Ilya Startsev

It is impossible to avoid this dialectic. Change is indeed constant. And we indeed are subjective and objective, just like our world. You are rejecting Time then. Where did Time come from? It surely did not come from Everything that's out of time.

I don't want to keep you in the dark. Although I denied a conceptual basis for void and vacuum, I still implicitly conceive of Nonexistence. Epistemological non-A ultimately comes from metaphysical Nonexistence. Here is the reformulation of my metaphysics: Existence is timeless everywhere, and Nonexistence is spaceless everywhen. They complement perfectly, with the latter coming before the former.

The concern to reduce everything to particles and quanta is materialism. Here is what Kant wrote: there is a relation and connection between reality and negation, or rather a transition from the former to the latter, which makes every reality representable to us as a quantum (COPR, p. 123) Does Wigner see anything besides particles (as mental images) and do you see anything besides particles (as energy)? Seemingly not. Thus, you negate, or reduce, reality to a sub-reality or a non-reality (i.e., your 'vacuum'). What you do not want to comprehend is that particles are not energy. Particles are organized, quantized, structured localizations of energy. (You even said "their energy," which means there is something else besides the pure energy that makes particles qua particles.) Energy is the stuff from which they are made, the half-waves of vibrations. The same way is our world made of such energy and particles, but our world as a whole, an irreducible sum, such as the computer you look at or a room where you sit have a form that we perceive actively as human beings and not merely sense our surroundings like passive receptacles, such as the non-human instruments that physicists use. I have a question for you: Is there a difference between a robot and a human?

You and Wigner judge as if everything was QM particles. The difference is that he takes them to be subjective and you take them as objective. That's a difference of ideas but not of core materialist philosophy. As for me, I live in an environment, which is not the same as 'vacuum.' Whole things surround me, but they are not the same as QM matter and energy. While QM is concerned with fragments and parts, our true reality is the perceivable whole. That's exactly what I need, and this was my point. I am concerned with the relationship between energy and particles. And this wave-relationship is found among particles as well. This simply means that no particle is independent from energy or other particles.

From wikipedia: A single, all-encompassing definition for the term wave is not straightforward. A vibration can be defined as a back-and-forth motion around a reference value. However, a vibration is not necessarily a wave. An attempt to define the necessary and sufficient characteristics that qualify a phenomenon to be called a wave results in a fuzzy border line. And from the same place, showing how much of a 'realist' you are: [W]ave theory represents a particular branch of physics that is concerned with the properties of wave processes independently of their physical origin. And here is something I found on a Russian website about wave–particle duality: photon, electron, proton, neutron... are only half-waves of vibrations in the medium where the wave propagates (фотон, электрон, протон, нейтрон… являются лишь полуволнами колебаний той среды, в которой распространяется волна)

Kantians ignore reality. They are anti-realists. The 'realities' you speak of are the primeval 'particle' with the internal temperature from about 1027C to about 1012C before the Big Bang and the 'vacuum' state with photons somehow existing at the same time. More so, none of these things are observable yet they are measurable (or immeasurable, however you like) by the humanly constructed instrumentation based on anti-foundationalist principles.

You mean when there was only one never-to-be-observed particle in existence, right? I get an idea that neither have other particles, such as Higgs boson, exist until they were observed by people who so desired (and mathematically justified) them to exist.

I forgot about the lexicon entry. Yes, if existence is timeless, then it fits within my framework. An everlasting entity is a hard one to comprehend, though. QM was surely caused, but do you think that it's everlasting? I doubt it. The USSR was supposed to never have an end, too.

Obfuscating, huh? Well, here is something that is not obfuscating to you, then: The units of the concepts “existence” and “identity” are every entity, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist. The units of the concept “consciousness” are every state or process of awareness that one experiences, has ever experienced or will ever experience (as well as similar units, a similar faculty, which one infers in other living entities). The measurements omitted from axiomatic concepts are all the measurements of all the existents they subsume; what is retained, metaphysically, is only a fundamental fact; what is retained, epistemologically, is only one category of measurement, omitting its particulars: time—i.e., the fundamental fact is retained independent of any particular moment of awareness (Rand, ITOE, Ch. 6). And Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states: "Eternity as timelessness, and eternity as everlastingness, have been distinguished." So, my question is: Is the eternity of existence timeless or everlasting?

First, I did not mention "vacuum" in my reformulation. Second, you did not answer my question. Edit: here I'll put it more directly: Andie, does this agree more with QM than before? The verb "is" is used in Rand's sense as a mix of existence and identity based on context.

Here is my philosophical reformulation of my comprehension of QM: Verb "is" as in Existence is Identity, everything is something: Field is Particle; Field is Wave Particle is Quantum; Particle is Energy Wave is Quantum; Wave is Energy Verb "is" as in non-Identity is Identity, non-something is something: Quantum/Energy is Particle Quantum/Energy is Wave Particle/Wave is Field Edit: two additional: Energy is Quantum Wave is Particle Andie, please confirm whether this is more in agreement with QM (as you see it) than I had previously.

I understand causality as self-causality (i.e., becoming). Does that answer your question?

The law of causality is about process, and I am talking about the end points of that process, the identities. Non-A means something is not something else. You should purge the void you keep referring to from your mind. There is no such thing. Space is filled with matter or energy. Qubits use three valued logic: 0, 1, and 0/1, or indeterminate. Does the law of causality, as you understand it, fit here?

The confusion is over these terms: particle, wave, field. To you they are all the same and you are calling them a quantum. To me, they are different. A particle has dimension 0, a wave has dimension 1, a field has dimension 2. You mix them all as if they have the same dimensions! Your mathematics is telling you that a particle has a wavelength, therefore it is a wave. But a wavelength is a mathematical property, not an actual thing/energy. Then you say that in the distance of the same wavelength there are two fields, an electric and a magnetic one. That makes it a three-dimensional particle! Of course, if you like the string theory, you'd say that there are even more than three dimensions a single particle can have. And yet we know that particles move in one direction! Excellent quote! This needs to be formalized into a law. Plenum may be analogous to a wave, but they are not equal. I've quit using the anti-concept of void. Plasmatic, I referred to "epagoge" article since that's the one I've read provided your link. It's only available in pdf as an image without searchable text, so that's why you did not find the name. I've skimmed it and found Bacon twice as in "Baconian" on page 346 and in a note on p. 371. The article on Bacon from wikipedia said that he "has been called the father of empiricism," so I automatically assumed that "modern notions of induction," involving the misinterpretation of Aristotelian induction, are Baconian.

Greg, the law of identity is the fundamental method used by a conscious being to describe reality as it is. Yes. There is nothing in the laws of Aristotelian logic that dealt with potentials actualizing, as far as I can tell. This great gap is what I think should be filled by a new law, that of becoming, of actualizing, of changing, growing, developing into a new identity (for an old one). This means that a red table cannot become anything other than red of its own accord. But a conscious being can change itself of its own accord. Or a photon. It can change its identity from an old identity (non-A) to a new identity (A) by means of going through some "unknown" process. Please, don't mix spatial voids here, since they are greatly misunderstood. Plenums cause Cosmos, not voids. Although it may be even more complicated than that. Cosmos may also lead to Plenum (somehow). Let's first look at how a photon would change its identity by becoming a complete wave. Let A be "wave," and non-A thus becomes non-wave. A photon is not a wave. Make this photon a non-A (non-A here is already spetialized for this particular process of becoming, so yes, this is a mix of induction and deduction). Add another photon in a noisy channel. Non-A plus another non-A is still a non-A but (!) until a critical point is reached through entanglement when non-A becomes A. Thus a state from two non-waves changes to the new state of a wave. Apply this to anything that can change its own identity through some phenomenological event, and all problems are solved! The law of becoming is not mathematical, since it supports the notion that the sum can be greater than its parts (because identities are changed!).

You are on a roll with your posts, Andie! That's why my concept of the law of becoming, non-A is A, should be considered. The law of identity, as it is, is incomplete in describing our (complete) reality. Your description of an Objectivist is incomplete. The law of identity is not an end-in-itself for Objectivists but the method. And you got it backwards. Platonic "purview" falls within Objectivism. Bell's used his "standard of consistency" to independently confirm the schism between QM and Rel. So what? A photon is not a complete wave, but a part of a wave, a localization. But two photons can be a wave (like two points make an interval on a line). The photons traveling at the speed of light is only that which we can sense. The question is what we cannot sense. We cannot sense dark matter/energy. In fact, we cannot sense much of energy, although we can model it. I think the answer lies somewhere therein. Edit to elaborate on my answer: Maybe it has to do with the structure of electromagnetic radiation itself. In his book Programming the Universe (2006), Seth Lloyd said that there is nothing spooky about quantum entanglement. Quanta entangle while they are a wave going through a noisy channel and after they are separated and one of them is observed, the other has the remainder of what's left of that wave. I compare it to electro-magnetism of a wave. It has two opposite components. Similarly, quanta have opposite spins. Once you get the spin of one end, the other end is the opposite. There is nothing strange about this natural phenomenon, if you look at it this way. Just think, if you observe one (say you observe it in different universes), you will get the same results every time at this same time of observing the same photon. Just don't get spooked by the fact that the photons' spins were unknown while they were going through a noisy channel and were forming a complete wave.

I don't have a problem with photons comminicating "at speeds far greater than that of light itself." I have a problem with QM's "internal coherence." QM's only consistency is in being inconsistent. That is no "explanation" that follows the facts and constitutes "the best that we have." Einstein's fault was that his theory is also incomplete. If you read it carefully, you will find Bacon's name twice in that article. However, I should not have mentioned Bacon's name. Besides not knowing much about him, I did not know that "modern notions of induction" were not Baconian, even though Bacon was the father of empiricism. And I don't honestly care whether Bacon agreed with Aristotle or disagreed. As for your edit, I didn't read Rand's books as sacred texts, if that's what you meant.

I quoted from the article you linked - McCaskey's "Freeing Aristotelian Epagoge From Prior Analytics." That's strange because it does seem as if he is contradicting himself in different articles. From reading the first article, I got the impression that Aristotle was misinterpreted by Bacon, unless he meant that "Modern notions of induction" are neither Baconian nor Aristotelian, but then where did they come from? Andie, I agree with Einstein that QM is incomplete. Einstein was indeed more logical than QMers. Apply the same reasoning to QM, and we get that QM cannot find "the only logical way of explaining" the double-slit experiment (i.e., Young's experiment). But that does not mean that there isn't one. The problem is to find it - not to simply ignore it.

In McCaskey's article, he differentiates Aristotle and Bacon's induction on p. 368: So, Aristotle did not mean inference under induction. Very interesting. I tend to agree with this notion. As for the other article, I did not enjoy when Salmieri wrote "universals as “matter” " and that "Aristotle regards all universals, rather than only kinds, as determinable matter". Kant interpreted Aristotle as an empiricist, which is wrong. Aristotle was not just an empiricist. What do you think?

Ops, those e-mail notifications messed me up. Sorry about that. I would think that essence is metaphysically necessitated but is epistemological. I will read those articles on Aristotle that Plasmatic linked and see who is right.

Andie Holland wrote (later deleted, but unjustly, I think): Out of many things you wrote, Andie, this one is true. Aristotle never idealized his philosophy, but Rand did. For Aristotle the logic is directed at an end, for Rand - the logic starts at the end as if it were a beginning position.

You understand Neo-Objectivism quite well, regardless of whether you want to believe otherwise. I congratulate you with this immense achievement!

Andie, my "ignorance of basic Physics" is not boring but irritating to you, since I am questioning Physics' dogmas, to which Harvard has taught you so well to conform.

Your sufficiency-mindedness is boring, Andie. Next!

Jacob, you were right. Both "Fiction" and especially "Nonfiction" have a lot of good points on metaphors. Thank you for recommending them to me!