patschican wrote:What initial premises? Again, what initial premises need to be true in (If A=B and B=C then A=C)? Doesn't it stand alone? And can't it be applied to the real world? (If all boys are male and all males have XY chromosomes, then all boys have XY chromosomes).

The example shows the problem. Some people have XXY or other strange chromosomal arrangements. Visually we might be unable to tell that we're not looking at an XY individual. We might then say that only XY individuals are "boys" and assign XXY individuals a different label but then all boys being XY becomes trivially true because we are simply defining them thus.

rEvolutionist wrote:Schrödingers cat is relevant to this side discussion, but not the way Anthroban thinks. The cat represents one of the unsolved problems of quantum physics and that is, how does a non-deterministic quantum world underpin a deterministic classical world? That's why aristotlian logic still works fine at the classical level, as clearly things as big as cats CAN'T be both dead and alive at the same time.

Why can't they? I have yet to see any good reasoning rather than incredulity for this argument.

Luis Dias wrote:

rEvolutionist wrote:Schrödingers cat is relevant to this side discussion, but not the way Anthroban thinks. The cat represents one of the unsolved problems of quantum physics and that is, how does a non-deterministic quantum world underpin a deterministic classical world? That's why aristotlian logic still works fine at the classical level, as clearly things as big as cats CAN'T be both dead and alive at the same time.

Why can't they?

To be honest, I don't exactly know. I'm taking the word of the quantum physicists. But besides that, I would have thought the very name of the discipline should give a clue as to what scale its phenomena occur at.

Luis Dias wrote:

rEvolutionist wrote:Schrödingers cat is relevant to this side discussion, but not the way Anthroban thinks. The cat represents one of the unsolved problems of quantum physics and that is, how does a non-deterministic quantum world underpin a deterministic classical world? That's why aristotlian logic still works fine at the classical level, as clearly things as big as cats CAN'T be both dead and alive at the same time.

Why can't they? I have yet to see any good reasoning rather than incredulity for this argument.

Why can they?

rEvolutionist wrote:

Luis Dias wrote:

rEvolutionist wrote:Schrödingers cat is relevant to this side discussion, but not the way Anthroban thinks. The cat represents one of the unsolved problems of quantum physics and that is, how does a non-deterministic quantum world underpin a deterministic classical world? That's why aristotlian logic still works fine at the classical level, as clearly things as big as cats CAN'T be both dead and alive at the same time.

Why can't they?

To be honest, I don't exactly know. I'm taking the word of the quantum physicists. But besides that, I would have thought the very name of the discipline should give a clue as to what scale its phenomena occur at.

It is a dillema for a reason.

I think that it "occurs theoretically" as described (cat being both alive and dead) because QM is probably just a probabilistic empirical theory: for all that is unobserved is described as a superimposed field, and the probabilities it gives us is just its best shot, its best guess of what is going to happen in the future, when we actually observe. IOW, QM is profoundly positivistic in nature. What gives people an headache is the confusion between the theory and the actuality. While it's good for the theory to predict both A and B, it's ridiculous for the "actual" A and B be both "true". But we have no access to the "truth", only the theory. And our theories are positivistic by premise, one should not wonder that their final product is also positivistic.

I'll have to take your word for it. I didn't understand any of that....

rEvolutionist wrote:I'll have to take your word for it.

Never do that.

Luis Dias wrote:
I think that it "occurs theoretically" as described (cat being both alive and dead) because QM is probably just a probabilistic empirical theory: for all that is unobserved is described as a superimposed field, and the probabilities it gives us is just its best shot, its best guess of what is going to happen in the future, when we actually observe. IOW, QM is profoundly positivistic in nature. What gives people an headache is the confusion between the theory and the actuality. While it's good for the theory to predict both A and B, it's ridiculous for the "actual" A and B be both "true". But we have no access to the "truth", only the theory. And our theories are positivistic by premise, one should not wonder that their final product is also positivistic.

That's not accurate. Quantum superposition is very real and has been measured and indeed induced. You may find my entry into this month's sci-writing competition interesting in this regard, if I can get it finished in time.

hackenslash wrote:

Luis Dias wrote:
I think that it "occurs theoretically" as described (cat being both alive and dead) because QM is probably just a probabilistic empirical theory: for all that is unobserved is described as a superimposed field, and the probabilities it gives us is just its best shot, its best guess of what is going to happen in the future, when we actually observe. IOW, QM is profoundly positivistic in nature. What gives people an headache is the confusion between the theory and the actuality. While it's good for the theory to predict both A and B, it's ridiculous for the "actual" A and B be both "true". But we have no access to the "truth", only the theory. And our theories are positivistic by premise, one should not wonder that their final product is also positivistic.

That's not accurate. Quantum superposition is very real and has been measured and indeed induced. You may find my entry into this month's sci-writing competition interesting in this regard, if I can get it finished in time.

Well I won't bother going into it. Many brilliant minds have lost it with this stuff, so I'll just believe you.

Count Otto Black wrote:

patschican wrote:What initial premises? Again, what initial premises need to be true in (If A=B and B=C then A=C)? Doesn't it stand alone? And can't it be applied to the real world? (If all boys are male and all males have XY chromosomes, then all boys have XY chromosomes).

The example shows the problem. Some people have XXY or other strange chromosomal arrangements. Visually we might be unable to tell that we're not looking at an XY individual. We might then say that only XY individuals are "boys" and assign XXY individuals a different label but then all boys being XY becomes trivially true because we are simply defining them thus.

Okay, that was a bad example...I forgot about XXY. But it was bad not because the logic breaks down, rather because in this case, all B does not equal C. The flaw was in the human application of logic. If A=B and B=C then A=C is till a true logical statement that we use to draw inferences about aspects of the universe all the time.

patschican wrote:Okay, that was a bad example...I forgot about XXY. But it was bad not because the logic breaks down, rather because in this case, all B does not equal C. The flaw was in the human application of logic. If A=B and B=C then A=C is till a true logical statement that we use to draw inferences about aspects of the universe all the time.

Aboslutely, the logic's fine. The problem with deductive logic is getting your axioms right though. Ultimately you just end up showing things that are trivially true:

A All husbands are male.
B Simon is a husband
Therefore Simon is male.

The conclusion may be true and it may follow but it's not really useful because it merely follows from the human definition of "husband".

Count Otto Black wrote:
Aboslutely, the logic's fine. The problem with deductive logic is getting your axioms right though. Ultimately you just end up showing things that are trivially true:

A All husbands are male.
B Simon is a husband
Therefore Simon is male.

The conclusion may be true and it may follow but it's not really useful because it merely follows from the human definition of "husband".

True, getting the axioms right is quite important. If they are correct, however, do you think logic is a good tool for understanding aspects of the universe that are imperceptible by our other senses? Could we actually call it a sixth sense?

patschican wrote:True, getting the axioms right is quite important. If they are correct, however, do you think logic is a good tool for understanding aspects of the universe that are imperceptible by our other senses? Could we actually call it a sixth sense?

I'm not sure what could be considered axiomatic in the real world?

Okay, I'll give this a shot and I'm going to end up sounding really, really stupid, but what the hell. I'm a comedic filmmaker, not a philosopher, so worst case scenario, I join in on the mocking of myself and turn it into a skit or something.

Axiom #1 -- Nothing is truly the absence of anything.
Axiom #2 -- My consciousness exists because I am thinking (Descarte-like, but I am limiting it to my consciousness, not me).
Axiom #3 -- My consciousness is surrounded by nothing -- there was nothing before my birth and there is nothing after my death.

Therefore, from the POV of my consciousness, it always exists. It is an entity surrounded by nothing, so in effect, it is everything. And if my consciousness always exists, I always exist.

Dumb?

That's just it -- we try to assign a value to nothing. But nothing has no value. I think often when we "envision" nothing, we're envisioning vast empty space: blackness. But we're really envisioning something, not nothing. In fact, I would say it's impossible to actually envision nothing, just as it's impossible to envision infinity. We can grasp the concept, but not actually envision it.

So is it accurate to say that my consciousness is surrounded by nothing?

patschican wrote:Okay, I'll give this a shot and I'm going to end up sounding really, really stupid, but what the hell. I'm a comedic filmmaker, not a philosopher, so worst case scenario, I join in on the mocking of myself and turn it into a skit or something.

Axiom #1 -- Nothing is truly the absence of anything.
Axiom #2 -- My consciousness exists because I am thinking (Descarte-like, but I am limiting it to my consciousness, not me).
Axiom #3 -- My consciousness is surrounded by nothing -- there was nothing before my birth and there is nothing after my death.

Therefore, from the POV of my consciousness, it always exists. It is an entity surrounded by nothing, so in effect, it is everything. And if my consciousness always exists, I always exist.

Dumb?

This is all fine from a philosophical point of view but you can't deduce your conclusion to the real world.

Axiom 1 may or may not be true but does "nothing" exist in reality? Can it?

Axiom 2 may or may not be true but is it "my consciousness" existing? Might it not be one long continuous but external consciousness, of which I can view only a slice?

Axiom 3 may or may not be true. Some theists say that consciousness exists after death eternally. Some will no doubt say it exists before you're born too.

And that's the trouble. It may look like I'm nit-picking but axioms have to be self-evidently true. Self-evident axioms tend to be things like "a square is an object whose internal angles equal 360 degrees".

I've been following this thread with interest. I have no training in philosophy what so ever as the rest of this post will demonstrate.

This post was inspired by patschican so all mocking, laughter and abuse should of course be directed at her. I'm sensitive don't cha know:-)

We have all heard the question: How is there something instead of nothing, (and variants there of.)

So I'm going to propose that nothing can not exist.

Definitions:
Something=anything.
Nothing=absence of anything.

1, Nothing can not exist.
2, For nothing to exist, nothing must actually exist.
3, If nothing actually exists it must have a value even if that value is nothing. (Not sure about this I maybe reaching here.)
4, If nothing exists and has a value(?) then it has become something.
5, If nothing has become something it is no longer nothing.
6, Nothing can not exist.

How's my navel glazing? I think I need to lie down my head hurts:-(

DaveDodo007: I love it. And yeah, it does seem to make sense, although it destroys my model showing that I always exist, so thanks, bub!

Count Otto Black: Yeah, I get what you're saying. This is all just mental masturbation. Even I'm getting bored with it, and I started the damn thing...

patschican wrote:Okay, I'll give this a shot and I'm going to end up sounding really, really stupid, but what the hell. I'm a comedic filmmaker, not a philosopher, so worst case scenario, I join in on the mocking of myself and turn it into a skit or something.

Axiom #1 -- Nothing is truly the absence of anything. Do you mean the absence of one or more individual thing? So by that definition "nothing" would include everything, since everything would have at least something which is absent! I don't think you really meant to write that, did you?
I suspect you meant to write -

Axiom #1 -- Nothing is truly the absence of anything everything.


Axiom #2 -- My consciousness exists because I am thinking (Descarte-like, but I am limiting it to my consciousness, not me). I think that sort of statement, from yourself or from Descartes, is meaningless unless you can accurately define what is meant by "consciousness" and also by "thinking". I doubt if you can actually do that. I suspect any such definitions will just end up describing a poorly defined bunch of subjective individual opinions & considerations about the possible meaning of the words "consciousness" and "thinking".

Axiom #3 -- My consciousness is surrounded by nothing -- there was nothing before my birth and there is nothing after my death. If you can't actually define "consciousness" accurately (I doubt if anyone can), then any conclusion such as Axiom #3 must surely fail.

Therefore, from the POV of my consciousness, it always exists. It is an entity surrounded by nothing, so in effect, it is everything. If my consciousness always exists, I always exist. So this conclusion would be invalid, ie if what I've said above is correct.

Dumb?

But as someone else suggested - this is all philosophical style argument, which as far as I can see is incapable of demonstrating anything except flaws in semantic arguments about the use of words. Seems like rather a waste of time if you/we want to truly understand real things in the world around us .

Ian.

DaveDodo wrote:
1, Nothing can not exist.

Quite true because nothing existing implies that nothing exists which is a contradiction.

DaveDodo wrote:
2, For nothing to exist, nothing must actually exist.

Oh, I see that you got there before me. So ignore the comment above or just consider it a pat on the back.

DaveDodo wrote:
3, If nothing actually exists it must have a value even if that value is nothing. (Not sure about this I maybe reaching here.)

No, you are close. Nothing has an average value of zero when anything is in a maximum state of entropy for the area it occupies.

DaveDodo wrote:
4, If nothing exists and has a value(?) then it has become something.

Nothing is always something, it just wears a nothing shaped costume until it becomes distinguishable as something.

DaveDodo wrote:
5, If nothing has become something it is no longer nothing.

Yes, but the opposite is not true: If something becomes nothing then it is still something. Nothing is more of an illusion created by averaging energy fluctuations of local states of maximum entropy than absence of anything or everything.

DaveDodo wrote:

6, Nothing can not exist.

Correct! But states that resemble nothing can exist, but not for long because the energy state averaging of an area of maximum entropy is extremely unstable. Any deviation from the averaging energy levels destroys the illusion that there is nothing and in the process creates something out of “nothing.“

DaveDodo wrote:
How's my navel glazing? I think I need to lie down my head hurtsL

I don’t know about navel glazing, but your navel gazing is not far off the mark and it can be supported somewhat by the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics. You think your head hurts thinking about nothing in a philosophical sense try QM. At first you’ll feel like you have a massive brain tumor, but it goes away the more you read and come to understand.

To hell with philosophy, most all of it is pretentious mental ramblings based on preconceived notions or the desire to be different and use cleverness to exhibit it,. and I pretty much try to avoid dealing with philosophers. Except for one philosopher that I admire . Because he wrote this:

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher will not say it - Cicero

That is the kind of philosopher that I admire. One that says that philosophers are full of crap.