Metaphysics as an Error

[Little Idiot]

@ SoS and anyone else interested
My 'maths post'

I proved and demonstrated once already that mathematical knowledge exists without dependence on the empirical, you failed to dispute that point as I recall, please feel free to refer me to the post where you did dispute that point, if I missed it or if I am in error - as I may be, having but the intellect of a human.
<sniggers at the fools who think intellect is measure in volume terms, such as 'planet size'>

Actually, you haven't said why it is knowledge. The point is that knowledge can be defined quite clearly. The problem with mathematics is that if one accepts that as knowledge, one is basically allowing purely analytical statements. There's nothing in mathematics that we didn't put there.

I think there is no need to defend maths as being able to produce knowledge , pi = 3.142 the ratio of the diameter to radius of a circle is known, and is knowledge. Given X and an equation we can find Y. This does not need defending.
You know this, as you dont actually commit to saying mathd does not give knowledge, which is a shame, we could do with a laugh.

DISCLAIMER 'beyond*' and 'start*' are spatial and temporal term applied out side the space-time domain for suggestion of meaning - this does not suggest that I am ignorant of the inappropriate use of these terms, they are used for simplicity and for the purpose of suggestive communication only.

Assuming you can not disprove my earlier proof - in maths we do have proofs of course, assuming you can not dismiss my argument; then I have shown, and Penrose agrees (he's a mathematician, physicist and a lot smarter than anyone here even 'the planet' ) - I suggest tentatively along with the vast majority of the academic maths community - that maths describes an existence and a reality beyond the empirical.

So because Penrose thinks x it must be the case? What's the relevance of Penrose or the 'vast majority' of the academic maths community? Mathematical platonism isn't as popular as it used to be, by the way. Neither is what I'm suggesting popular, but I find it hard to believe we are now submitting these question to the popular vote, or to the discretion of Penrose.

You do read English, dont you?
I proved it my self first with 'odds and evens' (proof which no one could dismiss), the used my proof as foundation to link into Penrose. I and he prove the same point, I and my peers working with odds and evens, he and his working with the cosmos and residue from pre-big-bang. If I prove odds and even, thats OK, its a suitable level, if I claim to prove the existence of a cosmos before space time, and suggest examination of the background radiation can emperically show this, you must agree its best I use Penrose or other proffessors to argue the point?

The fact that it is possible to construct mathematical models as Penrose (which may or may not be accurate – that’s not the point at this stage) does in the clip I link below of 'beyond*' the 'start*' of our space-time, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that our maths does not need our space-time to be real, and thus does not need our empirical or physical to be real. Can you dispute that?

Not only does it prove mathematics can exist outside space time, it proves the principle of a human inside space-time discovering knowledge about 'beyond*' space-time, and I am happy to say it is empirically testable - we can in principle test the current physical world for traces of the previous one; he uses the analogy of looking at the ripples on a pond AFTER the rain stops to figure out where each rain drop fell.

This is so awful it doesn't deserve a response.

Sorry, thats an epic fail for you.
Note that I am commenting on Penrose and only repeating his words.
That means you are saying in effect - even though Penrose holds one of the most prestigious chairs in maths, his work is so wrong that a simple assertion from me is all it takes to dismiss it.
Even if you were a maths proffessor that would be a laughable attitude, coming from you its just classic.

Sorry for over editorializing the clip, but it makes me think; 'FUCK FUCK FUCK! that’s Fucking awsome.'
Note; I never swear - when did I last swear on the forum? and the fact that I did so 4 times here doesn’t even begin to show how Fucking awesome that is.

I still can't believe they let you teach physics to people.

Not only do they 'let me' but I am paid a top salary in one of the most presitigious schools in the country to do so. They were so keen to 'let me' they paid for my international flight and hotel to come for interview when they were looking for elite skilled teachers.

But your casual comment (like your earlier one line dismissal of a maths proffessor) fails completely to actually counter any thing in my post, I am sure you understand that.

Anyway I thought I'd share the link with you guys, now, honest answer please; doesnt that make you think the same?
(see how I give you an easy opener for a counter attack? I dont give a #0($ )

Yeah. No one takes Penrose - or Hameroff for that matter - seriously. It's a bit like you and jamest - no one takes you seriously either.

Funny thing that.
Bohr creditted the ancient traditions for his ideas.
Max Planck stated clearly that consciousness was behind all existence (I quote him earlier).
John Wheeler (last of the 'fathers of QM') said "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." As he aged (and had a heart attack) said he had only time left to focus on one idead and spent his last years on the point that "human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well" here is a link to Discover in 2002where at age 90 (with 6 years left to live) he confirms this. There is also a bit on his 'delayed choice experiment' where a photons path can change retro-spectively by millions of light years when a human observes it.

So it is fair to say the majority of the early scientists who descovered QM took this idea of 'consciousness as a foundation for reality' seriously. Its equally true to say that there are respectable current scientists who take it seriously.

Equally it is obviously valid to say "No one takes Penrose - or Hameroff for that matter - seriously." is both a profound error, and a statement from ignorance. You said yourself that we dont submit these things to public vote.

It is far more accurate to say nobody takes YOU seriously.

The fact that it destroys your J team's petty argument (that we need the emperical to get knowledge, that metaphysics is invalid because all knowledge depends on the physical etc.) is trivial compared to what it actually really means.

Strawman. My argument never asserted that we needed the empirical to get knowledge, it established empiricism as a source of knowledge. Second, metaphysics isn't invalid because all knowledge depends on the physical, metaphysics is a failed project because there is no evidence or argument for its possibility.

Again, as I told you earlier, this is not just about you.
SD made the exact claim more than once in this thread. As have others.
James and I have shown several foundations for metaphysics.
Modern QM is based on ideas of Bohr, which he stated clearly were drawn from ancient metaphysical knowledge. The principle of complementary opposites is his family moto, and 'yin and yang' is central to his coat of arms.

What it means is that we have a verifiable way of knowing if there have been previous universes.
Also it means we have at least one way of knowing not dependent upon the emperical, which is good as we agree emperical method cant find Truth.

The question of previous or next universes is entirely separate from metaphysics.

That is fundamental error.
Knowledge that there was a previous universe before this one will provide an answer to metaphysical questions about the distant future and past of the universe, including the 'past* before* our time', and answer clearly the ultimate fate of the cosmos.

[SpeedOfSound]

So because Penrose thinks x it must be the case? What's the relevance of Penrose or the 'vast majority' of the academic maths community? Mathematical platonism isn't as popular as it used to be, by the way. Neither is what I'm suggesting popular, but I find it hard to believe we are now submitting these question to the popular vote, or to the discretion of Penrose.

You do read English, dont you?
I proved it my self first with 'odds and evens' (proof which no one could dismiss),
the used my proof as foundation to link into Penrose.
I and he prove the same point,
I and my peers working with odds and evens,
he and his working with the cosmos and residue from pre-big-bang. If I prove odds and even, thats OK, its a suitable level, if I claim to prove the existence of a cosmos before space time, and suggest examination of the background radiation can emperically show this, you must agree its best I use Penrose or other proffessors to argue the point?

What did you prove with odds and evens again?

I thought it was that there were other ways of knowing besides the empirical? But then you didn't really prove that at all anyway. Do you read English? CDSG said there is nothing in the math that we didn't put there. Thee is some work needed in explaining that to you as well as supporting it.

But I just wanted to caution you on believing your own press about what you have proven. In every case where you claim this sort of thing what you have proven is that you have the staying power to frustrate people into dropping their efforts to show you the flaws. An old Norwegian grandpa of my friend used the phrase: "Strong like bull, smart like tractor'. I'm reminded.

But we are all done with that conversation for the time being.

Focus on THIS.

1. You are claiming a new way of knowing that is not empirical.

Then you say:

and suggest examination of the background radiation can emperically show this, you must agree its best I use Penrose or other proffessors to argue the point?

You just pointed out that empirical evidence is suggested by Penrose to verify his theory. ????

2. Penrose doesn't have a theory yet. He was suggesting an intuitive way of developing one that is I think brilliant. He doesn't have the math yet to support it is what I heard him saying.

3. If he did have such a theory it would be like my suggested 40 pages. It would be pure math that we developed that would accurately model our empirical data on this universe. Remember I suggested that space/time was a stupid human trick and that the math would be in some other geometry than that. Before you drug the old English dude in.

So. What we would get out of such math is a prediction of empirical data. That's what we wanted out of it so that's what we put into it.

With odds and evens the situation is the same. We started with cutting fish and we created math to help us cut them.

Do we get new knowledge from this? I think so if we define knowledge as predictive power. But what is predictive power?

Edit: I think the pure math physics is also giving us knowledge in the form of predicting what happened before as well as prediction. But it's still all verified empirically.

[SpeedOfSound]

Before I miss the chance I want to tell you my opinion of Penrose on the mind and the triumvirate. That clip.

He is talking out of his ass about something he is not qualified to talk about. He did this before with his microtubule fart-gas. Clips of prominent scientists and out of context quotes where they was philosophical have always been a problem with these forum conversations.

That's all they are is a problem. They lend nothing else to the discussion.

Ahh. Here is an example. Planck is a favorite among the christians too.

Funny thing that.
Bohr creditted the ancient traditions for his ideas.
Max Planck stated clearly that consciousness was behind all existence (I quote him earlier).
John Wheeler (last of the 'fathers of QM') said "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." As he aged (and had a heart attack) said he had only time left to focus on one idead and spent his last years on the point that "human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well" here is a link to Discover in 2002where at age 90 (with 6 years left to live) he confirms this. There is also a bit on his 'delayed choice experiment' where a photons path can change retro-spectively by millions of light years when a human observes it.

So it is fair to say the majority of the early scientists who descovered QM took this idea of 'consciousness as a foundation for reality' seriously. Its equally true to say that there are respectable current scientists who take it seriously.

Equally it is obviously valid to say "No one takes Penrose - or Hameroff for that matter - seriously." is both a profound error, and a statement from ignorance. You said yourself that we dont submit these things to public vote.

It is far more accurate to say nobody takes YOU seriously.

These are scientists talking out of their assess after they get famous. Just move along. Nothing important to look at here. Old clueless physicists do not have a fucking thing to say about the brain. Call that an SOS principle.

[SpeedOfSound]

That is fundamental error.
Knowledge that there was a previous universe before this one will provide an answer to metaphysical questions about the distant future and past of the universe, including the 'past* before* our time', and answer clearly the ultimate fate of the cosmos.

Yes it is a fundamental error of yours. This is physics not metaphysics. If you are arguing with the OP then he gets to use his definition else you have straw in your fist.

[SpeedOfSound]

Interesting. My son and I know shit about physics. We were at a Perkins two weeks ago with salt as galaxies and pepper as black holes arrayed on the table. In an expanding universe the blacks holes were left overs and Dylan suggested that there is the problem of no way to collapse them into one big banger. I suggested that they didn't have space time anyway so it doesn't matter if they are one or not. They would still carry over some kind of information into the next cycle.

This of course is all bullshit by two guys that don't know any better. Still it sounds eerily similar to what Penrose is suggesting.

The waitress thought we were weird too. Maybe we can get some youtube video of her opinion over here.

[SpeedOfSound]

One more story. We had a physics and algebra teacher in my high school. He was considered a sciency type. Turns out he was a shop teacher before I got him for science and math. Long after, I was in college making money for my TI Sr-52 calculator and my drinking problem by tutoring CSci 101. He was taking the course because the HS made him.

I discovered to my absolute fucking horror that he didn't know what a quadratic equation was. I had to teach him.

[Little Idiot]

The relativists' claim is that there is no way to know of anything, other than 'E' (the empirical realm).

Now, let's attend to the subset of 'E' - that is, the constituent parts of E (henceforth 'Es'), such as the Sun, other stars, the Earth, water, trees, pigs, humanity, etc. etc.. Though I really want to focus upon 'you', the individual itself (henceforth 'ii').

Now, how does the ii observe/see/perceive (or whatever word the J-team choose) the members of Es? From the point of view of logic, there can only be two possible stances:

1) The ii observes Es as they are, externally to itself. That is, the ii observes Es as they are, apart and distinct to itself.
2) The ii observes Es representationally and internally to itself. That is, the image of Es is generated within the ii.

There are no rational alternatives - where one entity sees another, that vision must be internal or external to the viewer. This is a necessary addendum to the relativist stance, although [seemingly] he is probably ignorant of this necessity. We can now go on to develop this line of thought:

If '1' (see above), then an ontology is implied, since it is necessary that each individual of Es must BE separate and distinct to one another. This is commensurate with the general materialist outlook - which is a metaphysic; hence not facilitating a rejection of [other] metaphysics.

If '2', then it becomes clear that 'E' must necessarily be distinct, yet integral, to the ii. That is, E must be reducible to the ii, since it is merely a representation, generated by the ii within itself.
This position is not commensurate with idealism/solipsism, since no denial or refutation of an 'external realm' has [yet] been forthcoming. That is, at this juncture, nothing has been said sufficient to invoke any ontology, nor to refute relativism. However, further progression can be made:

If '2', it has been shown that E is reducible to the ii, since each observed entity (Es) is [internally] self-generated. That is, no single member of Es is the ii itself. Formally:

1) If Es is internal to E.
2) And E is internal to the ii.
3) Then E is not internal to Es (not internal to constituent part(s) of E), and:
4) Therefore, the ii is not synonymous with Es (the ii is not a member of Es)... and therefore, not synonymous with E (the ii is not in the empirical realm).

Here, if '2', the conclusion is that there is 'something' that exists that is distinct to the empirical realm, that gives rise to that realm. This 'thing' provides a basis/grounds/opportunity for metaphysics. It also provides sufficient basis to reject the relativist claim that "there is no way to know of anything, other than E (Es)", since the progressive logic of '2' does facilitate such knowledge. In a nutshell, it renders relativism as baseless... and therefore, as obsolete. Dead.


Metaphysics is grounded... is justified... is alive!

Good clear argument there James.

Is it just me, or is 'our side' producing post after post of logical argument set out in a clear way which makes it easy to identify any weakness in the argument, only to be met by casual dismissals which go off on a random tangent or rant or attack, but not actually pointing to any possible errors in the lodical points presented.

[SpeedOfSound]

Good clear argument there James.

Is it just me, or is 'our side' producing post after post of logical argument set out in a clear way which makes it easy to identify any weakness in the argument, only to be met by casual dismissals which go off on a random tangent or rant or attack, but not actually pointing to any possible errors in the lodical points presented.

I think I just pointed out some logical errors that you made. Along with some credential errors.

No one wants to touch jamest's argument. I quit reading after the ii.

[FBM]

Wow. Over 600 posts and still going strong.

[Little Idiot]

One more story. We had a physics and algebra teacher in my high school. He was considered a sciency type. Turns out he was a shop teacher before I got him for science and math. Long after, I was in college making money for my TI Sr-52 calculator and my drinking problem by tutoring CSci 101. He was taking the course because the HS made him.

I discovered to my absolute fucking horror that he didn't know what a quadratic equation was. I had to teach him.

Hehe.
Good teachers of maths and science (and more so physics particularly) are hard for schools to find and retain.
I have had to train people content minutes berfore they deliver it to a class, sad but true. On one occasion we were standing at the front of a class of students while I explained the physics to the teacher before going to teach my own class leaving her to teach her own class.

[Little Idiot]

Good clear argument there James.

Is it just me, or is 'our side' producing post after post of logical argument set out in a clear way which makes it easy to identify any weakness in the argument, only to be met by casual dismissals which go off on a random tangent or rant or attack, but not actually pointing to any possible errors in the lodical points presented.

I think I just pointed out some logical errors that you made. Along with some credential errors.

No one wants to touch jamest's argument. I quit reading after the ii.

I struggled on the first read through too. But I got it nailed third time through.
Its a sound case, and simply being hard to follow does not equate to being flawed. We are intelligent people here, apparently some of your team are anyway - if I can get it, there is no excuse for your team not to be able to get it too.

[jamest]

Good clear argument there James.

Is it just me, or is 'our side' producing post after post of logical argument set out in a clear way which makes it easy to identify any weakness in the argument, only to be met by casual dismissals which go off on a random tangent or rant or attack, but not actually pointing to any possible errors in the lodical points presented.

Exactly. On the whole, serious logic meets silence; laughter; rhetoric; condescension; ad hominem.

I think we should be commended for our patience - especially yourself, who has had to endure the brunt of it recently.

Btw, that argument that you just mentioned probably has ramifications for your own philosophy - if I understand your philosophy correctly. Having established both a grounds and approach for metaphysics, perhaps we might move on to discussing that, eventually - notwithstanding any serious counters to our arguments. I feel that it's getting to the point where little else can be said. Suffice to say, I'm clear in my own mind that relativism is a dead and worthless philosophy.

[Little Idiot]

Wow. Over 600 posts and still going strong.

Hehe
We can do a couple of thousand, given something interesting to actally talk about.
This one is a bit of a slog because the two oposition views are black and white, there is no middle ground for productive exchange.

[jamest]

No one wants to touch jamest's argument. I quit reading after the ii.

Why?

I understand that the post was dry and formal, but I'm hoping that you have more reason than that to overlook it.

[FBM]

Wow. Over 600 posts and still going strong.

Hehe
We can do a couple of thousand, given something interesting to actally talk about.
This one is a bit of a slog because the two oposition views are black and white, there is no middle ground for productive exchange.

Cool.