Infinte Regress Timeline...

[Kharakov]

Well, here's something funny. I noticed this debate between you two about whether an amount of X is X or not. What is funny is that while you want to say they are the same thing, untermensche insists to say they are not...

Time is time, whether it is 10 minutes or a 1000 years. Time is still time whether or not there is a specified amount of it, and we all know this (well, except people who argue that water isn't water because it has peroxide ions in it... ).

Duration does not require change to be known. One can know that one's existence has duration without comparing it to change.

I don't know that we don't need to experience change to experience or deduce duration. I don't think I can stay without changing for any period of time. Maybe I do. Maybe I stay unchanged for hours, centuries or an infinite amount of time but if I do I wouldn't notice. Experiencing change seems necessary.

I think if you internalize the knowledge of duration of unchanging things, you can build an idea of duration without change. If you master stillness of the mind, you may be able to build an unchanging, still realm that has duration. In other words, a place of peace and joy that does not falter. Then again, do you need stillness to experience peace and joy? I think not.

Inference is good enough for many applications, and definitely not good for others.

Sure we infer if we want to but the point is that inference is not proof of existence unless the premise is good enough to allow it as in I think therefore I am. As far as I know, we cannot infer the existence of an infinite time.

I don't think you can avoid knowledge of the existence of infinite time. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it is a logical necessity that something has always existed, because if nothing had existed, it would never have caused anything. So the infinitude of existence is guaranteed, unless you think that eventually nothing can be created out of something. This seems to be a stupid goal though... l

In fact, we can pretty much ascertain that something (or someone) has always existed, because if nothing had existed to cause something to begin to exist, nothing would ever have begun to exist. This makes the whole "eternal existence" thing a given.

Your belief seems to be that if something exists it must have been caused to exist.

That's not my "belief" whatsoever. The logical necessity is pretty simple: something has always existed. Things don't appear out of nothing: nothing is the absence of everything, including causal structures, and what not. From absolute nothingness, nothing can appear. Nothing isn't a negative amount of something- it isn't even that.

We can create the concept of nothing out of something, but nothing is something which is created in our imagination, which never actually has existence (obviously nothing cannot exist).

 

[ryan]

Do you believe in non-physical entities?

What do you mean?

This is me exploring the implications of physicalism (something that I struggle to agree with but nevertheless dominates science).

Why can't the model actually be an aspect of reality? What if what is out there actually is our incomplete models; after all, a scientific stance is that we are the stuff that is out there.

Do you think gravity is an entity?

If it is gravitons or strings, then I think it is an entity. If it's only curved space-time, then I am not sure.

 

[ryan]

These are models. Not reality. Those models depends on how humans conceptualuze reality.

So you're saying protons and electrons don't exist, but instead are just human models? Would you say that the reality that General Relativity describes very accurately does not display behaviors that coincide with the mathematical models (that are built from the foundation of the Peano axioms)?

There are bunch of things in nature that can be closely approximated by mathematical models (with variance in some cases due to mathematical models not including all data). The mathematical models were created, and afterwards they were confirmed. This indicates that on some levels, nature's behaviors coincide with the Peano axioms.

The existence of the universal behaviors that the axioms describe preexists the formalization of the axioms by humans.

I am exploring something that was triggered by your argument that seems to almost equate models with nature.

I would like to ask you if you think that we are always right if it is true that our brains must adhere to the true model of nature. In other words, since we are the true model in action, then wouldn't our models always be true but incomplete, that is until we have knowledge of all laws of nature and enough data?

 

[Kharakov]

The existence of the universal behaviors that the axioms describe preexists the formalization of the axioms by humans.

I am exploring something that was triggered by your argument that seems to almost equate models with nature.

I would like to ask you if you think that we are always right if it is true that our brains must adhere to the true model of nature.

The model that includes incorrect answers, mismatched models, myths, and fiction?

In other words, since we are the true model in action, then wouldn't our models always be true but incomplete, that is until we have knowledge of all laws of nature and enough data?

Our models will always have actual existence, at least in our minds, if that's what you're asking. They may correspond partially, exactly, or not at all to other models and objects.

 

[ryan]

I am exploring something that was triggered by your argument that seems to almost equate models with nature.

I would like to ask you if you think that we are always right if it is true that our brains must adhere to the true model of nature.

The model that includes incorrect answers, mismatched models, myths, and fiction?

What can be wrong about a real model? Before answering, please read below.

In other words, since we are the true model in action, then wouldn't our models always be true but incomplete, that is until we have knowledge of all laws of nature and enough data?

Our models will always have actual existence, at least in our minds, if that's what you're asking. They may correspond partially, exactly, or not at all to other models and objects.

I am trying to flesh out what your idea implies. You seem to claim that some models are a deep truth to reality, and I find something very interesting about this idea.

One way that I am trying to make sense of it is by asking if the model is actually a sample of the reality that it's modelling.

For example, imagine a very large body of dark matter is floating in space. From Earth we can know nothing about this object other than its gravity. So naturally we visit it to hopefully break a piece off to bring it back to Earth. When we get a piece of it back, we learn some of its exotic properties. However, we are not sure that these properties will hold true for the rest of the mysterious object, and it is too large and far away to bring it back. So, we, I don't know, shoot some lasers at it and make predictions about what the lasers will do if the rest of the object is more of the same as the sample. And maybe some of the object is like the sample, and some of it isn't.

So maybe the meaning of the equations is somehow a "piece" of reality instead of just a model of it.

 

[Kharakov]

The model that includes incorrect answers, mismatched models, myths, and fiction?

What can be wrong about a real model?

If someone's model of a model or reality does not correspond to the model or reality that they believe their model corresponds to, their model of a model or reality is wrong. There are varying degrees of lack of correspondence to reality.

You seem to claim that some models are a deep truth to reality, and I find something very interesting about this idea.

Seem to claim, but don't. Some models correspond to portions of reality with a precision that indicates something about reality itself. Some levels of reality follow very basic patterns: the inverse square laws. When we know somethings rest mass, we can calculate various other things about how it will interact with other things.

All of the mathematical models that have been developed (e=mc^2 being a very important one) indicate that at some fundamental level, reality follows certain patterns of behavior that happen to correspond very precisely to certain behaviors that correspond to the behavior dictated by the axioms of arithmetic.

So maybe the meaning of the equations is somehow a "piece" of reality instead of just a model of it.

I'd like to just say "of course they're a piece of reality, because everything is", so I think I will.

 

[Juma]

So you're saying protons and electrons don't exist, but instead are just human models?

They exist as part of some human models. Some of which predicts the behaviour of reality very well.

I know that many people find such reasoninig silly but if you look at how we know stuff it is obvious that we dont have access to reality, only our personal model of it. That stuff "exist" is part of that model.

Would you say that the reality that General Relativity describes very accurately does not display behaviors that coincide with the mathematical models (that are built from the foundation of the Peano axioms)?

The mathematical models are not built from the foundation of peano. The axioms of Peano is built from the behaviour of mathematical objects.

There are bunch of things in nature that can be closely approximated by mathematical models (with variance in some cases due to mathematical models not including all data). The mathematical models were created, and afterwards they were confirmed. This indicates that on some levels, nature's behaviors coincide with the Peano axioms.

No. I see roughly like this: mathematics is our tool to overcome the shortings of our viewpoint.

When projecting the total "truth" on to the human mind we see only their projections:

Let me give a !metaphorical! example: let the "truth" be represented by a lamp and a slowly rotating wireframe cube. Then let what we experience by our senses and rationality be the projected shadow on the wall. The simple cube has become a complex movement of shadow lines. Mathematics is our tool to see the simple structure of the origin of the shadows and is then really "only" a inversion of the projection (how we experience the reality).

Another metaphorical example:

Look at this:

X*X + 2*X*Y + Y*Y = (X + Y)*(X + Y)

This seems to state something (A=B) but really do not. It is just a transformation of an expression.
Mathematics is the tool that tells us what transformations we can do. It does not introduce new information, only shows us how we from our limited viewpoint can transform a statement that represents some information into another statement that represents the same information.

Thus from the shadow lines we can build a model of the cube (representing the real world), we may never be able to visualize the cube (due to us being humans) but we can rotate the cube and visualize the different possible projection patterns.

That does not mean that the "cube" somehow are bound by the rules we use for this mental reprojections.

The existence of the universal behaviors that the axioms describe preexists the formalization of the axioms by humans.

No. The axioms just show us how the projection works.

 

[ryan]

Seem to claim, but don't. Some models correspond to portions of reality with a precision that indicates something about reality itself. Some levels of reality follow very basic patterns: the inverse square laws.

Okay, so is it just some amazing coincidence that the inverse square laws keep holding true? There has never been a good answer for how induction can be justified without being circular by using induction as an assumption or argument to support it.

Instead, I am starting to think that laws that work could be samples of reality.

As much as I contest physicalism, this part of physicalism is compelling because it makes us think about our own minds, concepts, laws etc. as matter itself. It gives me some intuitive satisfaction to think of models as the actual workings of reality even though they are incomplete.

 

[Juma]

Okay, so is it just some amazing coincidence that the inverse square laws keep holding true?

There has never been a good answer for how induction can be justified without being circular by using induction as an assumption or argument to support it.

I have already answered: evolution. Evolution created our brains.

 

[ryan]

Okay, so is it just some amazing coincidence that the inverse square laws keep holding true?

There has never been a good answer for how induction can be justified without being circular by using induction as an assumption or argument to support it.

I have already answered: evolution. Evolution created our brains.

How does this support your argument about models? If anything it supports my position about models being what they model.

 

[skepticalbip]

Seem to claim, but don't. Some models correspond to portions of reality with a precision that indicates something about reality itself. Some levels of reality follow very basic patterns: the inverse square laws.

Okay, so is it just some amazing coincidence that the inverse square laws keep holding true? There has never been a good answer for how induction can be justified without being circular by using induction as an assumption or argument to support it.

Instead, I am starting to think that laws that work could be samples of reality.

As much as I contest physicalism, this part of physicalism is compelling because it makes us think about our own minds, concepts, laws etc. as matter itself. It gives me some intuitive satisfaction to think of models as the actual workings of reality even though they are incomplete.

Models are more like accurate analogies (if we don't push them too far). They are a way of thinking of reality that allow us to make predictions. We use many models that we know aren't true descriptions of reality but we use them because they work, i.e. we use a geocentric model for stellar navigation and the Bohr atom in chemistry. We also have something like four different models for gravity that describe gravity and how it works quite differently but all work in allowing us to make predictions.

 

[Speakpigeon]

In fact, we can pretty much ascertain that something (or someone) has always existed, because if nothing had existed to cause something to begin to exist, nothing would ever have begun to exist. This makes the whole "eternal existence" thing a given.

I disagree without your view here. If we assume that the world that exists today has been existing for, say, off the top of my head, six thousand years, we don't need to say that there was nothing before that, since "before that" itself has no referent. We can say instead that the world was never caused since time itself didn't exist when a cause would have been effective.

And then of course your argument falls by the wayside.

Your belief seems to be that if something exists it must have been caused to exist. But there's no basis for saying this precisely because nothingness is not a state of reality where there is no world at a certain time or period of time and suddenlly there's a world. If you think in these terms then you make the same mistake as Krauss in forgetting that time is not nothing. So to say that the world existed for only six thousand years because time itself last six thousand years is just to say that the world wasn't caused because it couldn't have been caused (since a cause always precedes the effect).

That's not my "belief" whatsoever. The logical necessity is pretty simple: something has always existed.

"Something has always existed" is not a logical necessity.

Things don't appear out of nothing: nothing is the absence of everything, including causal structures, and what not. From absolute nothingness, nothing can appear. Nothing isn't a negative amount of something- it isn't even that.

Yes, yes, I already replied to this.
A finite past does not entail that the world that exists now was somehow created out of nothing.
Have a nice day.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

They exist as part of some human models. Some of which predicts the behaviour of reality very well.

I know that many people find such reasoninig silly but if you look at how we know stuff it is obvious that we dont have access to reality, only our personal model of it. That stuff "exist" is part of that model.

Would you say that the reality that General Relativity describes very accurately does not display behaviors that coincide with the mathematical models (that are built from the foundation of the Peano axioms)?

The mathematical models are not built from the foundation of peano. The axioms of Peano is built from the behaviour of mathematical objects.

There are bunch of things in nature that can be closely approximated by mathematical models (with variance in some cases due to mathematical models not including all data). The mathematical models were created, and afterwards they were confirmed. This indicates that on some levels, nature's behaviors coincide with the Peano axioms.

No. I see roughly like this: mathematics is our tool to overcome the shortings of our viewpoint.

When projecting the total "truth" on to the human mind we see only their projections:

Let me give a !metaphorical! example: let the "truth" be represented by a lamp and a slowly rotating wireframe cube. Then let what we experience by our senses and rationality be the projected shadow on the wall. The simple cube has become a complex movement of shadow lines. Mathematics is our tool to see the simple structure of the origin of the shadows and is then really "only" a inversion of the projection (how we experience the reality).

Another metaphorical example:

Look at this:

X*X + 2*X*Y + Y*Y = (X + Y)*(X + Y)

This seems to state something (A=B) but really do not. It is just a transformation of an expression.
Mathematics is the tool that tells us what transformations we can do. It does not introduce new information, only shows us how we from our limited viewpoint can transform a statement that represents some information into another statement that represents the same information.

Thus from the shadow lines we can build a model of the cube (representing the real world), we may never be able to visualize the cube (due to us being humans) but we can rotate the cube and visualize the different possible projection patterns.

That does not mean that the "cube" somehow are bound by the rules we use for this mental reprojections.

The existence of the universal behaviors that the axioms describe preexists the formalization of the axioms by humans.

No. The axioms just show us how the projection works.

Ah, but that's just absolutely excellent!

I guess this is the season for literary awards (Nobel prize of literature, French Prix Goncour and Bristish home-made awards...) so you may be in the mood for that. So I'd like to propose your piece for its meritorious effort to explain things! Congratulation!
EB

 

[Juma]

I have already answered: evolution. Evolution created our brains.

How does this support your argument about models? If anything it supports my position about models being what they model.

Evolution creates brains that more or less good at predict what will happen in the future. In a dangerous environment only the the very successfull predictors will survive. The sucessfull predictors is the ones that have a good models. (That is the definition of a good model). Thus we would expect our model to be exceptionally good.

 

[Juma]

They exist as part of some human models. Some of which predicts the behaviour of reality very well.

I know that many people find such reasoninig silly but if you look at how we know stuff it is obvious that we dont have access to reality, only our personal model of it. That stuff "exist" is part of that model.


The mathematical models are not built from the foundation of peano. The axioms of Peano is built from the behaviour of mathematical objects.

There are bunch of things in nature that can be closely approximated by mathematical models (with variance in some cases due to mathematical models not including all data). The mathematical models were created, and afterwards they were confirmed. This indicates that on some levels, nature's behaviors coincide with the Peano axioms.

No. I see roughly like this: mathematics is our tool to overcome the shortings of our viewpoint.

When projecting the total "truth" on to the human mind we see only their projections:

Let me give a !metaphorical! example: let the "truth" be represented by a lamp and a slowly rotating wireframe cube. Then let what we experience by our senses and rationality be the projected shadow on the wall. The simple cube has become a complex movement of shadow lines. Mathematics is our tool to see the simple structure of the origin of the shadows and is then really "only" a inversion of the projection (how we experience the reality).

Another metaphorical example:

Look at this:

X*X + 2*X*Y + Y*Y = (X + Y)*(X + Y)

This seems to state something (A=B) but really do not. It is just a transformation of an expression.
Mathematics is the tool that tells us what transformations we can do. It does not introduce new information, only shows us how we from our limited viewpoint can transform a statement that represents some information into another statement that represents the same information.

Thus from the shadow lines we can build a model of the cube (representing the real world), we may never be able to visualize the cube (due to us being humans) but we can rotate the cube and visualize the different possible projection patterns.

That does not mean that the "cube" somehow are bound by the rules we use for this mental reprojections.

The existence of the universal behaviors that the axioms describe preexists the formalization of the axioms by humans.

No. The axioms just show us how the projection works.

Ah, but that's just absolutely excellent!

I guess this is the season for literary awards (Nobel prize of literature, French Prix Goncour and Bristish home-made awards...) so you may be in the mood for that. So I'd like to propose your piece for its meritorious effort to explain things! Congratulation!
EB

So you didnt get it at all? I thought my text was very easy to understand.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Nah, I did get it all. As you say it's pretty obvious.

The "literary" jibe was about your very unusual prolixity here, even a better than usual grammar. Some substances can do that to you.
EB

 

[Juma]

Nah, I did get it all. As you say it's pretty obvious.

The "literary" jibe was about your very unusual prolixity here, even a better than usual grammar. Some substances can do that to you.
EB

Ok.

 

[ryan]

Okay, so is it just some amazing coincidence that the inverse square laws keep holding true? There has never been a good answer for how induction can be justified without being circular by using induction as an assumption or argument to support it.

Instead, I am starting to think that laws that work could be samples of reality.

As much as I contest physicalism, this part of physicalism is compelling because it makes us think about our own minds, concepts, laws etc. as matter itself. It gives me some intuitive satisfaction to think of models as the actual workings of reality even though they are incomplete.

Models are more like accurate analogies (if we don't push them too far). They are a way of thinking of reality that allow us to make predictions. We use many models that we know aren't true descriptions of reality but we use them because they work, i.e. we use a geocentric model for stellar navigation and the Bohr atom in chemistry. We also have something like four different models for gravity that describe gravity and how it works quite differently but all work in allowing us to make predictions.

Yes, that is what I have always thought. But why is it that models work at all if there isn't some deeper connection between it and what it's modelling?

Also, the more accurate a model is, the more it becomes what it's modelling. Take a perfect map for example; the more specific it is, the more it becomes what it's mapping. Or imagine trying to explain red to someone who has never seen red. The best way to explain red is by showing the colour to the person.

This also partially answers the problem of induction.

 

[ryan]

How does this support your argument about models? If anything it supports my position about models being what they model.

Evolution creates brains that more or less good at predict what will happen in the future. In a dangerous environment only the the very successfull predictors will survive. The sucessfull predictors is the ones that have a good models. (That is the definition of a good model). Thus we would expect our model to be exceptionally good.

Okay, but this says nothing about what the model is. Is it inherently correct, or is it just something that works because it works?

Do you know about the problem of induction?

Think about it. Why should some model keep holding true; what makes it so special? The only way that I can answer this is with my argument.

 

[skepticalbip]

Models are more like accurate analogies (if we don't push them too far). They are a way of thinking of reality that allow us to make predictions. We use many models that we know aren't true descriptions of reality but we use them because they work, i.e. we use a geocentric model for stellar navigation and the Bohr atom in chemistry. We also have something like four different models for gravity that describe gravity and how it works quite differently but all work in allowing us to make predictions.

Yes, that is what I have always thought. But why is it that models work at all if there isn't some deeper connection between it and what it's modelling?

Also, the more accurate a model is, the more it becomes what it's modelling. Take a perfect map for example; the more specific it is, the more it becomes what it's mapping. Or imagine trying to explain red to someone who has never seen red. The best way to explain red is by showing the colour to the person.

This also partially answers the problem of induction.

The models work because they are descriptions of what we observe. Those descriptions don't tell us what reality is but how reality works - what to expect to happen given specific conditions. We don't know the "WHY" reality works the way it does but we invent analogies to help us visualize the description of the "HOW" i.e. we can describe the actions of gravity as a force, a field, an exchange of virtual particles, bending of spacetime, a vibrating string, etc. All these models help us predict but certainly they can't all be the true nature of gravity. They just help us visualize the math that allows us to predict the affect of gravity, whatever the hell gravity really is.

ETA:
Models work because they are simply descriptions of what we have repetedly observed as the actions and reactions of nature. Models are formalized pattern recognition. Humans happen to be quite good at pattern recognition.