If you're trying to use philosophy to demonstrate objective facts about reality, then you are going to fail. And fail hard. It has to be combined with the scientific method, or else you're off in an abstract simplified model of reality, with no confirmation that anything you "learn" from that model has any bearing on reality.

Reducing reality to simple rules like, "everything needs a cause" is just making a massive unfounded assumption. "In my experience things have needed a cause" is what the person is actually saying, and is then trying to extrapolate that to all of reality, including reality itself. This is garbage, and it's why this kind of thing never produces any meaningful results. What use is it?

To me, the useful parts of philosophy come down to:

1) Logic
2) Morality
3) Pragmatism

It's not just philosophy either, this need to be relevant to the real world can apply to whole scientific fields as well. When the field of Artificial Life began, there were some doubts as to whether it was actually any use. What was the point of coming up with models about 'life as it could be'? Ultimately a model needs to be applied back to the real world, it needs to tell us something about it. I may come up with an excellent model of how life could have started, or how artificial birds flock together, but I then still have to see if it matches real world observations. If it does then great, if not then why not? Or can I use my model in a practical way? Until that last step is made, the work is irrelevant.

So if you are going to try to come up with ways that the universe was created by a god and are happy with your conclusions, you still need to test it and provide evidence. You can use logic without evidence to show that a hypothesis is logically inconsistent and can be discarded, but you cannot use logic without evidence to prove that a hypothesis is correct.

(February 26, 2016 at 5:25 am)robvalue Wrote: Reducing reality to simple rules like, "everything needs a cause" is just making a massive unfounded assumption. "In my experience things have needed a cause" is what the person is actually saying, and is then trying to extrapolate that to all of reality, including reality itself. This is garbage, and it's why this kind of thing never produces any meaningful results. What use is it?

Exactly.

I'd love how to know how "infinite regress" can end in nothingness, since by definition it doesn't end at all.

Again, we're talking about a regress which begins with something external to this reality as the first step. Either you object to an external regress, or you object to the regress become infinite once outside this reality.

If it's the first, God is pretty much done and dusted. You've just assumed the universe is either eternal or requires no case.

If you object to external infinite regress, you need to explain how you know the way other realities work, and how they relate to each other, without simply assuming they all work like this one does.

I have no opinion regarding any sort of regress, since it's entirely unfalsifiable and untestable. Any such model is consistent, but all are useless in any practical sense. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of regression style arguments.

(February 26, 2016 at 3:37 am)paulpablo Wrote:

(February 26, 2016 at 1:56 am)Harris Wrote: Law is a generic term that defines a pattern or principle of an activity or a behaviour. Whether you study the behaviour of people in some particular state of affairs or you study a certain event in nature in all cases your research enables you to explore the pattern or principle that regulate the activity or behaviour. Consequently, the acquired knowledge gives you an opportunity to make use of that principle or pattern in a way that is beneficial for you.

Ok, I'm no expert on the subject but none of the points you're making here point to laws actually controlling anything, as I said before scientific laws are statements and predictions based on observations, they aren't a force themselves, I'm assuming you agree with that since you haven't made a counter argument, you've just given a vague definition of law.

Additionally I'm assuming your argument is for theism, I still don't see the significance of laws in relation to the possibility of God.

All forces in the universe are acting on the line of some pattern or principle. Take away those principles and those forces will start acting randomly which in result bring nothing productive. Forces acting without certain principles are like a moving car but without a driver. Therefore, although laws are not forces in themselves however they are crucial in maintaining order and harmony in any activity.

(February 26, 2016 at 4:24 am)Alex K Wrote: @Harris

I don't agree with everything Shoshany writes in that quora thread. I think the distinction he makes between virtual and real / actual particles is naive and not as clear - cut as he makes it out to be. The construction and concept of what he calls "actual particles" is no less artificial and no more real that virtual particles imho. He claims that virtual particles are not a thing in nonperturbative calculations. Well, are "actual " particles? If we want theories to be explanations rather than black boxes, we at some point have to take the objects in our calculations and map them to phenomena in nature. Which ones are suitable for that is a subtle question and there may not be a unique correct answer. But to say that actual particles really are real because they appear in this place in the theory, and virtual particles are not because they only appear in this piece of the calculation strikes me as philosophically naive.

He should have said that to what extent objects in theories and calculations "really exist" in nature is a question of philosophy, not physics, and leave it at that. In my explanation I was trying to put a piece of maths into ordinary language. Whether which pieces of maths represent an underlying reality - and what that would even mean - is not something that can just be settled in a quick paragraph.

Concerning your questions: the contradictions you claim do not exist. Demonstrate more clearly why you think they exist.

Quantum fluctuations is not a very precise term referring to statistical uncertainty in quantities that would be sharp in classical physics.

QFT is based on fields as the fundamental objects. Now roughly speaking when you have excitations of those fields, "actual particles" are an idealized object corresponding to a field excitation which satisfies E=mc^2 and lasts forever. Virtual particles correspond to field excitations which do not satisfy these properties. The distinction between the two is kind of fluent.

The connection - Virtual particles are generally subject to quantum uncertainty in their properties, is probably the safest way to say it.

We should not overlook a simple fact:

When particles collide nearly at the speed of light in Large Hadron Collider they burst into clouds full of exotic subatomic particles. All those subatomic particles have physical properties which made them detectable.


However, virtual particles are not detectable by any mean and for that reason in the world of physics they are called “virtual.” They are mathematical objects which scientists have invented for the purpose of calculations of interactions between real particles and it is absolutely inappropriate to treat them as a different category of real physical particles which are detectable.


Furthermore, what you think how much time scientists need to reach some event horizon to study undetectable virtual particles.

(February 26, 2016 at 5:25 am)robvalue Wrote: If you're trying to use philosophy to demonstrate objective facts about reality, then you are going to fail. And fail hard. It has to be combined with the scientific method, or else you're off in an abstract simplified model of reality, with no confirmation that anything you "learn" from that model has any bearing on reality.

Exactly, that was my point while I was writing a response against the stupid statement of Mathilda, “I'm a professional scientist with the view that 95% of philosophy is pointless and irrelevant mental masturbation.”

In that response, I wrote:

“Philosophy was the original inquiry into the nature of the world.  (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.)  It combined what we now call “science” with other aspects of reality, and asked all those questions about the origin of the universe, what it was made of, what it was all for, etc.”

(February 26, 2016 at 5:25 am)robvalue Wrote: Reducing reality to simple rules like, "everything needs a cause" is just making a massive unfounded assumption. "In my experience things have needed a cause" is what the person is actually saying, and is then trying to extrapolate that to all of reality, including reality itself. This is garbage, and it's why this kind of thing never produces any meaningful results. What use is it?

Do not forget about logic which has a power to transform philosophical ideas into real science. Logic provides a conceptual analysis, a critical attitude, a superior methodology, and the possibilities of deriving consequences of their fundamental presuppositions.

Is not Aristotle the one who used inductive-deductive method, used inductions from observations to infer general principles, deductions from those principles to check against further observations, and more cycles of induction and deduction to continue the advance of knowledge? For Aristotle, logic is the instrument by means of which we come to know ANYTHING. He was the first person who have introduced the idea of the unmoved mover, "that which moves without being moved" or prime mover.

Logic can accurately represent the true nature of reality. Beginning with simple descriptions of particular things, we can eventually assemble our information in order to achieve a comprehensive view of the world.

In modern times think about Boole, Frege, and Russell who have developed modern symbolic logic and succeeded in deriving all of mathematics from it (and set theory) and by the magic of same logic physicists have discovered indiscernible black holes.

Based on our observations and evidences that we have, is it logical to think that everything in the universe is:

Eternal or
Popped out of nothingness without any cause?

(February 26, 2016 at 6:31 am)robvalue Wrote: I'd love how to know how "infinite regress" can end in nothingness, since by definition it doesn't end at all.

Again, we're talking about a regress which begins with something external to this reality as the first step. Either you object to an external regress, or you object to the regress become infinite once outside this reality.

If it's the first, God is pretty much done and dusted. You've just assumed the universe is either eternal or requires no case.

If you object to external infinite regress, you need to explain how you know the way other realities work, and how they relate to each other, without simply assuming they all work like this one does.

I have no opinion regarding any sort of regress, since it's entirely unfalsifiable and untestable. Any such model is consistent, but all are useless in any practical sense. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of regression style arguments.

Please read my previous response on infinite regress with care. I have already given few reasons to explain why the idea of infinite regression is illogical.

(February 29, 2016 at 2:12 pm)Harris Wrote:

(February 26, 2016 at 3:37 am)paulpablo Wrote: Ok, I'm no expert on the subject but none of the points you're making here point to laws actually controlling anything, as I said before scientific laws are statements and predictions based on observations, they aren't a force themselves, I'm assuming you agree with that since you haven't made a counter argument, you've just given a vague definition of law.

Additionally I'm assuming your argument is for theism, I still don't see the significance of laws in relation to the possibility of God.

All forces in the universe are acting on the line of some pattern or principle. Take away those principles and those forces will start acting randomly which in result bring nothing productive.

This again is nothing but a bare assertion. Do you have any support for this claim?

(February 29, 2016 at 2:15 pm)Harris Wrote: Based on our observations and evidences that we have, is it logical to think that everything in the universe is:

Eternal or
Popped out of nothingness without any cause?

This is a false dichotomy. We don't know what all the options are, but they aren't limited to these two.

[quote pid='1215180' dateline='1456770925']

• Jörmungandr
  
  

(February 29, 2016 at 2:15 pm)Harris Wrote: Based on our observations and evidences that we have, is it logical to think that everything in the universe is:

Eternal or
Popped out of nothingness without any cause?

This is a false dichotomy.  We don't know what all the options are, but they aren't limited to these two.
[/quote]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang2.htm
Indeed there are many theories about what came before the big bang. I have posted the links many times on these here forums previously but theists ignore them as it robs them of the main thing they see as a hiding place for the deity of their choice.