For a short time, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratories broke the symmetry of space
Marriage has long been considered a fundamental law of nature. The law holds that the universe is metaphorically left- or right-handed - meaning that the laws of nature remain the same for opposite coordinates. In the early 50s it was found that the weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactive radiation, violates the law of parity. Nevertheless, the strong force, the one that holds the subatomic particles together, does uphold the law, at least under normal circumstances.
The research was carried out by a team of a dozen particle physicists, among them Jack Sandvis, Professor Mail. Since 2000, scientists have been bombarding gold particle nuclei as part of the START experiment in the RHIC particle accelerator - a 3.9 km long ring - in which they accelerated the particles, in order to understand the law of parity under extreme conditions.
The team created something called a gluon-quark-man "soup" plasma created as a result of enormous energies that are sufficient to break down the protons and neutrons into quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of matter.
Theorists believe that the gluon-quark plasma, which has a temperature of about a trillion degrees Celsius, existed only shortly after the Big Bang when the universe was only one microsecond old. The plasma "bubble" created in the RHIC accelerator existed as a millionth of a billionth of a second. The team hopes to use the data to investigate how the structure of the universe - from black holes to galaxies, came into being and was created from the "soup".
When the gold nuclei, which were flying at a speed of about 99.999% of the speed of light, collided together, the plasma that was created was so energetic that a small particle of it, the size of a human hair, would have been enough to produce electricity that would have lit up the entire United States for a year.
It was a massive magnetic field like the one created by plasma - the strongest ever created by man - that alerted the physicists that one of the laws of nature had been broken. "A very interesting thing happened in these extreme conditions," Sandweiss said. "The violation of the parity is very difficult to detect, but the magnetic field together with the breaking of the parity caused a secondary effect that could be detected."
Sandweiss and his team - which also included physicists Mayel Aban Finch, Aleksei Chikanianen and Richard Maika - found that quarks move together as if by sign. An UP quark moves along the magnetic field lines while a DOWN quark moves against the magnetic field lines. The fact that they were moving in opposite directions told the researchers that the symmetry was broken.
The results were so unexpected that Sandweiss and his colleagues waited over a year for publication, spending that time searching for alternative explanations. Physicists are still quick to point out that this effect indicates the possibility of the violation of parity - and does not prove it - but the STAR team decided to open up the study to the scrutiny of other physicists. "I believe it was a real effect, but we will know more in the years to come," said Sandweiss.
The group then wants to test the result by running the experiment at low collision energies to see if the apparent violation disappears when there is not enough energy to create the required extreme conditions.
The researchers' press release
More on the subject on the science website
494 תגובות
The super-giant particle accelerator at Sarn was supposed to recreate the Big Bang. Not only did it not reproduce, but fewer particles came out than in a smaller accelerator. And the most wonderful thing is that I foresaw it and wrote it down and published it so that I'm not just bragging. The reason for this phenomenon is that there are no particles in atoms at all and the particles are the products of the collision. And like a plate of glass that breaks down into particles but is not built of particles, so the material breaks down in a collision. And just as a glass pane will break apart more and more until it is smashed with the biggest hammer and then fewer particles will be created, so the biggest accelerator gives fewer particles than a smaller accelerator.
ghost moon:
That you didn't understand is quite normal.
But this time you admit it!
Is this progress or have you fallen apart?
Mr. Anonymous Rh Medium Hard:
If an elephant can knock down a wall why can't a wall know an elephant.
I agree with the wisdom of the wise rational, learn to be precise and not to subtract anything and not to learn roughly in a partial way. And after that the specific studies will be useful.
Sefer or Moshe or whatever your name is
Believe me I actually do understand you, it's the way you explain it to others that is problematic.
If I didn't believe in God, you wouldn't have convinced me.
Machel
Is this another one of your sophisticated comments? Because I didn't understand.
ghost moon:
I have previously suggested that you start studying physics before discussing the subject.
I do not cancel this recommendation, but I suggest that you also precede these studies with reading studies.
book:
you dropped the letter "f"
You came to explain bפnonsense and is found explaining innonsense
(R. H. R. Faim) Hello
I will try to explain it simply:
Does a chair or a table have consciousness? The answer is there is no consciousness, but there is a mental form that someone clothed in matter, therefore the chair is "a form that is clothed in matter".
The human brain is also nothing more than a form clothed in matter, because there is a form of information in infinite space and it is only clothed in a matter called a brain or a sponge or a computer drive it is the same only the tools that receive the knowledge are different and therefore the images are different the materials are different and change, therefore the light (information) It is in absolute rest and the tools are the ones that change and are different, therefore the information changes from body to body from material to material at all levels the inanimate grows alive and speaks.
I will write you something strange now:
In the not too distant future you will be able to have a new brain transplant and still remain you with all your features and with all your past, present and future, as if your brain was not replaced, because your information is not in the brain, it is outside.
You can keep what I wrote, that's my promise.
All the best
Moses
Moshiko
"The order is permanent and does not change" - true. But it has nothing to do with reality. It is true that in reality there are 'patterns of action' or patterns of behavior or templates and symbols according to the order of which certain things are conducted, but this is not reality but a part of reality.
"Consciousness is outside the brain and not inside it, the brain is just a sponge that absorbs the information that is outside and turns it into a picture" - you wrote.
Consciousness is inside the brain and not outside, what is outside is the reality that is affected and affects the brain and consciousness.
(R. H. R. Faim)
There are permanent rules that hang like a rolled up carpet that unfolds...
This is written by a person who has studied reality a little more than you
"Nothing less and nothing more, but an order of roots, which dangle from a path before and continues, in fixed and absolute laws that connect and strike one very lofty goal named in the name of revealing His Godhead to His creatures in this world. "
The owner of the scale.
The order is fixed and does not change, consciousness is outside the brain and not inside it, the brain is just a sponge that absorbs the information that is outside and turns it into an image, so what is reality?
Peace be upon you, desire has brought me back again, I feel that some pieces are missing to complete the puzzle...
All the best
Moses
incidentally,
I just watched the clip, and I saw that at the end of the clip the elephant draws a flower (the size of the elephant's head) that the elephant is holding
with the trunk
Assuming that flowers of this size do not exist in nature, and of course the elephant cannot hold such a flower, and elephants also do not walk around with flowers in their trunks.
Hence not only (as it says on the website) that the elephant was taught to draw, but, if the elephant was aware that he was drawing an elephant he would not draw it with a flower because such a situation does not exist in nature.
Hence the elephant is not aware of what it is drawing.
ghost moon:
I suggest you read carefully what is written there and also enter the links that present many different works.
Machel
Will all elephants or at least most of them be able to draw an elephant?
Did the same elephant who drew an elephant, before the drawing, never draw an elephant?
Maybe the same elephant learned (was taught, tamed) to draw an elephant and he himself is not aware of what he is drawing?
Your conclusion about elephants is questionable.
(R. H. R. Faim)
Another thought about my response to Rah (479) reminded me of another interesting thing:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/elephantpainting.asp
I remembered this because it is an example of elephants drawing without knowing how to speak, but then I realized that it is an example of another thing:
This is another confirmation of the existence of the external world and the fact that the animals perceive it in a similar way to the way we perceive it.
An elephant draws the same elephant and the same flower that man draws because they both derive their appearance from the same objective world.
My summary:
I will start with a quote from Kant:
"There is a distinction between the world as it is perceived by our intellect (also known as the "world of phenomena") and the thing-as-it-is-for-itself. While the world of phenomena is the world we experience, through our senses, we have no direct access to the thing-as-it-self, and there is no way to investigate it directly.
"The world of phenomena is not separated from the thing-as-it-self, but there is a connection between them. The thing-as-itself manifests itself in the world of phenomena in the various revelations of our senses... and is the source of the world of phenomena" end quote.
These few sentences describe the situation well as I believe it should be understood.
The scientists try to get as close as possible to understanding the "thing in itself", and for that they use the scientific method to create a system of laws of nature of the second kind, with the hope that these do indeed get closer and closer to the "thing in itself"
We have indirect evidence that there is indeed a rapprochement:
The new developments of science, which come all the time, are only possible by a better understanding of the laws of nature of the first kind.
(Obviously so, I hope, that using a law of nature of the second kind, which is not even close to a law of nature of the first kind, will lead to failure: the plane will crash, the computer will not work and the spaceship will be lost somewhere).
"The thing in itself" (first order laws) has existed since the big bang. Laws of the second order began to exist since the arrival of man on the scene.
The two systems exist side by side, while we currently only have direct access to the second system.
Rah:
I would comment on one of the points you presented:
The human mind does not have to symbolize and catalog.
He can do this and in this he has an advantage over the animals, but he also does many things without any classification and catalog (think about walking, seeing and recognizing the image, riding a bicycle, and more).
The truth is that there is one activity that is an excellent example of our tendency to use language where it is not necessary - a place where it is even harmful - and that is the field of plastic arts.
I suggest you read Betty Edwards' book on Drawing on the right side of the brain (pay attention to the play on words in the name of the book - "right" versus "correct").
It's a book that also allows you to practice and be completely convinced of the fact that our tendency to entrust many activities to the left hemisphere - the one that breaks things down into "words" and symbols - can really hinder us from painting a realistic picture.
We see a face and break it down into nose, eyes, mouth, ears, hair, etc. - then draw the stored representations of these concepts in our memory instead of drawing what we see.
An interesting exercise she gives there is to flip the picture and then try to draw it.
When you do this - the disassembly becomes impossible (because you don't have an "inverted nose" catalog) and therefore you copy on paper exactly what you see.
It's just fascinating!
I am glad that you responded to my call for summaries, below is my summary.
The truth is that the discussion surprised me a little and for me it discussed an obvious and trivial matter and again to my surprise I realized that I was not able to convince on something that seemed obvious to me.
I believe that:
* There is an objective reality (probably one) that we are a part of. Reality is dynamic
and changes. Objects appear and disappear.
* Reality is governed by rules. If there was no such thing, meaning it was random, life would not be possible
And anyway there was no one to conduct our discussion.
* Right now the laws are imposed on us and we have no way of knowing who and how they were set. We are still busy with their description.
* Every organism in the world describes and actually investigates reality in a certain way. germs
For example, they know how to sense the environmental conditions and react to them. A baby learns not to fall, etc.
* Although there is one reality there are infinite ways to describe it, for example, language, mathematical formulas,
Photography, drawing, sensing and building an image in the brain.
* The human brain, and this is probably its unique feature, must in order to understand classify and define. It's hard for us to understand
Things in the so-called intuitive way and we also use sorting, classification and definition. Our definitions derive
From the objective reality and dependence on it, however, they are not the "real thing" but only our interpretation
draw a picture of reality. Animals and cells paint a different, uncatalogued picture of the world.
* Many times it turns out to us (and to every organism that builds an image of reality) that the image we created is wrong and then
We fix the picture. For example, we once thought that there was a site in the world and today our picture of reality is destroyed
there is no such thing.
* Quantum mechanics is probably the first example that shows us that our brain has evolved in the millions
Years of evolution actually makes it difficult to paint a truly accurate picture of reality and is actually limited.
* In light of the fact that we manage to implement our world image with great success, ie technology, it is possible
To conclude that our picture of the world is now much more accurate, i.e. closer to reality than it was
Previously.
* It is assumed that we will never succeed, and even if we succeed, we probably won't know if our picture of the world is indeed what it describes
Exactly the reality.
* There are things in reality that we guess their existence but still don't know if they exist or not. for example
Higgs boson, for example extraterrestrials.
* There are things that we don't even guess their existence and suddenly they are revealed to us. For example the planet Pluto.
* For me, the last two sections are proof that there is a reality that does not depend on us that is revealed and surprising
us all over again.
* We can influence objective reality. However, this ability is apparently limited by several laws
Basics that we have not yet been ignorant of and we are still investigating them. Maybe one day we will even manage to change them
And maybe not.
As humans - we have no escape from faith - and we all know that.
After all, we also accept the validity of the laws of logic out of faith.
Every consideration that we call rational is based on this belief and it is clear that there is no way to prove its correctness because every proof will itself be based on logic - that is, on that belief.
Therefore - there is no reason to reject a belief just because it is a belief.
We try to reduce the number of our beliefs as much as possible.
Why?
One can easily argue that we do this to avoid contradictions (since it is possible that in a complex process of drawing conclusions one belief will turn out to contradict the others) but in my view this is only a technical reasoning - and why should we avoid contradictions? Why is it important to us that there be no contradictions?
The deep reason, in my opinion, is that we want our conclusions to represent reality (and yes! we have no escape from the belief in the existence of reality and this belief is not inferior to the belief in the correctness of the laws of logic) and we believe (yes! again we believe! and again without a choice!) that there are no contradictions in reality.
So much for the belief in the actual existence of reality and hence - the laws that control or do not control it.
If we accept the laws of logic (believe in them) and if we believe that the source of the input of our senses is in reality - there is no escaping the conclusion (yes! This time it is a conclusion and not a belief!) that reality is governed by laws.
What are the rules?
Laws are something that put restrictions on randomness.
Laws can completely define the behavior or subject it to certain statistical distributions (actually you can be satisfied with the second part because the first is a special case of it but I thought the matter would be clearer if I presented it as I did, including these brackets).
Why is the existence of laws a conclusion?
Because - as I said - in the absence of laws it is not possible to make predictions and we are known to make predictions. We even know (again, as I said) that every living being embodies in its very existence the success of evolution's predictions in its creation.
I suppose I have clarified the subject satisfactorily before but perhaps there is room for some further elaboration of the relationship between evolution and prediction.
Evolution changes animals at random and selects among them those that do better.
She kills those who don't succeed.
In fact, it conducts experiments in animal design and abandons the designs that did not pass the test of the experiment.
Every experiment becomes a part of the past as soon as it is completed, but evolution prepares creatures for the future and their ability to survive in the future is evidence of the success of the forecast.
Of course, since many creatures with conflicting interests undergo evolution, the environment in which the various creatures live changes, and the continuation of evolution is required.
Here the work is never completed. There is no convergence to the "optimal creature".
This is different from the state of science which tries to discover the laws of nature because the laws of nature do not undergo evolution - they are fixed and therefore science can get closer and closer to understanding them.
Therefore, as I have already mentioned before, the famous philosopher - Hilary Putnam said that "if scientific success does not result from the fact that scientific theories do correctly describe the world, then only a miracle can explain the success of science."
I don't believe in miracles.
As I explained - the formation of the language is not a miracle to me either. Because of the existence of natural laws, it could have developed (and I have no doubt that it did develop) in a normal evolutionary process - one whose character was described in my article "The first word".
Language improves (yes - only improves - by no means creates - anyone who has made an impartial introspection of their own thought process knows that there are thoughts without words!) our ability to think and predict and is essential to the creation of our scientific theories but the laws of nature themselves are indifferent to it completely.
My summary:
The discussion began with the question of the existence of laws that do not depend on the subject that perceives them. My opinion on this subject is that there are no such laws because law is a concept that is affected by the way we interpret our sensory input.
The discussion expanded a little to the question of the existence of some kind of 'objective reality'. My evidence on this subject is that there is a 'thing as it is for itself' and everything we are ever able to know is the product of interaction between the brain and this thing (mediated by sensory input or measuring devices).
The discussion also dealt with the division of the world into objects and whether objects (atoms, horses and fish) have an existence without a grasping subject. Here, too, my evidence is that there are no objects without a subject that perceives them.
In conclusion, I think that any reality is actually a model of reality. A reality model is the brain's or science's way of interpreting the sensory input. Different and even opposing models of reality can be generated under the same scientist (who can say without hesitation that horses exist, and even ride them and at the same time think of a world consisting only of atoms in which horses do not exist).
Any discussion about reality is necessarily a discussion about a model of reality. This model provides predictions that can be tested against the sensory input.
In my opinion, the discussion focused on the concept of reality and my arguments were the following:
1. Reality is created by combining our language (consciousness) that defines objects and the sensory input.
2. There are no laws of nature in external reality, all the laws of nature are a product of language, i.e. the creations of man. In particular, the laws of nature do not come close to universal laws of nature that do not depend on man.
Regarding claim 1, my basic claim says that there is nothing that can be proven to exist beyond the sensory input processed (by our language) and the conclusions drawn from it. Only claims in some language about the world can be examined for confirmation or disproof. For the sake of fairness, I do believe that there is an external reality "the thing in itself" but I must emphasize that this is only a belief that is equivalent for me to a belief in God and lacks a factual or logical basis. In this respect, I find myself a member of what was called the "Church of the Mind". Again I emphasize that this is only faith!
Michael was right in his words, but it was important for me to emphasize that the existence of "the thing in itself" is not based on facts or logic.
Regarding 2, I believe that it is not possible to base any claims on "the thing in itself" and it is not possible to check them. The only thing that stands up to criticism in experiment and logic are laws that are created by man in particular. This follows from the fact that it is not possible to speak of universal laws of nature (which do not depend on man). I emphasize that I do not believe in universal laws of nature because I do not believe that anything can be said about "the thing in itself" since it is outside the realms of language and its sensory input.
In conclusion, I believe (emphasis on faith) in "the thing in itself" and I do not believe in laws of nature that do not depend on man. All the laws of nature come to answer questions arising from the creation of objects by human hands. All the laws of nature were created by man to describe the results of experiments and they were not wasted!
Michael
The point is that the language needs to be refined because it does not correspond to our sensory input, there is no new claim of mine and there is no unknown reality here.
But I suggest that we summarize the discussion and that indeed everyone should bring a summary of their words.
sympathetic:
I don't fall into any trap.
In your words you admitted the existence of things that are not our definitions.
I never claimed that our setups are the pinnacle of refinement.
Science deals, among other things, with refinement - where it is needed, and removing unnecessary refinement when the definitions are excessively detailed (for example - the laws of gravity eliminate the excessive detail in presenting the data on each apple and each star) but this is what science does, while reality is mature.
If you say that not all cancer patients have the same disease, you are saying exactly that - they are sick with something - maybe I don't know something - but it exists.
This is exactly what we say all the time and now the phrase "we" includes you too.
Ehud from Liza and Noam, since this discussion is repeating itself and no progress is evident, I agree with Ehud and suggest that each of us write a short and exhaustive summary of his view of reality. what do you think?
pleasantness
I will try to answer you later in detail when I summarize the issue for me.
R.H.
I kind of lost you with the Higgs boson example. We define words and examine their compatibility with the rest of our language and our sensory input. Thus the word fish describes some of our sensory input and does not contradict the rest of our language, not so with the word dragons. Extraterrestrials do not contradict what we know, that is, our language (the truth is, in my opinion, but that's a topic for another discussion), while the Higgs boson is a logical result of our language. As in mathematics, theorems can be proved based on the axioms. In the analogy, the words are the axioms and conclusions arise from them, one of which is the existence of the Higgs boson (mathematically derived from the language in which we choose to describe elementary particles). If the Hanel boson is not detected, it means that the words we defined are not consistent with the sensory input and we will have to change the language.
I will start from the end and work backwards.
R.H.
You write: "You tell Noam (460) that in another galaxy or even on another planet the definition of the day would be different. True, but have you thought through to the end what your words mean? Your erroneous conclusion is that the definitions are arbitrary, but it is exactly the opposite!
The definitions are not arbitrary but derived from reality. Here on Earth the length of the day is 24 hours, while on another planet the length of the day will be different precisely because the definitions are derived from objective reality."
We're repeating ourselves a bit, aren't we? The same case existed for Pluto, Indians could not see it therefore it did not exist in their reality and cultures that did see it defined it and thus it became an object.
Michael
You also fall into the same trap in my opinion. You quote me "Do all those people who die of cancer really die of the same disease? Certainly not cancer is an all-encompassing name defined under one word."
and writes "Very beautiful! You fully admitted that there is a reality out there that is not our definitions.
I rest my case". Let's go back to the example of the Eskimos and the snow. Eskimos in their culture need 20 types of snow descriptions, we need one. That's why Eskimos refine what they perceive with their senses into 20 types of snow (I hope the readers of Eskimo science will forgive me if the number is not accurate). In any case, we can feel that the language is not rich enough to describe our sensory input and refine it by inventing new words similar to what I think should be done for the word "cancer" which in my opinion is too general. After creating new definitions we must examine their consistency and see if they do not contradict the previous definitions and this is how language and also science develops.
Ehud, one more thing. You tell Noam (460) that in another galaxy or even another planet the definition of the day would be different. True, but have you thought through to the end what your words mean? Your erroneous conclusion is that the definitions are arbitrary, but it is exactly the opposite!
The definitions are not arbitrary but derived from reality. Here on Earth the length of the day is 24 hours while on another planet the length of the day will be different precisely because the definitions are derived from objective reality.
How does Michael say?
I also rest my case
Lisa, you keep coming back and reinforcing our approach. In your drawing, the reality that there are two lines with an X at the end. This was unknown. The initial description of reality was spots or whatever. Then with the invention of the telescope, the description of reality got closer to reality itself and the two lines were found. How does this contradict what we say?
Lisa and Ehud you kind of missed my point about the Higgs boson. The point was to talk about something that is not yet known whether it exists or not and the boson is just an example. I will try to rephrase:
Do you differentiate between the realities of the following elements: fish, dinosaurs, dragons and extraterrestrials?
In our opinion, they are in 4 different categories in terms of their existence in reality (law 1) even though descriptions of reality (law 2) exist for all of them:
1) Fish - exist
2) Dinosaurs - were and are not
3) Dragons - never existed
4) Extraterrestrials (as well as the Higgs Boson) - they may or may not exist, so we are looking for them.
How are their realities according to your method?
Ehud (460):
"Do you believe that all those people who die of cancer really die of the same disease? Certainly not cancer is an all-encompassing name defined under one word."
Very nice!
You fully admitted that there is a reality out there that is not our definitions.
I rest my case
Ehud and Liza,
You put a lot of effort into convincing us about the importance of human interpretation of natural phenomena, and there is no debate about that.
I will repeat my arguments briefly (I assume that these are also the arguments of Rah and Michael):
1) We distinguish objects, for example a collection of atoms in a certain arrangement, and give them a certain name and a certain meaning. The name and interpretation are only a representation of the "real thing"
2) "The real thing" exists even before anyone bothered to give it a name or an interpretation. The existence of the "real thing" is not affected and does not depend on its representation.
what do you think?
R.H.
The real reason physicists are looking for the Higgs boson, is that they have not yet heard Ehud and Lisa's explanations...
R. H. Mr. Roschild and Noam:
I told an interesting story in my previous response but apparently I stepped on a mine and my response is awaiting approval.
In that case I will come back later today if I have enough of our hypothetical world and that which is not so.
R.H.:
I don't know much about the Higgs, but I once heard a story about a similar thing called the X.
The story goes that scientists took a series of measurements, and got the following:
http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/1102/linesy.jpg
The scientists sat and thought. They thought and sat, until Peter X came and thought of the following theory:
What we see is actually two lines!
Peter X has since passed away, but recently a special telescope was built in Geneva that is capable of making even more measurements!!! The scientists now want to measure whether in the area where the said lines meet there is evidence of an X-like structure:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/1565/lines2h.jpg
This will of course be a winning proof! To understand the structure of the universe and what stands in its infrastructure!
R.H.
You went far to define objective reality and brought the search for the Higgs boson to the fore. In any case, once we have defined words or axioms using language, we can use them to formulate sentences and check their correctness according to the current language of science. The existence of the Higgs boson is mathematically guaranteed. If it turns out that the particle is not found, it will be necessary to change the language, the definitions we created do not correspond to our sensory input (in the broad sense that includes devices measurement). Example: Newton's laws were adapted to the sensory input of 150 years ago, when new measurement results arrived it turned out that it was necessary to change the concepts such as mass, position and time.
Noam, R.H. and Michael
I'm sorry to bring the discussion back so far, but I was asked questions about the definition of reality that I would like to answer. I will return to the example of Shabbat where I assumed that Shabbat was not defined and then a day of the week was defined as Shabbat and suddenly the days of Shabbat are set forward and backward in time. To your question R.H. If in a certain culture the Sabbath is forgotten, then for that culture there is no Sabbath, and if it is defined again in the future, then for the new culture there is again a Sabbath (or Shabbat in today's case), there is no superposition here.
Now to your question Noam, you are starting from the assumption that the days of the week exist (really?) and that I only defined the Sabbath. But who defined the days of the week as a unit of time? Of course, man would create intelligent beings living in a galaxy, otherwise he would not have taken the time of the earth's rotation around himself as a unit of time if he had recognized the earth at all. Even the production of animals for a few minutes would not bother to define day and night as units of time, therefore the definition of day and night in words and the definition of a unit of time according to them is almost as arbitrary as the definition of Shabbat.
Michael
The example you give about life and death (doesn't have to be so dramatic) also depends on definition. The scientific assumption about diseases is a kind of definition, if we examine people in depth we will find that each one is a little different from the other and therefore we are all different machines and therefore each one dies in a different way. It is possible to define a number of features that are common to people and see if they are important and this is also how diseases are defined. Michael, do you believe that all those people who die of cancer really die of the same disease? Certainly not cancer is a general name defined under one word. In the future, when they find a word for the specific diseases that make up cancer, it will turn out to us that people have always died from something else.
Michael, of course, of course. It was for provocation. What I wanted to show is that "the whole world" accepts the fact that there is a reality "out there" that does not depend on us and therefore we must investigate it. Higgs is a good example because currently it is not known if it exists or not and it does not depend on our definitions at all. You can replace the Higgs boson with extraterrestrials or any other unsolved topic.
Lisa, no one is arguing with you about our representation and how it was determined. The debate is whether our representation refers to some real thing or not?
Rah:
I agree with most of your words, but not with the claim that this is "proof" of the existence of reality.
After all, even the solipsistic thesis (the one that claims that only you exist) cannot be contradicted (that is, it cannot be proven incorrect).
Your words only confirm the fact that in Lisa's sensory input there are many people whose representation in his mind is interpreted as the representation of people who believe in the existence of reality.
to R.H.:
I referred to this point before and throughout the discussion - our representation is affected by the measurements but is not completely determined by the measurements - a large part is affected by how they are interpreted.
I would love to continue tomorrow….
The responses got a little confused in terms of order, but as I said from the beginning - the existence of a thing does not depend on someone noticing it (just as the existence of the noticer does not depend on the existence of someone else noticing it).
It is clear that any discerning being will only "claim" the existence of the things he notices, but this is only a limitation of his inner world and not of reality.
Liza and Ehud, here is proof of the existence of reality.
Why are we looking for the Higgs boson?
In my opinion, and I assume that Michael and Noam will agree with me, we do not know if he exists and his existence does not depend on our will or what we do or think. Either it exists or it doesn't exist and therefore it is searched for.
Where does he stand according to your view? If it's all a matter of definition then why invest so much effort in finding it?
To Mr. Roschild:
I completely agree with every word:
Horses and fish, according to my view, also make the diagnosis - they also have a representation of the world - but this representation is subjective (and it is different from ours)
And this something is external to them!!
That is, someone or something gives them names - represents them in some way - this can also be a computer - but the marking is a representation - and this representation is arbitrary!
And in response to your words in response 450:
Diagnosis depends on the existence of a discriminator but existence does not.
In any case, since you insisted on getting involved in a world where there actually are discriminators (the horses and the fish), then they distinguish members of their own species and separate them from members of other species just as their non-hypothetical brothers do.
To R.H. and Mr. Roschild:
And to dispel a little of the mystery I will finally get to my point:
In our hypothetical world all that exists is atoms. If there is something beyond atoms like a fish or a horse - this means that they are somehow "marked" at any given moment as belonging to a horse or belonging to a fish. Now you say: it is nonsense for the atoms themselves to be labeled - and I agree. And what is the conclusion from that?
That something (someone?) marks them as such...
to R.H.:
So how do you distinguish in our hypothetical world between order X and order Y?
What is so special about arrangement X that calls it a fish and arrangement Y that calls it a horse? Isn't it just atoms running around according to the classic laws of physics...
Lisa:
By the time the internet responded to me I see that Sarah answered you.
I don't understand what your problem is.
All the (different) written words are also all made up of the same letters. Do you think there is a difference between the "r" of "spirit" and the "r" of "ghosts"? There is no difference. It's all about organization. I ask again - do you think the horses in our world don't try to mate with fish because the atoms are marked? Do they know what atoms are? What is this nonsense?
Lisa 447, no there are no horse atoms and fish atoms. Arrange the atoms in an X shape you get a fish, arrange them in a Y shape you get a horse.
Two proteins composed of exactly the same amino acids in a different order can be completely different from each other.
Mr. Roschild:
I'd rather talk about horses and fish (unless you tell me that in our hypothetical world there can't be horses and fish - for which I'd appreciate an explanation).
Well we have horses and fish made up of what if not - horse atoms and fish atoms. Is this the case?
Lisa:
Maybe explain to me what you are trying to say?
After all, even in our current world, horses distinguish between a horse and a fish without the atoms being marked.
I think I'm being dragged into a completely delusional conversation here.
I repeat - after all, it was only by chance that you got confused and brought into this world discerning creatures like horses and fish.
Come and help you and suggest you talk about rocks.
They certainly don't have a diagnosis.
Let's also assume (again - so you don't get involved in things you didn't intend to get involved in) that there are no living beings in this world (perhaps something like the planet Mercury or like Neptune).
Nevertheless - the rocks can exist in such a world.
There will be no one who will notice their existence and there will be no one who will claim that they exist, but it will not bother them.
Was it in response to 443?
In any case - the existence of the horses does not depend on the existence of those who notice them.
As long as I have no way to meet our hypothetical world - I will not claim anything about it - not even that atoms exist in it.
From the moment I notice it through description - I say it also has hypothetical horses.
To Mr. Roschild:
You say there are horses and fish. Are the horses and the fish the ones who make the diagnosis between a horse and a fish?
Or is it an objective diagnosis? That is, the atoms in the hypothetical world are "marked" as fish atoms and horse atoms? (Is it said that fish atoms are yellow and horse atoms are brown?)
Who do you mean when you say "notice"?
The horses surely notice and they will not try to mate with a fish.
To Mr. Roschild:
Okay, so there are no descriptions in our hypothetical world.
That is, horses are a collection of atoms.
How do you distinguish between a collection of atoms that is a horse and a collection of atoms that is a fish?
I'm sorry, Lisa.
You asked me for the description, in our non-hypothetical world.
If in our hypothetical world humans like us also developed, then it is possible that in their world the description is the same as in our world.
In any case - the existence of the horse does not depend in any way on this or that description. The description is necessary for conversation and not for existence.
To Mr. Roschild:
"at a certain level of description"
What is a description in our hypothetical world?
Lisa:
At a certain level of description it is a collection of atoms.
Of course, those that are put together in a very specific way that is not the same as how they are put together in a fish.
To Mr. Roschild:
That is? What is a horse in our hypothetical world?
Is it a collection of atoms?
I am really amazed at your attempt to tie the existence of the horse to my ability to define it. These are two unrelated things.
If you ask a Japanese to define "horse" he will give a completely different definition or say that it is a meaningless word, but if you ask him to define what he means when he uses the equivalent word in Japanese, you will get a definition similar to the one you will get from me (but in Japanese).
It is possible, by the way, that somewhere in New Guinea there is another lost tribe that has never seen a horse in its day and yet there are horses.
Exactly the same as a horse in our world
To Mr. Roschild:
I promise not to catch you at a word. Again, if this turns out to be the point of contention, please clarify it when the need arises.
So let's go back to the simple formulation of the problem:
We have a world where only atoms exist. And now you say that in such a world horses can also exist.
Well now my question is:
What is a horse in such a world?
And again, for the avoidance of doubt, when I talk about atoms I am talking about entities that meet all the properties that atoms in our world have - that is - they have mass, they have gravitation, they have electromagnetic forces, etc.
Lisa:
So that you don't take me at my word for nothing - I will clarify the answer I gave shortly and say that in such a world - if it has indeed developed similar to our world, then all of these definitely exist in it.
In fact, as soon as the chemical reaction took place in it that bound two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom to a separate H2O, water was formed in it.
to R.H.:
If you would like to participate in the hypothetical discussion about the objective hypothetical world that I presented, you are also welcome to express your opinion.
To Mr. Roschild:
Thanks for the matter-of-fact treatment.
Well, if I understand your argument correctly (of course, correct me without hesitation if I'm wrong) then I envision such a world where there are only atoms (and for the moment ignore the physical problems you talked about - if we prove that they are necessary - please add them to the discussion) - and with your permission here I will return to the original terminology where What **exists** is only atoms (as mentioned, this is a hypothetical world, so why do we care to say it exists) - what you are saying is:
There are also horses, fish and water.
Did I get you right?
Ehud, according to your method, how would you define a discovery that was discovered, forgotten and rediscovered? Created, non-existent and existing again?
What if only part of humanity discovers something? Do you think it exists? When America was known by the Indians and not by the Europeans, was it in a certain state of superposition?
I'm having a really hard time understanding your point.
Lisa:
What Noam said is true of course.
However, I guess this is just a wording problem and you are actually interested in the situation of "everything is made of atoms" and not "only atoms exist".
I will also ignore the physical problems that this assumption creates in that without all the subatomic effects no chemical compounds can be formed and I will assume that instead of saying atoms only - you wanted to include in the ingredients everything that is really needed for horses and corncobs to be formed.
In that case the answer is undoubtedly yes.
After all, horses, fish, us, and even you evolved in such a world.
All the eight things developed in such a world before there was man and the formation of some of them was also necessary for the development of man and therefore also for the creation of language.
In other words - if these things did not have an objective existence then the language would not have an existence either.
And in addition, I don't know if you have children, but my son gets a pile of identical Lego blocks and suddenly horse and fish houses are created even though supposedly only Lego blocks "exist".
Lisa, in your hypothetical world a horse is composed of atoms A+B+C and a fish would be A+N+M. I want to say that the atoms are the building blocks that make up everything else. What does this have to do with reality? Why if only atoms exist horses can't exist?
Lisa,
There is an internal contradiction in your words:
"Everything is made of atoms", "The only thing that exists is atoms"
The above two sentences cannot be true at the same time.
If we assume that the second sentence is correct, and only it is, then the answer is in the body of the question: you said that in your hypothetical world only atoms exist, hence nothing else exists.
Lenaam:
(Why doesn't it exist? Did I say such a thing? It doesn't suit me...) And to the topic itself:
Again, if my question was not understood properly - another attempt:
Let's look at the following **hypothetical** situation (in which I **assume** note):
Everything in the world consists only of atoms. I will go one step further. These atoms behave according to certain laws (the laws of classical mechanics for that matter). The **only** thing that exists is these atoms.
In this picture of the world, can horses exist (really exist - like the atoms)? water? fish?
Please referring to this hypothetical situation (if you want you can imagine that this is the desired objective world - but only if you want)
Lisa,
You are really not in the right direction. Your in-depth study of atoms is impressive, but not relevant at all.
In one of your previous comments, you already agreed that there is something that Kant called "the thing in itself", and you even bothered to point out that you and Kant are of the same opinion - what happened to you?
Suddenly "the thing in itself" doesn't exist???
And to your question, in objective reality there are atoms, there are subatomic particles, there are horses, there are trees, there are people, I don't understand why you are satisfied with only atoms - there is everything, the whole universe!
Noam and Mr. Roschild:
I repeat my question from response 418:
In which we will look again at the following picture of the world (suppose it is the desired objective world):
Everything in the world consists only of atoms. I will go one step further. These atoms behave according to certain laws (the laws of classical mechanics for that matter). The **only** thing that exists is these atoms.
In this picture of the world, can horses exist (really exist - like the atoms)? water? fish?
sympathetic,
I'm trying to locate your difficulty in understanding the matter, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
We will examine the matter of Shabbat:
As you said, after setting a day of the week as Shabbat, you can go back and set all the Shabbat days ever since.
Those days that are now marked as Shabbat, of course, existed before the definition of Shabbat - I really hope this is understandable to you.
If so, the only thing that changed is that after they were defined as Shabbat, they took on an additional meaning, but it is clear that they had always existed, and their definition as Shabbat did not change anything. These days, as well as the other days, are part of "real reality", they are "the thing in itself" and their existence does not depend on the definition of humans.
You can add additional content to each of the days, and this content will only start to exist after we have decided on it, but please don't get confused, that day that you have now decided is Shabbat, must be very happy about the additional content you attached to it, but even without the favor you did to it, it would have existed!
The same goes for that liquid, which today we call "water". The same liquid existed long before we arrived, and the fact that before we arrived it did not have a name, of course, does not contradict the fact that it existed!
I think your confusion stems from the mistaken thinking that nothing exists until it is given a name in human language. This is of course complete nonsense.
Before you burst into an open door, I of course agree in advance, that what we call water, and know that it consists of an oxygen atom and two hydrogens, is not the "real thing" but an approximation (probably a very good one) to the real thing. But the real thing exists whether it has a name or not - if you don't believe it - ask the fish.
sympathetic:
I can't even begin to get your point (the truth is I'm adding another comment to an endless loop but I'm just amazed every time and I can't help it).
You condition the "existence" of things by our definition of them and this is so strange to me that I find it hard to believe that you yourself believe this.
People have died in the past from diseases for which we have only recently found a name, cause and treatment.
In the past, people thought that these were evil spirits and held all kinds of useless rituals around them that were supposed to drive the spirits away.
Does this mean that these diseases did not exist in the past?
Although it is true - people did not know how to call them fat, but they actually knew how to die from them very well!
According to your interpretation, in the past people got sick for no reason and only today - after we discovered the bacteria that cause the disease - there is suddenly a reason for people dying in the past.
I must point out that I really welcome the fact that those who strived to discover the cause of the disease did not think like you and understood that if a person is sick there must be a cause and that it is worthwhile to find the cause so that we can also treat it.
pleasantness
A few steps back again. Water did not exist before man defined it, and since he defined it, it has always existed. This point raises problems both for you and for R.H. So I will try to explain it better. Let's say that society has determined one of the days of the week (which is also a human definition) as the Sabbath day, since from that moment and before that, the Sabbath days can be determined forward and backward. Was there a Sabbath before the definition - no. After the definition it can be shown that the Sabbath has always existed. So also water. Humanity defined one of the liquids as water and since it was secreted it has always been.
pleasantness:
In which we will look again at the following picture of the world (suppose it is the desired objective world):
Everything in the world consists only of atoms. I will go one step further. These atoms behave according to certain laws (the laws of classical mechanics for that matter). The only thing that exists is these atoms.
In this picture of the world, can horses exist (really exist - like the atoms)? water? fish?
sympathetic,
Let's go step by step:
As you said, everything is made of atoms, including humans, fish and inanimate objects. The difference is only in the arrangement of the atoms. If humans know how to differentiate between objects, why couldn't fish? And they do know - according to my measurement there are still many fish in the sea, and if they did not know how to distinguish between sea and land, they would have died a long time ago.
Note, I did not ask why birds fly, and I did not ask why fish live in the sea, I stated as a measured fact that fish know how to stay in the water.
But let's not stray from the main discussion, let's go with your method, with your unsuccessful comparison between fish and an oxygen atom:
Do you think oxygen atoms found hydrogen atoms even more than 2 million years ago (the beginning of humanity)?
Let's look at both options:
1) No - it follows from this, that heaven only appeared with the beginning of humanity. Before that there was no water - does it make sense to you?
2) Yes - it follows that a certain phenomenon, which we interpret as a compound of an oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms, occurred without anything to do with the appearance of humanity, language and the ability to separate.
Conclusion: There is an objective reality - the creation of water - that exists today and existed long before the advent of mankind.
It comes out where our perception of reality, which is an approximation of the real reality, teaches us that there are and were phenomena in nature, which occurred without any connection to intelligent beings like us, and these phenomena, whose nature we only know intimately, are what we call "laws of the first kind", or "real reality ”, or “the thing in itself”, or any name you choose.
Ziv (409):
Since you started your words with a blatant lie, I have no intention of continuing the conversation with you.
In my responses there is almost nothing but reasons, but I could discuss with people to a very limited extent - I cannot hold a conversation with liars.
pleasantness
Let me deal with the problem of the flounder fish from your point of view, so that you understand the oxygen and water analogy I gave earlier.
Your method has an objective reality and there are absolute laws of nature that we discover. Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that everything is made of atoms, therefore there is no difference in principle between inanimate objects and animals (even fish). The difference is only in the arrangement of the atoms. Therefore, why do you claim that fish have the ability to distinguish between sea and land? After all, it is a complex collection of atoms? The behavior of the fish is dictated by the atoms that make them up, isn't it? And so they don't really have a more complex distinguishing quality than the chemical reactions that make them up.
Now about our disagreement on approaches. Your line of thought goes something like this:
There are fish in the world
The fish know how to differentiate between sea and land that exist in objective reality.
Thus there is an objective world.
In my opinion:
We define a certain type of animal as fish, those that live in the sea (there is also another type of animal that lives both in water and on land, we call them amphibians). Since we defined fish as those creatures that live in the sea, they are in the sea (which we also define according to its size, the salinity of the water and countless other factors). Conclusion Our definition succeeds in describing some of our sensory input and therefore an animal named fish is a good definition.
To me your question about the fish is like asking why birds fly?
Exactly, just as science does not necessarily prove our intuition (quantum mechanics) but even contradicts it... it is possible to understand that this image was created from such and such materials with one technique or another... and the state of mind and physical condition of the person who drew the image was one or the other, but It doesn't explain anything about how you feel the picture you draw.. even if you replicated the situation exactly (despite the principle of iota) it is not certain that the experience would be the same even though physically it would be the same..
It is not possible to prove the shivin because it is only subjective and is not the same as the objective reality, it is only influenced and influenced by it.. and it will not be possible to prove such a connection, as always we can claim that it is only a dream or an illusion or that the eyes, intuition or the devices are delicious.. It is possible that they are not but we will not be able to know. .
There is no ignoring science here, there is no mysticism here. In my opinion, the difference is in the deterministic perception of reality, to a softer, more uncertain perception that is more in line with the physical reality we know today.
Continued:
The interesting point that Dawkins reaches at the end is that every scientist "plays" on two courts. One is his academic world and one is his human world. These are two different attribution systems and each of them has its own rules.
Just as there is constant tension for a person living in a society or country:
On the one hand, the individual has his individual desires. This is one reference system.
On the other hand, there are the needs of society or the state. This is a second reference system.
In many cases there is a conflict between these systems - when each of the systems "pulls" the individual in a different direction.
The same goes for a scientist or philosopher trying to understand the world. He had to switch between two reference systems (or models of the world). In one model horses exist, but this is not the case in all models of the world.
L.H. (405):
You ask "what is the point of science":
Well the strange conclusions we are forced to reach do not entail any conclusion about science. On the contrary. These strange conclusions follow! From what science tells us about the reality we live in.
I came across this interesting lecture by Richard Dawkins in which he talks about the strangeness of the world we live in, and how different it is from what he calls the "middle world" in which we are used to experiencing the world:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6308228560462155344#
It's not that 'there is no reality', 'reality' exists (even if it's only in the mind).
I say, the real debate is about the kind of 'quality' (if you can call it that) of reality.
That is, there is one reality, a point. Humans exist in this reality, humans realized that reality exists and maybe exists only in the mind. That is, it exists in the human brain at least. But, because reality is subject to the mind or the mind is subject to reality, hence all minds experience reality (somewhat if not as a consensus), or reality exists in all minds.
There are other brains in the world (besides humans) and therefore reality must exist for them as well,
This means that the reality experienced by a human's mind is only a part of the general reality, because it does not include the reality as it actually is in 'non-humans'.
Despite the number of minds and the difference between each mind, and the perception of reality which is different between each mind, manage to reach some general agreement regarding reality.
But, 'reality' (which is arrived at by agreement) is a partial reality - that is, even if there is complete agreement between humans about what reality is, it will only be the 'reality' of humans and not of any other creature. And hence it is not a complete reality.
(even though other creatures 'participate' in reality in our minds, their reality is not our reality, but only their brains participate in a reality in which our brains also participate), and this brings us to the fact that the reality that man tries to describe - even if he succeeds 100 percent - is not the reality in which every The minds participate but the reality in which only the human mind participates.
This brings me to the conclusion that we have no way of even trying to get close to the real reality.
(R. H. R. Faim)
Ziv, obviously we are improving the description of reality. In the past, for example, the description of reality included gods with whims such as Zeus, Poseidon, the god of this river and the god of that mountain and tried to explain the processes in nature in this way. Today, the mathematical formulas and our description of reality brought us to understanding and accurate predictions that made it possible to put a man on the moon, determine the sequence of the human genome, carry out genetic engineering, etc. Technology, the application of our understanding, is the proof that we are getting closer in the description of reality and not further away. As a self proclaimed technologist I would expect you to understand this.
Michael, in a systematic way (perhaps you are right, there is progress) you do not justify your response, but only "expect" others to reason" how come you do not accept my opinion, if you did not understand what I said (you asked me to explain.. a sign that you did not understand)
On the basis that you understood ("you wrote a sentence from which it is implied that we are not.. " implies an understanding) me you claim that you did not understand me and you still do not want to argue, amazing.. indeed rational and reasoned scientific thinking...
As for my argument (although I'll probably say it only to myself - after all, you don't exist or seek dialogue...)
I am not against science.. Science is a method (so from the dictionary) in which through trial and error, of presenting a thesis and disproving it there is a change and evolution into another idea, for example the theory of the arrival of life from another world, was seen for years as delusions of science fiction writers, and today (literally the height of fashion The scientific... of course all this without proof, just a change of perception (oops I said perception, and not realistic proofs in the field - I'm really a mystic)
Science by definition is not a sequence of proofs but a sequence of structured ideas but not yet proven.. It is a very impressive powerful tool that we have brought to abilities such as writing and reading slanders (sorry comments) in this forum (over 400!!!) but it cannot explain reality and its meanings, the My "postmodernism" is nothing but a philosophy and as such is not related to scientific proofs, but only to a rationale, established in the same dialogue between us.. This is how the method works (when it works) I make an opinion, we agree on a world and test the reality made possible by this concept.. Of course there are realities where science has not reached us and the real reality hidden from science is completely different..
What I argued before and here in more detail and reasoning is that you cannot verify this but only agree to learn and wait from our common madness.. Your claims that we have a way to tame science and thereby show its proximity to reality is a claim that has not been demonstrated anywhere by you (or anyone at all) and tools Scientifically wrong is not possible
The reason for my "escape" to the field of philosophy and not a pursuit of science is your decisiveness and your reliance on absolute and unequivocal knowledge that you and your scientists who participated in the survey you conducted concluded among themselves.. and it's a bit hasty.. What's more, I think you're in a smaller group than you think..
Michael, I'm sorry but as soon as Ehud claimed that Pluto didn't exist before it was discovered or in fact that it had no meaning, the discussion is over for me. I realized that we are actually talking here about the same parallel lines axiom from the other discussion that will never meet.
Rah:
: )
splendor:
You probably didn't notice, but you wrote a sentence that implies we don't understand what Lisa is saying, so why do you think it's not legitimate for me to tell you the same thing?
I do not accept your opinion on the subject of reality and progress, but since you do not reason, I do not find it appropriate to argue.
Well, I raise my hands. What did Galileo say? "And yet there is reality."
You will live in your postmodernist world where the brain explores and builds an image of ... an image that is actually in the brain itself. What is the point then in science?
There are no horses, no atoms, nothing, so why does it hurt so much?
It's good that you have a happy independence day (oh I forgot, there is no independence, everything is a picture in the brain) and we will meet happily.
Well, I raise my hands. What did Galileo say? "And yet there is reality." You will live in your postmodernist world where the brain explores and builds a picture of... what is actually in the brain itself. What is the point then in science?
There are no horses, there are no atoms, there is nothing, so why does it hurt so much?
And one more thing Michael, to him and I will tell you so easily what I know and what I don't understand...
Michael, scientists and faith in one sentence, with you?? Unbelievable!!
I thought it was evidence?! Want to be very sure about them.. What happened?
I'm not even sure how we know how many scientists there are, for the survey you're talking about, and how do we know that we are indeed approaching reality, don't we need to know what it is and where it is in relation to know this approximation? Maybe we're even drifting apart..
Precisely as a scientist and technologist (who did not participate in the XNUMXth survey) I claim otherwise..
I claim that we are always progressing, but I am not sure where... we are progressing by the very fact that we change and change and do not freeze the yeast...
And by the fact that we merge our perceptions with the perceptions of those who are different from us (if everyone agrees it is quite boring and certainly does not advance anywhere) and by this we learn something especially about ourselves..
When we decide that the other is wrong! For sure! So we somewhat missed the crumb in which he is right - all this to prove that I am more right..
Successfully!!
thanks for the correction.
Unfortunately, there is no validity to the fact that the fact that my sensory input does not originate in me entails the existence of an objective reality. I have no way to test this claim and even more so I have no way to test the objective reality in a scientific way.
The only thing at my disposal is my processed collection (for language).
sympathetic,
You didn't understand at all.
On the other hand, you put things in my mouth that I didn't say, and then you argued with them.
I said something simple, which in my opinion cannot be disputed, and for your sake I will repeat it, so that you will not be mistaken once more:
"If the fish did not know how to recognize the difference between sea and land, between prey and predator, they would have become extinct a long time ago. The fact that they exist peacefully to this day indicates that they recognize the important objects, without language, without humans."
It has nothing to do with natural selection. I understand that this example bothers you because it indicates a reality that has nothing to do with humans, neither language nor the ability to separate.
Your example of hydrogen and oxygen is nonsense, and I find it hard to believe that you expect anyone to take this comparison seriously.
Maybe try again?
To Mr. Roschild:
Mina Zemach's recent polls show a sharp increase in the tendency towards postmodernism among scientists
sympathetic:
First of all - as far as Hebrew is concerned - there is no need to confirm claims that have not passed out. At most they should be confirmed.
Besides, if you say that you are not a disbeliever in your sensory input, and as you said - its source is not only in you.
So what is its origin, then?
The objective reality!
Lisa,
Allow me to address your comment directed at Rah.
I can't follow the logic of your arguments. Indeed "horseness" is not a property of an atom.
A huge file of atoms in a very specific arrangement, constitutes an object called a horse.
Those atoms, in a different arrangement, form an object called a person.
Unfortunately, both horses and humans are transitory and therefore atoms pass from object to object, when all objects are real, just as atoms are real, and are absorbed by our senses in one way or another
I don't understand where you have trouble understanding such a simple thing.
splendor,
You didn't understand the point of the argument.
Rah, Michael and myself claim roughly what you claim - that is - there is "absolute reality" (laws of the first type) and there is an interpretation of that reality (laws of the second type). There is of course no identity between the two, but only an attempt to get as close as possible to understanding "the absolute invention."
Ehud and Liza claim that there is no such thing as "absolute reality"
This is what the debate is about, and not about "the real way to describe the reality signal..
Besides, your example about the principle of non-admissions has nothing to do with the topic of the discussion.
splendor:
I agree with you that it is very easy to understand what Lisa is saying.
That's why I'm surprised you didn't get it.
None of us (Noam, Rah or I) claims to be able to know with confidence what objective reality is.
We only assert that it exists.
Liza and Ehud oppose this claim.
Just to be clear - the scientific community is mostly in our position and not this one either - most scientists believe that the laws we discover are indeed getting closer and closer to the true laws of nature.
pleasantness
I understand that you are relying on an absolute scientific law, ie the law of natural selection to prove the existence of thought in fish. The claim is full of so many holes that I have trouble describing them:
1. The law of natural selection does not exist in the world, it is our conclusion from observations, so I don't see how it can be proven that fish can discriminate.
2. According to the same weight, the oxygen identifies the hydrogens. If it weren't for this, we wouldn't have water. Conclusion Oxygen has the ability to distinguish. Conclusion There is an objective world, a bit problematic isn't it?
Michael
I apologize if you were offended that you thought I disbelieved in your existence, that is not the case and there is no need for you to arrange for my computer to be stolen.
I will try to make it clear: I am not a disbeliever in the sensory input and its source is not only in me, but only my sensory input is accessible to me. Therefore I do not speculate about what creates it and what part of it is in my mind and what is not. Language or consciousness is what separates the sensory input into objects and allows me to tell stories about them such as: the object on the table is a computer, the computer is not here at the moment (maybe something took it - a testable speculation). These are claims about my processed sensory input that I can test. A claim like there is an external world is meaningless. I can test the claim that all bodies fall to the ground using my sensory input (and I find that it is mostly true). You make claims in a language I understand - Hebrew. I can try to examine them and therefore I see them as true or false within the framework of the language we both accept about ourselves. That is, my claims in language (consciousness) and claims in another spoken language (or mathematical for example) I can check. Claims such as there is an external world I cannot test Claims such as there are objective laws of nature I cannot test. Claims like fish think in their own language I can't check, etc...
Please explain to me why you think there is an objective world outside of any language and try to substantiate your claim.
to R.H.:
And if so far there is an agreement between us (I would be surprised if this is the case) then the next step is to ask:
If horses do not exist outside us - why are atoms different from horses? That is, atoms also exist only in our minds.
sympathetic,
I took special pains to describe an event that can be rustled or refuted and you so easily skip over it.
You wrote: "You write the fishes know with certainty where this confidence comes from"
The answer is simple, and I'm sure you'll agree with me:
If they did not know how to recognize the difference between sea and land, between prey and predator, they would have become extinct a long time ago. The fact that they exist peacefully to this day indicates that they recognize the important objects, without language, without humans.
Hint: it has to do with objective reality...
what are you saying?
Michael, Noam, everyone, I don't understand what is so difficult about what Liza says..
This question has been examined by philosophers for thousands of years... and there are no unequivocal answers for them (except for those who have already made up their minds, and then their answer is something like "there's no need to argue about it, it's nonsense" and the like)
In the space of the problem there is "absolute reality" the essence of which everyone is trying to understand, and there are ways of deciphering reality, which the discussion is, what is the "true" way to perceive reality through it - there is the sensory way, there is the logical way, and there are combinations of both... and there are "emotional" ways To grasp the reality and the way of a deva and the way of one or another "crazy"... and so on... the boundaries between the perceptions are not so clear and in my opinion it is not black and white... just like one person's opinion on the political situation of the lettuce in the territories, is not exactly 180 degrees different From the opinion of the other on a few degrees less and there are tangential points .. so as the number of people (their personalities, if you add the crazy ones) so the number of perceptions and ways to try to understand reality ..
But in my opinion there is no way to prove that it is the absolute reality... Because we can always claim that it is only the glasses with which we see this reality..
Just as it is not possible to know the position and the speed of a particle at the same time .. so also here the principle of unreality hurts us ..
Just… just..
Call it postmodernism, I call it accepting the evil of the decree that I am limited as a person and cannot see "everything" and know "everything" because even things I know, sometimes turn out to be complete nonsense and vice versa..
It's all vanity and bad moods... they said and they were right... except for the depressing tone of things - (I prefer to be happy about any discovery of a mistake on my part because that way I can develop and learn about things I didn't know) and stick to the concept that the wise man learns from every person (and talk or fish or horse , or a drawing of a horse) there is a lot of happiness and wealth of possibilities in this.. (and there is not a drop of anti-pseudo-scientism in this because science is just a collection of paradigms that change all the time.. very intriguing.. but by definition (scientific and linguistic) not absolute, Because there are no proofs in science only in mathematics
I believe I can guess the responses, we'll see if you surprise me and you.. thus we will both learn something new and not again.. the same nonsense of I'm right is bigger and such.. it's quite a find after a second..
Good luck.. and fruitful study
sympathetic:
This reference to language is what formed the basis of my question about your not slipping into solipsism.
This is also what I said in response 367 but this reference drops the foundation under your response 352.
I also said this again in response 367, so I repeat the question for the third time: you say that the reality that is worth talking about is the one that is created (through language) in the human mind, but according to this approach there is no basis for your assumption that there is any objective existence for minds other than your own.
As someone who considers his brain one of the brains that aren't yours - I find that quite insulting.
Besides - I repeat and ask you a question that I have already asked several times in different ways:
Let's say someone broke into your home while you were away and stole your computer.
He didn't use any language to tell you that. On the contrary - he did everything possible so that you would not know that there was a break-in. Will the fact that the linguistic structure describing the computer that exists in your home still remains in your mind allow you to type the answer to my response on this linguistic structure?
In the absence of objective reality - what will make you realize that you cannot do this?
to R.H.:
And regarding your answer about the atoms:
We agreed (in the hypothetical situation we described) that we have a reality that is only complex! I'm just stressing! Sealed. Now you say there are also horses - which also exist in reality. If yes, these horses are composed of atoms - but! These horses exist in reality, so what is the conclusion?
that "equity" is a property of the atoms. That is, given a single atom, I can measure its "horsepower".
Is this how you think our reality can be described?
When you said that an atom goes from a horse and then to a bacterium, I assume you meant that "horseness" is not a property of an atom. Atom really doesn't care what animal he is. In fact, the animal to which the atom belongs is not at all a property of the atom itself. And if we said that the reality is only! Only! Atoms - what would you conclude about horses?
My answer to the matter is that a horse is only found! Only! in our minds This term of a horse is indeed influenced by external input but to a large extent much, much more by the way the input is processed.
Michael
From the beginning of the discussion I referred to language as the way in which we interpret our sensory input and only secondarily as a means of communication between people. In my opinion, I was understood on this point and it may be that due to the fact that you joined the discussion late, this point was not clear to you, but there was no turning point in my position.
I will detail it again: all we have as humans is sensory input processed by language (which is also used as a communication tool) it makes no sense to talk about anything beyond the processed sensory input ie an independent external world. As mentioned, at the moment I am not discussing the point of why language is a means of communication.
R.H.
You write that "I did not ask if Pluto existed in the human mind before the invention of the telescope". If you haven't understood my words so far, then I believe that there is no meaning to any discussion about something that goes beyond human consciousness which I called language (for the sake of simplicity).
pleasantness
You, the Pisces writer, know with certainty where this confidence comes from. I can also say about oxygen that it definitely knows how to identify hydrogens to form water with them, so what? The only objects with which we can exchange information are the speakers of our language and with whom we can communicate, therefore I do not advocate solipsism.
I'm referring to things that I can check, that is, the sensory input processed through language, claims can be checked about which can be confirmed or refuted regarding the outside world, this is pure speculation as well as the concept that fish are more than a complex collection of chemical bonds that we have chosen to differentiate them within the group of animals.
Lenaam:
Why are we gone?
sympathetic,
I am impatiently waiting for your answer - see my response #373
Lisa,
You went back, what happened to you?
You already agreed that there is "the thing in itself" as Kant called it, and now suddenly it is gone?
to R.H.:
I think that in order to try to understand my position the following diagnosis must be made:
People have a model of reality in their mind. This model is an abstract representation that is influenced by our sensory input and to a large extent by the way we interpret it. I guess by this point you will agree.
I believe mine and you have a similar model of reality. What does that mean? When I say 'horse' the associations that will come to your mind will be similar to mine. If we are required to think of a series of words that come to mind when both of us are told the word 'horse', there will probably be a very large overlap between these words.
All of this is influenced by our model of reality.
Of course, it is no wonder that this is the case:
First there is a huge amount!! of the mutual transfer of information between people which causes the 'synchronization' of the model of reality between people.
Second, we are both people and not two different creatures from each other.
When you ask me if horses exist - this question usually refers to our model of reality.
In my model of reality, horses also exist.
All this related to our model. This model is subjective (but for the reasons I mentioned above, it becomes a convention following information sharing processes)
If you ask me about an objective reality that is - one that does not depend on the viewer - now there is very little if anything that can be said about this reality.
Lisa, I'm a bit surprised by your question. There are atoms, let's say carbon, which at a given time for about 30 years are part of the same "horse" after which they will become a dead horse and then they will form a living bacterium and then maybe become coal.
The atoms are part of a higher level of complexity of molecules that make up cells that make up tissue that makes up an organism in our case a horse. The processes are of course dynamic. It is clear to you, I hope there are no victorious horse atoms, but there are horses in the world. Ask Clint Eastwood.
Really this debate is getting bizarre.
Lisa:
In relation to postmodernism - this simply seems to me to be unprecedented nonsense from any angle you look at it.
It seems to me like the attempt of people who are unable to understand science to overcome their frustration by distorting it.
On the other hand - since it seems to me that your and Ehud's positions are not so far from postmodernism - I will limit myself to this criticism.
Regarding this topic and Wittgenstein - I suggest that you read the links I provided to the words of Zeev Bachler.
To Mr. Roschild:
I don't see 'postmodernism' as something negative or a derogatory word - I'd love your opinion on why you see things that way.
I also do not see Wittgenstein as a 'fool' - I have never read his writings and my acquaintance with his thought is only superficial.
to R.H.:
I assumed that the question of existence would come up at some point...
As I mentioned, I don't think that a horse is an actual part of some objective reality.
Let's assume for a moment that there is some objective reality and it consists of atoms. Everything is made of atoms. Only atoms.
Are there 'really' horses in this reality? If so, then surely there is a division of the atoms in the world into:
Horse atoms and non-horse atoms. Can an atom change its essence? That is, to turn from a horse atom to a non-horse atom?
If so, what is the process that turns one into the other?
If not, then since time immemorial there has been a division of the atoms in the world into horse and non-horse atoms.
That's one side of the matter.
Another way to look at the matter is this:
A computer can be taught to recognize horses in pictures. The computer is shown a series of pictures of horses and from them the computer learns to recognize horses. Does this mean that now the computer has learned something about reality? I think not.
It was equally possible to teach the computer that both horses and cows are an animal called 'Fros'.
This division of the objects is arbitrary (to the extent that it depends very little!!!!, almost negligible! on the sensory input)
Most of the work is done in processing the sensory input. A computer can be taught to recognize anything as anything. What is true for computers is true for our minds
Lisa, a simple question, is there a horse in this world?
My answer is that there is an object (this is reality) that we call a horse, in English it would be called a horse, the picture you showed describes it, the children's song Rotz ben Sosi describes it and the movie The Horse Whisperer describes it. These are all descriptions of reality.
The example of Wittgenstein's Arnebrows only shows the limitations of our theories of reality, such as quantum mechanics and not the non-existence or any problem in objective reality itself.
Lisa, seriously! What does it matter if it is called a horse or the lily of the Sharon?
The drawing is a certain shape which is what you asked us to guess.
More or less successful guesses would not change her.
According to Ehud, this form does not exist. According to you…. Not really clear.
The connection to the horse in nature is not relevant in this case. Reality is not a description of anything but is itself (do not forget that this is a parable).
Regarding Wittgenstein - the father of postmodernism - I have long since come to the conclusion that he is a moron and I do not intend to devote time to him.
Although we don't like references to philosophers here, I will still give the example of Wittgenstein's "Ernbrewson":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Seeing_that_vs._seeing_as
to R.H.:
"As mentioned, there are infinite theories of reality for one actual reality"
What is a description of reality? What does a description of reality consist of?
Nevertheless, there is some progress.
"Your complete painting is also a reality description of the real object 'horse'"
And now back again.
What is a real object? The horse you are talking about is much more in our minds than it is in 'reality'. 'Horse' is a description - action of the brain on the sensory input. This 'horse' you speak of is nothing more than a convention. A person who has never seen a horse in his life will not see a horse (his mind will not interpret the received signals in the same way you do) - what is the difference between you and that person? Do you see reality as it is and he doesn't?
In addition, at what stage does the above drawing become a drawing of a horse? Suppose I were to reveal the image pixel by pixel...
I'm not even talking about other creatures that can interpret their sensory input quite differently from us. The 'horse' in the picture is nothing more than a convention according to which our minds work (as mentioned, it is much more a part of us than a part of any 'real' reality)
I join Rothschild. Your painting is exactly what we are talking about.
Reality = a picture of a horse
Description of reality = our descriptions based on partial information about reality, "Horse? cow? A person lying down? Part of a face?". As mentioned, there are infinite theories of reality for one actual reality.
Moreover, your complete drawing is also a reality description of the real object "horse". So there is a hierarchy in the descriptions of reality and science tries to get to the root of the matter, to describe reality itself.
I will come back again and tell you, with you the argument is semantic and in fact there is an agreement between us.
Probably so, and yet I'm curious to know how the fish know the difference between the objects..
We will wait for Ehud's explanation.
Noam:
Don't you think this is an endless loop?
https://www.hayadan.org.il/for-one-tiny-instant-physicists-may-have-broken-a-law-of-nature-0604107/#comment-265335
sympathetic,
You make life easy for yourself. My argument about the fish does not require any understanding of how they think, and there is no need to translate their thinking into our way of thinking.
My argument is much simpler, and you refuse to deal with it:
The fish definitely know how to identify objects such as sea and land. They do this without language, without separation, and without humans.
The only way to explain this, apart from an act of miracles, is that there is an objective reality, which is not related to and does not depend on humans, and the fish interpret it in such a way that allows them to exist with dignity, and not jump ashore from time to time.
We also know that fish existed long before humans, and even then they knew well how to distinguish between sea and land.
If you agree with my argument, then you must at least agree that there is a reality that does not depend on humans, and does not depend on language and the ability to separate.
If you disagree, please explain how the fish knew and know how to differentiate between the sea object and the land object.
Later, after you agree with my analysis, I will try to convince you of the existence of objective reality,
And yet the text exists and its part that was in the past exists and is fixed (law of nature)
The talkbacks for this article is also a good analogy.
We all see the exact same text and at the same time we see a completely different text.
Lisa:
This is an excellent example to illustrate our point.
The painting was there all the time and it was there in reality and did not change.
This is the law of nature we are talking about.
We didn't know what it was but it was there.
to R.H.:
The painting is intended to demonstrate the great role our mind has in interpreting reality - far beyond what is provided from the outside, and it also has no analogy to the scientific process.
What was the first drawing? horse? cow? A person lying down? Part of a face? … All the answers are correct.
Now that we have seen more of the painting (more observations) - has the first painting changed? (try to look at the first painting now without seeing the horse in it),
Can we now say without hesitation that what is 'really' drawn in the second painting is a horse?
What changed in the period between the paintings - did the painting change? Has our interpretation of the painting changed?
Ehud, please note that I did not ask if Pluto existed in the human mind before the invention of the telescope. It is clear to both of us that he does not exist.
But for me it existed objectively just as it exists now. His discovery by did not change anything for Pluto himself.
Is this true for you too? Or do you think it did not exist objectively before its discovery by man?
Lisa, so what did you want to say in the above riddle?
sympathetic:
It was impossible to understand your intention and I think you even repeated the definition.
In response 352 you wrote (in response to my question about solipsism) the following:
"The basis from which I start is the language. I assume that what can be asserted in language can eventually be confirmed or refuted and known. Therefore, if I claim that I see the moon, I can convey the information to the person speaking with my lips and he can check it. The existence of language is a miracle that I cannot explain, but it is the starting point for me."
If you now retreat to the definition of language as only a tool of thought - I repeat and claim that in your opinion there is no point even talking about my existence and you must continue to solipsism
Michael and Liza
It seems that both of you did not understand my intention. For me, language is the patterns in which we think. Such a language has no direct connection with speech or information exchange even though it is the basis for information exchange.
R.H.
As long as there was no one to identify Pluto as a star it did not exist as an object once it was identified it has existed in human consciousness since it was created. Pluto did not exist for ancient civilizations and in their language there was no concept of an asteroid belt object being called. Since they didn't know how to identify him, his existence as we call him today did not change.
You are cramming reality there is only one what does this mean?
pleasantness
You bring me examples of demons as if you know how they think and how they act. It is not clear to you and you have no proof that they are nothing more than a complex mindless machine. As long as you can't translate their thinking to your way of thinking, you have no idea what you're talking about. On the other hand, other animals such as dogs or horses are likely to have a consciousness of reality because they can be tamed. But all reality sea fish horses and dogs are the result of our mind producing an object from the sensory input. What causes the sensory input can only be discussed within the framework of language. Again you didn't answer me for the thousandth time what proof do you have or what claims do you have about objective reality? After all, it is clear to you that any claim you make will be made through language, and therefore, according to your method, the objective reality will not be just a description of it, that is, according to my method, a product of your cognition.
And to solve the riddle:
http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/5659/part2yh.jpg
to R.H.:
I believe that there is more to it than semantics (or at least that a semantic difference is definitely a significant difference).
As I mentioned, laws, objects and everything else are part of our perception and not part of something external to us.
Noam:
My position is slightly different from Ehud's for several reasons:
First, I do not see language (in its usual meaning, i.e. the use of words and sentences) as the only tool for communication. For example, I believe that deaf-mutes also have a perception of reality. The same goes for babies. This belief can be tested to the extent of testing my belief and you have a similar perception of reality (or some perception of reality).
I also have a problem with the term 'objective reality'. Any perception of reality is, at best, 'a conventional reality'.
I am more inclined towards Kant's 'thing as it is itself' as far as I understand it - but it must be emphasized that this thing does not include 'atoms', does not operate according to laws, and nothing can be said about it other than that the reality we perceive in our hands is a product of interaction between Our mind to another factor external to us.
Also, isn't it clear that:
1) There is only one reality (apparently and known to us)
2) Are there infinite theories of reality?
2 Since reality can be described in words, photography, painting, recording, formulas for sensory perception and action according to it, and much more. In fact, each of us constantly creates a partial picture of reality in his mind.
This issue is so trivial and of course I'm really surprised that such a long debate was created especially that in light of your reasoning Lisa and Ehud you don't sound delusional like the writers Hazy Ron or that anti-Semitic Jew.
sympathetic,
You don't delve into (or don't read at all) what they tell you.
Let's try one more time:
Fish have no language. According to your opinion, it follows that fish cannot separate objects and therefore are also unable to distinguish between sea and land (and many other things of course).
Despite the above, it is clear that they do know how to distinguish between sea and land, otherwise they would have become extinct a long time ago.
This can be explained in two ways:
1) Miracle work
2) There is an objective reality, which does not depend on human beings, and not on language. The fish interpret this reality in a certain way, which among other things helps them distinguish between sea and land.
We know today, that the fish managed well even before the existence of humanity, which proves that they knew how to interpret the objective reality even without our help.
In my humble opinion, this is an excellent proof of the existence of an objective reality, which does not depend at all on us, human beings, and does not depend on any language.
Lisa, I am once again impressed by your response that the argument between you, Noam Macha'al, and me is purely semantic.
Ehud, you didn't answer a question that I think is a key to understanding your identity. Do you understand that the planet Pluto did not exist before the invention of the telescope?
sympathetic:
Well, I realized a long time ago that our attitudes are irreconcilable.
Your attitude is so strange to me that I really find it hard to believe that you really hold it.
I, in any case, prefer to manage without miracles and it is really clear to me how the existence of the laws of nature ultimately results in the existence of language while the existence of language alone cannot even cause the birth of a single bug.
In other words - even if you decide that in your eyes faith in the existence of the laws of nature is faith in a greater miracle than language - a claim that in itself will sound completely baseless to me - then even then no problem will be solved because language does not create anything physical and certainly not life and death.
I'm interested in whether you think lying on the road in the middle of the freeway at night won't result in anything other than some exchange of words by a few people (which you won't even suffer from if you cover your ears).
By the way - have you not come across a person in your life who, due to a brain injury, has lost his language and despite this it was clear that he understands what is happening around him and reacts to things?
I, unfortunately, saw this in the protracted dying process of a friend who had brain cancer.
Perhaps the thundering silence of such a friend while you are trying to convince him of your opinion would have convinced you more than all the words poured out here.
Michael
One can also doubt the correctness of the language as a means of communication. I take the fact that language exists as a means of communication as a starting assumption, although this assumption can also be substantiated, but I do not intend to enter into a debate around this point. The main point I am making is that thinking, speaking and recognition are done through language, any discussion about what cannot be fully described through language is unnecessary in my opinion. So are the claims about objective reality.
pleasantness
As long as I don't speak the language of fish or horses as far as I'm concerned, they have no reality of their own, they live within the reality defined by my language. Their world is my world and the only way I can imagine their thought processes is through my words.
For some reason you insist on completely ignoring the question I've asked at least four times already. How do you know that there is a reality that does not depend on language? What are you basing it on?
Lisa,
I agree with almost every word you wrote.
What I'm missing is one key point:
The perception of the reality of the fish, horses and humans stems from that ** objective reality ** that Ehud refuses to acknowledge the existence of.
This is also the proof of the existence of an objective reality, which does not depend on humans, it depends on language, it simply exists.
If it didn't exist, then according to Ehud's description: "Language = reality" (therefore in the absence of language there is no reality and no separation between objects), the fish would have long ago been confused between the sea and the land, and horse ticks would have long ago wasted their time on rocks and trees in their attempt to suck blood.
sympathetic,
I think you will have to admit at least one thing:
There is some reality (of the fish and horse ticks at least) that does not depend on man nor on language.
Have we managed to progress at least this far?
sympathetic:
I cannot see in your words an answer to my question.
After all, even the fact that you hear me speak should be interpreted in your eyes as a structure created by your knowledge in some way and without the existence of an objective reality that includes me.
Lenaam:
My evidence is that human language is not the only one capable of representing reality.
Any sufficiently sophisticated computational device is capable of representing reality in different ways. The brain abstractly represents reality and language is designed to share this representation with the environment.
Every creature capable of representing its sensory input has some perception of reality. This is what I meant when I talked about the concept of 'tree' in dogs.
That is, according to my view, even fish have a representation (even if extremely limited) of some reality. This reality of fish is completely different from the reality we experience. Pisces also have concepts according to which they perceive reality. These concepts define the natural laws of fish.
Science can be thought of as a big brain that perceives 'reality' through measuring instruments (which are its sensory input). The input of the measuring device goes through many additional processing steps (like in our brain the initial input is a light intensity that hits the retina and at a late stage in the processing of this information, this input becomes 'dark' or 'orange' or whatever it is we are looking at). This is also how science measures measurements, these measurements go through a lot of processing, these measurements get meaning through the current concepts and laws that science uses and finally a meaning is obtained (like for example: this experiment showed the existence of an 'atom' or a 'galaxy'). Much of the scientific language (laws and concepts) is related to the conventions that exist in the scientific community regarding how to interpret measurements.
The same process at different levels of sophistication calls upon any creature that represents some sensory input. The meaning of the concepts and laws is also related to the input itself, but also (and to a much more significant extent than it seems intuitively) to the manner of its interpretation, which is largely arbitrary (that is, not related to the input itself).
pleasantness
Unfortunately, I do not speak the language of fish, so I have no way of knowing if he is aware of my world. That is, the world that my language defines. If we (me and fish not me and you) had a common language we would have a common worldview. For me, the fish can be a complex type of automaton that has no consciousness. The action of the fish in the world is like the movement of the clouds in the sky or the rotation of the moon around the earth, only more complex and dependent on many chemical mechanisms.
Noam, you constantly claim that there is an objective reality that is not related to any language that describes it, please try to justify this argument. Please write me what it is based on other than faith.
sympathetic,
And how does the fish, without language, manage to make interpretations of objective reality?
Michael
As I stated throughout the discussion (which is starting to repeat itself) and I don't blame you for not even reading part of it, the basis from which I start is the language. I assume that what can be asserted in language can eventually be confirmed or refuted and known. Therefore, if I claim that I see the moon, I can convey the information to the person speaking with my lips and he can check it. The existence of language is a miracle that I cannot explain, but it is the starting point for me.
pleasantness
I will try again. For me there is only human reality and it is not limited in time. Human reality can talk about what was before being human. I feel that you did not understand this point in my words. The claims about the things that existed before the existence of man will be in some language and it is the language that produces this reality. It is not an objective reality because in my opinion it is not possible to talk about such and as Wittgenstein said, "What cannot be talked about, should be kept silent." In it we will examine this claim in depth and also read my words to Mc*El: What cannot be described in language cannot be examined and recognized and in my opinion there is no need for it. The same objective reality that you and R.H. Flaps in it can only be described through language and it is considered as far as I'm concerned for what can be said about it - including false claims. The main thing is that which can be described through language, can be transferred between people for examination and even for scientific examination, everything else about it should be kept silent.
R.H.
Read my response to Michael and Noam. The reality is worth to me for its description, any speculation about what cannot be described in language I leave to religion.
Ehud, I think I understand better the root of our disagreement. You are confusing the concepts of reality with the description of reality. Reality is an objective thing that exists for itself without definitions and without names. The description of reality is carried out by every living organism that senses reality and reacts to it, from a bacterium that is attracted to glucose to a lover that sits and writes on the keyboard. No organism can survive without a certain description of the reality around it.
so that:
A. Reality itself exists independently of description without classification and definition. She is simply "there" (or here for that matter) and there is apparently only one.
B. The description of reality, on the other hand, does not exist without the description. There can be infinite theories of reality and different interpretations based on them.
And I asked?
sympathetic,
I didn't mention it explicitly, but I hope you understand that the interpretation of that objective reality is made not only by man but also by the horse tick, which knows how to suck blood from horses and not rocks, by fish that know how to stay in the water and not jump to land, and all that Without having a language "with which to make separation".
That is, your basic premise: language = reality is completely unfounded.
sympathetic,
Who is talking about human reality???
I'm talking about objective reality - do you also only read your own comments?
So if it wasn't clear - our main argument is that there is an objective reality that does not depend on the existence of humanity and not on the existence of language (laws of the first type), the objective reality exists for the fish, the dinosaurs, the moon, and the planets (forgive the ones I mentioned by name). And there is an interpretation of that reality made by humans, with the help of laws of the second type, which depend on language, and do not exist without the existence of humanity.
This is exactly what they have been trying to explain to you for a long time, and you suddenly pull out a trivial and non-controversial statement (nor does it contribute anything to the discussion) that says
"Of course before there were people there was no human reality"
what are you saying?? How did you come up with it??
to R.H.:
I want you to describe to me what you see in the painting.
I would be happy if the others would do the same.
There is nothing to fear - as mentioned, there are no wrong answers.
sympathetic:
I just popped in to see if something had changed.
Apparently not.
According to your last response, I assume that there is another step that is really required according to your approach and it is the step that concludes in the same way as the other conclusions are drawn - that for you there is not even a language at all and there are no others because everything is in your private head.
Apart from the input of your senses you have no information even about my existence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
Would you mind explaining why you don't go that far?
pleasantness
I thought you had already withdrawn from the discussion but it turns out that you didn't... of course before there were people there was no human reality and we can't imagine what a different reality would look like for example a reality for fish. The fact that fish survive has nothing to do with their deep thoughts about reality (forgive me the dolphins). You never once bothered to answer my questions. How do you know there is reality? Can you prove this or is it just a belief?
R.H.
I talked about configurations of water but something does not exist by itself without man snow is not separated from water there are no separations in reality as you want to refer to it. All the separations we make about the world are made in words and based on definitions. As I have said more than once the miracle is the ability to produce language, but beyond being a miracle it does not involve the concept of divinity (or "the thing in itself", as you and Noam call it).
Sorry Ehud but I ran out of words. You say there are thousands of frozen water configurations in nature that we call snow. This sentence refers to our limited settings. You admit that there is something in nature that we try to define and classify with our meager power. Does that "something" not exist without the definition?
By the way, I'm not sure about an ant but the horse fly or horse tick sure knows how to spot a horse.
Lisa, what do you want?
I will ask for cooperation with the experiment.
Hint:
There are no wrong answers.
sympathetic,
Your theory is extremely logical, really self-evident: language=reality, therefore if there is no language there is no reality.
The fish, for example, are very dangerous. Everyone knows that the fish get confused all the time and jump from the sea to the land because, in the absence of language, they are not able to make the much needed separation - what has to be said makes perfect sense.
There is no doubt that before humanity, there was no reality. It's so obvious, it's a shame to argue about it. Reality only began when we appeared on earth, and together with us reality emerged. Before that, there was nothing, and it is meaningless to ask what was before.
Oh well, I've heard of even more absurd theories, although this is indeed one of the contenders for the most ridiculous theory crown.
R.H.
We are moving backwards.
To your question about the horse: does a cat distinguish between a horse and a donkey or a mule? Can an ant recognize a horse? As soon as you define a certain animal you recognize it before you don't. This is clearer with the snow example. For us there is one type of snow (I assume because you are not of Eskimo origin). For the Eskimos there are 30 types, therefore in our reality there is one snow and in the Eskimo reality 30 types. But what in the world you ask? I can't talk about something without language. Language separates the world into objects and thus becomes a relative of something that cannot be recognized by itself and cannot be spoken about in words, therefore the assumption of its independent existence in my view is an unnecessary hypothesis. You want to believe that there is a world without language, you want to refer to it, that's your right, but it's not necessary.
You say words that describe reality, I don't agree. Let's go back to snow in reality. Snow doesn't exist in order to still talk, I'll say because in reality there are infinite configurations of frozen water (here too I differentiate between the types of liquids and different states of aggregation, a separation that doesn't exist in reality, whatever it may be) why call them all by one name, snow? Why not call each flake by a different name? If we drag into talking about reality, then reality is one in which there are no separations. It is the brain that separates reality into objects and creates connections between them. The mind creates approximations of the one because we cannot grasp the complete existence. By the way, I used the phrase reality, but you can replace it again with God or something else. This was just for the sake of the actual discussion, this hypothesis is unnecessary. As a human being I perceive things through language and it is the only thing that exists for me. That is, language equals reality.
Let's do an experiment.
I will ask each of the participants to say what is drawn in the following drawing:
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6971/partc.jpg
Ehud, I also agree with the phrase "we define and nature takes its course" but you take it too far. Nature in itself means that there is a world without man and our definitions are limited and unable to fully describe it. There is no horse in your opinion if we don't call it a horse? What is our connection to the existence of reality?
Question, what is the status of an object that was not discovered and was not given a definition? According to Ehud's dictionary he doesn't exist?
Eskimos have about 30 definitions for snow. We only have one, so the snow is in which super position of existing/non-existent according to your definition?
As mentioned, I find your sentences "I don't think it is legitimate to ask how the universe was conducted before the arrival of man" or "words create reality" outrageous at best and ridiculous at worst.
Ehud, words describe reality, they create nothing. Reality is out there!
R.H.
I thought we'd already been through all of that. Let's try one more time….
How many different types of snow are there? It depends on your discernment and your needs. If I think there are 4 different types of snow and define them, how many types of snow will there be now? True 4. How many types of snow were there before? One, because no one bothered to differentiate between them. Now for poultry, how many types of poultry are there? It depends on the definition, doesn't it? Oh, you think it's possible to sort by DNA, what exactly is the difference between different types of poultry in the DNA that defines them? Are there no differences in DNA between the same type of chicken? Well then tell me that it is possible to differentiate between species based on their ability to breed with each other. Here, too, a horse and a donkey can give birth to a mule... I hope that it is already clear to you that the objects in the world are a product of our definition. The brain separates and categorizes the sensory input. Before I define something as different I do not distinguish it and associate it with the larger group. Words create reality!
Ehud, forgive me, but either I'm missing something or your view is egocentric and ridiculous. I find your first sentence (and in fact the rest as well) to be completely nonsensical. To think that there is no universe without man?
I'll ask you again, didn't bacteria exist before the microscope was invented?
Wasn't Pluto there before the telescope?
Was the thing we call "red" not and will not be when the person was/will not be here?
Can't a baby or alternatively a bee or a computer program detect a red object?
Didn't I exist before you started writing to me?
What is the connection between our definitions and awareness of the existence or non-existence of objects in nature???
I also really don't understand your backwards definition "and the moment Sahaksa was defined as a word it has always existed" how can that be?
R.H.
I thought we already agreed that there are no objects in nature. Objects are the result of the human brain's ability to separate and have no validity beyond their definition.
pleasantness
We will address the subject that you call "the thing in itself". In my opinion, it cannot be talked about, all that can be talked about are laws created by man. An important point in my statement that I think you are missing is that I do not think that laws were created as soon as man emerged into the universe. Such laws were created and apply to human consciousness from the moment a certain thinker conceived them and from that moment they apply to human consciousness since time immemorial. We have already agreed that objects in the world are a product of human thought. Without the first person who created the word throne there would be no thrones in the world and from the moment sahaksa was defined as a word it has always existed. The same goes for red, types of snow, mass and speed.
Now we will move on to examine your and R.H.'s claims:
1. What can be said about "the thing in itself"? You agree with me that man speaks and thinks in language and therefore can only tell approximations about something he calls "the thing in itself". Thus we have only the human saying about "the thing in itself" and nothing else. For the sake of simplicity, we will only refer to the human laws.
2. It is not possible to prove the existence of "the thing in itself", it is not possible to test it or think of an experiment in which it will be found.
3. According to you "the thing in itself" is the source of things. Let's play your favorite word game and replace the name of "the thing in itself" with God. what will we get
It is not possible to talk about "God". It cannot be known but only its approximations. "God" is the source of things. As a secular person, it is convenient for me to give up this hypothesis.
I do not understand how you are trying to convince me of the existence of something that cannot be tested, much less scientific testing. It cannot be given a complete description, and it cannot be given complete or even partial knowledge (which does not depend on human thought).
In conclusion, it seems legitimate to me to ask how the universe behaved before the arrival of man? Just as it seems legitimate to me to ask what was in the universe before the big bang? If you didn't understand my answer, it doesn't seem legitimate to me to ask how the universe was conducted before the arrival of man!
Lisa,
I can't help but get the impression that part of the argument stems from the fact that you don't bother to read what others write.
Already a week ago, in response 129, I wrote that I use the word "law" according to one of Ibn Shushan's definitions.
Since then I have repeated it several times.
In addition to that, you asked some questions, you accepted my answers, and yet you continued to claim that I did not answer you.
It's a bit disappointing to argue with someone who only listens to himself.
Lisa, I argue that what you call "the thing in itself" = what we call "law". We could just as easily both call it X, the words don't matter, the intentions do and it seems to me that we mean the same thing.
Read Noam in 331: "Law also means a permanent natural phenomenon (according to Ibn Shushan's dictionary)." That is, when we said law, we meant this definition of a permanent natural phenomenon. Hence the argument is completely semantic and has exhausted itself unless you can explain why you think the intentions are different.
Lenaam:
I certainly agree that the point of dispute is the interpretation of the word law.
This is how the discussion began - some argued that the Law of Nature cannot be violated and some argued that it was.
to R.H.:
"Replace the words in your sentence 'the word in itself' with the words 'type 1 law' and 'our mind' with the words 'type 2 law'"
This exchange of words is the heart of the discussion. I can replace "the thing in itself" with the word "orange" and "our mind" with the word 'table'. The meaning you get will be different. We have nothing but the words we use.
Lisa at the moment you wrote (328): "The world we describe and experience is the product of an interaction between the "thing in itself" or reality or any other name you choose and our minds." The discussion between us ended in agreement. Replace the words in your sentence "the word by itself" with the words "type 1 law" and "our mind" with the words "type 2 law" and you got what Noam and I have been trying to say for dozens of posts.
Ehud (329): I agree with everything you said. What is missing is –
0. There are objects in nature.
And there is no argument between us either.
Lisa,
You are ignoring another meaning that the word law has, and I have already mentioned it several times.
Law also means "permanent natural phenomenon" (according to the Ibn Shoshan dictionary).
A permanent natural phenomenon is not "someone thinks it - someone generalized it, this law resides in someone's mind." In whose mind sits this law"
When I speak of laws of the first type, I speak of laws in the sense of permanent natural phenomena.
Now, please re-read what you wrote, and understand that at least part of the debate between us arose as a result of a different interpretation of the word "law"
sympathetic,
There is nothing childish about relying on great and wise people from both of us, and it is clear that it is not enough - arguments must be made and substantiated.
I am not an ardent follower of Kant, nor do I pretend to understand it in depth. The one who brought Kant into the discussion was Lise, who for some reason thought that Kant was strengthening his position.
We have made good progress in understanding each other, but you are still missing a very important matter, which exists in reality but you try to make it disappear.
This is what Kant called "the thing in itself" - that is, that objective reality that exists with or without humanity, with or without language - it simply exists, and the fact that we only manage to create laws close to reality, does not make that reality disappear.
Do you think it is legitimate to ask how the universe was conducted before the arrival of humanity?
If you say that this is a meaningless question - then for me the discussion is over, it is not possible to bridge these differences of opinion and it is not possible to continue a fruitful discussion without agreement on this point.
pleasantness
The discussion is not whether Kant was right or wrong and I do not pretend to understand Kant in depth. By the way, have you ever tried to read "Bekorat HaTovana Torah" from cover to cover? Beyond that, it is a bit childish to base a discussion on Einstein said so, Kant said so, the discussion should be factual and based on arguments.
R.H.
I am excited that I have made a lot of progress in my attempt to explain my position.
I will summarize the common conclusions in my opinion so far:
1. Man creates in the brain in combination with observations of objects from nature.
2. The person asks questions about the essence of the objects and the connections between them.
3. The person produces correlations and scientific laws whose function is to explain the questions asked about the objects.
Additional claims:
It is not possible for a person to speak or think without language. Since language separates the world, it is not possible to talk about nature in itself without separation. Scientific laws are always about the separation of nature into objects, that is, scientific laws do not concern nature per se.
Lanaam and R.H.:
The world we describe and experience is the product of an interaction between "the thing in itself" or reality or any other name you choose and our mind.
Why do such a diagnosis?
Because from the word itself we get:
1. Our sensory input
2. Any measurement that scientists perform (1 can be treated as such a measurement).
Why is it necessary to separate the thing in itself from our mind?
Because the observations we measure are determined by something other than us. Otherwise we would determine the results of the experiment. If this did not exist - we would be the only ones left and we would have to be the source of the observations.
Now you are asking: Well, why aren't the laws part of this thing? You are probably asking:
First, because we don't measure laws - show me a device that measures laws.
Unlike measuring the laws, we create. Our mind is capable of creating laws. Any law we want. Our mind is not capable of producing measurements.
The laws are an approximation and explanation of measurements. This is how they are created, first there are measurements, then there are laws. A law is a generalization of observations.
Every law that you can ever think of, talk about, predict other observations based on is of this type.
Unlike measurements - we are able to produce laws as we please - but in order for these laws to be of any use, it is necessary to match them with the observations.
If there is something in a "thing in itself" that is a law - the present means someone thinks it - someone has generalized it, this law resides in someone's mind. In whose mind sits this law?
In fact, these laws you are talking about are profoundly and fundamentally different from ordinary law:
These laws you talk about are not generalized and are created from observations (like any law you can ever talk about).
The essential thing is: the laws you are talking about create the observations.
And the question is - what justification is there for such a claim? What is it based on other than faith?
And of course there are the questions that have been asked and have not been answered so far:
How would science be different without these laws you are talking about? If we were satisfied only with observations and not with the laws that produce them, how would our world change? What scientific question can be asked about these laws?
OK Ehud, so it turns out that unlike the argument with Lisa, which I think turned out to be semantic, we have differences of opinion in principle.
I think your position is clear to me now in light of the last comment "there is no separate reality and language".
My opinion is the opposite. In my opinion there is reality and we have an attempt to describe and build an image of it with the help of language, formulas, feelings, and even art. Reality and its image are not one. Just as a picture we took or drew represents reality but it is not reality.
In my opinion, one of the most beautiful proofs of this second is quantum mechanics, in which you are a greater expert than me, where it turns out that this is the first time that we probably do not have the ability to build a clear coherent picture of reality.
I mean, do you think Kant was wrong?
R.H. and Noam
We cannot talk about nature per se. We speak and think in language, that is, we make separations and classifications.
There is no reality and language separately. It is possible to imagine a world without language, but for me this is equivalent to religious belief. Empty words that have no verifiable meaning.
sympathetic,
I'll ask you the same question I asked Lisa and I didn't get a clear answer:
What do you think is the "thing in itself" that Kant talked about?
Ehud, human sorting and classification are not loose ends but rely on real differences originating from objects. We don't just call these doves and these crows, but according to their features, their DNA sequences, etc.
The origin of the classification in nature is not in the head of man.
R.H.
I feel that with the help of my example about the snow we have made a lot of progress in my attempt to explain my position.
Regarding the red, I hope you understand that this is just a case like the snow: which frequencies are called red, which blue, etc.. are determined by the separation of the person. The example of snow also applies to animals. You can call all the animals by a collective name or you can separate them into birds, mammals, etc... You can continue to separate the birds into pigeons, crows, etc... Now you can ask questions about the groups, why are all crows black? Why do bacteria cause diseases? These questions are also based on human definition: what is a disease depends on definition, which creatures are called bacteria. It is now possible to answer these questions within the framework of scientific language. Our ability to answer the questions reinforces the separation we made of nature into certain objects. The laws we create to answer the questions are dependent on the separations we have made and therefore the laws are not from our eyes of nature but the result of man's use of language.
Noam, I hope that now you understand how everything relates to the main topic and why my claims are exactly related to the main topic and are not just interesting corners
Lisa 317. What don't you understand? "The thing by itself" behaves in a certain way, meaning that a ball X fired at speed Y moves at speed Z. What I wrote in the previous sentence is our description of the same phenomenon in which in the A-M-T something is currently moving in the air according to a certain rule. Do me a favor, don't be smart.
Regarding Kant, Noam showed you well that he says exactly what we say, there is the "is" and there is our description. What's simpler than that?
As far as I'm concerned, I've exhausted myself, and if no new thought-provoking reasoning comes up, I'll part ways with you here as friends until the next discussion!
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Rah,
Have you ever managed to get a religious person to say the explicit name? I do not.
Besides, it seems to me that what we are doing to Lisa is starting to be a bit abusive.
Although he still hasn't answered some important questions, we seem to have exhausted the matter.
Lenaam:
I feel at ease with my last comments, they succinctly sum up my position.
When a new claim is raised, I will be happy to respond.
Lisa,
Allow me to repeat the definition of the word "law" according to Ibn Shoshan:
permanent natural phenomena.
Note, Ibn Shoshan does not qualify this definition for phenomena as man understands them, but for natural phenomena in general,
He does not define that they need to be written, or that they need to be created, that they need an empirical basis or that they depend on humans.
Simple: "permanent natural phenomena"
I have already mentioned many times that the use of the term "law" can certainly cause confusion, and I don't particularly like it, but try to understand the essence and ignore semantic problems.
I agree that you kindly suggested that there is such a thing as "the thing in itself", and this differs from Ehud's opinion, who thinks that there is only one system and it is "the world as it is perceived by our reason"
You kind of remind me of a religious person, who doesn't dare to say the explicit name. He of course knows exactly what it is about, but insists on not saying it out loud. so be it.
Anyway, I'm waiting for a better definition than "two systems"
to R.H.:
I don't understand the saying "that 'the thing in itself' behaves in a certain way".
As mentioned, rules are created by people. Therefore I do not agree with this claim. There is much more to it than semantics, and Kant's approach was not called a Copernican revolution just like that - it is a fundamentally different worldview. I even think that his greatness is manifested today in many ways in the cognitive sciences
Moreover, in my humble opinion, if we are already talking about semantics, it would be appropriate to call the behavior of the object "laws of nature" and what we do and describe: "attempts to describe the laws of nature".
It is indeed a semantic argument because you agree that "the thing in itself" behaves in a certain way, right? His ways of behaving or the rules or whatever you call it according to which he behaves were called "laws" in the current discussion.
to R.H.:
I hope my previous answer clarified the matter:
The saying that there are laws that do not depend on the person is wrong according to my view and therefore this debate is not semantic because it is an important diagnosis.
The mind makes laws
Laws are not part of the thing per se
Lenaam:
I will come back one more time:
Laws are generalizations of observations. This is the essence of the discussion. Generalizations are made by people. They are part of the way we think. Generalizations are made on a series of observations or measurements and with their help we make predictions for further observations.
There is no reason to believe that the thing itself operates according to laws (because the concept of 'law' itself is a concept that depends on our intellect - it is the glasses with which we see the world).
We cannot measure a law (because we make laws based on observations).
Laws operate on concepts that we generate based on observations.
The only thing that the "thing in itself" provides us are observations.
Observations and measurements
Measurements and observations
Laws are our creations
Lisa, 309. So from this I understand that the debate between us is purely semantic. We call the object and its behavior "laws". You don't like the word laws, call them a phenomenon or an object.
All we wanted to say is that there are objects and they behave in a certain way (these two were called in the current discussion by the perhaps not so successful name of type 1 laws) and on the other hand there is the description of the person by language or mathematical formulas (called here type 2 laws).
Is this description acceptable to you?
Lisa,
Do you think "the thing in itself" behaves in a completely random way?
Lisa,
How would you define what Kant calls:
"The world of phenomena" and "the thing in itself"?
Do you have a more precise definition than two systems?
Regarding "the thing in itself" you can ask all the scientific questions that interest you. The answers you are able to provide are only approximations to the "thing in itself"
to R.H.:
Reporter:
"There is a thing in itself (object, type 1 law)"
There is such a thing - but this thing is not a law, nor is it a set of laws.
Laws are generalizations of observations. These generalizations are made by people and are not part of the thing itself
Lenaam (305):
"Kant speaks of two systems"
systems? Are you sure?
To Noam:
When I perform an experiment - measurement or observation, I get a result. What determines the result I get?
According to my understanding, this is the thing in itself. This is all that can be said about the thing in itself - it is the necessary condition for our observations. If this were not the case and we ourselves were the source of the results of the measurements - we would have had the possibility to determine the results of the experiments.
Now I will try to understand your answer - I thank you for the reference but I did not understand what scientific questions I can ask about this set of laws you are talking about, could you help me in this matter?
Lisa, oh, we've made progress here. You say "the thing in itself is the source of the observations" that's it!
There is a thing in itself (object, type 1 law), there are observations and there is our description of the object (language/formula/type 2 law). is it clear now?
Ehud, a physical experiment for Edom? Open Photoshop, select the sampling tool (looks like a pipette) tap on a red spot and you will see in the color panel that it is 0, 100, 100, 0. The representation of red on the computer. Even a color blind person or even a blind person who uses a device that tells them the numbers will know where red is. No image is needed in the brain.
About the snow I think I understand what you mean. It can be phrased as "we define and nature takes its course". The human brain must sort and classify in order to understand and the definitions are from us and not from nature itself. But, and this is a big but, this does not mean that nature does not behave according to laws or rules. It is a fact that the behavior of systems can be accurately predicted and described.
Explanation: Kant speaks of two systems: "the world of phenomena" and "the thing in itself"
Lisa,
Not only am I not evading, I have already answered all these questions - see response 277
I'm starting to get a little discouraged - I put a lot of effort into convincing you, and you don't even bother to read my comments.
Your answers are getting weirder and weirder. what the hell is this:
"Because when I make measurements - the results obtained are not "all that I want to be obtained" - there is another source (not me) for these observations"
Please clarify
If there is anyone else on the site who understands Lisa's answers, I would be very grateful if they could help me understand them
Lenaam:
And to your question: "Is there one system or two systems at the same time?"
What systems are you talking about? Please clarify.
Regarding the source of the observations:
Because when I make measurements - the results obtained are not "all that I want to be obtained" - there is another source (not me) for these observations.
Lenaam:
And now for the questions to which we still haven't received an answer (I'm sure you don't avoid questions like I do, I guess you didn't notice that they were asked several times throughout the discussion):
You wrote that "the universe is governed by a set of laws". Where are these laws written? What is their nature? What are they working on? What is the empirical basis for these laws? Who made them? How do we know that we have such a law? Is there one scientific question I can ask about this set of rules? What existed first - the material or the laws on which they operate?
Lisa,
I did not understand your answer: what is the source of the observations? Please clarify.
Another question: Is there one system or two systems at the same time?
Lenaam:
As I mentioned, "the thing in itself" according to my understanding is the source of observations.
(Here too you are welcome to ask again, or I can update you when I change my mind)
Lisa,
Kant thinks differently. He explicitly says that there are two systems, and that there is a connection between the two systems:
"Kant proves that there is a difference between the world as it is perceived by our reason (also known as the "world of phenomena") and the thing-as-it-is-for-itself"
"The thing in itself manifests itself in the world of phenomena in the various revelations of our senses"
What did Kant mean by saying "the thing in itself"?
Noam:
For your response (293):
I would appreciate it if you could help me understand Kant, because I do not understand him deeply.
This is of course if you have some free time after you explain to me about general relativity.
Lenaam:
Your question "when the thing is in itself" can only be addressed through observations or measurements. This is a necessary condition for the observations and it is not possible to refer to his brother on his own.
Of course, for a more detailed answer, you are directed to the "pure common sense review".
Lisa,
And I asked?
It seems that every time you find yourself in an uncomfortable position you just dodge.
Lenaam:
To understand Kant, you are welcome to read philosophy books.
Talkbacks probably won't help you in this matter.
By the way, Noam, you are welcome to read Ehud's response 99 to better understand his approach and its relation to Kant.
Lisa,
Let's help you understand what Kant says:
"Kant proves that there is a difference between the world as it is perceived by our reason (also known as the "world of phenomena") and the thing-as-it-is-for-itself"
What do you think is the thing "when he is to himself"?
sympathetic,
You drag the discussion into all kinds of corners (interesting in themselves) but not related to the main topic of the dispute:
You claim there is only one point system.
We claim that there are two systems: one that Kant defined as "when-for-itself" and the other is a man-made system. In addition, there is a connection between the two systems, and the second system is an attempt to approximate the first system.
All the other points you raise are simply irrelevant, although interesting in themselves.
Lenaam:
"In any case, on the main subject of the dispute, Kant says explicitly, there are two systems and there is a connection between them"
Please show me where Kant says there are two sets of laws of nature?
If Kant is a ladder for you to descend from your initial position, you are welcome to use it. Please do not present his position as your position in this discussion because it is interpreted differently from it. Verbal meandering will not help in this matter.
R.H.
A short response, I will try to elaborate later. If the laws of nature are timeless what do they apply to? Did the laws of chemistry exist in the early universe where there were no atoms and molecules. Of course not. The laws of human chemistry speak of atoms and molecules. Let's assume for the sake of simplicity of the discussion that nature consists only of quarks, after all at the beginning of the universe there were quarks and according to your perception laws apply to the quarks. The laws of chemistry are therefore derived from human evidence that says let's say that I could write chemistry laws for quarks, they would be worded terribly complicated, I will invent an effective law that discusses not quarks but their combination with atoms. Al the laws of chemistry are not fundamental they are a human approximation. My argument is that if you believe in the laws of nature these laws should only apply to what the early universe was composed of and everything that was created from it was derived from those laws. That should be your claim.
R.H.
Please formulate a physical experiment for me to determine whether a certain object is red? But you must not make a definition of red. It is clear to you that the division of spectrum colors is human. Why is the planet Pluto an object because with the help of language I recognize repeating patterns in nature.
For a different question (which I hope will clarify the issue) are there several types of snow in nature? It depends on my language. I can separate different types of snow. Did they exist before I separated them? Yes but not as separate objects. Maybe every snowflake in the world is unique and special and I am obliged to call it by a different name? The attempt to separate reality according to a certain feature is a human tendency not something in nature. Man produces objects (words) to describe his observations.
And by the way, I'm not sure that being close to Kant is an advantage, but it's funny to me that Lisa cites Kant as a reinforcement of his opinion, while Kant says the opposite.
Lisa,
Let's compare what Kant says to my approach and yours and Ehud's (if all modesty is required):
"Kant proves that there is a difference between the world as it is perceived by our reason (also known as the "world of phenomena") and the thing-as-it-is-for-itself"
That is: there are two systems: "the world as it is perceived by our reason" and "the thing as it is for itself"
What does Noam say about this:
"There are two systems of natural laws that exist at the same time. One set of natural laws - of the first type - exists regardless of our existence, and we can only come close to understanding them at this stage, and the other is a man-made set of natural laws."
What does Ehud say about this:
"In my opinion, only one (the other) system of laws makes sense."
"Kant emphasizes that the world of phenomena is not separated from the thing-as-it-self, but there is a connection between them. The thing-as-itself manifests itself in the world of phenomena in the various revelations of our senses"
What does Noam say about this:
"Our way of understanding nature, i.e. the laws of the first type, is to build models that are only approximations"
What does Ehud say about this:
"The separation between the laws of nature as they really are and the laws of nature formulated by scientists does not exist."
What can I tell you Lisa, are you sure that your opinion and Ehud's opinion is closer to Kant than mine and Michael Varach's opinion?
In any case, on the main point of contention, Kant says explicitly, there are two systems and there is a connection between them.
This is also my main argument
Ehud, I will ask you again what is the connection between the creation time of something and the laws according to which it exists?
Will a new molecule that has never existed before that I create in the lab not obey the laws of chemistry and physics?
Doesn't a new strain of bacteria or virus behave according to the same rules as other bacteria and viruses?
Regarding the color point. It is clear that the difference in colors is due to something in the object itself and not in the person. Suppose as you say that you only see black and white and you do not distinguish between two objects A and B. Suddenly someone invents glasses that allow color vision and you now recognize that one is green and the other purple. Were they not different before or you simply could not feel the difference? What does the image in your brain have to do with the true nature of the objects?
Didn't the planet Pluto exist before the invention of the telescope and bacteria didn't exist before the invention of the microscope? Isn't that a little ridiculous?
Lisa, first of all I apologize for the word "just", you're right, it's not for nothing, but an important and interesting debate. He probably referred to the fact that I felt we were chewing over and over again and not making progress with a topic that, in my humble opinion, is a bit trivial and I ran out of words to explain without repeating everything that was said.
I will try one more time. You can look at the scientific process as the opposite of mathematical construction. In mathematics we start with axioms and gradually develop theorems on top of them on which more and more theorems are built.
In science, on the other hand, we start from the sentences, in this case phenomena and we go looking for more basic sentences or explanations for these phenomena. The ultimate ambition that will probably never be achieved is to discover the axioms of nature, these are the true laws of nature.
There is nothing mysterious or mystical about discovering the laws. On the other hand, the question of who and how the laws were established would, in my opinion, be very problematic and perhaps without an answer or meaning, like asking who determined that only one line passes through two points? Or who determined that 1+1 = 2?
Another ambition is to reach a full connection of the entire hierarchy. For example the dream of explaining human psychology (through biology/chemistry and physics) using elementary particles.
Related Links:
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/שלוש_מהפכות_קופרניקניות
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3181406,00.html
By the way - I once read a very interesting article by Zeev Bechler who explains that Kant is actually one of the fathers of postmodernism and that his philosophy is even among the causes of the rise of Nazism.
Friends:
I promised that an article published in Galileo on this subject would appear here.
Hint from the article:
The "realism" which is the approach of Noam, R.H. and Abdakhm is the common approach among scientists.
That doesn't mean she's justified, but it does mean something.
There is a quote from the well-known American philosopher - Hilary Putnam who claimed that if scientific success does not result from the fact that scientific theories do correctly describe the world, then only a miracle can explain the success of science.
This is of course a special case of my claim regarding the possibility of predictability and its necessary connection to a world governed by laws.
This is also well expressed in the words of Ehud who defines the adaptation of the language to its function as a "miracle" (response 67) and in my response to these words
R.H. and Noam
It seems that you just don't even try to understand what you are being told...
Noam's claims sound like the claims of a religious person: "Call it the "rules of nature's behavior". They are of course not written anywhere, no one invented them, there is no empirical basis and the problem of induction certainly does not apply to them."
Let's change the words and see what we get," there is simply God, what is complicated here to understand, he simply created the world
And we are only trying to describe the wonders of creation. God, of course, is nowhere to be found and no rule applies to him."
To distinguish charges of this type:
Science deals with facts not speculations all that science deals with are laws of the human kind and nothing else.
Only such laws can be discussed. And only they can be examined scientifically. The laws of nature you are talking about cannot be tested, cannot be written down and cannot be spoken about, this is purely a belief and has no priority over religious belief. You believe and I emphasize again believe that there are laws of nature in the world, laws of nature of the second kind are not proof of the existence of something in the world they are a description of human observations.
Regarding the subject of objects in the world: R.H. You are talking about bacteria, what are bacteria? Can you set them without observation? Bacteria did not exist in the early universe so the laws that applied to them did not exist therefore since you claim that the laws of nature are temporary, there can be no laws of nature for bacteria. If there are laws (hierarchy of laws of nature) then they are based on the laws that apply to the basic objects. Hierarchy of laws means that in practice there are only basic laws at the base of the rest of the laws are the result of human approximations giving you comfort. A creature with an infinite calculating capacity could write precise laws for bacteria from the fundamental laws of nature.
By the way Noam there is no calculating machine or person in the world capable of deriving laws for atoms that we have already agreed are not elementary particles laws for animals. Again you believe it can be done but you can't prove it.
So all the hipness of your softening laws is based on faith and not on any proof.
As for a tree or a moon, they have no separate existence, they are not objects. I will try to explain because I feel this is the most problematic point for you. Suppose that I have glasses that describe the world in black and white, will I ever be able to distinguish between two objects based on their color alone (not the darkness)? The answer is no, meaning that my ability to see colors allows me to separate the world into objects of different colors. Now I can collect all the red colored objects and call them reds. The red objects are called so only because they produce the sensation red in my brain. That is, the separation of the world into colors happens in my mind and not in the world itself. Surely you will say no problem we will separate them according to wavelength but which wavelength or wavelengths are red again this is a definition not something in nature nature does not separate groups of different wavelengths the radiation spectrum is continuous. Therefore colors, sounds and objects are a matter of human definition.
to R.H.:
The approach according to which there is a reality separate from man that operates according to certain laws that do not depend on man is equivalent to the approach according to which there is a real labeling of the image that I presented at the beginning of the discussion that determines what is really painted in it independent of man.
I agree with you that we philosophize.
I do not agree that it is 'just'.
Is the Critique of Pure Reason just a book?
Are Kant, Hume and Popper just philosophers?
Noam, don't you think that the discussion here has become so trivial that it really seems to be for the sake of the debate and in fact everyone here understands and agrees with everyone else and is just philosophizing?
Lisa, it's so simple I'm having a hard time understanding the whole language argument.
There is a natural phenomenon, every effect. This is what we call a type 1 law of nature here. We try to understand it, first when and how it happens and then why it happens which is a much more difficult question. We do this initially through observations and experiments and then we develop a mathematical description of the phenomenon. This description was called in the above discussion a law of the second type.
There is also a hierarchy of laws in which one thing derives from another. Biology stems from chemistry which stems from physics which also has levels of particles.
The wet dream of physics today is to find a description (second order law) that will explain everything and there will probably be an accurate description of what is really happening (law of the first kind) as string theory tries to do and this is all science on one foot.
Think also that if there were no natural phenomena (and again I will call them type 1 laws) there would be nothing to investigate.
Noam:
Kant's approach is not called the "Copernican revolution" for nothing.
With the difficulties I encounter here in conveying this approach, I get a pinch of the resistance that Kant must have had in the 18th century.
And for your comments:
You are confusing your intuitive view of the world with the one that comes from a rational look at the facts.
"The rules of nature's behavior":
Nope… still not doing the job. Rules are the way a person tries to interpret the observations - rules are in our head and nothing else (and as mentioned, they are not "everything that comes to our mind". There is a clear dependence between them and the observations)
"All attempts to deny their existence will not help, and even ridiculous" interesting, I wanted to say the same thing about your words - at least we agree on one thing.
Lisa,
I think the name "laws of nature" confuses you, and I agree that it is not the best name.
All your arguments focus on type two laws, and for some reason you think that the same arguments also apply to type one laws.
Call it "the rules of nature's behavior". They are of course not written anywhere, no one invented them, there is no empirical basis and the problem of induction certainly does not apply to them.
Nature, the universe and everything in it, behaves in a certain legality in a certain systematicity that does not depend on man, and it has existed since time immemorial. All attempts to deny their existence will not help, and even ridiculous - after all, you notice them every day, even if you do not know their exact meaning.
Their importance to us is enormous - this is exactly what we are trying to investigate, and this is exactly the self-evident answer to my question that you tried so hard to avoid answering.
We, as intelligent and curious beings, notice their existence and want to understand them.
The scientific method and science work to better understand these rules of conduct, and laws of the second type are the expression of this.
To be continued
For the purpose of clarifying the position that Ehud and I represent, I will quote from the entry on Immanuel Kant from Wikipedia. I believe that she clarifies the position better than me:
("He" is Immanuel Kant)
"He claims that most of our knowledge originates from experience, but the very use of experience is conditioned by the structure of our knowledge and the way in which we are able to perceive things. Another way to explain Kant's position is to liken the structure of knowledge to glasses of a certain color, which cannot be taken off. On the one hand, knowledge comes from outside us, through the input of the senses. But on the other hand, it is 'colored' and the world cannot be described except from the limits of the color of our glasses. According to Kant, there are clear categories of knowledge that human understanding regularly uses in judging the world. The categories are related to the quantity of an object (such as unity and plurality), its quality (such as reality or negation), its modality (which is a reflection of ability, necessity and possibility) and the relationship between it and other objects (such as selfhood, materiality, dependence and causality). These, according to Kant, are the concepts that we use when we analyze phenomena in the world, and the world cannot be described except through these categories."
...
"Kant proves that there is a difference between the world as it is perceived by our reason (also known as the "world of phenomena") and the thing-as-it-is-for-itself. While the world of phenomena is the world we experience, through our senses, we have no direct access to the thing-as-it-self, and there is no way to investigate it directly. However, Kant emphasizes that the world of phenomena is not separated from the thing-as-it-self, but there is a connection between them. The thing-as-itself manifests itself in the world of phenomena in the various revelations of our senses. The thing-as-itself is something that we cannot grasp with our intellect (as Plato, Spinoza and Leibniz suggested), but it still exists and is the source of the world of phenomena. Kant claims that the limit of our research is in the world of phenomena only. We can use the scientific method to investigate the framework in which the world of phenomena operates, as science began to do already in Kant's time. We can discuss the categories that our reason presupposes on the world of phenomena as if they were its essence, as Kant does. We cannot, Kant repeats and emphasizes, fundamentally investigate the thing-as-it-for-itself"
pleasantness:
Regarding your question about the options for dividing the universe:
You wrote that "the universe is governed by a set of laws". Where are these laws written? What is their nature? What are they working on? What is the empirical basis for these laws? Who made them? How do we know that we have such a law? Is there one scientific question I can ask about this set of rules? What existed first - the material or the laws on which they operate?
In my opinion, this set of laws meets all the possible non-existence conditions imaginable. Of course, beliefs cannot be argued with. Accordingly, none of the three options you presented "describes the behavior of the universe".
I will ask you a question - can science manage without laws of the first kind? Are second type laws enough for him?
If science cannot manage without first-class laws - please specify what will be lost and how science will be harmed by removing first-class laws from the lexicon.
If science does not need these laws - what can we conclude from this?
By chance, an article by Marius Cohen Hadan was published in the last issue of Galileo - more or less on the subject we are dealing with here.
I asked my father to ask him from them and he promised to do so.
Ehud, like Noam, I have a hard time understanding what you don't understand.
I will try to explain with an example from the field that is close to me.
* Diseases are transmitted by bacteria (type 1 law).
* For a long time, various theories emerged about the origin of diseases. "Spoiled" water, "spoiled" air, evil eye, etc. Everyone thought they had found the explanation for contracting the disease. There were even those who thought that the Jews were responsible for the black thing, massacred them and found out after they got infected that it was not the reason. All these theories are included in the law of the second type.
* Pasteur and Koch after him showed very well that bacteria transmit diseases. Since then, in dozens and maybe hundreds of thousands of attempts, this has been confirmed. This is perhaps an example in which the human description (2nd order law, theories or whatever you call it) captured and accurately described what happened in nature.
It is true that we are not talking here about basic physical laws and that everything is derived from them that have not yet been discovered, but this is an example of the intention that there is a phenomenon (law 1) and there is a description (law 2).
sympathetic,
1) Of course it is possible, it is possible to get closer to the understanding of the laws of the first type - with the help of the scientific method.
2) The behavior of nature is indeed real by definition, and therefore also laws of the first type (which are a description of the behavior of nature).
3) Ehud, haven't you heard of the concept of "hierarchy of laws"?
I admit that I have a hard time understanding why this is so hard for you to understand. What do you find wrong with a law that is based on two other laws? Is that why it is not a law? The hierarchy of the laws of nature begins with laws of the behavior of elementary particles, and continues to climb through laws that define the behavior of atoms (which of course rely on the previous laws), through laws that define the behavior of molecules, and then the behavior of bodies up to trees and animals. Each law is of course based on laws below it.
You are trying to create a problem where there is simply no problem at all.
4) A mistake and also a lack of modesty if I may say - you are again confusing objective qualities and your perception as a person of these qualities. A tree and a table and the moon are different even without the presence of a person. Have you ever seen a cat try to climb the moon?
Hence even a cat knows how to differentiate between the two, you don't need an intelligent person for that.
5) I didn't understand your phrasing, but of course I disagree with your last statement:
Laws of the second type are intended only for one thing - to be as good an approximation as possible to the laws of the first type. The process of getting closer includes the observations, but don't get confused - observations are not our goal, they are an important tool for achieving the goal, which is of course understanding the laws of the first order
Rach
1. "What is the connection between the fact that something was created late and the laws of nature?" The laws of nature according to your definition are supertemporal independent of time. "If we now create a molecule that has never existed before, will it not obey the laws of chemistry?"
If we are talking about laws of nature as defined do not change in time, there can be no laws of chemistry. Because there are no laws of chemistry without molecules and there were never molecules so the laws of chemistry are not laws of nature in the sense of Noam and yours.
2. The laws of nature describe observations and experiments.
3. Only laws that combine observations and experiments can be called laws of nature. What you and Noam call laws of nature something timeless can be called God or any other name. It cannot be confirmed for knowledge or definition and its existence cannot be proven.
4. Science describes illegal natural experiments.
It is not possible for a person to think about something without using language, so the only laws of nature we have are within the framework of language and only they can be spoken about.
pleasantness
1. "It is certainly possible to talk about the man-made laws as an approximation to the laws of nature of the first type."
You say that it is possible to talk about laws made by man as an approximation to the law of nature. You can also talk about them as close to the act of God or anything else, but is it possible to do anything other than talk about it? Do you have proof that there are laws of nature that do not depend on man?
2. "The problem of induction, of course, does not exist at all in laws of the first type, which are true by definition." You say true by definition, this is new to me. You define something and immediately it becomes true?
3. "What is so difficult to understand that you laws, through their effect on the basic particles, also affect the atoms, the trees and the animals? "
As you understand the laws should be about the elementary particles and not about atoms. Thus atoms are only one possible configuration that is not realized under all conditions of the elementary particles. Which of the elementary particle configurations should we consider and why? We pay attention to those configurations that we recognize in nature. In other words, the configurations that get attributed or realized among the infinite situations are those that the person recognizes. That is, the objects composed of primary particles are the products of human observation. By the way, today it is not possible to calculate from primary particles which atoms can be produced let alone which animals can produce it from primary principles.
4. "Unless you believe that when I look at a tree or the moon, I change their properties" When you look at a tree or the moon you define their properties. How does a tree differ from the ground around it or from the bushes around it in that you choose to treat it as an object separate from the environment. The division of nature into objects is human. The ability to see certain frequencies, pick up certain objects, etc... is what defines their character as an object. If you cannot separate the pieces of wood that make up the table, you do not make them into an object different from the table.
5. Observations define reality. Read 4 again.
6. Who said there are laws of the first kind, everything we do and talk about is laws of the first kind. We only test laws of the second type not against laws of the first type but against observations.
Ehud, what you write is interesting, although I agree with Noam's approach. Several comments/questions.
1) What is the connection between the fact that something was created late and the laws of nature? If we now create a new molecule that has never existed before, will it not obey the laws of chemistry? In my opinion, you are a bit confusing here between natural laws and processes and objects created as a result of those laws. Atoms, plants and everything else were created by a process that is driven by the same first class laws of nature.
2) You claim that the laws of nature are human creations, so what exactly do they describe? What do you call the thing they claim to describe?
3) How can you call them "laws of nature" if there is a chance that tomorrow they will change as a result of a new discovery? Would you call the geocentric theory a law of nature? After all, there was a time when she was indeed considered as such.
4) You claim "those who assume that nature upholds fixed laws that do not change are forced to say that they cannot describe the structure or form of these laws and what their essence is." Not true. This is exactly the essence of science, the attempt to describe the laws of nature. What we will never know is whether we actually hurt. Is our current description accurate and true?
So, in conclusion, the laws of nature of the second type are merely language or man's attempt to describe and predict the phenomena of nature, or if you will, his laws. Those referred to here as the first type.
sympathetic,
I will try to explain to you point by point:
1) "Any attempt to attribute to nature its own laws that are not related to man is based on faith and nothing else and cannot be proven"
Indeed, the structure or form of these laws can be described, although for now only in an approximate way. This is done by man-made laws!
It is certainly possible to talk about the man-made laws as an approximation of the natural laws of the first type.
2) "The attempt to build universal laws from a finite collection of observations leads directly to the problem of induction"
Indeed, man-made laws based solely on a collection of observations run into the problem of induction.
The induction problem of course does not exist at all in laws of the first type, which are real by definition.
Note that I use the word "laws" in the sense of permanent phenomena in nature.
3) "Therefore there cannot be laws of nature (of the first type) regarding trees, animals and atoms since these were created in late stages of the universe and were not in it to begin with"
Here you reveal a basic misunderstanding. Atoms, trees, animals, are all composed of basic particles. If you already understood that there are laws of the first type that determine the behavior of the basic particles, why is it so difficult to understand that you laws, through their effect on the basic particles, also affect the atoms, trees and animals? The time of appearance of the trees and animals is not relevant to the discussion at all, after all the basic particles that make up those objects have existed since the big bang, and so have the laws of the first order.
The fact that trees and animals are transitory is not relevant at all because the basic particles that make them up are not transitory.
4) "If you believe that there are laws of nature of the first type, you are obliged to believe that they apply only to those things that are not observed with your senses directly because they do not depend on your observation"
No way???
Unless you believe that when I look at a tree or the moon, I change their properties (I hope you don't).
5) "According to your claim (stemming directly from your belief) that only the elementary particles really exist in the world and the rest of the objects in the world are related or induced states of the elementary particles that are treated (separate existence) because man makes observations or experiments on them"
No way ???
Why is it impossible to believe in the existence of blocks as well as whole houses?
What does it even have to do with human observations? If I turn my back to the moon, the moon ceases to exist???
Observations are an important thing in science, but if you believe that all observations change reality (and not just in quantum mechanics), then I completely disagree with you. Elementary particles, atoms, trees, animals all exist without any dependence or connection to human observations.
Some objects are transitory, some are not, but all are equally real.
It can be argued that in reality they are different (more or less) from what we think or describe in our minds, but this is not relevant to the discussion itself.
6) "And only they (man-made laws) have meaning in general and our lives in particular"
Definitely not true. All the effort made in developing laws of the second type, was done to better understand the laws of the first type.
pleasantness
I will try to summarize:
Everything we know about nature is the result of observations. Through these observations humans formulate laws. Which laws can be tested: confirmation or refutation.
Any attempt to attribute to nature its own laws that are not related to man is based on faith and nothing else and cannot be proven just as the existence of God cannot be proven. Those who assume that nature upholds fixed laws that do not change are forced to say that they cannot describe the structure or form of these laws and what their essence is. The only thing that can be talked about are man-made laws that we build from correlations between experiments.
I would like to emphasize that the attempt to find an explanation for things is a human experience in nature which in itself has no reason and revolves around laws. The attempt to construct universal laws from a finite collection of observations leads straight to the problem of induction as Liza has detailed in your ears several times.
If I take your position then that there are laws of the universe (let's call them laws of the first type) I am bound by the question about what they perceive and the bound answer is about what exists in the universe. Therefore there can be no laws of nature (of the first type) regarding trees, animals and atoms since these were created in late stages of the universe and were not in it to begin with. Thus laws of the first type do not operate on atoms, animals or atoms. Do plants really exist in the world or animals or atoms? It is clear that they are not objects to which the laws of the first type apply and it is clear that they are transitory therefore I know that as they were created they can disappear. Since animals, plants and atoms are transient, why should we refer to them and not to their basic components? It is true as you said because we and I emphasize we see them meaning they depend on our observation to exist.
That is, if you believe that there are natural laws of the first type, you are obliged to believe that they apply only to those things that are not directly observed by your senses, since they do not depend on your observation. That is, according to your claim, it follows (directly from your belief) that only the elementary particles really exist in the world and the rest of the objects in the world are related or induced states of the elementary particles that receive reference (separate existence) because man makes observations or experiments on them.
Therefore just for reasons of simplicity, not to mention more complex reasons that I tried to explain to you, it is better to hold the concept that the laws of nature are the creations of man. Only laws that are the creations of man can be described in test language: confirmation or refutation and only they have meaning in general and our lives in particular.
Michael
I thank you for trying to represent my position (even though you don't agree with it). I felt that I could not convey my position to Noam. Despite your attempt to explain our positions (liza's and mine) I still feel that our position is still unclear to him so I will make an effort to explain myself again later. I have a number of objections to the rational justifications for laws in the external world that you bring up, but I will leave them for a later date to focus on one discussion that will hopefully clarify my principled position.
Noam, right? But since when do we investigate according to the wishes of the heart? And by the way, I suppose it is possible to think of experiments that will test whether the laws of nature change in time and place. For example, is the speed of light in the most distant visible objects (which are also the most ancient) the same as known? Are other physical constants also constant there?
On second thought, even if a difference is found it is due to some mechanism which is a law of nature that changes the physical constants.
Rah,
Probably the answer to your question is - it is not possible to know which option is correct.
In order not to get into a pointless discussion, I specifically stated that this is a premise that I cannot prove, and if there is no agreement on it, there is no point in the discussion.
For some reason, Lisa is now entitled to clarify that he does not agree with the third premise, and stated that only one of the three options is unacceptable to him.
I politely asked him to indicate which (other) possibility is acceptable to him, we will wait and see.
It is clear that the third option is the most fruitful, and in fact the first two options make any scientific research redundant.
Noam (253), I agree with you. The question is, can we examine which of the 3 options you presented is correct or do we have to rely on faith and gut feelings?
In terms of science, your logic and the truth that mine 3 is also correct in light of the fact that to this day things do behave in a regular and predictable manner, but of course this is not enough.
A true understanding of the world, the purpose of science's existence, will not be possible without solving this question. What is the nature of those laws of the first kind.
Noam:
Even when you can photograph something, it does not mean that it exists.
As I mentioned in the comments I voted on - all we have at our disposal is the input of our senses and the belief that it represents something in the real world, but exactly what it represents - we cannot know.
In the photographs of the atom - we do not see an atom.
We see an image that, according to our understanding, the explanation for its reception in the complex process we carried out to produce it is the existence of atoms.
I agree with you that it is indeed a very logical explanation and I would even bet my life that there are atoms in objective reality but I have no way of knowing this in the full sense of the word.
Therefore, atoms, like any law of nature that is explicitly described, is nothing more than (and the unintentional word play here is nevertheless interesting) - our interpretation of our findings but not necessarily "reality as it is".
To me, this is different from anything that can be deduced based on our very existence.
Our existence cannot be an illusion or a mistake of the senses (because if we do not exist - there is no one to mislead or delude - this is also what Descartes meant when he said "I think - means I exist").
I claim that the existence of objective laws of nature is a conclusion that is required by our very existence and therefore it is a conclusion that we cannot but accept.
Of course, like mathematics - this conclusion is a conclusion that is already ingrained in us in advance and therefore our search for those laws stems from an inner feeling that we cannot cancel - the feeling that they do exist.
That's why Ehud and Liza - despite their attempts to state otherwise - are unable to bring themselves to say that the galaxies rotate for no reason.
from *al,
Regarding the atom, as I mentioned there is today the possibility of photographing atoms so it seems to me that there is no disagreement that they do exist, and not only in our consciousness.
Regarding quark and electron - I completely agree with you and if Ehud, we have no way of knowing if they actually exist or if they are just a convenient representation in our consciousness.
But this discussion is not at all related to the main question - are there or are there no universal laws of nature, which I called first type natural laws.
Lisa,
You wrote: "This option is not represented in the three options you presented"
I thought the three categories I presented covered all the possibilities, but if I was wrong,
Please show the additional category you accept.
Lisa:
I am indeed a person as much as a person and all my "ratio" derives from that.
Therefore there is no need and no logic for you to present another presentation which is necessarily a false presentation.
Mr. Roschild:
As mentioned my evidence is that a causal relationship is a product of the way we describe the world and not some kind of property of the world itself (we cannot measure a causal relationship - we infer it from the observations we measure).
I'm sure there's no need for me to repeat all my words in the discussion one more time.
If your rational world view is affected by what you feel in the secret of your heart, then it is a sign that you are a human being as a whole and this is what Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky talked about.
Lisa:
Kahneman is really irrelevant and I repeat my claim.
My conclusion that natural laws exist is completely rational.
You don't point out any flaw in her rationality, so please don't position her as something that goes against your "rational" view.
In the end - the fact is that you are not ready to explicitly say that the rotation of the galaxies has no reason and it is simply a result of the belief that you really hold in the secret of your heart, as opposed to the belief (and yes - this is also nothing but a belief!) that you claim during the discussion.
To Mr. Roschild:
I don't know what is happening "in the secret of my heart".
It is necessary to separate our intuitions as humans from the scientific validity of those intuitions. There are many intuitions that all of us as humans act on (yes, me too) and they are wrong and irrational.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman identified a series of such biases in people's behavior:
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/הטיה_קוגניטיבית
These biases are also the lot of scientists.
Therefore, even if my intuition tells me otherwise, this does not change the rational description I advocate.
Noam:
It seems to me that you do not understand Ehud's mind and that is why you speak in different languages.
When Ehud talks about "atoms", about "electrons" and "quarks" he is not talking about them as the same thing you think of - atoms, quarks and electrons that "exist in reality".
Note that I also used quotation marks in the phrase "exist in reality" and later I will explain why.
Ehud talks about the concepts of the atom, the quark and the electron that exist in our consciousness and that we actually have no way of knowing if they actually exist in reality.
Although we have very good reasons to believe this, but we cannot know!
In this sense - I agree with Ehud and this is also reflected in the following comments I wrote during a debate I had with Nadav
https://www.hayadan.org.il/brain-reaserch-and-human-quiz-0503101/#comment-263277
https://www.hayadan.org.il/brain-reaserch-and-human-quiz-0503101/#comment-263291
I argued there that we use the word "exists" to describe the concepts that we ourselves discovered about the world (by drawing conclusions from the shelter of our senses) and in fact we have no ability to claim that any concept among them does "exist in reality" (as opposed to "exists in our consciousness and understanding").
This is all well and good and on this point - note - I agree with Ehud.
The fundamental difference I see between my approach and Ehud's is not in this point but in the question of whether there are objective laws in nature that do not depend on us.
Here I claim that such laws do exist and this is a claim that Ehud refuses to agree to because he says that there is no meaning in talking about things we know nothing about.
The point is that in my opinion we actually do know something about them which is the fact that they exist and the way we know this is not the same way we infer the existence of other things but through a completely mathematical consideration which says that in a world without laws prediction is not possible and since we live in a world where there is prediction then they must exist.
Although it is possible to argue that this is the same process of drawing conclusions because the claim that our world has predictability is actually an observation and the conclusion of the existence of the laws stems from this observation, but in fact this is not a fair comparison because this observation actually embodies a necessary condition for our very existence and our very existence is not something we can call "Observation" (see entry "I think - means "I exist").
As I mentioned - in my opinion - both Ehud and Liza, secretly, do not agree with the claim they are making in the current debate and this disagreement is expressed in their unwillingness to explicitly claim what is implied by it in the same question in which they were required to choose between 1 and 2
Lenaam:
Well, you have now once again perpetuated your view, which is completely different from the one I represent (as far as I understood Ehud's words at the time as well). This option is not represented in the three options you presented.
Your assumption that there is agreement is wrong.
If you would like to understand this position that is not represented in your words, you are invited to a renewed discussion.
ghosts,
You seem to be completely confused.
By the middle of your response, you repeated my position word for word (about this it is said: came to curse and came out to bless).
Later, you decided that the second type of law system (man-made) should not be called laws but by another name. Oh well - let's call it "chicken".
I didn't understand how you came to the conclusion that if we call these laws by another name, it makes them unnecessary - why?
After all, you explained yourself that there is no identity between the laws of the first type and the laws invented by man, which are only approximations.
If there is no identity, then both are needed
Rah,
Exactly to circumvent this problem, I wrote in my response (125):
"There are 3 main possibilities for the behavior of the universe (of course there is a subdivision for each of the possibilities):
1) The universe is controlled by some higher power, which sets the laws / rules of conduct and changes them as it wishes constantly.
2) The universe is governed by a set of laws/rules that change by themselves all the time, and there is no way to know what the rules were and what they will be in the future.
3) The universe is governed by a fixed and unchanging set of laws/rules. There is no superior force, and there are no changes in the rules over time.
I believe in the third option and I have no way of proving that this is the option that describes reality in the only correct way
Of course, if there is no agreement on this issue, there is also no basis for discussion. My assumption is that there is agreement.
sympathetic,
In my opinion, you are pulling the discussion in the direction of useless bickering, but if you insist, I will answer you in the same direction:
Atoms, animals and trees are all composed of elementary particles (for the purpose of the discussion - quarks), therefore the laws of nature that work on quarks also work directly on atoms, animals and trees.
Your conclusion that "man's observations created the atoms" is simply ridiculous to me, sorry.
Beyond all this unnecessary bickering, I don't see how any of this relates to the topic of our discussion, but anyway, so be it.
Noam:
I have nothing but regret that you see our disagreements as a personal argument.
I would of course be happy to learn about general relativity from you when you have some time.
Lisa,
You proved to us that lack of knowledge does not constitute any problem or disadvantage for you, and certainly does not prevent you from arguing with great vigor.
You also proved to us that if the facts are not comfortable for you, you have no problem changing them to fit your world view.
In light of this, I didn't get the impression that you were really interested in broadening your horizons.
Sorry, I'm wasting my time.
Legal:
At first I thought like you, that the positions are not so different.
Noam's last words give me the impression that these are completely different worldviews.
If I understand Noam correctly (please Noam, correct me if I'm wrong this time as well as all the previous times), he claims that there are laws (of one or three types or who knows what to call them) that are fixed and unchanging and independent of the person.
My position (and if I understand correctly Ehud's position as well) is that there is no meaning to laws of this type. All that can be talked about are observations of the world, and the inclusion of observations into law (by man). Since this is a characteristic of all laws (of all kinds - one to infinity), each law can change given a new observation that will require it.
Noam, Ehud and all the rest, it seems that the disagreement between you stems mainly (if not entirely) from semantics and it is not conceptual (correct me if I'm wrong). A problem of semantics can be solved with the help of semantics: what Noam calls 'laws of the first kind' and others call them 'laws of nature' are actually the behavior of nature (the universe) on all its levels. Assuming that 'law' is a literal formulation of the way in which we perceive the behavior of nature, the expression of our understanding of the 'laws of nature' or Noam's 'laws of the first kind', then the 'laws of the second kind' are only a human description that strives to get closer ( and may never arrive) to an accurate description of the behavior of nature. Everyone accepts that the behavior of nature is consistent and can be systematically described even when it is random and therefore can be described using laws.
Noam:
As the well-known expert on general relativity (and even the world-famous on the subject!) please teach us some general relativity.
I'm confident that you don't get your vast knowledge on the subject from reading biographies, so I see you as a qualified source on the subject.
At the beginning, if you could, please describe to us what led Einstein to develop the theory, what problems did he think about when he sat down and developed the theory? (Or maybe this theory landed on his head like thunder on a clear day)
pleasantness
I will try again briefly. According to your opinion, there are laws according to which the world behaves:
What do these laws work on?
I guess as tell me about the material in the world
You claim the laws have always existed: true or false?
Since atoms, animals, trees have not existed since time immemorial
When you say the laws act on the material you mean they act
On the primordial matter that existed since the big bang
But there are impermeable laws, that is, the laws of nature of the first kind, in order to be basic, must only act
Add whatever quarks you want to the primary matter. Seals animals trees all but they are according to your opinion
Only results of these laws when they are applied to primordial particles crack or strings whatever)
That is, an atom is not an object on which the laws of nature of the first kind act, as far as you know
Their product. Atom according to your opinion is a product of the primary laws?
I may be wrong correct me but if I am wrong the laws that apply to atoms the basic laws of nature were created when atoms were created
And you wouldn't want us to believe that they are not fixed in time. That is, according to your opinion atoms are bound states of elementary particles to which only the elementary laws of nature apply because they are the only ones here from the beginning
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Now why refer to atoms because we discover them through experiments and observations
That is, if you have followed me until now, it was the observations of man that created the atoms
Regarding Einstein, you also do not understand my claims, maybe tonight I will try to explain them again
Ghosts, you didn't understand. When Noam says second order laws he means the formulas and the human description of those natural laws as you call them.
Noam, I already had a discussion on the subject with Machal a few hundred posts ago. The starting premise of science is that there are indeed first-order laws and our goal is to describe them (the second-order laws). True to the experience of each of us, the world behaves in a certain legality because otherwise no experiment would be repeated and in fact we would not survive so that for every need and interest they exist. But philosophically, can we be sure they exist? That is, this is again a return to the induction problem, are we clear that both tomorrow and in 500 years the experiment will work in the same way?
Noam
I noticed that you are confused and do not understand what they are trying to explain to you:
First of all, man did not invent the laws according to which the world operates. The world operates according to certain laws
that man is a part of it.
The laws that man invented are subject in their correctness only to man's perception of reality (for example if a man jumps from a tall tower he will crash. But if a bird jumps from a tree it will fly).
Hence the 'laws' that man invented are no longer 'laws' but a 'description of the natural laws' and hence these 'laws' can be called by another name.
All this indicates that the addition of a 'law of the second kind' is completely unnecessary as laws already exist
that 'do the work' even before there was man.
Man only interprets these laws with the help of language.
(R*H R*Faim)
sympathetic,
No matter how you try to spin it - general relativity is not an abstraction of any theory, and I'm sorry it doesn't fit your and Lisa's world view.
I agree with you that our way of understanding nature, i.e. the laws of the first type, is to build models that are only approximations, there is no disagreement between us on this.
Regarding the atoms, I don't understand why you keep repeating and misquoting me - is it on purpose?
Where did I say that "atoms according to what you tell me are not elementary particles so they cannot be described by the elementary laws of nature that according to you existed before the atoms were created"?
I repeat: everything that exists in the universe, operates according to the laws of nature of the first type, from the big bang until now - did you understand me this time?
Contrary to what you say, laws are not only a human invention, they are also permanent natural phenomena that no human invented (see Ibn Shoshan dictionary).
Atoms almost certainly exist in practice because a way was found to photograph them, see for example:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17699-microscopes-zoom-in-on-molecules-at-last.html
Like the other things in the universe, of course the laws of nature of the first kind apply to them.
Regarding Hooke's law, you are of course wrong - who told you that Hooke's law is linear?
You probably mean Hooke's law that they teach in school, but that's just a simplified form of the full Hooke's law.
Laws of the second type are an attempt to approach laws of the first type. That's their goal, that's their job, and what you said about linear equations is just nonsense, physicists know how to get along well with non-linear equations and in most cases they have no need to make a linear approximation.
pleasantness
Just a side note,
Hooke's law is also not a law of nature, it is an approximation, a linearization of phenomena that are basically non-linear. All the laws we have are not close to any fundamental laws (of the first kind) but an approximation of experimental results that in many cases use linear equations to describe them.
pleasantness
How nature behaves regardless of man we will not be able to know or understand our mind is limited to descriptions through models.
You say there is no need to quibble, but try to answer me whether atoms exist in nature or only in our minds. Atoms according to what you tell me are not elementary particles so they cannot be described by the elementary laws of nature that according to you existed before the atoms were created (at the time of the big bang). That is, man is unable to understand nature, so he is content with models based on approximations. Approximations to why we will never know. Laws are human inventions like the laws of the legal system. In analogy, there may be absolute justice, but this is meaningless. We establish laws according to which society behaves. Science is a similar relative.
Regarding Einstein and general relativity, he had several motivations for building general relativity, one of which was to understand how gravitation would affect a photon. In my view, this is about two generalizations that Einstein tried to connect, that is, the simplification of scientific language.
In conclusion, I would be happy if you claimed me. Are there atoms in the world and do laws of nature of the first kind apply to them or do these laws only apply to elementary particles in your opinion?
Lenaam:
Indeed I do not understand general relativity, the conclusions I reach I derive from your words only.
According to your interpretation, what is implied is that there was no motive for developing this theory.
It is more complicated and there were no observations that required a better explanation.
Apparently, as I mentioned, Einstein had a conversation with God.
Lisa,
You said nicely that you don't understand physics and relativity, and you do care to prove it. Too bad, if you had read some biographical material about Einstein you wouldn't have written what you wrote.
The theory of general relativity did not simplify any existing theory, on the contrary, it constitutes a significant complication of the theories that existed at that time (if you wish, and Avi Yaseim, this point can be expanded).
General relativity neither settled nor contradicted any observations collected up to that time. To understand this you need to know that general relativity leads to different predictions from Newton's theory only at extremely high speeds (close to the speed of light) and only in the presence of enormous masses that distort the space of time.
At normal speeds and normal gravitation, there is no difference between Newton's theory and general relativity
At that time, they didn't know all this, nor were there any measurements that hinted in the direction. I have already mentioned that after Einstein published the theory of general relativity, it was necessary to wait several years to verify it - there were simply no existing measurements that could do this (apart from the orbit of the planet Mercury).
As I said before, Einstein developed the revolutionary ideas of general relativity all by himself, and he did not use existing measurements. As strange as it may seem, this is the brilliant brilliance of one person, who sat in his room and came up with the theory, with the aim of including gravitation in his previous theory - special relativity
Lisa, you get into a casual confrontation without having the knowledge base necessary for it, too bad, you're making fun of yourself
To Noam:
you said:
"The general theory of relativity is a genius development of one person, which does not come to explain a single measurement, nor a contradiction between existing measurements and an existing theory."
Did you 'forget' another option here? What about simplifying existing theories?
"The measurements available at that time did not hint at anything about the need to develop general relativity, and Einstein did not use measurements to develop it"
What exactly were the theories Einstein tried to simplify based on?
According to you, Einstein never needed to know anything about the location of bodies, about their movement, in fact he could sit in a sealed room his entire life until suddenly out of nowhere a theory came to him that magically aligned with all the observations collected up to that time.
Interesting version. He may have had a personal talk with God.
sympathetic,
You wrote: The concept that man proposes the laws of nature does not mean that without man nature would not know how to behave and that man is at the center of creation, but the opposite"
If so ** how did nature behave without man? **
Please explain.
Regarding general relativity - it is not at all relevant to our main discussion, but you are completely wrong.
Einstein's motivation was not to simplify two different natural phenomena, but to generalize gravitation within special relativity
This generalization was made by identifying the equality between the inertial mass and the gravitational mass.
Lisa - you are also completely wrong. There were no measurement results on which Einstein relied in the development of general relativity!
All the measurements that existed at the time did not hint at anything about the need to develop general relativity, and Einstein did not use measurements to develop it.
But it seems to me that when the facts don't suit you, you just try to change them.
Special and general relativity are beautiful examples of two types of theory development:
The special theory of relativity was developed by Einstein to explain a contradiction between existing measurements (the speed of light in different directions) and the existing theory (Newton).
The theory of general relativity is a genius development of one person, which does not come to explain a single measurement, nor a contradiction between existing measurements and an existing theory.
In fact, it was necessary to wait several years until a total solar eclipse, in order to test one of the predictions of general relativity, and only after that, it was recognized as a correct theory (for the sake of accuracy, it should be added that the theory of general relativity gave a beautiful explanation for an incomprehensible phenomenon related to the orbit of the planet Mercury Here again, your eyes see, there was an incomprehensible phenomenon, a clear lawfulness of the first kind, and it was understood only after the development of general relativity).
Ehud, you wrote: "All the laws in nature are creations of the human mind, except according to your opinion the small number of laws that you perceive regarding the elementary particles, the rest are human inventions"
I never said that nonsense.
Ehud Tafin please: There are two systems of natural laws that exist at the same time. One set of natural laws - of the first kind - exists regardless of our existence, and we can only at this stage come close to understanding them.
There is no need to quibble over whether only laws of nature that apply to elementary particles are laws of nature, or if laws of a higher level are also laws of nature - it's really irrelevant to the discussion, a waste of time!
A second set of natural laws are those man-made laws, which are developed with the help of the scientific method, which Liza took the trouble to explain to us 5 times in a row, and they are intended to be as good an approximation as possible to natural laws of the first type.
Here, too, there is no need to quibble over the question of whether only the laws of quantum theory are laws of nature or whether Hooke's law (remembers - spring) is also a law of nature - simply not as relevant to our discussion.
I await your answer to my question at the beginning of my speech.
Lenaam:
I also agree with Ehud that there is no agreement between us on the essence. This is not a semantic gap in my opinion, but a fundamentally different view of the world
pleasantness
Unfortunately we do not agree. Einstein tried to simplify the description of the observations instead of having two types of natural laws one for acceleration and the other for gravitation. Einstein tried to unify the concept of mass. Therefore, Einstein tried to simplify (or generalize) the scientific language. This is not a law of the first type.
You say that everything stems from fundamental laws, meaning that the atom is actually an approximation (a product of the human mind). According to your opinion, everything in nature is elementary particles. The atom, a bound state of elementary particles, does not exist in nature but in the mind of man who is not able to give a good description of the elementary particles in all their states and therefore needed a description using an atom. According to the same view, all the laws in nature are creations of the human mind, except according to your opinion that small number of laws that you perceive regarding the elementary particles are human inventions (laws of the second type) to describe related states of particles. The laws of biology and chemistry are also human inventions according to this concept. Why then would you want me to think that the laws that apply to the elementary particles are also not laws of the second kind.
Lenaam:
"An extremely important step, long before the first measurement, is the desire to understand the legality of phenomena in nature."
Please, Noam, describe to me what "natural phenomena" consist of? How do scientists know about them?
Are these the hallucinations of the scientists?
Are these dreams that scientists dream about at night?
Are they some kind of hidden message from God?
"For your information, when Einstein developed the theory of general relativity, ** he did not rely on any measurement **"
As mentioned, I do not understand physics and general relativity in particular. But allow me to disagree with this statement of yours. First there were mountains of measurements while Einstein was thinking about general relativity. Some of the measurements included measurements of the movement of bodies on Earth, some of the measurements included the movement of other heavenly bodies outside the Earth, and certainly more and more measurements of different types (which I am not familiar with).
Measurements are the basis of the physical theories of that time.
As I mentioned in my response 228,
One of the steps in developing a new theory is:
"To look for a simpler or more comprehensive theory (which includes additional measurements that have been measured in the past)"
And such is the theory of general relativity.
sympathetic,
It seems that this time we agree on all the important matters!
You basically repeated all the things I tried to explain.
I also agree with you about Einstein - and this does not contradict, perhaps even strengthens, my claim that measurement does not come first, but rather the desire to understand the fundamental laws of nature of the first kind.
And to your last question - of course, everything stems from those fundamental laws of nature.
It is clear that often, for the sake of convenience, the rate of radioactive decay of a certain element is spoken of as a natural law without mentioning that it derives from an even more fundamental natural law.
pleasantness
Regarding your last response to Liza, I'm afraid you don't fully understand the position that Liza and I represent. The concept that man proposes the laws of nature does not mean that without man nature would not know how to behave and that man is at the center of creation, but the opposite. Man is limited, he is not able to grasp nature in all its glory, the only things that he can grasp are laws that are the product of his creation, he has no ability to grasp or understand anything beyond that.
Regarding general relativity, it is Einstein's attempt to generalize the concept of mass to connect the mass appearing in the acceleration formula and the gravitational mass, that is, to reduce the number of different concepts we use to describe nature.
Regarding the radioactive elements as far as I know scientists will not know how to calculate them especially the rate of spontaneous fission of uranium there are approximate formulas based on observations. Half-life is a measured value not calculated. Back to our eyes I understand that the law for the heavy elements existed before these actually existed in nature. That is, the laws for the heavy elements are not laws of nature, these laws originate from more basic laws, the laws of elementary particles. Is that your claim?
sympathetic,
To clear your mind, I am ready to elaborate and be more precise.
There is no different law of nature for the radioactive decay of carbon or uranium for example. All radioactive decay results from natural laws that determine the behavior of subatomic particles.
The laws of nature of the first kind have existed since the big bang until now, and everything that exists in the universe operates according to them.
Therefore, it is clear that it is not important at all when carbon appeared in the universe - the laws determining the rate of its decay already existed.
Scientists today know how to calculate very well the rate of radioactive decay of artificial elements that were created only a few years ago, and even the lifespan of elements that have not yet been created.
I didn't think it was necessary to be so detailed and precise, just to illustrate to you that natural laws of the first kind existed even before the advent of humanity and before the invention of language. I hope now the matter is clearer to you, and I apologize for the slight inaccuracy in the previous example.
And to your last question - I personally have no idea where these laws came from, but it is clear to me that humanity did not invent them. If you have an idea about it - I'd love to hear it.
pleasantness
What about the first type of natural law that works in the example you gave - the decay of radioactive carbon?
Lisa,
You wrote: "Scientists only act as a response to measurements"
You are fundamentally wrong, and put the cart before the horse.
No one underestimates the importance of measurements, but you are confusing the order of things.
A very important step, long before the first measurement, is the desire to understand the legality of phenomena in nature.
(From this stage you try to escape as much as you can, and therefore you always answer me a question that was not asked, and avoid giving an answer to my question, but ignoring does not change the facts).
FYI, when Einstein developed the theory of general relativity, ** he did not rely on any measurement **
Of course there are also theories developed following many measurements, but not all.
The correct sequence of events is this:
There is a universe that has been operating successfully for 13.7 billion years. It operates according to certain legalities, or if you will according to certain laws, from the big bang to the general.
At a certain point, intelligent beings appeared on earth, who began to wonder what those laws were. After many years of not very successful attempts, those beings came to the conclusion that the scientific method was the best method to approach the understanding of those laws of the first kind. Over time, the aforementioned creatures developed a series of laws of the second type, which are a better or worse approximation of the laws of the first type. The development process of the second type of laws is still ongoing.
Some intelligent beings are guilty of excessive feelings of grandeur, and they are convinced that all the laws of nature exist only since they appeared on earth, and before their appearance, the universe did not know how to act at all.
And finally, a request:
I've already explained to you that I know the scientific method, I'm convinced that it's good, and you repeat and lecture on it time and time again as if someone is even arguing with you - that's enough, the scientific method is well understood, and it's a wonderful method for creating laws of nature of the second kind - that's it, I hope we don't get a lecture More from you on this topic.
Noam:
The scientists act solely as a response to the measurements. If the current theory agrees with all the measurements - the scientists are left with:
Or look for a simpler or more comprehensive theory (which includes additional measurements that have been measured in the past)
Or go out and look for additional measurements in places where they haven't done it before (the forecast stage).
Or stay at home and watch Channel 8.
When a new observation is received, scientists must:
check with which theory this observation fits,
If there is one, go back to step XNUMX.
If there isn't one, sit in the room in front of the computer, and start thinking about which theory will contain the observation.
Without measurements, scientific theories have no meaning.
The scientist without measurements is like a person without any sensory perception whatsoever (he will be completely cut off from the world)
Lisa,
You got into the habit of answering what is convenient for you and not the question that was asked.
Your answer does not address my question:
I asked what the scientists were looking for ** before they decided to make measurements ** and you answered me what the scientists were looking for after making measurements.
Of course it is your right to continue to evade, and I conclude from your evasion that indeed my question is really uncomfortable for you.
Noam:
For your question, please see my answer from response 216.
You are welcome to keep asking. Or I can let you know when I change my mind, which is more convenient for you of course.
If I were not the innocent person that I am, I would suspect that you are asking to hear me answer the answer you want me to answer.
Since I am an innocent person, I am sure that your question arises from a genuine desire as well as to hear my opinion, so I will continue to answer all your questions (even if it is the same question over and over again)
pleasantness
If I may, I would like to refer to your example. You claim that a radioactive isotope of carbon decayed even before the most primitive language was invented (response 204):
"Scientists have found that radioactive carbon decays at a constant rate. They found confirmation that the constant decay rate also existed long before the arrival of the first man, and certainly long before the most primitive language was invented." You claim that the radioactive carbon decays because of the first type of law of nature. On the other hand, you claim that a law of nature of the first type is defined by (response 183) "a permanent and unchanging phenomenon in nature" (one of the definitions for the word "law" in the Ibn Shoshan dictionary). That is, the law of carbon decay has existed since time immemorial, but from the second type of law we know that the carbon in the universe was formed only at a late stage. I therefore find it difficult to understand whether the law of carbon decay existed from the beginning of the universe even when there was no carbon in the universe or was it "created" together with the carbon (and therefore does not meet the definition of a permanent phenomenon. Where do you think laws of the first type come into the universe?
Lisa,
** What is the thing that the scientists are looking for, that causes them to make measurements, even before they have even started to make a single measurement **
I know I'm annoying, but make an effort to answer the question being asked and not a question you are comfortable answering.
Friends:
I am amazed that the discussion continues.
If there is something that has been proven beyond any doubt (induction) it is that no one will give up his position here.
Noam:
Many people express themselves today in the way Liza and Ehud express themselves.
The interesting thing is that this opinion occupies a more prominent place in scientific circles than in circles that are not related to science.
The reason is in the same argument that comes up again and again - that we cannot know these laws with certainty, so it is better that we only talk about the laws we made.
In my opinion these people are wrong and in my opinion - this is not a simple mistake but a mistake of self-deception.
You can also see this in avoiding an explicit answer to a question for which all possible answers were 1 or 2.
When the decision between these options was before them, I had to put answer 1 in their mouths because even though this is the answer that arose from all their arguments - they did not allow themselves to say you because (and I will sin a little psychology here) they felt that deep in their hearts they themselves did not agree with you!
You can add more and more.
I have already explained that evolution is not possible in a world without laws and that this is actually a private case of the fact (which includes both science and evolution) that a world without laws does not allow prediction at all. point. And prediction is the heart of science and those who understand evolution know that it is also the basis for its existence.
You can add to this an even more speculative argument, but it seems to me that it is also true, and that is that there cannot be a reality in which something happens - which is not subject to laws - at least probabilistic laws. I won't go into detail about it because the thought is still too immature, but it has to do with the fact that the distribution of events cannot be uniform over a range whose measure is infinite (I am using the words of a pharmacy here, but I will specify here that there is no identity between an infinite number of members in a group and an infinite measure and those who studied theory The measure understands this) because the integral of the density function must converge to the value 1. In other words - any distribution of "random" results over an infinite range must prefer certain ranges of values over others - and this preference is in itself a law of that distribution - a law that allows prediction.
But all this will not help.
There is no unequivocal proof here and it is really a question that the only way a person can decide is introspective.
Noam
I have a question for you, I would appreciate it if you could answer:
Do you think 'reality' existed before man called a certain phenomenon 'reality'?
If so, then how can you tell?
If not, then it obviously doesn't add up with the arguments you present.
(R*H R*Faim)
Noam:
Happily, I like being teased (from such a deviation):
"What is the thing that the scientists are looking for, that makes them make measurements?"
Well my answer from 216 still hasn't changed:
They are looking for a description as simple as possible that will match the measurements.
If you try a few more times, maybe my answer will suddenly change (who knows, there is no "law of nature of the first kind" that says my answer will stay the same forever, right?)
Lisa,
You're starting to amuse me.
You struggle and twist how not to say what you and everyone else know very well, and you continue to answer questions that were not asked, while avoiding the question that was asked. Let me continue to pester you:
I didn't ask what makes scientists make measurements, I asked ** what is the thing scientists are looking for, that makes them make measurements **.
Come on, the answer is simple, and you know it.
Regarding the scientific process - there is no need to repeat the obvious, and this is not the subject of the discussion.
Noam:
Regarding the scientific process itself:
A fascinating question is how many new hypotheses come to the scientist who studies phenomena.
The process is an iterative process:
hypothesis hypothesis (theory)
The design of the experiment
Conducting the experiment
Testing the hypotheses in light of the results
And so on
What is the mechanism by which scientists come up with new hypotheses is a very interesting question
Noam:
Ah… what makes them take measurements! Too bad you didn't ask earlier.
Of course I am not the representative of the scientists, but I would guess that intellectual curiosity is among the others.
It seems that even simple questions need to be explained better:
You answered another question which is what the scientists do ** after they have made measurements **.
I asked what is the thing that the scientists are looking for, that makes them perform measurements.
Lenaam:
They are looking for a description as simple as possible that will match the measurements.
Lisa,
And now try to answer a simple question:
What are scientists looking for when they make measurements?
Nice, you managed to burst into the open door once again.
Don't you realize that the problem of induction only applies to man-made laws of nature?
I will repeat my words, this time more slowly:
The problem of induction stands firmly in relation to natural laws of the second type (man-made). There is no dispute about it, there is no need to repeat it over and over again, please, I beg you, understand this, and don't repeat it again.
Not only is there no dispute about it, it has nothing to do with my argument, which refers to the existence of natural laws of the first kind.
Did I manage to explain myself this time?
Noam:
Ah, you need an open mind. Too bad you didn't say it earlier.
Well, I tried, opened, and still the induction problem stands firm!
And in order not to bother you and direct you back, I will load it again:
All scientists have is a series of measurements (what is measured is observations. No scientist measures laws).
From a series of observations not (niet\no\non) it is possible to logically draw a valid conclusion to the law (ie to generalize).
It doesn't matter at all if the measurements are from before the person or after him, the conclusion (or the law) was made by the people!
again:
No one has measured laws since before the creation of man - what is measured is measurements.
follow me back:
Measure measurements - deduce laws
Measure measurements - deduce laws
Measure measurements - deduce laws
Measure measurements - deduce laws
Lisa,
I don't understand why you are trying so hard to burst into an open door. After all, it is clear to everyone (so I hope) that natural laws of the second type can only be confirmed or refuted, but not proven.
In fact, this is exactly the reason why it is not possible to unite natural laws of the first type with natural laws of the second type, and settle for one set of laws, as Ehud wants.
It's obvious that you still haven't understood my argument, and instead of repeating myself, read my argument again with an open mind, and if you still don't understand, please come back to me.
R*H R*Aim,
The language that Ehud speaks of exists only among humans. Is it more understandable now?
I will try to explain the argument more graphically.
The scientific process can be described as the collection of points on a plane (the measurement phase)
and fitting a function that will be as close as possible to the collected points (deduction of rules).
The points do not have to be dated to the time when the person exists, they can also be from before his existence.
Each series of points can be fitted with an infinite number of functions.
Every function I fit can have a new point that won't fit.
Noam
I don't want to divert the debate to other topics, but I have to ask you:
What "completely speechless animals" are you talking about?
Regarding the second argument - I understood your argument and you did not understand my explanation.
What I think Lisa is also trying to explain to you is that if you determine based on the measurement of a law of the first type, that there is a law of the second type - then the law of the second type is no longer a 'law' by definition but something else/new.
Therefore there is no need to further generalize a 'law' to a natural law (of the first type) that already exists in nature
And also in the human mind - which in itself is a part of nature (which same mind uses language to explain to 'itself' and other minds the meaning of the intention).
(R*H Rf*im)
Noam:
again says:
When you say "we have identified regularities" you mean that there are measurements that date back to before the existence of mankind. These are observations right? A series of numbers.
What is measured are observations and not laws. Scientists measure measurements and only then deduce laws. The measurements date back to before the existence of man. Laws are deduced based on the measurements.
There is nothing in the series of measured observations that tells me:
1. That tomorrow the measurements will not deviate from the law that was deduced
2. That tomorrow a measurement dating back to before the existence of mankind will be discovered that deviates from the legality that scientists have concluded so far. (Think about a paleontologist who studies dinosaurs. He updates the "laws that existed before mankind" whenever the observations require it)
I understand that this is a distressing problem but closing your eyes doesn't make it go away
Lisa,
Mind you, you're missing the crux of my argument:
I do not claim that we correctly identified the same law, I claim that we identified some legality that existed even before the existence of humanity, and which we try to explain with the help of a second type of law - this is a subtle but important difference.
You insist on proving to me that the law of the second kind may not be true, when that is not the point at all.
Remember: the debate is whether the universe followed certain laws even before the existence of humanity. Ehud claims that the question has no meaning, and I claim that there is and there is.
Noam:
You find specific evidence right?
And you have a series of points in time (also points from before the creation of man and even the amoeba).
Now what we do is to connect these dots (that is, deduce a law)
You conclude that the law existed.
There is nothing that guarantees you that tomorrow you will not find new evidence that contradicts the law (a new point that will go out of line).
R*H R*Aim,
The animals I'm talking about are completely speechless, so this argument of yours immediately falls apart.
Regarding your second argument - you simply did not understand my argument, read it further and carefully.
Lisa,
A law we conclude is always a law of the second kind, there is no need to repeat it.
I know that it is a law of the first kind, because I find evidence that it was valid before the existence of mankind, and therefore by definition, in the whole period that preceded our coming, it cannot be a law of the second kind.
Lenaam:
Your persistence is truly admirable.
I don't understand anything about radioactive carbon decaying and not at the rate at which it does so, but for the sake of discussion let's assume that it does (please correct me if there are any inaccuracies in my words)
Where did the scientists find "that radioactive carbon decays at a constant rate"?
They made a series of measurements or observations. They measured the rate of carbon decomposition in some way. It is possible that they even found a way to measure the rate of decomposition from the time before the formation of life on Earth.
Meanwhile what we have is a series of time measurements right?
Now the scientists come and look at this series of observations. From the series of observations a law is deduced.
The induction problem talks about this conclusion.
What is the law they conclude? A law that says "radioactive carbon decays at a constant rate".
This is a type two law, I think you'll agree with me.
Now, you say that this is a law of the first kind that has always existed and only now has it been discovered. And I ask you, how do you know that this is a law of the first kind?
What assures you that a law of the first kind is found?
If tomorrow there is a new observation that has not been seen so far that contradicts the second law, what will you conclude from it?
Noam,
If possible to intervene and also answer your questions:
"Furthermore, even animals, who have no language at all, are well aware of this law of nature, and the proof of this is that they know how to prepare a place to sleep for themselves ahead of time" - a false argument.
All animals communicate in some way between themselves and the environment, therefore all animals maintain a 'language'.
It was language that brought knowledge to man because without language what one understood the other would not understand if there was no communication.
And that's why your response 202 does not refute Ehud's claim.
His argument is philosophical and cannot be explained through a purely scientific argument such as mathematics.
And your non-scientific refutation of his claim strengthens his claim in terms of being
Philosophical. And this creates an advantage in the correctness of his claim over the correctness of your and Machal's claims.
About 203
The adaptation of the second law of nature is not the determination of the 'law' itself as existing, but its 'translation' with the help of language, of the only law that exists both in nature and in the mind.
(R*H Rf*im)
Another example:
Scientists have found that radioactive carbon decays at a constant rate. They found confirmation that the constant decay rate also existed long before the arrival of the first man, and certainly long before the most primitive language was invented.
Hence it is clear that this law of nature (decay rate of radioactive carbon) was for a long time a natural law of the first type only, and only recently we adapted a natural law of the second type to it.
What do you think?
sympathetic,
You stated in rulings that the sunrise is not a law of nature - but you did not bother to prove this statement.
I claim that the sunrise is definitely a description of a natural law, and language is a tool to communicate with other people, and it should not be given any importance beyond that.
The laws of nature, such as the sunrise, existed even before the invention of the most primitive language.
Moreover, even animals, which have no language at all, are well aware of this law of nature, and the proof of this is that they know how to prepare a place to sleep for themselves ahead of time
R*H Rf*im
This has nothing to do with the induction problem.
at second glance,
In my responses 197 and yours 198 the 'problem of induction' is expressed.
Or am I wrong?
sympathetic
I definitely agree with you on this approach. And although Machal's claims seem reasonable to me
It may be that my worldview is more similar to yours than Machal's.
Anyway, I have nothing to add in the matter at the moment because there is no disagreement between us.
Thanks for the explanations.
(R*H R*Faim)
R*H Rf*im
That's pretty much what I'm saying. I am not sure about the 0.5 but we cannot imagine a world without our worldview which is based on language.
sympathetic
What you are saying is that (in the eyes of man) reality is radiation at different frequencies that interact with the brain. that it (the brain) itself is radiation at any frequencies.
On the weight of the law 'one' and not 'two' - reality and the 'perception of reality' is one thing.
If we translate this into numbers:
instead of being
Reality=1
Perception of reality=1
It has to be
Reality=0.5
Perception of reality=0.5
So it turns out that the two entities cannot exist as a whole without the other half, and thus cannot exist
alone
Would you agree if the claim?
(R*H R*Faim)
R*H R*Aim I'm not trying to explain things through evolution, all I'm saying is that our brains (and also our bodies) force us to see the world through certain glasses and there's no point in asking what the world looks like without the glasses. The question of why things behave the way they do is a human question. We notice macroscopic objects and built his theories on them. Try to imagine if the average lifespan of a person was 20,000 years, would we still be interested in the same questions but we would refer to the growth of trees or earthquakes and if the lifespan of a person was millions of years, what questions would we ask about stars.
sympathetic
The anonymous one in 189 is indeed me R*H R*Faim.
So if I understand correctly, the reality that man sees is a 'real' reality but only in the eyes of man,
That is, if a ladybug jumps from the top of a stem it will not fall but will fly because
Her worldview is one that allowed her during evolution to grow wings and use
in them in order to fly.
All this is done through the brain - which influences the body in what form/way to 'behave'. Perth's brain-
Moses forced her during evolution to grow wings just like the human brain -
While obeying the laws of nature like all other minds - forced man to understand that if he jumps from a height
Rabbi will crash.
Therefore, adding another law would be unnecessary. Because the law that tells us to crash is the only law that does
Also communicates with the minds of man and thus constitutes a human/natural law and also constitutes an 'is' in itself.
On the other hand, this contradicts the first line of thought I presented, which I found to be similar to that of Michal.
I would appreciate it if you could make it more clear to me why you think this way, that there is only one law?
questionnaire
The ambition will always be to group such phenomena under the existing definitions. That is, we have natural laws of the second type (human generalizations). We believe that the phenomena without explanation can be linked to phenomena for which we have an explanation (law of the second type). In the event that they do not succeed, a new second type law is defined for these phenomena when event X will observe or measure Y.
By the way, some of the phenomena you mentioned do not have a single cause, and then we may only be able to make statistical assessments about them.
For example, we do not have calculation capabilities to calculate all the velocities and positions of a gas particle in a room, nor would it be possible for us through Newton's laws (laws of the second type), this ability would not contribute to us. Thus defining laws that are not fundamental but statistical, the laws of thermodynamics. That's what I suppose will happen with earthquakes and pine trees. As for the rest of the phenomena, either he will find an "explanation" using the laws of the second type that we have now or we will define new such laws. Nature is not interested in explanations. The question why is a human question.
sympathetic,
What do you think about phenomena that happen thanks to certain legalities but we have not yet been able to trace those legalities and characteristics, at least not precisely:
1. What is the legality regarding earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and when will they happen?
2. What is the mechanism that causes galaxies to rotate?
3. What is the nature of cosmic radiation and where does it come from?
4. What will a pine tree planted now look like in 10 years (branch structure, thickness, etc.)?
5. Can it be said with certainty that monopolies do not exist?
6. On what surface is gravity carried and is it possible to dive?
Do you think that an unsolved phenomenon does not work according to laws, compounds, energy speeds and other characteristics?
Does it happen for no reason just because we haven't found it yet?
Thanks.
I will try to summarize that I agree with Michael that the debate cannot be decided and I also agree with Noam that when I think as a scientist I try to discover the hidden laws of the world. On the other hand, from a philosophical point of view (without a contribution to science as a practice in my opinion). There is no point in duplication. There are laws of the second type that are generalizations to experimental results that I can only describe. Only I can confirm or refute them and only I can understand them. On the other hand, Michael and Noam, you present another set of laws that I cannot know, I cannot examine them and I cannot describe an experiment or a set of experiments that will discover them. In this respect, the existence of this set of laws is unnecessary (philosophically) in my view, similar to Laplace's comment on the hypothesis of God...
pleasantness
A rising sun, falling objects and more are not evidence of natural laws. The temporal constancy of objects and their properties are the basis of language. By having language we do not have the tools to determine how the world looks or behaves without language. For example, we divide the phenomena in the world into cause and effect, but you can see the limits of human thinking. If you try to think about what a set of laws would look like that would explain all the phenomena in the world. After all, we can always ask why there was a big bang? What preceded it (or what caused it)? What determines the amount of matter and antimatter in the world? Why are particles either bosons or fermions? Why is the symmetry representing the three strong weak and electromagnetic forces SU(3)*SU(2)*U(1). Why are there only four powers? After all, it is clear that the answer to some of these questions is simply this, they have no reason, which means we have a result without a reason - in contradiction to the line of thought with which we started.
For anonymous = r*h ref*im?
You're starting to get my point. My intention is very simple: there are no material objects in the world. The possibilities of our senses, our physical strength and the characteristic time of our signal processing process is what allows us to define objects. Think of an ant climbing a chair with a wooden leg and upholstery. Why would the ant decide that these collection of materials are one object? Her vision is not able to see the whole chair. She does not have the strength to pick up parts of it and has no sense in her hypothetical language to define an object like a chair.
Lenaam:
I don't know if I read too much (I would say I didn't read enough).
Regarding physics - I myself certainly do not understand physics very well.
You raise an interesting question - does philosophy of science help science in any way? Is it part of the scientific practice?
I assume that your answer will be negative, on the other hand I am afraid that this discussion did not contribute much to science either. That didn't stop him from being interesting.
Ehud - one more thing:
From 1 and 2 it is impossible to choose zero.
When we don't know a reason then the situations "there is a reason" and "there is no reason" together complete all the possibilities.
According to your approach - there is no reason.
It seems illogical to me, but as the discussion continues, I get the impression that there is no real argument between us. The only difference is that Noam and I are willing to address something that you and Lisa don't think is worth addressing.
This fact does not create any disagreement between us when we talk about things that we are all ready to refer to and the laws of nature that are good and bad, and I am talking about them really have no practical use.
Therefore, I suggest that we stop the discussion.
We understood each other.
Our feelings are different, but it doesn't seem like it will change.
I tried to search a bit on the internet and saw that this debate is ancient.
Echoes of this debate can be found, for example, here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/laws-of-nature
sympathetic
A board with five wooden posts and even some ropes can also be used for sitting and therefore can also be called a chair.
Do you mean to mean that a 'chair' is perceived as a specific thing in our minds we see a thing as a 'chair'?
That is, the chair - a type of radiation at different frequencies that communicates with our mind, therefore the law (chair) exists only in our mind and there can be no other law, since this only law provides the entire explanation?
Am I getting closer to understanding your intention?
Lisa,
If I understood your answer correctly, before the existence of humanity, the universe ran in complete chaos, without any legality (this is a concept that only exists when there are people around).
How fortunate that humans came, and explained to the universe how it should behave...
Lisa I'll tell you honestly what I think:
You read too many philosophy books, and it confused you a bit.
Luckily for us, physics has become too complicated for most philosophers in the last few decades, so you can move forward quickly without them pestering the physicists with questions about swans, crows and chairs.
sympathetic,
With your permission, I will repeat the definition of the law of nature, according to Ibn Shushan:
"a permanent and unchanging phenomenon in nature"
Difference between animals is not a law of nature, it is possible to imagine a situation where evolution will cause a gradual reduction of the differences that exist today.
pleasantness:
I'm really trying, please understand, I'm just having a hard time understanding what you're saying.
My answer to your last question is that legality is a concept related to human beings, their language, their understanding, etc.
There is no meaning in talking about legality without having a brain that perceives and observes. This is equivalent to talking about the grandmother or the young woman in the painting I presented at the beginning of the discussion without regard to the people.
Lisa,
I try and fail to find any contradiction in my words - there simply is no contradiction.
I do not make predictions or develop theories and therefore do not engage in induction either. All these are your attempts to divert the discussion from the simple question I posed, and I have not received any answer so far.
Regarding my first quote - this is said so that you understand that induction has nothing to do with my basic claim.
Regarding the second quote, this is said to convince you that there is some legitimacy behind the phenomenon, since the chance of getting such results by chance is zero.
Try for a moment to stop looking for contradictions that don't exist, try not to divert the discussion to irrelevant philosophical questions, just try to answer a simple question:
Did the universe operate and operates according to a certain legality, which is not related to human beings, their language, their understanding, their mathematics, their philosophical musings?
How about you, can you answer this simple question?
sympathetic:
I have said more than once that I do not know and will never be able to know if the laws that scientific research has arrived at are the laws of the first type.
On the other hand - I don't pretend to be anything other than a person.
You say that as a person you would assume that the phenomenon has a reason.
Well - I agree with you and because I am human - this is what I think.
pleasantness
Let's go back to the swans for a moment and then I apologize, I can only reply tomorrow - sorry.
Is the difference between swans and crows a law of nature or a definition of language?
sympathetic,
When I say a law of nature of the first type, I mean "a permanent and unchanging phenomenon in nature" (one of the definitions for the word "law" in the Ibn Shoshan dictionary).
The question of the validity of these laws is completely meaningless to me. The other questions you asked are also not relevant to natural laws of the first type, they are relevant to natural laws of the second type - laws made by us.
How do I know there are such laws?
After all, this is precisely the occupation of science: an attempt to understand these laws, and the laws of the second type are the result of these efforts.
All that is needed is to look around, to see the sun rise and set, to see comets pass by, to see objects falling with a certain acceleration to the ground, and an infinite number of other constant and unchanging phenomena.
Of course, you also have to be humble enough to understand that these phenomena happened even before there were humans, and certainly before there was mathematics and before there was language.
Causality: I did not claim anywhere that there is a reason for things, I was satisfied with the claim that there is final legality and nothing else.
The truth is, I have to admit that it is not so clear to me why you insist on not understanding that the universe operates according to certain laws, whether we exist or not, whether we understand the various phenomena or not.
And now with fewer typos...
I could argue that God is playing with the cube... but you bring up a completely hypothetical case, so let's add more details to it every time x is measured and y is obtained. As a scientist, I would straight up define a law of nature (of the second kind) every time x is measured and y is obtained. Between 1 and 2 I would choose zero. As a person I would assume that the phenomenon has a cause (if not, then a basic law is defined here), but the idea that things have a cause as Liza tries to explain is human. Man divides the phenomena into groups of cause and effect. On the objects in nature there are no labels that say if they are cause and effect. And now it's your turn to tell me a little about the mysterious law of the first kind.
pleasantness
I could argue that God is playing with the cube... but you bring up a completely hypothetical case where we add more details to it every time x is measured and y is obtained. As a scientist I would define a natural law (of the second kind) every time x is measured and y is obtained. Between 1 and 2 I would choose zero. As a person, I would assume that the phenomenon has a cause (if not, then a basic law is defined here), but the idea that things have a cause, as Liza tries to explain, is human. The person divides the phenomena into groups of cause and effect. And now it's your turn to tell me a little about the mysterious law of the first kind.
and now seriously,
I do not understand your statement "if the reason has no meaning" please clarify
To Mr. Roschild:
Do I have a phone friend to consult with?
To Noam:
Well you have now “turned your editor”:
For your reference to your response 163:
"I didn't claim that if the same results were obtained in a thousand attempts, this is proof that the same results will be obtained the 1001st time"
That is, here you are not referring to predictions but to observations that were made in the past and you calculated their chances. You yourself say - you are not trying to make a prediction for observation 1001
Now, in response 173:
"I defined in advance a certain and specific result"
That is, here you are making a very specific prediction.
Which of the cases do you want me to refer to?
Lisa:
If the reason has no meaning then your answer is 1 - right?
sympathetic:
Is it me or did you not answer the question at all?
What statement would you sign? To avoid confusion, please give a natural number that belongs to the group {1,2}
To Mr. Roschild:
First, forgive me for not addressing the issue until now. Share The discussion swept me away.
The issue of causality is not so different from the issue of natural laws. As David Yom observed, there is nothing in the sequence of observations itself to instruct us on any 'objective' causal relationship.
Causality stems from the way our mind models the measurements (where by the words 'our mind' it is meant any computational device that models the measurements in some way). When I say that some observation has a reason - this statement does not refer to any objective reality, but it refers to my model.
Without a model or theory the reason has no meaning - so when phenomena in quantum mechanics seem random - this means that there is no reason (because I lack a model to describe the observations)
Regarding the galaxies - if I don't have a model or theory regarding the movement of galaxies (which is probably not true) then the conclusion is that there is no reason either.
I will use this additional opportunity to refer to Yehuda Perel's book on causation:
http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/
Lisa,
This is indeed a deviation from the topic, but I will spend a little time clarifying the statistical question you asked.
This is a bit like the lottery:
The chance of someone not in particular winning the weekly lottery is quite high.
The chance that a certain person will win the lottery is extremely small. There is no contradiction in that, of course.
Back to your example, there is a very high chance that we will get some combination, one that is not predetermined.
After we have received some combination, we can always ask in amazement how it is that such a combination was received, but remember, this is some combination that we did not determine in advance (consider the chance that there will be some winner in the lottery).
Therefore, your conclusion is fundamentally wrong - the more measurements there are, the longer we will get some combination, but no less likely, and there is nothing strange about that.
And from the examples, back to my experiment:
I defined in advance a certain and specific result (equal to the question of what is the chance of a certain person winning the lottery), and I claimed that the random probability of this is zero, and therefore there is a certain legality behind it.
Did you understand the difference?
sympathetic,
I don't understand why you all fell in love with swans.. so be it
It seems to me that you insist on ignoring the problem I posed to you.
I ask you a simple question, and try to answer it without resorting to chairs and swans:
A certain experiment is conducted, a large number of times in different places, and the same result is always obtained. The chance of receiving the above series of results randomly is 1 in 10 to the power of 14.
In your opinion, is it possible to assume that there is a law of nature of the first type that stands behind the above results (and as mentioned there is no law of the second type that can explain it)?
Noam and Michael
You asked me questions, now I would like to better understand your position. What are the laws of the first type (those according to which the universe works)? What gives them their validity? Are there any mathematical laws? Can these laws be fully explained using any language and in particular mathematics? If I can't reach them how do I assume they exist? Aren't they required for language to exist? I guess because they cannot be fully described in language, correct me if I'm wrong. Unlike the example Michael gives of the time since Newton wrote the Principia, the time that has passed since the Principia was written can be described in language and you can think of a thought experiment in which I could measure it. What about the laws of nature of the first kind? Is it possible to think of a thought experiment in which they will be discovered? Note that laws of nature of the second type have a very reasonable validity, they are equivalent to the experiments on which they are based.
pleasantness
I have no problem with experiments that cannot be explained by the given and systematically repeated laws. This is similar to scientists who only saw white swans (which are the only birds they know) now a group of them travel to a far country and see a black bird many black birds appear. Are any black swans? Is it possible to expand the concept of swans, should we generalize and call the general group birds: blacks are crows and whites are swans. Does the law of nature require the existence of the ravens or is it the distinction between them and the swans that allows them to be called by a different name. The second type of natural law is, as I said, part of it in the world and part of the mind, so I have no problem with a new type of phenomenon that is revealed in a stumbling block, it just has to be associated with a new word. Is the distinction between crows and swans real? Yes, they do not breed among themselves, but on the other hand, there is also a difference between the group of crows and the individuals. The ability to isolate a certain feature and decide that it defines the object is the ability of language and also the ability of natural laws of the second type (in my opinion there is only one type of law, so it is a bit silly to call it Law of the second kind...).
to Michael
The example of the dark matter is not problematic because it is assumed that the new group of events the black birds must be white swans and from this it follows that someone malicious simply painted them black, in fact they are white as snow (in analogy to the dark matter).
Rach
Why differentiate between chairs according to the number of their legs and not according to the material from which they are made? Each of these differences produces a partial picture of the world. This is a feature of language, especially scientific language.
155 and in many details and clarifications 161
To Mr. Roschild:
When they explain to me slowly and clearly I understand (I'm doing my best, I'm having trouble lately).
Please repeat the question or direct me to it so that I can relate.
Lisa:
He is you and my words were directed to Noam.
You see? You actually understood.
It didn't make you answer, but there's no need for me to repeat the question. Right?
To Mr. Roschild:
Is 'he' me?
I'm still here, there's no need to talk about me in the third person.
I must be really struggling with my understanding lately.
When you have the patience to explain to people as difficult to understand as I am, I will be happy to learn a lot from your wisdom.
sympathetic:
For the avoidance of doubt - my questions to Lisa are the details of the question I addressed to you and you are welcome to answer the detailed wording because it focuses the matter better.
The detailed wording appears for the first time in response 155 and then - in greater detail and with reference to some of the possible misunderstandings - also in response 161.
wont help.
He won't answer.
He will chase me to other discussions to interfere with my war on religious preaching and in all his fierceness he will write more than is necessary to write about which of the claims he signs but he will not answer the question.
See you with Ehud.
To Noam:
"The induction problem is really unrelated to the topic" are you sure about that?
I will try to convince you that this is not the case (I am really sorry for my stubborn position):
If I understand your argument correctly (please correct me again if I didn't understand) he says that an event such as the one you described is very unlikely (1 divided by 10 to the 14th power) and therefore it must be concluded that there is legality behind it.
Well:
Let's assume that we are looking at a random phenomenon such as those observed in quantum mechanics. For the purpose, let's assume that my results can be written as 0 and 1. In addition, let's assume that the probability of each result is half.
Now I start measuring. My measurement will look something like this:
0010011110100010000101 ...
What is the probability that I will get these observations? The more I measure, the less likely the results will be.
According to your argument there is only one thing I can conclude:
The more I measure, the more likely it is that the phenomenon I am measuring is not random.
Don't we have a contradiction here?
Lisa,
The problem of induction is really not related to the topic, after all I did not claim that if the same results were obtained in a thousand attempts this is proof that the same results will be obtained the 1001st time as well.
All I claimed was that the results are not random, and if they are not random, there is some law (unknown to us) behind the results.
To remind you, the whole debate is whether there are natural laws of the first kind - that is, those that the universe "operates" according to, even when there is no natural law of the second kind that explains it.
At the same time, if you insist on induction, then I checked the data on the experiment one more time and found that the chance of getting the result by chance is 1 in a billion.
The experiment was conducted in different parts of the world, 100,000 times, and all times the same result was obtained.
There is then a chance of 1 divided by 10 to the 14th power that the results are purely random.
For every practical need, and not philosophical chatter, this indicates a certain law of nature of the first kind.
I hope I have convinced you, although I doubt it.
To Mr. Roschild:
I see that not everyone understands my humor. I will be more specific.
1. What applies to swans applies to galaxies. In fact, this applies to the entire scientific enterprise. I will go back and say, the problem that Noam is talking about is not a simple problem.
2. I'm not a great expert on swans either.
3. The comment you referred to does speak of confirmation by observation. I don't know how to say clearly when an observation is a confirmed theory (if you re-read my answer in response 157 you will find that this is indeed my position - I don't know and it's a good question)
4. I still haven't found a good answer to this question (including not in this discussion). What seems very clear to you, seems very questionable to me. I referred you to the induction problem. This is a fundamental problem, and being waved off by saying the answer is obvious doesn't solve it for me
Lisa:
The transition to swans is dodging.
Please answer the matter of the galaxies and come out of the following two assumptions:
1. Many galaxies exhibit a rotation rate that does not match the rate calculated according to the known laws. This is the bulk of the galaxies tested and the orders of magnitude of the differences between the calculation and reality are enormous.
2. There is a theory in this matter that you do not accept.
This is Ehud's real situation and since up to now we have talked about general principles - you are simply asked to apply these principles to the described situation - even if for you it is hypothetical. It does not require familiarity with the galaxies.
Therefore - you are still welcome to answer the question:
Which of the two statements would you be willing to sign in this hypothetical situation:
1. Right now there is no reason to talk
2. There must be a reason that we do not know at the moment
To make the task simpler, I will point out that everything you and Ehud have said so far indicates that you would sign the first statement without hesitation.
Views? I know how to answer the question regardless of my knowledge of galaxies because in my opinion there is actually a plausible explanation for the rotation phenomenon but I still managed to act as if my beliefs were yours. It should be even easier for you.
I emphasize:
This is not about the induction problem!
I am not asking you to answer me any question about the behavior of other galaxies!
I am only asking you about the existence of a reason for the behavior of the galaxies in which you observed and in which you saw a rotation speed that does not correspond to the known laws.
I don't want to bias the discussion, but your claim regarding the role of the experiment in science is incorrect and even you (when it's convenient for you) know it - as expressed, for example, in this response:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/the-importance-of-honoring-darwin-1202101/#comment-261473
Here you do not ignore the fact that experiments that have the potential to refute and do not disprove - confirm (and not often - not only in this response - you talk about the fact that evolution has many confirmations or that it is a very well-established theory. These are meaningless claims if you do not see experiments as a source of confirmation and establishment because that there is no other source to confirm and establish)
You are welcome to address this claim as well - if you feel like it - but not at the expense of the previous question.
To Noam:
The situation you presented is the description of the induction problem. You claim that the solution is clear to her, I'm a little more skeptical.
Lisa,
Popper's honor in his place is laid, but of course he refers to the second type of laws - man-made.
Laws of nature of the first type cannot be refuted, and there is no need to confirm - the universe simply operates according to them.
And to describe my situation: all I claimed is that although scientists have no idea what the legality is behind the results of the experiment, it is clear that the results are not random and therefore it is clear that there is some natural law of the first type by which the non-random results are obtained.
Continue to 157:
The most serious attempt I know of to deal with the problem is Professor Yehuda Perel's book which I mentioned earlier:
http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/
To Mr. Roschild:
Since I don't understand galaxies, I'll refer to the field in which I have more control: swans.
The fact that so far I have only seen white swans does not confirm the claim that all swans are white.
As I quoted, Popper claimed that the power of observations is in refutation rather than confirmation.
The question of when an observation constitutes confirmation of a theory is a good question... I have not yet come across a satisfactory answer, I would appreciate references to sources relating to the subject.
For a glimpse of the problematic nature of the subject (called the inoculation problem) you can read here:
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/בעיית_האינדוקציה
Ehud, referring to your example, there is some mechanism that creates chairs with only three legs and four legs. Why don't you find (hypothetically) chairs with 6 legs? This mechanism or this legality of 3 and 4 legs is the same "law of nature" that Noam and Makal talk about. It is possible that the mechanism (the law of the first order) is more complex and one day it will be discovered that under certain conditions chairs with 6 legs are indeed created (for example according to IKEA's interpretation...) then this means that the law which they call second order must change and include 6 legs as well. This process will continue with the goal that one day the second order description or law will always predict the number of chair legs. Of course, we will never know if our description is indeed perfect and covers the law of the first order.
Lisa:
The power of observations is not only in refutation but also in confirmation.
There is no proof, but the more experiments there are that agree with the theory and there is not a single experiment that contradicts it - the more we believe in it.
Regarding the problem of the faster rotation of the galaxies and assuming that, like Ehud, you do not accept the dark matter hypothesis, what would you say about the theory that there is something that causes the faster rotation of the galaxies?
This is a theory that has been confirmed many times over for every galaxy every time it has been looked at.
Of the following two sentences - which one would you sign:
1. Right now there is no reason to talk
2. There must be a reason that we do not know at the moment.
To Noam:
If I understand correctly the conditions you describe, there is a situation where a reproduction of some experiment yields the same results under the same conditions. In addition, if I understand correctly, this experiment contradicts all known theories until that experiment? Have I understood the situation you are describing so far?
If indeed this is the case, this situation is not far-fetched at all. He even read several times throughout history.
Indeed this situation requires updating or changing the theories.
The conclusion you reached: "Obviously there is legality in the results of the experiment".
Well here we have to be careful. The regularity you are talking about is a finite number of experiments that all yielded certain measurements (identical or close enough to each other).
Here we encounter the problem of induction - can a law be generalized from a finite series of observations. Does the fact that I have only seen white swans so far mean that all swans are white?
Popper argued that the power of observations lies in disproving legality and not the other way around.
Noam:
This is a very nice question.
The truth is that it is not so hypothetical either.
For example - it is clear that there is a law of nature that creates the spiral structure of some galaxies.
To this day it is not really known why this happens. There are all kinds of hypotheses but none of them are in the status of an accepted answer.
There is another example that is closer to Ehud's heart - the example of dark matter:
Here is a theory that is acceptable to most scientists, but to some - and a favorite in this part - it is not acceptable.
Yes, he accepts the fact that the galaxies rotate faster and the question is whether in his opinion there is no reason for this.
sympathetic,
You did not read the question conditions well:
I repeat, in the event I described, there is no theory, no generalization, no law of nature created by the scientists that can explain the results, all the attempts of the scientists to generalize, expand and change have all failed!
Is this situation clear?
If so, we are in a situation where there is no man-made law of nature, but it is clear that there is legality in the results of the experiment.
This is a situation where there is a natural law of the first type (the one you deny the existence of) and there is no natural law of the second type.
Please explain your position
pleasantness
I will write a short answer and I will be happy to elaborate more tomorrow (evening). Scientists make generalizations of the results of their experiments. When they encounter a new phenomenon that does not fit their generalizations, they correct the generalization, i.e. the law of nature.
Example of chairs: Scientists tested chairs and discovered that for every four-legged chair, a law of nature was created accordingly. Suddenly a group of scientists came across a chair with three legs. The experiment was replicated by a group of competing scientists around the world. The law of nature has been expanded and now the category of chairs also includes chairs with three legs. Another possibility was that the three-legged production would not be called a chair and a different theory would be built for it, but the tendency to generalize and abstract meant that the product was called a chair and the general for chairs was expanded.
First of all, you didn't understand my intention, and according to my understanding, your approach is similar to Michal's approach
Noam, I will try to answer you as soon as possible, but unfortunately I am not sure that I will be able to do so tonight, I apologize for following the discussion. Michael, I have objections to the evolutionary theory that you bring up regardless of the current discussion, but again I can probably write them only tomorrow (I apologize if you feel that the discussion is stuck).
Wait, wait - give Ehud a chance to explain how it is that there is legality in the results of the experiment, but there is no law or theory of science that can explain it
If so, what law of nature is here?
Ehud - please.
Friends:
I think we should stop the discussion.
Anyway, I'm going to stop.
Repeating the same things does not advance us anywhere and recently the matter has already started to be really unpleasant.
sympathetic,
Let's imagine the following event:
Scientists perform a certain experiment, and the results are completely incomprehensible. There is no theory and no law that can explain the results.
The experiment is carried out precisely in several laboratories, and the exact same results are always obtained, but as mentioned without explanation.
The situation then is this:
There is no law of the second type - that is, a man-made law - that can explain the results, and according to your opinion, there is also no law of nature of the first type according to which the results are obtained, nevertheless, the same results are obtained every time the experiment is conducted.
How would you explain this situation?
Come on, Lisa:
I remain matter-of-fact the whole time despite your attempts to drag it down to the personal level.
Don't try to tell someone that sarcasm is a very interesting claim. I will tell this to professors who deal with quantum physics, who will look for a career in literature." He is my business.
And when it is played while completely ignoring what I said or, more precisely, while basing it on a point of departure that is in direct contradiction with my words, it is absolutely impossible to see it as a substantive discussion.
You are welcome to return to the substantive discussion at any time.
To Mr. Roschild:
I understand your desire to drag the discussion to the personal level, you'll surely exhaust me very quickly.
When the discussion returns to the substantive level, I will return to it willingly.
Machel
To be fair, I would like to point out that Anonymous is a ghost.
It's just that if I identify with a nickname, then my comments are censored.
Let's let Ehud respond to this if he wants and then we'll judge again. If I was wrong I will admit it, but I expect
For the same response from you.
anonymous:
To be clear - beyond the fact that in my opinion you do not correctly identify Ehud's intention - the description you described is exactly the description of my opinion.
If Ehud thought like me he would not argue with me.
I'm sorry, Lisa.
It's hard for me to believe that you really don't understand what I'm saying, so I can only conclude that the "misunderstanding" is intentional.
I have already explained a thousand times that a statistical prediction is also a prediction and in my last response I mentioned it, but there is nothing. I understand that when things get personal then this kind of behavior is predictable.
anonymous.
You didn't understand and I suggest you read Ehud's words himself. It's really funny that we argue about the interpretation of Ehud's words.
Machel
Again you misunderstood the meaning.
"After all, it is impossible to claim that the laws of nature are the laws we describe and still continue to investigate."
I didn't claim it.
"What I understood from his words is that he means that these two laws are the same.
In other words, the two laws are actually an attempt to combine them into one complete law."
What I meant was that the laws that exist are laws invented by man to describe the laws of the universe.
The lawfulness of the universe is proven to exist only on the basis of confirmation provided by some 'human law of nature'.
It would be impossible to say that the universe has laws if there were only the laws of man that describe them.
Man also tries to combine these two laws into one complete law of nature (unsuccessfully).
Therefore, science tries to discover the laws of the universe through the invention of its own laws that describe
the lawfulness of the world (which exists {lawfulness of the world} only because in certain experiments systematicity is proven).
but,
All this is done in the brain first!
After all, this is all a consequence of thought!
Why is it hard to understand?
All laws and rules were created and are created first of all in the brain and then the brain through the mouth the hand that does not know what is conveying
forward the information.
Therefore, what I think Ehud claims:
It is that the new laws that are discovered and the laws that have already been discovered all without exception describe the concept
humanizes reality, and not reality as it really is. (Because you can't say what reality is!)
Rach
A short answer about weaving. On the balls in your example, you can check other features besides "color", for example, you can check the spin projection in a certain variable direction that is not alternating with the spin projection in a different direction. On such a case, a table of possible results can be built according to classical physics with hidden variables and according to quantum physics. It turns out that it is possible to find certain angles where the measurements are taken so that the results (correlations between the measurements) cannot be explained according to classical physics. In this context, read about Bell's non-Christianity.
To Mr. Roschild:
"The fact that there are things that cannot be predicted in general means that science cannot investigate them and provide them with predictions, and therefore science is not really relevant about them"
A very interesting claim. I will tell this to professors who deal with quantum physics, who will look for a career in literature.
Well - I started reading in the link and it does not talk about absolute randomness but about one that arises from laws and that still dictates probabilities (in some cases) and still dictates deterministic results - even if difficult to calculate - in the other part.
Lisa:
Right. I didn't see you wrote a prediction.
I just assumed things should make sense.
Because it is clear that if you say that science strives for prediction then it surely does so based on the assumption that there are laws because otherwise - as mentioned - prediction is not possible. Since I didn't think that you suddenly accepted my opinion, I didn't notice that you wrote a prediction.
I have not yet read the link you provided and I will read it because what Gil Kalai writes is certainly interesting, but it does not change anything! The fact that there are things that cannot be predicted in general means that science cannot study them and provide them with predictions and therefore science is not really relevant about them. This does not change the fact that there are things that are predictable and therefore there are laws of nature.
I will make a short attempt at the syllable and hopefully I will elaborate more later on since there is some ambiguity about my position.
I claim that there are no laws of nature per se and human laws of nature. The only thing we can talk about or think about are the human laws of nature. For us there is no separation between reality and recognition, the two concepts are the same concept.
Our mind creates reality and we cannot talk about objective reality.
The separation between the laws of nature as they really are and the laws of nature formulated by scientists does not exist.
To your question Michael, in short: In my opinion, science strives to find models that will describe well all the results of the experiments carried out by scientists.
Lisa, everything you and the others say is in complete agreement with what was said above. Science tries to predict natural phenomena, or in other words the "laws of nature".
This argument is a bit of unnecessary grinding.
And between us, what does the semantics matter if everyone understands everyone?
Question about the weaving. It is not clear to me what is so surprising about this phenomenon. Suppose we have two boxes with two black and white balls. We send them to both ends of the world. You open one of the boxes and see a white ball, inevitably the other ball will be black. Why is the weaving different from the above experiment?
To Mr. Roschild:
To refer you to the beginning of my words if you did not understand me properly:
"Science strives for an accurate and predictable description of the measurements that scientists perform"
The fact that he strives for this does not mean that he always succeeds.
"What to do?" There are phenomena that, as far as we know, are random and unpredictable.
The subject of randomness in nature is extremely interesting. You can read an interesting discussion on the subject here:
http://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/randomness-in-nature-ii
Lisa:
Your answers are simply not correct.
It is also possible to describe the reality in retrospect.
Science was created to make predictions.
It is possible to predict only phenomena that are not completely random and non-random (what to do?) This is an action according to certain laws.
This is also what I explained about evolution.
This mistake in describing the purpose of science obviously also affects your other answers.
anonymous:
I am afraid that you are the one who does not understand Ehud's words.
After all, it is impossible to claim that the laws of nature are the laws we describe and still continue to investigate.
What should be investigated if we know the laws of nature? Why should these laws be put to the test? Could nature fail its own experimental test?
Whoever says that scientific research aims to bring the laws of man closer to the laws of nature is precisely our side of the debate, while the other side claims - literally - that the laws of nature do not exist.
Liza Noam Rah and Makhal
As I understand your argument with Ehud then:
There is no dispute that there is a 'law of nature' and also a 'law of man against nature'.
I think you do not understand the intention of Ehud's words.
What I understood from his words, is that he means that these two laws are the same.
That is, the two laws are actually an attempt to combine them into one complete law.
The lack of success in this is due to (in my opinion) the difference in the 'perception of reality' of each brain.
Therefore, during evolution, language developed (with the help of the brain) so that the brain could more successfully move towards some goal, which - according to the human perception of reality - must be.
To Mr. Roschild (127):
To your question "What is the thing that science strives to understand":
My answer is that science strives for an accurate and predictable description of the measurements that scientists perform in the most conclusive way possible. What are measurements?
A measurement can be the position of a particle at different points in time,
The number of surfers who entered my site during a month,
stock value on the stock exchange,
The amount of rain that fell this year in Israel, etc., etc.
Science often does this by mathematical models that approximate the measurements and with their help new measurements can be predicted.
Mathematical models are often accompanied by a "background story" which is the causal explanation. This causal description is not necessary for the description of the observations (and is not part of the mathematical model at all). This causal description gives the feeling that things are more understandable (similar to the feeling of a religious person that God is an explanation for the phenomena around him). When I ask a scientist why when I leave a ball it falls to the ground, his answer will be that the reason is that the force of gravity "exists" and is the cause. As mentioned, this causal part does not exist in the equations (I will not be able to find an answer to the question "why" in the equations, but only insert sizes that I can measure and receive new sizes as an answer), even though the size of the force in question is indeed represented in the equations.
It was possible to think that this might be a problem in formalism. Perhaps finding the appropriate mathematical terminology to describe causal relationships would have given validity to the causal explanation.
One answer is that there are indeed attempts to describe causality mathematically as Professor Yehuda Perel did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl
. The second answer is that modern physics shows us that there are phenomena for which there seems to be no causal explanation (they are randomness). There is no mathematical model that will give an accurate prediction - and accordingly it seems that the behavior is without reason. Of course, there is a possibility that such an explanation will be found in the future.
The bottom line is that science strives to describe observations. Nothing less and nothing more than that.
Regarding the second question - "What is the role of the experiment?":
The experiment was basically designed to test the models that the scientists had conceived. It is the experiment that provides the scientists with the measurements discussed earlier. A measurement that does not match the model entails one of two things:
or an error in the way the experiment was performed or an error in the model.
The third question - "What justifies the methodology of the experiment?":
The scientists aim for as accurate observations as possible. What is an accurate observation? One that is not biased by the beliefs of the person conducting the experiment, one that was carried out with measurement efforts as precise as desired, and one for which all the conditions in which it was taken were recorded.
All this assumes nothing about the "real world". The method is designed to minimize biases in the models that arise from the factors listed.
Throughout history countless times scientists thought they had found a description of nature as it is. As science develops, basic assumptions that we believed to be properties of the universe as it is turn out to be wrong (that is, they do not match the observations).
I would like to expand a little on what I said about natural selection.
In my previous response I said that all natural selection would not have existed without that reality.
In fact, a stronger argument can be made: not only that the existence of reality is essential for natural selection, but that realities that allow natural selection - it is necessary that there be realities governed by laws!
Why?
Because all natural selection works only because the word "fit" has a meaning (choosing the fit - remember?)
And what is that match?
It is a match between the way the organism functions and the way the world functions.
It will not be possible to match the functions of two different things if there are no laws governing their functions.
The adaptation of the organism is the ability to predict the behavior of the environment - an ability expressed in its structure and behavior.
The "more suitable" one is the one whose predictive ability it expresses is better, but again: it is not possible to predict something whose behavior is not controlled by laws - at least on a statistical level.
I also want to emphasize the point on which I stand throughout the discussion.
The only thing I emphasize is the existence of those laws external to man.
Not that I am a big fan of Wittgenstein - the opposite is true - but I agree with him that there is no point in discussing what one cannot say anything about. The point is that the discussion on the question of the existence of those objective laws also meets its criteria because, as I said - the very existence of natural selection and as a result our very existence are evidence of the existence of an objective system of laws.
It is important to note that I am aware of the superficial similarity between this argument and the argument of the religious that our very existence is evidence of the existence of God but this, as mentioned, is only a superficial similarity because unlike them - I can show how the existence of external laws leads to our existence and how their absence prevents our existence and they cannot do so in relation to God.
Well - the only thing I'm saying about the external laws is that they exist.
We can approach the content of these laws and perhaps even reach them through science, but we have no way of verifying that we have indeed reached it because it is always possible that the next experiment will reveal to us that the prediction does not work in all cases.
Noam:
I have already asked Ehud the question of how the world worked before there was man.
I did not repeat it in my last response because it seems to me that it was addressed.
He does not claim that our laws determine the behavior of the world.
He only claims the right thing, which is that the laws serve us well for prediction, but not that the existence of these laws in our hands affects the way the world works.
Since he does not claim this about the world where there are humans, there is no need for him to explain how his claim fits with a world where there are no humans.
The problem with his claim is, as I said, that a world without laws could not look like our world because evolution would not be possible in it and certainly no intelligent life would be possible in it (because the whole concept of reason loses its meaning).
Yigal c.
I checked the interpretation of the word law in the Ibn Shushan dictionary:
1) A permanent and unchanging phenomenon in nature, in life, in society
2) rule, fixed mode of action, procedure, behavior
So it seems to me that the use of the phrase "laws of nature" well meets your requirement to be very precise in your expression.
Yigal c.
I also think that the conventional terminology "laws of nature" is not successful, but don't forget that the word law has other meanings, such as for example from the word "legality" which means "systematic", so I would not enter too much into a semantic debate.
sympathetic,
Try answering this simple question:
According to what rules did the universe behave before humanity existed?
sympathetic:
I guess I don't need to point out that you still haven't answered any of my questions because that's obvious.
I also understand why. After all, the answer to these questions brings down the whole line of thought you are trying to present.
I presented these questions to you in many ways and Noam and Rah also presented some of the same questions to you in other ways.
All in all, there are three questions here that you have no possibility of answering without using the term "laws of nature" in its correct meaning - that is - the laws of nature - not ours but nature's.
The first question, for its nuances, was what is the thing that science strives to understand. My answer is that it is nature as it exists out there independent of us. The laws in our theories are meant to describe laws in reality.
It is not true, by the way, that we cannot reach these laws. What is true is only that we cannot know if we have arrived.
The second question is what is the motivation for the experimental component in science. My answer is that the experiment is designed to help us identify differences between the real laws of nature and those we have formulated. We use logic and mathematics to derive predictions from the laws we formulated and check if these predictions hold in reality. If they exist - we consider it a confirmation, if not - a refutation. Why a rebuttal? After all, we formulate the laws and we control them, so what reason is there to refute them? The reason is of course that external reality that we don't know what it is, but nevertheless we know that it exists and it is clear that the laws do not line up with you. No person in their right mind would claim that this reality does not exist or that, alternatively, it is God.
The third question is what justifies the methodology of the experiment - that is - why do we expect the experiment to show us the differences. My answer to this question is that our description of the laws of nature is mathematical and the results of the experiment are predictable and this is also what we expect to find in the laws of nature themselves. We expect them to give the same results under the same conditions and when this condition is violated we conclude that either the laws are wrong or that the description of the results and conditions is not done in a way that "corresponds to reality" (an expression that in itself requires the reality of a reality).
In my world there are no miracles - including not the miracle that the language is so successful. It simply follows clearly from my assumptions. The development of language did not happen in a vacuum, but in an evolutionary process that I have explained - a process in which the entire reason for the selective advantage it allows language to give to those who are gifted with it stems from the fact that there is a reality that language can describe. Of course, all natural selection and not just language would not exist without that reality.
Logic succeeds for the same reasons. It is true in reality and beings who acted contrary to it were at a selective disadvantage compared to those who internalized it.
If we return for a moment to the perfects that wanted here - you perfect our faith in the existence of laws for belief in God.
You did this even though this very belief is what produced all of science!
You did this even though the entire scientific methodology you yourself use is based on the same belief.
That's why I likened your words to worshiping, praying and offering sacrifices to a God in whose existence you do not believe.
That's why the sheriff also ignored your words to search for the criminal when you don't think there was a crime.
Noam, I did not express disagreement with your words, but I clarified a point that I think should be clarified (within the general framework of my opinion, that in discussions of this kind it is better to be very precise in expressing yourself): laws are the product of thought, while the behavior of the universe has existed by itself, since time immemorial, without laws or rules dictating it . It is indeed systematic and consistent. The laws and rules are a formulation of the results of our understanding of the behavior of the universe.
sympathetic,
Before addressing the points you raised, let me take a step back:
There are 3 main possibilities for the behavior of the universe (of course there is a subdivision for each of the possibilities):
1) The universe is controlled by some higher power, which sets the laws / rules of conduct and changes them as it wishes constantly.
2) The universe is governed by a set of laws/rules that change by themselves all the time, and there is no way to know what the rules were and what they will be in the future.
3) The universe is governed by a fixed and unchanging set of laws/rules. There is no superior force, and there are no changes in the rules over time.
I believe in the third option and I have no way of proving that this is the option that describes reality in the only correct way.
If you do not agree with me, that is the end of the discussion between us and there is no possibility to continue.
Assuming you agree with me, here is my response to your points:
1) The system of laws applies to the universe and everything in it.
2) See assumption #3
3) It is certainly possible that we will discover this set of rules, although at the moment it seems that there is still time for that.
There is no way, and there is no need to avoid assumption #3 and I wonder where your need to try it comes from. The universe exists regardless of humanity and humanity's understanding of the rules, and the attempt to claim that without humanity the universe would not know how to behave, is in my opinion ridiculous.
For this reason, it is absolutely clear that one cannot be satisfied with the human system of laws, which in general is intended to try to explain the first system of laws.
And finally, the possibility that the universe was created by a higher power, but since he established the laws and created it, he does not intervene, is a possibility that cannot be contradicted, and in my opinion is an unimportant and uninteresting possibility. Let's agree that our discussion refers to the Planck time particle after creation.
Yigal c.
You oppose the term system of rules, and call it "a certain systematicity".
To me, these are two identical expressions, and I have no intention of arguing about the interpretations of words.
Apart from this semantic matter, it seems from your words that you completely agree with me.
sympathetic,
If we take your approach: our world is the interaction between our minds and nature, then also
Here there are different degrees of interaction (from the point of view of scientific understanding):
1. "The world of chairs" (the subject of your favorite) - which includes everything our senses perceive
and which are the easiest to translate by our minds.
2. The world of qualified observations - which we do not experience directly without equipment
and which only our vision and brain are involved in. where the atom is the lower limit
And distant celestial bodies are the upper bar. It is important to note that the human mind is not really
Able to understand how small the atom is and how vast the distances are
And the proportions in space - all this can only be observed outside the limits of our minds.
3. The world of electromagnetic particles, cosmic background radiation, the speed of waves, their intensity
of strong and weak energies and phenomena and their components which we only prepared
able to interact with them. Here it is already difficult to determine whether this is the case
In the interaction between our minds and nature because there is a medium of the separating equipment
between us.
4. The world of predictions, indirect observations and phenomena that interact between our minds
for mathematics and only confirmations or refutations indicate in retrospect if it was imagination
or reality.
5. Everything that has not yet been observed will be confirmed and experienced in some direct or indirect way by
our minds
These are more or less the levels of scientific objectivity. If you claim that
Practically, science has nothing to do with category 5, and therefore there is no point in dealing with it, I agree
With you partly because we have no real material to work on, but on the other hand history
Science shows us that every time science takes a "small bite" from that unknown or in words
Others The progress of science is constantly fed by this category and that is why it is so important
and relevant to us.
Noam, the universe does not have a set of rules according to which it operates. The universe does operate in a certain systematic way, but it does not have a set of laws that you call 'first'. We, humans, formulate a set of laws that in our opinion (or at least in the opinion of some of us) describe the behavior of the universe (or parts of it). If suddenly it is revealed to us that something has gone wrong in our understanding of the universe (and hence a law has been 'broken'), we must change the laws we have invented so that they describe the reality that has appeared before us differently than we thought.
questionnaire
Regarding your question, I think it makes sense to continue to investigate and find legality. Only as I wrote to Michael there is no point in separating two types of legality. The only thing we can discuss as human beings is legality within the human consciousness beyond that there is no universe or external world therefore there is no point in this separation. As Wittgenstein beautifully said, "What cannot be spoken about, must be kept silent."
Michael
I know that man can find legality in the world, after all we have a language that describes the world for us. The legality we find is a combination of what is in the world to which we do not have direct access and of the human mind and human imagination. I believe that man and the human imagination can continue to perfect the legality they find, but I do not believe that from this legality it is possible to make a separation. There is an external world and separately there is an independent cognition that describes it. I believe that the separation between the external world and the human mind is an artificial separation, we cannot talk or think about something that is external to our consciousness. Therefore, I see no point in the first set of laws as Noam calls it. The separation between man and reality is similar in my view to other separations made throughout history such as the separation between body and mind, but that is a different issue.
If we return to the title of the article, Ata Noam Rah and Shalon believe in universal laws of nature that cannot be fully discovered and on the other hand cannot be disproved, therefore in my opinion nothing can be said about them. If you believe in a second set of laws "laws of nature" then it is clear that the title of the article referred to them and there is no problem here, these laws can be broken... in my opinion there is only point in one (the other) set of laws.
pleasantness
You say that everything is simple and it's a shame to complicate "the matter with pseudo-philosophical bickering", so I'd appreciate it if you could explain it to me again. I understood that you think that there are two sets of laws, one of the universe which you called the first set of laws and the other the creation of man. I am interested in the first set of rules:
1. What does it apply to? About atoms, quarks, the living cell, the universe?
I assume that you do have a definite answer to that, or maybe it applies to what the universe is made of, but we have not yet discovered what that thing is.
2. How do you know that this system of laws exists?
I suppose you will say that you discover a regularity in your observations and from that assume that there is a general regularity that you reveal only a part of, but on the other hand you have no proof that such a system exists.
3. Will we ever discover the first set of laws?
I guess because tell me no. Man's intellect is limited as well as his ability to calculate and his technological ability.
So maybe sometime in the future we will be able to discover the same set of rules but you can't prove it.
From the set of questions and answers I formulated for you (forgive me and you are welcome to correct me), I came to the conclusion that you believe (don't know believe) that there is universal legality, you don't know what it applies to and how it was created and you don't know if we will ever discover it. Now that we replace the words "universal system of laws" with the word God that there are others who believe in him in different forms and we accept that the universe is controlled by God who created everything (but since then he is limited and cannot change his creation) we will never gain full recognition of him and his motives will not be clear to us His. Therefore, I claim that it is possible to avoid this hypothesis and settle for the second set of laws, which becomes the only set of laws.
Rach
Michael did a better job than I did in explaining the hidden variables and the impossibility of describing the results of quantum mechanics using local statistical theory. Michael, by the way, I think that Bohm's theory has been recognized and used less both for sociological reasons of science and because it is more cumbersome to operate.
There are laws that man has invented that are all expressed through language as the first thing.
These laws come to describe the 'lawfulness of the world' (if you can call it that. The main thing is the intention).
But before we express the law or the rules,
And before we ourselves understood that there are laws in the universe,
And before we realized there was a universe,
We managed to do the action of 'understanding'.
And we didn't succeed, but the brain.
It is neither man nor God.
It's the mind.
The brain (a lump of 'something' that is both electric and magnetic and 'all together') that in an autodidactic manner
tames the form it takes - hereafter 'the body'.
Non-stop for maybe more than a billion years until this moment and onward…
The brain takes care of replicating itself (or maybe it's the result of what causes it to replicate)
So that all the information acquired up to that moment will be passed on. And why forward the information?
Do not know. But the mind will not be able to exist in this world forever, therefore the mind must produce a 'continuation' of its 'activity'.
Therefore it replicates and creates a newer ('fresher') brain that can continue the 'work' from a certain point.
All the information acquired in the brain remains in the brain forever and is copied on to other brains (if by genes
and if by interaction between minds).
All the laws and all the rules and even the universe itself is a creation of the mind.
All minds in the world obey the laws of nature.
Man sees these laws individually.
Because the mind is individual.
Well they showed about three, even got a 2010 Wolff Award for it.
http://www.wolffund.org.il/fullheb.asp?id=166
Did they show interlacing of more than two particles?
almost.
This is completely true for "entwined" particles, when the state of the collection of particles (that is, the state of each and every one of them) is determined at every moment by all the particles together, regardless of the distance between them and at the same time.
There is, of course, a difficulty with the definition of simultaneity when the theory of relativity is taken into account, but this difficulty also exists in the usual interpretation
"Bohm's interpretation overcomes the problem in that it sacrifices locality completely" ie should it be assumed according to this interpretation that every particle in the universe can affect every other particle regardless of distance? (and in time???)
sympathetic,
On the one hand, you are right that the laws that have not yet been discovered are irrelevant
In order to discuss them, but on the other hand they function as a force of attraction for science and without them we would be
We have long since lost our curiosity and the drive to explore and move on.
A good example of this is predictions and indirect observations: why it was important to Einstein
Predict the gravitational cooling, if it was only confirmed 43 years after we observed it? Is according to
In your words, he did not exist during those years in human reality?
And the opposite example is dark matter and dark energy. Is when first observed
And they still didn't have weighty explanations, did according to your words they "appeared for a reason".
place" into our perceptions, and only after mathematical calculations and zero direct observations
They entered the whole of our definitions.
I mean to say that the same laws of nature that we make our way in order to discover,
Not only are they relevant even though they were only partially discovered, but it was impossible
To carry out scientific research without them means - they are out there even though they are out there
to our definitions, but they cannot be called God's work either.
Rah:
The issue of hidden variables is complex.
Bell's theorem shows that hidden local variables impose certain restrictions on the statistics of the experimental results that the statistics predicted by quantum theory do not meet.
The subject was tested experimentally and it was found that the predictions of quantum theory are fulfilled and the predictions that Bell's theorem derives from the existence of hidden local variables are hidden.
Boehm's interpretation overcomes the problem by sacrificing locality entirely.
Ehud, I will add to what Noam says in 109. If you think there is no legality then what is the point of investigating? After all, it is clear that science behaves like a detective investigation. We commit a crime, we assume a criminal did it, let's find him.
Accordingly, we saw a phenomenon, we assume that there is a mechanism responsible for it, let's find it. If there is no criminal, what is the point of the investigation?
Could you please expand on how the possibility of hidden variables was ruled out? After all, there are many phenomena in the macro that seem seemingly random and stem from chaotic deterministic behavior such as the weather, the ripples of the waves or the falling of a cube. What is different about radioactive decay?
And by the way, thank you, Lisa, for coming back and reminding us that with you everything is personal.
sympathetic,
It has nothing to do with God, and my approach also does not refer at all to the nature of the Creator - if there is such a thing.
It's much simpler and it's a shame to complicate the matter with pseudo-philosophical bickering.
There is a universe that operates in a certain way, according to certain rules, in a certain method, call it whatever you want.
This conduct has nothing to do with humans, and humans do not influence it.
I called this set of rules a set of rules of the first type.
Because we are intelligent and curious, we try to discover those laws that govern the universe.
For this we develop theories and formulate laws in the hope that they come close to the laws of the first type I described.
I called this set of rules a type two set of rules.
There is no mention of God, a higher power, thrones of flowers.
just no?
Lisa:
Laugh to your heart's content.
I swear to you that was my intention.
"First of all - in relation to Lisa's words - you know that I watched them, and that's why I made sure to write in response 71 the fact that we define what the results are (and the meaning was that in quantum theory the result is statistical)."
I haven't laughed so much in a long time. Thank you Mr. Roschild.
sympathetic:
You don't answer my words.
If you take the parable of God that you brought - then your situation is really inexplicable: you worship, pray and make sacrifices to a God in whose existence you do not believe.
Rah:
A small detail that is not directly related to the discussion.
A deterministic interpretation of quantum theory was proposed.
It was proposed by Boehm and is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation
I heard about her a few months ago from Mahud.
So I told him that I didn't know what it was and I would try to learn it.
Since then I have learned and it is indeed a completely deterministic and completely consistent interpretation.
On the other hand, it is completely non-local. The truth is that in the lack of locality we meet in all possible interpretations, but in Boehm's interpretation it really celebrates.
I don't know why the interpretation of the collapse of the wave function is preferred today. It is probably a matter of history and dynamics between humans, but since there is no way to differentiate between the predictions of the two theories it is not really important.
Rach
There are mathematical theorems that prove that it is not possible to build a deterministic model for quantum theory. Theories that assume a deterministic structure are called theories of hidden variables and these theories were claimed by John Bell.
pleasantness
What I am saying is that there is no point in believing in the existence of two such systems if one of them does not give us anything (hence the story about Pascal) there is no point in assuming that the reason the world behaves consistently is that there is an unknown mechanism of natural laws that drive the same thing the only thing we know are the laws of nature that we produce are models. In my opinion, our models describe our knowledge of the world and they are not better or worse imitations of some universal rules. It is convenient for us to think that beauty is a universal concept like justice, but without God the only validity of things originates from man, so do the laws of nature. Talking about such a system is equivalent to believing in God. Your and Michael's view is similar to those who believe in God who created the world and since then he allows it to run freely according to the rules he created.
sympathetic:
First of all - with respect to Lisa's words - you know that I watched them and that's why I made sure to write in response 71 the fact that we define what the results are (and the intention was that in quantum theory the result is statistical).
Secondly - it is impossible to talk about one set of laws because then it is impossible to say what this system strives to achieve.
So it is also impossible - and I mentioned this - to justify the experimental test whose entire function is to locate the differences between the two systems so that we can fix the system we are defining.
I do repeat myself for the thousandth time but it doesn't seem to me that anyone has answered the things or even tried to answer them.
Ehud (98), it is clear that there is no single set of rules. After all, we build theories that claim to describe the world and predict its behavior. It is a dynamic set of rules that changes according to observations and ideally gets closer and closer to the "truth". The question is whether such a truth exists. Do things in the world really run in a way that can be described mathematically?
So far, and correct me if I'm wrong, we've been able to describe every phenomenon mathematically. It is true that there are phenomena that we really do not particularly understand in quantum mechanics that the model that best describes them is a random model. Is the decay of a radioactive particle really random in the deep sense of the word? Or have we simply not yet been able to find a deterministic model to describe them?
sympathetic,
There is no problem with probabilistic laws. It is also possible to define an experience as a series of measurements whose result is given by a probabilistic calculation.
You can repeat this a number of times and prove that you do get the same result every time.
sympathetic,
Occam's razor is certainly not a law of nature but a useful recommendation and nothing more.
And to your question, it is certainly not possible to unite the two systems - they are essentially different:
One is a set of laws - or rather maybe a set of rules - according to which the universe runs, whether we understand it or not, whether we exist or not.
I find it hard to believe you disagree with that, assuming you don't believe in some kind of higher power.
The second set of laws is a human creation with all that implies. It has no existence without the existence of humanity, it is subject to changes, it is subject to language, and other problems mentioned.
Our hope is that the second set of rules is steadily approaching the first set of rules.
There is reason to be optimistic.
The story you told is nice and familiar and has nothing to do with the discussion.
Michal Noam and Ahalon
It seems to me that you present a kind of Platonist opinion and your perception of the laws of nature is similar to the example of the cave
Plato's famous In our limited capacity we can only see the shadows on the cave wall and not the things themselves. I personally believe more in an approach like Kant's because we are not talking about the things that the intellect can understand and not about the world in itself and as humans we have no touch with it.
Michael
Let's leave for a moment liza's just argument that in quantum mechanics repeating an experiment does not guarantee the same result.
After all, even when I say a chair (again, sorry for the limited selection), who assures me that when I say this word again, it will refer to the same object in reality, the assumption that words can be attributed to the properties of objects is the basis of language. If I'm not mistaken (and forgive me if I missed something) you haven't given any argument about science so far, but only arguments about what language means in the world and about our ability to do induction. Basically what you are saying is our ability to do induction, what was will be, is based on the fact that at the base of things there are laws that force this behavior.
Going back to liza's claim, an interesting question is what do you think about quantum theory and probabilistic laws?
Michael
First of all, I am sorry for the misunderstanding of my words, indeed in the second reading I was not clear enough. When I wrote that the laws of nature are partly human creations that without human existence would not exist, I did not mean that there are such and such laws of nature, but that every natural law is partly a human creation and partly my observation related to the world.
I wanted to go back to your claim "All science is based on the fact that the input of the senses represents something in the real world that exists even without it. The idea that everything that exists needs justification is an absurd idea that has no justification in itself."
Regarding the first part, this is a fundamental claim regarding language in general, not only for science. When I say a chair (my favorite object, excuse me), I assume that there is such an object that you can see. "Here is a throne", is not a scientific claim and I doubt if it can be claimed without people. Regarding the second claim. The idea that everything requires justification is an absurd idea, but on the other hand, the system of natural laws as I define them has justification, it is just as strong as the observations and experiments on which it is based, while you believe in an imaginary system of laws that we do not have access to. Do you also think that beauty and justice are concepts that do not depend on humans ?
pleasantness
You assume, like Michael, "two sets of laws that are certainly not the same, although it is customary to call them both laws of nature." One system can never be given to full knowledge (according to Michael) isn't it simpler according to Occam's razor principle to assume that there is only one system. I am reminded of the following story: Newton in his calculations thought that the planetary system was unstable and therefore assumed that it was God's job to stabilize the solar system in its place. Laplace showed that the system is indeed stable. Napoleon asked Laplace what is the role of God in you and Laplace replied I did not need this hypothesis.
Back to discussion:
What Mr. Roschild called a law of nature, it is now commonly believed to not exist in quantum mechanics, where repeating an experiment several times under the same conditions can yield different measurements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_in_quantum_mechanics#Qualitative_overview
Beautiful Lisa:
You have returned to your well-known path of personal slander.
I suggest you read my words before you refer to them.
To Mr. Roschild:
"Do you disbelieve in what I described as a basic assumption of science that repeating the same experiment will yield the same results?"
This is a discount and nothing else! There is nothing that guarantees me that this will happen! This is what David Yom spoke about when he noticed that the assumptions about causality do not derive from the observations themselves.
After all, if this does not happen - you will not know about it - you will simply assume that there are additional parameters that you ignored.
"It seems to me that in this whole discussion I am the only one who gives reasons for what he says"
I'm sure you think so. If I had to think of one "objective" law of nature it would be this:
"Mr. Roschild always thinks he is the only one who is right"
If I had to think of one more it would be:
"Most of the time Mr. Roschild is wrong in thinking that way"
True, I very much agree with the last sentence "The introduction of every practical need is always outside the parentheses in everything we say." (I would just change to "within the brackets").
I am also quite convinced that Ehud agrees with this and he does not completely disbelieve the possibility that objective laws may exist.
We simply have to accept the fact that we probably won't know if they exist or not and yet try to strive to uncover them, because as mentioned until now science has progressed very well.
Rah:
What are we trying to find out? Something that doesn't exist?! And still succeed in doing so?!
Ehud's claim is that objective laws do not exist at all and I repeat and tell him that his entire course of action is guided by the assumption in advance that they actually do exist.
After all, there is no way to know anything for sure and it could be that everything is a matrix and only I exist and that too - only in the current fraction of a second when someone planted all these illusions in my mind. This too cannot be contradicted and therefore the introduction of "for every practical need" is always outside the parentheses in everything we say.
There is no subtle difference here. You, as I understand it, do not doubt the existence of objective laws of nature to the extent of Marius' claim that the whole world is actually a mathematical structure. I think as I argued above that for practical purposes we act as if this claim is true and try (and apparently successfully...) to investigate and discover the laws of nature.
But from a purely philosophical point of view we have no proof that we are even on the right path.
Lisa:
There is no meaning to a claim that contradicts our entire way of working.
Do you disbelieve in what I described as a basic assumption of science that repeating the same experiment will yield the same results?
If you are not an unbeliever - then you have agreed with the existence of at least one natural law - one that is not the result of scientific research but an assumption that you assume to be true in advance.
I repeat for the umpteenth time. Even if we don't know what the laws are (and I think we actually know some of them but we have no way to prove it) we assume that they exist because otherwise there would be no point in searching for them and there would be no justification for the search method we are using.
It seems to me that in this whole discussion I am the only one who raises reasons for what I said and you, in addition to the fact that you do not justify the things - you also do not refer to my reasons.
Liza
You probably don't spend enough time reading what others write.
Where did you see someone say "there is no way to know anything about her nature"???
On the contrary, I argued that the second set of laws of nature is the result of our attempts to understand the nature of the first set of laws - extremely successful attempts!
At the same time, there will probably never be absolute identity between the two sets of laws.
Rah:
If you read the debate carefully, you will see that your words actually express agreement with me (and with Noam and with Jacob) and not with Liza or Ehud.
To Noam:
If indeed this was not said, please accept my apologies. The impression I got from the words is that even if it was not explicitly said.
Well, my argument is that there is no point in discussing the first set of laws - because, as you said - there is no way to know anything about its nature. Talking about this system is like talking about God.
I personally do not believe in God
Michael and Noam, I tend to agree to a certain extent with Ehud and Lisa in the ongoing debate here.
We as scientists try to describe the world.
We have no idea how real or close our description is to something real.
As the attempts are repeated and the predictions come true, we feel more confident that we are "closer" to something real, but we can never really know.
A fact can always emerge that contradicts everything we have known so far and dealing with it will be through changing our world view.
On the other hand we must assume that there is objective truth out there otherwise there is no point in all the research (as the various postmodernists would say).
The good news is that our predictions seem to work and the evidence is the technology that is an application of the understanding of the "laws of nature".
So for every need and interest we can talk about laws of nature that we have found or at least we have come close to and there is nothing to be bothered about in our daily scientific life. Beyond that we very successfully apply our understanding.
However, on the philosophical level when we think about the essence of things we don't really know and probably won't know if there is an objective set of laws. And the truth? What is so important?
Liza
Oops - you inserted "and she is the reason for our existence" into your words, this was not said by me anywhere and I don't think anyone else said it.
I wonder why you added that - maybe to argue with what is convenient for you and not with something that was said?
If indeed this is the reason, it is not a fair way to argue.
As a matter of fact, I am sure that you are also convinced, that the universe exists and operates according to fixed laws/rules from time immemorial, before the existence of humanity, and will continue to exist and operate even if humanity does not exist, whether we succeed in deciphering them or not.
The philosophizing (barren in my opinion) about how a flower is perceived by the eyes of a monkey belongs to the second set of laws and not the first
This is such a simple and self-evident assumption that I find it hard to believe that a non-religious person would question it.
To Noam and Mr. Roschild:
What is that objective set of rules?
According to your words, this is a system that cannot be described, its nature can never be known, it has existed since time immemorial and is the reason for our existence...sounds familiar to me from other regions...
To Mr. Roschild (response 76):
"The position you present is in fact that nothing has meaning without man":
Here, too, the conclusion you reached is not accurate. There is a meaning to things without man - but this is a different meaning than with humans.
The thing that is represented by humans as a "tree" is represented in a slightly different way by dogs, for example. Dogs probably don't have an equivalent concept for "tree" - the closest concept for them would probably be something like "the thing on which we usually urinate and smell the urine of other dogs". Given these different concepts, it is certain that the "laws of nature" of dogs are also different laws of nature that refer to the conceptual system of dogs.
Different systems of concepts also exist in humans - there are few concepts whose meaning is the same in all humans. However, in the field of science there is an attempt to reduce the conceptual differences as much as possible and to define them more rigorously.
Different concepts and different definitions therefore also define different laws! An excellent question in both science and mathematics is when it is appropriate to define a new concept. Here is an interesting discussion on the subject:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/definitions-definitions-do-we-need-them/
sympathetic,
If humanity did not exist on the face of the Jewish People, there would also be no one to define
What is nature and its laws and here you are right in saying that man creates by himself with help
His (limited) definitions and perceptions of what is called nature, but he is still the one who is "led"
By an external factor and my time depends on the person's perception and that factor ("the world as usual
practice") will never change as a result of man's perception.
Therefore, how can you even compare the existing (with or without man) and the creation of his mind
of human ? They both live together, only one does not change and the other does not stop
to change (reality versus perception). One leads and the other is led. One has no end or beginning and the other creates in his mind only fragments of the first.
And the bottom line is, are they even comparable?
Noam:
I have already highlighted the difference between the two systems.
The truth is that the use of the term "laws of nature" regarding our theories does create confusion and in fact it is not an accurate usage because the laws in our theories are only our current guess about the true laws.
Be that as it may, in his responses so far (except - perhaps the last one) Kfar Ehud has acknowledged the existence of the objective legal system.
Shouldn't we now, in light of the new findings, re-examine "firm conclusions" such as the claim that the Zern accelerator will not create black holes?!
In my opinion, one should try and check the predictions each time based on the latest observations before moving to higher energies.
In the end, we also see according to the article that things are not "moving" in the same direction as they were supposed to move according to the scientists' hypotheses, literally.
sympathetic,
It seems to me that you are mixing two sets of laws that are certainly not the same, although both are commonly called laws of nature.
The first set of laws are the laws of nature according to which the universe has been governed since time immemorial, regardless of humanity and language. They will continue to exist even after humanity is destroyed.
A second set of laws is the result of our attempts as intelligent beings to understand and describe the first set of laws.
There is no identity between the two systems, and apparently there never will be. The second set of laws depends on language, it changes often according to the progress of our knowledge of the first system, and has no meaning without human existence.
sympathetic:
Do I hear a new note in your words?
This is the first time you qualify your words to some of the laws of nature.
Is it a change of position or a disruption in writing?
Correcting a mistake "to create a person" from A to Z, it still won't change the law
The nature that every man is born of a woman will not be subtracted from or added to.
questionnaire
When I wrote God is dead it was a paraphrase of Nietzsche's saying. It meant the way the company is run. The ancient society was religious and now as seculars we have to fill things with our own content according to Nietzsche. I do not intend to enter into a discussion about God but about the basis of our beliefs about the world.
In my opinion "every man is born of a woman" is part of the definition of the concept of man and not a law of nature and this sentence can change depending on what we call a man. There is no ideal concept that exists since the language defines the concept as it does in scientific concepts.
The difference between my perception and Michael's is his belief that there are natural laws in the world independent of man. And I believe that the laws of nature are partly human creations that would not exist without human existence.
sympathetic:
I said mine.
Even if it doesn't convince you (and it's really not clear to me how one can escape the necessity of the conclusions I presented) - I can't do more.
questionnaire:
Long live the difference:
You quoted part of my sentence, which in its entirety looks like this:
” The laws in your theory describe the laws of nature. They are not the laws of nature themselves but the best description you could find for them"
That is why there is a huge difference between my position and Ehud's position.
Lisa:
Entering here a completely unrelated topic of the meaning of the word "meaning".
The position you present is actually that nothing has meaning without man.
Beyond the chauvinism of this position - it seems to me completely irrelevant.
All the words we use get their meaning from us and the word "enough" has a different meaning in different languages.
The question is whether there are laws of nature objectively and the answer is "without a doubt there are!"
I have already explained that all scientific research is based on the assumption that repeating an experiment under the same conditions will yield the same results. This is an assumption that I say again and again - scientific research assumes in advance.
This assumption is actually a law of nature - literally.
That is, scientific research presupposes that there is a natural law.
The problem is that the ability to predict that knowledge of this law gives us is not great because this knowledge only allows us to predict the results of experiments that we have already performed such as in the past.
We are looking for laws with a higher predictability and these are the laws that science tries to get as close to knowing as possible.
Note that the basic law of nature that I mentioned is known even to the simplest animals and this is the basis of our ability to tame them.
I think the discussion is essential.
I am writing to you right now while I am sitting on a chair. Would the throne exist without humans not from the point of view that they create it but from the point of view that there is a word for it in the language. When you read that I am sitting on a chair, do you imagine what kind of chair (ideal) does the chair you imagine really exist in the world? No! Without the language that distinguishes between different sensory inputs and groups them together in a name there were no objects in the world.
The fact that the sensory input represents something in the world is a property of language and depends on conventions. When I talk about a chair I am simplifying the world, the chair may be made of wood, there are grooves in it, it is high or low, all these details are unimportant because what describes it is the word chair. Is the word equivalent to reality no and is it an abstraction of reality to a narrow collection of features that the object must fulfill. When a ball falls from a tower, it doesn't matter the color of the ball, its shape (assuming friction is negligible), the material it is made of. The ball in Newtonian physics is described by a mass point. Does the description of the sphere correspond to reality, does it give us all the information, isn't it a model of a part of reality that we call physical reality. We build models of reality in our minds, transfer it to the scientific language (which is, at best, mathematics) and examine how well our models fit the observations. Without the agreement on the abstraction that the language makes to create the model, the model is empty of content. Language creates an abstraction of reality and examines one facet of reality that depends on human consent. Will an alien who sees a chair understand that it is dubbed in a chair? In my opinion, it is not by chance that he sees the appropriate wavelength, he will see a collection of materials designed together. We build objects in language according to our physical limitations (the power to lift something, the ability to see something in the appropriate spectrum, the ability to hear). Our human limitations determine which things can be objects of language and on these objects which are not realistic but abstractions we build theories.
sympathetic,
Allow me to disagree on several points you raised in response 67:
1. The fact that you took "God is dead" as a foundational assumption for your following arguments is not clear to me.
Was God alive before he died? Or did he never exist?
Or is it one of your worldviews so you don't have to deal with entity research
Which is objectively difficult to define with the help of life sciences and physics?
* I am not a religious person, but on the other hand, it is not clear to me how you can cancel something forever
undefined…..
2. Every person is indeed born of a woman and this is a law of nature regarding most living beings
Across the KDF (but not all of them). Even if hybrids between the different species happened
In the past (including man and animal) and even if we succeed in "producing a man" from A to Z, it is still
Change the law of nature that every man is born of a woman, neither subtract nor add
He has nothing.
3. I will not address the idea that a person creates "awareness" artificially, because that is what it is
Too broad a subject to deal with now.
4. You wrote "Is there a law in the world that determines what a person is and we discover it I am not
think so. The law depends on our definition of what a person is. The law is a combination of
Our observation of the world and the way in which we bring the observations together."
I think that even for the purpose of the discussion there is no need to complicate the definition of a person too much.
On the other hand, I agree with the second part of the sentence, except that it is exactly what Michael said
He said at the beginning, so what is the argument about?
I also don't understand the difference between what you wrote: "I believe like Liza that there are laws
A consequence of the interaction between the brain and the world" and what Michael wrote:
"The laws of nature themselves are nothing but the best description you could find for them"?
please explain
Thanks
The debate is about both the essence and the terminology.
Without human existence there is no meaning for "tree", there is no meaning for "falling" and not for "falling tree". This does not mean that the thing (called "reality") that created the sensory input that humans call a tree and falls does not exist without humans - but this thing itself is not a tree.
If we look at the painting I referred to - the fact that we see an old woman or a young woman in this painting indicates mainly the action of the brain on the sensory input. There is nothing in the "painting itself" that says this is a woman - neither young nor old. These are interpretations of the human brain which interprets the sensory input according to its own rules. In the same way, a human brain that was used to a different conceptual perception, would see other things in this painting.
If the ancient man saw a drawing of a computer, he would see different things in it than the modern man - this despite the initial sensory input being exactly the same in both cases.
sympathetic,
It seems that there is an argument here about terminology and the meaning of the words and not about the essence itself.
I'm sure you're as convinced as I am, that even without human existence, trees fall, bodies attract each other with a force proportional to their mass and inversely to their distance squared, water boils at 100 degrees and freezes at zero degrees, the earth orbits the sun and much more.
All of the above are natural phenomena, which occur according to a certain legality that exists even without human presence.
Bodies that fall to the earth do so with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2, with or without human presence.
It is possible that instead of the expression "laws of nature" it is more appropriate to say "rules of nature"
We try to discover the same legality, but do not influence it, and it takes place with the same success and precision even without us.
You asked: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?"
The obvious answer is of course - the fall of the tree creates a shock wave that we hear as noise, but it is a physical phenomenon even without anyone hearing it (if the shock wave is strong enough, it can, for example, cause another tree to fall even though no one heard it).
incidentally:
The prior assumption that natural laws exist is also a necessary condition for all scientific practice based on refutation through experiment.
This whole practice is based on the assumption that if you reproduce the experimental conditions you will get the same results.
It is true that both the conditions of the experiment and its results are defined in terms that we have come to the conclusion regarding their suitability, but this does not detract from the fact that this assumption is nothing more than another verbal expression of the assumption that nature is governed by laws - even if we have not yet discovered these laws.
sympathetic:
You are the one who is confused.
All science is based on the fact that the input of the senses represents something in the real world that exists even without it.
The idea that everything that exists needs justification is an absurd idea that has no justification in itself.
Anything you present as a justification for something else will honestly justify the question of what the justification of the same thing is.
Michael
What is the justification of the laws of nature? Did whoever created the world create it along with detailed operating instructions?
I think you are confusing our daily experiences with the laws of nature. When we drop a bone it will fall is a daily experience and not a scientific law. You base your belief in absolute laws of nature on everyday experiences, but modern science has shown us that the phenomena in nature do not behave according to our everyday intuitions. Falling bodies, you say, and if a particle is discovered that does not obey gravity, then what will you say? A natural law is broken or the day-to-day intuition is invalid. Each additional observation/experiment about the world increases our knowledge and forces us to change the definitions and rules. The definitions and rules are human - laws as opposed to phenomena defined by humans. Is there a finite number of rules that describe nature? They thought so at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, but we discovered that their definitions can be expanded. Science is looking for laws of nature on that we more or less agree but what their meaning is on that we disagree. You believe that they have a meaning independent of man and an absolute existence like the existence of matter in the world. I believe that they are created by the human mind. Did "every man is born of a woman" exist before there were people? Is it a law of nature? Are all bodies attracted to the earth a law of nature? What defines what bodies are? Similar to the laws in a court of law, we establish certain rules as soon as a new human phenomenon is discovered or society changes, we change the laws. Thou shalt not murder is a universal rule? It forms the basis of the company and therefore appears in all companies. Is it independent of human existence? Found in the head of which god? I think not, so are the laws of nature. These questions are related to David Yom's question (if I am not mistaken) "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?".
sympathetic:
Are you trying to claim that the world was not governed by the laws of nature before the creation of man?
abandoned.
It seems to me that your approach is based on some ideology and not on what you really feel.
Bodies fell even before there were any animals and different animals are aware of different laws of nature just like us. I don't think you'll find a flying elephant or even an elephant jumping off a cliff hoping to land safely.
The laws of nature are laws for all intents and purposes - even more so than the laws of our legal system.
They are also equipped with an uncompromising enforcement system that doesn't bat an eyelid when it hands down a death sentence to anyone who tries to question the laws.
Therefore - the development of the language is not a miracle at all. It is simply a result of evolution that makes the ability to discover laws an advantage in natural selection.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/birth-of-language-1110084/
Michael
In my opinion, the discussion revolves around the justification of the laws of nature. God is dead and therefore in my eyes the only measure is man.
Let's take the claim "every man is born of a woman", is this a law of nature? Or maybe even a tautology?
Now if we manage to produce a human-like robot (android) with human awareness, will it be human? And now if we make it from biological materials, is it necessary to change the law? As long as we have not produced such a production, is the law correct and when we produce it will it be necessary to change the law? Is there a law in the world that determines what a person is and we discover it? I don't think so. The law depends on our definition of what a person is. The law is a combination of our observation of the world and the way in which we bind the observations together.
To your question, the miracle in my view is the existence of the language. Her ability to describe the world. All things fall is a claim in language and not a scientific claim. In order to define a scientific claim, it is necessary to formulate what the things are, what a fall is and it is desirable to do this quantitatively. Language, our ability to find patterns in the world, is the wonder.
I believe like Liza that laws are a consequence of the interaction between the brain and the world
In the desert
Moshe Rabbnu's detail
100 NIS
And if a ladybug jumps from the top of a stem, let's say, will it fall or fly?
sympathetic:
You have to decide.
If the scientific method refers to objective reality (which has all kinds of things - including natural laws) then you deny what you said before.
If it refers to terms and laws that are in any case the fruit of our spirit - this is postmodernism.
I'm interested in whether you don't think there is an objective law of nature that doesn't depend on any of our constructions that says that if someone jumps from the top of Migdal Shalom they will crash.
To Mr. Roschild:
Is this a show of hands? Is your power only good in slandering those who slander evolution?
I see Ehud's position as more than a sliver of logic and common sense, and brandishing his words with epithets "the roots of postmodernism" adds nothing to the discussion and certainly does not present your position in a positive light.
And actually the subject of the discussion:
When it is claimed that the laws of nature exist in the minds of people and do not exist by themselves, what does Mr. Roschild conclude?
"Everything is the fruit of our minds" (Response 61), "Our belief in the law is not enough for it to be true" (Response 21)
But these banal facts do not at all derive from the claim that Ehud claims and in which I myself take a side. After all, it has never been claimed that there is no dependence between the laws and the observations that the laws aim to describe. On the contrary. What eluded Mr. Roschild is the possibility that such a dependence between the laws and the observations also exists without the need for these laws to be an actual part of those observations from the world.
The claim says that laws are a consequence of the interaction between the brain and the world (or reality or observations).
This is equivalent to the familiar painting:
http://www.wordsculptures.com/images/illusion.jpg
On the one hand it can be interpreted as an old woman and on the other hand as a young woman.
What is "really" drawn there Mr. Roschild? If the truth is indeed so dear to you.
This is an analogy to the scientific process. In the painting, "everything that comes to our mind" is not painted, on the other hand, there is also no pedagogue who is the "real" pedagogue for the painting. There are several ways to interpret and they all depend entirely on the painting itself!
Michael
There is truth and there are rules, they are determined according to the scientific method and logic. Best description
Chosen by its suitability to the experiment and its coherence. There is no truth in science like in mathematics
Because in the reduction of phenomena to mathematics there is an abstraction. Abstraction originates in the human spirit.
I must point out, Ehud, that in your words lie all the roots of postmodernism.
There is no truth! They say - and you approve.
Everything is the fruit of our spirit and science is just talk - and you approve.
unbelievable.
sympathetic:
I'm sorry.
Your words sound completely absurd to me, but give me strength.
Michael
You write: "When you say that science tries to describe the world around us, you are basing it on an assumption that you make in advance and that is that the world can be described with value" but the fact that the world can be described does not require science. I point and say "here is a throne" did I say something about the world by doing so? I used the convention of the language that defines what a chair is. Thrones do not exist in the world, they are the result of human definition. Without the human convention that a chair is a product that is sat on, one chair would be a collection of trees, the second chair was processed metal, and the third chair was a straw basket, etc...
That's why I don't agree with your statement about "laws of nature". In my opinion, science describes parts of the world as language does, it defines objects that are not necessarily elementary like the living cell in biology which is made up of atoms. Does a cell in biology really exist or is it a human definition? How is a frog's cell similar to a human cell or even in a human how are nerve cells similar to blood cells? It is convenient for us to define an object - the cell in this case, to create a description of the biological world. It is convenient for us to define the properties of their cells, we call them laws of nature, we change the definitions of the laws so that they are more general over time.
For example, the concept of energy has gone through several incarnations, where each time we include it in more and more phenomena. Does the temperature that physics talks about exist in the world? A property of how many atoms is temperature? Is it a basic concept or a statistical feature.
The "laws of nature" as you call them are the rules that apply to our definitions over time we find more and more ways to perfect them and generalize them so that the description becomes more complete.
You write: "My response does not include the justification for the laws of nature. I do not know if the laws of nature have a justification that we can find." I, on the other hand, say that the justification for the laws of nature is found in the cases to which they apply, when you find a case to which the rule does not apply, you change the definitions or the laws of nature. In this sense, laws of nature are similar to laws in criminal law. We try to answer every human action and determine whether it is allowed or not? Our definitions change as the company changes. The validity of legal laws comes from their definition and we try to make them as general and practical as possible so that we can use them to judge the whole range of human activity. Your claims about absolute laws of nature are equivalent in my opinion to a search for a morality of good and bad that does not depend on a person, a search that in my opinion has religious justification.
questionnaire:
The point is that the results of our research are not something that can be predicted in advance (if we could have predicted them in advance - this would have been a sign that there was no need for research to create a new theory and it was only intended to confirm an existing theory - the one that predicted the results).
Therefore - we have no control, for example, over the number of particles and laws we will discover.
It should also be understood that no one has promised us that the result will be simple or easy to achieve. We hope so, but there is no certainty that this is what we will end up with.
You can find the reason why this is our hope in my article on the subject of beauty.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/meta-beuty-2911082/
Because this is our goal - after all, beyond the experimental research, we are trying to build mathematical structures that will unite many details under the roof of one simple law.
Sometimes it succeeds for us and a prominent example of this is the union made by Newton between free fall and the orbits of the stars.
This goal is behind the search for "the theory of everything" - it is a goal that may or may not be achieved.
In any case - there is no law of nature that says that at the base of complexity there is simplicity. There is only our hope here.
Did anyone happen to see where my response (No. 56) went?
Thanks
Michael, thank you for your response (51),
There is no disagreement between us regarding the way science conducts itself on the way to finding the foundation stones.
Perhaps what I meant to say is that we may have already "passed" the opportunity to find them
And now the direction is a constant decomposition into factors and laws on the assumption that "multiple actors"
will bring us closer to those cornerstones.
Sometimes I ask how it is possible that all the baryonic matter observed so far is built
Atoms where each atom consists of 28 types of particles and antiparticles (if
Did I count correctly? Or in other words: if simplicity underlies complexity, how
Is it possible that the research to find those building blocks produces such a great "side complexity"?
The structure of the atom is just an example, but the behavior is quite uniform in other areas as well.
I support your answer to Ehud ("The laws of nature themselves are nothing but the best description
that you were able to find for them") and here the question of unification or pluralism arises (depending on which side
looking at it) as a derivative of the laws of nature as they really are.
Thanks.
Okay, I accept. Let's call it the "three-quarters concept".
What I mean by this is that it combines the view that the laws of nature change with the view that they are fixed.
sympathetic:
On second thought - although what I referred you to is interesting, it is less relevant to our case than I initially remembered.
These discussions mainly deal with what is happening in the fields of science and not with the basic assumptions behind science, whereas the current discussion deals with the basic assumptions.
Re-read my responses here and perhaps especially the last part of response 51.
I really can't understand how you can think otherwise.
Lisa:
I also think that what you described as a "middle view" is completely consistent with the view that Ehud presented in the first place (and with which I do not agree)
Michael
Unfortunately I don't have time right now to follow the entire discussion you referred me to. I will try to get to it tomorrow. I appreciate that it can be a hassle to repeat arguments again and again and therefore I will read the discussion. After I read at least part of the discussion I will formulate my view.
liza
I agree with your opinion, I don't see why you call it a "midpoint"? I am certainly willing to adopt this approach.
questionnaire:
I asked about the other way to discover the laws was rhetorical.
No one ever thought of a way other than science.
In other words - one of the functions of science is to find the building blocks, therefore science cannot be built on the basis of knowledge of the building blocks.
Basically we work exactly the opposite of what you suggest and we have no other choice.
We observe the results and then speculate what could have been the reasons for all these results.
This is how we come to a conclusion about laws of nature, about invisible particles and much more.
I don't know if you have followed a discussion I had with others over the pages of this site regarding the question of the definition of the word "exist" but it is a very relevant discussion.
Two responses in the same discussion - in which I tried to clarify the issue are these:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/brain-reaserch-and-human-quiz-0503101/#comment-263277
https://www.hayadan.org.il/brain-reaserch-and-human-quiz-0503101/#comment-263291
sympathetic:
My response does not include the justification for the laws of nature.
I don't know if the laws of nature have any justification that we can find.
We have already discussed this topic a lot in the discussion I pointed to in the questionnaire and under Marius Cohen's article about the possibility that mathematics is the vision of everything.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/ground-problem-of-metaphysics-part-2-0704103/
Your perception of science is not different at all, but the question "what does the term "laws of nature" mean" is not a question from the field of science.
When you say that science tries to describe the world around us, you are basing yourself on an assumption that you make in advance, and that is that the world is amenable to a description that has value.
When in the framework of science you formulate theories in which there are these and other laws - these laws are supposed to be part of the same description of the world. Pay attention to what you yourself say: this is the description of the world. It is not the world itself. But, as mentioned, all the value we attribute to description stems from the assumption that there is something to describe.
The laws in your theory describe the laws of nature. They are not the laws of nature themselves but the best description you could find for them. But the laws of nature that exist in their own right will provide you over time with confirmation and maybe also a refutation that the description you found is correct.
What is so complicated here?!
I think I found a "middle ground":
I tend to agree with Ehud's perception of science as described in response 44.
However, the sentence "the laws of nature do not change" can also be interpreted as follows:
Scientists collect observations over the years. To these observations they try to fit models that will describe them based on the laws of nature in which they believe. Let's assume for the moment that in the adjustment of the models only observations are used for which there is no doubt about the validity of the measurements (there were no failures in the execution of the experiments and they were properly documented).
Now, when the scientist comes and tries to find a theory that explains the observations - his premise is that there is the same validity for all measurements - and this is regardless of the time when the experiment was performed. That is, the scientist does not try to describe the observations from ten years ago with the help of laws of nature that are different from those in which he tries to describe those from a month ago.
That is, even if the description of the laws of nature has changed and now the scientists describe the observations with the help of a different series of laws than before, the assumption is that the validity of these new laws is the same throughout all the years that have passed (these laws describe the observations collected throughout the years even before the scientists described the observations with the help of the new laws ) - and in this sense these laws have not changed over the years.
Scientists do not assume that the laws of nature with which they describe reality today were different at the time of the Big Bang. Well, this is the working assumption - that there is a description common to all observations throughout all time up to the present time, this description can change over time but its validity will always be fully backward in time.
From Kal:
It seems that in your opinion a law of nature is an abstraction that describes a linking property for a diverse collection of phenomena.
And also that such connecting features are necessary and also that the laws themselves are connected and united by connecting features.
In the exam everything is connected with everything.
But you must admit that these abstractions are imposed by human perception in the way that it perceives the hierarchy of relationships.
For example: gravity according to Newton is an abstraction that links the falling of an apple to the tracks of the stars.
However, according to Einstein, it is not a force of its own, but a sub-property linked at a higher level to the connectivity properties of the space itself, that is, the dynamic curvature of the space.
And if we go in this direction, someone else will come and offer a higher link rank that will turn the above into linked features.
What, then, is the law itself, perhaps from an infinite thing.
sympathetic
I mean, what they discovered now is that 'asymptotic freedom' is 'free' up to a certain limit?
Thanks.
ghost moon
I am far from being an expert in the field, all the more trying to understand what the results of the experiment described in the article mean (if it turns out that his results are indeed correct). The understanding of the field requires comprehensive knowledge of the theory of groups and their representations.
Even so, I don't think what you think you understood is true. Unlike the intuition in other fields, quarks behave like free particles the higher the energies, the phenomenon is an asymptotic freedom machine and for its discovery the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2004. Therefore, it is unlikely that at high energies quarks will break down into components, what is more, according to what is known to date, quarks are elementary particles that cannot be broken down .
Michael
I did not understand from your answer to Yishai where you think the laws of nature derive their validity from. Other laws are the actions of man's hands, that is, the fruit of his agreements and are fundamental assumptions on which a complex structure is built. What justifies the laws of nature?
My concept of science is completely different. Science is a practical activity that tries to describe the world around us
at different levels. For example, there are certain laws in cell biology. What are the laws of nature even though they are not basic laws because the cell is made up of atoms while the cell is made up of electrons, quarks and gluons. There is no point in talking about atoms at the level of the living cell because even if they could describe the living cell using atoms, it would be a terribly cumbersome description that would not add anything to us. Thus we describe biology at certain levels using cells. The description is made through a collection of rules that we call laws of nature. The laws of nature are the most convenient way to describe the results of experiments in animal biology and their validity is derived from the experiments they describe.
In every description of nature there is a level of abstraction that is appropriate for it according to the characteristic length, time and energy scales and at this level laws are established for example hydrodynamics is the theory of fluids described by the Navier-Stokes equations this is a certain level of abstraction that is appropriate for the phenomenon we are describing. Since the validity of the laws of nature as I have defined them here comes from experiments, so they can change when new experiments are performed that do not fit the accumulated knowledge. Your image of absolute laws of nature whose validity is unclear and whose existence can never be proven seems puzzling to me.
Michael, thanks for the response (37),
What I said is precisely that physical research strives to discover the foundation stones
In nature (36), but I brought up a picture of a situation in which this research was done without knowing who they are
cornerstones, and as a result the research deals with the external characteristics.
I am convinced that there is no scientist who would not want to use those building blocks for understanding
The development of the phenomena he studies - this is the furthest dream of every physicist.
You asked if I had any idea how to discover those foundation stones (if they exist of course).
So, firstly, I learned from many brilliant minds who have dealt with this question, and I appreciated them
Great (not to all). If I understand the history of physics and the process correctly
The "cause / output" in which, it seems that the electric charge appeared before the magnetic induction (which
"creates the electricity" - as an assumption for the sake of discussion). It is possible that if the magnetic field and its "reversal"
Electricity would eliminate the need to use an "electric charge" and maybe even electrons....
And alternatively there were these north and south magnetic particles that flow in the wires
And those that revolve around the atom.
It is important to note that I do not claim this to be the case, but only suggest re-investigating their works
of the physicists involved in this initial research. Maybe nothing will come of it, but this is it
Undoubtedly an "ancient" turning point by which physics developed into what it is
Today.
Does anyone have at least some kind of hypothesis as to why the quarks are unpaired at certain energies?
Is it because of the interference of another strong magnetic field with the field of the strong force? (as I understood from the article)
My hypothesis:
This is just another step towards proving that breaking the symmetry of space and creating a 'hole' in space is absolutely possible.
And from there the steps towards building machines for 'travel' in space will be shortened, as will the steps to build a 'time machine'.
Yishai:
No. And do you think?
What is clear is that they exist and there is a difference between them and our theories.
Our theories are our own making. The laws of nature exist even without us and therefore it is clear (if it was not obvious even without this) that they are not of our hands.
Our theories were created in an attempt to discover and describe the laws of nature but they are not the laws of nature.
During our attempt to form a more and more reliable description of nature we formulate theories (which is basically equivalent to determining the axioms of the theory and calculating the consequences of those axioms).
The axioms are actually the current expression of our understanding of the laws of nature but they are not the laws of nature themselves.
interesting.
But maybe the conclusions of the experiment are simply incorrect, and there was no violation of any law?!
From Kal:
Do you think the laws of nature were created by a higher power?!
After all, they are the same axioms that are usually called laws. They are the ones that serve as the basis for the existing theories.
When new theories appear in the future, it is very possible that the existing laws will become worthless and lose their constitutional status.
Yishai:
None of the disputes here arise from the translation.
And regarding the laws of nature - I completely disagree with you - as I explained in my words to Ehud.
One note for the knight:
On first reading I skipped your response because I got the impression that beyond the opinion (which is completely legitimate, according to everything known today) that mathematics and physics are the same, it does not deal with other things.
Since this morning I did not find many comments on the site, I returned to your message and read it more carefully.
It turns out that there is something in it that is worth further consideration (beyond tacit agreement).
You wrote in a certain place "because if I'm not mistaken, it can be proven that any two different sentences that have already been proven to be true under one set of axioms, will not contradict each other".
Well - you are probably wrong about that.
Hashmi grew up (Actually the second of them) make a proof of the kind you mentioned impossible!
All here:
The unnecessary disputes arise from a careless translation of the source!
The original article talked about one specific subject, the violation of the PARITY partnership (see CPT violation on Google)
And not what was already at the beginning of the translation called and misleading "the breaking of the symmetry of the space"
At the time, violating CPT in the presence was considered an innovation and was added to part of the repertoire of the "standard model"
The possibility that this violation exists even in the presence of the strong force gives researchers leverage to publish another innovation.
The matter is still in testing and has not been proven at all, but it will be proven that nothing will change in a wide-scale understanding of the standard model. Even so, this is a very successful model that, despite its success, no one understands.
Regarding the laws of nature:
These are all the collection of axioms on which a certain physical theory is based.
These laws are not engraved on a rock that fell from the sky.
questionnaire:
Do you really not understand that physical research strives to discover exactly the same building blocks?
Do you have any idea how to discover the same cornerstones (if they even exist) in another way?
The laws of nature are part of those foundation stones. Since the foundation stones are not exactly known to us - the laws of nature are not exactly known to us either.
The current experiment advanced us a small step towards understanding the foundation stones by showing us that if before we thought that one of the laws of nature was that the strong force maintains the relationship, now we know that at least beyond a certain energy level this is no longer true.
This was not entirely unexpected.
One of the goals that are attempted to be achieved in physical research is the discovery of an energy level beyond which - all forces are in fact the same force.
That is why we are already talking about the "weak electro" force, evidence and insights about its essence already exist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction
It may be that the present discovery is a step on the way to the unification of these two forces with the strong force.
Physics can be seen as an evolution of the study of nature and the laws that pass
Transformation are natural elements for this conduct. But it can also be argued that
Since we haven't found the foundation stones (if there are any?), physics deals only with the characteristic
Nature and not really in the study of nature. In other words, this evolution can be seen as a walk
backwards and the decomposition of the observations into smaller and smaller, distant and mathematical factors,
At a time when it would have been more correct to start from the foundations.
It is possible to formulate observations and experiments of the characteristics of nature in a precise mathematical way
And rules even without knowing what the foundation stones are. This is also probably the reason
The "laws of nature" as we call them, have a relatively short lifespan.
If indeed there are a small number of cornerstones that underlie every phenomenon in the universe
(sorry if it sounds a bit idealistic), so maybe there is a way to check out Maxwell,
Gauss and Faraday one more time? Or maybe we will continue the research and these will be discovered by themselves?
sympathetic
I got the impression that you understand something on the subject, so I want to ask you a question and I would be happy if you could answer me: Does the violation of the law imply that in the strong force at certain (and very high) energies, phenomena such as the disintegration of the quarks and gluons into other particles occur? Which in retrospect proves the claim
Even in the strong force, phenomena occur that are 'pursued' to phenomena that occur between the weak and electromagnetic forces?
did I understand correctly?
The article uses words.
He talks about science but it is not science.
Is the word Brookhaven scientific? Is it disprovable?
Is it because the article deals with science that we should interpret the word Brookhaven as refutable?
In my opinion (and Yaakov's opinion) - the wording of the article is flawed.
The whole argument is that the interpretation you give to the term "law of nature" is not the interpretation that this term was invented to represent.
You also do not answer the question "what is science looking for" because you cannot answer it without using this term or an equivalent term.
This shows that if you "fit" the term "law of nature" for a need other than the need it was invented to describe, you will have to invent a new expression to describe the same thing that science strives for.
If you call it "Carfoxol" one day someone like you will come and claim "What the hell?! The carpockets are our invention" and then someone like me will come and tell him that if this is the case - he should propose a new term to explain what science is looking for.
That's why it's worth stopping here.
Michael
You say that it is not a scientific discussion, but the article does deal with science and within the framework of science, the use of the term "law of nature" is valid regarding our beliefs about reality which can be confirmed or refuted.
In my opinion, science discusses scientific questions within the framework of scientific language and not theological questions. I think science is coming
Describing the world (or the results of experiments) in the most compact way does not answer the theological questions: What is existence? Why are things the way they are?
There is no end to such questions. If we say the world consists of such and such elementary particles it is always possible
To ask why these and not others. If we say everything started with the Big Bang, we will ask what was before what created it
What was in the universe at the moment of the singularity? In my opinion, such questions are theological when they cannot be formulated in scientific language to refute or confirm them. That's why the theological search for a natural law is absurd since it will always be possible to ask why it is this way and not another. The compact description of experiments is in principle achievable in any period and thus the correct scientific laws for that period are determined. When technology improves and there are new results that cannot be explained using the old laws, a scientific revolution occurs and new laws of nature are defined. In my opinion, this is how science works, as opposed to philosophy or theology.
Standard Model scientists have known for a long time that the model is not accurate enough and that there are problems with it. And therefore looking for unified models.
sympathetic:
This is not a scientific discussion.
Scientific discussion deals with theories and their refutation.
The belief in the existence of the laws of nature is a belief that stands at the foundation of science. Without this belief we would not be engaged in science and probably there would be no scientific discussions either.
What do you think science is looking for if not the laws of nature?
So theoretically it could be that there are no laws of nature and all science is just self-deception, but it seems to me that this theoretical possibility is nothing but nonsense.
By the way - there is no difference between law and law. If there are many laws, they can be combined into one law by the relation "and" and equally it is possible to break down a single law into several laws by dividing the situations into an arbitrary number of classes and defining the law separately for each class.
The use of the term "law of nature" in the scientific language is the use I make of it.
The scientists are looking for the laws of nature and not inventing them.
During the search they build theories that describe the laws better and better.
Lisa:
The truth is, I meant to speak much more simply.
You cannot check the aforementioned time gap - not because of the inaccuracy of the measuring device but because you do not know exactly when Newton finished writing the Principia and you are not equipped with a time machine that would allow you to find out.
I actually just messed up the example.
You could be content with the fact that you don't know when Newton finished writing, yet I have no doubt that you believe he finished it at a certain moment, or in other words - you have no doubt that this moment exists.
Now - as already indicated in your previous response - you may answer me that you actually have a doubt.
My response to this type of response is "stop bullshitting".
liza, I did not read the other messages in depth, therefore this message refers to the information arising from your last message only.
The willingness to side with the statement that the laws of nature are eternal stems from a source that has not disappointed - at least so far - in the form of a collection of eternal and universal entities known by humans as "mathematics".
The separation that still exists today between it and physics indicates the caution with which the world of science takes its request to treat both as separate from each other. Physics is the closest of any other science to pure mathematics, the one that exists in my mind, in your mind, or the one that takes conventional forms on paper. In my opinion, there is no room for a gap between them: physics and mathematics are the same. Moreover, everything that can be expressed using mathematical tools is mathematics. The interpretation given to such expressions in "our world" is the science of physics or chemistry.
In an attempt to explain how much this kind of overlap manages to entrench itself in the minds of physicists, I will say that when some of them seek to reach a new discovery, they look for symmetrical patterns (in fact, they act as mathematicians); In this way they adopt, even if only for a part of the time during their work, the view that sees the universe as striving for absolute symmetry. After all, there is a chance that the next physical discovery may collapse this view altogether, just as there is a chance that the next theorem we prove in mathematics will contradict another theorem that has been proven. But it didn't happen. In fact, the latter has no chance of happening (again, in my estimation and I assume that in the estimation of every mathematician out there, because if I'm not mistaken, it can be proven that any two different theorems that have already been proven to be true under one set of axioms will not contradict each other) and as for the first one - on Even the higher possibility of its occurrence, as mathematicians will jokingly dismiss, I personally believe that it is the same as its predecessor, since in my eyes physics is contained (and if it is only "our" physics, that is, of this universe, then it is literally contained) in mathematics.
Since it is possible to say with absolute certainty (again, this is my opinion), although it cannot be proved mathematically, that mathematics is eternal and universal, then it also exists independently of man. Man discovers and does not invent it, just like all the sciences that rely on it and use it as a "tool". She is external to him - he is unable to subjugate her and she herself imposes her patterns on him. If he wants it, he will accept it, if he doesn't want it, it doesn't matter. This is why even if we all suddenly evaporate off the face of the earth, mathematics is the only thing that will be left since we are not responsible for it. She does not need us to "exist".
Hence, if physics is contained in mathematics and mathematics is eternal and universal, then physics is also eternal and universal. Newton's classical mechanics is not wrong, it is just a special case of a stronger physical theory that contains it - the theory of relativity. By analogy, no mathematical theorem that has been proven so far will turn out to be wrong - at most it will be a weaker claim than another theorem that will be proven in the future.
My conclusion is that the physical laws of nature, they are the mathematics, universal and eternal like it. This is exactly the gist of the thesis that was presented on this site a few weeks ago and I admit that I am an enthusiastic supporter of it (of course, I became aware of it before that).
To Mr. Roschild:
Well, in it we will examine the example you presented.
Regarding the number you are talking about:
In order to speak scientifically about the number I would need some way to measure its value. The measuring devices I have will allow me to measure this value to a certain level of accuracy. That is, I will never be able to know its exact numerical value. Given this fact, I will never know if this value varies between my various measurements by values smaller than the level of accuracy that the measuring devices allow me. Of course, there is the option that the change will be in the visible range and then I will have to draw my conclusions - either something was wrong in the measurements or the strange thing happened and this value did change! The article talks about such a strange thing. We have no way of knowing! All we can do is infer from the observations.
Michael
There is no point in a scientific discussion talking about things that are irrefutable or more precisely things whose properties cannot be precisely defined. In a scientific discussion there is no point in talking about a "law of nature" as an abstract concept since such a concept belongs to the field of philosophy perhaps. A chair or an electron in a scientific sense are objects whose properties can be defined and they get their properties from language. For example, a chair is an object produced and used for sitting. This is a setting and can be changed. An electron is an elementary particle with a negative charge. Both the negatively charged property and the fundamental particle property are refutable.
Since you said that it is not possible to know the true nature of the "laws of nature", we have no way of knowing even the number of the laws of nature - perhaps there is only one. If this is the case, should we talk about "laws of nature" or rather "laws of nature" We don't even know if the abstract object is singular or plural let alone what its essence is. Who allows you to use the term "laws of nature"?
How would you then define a law of nature and if it can be defined then it is again subject to human conventions. You choose to define a law of nature, so I choose otherwise... what determines? Set the social conventions that speak about our beliefs and not about an abstract concept.
In light of this, the use of the scientific language of natural law refers to our beliefs about reality.
Lisa:
I do not accept your interpretation of what I said.
The fact that we cannot know something with absolute certainty is not a doubt about its existence.
I started writing my response a very specific number of seconds after Newton finished writing the Principia.
You can never know this number for sure but I assume you have no doubt that such a number does exist.
Jacob:
indeed.
I use this idea on many occasions:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/knesset-speach-avi-blizovsky-2010095/#comment-253399
https://www.hayadan.org.il/knesset-speach-avi-blizovsky-2010095/#comment-253136
I often use his derivations in arguments with religious people and other evolution deniers:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/oldest-rabbit-fossils-2503082/#comment-42994
https://www.hayadan.org.il/zamir-cohens-changeover-blofs-140908/#comment-106512
https://www.hayadan.org.il/zamir-cohens-changeover-blofs-140908/#comment-123758
https://www.hayadan.org.il/volcanoes-may-have-provided-sparks-of-first-life-2010086/#comment-130766
https://www.hayadan.org.il/volcanoes-may-have-provided-sparks-of-first-life-2010086/#comment-130874
https://www.hayadan.org.il/does-darwinism-need-rescuing-0402098/#comment-174164
https://www.hayadan.org.il/vatican-darwin-conference-0503096/#comment-185697
https://www.hayadan.org.il/neandertahl-teeth-22090713/#comment-235616
And to a certain extent here too:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/deade-like-%e2%80%aadodo-1703104/#comment-263855
To Mr. Roschild:
The phrases I was referring to:
"Probably the true nature of the laws cannot be known with complete certainty" by Mr. Roschild
"I think there is no framework of thought that allows answering questions of this type" by Yaakov
Given these positions, it seems reasonable to me to question the firm statement that the laws of nature do not change.
Lisa:
An open or closed door - the possibility that "if not, then the laws of nature change when we change their wording, don't they?" You brought it up and I referred to it.
If you don't believe it is true - very well.
I have no doubt that you are referring to the comments regarding the determination of the laws. What expression by whom makes you feel such doubt?
sympathetic:
I am not dragging the debate in any direction.
I simply joined the debate that arose between you and Jacob and I agree with Jacob and I do not agree with you.
Not everything that exists has to be disprovable.
Is a chair refutable?
Our theories are disprovable. Refusability is a property of a claim and not of anything else.
The laws of nature are not theories. They are existing facts - just like a chair.
The theories try to describe them as well as they can but what they include are claims about the laws and not the laws themselves.
There is a difference between the claim that there is a chair in my room and the chair in my room.
The claim that there is a chair in my room can be refuted.
There is no meaning in refuting the chair in my room.
Michael,
Aniroa makes much more sense in discussing physics than semantics, but since you are dragging the discussion in this direction, I will write
Again my previous answer. The only meaning a natural law has is in the context of language. A natural law is an expression we use to describe our belief (confirmed by experiments) about the external world. There is no point in talking about confirming or refuting a law of nature in the external world as you want us to do because we have no idea what the laws of nature are and even if they exist therefore when we as humans use the concept of law of nature we are talking about our beliefs regarding an abstract concept that is in principle unknowable. Therefore, since the law of nature refers to our beliefs, it can be disproved experimentally.
To Mr. Roschild:
Burst to the door wide open.
You say: "Our belief in the law is not enough for it to be true"
I absolutely agree. This can indeed be disproved experimentally. This claim of yours does not refer to the questions raised.
Jacob:
I'm definitely inclined to side with your position
So what is the conclusion? If you were previously determined that the laws of nature are fixed and unchanging, I feel a little doubtful about your response to my questioning.
Lisa, I don't think there is any framework of thought that allows answering these kinds of questions, which makes them meaningless.
Hypothetically, the universe may have been created "before" (we will not go into the discussion of the meaning of this word) 5 minutes, and since then its laws have changed a billion, three hundred thousand and two times, when only our consciousness tells us otherwise.
It could be, for example, that I am the only one in this universe, and everything around me, including your reaction, was created as part of the last transformation of the laws, when you really do not have a "physical" existence (we will not go into the meaning of this word either).
Can I confirm or disprove this hypothesis?
No. Which leaves us to deal with the "last transformation", as it is experienced in our consciousness.
Lisa:
The theory you put forward has been disproved by every experiment that has ever disproved any theory.
After all, an experiment that disproves a theory shows that the law we believed in was not true, and therefore our belief in the law is not enough for it to be true. That is why the laws of nature do not change when we change their wording (and this, in addition to the fact that there is no single "we" at all and regarding issues that have not yet been decided, different people hold different opinions).
It is probably not possible to know the true nature of the laws with absolute certainty. They can only be confirmed with more and more experiments and increase certainty.
The change of what we see as a law of nature is not a change of a law of nature but of what we see. It means that the law whose existence we assumed is not correct and there is another law that determines what the correct law is at every moment.
I will return to wondering about a topic that I believe is extremely interesting.
Do the laws of nature exist outside our minds?
*If so, is it ever possible to know what their true nature is? If it is not possible to know what their nature is, is there not the possibility that they also change?
*If not, then the laws of nature change when we change their wording, don't they?
Since questions were raised on the subject, I repeat and emphasize that I completely agree with Jacob.
The fact that we do not know the laws of nature precisely and our knowledge of them changes over the years does not mean that the laws of nature change.
On the contrary: our very search for the laws is based on the assumption that there are permanent laws of nature that are worth looking for. This is a basic assumption of the scientific enterprise.
refreshed
So far, the standard model has been confirmed experimentally in an excellent way, therefore if you come across an experiment that contradicts the standard model but involves extreme conditions, i.e. very high temperatures, it is likely that the standard model will undergo a change following the experiment depending on a certain parameter. For example, Newton's laws were hidden in experiments that involved high speeds - Newton's laws were extended to the special theory of relativity, which gives Newton's laws in the classical limit as above regarding elementary particle models. That's why I'm talking about the expansion of the model and not its collapse and replacing it with a completely different model.
It is clear that it is always better to expand the theory if possible, the question is whether after we expand the standard model it will remain consistent. It is also better to connect gravity to the standard model, but they have not succeeded so far.
Ehud, in my opinion semantics is critical to the promotion and preservation of scientific knowledge. Punctuality and the insistence on unequivocalness are the cornerstones of all the scientific successes of the human race.
In any case, if I managed to raise this point to the awareness of the readers of the news, it is my fault.
refreshed
One experiment that contradicts our theoretical knowledge still does not bring down the entire theoretical structure. Even if the experimental results are true, a small extension to the standard model may be necessary.
Regarding your many questions:
A theorem is a mathematical theorem that cannot be violated experimentally.
Supersymmetric quantum mechanics is not a theory that has been experimentally confirmed, so it is unnecessary to talk about whether it is wrong or right following the above experiment, as well as supersymmetry in string theory.
Depending on the effect of the experiment on the standard model, so will its effect on our understanding of vacuum energy. There is nothing in the vacuum that is not described by the full theory, the vacuum is only the basic state.
Since we are indeed discussing semantics, my intention was "do not violate what we consider a natural law".
But I agree with A. Ben Ner, what we call the laws of nature is all we know. Jacob Do you know one law of nature that is always true? After all, everything you claim cannot be proven to be indeed a law of nature because it is always possible to come and claim that it will be disproved by experience. Therefore, when we talk about natural laws, we are talking about what in our human eyes is perceived as a natural law, we have no possibility to talk about something else...therefore the actual title of the article says that what has been considered in our eyes up to now to be a natural law (the only natural law we can talk about) has been violated.
In my opinion, Nimrod is right, dealing with science here is relevant, not semantics.
A. Ben-Ner,
In the high energy hypothesis, you did not describe changing laws of nature, but an error in our formulation. Even if we find other phenomena at higher energies, we will correct our understanding, and formulate a new law that says, up to energy X this occurs, above it another.
This new law will still be permanent and unchanging.
Regarding section C, I think you are mixing up the eternity in the textbooks, and the eternity in nature. Our understanding is temporary, and constantly changing. Nature, on the other hand, is eternal. Even if the universe collapses tomorrow, all the phenomena in it, as a result of a law of nature unknown to us, the laws are eternal witnesses.
What is the actual meaning of this violation of the symmetry of space?
Does this mean everything we know about the Standard Model is wrong? Does this confirm that the claim of the existence of supersymmetry in string theory is wrong?
Does this mean that supersymmetric quantum mechanics is also wrong?
Is the nether theorem violated?
Does this affect the understanding of void energy?
To Jacob,
A]. I will start with a quote from your response to Ehud:
"……its laws (of nature) are fixed and unchanging..."
B]. And now I will ask you:
Where do you get the absolute confidence in your so decisive wording?
Is it not possible that at very high energies there will be different laws of nature than those known to us so far?
third]. Allow me to comment that science recognizes that all known laws of science are not necessarily eternal laws. any law
Scientific is exposed to scientific, theoretical and experimental criticism, and may change.
If it wasn't yes? After all, there was no scientific law but a religious law.
Indeed the title of the article is quite jarring, what is interesting is that this is what is written in Daily Science.
If we focus mainly and not on semantics, then it is indeed an interesting discovery that in the future can lead to a change of perception regarding symmetry in the universe for when we understand order and disorder, in the meantime it seems that there are erroneous conclusions that need to be corrected.
Ehud, what we consider a natural law is of very little "interest" to nature. His laws are fixed and unchanging, whether we have formulated them correctly or not.
Physicists have discovered, at best, that what we have considered a law until today, is not such.
sympathetic:
To me, Jacob's comment is actually accepted.
The laws of nature cannot be broken.
All that can be done in an experiment is to disprove our hypotheses about the laws but not to violate the laws themselves.
You too, when you wrote the response, said that they violated what is considered a law of nature and not the law of nature itself.
In my opinion, that's what he meant and thus he was right.
By the way, the previous answer is also intended for B.Z. …
for an unreal integral,
First, what is the difference between RHIC and another accelerator that everyone has heard of, the LHC.
In RHIC, heavy elements are accelerated and not a single nucleon (proton or neutron). In the specific experiment, gold nuclei were accelerated, i.e. they took the gold atoms, removed their electrons from them and gold nuclei were obtained. This is a heavy element with a high positive charge (after the electrons were removed). The nucleons (protons and neutrons) into their quark components (each nucleon consists of three quarks). Under normal conditions the quarks in the nucleon are bound together and cannot be distinguished under the conditions in the experiment you get a "soup" of gluon quarks and the quarks behave more or less like free particles (as opposed to the situation inside the nucleon).
Jacob
First of all, in the experiment they violated what is considered a law of nature. Until today, scientists believed that a relationship only breaks in cases where the weak force is involved, and in the experiment it was the interactions of the strong force. If the experiment is indeed correct, it means that what has until now been considered a law of nature must be corrected.
Although the title is not wrong, there was a mistake in the body of the article, the text "The law holds that the universe is metaphorically right-handed or left-handed -" should be changed to "The law holds that the universe is metaphorically not right-handed or left-handed".
To the anonymous user,
The basic laws of physics were considered invariant (do not change) under certain transformations. Example: Time reversal is considered a fundamental symmetry of nature at the microscopic level. In the film showing billiard balls colliding, it will not be possible to distinguish whether the film is projected forward or backward (it is not possible to determine what the correct projection direction is...). In the same way a description of collisions between elementary particles should be the same if reflected in a mirror. In the XNUMXs it became clear that this is not the case for interactions involving the weak force (in nature there are four forces: strong (the force that holds the atomic nucleus together), weak (controls radioactive decays), electro-magnetic and gravitation. If the results of the experiment are correct it turns out that also For reactions involving the strong force there is a difference between the reaction and its mirror image.
I would love to read some popsci on pure physics topics. A little to understand what it is about.
Any book recommendations? Maybe one that gives an overview of the groundbreaking experiments in modern physics?
Still, it's hard for me to believe that I could understand something intuitively and not with the help of mathematical models.
The title is wrong. Scientists have not broken, and will never break, any law of nature.
It's a shame that a site that provides scientific content does not take care of its wording.
What interests me, and I did not find an answer to this in the original article either, is the meaning of the experiment in question regarding physics.
Is this the first experimental proof of the phenomenon since it seems that the theory dealing with the violation of symmetry existed even before the experiment.
It is recommended to go to the link attached to the article and read the full source.
Apparently there was a mistake and only a part went up and only the first half in Hebrew actually went up to the site.
Um, the article is interestingly written, but in general, nothing is written about the experiment, but only about background material, if it is possible to expand a bit for those who don't understand what was actually done in the experiment, that would be great. Happy Holidays