On 15 Dec 2014, at 11:22, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
You are projecting metaphisical differences into physical forces at
the last steps. That does not make sense IMHO. The New Agers do the
opposite.
I think that this is an error typical of people with no education in
physics and technology that are overexposed to scientific-tecnical
terms.
Your metaphysical reasoning is very interesting. Specially your
awareness of the logical positivism and your rejection of it, that
is refreshing for me. The people of this list are logical
positivists and they don´t know that they adopt this metaphysical
standpoint.
I have no clue why you think that we are logical positivist, which in
paricular I debunk in detail in many places (forum, papers, books).
Then, how could machine's theology fit with logical positism? How
could computationalism, which asks for a consciousness invariance act
of faith be positivistic?
I think that the rejection of metaphysics by the logical positivists
is an ideological trick that closes their mind and inmmunizes them
against metaphysical reasoning, in the same way that marxists
despised anything non marxist as bourgeois.
I think that logical positivism, like behaviorisme in psychology has
been abandonned by everybody since many decades.
Bruno
2014-10-23 9:50 GMT+02:00 Peter Sas <[email protected]>:
Well, I'm not a physicists but a philosopher, so I cannot give a
physicist's answer. My approach is to start with the most
fundamental question (Why is there anything at all?) and then see
how far we can get with pure logic alone. It is of course very, very
tricky to try to derive fundamental laws of nature in this way. But
I think that we can actually get quite far with such an a priori
method. Now with respect to your question, I understand that dark
energy is a basically repulsive force driving inflation. I don't
want to say I can derive dark energy from a priori principles (that
would be absurd). But I think I can derive a duality of attraction
and repulsion in that way. The reasoning I emply, however, is very
abstract, using ideas taken from philosophers like Hegel and
Heidegger, although on the whole I feel more attracted to the
rationality of Anglo-American philosophy (and science) than to
postmodern philosophy (which I think is basically a fraud). Perhaps
my reasoning is closest to German idealists like Hegel and Schelling
who still feld they could derive the basic principles of natural
science from philosophical principles. So here is how my argument
goes in nuce, I hope you can make sense of it:
First I argue that nothing is self-negating (for logical arguments
see the blog piece). Simply put: nothing is nothing to such a degree
that it isn't even itself! Thus, as nothing negates itself, it
produces being, it becomes something. Now, since nothing is
different from itself, being (as the negation of nothing) must be
different from something else. This then is how I define being: as
difference from something else. Now it is easy to see that this
difference must take two forms. First, being is being because it
differs from non-being or nothing (let's call this ontological
difference, following Heidegger). Second, being must also be
internally differentiated, that is to say: there must be multiple
beings differing from each other (let's call this ontic difference).
Then we can say: a being is what it is because of its ontic
difference from other beings. (Ultimately, I think, this imlies that
beings are mathematical, for lacking intrinsic qualities of their
own, they canly be distinguished in quantitative ways, such that it
is their position in a quantitative structure which determines what
they are.) Now we can say: the source (or cause) of what beings are
is (ontic) difference. This difference, then, must precede them,
just as any origin must precede the originated (at least logically,
if not temporally). But what is this difference that precedes the
different beings? It's like a relation that generates its own
relata. Thus we must postulate something like a pure difference or a
pure negativity underlying the mutual non-identity of beings. But
what is this pure negativity? It seems clear to me that we are now
back with our starting point, the concept of nothing as differing
from itself. And this is not surprising if the self-negating nothing
generates all beings, for then it must also act as the pure
negativity that differentiates beings. But now comes the rub: there
is a contradiction between ontological and ontic difference. Recall:
ontological difference requires that beings differ from nothing
(i.e. pure negativity), whereas ontic difference requires that there
is pure negativity between them. Hence: to have existence (i.e.
ontological difference) beings must stand in a negative relation to
the negativity between them, they must differ from their mutual
difference. But to differ from their mutual difference, beings must
become the same and loose their separate identities. Hence there is
a contradiction between identity and existence, i.e. between the
determinacy of beings (ontic difference) and their existence
(ontological difference): in short, existence is unifying,
determinacy is separating. Now given the fact that being must be
logically consistent, we must interpret this contradiction not as
logical but as an opposition of forces. Thus existence becomes a
unifying force, determinacy (ontic difference) becomes a separating
force. The separating force must manifest itself as repulsion, i.e.
as resistance against unification. The unifying force must manifest
itself as resistance against repulsion, i.e. as attraction. Hence
repulsion and attraction are the basic forces that govern being.
I spelled out this argument in more detail on another blog piece I
wrote: http://critique-of-pure-interest.blogspot.nl/2014/06/theses-towards-dialectical-ontology_8246.html
So if you want more detail, please check this piece. I have to
emphasize, however, that I am still working on these ideas and that
I hope to publish a fuller account on my blog in the near future.
.
Op woensdag 22 oktober 2014 15:46:16 UTC+2 schreef yanniru:
Peter,
Could you elaborate on how Dark Energy fits into your thesis?
Richard
On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 4:33 AM, Peter Sas <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi guys,
Here is a blog piece I wrote about nothing as the ultimate source of
being:
http://critique-of-pure-interest.blogspot.nl/2014/09/why-is-there-something-rather-than.html
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