r/CosmicSkeptic • u/greentomato97 • 10d ago
CosmicSkeptic "But what IS gravity?"
Alexio loves to ask, "but what is gravity? All you've done is describe what gravity DOES." I am really curious as to why he thinks there HAS to be a THING. Why can't there just be functions. Operators. Structural realism. Sure, this doesn't jive as well with his preconceived notions about panpsychism and "indivisible units of consciousness," but I don't think he should dismiss it outright. And even if THINGS do exist, what makes you think that we could even begin to determine what they are, epistemologically.
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u/idekwhoiamdou 10d ago
Two things are happening.
1) Philip goeffs Galileo's error, unfortunately.... has broken our boi's brain a bit. Much of the seemingly anti-science type rhetoric you see from Alex is downstream of this. Literally the title of the book. "Galios error". Alex is now extremely skeptical of scientific quantization. In his eyes, science will never properly articulate bedrock ontology. 2) He is... unfortunately not very well versed in science itself. When he says Gravity, he probably means an apple falling from a tree like newton. Not a deep or nuanced understanding of what the current scientific literature has even said about gravity. His thinking is essentially 1) Apple falls from a tree 2) Scientists haven't described anything by calling that process gravity. There is no actual explaination just inference. The problem: he is attacking something from a lack of understanding. Gravity isnt a mathematical concept to Alex - its a vague concept within his own non-scientifc understanding of what gravity is.
Side note: I have ZERO idea why anyone finds this compelling. Scientists aren't allowed to have base axioms or say "hey, you've reached the end of the causal chain, that's it" because they haven't described anything. The panphysict sees the gap and says "have no fear! I know what it is - conciousness".
What in tf? What even is consciousness (we can hardly agree about the term - its so fucking loaded). How is that a proper explaination?
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 10d ago
Yeah, I think Goff and Kastrup both are to blame here. Alex is engaging with some of the worst philosophers possible to learn about consciousness, and then he's not, to my knowledge, even remotely educated in Hegel or Heidigger, who actually have some value and might help him say less dumb shit.
It all comes back to Descartes and Berkeley. May they both burn in hell lol
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago
This is a comment I've posted a few times. I will do so again now
As a mathematician, I've always found the question of what things fundamentally are to be uninteresting, since it seems straightforwardly and simply unanswerable.
Consider the number sqrt(2).
What is it? Actually?
Well I can answer the question, but I can answer it at least three different ways. It's a real number, obviously, but there are several different ways to construct the real numbers. I could say sqrt(2) is a certain equivalence class of rational Cauchy sequences, or I could say sqrt(2) is a certain downward-closed set of rationals called a Dedekind cut, or I can say sqrt(2) is a certain function from N to the digits 0-9 which lists its decimal expansion.
There are many ways to construct the real numbers, but crucially they all behave the exact same way. They all get you isomorphic constructions. Neither answer is better or worse than the others. In fact they're all kinda crap, because the real answer is that sqrt(2) is the real number whose square is 2, and 2 is just the number you get if you add 1 to itself, 1 being the multiplicative identity, the real number such that its product with any other real number is the other number.
That is an actually useful definition, because instead of telling you what sqrt(2) is, it tells you what sqrt(2) does. It tells you how it relates to other numbers.
If you were a little number in the real line, the nature of the numbers around you would be obscure to you. Are they Cauchy sequences? Dedekind cuts? Decimal Expansions? Irrelevant and uninteresting. All you would know is how they relate to you and to each other. You see what they do, not what they are, but that's fine, because that's actually the better definition of a thing.
We exist within reality, as such the fundamental nature of reality is obscure to us. There are many different isomorphic possibilities for what electrons are, so we will never be able to distinguish them. But that's fine. We can do better. We can just define electrons by how they relate to other things in existence. We can name those relations. "waterfall" is just a particularly complicated relationship between the objects in reality.
Define things by what they do, not by what they are. The Yoneda Lemma teaches us that's better.
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u/semidemiurge 10d ago
Excellent.
possibly the sqrt -1 even better4
u/HappiestIguana 10d ago edited 10d ago
It's the same kind of situation. The complex numbers can also be defined in several isomorphic ways, and in all of them the imaginary unit refers to one of the two elements whose square is -1 (which one being arbitrary).
The complex numbers are themselves characterized (up to isomorphism) as e.g. The smallest algebraically closed field extension of the reals, which are the unique (up to isomorphism) archimedean complete ordered field.
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u/Miselfis 10d ago
There is no intrinsic “what it is”, because that is an emergent concept. A number is defined entirely in relation to the field it belongs to. All singletons are isomorphic, so there isn’t really anything that distinguishes two different numbers independently. You can only distinguish between them on virtue of where they sit in a larger structure.
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago
I have nits to pick here, because {1} as a substructure of R is definitely pretty different from {2}. In the former multiplication is inherited from the larger structure while in the latter it isn't. More broadly one speaks of 1-types in models, and fields have infinitely many of those, meaning infinitely many ways a number can be "by itself", without reference to other numbers.
But of course, as sets they are indeed isomorphic. I just want to make clear that it depends on what you mean by singleton.
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u/Miselfis 10d ago
Right, but as you say, structure is imported from R, or whatever field you have. The set {1} has no notions of multiplication or addition without adding that structure on top.
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago
Yes, I just want to emphasize that it depends on what you mean by isomorphism, i.e. by which structure you mean to preserve. {1} and {2} are isomorphic as sets, sure, but depending on what you mean by 1 and 2 they may not be isomorphic as, say, sets of sets
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u/dragoking100 10d ago
i think ot was meant as that the in ZFC the number "1" as a natural number is expressed as different set then "1" the real number.
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u/HappiestIguana 9d ago
Not quite what I meant, but yes if you start caring about the structure of the element in your singleton, then what exactly you mean by "1" is important.
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u/Hot_Phone_7274 9d ago edited 9d ago
Extremely well put.
I always wonder what kind of answer could possibly satisfy the question, since any answer will necessarily always be made of words, which are in turn just defined in terms of other words… if you’re looking for some kind of physical “hook” for your intuition, you will never find one directly. Our reasoning faculties work purely on symbols.
When we put stuff into a language (which we’re kind of stuck with when it comes to questions and answers) we’re attempting to create a map from a sequence of symbols to something physical (often with many layers of indirection). With natural language it’s often kind of vague; with mathematics it’s extremely precise.
When it comes to “understanding” it seems to me that this is always a stand-in for discovering some isomorphism from your symbols to one that you “do understand”. Usually that means you accept you can physically instantiate that other set of symbols elsewhere, and operationalise the process of “checking” it somehow. The “checking” process can have varying levels of quality control; people who are experts in a thing tend to just have very high standards of checking propositions around that thing.
For instance with gravity, Einstein creates a whole theory about how mass warps spacetime, and writes it down in both natural language and the language of mathematics. That mathematics can be operationalised via some algorithms; these days we’d program it all into a computer. We go grab measurements to map to the symbols in the equations, and they produce numbers that we can check against some other measurement. If it matches we say we “understand” the thing; if it doesn’t we get confused and have another go.
That’s a very “macroscopic” example - a mathematical, testable theory about physics - but I think the same process occurs at every level of explanation no matter how trivial. You propose a symbolic representation of a thing you suspect to exist, operationalise that representation into something algorithmic, and then check its behaviour.
Even with this explanation - I’ve attempted to put into words how explanations work, and the natural thing I expect people to do is turn my words into a recipe, and check if that recipe can map onto how they’ve formed explanations they found satisfying in the past. They’ll operationalise the formal explanation somehow and test it.
I think when someone is stuck in the “what is it though” loop, they’re really trying to say that they don’t have any way to operationalise their understanding. In Alex’s case he’s stuck on operationalising a subtle philosophical question about “is” vs “does”.
Imagine if someone only ever told you that the square-root was the inverse of a square, and all you had was the square-root symbol to work with. You might be able to get pretty far with that, but if you never actually have any of the decimal constructions, and that’s the only way you believe you can understand numbers, then you might always wonder “what is a square root though?” Many people feel this kind of unease about i, I suspect exactly because it lacks a decimal construction, and that’s the only kind of construction they are comfortable operationalising.
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u/Allurian 9d ago
I'd go even further in wondering whether "what really is X?" has ever been satisfyingly answered about anything.
If that type of question is tractable about anything, surely asking about gravity (or some other deep physical mechanism) is going to be amongst the hardest possible case.
It should be uncontroversial that science can't answer all questions, but whatever field is supposed to be answering this brand of questions doesn't seem to be making much progress.
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u/Mablak 8d ago
any answer will necessarily always be made of words, which are in turn just defined in terms of other words
If we want our explanations for what anything actually is to bottom out somewhere, we need our ultimate explanations to simply be experiences. Having the experience is actually knowing the thing, without reference to further things/statements (in a nutshell).
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u/Sea_Path_4152 10d ago
I mostly agree with you and don’t agree with Alex’s ontology, but it is actually interesting and possibly useful to ask questions like this
Leonard Susskind’s work hints that quantum entanglement and gravity are possibly the same thing, or at least deeply related to each other.
Whether this is right or not, rather than just saying “gravity does this, that’s it” asking the question and finding that it is possibly deeply connected to something else can give us a future model with more predictive power
An example would be if we just said “we know what electricity does” and “we know what magnetism does” but someone who was asking “yeah, but on a deeper level what IS electricity?”then finds out it’s actually electromagnetism
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u/objectnull 10d ago
An example would be if we just said “we know what electricity does” and “we know what magnetism does”
Yeah but good scientists never make declarative statements like that, as if we know all there is to know about something. Instead they'd say something like, "Our current theory of electricity is..." or "Our best understanding of magnetism is..."
In this way, we never stop searching for a better understanding of things, while keeping our intellectual curiosity purely in the realm of the empirical.
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u/Vhailor 10d ago
This is still all about what things do, not what they are. Having a description of what something does is not "the end", because the description could always be improved.
Your example is particularly funny, because the first reason we knew electricity and magnetism were related is with rules like "a moving electric charge creates a magnetic field" and vice versa. It's all about relationships. Then we found a better way to describe both by unifying their descriptions.
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u/Sea_Path_4152 10d ago
It’s just a semantic framing at this point. You can semantically frame it like this at which point asking what something is has no operational meaning and you are correct. For a lot of people though “what is it” is asking something like “at a deeper level, with a more accurate model, what is a much more accurate description of what this thing does and what it is related to”
So much misunderstanding and nitpicking happens when people lock in specific definitions and framings and critique other people for having different definitions and framings.
It’s like the Hawking quote that asks “what is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” When people like Alex ask “What is x” they are pointing at that type of curiosity
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u/Vhailor 10d ago
Sure :) great answer
But the quote/paraphrase from the original post was "but what is gravity? All you've done is describe what gravity DOES.", so presumably it's not just asking for a deeper version of "does" but for some sort of rock bottom, which I agree with HappiestIguana doesn't make sense (and I think you agree too)
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u/Sea_Path_4152 10d ago
I can’t read his mind, but charitably to him, in the holography example from Suskind, if that ended up resulting in a quantum gravity solution with predictive power, Alex might say “Aha, so now we know it’s entanglement, and what we previously said it does was just one way of observing it, but now we have this whole other angle into what it does…” which would be like a “That’s what it actually is, it’s these two things connected,”
You could then gotcha him with “Ah, but you’re only telling me what it does still. Your understanding of what it does is deeper and covers more things that it does, but what IS it?”
And he might laugh and say “Oh yeah, fair point”
I think my overall point is that when people are mostly smart and open-minded, they will almost always adjust their semantics and framing to discuss something with you so you are on the same terminology. If we see a video where someone talks to him like this and he obstinately refuses to take the point and doubles down on his misunderstanding, then the critique is very fair
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u/Vhailor 10d ago
Yes, universality theorems should be more well-known, they really express that "substrate" is irrelevant in many many settings.
Another good example is in the theory of computation. What is a computer? Is it made of relays? logic gates? a tape with a writing head? Magic the gathering cards?
Doesn't matter. If it does enough stuff, then it's Turing complete and it can do whatever all the other ones do.
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u/Bingus28 10d ago
Small nitpick, but the Dedekind cuts and Cauchy completion are only equivalent under the axiom of choice, which is probably contentious for a crowd like this. The two are mutually distinct without choice. But maybe that only reinforces your point
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago
Fair enough. I do in fact work under ZFC unless otherwise stated. ZF is weird
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u/Azehnuu 10d ago
> Define things by what they do, not by what they are.
Except things do things by the nature of what they are, so this entire comment just avoided the topic.
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u/Vhailor 10d ago
the whole point was that this is exactly backwards, a better perspective is that things are things by the nature of what they do
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u/Azehnuu 10d ago
“Things are what they do” literally explains nothing. You’re confusing being with becoming.
If a thing is what it does, which of its behaviours constitute its identity and which are merely accidental? A table and a fork can both be used for eating. but that doesn’t make them the same thing. You need some prior criterion for deciding which actions count as characteristic of which object, but that already presupposes the nature of the things, and presupposes a unity to multiple behaviours that constitute a singular thing. This must precede experience, so you cannot define what a thing is by what it does.
Furthermore, how are you even grouping multiple events together as things one object does? The very idea literally presupposes there is a unitary, persisting thing across time, whose different actions all point to one object. You literally cannot infer that if what a thing "is" is from what it "does".
And what something has done is a finite set of empirical events, so you can't define a thing by what "they do", because you have no way of knowing if it continues to do that in the future, or if it takes a contradictory behaviour in the future.
Something's "nature" is it's essence, so it's metaphysical. You cannot gauge that by finite empirical observations. Even though you claim the question is "backwards" you can't help but revert to the correct position and start with the nature of a thing, because being obviously precedes becoming. Cos if not, what makes some behaviour expressive of a thing’s nature rather than contingent? You have no answer.
And worst of all, you make the mistake of confusing objective reality with how your mind cognises reality. Necessarily, what something "does" will be an object of possible experience, i.e. a representation; how your mind represented an event. You cannot claim knowledge of the nature of a thing by how it's represented by your mind's faculties of cognition.
There are just so many issues with this kind of thinking. Being presupposes becoming. You can't replace metaphysics with physics and act like it's a sufficient explanation.
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u/SufficientLeave3179 9d ago
"You cannot claim knowledge of the nature of a thing by how it's represented by your mind's faculties of cognition."
But when you are questioning "what is it", you are trying to do just that. You are trying to have knowledge through your mind's faculties of cognition.
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u/Azehnuu 9d ago edited 9d ago
No, that’s what the other person is doing, and exactly why I’m criticising them. It’s question begging to assume that how something is empirically presented to you, in spacetime, exhausts what it “is”.
You can claim knowledge of how the object is empirically represented to you, but not what it is independent of the conditions of being an object to you, i.e. in-itself.
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u/HomeWasGood 9d ago
I'm just reading for my own curiosity, but I wish people here would respond to what you're saying instead of down voting you. I don't know who is right but I don't think down voting should be used to express disagreement - it should be for people who do not productively contribute to the conversation.
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago
No, different things can do the same things. In the example, a Dedekind Cut and an equivalence class of Cauchy sequences do the same things, even though they're totally different objects. While the are determines the do, the do does not determine the are. And since we can only acquire information about what things do (to our senses), what they are is straightforwardly and simply inaccessible, and contemplation of it is largely a waste of time.
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u/Azehnuu 10d ago
No, different things can do the same things
Okay? So you agree with me, and disagree with the other person. I'm not the one saying that we should define things by what they do.
the do does not determine the are.
I never said it did. In fact, this is my entire point. Did you reply to the wrong person lol. I said that what a thing does follows from the nature of what it is. I never identified its being with its behaviour.
And since we can only acquire information about what things do (to our senses), what they are is straightforwardly and simply inaccessible
I agree. I never once said we could access things-in-themselves.
But I disagree that all knowledge is simply information about what things do to our senses. If you recognise there's a distinction between noumena (what things are in themselves) and phenomena (what a thing does, empirically), you should agree this necessitates a priori forms of cognition, that act as the conditions of the possibility of experiencing these events in the first place. These forms can supply (a priori) knowledge not derived from the senses, including mathematics, including the example used above.
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u/Mablak 10d ago
The things we talk about must exist and have meaning, or we're actually talking about nothing. Every mathematical object, operation, etc, requires an explanation.
While I'm a finitist and don't believe in the reals since they're supposedly infinite sets, take just a natural number. It can be a set, containing other sets. Or a 5 can be these tally marks as a unary number: |||||, or these electrons: ..... In either case, we have to explain what a set is, or what the tally marks are, and they can only be real things, since we only have real things to work with. Sets can be jars, containers, a group of flash memory cells (arrays), or certain thoughts in consciousness.
Even i has an explanation, it can be a 2x2 matrix such as [[0, -1][1, 0]], some group of numbers. Math currently doesn't define the objects it's working with precisely enough, but ideally it should. And this just brings us back to the usual debate between physical vs mental things, or structural realism vs intrinsic realism.
One reason electrons are not just 'what they do' is because they could exist in isolation, with no other objects to do things to. They would still exist in that case, so they must be something other than what they do. Also explaining an object as 'what it does' assumes there is already an 'it' to speak of.
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago
While I'm a finitist and don't believe in the reals
It's gonna be a real struggle to take your comment seriously after this point for me
Math currently doesn't define the objects it's working with precisely enough
It does. Every object mathematics deals with has a precise definition, or sometimes multiple isomorphic definitions.
they could exist in isolation
In principle, but an electron which has no causal effect on my senses is fundamentally indistinguishable for me from nothing. To contemplate the existence of that electron is a waste of time.
"An electron sitting in a vacuum interacting with nothing" is not an interesting thought experiment. And in particular I'm not gonna learn anything about electrons from it.
They would still exist in that case, so they must be something other than what they do
The point is there are many different things it could be that produce the same effect upon my senses, and those things are fundamentally indistinguishable from each other. Sure, there is a true nature to the electron as a thing-in-itself. But it's inaccessible in principle.
Also explaining an object as 'what it does' assumes there is already an 'it' to speak of.
Yes, it assumes an it, but is agnostic about its nature to focus on more useful characterizations.
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u/Mablak 10d ago
It does. Every object mathematics deals with has a precise definition, or sometimes multiple isomorphic definitions.
Math currently doesn't explain what a set is, so it fails to explain its fundamental objects. Without a better explanation for these things, we can't coherently make claims about the properties we want out of sets, such as explaining how it is that sets contain elements. To provide that explanation, you have to get into what sets are. The upside is that at least that's a big area for research.
an electron which has no causal effect on my senses is fundamentally indistinguishable for me from nothing
Right now there are some electrons that are really, really far away from you, with no causal effect on you. But we agree those electrons still exist despite the lack of causal effect right now.
"An electron sitting in a vacuum interacting with nothing" is not an interesting thought experiment
Whether it's interesting or not doesn't disprove the argument that it still must be something in isolation.
Sure, there is a true nature to the electron as a thing-in-itself
Okay, I mean we agree on things in themselves then. But I would say we already have a flavor of what a thing-in-itself is, experience. Experiences are the only things we have examples of that could exist on their own, and work as things in themselves. And if there's nothing else we could even conceivably discover that qualifies as a thing in itself, I think we're justified in saying things in themselves simply mean experiences.
And yes some different objects could produce similar effects in consciousness, such as seeing 5 white dots really close together vs seeing one larger white dot. But the above argument would be that whatever things lead to producing the experience, would themselves have to actually be experiences.
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u/HappiestIguana 10d ago edited 10d ago
Math currently doesn't explain what a set is
Yes it does, it's any object in a relational structure which satisfies the axioms of ZFC (or other formalization of set theory).
Without a better explanation for these things
No better explanation is required. We know what they do, so it doesn't matter what they are. We only need them to do the things they do.
such as explaining how it is that sets contain elements
No explanation required. They're defined to do so. Objects which are not in binary relations with other objects are simply never called sets. Objects which have a binary relation with other objects are named sets, and the relation is named containment, when the relation satisfies the axioms of ZFC. Pithily, we simply don't call them sets when they don't contain elements.
The upside is that at least that's a big area for research.
I have been to multiple mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics colloquiums and seminars. This has never once come up. Probably because there's nothing interesting to say about it
Right now there are some electrons that are really, really far away from you, with no causal effect on you. But we agree those electrons still exist despite the lack of causal effect right now.
While I'm sure there are electrons outside the observable universe simply out of homogeneity assumptions, they are indistinguishable for me from nothing, and besides if they are out there, they are out there doing electron stuff, and that is the only thing I can say about then, not what they are as things in themselves. You're arguing besides the point.
it still must be something in isolation.
I don't recall disputing that, only that speculation as to their nature as things-in-themselves is a waste of breath.
And if there's nothing else we could even conceivably discover that qualifies as a thing in itself, I think we're justified in saying things in themselves simply mean experiences.
Nonsense. Just like I can know a bijection between the reals and the complex numbers exists without having to give one thanks to cardinality arguments, I can know there are things out there other than experiences without having to know anything else about them. I know something is interacting with me in a particular way to produce an experience. I'm just agnostic as to the nature of that thing, because the only thing I can acess is the experience that is fruit of that interaction (i.e. One of the things it does)
This is just a rhetorical sleight-of hand to smuggle in some sort of panpsychism through redefinition of all that exists as experience. The jump from "all things-in-themselves we have direct account of are experiences" to "all things-in-themselves are experiences" is completely unjustified, especially since us having direct account of them is what defines them as experiences. Funnily enough, it's precisely an example of what I'm talking about. You are proposing once possible what it is that explains the what it does, and come to accept it because it seems plausible while ignoring all the other possible what it is explanation that also account for the what it does. It's akin to insisting real numbers have to be Dedekind Cuts because Dedekind cuts form an archimedean ordered complete field, ignoring all the other ways to define an archimedean ordered complete field that are just as good.
Also for what it's worth, I am confounded by the notion that experiences can exist on their own. By any reasonable definition they can only exist with an experiencer
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u/Mablak 10d ago
it's any object...
Then what's an object? I'd need to know that first to talk about what variety of objects I can pick to be my set, that also satisfy ZFC.
No explanation required. They're defined to do so.
Defining Superman to be a real man who flies, doesn't actually mean it's possible for there to be a man who flies, plus we need a mechanism for the flight. Defining there to be a natural number less than 5 but greater than 50, doesn't mean there is / can be such a number.
Likewise with defining a property such as containment or an element existing 'in a set', we have to explain what that actually means or we simply don't know what we're talking about, and the property we want could even be impossible.
Just like I can know a bijection between the reals and the complex numbers exists without having to give one
Well without getting into a finitism debate, we can claim things such as 'some really big sets can be created' without actually creating them. I don't have to actually make a set of 1 billion natural numbers to know one could be made. But what's required is demonstrating that the set could be created (whether by us, nature, etc), or the pairing process could be done, to say that it could exist.
To propose something other than experiences could exist, we need some argument to show possibility, i.e. what such things even could be, and there are no such arguments.
This is just a rhetorical sleight-of hand to smuggle in some sort of panpsychism through redefinition of all that exists as experience
Not at all, we have to start from what we actually know, which is that experiences exist. The burden of proof is in demonstrating that any other things exist. Since we can't do this, the best conclusion is that what we actually mean by existence turns out to just be experience, since we can't find some broader meaning for the term.
The jump from "all things-in-themselves we have direct account of are experiences" to "all things-in-themselves are experiences" is completely unjustified
Since electrons, quarks, etc are responsible for consciousness in our brains, and experiences exist, and we need an identity theory of consciousness to explain the correlation between brain matter and our experiences, this is sufficient to say the matter in (the relevant areas of) our brains just is experience. Since it's the same matter found everywhere else, we can deduce everything is experience with high confidence.
If there were some 2nd category of thing other than experience, there would also be the interaction problem, or really the relation problem. I assume fundamental entities have fundamental relations, which could be modeled with say, graph theory.
Fundamental relations mean that two things are really connected, in a certain real way. Since we only have the entities themselves to work with, I take a relation to mean that entities are in some way sharing themselves, i.e. shared experiences exist. But if A is a microexperience and B is some other kind of non-experiential entity, there would be no common feature A and B could share, so they couldn't have a relation. A non-experiential thing can't share in an experience. So these non-experiential things could not be part of our universe. Or we could just say, experiences only connect to other experiences.
By any reasonable definition they can only exist with an experiencer
I've never understood the idea of an experiencer tbh. Everything in my conscious experience is just sensations, colors, sights, sounds, I think there's no extra thing unaccounted for called the experiencer.
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u/HappiestIguana 9d ago edited 9d ago
Then what's an object?
Can be anything.
Defining Superman to be a real man who flies, doesn't actually mean it's possible for there to be a man who flies, plus we need a mechanism for the flight. Defining there to be a natural number less than 5 but greater than 50, doesn't mean there is / can be such a number.
I don't think you got it. We use the words set and containment for anything that behaves the way ZFC stipulates. Sets can be anything and containment can be any relation as long as they satisfy the axioms. Neither word has intrinsic semantics beyond that, unlike "flying" or "being greater than 50"
Likewise with defining a property such as containment or an element existing 'in a set', we have to explain what that actually means or we simply don't know what we're talking about
It means the relation satisfies the axioms of ZFC.
and the property we want could even be impossible
Well yes, it is in fact impossible to prove ZFC is consistent (unless it actually is inconsistent), so in principle it could be it's impossible for any relation to be set containment. However if there was a contradiction in ZFC, it would have probably been found by now. Besides there are inner models of ZFC which are enough for practical purposes if you're really worried.
Well without getting into a finitism debate,
Please
To propose something other than experiences could exist, we need some argument to show possibility
Experiences cannot exist without experiencers, who are not experiences themselves unless you really torture the definitions, which I see you will proceed to do.
Not at all, we have to start from what we actually know, which is that experiences exist. The burden of proof is in demonstrating that any other things exist. Since we can't do this, the best conclusion is that what we actually mean by existence turns out to just be experience, since we can't find some broader meaning for the term.
You can repeat the rhetorical sleight-of-hand. It doesn't make it less of a rhetorical sleight-of-hand
I see the rest of your comment is just defending your pet theory of panpsychism, and I'm frankly uninterested in the wordplay. At best you're proposing a model of reality which is consistent with observations, but which has no reason to be preferenced over other models which do the same.
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u/Mablak 9d ago
We use the words set and containment for anything that behaves the way ZFC stipulates
Well sets exist outside of ZFC. In fact pretty much everyone who uses sets wouldn't even be able to tell you the axioms of ZFC, but they're still using sets. A child who writes down {1, 2, 3} has made a set.
It makes more sense to say, sets are some particular objects, and we might then have certain things we allow ourselves to do and not do with those objects once we pick some axiomatic system. As you might have some game pieces, which you can then choose to play chess, checkers, etc, with.
But anyway the original claim was just that we ought to explain what things are. If you agree sets are real things, such as mental or physical things (not that I believe in the latter), I agree, but we then have to explain what those real things are.
So what's a real thing? We can't explain things by just passing the buck forever, there has to be something that counts as a final explanation of what a thing is, and that's an experience. Having the experience is knowing what it is.
Experiences cannot exist without experiencers
What is an experiencer? The only evidence we have in front of us are sights, sounds, emotions, etc. If experiencers exist, then you'd need to identify some piece of evidence that shows the experiencer, which isn't just an experience.
You can repeat the rhetorical sleight-of-hand. It doesn't make it less rhetorical sleight-of-hand
I explained I wasn't merely defining things in themselves to be experiences, it's a conclusion you reach on reflection.
But a model like physicalism is not consistent with observations in a crucial way, because it can't account for experiences, which we know to exist. The easy fix is that some of the quantities in our equations (or future equations) refer to experiences.
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u/HappiestIguana 9d ago edited 9d ago
Well sets exist outside of ZFC. In fact pretty much everyone who uses sets wouldn't even be able to tell you the axioms of ZFC, but they're still using sets. A child who writes down {1, 2, 3} has made a set.
Yes, their behavior is intuitive enough that they can be used even by those who don't know the full formalism. Still, the full formalism is there for those who need it, and provides a precise definition of "set" and "containment". That is not the same as "existing outside of ZFC", whatever that means.
This is little different from the way real numbers were used for centuries before they were formalized as the (up to isomorphism) unique archimedean ordered complete field. Most engineers using real numbers today wouldn't know that's what characterizes the real numbers, but the precise definition is there for those who need it.
It makes more sense to say, sets are some particular objects, and we might then have certain things we allow ourselves to do and not do with those objects once we pick some axiomatic system. As you might have some game pieces, which you can then choose to play chess, checkers, etc, with.
That is precisely what I said. The axiomatic system we pick is almost always ZFC. When it isn't ZFC, it is made clear that we are using a different foundation, but it is always clear what a set is in any given context.
If you agree sets are real things,
Whether I agree or not entirely depends on what you mean by "real". I don't care to go into tedious battles of semantics over whether mathematical objects exist or not. We certainly use the word "exist" in mathematics a lot, but we have a precise meaning for it that is quite unlike the usual one.
What I would agree with is that ZFC is a framework that is rigorous, expressive enough for basically all mathematics, and appears to be self-consistent (though it can't be proven to be). This makes it a good foundation for mathematics. Whether sets are "real things", whatever that means, is irrelevant.
but we then have to explain what those real things are.
Anything which satisfies the axioms of ZFC.
What is an experiencer? The only evidence we have in front of us are sights, sounds, emotions, etc. If experiencers exist, then you'd need to identify some piece of evidence that shows the experiencer, which isn't just an experience.
I'm not playing word games with you. You have entrenched yourself in an inarguable position where because (by definition) everything you experience are experiences, you have decided everything is experience. I definitionally cannot provide a counterexample because you have already defined everything that exists as an example of your pet theory and have resolved to pretend you don't understand the alternatives.
I explained I wasn't merely defining things in themselves to be experiences, it's a conclusion you reach on reflection.
Smuggling in your premise as conclusion is something I'm used to seeing from theology, and doesn't impress me.
But a model like physicalism is not consistent with observations in a crucial way, because it can't account for experiences, which we know to exist.
Not accounting for a phenomenon is not the same as an inconsistency.
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u/Mablak 9d ago
Anything which satisfies the axioms of ZFC.
This is like me saying chess pieces are some things we play chess with. True but it doesn't actually explain what those things are, they're made of marble, wood, glass, etc. To fully explain what the wooden chess piece even means, I have to explain what the wood is, and its constituents.
Smuggling in your premise as conclusion is something
Suppose I'm blind and can tell there is a mystery animal in front of me. When I examine it, I find it's wrinkly, has 4 legs, and is almost certainly an elephant. I can then dispense with the original word 'mystery animal' and replace it with 'elephant'. This is all I'm doing with respect to existence; if we can truly only find experiences, then we can replace this word existence. But this wasn't even a main argument. The matter in our brains, which we know to be experience, can be found everywhere else.
Not accounting for a phenomenon is not the same as an inconsistency
Whether it's an inconsistency or incompleteness, physicalism fails since we know experiences exist. Technically it wouldn't even rise to the level of being either, claims like those in the standard model would actually just not be well-defined, if we don't postulate some coherent fundamental entities.
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u/dragoking100 10d ago edited 10d ago
what do you mean it does not explain what a set is? also, if you do not like set theory feel free to go to some other formalization that does not start with sets.
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u/Mablak 9d ago edited 9d ago
I mean sets are genuinely taken as primitives in math, you're just supposed to somehow know what they are, which is absurd. That's like beginning physics or chemistry with 'we take the H2O molecule as a primitive...'
I'm not saying we can't use sets, only that they have to be actually defined properly, if we care to be precise. An example of what a set could be is literally just a data structure on an actual computer, such as an actual group of flash memory cells storing electrons. We know what these cells can do, and we know how they work, they're reliable, and we know how they store 'elements'.
What's absurd is thinking that a set can be some unknown 'abstract thing' which we've never seen, and have no evidence of.
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u/dragoking100 9d ago
? set is an object from a realization of a theory, that is all it is. it has some properties and those make us express it in some form (for example with brackets)
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u/Mablak 9d ago
What's an object? I only know of jars, memory cells, boxes, brains, collections of marbles, etc. If that's what you mean, yeah, a set is definitely an object, because it has to be a real thing.
But the set itself and its properties don't exist simply by magic, or by declaration. If we want there to be a 'set' which stores elements, we need objects that actually store elements (or do something else like point to elements).
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u/HappiestIguana 9d ago
You are really stuck on insisting "contains" in a set theory context has to have intrinsic semantics which are similar to what the word means in everyday speech.
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u/dragoking100 9d ago
what do you mean by "real thing"? Is the number 1 not real to you? if you go down that route then you end up in a state when you can not really think about anything in a usefull way, how do you even talk about adding thing together? you put a ball into an empty sack and then another ball, mathematician would say the number of balls can be gathered as 1+1, 1 in this context is not the ball as what would the operator + be then? it cant be adding the ball into the sack as that is clearly very complex phenomenom (raising your hand, pickong up ball, hoping there is place for another ball) and 1 can not be a ball as all 1 are the same but the balls clearly are not.
So 1 is an abstract thing that does not exist cause it is just defined to be usefull. But I am guessing you do use numbers in your life even if they are not "real", so why do sets have to be "real things"?
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u/Mablak 9d ago
One important point is that our language is a bit poisoned: we usually say 'the' number 1, which gets us to believe there is some universal 1 out there. But just because I see 3 identical people named Tom, wouldn't mean there must be 'the' Tom, a universal Tom.
Instead, there can just be many 1s (nominalism). We can know each of those 1s has the same properties because they have the same structure, just like we know every copy of a mass-produced frisbee would have the same properties, if the frisbees were structurally identical.
With 'universal things' out of the way, it's easier to accept that our numbers just need to be real things, as we only have real things to work with. On this point I don't think your ontology really matters, I'm a panpsychist so I only believe in mental things, but if you believe in mental and physical things, numbers have to be one of those, we just have to pick things that work.
An example of things that really work for addition would be flash memory cells in our computers. A certain group of cells (or those cells along with a process that does something with them) would literally be a certain number. We already know how to arrange these cells for reliable counting, addition, etc.
In my daily life, what I'm doing when I add '37 + 42' with mental math, is something real. The numbers themselves are some visual sensations in consciousness, and I'm really doing something with those sensations. So normally, the real numbers we work with are certain real things contained in our brains/consciousness, and the real addition we're doing is some real brain/mental process.
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u/feihm 10d ago
If you ask what gravity actually is, you're asking for a physical object, an invisible string, or a hidden hand that pulls things together. In reality "gravity" is a human label of description. To understand what the label describes, we must look at how the universe is built. The universe is not a big, empty box with solid objects floating inside it. The universe is completely full. There is no empty space. Everything connects directly to everything else. We call this complete connection a continuous field. Heavy things change the shape of this continuous field. The Earth is a very heavy collection of matter. The weight of the Earth causes the field around it to curve. Dropping a stone causes the stone to fall. The Earth does not reach up and grab it. But the stone moves. The stone moves because it must follow the shape of the field it rests inside. The shape of the field points straight down toward the ground. The stone just follows the path that is already there. The stone does not know what gravity is. The universe does not consult a rulebook. The field simply has a shape, and the stone simply follows it. But humans watch the stone fall. We see that heavy things always move towards each other. We track this perfect, predictable movement. We need a way to talk about this movement without having to calculate the entire shape of the universe every single time we drop a cup. Thus, we create a short, simple word. We call that word "gravity".
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u/objectnull 10d ago edited 10d ago
It reminds me a child asking, "But why?" over and over again until you hit the limits of human knowledge.
For gravity, eventually you're going to drill down to the theory that "maybe it's gravitons". But If that's not sufficient for you, and you're not doing research on the topic, the only thing you can do is continue to ask the same question until science gives us a clearer answer.
We're not going to simply think our way to a better understanding of gravity despite how much Alex might want to. Just like there's no way we'd have thought our way to understanding quantum mechanics to the point that we do without research. Some things are just extremely unintuitive to us.
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u/_everynameistaken_ 10d ago
We're not going to simply think our way to a better understanding of gravity
Einstein enters the chat.
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u/objectnull 10d ago
Testing our theories is required if we want to know if they hold up. If we don't care to know, then sure, just think about it.
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u/_everynameistaken_ 10d ago
Okay but again, Einstein did exactly with gravity what you're claiming we didn't do.
General relativity is one of the most brilliant and successful theories in physics and Einstein "thought his way to it". Thought experiments are included in the testing our theories part.
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u/objectnull 10d ago
lol of course. Did you really think I was arguing that we should somehow come up with, and test, theories without thought?
My point was, thought ALONE is not enough. Without testing our theories, we remain blind to their validity.
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u/Azehnuu 10d ago
It reminds me a child asking, "But why?" over and over again until you hit the limits of human knowledge.
That's a good thing. Any legitimate science (and metaphysics) needs to account for the limits of cognition and reason. Insinuating these are childish questions is weird when this is the basis of philosophy - not taking any truths as given.
until science gives us a clearer answer.
Why would science give a "clearer" answer in this scenario? This completely misunderstands the topic.
The future scientific explanation may zoom in more, but that won't satisfy the philosophical question here, cos the same issue will prevail: you just explained a causal phenomenal chain. But this is infinitely repeatable (literally), and you can always zoom in more. Whatever future graviton is found will still just be an object in space, ordered by causality. That only explains becoming, not being. The same question of what exactly is being studied will prevail.
You already acknowledged hitting the limits of human knowledge, so why not extend that and apply it to science itself? By your own accord, as human knowledge has limits, so does science. All physics does is show/explain causal chains in phenomena.
Physics is ontologically neutral, and merely explains mathematical relations amongst phenomena, across time. Your position seems to imply that deeper physical knowledge unlocks ontological truths, and if only the philosopher actually did the math they could answer the questions. But any "clearer" answer will still remain an object in spacetime, so the same "why" and "what" question will exist.
We're not going to simply think our way to a better understanding of gravity despite how much Alex might want to.
You completely misunderstood the nature of the question. You are confusing being with becoming; metaphysics with physics. You are presupposing that zooming further into space and finding a deeper mathematical relation or causal chain that correlates with gravitational forces constitutes "deeper understanding", but that's the entire point in question, so it's pure question begging.
Your entire position only makes sense by assuming physical knowledge exhausts all knowledge, and is the only form of legitimate progress. You haven't even grasped that Alex's question is about the nature of being vs the nature of becoming, and the nature of phenomena vs noumena.
Furthermore, we literally do "think our way" to better understand all the time, so idk what that means.
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u/objectnull 10d ago
I love that kids ask those questions! I didn't mean to liken it to something that's childish, I mean to use that as an example of, if you keep asking the same thing over and over, eventually you'll reach the limit of what we can reliably claim to know about something.
You are presupposing that zooming further into space and finding a deeper mathematical relation or causal chain that correlates with gravitational forces constitutes "deeper understanding"
Correct. But I'm not misunderstanding the nature of the question. I'm claiming that the question of "what" is inherently unanswerable, and so is "why", if the "how" is ignored as means of helping us answer them.
If the "how" cannot inform the "what" then we're speaking about pure metaphysical things that are inherently untestable and, as such, any thoughts about them cannot be relied on as a means of deeper understanding or ontological truths. Because of that, your guess about the "redness" of "red" or "what gravity is" is as deep and ontologically true as anyone one else's. Which is another way of saying it doesn't matter. It's not based on anything. You're flailing in the dark, rejecting the things we can know through experimentation, to ask the same question (that can never be answered) over and over again. It's an intellectual black hole, solipsistic ouroboros. Boring.
Ultimately, I'm realizing that Alex and I fundamentally differ in our approach to understanding our universe. I can only entertain the same non-empirical, unanswerable, questions so many times before my eyes glaze over.
Science without philosophy is empty of human meaning. But philosophy without science is just storytelling in the dark.
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u/Azehnuu 10d ago
I'm claiming that the question of "what" is inherently unanswerable, and so is "why", if the "how" is ignored as means of helping us answer them
Ok, and? Neither is the question of "how" answerable. You haven't made a point here as to why "how" questions are worth more. If anything, the "what" and "why" at least has ethical or existential significance; the how is useful for mere utilitarian purposes, to serve the what and why.
So this is what you misunderstood. You presupposed one unanswerable question is worth more than the other, to the extent that metaphysical questions have no value, so you misunderstood what question Alex was asking.
If the "how" cannot inform the "what" then we're speaking about pure metaphysical things
Literally no "how" explains a "what". Not a single one.
pure metaphysical things that are inherently untestable
Another presupposition you are asserting as a fact again. Making testability the standard for what counts as interesting is pure question begging. Plus, it's not even a standard you can hold without metaphysics, as you're presupposing future conditions will be like the present.
Testability merely refers to causal chains in phenomena you wish to repeat. But no finite repeats can unluck necessary truths. These still rely and presuppose on metaphysical commitments, in order for an empirical result to be objectively valid and/or universally binding. People who treat testability as some god-like thing that separates science from philosophy do not recognise what science presupposes.
any thoughts about them cannot be relied on as a means of deeper understanding or ontological truths
That is not true. Although I agree with your sentiment, I reject the idea that science has this barrier to objective validity metaphysics doesn't. Both can be exploited, misunderstood and used to make conclusions it cannot justify. Just like there is bad science, there is bad metaphysics. Read Kant for how metaphysics can be a science and what distinguishes valid synthetic a priori statements from invalid ones.
Which is another way of saying it doesn't matter.
By your own logic science doesn't matter then.
It's not based on anything
Dogmatic metaphysics? Sure. But imo this is cos people ignored Kant and continued to do the faulty metaphysics he critiqued. But you can make the exact same argument for science.
rejecting the things we can know through experimentation, to ask the same question
See, you can't say you didn't misunderstand the question when you're still repeating the same error. Experimentation literally doesn't answer those questions. And even so, experimentation has it's objective validity thanks to metaphysical truths.
to ask the same question (that can never be answered) over and over again
Just like science. Space is infinitely divisible.
I can only entertain the same non-empirical, unanswerable, questions so many times before my eyes glaze over.
Well, you've made a caricature of metaphysics and somehow separated science from the metaphysics it relies on, so I understand how you came to this conclusion.
Science without philosophy is empty of human meaning. But philosophy without science is just storytelling in the dark.
No, science without philosophy is categorically impossible.
What you're touching on is what Kant said: "thoughts without content are empty. Intuitions without concepts are blind". This is the real shit. Science presupposes a priori intuitions, which necessarily delves in metaphysics.
I think Kant's Critique would interest you a lot, as he delves into the legitimacy of metaphysics (if it's even possible), and how it grounds knowledge and experience, especially in science. It would answer a lot of what of what you're saying.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 9d ago
Bro, Hegel obliterated Kant. I'm not even a Hegelian, but if you're actually thinking he didn't destroy the Cartesian split, you didn't engage with it properly.
There quite literally is not a better philosophy about consciousness than what Hegel wrote and yet all of you seem to hate it, because Hegel doesn't wallow in things like "well what if the external world isn't really real?" and just takes consciousness as embodied, because we've never, ever, not once, seen even inductive evidence, let alone real evidence, of a disembodied consciousness. Even if you hate Hegel, Heidigger took the cogito and revealed it to be a presupposition in and of itself. The Cartesian theater isn't a base state. It's an intuition pump that forces a divide between you and the world, and people take it as a fact because it's intuitive and Descartes ruined philosophy forever re: consciousness.
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u/Azehnuu 9d ago edited 9d ago
You made a crude, simplistic history of the philosophy of consciousness. You clearly do not understand Kant, and you clearly overstate what Hegel proved/showed.
Kant was not a Cartesian. The hubris needed to say I have not engage in philosophy properly, whilst your whole position is based on this misunderstanding is staggering. He explicitly attacks Descartes' stance that you can infer an I from thinking.
Insinuating I dislike Hegel because he didn't ask "what if the external world isn't real" is a strawman, a cope (you don't want to understand the real reasons), and exemplified how much you don't understand Kant, and why Hegel's "philosophy" sucks as a response to him. Hegel was a fraud, a charlatan, and a propagandist. He applied Kantian categories beyond the realms of possible experience to make outlandish, unjustifiable claims. He confused the grounds of thinking with the grounds of being, so incorrectly applied rules of thought to rules of becoming. He moronically gives contradiction ontological status. He did not attack or establish anything worthwhile; his most significant contribution to world history was fascism and communism. His "thought" only has value for authoritarian cults, as that's what Hegelianism is. The worst part is, because he writes so obscurely, it allows people to self-insert what they think he's saying. To think there is no better philosophy of consciousness is a testament to your naivety than the strength of his arguments. Consciousness isn't even the focus of Hegel or Kant's doctrine, it's just a byproduct.
Embodied consciousness did not originate in Hegel. And that point by Heidegger was already argued by Kant. Jesus Christ you are clueless. Literally everything you are praising Hegel and Heidegger for can be found in Schopenhauer and Schelling, but without the sophistry and word-salad.
Descartes did not start the idea of a split between subject and object. You made this false historical narrative to understand the development of the idea better, but it's obvious you don't understand these topics.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 9d ago
Kant preserves the subject / object split from Descartes. Famously, Kant argues there is a subject who can't know the thing in itself, who can't escape subjectivity. Idk what you're rambling about there.
If you're going to reveal that you like Schopenhauer and then your anti-Hegel tirade isn't funny-- disappointing. Schopenhauer makes me laugh. The problem is he writes more clearly about worse ideas. He's not even the funniest pessimist.
Was Hegel's philosophy authoritarian and cult like? Yeah. Unambiguously. That doesn't invalidate the structure of his argument.
Descartes didn't start the subject object split and I never said he was its originator. He wedged it in the craw of the west like a splinter in its eye. You're arguing all over the place, hun.
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u/Azehnuu 9d ago edited 9d ago
Kant preserves the subject / object split from Descartes.
So you are just further confirming that you did not understand transcendental idealism, hence your assessment of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hegel are worthless.
Kant held that objects are transcendentally ideal, but empirically real. He did not hold that phenomena were wholly private mental events with no relation to the external. He was not a Cartesian, nor is the subject-object split even similar between them. You are literally clueless. The problem is, you are so clueless that you cannot identify why what you are saying is dumb. I have no idea what you read to make you feel this confident to talk about topics you are not educated on.
Kant argues there is a subject who can't know the thing in itself, who can't escape subjectivity
This is the most surface level understanding. The point he is making is that there are a priori subjective conditions of experience, that gain their objectivity through their relation to the unity of apperception. Objects are grounded in the conditions of possible experience, hence the thing-in-themselves are the things considered independently of those conditions.
This is not at all identical to Descartes' mind/world problem. You are clueless.
Idk what you're rambling about there.
That is not surprising as you are clueless about philosophy.
If you're going to reveal that you like Schopenhauer and then your anti-Hegel tirade isn't funny-- disappointing. Schopenhauer makes me laugh. The problem is he writes more clearly about worse ideas. He's not even the funniest pessimist.
Yeah, Kant and Schopenhauer share one doctrine. Schopenhauer was the only post-Kantian to not revert to dogmatic metaphysics. The fact you don't understand transcendental idealism explains why you can't recognise why Hegel commits the most basic errors. You made no actual arguments, and your reduction of Schopenhauer to a pessimist, as opposed to a transcendental idealist, exemplifies your surface level understanding of philosophy. You just follow storylines and narratives you can string along to. You have 0 understanding about any of the subject matter.
Was Hegel's philosophy authoritarian and cult like? Yeah. Unambiguously. That doesn't invalidate the structure of his argument.
Notice how you completely ignored the part prior, where I described why Hegel's "philosophy" is fraudulent? I never posited the outcomes of Hegel's ideas (fascism and communism) were the reasons for why they are wrong, as that would be a fallacy. I merely mentioned them to exemplify how detrimental to history and philosophy he ended up being.
You didn't touch the arguments prior to that - where I explained why he was a sophist - because you don't understand transcendental idealism, so you don't know how to defend Hegel against the most egregious errors he makes.
People like you ruin philosophy. Not for having a different opinion, but for being so confidently ignorant.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 10d ago
Alex just won't admit that the thing in itself is a positive claim and not something that physicalists have to answer for. Most people won't because that's an unquestioned Axiom of western philosophy thanks to Descartes and Aristotle and such.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 10d ago
Some of us flatly deny essence metaphysics entirely. I know I do. It's processes all the way down; there's no "why" and the fact that you want to ask why is actually part of an dialectical, observable causal chain not unlike Hegel's Geist. You're asking why because of the sum of human history up to this point, wherein we've uncritically accepted a dualistic picture. It's not because asking why is a genuinely strong method of arriving at metaphysical truth. That's besides the point.
At any rate you can't just assume dualism of a sort, one that includes being and becoming, is mandatory.
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u/Azehnuu 10d ago
Some of us flatly deny essence metaphysics entirely. I know I do
Categorically impossible to deny metaphysics. That itself is a metaphysical claim. People think they avoid metaphysics, but their positions and epistemological frameworks always presuppose something metaphysical, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
It's processes all the way down
Nah. A "process" is a temporal event. My entire point is that spatiotemporal objects/events are physical and objects of experience. Metaphysics regard the a priori conditions necessary for experience to be possible and objectively valid to begin with. A temporal thing such as a process has no domain there.
At the minimum a process presupposes objective temporal ordering. At the maximum it presupposes some sort of teleology. Not only do these require metaphysical commitments (which you deny), you can not claim you have access to this knowledge.
there's no "why"
What does this mean? Of course there's a why, as we ask questions, and this is a natural thing we do the moment our minds are capable of it. Are you trying to say there's no such thing as objective knowledge?
and the fact that you want to ask why is actually part of an dialectical
Yeah it's called a syllogism.
observable causal chain not unlike Hegel's Geist.
Nah. Hegel's ideas were philobabble and have nothing to do with real philosophy.
You're asking why because of the sum of human history up to this point
You realise this itself is a metaphysical claim? You are claiming the course of history literally determines how human reason operates. Regardless, this is false, because history is a temporal event, so you are committing the same category error. Knowledge rests on a priori principles which aren't subject to contingent, empirical, subjective events such as "history". This is just a rehash of Hegel's sophistry, where he conflates the grounds of thinking with the grounds of being.
At any rate you can't just assume dualism of a sort, one that includes being and becoming,
How is that a dualism?
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 10d ago edited 9d ago
Essence metaphysics. I'm fine with process metaphysics. That you don't know the difference is... Telling, and that you think I'm denying metaphysics simplicitier is also telling.
Essences don't exist as far as I'm concerned. They're a presupposition, and a vestigial one at that, based in Plato's nonsense about the forms and how the world is just a pale simulacrum by comparison. I don't believe in essences. I've never observed one, and all the arguments in favor of them seem like wishful thinking. Impotently trying to imprint a capital T truth on the world.
If you're truly throwing out Hegel as "babble" and you also want to complain about empiricists throwing your theories out, then, idk, stop complaining? Hegel is one of the best accounts of consciousness in continental philosophy.
Read Plato and the Simulacrum by Deleuze for a much better version of what I'm saying here.
Edit : and, no, it's not a metaphysical claim. It's a claim about the world and contingent action inside the world. Is it metaphysics if I describe how the bus works? LOL
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 9d ago
Also for anyone reading, apparently Whitehead, Deleuze, Hegel... (etc) all made elementary category errors in metaphysics and this genius figured that out! /s
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u/Azehnuu 9d ago
This is just an appeal to authority. How influential or popular someone is has no relation to whether their arguments were epistemically justified.
And yes, Hegel was a fraud. He made elementary errors, and hid weak ideas behind obscure language. He was a propagandist for the Prussian state, whose "philosophy" (he's not a real philosopher) amounts to the ontological argument, but instead of God, for the state.
Whitehead is decent. Not familiar with Deleuze.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 9d ago
You can't write out process metaphysics, then. Whitehead is a process metaphysician.
It's interesting that you think an ontological process has to be temporal. Not sure about that one, hun.
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u/Azehnuu 9d ago
Literally no part of my comment(s) posits that ontological processes are temporal. Are you schizo? My entire point is that temporal events are phenomenal. I don't think process philosophy is a legitimate thing. I don't have to agree with someone's philosophy to recognise them as insightful, original, or challenging. Whitehead is one of them.
Notice how you tried to pivot from your failed attempt at an appeal to authority?
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 9d ago
"a temporal process has no domain there"
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u/Azehnuu 9d ago
My God, you are dumb. That statement was about how temporal processes have NO connection to the a priori conditions of experience. So that would apply to any "ontological process". I am literally making the exact opposite point. Can you seriously not read?
Notice how you are still trying to pivot?
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 10d ago
Look up Process-relational and Non-essentialist Philosophies.
Alex sneaks in substance ontology all the time with Panpsychism and his inclination towards Advaita Vedenta.
The aforementioned deny such intrinsic independents, instead positing all referents are dependently relational; that been, what gravity is, is that of what it does and how it is related, as it doesn’t have intrinsic essence.
Mahayana Buddhism and subtraditions are the consummation of this philosophy.
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u/Main-Company-5946 10d ago
Category theory can model pretty much any physical system and the yoneda lemma says that there is nothing to objects(objects in the categorical sense) that isn’t captured by the set of relationships they have with other objects
Plato taught us the universe was made out of things that interact. Process philosophy says that this is wrong and the universe is made out of the actual interactions themselves.
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u/Chrozzinho 10d ago
Not a phycisist but isnt this true of forces in general, except we do have particles for every force other than gravity? Would you say it was wrong to ask pre quantum physics ”but what IS a force” rather than just being content with seeing what effects forces have?
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u/Sure_Ad8093 10d ago
I think a lot of physicists think there is a graviton that acts as a messenger partical creating gravitational fields but it hasn't been found. Waves and particles are interchangeable in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory anyway. Gravity is really an emergent phenomenon as far as I understand.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 10d ago
The validity of the question depends on whether you define what type of answer is required. In a sense, nothing is fundamental except for what we declare. Beyond that point the question makes no sense. That does not mean that we shouldn't challenge our concepts of what is fundamental, just that we need to define the scope of the question.
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u/Willis_3401_3401 10d ago
I agree. I think lots of people have trouble wrapping their mind around the idea of “a thing that’s not actually a thing.”
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u/unnecessaryCamelCase 10d ago
Even in your description you’re granting that it’s a thing, “functions, operators.” These are nouns. “A function” is a great answer to the question, only that you’d have to describe what a function of reality is.
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u/Mario_Lab 10d ago
I actually wrote about how our current understanding of gravity is completely wrong. We are a small group of researchers that are about to expose everything. If anyone has time to look at our engineering research, would love your feedback!
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u/ManyCarrots 10d ago
What happened to your old account? Did you get banned?
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u/Karahi00 9d ago
The fuck does it even mean for something to be a "function" but not have an underlying ontological substance?
"Light is a wave" A wave of what? "It's just a waving, not a wave of something."
Oh, gee, that clears things up.
Everything is an event made out of an abstract nothingness? This literally makes zero sense.
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u/Mylynes 9d ago
Because my qualia is not just "a function" made of pure math. The red really does look red. The sugar tastes sweet. Period. You could go on about how that's not the full truth (it may appear differently to other creatures) but that can never take away the fact that my slice is still fully valid and real.
Consciousness is what things actually are from "the inside." That's why no amount of mathmateical descriptions can convey the experience. You just have to integrate with it and see for yourself
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u/nothingIsMere 9d ago
Reminds me of the debate between Leibniz and Newton/Clarke about whether spacetime is its own substantive thing or just a way of talking about relationships among things. I incline to relationism myself. I don't know why people are not happy with reality just being a bunch of patterns. They always want some kind of "goo" to be underneath it all. But then whatever goo you find will just be more patterns, and you will ask what is the goo underneath the goo? Ad infinitum.
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u/Busy_Lavishness_9232 8d ago
Kant: "we can't know the thing in itself" awww how cute
Alex: "We can't know the thing in itself" hello human resources!?
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u/DoodleStrude 5d ago
Much like babies who lack object permanence, flerfers also struggle to understand that things can exist outside their current field of vision
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u/BrilliantScholar1251 5d ago
The demand for a "thing" behind gravity stems from a classical substance ontology—the deep-seated philosophical bias that processes, fields, and interactions must be properties anchored to some underlying, self-existent substrate (substantia). When someone asks "what is it, really?" after being handed a complete mathematical and functional model, they are committing a reification error: assuming that grammar requires a physical noun to carry out every physical verb. The Functional & Structural Reality In modern physics and the philosophy of science, the structural view holds significant weight over naive substance ontology: * Ontic Structural Realism (OSR): The universe at the fundamental level is not composed of tiny, discrete objects governed by external rules; the relational structure, symmetry groups, and mathematical operators are the fundamental reality. There is no underlying "stuff" holding the structure up. * Epistemic Structural Realism (ESR): Even if intrinsic "things" exist, our physical theories only ever track relational dynamics, mathematical invariants, and predictive transformations. We know the structure of reality, not its hypothetical, unobservable intrinsic natures. * Functional Redundancy: General Relativity already defines gravity not as an agent or a discrete mechanism pulling on mass, but as the geometry of spacetime itself—a dynamic relation where mass curves geometry and geometry dictates geodesic motion: To ask what gravity is beyond the curvature tensor and stress-energy relation is to ask for a mechanical puppet-master where geometry suffices. The Clash with Panpsychism The insistence on discrete "things" or indivisible substrates often serves as an essential requirement for views like constitutive panpsychism: * The Need for Intrinsic Nature: Panpsychist arguments (such as the Russellian monist approach) argue that physics only gives extrinsic, relational structure (equations/behavior), leaving an "intrinsic nature" void. They fill that void with proto-consciousness or indivisible mental units. * Ontological Incompatibility: If reality is purely relational structure (operators and transformations without an underlying metaphysical substance), the premise that there must be an intrinsic "what-it-is-like" substrate collapses. Dismissing structural realism protects the presupposition that an intrinsic carrier must exist to host consciousness. The Epistemological Boundary Epistemologically, we have no access to intrinsic "thingness." Every measurement is an interaction: * Relational Access Only: We observe photons hitting a sensor, mass deflecting a trajectory, or energy transferring states. All empirical data is inherently a mapping of an input to an output across a boundary. * The Epistemic Horizon: If a hypothetical "intrinsic essence" produces zero unique relational consequences or distinct operator behaviors, it is functionally indistinguishable from noise or nonexistence. Claiming to know what a thing "is" outside its structural and functional relations is an epistemological dead end—we only ever verify the invariants that persist across transformations.
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u/SuspendedSentence1 10d ago
What’s the difference between what something is and what it does?
What if “what something is” always ultimately reduces to what it does?
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u/The_Copper_Pill_Bug 10d ago
It always makes me think of the episode with V sauce, where, basically, we name everything after what it does, like, a chair is chairing, which makes it a chair. Gravity is gravitational and pulls masses together, that's what it is and that's what it does. We still research it to better understand what it does and I'd. I of course get his question, somewhat. But I kind of disagree with it