Is nothing only perceived as blackness, or is it actually blackness?

[fromderinside]

Not the same leaf.

It doesn't have to be entirely different, just different.

Designing search engines must be hell for you.

 

[untermensche]

Not the same leaf.

It doesn't have to be entirely different, just different.

Designing search engines must be hell for you.

Playing off in left field is fine but don't expect anyone to follow.

It is only human abstraction that gives objects permanence.

The apple is not the same apple as the rotten apple.

The man is not the same person as the boy.

 

[ryan]

I agree with untermensche; at what point would the apple cease to be the same apple. Any physical change should make it a different apple. If not, then how rotten or digested by a person does it have to be to be different?

If I have a set of numbers {1,3,5} and I replace 5 with 6, then I have a different set of numbers.

 

[fromderinside]

I agree with untermensche; at what point would the apple cease to be the same apple. Any physical change should make it a different apple. If not, then how rotten or digested by a person does it have to be to be different?

If I have a set of numbers {1,3,5} and I replace 5 with 6, then I have a different set of numbers.

Except we don't replace five with six in the set, we convolve set one with set two maintaining set one now combined with set two. Look at the possibilities

We can run an identity through all kinds of machinations and still recognize the identity. If you want to think pre-enlightenment or some would say pre-Archimedes go for it. Why do you thing we can apply molecular models so effectively?

 

[ryan]

I agree with untermensche; at what point would the apple cease to be the same apple. Any physical change should make it a different apple. If not, then how rotten or digested by a person does it have to be to be different?

If I have a set of numbers {1,3,5} and I replace 5 with 6, then I have a different set of numbers.

Except we don't replace five with six in the set, we convolve set one with set two maintaining set one now combined with set two. Look at the possibilities

The point is that {1,3,5} =/ {1,3,6}

We can run an identity through all kinds of machinations and still recognize the identity. If you want to think pre-enlightenment or some would say pre-Archimedes go for it. Why do you thing we can apply molecular models so effectively?

I have tried this over the years that I have been on here; it doesn't end well, and I know exactly why that is.

Think about what it means to define something. Humans define everyday objects extremely loosely. The moment you define something, you are only defining it as it is in that moment unless you specify otherwise. The apple in the next moment is no longer the apple you defined but it's close enough to recognize and falsely call it the same apple later.

If you remember, we went over this a few years ago, but with a car made of metal, except that you are now on the side that I was on. It's the wrong side to be on because eventually it comes down "everything is energy" and there is nothing more to say.

 

[Juma]

Except we don't replace five with six in the set, we convolve set one with set two maintaining set one now combined with set two. Look at the possibilities

The point is that {1,3,5} =/ {1,3,6}

We can run an identity through all kinds of machinations and still recognize the identity. If you want to think pre-enlightenment or some would say pre-Archimedes go for it. Why do you thing we can apply molecular models so effectively?

I have tried this over the years that I have been on here; it doesn't end well, and I know exactly why that is.

Think about what it means to define something. Humans define everyday objects extremely loosely. The moment you define something, you are only defining it as it is in that moment unless you specify otherwise. The apple in the next moment is no longer the apple you defined but it's close enough to recognize and falsely call it the same apple later.

If you remember, we went over this a few years ago, but with a car made of metal, except that you are now on the side that I was on. It's the wrong side to be on because eventually it comes down "everything is energy" and there is nothing more to say.

The solution is this: An apple is not a bunch of molecules. It is a human abstraction.

 

[ryan]

The thought of an apple is a human abstraction, but the actual apple is something else, assuming the most generally accepted philosophy of ontology.

 

[untermensche]

The solution is this: An apple is not a bunch of molecules. It is a human abstraction.

Not an individual observable apple. It is concrete not abstract.

 

[fromderinside]

The point is that {1,3,5} =/ {1,3,6}

NS Red Ryder. You've replaced one object with another. A change is an effect and the effect is on the object. Its like multiplying each element in set a by a number. Lets call the first set an apple. Lets call the number desiccation. The result is the apple plus desiccation. Its not the same as changing the apple genetically or replacing a specific variety of apple with another which would be instances of your example.

Nothing more need be said.

 

[ryan]

There is a set A = {1, 3, 5} and another B = {1, 3, 5}.

Then there is a set C = {1, 3, 6}.

A = B, but A =/ C

 

[Speakpigeon]

The point is that {1,3,5} =/ {1,3,6}

We can run an identity through all kinds of machinations and still recognize the identity. If you want to think pre-enlightenment or some would say pre-Archimedes go for it. Why do you thing we can apply molecular models so effectively?

I have tried this over the years that I have been on here; it doesn't end well, and I know exactly why that is.

Think about what it means to define something. Humans define everyday objects extremely loosely. The moment you define something, you are only defining it as it is in that moment unless you specify otherwise. The apple in the next moment is no longer the apple you defined but it's close enough to recognize and falsely call it the same apple later.

If you remember, we went over this a few years ago, but with a car made of metal, except that you are now on the side that I was on. It's the wrong side to be on because eventually it comes down "everything is energy" and there is nothing more to say.

The solution is this: An apple is not a bunch of molecules. It is a human abstraction.

Try William James (1842-1910), Radical Empirism.
Muddled but interesting.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

The point is that {1,3,5} =/ {1,3,6}

NS Red Ryder. You've replaced one object with another. A change is an effect and the effect is on the object. Its like multiplying each element in set a by a number. Lets call the first set an apple. Lets call the number desiccation. The result is the apple plus desiccation. Its not the same as changing the apple genetically or replacing a specific variety of apple with another which would be instances of your example.

Nothing more need be said.

A dessiccated apple is still an apple.

There are two groups of apples: the normal ones, and the dessiccated. Me I prefer the normal apples.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Think again! Remember this scientist Krauss something who actually explained how our universe could have come out of nothing? It's just that you have to try hard enough. It's not for softies.
EB

That's not really what Krauss said if you look at it.

That's really what he said. He wallowed in it. He lashed out at religious people and philosophers (apparently he didn't want to distinguish between the two groups) who got the 'wrong answers'. And it's only because he ploddingly insisted on it that his book did cause a controversy.

He said, starting with the laws of Quantum Theory, a universe will emerge.

Not starting with "nothing".

It depends how you construe "laws". I suspect that like many scientists, and like myself, he construes them as our representation of how reality behaves. So it's not something that is extra to the world and it shouldn't be conceived as something that would have been there before the world, let alone something out of which the world would have come. Since he insisted on the world coming out of nothing I think my interpretation is supported by the evidence of his book. Yours is not.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

That's nothingness for you. There, you have it at last!
EB

Because there’s no “it” to really be talking about. There’s just the half-ass concept.

I don’t think physics knows of any “nothing” in or "before" the universe. If I’m wrong, I hope someone will tell me. In all instances where I’ve heard physicists mention “nothing” they too really meant something else. Maybe there’s a quantum vacuum somewhere but it’s described as having properties so that’s not nothing and it's misleading to call it "nothing". Some physicists apparently try to describe a before the universe or before the Big Bang but it's always talk of events IN the universe.

Theists like to think that there’d be nothing rather than something if it weren’t for God. I’ve experienced surprise at existence too… and it’s just one of those occasional altered states of mind called “wonderment” which in itself is fine but from which no metaphysics can be extracted. But theists try. If existence seems "out of place" somehow :laughing-smiley-014 then we create a needless conundrum: Why not "nothing" instead? (See how language fucks people up? it makes them abstracted/dissociated enough to think that existing is weird). But theologian’s “nothingness”, like so many of their terms, requires a strained definition to be made to seem like it means anything. As with other of their terms, it isn’t really descriptive of anything either real or imaginary (and maybe not even possible). You just cannot talk about "nothing" without actually talking about something, and all assertions to the contrary are just that: mere assertions.

I’m thinking there’s just Something. Always. It’s the default. It’s not even the accidental or intentional Something that happened because the alternative of Absolute Nothing didn’t happen. Nothing’s not on the table as one of the options, neither when talking about the whole cosmos nor when talking about a small bit of empty space within the universe.

Language is such a very goofy, ancient thing, informed by ancient metaphors. We all ought to distrust it better. It shapes our worlds so we think it describes the world, which is a tad circular.

Yes I agree with all that. My guess is that we started with the ordinary notions of existence, of there being something in the drawer, and then there being nothing in the drawer, and then we have all these bright minds throughout history with too little actual work to perform who go into a spin and invent metaphysical absolutes out of our ordinary notions, coming up with Being, Nothingness, God.

That's all vacuous of course but it's human and I guess there's somewhat the same impulse in any genuine science, most of the time. The desire to know what there really is beyond the druggery of life. So I have some sympathy for these people but of course they were wrong. Ultimately, they have been dismissed not by argument but through the search for efficiency and material progress, i.e. mostly within capitalism. Money bought more science and technological prowess to subdue opinion. Today's philosophers, most of them, bow to science's usefulness, eschewing any worldview at all in the process, which is fitting since we ultimately all come from mud. Which is something at least.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

NS Red Ryder. You've replaced one object with another. A change is an effect and the effect is on the object. Its like multiplying each element in set a by a number. Lets call the first set an apple. Lets call the number desiccation. The result is the apple plus desiccation. Its not the same as changing the apple genetically or replacing a specific variety of apple with another which would be instances of your example.

Nothing more need be said.

A dessiccated apple is still an apple.

There are two groups of apples: the normal ones, and the dessiccated. Me I prefer the normal apples.
EB

Desiccated apple are sweet and chewy providing much pleasure to one with no water near by. We, on the other hand are talking about two different things desiccated apples and dessiccated apples (whatever they are).

 

[DBT]

I think the point is that mashed or puréed apple may not be recognized as being an apple, which is now just a bowl of unidentifiable mash.

 

[untermensche]

That's not really what Krauss said if you look at it.

That's really what he said. He wallowed in it. He lashed out at religious people and philosophers (apparently he didn't want to distinguish between the two groups) who got the 'wrong answers'. And it's only because he ploddingly insisted on it that his book did cause a controversy.

He said, starting with the laws of Quantum Theory, a universe will emerge.

Not starting with "nothing".

It depends how you construe "laws". I suspect that like many scientists, and like myself, he construes them as our representation of how reality behaves. So it's not something that is extra to the world and it shouldn't be conceived as something that would have been there before the world, let alone something out of which the world would have come. Since he insisted on the world coming out of nothing I think my interpretation is supported by the evidence of his book. Yours is not.
EB

Krauss bases his claims on the underlying workings of this universe. On what he knows. His title should have been "A universe just from the principles of Quantum Theory".

"Nothingness" excludes the underlying workings of this or any universe. It excludes the entirety of quantum theory. Nothing can arise from it.

Krauss is a good physicist but a poor philosopher.

But maybe his absurd title sold him a few books.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Krauss bases his claims on the underlying workings of this universe. On what he knows. His title should have been "A universe just from the principles of Quantum Theory".

Yes.

"Nothingness" excludes the underlying workings of this or any universe. It excludes the entirety of quantum theory. Nothing can arise from it.

Yes.

Krauss is a good physicist but a poor philosopher.

I wouldn't know about him being a good physicist but I can tell he's an idiot philosopher.

But maybe his absurd title sold him a few books.

Hey, I bought it myself. Still, it's not just the tiltle. I checked before buying. He comes back to the idea near the end.

He gave a poor image of science. I don't think we need that shit.
EB

 

[Juma]

Yes.

"Nothingness" excludes the underlying workings of this or any universe. It excludes the entirety of quantum theory. Nothing can arise from it.

Yes.

Krauss is a good physicist but a poor philosopher.

I wouldn't know about him being a good physicist but I can tell he's an idiot philosopher.

But maybe his absurd title sold him a few books.

Hey, I bought it myself. Still, it's not just the tiltle. I checked before buying. He comes back to the idea near the end.

He gave a poor image of science. I don't think we need that shit.
EB

He does a very good job of presenting what we know about reality.

Reality beats philosophers anytime.

 

[Speakpigeon]

No regarding this point. We're talking about the book he published, not the length of his penis. The reality then is just that. Krauss made a fool of himself peddling an absurd story line instead of sticking to science. He did that either by hubris, for commercial gain, or possibly for some other sordid reason.
Reality beats scientists too, even good ones.
EB