituted by the concept of motion or any other quantity.
Now the following question may be addressed and answered with sufficient rational justification: If the above is the inevitable case with respect to existents, why should energy-transmitting wavicles like photons, neutrinos, and gravitons yield (1) an infinity of mass at any specific state of motion as in the case of the velocity of any emission, when this velocity is compared in its motion with the velocity of light as the former approaches the latter in value, (2) any kind of comparative lack of motion as in the case of relative inertia, which is based on a quantitative comparison determined by imperfect and contextual measurements, or (3) create non-locality of influence (or lack of influence) in the EPR experiment, when two previously entangled wavicles with energy-content are made to move from each other at a comparative mutual total of the velocity of light or more, in such a way that the luminal-velocity-based reasoning shatters mutual causal influence and creates absolute miracles everywhere in the cosmos?
It is known that such infinities (and the connected zeros) at comparisons of two motions are not actual cases, because any existent has inner motions ad libitum and outer motions ad libitum, and none of these yields an infinity or zero because the infinite number of motions within any given unit Process or within parts thereof can only have the involvement of the infinite number of ever smaller, near-infinitesimal, transitions available in Change. These can never reach infinity but a finitude in total value. I think this explanation should justify the fact that we do not find any infinite or zero velocity, mass, energy, etc. in any existent observable or unobservable.
To explain further, the most important matter to be kept in mind here is that the inner motions of any wavicle, resulting from within and from outside, are not infinite in cumulative measure at any given time – but we should insist here that the sort of addition to be considered is not that of “infinite times finite quantities” as wrongly thought in the case of Zeno’s paradox, but instead, a finite totality of “infinite number of ever smaller near-infinitesimal quantities”. This is what characterizes physical existents and their parts in the cosmos, both of those that are termed matter and of those that are called energy.
In that case, there should be in physics a different manner of comparing motion, absolute inertia, and relative inertia of two bodies with each other, wherever physics uses a specific criterial velocity in order to compare itself with a smaller velocity under inquiry / under experiment. This is where physics could de-absolute the velocity of light with respect to its applicability to all the parts of the cosmos (which may even be an infinite-content ordering of infinite number of finite-content universes).
There are all the possibilities of infinities and zeros only in the mutual comparison of motion / velocities, and not when physical processes are considered in themselves. Hence, a spectrum of values of criterial velocities may be mooted for the various parts of the cosmos, where the velocities being compared with the criterial velocity can still be less than the criterial velocity used for comparison. This is all that physics can at the most possess in order to broaden the concept of quantity in physics and make it better adapted to deal with the physical-ontological concept of Change. In themselves physical existents have Change, which inevitably involves the totality of the many inner, inward, and outward motions.
A naive question in this context: Is anything in itself in motion, relative inertia, or absolute inertia? Naturally, anything is in finite motion of some kind within itself and at comparison with others. It is in a specific relative motion or inertia only in comparison with another motion or other motions. But there is no absolute inertia.
Any specific measurable or measured motion is not the exact (or only) thing that happens in an existent being. It has Change, i.e., all its parts are completely in motion – but in finite motion – which, as I said earlier, does not add up to an infinity of motion. Firstly, no instrument can measure anything exactly as it is, because at any given moment there are so many inner causal influences of causation within each entity and hence the exactness of the quantity does not have any justification with respect to any fixed point of time however minute. Secondly, by the time a measurement is performed, other minute influences have altered the quantity. Hence, no measured quantity can be exact.
Change is not any specific motion, but instead, a transition of many minute motions, and hence cannot be used in and by physics measurementally. It is a physical-ontological quality of all existents. This is why physics has been ignoring the physical-ontological status of Change. Change is in fact the ontological fact of all existents in that each element of existents has an infinite number of ever more minute causal influences acting upon it from within and without. This is the transitioning that Change is.
Motion and inertia are only two measurementally integral aspects of Change, wherein motion is a notion that needs mensuration and measurability, and hence can only be considered at one quantity of motion at a time. For this, the epistemic notions of space and time are necessary in physics. But this does not mean that this suffices for physics, because physics studies existent material beings in their motion; and existence, material, energy, etc. are not strictly and primarily physical but physical-ontological notions. Integrally taken, Change is whatever in fact happens in existents in all their parts, including in energy particles / wavicles.
Now one may attempt (1) to substitute Change with the notion of transition, i.e., motions within motions within… or (2) to substitute it with notions like momentum, mass, etc. The first is possible, but it is better to use the term ‘Change’ rather than an involving stretch of words. But none of the notions in (2) can substitute Change, because, as you may observe, they can augment the understanding of each other, and only augment the understanding of the concepts of motion, Change, etc., and not substitute the notion of Change.
The self-evident reason for this claim is that even momentum, mass, etc. are just quantitative notions composed of many (i.e., conglomerations of) quantitatively qualitative universals. Change is not a quantity, but a pure, qualitative, ontological universal not directly meaning epistemically determined quantities. I purposely call notions mentioned above, other than Change, as measuremental. This is in order to avoid the sense that quantity is some sort of a substitute for existent physical processes.
Quantity is an epistemic notion, and hence based on connotative universals and expressed in denotative universals. Change is a purely ontological universal. (For a simple clarification on ontological, connotative, and denotative universals, see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Physical-Processual_Representation_of_Irrational_Numbers; for more information, see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Physical_and_Exact_Sciences_and_Axiomatic_Philosophy_Introducing_Grounding_long_text)
Mathematical objects as quantitative qualities too are connotatively epistemic objects represented by denotative universals, and do not exist in terms of the belongingness of ontological universals to existents. (For more clarity on this, see the following discussions: (1) https://www.researchgate.net/post/Source_of_Major_Flaws_in_Cosmological_Theories_Mathematics-to-Physics_Application_Discrepency, (2) https://www.researchgate.net/post/Mathematics_and_Causality_A_Systemic_Reconciliation, and (3) https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_Are_Numbers_and_Shapes_and_Their_Structures_Considered_by_Many_as_Exact)
If motion is a matter of spatial and temporal measurements, then it can be treated in terms of epistemic procedures in physics. Space-time measurements are the only way for this. But Change, as the concept of motions within motions within motions…, is the precondition behind all motion. These are not generalizable again under the notion of motion-in-general, because this would only be represented mathematically by one type of motion at a time, and not a conglomeration of motions within motions within….
Change does not remain alone. Change is always co-implied by Extension, and of the latter too we have only epistemic measurements in physics, not ontological “quantities”. Clearly, Change is not motion; instead, it denotes an extended object, all the parts of which are in motion by way of impact-formation. Hence, Extension and Change are the fundamental, physical-ontological, universals of all physical existents.
This, in my opinion, is a better way to make the cosmos and eventually Reality-in-total dynamic – rather than creating directly a holistic philosophy for the sake of the attractiveness of holism, where notions like dynamism, interdependence, relationality, coherence, etc. are brought up without the necessary foundational justification.
Let us, therefore, agree that Change is the inevitable ontological precondition behind all motion and that Extension and Change are the fundamental, mutually requiring, physical-ontological, universals of all existents in Reality-in-total and is exhaustive of the notion of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Think of the various neo-Vedāntic, neo-Buddhistic, and nature-religion type, new age religions and their philosophies like those of Rudolf Steiner, Osho, Dalai Lama, etc. For neo-Vedānta, quantum physics is close to their heart because it “proves” Vedāntic non-dualism! Their meditation practices and their wisdom are wonderful, but not their physico-philosophical holisms, because they are oriented to good feelings, metaphysical or anti-metaphysical conclusions based on good feelings, and are not based on equally physically and cosmologically acceptable philosophical detail.
On the other hand, we have philosophers and philosopher-scientists like Henri Bergson (and the many neo-Nietzschean thinkers), Fritjof Kapra (and his kind of physicists turning quantum physics into a quick-fix-solutions philosophy), etc., who generate a good-feeling integralism without metaphysical tenability with respect to Reality-in-total.
3. WHAT DEBILITATES THEORY IN THE EPR PARADOX? How can quantum physics change?
I do not discuss here the details of the EPR problem. I shall take for granted in the reader some previous knowledge of it. For a state-of-the-art discussion and details of critical points, see: (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen_Paradox_and_Non-Locality_Was_Einstein_a_Monist_long_text)
The EPR problem points to a paradox (locality and non-locality) and consequent sub-paradoxes (say, of stuck-up concepts of symmetry, standstill in the universality of causality, closure of the causal cone, luminal velocity-based artificial limits to physical research, etc.). All these are based only on the procedures in physics as to how the Changes in the processes are being functionalized only with respect to a certain sort of motion with its settled velocity (i.e., c). The velocity of light has been determined from our world, and Relativity takes it up as the ultimate criterion of measurement for the whole cosmos without considering the status of origin of the notion. Hence, the EPR thought experiment and its experimental realizations have tended to create the said paradoxes.
Finally, the technical aspects of non-locality have been instrumentalized by technology-oriented physicists. John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger won the 2022 Nobel Prize for physics. Now many think that, due to the instrumentation success of quantum optics, the cosmos should obey non-locality. But then, should the successes of Newtonian engineering-physics in the instrumentation of astrophysical experiments prove such physics to be the physics of the cosmos?
This state of affairs continues in quantum physics while the physicists do not consider the basic physical-ontological qualities / universals of all existent observables and unobservables together for legitimacy in concepts, hypotheses, truth-claims, laws, theories, etc.: namely, (1) the first most general nature of every existent, i.e., Extension (compositeness), and (2) the only other most general nature of every non-vacuous existent, i.e., Change (impaction / mode of actualization of compositeness).
The second point above demonstrates that even for the energy wavicles concerned, say, the electromagnetic or gravitational emission units, there are inner motions within themselves and influences of motions from beyond themselves into the inner constitution and motions, both the types of which sub-determine every one of such emissions throughout the past, present, and future.
This realization in quantum physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists should be coupled with the need to posit a spectrum of criterial velocities for use at various regions of the cosmos. Out of the spectrum of criterial velocities’ values, some should be valid in ever greater conglomerations of universes within the cosmos. This could give impetus to the evolution of modes of conceiving the fundamental principles of aspects of physics in a cosmology-compatible manner. (For further deepening on this issue: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Gravitational_Coalescence_Paradox_GCP_Introduction_to_Gravitational_Coalescence_Cosmology_GCC, and https://www.researchgate.net/post/Infinite-Eternal_Multiverse_Implications_to_Physics_and_Cosmology)
We know that there is no real absolute inertia as Newton thought. If not in absolute inertia, then both observables and unobservables may be considered only in the state of comparative inertia. But what is ontologically more real and irreducible, they are in themselves in Change – i.e., sub-motions within and external sub-influences upon the motion at issue of the wavicle. Hence, wavicles in the cosmos possess not merely a finite amount of motion (and are not in absolute inertia). They possess also constant continuity in finite Change, namely, motions within motions within … ad libitum.
Subtitle: Will all the fundamental researchers be fired from their jobs in the future and fundamental research become obsolete?
This is a philosophical but also practical question with immediate implications to our not so far future.
The danger is that AI applications in science like AlphaFold (Nobel prize in Chemistry 2024):
are not really predictions made by science by fully and fundamentally understanding nature's physics mechanics and chemistry but just brute force smart computational pattern recognition correlating known outcomes of similar input data and guessing the most likely new outcome. This is not new fundamental science and physics research but just an application of AI computation.
The philosophical question here is, will future scientists and human civilization using AI, continue to be motivated to do fundamental science research?
Is there really any real human urge to fundamentally understand a physical phenomenon or system in order to predict its outcome results for a specific input, if the outcome results can be easily and much faster and effortlessly being empirically and statistically guessed by an AI without the need of fundamental understanding?
This is a blind and mutilated future science and future danger of slowing down real new fundamental science breakthroughs and milestones. Therefore, essentially slowing down human civilization progress and evolution and demoting science to the role of a "magic oracle".
In my opinion, the use of AI in fundamental research like fundamental new physics research must be regulated or excluded. Already many science Journals have strict rules about the use of "Generative AI" inside the submitted papers and also completely not allowing it.
What are your opinions and thoughts?
Experimentally, observationally, and observational-theoretically, some of the generalizations of any physical ontology of cosmology may, strictly speaking, be non-verifiable and non-falsifiable.
But the empirical method of the sciences is continuous with the theoretical. Both, together, form part of "reason". Note also this: Reason is not equivalent to logic. There are many sorts of logic. Reason is the general set, and the various logics are sub-sets or members.
From this viewpoint, would you admit that there seems to be the possibility of obtaining SOME REASON from the suggestion that a PHYSICAL ONTOLOGY OF THE REASON WITHIN THE COSMOS be constructed? I CALL THIS REASON UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY.
I have developed an MMM (maximal-medial-minimal) method, where the approachable values are zero, finite, and infinite -- all others being strictly of the realm of the positive sciences. Zero, finitude, and infinity may be available in the positive sciences. But in the case of zero and infinity, the attitude is that of limiting values.
Finitude is a general term. In the positive sciences there must be specific values, not generally finite values!
Of course, we do not know of infinite values in the strictest sense of the term. But on the same count we do not also know zero value except as the absence of WHAT WE CONSIDER at a given instance.
I feel that a sort of "axiomatization" is perhaps possible -- at least as a physical ontology of the cosmos, PROVIDED UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY IS DERIVABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE CONCEPT OF EXISTENCE (TO BE).
SEE:
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
Fisher studied if there is an out-of-equilibrium process that rapidly converges to some equilibrium points. He claims that Hahn process has a Lyapounof function and therefore convergent to an equilibrium. How can we understand Fisher's result with Saari and Simon (1978) Effective price mechanisms, Econometrica 46(5), 1097-1125, which claims there is no effective method of calculation that leads to an equilibrium?
How has language, particularly around the unquestionable authority of 'science' (vs. other domains of inquiry that apply rigorous method but are not generally considered 'science') been used to uphold the military industrial complex and other forms of hegemonic rule by global hyper-elites (the top 0.2% of individuals by personal assets)?
A review of public discourse in periods of great turmoil, such as COVID and the rise of NAZI Germany and possible the periods following The French Revolution are places to understand this dynamic. For example, newspapers, online articles, radio, television and public announcement campaigns around particular government policies, election campaigns, or services by private companies.
This is a complex question that incorporates linguistics theory, political science, sociological research methods that are able to scan databases and the internet for appropriate search terms.
To properly answer the question both philosophical models how power operates in the society, Michel Foucault, Manuel Castello and Noam Chomsky are three thinkers with a range of relevant theories along with data-driven approaches to under the true extent to messaging to individual eyes and ears through a broad range of methods of public discourse.
Why are numbers and shapes so exact? ‘One’, ‘two’, ‘point’, ‘line’, etc. are all exact. But irrational numbers are not so. The operations on these notions are also intended to be exact. If notions like ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘point’, ‘line’, etc. are defined to be so exact, then it is not by virtue of the exactness of these substantive notions, but instead, due to their being defined so, that they are exact, and mathematics is exact.
But on the other side, due to their being adjectival: ‘being a unity’, ‘being two unities’, ‘being a non-extended shape’, etc., their application-objects are all processes that can obtain these adjectives only in groups. These are pure adjectives, not properties which are composed of many adjectives.
A quality cannot be exact, but may be defined to be exact. It is in terms of the exactness attributed to these notions by definition that the adjectives ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘point’, ‘line’, etc. are exact. This is why the impossibility of fixing these (and other) substantive notions as exact misses our attention.
If in fact these quantitative qualities are inexact due to their pertaining to groups of processual things, then there is justification for the inexactness of irrational numbers, transcendental numbers, etc. too. If numbers and shapes are in fact inexact, then not only irrational and other inexact numbers but all mathematical structures should remain inexact except for their having been defined as exact.
Thus, mathematical structures, in all their detail, are a species of qualities, namely, quantitative qualities. Mathematics is exact only because its fundamental bricks are defined to be so. Hence, mathematics is an as-if exact science, as-if real science. Caution is advised while using it in the sciences as if mathematics were absolutely applicable, as if it were exact.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
CRITERIA TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN
VIRTUALS AND EXISTENTS IN SCIENCE
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
Existents are in Extension (each having a finite number of finite-content parts) and in Change (existents, which are always with parts, possessing parts which always exert finite impacts on others, inclusive of exertion of finite impacts on some parts within). Can an existence without parts and exertion of impacts be thought of? Anything that is not in Extension-Change is non-existent.
The Extension-Change kind of existence is what we call Causation, and therefore, every existent is a causal Process in all parts. This is nothing but the Universal Law of Causality. That is, no more do we need to prove causation scientifically. This Law is a pre-scientific and hence physical-ontological Law, meant also for biological existents.
No quantum physics, statistical physics, or quantum cosmology can now declare that certain processes in nature are non-causal or acausal, after having admitted that these processes are in existence!
That is, existents at any level of formation are fully physical, possess at least a minimum of causal connection with others in its environment, are not merely virtual (nor fully modular / non-local / non-emergent / self-emergent / sui generis in a totally isolated manner). Therefore, any existent must have causal connections with its finitely reachable environment and within its inner parts.
Physical-ontologically real generalities must be about, or pertinent to, existents in groups, i.e., as parts of a type / natural kind. These generalities are not existents, but pure ontological universals in natural kinds.
Space and time are just the measurement-based epistemic notions or versions of the more generally physical-ontological Extension and Change respectively. The latter two are generalities of all existent processes, because nothing can exist without these two Categories.
Hence, space and time are not physical-ontological, not real about, not pertinent to, existents. In short, physical science working only on measuremental space-time cannot verify newly discovered energy wavicles and matter particles by use of the physical “properties” they are ascribed to. The reasons are the following.
We can speak not merely of existents but also about their “qualities / universals” and about non-existent “beings” and “properties”. All of them are denotables. Thus, a denotable has reference to something that either (1) has a physical body (physically existent processes), or (2) is inherent in groups of physical processes but are not themselves a physical body (pure universal qualities of all description), or (3) is non-real, non-existent, and hence just a mere notion (e.g., a non-physical possible world with wings, or one with all characteristics – i.e., Extension and Change – absolutely different from the existent physical world).
Denotables of type (1) belong to existent realities, namely, physical processes. They are of matter-energy in content, because Extension-Change determine them to be so. To denotables of type (1) belong also theoretically necessary realities, which are composed theoretically of methodical procedures using properties of existents, which, as a rule, (a) may be proved to be existing (i.e., existent unobservables) or (b) may not be proved to be existing (non-existent unobservables, which are just virtual objects) but are necessary for theory (e.g., potential energy).
To type (2) belong those universals that are never proved to exist but belong to all existents of a group as the general qualities of the members. These are termed ontological universals. The denotables of (1b) are the sub-types that are either fully virtual or partially virtual but are necessary for theory. Both are theoretically useful, but are often mistaken as being existents. Denotables of type (3) are nothing, vacuous. These are pure imaginations without any success in being proved to be in existence.
The difference between non-existent, real, virtual, and existent denotables is this:
Non-existents have no real properties, and generate no ontological commitment to existence via Extension and Change. Real virtuals have the properties that theoretically belong to the denotables that are lacunae in theory, but do not have the Categorial characteristics, namely, Extension and Change. Existent denotables (a) have these Categories (characteristics), (b) generate ontological commitment to existence, and (c) possess also properties that are conglomerations of many ontological universals. All ontological universals are under obedience to Extension and Change.
Hence, virtuals are versions of reality different from those that have been proved as actual existents. They are called in general as unobservables. Some of them are non-existent. When they are proved to exist, they become observables and partial observables, and are removed from membership in virtuals. Some partial observables may yet be considered as not yet proved to be existent. They happen further to be called unobservable virtuals. Some of them do not at all get the status of existent observables or existent partial observables. They belong to group of purely vacuous notions (3) above.
Theories yield unobservables (electrons, neutrinos, gravitons, Higgs boson, vacuum energy, dark energy, spinors, strings, superstrings …). They may be proved to exist, involving detectable properties.
Note that properties are not physical-ontological (metaphysical) characteristics, which latter I call ontological universals, the two most important of which are the Categories: Extension-Change. Instead of being ontological universals, properties are concatenations of ontological universals.
Virtual unobservables fill the lacunae in theoretical explanations, and most of them do not get proved as existent. Nevertheless, they will continue to be useful virtual worlds for theory from the viewpoint of explanation in a state of affairs where there are no ways of explanation using existent unobservables.
As is clear now, the tool to discover new unobservables is not physical properties of which physical and social sciences speak a lot, but instead, the physical-ontological Categories of Extension and Change.
Mere virtuals are non-existent as such, but are taken as solutions to the lacunae in rational imagination. The sciences and many philosophies of the sciences seem not to differentiate between their denotables in the above manner.
I have spoken of universals here, which may fall in distaste for the minds of physicists, scientists of other disciplines, and even for some philosophers. Please note that I have spoken only of the generalities that we are used to speak of regarding existent types of things. I have not brought out here all my theory about kinds of universals.
My claim in the present discussion is only that properties are also just physical virtuals, if we have the unobservables (say, vacuum energy, dark energy, etc.) behind them not fully steeped in physical existence in terms of EXTENSION and CHANGE through experimentally acceptable proofs of existence.
Do we have a science that has succeeded to accept this challenge? Can the scientists of the future accept these criteria for their discoveries?
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
SCIENTIFIC METAPHYSICAL CATEGORIES
BEYOND HEIDEGGER
ENHANCING PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
1. Introduction beyond Heidegger
I begin my cosmologically metaphysical critique of the foundations of Heidegger’s work, with a statement of concern. Anyone who attempts to read this work without first reading my arguments in the book, Physics without Metaphysics?, (1) without being in favour of a new science-compatible metaphysics and concept of To Be, and (2) without a critical attitude to Heidegger – is liable to misunderstand my arguments here as misinformed, denigrative, or even trivial. But I do this critique in search of very general means of constructing a metaphysics capable of realising constant guidance and enhancement to scientific practice.
Contemporary mathematics, physics, cosmology, biology, and the human sciences have a shape after undergoing so much growth that we cannot think philosophically without admitting the existence (termed “To Be”) of all that exist, the cosmos and its parts. The general concept of existence is always as “something-s” that are processually out there, however far-fetched our concepts of the various parts of or of the whole cosmos are. “The existence of the totality (Reality-in-total) as the whole something whatever” and “particular existence in the minimally acceptable state of being something/s whatever that is not the whole totality” are absolutely trans-subjective and thus objectual presuppositions behind all thought.
Today we do not have to theoretically moot any idea of non-existence of the cosmos and its parts as whatever they are. This is self-evident. That is, basing philosophical thinking – of the very nature of the existence-wise metaphysical presuppositions of all that are subjective and objective – upon the allegedly subjective origin of thought processes and concepts – should be universally unacceptable.
Therefore, I think we should get behind Heidegger’s seemingly metaphysical words – all based on the human stage on which Being is thought – by chipping his prohibitively poetical and mystifying language off its rhetorically Reality-adumbrating shades, in order to get at the senses and implications of his Fundamental Ontology as Being-historical Thinking. It suffices here to admit that the history of Being is not the general concept of the history of the thought of Being, and not the history of the thought of Being.
Moreover, it is not a necessity for philosophy that the Humean-Kantian stress on the subject-aspect of thought be carried forward to such an extent that whatever is thought has merely subjectively metaphysical Ideal presuppositions. All subjective presuppositions must somehow be taken to possess the merely subjective character.
There are, of course, presuppositions with some conceptual character. But to the extent some of them are absolute, they are to be taken as absolutely non-subjective. These presuppositions are applicable without exception to all that is, e.g. To Be and all Categories that may be attributed to all that exist. HENCE, SUBJECTIVE PRESUPPOSITIONS ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR CONCEPTUAL PRESUPPOSITIONS.
This fact should be borne out while doing philosophy, without which no philosophy and science are possible. The weight of the subject-aspect continues to be true of thought insofar as we go to non-absolute details of metaphysical presuppositions and empirical details, and not when we think only of the metaphysical Ideals of all existents in themselves.
It is true that there is no complete chipping off of the merely subjective or anthropological aspect of the Heideggerian theory. Nor is there an analysis without already interpreting anything. The guiding differentiation here should be that between “the subjective” and the “conceptual”. The conceptual is not merely subjective, but also objective. It is objective due to the inheritance pattern behind it from the objectual.
Such a hermeneutic is basic to all understanding, speculation, feeling, and sensing. The linguistically and otherwise symbolic expression of concepts and their concatenations is to be termed as the denotative universals and their concatenations.
At the purely conceptual level we have connotation. These are purely conceptual universals and their concatenations. Since these are not merely a production of the mind but primarily that by the involvement of the generated data from the little selection of the phenomena from physical processes, which are from a highly selected group of levels of objectual processes, which belong to the things themselves.
At the level of the phenomena, levels of objectual processes, and the things themselves there are universals, which we shall term ontological universals and their conglomerations. These conglomerations are termed so because they have the objectual content at the highest level available within the processes of sensing, feeling, understanding, speculation, etc.
2. Conclusions on Heidegger Proper
The above should not necessarily mean (1) that we cannot base thought fully on the Metaphysical Ideals of “To Be” and “the state of existents as somethings”, and (2) that we cannot get sufficiently deep into the fundamental implications of his work by side-lining the purely subjective concepts of the fundamental metaphysical concepts. This claim is most true of the concept of To Be.
To Be is the simultaneously processual-verbal and nomic-nominal aspect of Reality-in-total, and not merely that of any specific being, phenomenon, or concept. For Heidegger, To Be (Being) is somehow a private property of Dasein, the Being-thinking being. To Be which is the most proper subject matter of Einaic Ontology (metaphysics based completely on the trans-thought fact of the Einai, “To Be” of Reality-in-total) is not the Being that Dasein thinks or the Being that is given in Dasein, because To Be belongs to Reality-in-total together and in all its parts.
Even in Heidegger’s later phase highlighted best by his Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, his concept of To Be as belonging to the Dasein which is the authentically Being-thinking human being has not changed substantially. Even here he continues to project positively the history of Being-thinking human being as the authentic Being-historical process and as the essence of the history of all that can be thought of.
Against the above metaphysical backdrop of essentially anthropocentric definitions, I write this critique based on cosmological-metaphysical necessities in philosophy, and indirectly evaluate what I consider as the major ontological imperfection in Heidegger’s thought from the viewpoint of the Categorial demands of the history of metaphysics, various provincial ontologies and scientific ontology, and of the way in which I conceive the jolts and peaks in such history.
Along with the purely meta-metaphysical To Be, (1) I present the metaphysical abstract notions of Extension (= compositeness: i.e., having parts) and Change (= impacts by composites: i.e., part-to-part projection of impact elements) as the irreducibly metaphysical Categories of all existents and (2) argue that Extension-Change existence in their non-abstract togetherness as existents is nothing but Universal Causation (= everything is Existence-Change-wise existent, i.e. if not universally causal, existence is vacuous).
These are metaphysical principles that Heidegger and most philosophers till today have not recognized the primordiality of. Most of them tend to fix to existence universal or partial or absolutely no causality. In short, Universal Causation, even in some allegedly non-causal aspects of cosmology, quantum physics, philosophy of mind, and human sciences, is to be the taken as a priorias and co-implied by existence (To Be), because anything existent is extended and changing...! No more should sciences or philosophy doubt Universal Causality. Herein consists the merit of Einaic Ontology as a universally acceptable metaphysics behind all sciences – not merely of human sciences.
To Be is the highest Transcendental Ideal; Reality-in-total is the highest Transcendent Ideal; and Reality-in-general is the highest Transcendental-Transcendent Ideal of generalized theoretical concatenation of ontological universals in consciousness. These are meta-metaphysical in shape. They are not at all classificational (categorizing) of anything in this world or in thought.
Although Heidegger has not given a Categorial scheme of all existents or Categorial Ideals for all metaphysics and thinking, he is one of the few twentieth century thinkers of ontological consequence, after Aristotle (in favour of an abstract concept of Being) and Kant (against treating the concept of Being as an attribute), to have dealt extensively with a very special concept of Being and our already interpretive ability to get at To Be.
I present here in gist the difference between the Dasein-Interpreted concept of Being and the ontologically most widely committed, Einaic Ontological, nomic-nominal, and processual-verbal concept of To Be, which should be metaphysically the highest out-there presupposition of all thought and existence. This is the relevance of metaphysics as a trans-science.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
If induction and deduction are mutually connected, what is the framework upon which they may be connected? Will such a framework of connecting induction and deduction be a mere perspective or something fundamental?
Courses in logic, philosophy of science, etc. begin always with a detailed study of induction and deduction. Most courses tell us that these are typically different kinds of reasoning. But are they?
I would happily obtain your arguments for or against the so-called mutual exclusiveness of induction and deduction.
I believe that relativising induction and deduction and connecting them with one another under some very general framework of thought will be a grand starting point to revolutionize the foundations of the whole of philosophy and science, and of logic and linguistic analytic philosophy in particular.
MINIMAL METAPHYSICAL PHYSICALISM vs. PANPSYCHISMS AND MONISMS: Beyond Mind-Body Dualism
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
Any one kind of smallest substance cannot be fixed upon by any realistic theory or experiment. Everything is in process, in all its near-infinitesimal parts, none of the parts of which ever stops being bodily and hence further processual within. If not bodily, it can only be non-existent, vacuous.
Hence, I hold that physical and biologically physical causal effects are not reducible to any a-tomic or monadic substance, but instead, processual-structurally generalizable to the metaphysically minimally physical level of the processual structure of activity to be found in any existent and in any part of it.
This is to be so just because any physically bodied process should constitutionally and structurally be reducible to its Extension and Change, and because otherwise the process itself cannot exist. This is the basis of Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP). I shall explain this Extension-Change requirement here in just a few sentences.
Nothing can exist without obeying the physical-ontological conditions of existence, namely, that the entity should be extended (be in Extension), i.e., must have finite parts, and these entities and their parts must exert impacts outwards and inwards (be in Change). Otherwise, there will be only absolute vacuum, non-entity. Extension and Change are the minimal Categories of all existents. Extension-Change-wise existence is Causality, i.e., existent bodily parts constantly cause impacts on a finite number of other similar entities. Hence, all existents are universally causal. A unit of causation with a causal and an effect part is a Process.
Thus, we shift the concentration of physicalism beyond merely physical properties, onto the minimum necessary physical-ontological Categories. Categories are not properties. Properties are admixtures of many ontological universals (ways of being of processes), whereas Categories are the conditions for the possibility of existence.
Processual-constitutionally and structurally reducible but ever finitely novelty-contributive causal effects by both human consciousness and machine-driven intelligence too are physical in the broadly metaphysical sense of being existent in Extension and Change. Hence, there cannot be vacuously transmitted information; it must be based on and transmitted in terms of Extension-Change-wise causally and processual existent energy propagations.
Note also that MMP is not pure physicalism or materialism. It implies only that vacuous existence is impossible. Hence, it does not preclude the existence of the Divine or the development of the psyche into a future-eternal continuity of growth in whatever activity it is involved in. But MMP insists that the Divine cannot be a pure vacuum.
For the above reasons, I characterize as metaphysically less aware and scientistically overloaded all sorts of statements like in: (1) the theories of reduction of information into something mysterious, and (2) careless expressions about the constitution and structure of what is called information while terming information as something non-specific and as different from matter and energy.
Thus, by MMP, even information is based on something non-vacuously existing with finite Extension and Change. If the totality of some physical or biologically physical energy-communications is called information, information does not become something different from physical. But information is not a physical existent, it is just a connotative concatenation of symbolically conceptualized ways of being of energy propagations and material processes. Connotative concatenations of symbolically conceptualized ways of being of matter-energy is not only conceptual but also expressed in terms of symbolic languages. These media may be the various forms of language, including mathematics, computer algorithms, etc.
I argue that this is true of both biologically brain-based and merely physically machine-based information – otherwise, their physical base would have to be vacuously non-existent, after their other causally related components have been recognized as fully causal and physical. A transfer from causal physicality to non-causal non-physicality is impossible.
Anything extended and thus is non-vacuously in existence consists of matter-energy (or, if it is anything else, that too must be extended and active). Hence, the mind / spirit too must be out of something simultaneously extended and active – only that there are stages of differentiation between matter-energy as things and matter-energy as consciousness. In that case, why not we call it all as matter-energy, or at least as extended and changing? This is the version of physicalism that I call Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP).
MMP agrees with a minimum number of aspects (Extension, Change, and their togetherness as Causality) belongs to crass physicalism and aims to see that the conscious is a fully causal but mechanistically non-reductionist outgrowth that can continue with its own evolution in connection with its environment, whatever the environment is.
Panpsychisms:I discuss in this context also panpsychism in order to veer clear of the ‘non-physical ether’ sort of theories of the nature of information. Panpsychism in general is the school of thought that thinks that either (1) everything fundamentally is but mind / spirit, or (2) everything has a mental / spiritual aspect, or (3) everything will at some time become partially mental / spiritual, or (4) everything will at some time in the future become fully mental / spiritual.
Case (1), as in the previous paragraph, faces the question of why it need not be taken as matter-energy. Case (2) has at least empirical problems of evidence.
Cases (3) and (4) are suspect because no reason may be adduced as to why everything must be mental without the sustaining aspect as extended and active matter-energy. The question is as to why everything discontinues being physical matter-energy or becomes just mental energy, maybe at various levels, without material support to be in and to propagate from.
Note that in all these cases the word ‘everything’ is clearly to be used due to the ‘pan-’ of panpsychism. Moreover, if as in (4), everything evolves into being fully mental, there will then come a stage where nothing more is in the purely non-mental matter-energy form for them to evolve into the mental in a physical manner. The arguments get into an irresolvable vicious circle.
In all these cases, there is the tenable possibility of asking ironically whether there exists in panpsychism any metaphysically, physically, and biologically acceptable criterion by which the otherwise so-called non-mental is to be considered as at least elementarily conscious.
There is a further problem. If everything existent would ever become conscious, semi-conscious, or very partially conscious, it would take an infinite duration of time, (1) given the probable case that everything existed from all eternity, and (2) given the eventuality of the rationally more probable cosmological case that everything is being created in finite or infinite amounts into the mode of physical existence of finite causation. I do not discuss such question here, since the same will be treated in another book-length study. [Neelamkavil 2018 deals with related possibilities from the cosmological viewpoint.]
To put the matter short: Whatever the extent of absorption of everything in the cosmos is supposed be by the mental, the absorption cannot be absolute. The whole physical cannot be converted into mental energy, conscious subtle energy, etc. at any time. That is, the eternal recurrence theory has no basis. At any given time with respect to the local time of any part of the cosmos, the physical aspect will continue to exist, and of course also the mental. The latter will be only in those environments which physically evolve into becoming conducive to the evolution of physical elements into biologically physical beings.
Monisms: Monism is the theory that insists that everything existent must be either fully matter-energy or fully mind. The arguments in the case of absolutely reductionist physicalism and panpsychism apply also here without exception. This is not to speak of mystical monisms like some of the highpoints in Hindu philosophies (I am not speaking of the practice in the Hindu religion which consists of many religions, but of some philosophical trends), some Western philosophies, and above all, New Age religions of universal energy.
In the main versions of Hinduism, somehow the Other and the Self have to be one at the level of absolute truth and different at the level of relative truth. Such a discussion is beyond the purview of this discussion. The argument I suggest below is not so simple as to resist surprising details for further discussion.
If the cosmos and the Ātmán are identical with Bráhman at the level of absolute truth and are somehow different at the level of relative truth, there is much contradiction. If, as physical beings, we can even imagine the absolute truth, then we can have some access to it! In this case, the cosmos and the Ātmán need to be identical with Bráhman. But there are also the pragmatic-level differences, which are unthinkably different from the so-conceived identity!
In this case, in any sort of theory, monism does not work harmoniously with the physical nature of the cosmos.
In this case, in any sort of theory, monism does not work harmoniously with the physical nature of the cosmos.
This much for the time being!
(The section on Monisms and their interpretation in terms of MMP will continue to develop. I shall constantly update this part of the text and wherever it is deemed appropriate.)
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
INFINITE-ETERNAL MULTIVERSE
Raphael Neelamkavil
Ph. D. (Causality in Quantum Physics), Dr. phil. (Causality in Cosmology)
We cannot see, or predict the existence or not of limits of the edges of the universe. But, merely due to our inability to see or predict, the universe need not be infinite in content and extent. Similarly, nor should it be taken as finite in content and extent. Any number of insistent avowals on experimental proofs become useless here.
Some have attempted to determine the content of the universe by first determining the geometry of the universe by depending on their determination of isotropy and anisotropy at any local region or layer of the universe. Then they formulate the separate geometry of the finite or infinite spatial or temporal content of the universe, in order thus to indicate the matter-energy content (as finite or infinite) of the whole the universe...!
Does the absence of empirical evidence mean that we should not speak of the rational cases possible in the maximal, medial, and minimal cases of extent of time and space, and of content of matter-energy in the universe? I do not think so. Why not we treat each possible case and sub-case separately and come to conclusions not merely about the geometry, but also of the rationally most acceptable amount of content of the universe?
Many people in the physics and astrophysics of the whole cosmos often tend to insist that the mathematics used to derive conclusions from the particular / local portions of the universe to the total / overall cosmos will help to conclude physically to whatever the mathematics suggests. This is because they tend to equivocate the physics to the mathematics.
If in a physical system within a controlled environment on earth tends to reverse all the physical dispersion of matter (where no real tab is possible on the loss of a minute energy from the system), then they tend to conclude on a cosmic scale theory on the energy loss at the fringes of each local universe or portion of it that all energy propagated will return at some point. This goes without saying, they tend to conclude so.
If there is an internal gravitational reason that makes the loss of energy at the fringes from the first moment of expansion (due to whatever amount of expansion, because there is no total absence of expansion and contraction in any physical system!), then it is rationally and astrophysical-cosmologically clear that some energy will have left the system at least at the speed of light at the first moment of the process of expansion considered and it will continue at an intensive or less intensive mode.
Then many cosmologists tend to insist that our finite-content big bang universe (which either is just the totality of the cosmos that ever has existed, or is only our finite-content portion of the infinite-content cosmos) has only two options: (1) EITHER it will go on expanding eternally and become rarefied forever (in which case it could already have been so if the universe had no origin), (2) OR it will oscillate between expansion and contraction (which is the cyclic model, which too incurs a non-eternal process of rarefaction of the finite content by reason of the fringe-loss of energy).
In the latter case, all the mathematics-is-omnipotent sort of physicists just calculate the implications of their theory by depending merely on the strength of the mathematics. They say first that in any system most of the matter-energy return in any system, because even in the case of entropy of a given system the loss of energy – in case it is the case – is not great with respect to the system.
This is very inaccurate and in any case gives rise to the prejudice that the negligible loss is zero loss for all purposes. We do not know for sure whether every energy wavicle that left the system returns. It is impossible to measure the loss so exactly. The “sufficiently accurate empirical measure” is no guarantee for a total correctness. They then say that, whether there is a big bang universe or not, every system contains and preserves all the energy that it has, merely because of their presumption that matter and energy are interconvertible, and hence all the energy that left at the outskirts should return.
Lots of geometrical restrictions are then rendered for the fringe-loss energy to return: that the fringes are not infinite, any universe has within itself all that its space-time has, etc. In none of these do they try to really rethink the foundations of their merely mathematical concept of spacetime with respect to the fringes of local universes from the start to the finish of any amount of expansion and contraction that any cosmic body should have. Consequently, they consider the local universe as a complete system – by their unresearched presumption – and presuppose that cosmic bodies within that universe can lose energy forever, which of course will be within the system of this universe. Does anyone sense an inconsistency here?
As we all know, the second law of thermodynamics is formulated with almost closed terrestrial systems in mind, and no methods exist to perfectly measure all the minute losses of energy from within the system. If gravitation alone is involved in bringing back all the lost energy of the finite-content local universe, then the second law need not have applicability there at all!
Merely because we have formulated the physics in such a way that the second law of thermodynamics does not apply also to the entropy of the outermost fringes of the local universe, we cannot insist that the energy lost at the fringes will automatically return without the agency of a later gravitational propagation. One should naturally use the wisdom that no gravitational propagation issued before or after the start of the expansion can run slower or faster than the lost (gravitational and/or non-gravitational) energy and bring the lost energy back to the centre for recycling for use in another phase of the cycle of expansion and contraction.
In order to avoid this state of affairs, many might bring up geometries and cosmological theories requiring no big bang or big crunch. But who can insist that the local universe never has any amount of expansion and contraction? Even if it does not have expansion and contraction, energy at the fringes will be propagated off. There is no special wall there (except the geometrical walls created by a few cosmologists) to block the outward-bound propagations forever!
In short, the big bang universe cannot go on eternally in existence as a conglomeration with the same amount of matter-energy. If it had to be insulated from all other possible universes outside, it was certainly not in existence from the past eternity proper to it, because the fringe-loss of energy, however minute, could have exhausted such an eternally existent finite-content universe an eternity ago. It would have to evaporate all or most of its content, and hence, if it had existed from the past eternity as the sole physical cosmos, it should already have exhausted itself.
Why is it that this our finite-content big bang (or slightly expanding) universe did not already conclude at an earlier point of time by getting fully evaporated into the outer realms, if it was not created at all and if it really existed from eternity? Hence, IF MERELY THIS FINITE-CONTENT UNIVERSE EXISTS, some sort of creation of this finite-content universe should have been the case. Hence, let us leave this possibility – for otherwise scientistic scientists would begin attacking me.
Let’s ask: Why should only this one universe exist? The following are the only two possible sub-cases:
(1) Probably there existed, from the past eternity of each universe, an infinite number of universes bigger or smaller. These need not have an origin, since the small amount of energy that each universe loses at each of its expansion- and contraction phases will end up at some finite future in other similar universes; and perhaps this is enough for an eternal co-existence of each of them from the past eternity proper of all parts of each such universe as parts of one or many other universes within the infinite-content universe.
(2) If the one universe was the result of an instant creation or continuous creation of various parts, there should be other infinite number of universes too – because, the Source should not be this same universe or other universes, and the Source should then have the eternal ability of performing continuous creation. Moreover, the other universes in the cosmos cannot create themselves, and this big bang universe of ours cannot create itself, except when they have infinite activity within and the infinite stability proper to infinite activity.
Any number of arguments articulating a quantum vacuum creating new universes from themselves will naturally involve creation only from already existent matter-energy and/or universes. Existing matter-energy – however empty or full the quantum vacuum as the supposed agent of creation is – cannot create fresh matter-energy except from within existing matter-energy in each universe. But this is finite in amount, and cannot go on by fresh creation.
Transfer and re-formulation of matter-energy is not creation. It is just a new mixing with other matter-energy at finite distances. This activity is already included in the processes of the universe, by including which the finite-content universe/s exhaust themselves into their own outer spaces within a finite time, not permitting further prospects of new creation.
In the case of eternal and continuous creation from a Source, it must be admitted that the universe is infinite in content, that is, contains an infinite number of finite-content universes. This is because the Source cannot be this infinite-content cosmos or be part of it, and must exist continuously in the act of infinite and eternal creation.
I do not insist that the above is the case. I have presented one possible case given by any sort of open reasoning. I have elaborated all these and similar other cases of cosmogenesis in the 647 pages of my book: Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 2018, Berlin. It is the result of more than 35 years of reading, research, and cogitations – from my very school days.
I have published a short but differently argued version of it in less than 100 pages, presenting the logic of these reasonings in a more simplified manner, so that an ordinary educated person interested in cosmology can grasp the basic lines of the above book easily. It is titled: Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All, KDP Amazon, 2022. This book is available as Kindle and Printed, for a few Euros or Dollars.
I suggest these books because I cannot write more than a few pages here….
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
A TRANS-PRAGMATIC TRUTH PARADIGM
FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND PHILOSOPHY
Raphael Neelamkavil. Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. OBLIGATION TO PRAGMATISM AS A NEGATIVE TRIGGER
My concept of universally real trigger-causation in all existents is philosophically and scientifically indebted to the most glaringly universal instances of the ‘effects only’, ‘use only’, ‘limited space’, ‘limited time’, ‘limited causal roots’ type of pragmatic bases of the functioning principles of most philosophical and scientific schools and disciplines and their effects on all aspects of life.
In spite of such effects, the majority of humanity, especially the scientific community – does not learn to bring about a radical re-definition of the pragmatically defined concept of attainable truth. This is the proof of the relevance of a re-formulation of the same by the science of philosophy and by scientific philosophy in the realization and growth of science, technology, etc.
Just within the pragmatic attitude lives and functions a big majority of the humanity. Specifically, the scientific community acts consciously by inhibiting wholesome ideas, actions, and changes in the usually pragmatic functioning of (1) every possible realm of knowledge, including the human project of thinking, feeling, curing, facilitating, etc. or (2) any other realms of life in any given environment and society.
The only given justification has been the urgency (1) to experience “the realizably” theoretical and practical effects of all ideas, actions, and changes as early as possible, (2) to have the awaited “long-term effects” at the earliest, (3) to have it in abundance “in the here-and-now”, etc.
Pragmatism has been the backbone of almost all, most basic and less basic, definitions, practical procedures, etc. in logic, mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, human sciences, etc. Pragmatism acquires constantly new definitions in history of science and philosophy.
By ‘pragmatism’ is meant not exactly and not only the philosophical school under this name. Of course, this philosophical school extols the effects-only and use-only theory beyond the emphasis it assigns to theoretical breadths and depths. In general, such emphasis plays an exaggerated role in determining the forms of access to what humanity needs in terms of life and truth. It is mainly the sciences that effectively inhibit any efforts beyond pragmatism.
The suggested new paradigm beyond pragmatism would be: The more the certainty and generality of the theoretical breadths and depths assured by the axiomatic foundations – the greater the truth of the specific, the individual, and the delineated results of such a founded philosophy and science within life and knowing.
I shall explain in other words the pragmatic state of the sciences. After all theoretical and experimental search, truth is being concluded to – albeit for a short time and with some or much assurance of probabilistic tenability – in a manner that is FULLY representative of the state of affairs sought to be represented.
The representation of an objectual process in a truth statement is taken to directly correspond or correspond enough to reality, when the theoretically antecedent instruments are universal enough to produce the knowledge about anything specific. But the antecedents are never universal enough, if the theoretical foundations are not broader than the theoretical grounding available in the positive sciences or formal sciences.
This sort of truth-representation is what knows, feels, cures, and facilitates life today, purportedly “in all respects”. Hence, pragmatism is merely be about the method of approaching truths and activities. But it has not been sufficiently about concluding something from a swarm of structures of theoretical generality and superiority, which should have worked in terms of theoretical and practical applicability in all possible specific cases available in any theory that is trans-pragmatic.
2. EXAMPLES OF OVEREMPHASIS ON PRAGMATISM
One example where the attitude of more general theoretical justification is missing is in the diverse theoretical constructs in physics. Anyone can characterise one of the many reasons as the blind and pragmatic acceptance, by many physicists, of the velocity of light as sacrosanct everywhere in the cosmos. In fact, we have been able to prove the velocity of light only with respect to our part of the universe, and have accepted it as the highest for all parts of the cosmos solely because we have not been able to detect one of higher value.
This is due to the overemphasis on pragmatism in science. Using such a limit velocity in science for technological success is a necessity, but insisting on it even in the broadest possible theoretical situations is cheap adherence. In this respect, the matter that none can accept is the way in which Einstein’s postulation of c as the reference velocity to measure and calculate other but lower velocities becomes accepted as the final proof of the very postulation!
What else is it but the consequence of strict pragmatism in the method and procedure of inquiry without enough antecedent theoretical broadening in the foundations, method, and procedure? This has debilitated science and philosophy of science for almost a century and a quarter. How to dispense with such pragmatism in science and philosophy?
Additionally, the declaration that the observed source-independence of luminal velocity is somehow a basis for accepting a background ether for luminal velocity to hinge upon, is again another instance of overmuch pragmatism in the method and procedure of theorization without restricting strict pragmatism to drawing conclusions.
A second example of strict pragmatism is the way in which some absolutely spherical geometries and their topologies were and are even now being used to geometrize the universe. They tend even to conclude from such a presupposition that the universe is spatially and temporally isotropic, and then tend to dispense with the effects of the locally causal temporal dimension on the universe.
Yet another example is the blind acceptance of the pragmatically probabilistic interpretation of quantum physics as the essence of all physics and of all physically existent reality, whereby most physicists attempt to accept a merely epistemic sort of causality in physical reality and call it “probabilistic causality”, and then start using it as if it were physical-ontological causality.
What we can understand (probabilistically, epistemically) need not be the same as how nature is out there! What in fact is the probabilistic causality that acts in physical processes with some parts of it being causal and other parts not causal or even acausal? Is not such a concept of causality a silly idea of causation based on epistemic determinism getting converted into ontological determinism, which then is converted into the actual nature of existent processes? The unnecessarily pragmatic ways of fixing scientific practices is the main reason behind it.
3. A TRANS-PRAGMATIC PARADIGM OF TRUTH
In preparing a short introduction to the following critical presentation of the aftermaths of pragmatism, let me put in gist the new paradigm that is necessitated here: (1) Truth is not merely a subject-object act. (2) Truth is not merely an act of tending towards. (3) Truth is much more an act of epochal finalizing of constant insertion of foundational breadths and depths in the state of affair / process being inquired into, based on the most universal of all conceptual foundations and driving them down onto the particular, but based fully and always on the foundations of the total in a mutually related context.
That is, strict pragmatism should be exercised only at the instance of concluding to the final, strictly contextual, statement and action, and that too under the provision of further constant inquiry and enhancement of the descriptions, conclusions, etc.
My contention concerning strict methodological pragmatism is that, although the pragmatic attitude has its rights over thought and practice, it (1) inevitably foregoes many fundamental (most broadly based on the totality of all existents) aspects of reality, environment, and life and, (2) in consequence, unbridles back onto the same reality, environment, and life the epistemically guided ontological aftermaths of the negligence of the said fundamental theoretical aspects and necessities of reality and of knowledge – and consequently of course onto life and the human ideal of comprehension of reality and life.
Hence, it is high time that philosophy and science eliminate as much as possible the defective, strictly pragmatic attitude from their foundations while safeguarding some of the necessary aspects of pragmatism merely when they create advantages via accessing conclusions and actions, without causing philosophical, scientific, and human-life tragedies.
4. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF PRAGMATISM ON SCIENCE AND LIFE
As there are countless disadvantageous aftermaths of pragmatism in knowledge and life, some of them may be cited in the following:
(1) International, national, and local politics purposefully manipulating natural resources, economies, societies, religions, and nations for power and wealth, even to the extent of impoverishing the majority of a continent or nation.
(2) National and international poverty alleviation programs and techniques which increase the rich-to-poor differences by perpetuating pragmatically charitable corruption in industrial, educational, health, and governmental ventures.
(3) Educational systems and methods becoming partially aimed at creating a vast majority of cheap labourers for the industry especially in poor nations, by fast-paced and obscurantist information-encrypting of sciences, humanities, and languages in educational institutions, without reference to the history of future-oriented achievements in discoveries, ideas, theories, events, programs, etc.
(4) Most media entities creating sensational partial truths as the short-time highest truths at the behest of politicians, industry, research & development, or at least against them, meant finally for easy financial gains and thereafter for practising political and scientific amnesia at the same truths.
(5) The pharma and health industry adopting and justifying as sacrosanct the mechanist-causalist manners of producing medicaments and treating patients – encouraged mainly by the successes of naturally necessitated urgency in such interventions – and producing chemical medicines so non-holistically (i.e., in ways that do not involve material interactions more minute and life-based than in chemical interactions) that the methods of production and treatment necessarily have more than intended side-effects creating ever more patients.
(6) Industries, technological companies, media entities, media producers, and a few nations specializing in hyperbolically creating and satisfying unhealthy and unessential psychological and physical needs and increasing easy production of commodities for quick-growth in economy, resulting in universal pollution of genes and life-forms.
(7) Constitutions of nations and justice-dispensation systems formulated in ways that normally foster or at least merely facilitate the exigencies of the powerful and rich and possibly get favoured in return.
(8) Governmental law-enforcement arms which work on old-fashioned and corruption-facilitating machinery and, from time to time, can milk the rich and powerful by way of protection of their pragmatic socio-economic attitudes.
(9) The more than two centuries of spread of chemical fertilizing methods of agriculture by blocking the spread of great natural cultivation methods and researches into them, callously titling the latter “unscientific”, and thereby chemically cluttering the whole cultivable and life-worthy earth.
(10) The millennia-old mammoth culinary science and eating culture that encourage tasty junk consumption at home and outside, successfully encouraging and perpetuating the enjoyment of quick pleasure from the one end of the tongue to the other.
(11) The way in which human beings, for millennia, exhaust and emaciate themselves in pursuit of quick joys, vastly unaware of the merely brain-based connotative nature of quick joys.
(12) The methods of finance acquisition and offspring-maintenance in families, societies, nations, and religions, oriented at self-perpetuation and attaining – for that same reason – nothing of it.
(13) Eco-compatibility efforts all over the nations by governments themselves, that help further industrialize under cover of grand holistic statements and schemes.
(14) Economic, educational, cultural, health, and other diverse forms of solution of problems of humanity, in which policy makers never go for the deepest roots of maladies: e.g., the real reason why people build houses on and cultivate (e.g., occupying and cultivating steep hill-sides, thus inundating the high ranges), is not merely craving, but the high rate of population growth, and yet no government acts in this direction ethically and democratically via education.
(15) The manner in which the very oppressed groups become much like the oppressor groups and indulge in pragmatic tactics against their own status, and consume the effects of such self-poisoning.
(16) The universal ignominy to what the experiences and the universal phenomenon of rational reflections of the old and dying are – including those of former scientists, technocrats, and scholars.
(17) The wide-spread technocratic and allopathic health-scientific methods of nipping all nature-infused living methods by blanket-terming them as unscientific.
(18) Religions’ millennia-old and continuing promise of a quick and miraculous transfer to a body-less state similar to that of a supposedly vacuous Absolute, instead of the more possible and reasonable “continued growth” of love-bodies as fully well caused by the same kind of growth during the lifetime of individuals and societies in imitation of an infinitely active love-bodied Source.
(19) A section of scientists and philosophers wilfully presupposing that anthropomorphized expressions and theologies based on them are the meaning of religion and spirituality, and basing their science, technology, medicine, and philosophy, etc. on notions that counteract these vicious concepts that should not have been the meaning of religion and spirituality.
(20) Some or many of those involved pragmatically in the above thought patterns and sciences trade their guns against supposed realities that do not exist in the sciences and in the world out there, thus beating in the air to kill some form of ideas that do not exist where they think them to exist.
The most suitable examples today in theoretical sciences are Russell, Wittgenstein, and many others in the early half of the 20thcentury, and Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and a host of others in the latter half of the 20th century and thereafter. The ways in which the likes of these experts have unquestioningly been using the already existing pragmatism in physics, cosmology, and philosophy is symbolic and emblematic of pragmatism as a cut-throat methodology in effect.
Technological examples are the ways in which Newton’s physics and mechanistic chemistry, biology, economics, etc. are being used today to facilitate money-flow into the industry by disregarding their health-related and environmental aftermaths.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
PHYSICAL AND EXACT SCIENCES AND AXIOMATIC PHILOSOPHY:
INTODUCING GROUNDING
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. WHY SHOULD PHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY BE GROUNDED?
I get surprised each time when some physicists tell me that either the electromagnetic (EM) or the gravitational (G) or both the forms of energy do not exist – that EM and G are, are "existent" neither like nor unlike material bodies – but that EM and G are to be treated or expressed as mathematical waves or particles propagated from material objects that of course exist for all sciences.
Some of them put in all their energies to show that both EM and G are mere mathematical objects, fields, etc., and not physically existent objects or fields of energy emissions that then become propagations from material bodies. If propagation from material bodies, then their nature too would have to be similar to that of material bodies!!! This is something that the mathematical realists of theoretical physics and cosmology cannot bear!!!
This is similar in effect to Newton and his followers thinking honestly and religiously that at least gravitation and perhaps also other energies are just miraculously non-bodily actions at a distance without any propagation particles / wavicles. But I admit that I explained certain things in the first paragraph above as if I myself were a Newtonian. This has been on purpose.
Even in the 21st century, we must be sharply aware that from the past more than 120 years the General Theory of Relativity with its various versions and especially its merely mathematical interpretations have succeeded in casting and maintaining the power of a terrifying veil of mathematical miracles on the minds of many scientists – miracles such as the mere spacetime curvature being the meaning of gravitation and all other sorts of fields. The mathematics did not need existence, and hence gravitation did not exist! But the same persons did not create a theory whereby the mathematics does not need the existence of the material world and hence the material world does not exist!!
A similar veil has been installed by quantum physics on the minds of many physicists and their audience too. We do not discuss it here. Hence, I have constructed in four published books a systemic manner of understanding these problems in cosmology and quantum physics. I do not claim perfection in any of my attempts. Hence, I keep perfecting my efforts in the course of time, and hope to achieve some improvement. The following is a very short attempt to summarize in this effort one important point in physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of physics and of cosmology.
There exists the tradition of lapping up whatever physicists may say about their observable and unobservable constructs, based on their own manner of using mathematics. The mathematics used are never transparent. Hence, the reader or the audience may not have the ability to makes judgements based on the minimum physical ontology expected of physicists. I believe that this should stop forever at least in the minds of physicists. Moreover, physicists are not to behave like magicians. Their readers and audience should not practice religious faithfulness to them. Nor should physicists expect it from them.
2. ONTOLOGICALLY QUALITATIVE NATURE OF INVARIANTS
When the search is for the foundations of any science, it is in fact for the invariant aspects of all the realities of that science, and not merely for the invariant aspects of some parts of the realities (object-set/s), methods, conclusions, etc. This does not suffice for science for maximizing success. This is because, any exclusive search for the foundations of the specific object-set or of the discourse of the specific object-set will further require foundations upon the totality of all specific object-sets and their discourse.
We find ourselves in a tradition that believes that proportionality quantities are to be taken as the invariables in physics. But I used to reduce into universal qualities the quantitative-structural aspect of all sciences, that are represented in mathematics as the ontological quantities dealt with in science. The real invariants of physics are not the ontological quantities or proportionalities of certain quantities being treated in physics.
The latter, being only the constant quantities, are one kind of ontological qualities, namely, (1) the quantitatively expressible qualities of processes, e.g., ‘quantity’, ‘one’, ‘addition’, etc. are explicable, respectively, as the qualities: ‘being a specific quantity’, ‘being a unity’, ‘togetherness of two or more units’, etc. The other kind is (2) the ontological qualities of processes in general (say, malleability, toughness, colour, redness, etc.) which cannot directly be expressed as ontological quantities of processes. This shows that pure ontological qualities are a more general notion than ontological quantities and includes the latter.
Explaining ontological qualities in terms of physical quantities cannot be done directly by fundamental physical quantities, but by physical properties that involve fundamental physical quantities. Properties are a mix mainly of ontological qualities and of course includes ontological quantities, of which some are the fundamental physical quantities. Hence, the invariants must be qualities that are generative of and apply to both quantities and non-quantities. These invariants then are fully qualitative.
If the invariants apply to all physical processes, these invariants are qualities ontologically universal to all of them in the specified group. Out of them are constructed properties by mixing many qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals. Clearly, universals applying to all existents are the real invariants of all Reality – which is a matter to be discussed later.
Since universals are all qualitative and some of them are quantitative as qualities, ontological qualities are broader than mathematical in scope, because, the moment mathematics uses quantities, the use is not of quantities devoid of qualities, but instead, of the quantitative variety of general / universal qualities.
Qualities can also behave as some of the primitive notions that underlie all of physics and other sciences – but this will not exhaust the most necessary foundations of physics and other sciences, because these sciences require the general qualities of all existents, and not merely those of mathematics. These are the axiomatically formulable Categorial notions of philosophy, which latter is thus a general science.
In short, quantitative proportionalities as invariants are very partial with respect to existent processes and their totality. Naturally, philosophy too needs general qualities and not merely quantitative qualities to base the discipline.
3. DIFFERENCES IN FOUNDATIONS: EXACT AND NATURAL SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY
We see many theories in physics, mathematics, etc. becoming extremely axiomatic and rigorous. They call themselves or attempt to be as quantitative as possible. But are adequate comparisons between mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, human sciences, and philosophy, and adequate adaptation of the axiomatic method possible by creating a system of all exact, physical, and human sciences that depend only on the quantitively qualitative proportionalities and call them invariables?
They cannot do well enough to explain Reality-in-total, because Reality-in-total primarily involves all sorts of ontological universals that are purely qualitative, and some of them are the most fundamental, proportionality-type, quantitative invariables of all physical existents in their specificity and totality in their natural kinds. But as the inquiry comes to Reality-in-total, ontological qualitative universals must come into the picture. Hence, merely quantitative (mathematical) explanations do not exhaust the explanation of Reality-in-total.
Existence as individuals and existence in groups are not differentiable and systematizable in terms of quantitatively qualitative universals alone. Both qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals are necessary for this. Both together are general qualities pertaining to existents in their processual aspect, not merely in their separation from each other. Therefore, the primitive notions (called traditionally as Categories) of Reality-in-total must be ontological qualitative universals involving both the qualitative and quantitative aspects. The most basic of universals that pertain properly to Reality-in-total are now to be found.
Can the primitive notions (Categories) and axioms of the said sciences converge so that the axioms of a system of Reality take shape from a set of the highest possible ontological Categories as simple sentential formulations of the Categories which directly imply existents? This must be deemed necessary for philosophy, natural sciences, and human sciences, because these deal with existents, unlike the formal sciences that deal only with the qualitatively quantitative form of arguments.
Thus, in the case of mathematics and logic there can be various sorts of quantitative and qualitative primitive notions (categories) and then axioms that use the primitive notions in a manner that adds some essential, pre-defined, operations. But the sciences and philosophy need also the existence of their object-processes. For this reason, the primitive axioms can be simple sentential formulations involving the Categories and nothing else. This is in order to avoid indirect existence statements and to involve existence in terms exclusively of the Categories.
Further, the sciences together could possess just one set of sufficiently common primitive notions of all knowledge, from which also the respective primitive notions and axioms of mathematics, logic, physical and human sciences, and philosophy may be derived. I support this view because the physical-ontological Categories involving the existence of Reality and realities, in my opinion, must be most general and fully exhaustive of the notion of To Be (existence) in a qualitatively universal manner that is applicable to all existents in their individual processual and total processual senses.
Today the nexus or the interface of the sciences and philosophies is in a crisis of dichotomy between truth versus reality. Most scientists, philosophers, and common people rush after “truths”. But who, in scientific and philosophical practice, wants to draw unto the possible limits the consequences of the fact that we can at the most have ever better truths, and not final truths as such?
Finalized truths as such may be concluded to in cases where there is natural and inevitable availability of an absolute right to use the logical Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, especially in order to decide between concepts related to the existence and non-existence of anything out there.
Practically very few may be seen generalizing upon and extrapolating from this metaphysical and logical state of affairs beyond its epistemological consequences. In the name of practicality, ever less academicians want today to connect ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total by drawing from the available and imaginable commonalities of both.
The only thinkable way to accentuate the process of access to ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total is to look for the truest possible of all truths with foundations on existence (nominal) / existing (gerund) / To Be (verbal). The truest are those propositions where the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle can be applied best. The truest are not generalizable and extendable merely epistemologically, but also metaphysically, physical-ontologically, mathematically, biologically, human-scientifically, etc.
The agents that permit generalization and extrapolation are the axioms that are the tautologically sentential formulations of the most fundamental of all notions (Categories) and imply nothing but the Categories of all that exist – that too with respect to the existence of Reality-in-total. These purely physical-ontological implications of existence are what I analyze further in the present work. One may wonder how these purely metaphysical, physical-ontological axioms and their Categories can be applicable to sciences other than physics and philosophy.
My justification is as follows: Take for example the case of the commonality of foundations of mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language. The notions that may be taken as the primitive notions of mathematics were born not from a non-existent virtual world but instead from the human capacity of spatial, temporal, quantitatively qualitative, and purely qualitative imagination.
I have already been working so as to show qualitative (having to do with the ontological universals of existents, expressed in terms of adjectives) quantitativeness (notions based on spatial and temporal imagination, where, it should be kept in mind, that space-time are epistemically measuremental) may be seen to be present in their elements in mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language.
The agents I use for this are: ‘ontological universals’, ‘connotative universals’, and ‘denotative universals’. In my opinion, the physical-ontological basis of these must and can be established in terms merely of the Categories of Extension-Change, which you find being discussed briefly here.
Pitiably, most scientists and philosophers forget that following the exhaustively physical-ontological implications of To Be in the foundations of science and philosophy is the best way to approach Reality well enough in order to derive the best possible of truths and their probable derivatives. Most of them forget that we need to rush after Reality, not merely after truths and truths about specific processes.
4. SYSTEMIC FOUNDATIONS VS. EXISTENCE/TS, NON-EXISTENCE/TS
4.1. Basis of Axiomatizing Science and Philosophy
The problem of axiomatizing philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together is that we need to somehow bring in the elemental aspects of existence and existents, and absorb the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents. Here it should be mentioned that axiomatizing mathematics and logic does not serve the axiomatization of philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together. So far in the history of philosophy and science we have done just this, plus attempts to axiomatize the sciences separately or together by ignoring the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents.
Existence (To Be) is not a condition for the possibility of existence of Reality-in-total or specific processual objects, but instead, To Be is the primary condition for all thought, feeling, sensation, dreaming, etc. All other conditions are secondary to this. If To Be is necessary as the condition for the possibility of any philosophy and science as discourse, we need to be axiomatic in philosophy and science about (1) existence (To Be, which is of all that exist) and/or (2) the direct and exhaustive implications of existence.
It is impossible to define existence without using words that involve existence. But it is possible to discover the exhaustive implications of To Be in order to use them in all discourse. Therefore, towards the end of this short document, I shall name what could be the inevitable primitive notions that are exhaustive of To Be and that may be used to create axioms for both philosophy and science together.
To put it differently, I attempt here to base all philosophy and science on the concept of existence of Reality-in-total as whatever it is, by deriving from the concept of the existence of all that exist the only possible (i.e., the exhaustive) implications of To Be.
Of course, the basic logical notions of identity and contradiction will have to be used here without as much danger as when we use them in statements on other less fundamental notions. I would justify their use here as the rational inevitabilities in the foundations – not as inevitabilities in the details that issue later. The inevitabilities in the later details need never to be realized as inevitabilities, because To Be implies some fundamental notions which will take case of this.
That is, the various ways in which the principles of identity and contradiction should be seen as inexact and inappropriate may be discovered in the in fields of derivation beyond the provinces of the fundamental Categorial implications of To Be. This latter part of the claims is not to be discussed here, because it involves much more than logic – in fact, a new conception of logic, which I would term as systemic logic.
Let me come to the matter that I promise in the name of the foundations of ‘Axiomatic Philosophy and Science’. First of all, to exist is not to be merely nothing. In this statement I have taken access to the Laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle at one go in that whatever is, must be whatever it is, and not its opposite which is nothing but nothing, nor a middle point between the two extremes.
Therefore, existence must always be non-vacuous. That is, the primary logical implication of To Be is the non-non-being of whatever exists. But such a logical implication is insufficient for the sciences and philosophy, because we deal there with existents. Hence, let us ignore the logical implication as a truism. The existential implications of To Be are what we need.
I have so far not found any philosopher or scientist who derived these implications. But let us try, even if the result that obtained may be claimed by many ancients and others as theirs. In fact, theirs were not metaphysical / physical-ontological versions. Their epistemic versions of the same have been very useful, but have served a lot to misguide both philosophy and science into give “truth/s” undue importance in place of “Reality”. My claim about the exhaustive physical(-ontological) implications of To Be that I derive here is that they do not incur this fallacy.
To Be is not a thing. It is, as agreed at the start, the very condition for the possibility of discourse: philosophy, science, literature, art … and, in general, of experience. The To Be of existents is thus not a pre-condition for To Be – instead, it is itself the source of all conditions of discourse, not of existence.
4.2. Extension, Change, Universal Causality
If To Be is non-vacuous, it means that all existents are something non-vacuously real. Something-s need not be what we stipulate them to be, both by name and qualifications. But the purely general implication is that existents are something-s. This is already part of philosophical activity, but not of the sciences. We need to concretize this implication at the first tire of concrete implications. Only thereafter are sciences possible.
To be something is to be non-vacuous, i.e., to be in non-vacuous extendedness. However much you may attempt to show that Extension does not follow from the notions of To Be, something, etc., the more will be extent of your failure. You will go on using the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and never reach any conclusion useful for the sciences. Then you will have to keep your mouth and mind shut. I prefer for myself meaningful discourse in science and philosophy – when I meditate I shall attempt to keep my mind and lips as “shut” as possible.
As said above, Extension is one of the primary physical-ontological implications of To Be. Nothing exists without being extended, without being in Extension. Extended something-s are not just there in Extension. If in Extension, everything has parts. Thus, having parts is one of the primary implications of being something in existence. I term it alternatively also as Compositionality.
It is the very implication of being something that something-s are in Change. The deepest and most inevitable form of implication of Change is this: nothing that is in existence with parts can have the status of being something existent without the parts impacting at least a few others. This is the meaning of Change: impact-formation by extended parts. Any existent has parts existing in the state of impact formation in other parts and in themselves.
Hence, Change is the only other implication of To Be, not second to but equally important as Extension. I call it differently also as Impact-Formation. The notion of motion or mobility does not carry the full weight of the meaning of Change.
There cannot be any other implication equally directly derivable from To Be as Extension and Change can be. In other words, all other implications can be found to be sub-implications of Extension-Change, i.e., involving only Extension-Change. Showing them as involving only Extension-Change would suffice to show their sub-implications status with respect to Extension-Change.
Existence in Extension-Change belongs to anything existent, hence ubiquitous – to be met with in any existent. This is nothing but existence in the ubiquitously (to be met with in any existent) extended form of continuance in ubiquitous (to be met with in any existent) impact formation. What else is this but Universal Causality?
If you say that causation is a mere principle of science – as most philosophers and scientists have so far thought – I reject this view. From the above paragraphs I conclude that Causation is metaphysically (physical-ontologically) secondary only to existence. Everybody admits today that we and the universe exist. But we all admit that every part of our body-mind and every existent in the world must be causal because we are non-vacuously existent in Extension-Change.
This means that something has been fundamentally wrong about Causality in philosophy and science. We need to begin doing philosophy and science based fully on To Be and its implications, namely, Extension-Change-wise continuance, which is nothing but being in Universal Causation. It is universal because everything is existent. Universal Causality is the combined shape of Extension-Change. Causation the process of happening of Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence. Causality is the state of being in Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence.
4.3. Now, What Are Space and Time?
Note that what we measurementally and thus epistemically call as space is metaphysically to be termed as Extension. Space is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Extension. That is, space is the quantity of measurement of Extension, of measurements of the extended nature of existents. In this sense, space is an epistemic quality.
Further, note also that what we call time is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Change. If there is no impact-formation by parts of existents, there is no measurement called time. Hence, time is the epistemic quality of measurements of Change, which is the impact-formation tendency of all existents.
Immanuel Kant termed space as the condition for the possibility of sensibility, and Edmund Husserl called it as one of the fundamental essences of thought. Space and time in Kant are epistemic since they are just epistemic conditions of possibility; and essences in Husserl are epistemic, clearly as they are based on the continuous act of epochḗ.
Nothing can exist in epistemic space-time. That is, language and mind tend to falsely convert space and time into something that together condition existents. Thus, humans tend to believe that our measuremental concepts and derivative results are all really and exactly very essential to existent something-s, and not merely to our manner of knowing, feeling, sensing, etc.
This is the source of scientific and philosophical misconceptions that have resulted in the reification of the conclusions and concepts of thought and feeling. Thus, this is also the source of conceptual insufficiencies in philosophical and scientific theories. Scientism and scientific and mathematical instrumentalism justify these human tendencies in the name of pragmatism about science and thought.
Reification of certain statistical conclusions as probabilities and the metaphysicization of probable events as the only possible events are not merely due to the above sort of reification. It is also by reason of the equivocation of probability with possibility and the reification of our scientific and statistical conclusions of probabilities as real possibilities. Humans tend to forget that a certain amount of probability is exactly and properly the measure of the extent of human capacity (and by implication, of human incapacity), at a given instance and at a given measuremental moment of history, to use instruments to get at all the existents that are the causes of a given process.
As we know, To Be is not a Category / Quality. It is the very condition that is the same as the existence of something-s as whatever they are. This is a tautology: To Be is To Be. If To Be is a metaphysical notion, the physical-ontologically and scientifically relevant metaphysical implications of To Be are Extension-Change. These are the highest and only highest Categories of all philosophy and science. Universal Causality is the notion of combination of Extension-Change. It is not an indirectly derived notion.
If scientists tend to relegate such notions as philosophical, they are trying to be practical in a silly manner. Even scientific results need the hand of proper and best possible formulations of notions and theoretical principles. Theoretical principles (say, of causation, conservation, gravitation, matter, mass, energy, etc., which may clearly be formulated in terms of Extension-Change-wise existence and existents) must be formulated in the most systemic manner possible.
I would call Extension, Change, and the combination-term Universal Causality not merely as the highest metaphysical Categories. They are the very primitive terms in addition to terms like ‘existent’, ‘matter-energy’, etc., which are necessary for an axiomatic formulation of the foundations of the sciences. Hence, we need to formulate axiomatically both philosophy and science.
Universal Causality may hereafter also be taken as an axiom in philosophy and the sciences. An axiom is a formulated basic principle. In that case, why not formulate also the primitive notions (Categories) of Extension and Change as axioms? In short, the difference between mathematical-logical axiomatic foundations and physical-philosophical axiomatic foundations is that in the former set primitive notions are not axioms, and in the latter primitive notions may be formulated as axioms.
In the light of the above discussion, it becomes clear that Einstein’s postulation of gravitation and matter-energy as space-time curvatures is at the most a formulation of these notions in terms of the mathematical necessity to use space-time (epistemic) measurements and theorize based on them in theoretical physics.
Einstein was immersed in the neo-positivism and logical positivism of his time. Hence, he could not reason beyond the use, by mathematics, of quantitative notions as concrete measurements. Scientists and philosophers who still follow Einstein on this sort of a misguided reification of epistemic space and time are taking refuge not on Einstein but on his theoretical frailties. Even today most scientists and philosophers are unaware that quantities are in fact quantitatively characterized pure qualities – and not properties that are combinations of qualitative and quantitatively qualitative notions.
Minkowski formulated the mathematics of space-time and thus reduced space-time into a sort of ether in which physical processes take place gravitationally. Einstein put gravitation into this language and mistook this language (the language of mathematical space-time) to be the very matter-energy processes that curve according to gravitational processes. For the mathematics this is no too great error, because it worked. This is why some physicists even today consider gravitation and/or all energy forms as ether, as if without this stuff in the background material bodies would not be able to move around in the cosmos! A part of the cosmos is thus being converted into a background conditioner!
Only formal functioning has so far been found necessary in mathematics. Derivation from the metaphysical sources of existents and non-existents has not so far been found necessary in mathematics. But, note here also this: for more than 100 years physicists and philosophers of physics lapped up this substitution of the language of mathematics for the actual, physically existent, processes, which otherwise should have been treated also metaphysically, and if possible, in a manner that is systemically comprehensive of the sources of all sciences.
The implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents too can help to make the mathematical adaptations work pragmatically. Hence, clearly it does not suffice that only the mathematical formalism attained so far be used in physics and the sciences. The project of science, philosophy, mathematics, and logic must grow out of their limits and become parts of a systemic science with foundations in the implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents.
I have been attempting to explain in these pages a limited realm of what I otherwise have been attempting to realize. I show only that there are two physical-ontological Categories and some derived axioms (out of these many axioms, only one is discussed here, i.e., Universal Causality), using which we need to formulate not merely philosophy but also physics and other sciences.
But I suggest also that the existence-related and non-existents-related mathematical objects too must be formulated using some primitive terms and axioms that are compatible with the philosophical and physical primitive terms and axioms that may facilitate a systemic approach to all sciences.
4.4. Why Then Is Science Successful?
The awarding of the Nobel Prize 2023 for quantum informatics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger does not, therefore, mean that all of quantum physics and their assumptions and results are ‘the realities’ behind the ‘truths’ formulated. Instead, it means only that the truths they have formulated are relatively more technology-productive within the context of the other truths and technologies that surround them in physics. Quantum informatics works at a level of effects where we involve only those movements and processes that result in the resulting discoveries, general truths, and the derivative technology.
Similarly, the successes of engineering, informatics, medical processing technology, and the medical science that (as of today) are based on these need not be a proof for the alleged “absolute truth status” of the theories based on Newtonian physics, of molecular and atomic level chemistry and biology, etc. These sciences use only certain contextual levels of interaction in the physical world.
Recollect here the ways in which occidental philosophers dating at least from Parmenides and Heraclitus and extending up until today have been mistaking space and time as (1) two metaphysical categories, or (2) as mere existents, or (3) as illusions.
Oriental philosophies, especially Hindu and Buddhist, have been the best examples of rejecting space-time as metaphysical and as equivalent to permanent substances in a manner that made some Occidental thinkers to look down on them or to reject all of them. In the course of conceptualization that is typical of humans, having to create further theoretical impasses is necessarily to be avoided as best as we can. Such an ideal requires the help of Extension, Change, and Universal Causality.
In the foregoing paragraphs I have only hinted at the necessity of axiomatic philosophy and science. I have only suggested some basic notions in this systemic science. I do also use these notions and some axioms developed from them to formulate a new philosophy of mathematics. I have already published some books based on these and have been developing other such works. I hope to get feedbacks from earnest minds that do not avoid directly facing the questions and the risk of attempting a reply to the questions themselves.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
CAUSAL HORIZONAL RESEARCH: A METHODOLOGY IN PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil
Ph. D. (Causality in Quantum Physics), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)
Causal Horizonal Research is a method that works beyond empirical methods in the positive sciences and serves at existential generalizations that are an essential condition for the possibility of positive sciences. Thus, it may be seen as (1) a philosophical method, but (2) a method of recognition of the foundations of positive sciences. The foundational notions of positive sciences need not themselves be formulated as merely empirically formulable notions!
Although a short text, the arguments here are an attempt to bridge the defects of statistical applications in the sciences and avoid the same in physical ontology, philosophy of physics, philosophy of science (in general), and in the various philosophical disciplines. Implications may be drawn to the philosophy of mathematics and to the foundations mathematics and the sciences in general.
The uninterruptedly but finitely contributive past-existent causal influences point ever backward for recognition of causal pervasiveness of the past horizon. Therefore, this must be accepted as a beckoning for consideration of causal pasts in any research, for achievement of the maximum rational adequacy with respect to the perceived causes of any particular existent process.
There are both already detected and easily detectable aspects and parts of the causal pasts. But there is also the portion of the causal horizon which is not easily discovered or discoverable. At any time, some of this portion of past-existent causal players will remain unreached. But its existence cannot be said to be an impossibility, whatever this portion is. This is what I call the ontological givenness of the causal horizon of anything whatever.
The whole of the past causal influences are together never fully actually traceable back from a given point of time by human intellects and instruments. All processes are in principle and in general ever better traceable and capable of being theoretically included, in general, in physical research and in physical-ontological research. Such theoretical traceability of causes is rejected by their probabilistically ontological exclusion at any given result, if merely probabilistic calculation is considered as the only mode of scientific inquiry.
Examples are the “probabilistically causal” results in QM despite the very finite Extension-Change distances between any two QM events and between a QM event and an arbitrarily chosen experimenter. The problem here is the utter lack of admission of the existence of the totality of the causal horizon, whether detected or detectable or undetected.
Due to the principle of inner-universe conservation of matter-energy, these past causal influences – the causal horizon – as influences at any time traceable to the future, are not annihilated into non-existence in their transformed existence in the present. Therefore, they have their real and ubiquitously causal significance from the past in the present of any process.
I propose, therefore, a physical-ontologically and cosmologically tenable Causal Horizonal Research (CHR)[1]into inner-universe causalities as traceable theoretically to the indefinite past of any process at inquiry – even in case of existence of the external originative cause of all that is physical within the cosmos. This can yield at least a more than vague and sufficiently broad outlook at some problematic issues of statistically causal reach into existent unobservables / quasi-observables within micro-physics, cosmology, physical ontology, and philosophy. That is, the status and extent of causal processes in the micro- and macro-cosmos, the relation of real causality with the recognition-level or calculation-level probability, randomness, chaos, catastrophe, etc. can be further elucidated and systematized by CHR.
If individual processes in the universe have had any measure of past causality active in their parts in any manner (wholly or allegedly partially), this demonstrates by definition the fact that any causal explanation of any process hints at all the processes (causal or allegedly non-causal) that are prior to a phenomenon / event / process, relative to the spatiotemporally connected posteriority of the thing being explained and the priority of the causes being generalized upon. The measure of Extension-Change (measured as space-time in science and ordinary parlance) that has already taken place is theoretically traceable.
Suppose that a certain process’s causal roots proper (or, to please Hume-inspired theoreticians, in terms at least of what we call antecedents proper) are conceivable in principle as having been existent in the past. Then there is no reason why the experimentally and theoretically in-principle feasible extent of statistically tracing the causal horizon should obstruct us from taking at least a theoretically general look at the ontological structure of past causal antecedent roots, and then from them still farther past roots, etc.
Some of it can be traceable in future instances of statistical inclusions; and some will ever remain unreached. But science must accept the existence of the latter – which is not the case in merely statistically characterized sciences.
The causal horizon’s ontological structure is, in general, the Extension-Change antecedent-horizonal processuality as something that existed in the past. The need to tracing causal roots is in simple terms the rational basis of the principle and procedure of CHR, granting the fact that the antecedents proper of all that is today, of all that we speak of, are in fact causes. Only when one tends to claim that causes are not causes arises theoretical impasses. To make sure in the present context that these are causes, science should always wait a finite amount of time. But the pragmatic attitude of severing the relation of the theory from the past-existent but so-far not-reached parts of the causal horizon is the case only in statistics and statistically oriented positive sciences, and nowhere else.
By positing causes (1) as ever having been active in the past of any current physical process, (2) as causally relevantly dormant in the present forms of existence of the current physical processes, the proposed ontological and cosmological methodology of CHR is theoretically implementable. The physical explanation for this is the physical principle of conservation as it is active towards the future proper in all past and present processes. Science and philosophy always want to witness the extent of reachable causality. Hence, the fact of not having already attained the capture of certain causal horizonal members of the past is no justification to be overly pragmatic of the past causes. This is where CHR takes us to.
This will not take us to a meaningless infinite regress. Any infinite regress without the involvement of an abruptly theorized non-causal and non-physical Creator will still be reasonable since the search is with reference to causes within the universe, and such an infinite regress within the universe should naturally be physically meaningful.[2]The stage for CHR in micro-cosmology and macro-cosmology (by this meaning all physical sciences) will thus be set. The major result from here is that in QM causation will somehow have be discussed from various angles, along with making the need for our methodology further explicit.
CHR is treated in my books of 2014 (Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology) and 2018 (Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology):
[1] For detailed reflections, see Raphael Neelamkavil, “Causal Horizonal Research in Cosmology” (21-47), Journal of Dharma 34, 2 (April-June 2009).
[2] In order to circumvent infinite regress, we do not posit an unmoved creator as the final past end of any causal horizon. It is beset with metaphysical paradoxes. We keep the option of a continuously creating Divine open, but this is not needed for our more restricted methodology for physical research, namely, Causal Horizonal Research.
I explain here the connection between the pre-scientific Law of Universal Causality and all sorts of statistical explanations in physical sciences. The way it takes may look strange, but it will be interesting enough to consider.
To repeat in short what is already said a few times: by all possible assumptions, to exist (which is To Be with respect to Reality-in-total) is non-vacuous. Hence, any existent must have Extension, have finite-content parts. These parts, by the only other possible assumption, must yield impacts on other parts both external and internal. This is Change.
These impacts are always finite in the content and measured extents. The measured extents of Extension and Change are space and time. Without measurements we cannot speak of space and time as existing or as pertaining to existents. What pertain to all existents as most essential are Extension and Change. Existence in Extension and Change means that finitely extended objects give origin to finite impacts. This is Causality. Every existent is Extension-Change-wise existent, and hence everything is causal.
As pertinents to existents, Extension and Change are the most applicable qualities / universals of the group of all entities, i.e., Reality-in-total, because they belong to all that exist. Since Extension and Change are not primarily in our minds, let us call them as ontological universals. As is clear now, Extension and Change are the widest possible and most general ontological universals. All universals are pure qualities. All qualities other than ontological universals are mixtures of pure qualities.
There are physical-ontological universals / qualities that are not as universal as Extension and Change. ‘Colouredness’ / ‘being coloured’, ‘redness’, ‘unity’ / ‘being a unit’, ‘being malleable’, ‘being rigid’, etc. are also pure qualities. These are pertinents not merely of one existent process. They belong to many. These many are a group of existent processes of one kind, based on the one classification quality. Such groups of Extension-Change-wise existent entities are termed natural kinds.
Ontological universals can be reflected in minds too, but in very meagre ways, not always, and not always to the same extent of correspondence with ontological universals, because they are primarily in existent processes. A direct reflection is impossible. The many individuals who get them reflected meagrely formulate them differently.
The supposed common core of ontological universals in minds is a pure notion, but they are mere notions idealized by minds. These ideals are also not inherited of the pertinent ontological universals of all relevant existent things, but at least by way of absorption from some existents, in whatever manner of correspondence with ontological universals. I call them connotative universals, because they are the pure aspects of the conceptual activity of noting objectual processes together.
In brains connotative universals can show themselves only as a mixture of the relevant connotative universals and the relevant brain elements. Please note that this is not a brain-scientific statement. It is the best imaginable philosophical common-sense on the brain-scientific aspect of the formation of connotative universals, and hence it is acceptable to all brain scientists. In brains there are processes that define such activities. But it needs only to be accepted that these processes too are basically of Extension-Change-wise existence, and hence are causal in all senses.
Connotatives are just representations of all kinds of ontological universals. Connotatives are concatenated in various ways in connection with brain elements – in every case highly conceptually and symbolically. These concatenations of connotatives among themselves are imaginations, emotions, reflections, theories, etc., as considered exclusively in the mind.
Note here also that the lack of exact correspondence between ontological and connotative universals is what makes ALL our statements essentially statistical and non-exact at the formation of premises and at the jump from premises into conclusions. The statistical aspect here is part of the process of formation, by brains, of connotatives from ontological universals. This is the case in every part of imaginations, emotions, reflections, theories, etc., even when statistical measurements are not actually being made part of the inquiry as a matter of mentally guided linguistic and mathematical procedures.
Further, connotative universals are formulated in words expressed as terms, connected with connectives of processes, and concatenated in statements. These are the results of the symbolic functioning of various languages including mathematics. These are called denotative universals and their concatenations. All symbolic activities function at this level.
Now coming to statistics as an applied expression of mathematics. It is nothing but denotative universals concatenated in a quantitatively qualitative manner. Even here there is a lot of lack of exactness, which are known as uncertainty, randomness, etc. Pay attention to the fact that language, mathematics, and its statistical part work at the level of denotative universals and their concatenations. These are naturally derived from the conglomerations of ontological universals via concatenations of connotatives and then translated with further uncertainties unto denotative concatenations.
Causation works at the level of the conglomerations of ontological universals, which are in existent things themselves. That is, statistical connections appear not at the ontological level, but at the denotative level. When I say that this laptop is in front of me, there is a directness of acceptance of images from the ontological universals and their conglomerations into the connotative realm of connotations and from there into the denotative realm of connotations. But in roundabout conclusions regarding causal processes at the physical-ontological level into the statistical level, the amount or extent of directness of judgement is very much lacking.
SYMMETRY: A SUBSET OF UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY
What is the Difference between Cause and Reason?
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking of Choice
2. Defining Causality
3. Defining Symmetry Causally
I discuss here the concept of symmetry and relate it to Universal Causality. I do not bring in the concept of Conservation here. Nor do we mention or discuss the mathematicians and physicists who deal with this concept, because such a short document cannot study their work or critique them in order to related them to Universal Causality.
1. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking of Choice
Suppose that, by use of a conventionally decided unit of physically causal action α (of whatever, say, a photon) from A, the choice is met by the unit of action between two given electrons B and C. We consider B and C to be the immediate candidates for direct causal action by α, but the said causal action does not take place in B or C by an external causal action α from A. Then we tend to claim that there exists a PERFECT SYMMETRY OF CHOICE between B and C, for the unit of action α from A.
Whether α is from A or anything else does not matter here. What matters is that in nature such a perfect symmetry is never the case. Suppose there is no choice for α other than that between B and C, that is, there exist only A, B, and C in the world. In that case, at some point of time in the future of occurrence of the physically real mutual (causal, if A were to interact with B or C through the exertion of the causal action α) approach between (1) the unit of action α issuing from A and (2) any one or B and C, then there occurs the causal choice between the two.
If it is possible to stipulate that A, B, and C are in motion at various directions, then there exist some other D, E, etc. in the universe and A, B, and C have had causal interaction with many others. In that case, the decision of α for interaction with either B or C at a stipulated point of time lies in the acquisition of the knowledge as to how much A, B, and C have been causally affected by others, and to what extent of time.
This is not determinable given the fact that we are unable to causally contact all the agents of causal action upon A, B, and C. The final choice by us will be considering at least in a percentage-wise manner how much, how many other As, Bs, and Cs have causally influenced A, B, and C, beginning from a certain past relative point of time. But our decision is a speculation based on a few nearby-lying causal influences upon them. But this is not as much true as when we had the whole information.
We tend to term the action that follows with the so-called “choice” for B or C by the action potential α of A as symmetry breaking. Symmetry breaking here is nothing but the ability of any action potential α of A to affect B or C (or any other) processual entity causally – but this ability is presumed and calculated without taking, and without being able to take, into consideration all the causal antecedents of the action potential α of A and the processual entities B, C, etc.
These causal antecedents are such that, if known fully well, the action route of the action potential α of A can be predicted without access to the notion of symmetry or symmetry breaking. Such symmetry breaking may then even be cited by some physicists as the reason for the choice. Note also that this or any other concept of symmetry and symmetry breaking is not such that all the causal antecedents in A, B, C, etc. are already summed up in it. Recall to mind here also the Bohmian notion of hidden variables. Hidden variables are not actual variables, but instead, a device to merely represent unknown and non-represented variable values.
One may argue that symmetry too is causal. The direct cause of the choice is the action α by A on B or C. But even within the notion of the direct or immediate cause, cannot be included the notion of other external and remote causes of the event of the action potential α of A choosing B or C causally. That is, immediate causes do not contain within themselves all the remote past causal routes that have contributed to the choice by the action potential α of A to choose B or C causally at a moment to interact with.
This shows that the notions of symmetry and symmetry breaking are the results of conceptually ostracizing (or of our inability to reach and include) the past causal horizon of the causal event at discussion. Hence, these are instruments to do physics in our given context. This does not mean that science and philosophy should not recognize the universal nature of causality or that physics and philosophy should ostracize Universal Causality.
The action is physically processed in the form of a conglomeration of existent processes, whichever be the participating causal forces from within them and from outside – the latter of which normally are not being taken into consideration by the experiment and the symmetric-mathematical description, because there are limits to experimental setups and mathematical tools. But theoretically generalizing inquiry has no limits. This is why we need a theoretically generalizing notion of Universal Causality based solely on the notion of existence. The generalities in the natural kinds of physically existent processes are called ontological universals. These are not merely and exclusively in individual token entities.
In nature there are only causes, not reasons. Reasons are in human minds, and are active in two ways:
(1) In a connotative manner (i.e., consciousness notes together the generalities in processes. and then concatenates the connotative universals achieved / formed within consciousness in order to facilitates concepts and their expression in statements).
(2) In a denotative manner (i.e., connotative universals are mixed with brain elements and then expressed in symbols and language, and thereafter denotative universals are concatenated in various ways in symbolically formulated statements in language, mathematics, automated intelligence, and other symbolic instruments).
Both these are aspects of the constitution of reason in their own ways as and when they have to do with reasons in consciousnesses and expressions via symbols and languages. Causes in physical processes are existent as such outside our connotative universals, connotative concatenations of connotative universals, denotative universals, and denotative concatenation of denotative universals. Reasons occur in the concatenations of connotative and denotative universals, respectively in the pure conceptual aspect of consciousness and in its symbolizing aspect in various natural and artificial languages.
The symmetry or symmetry breaking in any given case is such an explanation, a reason. It is not a cause or the cause of anything. Many a time physicists tend to get confused between reasons and causes. Symmetry is just an example for instances where this universal phenomenon of confusion occurs.
2. Defining Causality
Anything existent is in Extension, i.e., is composite and thus has a finite number of parts, none of the parts of which can be taken as an infinitesimal in any exercise of division and counting. Anything in existence is in Change, i.e., all existent processes and parts thereof make new impact-generation on other such and as a result also within itself – this is the only other aspect of composition of existents. The latter part of Change, namely, the inner and inward action as a result of the previous action, is to be recognized as an additional action.
The combined action of Extension-Change-wise existence is nothing but causation. Everything existent is in causality – hence Universal Causality. Causes are always in the Extension-Change-wise mode of being of existents. Extension and Change together are the exhaustive meaning of existence (To Be) of Reality-in-total. All Extension-Change-wise instances of existence are instances of causation.
In short, everything existent has parts (Extension), every part has parts because it is in Extension, and all of them are in their own proper action of impact-formation (Change) inwards and outwards. Extension and Change are the only two exhaustive modes of the meaning of existing non-vacuously. Every existent is thus in causal action.
Such causation is everywhere, in all existents, as the very implication of existence. Hence, Universal Causality is the principle of nature that is instantiated when the choice by a unit of processual action (α of any A) between two electrons (B, C) breaks the principle of symmetry. Symmetry breaking with respect to a preferred or prescribed sort of action should always be causal, because this event has a past causal horizon, however long. (The question as to whether the past causal horizon is physically past eternal or past finitely eternal is the cosmogenetic question. We do not treat it here.)
Symmetry and the symmetry breaking are names for what may be called reasons in any case that may be discussed. But reasons must be explained always in terms of the causal actions within the given contexts. If physics is unable to do that in any instance, it is not entitled to call it non-causality or a-causality. Nor should the situation be filled up with an indescribable something called vacuum energy, ubiquitous ether, etc., and make vacuum energy and ether do the creation of the universe/s.
If the various laws of Conservation are considered as instances of symmetry, such symmetry is not merely of a choice of interaction, but much more, as a symmetry that may be defined as not being otherwise than what the processes involved (and thus all that exist as processes) are.
Existent processes are fundamentally in existence, which is the same as being in Extension-Change, i.e., in Causal existence, and only derivatively (i.e., by preferring to involve only a few causes) from the continuously Causal existence are they in the states of symmetry or symmetry breaking – whatever be the states or choice of states considered. This is done in terms of reasons, in terms of conceptual explanation, all this is in fact based on causal processes that guide everything being considered for investigation in the cosmos.
3. Defining Symmetry Causally
To be clearer in terms of what physics does, symmetry is a mode of perception and explanation of causal physical action quantitively within a given limited context of causes, where the totally causal nature of all existents does not get considered as playing a direct role in the formation of the immediate causes that are being considered.
Universal Causality is equivalent to non-vacuous existence, because Universal Causality, composed of Extension and Change, is the very exhaustive meaning of existence. Hence, Universal Causality is physical-ontologically more a priori than the symmetry and symmetry breaking of some select states, where the state of having two sides, aspects, choices, possibilities of actions, etc. are based on the Extension-Change-wise modes of existent processes in being in finite measures of activity and in stability in the same finite measures of activity.
The finite measures of causal action may be quantified. But this quantification in terms of any conventional mode of measurement does not represent all that the physical processes involved are in themselves, in terms of all that have causally happened in them.
Symmetry is not a matter of absolutely virtual knowledge. It is naturally based on the causal action of parts in parts of the universe and their comparability with respect to certain criteria of comparison. Various mathematical tools have come to be used to make comparisons effective and productive.
But this is not the case concerning Universal Causality, which I have defined here, because mathematical applications in physics, astrophysics, cosmology, etc. tend to forget the basic fact of the universality of Causality, which should have been dealt with in every little part of these sciences. This is the sad part of the story of Universal Causality.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
I hear and read much about physical causality, causal necessity, and modal necessity. Many take them for different or slightly different. I opine that causality and necessity, at the core, are mutually connected and to a great extent possess a physical-ontological core.
I hold that purely physical, modal, and dispositionalist interpretations of these terms are nothing but simplistic. We need a theory that correlates causality with necessity.
Raphael Neelamkavil
The Anthropic Notion of Existence and “Being-Becoming” in Heidegger: Heidegger’s continuous engagement with ‘nothingness’ in his works has not been about the non-existence of anything specific or the whole of what we call Reality or of its To Be. [-----] Heraclitus never had a notion of becoming that makes everything to escape into absolute nothingness; Parmenides never dissociated from human beings’ notion of being the apparent becoming. Apparent becoming, he thought, is a contradiction to his concept of being. Heidegger depended much on his re-interpretations of Heraclitus and Parmenides. None of them shewed away from Heidegger’s thought whatever is existent or seemingly existent into any absolute becoming or absolute seeming of becoming or absolute nothingness that would reduce the stuff of everything into a nothing in existence.
What Went Wrong in Heidegger's Thought: For the above reasons, within the ‘becoming’ that meant continuous activity, and beyond the ‘being’ that often presented the sense of permanence, Heidegger (1) did not think of the metaphysical approval of ontological commitments behind notions, thoughts, feelings, etc., sought a non-traditional notion of existence that he thought is discourse-bound and language-bound which thus became an anthropic notion of Being without commonalities with other existents, and (2), did not possess methods of dissociating (a) mere subjective and intersubjective objectivity from (b) subjectively and intersubjectively obtained objectivity via objectuality in discourse. Thus, he ended up holding only the (a) above and laughably anthropologized philosophy, science, and human institutions through a sense of superiority of the merely anthropically Being-thinking humans over all others. His politically overshadowing such a notion of Being-thinking humans by a vague identification of it with the Hitler race was naturally a gimmick to use the opportunity to save and elevate himself and his thought and additionally obtain a long opportunity to laugh privately of his own professor.
LINGUISTIC IMPLICATIONS OF EXISTENT PHYSICAL PROCESSES
IN PHYSICAL THEORY
Raphael Neelamkavil
Ph.D. (Quantum Causality), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)
Minimal Linguistic Implications of Words: I start this discussion with a generally acceptable kernel of what in the very least is meant when we say that something exists. My use of the word ‘electron’ need not mean that any of the models of electron as an existent must as such be the case out-there. This is because the word ‘electron’ is a denotative word constructed linguistically. It denotes a denotable, which exists as whatever it is, without our having to take it to be exactly this way or that way. But there can be at least some physical-ontological guidelines as to how an electron cannot be. For example, it is not a pure vacuum. Let alone the discourse that only quantum vacua exist. This is exactly what I mean, too: a pure vacuum does not contain any existent, not even one quantum of energy. A quantum of energy should be carried by something existent, and not by something vacuous. This quality that it is not a pure vacuum is what I call Extension. Every existent must be in Extension. If extended, it has parts, which are in some Change, too. In short, it is impossible to say that anything termed electron can exist without internal Change, which may be caused externally and/or internally.
Extension and Change are the ways without which nothing can exist. If anything is in Extension-Change-wise existence, this is causal existence: some finite amount of causation happens there. An antecedent changes within itself due to the impact that its parts make and are made to take. It is continuous in the sense that it is continuously the manner of existence of anything, but this is not infinite causation. If anything existent should be such, this shows that all existents are in Causality. This is the pre-scientific Universal Law of Causality. Now clearly, quantum wavicles too should be in causation, if we are speaking of existents, and not of pure vacua.
Historical Problem of Existence: “Being-Becoming” in Discourse and Its Linguistic Elements: Historically, the terms ‘existence’ and ‘being’ have been very confusing. The meanings assigned to them have been varied. I denote by existence the verbal To Be of all that exist in whatever manner they exist. All existents in the cosmos cannot be in intense holographic relation, if (1) the cosmos is of infinite content and (2) any highest limit velocity in any part of the cosmos is finite. Even in this case, there is no problem is speaking of To Be. More than two and a half millennia of Western discourse on existents has been primarily in terms of notions of particular existents and their ways of being, and references to becoming and non-being within the processes of existents. This has been conducted by safeguarding the notion of becoming of otherwise unchangeable substantial beings, from within the way in which language and discourse are the constituting factors although they too evolve. Not that such thought patterns shaped language in its basic evolution. Instead, primarily it was the already existing feeling-, perceiving-, and thinking-contours of language that shaped the thought that bases To Be on particular existents and their ways of being and reference to becoming and non-being. I believe that it is time to permit the contrary manner of basing To Be on Reality-in-total and its ways of being to happen at least in scientific and philosophical language. Later I shall show that the ways of being of Reality-in-total are Extension and Change.
Being / Existence and Permanent Becoming in Parmenides and Heraklitus: Historically, for the evolution of the proper understanding and linguistic formulation of To Be, becoming, activity, stability / permanence, etc. together, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Whitehead have contributed much in the Western tradition: Heraclitus has a way of thinking of becoming, being, firelike continuity of becoming, etc. [Burnet 1924: 61ff] and Parmenides has an unclear manner of combining being, becoming, their self-revealing, self-concealing, etc., [---------] as if being were possible only as an unchanging substance and becoming meant the annihilation of the total identity of the substance. This notion of continuity of identity of everything as substance was for him being / continuity in existence. These notions in Heraclitus and Parmenides have been discussed without end, but without scientifically and philosophically settling (1) the foundations of the questions and without first deciding whether anything exists, (2) what the implications of the notion of existence (the To Be of all that exist) are, (3) how to differentiate between the various tenses of ‘to be’ used in the case of existence, attribution to existents, equality of existents, and equality of attributes, etc.
The Many Genuine and Non-Genuine Senses of ‘To Be’ in Linguistic Use: It is common to read metaphysicians, linguistic philosophers, and linguists speaking of the many contextual meanings of To Be in use in language. They tend then to accept all these senses as genuine, saying that these are given in language. But the foundational senses in which it had to be found in use are not much being discussed, nor is it often recognized that these alone can justify the contextual usages. The contextual is a sort of phenomenology of the use of meanings in language. The foundational is a fundamental philosophical consideration in linguistics, sciences, and philosophy alike.
I enumerate more than a score of the said contextual meanings of ‘to be’, without too much attention to arranging them in their derivative importance, since it is extremely difficult to reason into: (1) exist as a thing out-there and/or within ourselves, (2) exist as a process out-there and/or within ourselves, (3) come into existence as a thing, (4) come into existence as a process, (5) be such and such a thing, (6) become such and such a thing (without attention to its changes), (7) be of such and such a quality or property, (8) become of such and such a quality or property, (9) become such and such a processual thing (acquire the nature of a different form of existence), (10) be the same as, (11) be similar to, (12) become similar to, (13) be true, (14) become true, (15) be taken as true, (16) be possible as existent, (17) become a possible thing, (18) become a possible process, (19) become something possible, (20) be necessary as something existent, (21) be necessary as of such and such a nature (quality, property), (22) be necessary as such and such a thing, (23) be necessary as such and such a processual thing, (24) apply (as a quality or property) to, (25) happen (in a manner), (26) happen as this or that thing (from an already-existent), etc., and (27) a host of the same meanings in the past, present, and future tenses and various modal incarnations.
The Only Fundamental, Guiding, Physical-Ontological Senses of ‘To Be’: The above are some of the linguistic usages of To Be. What about their most fundamental senses, without which language cannot facilitate its own use in philosophy and science? I show that, in its implications, To Be works out to be taken as, but is not the same as, ‘cause to be’ or ‘cause to become’, because Extension and Change, the implications of To Be, together imply Universal Causality. But these implications are the only concepts that language can find as the most fundamental significances of the To Be of Reality-in-total. As I said at the beginning, the only two highest exhaustive implications of To Be are Extension and Change; Extension-Change-wise existence is itself causation; and all existents are causal: hence the pre-scientific Universal Law of Causality.
DOES CONSCIOUSNESS EXIST, OR IS IT LIKE INFORMATION? A Very Short Text for Discussion
Raphael Neelamkavil,
Ph. D. (Quantum Causality), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)
Non-causally Non-existent Consciousness?: (1) If consciousness is the totality of whatever happens mostly within the brain and thus causes impacts within and outward the brain, and if any part of consciousness is considered as non-causal, that part must be non-physical and non-existent for Categorial reasons based on the exhaustive implications of To Be (Extension and Change). If this “part” has some impact on other parts, then it must further be shown to be capable of causal and/or non-causal action on causally physical existents. This is what turns theories of non-causality in mind / consciousness into a fiction or false reasoning. The brain receives energy-inputs from phenomena, and has also energy-type activities and energy-type outputs. The totality of such energy-activities happens in the brain. It is not the same as the brain. Why not term the totality of such activites as consciousness? This is not the same as the specific “consciousness-of” being referred to when I refer to something to which my awareness tends. Any specific awareness or the totality of awarenesses is not consciousness, because awareness is awareness-of (consciousness-of), and consciousness as such is a totality of activities in the brain. It is not merely cognitive; it includes many other activities. Nor is consciousness merely a cognitive affair. Many other activities are contained in it; and all these activities together are not the brain. The brain has parts which do not belong to the consciousness per se.
Now, if one insists that consciousness is the same as information and that both are mutually interchangeable or one is part of the other, the following questions arise: (1) If they are the same, would one say that information is in fact in consciousness? (2) When AI transmits information, when we have various sorts of information other than that by way of AI, etc., are we in any manner receiving consciousness in place of information? If one says only that they are at least of the same nature and are not the same, then they have to be differentiated and at the same time connected to each other. But it is accepted by all that information is also in consciousness, and not vice versa. How then is this possible, if they are of the same nature and status?
Since my confidence is growing that many will not figure out what I have done, I will tell you : the 1st FULLY empirical philosophy (& it's science) & a clear guide to a true empirical [real science] Psychology (up to now, from any holistic or integrated and real standpoint, such science has been non-existent). : Go To : http://mynichecomp.com/key_content
In addition to the essays/posts I have in zip files, read my newer posts (not that many) here on Researchgate
ESSENTIAL REASON IN PHYSICISTS’ USE OF LOGIC:
IN OTHER SCIENCES TOO!
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. The Logic of PhysicsPhysics students begin with meso-world experiments and theories. Naturally, at the young age, they get convinced that the logic they follow at that level is identical with the ideal of scientific method. Convictions on scientific temper may further confirm them in this. This has far-reaching consequences in the concept of science and of the logic of science.
But, unquestionably, the logic behind such an application of the scientific method is only one manner of realizing (1) the ideal of scientific method, namely, observe, hypothesize, verify, theorize, attempt to falsify for experimental and theoretical advancements, etc., and (2) the more general ideal of reason.
But does any teacher or professor of physics (or of other sciences) instruct their students on the advantages of thinking and experimenting in accordance with the above-mentioned fundamental fact of all scientific practice in mind, or make them capable of realizing the significance of this in the course of time? I think, no.
This is why physicists (and for that matter all scientists) fail at empowering their students and themselves in favour of the growth of science, thought, and life. The logic being followed in the above-said mode of practice of scientific method, naturally, becomes for the students the genuine form of logic, instead of being an instantiation of the ideal of logic as reason. This seems to be the case in most of the practices and instruction of all sciences till today. A change of the origin, justification, and significance of the use of logic in physics from the very start of instruction in the sciences is the solution for this problem. The change must be in the foundations.
All humans equate (1) this sort of logic of each science, and even logic as such, with (2) reason as such. Reason as such, in fact, is more generic of all kinds of logic. Practically none of the professors (of physics as well as of other sciences) terms the version of logic of their science as an instantiation of reason, which may be accessed ever better as the science eventually grows into something more elaborate and complex. Physicist gets more and more skilled at reasoning only as and when she/he wants to grow continuously into a genuine physicist.
As the same students enter the study of recent developments in physics like quantum physics, relativity, nano-physics (Greek nanos, “dwarf”; but in physics, @ 10-9), atto-physics (@ 10-18), etc., they forget to make place for the strong mathematical effects that are due by reason of the conceptual and processual paradoxes due to epistemological and physical-ontological difference between the object-sizes and the sizes of ourselves / our instruments. The best examples are the Uncertainty Principle, the Statistical Interpretation of QM, Quantum Cosmology, etc.
They tend to believe that some of these and similar physics may defy our (meso-physical) logic – but by this mistakenly intending that all forms of reasoning would have to fail if such instances of advanced physics are accepted in all of physics. As a result, again, their logic tends to continue to be of the same level as has been taken while they did elementary levels of physics.
Does this not mean that the ad hoc make-believe interpretations of the logic of the foundations of QM, Quantum Cosmology, etc. are the culprits that naturally make the logic of traditional physics inadequate as the best representative of the logic of nature? In short, in order to find a common platform, the logic of traditional and recent branches of physics must improve so to adequate itself to nature’s logic.
Why do I not suggest that the hitherto logic of physics be substituted by quantum logic, relativity logic, thermodynamic logic, nano-logic, atto-logic, or whatever other logic of any recent branch of physics that may be imagined? One would substitute logic in this manner only if one is overwhelmed by what purportedly is the logic of the new branches of physics. But, in the first place, I wonder why logic should be equated directly with reason. The attempt should always be to bring the logic of physics in as much correspondence with the logic of nature, so that reason in general can get closer to the latter. This must be the case not merely with physicists, but also with scientists from other disciplines and even from philosophy, mathematics, and logic itself.
Therefore, my questions are: What is the foundational reason that physicists should follow and should not lose at any occasion? Does this, how does this, and should this get transformed into forms of logic founded on a more general sort of physical reason? Wherein does such reason consist and where does it exist? Can there be a form of logic in which the logical laws depend not merely on the size of objects or the epistemological level available at the given object sizes, but instead, on the universal characteristics of all that exist? Or, should various logics be used at various occasions, like in the case of the suggested quantum logic, counterfactual logic, etc.?
Just like logic is not to be taken as a bad guide by citing the examples of the many logicians, scientists, and “logical” human beings doing logic non-ideally, I believe that there is a kernel of reason behind physics, justified solely on the most basic and universal characteristics of physical existents. These universals cannot belong solely to physics, but instead, to all the sciences, because they belong to all existents.
This kernel of reason in physics is to be insisted upon at every act of physics, even if many physicists (and other scientists and philosophers) may not ensure that kernel in their work. I shall discuss these possibly highest universals and connect them to logic meant as reason, when I elaborate on: 3. The Ontology of Physics (in a forthcoming discussion in RG)
The matter on which physicists do logical work is existent matter-energy in its fundamental implications and the derivative implications from the fundamental ones. This is to be kept in mind while doing any logically acceptable work physics, because existent matter-energy corpora in processuality delineate all possible forms of use of logic in physics, which logic is properly to be termed nature’s reason.
Moreover, conclusions are not drawn up by one subject (person) in physics for use by the same subject alone. Hence, we have the following two points to note in the use of logic in physics and the sciences: (1) the intersubjectively awaited necessity of human reason in its delineation in logical methods should be upheld at least by a well-informed community, and (2) the need for such reason behind approved physics should then be spread universally with an open mind that permits and requires further scientific advancements.
These will make future generations further question the genuineness of such logic / specific realization of reason, and constantly encourage attempts to falsify theories or their parts so that physics can bring up more genuine instantiations of human reason. But is such human reason based on the reason active in nature?
Although the above arguments and the following definition of logic in physics might look queer or at least new and unclear for many physicists, for many other scientists, for many mathematicians, and even for many logicians, I define here logic for use in physics as the fundamental aspect of reason that physics should uphold constantly in every argument and conclusion due from it:
Logic in physics is (1) the methodological science (2) of approaching the best intersubjectively rational and structural consequences (3) in what may be termed thought (not in emotions) (4) in clear terms of ever higher truth-probability achievable in statements and conclusions (5) in languages of all kinds (ordinary language, mathematics, computer algorithms, etc.) (6) based on the probabilistically methodological use, (7) namely, of the rules of all sensible logics that exemplify the Laws of Identity, Non-contradiction, and Excluded Middle, (8) which in turn must pertain to the direct and exhaustive physical implications of “to exist”.
Here I have not defined logic in physics very simply as “the discipline of the rules of thought”, “the discipline of the methodological approach to truths”, etc., for obvious reasons clarified by the history of the various definitions of logic.
But here comes up another question: Is the reason pertaining to physical nature the same as the most ideal form of human reason? From within the business of physics, how to connect the reason of physical nature with that of humans? I may suggest some answers from the epistemological and ontological aspects. But I would appreciate your responses in this regard too.
2. The Epistemology of Physics (in a forthcoming discussion in RG)
3. The Ontology of Physics (in a forthcoming discussion in RG)
THE EPISTEMOLOGY PRESUPPOSED BY PHYSICS AND OTHER SCIENCES
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
((This is the second part of the series in THE LOGIC, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY OF PHYSICS AND OTHER SCIENCES.))
1. The Logic of Physics (See the previous discussion's lead-text)
2. The Epistemology behind Physics
The whole of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. are not the exclusive property of physics, or of any other particular science, or of all the sciences together. Each of them may apply the various general logical, epistemological, and ontological principles in ways suitable to their disciplines, but cannot claim that theirs is the genuine or the possibly best logic, epistemology, ontology, etc.
There is yet another manner, beyond the sciences, wherein (1) the object range and viewpoint range become the broadest possible in epistemology, and (2) the epistemological manner in which the two are connected becomes satisfactory enough to explain both the aspects and the procedures involved between them. This is a philosophical version of epistemology. Even this manner is not complete without including the various logics, epistemologies, and ontologies of the particular sciences.
Before pointing out the special manner in which physics could use the more general aspects of epistemology in itself, let me mention a general trend in science, especially physics. I have seen many students of physics and mathematics mistaking the logical ways in which they do experiments and theories as the same as the conceptual foundations of physics and mathematics.
They do not even think of the epistemology of physics. The clear reason for this is that their epistemology is a crude correspondence theory of truth, and this is outdated. Take any of the best physicists, and we can see in their works the underlying undefined epistemology being closer to the correspondence theory of truth than anything else. I would like to suggest in the following a clear spine of epistemological rudiments for physics.
The pragmatism and scientism at the foundations of practical physics does not accept anything other than the correspondence theory as prescriptive of all the truths of science. Of course, the amount of finality achieved in truths will be the measure of tenability of their truth-probability. But this is to be reserved to the most general truths derivable from any science or philosophy. Low-level truths are much beyond the purview of correspondence between the objectual and the theoretical. Unaware of these facts, most physicists take the difference lightly.
It is a pity that the students of the sciences and also philosophy students with scientistic orientations even think of their ways of permitting truth correspondence to all their truths as the sole possession of scientists, which they suppose are being usurped from philosophy in the course of the past centuries in such a way that philosophy will have ever less reason to exist, or no more reason to exist. Imaginably, in this pride they are encouraged by their presumption of possession of the scientific temper in an exceptional manner.
More evidently, there were and there are physicists holding that their use of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. is final and that all other details being done by other sciences, especially by philosophy, are a mere waste of time. If you want me to give an example, I suggest that you watch some of the YouTube interviews with Stephen Hawking, where he declares philosophy as a waste of time, or as an unscientific affair. The same sort of claim is to be seen being made by many mathematicians: that logic is a by-product of mathematics, and that philosophers are falsely proud of having logic as their methodology.
The reason why the whole of logic does not belong to the sciences is that the viewpoint from which sensation, thought, and feeling may be exercised in the broadest possible manner is not exhausted even by totaling all the object ranges of all the sciences. Each of them does logic in a manner limited by its object range. How then can their logic be the best possible? There is one and only one general science of which the viewpoint is the broadest. It is that science in which the viewpoint is that of the direct implications of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Against this backdrop, although the following definition might seem queer for many physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, there are reasons why I define here epistemology for use in physics. The following definition itself will clarify the reasons:
The epistemology behind physics is (1) the science of justifications (2) for the systemic fact, the systemic manner of achieving, the enhancement of the systemic manner of achieving, and the foundations of systems (3) of rationally derivable and explicable theoretical consequences of human efforts (4) to grasp the connection between physically existent reality and their pertinent realities of all sorts (5) in an asymptotic approach of truth-correspondence from the procedures of knowing (in terms of the pertinent realities of existent realities) onto the physically existent processes of reality, (6) in a spirally broadening and deepening manner of truth probability, (7) which serves to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of knowing, namely, Reality-in-general, (8) starting from reality-in-particular, and (9) by use of the highest theoretical generalities pertaining to Reality-in-total and its parts, namely, reality-in-particular.
The epistemology of physics does not take the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. But it must obey the primary implications of To Be and the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. What these implications are, will be treated below, under “3. The Ontology of Physics”. Epistemology in philosophy may be slightly more general than the epistemology of physics, in the sense that philosophy takes the viewpoint of all physical processes that exist and attempt to view every reality from that viewpoint alone. If not, philosophy has no justification for existence.
Naturally, the epistemology of the sciences will not be so general as that of philosophy. But obedience to it is better for the epistemology of physics; and the advantages of such obedience will be seen in the results of such physics and such sciences.
The epistemology of physics, therefore, will attempt to theorize, know, and predict all that exist, but from the viewpoint exclusively of experimentally / empirically verifiable methods based on what is directly or indirectly before us, namely, the physical processes at our reach. The epistemology of systematically and systemically (i.e., systematically of systems of systems … ad libitum) moving in the use of logic from the given existent physical processes to the details of the not immediately given but ever more minute or ever more distant physical existents is the epistemology of physics. The above definition would, in my opinion, be sufficient to cover as broad and minute procedures as possible in physics. Time has come to appropriate it in physics, lest much advantage be lost for too long.
Not that philosophy does not trust this approach of physics. But philosophy looks for the Categorial presuppositions of existence behind all that is verifiable or verified empirically and empirical-theoretically. These presuppositions are the starting points and guiding principles of philosophy. There is a stark difference between a methodology of this kind and the methodology of basing everything on the truths derived from empirical and empirical-theoretical research. Now from this viewpoint you may judge the following suggestions and determine whether the epistemology of doing physical science is as broad as that of philosophizing.
Every moment, our body-brain nexus is continuously but finitely in contact with itself and with a finite extent of the environment, more or less simultaneously, but in differing intensities, no matter however elementary. The primary mode of this is through sensation, using all available and necessary aspects of it as the case may be. Thought and feeling are possible only in continuity with sensation, and never without it.
But one special characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, feeling, and thought can very consciously induct into, and consequently deduce from the presuppositions of, all that exist – no matter whether they are a finite environment or infinite – and all these solely from the finite experience from the finite environment at hand. This seems to be absent in less human living beings.
Moreover, the second, but more forgotten, characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, thought, and feeling are affective, tending to itself and to others, in the broadest sense of the term ‘affective’. It is the manner in which every human being tends in his/her sensation, feeling, and thought. Hence, all processes of knowing will be coloured by affection.
The manner and then the so-constructed broader background in which sensation, feeling, and thought take place is affection, which we term also love in a very general sense. Sensation, feeling, and thought are the three interconnected modes of tending of the body-brain to itself and to the environment, tend always to connect itself with the environment.
But here too the important differentiating characteristic in human body-brains is their capacity to tend to the environment beyond the immediate environments, and further beyond them, etc. ad libitum. There is nothing wrong in theoretically considering that there is the tendency in humans to converting this sort of ad libitum to ad infinitum, irrespective of whether these environments can really go ever broader at infinity in the content of matter-energy within Reality-in-total. Infinity is another term here for generalizing.
Reality consists of existent reality and realities that pertain to existent realities in their groups. Existent realities are clear enough to understand. Realities pertinent to existent realities are never to be taken as belonging to just one existent reality. They are always those generalities that belong to many existent realities in their respective natural kind. These generalities are what I call ontological universals.
All generalizations tend beyond onto the infinite perfection of the essential aspects of the concepts pertaining to the object-range. Not that the object-range must be infinite. Instead, the tending presumes an infinitization due to the idealization involved in generalizations. This is a kind of infinitization that does not need an infinite Reality-in-total in existence. All the concepts that a human being can use are based in the infinitization of the essential aspects of the concepts in their ideality. But behind these mental ideals there are the ideals, namely, the ontological universals pertaining to the groups (natural kinds) of processual entities in the environment. These are the ideals in the things and are not in us. These too are idealizations at the realm of the natural kinds that form part of Reality-in-total.
Without loving in the sense of tending to, as human do, to the inner and outer environments in their generalities there is no sensation, feeling, and thought. The tending to need not be due to the love of the objects but due to the love of something that pertains to them or to the ontologically universal ideals pertaining to the objects. From this it is clear that the relation between the processual objects and the sensing-feeling-knowing mind is set by the ontological universals in the natural kinds of existent physical processes.
At the part of the mind there should be idealized universals of conceptual quality, because the ontological universals in natural kinds cannot directly enter and form concepts. This shows that the conceptual universals (called connotative universals) are the mental reflections of ontological universals that are in the natural kinds. In short, behind the epistemology of sensation, feeling, and thought there are the ontology and epistemology of loving in the sense of tending to, due to the otherness implied between oneself and the environment.
There may be philosophers and scientists who do not like the idea of love. I say, this is due to the many psychology-related prejudices prevalent in their minds. We need to ask ourselves what the major mode of exercitation of any activity in human beings, and none can doubt the role of love in epistemology. The physical foundations of love too are commonly to be shared with the foundations of other aspects of physical existence.
Such tending by the person is mediated within the person by the connotative universals. Their expression is always in terms of symbols in various languages. These are called denotative universals. Connotative universals get concatenated in the mind in relation to their respective brain elements and form thoughts and feelings. Their expression in language is by the concatenation of denotative universals and get formulated in languages as theories and their parts.
To put in gist the latter part of “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I suggest that the ontological, connotative, and denotative universals and the love of human agents to these and the very existent processual entities are what facilitate knowledge. The psychological question as to what happens when one has no love does not have any consequence here, because psychology differentiates between love and non-love in terms of certain presumed expressions of love and non-love.
In the case of the natural course of life of humans, the choice is not between love and non-love, but instead, between increasing or decreasing love. We do not speak here of loving other human beings as a matter of ethical action. Instead, the point is that of the natural love that humans have for everything including for sensing, feeling, knowing, etc.
One might wonder here why I did not discuss mathematics as an epistemologically valid tool of physics and other sciences. I have already dealt with this aspect in many other discussion texts in ResearchGate, and hence do not expatiate on it here.
3. The Ontology behind Physics (soon to be given as a separate RG discussion session)
1. Grounded Physical-Ontological Categories behind Physics
Grounding can be of various levels and grades. I speak of grounding all sorts of concepts, procedure principles, procedure methods, and theories in any system of thought and science. It is unnecessary in this context to discuss the grounding of highly derivative concepts that occur much later in theories than those that appear while founding them with best-grounded foundations. I go directly to the case of what should be called the most Categorial concepts behind physics, on which physics is grounded.
These Categorial concepts cannot be merely from within physics but should be directly related to and facilitating physics in as many of its aspects as possible. The success of foundational Categories consists in that they serve to ground as many aspects as possible of the particular science or system. Concepts strictly and exclusively physical or generally scientific cannot be as useful as notions from beyond in order to serve as Categories. Evidently, this is because no scientific discipline or system can be grounded on itself and hence on its own concepts. This is clearly also part of the epistemological and ontological implications of the work of Godel.
Grounded ontological Categories are such that they are inevitably and exhaustively grounded in the To Be of Reality-in-total as the only exhaustive implications of To Be. All other Categories, as far as possible, must be derivative of the most primary Categories. The more the number of Categories within the Categorial system that do not derive from the primary Categories the worse for the self-evidence of the science or system within it.
Grounding is exhaustive in the sense that the Categories that ground all physics need nothing else to be a concept than the To Be of Reality-in-total. To Be is the source of the Categories. It happens to be that there are two such Categories that are inevitably and exhaustively grounded. I call them Extension and Change. Clarifications of their meaning, ontological significance, and epistemological and physical implications and follow.
As I said, preferably grounding must be on the surest notion of all, which is existence. I prefer to term it To Be. As far as thought, feeling, and sensation are concerned, To Be is a notion in al of them. But principally To Be must belong to the whole of Reality, and not to a few things. If anything and/or all processes of Reality are existent, then what exist are the parts of existent Reality. The first minimum guarantee hereof should be that existence should be non-vacuous. Non-vacuous signifies that each possesses or contains whatever is possible within its existence in the given measurementally spatio-temporal context (which, as shall soon be clear, belong ontologically to the Extension-Change-wise existence of things).
3. Definitions of Universals, Extension-Change, Causality, and Unit Process
Even the minimum realism in thought, feeling, and sensation has for its principal conditions (1) the ontological primacy of universal qualities / natures that belong to groups of entities (processes), where the groups are also called natural kinds in the analytic tradition, and then (2) the ultimate simplicity and indivisibility of the universal characteristics that pertain to all existents. Contrary to the infinite divisibility of existent matter-energy, universals as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations (of togethernesses of unit Processes) are ontologically ideal universals, and hence indivisible. These universals are ideal not because of our idealisation of the characteristics, but instead because they are the general characteristics of the natural kinds to which each existent belongs. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that ontological universals are not our idealizations.
The properties of things are built out of these simple ontological universals in the natural kinds. The vague reflections of simple ontological universals within our minds are conceptually connotative universals, which are conceptual ideals. And their linguistic reflections in minds and all kinds of symbolic instruments are denotative universals.
Connotative and denotative universals are epistemological universals, formed epistemically from the little contact that minds have with the phenomena (“showings-themselves”) from some layers of processual objects from out there. The properties of existent processual things (matter-energy particulars) are vaguely reflected in minds and languages through the connotative and denotative instrumentalization of concepts in order to reflect the things via phenomena in terms of the data created by minds out of them. Any theory that permits ontological primacy to epistemological universals is one of a range of theories yielding primacy to the perceiving mind over the perceived objects. This is anathema in any scientific or philosophical science, because things are not vacua.
Non-vacuous existence implies that existents are extended. This is one of the most important characteristics of existents. Extension implies having parts, compositionality. Any extended existent’s parts impart impact to some others. This is Change. Only extended existents can exert impacts on any other. As a result, the object that exerts impact gets in itself some impact within, which is nothing but the proof that an impact by one extended part implies movements and impact formation by its parts too, as a result of the overall impact formation in question which contains the inner parts’ impact formation within. The latter need not always have its effects merely within the parts but instead also outwards.
Extension and Change are the highest, deepest, and most general characteristics of all existents. Interestingly, existence in Extension-Change is itself the process that we have so far named causation. Hence, anything non-vacuously existent has Extension and Change not separately but together. This is the meaning of Universal Causality. Physics cannot dispense with this pre-scientific universal Law. No more shall quantum physicists or scientists from other disciplines tell us that quantum physics has some sort of non-causality within! Any causal unit of existents in which the causal part and the effect part may be termed a process. Processuality is yet another important characteristic of existents, but we formulate it as Process, which represents the matter-energy units that there can be.
By this have clearly been set up three physical-ontological Categories of physics: Extension, Change, Causality, and Process. Space and time are merely epistemic categories. They cannot characterize existent processes. Ontological universals, as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations, are of togethernesses of unit Processes. Ontological universals are therefore ontologically ideal universals belonging (pertaining) to some natural kinds. The Categories as ontological universals belong to Reality-in-total, and not merely some natural kinds.
LINGUISTIC HERESY OF DENOTATIVE ABSOLUTISM:
PHYSICAL OR BIOLOGICAL “SELF-INTERACTION”, “SELF-ORGANIZATION”, “SELF-REFERENCE”, "INTENTIONALITY", “EMERGENCE”
Raphael Neelamkavil,
Ph. D. (Quantum Causality), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)
1. Locus of Linguistic Absolutization of Universals, Properties:
Verbs, Nouns, and Attributes
Language is used to speak with inevitably fixed and at times sufficiently fixed meanings. This is just a pragmatic matter for the general behaviour pattern and history of human race in general. There have been at least some thinkers who felt that this is not fair to Wisdom. Nevertheless, majority of humans think in terms of meanings expected to be fixed forever. I term this tendency as originating from the linguistic heresy of denotative absolutism. Moreover, usually variation in and varieties of meaning transpire in the case of any word in terms of modulations of existing meanings, although new meanings may at times be produced.
The stability of meanings of the notions of quality / universal (simple, non-complex, universal characteristic), property, etc. comes about according to their universal applicability, and guides the strength of all theory about anything. Universals accessible to all processes that are existent and those applicable to all existent processes of a natural kind or of a few natural kinds must be distinguished from each other. Universals are pure if they can be as applicable to all existents as there are in Reality-in-total. Universals of this kind must further be distinguished from properties, which never are applicable to all existents that there are in Reality-in-total. This is the case in theories. The situation is not different with respect to notions that lead to experiments too.
Hence, both universals and their conglomerations termed properties cannot be subsumed or dumped within the term ‘qualia’, as most analytic philosophers do while talking of them without specifying, [----] and some philosophers of science too seem to follow them. [------] It leads to scientific and philosophical confusion and decadence in the otherwise achievable duration of and continuance of epochal successes in theories. The reason for this bad practice, in my opinion, is that most of them do not seek and ground the ‘properties’ and what they tend to call in general ‘qualities’ and ‘qualia’ – taken falsely as equivalent to ‘properties’ – upon the foundations yielded by the physical-ontological implications To Be (existence of all that are), which naturally are the most foundational and hence purest universals (qualities) ever thinkable.
As a result of these problems too – and not merely due to these – there has not been enough clarity so far in the sciences and in philosophy (1) regarding how to strengthen and sharpen notions and distinguish between quality, property, etc. in an ontologically well-grounded manner and (2) as to what the material extent of applicability of these terms would be.
Linguistically, both syntax and semantics, based on their ontological foundations, are involved in any theory of distinctions between ontologically well-grounded quality (ontological universal), property (conglomeration of ontological universals), etc. In what follows, the discussion is not about syntax, but about the ontology of logical semantics of axiomatically Categorial presuppositions, sense, reference, and implications not only of attributes but in general also of verbs, nouns, and other such words that work as denotative symbols to enshrine meanings in verbs, nouns, and other words.
There are two generally diverse theories (on the philosophically linguistic side there are the recent classic stalwarts like Searle, Chomsky, etc., but closely interpretable notions may be seen even in Aristotle [-----]) and their various sub-positions on the origin of and connection between syntax (symbols) and semantics (meanings obtained after some symbols unite) in linguistics and its philosophy: that semantics is included in and/or derived from syntax or even vice versa. But my arguments here are strictly based on the ontology behind the logic of word semantics. I will discuss elsewhere (1) the biologically and neuroscientifically brain-based causal action involved in syntactical formations and the origin of semantic formations based on syntax but not based merely on it or from it, and (2) the manner in which brain-based semantic formations give rise to further syntactical actions.
The ontological aspect should be present and justified even while justifying the logical semantics of words; else, there are no justifications for words in logic and logically argued sciences, because in end-effect all discourse is of the existent Reality in its entirety and parts. Not only changes in the ontology of logical apparatus (the meanings of symbols, connectives, etc.) but also in the ontological meaning of words (in our case, of nouns, verbs, and adjectival and adverbial attributes) can characterize logic. Since all these notions and their logic itself serve also the science of all movements in existent processes, and these movements produce impacts, whatever relation that exists between the agents producing the impacts and the impacts themselves getting transformed into something other than the said agents must be termed causation. It is for this reason that I take here a causally processual attitude to the constitution of words.
Determining the material extent of existent processes, of processes within processes, etc. can be fixed at least generally at the minimal-medial-maximal (MMM) levels, i.e., as being either zero or finite or infinite – and of course not by exact or near-exact measurements. For this, clarity is to be had first on the most basic generalities (Categories) that pertain to all existents which thus apply also to part processes of Reality-in-total. This is what I have been attempting to accomplish by creating a Categorial system for both philosophical and science-grounding consumption alike.
In philosophy the Categories will be followed at all stages, and in the sciences the intensity of following them will be found progressively less relevant when it comes to the experimental aspects of the sciences. Since I have already worked out such a Categorial system earlier, I presuppose them here and show how they are being obeyed in the ontology of the logical semantics of terminology formation.
As a preliminary to fixing the dimensions of influence of the most fundamental linguistic problem of the ontology of the logical semantics of terminology formation in the sciences and philosophy, I discuss hereunder the rampant denotative absolutism, i.e., the human tendency to absolutize the meaning/s of terms and its repercussions in the formation and finalisation of meanings of scientific and philosophical terms. I suggest also a solution. Since the problem is complex (not complicated or complicating), the arguments below will be from various perspectives and systemic.
Denotative absolutism is the case not merely of nouns but also of verbs and attributes, e.g., verbs like ‘to exist’, ‘to become’, ‘to free’, etc., adjectives like ‘existent’, ‘becoming’, ‘free’, etc., and adverbs like ‘(by) existing’, ‘(by) becoming’, ‘(by) being free’, etc. As a consequence of the background of the above short discussion, I hold that many of the ordinary nouns, verbs, and attributes are composites of most basic ontological universals. But we discuss initially (here) only terms formed in the form of nouns, which, with a slight effort in explanation and understanding, may be formulated in the form of verbs, attributes (adjectives and adverbs), etc. These are the meaning-carrying and reference-carrying agents at the smallest symbolic level in linguistics.
Admittedly, persons who stick their mind onto pragmatically (i.e., without recourse to the semantic demands of the processual ontology of Reality-in-total) sharpened fixed meanings and use them to form pragmatic ontologies of notions, theories, human institutions, and social structures are the catalysts of discouragement to scientific and philosophical advancements and decadence in human race.
Pragmatism is the scientific and philosophic method (and attitude) that (1) obtains data from theoretical and spatiotemporal vicinity and distance equally well, (2) seeks the methodological tools mostly from theoretical vicinity, and (3) does not seek to give enough theoretical space for re-deepening and re-generalizing in terms of the evidently scientifically acceptable Categorial implications of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
This gives chance for me naturally to be critical also of the pragmatic methods that human race follows in the formation of meanings of verbs, nouns, attributes, etc. At the side of science, for example, newer details and theories constantly pour in, which naturally should result in increase in the capacity of science to broaden and deepen the axiomatically Categorial presuppositions, sense, reference, and implications of all the words involved and resultantly also of the details, theories, etc. Hence, resistance to the resultant innovations beyond pragmatism is a malady in science and philosophy. The behaviour of those already trained to respect the traditions cannot be fixed solely in an academic manner. They require other treatments.
Hence, I do not speak here of their morality, psychology, sociology, social upbringing, etc. of the persons who stick to scientific and philosophical pragmatism, but instead, of the need to attempt to eradicate the said linguistic heresy in ordinary language, expressed at least as a theoretical paradox in the sciences and philosophy. As part of the human predicament, the heretical aspect of this linguistic paradox is natural merely in the sense that humans follow the semantic tendency in preference for the immediate pragmatic needs and without any attention to the meanings that transpire into the data and theories from within the Categorial predispositions offered by the whole of Reality.
But from the vantage obtained from such holistic, most general, theoretical necessities yielded by the most general ontological universals belonging primarily to Reality-in-total as necessarily being the whole of nature, it is more natural to follow the never-ending trail of perfection of meanings that humans can obtain out of Reality-in-total. I suggest, therefore, that the latter is more natural than the former pragmatic sort of linguistic heresy. For example, it may be natural for humans to steal and to wage wars, given the strictly pragmatic needs of individual life, social groups, and nations. But a broader outlook hinders (or at least minimizes) ethical, political, epistemic, scientific, and metaphysical conformity to pragmatist attitudes and facilitates the broadest possible attitudes and knowledge proper to such broader attitudes.
The attempt at eradication of the linguistic heresy should begin at least in persons relatively more prepared to be thoughtfully Reality-bound. Naturally, it is not possible to eradicate it from human practices. But continuous awareness about it should do good to science, philosophy, and human institutions in an eminently phenomenal manner.
2. Linguistic Absolutization and Its Consequences in Biology and Neuro-Science
I believe it is universally accepted that there is a higher extent of self-organization in biological organisms than in non-biological “organisms”, whatever the definition of self-organization is. But this is in the sense that in all or many of their parts this nature (property) may be present only partially, and cannot imply that any one element or parts thereof can ever be absolutely self-organizing. Absolute self-organization can be attributed only if the concerned existent process has infinite complexity at any given finite spacetime.
This is a direct effect of the necessarily Extension-Change-wise continuity in existence of all physically processual and thus non-vacuous existents with finite amounts of activity (finite Change within finitely Extended beings exerting finite amounts of impact) within each specific process, however near-infinitesimal or near-infinite it is in matter-energy content. The finitude of Extension-Change-wise activity defines the finitude of any characteristic (and of any property) in any existent and its parts.
On the other hand, ‘complexity’ is a term that does not primarily signify the functions but the structural depths of existents of all kinds in general. Anything existent should be in possession of complexity up till reaching infinitesimal levels. Hence, it is a concept that does not lend itself to limiting. There is such an extent of complexity of all relevant sorts in any existent process, and no measurement or generalized theory of the grade of complexity of anything can be had without the prior acceptance of the presence of a finite amount of near-infinitesimally approaching and an infinite amount of infinitesimally approaching complexity in anything existent. In short, all the finite parts is infinitesimally thorough or infinitely extending in their approach of amount of complexity. For this reason, it is impossible to treat self-organization, emergence, and related concepts in terms of that of complexity.
The extent of complexity as such does not submit itself to any determination of the beginning of self-organization, because any physical and biologically physical being has all the available but finite complexity in all its parts. What counts to differentiate biologically physical beings from merely physical ones is the sort of complexity, not the extent of it. Hence, here we discuss only self-organization, emergence, etc. and their seemingly foundational notion of self-interaction, and other related concepts.
If often words, defined with one or more allegedly fixed and pragmatically directly-occurring linguistic meaning, deceive thought, it is by making us attribute the temporarily personally and socially determined absolute meaning/s as absolute denotative realizations in the concerned processual objects under the merely denotative attribution. This sort of semantic fixation makes the words affect also the functions of all related sorts of words in the concerned theory.
This proves the necessity of broadening the ontology of the logic of semantics of words of all sorts in language. The semantic broadening must reach in language and theory beyond the exact denotations of whatever exist as processes – not merely of what exist individually, but instead, mainly of the related processes in their totality. Only thus can the totality of all existent processes permit their parts as individual existents to attain to the effects of the broadening.
This is what happens also in the case of the non-dualistic and monistic tendency of attribution of meanings, in an absolute sense, regarding the so-called ‘self-organization’, ‘self-reference’, and other natures, upon finitely existent biological organisms as idealistic sparks of an infinite-eternal Ultimate Consciousness, which for that reason should have had infinitely thorough infinitesimal reach of self-organization, which is not available in ordinary biologically based consciousnesses.
In religion, the absolutized concept of absolute self-transcendence at least in some human beings (either at the attainment of the highest state of the experience of Ideal Union, or at least at death) as the most desired “result” of their religious practices, is yet another serious example that has effectively held human race captive for millennia. It continues to do so in many nations and cultures. Such an absolutized concept of absolute self-transcendence, when ameliorated to acceptable levels of continuity of augmentation, may be an acceptable solution. But the solution for this problem in religion is not our concern here. I plan to discuss it later in a future book.
The level at which biologically physical organisms may be defined is determined and characterized at least by a finite amount of self-organizing ability in them at any time. They never attain an absolute state or an absolutzable experience of it. Such determination and characterization are due to the presence of life. But that this too is causal – albeit in another manner – may be discussed on another occasion. To put differently self-organization and self-reference as originating from the idea of self-interaction: due to the presence of some self-organizing ability in them beyond a certain limit (which limit is extremely difficult to determine sufficiently well by using measurement apparatuses), there is the presence of life.
But when habitually the meaning of self-determination is fixed under pragmatic deliberation “in favour” of some nearest theoretical needs and not by taking into account the most basic Categories (ontological universals) of the whole of Reality? It is there that the conclusion remains either absolutely materialistically reductive or absolutely idealistically incurring both the attainment of an absolute and unchanging state and instantiation of an infinite-eternal Absolute Consciousness in finitely active consciousnesses.
Then I shall also argue that self-interaction under a meaning determined by some pragmatically limited realities is a misnomer by all methods of argument. Why not then limit the pragmatic range further smaller? Why do pragmatists in science and philosophy not follow such a path? Hence it is better to argue in favour of removing at least the directly pragmatic, merely denotative, sort of motives behind absolute self-interaction, self-organization, self-reference, etc. in anything. Pragmatic motives do not at all take off at any stage of arguments to empower the significance of these terms.
Quantum physics’ statistical definitions of local and non-local states seem to empower them. But as I have already shown earlier in many works, non-local states are only a strictly probabilistically reached conclusion without an ontological commitment to an Extension-Change-wise active existent state behind the calculations. This is due to the inability of human minds by use of our experimental methods and mathematical tools to calculate certain minute causal events absolutely accurately. The lack of absolute or near-absolute accuracy is not a reason to accept some statistically non-causal (not existent in the Extension-Change-wise active manner) event. That is, the notion of non-causality of some quantum events arising here does not obey the pre-scientific law of Universal Causality.
The presupposition in quantum statistical non-causal interpretation is that some events characterized by probabilistic reasoning as “non-local” are non-causal events which then are supposed to “happen” in existent physical processes that are non-vacuously in Extension-Change. If they happen instead of “not to happen”, how do they happen in physically extended processes? Should they not primarily be Extension-Change-wise existent and thus be causal in all their parts? Hence, the happenings within them too should be such, and not be non-Extension-Change-wise vacuous in physically existent nature. Such “happenings” are physical contradictions for their very happening in existent beings.
If generalized properties (biologically consciousness-based ontological properties composed of many ontological universals) like self-organization, self-reference, and the more basic self-interaction are emergent in biological beings, they are certainly not be present in that manner in purely physical and non-biological beings. The question is: can any conscious mental event primarily be anything other than biologically consciousness-based?
If these are not emergent by being the resulting properties (not simple ontological universals) that differ due to their constant accumulation or loss or both of ontological universals, and if these properties are not of some sort of evolution from physical into physically biological aspects, together, of a wide variety of the evolving processes, then one would have to show how they are not produced evolutionarily. Suffice it to say that properties are emergent by evolution (of course, need not be emergent exactly as some emergentists have theorized) and hence are different in their grade among biologically processual physical entities; and as a result, the purely physical property of emergence and the biologically physical property of emergence are different but not absolutely different due mainly to their commonly possessing some ontological universals.
Note that any quality (ontological universal) is in itself absolute in the sense that it is not an existent but that ontological universals can only be the simplest in their implicit being in the many members of any natural kind. But any ontological universal and property (conglomeration of ontological universals, like in the case of concepts, sentences, truths, theories, etc.) within any near-infinitesimal part of any existent physical process (token entity) in this world, is non-absolute. As the result of this non-absoluteness, emergence (a property and a concept) too is not a notion with a permanently and absolutely fixed or hundred percent realized manner of realization in the parts of physical processes. In its capacity as a term denoting some specific process within physically existent processes, emergence (any other denotative of a property for that manner) is also not in possession of permanently and absolutely fixed meaning/s.
We may at the most take for granted a general sense of it as highly true by keeping its advanced meaning-dimension with respect to our minds as open for further evolution in linguistic expressions in theories regarding each such term or groups of them (including via logic and mathematics), because the objectual processes behind them and any of the parts of these processes, parts of these parts, etc. are not absolutely in possession of these or any other properties. In that case, how can our conceptual fixation of the meanings of unfinished processes be finished products?
The said objectual processes, their parts, parts of these parts, etc. behind every denotative are also not in absolute possession of the individual ontological universals that constitute these properties by reason of the impossibility of infinite division of anything into infinitesimal existents, in which on infinitesimals alone can be placed a pure ontological universal as being under absolute possession by the existent. But in fact no infinitesimal can exist non-vacuously. Moreover, no conglomeration of ontological universals into a property can consist of infinite number of ontological universals. Hence even the conglomeration of ontological universals into properties cannot be a finished product.
If, as we said, the so-called self-organization available in living beings cannot be absolute in the case of any living cell or its parts, then it shows that no physical process has so far become absolutely biological and absolutely non-physical. That is, biological activities are nevertheless physical, and thereafter, when there is an evolutionary heightening in it by emergence, then they become also biologically physical. I should remind the reader that I do not bring in any iota of panpsychism here – the only thing is that this fact will not be clear to anyone with only elementary convictions about panpsychism. But I leave it at that since this is not part of our discussion here.
Note also that we may generalize self-organization only upon what a physically existent and in that very capacity biologically organic processual entity. No such processual entity is in infinite activity in any of its parts. Hence, two facts should be kept in mind here:
(1) A wholly self-organizing kind of part or parts cannot be found in this world. For a similar reason, while characterizing anything this way or that way, it must be remembered that there is nothing absolutely this way or that way except its fully physical nature. Everything is existent as whatever it physically is; and none is fully whatever the physical entity is perceived or defined to be, except that it is physically existent and has in its processual possession the ontological universals absolutely implied by its physical existence.
(2) No human being can fix the meanings of self-organization and related terms forever and use them as totally involving any iota of a physical or physically biological entity. At the most we may generalize the meanings and work with them, and in the process of it re-define the terms, verbs, attributes, etc. into more perfection. This is part of the growth of language.
Hence, by assigning a characterizing name-sticker to any evidently general emergent property as being produced out of self-interaction, self-organization, self-reference, emergence, etc., we cannot absolutely categorize any iota of an existent biological and/or biologically conscious being’s action in evidence of these said properties as something wholly different from physical existents in general or from another physical or biological existent.
If they are not absolutely different from any other physically existent processes, then clearly, (1) all these are primarily and always irreducibly physical / material (both the “physical” and the “material” simultaneously involving finite amounts of existent matter processes and energy processes together, without exception – and not merely as the mathematical quantities assigned to them in individual situations and termed ‘matter’ and ‘energy’), and, (2) when seen both practically and theoretically, it is only after being physical / material that some of them are biological and thus given to actions proper to self-organization, self-reference, self-interaction, etc. In short, no part of the biological ever ceases to be physical / material in its non-vacuous processual existence.
Those who become systemic-logically quack as scientists and philosophers function intellectually by (1) first correctly considering the knowledge of the function of energy in physical entities in terms of various methodological plays of mathematical quantities and equations, (2) then, unluckily, forgetting the epistemic status of this fact and considering the knowledge of a function as the function itself, the logic and mathematics of the function as the function itself, and (3) then, further identifying the function itself (and the knowledge of the function itself) as the very processes that the function represents, as if the epistemic is the same as the thing epistemically explained denotatively and using concatenations of denotative universals. This sort of scientists and philosophers deserve derision as agents of degeneration and decadence of science, philosophy, and culture.
This too can be taken in conjunction with the discussion on the linguistic heresy or paradox which means also that at the most there is in biological processes a reduction of the merely physical aspect by means of the near-absence of some physical properties (i.e., some physical properties, e.g., inorganic chemical reactions, radioactivity, etc.) are not present in biological processes. This reduction is characterized by the finite presence of properties that belong solely to biological entities. But the basically physical-ontological universals remain, and many of the physical properties too, some of them containing some part-conglomerations of ontological universals belonging to biological properties. This fact could be used to extract a new concept of the biological, the mental, the conscious, etc., and if one wants, even a new foundational concept of the spiritual aspect in religions.
But the religious aspect does not consist in (1) merely presupposing an infinite-eternal Ultimate and Pure Consciousness (UPC) as pre-existent, under the guise of justifying the existence of consciousness in the world, and taking the universe as a purely conceptual and/or pure-concept-based physical creation by the UPC, without explanation as how the purely conscious UPC can become or be instantiated in the partially conscious entities in the world which is its creation, (2) explaining individual consciousnesses as miraculous ideal-knowledge-level instantiations of this presupposed UPC – which is miraculous, due to its epistemologically ambiguous unity and ontological duality with the infinite-eternal UPC – but without explaining whether and why the UPC in its individual expression is infinite-eternal or merely finite, and (3) explaining away minds as something separate from UPC both in its ideal primordiality and in its miraculously stealthy self-individualization in consciousnesses – miraculously stealthy because of its supposed conversion into finite conscious existents.
In short, the minimum Categorial implications (i.e., the ontological universals: Extension and Change) of the existence of the physical / material aspect are more fundamentally (i.e., near to absolutely) acceptable in anything non-vacuously existent, including in the biologically existent, than are acceptable the biological properties (conglomerations of various ontological universals), which often falsely but unconsciously come to be accepted as being the fixed and wholly differentiating nature of biological organisms.
What becomes clear here is the essential nature of the distinction between (1) ontological universals and (2) properties as conglomerations of ontological universals. Only ontological universals in their ideality cannot change. Properties are composed of them. There can be any finite number of such universals in them, and their number (unknown in each case) is the proof of non-exact measurability of properties. Some of the ontological universals are naturally most applicable to all existent processes, and the others are not meant for all. Hence the need to seek out the ever more fundamentally characterizing Categories of all physically existent processes and the eventual necessity of basing all biological properties on some physical universals which in fact are the physical-ontological Categories.
It is worth mentioning here that even as the self-organizing capacity of biological organisms is not present in an absolute measure anywhere in biological organisms as is intended by intellects that favour fixed meanings (i.e., as absolutely everywhere in every infinitesimal part of any existent organism), so also, in purely physical processes too there must be present an even humbler measure of this property. This is in the remote sense that all the ontological universals that characterize self-organization can be present in purely physical processual entities in certain conglomerations of ontological universals, and the conglomeration of ontological universals in biological organisms include many more other ontological universals in various intensities.
This is not any sort of pre-existence of merely and exactly the said property (conglomeration of many ontological universals) in purely physical processual beings. Rather, all the ontological universals exemplified in any property in a biological organism are present also in some other physically processual entities (and not concentrated merely in one), in each case in a different (or at least slightly different) sort of conglomeration formation. Conglomeration of ontological universals can only be in varying (normally more meagre) measures in a natural kind.
This helps dismantle the argument that, if the property of self-interaction, self-organization, self-reference, emergence, etc. were inexistent in physical beings in a milder form, no similar or non-similar property would have been such that it be converted gradually in its evolution into a stage where it can finally be called life. It is the conglomeration of some ontological universals (a property or many properties) that gradually evolve into causing the emergence of a specific property, in our case a biological property. In short, for consciousness to emerge in the process of evolution, it is not necessary that consciousness pre-exist in its elementary form as the property that characterizes consciousness.
Clearly, what is termed evolution is not any exactly measured-up property. Instead, it is the intensification or relegation of some ontological universals and the addition of some other universals, all of them together forming a property that is (finitely) different from others. I term this as an extremely variegated intensification of property-configuration by some ontological universals within biologically physical objects and as the evolutionary pre-condition for biological emergence.
Clearly enough, this argument shows that not all ontological universals of the property of self-organization, but only some of them are present in non-biological processes. Here, my term ‘emergence’ is merely a term to which common linguistic practices have yielded some generalized meaning – but nobody will be able to fix its meanings and their explanations forever and absolutely, because all the ontological universals that constitute the property of self-organization and emergence in biological organisms are not as such and fully present in purely physical entities.
Moreover, since it is only a property, it must also be known that it is a property consisting of many, more simple, ontological universals that are pertaining, more commonly than others, to even more other existent entities / processes, and that therefore the property of emergence is not an ontological universal within itself. It is a property, a conglomerate of ontological universals. The various characteristics of proper objects that the sciences and philosophy discuss as fundamental are not so fundamental as their Extension-Change-wise existence as non-vacuously existent, constantly finitely impact-generating, and hence universally causal processual beings. The conglomeration of Extension and Change is nothing but causality in all parts of the given entity as is the case in all other existents.
Now arises a question in self-interaction, on which are based the absolutized meanings of self-organization, self-reference, emergence, etc. – the rational answer to which will support the ultimately physical-ontological status of all existent processes as Extension-Change-wise active, i.e., universally causal, existence. Is self-interaction possible, if it is (1) between two parts of one and the same physically existent entity, i.e., between parts alone, or (2) by one existent or by one of its parts with itself?
I have said above that the level at which biological organisms are defined is determined by at least an iota of self-organizing ability in them, due to the presence of life. This is in the sense that in all or many of their parts the nature or property of self-organizing may only be discovered partially, and not in the sense that it will be discovered in any one element or parts thereof in an absolutely self-organizing manner.
I have also suggested that at least a highly elementary measure of self-organization capacity should be present also in purely non-biological processes so that it can increase evolutionarily and give rise to biological processes; and if not, emergence of life and elementary mentality would never take place in physically chemical elements and molecules. But this capacity in purely non-biological processes can only be such that they do not get expressed as the property of self-organization. Some ontological universals that belong to the finite amount of self-organization in biological processes will be present in purely physical processes in conglomeration with some other non-biological properties, and that is all. It is these ontological universals (elementary characteristics) that may conglomerate with other related or required ones and create self-organization. Hence, self-organization does not require absolute self-interaction.
If it is insisted that there exists something absolutely self-organizing in biological processes (i.e., at least some parts of biological organisms are considered to be absolutely self-organizing), the solution-seeking problems that arise here would be: How can an absolutely self-organizing organismic stuff interact with other non-self-organizing parts outside its own so-called absolutely self-organizing processes? How can the former exist at all, if not in contact with other existents? If they coexist, how at all can they interact physically?
These same questions await explanation concerning all other similar concepts that humans formulate in language. Hence, also in the linguistic formation of concepts there should be some sort of interaction, and all interactions are causal since no non-causal (non-Extension-Change-wise existent) interaction can exist non-vacuously.
The concepts of meta-cognition and meta-consciousness are another set of, very apt, cases in point. The moment meta-cognition is attributed to a conscious process, no little – however minute – portion (or portion of portion …) of the most elementary motions or actions, which are part of the biologically physical and thus sufficiently cohesive process (call it ‘existent processual consciousness’) involving conscious processes, is to be entitled as absolutely meta-cognitive or meta-conscious.
If the absolute sense is to be given to any near-infinitesimal part of the action (set of actions) in existent processual consciousness counterparts in the brain (i.e., to the brain parts and other related parts that were active in the act, which include both existent matter and energy), then the absolute sense of the terms that denote the action must first be justified rationally.
This can be done by proving two aspects of the action: (1) that this near-infinitesimal part of the action never was part of the physical world, and (2) that this near-infinitesimal part of the action ceases to be a part of the physically existent world, since (a) physically existent processes can only have finite activity although the infinite number of infinitesimal parts do not measure off to an infinite amount of it, (b) even a finite amount of parts in absolutely meta-cognitive or meta-conscious activity will have to interact with other not-so-absolutely meta-cognitive or meta-conscious physical processes (beings), and (c) in the course of the interaction the finite amount of parts must absorb into its inner parts some elements from the not-so-absolutely meta-cognitive or meta-conscious parts too – for if there is no absorption of this kind then there is no interaction, and absorption of any kind is due to impacts.
Yet another similarly pertinent notion that deserves mention here is ‘conscious intentionality’ (Brentano, Husserl, Searle, Chomsky, etc. among the philosophers and linguists). We have seen a big line of Continental and American phenomenologists, hermeneuticians, ethicists, linguists, and many more religious thinkers successfully attributing intentionality to at least some aspects of conscious behaviour. But then, as the result of naïve absolutism regarding the pertinence of the notion’s assigned denotative meaning to all parts of every element of participants in the actions leading to the conclusion of intentionality or to at least a few of them in the absolute manner, many of them believed that at least a portion of the conscious (intentional) apparatus is purely intentional and that the remaining portions could be purely biological, physical, etc. and thus not so intentional.
In short, denotative meaning in words (verbs, nouns, and attributes) is never absolute because of the non-absoluteness of the processes of the concerned action in the causally finitely active denotable entities / processes in the world and in the human brain.
Thus, denotative absoluteness of meaning in the logical semantics behind linguistic expression is a dangerous intellectual schism in ordinary uses of language including individual and social life, and is the result of a deep-seated tendency in language and language-using agents, which it is time to eradicate from the sciences and philosophy at least from its disastrous repercussions. I would term this schism, as active in the sciences and philosophy, as a paradox. We know that the suggested eradication is not going to take place in the ordinary use of language, literature, etc. and in ordinary human behaviour. But this is no reason for issuing ironical challenges and declaring “see-how-I-have-conquered-your-philosophy” sort of winning statements.
The usual ways of differentiation between concepts like ‘activity / action’, ‘functionality’, ‘structure’, etc. and between their meanings may also be analysed in the above manner and soon the futility of absolutized differentiations of significance will shine forth in the sciences and in philosophy, due to the interconnectedness of all these terms within the notion of physical existence and its grounding Categories, namely, Extension and Change. Pointedly to be mentioned is the interconnectedness between ‘activity / action’, ‘functionality’, ‘structure’, etc.
In short, without sufficiently fixing the meanings that can grow in clarity further with respect to these notions, and without showing their extent of interconnectedness and grounding in their deepest possible grounding Categories, namely, Extension and Change, progress cannot be registered while using any verbs, nouns, and attributes in languages of any kind. I keep this remark as a passing one here, since a physical-ontological discussion about this does not directly belong here.
After having accomplished the formation of the above conviction in academicians and scientists on the paradoxical and heretical aspects of the said absolutizations, the even more difficult responsibility of theirs shows up: that of eradicating the centuries of effects of the same linguistic schism in the various mathematical, physical, biological, and human sciences, from linguistics, from philosophy and ethics, and especially from linguistic philosophy – which latter, in fact, had set out to linguistically eradicate metaphysical problems from all philosophy and science and soon has fallen prey to the pragmatic linguistic absolutizing tendency which existed in language all the time that humanity existed.
((Neuroscientific aspects will appear here in passing, since they will be dealt with in another.))
3. Linguistic Absolutization and Its Consequences in Physical Sciences
Unlike the sort of terms discussed above, as we have already said, there are some physical-ontological universals and constructs behind them, which must be applicable to all existent things, before the discourse of properties sets it. Thus, as I have argued, the existence of properties pertaining to or akin to emergence cannot be a guarantee that biological bodies are free of the basically inevitable characteristic of being a material body or having a material body. This is because the most general ontological Categories (the most universal of all ontological universals) of all existents are directly implied in this characteristic / property.
I couch the discussion of the heresy / paradox of meaning absolutization within the general presuppositions of physicalism [Stoljar, Daniel, “Physicalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds), URL: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/physicalism/>], beyond which I have developed Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP). The present section discusses this possibility beyond crass physicalism and materialism.
Physicalism holds that everything is physical, physically to be explained. But of course, for this purpose they are not using the physical-ontological characteristics (which are basically the ontological universals, which have their conglomerations which are properties). Physical-ontological universals belong to all existent physical bodies, including non-vacuous energy propagations and existent biological varieties. I do not discuss MMP in all detail here, but I facilitate its physical-ontological foundations upon the general principles of physicalism, of which, I hold, materialism is a simplistic and scientifically and philosophically underdeveloped version.
But materialism merely holds that all that are real (I mean, existent) are matter and energy. One should not here be simplistic by saying that materialism holds that all that are real are matter alone. Today they do accept also the interconvertibility of existent matter and energy. They do not even take energy merely as quantity and matter alone as existent, as some physicalists my tend to argue. Physicalism includes the materialist thesis, but goes beyond it: that everything is physical and must be explained only by using physics and other sciences and not in terms of the highest physical-ontological foundations of physics. Physics here does not exclude biology, neuroscience, linguistics, and other sciences.
MMP too is a physicalism but not materialism that holds that everything is physical-scientifically explicable matter and energy, because matter-energy is not fully explicable by physical science but possesses the characteristics of physical bodies (Extension and Change), and everything that exists may be explained as being causal at the physically existent level but not at the level of explanation by physical science. MMP facilitates the theory that biological and biologically conscious bodies continue to be physical, thus involving reductionism concerning all living beings into bodies possessing at least the Categorially most foundational Extension and Change that are possessed by all existents. This aspect is absent in both crass physicalism and materialism.
MMP is not merely about living beings. It is about whatever exists. In our context of consciousness and language, MMP favours the functioning of existent conscious bodies without facilitating or involving absolute reductionism regarding the relative progress of fully causal freedom in some biological organisms. The sort of freedom available is relative freedom of some levels of conscious actions from the influence of merely physical and consciously causal actions from other existent processes. How can this be achieved? Before detailed explanations, I characterize it in a few sentences.
MMP Defined: Whatever be the property / properties that appear by the conglomeration of ontological universals within matter-energy conglomerations, there is no physically acceptable reason to say that these properties will disappear forever in all cases of development of properties. If any of the properties grows continuously within a given processual existent, it happens as follows. Increasingly more and more of near-infinitesimal parts of the existent or of just one part of the existent acquire this particular property more and more. This makes the existent an ever-growing base of that property. In this state too it can continue to exist, if it happens to acquire any one specific property continuously. Crass physicalisms (holding that the foundation of all explanation is always based on physical science) and materialisms (arguing that all that exist is the sort of matter-energy that we see) do not facilitate continuity in the acquisition of any property in Extension-Change-wise existent processes. Instead, they insist that all properties should change their base and lose those properties at some stage.
MMP resists merely physical-scientific level of explanations for the progress of causally thorough finite freedom in conscious beings, because such beings are involved in certain activities that have their base in the physical body. Such freedom cannot be non-causal freedom, since the interaction with non-biological bodies suggests similarity of basic nature between them. MMP involves basic (metaphysically most foundational, Extension-Change-wise) Universal Causality in all parts of the real internal physical constitution of relatively freely acting agents, and not the causation at levels explained by physical science and other positive sciences.
In the above, I have drawn up in gist a theoretical mode of viewing Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism. If the notions and words that we use (especially verbs, nouns, and attributes) are non-absolute in their denotative meaning and in the processes of meaning-representation via semantical attrition, this is not merely because minds are not justified in continuing from obtained meanings to absolutized meanings like in the case of ideal geometrical or other mathematical objects, ideal concepts of true and false in logic, etc. It is also because (1) no existent process is absolute at any given spacetime due to the continuity, although finite, of the Extension-Change-wise existence of non-vacuous processes in a finite manner, which is the same as Causality, and (2) Extension and Change together can become a property only by the involvement of some other ontological universals.
Even in this context of finitude and non-absoluteness of possession of ontological universals and properties, there are some absolutely-to-be-taken ontological universals pertaining to all existents, namely, Extension and Change (and I challenge the reader to show that there are any other/s). These ontological universals are to be taken as absolute because they are present at every aspect, every infinitesimal part, of any non-vacuous existent, and (2) they are constantly summoned by the fundamentally ontological commitment, required epistemologically for any knowledge of it, to the existence of all that exist.
If all existents possess only some absolute ontological universals, and all other universals become parts of conglomerations (called properties) of lesser ontological universals belonging to groups, then some of these properties (not ontological universals, but their conglomerations and only conglomerations) may, can, and hence will at times (given proper environment) evolve towards becoming ever more intense in their applicability / pertinence to every near-infinitesimal changing part of such evolved entities. Such evolution can only be the accumulation of further characteristics (ontological universals) that cumulatively represent the evolution of the existent processes in question.
If biological organisms constantly have a fully material / physical body in the sense of possession of at least the minimal characteristics (the two Categories) of all existents, then it is nothing but saying that the basic qualities (ontological universals) common to all physical existents must be available also in biological organisms. The term ‘quality’ here refers to the pure ontological universals, and not to qualities / properties like ‘being good’, ‘having two legs’, etc.
In many other characteristics the many processual beings can exhibit differences. This is what contributes to the identity of every process, sub-processes within a process, their sub-sub-processes, etc. with or as themselves and with or as no other. What constitutes their existence are the Categories: Extension and Change. That is, emergence cannot be of a manner of existence absolutely different from the material / physical manner of existence and yielding properties completely different from the most general physical-ontological qualities / Categories, namely, Extension and Change, of physical existents.
Thus, an inevitable part of a preface to biology would be that the purely physical / material nature evolutionarily yields within itself also biological ways (some ontological universals) of existence, as biological organisms are also absolutely physical / material. Even within the biological context, I take ‘the material’ and ‘the physical’ together as meaning the same – the physically existent whatever called matter-energy, which the cosmos is and contains everywhere – even though there are various currents of thought concerning this in common usage, e.g., the worse than physicalist claim that energy is only a mathematical quantity.
‘Material’ is usually considered not merely as matter but also as containing matter-related energy in contrast with energy treated merely as a mathematical quantity that is assigned to energy propagations. ‘Physical’ customarily is considered merely as physics-related, which naturally includes therein also the discipline named physics. Only those who want to extol energy into a divine level would take what is termed matter as the only ingredient of the cosmos.
I take ‘material’ and ‘physical’ to mean one and the same by first going back to the Latin-Greek materia-energeia and taking them together as meaning ‘material / physical existents’, whereby in the Latin concept of materia both matter and energy can today be included, and the Greek physis (which originally means also “growing”, although its stem phú(ý)- is related to the Sanskrit bhū and the English ‘be’) means for me the ‘material’ / ‘physical’ existents as such, which are defined as whatever is active and thus stable in that activity during all their existence.
‘Physics’ is another derivative from the Greek phú(ý)sis, this time as the study of whatever is in becoming-existence, meaning physically finite but continuously active existence. Continuity in physical processes in active existence is not infinite in whatever it is at a spacetime (Extension-Change region); instead, their continuity in becoming is absolutely true, and hence takes an absolute ontological commitment.
I subscribe to the physical principle of interconvertibility of matter and energy, which naturally permits me to take these two together as whatever is in existence as physical. I mean by ‘action’ in physical existents whatever happens in them, and not merely biologically intentional or partially intentional happenings, e.g., an action by a conscious agent.
With this short physical-ontological background, I propose a dismantling of the concept of false ideas about ‘self-interaction’. I shall treat it as a test case wherein most of the absolutizing words discussed above find another absolutizing parallel which is the case of a notion containing all of them. That is, if the absolutism of meaning of ‘self-interaction’ is analysed well and the real metaphysical problem therein is shown, then any concept that involves similar difficulties may well be de-absolutized. Here follows the analysis of the term ‘self-interaction’.
In physically processual existents, if any part (say, a Part of Level 1) of one of them is in self-interaction, it has clearly to be within itself, and not from outside. This can take place only if it has parts, and hence only between a few or all of the various parts (say, Parts of Level 2) of that one part of a process termed Part of Level 1. If one member of the Parts Level 2 of Part Level 1 is considered, then Level 2’s self-interaction cannot be with all its sub-parts, i.e., with all Parts of Level 3. Instead, some of them can act with some others of the same type or even with other Parts of Level 1 or 2. And so on. One may argue that there are no infinitesimal parts of any one of these parts. But this means only that the division process can go on infinitely, and each part will remain merely near-infinitesimal. The conclusion is self-evident: supposing that one entity or a part of it is considered as whole, none of them can interact with the whole of itself, since no existent physical process is non-extended.
With the introduction that time is always the measured duration of Change, let us move to some very significant additional conclusions for the present work: The above shows that, as the duration of Change, measured / measurable time cannot absolutely loop on itself; there is no non-measurable time; hence, time cannot move from the future to its past; and thus, causation must always be a forward process. However much spacelike a process may be, it involves some temporal duration, and vice versa. Hence, no absolute black hole singularity can exist, too.
If such are the truths, then self-interaction as the action of something absolutely on itself, on the whole stuff of itself, either involving no time or evidencing retro-causal measurementally (i.e., cognitive-epistemically) temporal regress, is a linguistic absolutism and ipso facto a metaphysical, physical-ontological, scientific-philosophical, physical, and linguistic nonsense.
Consequently, self-reference, self-referential consciousness, self-referential intentionality, self-referential emergence, etc., as based on the expectation that everything can act on itself in its totality, are gross terms used in disobedience to the ontological foundations of the broadest possible modes of existence, namely, Extension and Change. This is also a manner of demonstrating the impossibility of causation from future to present or past. As is now evident, an effect cannot cause its cause. A supposedly pre-existent Absolute Consciousness cannot divide itself into the specific consciousnesses in the cosmos.
4. Linguistic Absolutization in Physically Biological, Neural, Conscious States
From within the theoretical background created above, it is clear that whatever general laws apply to physical existents should apply also to brains, the conscious processes within them, etc. This does not mean that all that happen in all physical processes should happen also in brains and consciousnesses, but instead, some fundamentally ontological universals about physical existents should be present in biologically existent processes too. Note also that I meant very generally about physical existents, and did not take ‘physical’ as belonging merely to physics and physics-based explanations.
I do not take consciousness in its totality merely as the clearly conscious activities nor exclusively as the so-called intentionality, self-referential and self-interactive activities, etc. within brain events. Consciousness is more than intentionality; and self-referential and self-interactive activities are not fully so and not exclusively consciousness. Consciousness is the totality of all the cognitive and cognitivity-facilitating relational (including sensitive, emotional, memory, extremely vague mental processes within the background of other clearer activities and while the clearly conscious aspect is less active, etc.) and the evidently and remotely cognitive biological movements within the brain and those which are extended into (and beyond) the body as part of these relational biological movements.
Thus, the specific relationality meant here is more than what happens as strictly biological in the biological body. Therefore, consciousness is an assumed, finite, and non-absolute unity of all the relatively more self-related reflections of experiences of the biological being within the biological brain and related areas. One who did not understand the implications of these statements might now accuse me of excluding all non-cognitive activities of the brain – in that case, the request is to read again the statements above.
Now to the next step. Does the brain obey physical laws? Yes. But does it obey the physical laws merely as a crystal obeys? No. The manner of application of the physical laws is what makes the main difference. More than physical laws, what are obeyed constantly and without any exception are the most basic physical-ontological Categories (Extension and Change) and naturally their fusion, namely, Universal Causality. For this reason, it is clear that at least such pre-scientific Categories are laws and should be obeyed by all physical and biological existents.
I would reiterate: Here belong not merely non-vacuous Extension and Change, which means impact formation by non-vacuously extended existents. Extension and Change, as the most fundamental Categories of all existents, may be considered as the highest axioms or laws at the pre-scientific metaphysical realm. Their fusion (Universal Causality) is a derivative pre-scientific law to be obeyed strictly without exception. From these are derived also other pre-scientific Categorial laws like Processuality, Conservation, etc., of which I do not discuss here, nor of the manner of derivation of these latter from Extension-Change.
If Extension-Change-wise existence may be taken as the pre-scientific law of Causality, and if all existents are such, then Universal Causality prevails in all physical and biological existents. The nature of this pre-scientific law is such that I cannot be impeded by any scientific theory that does not aim to derive its theoretical foundations from Extension-Change. This is not merely a philosophical belief but also a universal Law much more fundamental than scientific laws like the causality pertaining to each science, e.g., statistical causality, chemical causality, social causality, etc.
There can be two sorts of scientists who can only continue being irritated about the above and waste mental energy by psychological fighting and self-talk: (1) physical scientists steeped in the non-causality stance of certain quantum-physical statistical interpretations or a biologist, neuroscientist, and (2) human scientists (I do not generalize over all physicists, biologists, neuroscientists, and human scientists) expecting something uniquely non-physical or statistically non-Extension-Change-wise imaginable and science-debilitating as happening in consciousness. The strength of the physical-ontology behind Extension and Change would someday prevail over them, because the pre-scientific laws are constitutive also of the consciousness-based procedures of formation of all mathematics and logic and the mathematical foundations of statistics.
The above ontologically and physically inevitable Categories of all existents are also the context in which the physically possible extent of self-interaction applies and plays out in the brain. If any one element or part of it in the brain is held to be absolutely self-interactive, then one will have to show that at least a portion – however small – of the brain and each near-infinitesimal part of that portion is absolutely self-interactive without a mix with other bodily and typically brain elements that are not in absolute self-interaction. But this is not the case in any part of the brain, for reasons discussed above. Nor can one argue that everything existent is in absolute self-interaction.
Hence, the physical, biological, neurological, and conscious so-called self-interactions are all in the very least merely interactions between two or more parts or sub-parts or sub-sub-parts, and not interactions absolutely within one and the same unit part considered as integral. They may also include interaction with elements beyond the very so-called self-interacting parts. This is at the most so, because no physical (which includes also biological) interaction is infinite in the total amount of parts involved in the action. In short, it is just physical action characterized also biologically, i.e., characterized by some sort of extra amount (than in purely physical processes) of self-organization between parts of the brain and the brain’s ability to do the same between its parts and outwards.
Now, upon me cannot be imputed the mistake of equating (1) human “action” and conscious “action” as in normal conversations – to which one has reserved the verb ‘action’ – and (2) whatever actions / processes happen in physically existent processes, biologically physical existent processes, etc. I prefer to call them all of them as action. This is merely a theoretical preference. The important point is that terms like self-interaction do not mean that all action, all motion, all Change, are absolute self-interactive actions within any one tiny part of existent body that is considered at the instance.
5. The Scientific-Metaphysical Aspect of Grounding the Sciences
Language is an evolutionary instrument to express anything with inevitably fixed or sufficiently fixed meanings. But this is a pragmatic matter for human race, which permits assigning fixed meanings only for the time if the persons are aware of the theoretical non-fixity of any pragmatic meaning whatever. Nevertheless, majority of humans thinks in terms of meanings fixed forever. Given the non-vacuously Extension-Change-wise causal-processual nature of Reality in all its parts, the linguistic practice of absolute fixation of meanings of denotative words representing the verbal and nominal aspects of processes and their attributes cannot be granted in science and philosophy which can be advancement-oriented only in terms of the non-fixity of meanings.
As is clear by now, (1) language is full of the linguistic heresy used for winning in argument, serving only to make biological, cultural, and linguistic evolution and scientific and philosophical processes and advancement as stationary as possible, producing millions and millions of convinced commoners for upkeep of pragmatic-linguistically inalienable orthodoxies, (2) which is properly a paradox in science and philosophy due to the above-said reasons, which is a matter that either cannot be solved at all or may be solved somehow – but in ordinary daily use, words and their products will have to continue to be heretically fixated in meanings.
This linguistic heresy or scientific-philosophical paradox, involved in words in various degrees, can only be bridged, not solved. That is, we attempt to eradicate the paradox in science and philosophy and end up having some success. It will remain a heresy in common usages, conversations, customs, cultural traditions, and elementary and not-so-elementary expressions of religion. But even here, even as the linguistic heresy continues, it can gradually be transformed by the extent of transcendence of the paradox achieved in science and philosophy.
No scientist or philosopher can now say that extending all notions, insights, and theories to fundamental and experimental physics is the resolute aim and only method of salvation of all science and philosophical, or that this is where all scientific and philosophical seeking should start, or both. For some, what is more fundamental is physics, biology, neuroscience, etc., and for some it is logic and mathematics, for some it is any of the human sciences, for some everything is reducible to language and linguistic interpretations, and for everything at the level of knowledge is just feeling. In my opinion, the starting point of all science and philosophy must be where one can seek the broadest generalities in the sciences and all human endeavours, all with clear and at least generalized reference to Reality-in-total, because the most general aspects of whatever we say should be applicable to all existent processes and thus and only thus to its parts.
The solution, therefore, consists not only (1) in constantly stretching the meanings of terms and other words of all sorts in a theoretical manner proper to each science and philosophy, but also (2) in drawing the fundamentally physical-ontological presuppositions of the reason for such re-broadening of the meanings of terms – i.e., the processes that language attempts to denote by various words are to be constantly taken as non-absolute in any of the properties attributed to the existent processes because the grounding notions on which terms are based are of application to all that exist, and not merely to all that we say.
The absoluteness of meanings of denotative words denotatively represent properties and those that denotatively represent the constituents of properties, namely, the ontological universals that conglomerate to form the properties of existent processes in their natural kinds. Such absoluteness of meanings of denotatives will be ever more the greater the reach of application of those ontological universals is in theoretical and empirical endeavours. Hence the relatively high absoluteness of the ontological universals that pertain to all existents, namely, Extension and Change, and their conglomerated Category, namely, Universal Causality.
Even today one may call oneself a scientist if one is an experienced student of and does researches in one specific field of knowledge. But the above-said sort of schism or paradox would be rampant in one’s field of research if one is not open to other fields of knowledge and does not seek the common grounds behind all these sciences. Seeking the common grounds should be done in such a way that the verbs, nouns, and attributes formulated in one science can interact with similar ones in other sciences and permit researchers in other sciences to seek the ever broader and sharper meanings of the common grounds of all sciences.
If Extension and Change and their conglomerated Category, namely Universal Causality, are not the foundations – although their meanings need further clarifications in the course of years and decades – let it be shown by opponents that more fundamental implications of To Be may be found and that their meaning can be clarified further and further in terms of the To Be of Reality-in-total. We have already had for millennia much discourse on regions of Reality and on the particularity of things.
Differentiating between the functionality and structure of anything existent does not yield any absolute difference between physically material processes and processes that give rise to the biological and the conscious sorts of existents. If denotative labels like ‘self-reference’, ‘self-interaction’, etc. can be proved to be an activity that absolutely differentiates conscious organisms from purely physical (non-biological) beings / processes, then one could claim success in the theory – which has never been the case so far in the related sciences.
If not, then self-reference, self-interaction, etc. will remain fully but finitely causal within the unfolding of what these terms represent denotatively, just as all material / physical existents too are subject to the pre-scientific law of Universal Causality due to the fact that all that exist non-vacuously must be in Extension and all that exist thus should always (continuously) generate finite amounts of impact, i.e., Change, on a finite number of other such existents. This necessitates seeking the common grounds of all the sciences while science succeeds creating new notions, branches of science, philosophies, etc. and the ever broader and deeper meanings of the verbs, nouns, and attributes at use in them.
Discussions like the above would certainly confuse some at the initial stages, but this is in view of beginning just somewhere to clean up sciences and philosophy out of the grand old human tendency to absolutize the meanings of words, especially of verbs, terms, and attributes, which in some or other manner represent existent processes and the sub-processes within them. We may even extend this discussion to the case of the age-old discussions on human freedom, emergence of life, emergence of consciousness, etc., and to find ways of understanding the manner of continuance of consciousness’s creativity. The present attempt stops short of these.
From the above discussions one thing is very clear: There is, within earthly and extraterrestrial human or similar existence, no emergence of a presupposed, already eternally pre-existent, and holistically infinite-eternal consciousness that is supposed by some religious philosophies as capable of creating an absolutely non-local localization of itself within earthly and extraterrestrial human and similar existents.
There have been philosophies that have confounded everything by treating everything simultaneously from the absolutistically holistic and the absolutistically pragmatic ways of forming statements. Absolutist holism takes all existents as expressions of the One That, which, by reason of the absolutism concerning the stuff of the Absolute Consciousness, is taken as absolutely different even from the most fundamental ways of existence imaginable, i.e., Extension and Change. The said absolute difference has been presupposed because, in any case different from the absolutistically holistic, the “One That” would have to be part of the multiple physical processes existent in the cosmos or vice versa.
The resultant impasse is that, in the said case, the “One That” cannot exist non-vacuously, and any vacuous existence can only be notionally transcendental and not concretely existent as transcendent to or as inclusive of the cosmos, because the transcendental is a mere ontological universal, and the transcendent is a non-vacuous existent within the purview of Extension and Change. If it has only Extension, then it cannot exist at all, since it would again be an inactive infinite-eternal stuff unable to be instantiated or active in any manner.
Thus, it would become useless to explain the existent cosmos. How then can it merely instantiate itself in the various physical and physically biological beings, by thus somehow “creating” all these beings, if it has no action at all? If it exists, it needs to be of infinite Extension and infinite Change. This alone would capacitate it to be active. Hence, a solution where the infinite-eternal consciousness is a mere “One That” without infinite Change is unthinkable for (1) anyone who favours semantic absolutism and (2) anyone who favours the existence of an infinite-eternal consciousness that instantiates itself or creates by way of converting the infinite-eternal itself to the finite-ephemeral parts of the cosmos.
But if one says that the cosmos has been infinite-eternal and without any partial or total origin, then the infinite-eternal consciousness as the transcendental “One That” becomes a useless notion and a vacuous non-existent. Can there then be freedom of any kind within the law of Universal Causality in existent physical, biological, and conscious processes to make any advance in the cosmos? This question is to be discussed in another chapter.
There are other areas in language that deserve redemption from the absolutization of meaning. An example is connectives in language and logic, like ‘and’, and ‘or’, and disjunctive ‘or’. But this and related topics must be discussed based on the foundation built by the present work, from the linguistic (both syntactic and semantic), logical, mathematical, positive-scientific, and philosophical viewpoints. This is beyond the scope of the present work.
WHAT IS THE MYSTERIOUS STUFF OF INFORMATION?
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
Here I give a short description of a forthcoming book, titled: Cosmic Causality Code and Artificial Intelligence: Analytic Philosophy of Physics, Mind, and Virtual Worlds.
§1. Our Search: What Is the Mysterious Stuff of Information?: The most direct interpretations of the concept of information in both informatics and in the philosophy of informatics are, generally, either (1) that “information is nothing more than matter and energy themselves”, or (2) that “information is something mysterious, undefinable, and unidentifiable, but surprisingly it is different from matter and energy themselves”.
But if rightly not matter and energy, and if it is not anything mysteriously vacuous (and hence not existent like matter-energy, or pure matter, or pure energy), then how to explain ‘information’ in an all-inclusive and satisfying manner? Including only the humanly reached information does not suffice for this purpose. Nor can we limit ourselves to information outside of our brain-and-language context. Both the types need necessarily to be included in the definition and explanation.
§2. Our Search: What, in Fact, Can Exist?: First of all, what exist physically are matter and energy (I mean carrier wavicles of energy) themselves. In that case, information is not observable or quasi-observable like the things we see or like some of the “unobservables” which get proved later as quasi-observable. This is clearly because there are no separate energy wavicles that may be termed information particles / wavicles, say, “informatons”. I am subjectively sure that the time is not distant for a new mystery-monger theory of informatons will appear.
§3. Our Search: A Tentative General Definition: Secondly, since the above is the case with humanity at various apparently mysterious theoretical occasions, it is important to de-mystify information and find out what information is. ‘Information’ is a term to represent a causal group-effect of some matter-energy conglomerations or pure energy conglomerations, all of which (of each unit of information or units of information in each case) are in some way under relatively closely conglomerated motion, and together work out for a causal effect or effects on other matter-energy conglomerations or energy conglomerations.
§4. Our Search: In What Sense is Information Causal?: Thirdly, the causal effect being transferred is what we name a unit or units of information. Hence, in this roundabout sense, information too is causal. There may have been and may appear many claiming that information is something mysteriously different from matter-energy. Some of them have the intention of mystify consciousness in terms of information, or create a sort of soul out of immaterial and mysterious information conglomerations, and then create also an information-soul-ology. I believe that they will eventually fail.
§5. Our Search: Examples for Mystification: According to some theologians (whose namies avoid mentioning in order to avoid embarrassment) and New Age informaticians, God is the almighty totality of information, and human, animal, and vegetative souls are finite totalities of the same. Information for them is able to transmit itself without the medium of existent matter, energy, or matter-energy. Thus, their purpose would be served well! But such theories seem to have disappeared after the retirement of some of these theologians because there are not many takers for their theological stance. If they had not theologized on it, some in the scientific community would have lapped up such theories.
Hence, be sure that new, more sophisticated, and more radical ones will appear, because there will be more and more of others who do not want to directly put forth a theological agenda, and instead, would want to use the “mystery”-aspect of information as an instrument to create a cosmology or quantum cosmology in which the primary stuff of the cosmos is information and all matter and energy are just its expressions. Some concrete examples are the theories that (1) gravitation is not any effect carried by some wavicles (call them gravitons), but instead just a “vacuum effect”, (2) gravitation is another effect of electromagnetism that is different from its normal effects, etc.
§6. Why Such a Trend?: In my opinion, one reason for this trend is the false interpretation of causality by quantum physics and its manner of mystifying non-causality and statistical causality by use of spatialization and reification of mathematical concepts and effects as physical without any attempt to delimitation. There can be other reasons too.
§7. Our Attempt: All-Inclusive Definition of Information: Finally, my attempt above has been to take up a more general meaning of the notion ‘information’. For example, many speak of “units of information in informatics”, “information of types like in AI, internet, etc., that are stored in the internet in various repositories like the Cloud”, “information as the background ether of the universe (strangely and miraculously!)”, “loss of all information in the black hole”, “the quantum-cosmological re-cycling of information in the many worlds that get created (like mushrooms!) without any cause and without any matter-energy supply from anywhere, but merely by a (miraculously quantum-cosmological vacuum effect (!?)”, etc. We have been able to delve beyond the merely apparent in these notions.
Add to this list now also the humanly bound meanings of the notion of ‘information’ that we always know of. The human aspect of it is the conglomeration of various sorts of brain-level and language-level concatenations of universal notions (in the form of notions in the brain and nouns, verbs, etc. in language) with various other language-level and brain-level aspects which too have their origin in the brain.
In other words, these concatenations are the brain-level and language-level concatenative reflections of conglomerations of universals (which I call “ways of being of processes”) of existent physical processes (outside of us and inside us), which have their mental reflections as conceptual concatenations in brains and conceptual concatenations in language (which is always symbolic). Thus, by including this human brain-level and language-level aspect, we have a more general spectrum of the concept of information.
In view of this general sense of the term ‘information’, we need to broaden the definition of the source/s of information as something beyond the human use of the term that qualifies it as a symbolic instrument in language, and extend its source/s always to some causal conglomeration-effect that is already being carried out out-there in the physical world, in a manner that is not a mere construct of human minds without any amount of correspondence with the reality outside - here, considering also the stuff of the consciousness as something physically existent. That is, the causal source-aspect of anything happening as mental constructs (CUs and DUs) is a matter to be considered always as real beyond the CUs, DUs, and their concatenations. These out-there aspect consists of the Extension-Change-wise effects in existent physical processes, involving always and in each case OUs and their conglomerations.
§8. (1) Final Definitions: ‘Information’ in artificial intelligence is the “denotative” (see “denotative universals” below) name for any causally conglomerative effect in machine-coded matter-energy as the transfer agent of the said effects, and such effect is transferred in the manner of Extension-Change-wise (see below: always in finitely extended existence, always every part of the existent causing finite impacts inwards and outwards) existence and process by energy wavicles and/or matter-energy via machine-coded energy paths. The denotative name is formulated by means of connotation and denotation by minds and by machines together.
Information in biological mindsis the denotative name for any causally conglomerative effect in brain-type matter-energy and is transferred in the Extension-Change manner by brain-type matter-energy and/or energy wavicles. The denotative name here is formulated by means of connotation and denotation (see below) by minds and by symbolic-linguistic activities together.
Mind, in biologically coded information-based processes, is not the biological information alone or separately, but it is the very process in the brain and in the related body parts.
§9. (2) Summary: I summarize the present work now, beginning with a two-part thesis statement:
(a) Universal Causalityis the relation within every physically existent process and every part of it, by reason of which each of it has an Existence in which every non-vacuously extended (in Extension) part of each of it exerts a finite impact (in Change) on a finite number of other existents that are external and/or internal to the exerting part. (b) Machine coding and biological consciousness are non-interconvertible, because the space-time virtual information in both is non-interconvertible due to the non-interconvertibility of their information supports / carriers that are Categorially in Extension-Change-wise existence, i.e., in Universal Causality.
Do artificial and biological intelligences (AI, BI) converge and attain the same nature? Roger Penrose held so initially; Ray Kurzweil criticized it. Aeons of biological causation are not codified or codifiable by computer. Nor are virtual quantum worlds and modal worlds without physical properties to be taken as existent out there. According to the demands of existence, existents must be Extended and in Change. Hence, I develop a causal metaphysics, grounding AI and BI: Extension-Change-wise active-stable existence, equivalent to Universal Causality (Parts 2, 3).
Mathematical objects (numbers, points, … structures), other pure and natural characteristics, etc. yielding natural-coding information are ontological universals (OU) (generalities of natural kinds: qualities may be used as quantities) pertaining to processes. They do not exist like physical things. Connotative universals (CU) are vague conceptual reflections of OU, and exist as forms in minds. Words and terms are their formulations in discourse / language – called denotative universals (DU), based on CU and OU.
The mathematical objects of informatic coding (binaries, ternaries) are “as-if existent” OUs in symbolic CU and DU representation. Information-carriers exist, are non-vacuous, are extended, have parts, and are in the Category of Extension. Parts of existents move, make impact on others, and are in the Category of Change. Extension-Change-wise existence is Universal Causality, and is measured in CU-DU as space-time. Other qualities of existents are derivatives, pertain to existent processes, and hence, are real, not existents.
Properties are conglomerations of OUs. For example, glass has malleability, which is a property. Properties, as far as they are in consciousness, are as CUs’ concatenations, and in language they are as DUs’ concatenations. AI’s property-attributions are information, which in themselves are virtual constructs. The existent carriers of information are left aside in their concept. Scientists and philosophers misconceive them. AI and BI information networks are virtual, do not exist outside the conglomerations of their carriers, i.e., energy wavicles that exist in connection with matter, with which they are interconvertible.
Matter-energy evolution in AI and BI are of different classes. AI and BI are not in space-time, but in Extension-Change-level energy wavicles in physical and biological processes. Space-time do not exist, are absolute virtuals, and are epistemic and cognitive projections. Physical and biological causations are in Extension-Change, hence not interconvertible.
From the viewpoint of the purpose of creating an adequate theory of experience and information, for me the present work is a starting point to Universal-Causally investigate the primacy of mental and brain acts different from but foundational to thoughts and reasoning.
§10.(3) The Context of the Present Work: The reason why I wrote this little book deserves mention. Decades ago, Norbert Wiener said (See Chapter 1, Part 1) that information is nether matter nor energy but something else. What would have been his motive while positing information as such a mysterious mode of existence? I was surprised at this claim, because it would give rise to all kinds of sciences and philosophies of non-existent virtual stuff considered to arise from existent stuff or from nowhere!
In fact, such are what we experience in the various theories of quantum, quantum-cosmological, counterfactually possible, informatic, and other sorts of multiverses other than the probably existent multiverse that the infinite-content cosmos could be.
I searched for books and articles that deal with the stuff of information. I found hundreds of books and thousands of articles in the philosophical, ethical, informatically manipulation-oriented, mathematical, and on other aspects of the problem, but none on the question of information, as to whether information exists, etc. This surprised me further and this seemed to be a sign of scientocracy and technocracy.
I wanted to write a book that is a bit ferocious about the lack of works on the problem, given the fact that informatics is today much more wanted by all than physics, mathematics, biology, philosophy, etc., and of course the social sciences and human sciences.
For example, take the series to which belong the first two of the three books: (1) Harry Halpin e Alexandre Monnin, eds. [2014], Philosophical Engineering: Towards a Philosophy of the Web; (2) Patrick Allo, ed., Putting Information First: Luciano Floridi and the Philosophy of Information –both from Chichester: Wiley Blackwell; and (3) John von Neumann [1966], Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
These works do not treat of the fundamental question we have dealt with, and none of the other works that I have examined deals with it fundamentally – even the works by the best of informatics philosophers like Luciano Floridi. My intention in this work has not been making a good summary of the best works in the field and submitting some new connections or improvements, rather than offering something new.
Hence, I decided to develop a metaphysics of information and virtual worlds, which would be a fitting reply to Norbert Wiener, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Jaakko Hintikka, and a few hundred other famous philosophers (let alone specialists in informatics, physics, cosmology, etc.), without turning the book into a thick volume full of quotes and evaluations related to the many authors on the topic.
Moreover, I have had experience of teaching and research in the philosophy of physics, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, process metaphysics, and in attempts to solve philosophical problems related to unobservables, possible worlds, multiverse, and cosmic vacuum energy that allegedly adds up to zero value and is still capable of creating an infinite number of worlds. Hence, I extended the metaphysics behind these realities that I have constructed (a new metaphysics) and developed it into the question of physically artificial and biological information, intelligence, etc.
The present work is a short metaphysical theory inherent in existents and non-existents, which will be useful not only for experts, but also for students, and well-educated and interested laypersons. What I have created in the present work is a new metaphysics of existent and non-existent objects.
Does anyone know whether the most advanced versions of artificial intelligence (AI) have been given the task of reconciling general relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics (QM)? If not, why not?
I'm far from being an expert on any of these topics, but it appears to me that this would be an excellent challenge for AI. The best minds in science have struggled with this deeply troubling challenge -- unsuccessfully -- for over 100 years. If AI could come up with a convincing resolution it would be an amazing milestone for both AI and for physics.
WHAT IS INFORMATION? WHAT IS ITS CAUSAL (OR NON-CAUSAL?) CORE? A Discussion. Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D. (Quantum Causality), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)
Questions Addressed: What is information? Is it the same as the energy or matter-energy that is basic to it? Is it merely what is being communicated via energy and different from the energy? If it is different, is it causally or non-causally different or a-causally? Is it something purely physical, if it is based on and/or identifiable to energy? What is the symbolic nature of information? How does information get symbolized? Does it have a causal basis and core? If yes, how to systematize it? Can the symbolic aspect of information be systematized? Is information merely the symbolic core being transmitted via energy? If so, how to connect systematically and systemically the causal core and the symbolic core of languages? If language is a symbolizing production based on consciousness and life – both human and other – and if the symbolic aspect may be termed the a-causal but formatively causal core or even periphery of it, can language possess a non-causal aspect-core or merely a causal and an a-causal aspect-cores? If any of these is the case, what are the founding aspects of language and information within consciousness and life? These are the direct questions involved in the present work. I shall address these and the following more general but directly related questions together in the proposed work.
From a general viewpoint, the causal question engenders a multitude of other associated paradoxical questions at the theoretical foundations of the sciences. What are the foundations of all sciences and philosophy together, upon which the concepts of information, language, consciousness which is the origin of language, and the very existent matter-energy processes are based? Are there commonalities between information, language, consciousness, and existent matter-energy processes? Could a grounding of information, language, etc. be helped if their common conceptual base on To Be can be unearthed, and their consciousness-and-life-related and matter-energy-related aspects may be discovered? How to connect them to the causal (or non-causal?) core of all matter-energy? These are questions more foundational than the former set.
Addressing and resolving the foundational question of the apriority of Causality is, in my opinion, the possibly most fundamental solution. Hence, addressing these is the first task. This should be done in such a manner that the rest should follow axiomatically and thus naturally. Hence, the causal question is to be formulated and then the possible ways of reflection of the same in mental concepts that may axiomatically be demonstrated to follow suit. This task appears to be over-ambitious. But I would attempt to demonstrate as rationally as possible that the connections are strongly based on the very implications of To Be. As regards language, I deal only with verbal, nominal, and attributive (adverbs and adjectives) words, because (1) including other parts of speech would go beyond more than double the number of pages and (2) these other parts of speech are much more complicated and hence may be thought through and integrated in the mainline theory here, say, in the course of another decade or more!
ESSENTIAL LOGIC, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY BEHIND PHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND SCIENCES OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. The Logic behind Physics
Physics students begin with meso-world experiments and theories. Naturally, at the young age, they get convinced that the logic thinking and research as applied to the meso-world level of physical phenomena that they follow is identical with the ideal of scientific method and hence there is nothing more general and advanced. Common social convictions on scientific temper may further confirm them in this belief. It then becomes a faith for them.
This has far-reaching consequences in the formation of the concept of science and of the logic of science, because the majority such students do not advance far forward, they fail to get the meaning of the foundations of the sciences, and thus remain spreading the elementary concept of science belonging to the meso-world logical applications. And as they get surprised at the quantum revolution, they tend to think or write books on topics like: “the whole universe is within the quanta in an atom”, because they think that the foundations of science are all questioned and set topsy-turvy by quantum physics!
But unquestionably, it is not very difficult to realize that even the quantum-physically upset sense of the logic behind the application of the scientific method is almost the same old manner of realizing (1) the ideal of scientific method and (2) the more general ideal of reason, namely, observe, hypothesize, verify, theorize, attempt to falsify for experimental and theoretical advancements, etc. upon meso-world realities, phenomena, data, etc.
Do teachers and professors of physics or of other sciences (1) instruct their students early enough on the advantages of thinking and experimenting in accordance with the above-mentioned fundamental fact of all scientific practice being founded on ever-better definable foundations of physics that are clearly based on the existence of physical objects as processes, or (2) make them capable of realizing the significance of this in the course of time? I think that they do not.
This shows that physicists (and for that matter other scientists) fail to a great extent at empowering themselves and their students in favour of the growth of science, thought, and life. The logic being followed in the above-said elementary mode of practice of scientific method at earlier stages of instruction, naturally, becomes for the students the genuine form of logic, instead of being an instantiation of the ideal of logic as reason.
This seems to be the case in most of the practices and instruction of all sciences till today. A change of the origin, justification, and significance of the use of logic in physics from the very start of instruction in the sciences is the solution for this problem. The change must be in the foundations and in the instructions on the foundations. Even at elementary stages of instruction this can be done, just like the SI units are being taught effectively very early in the school.
All humans equate (1) the physical-ontologically grounded and non-grounded forms of logic of each science, and even logic as such, with (2) reason as such. Reason as such, in fact, is more generic of all kinds of logic, and must be taken as that which must be realized in logic. But this attitude is not being followed in any science as of now. This has been my observation so far.
Practically none of the professors (of physics as well as of other sciences) terms the version of logic of their science as an instantiation of reason, which may be accessed ever better as the science eventually grows into something more elaborate and complex. Hence, a foretaste of the same given in form of the simple foundations of all sciences at the very start may go a long way to enhance the growth of science and human life. Physicist gets more and more skilled at reasoning only as and when she/he wants to grow continuously into a genuine physicist. The number of such persons is small. Increasing this number is one of the aims of the above-said kind of instruction in the sciences.
As the same students enter the study of recent developments in physics like quantum physics, relativity, nano-physics (Greek nanos, “dwarf”; in physics, @ 10-9), atto-physics (@ 10-18), cosmology, etc., they forget to make place for the strong mathematical effects that are due by reason of the conceptual and processual paradoxes which in turn are due to epistemological and physical-ontological differences between the object-sizes and the sizes of ourselves / our instruments. Some of the best examples of physicists forgetting the foundations of physics in existence are the Uncertainty Principle, the statistical interpretation of QM, cosmic singularity, quantum-cosmological multiverse from quantum vacua, counterfactual multiverse, etc.
They tend to believe that some of these and similar physics may defy our (meso-physical) manner of using logic and its source, namely, reason – but by this they mistakenly intend that all or many forms of logic and reason would have to fail if such instances of advanced physics are accepted in all of physics. As a result, again, their logic tends to continue to be that of the same meso-world level as has been taken while they did elementary levels of physics.
Does this not mean that the ad hoc make-believe interpretations of the logic of the foundations of QM, quantum cosmology, etc. are the culprits that naturally make the logic of traditional physics inadequate as the best representative of the logic of nature? In short, in order to find a common platform, the logic of traditional and recent branches of physics must improve so to adequate itself to nature’s logic. Nature’s logic is more than logic and its source, reason. Nature’s logic is the source of reason and thus of logic.
Why do I not suggest that the hitherto logic of physics be substituted by quantum logic, relativity logic, thermodynamic logic, nano-logic, atto-logic, or whatever other logic of any recent branch of physics that may be imagined? One would substitute logic in this manner only if one is overwhelmed by what purportedly is the logic of the new branches of physics.
But, in the first place, I wonder why logic should be equated directly with reason. The attempt should always be to bring the logic of physics in as much correspondence with the logic of nature as possible, so that reason in general can get closer to the latter. This must be the case not merely with physicists, but also with scientists from other disciplines and even from philosophy, mathematics, and logic itself.
Therefore, my questions are: What is the foundational reason that physicists should follow and should not lose at any occasion? Does this, how does this, and should this get transformed into forms of logic founded on a more general sort of physical reason? Wherein does such reason consist, and where does such reason exist? Can there be a form of logic in which the logical laws depend not merely on the micro- or mega- or meso-size of objects or the epistemological level available at the given object sizes, but instead, on the universal characteristics of all that exist? Or, should various logics be used at various occasions, like in the case of the suggested quantum logic, counterfactual logic, etc.?
Just like logic is not to be taken as a bad guide by citing the examples of the many logicians, scientists, and “logical” human beings doing logic non-ideally, I believe that there is a kernel of reason behind physics, justified solely on the most basic and universal characteristics of physical existents. These universals cannot belong solely to physics, but instead, to all the sciences, because they belong to all existents.
This kernel of reason in physics is to be insisted upon at every act of physics, even if many physicists (and other scientists and philosophers) may naturally not ensure that kernel in their work. I suggest that ensuring this involves not merely the constant attempt to formulation of nature’s logic in our reason and its instantiations in logic. It involves what can lead to the said results – and that is to formulate the very foundational logic of physics based on the generalities of all that exist and on the generalities of knowing all that exist.
I shall discuss these possibly highest universals and connect them to logic meant as reason, when I elaborate on: 3. The Ontology behind Physics (ALSO a discussion in RG).
The matter on which physicists do logical work is existent matter-energy in its fundamental implications and the derivative implications from the fundamental ones. It cannot be the all sorts of posited unobservables which cannot at all exist as physical processes but only as ad hoc necessities of some theoretical procedures in physics that are considered as theoretical existents.
This fact is to be kept in mind while doing any logically acceptable work physics, because existent matter-energy corpora in processuality delineate all possible forms of use of logic in physics, which logic is properly to be termed nature’s reason. Physics (and other sciences) needs to create a mode of presentation of logic where impossible theoretical entities can naturally be ostracized from the scenario of physics. This is possible only if the necessary, most general, Categorial demands of physical existence are inducted in all forms of logic of physics.
Moreover, theoretical and experimental conclusions are not drawn merely by one subject (person) in physics for use by the same subject alone. Hence, we have the following two basic requirements to note in the use of logic in physics and the sciences: (1) the intersubjectively awaited necessity of human reason in its delineation in logical methods should be upheld at least by a well-informed community, and (2) the need for such reason behind approved physics should then be spread universally with an open mind that permits and requires further scientific advancements.
These will make future generations and generations to further question the genuineness of the logic of specific realization of reason, and constantly encourage attempts to falsify theories or their parts, so that physics can bring up more genuine instantiations of human reason. But is such human reason based on the reason active in nature? How to make it base itself on the reason in nature?
Although the above arguments and the following definition of the logic being followed in mainstream and traditional physics might look queer or at least new and unclear for many physicists, for many other scientists, for many mathematicians, and even for many logicians, I attempt here to define logic for use in physics as the fundamental aspect of reason that physics should uphold constantly in every argument and conclusion due from it:
The logic behind physics is (1) the methodological science (2) of approaching the best intersubjectively rational and structural consequences (3) in what may be termed thought (not in emotions) (4) in clear terms of ever higher truth-probability achievable in statements and conclusions (5) in languages of all kinds (ordinary language, mathematics, computer algorithms, etc.) (6) based on the probabilistically methodological use, (7) namely, of the rules of all sensible logics that exemplify the Laws of Identity, Non-contradiction, and Excluded Middle, (8) which in turn must pertain to the direct and exhaustive physical implications of “to exist”.
Here I have not defined logic in physics very simply as “the discipline of the laws and rules of thought”, “the methodic discipline of attaining truths”, etc., for obvious reasons clarified by the history of the various definitions of logic during the past centuries.
But here comes up another set of questions: Is the reason pertaining to physical nature the same as the most ideal form of human reason? From within the business of physics, how to connect the reason of physical nature with that of humans? I may suggest some answers from the epistemological and ontological aspects. But, before that, I would appreciate your responses in this regard too.
2. The Epistemology behind Physics
The whole of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. are not the exclusive property of physics, or of any other particular science, or of all the sciences together. Each of them may apply the various general logical, epistemological, and ontological principles in ways suitable to their disciplines, but cannot claim that theirs is the genuine or the possibly best logic, epistemology, ontology, etc.
There is yet another manner, beyond the sciences, wherein (1) the object range and viewpoint range become the broadest possible in epistemology, and (2) the epistemological manner in which the two are connected becomes satisfactory enough to explain both the aspects and the procedures involved between them. This is a philosophical version of epistemology. Even this manner is not complete without including the various logics, epistemologies, and ontologies of the particular sciences.
Before pointing out the special manner in which physics could use the more general aspects of epistemology in itself, let me mention a general trend in science, especially physics. I have seen many students of physics and mathematics mistaking the logical ways in which they do experiments and theories as the same as the conceptual foundations of physics and mathematics.
They do not even think of the epistemology of physics. The clear reason for this is that their epistemology is a crude correspondence theory of truth, and this is outdated. Take any of the best physicists, and we can see in their works the underlying undefined epistemology being closer to the correspondence theory of truth than anything else. I would like to suggest in the following a clear spine of epistemological rudiments for physics.
The pragmatism and scientism at the foundations of practical physics does not accept anything other than the correspondence theory as prescriptive of all the truths of science. Of course, the amount of finality achieved in truths will be the measure of tenability of their truth-probability. But this is to be reserved to the most general truths derivable from any science or philosophy. Low-level truths are much beyond the purview of correspondence between the objectual and the theoretical. Unaware of these facts, most physicists take the difference lightly.
It is a pity that the students of the sciences and also philosophy students with scientistic orientations even think of their ways of permitting truth correspondence to all their truths as the sole possession of scientists, which they suppose are being usurped from philosophy in the course of the past centuries in such a way that philosophy will have ever less reason to exist, or no more reason to exist. Imaginably, in this pride they are encouraged by their presumption of possession of the scientific temper in an exceptional manner.
More evidently, there were and there are physicists holding that their use of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. is final and that all other details being done by other sciences, especially by philosophy, are a mere waste of time. If you want me to give an example, I suggest that you watch some of the YouTube interviews with Stephen Hawking, where he declares philosophy as a waste of time, or as an unscientific affair. The same sort of claim is to be seen being made by many mathematicians: that logic is a by-product of mathematics, and that philosophers are falsely proud of having logic as their methodology.
The reason why the whole of logic does not belong to the sciences is that the viewpoint from which sensation, thought, and feeling may be exercised in the broadest possible manner is not exhausted even by totaling all the object ranges of all the sciences. Each of them does logic in a manner limited by its object range. How then can their logic be the best possible? There is one and only one general science of which the viewpoint is the broadest. It is that science in which the viewpoint is that of the direct implications of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Against this backdrop, although the following definition might seem queer for many physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, there are reasons why I define here epistemology for use in physics. The following definition itself will clarify the reasons:
The epistemology behind physics is (1) the science of justifications (2) for the systemic fact, the systemic manner of achieving, the enhancement of the systemic manner of achieving, and the foundations of systems (3) of rationally derivable and explicable theoretical consequences of human efforts (4) to grasp the connection between physically existent reality and their pertinent realities of all sorts (5) in an asymptotic approach of truth-correspondence from the procedures of knowing (in terms of the pertinent realities of existent realities) onto the physically existent processes of reality, (6) in a spirally broadening and deepening manner of truth probability, (7) which serves to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of knowing, namely, Reality-in-general, (8) starting from reality-in-particular, and (9) by use of the highest theoretical generalities pertaining to Reality-in-total and its parts, namely, reality-in-particular.
The epistemology of physics does not take the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. But it must obey the primary implications of To Be and the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. What these implications are, will be treated below, under “3. The Ontology of Physics”. Epistemology in philosophy may be slightly more general than the epistemology of physics, in the sense that philosophy takes the viewpoint of all physical processes that exist and attempt to view every reality from that viewpoint alone. If not, philosophy has no justification for existence.
Naturally, the epistemology of the sciences will not be so general as that of philosophy. But obedience to it is better for the epistemology of physics; and the advantages of such obedience will be seen in the results of such physics and such sciences.
The epistemology of physics, therefore, will attempt to theorize, know, and predict all that exist, but from the viewpoint exclusively of experimentally / empirically verifiable methods based on what is directly or indirectly before us, namely, the physical processes at our reach. The epistemology of systematically and systemically (i.e., systematically of systems of systems … ad libitum) moving in the use of logic from the given existent physical processes to the details of the not immediately given but ever more minute or ever more distant physical existents is the epistemology of physics. The above definition would, in my opinion, be sufficient to cover as broad and minute procedures as possible in physics. Time has come to appropriate it in physics, lest much advantage be lost for too long.
Not that philosophy does not trust this approach of physics. But philosophy looks for the Categorial presuppositions of existence behind all that is verifiable or verified empirically and empirical-theoretically. These presuppositions are the starting points and guiding principles of philosophy. There is a stark difference between a methodology of this kind and the methodology of basing everything on the truths derived from empirical and empirical-theoretical research. Now from this viewpoint you may judge the following suggestions and determine whether the epistemology of doing physical science is as broad as that of philosophizing.
Every moment, our body-brain nexus is continuously but finitely in contact with itself and with a finite extent of the environment, more or less simultaneously, but in differing intensities, no matter however elementary. The primary mode of this is through sensation, using all available and necessary aspects of it as the case may be. Thought and feeling are possible only in continuity with sensation, and never without it.
But one special characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, feeling, and thought can very consciously induct into, and consequently deduce from the presuppositions of, all that exist – no matter whether they are a finite environment or infinite – and all these solely from the finite experience from the finite environment at hand. This seems to be absent in less human living beings.
Moreover, the second, but more forgotten, characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, thought, and feeling are affective, tending to itself and to others, in the broadest sense of the term ‘affective’. It is the manner in which every human being tends in his/her sensation, feeling, and thought. Hence, all processes of knowing will be coloured by affection.
The manner and then the so-constructed broader background in which sensation, feeling, and thought take place is affection, which we term also love in a very general sense. Sensation, feeling, and thought are the three interconnected modes of tending of the body-brain to itself and to the environment, tend always to connect itself with the environment.
But here too the important differentiating characteristic in human body-brains is their capacity to tend to the environment beyond the immediate environments, and further beyond them, etc. ad libitum. There is nothing wrong in theoretically considering that there is the tendency in humans to converting this sort of ad libitum to ad infinitum, irrespective of whether these environments can really go ever broader at infinity in the content of matter-energy within Reality-in-total. Infinity is another term here for generalizing.
Reality consists of existent reality and realities that pertain to existent realities in their groups. Existent realities are clear enough to understand. Realities pertinent to existent realities are never to be taken as belonging to just one existent reality. They are always those generalities that belong to many existent realities in their respective natural kind. These generalities are what I call ontological universals.
All generalizations tend beyond onto the infinite perfection of the essential aspects of the concepts pertaining to the object-range. Not that the object-range must be infinite. Instead, the tending presumes an infinitization due to the idealization involved in generalizations. This is a kind of infinitization that does not need an infinite Reality-in-total in existence. All the concepts that a human being can use are based in the infinitization of the essential aspects of the concepts in their ideality. But behind these mental ideals there are the ideals, namely, the ontological universals pertaining to the groups (natural kinds) of processual entities in the environment. These are the ideals in the things and are not in us. These too are idealizations at the realm of the natural kinds that form part of Reality-in-total.
Without loving in the sense of tending to, as human do, to the inner and outer environments in their generalities there is no sensation, feeling, and thought. The tending to need not be due to the love of the objects but due to the love of something that pertains to them or to the ontologically universal ideals pertaining to the objects. From this it is clear that the relation between the processual objects and the sensing-feeling-knowing mind is set by the ontological universals in the natural kinds of existent physical processes.
At the part of the mind there should be idealized universals of conceptual quality, because the ontological universals in natural kinds cannot directly enter and form concepts. This shows that the conceptual universals (called connotative universals) are the mental reflections of ontological universals that are in the natural kinds. In short, behind the epistemology of sensation, feeling, and thought there are the ontology and epistemology of loving in the sense of tending to, due to the otherness implied between oneself and the environment.
There may be philosophers and scientists who do not like the idea of love. I say, this is due to the many psychology-related prejudices prevalent in their minds. We need to ask ourselves what the major mode of exercitation of any activity in human beings, and none can doubt the role of love in epistemology. The physical foundations of love too are commonly to be shared with the foundations of other aspects of physical existence.
Such tending by the person is mediated within the person by the connotative universals. Their expression is always in terms of symbols in various languages. These are called denotative universals. Connotative universals get concatenated in the mind in relation to their respective brain elements and form thoughts and feelings. Their expression in language is by the concatenation of denotative universals and get formulated in languages as theories and their parts.
To put in gist the latter part of “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I suggest that the ontological, connotative, and denotative universals and the love of human agents to these and the very existent processual entities are what facilitate knowledge. The psychological question as to what happens when one has no love does not have any consequence here, because psychology differentiates between love and non-love in terms of certain presumed expressions of love and non-love.
In the case of the natural course of life of humans, the choice is not between love and non-love, but instead, between increasing or decreasing love. We do not speak here of loving other human beings as a matter of ethical action. Instead, the point is that of the natural love that humans have for everything including for sensing, feeling, knowing, etc.
One might wonder here why I did not discuss mathematics as an epistemologically valid tool of physics and other sciences. I have already dealt with this aspect in many other discussion texts in ResearchGate, and hence do not expatiate on it here.
3. The Ontology behind Physics
3.1. Traditional Physical Categories
There have arisen various schools of theories, mainly from within the physics community, theorizing elaborately concerning the ontological foundations of physics. Not till the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century have these notions been clear enough. Two major and common ways of approaching the foundations have been the following:
(1) Physical experiments and theories based on the notions of space, time, matter-energy, and causality. (2) Physical experiments and theories based on the four laws of conservation, namely, those of matter, energy, momentum, and charge. There may be other variations of the foundations, e.g., some include mass in the list. I believe that all such variations are based mostly on the two sets above.
The first set does not seem to be based on anything else from the viewpoints available in the long tradition of classification and the epistemic categories of space and time. The question of deriving one from the others or a few from the others within the list has not occurred. This is the foremost disadvantage of these categories.
But the second list integrates within each category the measuremental aspect of physical (scientific) activity. Interestingly, hence, the second set used to be reduced to symmetries (Hermann Weyl and others). But note that symmetries are measuremental and hence epistemic in nature. A symmetry is not a physical-ontological affair but instead the result of some epistemic operations upon already existent natural processes.
But here the existence of processes is taken for granted, and not included in the categories. That is, the nature of physical processes is not sufficiently taken notice of. This does not mean that the nature of physical processes is left aside from physics. Instead, it is not included in the categories.
Measurements are based on the epistemic concepts of space and time. A symmetry is never the result of merely one epistemic operation. A few measurements together constitute and result in any one sort of symmetry. Hence, the compositional nature of concepts assigned the categorial character in the four conservational categories renders conservational categories into less essential and less grounded for physics.
Moreover, in the above systems, causality is considered (1) either as an addition to the categories behind physical processes and the study of physical processes, (2) or as a notion being brought up in terms of the measuremental concepts of space and time, because until today a universally acceptable manner of defining causality in terms of any other primitive notions has not existed.
Hence, causality as an additional category not based on any other categories and symmetries based merely on composed measurements and not on any other fundamental categories cannot be the foundation for the study of the physical nature of existent processes. The latter needs physical-ontological Categories and these Categories should give rise to the basic notions of physics without reference to ad hoc positing of various basic notions as the foundations of physics.
Moreover, measurement systems like MKS, CGS, and SI are ipso facto mere epistemic systems. They are conventions of measurements, on which the nature of physical processes is based; and conventions of measurements are not based on the most general nature of existence of physical processes. This necessitates finding what underlies both measuremental systems and the resultant symmetries.
In the case of physics and the natural sciences as the general case, the epistemically oriented operations are for the most part measuremental. In the case of many other sciences – say, (1) some applied sciences like medicine, engineering, architecture, etc., (2) some of the human sciences, and (3) especially the fine arts, music, literature, etc. – the status of measurements is different. Exact measurements increasingly take a back seat in these three general types of sciences, although measurements exist in all of them in a more or less evident fashion.
But in the fine arts, music, literature, etc. we have sensation, experiential quality, feelings, etc. taking prominence over measurements. These procedures too are epistemically oriented procedures in such sciences, which scientists (and of course, all of us) often look down upon as sciences that obtain values calculated as less than those that the humanities obtain. Despite this fact, they too are sciences in some sense, since measurement is ubiquitously present in them at least as a minor procedure in comparison with the physical sciences and mathematics. I would hold even that the applied sciences, although active more often with procedural measurements, indulge also a lot of sensation, experiential quality, feelings, etc. in the manner of epistemic qualities.
3.2. Critique of Traditional Physical Categories
Some important details to be noticed in the above-mentioned two major traditional school systems of physical categories are the following:
(1) Firstly, space and time are not existents or ontological attributes of existents. As is clear from above, they are the measurementally epistemic and cognitive aspects of physical existents.
(2) Secondly, matter-energy can be taken as existents provided one does not tend to take the abstract Aristotelian-Thomistic meaning of matter (as the abstract raw material which, when exemplified, is always a material object, although such a raw material is never to be found anywhere) and energy (as an abstract action-at-a-distance with no material counterpart) in order to explain material objects.
(3) Thirdly, it is a false procedure in physics, cosmology and derived physical sciences to accept the measuremental notion of energy and material objects as just the number respectively of the energy emissions and material chunks measured based on measurement conventions (e.g., quanta). Instead, the notion of energy as existent propagation from existent matter, measurable in various conventional ways, is much more tenable.
(4) On the other hand, fourthly, the laws of conservation are not simple attributes of any existent. A detailed meaning-analysis of physicists’ claims may show that many of them have taken the conservation laws as the most fundamental attributes / qualities of theories. But they are principles formulated sententially out of a few notions and verbs, and hence rendered as principles composed of many other simple attributes which then are concatenated using verbal connective notions. I call as universals the simple attributes constituting the sentential principles of symmetries.
Even the verbal notions may be set in the qualitative language and rendered universal attributes. This is because both names and verbs belong to the processes that existents are and define existents as ongoing processes. Universals are the basic contents of all basic principles, definitions, etc. But what we need as most basic sources of physics are physical-ontological Categories that work as the fundamental notions of all universals.
Merely any one or some universals cannot suffice at the foundations of physics. They need to be the direct implications of the most fundamental of all notions, namely, To Be / To Exist. But why should physics follow this manner of thinking? None insists upon this on the physical praxis of a physicist. But the suggestion is that the physicist too deals with existing physical processes, and also the philosopher of physics deals with existent stuff, and not non-existent stuff. Why then should physicists follow those Categories that physical-ontologically justify their work? For the above reasons, I follow the way of searching for the universals of all existents in their equally nominal and verbal aspect, namely, the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Physics cannot be done in a well-justified manner without possibly best-grounded universals that go beyond the above-mentioned two groups of physical-ontologically insufficiently grounded, arbitrarily introduced, and haphazardly variegated categories which are not derivable from the most fundamental ones.
The most basic grounding should always be from the To Be of Reality-in-total, and such Categories are absolutely lacking in physics even today – a fact that I have become more and more aware of while discussing matters physical and cosmological on ResearchGate as I attempted to suggest what I found to be the possibly most basic Categories of all science and philosophy.
Some may suggest that the surest possible physical (not physical-ontological) grounding that has been provided by some in the past in terms of defining time, space, mass, and energy measurementally are sufficient for physics, and perhaps it is good to add causality, but we are not sure whether everything is fully causal – and that none needs to intrude into the foundations of physics from other disciplines.
I argue that all such grounds are insufficient due to their classificational and measuremental nature, as mentioned above. Secondly, they are insufficient for physics because they are exclusively and merely from within the ambit of physics. This does not ground physics. Moreover, I shall show that Universal Causality is ubiquitous if a physical existent should exist at all, i.e., from the concept of existence is Universal Causality to be derived in a pre-scientifically ontological manner, and that the instruments of such derivation are themselves the primary Categories of physics.
The two sets of physical categories mentioned above, due to their classificational and measuremental nature, are not derivable from the To Be of all existents. To put the argument in gist, the definitions of all the said merely physical categories use simple universals as ingredients; these ingredients are not final enough; there are two most final ontological universals; and hence, the highest ontological universals should also be at the foundations of physics along with existent matter-energy, so that the classifications and measurements of existent matter-energy within physics be conceptually possible; and further, these two Categories are the very essence of Universal Causality too.
3.3. Grounded Physical-Ontological Categories behind Physics
Grounding can be of various levels and grades. I speak of grounding all sorts of concepts, procedure principles, procedure methods, and theories in any system of thought and science. It is unnecessary in this context to discuss the grounding of highly derivative concepts that occur much later in theories than those that appear while founding them with best-grounded foundations. I go directly to the case of what should be called the most Categorial concepts behind physics, on which physics is grounded.
These Categorial concepts cannot be merely from within physics but should be directly related to and facilitating physics in as many of its aspects as possible. The success of foundational Categories consists in that they serve to ground as many aspects as possible of the particular science or system. Concepts strictly and exclusively physical or generally scientific cannot be as useful as notions from beyond in order to serve as Categories. Evidently, this is because no scientific discipline or system can be grounded on itself and hence on its own concepts. This is clearly also part of the epistemological and ontological implications of the work of Godel.
Grounded ontological Categories are such that they are inevitably and exhaustively grounded in the To Be of Reality-in-total as the only exhaustive implications of To Be. All other Categories, as far as possible, must be derivative of the most primary Categories. The more the number of Categories within the Categorial system that do not derive from the primary Categories the worse for the self-evidence of the science or system within it.
Grounding is exhaustive in the sense that the Categories that ground all physics need nothing else to be a concept than the To Be of Reality-in-total. To Be is the source of the Categories. It happens to be that there are two such Categories that are inevitably and exhaustively grounded. I call them Extension and Change. Clarifications of their meaning, ontological significance, and epistemological and physical implications and follow.
As I said, preferably grounding must be on the surest notion of all, which is existence. I prefer to term it To Be. As far as thought, feeling, and sensation are concerned, To Be is a notion in al of them. But principally To Be must belong to the whole of Reality, and not to a few things. If anything and/or all processes of Reality are existent, then what exist are the parts of existent Reality. The first minimum guarantee hereof should be that existence should be non-vacuous. Non-vacuous signifies that each possesses or contains whatever is possible within its existence in the given measurementally spatio-temporal context (which, as shall soon be clear, belong ontologically to the Extension-Change-wise existence of things).
3.4. Definitions of Universals, Extension-Change, Causality, and Unit Process
Even the minimum realism in thought, feeling, and sensation has for its principal conditions (1) the ontological primacy of universal qualities / natures that belong to groups of entities (processes), where the groups are also called natural kinds in the analytic tradition, and then (2) the ultimate simplicity and indivisibility of the universal characteristics that pertain to all existents. Contrary to the infinite divisibility of existent matter-energy, universals as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations (of togethernesses of unit Processes) are ontologically ideal universals, and hence indivisible. These universals are ideal not because of our idealisation of the characteristics, but instead because they are the general characteristics of the natural kinds to which each existent belongs. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that ontological universals are not our idealizations.
The properties of things are built out of these simple ontological universals in the natural kinds. The vague reflections of simple ontological universals within our minds are conceptually connotative universals, which are conceptual ideals. And their linguistic reflections in minds and all kinds of symbolic instruments are denotative universals.
Connotative and denotative universals are epistemological universals, formed epistemically from the little contact that minds have with the phenomena (“showings-themselves”) from some layers of processual objects from out there. The properties of existent processual things (matter-energy particulars) are vaguely reflected in minds and languages through the connotative and denotative instrumentalization of concepts in order to reflect the things via phenomena in terms of the data created by minds out of them. Any theory that permits ontological primacy to epistemological universals is one of a range of theories yielding primacy to the perceiving mind over the perceived objects. This is anathema in any scientific or philosophical science, because things are not vacua.
Non-vacuous existence implies that existents are extended. This is one of the most important characteristics of existents. Extension implies having parts, compositionality. Any extended existent’s parts impart impact to some others. This is Change. Only extended existents can exert impacts on any other. As a result, the object that exerts impact gets in itself some impact within, which is nothing but the proof that an impact by one extended part implies movements and impact formation by its parts too, as a result of the overall impact formation in question which contains the inner parts’ impact formation within. The latter need not always have its effects merely within the parts but instead also outwards.
Extension and Change are the highest, deepest, and most general characteristics of all existents. Interestingly, existence in Extension-Change is itself the process that we have so far named causation. Hence, anything non-vacuously existent has Extension and Change not separately but together. This is the meaning of Universal Causality. Physics cannot dispense with this pre-scientific universal Law. No more shall quantum physicists or scientists from other disciplines tell us that quantum physics has some sort of non-causality within! Any causal unit of existents in which the causal part and the effect part may be termed a process. Processuality is yet another important characteristic of existents, but we formulate it as Process, which represents the matter-energy units that there can be.
By this have clearly been set up three physical-ontological Categories of physics: Extension, Change, Causality, and Process. Space and time are merely epistemic categories. They cannot characterize existent processes. Ontological universals, as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations, are of togethernesses of unit Processes. Ontological universals are therefore ontologically ideal universals belonging (pertaining) to some natural kinds. The Categories as ontological universals belong to Reality-in-total, and not merely some natural kinds.
3.5. Definition of the Ontology behind Physics
In the definition of the ontology of physics, therefore, I shall posit the necessity of the highest possible grounds that I find as fundamental for physics and philosophy alike. The reason for these Categories’ being meant more or less also for philosophy is that both philosophy and physics have physical existents in common as their object range; and philosophy additionally has the pure universals of physics within the ambit of study. Hence, well-grounded physical foundations cannot do without the most suitable among these universals as its fundamental Categories, selected from among the universals forming part of the objects of philosophy.
Although many physicists and mathematicians may find the following definition queer due to their pragmatic and near-sighted concept of physics (where physical objects, and not their universals / qualities, are part of their object range) in a non-grounded manner, I define here ontology for use in physics with the purpose of elaboration of the various aspects brought forward in the definition.
The Ontology behind physics is (1) the rationally consequent science of the totality of physical existents, their parts, and their sine qua nons, namely, the pure universals as pertinents of existents and their parts, (2) prioritized as objects in terms of the To Be (Greek, Einai) of Reality-in-total and only thereafter in terms of the to be (einai) of its parts (reality-in-particular), (3) serving to achieve ever better measuremental approximations of the cosmos and its part-systems (4) in terms of the epistemological ideal of Reality-in-total, namely, the theoretically highest possible notion of Reality-in-general, (5) grounded in the unique and exhaustive implications of To Be, namely, Extension and Change, (6) in properly physical activities that let Reality and realities be measured in term of measuremental and classificational categories that facilitate both experiments and theories equally well.
I have introduced here the highest Ideals of philosophical and scientific thinking, namely, To Be, Reality-in-total, and Reality-in-general. These are not explained here well enough. I have treated them with detailed justifications in my books: Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, Frankfurt, 2015, and Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 2018, Berlin.
3.6. The Curse of Mathematical / Theoretical Physics
The Background: The ultimate physical and cosmological significance of the Categories of Extension (“being extended / having parts” while in existence) and Change (“extended existents causing impacts on others and also on themselves”) must be seen in the context of warding off quantum-physical, cosmological, statistical, and other sorts of inexplicable and bizarre existence-related aberrations resulting from theories like those of (1) parallel universes, (2) extra dimensions, (3) vacuous universes, (4) total mutual disconnection of universes, (5) infinite number of positive-content physical universes taking origin like extra-fitted balloons from “technically / mathematically zero-valued” quantum vacua or quantum-vacuum universes without any iota of causal agency (because quantum vacua are merely of near-zero zero statistical expectations), (6) the presumed existence of space, time, and spacetime like physical things in mathematical fields, (7) the theoretical writing-off of time alone as unreal and unnecessary, etc.
This sort of aberrations renders some theories and their related concepts into theories about absolutely non-existent objects (in some analytic-logical philosophies, called also as “counterfactual possible worlds”) and into substitute theoretical entities that serve only to explain procedures and not to explain existent processes. These serve for physicists and cosmologists to temporarily save their face by use of irrational adherence to methods of maintenance of mere uncertainties in mathematical physics.
The Curse of Theoretical Physics: I mentioned these above in order to speak of the curse of advanced mathematical physics. This curse is the confusion between (1) physical existents, (2) non-existent theoretical constructs, (3) theories representing small or large theoretical processes required only for theory, and (4) the lack of criteria of creating theories for describing existent processes with recourse to vacuous, non-existent, virtual objects and processes, but without turning these objects and processes into existent objects lacking the criteria of existence.
Positing ad hoc explanatory theories to clarify certain theoretical inaptitudes of notions or deviations in arguments is assuredly necessary for the progress of science. But these are sooner to be overwhelmed (not to be substituted) by more adequate and existentially non-aberrational unobservables and/or theoretical terms. As of now, physics, astrophysics, and cosmology are full of theoretical entities that cannot ever be proved to be existent unobservables. This is the curse of physics today – a graver problem today than previously.
3.7. Implications of Pragmatism and Idealism in Physics
For argument’s sake, if an observer is in absolute inertia / standstill with respect to everything else in the universe, he could possess high truth-probability concerning truths about spatiotemporally closest processes. But the fact is that ourselves, our senses, our instruments, and our environments are in motion, which is one of the ingredients of instances of actualization of Change. Hence, our experimental and consequently our theoretical visualization of physical processes in our environment is comparable to our direct vision from a running train.
What should be most closely real to us is our own motion as such and not the motions and changes within or outside. Nearby objects will then be most difficult to observe because their direction of motion will always be directly comparable to our own merely as different from ours. In fact, their immediacy to us and our motion as such would only be momentary. This is a fact that pragmatism, scientism, empiricism, experimentalism, etc. forget.
Distant objects will be relatively clearer due to the part played by the low proportionality between the distances and our own motion as such. This state of affairs may be conceived as follows. If the generalities of the objects at theoretical and empirical vision are clearly in view in terms of their general foundations, our vision will be more truth-probable than when (as in the case of close vision) the comparative differences of motions is high due to (1) the momentariness of exposure obtained between ourselves and the nearest objects, and (2) the lack of general vision between the two, that should normally have been facilitated by the general Categories that apply in cases of both near vision and distant vision.
To render the Categories applicable to processes both distant and near in spacetime, the only direct feasible manner of approach is to first discover the Categories that apply to near and distant visions and objects equally well, and then put them to use at least both epistemologically and ontologically and of course in other ways.
3.8. General Theories of the Evolutionary Stuff of Reality-in-total
In order to make possible a clear discussion of the necessity of physical-ontological Categories in physical and other sciences, I name some general forms of theories of the evolutionary stuff of Reality-in-total.
(1) There is a range of theories assigning existence only to minds or to the Divine as mind, the latter categorized as the fully mental being and the former partaking in the mentality of the latter.
(2) Yet another group of theories permits existence only to concepts / the conceptual, in contradistinction from minds and the Divine. This group, I believe, is a direction that existed all through the millennia and tried again and again to present themselves in various forms, at times very much mixed up with the first group so that the distinctions have become extremely difficult to understand.
(3) The third type permits in existence only physical entities as we normally conceptualize. Theories of this group are various, including physicalism, scientism, reductionism, etc. couched in their various theoretical shades.
The confusion between the first two types attests to the false identification of consciousness / mind with the conceptual / mental and the misidentification of all or any of existents with the Divine. This sort of ontological identification of the physical with the mental / spiritual and this with the divine is called pantheism. The identification may even be evolutionary. But in this case it becomes a system that accepts also the material world, but as an initial phase.
Theories which, however, find that at least a good portion of what are sensed is the physical world, permit the existence of matter-energy as part of Reality-in-total. Those that take only matter-energy as existent hold either the one or the other of the following:
(1) They reduce consciousness into matter-energy, do not grant any divine nature to consciousness, and do not find these two as originating from the Divine.
(2) They find matter-energy as the physical existent, take consciousness as emergent out of matter-energy without losing their basic physical status, and permit the origin of matter-energy and/or consciousness as unique in themselves but as created or emergent products originating from the agency of the Divine. These are mentioned here with the purpose only of a clear differentiation serving not to dismiss the existence of matter-energy.
Without entering upon a theoretical discernment over the above theoretical varieties of ontology, I attempt to concentrate on the existence conditions necessitated by ordinary science and advanced mathematical physics and cosmology, which deal primarily with physical existents. I shall show in the rudiments of a physical ontology here below the relevance of (1) the most universal Categories for all existents – i.e., physical processes, consciousnesses of all grades, and, if there is, also the Divine, which then should be an infinitely active and infinitely extended bodiliness – and (2) the reflections, of the pertinent ontological universals of existents within minds and through symbolic languages. (Please note here that I did not insist on the existence of the Divine, but only suggested how it would be if it existed.)
It is also possible to show certain cases of the ontology of Reality-in-total if minds and the Divine are absolutely distinct cases. See my discussions:
(1)https://www.researchgate.net/post/Infinite-Eternal_Multiverse_Implications_to_Physics_and_Cosmology
3.9. The Mode of Action of Existence and of Knowledge
Under the section “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I have brought into discussion the natural tendency of humans to love not merely what is present in the immediate vicinity but also the distant natural kinds (groups of gross processual entities that are not directly available for experiments due to their distances), the less evident natural kinds (existing unobservables and unobservables that are not yet proved to exist), and the abstract / pertinent kinds (universals) of all that exist. Among these objects of love are to be found also the totality of all existents and the most general pertinents of Reality-in-total.
It is unacceptable that someone here tells me that none loves such objects. I agree that all sorts of psychologically direct perception of love are almost absent herein. But the tending to them intellectually, through feelings, and through sensations, wherever whichever is possible, is already present in all of us. It IS love, too.
Any existent can tend to existents, their pertinents, and to some extent also to the mental and linguistic reflections of both these. The tending and love for the reflections of both the first two can only transpire through the tending to and love for the first two. The tending in physical processes is not love. But at least in human beings it takes the shape of love. I think this aspect must gain momentum in epistemology. In other philosophical disciplines it should be acceptable in a slightly different manner.
This is due to the primacy of the ontological (in respect of existence, existents, and their pertinents in existent systems) as against the epistemic (which is a vague and veiled conscious reflection of the former in their existent systems). The epistemic is merely the description of how knowledge takes place and should take place with the help of finite amounts of data input derived from a few layers of the phenomena issuing from a few layers of the reality in question.
Epistemology is the study of truth-occurrences, and not directly of truth derivation methods nor directly of their existence. But it presupposes these. This is also why I hold that physical ontology is the existential foundation of epistemology. But physical ontology must itself be grounded upon the very notion of the To Be of Reality-in-total.
If primacy of existence can be accorded to the ontological, then whatever exists in this world may primarily be termed physical in existence (not physical in the sense of being the object of the science of physics, because primacy is to existence, not to any discipline.
THE PHYSICAL-ONTOLOGICAL FALLACIES OF SPACE, TIME, AND SPACETIME IN PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Basis of Axiomatizing Science and Philosophy
The problem of axiomatizing philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together is that we need to somehow bring in the elemental aspects of existence and existents, and also absorb the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents. Here it should be mentioned that axiomatizing mathematics and logic does not serve the axiomatization of philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together. So far in the history of philosophy and science we have done just this, plus attempts to axiomatize the sciences separately or together by ignoring the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents.
Existence (To Be) is not a condition for the possibility of existence of Reality-in-total or specific processual objects, but instead, To Be is the primary condition for all thought, feeling, sensation, dreaming, etc. All other conditions are secondary to this. If To Be is necessary as the condition for the possibility of any philosophy and science as discourse, we need to be axiomatic in philosophy and science about (1) existence (To Be, which is of all that exist) and/or (2) the direct and exhaustive implications of existence.
It is impossible to define existence without using words that involve existence. But it is possible to discover the exhaustive implications of To Be in order to use them in all discourse. Therefore, towards the end of this short document, I shall name what could be the inevitable primitive notions that are exhaustive of To Be and that may be used to create axioms for both philosophy and science together.
To put it differently, I attempt here to base all philosophy and science on the concept of existence of Reality-in-total as whatever it is, by deriving from the concept of the existence of all that exist the only possible (i.e., the exhaustive) implications of To Be.
Of course, the basic logical notions of identity and contradiction will have to be used here without as much danger as when we use them in statements on other less fundamental notions. I would justify their use here as the rational inevitabilities in the foundations – not as inevitabilities in the details that issue later. The inevitabilities in the later details need never to be realized as inevitabilities, because To Be implies some fundamental notions which will take case of this.
That is, the various ways in which the principles of identity and contradiction should be seen as inexact and inappropriate may be discovered in the in fields of derivation beyond the provinces of the fundamental Categorial implications of To Be. This latter part of the claims is not to be discussed here, because it involves much more than logic – in fact, a new conception of logic, which I would term as systemic logic.
Let me come to the matter that I promise in the name of the foundations of ‘Axiomatic Philosophy and Science’. First of all, to exist is not to be merely nothing. In this statement I have taken access to the Laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle at one go in that whatever is, must be whatever it is, and not its opposite which is nothing but nothing, nor a middle point between the two extremes.
Therefore, existence must always be non-vacuous. That is, the primary logical implication of To Be is the non-non-being of whatever exists. But such a logical implication is insufficient for the sciences and philosophy, because we deal there with existents. Hence, let us ignore the logical implication as a truism. The existential implications of To Be are what we need.
I have so far not found any philosopher or scientist who derived these implications. But let us try, even if the result that obtained may be claimed by many ancients and others as theirs. In fact, theirs were not metaphysical / physical-ontological versions. Their epistemic versions of the same have been very useful, but have served a lot to misguide both philosophy and science into give “truth/s” undue importance in place of “Reality”. My claim about the exhaustive physical(-ontological) implications of To Be that I derive here is that they do not incur this fallacy.
To Be is not a thing. It is, as agreed at the start, the very condition for the possibility of discourse: philosophy, science, literature, art … and, in general, of experience. The To Be of existents is thus not a pre-condition for To Be – instead, it is itself the source of all conditions of discourse, not of existence.
2. Extension, Change, Universal Causality
If To Be is non-vacuous, it means that all existents are something non-vacuously real. Something-s need not be what we stipulate them to be, both by name and qualifications. But the purely general implication is that existents are something-s. This is already part of philosophical activity, but not of the sciences. We need to concretize this implication at the first tire of concrete implications. Only thereafter are sciences possible.
To be something is to be non-vacuous, i.e., to be in non-vacuous extendedness. However much you may attempt to show that Extension does not follow from the notions of To Be, something, etc., the more will be extent of your failure. You will go on using the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and never reach any conclusion useful for the sciences. Then you will have to keep your mouth and mind shut. I prefer for myself meaningful discourse in science and philosophy – when I meditate I shall attempt to keep my mind and lips as “shut” as possible.
As said above, Extension is one of the primary physical-ontological implications of To Be. Nothing exists without being extended, without being in Extension. Extended something-s are not just there in Extension. If in Extension, everything has parts. Thus, having parts is one of the primary implications of being something in existence. I term it alternatively also as Compositionality.
It is the very implication of being something that something-s are in Change. The deepest and most inevitable form of implication of Change is this: nothing that is in existence with parts can have the status of being something existent without the parts impacting at least a few others. This is the meaning of Change: impact-formation by extended parts. Any existent has parts existing in the state of impact formation in other parts and in themselves.
Hence, Change is the only other implication of To Be, not second to but equally important as Extension. I call it differently also as Impact-Formation. The notion of motion or mobility does not carry the full weight of the meaning of Change.
There cannot be any other implication equally directly derivable from To Be as Extension and Change can be. In other words, all other implications can be found to be sub-implications of Extension-Change, i.e., involving only Extension-Change. Showing them as involving only Extension-Change would suffice to show their sub-implications status with respect to Extension-Change.
Existence in Extension-Change belongs to anything existent, hence ubiquitous – to be met with in any existent. This is nothing but existence in the ubiquitously (to be met with in any existent) extended form of continuance in ubiquitous (to be met with in any existent) impact formation. What else is this but Universal Causality?
If you say that causation is a mere principle of science – as most philosophers and scientists have so far thought – I reject this view. From the above paragraphs I conclude that Causation is metaphysically (physical-ontologically) secondary only to existence. Everybody admits today that we and the universe exist. But we all admit that every part of our body-mind and every existent in the world must be causal because we are non-vacuously existent in Extension-Change.
This means that something has been fundamentally wrong about Causality in philosophy and science. We need to begin doing philosophy and science based fully on To Be and its implications, namely, Extension-Change-wise continuance, which is nothing but being in Universal Causation. It is universal because everything is existent. Universal Causality is the combined shape of Extension-Change. Causation the process of happening of Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence. Causality is the state of being in Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence.
3. Now, What Are Space and Time?
Note that what we measurementally and thus epistemically call as space is metaphysically to be termed as Extension. Space is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Extension. That is, space is the quantity of measurement of Extension, of measurements of the extended nature of existents. In this sense, space is an epistemic quality.
Further, note also that what we call time is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Change. If there is no impact-formation by parts of existents, there is no measurement called time. Hence, time is the epistemic quality of measurements of Change, which is the impact-formation tendency of all existents.
Immanuel Kant termed space as the condition for the possibility of sensibility, and Edmund Husserl called it as one of the fundamental essences of thought. Space and time in Kant are epistemic since they are just epistemic conditions of possibility; and essences in Husserl are epistemic, clearly as they are based on the continuous act of epochḗ.
Nothing can exist in epistemic space-time. That is, language and mind tend to falsely convert space and time into something that together condition existents. Thus, humans tend to believe that our measuremental concepts and derivative results are all really and exactly very essential to existent something-s, and not merely to our manner of knowing, feeling, sensing, etc.
This is the source of scientific and philosophical misconceptions that have resulted in the reification of the conclusions and concepts of thought and feeling. Thus, this is also the source of conceptual insufficiencies in philosophical and scientific theories. Scientism and scientific and mathematical instrumentalism justify these human tendencies in the name of pragmatism about science and thought.
Reification of certain statistical conclusions as probabilities and the metaphysicization of probable events as the only possible events are not merely due to the above sort of reification. It is also by reason of the equivocation of probability with possibility and the reification of our scientific and statistical conclusions of probabilities as real possibilities. Humans tend to forget that a certain amount of probability is exactly and properly the measure of the extent of human capacity (and by implication, of human incapacity), at a given instance and at a given measuremental moment of history, to use instruments to get at all the existents that are the causes of a given process.
As we know, To Be is not a Category / Quality. It is the very condition that is the same as the existence of something-s as whatever they are. This is a tautology: To Be is To Be. If To Be is a metaphysical notion, the physical-ontologically and scientifically relevant metaphysical implications of To Be are Extension-Change. These are the highest and only highest Categories of all philosophy and science. Universal Causality is the notion of combination of Extension-Change. It is not an indirectly derived notion.
If scientists tend to relegate such notions as philosophical, they are trying to be practical in a silly manner. Even scientific results need the hand of proper and best possible formulations of notions and theoretical principles. Theoretical principles (say, of causation, conservation, gravitation, matter, mass, energy, etc., which may clearly be formulated in terms of Extension-Change-wise existence and existents) must be formulated in the most systemic manner possible.
I would call Extension, Change, and the combination-term Universal Causality not merely as the highest metaphysical Categories. They are the very primitive terms in addition to terms like ‘existent’, ‘matter-energy’, etc., which are necessary for an axiomatic formulation of the foundations of the sciences. Hence, we need to formulate axiomatically both philosophy and science.
Universal Causality may hereafter also be taken as an axiom in philosophy and the sciences. An axiom is a formulated basic principle. In that case, why not formulate also the primitive notions (Categories) of Extension and Change as axioms? In short, the difference between mathematical-logical axiomatic foundations and physical-philosophical axiomatic foundations is that in the former set primitive notions are not axioms, and in the latter primitive notions may be formulated as axioms.
In the light of the above discussion, it becomes clear that Einstein’s postulation of gravitation and matter-energy as space-time curvatures is at the most a formulation of these notions in terms of the mathematical necessity to use space-time (epistemic) measurements and theorize based on them in theoretical physics.
Einstein was immersed in the neo-positivism and logical positivism of his time. Hence, he could not reason beyond the use, by mathematics, of quantitative notions as concrete measurements. Scientists and philosophers who still follow Einstein on this sort of a misguided reification of epistemic space and time are taking refuge not on Einstein but on his theoretical frailties. Even today most scientists and philosophers are unaware that quantities are in fact quantitatively characterized pure qualities – and not properties that are combinations of qualitative and quantitatively qualitative notions.
Minkowski formulated the mathematics of space-time and thus reduced space-time into a sort of ether in which physical processes take place gravitationally. Einstein put gravitation into this language and mistook this language (the language of mathematical space-time) to be the very matter-energy processes that curve according to gravitational processes. For the mathematics this is no too great error, because it worked. This is why some physicists even today consider gravitation and/or all energy forms as ether, as if without this stuff in the background material bodies would not be able to move around in the cosmos! A part of the cosmos is thus being converted into a background conditioner!
Only formal functioning has so far been found necessary in mathematics. Derivation from the metaphysical sources of existents and non-existents has not so far been found necessary in mathematics. But, note here also this: for more than 100 years physicists and philosophers of physics lapped up this substitution of the language of mathematics for the actual, physically existent, processes, which otherwise should have been treated also metaphysically, and if possible, in a manner that is systemically comprehensive of the sources of all sciences.
The implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents too can help to make the mathematical adaptations work pragmatically. Hence, clearly it does not suffice that only the mathematical formalism attained so far be used in physics and the sciences. The project of science, philosophy, mathematics, and logic must grow out of their limits and become parts of a systemic science with foundations in the implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents.
I have been attempting to explain in these pages a limited realm of what I otherwise have been attempting to realize. I show only that there are two physical-ontological Categories and some derived axioms (out of these many axioms, only one is discussed here, i.e., Universal Causality), using which we need to formulate not merely philosophy but also physics and other sciences.
But I suggest also that the existence-related and non-existents-related mathematical objects too must be formulated using some primitive terms and axioms that are compatible with the philosophical and physical primitive terms and axioms that may facilitate a systemic approach to all sciences.
4. Why Then Is Science Successful?
The awarding of the Nobel Prize 2023 for quantum informatics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger does not, therefore, mean that all of quantum physics and their assumptions and results are ‘the realities’ behind the ‘truths’ formulated. Instead, it means only that the truths they have formulated are relatively more technology-productive within the context of the other truths and technologies that surround them in physics. Quantum informatics works at a level of effects where we involve only those movements and processes that result in the resulting discoveries, general truths, and the derivative technology.
Similarly, the successes of engineering, informatics, medical processing technology, and the medical science that (as of today) are based on these need not be a proof for the alleged “absolute truth status” of the theories based on Newtonian physics, of molecular and atomic level chemistry and biology, etc. These sciences use only certain contextual levels of interaction in the physical world.
Recollect here the ways in which occidental philosophers dating at least from Parmenides and Heraclitus and extending up until today have been mistaking space and time as (1) two metaphysical categories, or (2) as mere existents, or (3) as illusions.
Oriental philosophies, especially Hindu and Buddhist, have been the best examples of rejecting space-time as metaphysical and as equivalent to permanent substances in a manner that made some Occidental thinkers to look down on them or to reject all of them. In the course of conceptualization that is typical of humans, having to create further theoretical impasses is necessarily to be avoided as best as we can. Such an ideal requires the help of Extension, Change, and Universal Causality.
In the foregoing paragraphs I have only hinted at the necessity of axiomatic philosophy and science. I have only suggested some basic notions in this systemic science. I do also use these notions and some axioms developed from them to formulate a new philosophy of mathematics. I have already published some books based on these and have been developing other such works. I hope to get feedbacks from earnest minds that do not avoid directly facing the questions and the risk of attempting a reply to the questions themselves.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
THE ANOMALY IN MATHEMATICAL / THEORETICAL PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
The Background: The ultimate physical and cosmological significance of the Categories of Extension (“being extended / having parts” while in existence) and Change (“extended existents causing impacts on others and also on themselves”) must be seen in the context of warding off quantum-physical, cosmological, statistical, and other sorts of inexplicable and bizarre existence-related aberrations resulting from theories like those of (1) parallel universes, (2) extra dimensions, (3) vacuous universes, (4) total mutual disconnection of universes, (5) infinite number of positive-content physical universes taking origin like extra-fitted balloons from “technically / mathematically zero-valued” quantum vacua or quantum-vacuum universes without any iota of causal agency (because quantum vacua are merely of near-zero zero statistical expectations), (6) the presumed existence of space, time, and spacetime like physical things in mathematical fields, (7) the theoretical writing-off of time alone as unreal and unnecessary, etc.
This sort of aberrations renders some theories and their related concepts into theories about absolutely non-existent objects (in some analytic-logical philosophies, called also as “counterfactual possible worlds”) and into substitute theoretical entities that serve only to explain procedures and not to explain existent processes. These serve for physicists and cosmologists to temporarily save their face by use of irrational adherence to methods of maintenance of mere uncertainties in mathematical physics.
The Anomany in Theoretical Physics: I mentioned these above in order to speak of the anomaly in advanced mathematical physics. This curse is the confusion between (1) physical existents, (2) non-existent theoretical constructs, (3) theories representing small or large theoretical processes required only for theory, and (4) the lack of criteria of creating theories for describing existent processes with recourse to vacuous, non-existent, virtual objects and processes, but without turning these objects and processes into existent objects lacking the criteria of existence.
Positing ad hoc explanatory theories to clarify certain theoretical inaptitudes of notions or deviations in arguments is assuredly necessary for the progress of science. But these are sooner to be overwhelmed (not to be substituted) by more adequate and existentially non-aberrational unobservables and/or theoretical terms. As of now, physics, astrophysics, and cosmology are full of theoretical entities that cannot ever be proved to be existent unobservables. This is the curse of physics today – a graver problem today than previously.
A GAME-CHANGER CAUSALITY FOR PHYSICS
Beyond the Two Millennia
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
IS CAUSALITY A SCIENTIFIC OR PRE-SCIENTIFIC LAW?
§§-- Without beings in existence (To Be), there is no science “on them”. Existence is not vacuous. Non-vacuous existents are in Extension (Existence-Category 1), i.e., they have parts, they are composed.
§§-- Both parts and wholes can interact. They cause impacts on a finite number of other existents and on themselves: Change (Existence-Category 2). Change involves motion, but is not motion. Parallel to these two physical-ontological Categories, no other characteristic is thinkable. Hence, Extension and Change ꞊ Exhaustive implications of To Be of Reality-in-total the highest natural kind.
§§-- If Extended+Changing (with parts and with impact formation) entities exist, this is causal existence. Every existent is such. Hence: Universal Causality...! Extension, Change, and Causality are pre-scientific Laws. Now, no Quantum Physicist can tell us that some (observable) processes are causal and the others (partial observables [unobservables] and non-observables) are merely statistically causal or non-causal…!
§§-- Smaller natural kinds (ordered and/or organized parts of Reality-in-total) also have characteristics. These are ontological universals (modes of being of processes). They are primarily in the natural kinds, and only thus in the token enities in the natural kind.
§§-- Space ꞊ measure of extension. Time ꞊ measure of change. These are epistemic concepts. Epistemic space-time cannot curve as physicists make us believe. Extension-Change-wise existent matter-energy conglomerations curve.
Centuries of violent and extremist discussions have taken place as to a Yes or No or Yes-and-No to causality in existent beings, namely, Reality-in-total. In the fray have been mainly philosophy, and only then physics. This state has changed after the genesis of quantum physics. In the above, I have “proved” in a very simple manner that Universal Causality is a pre-scientific Law.
The purely epistemic version of causality can only be a sort of concept and not be that of what happens in the world. It gets formulated due to the sense-related, conceptual, and logical conclusion towards a correlation of some sort between two or more events, but without recourse to the events’ existence.
Any further justification of the epistemological conclusion of causality without involving the purely physical-ontological aspect of existence of the event at question in total and its antecedent and consequent part-events may even be taken as an explanation of the experience of correlation. Historical examples abound, and Hume’s is the most famous example.
But this is not the case if the purely physical-ontological aspect of existence of the event at question in total and its antecedent and consequent part-events may be accepted as the conditio sine qua non of the sensation, conceptualization, and logical argument. Hence the fully physical-ontological status of causality.
Traditionally, causality is the relation between the antecedent and the consequent part-events of the one event at issue. And causation is the act of a cause-event in effecting an effect-event. This is the age-old manner of conceiving the ontology of causality. The former, the epistemic and the explanatory, have been the trend during most of the 20thcentury history of philosophical and physical-philosophical inquiry on causality.
But what I have proposed in the various parts of my five published books is a whole new manner of theorizing Universal Causality. I hope to finally suggest that this is also a game-changer in the history of the concept of causality.
THE ONTOLOGY BEHIND PHYSICS: CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL CATEGORIES
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Traditional Physical Categories
There have arisen various schools of theories, mainly from within the physics community, theorizing elaborately concerning the ontological foundations of physics. Not till the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century have these notions been clear enough. Two major and common ways of approaching the foundations have been the following:
(1) Physical experiments and theories based on the notions of space, time, matter-energy, and causality. (2) Physical experiments and theories based on the four laws of conservation, namely, those of matter, energy, momentum, and charge. There may be other variations of the foundations, e.g., some include mass in the list. I believe that all such variations are based mostly on the two sets above.
The first set does not seem to be based on anything else from the viewpoints available in the long tradition of classification and the epistemic categories of space and time. The question of deriving one from the others or a few from the others within the list has not occurred. This is the foremost disadvantage of these categories.
But the second list integrates within each category the measuremental aspect of physical (scientific) activity. Interestingly, hence, the second set used to be reduced to symmetries (Hermann Weyl and others). But note that symmetries are measuremental and hence epistemic in nature. A symmetry is not a physical-ontological affair but instead the result of some epistemic operations upon already existent natural processes.
But here the existence of processes is taken for granted, and not included in the categories. That is, the nature of physical processes is not sufficiently taken notice of. This does not mean that the nature of physical processes is left aside from physics. Instead, it is not included in the categories.
Measurements are based on the epistemic concepts of space and time. A symmetry is never the result of merely one epistemic operation. A few measurements together constitute and result in any one sort of symmetry. Hence, the compositional nature of concepts assigned the categorial character in the four conservational categories renders conservational categories into less essential and less grounded for physics.
Moreover, in the above systems, causality is considered (1) either as an addition to the categories behind physical processes and the study of physical processes, (2) or as a notion being brought up in terms of the measuremental concepts of space and time, because until today a universally acceptable manner of defining causality in terms of any other primitive notions has not existed.
Hence, causality as an additional category not based on any other categories and symmetries based merely on composed measurements and not on any other fundamental categories cannot be the foundation for the study of the physical nature of existent processes. The latter needs physical-ontological Categories and these Categories should give rise to the basic notions of physics without reference to ad hoc positing of various basic notions as the foundations of physics.
Moreover, measurement systems like MKS, CGS, and SI are ipso facto mere epistemic systems. They are conventions of measurements, on which the nature of physical processes is based; and conventions of measurements are not based on the most general nature of existence of physical processes. This necessitates finding what underlies both measuremental systems and the resultant symmetries.
In the case of physics and the natural sciences as the general case, the epistemically oriented operations are for the most part measuremental. In the case of many other sciences – say, (1) some applied sciences like medicine, engineering, architecture, etc., (2) some of the human sciences, and (3) especially the fine arts, music, literature, etc. – the status of measurements is different. Exact measurements increasingly take a back seat in these three general types of sciences, although measurements exist in all of them in a more or less evident fashion.
But in the fine arts, music, literature, etc. we have sensation, experiential quality, feelings, etc. taking prominence over measurements. These procedures too are epistemically oriented procedures in such sciences, which scientists (and of course, all of us) often look down upon as sciences that obtain values calculated as less than those that the humanities obtain. Despite this fact, they too are sciences in some sense, since measurement is ubiquitously present in them at least as a minor procedure in comparison with the physical sciences and mathematics. I would hold even that the applied sciences, although active more often with procedural measurements, indulge also a lot of sensation, experiential quality, feelings, etc. in the manner of epistemic qualities.
2. Critique of Traditional Physical Categories
Some important details to be noticed in the above-mentioned two major traditional school systems of physical categories are the following:
(1) Firstly, space and time are not existents or ontological attributes of existents. As is clear from above, they are the measurementally epistemic and cognitive aspects of physical existents.
(2) Secondly, matter-energy can be taken as existents provided one does not tend to take the abstract Aristotelian-Thomistic meaning of matter (as the abstract raw material which, when exemplified, is always a material object, although such a raw material is never to be found anywhere) and energy (as an abstract action-at-a-distance with no material counterpart) in order to explain material objects.
(3) Thirdly, it is a false procedure in physics, cosmology and derived physical sciences to accept the measuremental notion of energy and material objects as just the number respectively of the energy emissions and material chunks measured based on measurement conventions (e.g., quanta). Instead, the notion of energy as existent propagation from existent matter, measurable in various conventional ways, is much more tenable.
(4) On the other hand, fourthly, the laws of conservation are not simple attributes of any existent. A detailed meaning-analysis of physicists’ claims may show that many of them have taken the conservation laws as the most fundamental attributes / qualities of theories. But they are principles formulated sententially out of a few notions and verbs, and hence rendered as principles composed of many other simple attributes which then are concatenated using verbal connective notions. I call as universals the simple attributes constituting the sentential principles of symmetries.
Even the verbal notions may be set in the qualitative language and rendered universal attributes. This is because both names and verbs belong to the processes that existents are and define existents as ongoing processes. Universals are the basic contents of all basic principles, definitions, etc. But what we need as most basic sources of physics are physical-ontological Categories that work as the fundamental notions of all universals.
Merely any one or some universals cannot suffice at the foundations of physics. They need to be the direct implications of the most fundamental of all notions, namely, To Be / To Exist. But why should physics follow this manner of thinking? None insists upon this on the physical praxis of a physicist. But the suggestion is that the physicist too deals with existing physical processes, and also the philosopher of physics deals with existent stuff, and not non-existent stuff. Why then should physicists follow those Categories that physical-ontologically justify their work? For the above reasons, I follow the way of searching for the universals of all existents in their equally nominal and verbal aspect, namely, the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Physics cannot be done in a well-justified manner without possibly best-grounded universals that go beyond the above-mentioned two groups of physical-ontologically insufficiently grounded, arbitrarily introduced, and haphazardly variegated categories which are not derivable from the most fundamental ones. The most basic grounding should always be from the To Be of Reality-in-total, and such Categories are absolutely lacking in physics even today – a fact that I have become more and more aware of while discussing matters physical and cosmological on ResearchGate as I attempted to suggest what I found to be the possibly most basic Categories of all science and philosophy.
Some may suggest that the surest possible physical (not physical-ontological) grounding that has been provided by some in the past in terms of defining time, space, mass, and energy measurementally are sufficient for physics, and perhaps it is good to add causality, but we are not sure whether everything is fully causal – and that none needs to intrude into the foundations of physics from other disciplines.
I argue that all such grounds are insufficient due to their classificational and measuremental nature, as mentioned above. Secondly, they are insufficient for physics because they are exclusively and merely from within the ambit of physics. This does not ground physics. Moreover, I shall show that Universal Causality is ubiquitous if a physical existent should exist at all, i.e., from the concept of existence is Universal Causality to be derived in a pre-scientifically ontological manner, and that the instruments of such derivation are themselves the primary Categories of physics.
The two sets of physical categories mentioned above, due to their classificational and measuremental nature, are not derivable from the To Be of all existents. To put the argument in gist, the definitions of all the said merely physical categories use simple universals as ingredients; these ingredients are not final enough; there are two most final ontological universals; and hence, the highest ontological universals should also be at the foundations of physics along with existent matter-energy, so that the classifications and measurements of existent matter-energy within physics be conceptually possible; and further, these two Categories are the very essence of Universal Causality too.
This "philosophical" thought by Rabelais "Wisdom cannot enter into an evil spirit, and Science without conscience is but ruin of the soul", taken from Pantagruel, his major work (own translation from French), can be considered as the keystone of what would be called "Scientific Morality". What if we discuss this paramount issue for the scientific community? Contributions on the topic are welcome.
Science is a neutral, rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules".
Excerpt from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
"Conscience” translates the Latin “conscientia”, which refers to sharing “knowledge” (scientia) “with” (con-), and which in turns translates the equivalent Greek term suneidenai (see Pierce 1955 and Sorabji 2014 for an etymological analysis of the term). The literal meaning of the term does not specify the type of knowledge involved and whom that knowledge is shared with. However, the concept has traditionally been used to refer to moral knowledge (we talk indifferently of conscience and moral conscience) that is shared with oneself. This reference to the self does not rule out that the source of the morality in question be external to the self. ... Reference to the self indicates that, from a psychological point of view, conscience involves introspection, awareness of one’s behavior, and self-assessment..."
Excerpt from: " Conscience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conscience/ 1/16, First published Mar 14, 2016
Illustration: Book cover "Faber, L. W. Robot Suicide: Death, Identity, and AI in Science Fiction, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023."
ELECTROMAGNETIC QUANTA HAVE EXTENSION AND CHANGE WITHIN.
DO THEY ALSO GRAVITATE? AND DO THE GRAVITONS GRAVITATE OR REPEL?
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. MODES OF EXISTENCE OF ENERGY-CARRIER EXISTENTS
Without the presence of existent gravitational propagation wavicles / particles, nothing physical can hold together. Additionally, there are electro-magnetic and other non-gravitational propagation wavicles / particles. Both are carriers of energy. Thus, there can be two kinds of force-carrier existents (energy wavicles / particles) which are forms of physical matter processes and hence irreducibly are matter:
(1) force-carrier existents that get propagated from existent physical processes and pull other objects a step backwards, thus attracting the object gradually into the graviton-issuing object, and
(2) force-carrier existents that get propagated from existent physical processes, do not pull other objects to the issuing object, and thus give a portion of themselves off to other objects.
Do these gravitational and non-gravitational (electromagnetic and other) wavicles exist? Before using them in physics, it must be determined whether they exist and how they may exist, for them to exert causally real physical effects. Existents cannot be vacua, and hence, they must exist, and hence they are:
(1) in Extension (each having a finite number of finite-content parts), because if not extended, EM quanta would be non-existent, and
(2) in Change (existents, which are always with parts, possessing parts which always exert finite impacts on a finite number of others, inclusive of exertion of finite impacts on some parts within), because anything that has no change is not in existence.
In short, any matter particle and any force-carrier wavicle can exist only Extension-Change-wise. Whether they really exist is clear enough: if they do not exist, then the matter particles that issue force-carrier existents (wavicles) too need not exist, since force-carrier wavicles are just another (relativistically, and not absolutistically, source-independent) form of existence of mater particles.
An existent without own parts and own exertion of impacts will be imaginable as existent. Anything that is not in Extension-Change is non-existent – a physical-ontological fact at the foundations of physics, which most physicists (and other scientists) forget while performing their statistical and other related miracles!
This much for an introduction. Now, what are the implications of such existence in the case of EM wavicles and gravitons?
2. ELECTROMAGNETIC AND GRAVITATIONAL QUANTA
If electromagnetic and gravitational wavicles are EXISTENT, then they possess also EXTENSION and CHANGE. They are not absolutely geometric particles, instead, they are elongated at various dimensions.
Let us assume the following as a general principle in physics: Anything physical issues gravitons, which are the basic attractive forces within physical existents.
If an existent energy wavicle is thus a matter wavicle with extension, it must also issue gravitons! In that case, the only stuff in the cosmos that cannot themselves issue further gravitons from within are gravitons themselves. What can this work to in physics and cosmology? I believe that we need a revolution from this viewpoint. This is a proposal that waits being tested by future physics and astrophysics.
Gravitons too are extended and changing wavicles. But they are themselves the wavicles possessing also their parts that attract each other, and are long-range in nature. If they issue sub-gravitons, they will naturally be kept attracted within the issuing sources, because the parts from which they are supposed to be issued are themselves attractive by nature and other matter and energy particles attract each other basically by means of issuing gravitons.
But naturally, gravitons too must be existent, and hence possess parts. What would be the sort of parts that gravitons can possess? Repulsons or Gravitons? Sub-repulsons or sub-gravitons? I think that they cannot themselves be repulsons and sub-repulsons, because repulsons and sub-repulsons without coherence will not stick together as parts of gravitons. Gravitons cannot issue gravitons themselves, since this is self-creation. But they can possess sub-gravitons as parts, but these need not be of the same power as their totality that each graviton is.
In any case, one thing should be accepted: BOTH ELECTROMAGNETIC AND GRAVITATIONAL QUANTA MUST ISSUE THEIR OWN WAVICLES OF ATTRACTION. IN THE CASE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC QUANTA, THE ISSE IS THAT OF GRAVITONS (and whatever other sub-wavicles that might be there for them to give rise to). IN THE CASE OF GRAVITONS, THE PARTS WILL HAVE TO BE SUB-GRAVITONS (plus whatever other sub-wavicles that might be there for them to give rise to).
3. CAUSAL NATURE OF ALL WAVICLES
The Extension-Change kind of existence is what we call Causation, and therefore, every existent is a causal Process in all parts. This is nothing but the Universal Law of Causality. That is, no more do we need to prove causation scientifically. This Law is a pre-scientific and hence physical-ontological Law, meant also for biological existents.
Hence, no quantum physics, statistical physics, or quantum cosmology can now declare that certain processes in nature are non-causal or acausal, after having admitted that these processes are in existence!
That is, existents at any level of formation are fully physical, possess at least a minimum of causal connection with others in its environment, are not merely virtual (nor fully modular / non-local / non-emergent / self-emergent / sui generis in a totally isolated manner). Therefore, any existent must have causal connections with its finitely reachable environment and within its inner parts.
4. IF IN EXTENSION-CHANGE, WHY THEN IN SPACE-TIME?
Physical-ontologically real generalities must be about, or pertinent to, existents in groups, i.e., as parts of a type / natural kind. These generalities are not existents, but pure ontological universals in natural kinds. Extension and Change are purely ontological and absolutely basic characteristics of all existents. Hence, I have termed them Categories.
Space and time are just the measurement-based epistemic notions or versions of the more generally physical-ontological Extension and Change respectively. The latter two are ontological generalities of all existent processes, because nothing can exist without these two Categories.
Hence, space and time are not physical-ontological, not real about, not pertinent to, existents. In short, physical science working only on measuremental space-time cannot verify newly discovered energy wavicles and matter particles by use of the physical “properties” they are ascribed to.
The test criteria for the existence of any existent particles will be Extension (each having a finite number of finite-content parts) and Change (existents, which are always with parts, possessing parts which always exert finite impacts on others, inclusive of exertion of finite impacts on some parts within).
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
While preparing for my contribution to the Nanotexnology 2023 conference, I have noticed that submissions from researchers affiliated with state universities of the Russian Federation have been accepted for the international conference. This fact implies the sharing of the latest scientific knowledge despite the ongoing war started in 2022. I strongly disagree with this approach, and I personally distance myself from active scientific communication with researchers officially connected to state institutions of Russia. With its criminal activities in Ukraine, Russia is violating fundamental principles of the international community, and also destroying nature with a potentially global impact. Scientific communication that ignores this fact supports the technological progress of the state that destroys human values in general. Out of respect for the many Ukrainian scientists who have fallen victim to this war, I firmly reject the active transfer of scientific knowledge to scientists affiliated to Russian state institutions as a matter of principle.
Studying the various philosophers, even the contemporary thinkers, is a matter of study and analysis. Whatever our stage of development is, such study and analysis can only be educating ourselves in the strict sense. Thinking for ourselves is also part of the process, which should have greater weightage as the educative phase is had long enough.
Now what about forgetting for some time the contributions of the many philosophers of our time or of the past, especially the kind whom we all mention habitually, and then theorizing philosophically for ourselves without constant references to their works and notions, as doctoral students do?
Why do I suggest this? Such dependence on the works of the stalwarts and of the specialists on them may veil our abilities to see many things for ourselves. Thus, we can avoid becoming philosophical technicians and even the slightly better case of becoming philosophical technologists or philosophical experts.
I believe that synthesizing upon some good insights from the many thinkers and from the many disciplines would require also the inevitable conceptual foundations that we would be able to discover beyond these notions.
Suppose each of us looks for such foundations, and then share them on a platform. If the discussion is on these new foundations, something may emerge in each of us as what we could term genuine foundations. These need not remain forever, because philosophy and science show grow out of whatever we and others have done. But, as a result of the effort, we will have effected a better synthesis through such personal efforts than when without seeking foundations.
I think the conceptual foundations on which the concept of synthetic philosophy works may thus gain a lot. I for one consider the whole history of analytic and linguistic philosophy as lacking such rigour. You all may differ from what each one of us suggests. That is the manner in which deeper foundations can be sought. I am on such a journey.
I believe that in the journey to find deeper and more general foundations than those available, we will already have created a manner of doing philosophy independently, and if done in conjunction with the sciences, we will have a new manner of doing the philosophy of science. Fell trees from their roots, and we have the place to plant a new tree.
Let me suggest a question. All these 2.5 millennia of western philosophy, we have not found the question of the implications of existence (to exist, To Be) being discussed. Plato and Aristotle have tried it, and thereafter we do not see much on the implications of To Be. Now if some implications of To Be are found, these could be a strong foundation for philosophy of any kind. I hope we cannot find such implications of Non-existence for doing philosophy or science. The definitions of the implications of To Be will change in the course of time, but some core might continue to remain, if we do something validly deep and general enough.
Let me suggest an interesting manner in which many philosophers evaluate their peers. (This may also be applicable in all other fields.) This is here brought to a historical context, not merely theoretical. This I do in order to make the example very clear.
Suppose you (say, A) speak of space, time, entities, matter-energy, etc. in a special context. The peer (say, B) gets hold of the text and starts criticizing A’s notion of space, time, entities, matter-energy, etc. B starts from the concepts of space and time. He says, Kant and thereafter almost all thinkers have placed space and time merely as epistemic categories. This has been done in the context of phenomena. If you (A) hold the epistemic variety of notions of space and time, then they are phenomenal. In that case, you should have studied in the text what phenomena meant in Kant and analyze the scientific and philosophical consequences of those concepts.
B continues. If you wanted to make space and time metaphysical concepts, then you are speaking of the noumena. For Kant these are unknowables. Hence, you need to first show that the noumena are knowables. In that case you are rightful in suggesting epistemic / epistemological concepts of space and time. If not, you need to take recourse to other relevant philosophers or scientific disciplines to demonstrate the metaphysical meaning of space and time that you have introduced. And so on.
Absolute dependence upon the traditions and unpreparedness to think differently from the past or present thinkers is what is exhibited here. Not that B is not intelligent enough. B is. But the preparedness to think for years and decades differently comes not merely from the desire to think differently, but from the desire to SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD TOGETHER. We know we are being overambitious. If we demonstrate such an attitudes in our behaviour to others, then it is due to an intellectual sense of preponderance. But if we remain receptive to all new inputs from all others and all sciences, we will continue to be enabled to persevere in methodological obverambitiousness.
The peer had already decided how the author should write. It seems that the author should have written on all sub-themes within the title a separate book or part in the book....! Or, should he have cited from all sorts of authors on all possible sub-themes in his book in order to be approved by the peer?
Yet another systematically dominative and other-debilitating manner of peers is this: Say, I submit to you the publisher a book. The publisher sends it to the peer/s. Without even taking time for a good reading of the text, the peer suggests some opinions to the publishers, which the publisher relates to the author in a day or two: Your work may be very good, but its title is too broad. An author cannot do justice to the whole breadth of the subject matter!
Have you heard or read psychologists, neuroscientists, medical doctors, etc. discussing some symptoms and their causes? A book in psychology says: ‘According to the bio-psycho-social approach in psychopathology, one mental disturbance CAN have many causes.’ But a person trained and enthusiastic about philosophy (also of the philosophy of the sciences) would wonder why there should not be many causes, at least some of which one could seek to find...! Discovering ‘only the immediate, exact, and unique cause’ is not their work because any reason can tell us that nothing in this world has an exact cause.
This directs our attention to a basic nature of philosophy: Not that a philosopher should only generalize. But a philosopher should study any specific thing only in terms of the most generalizable notions. Here ‘generality’ does not directly indicate only abstraction. It demonstrates the viewpoint that philosophy always takes. Hence, speaking only of the linguistic formulation of notions and arguments, formulating arguments only of life-related events in order to prove general principles that belong to the whole of Reality, etc. are not philosophical. The philosophically trained reader can recognize which recent trends in philosophy I have in mind here.
I may be talking strange things here, especially for those trained mainly in analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science in a narrow manner. If you do not find such suggestions interesting, just ignore this intervention. I continue to work on this. I do have some success. Each of us has our own manner of approaching the problems.
I am aware that I may be laughed at. Since I have left the profession of teaching, I do not lose much. Moreover, getting great publishers is out of reach for me, but that too does not compound to much consequence if eventually one succeeds to do something solid.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
SOURCE OF MAJOR FLAWS IN COSMOLOGICAL THEORIES:
MATHEMATICS-TO-PHYSICS APPLICATION DISCREPENCY
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
The big bang theory has many limitations. These are,
(1) the uncertainty regarding the causes / triggers of the big bang,
(2) the need to trace the determination of certain physical constants to the big bang moments and not further backwards,
(3) the necessity to explain the notion of what scientists and philosophers call “time” in terms of the original bang of the universe,
(4) the compulsion to define the notion of “space” with respect to the inner and outer regions of the big bang universe,
(5) the possibility of and the uncertainty about there being other finite or infinite number of universes,
(6) the choice between an infinite number of oscillations between big bangs and big crunches in the big bang universe (in case of there being only our finite-content universe in existence), in every big hang universe (if there are an infinite number of universes),
(7) the question whether energy will be lost from the universe during each phase of the oscillation, and in that case how an infinite number of oscillations can be the whole process of the finite-content universe,
(8) the difficulty involved in mathematizing these cases, etc.
These have given rise to many other cosmological and cosmogenetic theories – mythical, religious, philosophical, physical, and even purely mathematical. It must also be mentioned that the thermodynamic laws created primarily for earth-based physical systems have played a big role in determining the nature of these theories.
The big bang is already a cosmogenetic theory regarding a finite-content universe. The consideration of an INFINITE-CONTENT universe has always been taken as an alternative source of theories to the big bang model. Here, in the absence of conceptual clarity on the physically permissible meaning of infinite content and without attempting such clarity, cosmologists have been accessing the various mathematical tools available to explain the meaning of infinite content. They do not also seem to keep themselves aware that locally possible mathematical definitions of infinity cannot apply to physical localities at all.
The result has been the acceptance of temporal eternality to the infinite-content universe without fixing physically possible varieties of eternality. For example, pre-existence from the past eternity is already an eternality. Continuance from any arbitrary point of time with respect to any cluster of universes is also an eternality. But models of an infinite-content cosmos and even of a finite-content universe have been suggested in the past one century, which never took care of the fact that mathematical infinity of content or action within a finite locality has nothing to do with physical feasibility. This, for example, is the source of the quantum-cosmological quick-fix that a quantum vacuum can go on create new universes.
But due to their obsession with our access to observational details merely from our local big bang universe, and the obsession to keep the big bang universe as an infinite-content universe and as temporally eternal by using the mathematical tools found, a mathematically automatic recycling of the content of the universe was conceived. Here they naturally found it safe to accommodate the big universe, and clearly maintain a sort of eternality for the local big bang universe and its content, without recourse to external creation.
Quantum-cosmological and superstrings-cosmological gimmicks like considering each universe as a membrane and the “space” between them as vacuum have given rise to the consideration that it is these vacua that just create other membranes or at least supplies new matter-energy to the membranes to continue to give rise to other universes. (1) The ubiquitous sensationalized science journalism with rating motivation and (2) the physicists’ and cosmologists’ need to stick to mathematical mystification in the absence of clarity concurring physical feasibility in their infinities – these give fame to the originators of such universes as great and original scientists.
I suggest that the need to justify an eternal recycling of the big bang universe with no energy loss at the fringes of the finite-content big bang universe was fulfilled by cosmologists with the automatically working mathematical tools like the Lambda term and its equivalents. This in my opinion is the origin of the concepts of the almighty versions of dark energy, virtual quantum soup, quantum vacuum, ether, etc., for cosmological applications. Here too the physical feasibility of these concepts by comparing them with the maximal-medial-minimal possibilities of existence of dark energy, virtual quantum soup, quantum vacuum, ether, etc. within the finite-content and infinite-content cosmos, has not been considered. Their almighty versions were required because they had to justify an eternal pre-existence and an eternal future for the universe from a crass physicalist viewpoint, of which most scientists are prey even today. (See: Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP) vs. Panpsychisms and Monisms: Beyond Mind-Body Dualism: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Minimal_Metaphysical_Physicalism_MMP_vs_Panpsychisms_and_Monisms_Beyond_Mind-Body_Dualism)
I believe that the inconsistencies present in the mathematically artificialized notions and in the various cosmogenetic theories in general are due to the blind acceptance of available mathematical tools to explain an infinite-content and eternally existent universe.
What should in fact have been done? We know that physics is not mathematics. In mathematics all sorts of predefined continuities and discretenesses may be created without recourse to solutions as to whether they are sufficiently applicable to be genuinely physics-justifying by reason of the general compulsions of physical existence. I CONTINUE TO ATTEMPT TO DISCOVER WHERE THE DISCREPENCIES LIE. History is on the side of sanity.
One clear example for the partial incompatibility between physics and mathematics is where the so-called black hole singularity is being mathematized by use of asymptotic approach. I admit that we have only this tool. But we do not have to blindly accept it without setting rationally limiting boundaries between the physics of the black hole and the mathematics applied here. It must be recognized that the definition of any fundamental notion of mathematics is absolute and exact only in the definition, and not in the physical counterparts. (See: Mathematics and Causality: A Systemic Reconciliation, https://www.researchgate.net/post/Mathematics_and_Causality_A_Systemic_Reconciliation)
I shall continue to add material here on the asymptotic approach in cosmology and other similar theoretical and application-level concepts.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
I doubt if the principles of logic can be applied universally except when the ontologies of the fields of discussion of the objects under logical treatment are clarified. In commonsense logic everything goes. But is it to be considered so when ordinary logical principles are applied in the various sciences in the various concepts levels being discussed in each of them?
A fundamental question at artificial intelligence (AI) informatics scientists: Are information and artificial and biological intelligence non-causal, not based on energy?
I am now finalizing a book on this theme. It is theoretically very fundamental to AI and biological intelligence (BI).
I create a system of thought that yields Universal Causality in all sciences and also in AI and BI.
I invite your ideas. I have already uploaded a short document on this in my RG page. Kindly read it and comment here.
The book is supposed to appear at some time after Dec 2023 in English and Italian, and then in Spanish. Will keep you informed.
Reification of Concepts in Quantum Physics:
The best of physicists and philosophers of physics even today do not seem to be decided on any concrete but all-encompassing solution by reason of the rational strength of arguments given in favour of the one or another solution. The questions not answered here are these:
(1) Why do physicists not think of the epistemic processes of identification of energy propagations as a geometrical wave, a geometrical particle, or as their alternation, or even as their superposition, and what are the reasons for such misplaced identification of concreteness of the mathematical entities as if they both existed physically out there?
(2) And then, when they feel confronted in themselves as to the paradoxes involved in their own creation, why do they tend to declare that all these (a) are just virtual, or (b) need to be causal in the world merely by reason of a statistical causality (and not by reason of the statistics upon the experimental history of measurements and of identification of causes), or (c) should be paradoxically the external reality because the mathematics says so?
(3) Are these not also modes of reification of what is made out in concepts, of which the basis is the continued tendency to hold the substance metaphysics and/or to oppose such a metaphysics absolutely, as if in the cosmos there were no existents at all behind the phenomena and the data that are being spoken of in physics?
(4) When we, for example, say that the wave function collapses in the physical calculations, do we not, in physics, tend to insist that the existent carrier of energy propagation outside is just collapsing into nothing or into something else that is either existent or mysteriously absolutely virtual? Does this sort of answers solve anything explanatorily?
(5) Are these not the results of the reification of our concept of collapse so as to naming it as an external physical process in exact existential correspondence with our imaginative and mathematically driven conceptualization?
(6) Why do some physicists not have enough ability (a) to recognize the need to establish that the physical calculations must be proved to have an existent process out there, and (b) not to identify the collapse in the equations with its supposed correspondent in the external world (as we do when we say that the pen exists)?
(7) Can they not at least imagine that the epistemic identification via logic and mathematics does not ipso facto produce a correspondence? In the absence of this ability in many physicists, is not fundamental quantum physics again becoming prey to the same age-old correspondence theory of truth that they denounce and accuse many philosophers of the past as having already been prey to?
(8) A typical manner of countering these arguments is to accuse these same arguments as originating from classical physics and notions. But such classical origin of reification of notions is exactly what I attempt to demonstrate in quantum physics and other related sciences – using notions of concept formation, of their foundation in existent physical processes, and of the ultimate and undeniable Categories of all existence.
Arguments Supported by Evident Examples: I add here a few clarifications to what I said above, based on examples from physics.
(1) Take the case of potential energy. It is an energy termed after a certain difference of states. We do discover it quantitatively everywhere. But the discovery is as that of a difference of calculated or calculable energy values, not directly as of an energy carrier so identified.
The same is not the case with photons, neutrinos, etc. These wavicles are identifiable as the very carriers of whatever quantitative energy they carry. What I mean is that whatever energy they contain, and not merely and exactly what we tend to calculate them to contain. As an absolute truth about these quantities, we can only determine whether they are zero, finite, or infinite.
Any measurement beyond these is an ontological commitment to be borne out via experimental verification and augmentation of theoretical and experimental results by use of future theories and experimental advances. The present work shall show that Extension and Change are the foundational criteria upon which such measurements and the proofs of existence of both observable and unobservable energies and matter should be based.
In the case of potential energy, the verification is of the difference, and not of the necessary correspondence with a wavicle as the carrier of potential energy. The latter should have been seen as a must for us to suppose that potential energy does not exist as an energy carrier propagation.
One thing becomes clear here: Energy propagations are theoretically to be posited as energy carriers. Of course, the energy as such is not a thing, but is the quantity of some finite capacity of any so-identifiable “energy carrier” to cause an amount of work, of movement. The quantity of some work / action is not the same as the difference between two states of quantity of work / action, which we call potential energy. The energy carrier has the Category of Change as its internal quality. That is, movement is within it not merely as an additional capacity but as the very quality. Every part of an energy-carrier is in Change.
(2) If we speak of electron as the same sort of energy carrier, there is a conceptual difficulty. An electron is at the most a carrier of carriers of energy, but it is not a relatively well finalizable carrier wavicle of energy of the type that photons are, with respect to the phase of the universe or parts of it or groups of universes wherein photons are relatively more unified as energy carriers than perhaps in other phases or other worlds. Electrons are matter-wavicles containing many smaller quanta of photon energy.
There is nothing wrong in saying this, even if these energy-carrying quanta are resident in electrons not in the very form in which they produce the sort of work or as when free of the higher condensation in electrons in the electromagnetic phenomenon. Hence, essentially, electrons are matter particles moving generally in wave form. If we tend to term an electron as energy carrier conceptually on par with photons, we may have to term also a stone as a set of energy wavicles. That would miss the mark set as the purpose of scientific activity and thought in general, but this is a fact.
The wave function collapse cannot be identified as an existent process out there in a manner similar to that in which we can adduce quanta of energy to any existent energy-carrier wavicle in propagation. This is because the wave function collapse is most probably not a collapse of some waves and/or particles (i.e., wavicles) out there, but the collapse of a certain quantitative symmetry, a certain expected behaviour of the quantities yielded by theory, etc.
But this is not the same as what happens when we create a notion to correspond to a process and we identify the latter with a supposed external correspondent of the notion. Hence, I hold that a wave function collapse is not to have an exactly corresponding change definable as what the word ‘collapse’ can mean, in any existent energy-quanta carrier wavicle. We witness many physicists taking for granted, or omitting to differentiate between, the technical and the ordinary meaning of ‘collapse’; and thus, their audience gets convinced into believing in their new physics under the same mistake.
Is it not necessary to condone such matters in the sciences on the count that human cognition has limits? True. But if this is admitted to be the case, it must also be admitted at the theoretically notional sources of any system of thought, science, and must especially so be infused at the experimental methods and interpretation of experimental and theoretical results of the system of thought and science at question. This is not being done enough in any one of these cases.
(3) This is exactly like special relativity tacitly defining in the Lorentz factor that, since all our physical observations come to be based upon the speed of electromagnetic propagations, the said system of theory “proves” the velocity of light as ultimate and that this does not permit superluminal velocities. This is nothing but begging the question. For more than a century, practically none questioned this self-defeating assumption. Almost everyone is blissful about the technical tool this stipulation offers for science and technology. Under a similar attitude are also the AI specialists who do not inquire what the stuff of information is, but can manipulate it for much technological success!
Conclusions about the Successes of Quantum Physics: To conclude, the successes of quantum physics consist in that at least many of the measurementally determined mathematical explanations of phenomena (phenomenon: the showing-themselves of existent processes from some layers of the processes within) are such that, within the system of mathematically discussing these explanations, (1) further calculations and approximations fall in place, and (2) further theoretical constructions are made possible.
This demonstrates a certain extent of consistency in the theoretical apparatus wherein the initial mathematical definitions and experimentally approximate quantifications permit the acceptance of many further results as true to the foundations of the theoretical apparatuses. But if evident paradoxes arise, then evidently its source lies most probably in the foundational notions of the system, their definitional specificities, etc.
As a conclusion, I suggest that fundamental quantum physics has many unclarified notions that play into its interpretations as miraculous mystifications of physical events, which may directly be attributed to the custom of misplaced identification of concreteness in quantum physics. Hence, the successes do not justify accepting in a literal manner all that is intended by the “even-now substance-philosophically” dominated or “radically virtual-philosophically” dominated minds of many physicists. Cosmology is no exception to what is said above.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
Leonard Hall added a reply (20 April 2023, in my discussion: “Can any experimental or theoretical proof be for ‘the’ existence of ether?) (With Leonard Hall's written permission in RG.)
Howdy Raphael Neelamkavil,
This question just appeared on an RG sidebar so I read through the set of replies. It's quite a trip, and of course I have my own theory, but I enjoy the discussions your questions raise.
I believe "catalyst" is the term I want here. My best tuned muffler design emerged in the aftermath of a terrible idea that was otherwise quite useless! Aristotle's introduction of the "aether" as the quintessence filling the universe beyond the sublunary sphere was quite useful to him in description. Young's double-slit experiment proved the wave nature of light, for a while, and the aether concept supported extensive learning which eventually produced more complete understanding, and many remaining questions about it. Why worry whether aether is "actual" with or without proof when it is so useful? Granted, it may mislead, but that is my point with the tuned muffler incident. We are still so ignorant we must have mavericks that explore, while the majority marches on incrementing what works.
The Philosophy of Science must be opportunity that aids discovery, not rules that protect all those doing philosophy from error. Proof about aether will come in it's time. In the meantime, what should be done about the fact that there are 11,552 replies to the RG question "What are the major and most effective refutations of Einstein’s Theories of Relativity?"
Factually, I do not understand "If ether is of infinite activity, it cannot interact with anything in the world, and hence also with matter, EM and Gravitation." If aether exists, activity associated with it will be local and its "infinite activity" seems to me irrelevant. Oh,well, great discussion!
Happy Trails, Len
Raphael Neelamkavil added a reply (21 April 2023)
Leonard Hall, thanks. You asked: "Why worry whether aether is "actual" with or without proof when it is so useful?" To my mind, this must increasingly be taken as an unacceptable attitude in science and of course in philosophy, because this is the attitude that stalls the progress of both (and also of human institutions), by creating discrete "epochs and revolutions" in their way ahead.
For me, the question as to the existence of ether, and if it does exist its manner of action and influence on the world, are important enough. Not because the answer will come soon. But there is always some more light into the eventual near-perfect but imperfect solutions when we keep reasoning about its possible existence and non-existence, influence and non-influence, extent of influence and non-influence, etc.
For some scientists, only a direct proof will count. "Mere reasoning" is useless for them. But very few have produced almost direct proofs for anything -- and if they insist on science having produced direct proofs, we will and shall attempt to show them that, theoretically, they are not even able to prove the existence of the physical world directly.
Hence, indirect reasoning too has its value -- even if science, philosophy, etc. will transpire only in terms of epochs and revolutions. I for my part have used the MMM (Maximal-Medial-Minimal) Method for this purpose.
About the RG question "What are the major and most effective refutations of Einstein’s Theories of Relativity?". If you notice the going-ons therein, you will realize also the attitudes and motives behind many of the warring factions therein.
Sorry, if not the motives, then at least the attitudes that come to the fore through the words being used. I do not say this about all of them. Some of them use their words in such a manner as for others to feel that the ones who express themselves so will surely have missed parental love in childhood.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
Anything exists non-vacuously as in Extension (having parts, each of which again is extended) and in Change (extended existents impacting some other extended existents). Anything without these two characteristics cannot exist. THESE ARE THE TWO, EXHAUSTIVE, IMPLICATIONS OF "TO BE" AND "EXISTENTS".
If not in Change, how can something exist in Extension (= in the state of Extension) alone? And if not in Extension, how can something exist in the state of Change alone? These are impossible. ((The traditional interpretations of Parmenides and Heraclitus as emphasizing merely one of these is unacceptable.)) Hence, Extension-Change are two fundamentally physical-ontological Categories of all existence.
But Extension-Change-wise existence is what we understand as Causality: extended existents and their parts exert impacts on other extended existents. Every part of existents does it. This is not the meaning of Change alone, but in Extension-Change! That is, if everything exists, everything is in Causation. This is the principle of Universal Causality...! All counterfactual imaginations need not yield really existent worlds of this kind.
Even the allegedly “non-causal” quantum-mechanical constituent processes are mathematically and statistically circumscribed, measuremental, concepts from the results of experiments upon Extended-Changing existents; and ipso facto the realities behind these statistical measurements are in Extension-Change if they are physically existent.
Space is the measured shape of Extension; time is that of Change. Therefore, space and time are merely epistemic categories. How then can statistical causality be causality at all? Bayesians should now re-interpret their results in terms of Universal Causality, as mere measuremental extent of our determination of the exact causes of some events.
No part of an existent is non-extended and non-changing. One unit of cause and effect may be called a process. Every existent and its parts are fully processual -- in the sense that every part of it is further constituted by sub-processes. None of these sub-processes is infinitesimal. Each is near-infinitesimal in Extension and Change.
Thus, Extension and Change are the very exhaustive meanings of To Be, and hence I call them the highest Categories of metaphysics, physical ontology, the sciences, etc. Science and philosophy must obey these two Categories if they deal with existent processes, and not merely of imaginary counterfactual worlds.
In short, everything existent is causal. Hence, Universal Causality as the highest pre-scientific Law, second only to Existence / To Be. To Be is not a law; it is the very reason for existence of anything...!
Natural laws are merely derivative from Universal Causality. If any natural law disobeys Universal Causality, it is not a scientific law. Since Extension-Change-wise existence is the same as Universal Causality, scientific laws are derived from Universal Causality, and not vice versa.
Today sciences attempt to derive causality from the various scientific laws! This is merely because millennia long we have been getting fooled about such a fundamental meaning of Causality. We were told that causality can be proved only empirically. The folly here has been that what is specific is universalized: The Fallacy of Conceptual / Theoretical Wholes and Parts. Search for the causes of a few events has been misinterpreted as capable of defining the search for the causal nature or non-causal nature of all...! IS THIS NOT ENOUGH PROOF FOR THE INFANCY IN WHICH THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES FIND THEMSELVES IN?
The relevance of metaphysics / physical ontology for the sciences is clear from the above. Lack of such a metaphysical foundation has marred the effectivity of the sciences and of course of philosophy as such. RECOLLECT THE ERA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WHEN CAUSALITY WAS CONVERTED TO CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS.........
Existents have some Activity and Stability. This is a fully physical fact. These two categories may be shown to be subservient to Extension-Change. Pure vacuum (non-existence) is the absence of Activity and Stability. Thus, entities are irreducibly active-stable processes in Extension-Change. Physical entities / processes possess finite Activity and Stability. Activity and Stability together belong to Extension; and Activity and Stability together belong to Change too.
That is, Stability is not merely about space; and Activity is not merely about time. But the traditions (in both the sciences and philosophy) still seem to hold so. We consider Activity and Stability as sub-categories, because they are based on Extension-Change, which together add up to Universal Causality; and each unit of cause and effect is a process.
These are not Categories belonging to merely imaginary counterfactual situations. The Categories of Extension-Change and their sub-formulations are all about existents. There can be counterfactuals that signify cases that appertain existent processes. But separating these cases from useless logical talk is near to impossible in linguistic-analytically and denotatively active definitions of reference in logic, philosophy, philosophy of science, and the sciences. THE FAD NATURE OF THE PHILOSOPHIES OF FREGE, WITTGENSTEIN, THE VIENNA CIRCLE, AND THEIR FOLLOWERS TODAY FOLLOWS FROM THIS.
Today physics and the various sciences do something like this in that they indulge in particularistically defined terms and procedures, blindly thinking that these can directly denotatively represent the physical processes under inquiry.
Concerning mathematical applications too this is the majority attitude among scientists. Hence, without a very general physical ontology of Categories that are applicable to all existent processes, all sciences are in gross handicap. THIS IS A GENERAL INDICATION FOR THE DIRECTION OF QUALITATIVE GROWTH IN THE SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY.
The best examples are mathematical continuity and discreteness being attributed to physical processes IN THE MATHEMATICALLY INSTRUMENTALIZED SCIENCES. Mathematical continuity and discreteness are to be anathema in the sciences. Existent processes are continuous and discrete only in their Causality.
This is nothing but Extension-Change-wise discrete causal continuity. At any time, causality is present in anything, hence there is causal continuity. But this is different from mathematical continuity and discreteness.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
Insistence on mathematical continuity in nature is a mere idealization. It expects nature to obey our idealization. This is what happens in all physical and cosmological (and of course other) sciences as long as they use mathematical idealizations to represent existent objects / processes.
But mathematically following nature in whatever it is in its part-processes is a different procedure in science and philosophy (and even in the arts and humanities). This theoretical attitude accepts the existence of processual entities as what they are.
This theoretical attitude accepts in a highly generalized manner that
(1) mathematical continuity (in any theory and in terms of any amount of axiomatization of physical theories) is not totally realizable in nature as a whole and in its parts: because the necessity of mathematical approval in such a cosmology falls short miserably,
(2) absolute discreteness (even QM type, based on the Planck constant) in the physical cosmos (not in non-quantifiable “possible worlds”) and its parts is a mere commonsense compartmentalization from the "epistemology of piecemeal thinking": because the aspect of the causally processual connection between any two quanta is logically and mathematically alienated in the physical theory of Planck’s constant, and
(3) hence, the only viable and thus the most reasonably generalizable manner of being of the physical cosmos and of biological entities is that of CAUSAL CONTINUITY BETWEEN PARTIALLY DISCRETE PROCESSUAL OBJECTS.
PHYSICS and COSMOLOGY even today tend to make the cosmos mathematically either continuous or defectively discrete or statistically oriented to merely epistemically probabilistic decisions and determinations.
Can anyone suggest here the existence of a different sort of physics and cosmology that one may have witnessed until today? A topology and mereology of CAUSAL CONTINUITY BETWEEN PARTIALLY DISCRETE PROCESSUAL OBJECTS, fully free of discreteness-oriented category theory and functional analysis, is yet to be born.
Hence, causality in its deep roots in the very concept of To Be is alien to physics and cosmology till today.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
This discussion can be sensitive philosophically for some people. The philosophy of science is based on Eurocentrism and western culture excessively from time to time. In other words, this means that the philosophy of science relies on western culture and aspects too much. However, science should be objective and not involve a single philosophical view and culture, as this can lead to only one direction biasedly. So, how can we avoid and improve this matter in science? I want to know the international perspective on this. For example, the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas did not have the philosophy of European science, but they built great architectures and had well-developed Astronomy based on their scientific methods and philosophy.
P.S. This has nothing to do with academic staff and students, including my supervisor, in our department. I personally, always, try to seek to improve philosophical methodologies in science for understanding our nature with open-mindedness. Therefore, I put this discussion in Researchgate.
Dear colleagues. This is not a matter about mathematical questions, fields and the like that I do not understand, but about the following:
As a researcher in philosophy of science, I have read more than once - from qualified sources - and repeated that, unlike Newtonian mechanics, which assumes that macroscopic physical space is absolute, has three dimensions and is separated from absolute time, for general relativity space is a four-dimensional spacetime, and that time is relative to the position of the observer (due to the influence of gravity).
Now I find that wrong, having heard that, for the theory, time and the perception of time are different things. Specifically, that in the famous Einsteinian example (a mental or imaginary experiment) of twins, the one who is longer-lived when they meet again has perceived a greater passage of time. And if what has been different is the perception of time, and not time, then that would mean that objectively both have always been at the same point on the "arrow of time".
And it would mean that I have confused time, as an objective or "objective" dimension of spacetime, with one's perception of it. That is, if there were no observer, spacetime would still have its "time" dimension.
It follows that it is false that for general relativity time is relative (because it is a dimension of spacetime, which is not relative). Now, if this is so, how can the theory predict the - albeit hypothetical - existence of wormholes?
There is something I fail to understand: does the theory of relativity really differentiate time from the perception that an observer may have of it, and the example of twins refers to the latter?
If spacetime is only one - there are not several independent spacetimes - and it has objective existence, including its "time" dimension , how is it possible to travel - theoretically, according to the theory - through a wormhole to another part of it that has a different temporality (what we call past or future)?
Since it does not make sense to me to interpret that one would not travel to the future but to the perception of the future. And I rule out that Einstein has confused time with the perception of it.
Thank you.
Consider the two propositions of the Kalam cosmological argument:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
Both are based on assuming full knowledge of whatever exists in the world which is obviously not totally true. Even big bang cosmology relies on a primordial seed which science has no idea of its origin or characteristics.
The attached article proposes that such deductive arguments should not be allowed in philosophy and science as it is the tell-tale sign that human wrongly presupposes omniscient.
Your comments are much appreciated.
Dear Friends,
There are systematic attacks on freedom to express scientific ideas and facts in India (also may be True in other 3rd world countries). There are so many crony intellectuals in tax payer funded universities or research institutions, who occupied position of influence and power not by merit but by pleasing corrupt Indian political system. They have been using their power and influence to suppress new ideas and inconvenient Truths.
I faced this kind of crony intellectuals in many research organizations such as IITs at Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai, DRDO and IIIT at Hyderabad to name a few. These crony intellectuals viciously suppress freedom to express scientific ideas and facts to cover-up their ignorance or satisfy egos.
It enraged many of them and they resort to vicious personal attacks, when I politely presented facts that expose mistakes in their knowledge or perception of reality. For example, one of such instance I reported in my earlier question, where IIIT at Hyderabad assaulted on my freedom to express facts by banning me from interacting with researchers: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_so_many_experts_react_so_viciously_and_resort_to_insults_for_requesting_an_opportunity_to_demonstrate_counter_evidence_for_flawed_beliefs
I was extremely polite and humbly requested for an opportunity for presenting evidence and facts to expose flawed beliefs at the root of existing dominant software engineering paradigm in general and CBD/CBE (Component Based Software Engineering and Design or development) of software products in particular. They banned me merely based on my polite requests without any other communication from them.
I have similar experience with former NASSCOM President Som Mittal, when he was President of NASSCOM. He bluntly told me that no one will listen to you, if you point out mistakes in their knowledge or perception and cutoff all communications. How can a fledgling or budding researcher survive such assault? Such crony intellectuals in the position of influence are the main reason that no worthwhile invention or discovery can ever come out of India?
It is shame on every Indian intellectual for allowing such crony intellectuals to stay in the position of influence or power, and do nothing when such crony intellectual have been assaulting on inalienable rights and freedom to think and find facts for exposing mistakes. I am sure this situation exists in many 3rd world countries, where corruption is rampant. So this is also meant for such 3rd world countries as well.
Is he a real scientist or researcher, if he enraged for questioning his untested belief (i.e. myth) by disagreeing or for asking him to provide evidence to substantiate his belief (i.e. myth)? Such rude attacks are wide spread in India, where the so called intellectuals are more interested in pleasing corrupt political bosses for advancing their career then the research.
What would you do, if your basic rights are assaulted? Any researcher or a scientist not only have an inalienable right but also moral obligation to state such facts/truths, even if such facts or truths anger or enrage so called intellectuals for exposing their mistakes, prejudice or ignorance. It is his/her problem, if any crony intellectual can’t handle such harsh reality or truth. Assault on such truths is an assault on the scientific knowledge and progress.
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
CEO, Pioneer-soft
Ref:
Research Proposal Computer Science (Software) Must be Considered as an Indepen...
Impacts of individual publications are often measured via citation rates. Average citation per publication rates differ across research domains (e.g. Mathematics versus Ecology). Is there a minimum number of citations required to call a paper important or influential, and if so, how many?
Philosophers of science typically recognize two kinds of values in scientific practice: (1) epistemic (or theoretical, or cognitive) virtues, like accuracy, testability, empirical support, etc, and (2) ethical (or social, or regulative) norms, like justice, egalitarianism, openness, etc. Of course, the strict separation of these categories is open to disagreement.
Are there values or norms (of either kind) that are unique to mathematics? Rigour (or provability) is one possibility; computability is another. Can you think of others? Do values play the same kind of role in math as in the natural sciences?
According to the article on functionalism in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, written by Thomas Polger,
Functionalism is a theory about the nature of mental states. According to functionalism, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of. This can be understood by thinking about artifacts like mousetraps and keys. In particular, the original motivation for functionalism comes from the helpful comparison of minds with computers. But that is only an analogy. The main arguments for functionalism depend on showing that it is superior to its primary competitors: identity theory and behaviorism. Contrasted with behaviorism, functionalism retains the traditional idea that mental states are internal states of thinking creatures. Contrasted with identity theory, functionalism introduces the idea that mental states are multiply realized.
---pause quotation---
The opening of this article places emphasis on "the helpful comparison of minds with computers." This sort of approach or version of functionalism is often formulated as "Turing machine functionalism," and has been a major focus of the criticism of functionalism, but it is also responsible for a good deal of the contemporary interest--associated as it is with the topic of strong artificial intelligence and computational conceptions of mind and intelligence. However this is an important contrasting conception of functionalism which arose in the early 20th century and in the wake of Darwinism in psychology. This version takes the biological paradigms of intelligence and consciousness as basic and, it may be argued, avoids many of the criticisms directed at strong A.I. Both versions of functionalism tend to benefit from criticisms of "identity theories" and of behaviorism.
The article continues:
Objectors to functionalism generally charge that it classifies too many things as having mental states, or at least more states than psychologists usually accept. The effectiveness of the arguments for and against functionalism depends in part on the particular variety in question, and whether it is a stronger or weaker version of the theory. This article explains the core ideas behind functionalism and surveys the primary arguments for and against functionalism.
In one version or another, functionalism remains the most widely accepted theory of the nature of mental states among contemporary theorists. Nevertheless, in view of the difficulties of working out the details of functionalist theories, some philosophers have been inclined to offer supervenience theories of mental states as alternatives to functionalism.
---End quotation---
See:
Generally, this article is quite useful for discussion of the topic, and it recognizes problems connected with stronger and weaker versions of functionalism. Although Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam once claimed to have invented functionalism, it was something like "Turing machine functionalism which he proposed (and later rejected), and the psychological theory of functionalism, rooted in William James and his Principles of Psychology, long predated the contemporary versions which are more directly related to the advent of computers and computer technology.
One of the central themes in the philosophy of formal sciences (or mathematics) is the debate between realism (sometimes misnamed Platonism) and nominalism (also called "anti-realism"), which has different versions.
In my opinion, what is decisive in this regard is the position adopted on the question of whether objects postulated by the theories of the formal sciences (such as the arithmetic of natural numbers) have some mode of existence independently of the language that we humans use to refer to them; that is, independently of linguistic representations and theories. The affirmative answer assumes that things like numbers or the golden ratio are genuine discoveries, while the negative one understands that numbers are not discoveries but human inventions, they are not entities but mere referents of a language whose postulation has been useful for various purposes.
However, it does not occur to me how an anti-realist or nominalist position can respond to these two realist arguments in philosophy of mathematics: first, if numbers have no existence independently of language, how can one explain the metaphysical difference, which we call numerical, at a time before the existence of humans in which at t0 there was in a certain space-time region what we call two dinosaurs and then at t1 what we call three dinosaurs? That seems to be a real metaphysical difference in the sense in which we use the word "numerical", and it does not even require human language, which suggests that number, quantities, etc., seem to be included in the very idea of an individual entity.
Secondly, if the so-called golden ratio (also represented as the golden number and related to the Fibonacci sequence) is a human invention, how can it be explained that this relationship exists in various manifestations of nature such as the shell of certain mollusks, the florets of sunflowers, waves, the structure of galaxies, the spiral of DNA, etc.?
That seems to be a discovery and not an invention, a genuine mathematical discovery. And if it is, it seems something like a universal of which those examples are particular cases, perhaps in a Platonic-like sense, which seems to suggest that mathematical entities express characteristics of the spatio-temporal world. However, this form of mathematical realism does not seem compatible with the version that maintains that the entities that mathematical theories talk about exist outside of spacetime. That is to say, if mathematical objects bear to physical and natural objects the relationship that the golden ratio bears to those mentioned, then it seems that there must be a true geometry and that, ultimately, mathematical entities are not as far out of space-time as has been suggested. After all, not everything that exists in spacetime has to be material, as the social sciences well know, that refer to norms, values or attitudes that are not.
(I apologize for using a translator. Thank you.)
Hello fellow Researchers,
I have a question regarding the understanding of the theory of theory, especially in the case of research categorizations according to empirical / theoretical. It is about a literature review, which summarizes empirical as well as theoretical papers.
Do I categorize this review as theory or empirical? Per se, no new data is collected from empirical studies, although the literature review could be considered an empirical study. Has anyone by chance ever had the same problem and found an answer? :-)
Thanks and best regards
Alex
Dear Sirs,
R Feynman in his lectures, vol 1, chapter 12, Characteristics of force wrote:
"The real content of Newton’s laws is this: that the force is supposed to have some independent properties, in addition to the law F=ma; but the specific independent properties that the force has were not completely described by Newton or by anybody else, and therefore the physical law F=ma is an incomplete law. ".
Other researchers may consider the 2nd Newton's law as a definition of force or mass. But R. Feynman did not agree with them in the above chapter.
What is your view on the 2nd Newton's law?
Sometimes , we use term of "zero time" in a formulation but are we sure it is really "0" ? maybe it is 0,000......1 and is there a "zero" time(can we stop the time?), or sometimes, we say v=0 are we sure?
On the other hand
1/0 = infinity. Well then, what's "infinity"? How does it work in all the other equations?
infinity - infinity = 0?
1 + infinity = infinity?
If we use closest number to zero-monad (basic thing that constitutes the universe-everything-)Gottfreid Leibniz, in his essay “Monadology,” suggested that the fundamental unit of all things is the monad. He intended the monad to have some of the attributes of the atom, but with important differences. The monads Leibniz proposed are indivisible, indissoluble, and have no extension or shape, yet from them all things were made. He called them “the true atoms of nature.” At the same time, each monad mirrored the universe. If we use monad instead of zero, every equations work
I think Science says "Every Thing had originated from a basic thing"
From antiquity, one of the first fundamental areas of the development of thoughts and considerations being precursory trends for the subsequent development of specific fields of science was logic and philosophy. Analysis of the development of various directions, theories, concepts, trends, and philosophical schools in the context of the history of philosophical thought can also provide inspiration for contemporary considerations over specific guesses, the search for solutions to complex problems, and the planning of complex research processes.
Many philosophical concepts and trends from the past, formulated in other epochs, are in principle still valid despite the technical, technological and civilization progress made. I believe that many philosophical concepts and trends from the past concerning the role of man in the surrounding world, in relations with the environment, including the social and natural environment, man as part of nature in a sustainable ecosystem, etc. is still valid. Human life has changed due to technological and civilization progress. The current technological revolution, known as Industry 4.0, could, however, change human life in highly developed countries so far that these may be already noticeable in contemporary trends and philosophical concepts concerning antrolope, social issues, etc.
On the other hand, modern philosophical concepts can also describe the role of science in the 21st century in the context of successively growing global social, climate and natural and economic problems.
In view of the above, the current question is: Do you know any theories or directions of philosophical thought that inspire you to carry out scientific research?
Please, answer, comments. I invite you to the discussion.
For example, cold fusion.
Are there other examples?
What are examples of ideas initially treated as momentous, and doubted, later achieving acceptance? What is on the horizon?
Possible the HUP describes the fact that we are not able to probe beyond a small size scale into the quantum world because the relative long light waves just diffract over the particles giving a fuzzy sensor reading and measurements and when we finally try to probe these with shorter wavelength high energy photons the measurement totally disturbs the quantum state of these particles not giving us back their actual states and therefore making the measurements partially obsolete. Therefore, we can know the position of the particle at the instant of measurement but not also the momentum and vice versa. The HUP and measurement problem are ultimately entangled together.
However, maybe, if we could invent less intrusive or even better non-intrusive, indirect observation methods at high energies of probing and measuring then the HUP would be partially lifted or even nullified.
My question's center theme is, hypothetically with the HUP gone, what will we then observe in the quantum system under observation? Will this then rendered and become classical?
I personally believe that it is a matter of scale and for a hypothetical observer as small as these particles everything would look deterministic and obeying good classical physics and mechanics. Therefore the HUP should be not absolute for the quantum world but a relative apparent effect depending on the frame of reference and scale. This is just speculative but still an intriguing possibility beyond the SM of physics.
Maybe after all, nature is actually only deterministic and classical independent size scale and frame of reference and HUP is only an apparent effect due our macroscopic frame of reference relative to our quantum world and size scale? Maybe if a human observer could reduce his/her size and frame of reference to the size of sub-atomic particles then he/she would observe a total classical reality of the quantum world where particles would appear like planets or stars obeying the classical laws of motion and classical mechanics?
Maybe HUP is not absolute but relative and does not apply for subatomic sized observers?
Does HUP quantitatively diminish with the observer or measurement tool size?
What are your thoughts and analysis of the above hypothesis?
What kind of scientific research dominate in the field of Philosophy of science and research?
Please, provide your suggestions for a question, problem or research thesis in the issues: Philosophy of science and research.
Please reply.
I invite you to the discussion
Thank you very much
Best wishes
Is anybody able to Imagine "Nothing" before the big bang? Does it mean no time and no space. Well, I cannot imagine there were nothing before the big bang. I think it might be something. But what about "something"? For me, this is the main question?
Chord language is a natural information system, The basic forms are: chords (quantized discrete spectrum), chord geometry (open, closed, membrane strings), and mathematical models of chords (temperament, harmonics), often used in time (music) ), space (painting), life (meridians) and other chord semantic expressions; chord semantics comes from the chord spectrum, which is the manifestation of natural spirit and natural laws.
The impression of chord observation is: the language of chords is the language of time-space (life); the language of all things.
Preprint CHORD LANGUAGE
Preprint CHORD PAINTING
Dear all, Mathematical models and theories are meant to provide efficient and accurate approximations of physical phenomenon. Some models have been ignored assumed to be true for hundreds or thousands years, few of them have been maintained and perfected to be close to reality (atomic models, the universe size, etc.). The human word perception and understanding is getting better every day. Also, most advances in science and technology are overlooked those of the previous cycle. However, these physical principles have been existed since the existence of the earth and the universe. The good news, Many theories and physical principles still exist and are just waiting to be discovered, our ignorance does not mean the absence of such a principle (Human limitation to exploring the earth against the vastness of the universe is a proof). Is there any mechanism or a technique which makes it possible to predict the existence of some new physical phenomenon, etc. or to initiate the reflection process ?. Thanks for your comments.
Even tigers and lions kill just to survive. Lions kill other lions' cubs just because of "the egoistic gen". However, we kill - yearly (!) - hundreds and hundreds million of animals just for our food (and we most likely are successors of fruits-eating animals, as, e.g., also Pan paniscus are) and for mere entertainment (so called "hunting" - the same predators' "virtue" ) and simply disgusting pleasure (furs). We are keeping them in frightening conditions in meantime. (As if they were not living soul persons just as we all are?) And we kill them for nothing in millions just under suspection of slightest endangering for our own health:
In early November, the Danish government announced a plan to slaughter 15 million mink due to emerging fears of the COVID-19 mutation, which could be transmitted from these animals to humans. At a press conference held on November 4, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that twelve people had contracted the mutant virus and added that mink are "considered a threat to public health".
15 mln vs. 12 - isn't it a clear evidence of presumption of Homo sapiens sapiens
to be actually the most predatory (and beyond compare measure EXTRAORDINARY) of species of whole the Multiverse, therefore?
Photo from:
Dania. Władze wybiły norki. Teraz ich truchła wychodzą z ziemi (wprost.pl)
The Meissner effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state. Entering the superconducting state, electric currents are set up near its surface and this cancels the applied magnetic field within the superconductor. So, it seems that electron movements become possible which were not before possible and this is demonstrated by the Meissner effect. Does this amount to emergent degrees of freedom relevant to the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
It seems to me that the power of the mechanistic account of explanation (Craver; Bechtel; Glennan) is to take apart individual components and see how they contribute to a given behaviour. In my opinion, the significant focus still is on the activities of individual components. The concept of the mechanistic organization should make mechanical models more holistic. However, in my opinion, the mechanistic organization merely focus on the spatial (i.e. proximity and distance) and temporal (i.e. different times of activation) co-ordination of mechanistic components. If this is the case, I do not see why the mechanistic organization should imply that mechanisms, for example, in neuroscience, are holistic. The mechanistic organization does not include a concept such as "way of working" (Bergeron, 2007) which points out the comprehensive way of cooperating of a set of components abstracting away from the activity of individual components. For instance, Burnston (2019) suggest that for studying how a set of brain regions (i.e. a brain network) underlies a specific cognitive function, we may look at the "brain frequency" (alpha: 8-13 Hz; beta, 18-25; theta: 3.5-7 Hz; delta: 0.5-3.5 Hz, and gamma: 30-70 Hz) of the whole network. That is holistic! Is it my impression or is there no an account of the mechanistic organization (in neo-mechanical philosophy) that takes into consideration "ways of working" together of every mechanistic component both intra-level and inter-level?
Please, let me know if you think I am wrong, and where may I read a substantially holistic account of the mechanistic organization.
Much of this is quoted from elsewhere, but I think deserves its own thread:
Kuhn, who I have always seen as having a only a partial (that is: just a "some-parts" understanding) of a paradigm, still seems at least in the direction of being correct in some noteworthy ways. According to Kuhn :
An immature science is preparadigmatic -- that is, it is still in its natural history phase of competing schools. Slowly, a science matures and becomes paradigmatic. (End of short summary of some of his views.) [ It will be clear I do not fully agree with these views, in particular: the " 'natural' history" part. ]
I would say that preparadigmatic is not yet science at all and characterized by flailing and floundering UNTIL a paradigm is found (and RATHER: actually, this should be done NOW and with any necessary efforts: FORMULATED). Preparadigmatic is nothing good, clear or even "natural"; it is a state of insufficiency, failing to provide for making for clear sustained integrated progress (and even, as indicated, I would say this situation is: unnecessary -- see my delineation of the characteristics of a paradigm * to see why this situation in Psychology is unnecessary and INEXCUSABLE, because clearly you MUST be doing paradigm definition the best you can, clearly and respectably). _AND_ we are not talking about progress in one vein (sub-"area"), but some interpretable, agreeable findings for the whole field -- a necessary condition of HAVING ANY sort of general SCIENCE AT ALL; obviously Psychology does not have that and should not be considered a science just because people in that field want to say that and supposedly aspire in that way [ ("aspire" somehow -- usually essentially mythologically, irrationally, and just "hoping beyond hope" (as people say)) ] In short: that state of preparadigmatic should not be tolerated; major efforts should be clearly going on to improve from this state immediately ("if not sooner", as they say -- i.e. this SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE SOONER).
Since I think I DO KNOW at least many of the characteristics of a paradigm (presented elsewhere, for one: in the description of the "... Ethogram Theory" Project *) AND since mine is the only paradigm being "offered up", Psychology people should damn well take full note of that and fully read and come to a reasonable understanding of my perspective and approach -- all that leading to clear, testable hypotheses that, IF SHOWN CORRECT, would be of general applicability and importance and very reliable (in the formal sense) and , thus (as I say): agreeable. IN short, I OFFER THE ONLY FULL-FLEDGED GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY PARADIGM and if someone is in the Psychology field and really cares about science, they must take note (and fully assess it) (no reason for any exception): Minimally, all must "see" AND READ:
Barring any "competition", my paradigm should be studied and fully understood -- NO REASONABLE SCIENCE CHOICE ABOUT IT. It stands alone in Psychology, as a proposal for a NECESSARY "ingredient" for SCIENCE for Psychology.
* FOOTNOTE (this footnote is referenced-to twice in the essay above): The characteristics of a paradigm are presented the Project referred to: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development-Ethogram-Theory-A-Full-Fledged-Paradigm-Shift-for-PSYCHOLOGY
(in particular, in its description)
Dear Friends,
How could any proof for disruptive discovery or theory could see the light of day (or error in our knowledge can be exposed), if no one is willing to investigate evidence that can prove the disruptive discovery or theory?
For example, how is it possible to expose flawed basic beliefs (e.g. such as the Earth is static at the center), if no one is willing to look at evidence that can expose such basic errors? If anyone try to expose such error, often many scientists or researchers resort to personal attacks or humiliating insults to suppress open honest debate.
The basic moral and ethical obligation or sacred duty of every scientist is pursuit of absolute Truth directly or indirectly, where indirectly also includes moral and ethical obligation to validation of sacred tenets for upholding Truth. Refusal to investigate conclusive evidence that can prove a new discovery of fact is tantamount to promoting an error by suppressing the Truth. Suppressing truth (by any scientist) is a volition of scientific method and moral code of conduct (for anyone consider himself a scientist).
How any new discovery of fact, basic error in mankind’s knowledge or new theory could see the light of day, if each member of community of researchers or scientists evade their mandatory moral obligation of investigating evidence and facts that can prove the theory or expose a flawed belief? Any real discovery only shines under rigorous validation or scrutiny by brilliant critics or opponents.
No researcher or scientist should ever ask anyone to blindly believe his/her discovery or theory. Every discovery or theory must be backed by falsifiable proof, evidence and reasoning. Falsifiable doesn’t imply that the discovery or theory is flawed, but it can be falsified, if it is flawed, for example, by finding a counter evidence or sound counter reasoning.
Scientific research is nothing but pursuit of absolute Truth (and upholding the Truth), which also includes getting closer and closer to the Truth by eliminating imperfections in our BoK (Body of Knowledge). The community of researchers and scientists are morally and ethically obligated to uphold the Truths, by investigating the evidence to determine the validity of the discovery or theory.
What would have happened, if everyone ignored or snubbed seminal theories or discoveries of a young 25-year-old low level clerk (named Einstein) at a patent office in Bern? Research community successfully suppressed disruptive discovery of Copernicus for hundred years, which eventually prevailed due to great sacrifices of researchers like Giordano Bruno and Galileo, which resulted in a scientific revolution.
Mankind would be still in the dark ages without their sacrifices to uphold the Truth. Disruptive or outside of box discoveries expose inconvenient Truths/facts, so face fierce resistance and hostilities.
Almost every disruptive or revolutionary discovery faces fierce resistance and opposition. If any scientist disagrees with a theory and proof backed by evidence, scientific process requires channeling the fierce resistance and opposition for falsifying the evidence and facts for invalidating proof. Only incompetent or ignorant people resort to personal insults. Any determined efforts to falsify proof for any discovery end up proving the discovery, if the discovery is Truth/fact. But it is unethical to suppress or snub the discovery to evade such mandatory moral obligation of investigating evidence by resorting to personal attacks or insults.
What would you do, if you stumbled onto a revolutionary discovery, and if no one in the scientific or research community is willing to investigate the evidence and facts, which can provide conclusive proof for the discovery by employing unethical evasive tactics such as personal attacks or humiliating snubs to suppressing facts?
What can you do, if research community ostracizes you (e.g. by resorting to personal attacks, humiliation and snubbing), when you politely request for an opportunity to present evidence that can provide conclusive proof for your theory or discovery?
Assume, you spent more than 12 years making sure that you are absolutely right by accumulating many proofs, where each proof is backed by more than enough evidence. If you are not very wealthy and powerful, you would be helpless (e.g. can do nothing), if research community refuses to look at your evidence that can prove your discovery.
What can you do, if you don’t have large financial resources to force the research community to investigate your evidence, for example, by dragging them to courts for abdicating their moral and ethical obligations (e.g. upholding the Truth) or for gross negligence, in case if researchers are being funded by taxpayer money and having mandatory obligation to find and promote such discoveries?
It is a laudable example that few great researchers took time to investigate disruptive discovery by a low-level young patent clerk. But in case of Galileo and others, research community blatantly abdicated their moral obligation and failed the mandate of scientific method or process for upholding the Truth. Most people claim to be a scientist doesn’t even know what is meant by being a scientist and what are the moral or ethical obligations and mandate of scientific method.
How can we advance mankind’s scientific knowledge into new unexplored frontiers, if research or scientific community abdicates their sacred duty – Pursuit of absolute Truth, flawless knowledge and wisdom? One must stop pretending to be a scientist, if he is not willing to fulfill moral or ethical obligations and mandate of scientific methods for pursuit flawless knowledge and/or upholding of the Truth.
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
If humans are so "complex", is it always harder to understand human behavior [patterns] than to understand similarly functioning patterns in other animals? NO !!
Of course not: we see as other humans see and, to some notable extent, what they see; we hear what they can hear; we smell what they can smell; we understand the types of things they are trying to understand and master; and we understand (roughly) what they are trying to accomplish at each stage of life ('stage' both in the strict sense, of the ontogeny that is child development, and otherwise). WITH RESPECT TO NO OTHER ANIMAL DO WE HAVE THESE COMMONALITIES TO USE AS PART OF OUR UNDERSTANDING.
Then, how is it that all this does not help us; I , for one, am not willing to believe that we are yet otherwise extremely complex to any point of not being able to come to understand humans (ourselves). [( In most cases, claims of complexity can be regarded as simply indications of confusion* (and ignorance) -- and not necessarily anything more. And, the confusions are often not necessary at all, even in the first place.)]
FOOTNOTE: Try the proposed word substitution ("confused/confusion" for "complex/complexity") and see.
Let me explain:
It is as if bad philosophy has put a "spell" (actually: blocks and limitations, over-generalizations and other wrongful mental behavior patterns, aka "thought") on us that incapacitate our moving forward, thinking along/upon more constructive lines such as (in small part) indicated above [(but much more clearly indicated, and then outlined, in other parts of my writings)]. We very much too often ask "what have the philosophers thought?" when, frankly, that hardly matters at all (they may have had some point sometimes at some junctures but, with their same body of philosophy, they commonly very much over-"define" (notably wrongly and falsely), and then overgeneralize their 'position' to make unsubstantiated CLAIMS -- yet these thought-out armchair claims are accepted!! BIG EXAMPLES OF THEIR WRONGFULNESS COME UP in statements beginning "ONLY Man can ... ". And this is in addition to THEM saying in other ways (which I am now characterizing in vague outline and obviously paraphrasing): only some 'this' or 'that' [way] will work or only some 'this' or 'that' can be the "way it is", as they "determined". They analyze any single words they choose (e.g. how we can supposedly "understand" our "will" or understand certain particular other things) as if any of these are well established concepts, when they are not; THEY then "define" other things and move on from there, both of these wrongful ways [further] making a fundamental breach with empiricism and then necessarily also with science (AND all this CAUSES CONFUSION (and it should be clear it is based on ignorance)).
Those large aspects of many, many of the philosophies are not only incongruent with science, but lead to unnecessary confusions (on larger "related" topics, like "consciousness" -- something they go on to develop ideas about, based on their initial "definitions", all that yielding the "complex" "understanding" and then also "finding" that which "cannot be understood" (e.g. the " 'hard problem' of "consciousness" " -- [a problem I see as nonexistent from another standpoint]) .
With so many permutations of so many diverse "things": the only way to provide a general alternative better view AND APPROACH will be WITH a full-fledged paradigm shift:
What is offered must have a host of better characteristics and better ways, all related clearly to a better empiricism. [ SPECIFICALLY: I am speaking of/for PSYCHOLOGY -- the number of characters allowed in a title didn't allow for the inclusion of that full phrase (though the same type of thing may at times be required by other sciences) .]
A full-fledged PARADIGM CHANGE: Better assumptions; stricter & very established/agreeable and actual empiricism, well-defined, with a definition true for ALL sciences; better KEY BEHAVIORAL foundations/clear grounding (in terms of: behavior patterns) for all cognitive processes; clear NEW observations sought (i.e. major discoveries sought) VIA NEW observation methods; & with clear better-empirical verifiable/falsifiable HYPOTHESES . This is what I seek to offer with :
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development-Ethogram-Theory-A-Full-Fledged-Paradigm-Shift-for-PSYCHOLOGY (see its major References and the Project Log (Updates) for this Project; the major References, hundreds of pages long, will provide you with a perspective and approach -- a "how-to" FOR all of that. Given its better empiricism, a concrete basis is also provided for General Artificial Intelligence -- all that is found and seen can be "mechanized", is programmable.)
[ This all is VERY serious "business"; it really is an all-or-nothing proposition. If you see major problems with large portions of Psychology throughout its history, you better "go with" what I present; otherwise the long-standing situation WILL remain the same; I think you may well be able to imagine how and why that could be true (all the various myths of how things [otherwise] could/will come together NOT WITHSTANDING -- these are true myths, not based on any empiricism). ]
In physics, we have a number of "fundamental" variables: force, mass, velocity, acceleration, time, position, electric field, spin, charge, etc
How do we know that we have in fact got the most compact set of variables? If we were to examine the physics textbooks of an intelligent alien civilization, could it be they have cleverly set up their system of variables so that they don't need (say) "mass"? Maybe mass is accounted by everything else and is hence redundant? Maybe the aliens have factored mass out of their physics and it is not needed?
Bottom line question: how do we know that each of the physical variables we commonly use are fundamental and not, in fact, redundant?
Has anyone tried to formally prove we have a non-redundant compact set?
Is this even something that is possible to prove? Is it an unprovable question to start with? How do we set about trying to prove it?
For Psychology (and other aspiring sciences and for even for good established sciences): Isn't it better to speak and write in terms of "conditions-for" instead of 'causes'?
My answer: Yes. Yes. Yes. Most usually. (Most certainty for a Biological science, like Psychology; HERE I am talking about a science of behavior patterns PER SE (i.e. "just behaviors"). (What is closest to a 'cause' is what ethologists call: proximate causes.))
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For some certain persons: If you do not like negative feedback, do not read below the line, directly below.
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This present Question is especially for some certain individuals (who I read): The above Question is something useful to think about OTHER THAN philosophy and especially philosophical Questions about "Consciousness" and "philosophy-and-science". Those Questions are useless, senseless, ridiculous Questions that most certainly will lead nowhere (certainly nowhere useful). Consider my present Question instead, for "therapy".
Just a thought: as the number of narrow specialists grows, so does decrease the number of peers who can “double-blindly” revise one's work, turning the review process into a fallacy.
So, will there be out there that beautiful and magical moment when joint work will become a realm, at least within such narrow fields?
Who gives the last word about the evolutionary process, genetics or ecology?
In other words, are ecological interactions driven by any genetic phenomenon? Or is it genetics that has been molded by ecology?
[I’m a Brazilian biologist and writer. I write about science – I have just released a new book, O que é darwinismo (What is Darwinism, in Portuguese) – and would like to know the opinion of colleagues from other countries (from any field of scientific knowledge).]
See also What do you think about fitness, adaptation and natural selection? (https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_think_about_fitness_adaptation_and_natural_selection)
The Journal of Research Practice (Elsevier) was created for that purpose back in 2005, but was discontinued in March 2019. I’m not looking for journals of research in specific areas, such as education, science, or engineering, but for journals that concentrate specifically on the acts of rigorous human inquiry and knowledge creation.
I am working in statistical seismology and we are running into a HIGHLY controversial topic. What can we say about the largest possible event (earthquake) that could happen in an area based on data? We make estimates, but what reliability do these estimates carry? There are epistemic and random uncertainties involved. There are many theoretical estimators for this quantity but many scientist doubt that they are of any practical value. I do not believe we seismologists are qualified to do more than "rambling" about the problem and I think some input from philosophers would be extremely enlightening.
I refer to papers:
Pisarenko VF (1991). Statistical evaluation of maximum possible magnitude. Izvestiya Earth Phys 27:757–763
Zöller, G. & Holschneider, M. (2016). The Maximum Possible and the Maximum Expected
Earthquake Magnitude for Production-Induced Earthquakes at the Gas Field in Groningen, The
Netherlands. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 106, 2917-2921.
Zöller, G. (2017) Comment on “Estimation of Earthquake Hazard Parameters from Incomplete Data
Files. Part III. Incorporation of Uncertainty of Earthquake‐ Occurrence Model” by Andrzej
Kijko, Ansie Smit, and Markvard A. Sellevoll. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 107: 1975-1978.
Dear Friends,
Can anyone answer this question that has been perplexed me for years? What kind of scientific discipline blatantly violates basic principles or proven rules of scientific method? What kind of scientist fiercely defends such blatant violation of basic principles or proven rules of scientific method?
Last time a scientific discipline that blatantly violated scientific method was before 17th century, when researchers fiercely defended geocentric paradox in violation of scientific method. In their defense, most of the basic rules and principles of scientific method were not yet known or properly established. Most of the basic rules and principles of scientific method were formed and which have been perfected since 17th century by many great philosophers of science and brilliant scientists, particularly based on valuable lessons and insights learned from the painful experiences gained from subverting geocentric paradox, which transformed the basic science from fake science into a real science.
What is a scientific discipline? A discipline can be a scientific discipline, if and only if the BoK (Body of Knowledge) in all the published textbooks and accepted research publications for the discipline must have been acquired and accumulated without violating basic principles and rules of scientific method. The purpose of modern scientific method is perfecting the quality of knowledge by finding and eliminating imperfections and/or anomalies. Scientific method doesn’t offer a recipe, hints, and guidelines or impose restrictions for doing research to acquire new knowledge, but provide tools to keep scientific research in the right path by detecting mistakes that can divert research efforts into a wrong path.
Each piece of knowledge in the BoK must be supported by falsifiable proof (backed by evidence and facts), where each piece of knowledge and its proof is open for challenge and perfected by rigorous testing and empirical validation. The research community in 17th blatantly violated basic scientific rule, when they tried to suppress and tacitly sabotage efforts to expose 2300-year-old unproven flawed presumption (i.e. the Earth is at the center) in it’s vary foundation.
Except computer science, I could not find any evidence that any other scientific discipline violated scientific method so blatantly. It is beyond my comprehension, why researchers of computer science fiercely defending such blatant violation of basic principles or proven rules of scientific method.
Unfortunately, software researchers acquired so much invalid BoK by blatantly violating scientific method. Since it is impossible to solve any problem by relying on invalid knowledge, software researchers concluded that it is impossible to solve certain problems (e.g. real-CBD/CBE or real computer intelligence). But it is not hard to solve those problems by acquired relevant valid knowledge. Please refer to ValidKnowledge.pdf for more information.
P.S: I also failed to find a real scientist, who can understand code of conduct for real scientists: CodeOfConduct.pdf
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
Philosophy of the sciences
The hypothesis I make here is that if you understand the philosophical background of your scientific field of study, it will help you in doing better research, in the problems you solve, the questions you ask at the problem solving, in the way you approach problem solving, the tools you use and the way you communicate your results. Maybe it also help to determine how you behave in life, also here on the platform.
The philosophy of science looks in a rational way at aspects such as existence (ontology, metaphysics), knowledge (epistemology), methods (logic and language), values (ethics) and the beauty and creation of their truth (aesthetics).
In general, science is divided in three branches: formal, natural and social- and they again are divided into sub-branches with everyone their own way of thinking, their philosophical approach. Therefore, you have e.g. the philosophy of economics, the philosophy of physics, of art, technology, history, mathematics, business administration, engineering and so on.
People in the same field of study can differ of opinion about the philosophy of their science. Understanding the philosophical approach of other scientists and researchers here on the platform can help improve the communication.
Dear colleagues, maybe you can help answering this question: What is the philosophy or your scientific field about and how do you practice that philosophy doing your science?
Here I want to collect the philosophies of the different scientific fields, e.g economy, public administration, art, biology, history, technology and so.
Let me say a bit more. A starting perspective MUST be core-observation _AND core-principle founded, and grounded on that which is minimally clearly related to directly observable overt phenomena. These are absolute requirements for empiricism, for science. And remember: _your Subject, NOT YOU, should in-true-effect define every word and concept and the structure and nature of every set of concepts (much of all this following new observation and NEW DISCOVERIES). A strict, abiding, perspective of this quality is REQUIRED FOR ANY AND ALL SCIENCES.
If you do not start like this and stay like this, your sets-of-hypotheses/theory AND your approach will be contaminated (specifically: false w/r to reality) in some ways, and more and more, and lead you away from finding things as the really are.
[ P.S. NO need to try to "define" terms (providing generalities) or to define "realities" (boundaries). THIS IS NOT THE "JOB" OF A SCIENTIST _AND_ IS ACTUALLY NOT POSSIBLE to any notable extent through thinking alone. And yet, with this (doing as I indicated), there can be some real and good science related to anything ... ]
There is no reasonable and sound counterargument or major perspective. I actually view this Discussion (so far, as I have presented it) as quite beyond discussion. I see it as a foundational Law of Science. (Yet, there are those who seek science, or seek to progress their 'science', who violate this LAW every day.)
It is obvious that English is currently the working language for scientists worldwide, and that those who publish must do it mostly in English, even if they don´t speak it at all. It is also clear that not everybody masters this language to express their ideas and argumentations with the same clarity than with their mother tongue. So, ... how much do you think that English is affecting the quality and clarity of your best ideas?
Hola everybody
As you know, since many years back, we have an international scientific community that publishes most of their findings and ideas in English although most countries worldwide do not have/use that language as "mother tongue". In this, we commonly see an implicit international convention dictating that we currently use English as our international working language. Many of us have published on this matter and whether this “convention” is valid or not and what the outcomes are. Within this context, professionals from countries with other language than English, often wonder if our publications are reaching the right public within our countries. The different sectors of the society that may need to know about (and use) our findings, often ignore why we publish in English when they do not understand that language. So, I would like to know from you:
How much (aprox. %) of what you produce and publish in English is known by, or reaching, your own country fellows? and, Do you think that, within the different sectors of the society, those accessing your publications in English are the best recipients possible?
1) There is some tradition in philosophy of mathematics starting at the late 19th century and culminating in the crisis of foundations at the beginning of the 20th century. Names here are Zermelo, Frege, Whitehead and Russel, Cantor, Brouwer, Hilbert, Gödel, Cavaillès, and some more. At that time mathematics was already focused on itself, separated from general rationalist philosophy and epistemology, from a philosophy of the cosmos and the spirit.
2) Stepping backwards in time we have the great “rationalist” philosophers of the 17th, 18th, 19th century: Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hegel proposing a global view of the universe in which the subject, trying to understand his situation, is immersed.
3) Still making a big step backwards in time, we have the philosophers of the late antiquity and the beginning of our era (Greek philosophy, Neoplatonist schools, oriental philosophies). These should not be left out from our considerations.
4) Returning to the late 20th century we see inside mathematics appears the foundation (Eilenberg, Lavwere, Grothendieck, Maclane,…) of Category theory, which is in some sense a transversal theory inside mathematics. Among its basic principles are the notions of object, arrow, functor, on which then are founded adjunctions, (co-)limits, monads, and more evolved concepts.
Do you think these principles have their signification a) for science b) the rationalist philosophies we described before, and ultimately c) for more general philosophies of the cosmos?
Examples: The existence of an adjunction of two functors could have a meaning in physics e.g.. The existence of a natural numbers - object known from topos theory could have philosophical consequences. (cf. Immanuel Kant, Antinomien der reinen Vernunft).
The role of science in building the modern-day society is so enormous without any hitherto of doubt that the blind can feel and the deaf can see. Application of scientific knowledge is pivoted in formulating the social structures of any kind through the local and industrial production to all levels of education (Markova, 2017). The values attached to science by society is a reflection of inevitable scientific knowledge application in satisfying the basic needs of human beings and improving quality of life and well-being. Despite the utility of science through application of its knowledge in the society the big questions remain: What constitutes scientific knowledge? What are the unique features of scientific knowledge that make it different from other types of knowledge? In the next few paragraphs, I will attempt to address these questions.
Questions on the nature of scientific knowledge is philosophical and it is imperative to treat it as such. Therefore, the type of knowledge science is can be explained from the epistemological perspective which primarily concerns with the theory of knowledge in general. Despite the much effort that have been expended towards identification of constituents of scientific knowledge among educational philosophers there seems to be no universal agreement. However, some components such as statements, concepts, hypotheses, theories, methodology, etc., stand out in scientific practices. In an attempt to explain these components of scientific knowledge and their interrelationships, an overview of two epistemologies will be provided. These are the epistemology developed by Popper (2002) and that of Bunge (1998a, 1998b).
In the conceptualization of scientific knowledge, Popper sees statements as cardinal constituents and tools to describing concepts (basic or universal) coupled with associated relationships. In his view, a statement could be singular – describing experimental observation, or universal – all-inclusive based on experience. It is by default necessary for concepts to feature in scientific statements. Accordingly, a singular statement encompasses the description of an occurrence – real phenomenon – which in turn could form a building block for an event-similar occurrence which differ only in space or time. A special kind of statement is a hypothesis while a law is a unique type of universal statement. Another major component of scientific knowledge is a theory – a collection of scientific statements. Finally, a special kind of theory is a methodology (Hars, 2001; Popper, 2002). These components sum together constitute Popper’s epistemology of scientific knowledge.
Another perspective of the kind of knowledge science really is can be understood from Bunge’s epistemology of scientific knowledge. According to Bunge (1998a, 1998b), ideas and facts are basic building blocks of a scientific knowledge of an object. Scientific ideas can be broken into factual hypotheses or observational hypotheses. A factual hypothesis requires creativity as it is not often extracted from data. Another component of scientific knowledge as described by Bunger are problems which could be solved using formula that encompasses concepts and variables. Data generated by scientific experience (e.g., measurement, observation and experiment) could be linked to hypotheses towards forming theories. Hence, theories are collection of hypotheses which can be deeper than one and other.
From the foregoing paragraphs it is evident that a scientific knowledge could be conceived of as a systematically synthesis of ideas about an object, occurrence, phenomenon or event through hypotheses that are subjected to testing using measurement, observation, experiment and refined accordingly for a rational explanation (theory) of the phenomenon. These features-ideas, hypothesizing, experimentation, methodology, theorizing, etc., coupled with its empirical integration make scientific knowledge different from other types of knowledge.
It will be a good idea if your thoughts can be captured in the comment section. Thank you.
References
Bunge, M. A. (1998a). Philosophy of science, volume 1: From problem to theory. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishing.
Bunge, M. A. (1998b). Philosophy of science, volume 2: From explanation to justification. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishing.
Hars, A. (2001). Designing scientific knowledge infrastructures: The contribution of epistemology. Information Systems Frontiers, 3(1), 63–73.
Markova, L. A. (2017). The Turn in Social Investigations of Scientific Knowledge. Russian Studies in Philosophy, 55(1), 26-36. doi:10.1080/10611967.2017.1296290
Popper, K. (2002). The Logic of Scientific Discovery (6th ed.). London: Routledge.
Faith or Belief should be based on Evidence in order to reach the TRUTH. Science leads to Truth. If the purpose of Religion is to take the believer to the Truth , then it should be based on Evidence
Ibrahim B Syed
Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc. (IRFI), LOUIS VILLE, KY, USA
As an IR/Comparative Politics scholar I've always tried to follow the dictum "let the research question determine the methodology, method, etc." I remain a disciplinary and methodological pluralist. And now I find myself writing what amounts to a defense against a resurgent scientism from some quarters, which I feel are targeting inherently vulnerable research programs (such as made clear in the Grievance Studies hoax). At the moment, I'm wrestling with concepts from the philosophy of science that I struggle to get a good bead on. Take for instance one critic who dismisses the work of an increasingly well known sociologist advancing a theory out of critical race studies as pseudoscience because she does not adhere to Popper's 1963 monist demand for the hypothetico-deductive method as the only demarcation between science and non-science and specifically that she does not employ quantitative methods. Yet in one essay by this critic, an argument against the removal of Gen. Robert E. Lee's statue from New Orleans, the author 1) notes that he firmly rejects presentism - though qualifies that to say of course we should still be able to morally criticize slavery, and 2) argues that to fully understand the meaning of the statue's removal (meaning for whom, the author does not specify) we must contextualize the historical figure Lee, for as the critic notes, Lee was inescapably a man only to be understood in the context of the time he could not escape. Failure to contextualize Lee, leads us to miss what a good and honorable man he was, and thus why the statue's removal should be reconsidered. So my puzzle is this: Is this an epistemological inconsistency? Isn't, for all it's obvious problems, presentism - the view that, inter alia, only present things exist -- something of a positivist epistemology that a hard core positivist must embrace if he or she is to be remain epistemologically consistent? Additionally, isn't' demanding at the same time that we adopt an epistemic contextualism in order to see the error in removing a statue celebrating the man who led the army of the confederacy in defense of slavery rather contradictory for one who dismisses as pseudoscience sociological work that emphasizes the cultural context that gives rise to, for example, internalized racism among the dominant racial group? Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? Or do I just not adequately appreciate the complexity of these concepts?
Our language is the origin and the building mean of formal languages of math and physics. Artificial intelligence mashines creates even their own language.
Are there research to create new languages to create new science or to simplify and make more understandable the current science? Or is it just my fantasy? Maybe if a man can see, say in ifrared range then he could invent new words? Maybe we should go in this direction?
How will one create new language describing our world and qualitatively different from the today one? Maybe we should study other creatures likes delphines?
Dear Friends,
I am sure no scientist such as Copernicus, Kepler or Galileo bribed anyone to validate their discoveries that exposed 2300-year-old flawed belief (e.g. the Earth is static at centre) at the root and very foundation of then dominant paradigm (i.e. in 16th century) later referred to as geocentric paradigm or paradox.
But today research community expect me to bribe them or someone influential to get endorsement for my new discovery that exposes 50 to 60-year-old flawed beliefs (e.g. about components and CBD/CBE) at the root and very foundation of existing dominant paradigm for software engineering. Please refer to attached PDF for my discoveries that expose the flawed beliefs.
I never heard that any researcher ever paid bribe for investigation proof for getting endorsement for his discovery or theory, even in case of very complex and disruptive discoveries or theories by researchers such as a junior patent clerk (I.e. Einstein), Newton, Plank, Maxwell or Darwin.
Such discoveries or theories require investing many months of time and money for investigating evidence, facts and reasoning. Research community gladly investigated the evidence, facts and reasoning, without expecting any bribe or favours. It is the sacred duty of any researcher or scientist to investigate such new discoveries or theories. The scientific method requires publishing each new discovery or theory openly backed by evidence, facts and reasoning.
The scientific method requires other researchers and scientists to investigate the proof backed by evidence, facts and reasoning. They can reject such discovery or theory only by finding a flaw in the proof, evidence, facts or reasoning. Only an incompetent scientist or researcher rejects a new discovery based on his pre-connived notions or prejudice without looking at the evidence and facts.
Any researcher is only obligated to provide proof backed by evidence, observable facts and reasoning publicly. It is the moral and ethical obligation of the research community (having expertise in relevant domains) to validate the proof. It is humiliating to beg researchers to investigate the proof and being snubbed. Unfortunately, since no one in computer science is willing to fulfil their moral duty to investigate proof for a new discovery, I feel that I left with no other option but bribing scientists and researchers of software to investigate the proof for my discovery.
Isn’t is demeaning, if not unethical, to pay (or expect) money to get (or give) endorsement for a new discovery. The scientific process or method requires openly publish proof for such discovery backed by evidence, observable facts and reasoning. It is the duty of the members of research community to investigate the proof.
I feel, it is my moral duty and obligation to investigate such proofs for any new discovery (of another researcher), if the domain of the discovery and its proof are within the reach or realm of my expertise.
Often disruptive discoveries in any domain would be outside of the existing knowledge base of the domain but would be within the reach of experts in the domains but requires putting more effort to stretch to expand the boundaries to reach the new discovery. But discoveries in physics, chemistry or biological sciences are not in my realm of my expertise.
For example, I am qualified to validate proofs in software engineering domain, which includes even a disruptive discovery that is outside the boundaries and/or contradictory to existing BoK (Body of Knowledge). I will not abdicate my duty to investigate proof for new discoveries for expanding our boundaries of BoK (or to uphold the Truth) and is it wrong to expect other researchers to do the same (i.e. not abdicate their duty for the cause of expanding BoK or upholding the Truth)?
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
Dear Friends,
I have encountered many researchers in the field of computer science and software engineering, each of them considers himself to be a scientist. But all most all of them fail basic test that can show weather a researcher is a real scientist, so fooling himself to be a scientist.
As per one of the greatest philosophers Dr. Karl Popper, a scientist must no longer hold on to a theory or belief, when conclusive counter evidence is presented to falsify a theory or belief.
I confronted many researchers by showing conclusive evidence that prove that their beliefs about the so-called software components and CBE/CBD (Component Based Design or Engineering) or fundamentally flawed.
The beliefs about so called software components and theories about CBD/CBE for software are in clear contradiction to facts and reality we know about the physical components and CBD/CBE for physical product respectively.
Instead of investigating evidence and facts presented to expose flawed beliefs and theories, each of the so-called scientists or researchers tried to viciously suppress the Truth and counter evidences or reasoning by resorting to personal attacks, snubbing or humiliations. A real scientist is morally and ethically obligated to engage in productive debate to uphold the Truth.
For example, in the context of CBD/CBE of countless physical products (e.g. cars, computers, cell-phones, bikes, TVs, ACs, airplanes, office equipment such as printers, machines or machinery for factory): What is the striking difference between kind of parts that are certainly components and all the other kinds of parts that are certainly not components?
Isn’t this an obvious or self-explanatory fact: In this context, no part can be a component, if the part is not conducive to be assembled and disassembled? Today, no known kind of so-called components for software is designed or conducive to be assembled and disassembled.
What is CBD/CBE? The CBD/CBE in brief has three parts (i) Partitioning a large or complex product in to smaller parts, where each part implements a small sub-set of self-contained features and functionality of the product, (ii) design and build each of the parts individually as a component, which can be assembled and disassembled, and (iii) building the product by assembling all the components, once all of the components are built and tested individually. Isn’t this a reality?
It is not hard to achieve this reality for complex software products. We have conclusive proof and evidence that this reality can be easily achieved, but software researchers refusing to look at the evidence or facts. They have been doing everything in their power to hold on to their flawed beliefs and myths by resorting to vicious personal attacks or snubbing to suppress counter evidences.
Who is a scientist (in another perspective)? Scientist is a person doing research in the pursuit of Truths for understanding the objective really and obligated to uphold the Truths in one or more related scientific disciplines (in which he claims to be a scientist).
What is a scientific discipline? Each scientific discipline is a BoK (Body of Knowledge) acquired and accumulated by using proven scientific method, process and principles. It is a mandatory duty and obligation for a scientist to follow or use proven scientific method, process and principles for doing the research and to uphold the Truth.
The scientific method was created in the 17th century by great philosophers such as Galileo, Descartes, Bacon and Newton to name a few. The scientific method has been perfected during past 300 years by countless contributions of great philosophers of science including Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Arthur Schopenhauer, Russell or Feyerabend to name a few.
I am sure that the scientific method will be continuously improved and perfected by great philosophers in the future as well. No one can be a scientist, if he blatantly violates the basic principles or processes of scientific method. No person can be a scientist, if he doesn’t know the basic principles or processes of scientific method and/or blatantly violate the scientific method.
Computer science and software engineering defined nature and/or characteristics of components and CBD/CBE by blatantly violating the basic principles or processes of scientific method. Those basic assumptions made 50 to 60 years ago without any basis in rarity or fact, which are at the foundation of existing dominant software engineering paradigm and are fundamentally flawed.
Isn’t wrong to claim to be a scientist, if he blatantly violates scientific method? Today many software researchers claiming to be scientists but refusing to know or follow scientific method for understanding the reality and facts about components and CBD/CBE.
It is the duty of a scientist is to acquire and accumulating valid BoK (e.g. facts and theories backed by evidence and sound reasoning) by using the scientific method for comprehending the objective reality, for example, about components and CBD/CBE of physical or real products. Today software researchers denying basic scientific principles to maintain a paradox.
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox. - Galileo
P.S: Kindly forgive me if anybody is offended by the above inconvenient facts. Such facts must be said and knowing the facts is in his/her best interest, if any researcher doesn’t want to waste his/her lifetime of hard work and efforts in the pursuit of fool’s errand for expanding a flawed paradox in a scientific discipline, which is similar to the flawed geocentric paradox existed until 16th century.
The very purpose of research in any scientific discipline is acquiring and accumulating knowledge for expanding the BoK to comprehend objective reality by using the scientific method. How can anyone be a scientist, if he doesn’t know and/or blatantly violates the basic principles and processes of scientific method?
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasises evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.
Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification". Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method.
My question is that the research
The Einstein-Bergson debate took place in Paris on April 6, 1922. I have come across various reconstructions, which however do not seem fully satisfactory. Can anybody kindly point me towards:
a) Sources and scholarly attempts at a precise reconstruction of the debate itself and the discussed topics (even in absence of verbatim transcription);
b) Wider interpretations concerning the different underlying views expressed and intentions that emerged during the debate and afterwards.
Context: I am furthering an investigation concerning the relation between philosophy and science, and more specifically, about various understandings of life from different epistemological and theoretical perspectives. Although not directly related to matters of life, I suspect the Einstein-Bergson debate could offer an interesting bit of reflection.
Thank you in advance for your help!
What is your view of science from the perspective of philosophy? There are a number of different approaches to understanding this - which is most correct in your opinion?
Many concepts in research and science are poorly understood, wrongly applied or simply misinterpreted. Paul Feyerabend's book title "Against Method", for example, is provocative, but highly misleading. Adam Smith is mostly known for the "invisible hand", which can be used for justifying any kind of laissez faire capitalism, but this does not do justice to his book "Wealth of Nations". Furthermore, I claim that Popper's falsification principle is frequently misunderstood in the social sciences. What about Cronbach's Alpha as an indicator for measuring reliability? Any further examples and/or opinions?
Of course, Coulomb’s law describes the phenomenon, but that does not explain it, as far as I know. This may be a somewhat philosophical question.
During my earlier work as a nuclear waste regulator in the intense force-field put in place by nuclear pro- and opponents, it has been necessary to look deeper into the philosophy of science aspects of our work invoking principles such as Popper's falsifiability criterion and many others. It was made within a national and an international framework, the latter primarily within the UN (International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA) and the OECD (through its Nuclear Energy Agency, OECD/NEA).
This turned out to be necessary not only because of external pressure but also because of the MO which included the time aspect, a safety assessment stretching over hundred thousands of years and the matters at hand, including the challenge of having records available over millennia in the interest of future generation’s safety. (It sounds strange to outsiders but it has been on the table for several decades).
In a draft essay I have looked into aspects of physicalism related to waste management and expanded the scope to include a number of other test issues: Einstein’s Nobel Prize, the safety of high level radioactve waste disposal, psychology and psychoanalysis and finally, for good measure, the issue of divinity. In the last example Teutonic logic is difficult to apply and the principles become shaky, underlining my second presented axiom (of three) about uncertainty, on physicalism. I then take refuge to an added goal in the essay, that of storytelling.
The essay is held in an (hopefully) entertaining tone.
I find that a strict (as possible) adherence to physicalism (the way I allow myself to define it) gives a deeper understanding of a large number of things and I wonder if you agree.
The possibility to present my ideas on this site was suggested to me my contact Professor Karlis Podnieks from Lattvia, which is gratefully acknowledged.
This is how AE rejected our paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327382103_Endangering_yourself_to_save_another_A_real_life_ethical_dilemma .
- “Thank you for the opportunity to consider "Endangering yourself to save another: A real life ethical dilemma" for XXX. An Associate Editor and I have read the manuscript. We believe that the topic is interesting, but we were not convinced that the findings you report are a good fit for XXX and instead seem better suited for a specialty journal. While we appreciated your argument that many would not predict the size of the effects you observed, we also agreed that the observed results seem to fall in line with common sense predictions; thus, the strength of the theoretical advance is limited.“
During my first year of psychology studies, actually it was the first course called Introduction to psychology, we learned about loud critics of psychology as being nothing else than somewhat extended "common sense science.” It is so disappointing to hear a colleague psychologist using the same argument.
I accept this journal emphasizes general theoretical significance and that our paper does not offer it. But naïve question: does the strength of the theoretical advance depend on how far results of a given study fall outside common sense predictions?
Dear Friends,
Kindly allow me to extract few interesting quotes from this page “Science is at its end, all the important things have already been discovered!”. The following paragraph is extracted from http://amasci.com/weird/end.html
"Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new."
- Heinrich Hertz as a physics student
I heard many researchers making such despairing statements (in fact I used to feel the same way 20 years ago). It is always much simpler to discover many things when any new paradigm for a scientific discipline was in its fledgling nascent stage. There would be many low hanging fruits for easy picking, when any field in its nascent stage. Even less intelligent people have chance of finding things or could start picking low hanging fruits, while brilliant renowned experts wasting time being skeptical or fighting to suppress the new reality/paradigm.
Instead of trying to find easy pickings in such newly discovered fledgling nascent Heliocentric model of their discipline, most of the brilliant fools fiercely defend the flawed Geocentric paradox of their discipline (e.g. by resorting to vicious personal attacks on the proponents of new model).
Kindly refer to wiki for normal science at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science, which says:
“Normal science, identified and elaborated on by Thomas Samuel Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is the regular work of scientists theorizing, observing, and experimenting within a settled paradigm or explanatory framework, Regarding science as puzzle-solving, Kuhn explained normal science as slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, without questioning or challenging the underlying assumptions of that theory.”
In short: Normal science solves puzzles that are posed by the prevailing paradigm but does not challenge the paradigm's basic beliefs (that are at the root and used as foundation for building the paradigm). For example, 2300 years old belief “the Earth is static at center” was at the root and foundation for 16th century dominant geocentric paradox.
The wiki on “Normal Science” further states:
“Kuhn stressed that historically the route to normal science could be a difficult one. Prior to the formation of a shared paradigm or research consensus, would-be scientists were reduced to the accumulation of random facts and unverified observations, in the manner recorded by Pliny the Elder or Francis Bacon, while simultaneously beginning the foundations of their field from scratch through a plethora of competing theories.”
The physics went through that stage between 400BC (i.e. time of Plato and Aristotle) and 16th century, when the basic tenet at the root “the Earth is static at the center”. A complex geocentric paradigm had been evolved for 1800 years until 16th century. We now know that no meaningful progress was possible in the geocentric paradox, except exposing the error “the Earth is at the center”.
When heliocentric model was proposed most of the brilliant fools choose to fiercely defend the flawed Geocentric paradox, rather than finding easy pickings on nascent Heliocentric model. Many brilliant people (e.g. Heinrich Hertz) and ordinary people like me must have longed for such simpler times.
Even ordinary people like me had a chance to make meaningful contribution in such simpler times. But today, people like me can’t even understand theory relativity. It is beyond mental capability of brilliant people to even comprehend theories such as String theory. Only handful of people in the world has the intellectual capability to comprehend such complex theories.
I learned hard way that: A monkey has better chance of understanding trigonometry, than the chance ordinary old engineers like me has to understand String theory. No wonder many people like me long for simpler times, where there is a chance (even if it is very small chance) to make useful contribution.
From 1874:
"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries." - from a 192 4 lecture by Max Planck (Sci. Am, Feb 1996 p.10)
Many experts such as Dr. Fred Brooks and other Turing Award winning researchers stated that Software engineering and computer science reached this stage in mid 1980s. That is, Software engineering as a whole stood there fairly secured, and software components approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.
Dr. Fred Brooks wrote seminal book “Mythical Man Month” in 1975 and influential Papers such as "No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering" in 1986.
Those books and papers were published more than 30 and 40 years ago. They withstood the test of time (i.e. no significant progress is made as theorized by Dr. Brooks) and in the process acquired many strong supporters. I was one of them. It is hard to attract treasure hunters to such well trodden and thoroughly explored discipline.
Chance of making any useful contribution is nearly Zero. How can anyone discover anything, when there is nothing there to discover in the geocentric paradox of software.
Only brilliant people have mental capability to master mature paradigms such as Theory of Relativity. No one can make any contribution without mastering such mature paradigm. It requires many decades of hard work even to brilliant people to master such mature paradigm.
Isn’t it despairing to people like me having average intellect? What chance a person having ordinary intellect has to discover something new, when tens of thousands of researchers before him already explored found everything that can be found in a dominant paradigm?
But lucky me! Existing dominant paradigms for Computer Science and software engineering has been evolving for past 50 to 60 years by relying on flawed assumptions (as the 16th century geocentric paradox evolved for 1800 years by relying on flawed assumptions).
Exposing the flawed assumptions open vast uncharted and hidden realms for exploration. This gives an opportunity to build new superior paradigm rooted in well tested facts from scratch. Such virgin territories offer many easy pickings, even for people having ordinary intellect.
But the problem is that: Instead of trying to find easy pickings, even brilliant fools choosing to fiercely defend the flawed Geocentric paradox of software engineering. Many of them not able to recognize the simpler times they have been longing for, even such simpler times hits in their face.
The huge BoK (Body of Knowledge) for existing dominant software engineering paradigm has been acquired and accumulated for over 50 years. This huge BoK is result of passionate hard work of Tens of thousands of researchers at any time during past 50 years.
Even today tens of thousands of researchers around the world are working hard, hoping to find something that earlier generations might have missed on the well-trodden path. Few dozen researchers must already be exploring anything you would choose to explore.
It is a tall order that a small thing hidden from combing sight of countless brilliant people explored before still to be found in a nook and corner of a dominant paradigm. Isn’t it despairing for a young researcher, who must spend many decades to master already existing huge BoK before he can have any chance of finding some thing hidden or new? Is there any wonder many young aspiring researchers yearn for simpler times?
In a mature dominant paradigm, everything has 4-digit accuracy. His efforts might increase it to 5-digit accuracy, if at all brilliant people before him overlooked an insignificant nook or corner.
Look at the bright side: We get to build a brand-new paradigm (a huge tree of BoK having many branches and sub branches) from clean slate by finding each of the new facts and rigorously test for validating each of the facts before relying each on the facts for acquiring to accumulate each piece of knowledge for the BoK starting from scratch.
Join me in growing the tree of BoK from budding seed for evolving a new paradigm. This kind of opportunity comes once in a century and no more than once in the history of each scientific discipline.
My request to each software researcher is, don’t be a brilliant fool. Existing dominant paradigm of CBD/CBE is rooted in lies. Nothing of significance is left to be found.
A new paradigm opens vast new uncharted territory. A new paradigm must be built from clean slate. Whatever you find might become a bud-seed for a new branch of knowledge in the tree of the BoK for the new paradigm.
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
I say a big "Yes" (big time, big time). And there is VERY LITTLE TO NOTHING to counter MOST of this phenomenon at all [(but, then again, you do have me)]. (For example (with some humor): Perhaps we "kan't" live without Kant because that sort of outlook is all we are given (several other philosophers' names could substitute in this statement, but then we loose the pun).)
The institutions are truly institutions in some of the very worst ways/senses. Always, and it really seems like this will be the way it is FOREVER ; e.g. look at Psychology and the history (and philosophy) OF Psychology -- a loser as any sort of science; we have not even clearly seen behavior patterns as biological functioning, which, of course they must be and ARE (<-- doing this is probably one of the very first steps in Psychology becoming anything like a real science (which I BELIEVE IT COULD !); and note: I HAVE done this for my perspective/approach -- I see the/a way for Psychology as a natural science).
Now, if the problem is so clear (at least as I see it): ask yourselves: why is there no concern for a solution?
Einstein defines a theory (i. e. a “complete system of theoretical physics”) as a system that “consists of concepts and basic laws to interrelate those concepts and of consequences to be derived by logical deduction.” (Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics)
Given this definition, can we assume that a successful theory is structure preserving (i. e. homomorphic) to, say, the causal structure of the world?
If the answer is yes, then we can infer that that there must be a homomorphism between the structure of the brain and the structure of the world. Consider a claim from Neuroscience: C. R. Gallistel and Adam Philip King define a representation of a system in analogy to the mathematical concept of a homomorphism. More precisely, they put force the proposal that there exists a homomorphism between the representing system, i. e. the brain and the represented system, the world (Gallistel and King, pp. 59-63).
If a theory is a representing system and if Gallistel and King are correct, then there must by a homomorphism between the structure of the brain and the actual structure of the world, insofar as the theory is successful.
It seems to be the case that this conclusion depends crucially on the assumption that successful theories are structure preserving. Are there arguments for or against this assumption?
Best,
Sven Beecken
- Albert Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics, Philosophy of Science, 1934
- C. R. Gallistel and Adam Philip King, Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience, Blackwell, 2010.
It seems to me that working memory (involving the episodic buffer AND some -- to all the types -- of the Memories) is constantly at work and is our very experience itself.
Thus, I cannot see how the Memories (with at least some of them always active, determining and "recording" experience -- which most prominently and significantly active, dependent on circumstances) can be considered something separate from our knowledge OR our knowing OR our awareness OR our conscious being (all those: inclusively), i.e. as ANYTHING ever considerable as separate from experience itself.
Correct? Seems to me such a dualism would be a most-major problem. (This may be the biggest and perhaps primary dualism of them all, in reality (phenomenologically), though the nature/nurture dualism may seem worse -- but the latter may be somehow related to the former and even may have to be somehow related.)
Yet, we do seem to talk about "them" (the Memories, usually called "memory") at times as just one aspect of who we are (we seeing ourselves somehow as more than that "one 'aspect'")(and "memory" as sometimes something to consider, and other times not), don't we? (BUT: Wouldn't this be delusion "incarnate"?)
In short, we never "just are" (nor are we in any other way): these mechanisms having capacities and capabilities are ALWAYS at "work" since we ARE biological beings, in every way (like other animals) and at all times.
The Memories are central to good psychology understanding (or progress) and to good science in this "realm". The other major consideration (to have any generally good understanding of our reality/animal reality) is innate-guidance of behavioral development (especially throughout ontogeny); and, the question becomes : how does the innate-guidance aspects of behavior emerge along with (or, actually: "in") our other behavior patterns?; the fact of the always-present Memories can be an indication of the "acceptable" integral nature of emerging innate-guidance and why "perceptual shifts" become by far the likely candidates for what they (innately-guided behavioral aspects), along with other relevant behavior patterns, look like and ARE (<- including the "automatic" nature of our reality due to the past developments of the Memories and those "bringing forward" the very nature of what a good part of our reality looks like and IS).
Isn't it pure psychoticism to have the most fundamental unit of analysis of a presumed foundational behavior pattern of AN organism INCLUDE MORE THAN ONE ORGANISM'S BEHAVIOR necessarily (or really AT ALL (ever), FOR THAT MATTER)? Yes, yes, yes. YET see the following recent papers INSIST ON such an explanation NECESSARILY (as necessary -- i.e. no other "reasonable" way):
Enactive Mechanistic Explanation of Social Cognition
and
Mechanistic explanation for enactive sociality
They claim 25 years of such just-pure-speculative (and by-now obviously useless) "conceptualizations".
This embarrassing nonsense is what can happen when you do not know or do not examine or analyze your true base/foundational assumptions YET THOSE ARE very poor, baseless, and UNPROVEN AND MOST-LIKELY _NOT_ TRUE (because of inconsistencies with BIOLOGY, as I have clearly indicated in my essays). [ It is desperation for progress with a basic view and approach THAT CANNOT MAKE PROGRESS rationally -- it is desperation in science/"science" . ]
