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"increased funding for study of paranormal phenomena"

Oh. Well, good luck with that.

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Tom,

Why do you think philosophers have spent lives trying to develop a more rigorous and comprehensive philosophy? To pass the time?

Please read some works on ontology and you will better understand that metaphysics/ontology/philosophy is not just a useless exercise in picking your favorite fundamental substance of the week and running with that as a whim.

Read Leibniz's Monadology, Descartes' works, Whitehead's Process and Reality, Chalmers' The Conscious Mind, or Griffin's Unsnarling the World-Knot or Reechantment Without Supernaturalism (for a mix of pure philosophy and theology).

The whole point of ontology is to develop a theory that gets at what is real. This is what ontology is. To get at what is real requires far more than just tossing out ideas like "how about we posit information as fundamental and don't really think about what that means?"

Yes, rocks can be conceived as computing themselves - as quantum computers, as I wrote in an earlier post re Seth Lloyd's Computing the Universe (in which he conceives of the universe as computing itself as one gigantic quantum computer that is irreducible to any smaller computer). But this doesn't mean rocks are made of computations/information. This is something they DO, not something they ARE.

I'm trying to get at what things ARE. This is what ontology means.

Whitehead states in Process and Reality that he begins with actual entities/events as the fundamental constituent of the universe b/c they are the only stable thing. Substance/matter is not stable in his ontology, so he posits process/events as the basic reality.

He gets it half right, in my view. Process is an abstraction, so cannot be the basis for any reality. Events as basic reality reflects the correct notion that there is no such thing as timeless instantaneous substance - it exists in time. So an event is substance plus time.

But there still has to be substance to have an event.

So events/process/forms are abstractions from physical reality and do accurately describe features of that reality, but forms themselves change and nothing is stable.

Similarly, I reject Whitehead's "eternal objects" which are the same as Plato's forms and could be thought of in the same way as information in Cahill's ontology. Where do eternal objects reside? Where does information reside?

When we think about, we realize that form and information must have a physical substrate. Information and process are abstractions that reside in mind, which as we can tell requires a physical substrate.

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Tam

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I see the problem here, and you have been told what the problem is, philosophy will never be a substitute you can claim any rigor you want of your ontology it is still not science, hence the two terms.

As to recommendation on reading, thanks, I have already read many of the great works of philosophy. The difference being I don't try to force my personal philosophical views on anyone else. Nor do I deem philosophy to be the arbiter of science as you seem to.

You seem to be stumbling about in some well understood snares of an individual who has recently discovered some new philosophical viewpoint and is eager for everyone to agree.

So good luck with your materialism, if you ever broaden your views to accept science into your world great, if not you will always have these problems when speaking with scientists.

Personally I couldn't care less what your ontology does or doesn't do, or what rigor you claim for it. The determination of how the universe works in practice is and has been the domain of science. With philosophy being able to examine and filter a wide range of ideas. But the final determination will always be science.

"Please read some works on ontology and you will better understand that metaphysics/ontology/philosophy is not just a useless exercise in picking your favorite fundamental substance of the week and running with that as a whim. "

This is merely false, not once have I claimed that philosophy is useless. What is more this is a false dilemma since this is not the only option. What is fundamental is not dictated by philosophy, science tells us that, always has and always will. The sooner you learn this the sooner you will start to understand the area your dealing with.

If you want to understand some of the problems of Cahill's paper read this:
arXiv:gr-qc/0407059

If you want to continue to foist your philosophical views on me, that have no aspect of necessity, then fine, we're done, go find someone who cares about your philosophy, and shares the same misguided view of the place of philosophy relative to science.

Jason has tried, I have tried, but you seem to be utterly determined to not hear a single word anyone has said to you. So if your determined to stay ensnared in these simple issues then fine, continue to be stumped by the simple. Continue with your naive ideas, and think everyone else is wrong. Thats fine its your choice, but don't expect that anyone is going to rollover all of a sudden and say oh look how smart you are.

Thanks

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Tom,

It looks like you're right that we won't benefit much from further dialogue, but I'll give it one last shot.

You state that science is the ultimate arbiter of reality. I agree that science takes over from ontology in terms of empirical experiment.

But the topic you bring up, string theory, is a great example of, first, the overlap between ontology and science, and, second, the limits of science and our current ontology.

String theory has been explored seriously for about thirty years now, yet it has yielded no testable predictions. It also posits extra dimensions and other very interesting ontological features. M Theory, the latest version of string theory (under some interpretations) also posits "branes" that may be different universes, which can interact in some ways, possibly explaining dark matter/dark energy and thus satisfying the problems with relativistic gravity that astronomers have observed at the cosmic scale.

Strings are purely theoretical constructs, as are quarks, electrons, etc. They may exist in actuality, but we don't know currently b/c we simply can't peer deep enough to know. They're abstractions, so science at this level is very similar to ontology: it posits constructs and sees if they stick and are helpful in testable predictions, etc.

Here's a great quote from Anton Zeilinger, one of today's preeminent physicists, re the real nature of the photon (from Nature, 2005):

"When analysing quantum interference we can fall into all kinds of traps. The general conceptual problem is that we tend to reify — to take too realistically — concepts like wave and particle. Indeed if we consider the quantum state representing the wave simply as a calculational tool, problems do not arise. In this case, we should not talk about a wave propagating through the double-slit setup or through a Mach–Zehnder interferometer; the quantum state is simply a tool to calculate probabilities. Probabilities of the photon being somewhere? No, we should be even more cautious and only talk about probabilities of a photon detector firing if it is placed somewhere. One might be tempted, as was Einstein, to consider the photon as being localized at some place with us just not knowing that place. But, whenever we talk about a particle, or more specifically a photon, we should only mean that which a ‘click in the detector’ refers to."

So a photon is not, according to Zeilinger, a real thing. Rather, as we understand it today, it is simply the click of a detector indicating some relationship between the photon emiter and the detector - a notion that is supported by my interpretation of Cahill's gebit nodal network ontology as allowing us to drop "energy" as a thing from this ontology and replace it with network connections between gebits.

Last, you have still not given me a single hook to hang my hat on regarding how information can have any existence independent of matter. You have said, thus far, essentially: "Some people like to think of information as fundamental. I have no idea how it might have any independent existence, but I'm fine thinking it does b/c I'm not too concerned about ontology as it's all a silly game really."

I think perhaps we will simply have to agree that you're not interested in ontology.

You can focus on science and mathematics and I'll continue to worry about creating a comprehensive ontology that meets the basic tests of rigor/rationality.

I highly recommend Griffin's Chapter 3 in Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism as an overview of the criteria for a good ontology.

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Tam

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First of all none of what you list has anything to do with what makes string theory wrong. Forget about the string theory example its doing nobody any good.

"Strings are purely theoretical constructs, as are quarks, electrons, etc. They may exist in actuality, but we don't know currently b/c we simply can't peer deep enough to know. They're abstractions, so science at this level is very similar to ontology: it posits constructs and sees if they stick and are helpful in testable predictions, etc. "

What? strings are a theoretical construct yes, electrons, no, quarks, not so much. What do you think makes your computer run. These ideas are well documented and widely accepted with the scientific community no serious scientist would argue electrons are merely theoretical constructs. Please inform your self of these topics before speaking on them.

"So a photon is not, according to Zeilinger, a real thing. Rather, as we understand it today, it is simply the click of a detector indicating some relationship between the photon emiter and the detector"

This is not at all what was being talked about, he is referring to non-locality, that we cannot precisely identify the location of a photon.

Please read about this stuff, you obviously know nothing about, and are thus drawing completely incorrect conclusions.

I would prescribe:

Bohm, David. 1989. Quantum theory. New York: Dover Publications.

Greiner, Walter, and Andreas Schäfer. 1994. Quantum chromodynamics. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Rojansky, Vladimir Borisovich. 1979. Electromagnetic fields and waves. New York: Dover Publications.
....
and others of this sort.

"You can focus on science and mathematics and I'll continue to worry about creating a comprehensive ontology that meets the basic tests of rigor/rationality. "

Prior to attempting this learn about these topics that your creating an ontology of.

This involves math, and science, put aside the philosophical waffling and get to some hard study of science, then you can hope to succeed.

Thanks

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Tom, now I see the difficulty we're having. You think scientific constructs are REAL. Look, has anyone seen an electron, a quark, a string? The answer to all three is a resounding "no."

These are constructs posited to explain the evidence collected. Yes, most scientists accept the existence of quarks today, but this doesn't mean they're real. They're posited to explain phenomena, and are a result of mathematical advances.

This goes to the heart of what we're clearly missing each other on: you think science deals with firm reality and nothing more, and ontology is loosy goosy abstraction.

What you haven't realized yet is that much of what mainstream science holds to be true in terms of underlying reality is posited and is a matter of interpretation.

Why do you think there's so much debate about the two-slit experiment still, a hundred years or more after it became well-known? Photons as waves AND particles? This is an interpretation of quantum reality known as the Copenhagen interpretation, which has become the dominant interpretation, but it is by no means the only interpretation or even the best interpretation.

Have you read the Bohm works you recommend to me? If you had, you would realize that much of his career was trying to develop a better interpretation of quantum phenomena, than the strange interpretation of photons being both waves and particles!

Have you read his Wholeness and the Implicate Order? He explicitly develops a new ontology, relying on a posited "implicate order" that underlies all of reality in this work! Lo and behold, that sounds a whole lot like Cahill's gebit nodal structure. Hmmm.

Bohm states in the introduction to WATIO:

"I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole..." (P. x).

Bohm also writes, in The Undivided Universe, about the problem of the particle interpretation of energy (photons, gravitons, etc.):

"We shall begin by giving reasons why it is necessary ... to give up the notion of particle as fundamental and to regard our basic 'beables' as the field variables themselves." (P. 230.)

The chapter I pulled this quote from is called "The ontological interpretation of boson fields."

Maybe there's something to this ontology quackery after all...

What's interesting to me is that you've been defending the notion of information as fundamental reality without apparently realizing that this is a very new notion that is not a mainstream idea at all. It is the result of people like John Wheeler (who popularized the phrase "it from bit") seeking a new ontology to better explain the scientific evidence.

Physicalism, the idea that matter is fundamental, is in fact the mainstream scientific view. I've been proposing a panexperientialist physicalism as a better ontology, and this is most definitely not a mainstream view.

The advantage of panexperientialist physicalism is that it provides an elegant solution to the mind/body problem as well as opens up many other possibilities that are currently denied reality in the mainstream ontology.

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Tam

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Jason, check out Entangled Minds, by Dean Radin. It may change your mind about the reality of paranormal phenomena.

He shows that numerous experiments over the last couple of centuries have demonstrated, with p values of less than 0.00001 in some cases (due to very large trial numbers), the reality of certain paranormal phenomena.

Here's the abstract to a recent article on PK and RNGs by Radin:

http://content.apa.org/journals/bul/132/4/529

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Tam

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Did you read any of the material I recommended to you?

In terms of string theory I don't agree with it so no I don't think strings are real.

Electrons you can only see where they have been not where they are.

I say quarks and electrons are real due to the fact that the evidence shows they are real. Reality and being able to see something aren't the same.

You may waffle about in you philosophies that have no necessity whatsoever as long as you want, they will never be more right.

What your saying is like saying, well since I have never seen wind and never will, I am going to say that the wind is purely theoretical.

So tell me if electrons don't exist, what makes your computer run? Any ideas? Of course the current ideas of these things may well change, but some particle exists in reality that performs the task of electrons.

"What you haven't realized yet is that much of what mainstream science holds to be true in terms of underlying reality is posited and is a matter of interpretation. "

What you don't realize is that you are speaking out of you hat. This is garbage nobody should pay this any mind. Science makes predictions and then tests them. Science makes models of the world to understand the world, yes Quantum theory is a theory its a model, but it does a good job of reproducing what we see in the quantum universe.

Oh and thanks for helping me to better understand scientific constructs, I only have been doing this stuff for years, and only taught myself quantum mechanic, physics, nuclear physics, quantum chemistry... and skipped from high-school algebra to differential equations, while teach myself calculus at the tender age of 18 upon completion.

"Have you read the Bohm works you recommend to me? If you had, you would realize that much of his career was trying to develop a better interpretation of quantum phenomena, than the strange interpretation of photons being both waves and particles!"

Hmmm... let me see here? no of course I haven't.. I talk out of my hat like you. Your point about career is irrelevant. The point was for you to learn about quantum physics, which you obviously don't understand. He may have spent his career doing anything, doesn't matter, you still don't know quantum physics and thus are still unqualified to speak about. And yet here you are speaking and critiquing things you know nothing about.
By the way congrats you realize that there is the issue of the wave particle duality, the most intelligent thing you have noticed yet.

"Maybe there's something to this ontology quackery after all..."

I never stated ontology was quackery, just that you are a quack. You are not a philosopher, nor a scientist, go learn something about this stuff and stop wasting peoples time with your foolish unfounded ideas. Apparently that "30 years education" was completely wasted on you.

Please read the books I suggested, then we'll have something to talk about. Till then I shall address you as you demonstrated intellect deserves: Tam Hunt (AT) or amateur thinker, and shall confine my comments to poking fun of you till such time as you have read and understood some real science.

Thanks, my young amateur thinker...

Last edited by on 01-07-2008 at 11:08 PM

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Tom,

It's unfortunate you resort to such language and tone. I'd expected more from this forum. Thanks for your time.

In the meantime, try reading Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order or Unvidided Reality.

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Tam

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Originally posted by tomjones

"So a photon is not, according to Zeilinger, a real thing. Rather, as we understand it today, it is simply the click of a detector indicating some relationship between the photon emiter and the detector"

This is not at all what was being talked about, he is referring to non-locality, that we cannot precisely identify the location of a photon.

Please read about this stuff, you obviously know nothing about, and are thus drawing completely incorrect conclusions.

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Perhaps try reading the post that was being responded too:

"So a photon is not, according to Zeilinger, a real thing. Rather, as we understand it today, it is simply the click of a detector indicating some relationship between the photon emiter and the detector"

In fact he said no such thing, what he was speaking of as you said the copenhagen interpretation of the photon. But that interpretation is not that a photon is not a real thing. One may make that argument just not like that.

It is without question that what we term photon today exists in some form, what the precise function is may be debatable, our model may be wrong, or some property we ascribe may be wrong, but there is still some real element there. As evidenced by the fact that one can use these "non-real" particles in Quantum Computation.

Nor did I ever claim that the problem of the photon is only one of non-locality. I was merely bashing the argument that photons are not a real thing. There is some real element to the idea of a photon as evidenced by there many applications.

Ah, as I said read the paper, and it makes Tam's conclusion more ridiculous.

And thanks for the advice, but I read more in a day then you in a week. Add to this the playing dumb on the forum to see who knows and doesn't know there stuff.

Thanks

Last edited by on 01-08-2008 at 11:00 AM

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Rlamy,

I think that Zeilinger was going a little further in fact than the Copenhagen interpretation. The CI, of course, deals with waves as the probability of a given "particle" being in any particular location.

Here's the link to Zeilinger's full article, summarizing the state of our knowledge re the photon upon the centenary of Einstein's famous photoelectric effect paper:

http://intl.emboj.org/nature/journa...51E19359B60DD22

His point was that even the CI goes too far: all we can say about the photon is that it is a "click in the detector" and represents "SOME" relationship between the photon emitter and the detector.

I am exploring the notion of energy "particles" as not really particles but, instead, network connections between gebits in Cahill's nodal network structure. This interpretation provides a simpler ontology, avoids the tricky problems of positing gauge bosons like the graviton as the gravity "particle," which have never been found, and provides an ontology that satisfies Zeilinger's statement that a photon reflects SOME relationship between the photon emitter and the detector.

The particle model for the four forces has always made me uncomfortable, as it did people like Bohm, which is why he developed his ontological interpretation of bosons as field strengths instead of particles (as I described in a previous post, quoting The Undivided Universe).

Brian Greene, in his book The Elegant Universe provides some support for the notion that photons are not particles, though he may not agree with my interpretation. He states:

“It's as if the photon is not so much the transmitter of the force per se, but rather the transmitter of a message of how the recipient must respond to the force in question.” (P. 124).

Clearly, the photon is not a particle, like a mini-billiard ball, if it's a transmitter of a message. The particle acted on by the photon may move toward the photon or away from the photon, so it's certainly not a billiard ball kind of relationship.

Rather, information is being shared. But how is that information shared? Here's where Cahill's network connections come in handy as a possible explanation, which also fit Whitehead's notion of occasions of experience as unmoving entities that flicker in and out of being.

So in this new synthesis, drawing heavily upon Cahill, Whitehead and Griffin, we can envision the basic stuff of the universe as gebits (geometrical bits) connected to each other and manifesting either as space or matter depending on the type of connections for each gebit.

This is a "neutral monist" ontology and it provides a bit firmer conceptual foundation for Whitehead's process philosophy, while connecting it to the world of physics (as Cahill has tried to do explicitly).

Sincerely,

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Tam

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"Photons, atoms and beyond
As mentioned above, the initial question of whether it is only matter or also radiation that is quantized has finally been settled in favour of the photon. It has now become possible to investigate the interaction between photons and atoms in great detail. For example, Kimble's group at Caltech showed that it was possible to observe the phase shift experienced by an atom while it interacted with a field of, on average, less than one photon. Haroche and his group at the École Normale in Paris were able to construct entangled states between single photons trapped in a high-finesse cavity and atoms passing through (Fig. 7). Such experiments have also been used to demonstrate several interesting aspects, such as time-resolved quantum interference phenomena, trapping of atoms with single photons or quantum non-demolition measurements, in which the presence of single photons can be determined without destroying the photon."

Yes indeed photons are not real, they are merely theory... yes...

Please tune in next time for chatting with people who don't know jack about anything...

Thanks

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Tam, notwithstanding the fact that there's no such thing as *the* Copenhagen interpretation, you are probably right in the sense that Zeilinger seems to consider the photon's existence in the same way as CI considers its state, while the latter wouldn't. However, I think that this is merely a consequence of the fact that CI was formulated before the advent of quantum field theories. These showed that it is more accurate to consider particles as excitation states of an underlying quantum object than as unchanging and objective elements of reality. Therefore, I am convinced that Zeilinger's position conforms perfectly to the spirit, if not to the letter, of CI.

"So in this new synthesis, drawing heavily upon Cahill, Whitehead and Griffin, we can envision the basic stuff of the universe as gebits (geometrical bits) connected to each other and manifesting either as space or matter depending on the type of connections for each gebit. "

We can. It certainly doesn't mean we should, not unless we can infer convincing new knowledge from it.

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Rlamy,

I agree that there is no compulsion to agree to a new paradigm: it must earn its stripes. I'm still trying to bring the relevant issues together and see if this new formulation makes more sense, explains more human phenomena (it's ultimately all human phenomena or how else would we learn of anything?), and leads to a more sustainable worldview.

I'll come back at a later date once I've worked out my ideas in more detail.

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