As promised, I am posting some of my philosophy of physics ideas that aren’t as well formulated. Click here. The idea in the attached paper is that there are a number of large-scale phenomena that might suggest that the notion of “travelling” might not be so well defined. In the time to come, I will be blogging about Wesley Salmon’s “at-at” theory, which has been universally embraced by nearly all philosophers and, almost assuredly, every physicist holding a university position. This paper, “Not-So-Faster-Than-Light Particles and the GZK Cutoff: Philosophical Considerations of Wayward Travels,” is really a shot in that direction, contra “at-at” theory. The “at-at” theory says that an object moving from point A and B occupies each spatial point, xi (i = 1, 2,…,n), at some corresponding point in time, tj (j = 1, 2,…,n), satisfying the following two criteria: 1) i=j, 2) the object occupies each contiguous location en route to the final point, and 3) this set, the set of contiguous locations, is the unique set such that distance is minimized between point A and B. Continue reading
Category Archives: Philosophy
Not-So-Faster-Than-Light Particles and the GZK Cutoff: Philosophical Considerations of Wayward Travels
Thoughts on Physicists Versus Philosophers
In her opinion article “Physicists Versus Philosophers” (in The Philosophers Magazine Issue 58, 3rd Quarter 2012), Ophelia Benson presents a short, but interesting, account of friction between philosophers and physicists. I was a bit bothered by a number of elements presented in the article, and provoked to sympathy for the physicists, by way of reflection. “Sympathy,” not because I side with the comments of physicists, like “‘The only people, as far as I can tell, that read works by philosophers of science are other philosophers of science’”; but because of all of the changes in tides and shifts in power away from physics. It really is a tumultuous time in academia. Take a second to consider it. Many (maybe most?) scientists and philosophers no longer believe in ontological reduction down to the level of physics. Continue reading
On Decision-Making Considerations in Light of Meta-Data with Dubious Ontological Status
There was an interesting paper (a couple of them, actually) presented at the Sixth Midwest Epistemology Workshop hosted by Indiana University Bloomington. The particular paper I have in mind, “The Practical Dogmatist” by Roy Sorensen of Washington in St. Louis, was very intriguing; but it was not all that well received by the IU Bloomington Philosophy Department. My impression is that the paper’s importance was missed, and this impression is supported by some of the questions asked and comments made after Sorensen gave his presentation. It could be that the paper is still in an early state of formation, inchoate in its development, but I think the merit in its line of thought can be seen. It could very well have been the case that few had actually read the paper prior to the presentation. Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, Philosophy, Pure Philosophy
Why Are Narratives So Moral?
This question’s answer seems very, very obvious and without a doubt, for me at least: Why are narratives so moral? The question was posed to me in an e-mail, which served as a call for responses to be presented at IU Bloomington’s conference, a conference that is thematically in line with our “Themester.” Fall 2012’s theme is “Good Behavior, Bad Behavior: Molecules to Morality.” The “molecules to morality” part is the part I don’t like about the theme’s title, primarily because I think the proposal of an ought from an is is silly. There is some limited sense in which I think an ought can come from an is, but that is beyond the scope of this post. Anyway, my answer to the above posed question is —surprise! surprise!— Kantian in flavor. If you are in cognitive science, psychology, or neuroscience, and actually know a thing or two about the philosophical founding of your science, then this will, on the contrary, not surprise you. Continue reading
Filed under Kantian Philosophy, Literature, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Addendum to Conceptual Anachronism Post
I need to go a bit further than what I did in my blog post on conceptual anachronism. It is the worst nightmare of the historian, mostly because his or her craft is centrally about context. For them, there is a wrong answer, when looking at history unfairly with a modern lens. Philosophers make this mistake, too, but they tend to do it with style and blissful ignorance like you’ve never seen. The problem with philosophers doing it is double: 1) The philosopher’s project is often (only!) ostensibly lacking in investment in historical accuracy; but the truth is that this false impression makes it more difficult to pick up on his or her error —and this, in my opinion, means partial exculpation for the indicted philosopher. 2) The creative fashion in which conceptual anachronisms are employed is so unclear that the error may seem debatable. I have a particular instance in mind. It arose this past week, in a seminar I am taking under Jordi Cat, called “Unity of Science.” Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics
The Time Traveller’s Instantaneous Cube
I offer for consideration a very interesting dialogue from the opening of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (Pocket Books, 2004, page 5). The protagonist begins:
“You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.”
“That’s all right,” said the Psychologist.
“Nor having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.”
“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All real things —”
“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?”
“Don’t follow,” said Filby.
Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?”
Filby became pensive.
“Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have extension in four directions, it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and —Duration.”
The dialogue points to what is, in my experience, a much overlooked idea: that there is an interesting constraint applied to time by the first three spatial dimensions. When we look around, we don’t see triangles, we see things that look like triangles. This is the sort of thinking that led Plato to the idea of universal forms and the allegory of the Cave. The dialogue points out an interesting question: Supposing that one can obtain, say, a platonic solid, what if it exists only for an instant —that is, no duration at all? I don’t see this question come up often in the more academic forums; maybe it does and I am just missing it. Continue reading
Instrumentation in Thought Experiments?
There are three scholars, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Jason Noble, and Seth Bullock, who have a brilliant little paper floating around. I say “floating,” because I don’t believe they have published it formally, so I append it here. The paper is called “Simulation Models as Opaque Thought Experiments.” I think the paper could be the first move in a very interesting direction, but there is a problem: I don’t think they concluded the paper in the most natural and potent way; the presentation made me realize something very different from what the authors concluded. Let me give you a quick, two-second rundown of the paper. Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy of Mind
Kahneman, Kusch, and Hacking: Formal Reasoning Systems as a Subset of Styles of Reasoning
There is an interesting fact about science, one that probably Kuhn was first to note: When we perform experiments and enter into a study, the scientist will do his or her best to jam any result into the box, and be completely satisfied with that. End of story. The scientist proved what they thought was or might be the case. This extends well beyond the natural sciences, and is much easier in some of the other empirical sciences, as will be seen in this bog post primarily on economics. I bring all of this up because of a paper I recently came across that deeply bothered me. Continue reading
Filed under Economic Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
A Problem with Popular Physics/Science Books: The Problem of Authorship
It should be common knowledge that it isn’t wise to accept, without air of caution, someone’s opinion on a matter as absolute fact, if that person is not an expert in the given field. Consider popular physics, for the moment. What field is it that a physicist (or, as will be the case in the blog post, a mathematician) is expert of? That’s one question. Another is: What does the composition of works in popular physics entail? If the answer to the former is not the answer to the latter, then there is something wrong. I believe something is. Continue reading
The Impossibility of Precisely Measuring Positions of Particles in Quantum Physics
I am not going to go too hard on him, James S. Trefil, because he is such a fine author and I enjoy his work; but I must address an error that this physicist makes in one of his books, From Atoms to Quarks: An Introduction to the Strange World of Particle Physics (1980). (See my review of the book by clicking on this sentence.) I have chosen Trefil’s error for discussion, because he is a fine physicist, which makes for a good mark in proving a point, namely, that physics needs philosophy of physics to mind a number of problems that are not central to advancement of the science. These problems include the kind of conceptual one that will be mentioned —one that I hope other physicists do not err on— and conceptual problems in foundations, metaphysics, and so forth. Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy, Philosophy of Physics, Physics, Popular Science
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