Are there really unbreakable particles?

[peter]

Would not string theory, if it can ain any experimental verification (has it?) be the answer to Mighara's original question. As the division proceeds down and yet further down, at some point will you not approach these, the most fundamental building blocks of matter. In fact, down at this level, will not the distinction between matter and space become a meaningless one, the spacey nature of matter and the mattery nature of space becoming one and the same.

(It has been suggested that gravity as a force only appears weak because the bulk of its strength is contained in the rolled up dimensions of string-theory, what we experience being mere 'leakage' into the dimensions that we have access to. Carlo Rovelli says that gravity and space are one and the same thing and Deutsch that it doesn't exist at all! Is physics becoming a trifle ....... confused ........over this force - or is it just me .)

[JIkj fjds j]

the spacey nature of matter and the mattery nature of space becoming one and the same - or is it just me .)

I'm pretty sure it's just you.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

@Everyone, well, I realized I was trying to make a point without knowing what point I was trying to make, whereas Vraith knew what was being talked about.

@peter re: string theory, well, maybe. But if strings have a definite, e.g. a Planck-scale? length, then even so, when we copy our image of a string from physical space into the imagination, we could visualize dividing the string into parts, and those into parts, and so on, it seems. And then the question of Cantor's dust between the spaces would arise again. (Okay, I apologize for that totally poetic and random remark; Cantor's dust is some fractal-like function obtained by continuous division of a line segment or something, summarizing missing endpoints for the segment IIRC. So it is an image of the empty space between parts of a line, sort of.)

This might mean little or nothing: how would an ability to imagine something correspond so directly to the possibility of a deeper physical reality? Well, one argument would be: if physical reality contains the imagination, then the information content of the imagination is physical, wherefore since in this space there are objects smaller than strings, we must have a physical explanation for how something can exist on a smaller scale than strings. How can the imagination function have outputs smaller than strings? Or are we saying that the content of the imagination obtains outside of physical reality somehow?

But the Kantian argument is just that, in the case of pure possibility for space and time, the formality and apriority of space and time allow that we can projectively imagine what is possible in the continuum of the world. Viz., if something is mathematically possible, so to speak, there is some corresponding way that it is physically possible. (This is IIRC one of the Postulates of Empirical Thought or something in the first Critique.) But in this event, since mathematical divisibility is unlimited, so is the precomposition of matter in physical space.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

@peter re: the hierarchy problem(?):

I actually have a peculiar theory about that, unfortunately... I know the one that says gravity is somehow "leaking" out of our spacetime domain/continuum/w/e into "somewhere else," and I suppose that is the most plausible idea I've otherwise come across.

However, why are there four fundamental forces? That there are four seems fairly well established in physics; departures from the idea are conceivable but irregular. Now in principle, a Grand Unified Theory or Theory of Everything will enable us to understand the four as actually one, but setting that question sort of to the side for a second(!), the question admits of the hierarchy problem just in case it corresponds to something that can be put into an order, and the strengths of the forces correspond to their rank in this order. But when I long ago read Hannah Arendt and Immanuel Kant's theories of forgiveness and redemption, I came to the conclusion that there are four basic categories of "making amends," viz. apologies, forgiveness, punishment, and redemption, and these can be ranked in one's judgment (one can prioritize one or more over the others), so in pure space there is a graph for the possibility of this priority, and the strengths of the forces amount, in fact, to the variations in the quantity of initial energy provided to each from the plane of moral information.

IOW this is a quasi-theistic theory of why gravity is weaker: it corresponds to the type of amendment ranked lowest by physical reality itself, so to speak.

But now if this is so, and if it possible to rank the order of amendment wrongly in theory, then is it possible for the ranking of the forces of the world to be wrong, too? That is, according to this theory, if ought implies can, and if gravity "ought" to be stronger than it is(?!), then there's some way that physical reality can be altered, so that this is so---with whatever implications would follow.

[peter]

(These thoughts came into my head as I read Mighara: relevant or not I, record them.).

1. Art, as product of Imagination can always go to places beyond the reach of 'physical reality' - thus did I experience a small additional frisson on reading your 'apology' about a random drop into poetry {a small clue that I might at least be somewhere in the vicinity of your thinking}.........

linking into..........

2. There being something of the Ontological Argument about Kant's position as you outline it in the final paragraph of your first (of the above two) posts.

In respect of your 'peculiar theory' - it has it's own poetry and deserves more thought than my sleep addled brain can muster. I will re-read and think on it and we will see what we will see.........

[JIkj fjds j]

In respect of your 'peculiar theory' - it has it's own poetry and deserves more thought than my sleep addled brain can muster. I will re-read and think on it and we will see what we will see.........

Ok!

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Re: (1): on one hand, that does seem to be so. In dreams, for example, it seems that information travels in total violation of physical processes as we know them (it's even possible to draw a perfectly straight line, despite the intrinsic curvature of space?). So is it possible that the imagination/dreamscape is actually not part of physical reality? I daresay this might be so.

If, though, it's not, then art doesn't go beyond physics, art rather discloses how limited our knowledge of physics really is (regarding whatever question the art as its own fact addresses). For physical reality has to explain the aesthetic function, or include such an explanation, or however it ought to be put, so if art codes information inconsistent with our current physical theories, then one day, ultimately, we'll have to revise those theories to express how the aesthetic information can be traced back to the deeper physical substrate.

EDIT: Re: (2):

The Postulates of Empirical Thought actually do connect up with the questions and ideas involved in the ontological argument for God's existence. Recall how Kant obsesses over existence not being an attribute/property/"real" predicate. Now Alvin Plantinga has gone on to argue that necessary existence, however, is such a thing; but Kant had already foreseen such contentions, as it were, because in the PoET he explains that neither possibility nor actuality, nor contingency nor necessity, are attributes/properties/"real" predicates.

What, then, are they? Kant says that the only concrete but aprioritized standard of modal knowledge we have depends on mathematics. We know that it is reasonable to use mathematical concepts to explore physical laws and the like. Beyond this, though, our knowledge of possibility only comes from inference from the actual: X can be, because it is, but whether it can be outside of the moment in which it is, will be less clear, if clear at all. So there is very little, according to Kant, that we can confidently speak of as possible in a robust way, unless we venture into the moral realm but that just complicates his whole story.

But so anyway, "X is possible," for Kant, means, "It is possible to refer to X in individual objective reality," which means either that X is already given, is already here, ready to be referred to, or it can be described in mathematical terms such that we can imagine referring to it individually, even if we have yet to encounter it in real life. Actuality is correlation with sensation: not that X exists only when we have sensations of it, but it only exists to the extent that it is in the abstract possible for us to refer to it in light of our acquaintance with it in sensation. Necessity holds, in experience, only of that which is always referred to, in other words the order of space and time in which individual reference to the same and to different things (things internal and external to each other) is possible. For Kant also says that space, for example, is the form of "outer intuition" or "outer sense." But by this he means that space is the way that objects are identified as numerically distinct, by being outside of each other. Time, on the other hand, allows us to reidentify objects in its changes, so it allows us to compute the sameness or inner sense of things. Since everything in experience is computed in space and time, the pure mathematical order of space and time, and the dynamical expression of this order as the law of causality, is the only thing we can "know" is specifically necessary.

The significance of all this for understanding Kant's overall theory of transcendental ideality is great. For one of Kant's key concepts in the Transcendental Analytic is that of the "possibility of experience," which is a modal concept. Moreover, though Kant specifically says that the moon exists even when no one is looking at it, people sometimes feel that his claims in other debates on certain points contradict this assertion. But when we realize that Kant denies empirical objects "reality" outside of sensation or experience, he is not referring to reality as in the "it's there when you're not looking at it" sense, but the more esoteric one in which philosophers and theologians would speak of "being in general" and "essence and existence" and so on. In other words, physical objects don't directly connect up with some freestanding order of causality that could be traced back to God, for instance. They don't "exist" outside of their own reality, where all that is possible for them is conditioned by the possibility of these objects including beings situated so as to know them (think of it like a peculiar variant of the Anthropic Principle).

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Also, to justify/argue for the fourfold scheme of amendment:

The initial assumption is that agents have the power to place themselves under obligation voluntarily, that they construct their obligations by active choice. Now seeing as being obligated to do something seems like being bound to do so, it remains to be comprehended in total, how a person can freely assume such burdens. But let us suppose it is as easy as intending, "I intend to X and I also intend to not arbitrarily change my mind about this," where this assertion is honest.

So, we have this power, at least to some extent (if not regarding all duties, at least ones based on promises and the like). But let's suppose we do something wrong, in such a way that we are "corrupt" or "sinners" or the like. What would this mean? I think the easiest understanding is that this condition is that of having our moral power compromised. Doing the wrong thing puts us in a position where our moral power is less fit for exercise. So, for example, if I done wrong by someone, I am less capable of expecting that person, within reason, to do certain things---I cannot exercise my ability to be obligated with this person, to the same extent or whatever.

It follows that there are four ways to fix the situation:

[][][][][][][]INTERNAL INITIATIVE---------EXTERNAL INITIATIVE
Substitutive --- Apologizing ...................... Forgiving
Restorative --- Redeeming ........................ Punishing

The first option means that one takes the initiative (by making the apology) to substitute a different source of moral power for the one that one intrinsically has but now in a corrupted state. This is a temporary or dependent solution inasmuch as the exchange or transposition of moral authority or power is only maintained as long as the apology is accepted. Similarly forgiveness involves transposing one's moral power into someone by whom one has been wronged, or something of a similar nature. Punishment is also externally imposed but once completed, the moral standing of the person to whom it is applied is more fully restored (or, I should say, it should be restored, then; whether this rules out the death penalty, though, is a question for another hour or day). Finally, to redeem oneself is to restore, not just find a substitute for, one's corrupted moral power, one's power of obligation. Now sometimes we speak of acts of penance or contrition, and these are imagined as aspects of the redemptive capacity in the world, and sometimes we think of being redeemed by the forgiveness and atoning work of others, but strictly speaking redemption is not complete if it is only a result of accepting forgiveness (even should that forgiveness be complete).

Of course, whether there are to be so imagined four categories of making amends, and whether the definitions are to be grounded as they have been, is an intricate issue, one that I haven't fully read up on or thought about or whatever yet. For the time being it just fits my "considered judgments" or "intuitions," I guess. The notion does help in the construction of a specific moral theory, though, one that connects up with some intriguing possibilities for the interpretation of history, so it's something I've pursued for quite a while now.

[peter]

I like it very much Mighara though would, probably through misunderstanding, have placed redemption as externally gifted in the larger sense (though not to deny that personal/inner redemption can be achieved independent of a third party). I've just been back to the '@peter: re the hierarchy problem post' and have in a momentary flash of illumination briefly glimpsed what you were saying in respect of the correspondence with the gravity question. I'm not going to pretend a full understanding but the idea absolutely chimes with my (sometimes overwhelming) need to see the world in terms of connections and correspondences that sit above the brute scientific.

In respect of your penultimate post - alas once again I fear it runs beyond me (bear in mind the limit of my education in philosophy is Sophie's World and Brian McGhee's 'DK Guide to Philosophy'), and so will not expose my inadequacy in this area further by attempting to pretend to understanding via acute and penetrating comment. Suffice to say however, that I am confident that these posts will be being watched "keenly and closely by intelligences greater than......" etc, and I look toward outside help to provide a quality of reply appropriate to your level of contribution.

(Nb: I love reading your posts though and am learning from them! )

[Ur Dead]

The answer is 42....

[peter]

Now now Ur Dead.

[Vraith]

absolutely chimes with my (sometimes overwhelming) need to see the world in terms of connections and correspondences that sit above the brute scientific.

Really? What exactly is so brutal about science? It might be "cold" in some sense---but brute is hot, and seems more applicable to things less rational.

[peter]

I use it in the manner it applies to champagne perhaps V, as in 'dry'.

But more to the point is that science, if it is to be pursued in its 'pure' form, has to be dry ......... but of course it never is (pure and dry both) because it's practitioners are (thank the stars) human, and subject to all the hopes and joys, fears and foibles that they learned long, long ever before they learned to be scientists. A pure scientists would be a monster ........

But V, I'm lost in Mighara's posts, and have no way of responding to them: he writes on the spectrum of knowledge of his subject way above my ability to participate. You on the other hand do I know, have some understanding of these matters and will be able to see the wood from the trees where I cannot.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

[edit]don't know how this showed up in this thread haha[/edit]

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

@peter, at the risk of not saying anything clearer

Let's say there are two kinds of information, moral and physical. Each has its own rules/logic/order. Now, which came first? If one of them did, and if moral information was the first, then if space and time are mirrors of each other (if time is three-dimensional too), then the moral order will be copied into the physical order as a matter of shape. So, if moral information is organized/configured like music, and if this song has four essential notes that can be played in different sequences, then in the physical world there will be a "song" with sequences of its own, too. Now the iffiest aspect of this, then, is the equation of the song of making amends, with the "song" of the four forces of physics. Maybe there's some other fourfold moral information that gets reflected in space as the four forces.

[Vraith]

I use it in the manner it applies to champagne perhaps V, as in 'dry'.

You on the other hand do I know, have some understanding of these matters and will be able to see the wood from the trees where I cannot.

On the first...funny. The thing is, if science were dry like champagne, nevertheless if it is used as it is intended it is inebriating. Don't confuse one small aspect of its flavor for the beauty of its function and effects. An effect realizable even if one does not have the palate for some of the subtleties.

On the second...well, to some extent. But a lot of the Mig-ness is idiosyncratic and/or surreal.
Not a criticism---but it does create barriers and thickets for the reader.
One or two [million] people may have suggested I might have a similar tendency.
Mostly I see that the paths, mergers, and superimpositions create/imply branches and spaces unexplored/unaccounted for.
And also [sometimes---usually the things on comment on] axioms/principles/fundamentals that are problematic. For instance:

"Viz., if something is mathematically possible, so to speak, there is some corresponding way that it is physically possible. (This is IIRC one of the Postulates of Empirical Thought or something in the first Critique.) But in this event, since mathematical divisibility is unlimited, so is the precomposition of matter in physical space."

Is that so?
the square root of negative one is mathematically possible in some sense---in fact it is necessary in numerous cases, and extremely useful.
But is it physically possible in any way?
The same can be said for an enormous number of things---dimensionless points, infinity, negative distance [two points that, the closer they are to each other the further they are apart???]
There is a gap between these kinds of realities.
Show me the physical instantiation of the mathematical "one."
What is the proof of an abstract apple?
If there isn't an abstract apple, then how can there be an abstract morality?
Just call me an Anti-Platonic.
The world isn't an imperfect reflection of the Ideal---the Ideal is a sketch of the bones of the real.

[peter]

So Plato got it all wrong! (I've long suspected as much: his ideal republic was so full of holes, misogyny, and plain nasty as to be worthy only f the bin ).

Mighara - Yuval Noah Harare in his latest book Homo Deus talks of the entirety of existence in terms of data flow (a concept he calls 'dataism'). Your last post has something of this about it. Descartes found only thought alone could have truly indisputable existence, and on this basis (since thought is data too) even V's abstract apples and morality have more weight than the hand in front of my eyes. Similarly your four-fold reflections are existent data patterns just waiting for your mind to settle on them ..... to see them where no-one else did.

[Vraith]

So Plato got it all wrong! (I've long suspected as much: his ideal republic was so full of holes, misogyny, and plain nasty as to be worthy only f the bin ).

Mighara - Yuval Noah Harare in his latest book Homo Deus talks of the entirety of existence in terms of data flow (a concept he calls 'dataism'). Your last post has something of this about it. Descartes found only thought alone could have truly indisputable existence, and on this basis (since thought is data too) even V's abstract apples and morality have more weight than the hand in front of my eyes. Similarly your four-fold reflections are existent data patterns just waiting for your mind to settle on them ..... to see them where no-one else did.

Heh...I don't want to say Plato was some kind of moron. He was pretty damn brilliant. And he surely elucidated extremely valuable and fruitful ways of thinking about things. Effective tools shouldn't be denigrated. But yea---mistaken conclusions and assumptions abound. [[many of them perfectly understandable given the boundaries---technical and otherwise---of the total knowledge field at the time]].

Onward.

Data/information---is physical. Flowing is physical. Perceiving it is physical. The process of thinking about it and making meaning is physical.
If thought has an indisputable existence, then it is absolutely a necessary condition that some thing exists that thinks.
[[[as far as we know...it may be difficult, or even impossible, to prove existence absolutely. But it is infinitely harder to prove non-existence.]]]

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

On the second...well, to some extent. But a lot of the Mig-ness is idiosyncratic and/or surreal.
Not a criticism---but it does create barriers and thickets for the reader.

Just imagine what it's like for people trying to deal with me IRL. I recently made some quasi-religious remark that was interpreted by almost everyone around me as a claim of pursuit by a bounty hunter...

the square root of negative one is mathematically possible in some sense---in fact it is necessary in numerous cases, and extremely useful.
But is it physically possible in any way?

Not sure if this is a direct answer, but, IIRC, my college algebra textbook said that electricians/electrical engineers actually use imaginary numbers in their work. So electricity, it might seem, is imaginary-numbered?

More broadly, not that I know the details, or understand those of which I am aware, but physicists' exploration of string theory has inspired work by "pure" mathematicians in some way.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Mighara - Yuval Noah Harare in his latest book Homo Deus talks of the entirety of existence in terms of data flow (a concept he calls 'dataism'). Your last post has something of this about it. Descartes found only thought alone could have truly indisputable existence, and on this basis (since thought is data too) even V's abstract apples and morality have more weight than the hand in front of my eyes. Similarly your four-fold reflections are existent data patterns just waiting for your mind to settle on them ..... to see them where no-one else did.

Datalism/the information-theoretic paradigm is exactly what I was invoking.

I don't really know that I've seen a connection besides that one set has four things on one side, and the other has four on another. Each set is on approximately the same "level" of the information-realm it comes from, as the other---redemption/etc. are not quite the baseline, just as the four forces are supposed to come from a more basic force/field---so I wonder... But now, on the other hand, is this suspicion or wonder new with me? I think that the history of music, of musical concepts and technology, the use of music in religion, and now the resonance-theoretic project of string theory, point to the basis of such an equation.

As I claimed, the equation depends on the notion of a hierarchy among the forms of making amends/atonement. But why suppose this? Couldn't people just be vengeful at one time, forgiving at another, apologetic here and there, and hopefully, in the final analysis, redeemed of all their failures, without ever entertaining some priority between these possibilities? However, let's consider traditional/mainstream/w/e Christianity for a moment. It encodes the following:

• 1. God is obligated to punish sin (for His own honor).
  2. Apologizing to God is not sufficient to remit sin/block punishment.
  3. Forgiveness is "grace," unearned/undeserved.
  4. Redemption (in the non-Christian sense) is impossible: think of all the aspersions cast on Pelagius in his day, the Franciscans at one point in their earliest hours, and Arminius later.

So implicitly, Christianity has assumed a prioritization of precisely these four notions. Worse, Christianity has apparently assumed the exactly wrong order for them. Although I would not say the moral information is totally subjective/obscurely expressive of attitudes or feelings, I still think that, "I am obligated to do X," is not true unless I, on some level, choose or intend for it to be so. This is autonomy (in some Kantian sense), and so in this light:

• I am punished = my moral power is fully restored, from the outside (the debt is satisfied with no remainder, but I did not myself satisfy it).
  I forgive someone = I partly/temporarily restore someone else's moral power (autonomous from my direction but heteronomous from the forgiven person's).
  I apologize = the same as forgiveness except inverted.
  I am redeemed = I have redeemed myself (this does not follow from the normal usage of the word "redeemed" but only its special sense in my work, as I picked it up from my youthful perusal and devouring of the Covenant novels.

That is, punishment is the most heteronomous form of making amends (in fact, the will-to-punishment might be gleaned as the primary source of inspiration for authoritarian governance, since "in punishing oneself, one comes to merit punishment," or in other words, as Kant said, the attitude of self-vengeance is, in terms of abstract logic, absurd, wherefore a genuine punishment requires an external authority), forgiveness and apologies are mixes of heteronomy and autonomy, and redemption best expresses transcendental freedom.

EDIT: A twofold example of the amendmental priority: SRD explicitly goes over "restoration versus retribution" two or three times in TLD. In this he hearkens some to Jung's analysis of the Christian God in AtJ, and these two both echo Joachim of Fiore's view that God the Father is to be conceived of as the more wrathful/vengeful mode of God, with the Son and the Spirit, and Their respective ages (this is the guy who came up with the "Three Ages" idea as warped, eventually, by the Nazis), symbolizing a transition from punishment-mindedness to sanctification-mindedness.