RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 19:06:07 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 12:52 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

On 1/7/2015 11:25 AM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:

Ultimate reality? What would make one reality more real than another? To a 
physicist pressure is a perfectly real concept, and the idea that pressure 
makes a balloon expand is true. And the concept that a million billion trillion 
gas molecules are pushing on the inside of a balloon making it expand is also 
true. Both ideas exist and both are true, so why is one idea more real than 
another?

 

But isn't it also true that in this case "pressure" is actually an emergent 
phenomenon resulting form the accumulated effect of the trillions upon 
trillions of gas molecules careening into each other and into the atoms 
comprising the inner surface of the balloon... and that the force of these 
countless interactions is what emerges as the phenomenon we measure as pressure?


"Ultimate" implies some kind of well ordering.  What we measure and agree on is 
epistemologically ultimate.   But it's not reducidbly ultimate.  And it's not 
teleologically ultimate, nor is it ultimate in the line of efficient causes.  
So I think it is good to reflect on what "ultimate" means before insisting on 
importance of ultimate reality.

 

Can see -- now -- that you were responding to John’s use of “ultimate” reality.

I agree with what you just said, and similar cautionary advice applies to all 
kinds of characterizing words we commonly use.

-Chris



Brent

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