Natural Order and Science

[Harris]

I never ignored you paulpablo. I would be happy if you educate me about law in the context that you favour.

You just have to google search what scientific laws are as opposed to laws that aren't scientific.  

I think you were ignoring the part where I said scientific laws are observations and predictions, it isn't the laws themselves that control anything, I told you this yet you still went on to say scientific laws control and govern things

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.

[Harris]

An infinite regress is a never ending chain, with no fixed beginning.

This could be an infinite series of nested realities, each one having a parent, and being in some way a manifestation of an aspect of the parent.

I'm not proposing this is the case, I just note that it is logically consistent. We don't know how realities other than this one operate (if there are any), or how their structure might work. Trying to model them on how this reality works is a baseless extrapolation and/or fallacy of composition. Our naive concepts of time and causality, again relating only to observing our own reality, do not equip us to make statements about goings on "outside" of it.

This would of course give rise to an "infinite number of realities". This intuitively seems impossible, but that is not an argument against reality.

This will probably always be unfalsifiable, making it as useless as any other unfalsifiable proposition.

Think of a fractal, that you can zoom in and out of as many times as you like. That's about the best way I could visualise it.

Infinite regress is a causal relationship transmitted through an indefinite number of terms in a series, with no term that begins the causal chain.

Any regress in the material world would end up in nothingness therefore, infinite regress in the material world is an impossibility and in the world of metaphysics infinite regress is also an impossibility because that simply shuts up the door through which one can arrive at a primary cause in the series of causes.

In case of infinite regress there can ultimately be no such things as valid means of knowledge because any attempt to demonstrate that a given procedure is a means of knowledge will either be a mere dogmatic assertion, or else be subject to circularity which eventually ends up in an emptiness.

[Harris]

That means you do not know philosophy.

Your response tells me that you cannot explain the assumptions that you have made.

I'm a professional scientist with the view that 95% of philosophy is pointless and irrelevant mental masturbation. Anyone that truly knows what they are talking about should be able to explain to lay people.

What this tells me is that you do not.

Saying that 95% of philosophy is pointless and irrelevant mental masturbation is equal to saying 95% of science is pointless and irrelevant mental masturbation.

If you have partial and useless knowhow about philosophy that does not make philosophy pointless and irrelevant rather your ignorant assertions that comes out of your indulging behaviour only illustrates the incapacity of your intellectual potentials in making interpretations of the natural world.

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.

Just spare little time on this website which will give you sufficient proof that nearly all famous scientists and mathematicians were basically the well-known philosophers.

http://fabpedigree.com/james/mathmen.htm

[Harris]

There are other possibilities than God vs. plain-jane physicalism

For example, an elemental particle might be a universe-- THE universe-- Big Banging and contracting a gazillion times a second.  That would mean that all reality is a practically infinite view of a single philosophical principle interacting with itself in myrida ways.

Or there could be a duality: mankind creates a universe-creating machine, and the universe unfolds (inevitably) to that moment over and over again forever.

Or each black hole, at its inception, might represent a new Big Bang in a kind of anti-universe, and each black hole in that might be linked to our own Big Bang in a kind of Escher-like co-creation.

I mention these because fuck it, if we're going to start making up bullshit to answer philosophical questions, let's at least have some fun.  That's better than a fucking fairytale God who disapprovingly watches teen boys jerk in the shower and commands His followers to cut off the heads of anyone smarter, richer or more educated than they are-- which is almost everybody.

I do not see any connection between your conjectures and fun.


In the secular and atheist world the major purpose of terms like multiverse, natural selection, etc. is to spread false concepts by perplexing likelihood and probability and by confusing reality and puzzles using technical jargons.

You are blaming me for playing a foul game, please go through the thread and let me know where I have gone off the track. Real fairy tales are actually the concepts such as:

Something out of nothing
Infinite regression
Self-subsistent processes
Universe in a black hole etc.

Most pathetic of all is the fact that you are using these conjectures as weapon to disprove the existence of God when you yourself are not aware whether these concepts are true or false. You have no evidence neither from the world of science nor from logic to justify these irrational concepts. Some of these concepts are simple impossibilities and others like “universe in a black hole” instead of resolving the riddle raise further puzzles.

If you are not writing all that misleading stuff on purpose then you should not lose sight of the many reasons in valuing our existence in a one, rich, and vibrant universe which is not only stable that makes our existence possible but also intelligible and predictable that gives us the luxury to learn and satisfy our desires for knowing through our systemic and procedural explorations. Such a reality even by magic is not possible in the environment of:

Something out of nothingness
Infinite regression
Self-subsistent processes
Universe in a black hole etc.

Our universe is real and rational only because of the order and harmony in all of its events. This order and harmony is possible only because of the intelligent coding system which is controlling the activities of everything in the universe for example in general no living being is growing beyond its average width and height and celestial objects are moving on their fixed paths without any deviation.

Your emotive and provocative pleads may only support your self-deception but it would never change the truth to satisfy your desires.

[Harris]

Harris Wrote: 3. Models with predictive capabilities useful than models without predictive capabilities. I see most of you are favouring models without predictive capabilities by supporting the ideas that processes can be self-subsistent and that things can pop out from nowhere. The interesting point here is that none of the proponents of these absurd ideas have any evidence to support their absurdity. These two ideas if become the reality then they have potential to transform universe into most unpredictable place that means total anarchy.
Jörmungandr Wrote: This is bullshit. The laws of nature as such are descriptive of the way things behave universally. That is not chaos but a maximum of order and predictability. You're just spewing word salad here.

Have you any understanding of what you are writing?

Harris Wrote: Initially I have raised few question the essence of which was: What is the source of that intelligent code that is controlling all the events in the universe in intelligent way? Alas! No one has come up with a decent philosophical or scientific response.
Jörmungandr Wrote: That's because you stuck your fingers in your ears and went, "la la la, I can't hear you." But more on this later.

Simply admit that you do not have the answers because “God” is the only logical source of the intelligent coding systems that control all events in the universe in intelligent way.

Harris Wrote: 5. If universe does not depend on God then whatever it depends upon is God
Jörmungandr Wrote: The word God here is just a placeholder for a necessary first cause. That first cause could be a god, or another universe, or something we are completely unaware of. In no sense does it imply the traditional God of the JudeoChristian traditions. It need not be conscious or a being of any kind. You could just as easily have written, "If universe does not depend on X then whatever it depends upon is X." It means the same thing either way. X is unspecified.

I am happy because you at least you have admitted that uncaused cause is the necessity of all causes. Things would not be different if you call that uncaused cause “X” because in reality that very “X” is God.

Harris Wrote: Whether genetic instructions produce specific proteins or gravitation controls cosmic balance, every event is controlled by some system of coding which cause all events to happen on specific and predictable pattern and thus making the universe predictable and intelligible for human intellect.
Jörmungandr Wrote: This is just a bare assertion without support. It and the rest of this spiel can be dismissed with just cause. There is no evidence that gravity represents a "coding system" and the only thing that suggests it does is your bare assertion. Surely you can do better than suggesting that everything is a result of systems of coding "because I said so." That's worthless and is no justification for accepting your statement as true.

Do you have any alternate that may replace my “so called” Assertion?

Harris Wrote: However, invention of any coding system always requires an intelligent origin and matter as such is unable to generate any code. Humans on the other side are the only agent who have the capacity to produce code however code of nature is not written by humans. As matter cannot generate code on its own and human is not the author therefore there should be some author, a thinking being, who voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity in writing code for the conduct of every single object in the universe. An intelligent activity always requires an intelligent source. Whoever or whatever is controlling all the activities through systematic coding system in the universe is God.
Jörmungandr Wrote: Since you've not demonstrated that there is or are such coding systems other than a bare assertion that there are, your conclusion here is nothing more than the product of bare assertion and is easily dismissed. You assert there is a God. I assert that there is no God. The assertions cancel each other out.

I think you are writing without reading or understanding. I suggest you to study the basics of genes and I assure you that would give you a substantial understanding about which coding system I am talking.

[Harris]

Thanks Alex, that clarified quite a bit for me. Especially the inverse square law of gravity increasing in strength, I should have remembered that. One question though, if nothing can go faster than the speed of light and not even light can escape from a black hole, then how can they evaporate by radiating random noise called Hawking radiation? Why do physicists think that this happens?

p.s. with Einstein, it is only approximately an inverse square, because gravity itself begets gravity in Einstein theory, which is not a thing in Newton theory. This means that once gravity gets strong enough, it boosts itself until it becomes more severe more quickly than a simple inverse  square would. Hence you get extreme phenomena such as black holes.

The derivation that is most illustrative is as follows: near the event horizon, quantum field theory makes it so that pairs of virtual particles appear. Usually, if nothing is nearby, they would simply disappear again and nothing happens. If they appear near the horizon, it can happen that one of them falls behind the horizon, whereas the other one can leave. What we see as hawking radiation is then the one that got lucky

One might now wonder why something falling in can let a black hole decrease. Now, virtual particles are not bound by E = m c^2, and if a pair appears ex nihilo, one of them will in fact carry negative energy to balance out the positive energy of the other. Only events where the negative-energy one falls in will actually happen. We did the calculation in my relativity lecture, but that was 11 years ago and I forgot how the details went

According to Wikipedia virtual particle is only an explanatory conceptual entity that is found in mathematical calculations about quantum field theory. Virtual particles do not appear directly amongst the observable and detectable input and output quantities of those calculations, which refer only to actual, as distinct from virtual, particles.

There exist two views about the existence of virtual particles:

1. The standard Feynman view, virtual particles exist but they are shadow objects obeying Heisenberg's ΔtΔE>hbar/2 inequality

2. They do not exist; they are just another fallacy of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics

Neither of the assumptions favour physical existence of virtual particles. Furthermore, it is only an assumption that one component of virtual particle pair has negative energy value because without this assumption mathematical equilibrium of Hawking Radiation would get disturbed in which virtual particles with negative energy play crucial role to demonstrate theoretically how black holes evaporate.

Please have a look at this webpage that holds an interesting exchange of facts on virtual particles.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-physicists-...observable

In reality, if virtual particles are true particles which appear and disappear spontaneously (ex-nihilo) that seems to be a contradiction to:

1. “Energy cannot be created nor destroyed”

2. Relativity and causality

3. Nothing can travel faster than speed of light

I am hoping for an explanation on:

1. What virtual particles are if they really exist?

2. How they work and

3. How they are similar to quantum fluctuations?

[paulpablo]

You just have to google search what scientific laws are as opposed to laws that aren't scientific.  

I think you were ignoring the part where I said scientific laws are observations and predictions, it isn't the laws themselves that control anything, I told you this yet you still went on to say scientific laws control and govern things

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.

[robvalue]

Why does infinite regress end in "nothingness"?

How can you possibly know how things work external to this reality? I'm assuming your God is external to this reality, yet you assume all infinite regress must take place within this reality for some reason.

[Alex K]

@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.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Saying that 95% of philosophy is pointless and irrelevant mental masturbation is equal to saying 95% of science is pointless and irrelevant mental masturbation.

Why?

Science is not the same as philosophy. It's like saying that if you think that 95% of juggling is pointless and irrelevant then so is medical science.

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.

Exactly. Philosophy is generally obsolete now that we have created the scientific method. If you ignore science and your so-called philosophy is not applicable or useful to the real world in some way, then it is mental masturbation. There is a need for some philosophical musings, to gain a higher level perspective on the way things are going and to figure out why we should be doing things, but again, that's because it is relevant.

Not that what you are doing is actually philosophy. It's rationalised superstition.