Vik
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Posts posted by Vik
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If you haven't heard his lecture yet and you are ignorant of what QM and relativity say, you may misunderstand what Harriman is trying to say about them.
I have some comments and questions.
1) Some of QM's pioneers said some nutty things, but the popular press tends to misrepresent QM as well. We should separate *real* nuttiness from *misunderstandings* and *misconceptions* on the part of an ignorant layperson.
In QM, people do NOT "cause wave collapse". "Observer" refers to the measuring apparatus, whose particles can interact with what you're trying to measure and change their behavior.
Harriman makes a comment on Schrodinger's cat. Please be aware that Schrodinger's thought experiment was intended to illustrate the absurdity of taking the Copenhagen interpretation literally. Schrodinger did NOT mean that the cat is REALLY in an indeterminate state until we look.
He wasn't the only one who felt the interpretation was inadequate. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen wrote a paper on one of the issues. De Broglie thought the wave-particle duality was inadequate and proposed something similar to a standing wave.
Heck, Feynman explicitly stated that if you shine a light on an electron to figure out which slit it's passed through, you lose the interference pattern because photons interact with electrons.
2) I don't see anything in GR that claims that space exists apart from physical entities. GR is founded on SR, which assumes Galilean relativity. If I'm reading Galilean relativity correctly, space is NOT an entity.
It is my understanding that it was Newton who claimed that space was absolute and that it was Einstein who rejected that claim. Google "Newton's buckets". It is my understanding that Einstein REJECTED absolute space and came up with a different explanation for the behavior of the buckets (the rest of the universe).
3) SR claims that space will *appear* to contract to an outside observer.
So why do some people think SR says that space *actually* contracts? I'm pretty sure that's the fault of Lorentz Ether Theory. While Einstein claims that contraction is APPARENT, Lorentz claims that contraction is REAL. AFAIK, both LET and SR make the same predictions. However, SR led to GR, which gave us a correct prediction for Mercury and GPS navigation systems. LET dead-ended.
I wonder what Harriman's thoughts are on the matter.
4) Harriman doesn't like the phrase "time dilation". It is a cold hard fact that fewer seconds pass on a shuttle accelerated into orbit and brought back than a shuttle parked on earth. Why is it wrong to call this "time dilation"? Does he suggest a better phrase?
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Causality to him is not action applied to the law of identity.
Then you'll have to force him to reduce it to reality.
Let's suppose for the sake of argument his definition is something like:
the relation between a cause and its effect
Now what do you need to know before you can have the concepts of "cause" and "effect"? You need to know that things do actions. You need to know that similar things do similar actions.
Suppose instead that his definition is something like:
the relation between regularly correlated events or phenomena
What is a phenomenon? A well-documented type of event. A kind of fact.
What is an event? Something doing something. Entity and its action.
What is a fact? An actual state of affairs involving entities.
However you reduce causality, you end up with entity-action relationships.
Start with entity-based action and induce up.
He wants to know that water, comprised of hydrogen and oxygen, - how do hydrogen and oxygen 'know' to 'become' water.
They don't. Sometimes they form hydrogen peroxide.
The outcome depends on oxidation numbers, collision energy, and many other factors.
Hand him a chemistry book. Collision theory is pretty easy to understand.
Atoms are comprised of protons, neutrons and electrons. How do these subatomic particles 'know' to become the elements.
They don't. Sometimes electrons are traveling freely through space. Ditto for protons. Neutrons tend to decay though, so they're seldom seen apart from atoms.
Subatomic particles become elements only under certain conditions, e.g. when the subatomics are in close proximity, have suitable energies, etc. Hydrogen atoms are easy to make. Anything passed that requires nuclear fusion.
In short, things interact. If things interact a certain way, they "stick".
The "rules of the universe" are not commandments forcing nature to behave a certain way.
The "rules of the universe" are statements summarizing how nature DOES behave.
Newton discovered the gravitational constant. What gives rise to gravity, and 'what chose' the gravitational constant.
What "chose" the value of Pi? The circle did.
I am trying to avoid getting into that here, and your earlier reply pointed out an avenue that I had not considered taking. It is as if the 'blinders' are on, and the focus is reducing it back to axioms as the given. Perhaps a steering into the formation of concepts may give him (and myself) a run for the money. Quite frankly, this R(ule)M(aker) approach has grown about as old as turning missionaries away from the door on a Saturday morning.
Things interact.
We form concepts based on perceived similarities and differences.
We formulate propositions by applying our concepts to physical states of affairs.
We summarize our understanding of nature by means of physical laws.
What we call a Rule is simply a way of focusing on a specific aspect of the universe by means of our concepts.
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"how the universe is not prior to atoms"
What does Binswanger mean by "atom"?
If all that Binswanger means is that the totality of everything that exists must have started out as *something*, I agree.
But I would NOT call that something "atoms". Current theory holds that atoms formed out of protons and electrons. If Binswanger was trying to resurrect the Greek idea of fundamental entities, there are less confusing ways to do it.
I would call the something "prior existents", i.e. existents prior to and responsible for the particle zoo we're familiar with. I would NOT call them "first existents" because we have no way of knowing whether the entities behind the visible universe are the first entities or simply another generation in an even longer history.
The situation is a bit like when chemists started calling certain particles "atoms", meaning "un-cutable", before we discovered they were indeed cut-able.
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Something for me to work on. It points out something that could use a little introspection to isolate.
Curious though, 5:1 - 5:2 provoked this response:
co-worker:'The abstracting of identity'. That's a strange sentence using abstract as a verb. My understanding of abstract was that it is something that you cannot touch, an idea or a feeling.BTW, nice job listing the source as if it's in the 3rd Testament.dream_weaver:Abstracting is concept of consciousness denoting a process / activity, hence, verb.Where do these "abstract ideas" come from? A rational person doesn't pull them out of nowhere. There must be some sort of mental process or set of processes that took us from the perceptual level to the abstract.
What is it about rubber balls that enables us to say that two things are rubber balls? How could we determine that? Texture. High elasticity. If you want to be rigorous, certain chemical reactions.
SOMETHING accounts for these characteristics, namely the IDENTITIES of the existents involved.
Can you have texture without structure? Can you have chemical reactions without electrons?
Without entities, there are neither attributes nor actions.
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dream_weaver: So if we summarized where we are at the moment, it would seem that each individidual entity, individually exists, is individually percievable, and individually has identity?
co-worker: Yes.
dream_weaver: So put in other words:
to conceptualize that existence exists, is to identify that every entity / existent, exists and grasp that they do.
to conceptualize that consciousness is conscious, is to identify that consciousness perceives the existents.
to conceptualize identity is to identify that each and every entity / existent, is precisely the entity / existent that it is.
I am not sure if your co-worker understands the concept of "identity".
It isn't right to say that things *have* identity.
"[The abstracting of identity] is not the abstraction of an attribute from a group of existents, but of a basic fact from all facts. Existence and identity are *not attributes* of existents, they *are* the existents."
(Ayn Rand, ITOE, 6. Axiomatic Concepts, 5:1 - 5:2)
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Some points on the role of context in physical theory.
1. Context involves levels of integration as well. Copernicus integrated quite a few astronomical facts by means of the idea of helio-centricism and the concept of inclined axis. Kepler integrated additional facts by means of the concept of an ellipse, which he used to formulate his laws concerning powers of times and distances. Galileo integrated motion and rest by means of the concept of inertia. Newton integrated the horizontal and accelerated motion described in Galileo's work by means of the concept of force. Newton's theory of gravitation integrates ALL the facts associated with the above work and quite a few more. Einstein's Principle of General Covariance integrates Copernican covariance with Galilean relativity.
2. New knowledge can make explicit the context of an old theory. For example, Einstein's 1905 paper shows that Newtonian mechanics holds for slow velocities.
3. Much of a theory can survive with minimal modification in the face of new facts.
Newton's law of inertia and his concept of force for example. I think it's worth pointing out that the concept of non-inertial reference frame enables us to *add* to our knowledge concerning inertia and force. It does not invalidate the concept of inertia or the concept of force. Nor does it invalidate the laws of motion when you simply *take into account* the necessary coordinate transformations. So inertia and force are definitely "right". They're just insufficient.
As Newton says:
"In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions."
4. If an old theory can be treated as a special subcategory a new one, and the "false" assumptions are only false when applied outside that special subcategory, you can treat them as simplifying assumptions. For example, "absolute space" and "absolute time" are simplifying assumptions that are useful for situations where kinetic energy isn't relativistic. So I suppose you could say Newton's theory is an approximation in that sense.
4. "Wrong" theories are not "wrong" simply because they are incomplete. If we say that incomplete theories are "wrong", then all theories are wrong. Including relativity and quantum mechanics, which were the very theories alleged to overturn the Newtonian world-view in the first place.
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You are missing the recursive nature of objects as hierarchical containers, and the fact that the sequences themselves, and any collection or relationship among them, are also objects of consideration. For example, I can consider my coffee cup and its contents as a whole; or I can change the level of my focus, and consider the cup and its contents as a system of two parts interacting; or I can refocus on the coffee itself, and consider how it is a mixture of a particular nature; and etc.
At each step of consideration, there is an object in focus, which object can be multifaceted, i.e., a complex of lower-order objects. But I cannot simultaneously consider my coffee and your coffee as specifics; I can consider the two coffees as one item if I change focus to that level.
I specifically pointed out that there are levels of abstraction, so I agree that you can shift your attention to a different level of abstraction or a different system level.
I am saying that the process of thought produces such sequences; I am not saying that the sequence format is necessarily the common means to represent the process, but that, implicitly at least, that is what is going on: a sequence of focus and then refocus.
Focus is certainly an attribute of at least some thought processes, but it isn't universal.
Earlier, I mentioned ideas that seem to come out of nowhere. I think that's far more revealing about the mind than the fact we experience a stream of consciousness.
The logic is lateral; the process of thought is still sequential, and each step of focus brings a new object into resolution and consideration. Objects are not points, they have structure and function, are containers of information, have size and shape (although in many cases size can be set aside, which is also the basis for thought of real thing as scale models in the mind).
It sounds like you're using the word "object" to refer to a type of "mental existent" bearing similarity to abstractions but having intention.
I am not sure what you are using "shape" to refer to.
When I associate any two objects, I am considering them as a whole system and examining specific relationships between them consistent with considering them as a whole. My focus shifts from one object, to another, to their interactions/relationships, to the net effect of the interactions as a whole. When I have been definitive about the association, I have explored and exhausted the available sequences, at least in principle if not necessary in fact (I may not need to know the details of each sequence to make the considered association).
Opposition between fact and principle is a variation of the analytic synthetic dichotomy.
I think what you're trying to grasp is that you get to a certain point when you think you have the essence of something and you can't learn any more at that time anyway because your mind is tired.
But you can always build on previous understanding. That process is effectively endless. Although there is a finite number of things you can do with something, that number is so large that you won't get through them all before you die.
True, levels of abstraction correspond to objects that contain other objects, and are contained by higher order objects. Objects are "state-ic", but the consideration of them over time is sequential. That is how time-perception works: by considering a sequence of related objects (like your images of a clock watched).
Your inner sense of time is not based on perceptual stimulation. Some work on cognitive science has been devoted to the subject, but that's not philosophy so I won't comment.
True. It's object-oriented and complex. But the ACTION of thought is sequential, i.e., the process of cycling through the frames is a sequential process where the question "has it already been considered" can be answered definitively.
Are you distinguishing "frames" on the basis of the intention behind it?
But the process of measuring is sequential.
Sometimes.
Picking up a ruler and putting it down again is sequential.
But ordinal measurement is not.
Neither is measurement of material properties such as strain.
Reread ch 1 of ITOE
The process of subdivision is sequential, the results produced by the process are not.
Subdivision can occur at random moments and doesn't have to be guided by a focus.
The process of comparing can only occur in relation to sets of discretes, and is itself discrete, temporally executed, sequential.
Read Ch 2 of ITOE.
Um, no. I am attempting to convert the concept "change" into something more specifically useful, mathematically and operationally.
So you want to talk about something else. Ok, start a new thread
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Exactly, all examples of considering sequences of objects ... and then, considering the relationships among the sequences, and sequences of sequences, and etc. recursively in each and every available direction of elocution.
- ico
Listen, many things are NOT sequential.
When you focus your consciousness on absorbing something, you get bits and pieces from various places. Eventually it "clicks". That "click" is an integration. There is nothing sequential about that. The scope of integration isn't sequential either. When you with play with a new object, trying to learn how it works, you're engaging in a type of exploration with the intention of integration. Scope of integration is not sequential.
When you explore similarities, analogies, metaphors and so on, you moving *laterally*, not sequentially.
When you associate fundamentals, you're thinking non-linearly.
Levels of abstraction aren't sequential.
The domain of thought is NOT sequential.
How you frame the domain is NOT sequential.
Measurement specification is NOT sequential.
Subdivision is not sequential.
Combination is not sequential.
You're treating a non-essential as universal.
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What else do I have to work with?
- ico
various kinds of thought processes
how you stimulate thought
what the mind throws away after thinking
how you "sit on" a problem until a solution becomes evident
domain of thought
how you frame that domain
content space
grasping reality by means of abstractions
generation of alternatives
approach
arrangements of content
...
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I claim further that, because it is the essence of how thinking works (at least for me), one can gain conceptual leverage by basing and/or reducing the products of thought on such sequences.
What else do I have to work with?
- ico
That's mid-stream. What enabled you to apply the concept of "sequence"?
Start with the facts that lead you to self-awareness. That allowed you to bring attention to your own inner states and the nature of mental processes. Once you started noticing WHAT you were thinking about, you could identify HOW you were thinking about it.
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My process of thought appears to operate as a functional machine of a specific nature. I notice the following, and assume that if you understand my meaning, you are also capable of noticing these things about how your own process of thought works:
1) It is functional, and requires input on which to operate, or if you prefer, context on which to build.
2) The specifics of the input are omitted, that is, I can initiate a course of thought with respect to any available context.
3) If I don't choose the course of my thought, it does not stop; it keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny, processing away on whatever input it picks up from its surroundings.
3 does not hold for me.
If I do not bring attention to my surroundings, I can vegetate for quite some time.
4) I can, with effort, gain and keep focus on a specific object of consideration, mentally examining what I am aware of with respect to the object; the longer I try to keep full awareness of a single object of consideration, the harder it gets. Eventually, my focus switches, even if only briefly. So all I can accomplish is a sequence of pairs {focus,duration}
I can do that for about 50 minutes.
5) There appears to be a minimum duration for which I can consider any particular object of thought, which corresponds to the time it takes to switch to another object of thought.
I have never noticed a minimum for me. I will have to think about this.
From these observations, I conclude that my process of thought is sequential with (approximately) fixed frequency of refocusing potential, so that it can be modeled as a finite sequence of objects, with the frequency telling the number of objects considered per unit time.
I do not see how what you've stated necessarily leads you to the idea of sequence.
The only thing that's remotely linear to me is the model of: input, operations, output
But even that isn't always sequential. I can have feedback loops where I'm not even aware of the inputs until *after* I've done something with them. Also, ideas can came out of nowhere, without any relationship to the facts in conscious awareness.
I'm afraid your model is neither necessary nor sufficient for my experience of consciousness.
I should also warn you that I've thought about this type of stuff for nearly 20 years.
As for "compatibility", some aspects of conceptual thought aren't sequential. Logic is sequential only because we *arrange* content into a sequence. Consciousness is not a passive sequence of content. It is an active process. That process can be modified by attention, intention, etc.
If you want to build a model of what can be in your consciousness, start with simple attributes like content, format, action, intensity, intentionality, etc. You should separate these from the act of conscious attention to them (i.e. awareness of those attributes as "things")
Once you have a large vocabulary for yourself, you can start forming concepts about actions.
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I wouldnt try to put a specific order to it. Knowledge is contextual, A child may define "mile" as, "the distance moms car drives in about 2 minutes" and still not have any idea what a narwhal is. We're constantly learning new concepts, and refining our definitions of old ones.
In that example, the child knows "distance" and "minute" before "mile" AND indicates a grasp of quantitative relationships.
But I agree that the child doesn't have to know "feet".
Not to mention that definitions will change as the child's knowledge base grows.
I think that what you will find universally is that a grasp of quantitative relationships is a prerequisite for definitions of measurement-units.
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A person that age would have a difficult time grasping a concept that is so far removed from the perceptual level. The concept of "length" itself would come before "mile", perhaps "foot" would come next. "Mile" can only be grasped after lower level concepts that are closer to a childs perceptual awareness, and can be grasped spatially are automatized.
Would a more complete order go something like:
concepts of entities
concepts of attributes
concepts of relationships (spatial, temporal, etc.)
concepts of quantitative relationships
concepts of measurement-units, such as "foot"
?
I am not a cognitive scientist.
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It is my understanding that for Abelard, a universal is a natural kind arrived at by ignoring certain features.
For Rand, a universal is a measurement-omission. And she had a very specific idea about what that entails. We don't acquire universals simply by ignoring certain features. We find what varies quantitatively among units and omit them on the principle that "the omitted measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity".
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I'm don't think that one can meaningfully talk about the extent of the universe unless it is qualified, e.g., the extent of the observable universe. Surely it's true that the distance between any two entities in the universe is finite and surely it's true that the extent of any entity is finite. I think, in this sense, it is correct to say that the universe is not infinite, i.e., that there are no infinite distances, infinite extents, etc.
Agreed.
Nonetheless, there is no logical reason that distances and extents cannot be arbitrarily large, i.e., have no upper bound.
"No logical reason"? as in does not imply a contradiction?
That sounds like the analytic-synthetic dichotomy.
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"Why" the ions exert pressure is explained by diffusion, as I said. Are not the prestidigitations of a magician "physical interaction?" Effects are not explained by using jargon such as "entity-action." If window glass is broken by a baseball, you would probably insist that the glass "broke," because that fits your "entity-action" format. It doesn't add anything, however.
How a magic trick is managed is as truly an explanation as anything else. You don't want to become so enamored of narrow explanations that you miss explanations in macro applications.
-- Mindy
I'm aware of the explanation involving diffusion. I was merely illustrating that one doesn't stop at mathematical formalisms because such formalisms don't provide a *physical* explanation, which are always reducible to actions.
You explain a magic trick through a sequence of actions that accounts for the illusion.
You explain a broken window through a discussion about the nature of fracture.
I'm not saying you just stop at "Things act because of what they are".
I'm saying that you study the nature of a predicate and arrive at a physical explanation.
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Thanks everyone for their comments so far. It's been very enlightening!
It's seems apparent to me that i am just ignorant of physics.
Thanks for every-bodies help.
Don't feel too bad. The categories weren't presented to you properly.
Popular science books are usually written by non-scientists who don't know history of science, let alone what the abstractions refer to in reality.
Feynman rescues physics from their absurdity in QED: A Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
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Should cover fields, rings, groups, and modulo
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Right, I thought that might be the passage referred to. I find it a little indirect since she speaks of actual quantities being finite, which might imply that she's speaking of quantities at a time, and so this would not have bearing on the question of whether time can fail to have a beginning point.
She viewed time as a change in relationship among things. (pages 256-260)
"Infinity"--in the metaphysical sense--means something not limited by ANYTHING. But this isn't compatible with the Law of Identity.
When you're talking about the sum of everything, I think it's best to exempt it from the concept of "time". There is no "master clock" at that scale.
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If this is what they say, I would be interested to see a quote from Ayn Rand, but that's mere curiosity. In any case, without some additional argument, I don't accept this premise.
Ayn Rand discussed "infinity" on pages 148-149 of ITOE. "There is a use of [the concept] “infinity” which is valid, as Aristotle observed, and that is the mathematical use. It is valid only when used to indicate a potentiality, never an actuality."
As for time, it refers to the change of one thing against the change of another. A planet moves in the sky from night to night, then repeats a pattern. A nucleus decays, providing a count that serves as a clock for rapid, microscopic processes.
It has no meaning outside of things that change.
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I found something useful:
Page 15 ITOE:
"Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of entities; ..."
So if you were to define "attribute" the genus would be "characteristic". A connection between the two at least.
The genus of Conceptual Common Denominator is also "characteristic".
That makes attributes and CCD siblings, though "attribute" has a metaphysical character (as attributes are attributes of entities) while CCD is most definitely epistemological.
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There can be an infinite regress of uncaused causes. In order for an effect to have a cause, a means of causality must already exist. When pressing the gas pedal causes the car to accelerate, combustion is the means of causality. If there is a means of causality prior to the first cause, then the first cause could not create the means of causality. Therefore, it could not be truly a god.
There are no actual infinities.
Entities provide the means of causation.
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It is basically the Cosmological Argument with a few "twists" or commonly missed observations:
Every effect must have a Cause.
That's infinite regress.
There cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
Ayn Rand believed there were no actual infinities.
If this is true, it kills your first premise.
Therefore there must be an "Uncaused Cause" which in a sense has the power of existence within itself.
I wouldn't put it that way. That makes existence sound like a predicate.
There are certain things that must logically be true about this "Uncaused Cause".
1) It must be "knowable". To say that we cannot know anything about it is a contradiction ("we cannot know anything about it except for the fact that it is the kind of thing that cannot be known" is contradictory). And therefore by the Law of the Excluded Middle, it must be knowable.
We know that it's a *something* as opposed to "nothing". We know that it did something. I can't think of anything else we can say about it.
2) In it's original action of causing, it's action must not have been "accidental". There is nothing else which exists to act upon it and thus cause it to cause other things. It IS the first cause. So now we are asking, "what caused it to cause/create other things/effects?". The answer could not be anything outside of itself and therefore must come from within itself. BUT it could not be some "part" of itself acting upon it from within for then we are taking the same question and going inward rather than outward and run into the same problem of an infinite regression. Whatever this Uncaused Cause is, it must have fully purposed to cause/create and therefore must have a mind to perceive options (to cause or not to cause), desires/preference to choose an option, and will to execute the option. The Uncaused Cause must be a person in the sense of it having a mind, affections, and will.
Excuse me, but an Uncaused Cause CANNOT--in principle--be conscious.
It would have nothing to be conscious of but itself, which is a contradiction in terms.
This kills most religions.
I am familiar with atheists suggesting that "the universe is the uncaused cause" but this seems to have some major problems:
"Universe" has a very specific meaning in physics.
If there is a multiverse, the universe cannot be the uncaused cause.
I prefer saying "the sum of everything has an ultimate prior cause that is not caused by anything else"
1) It does not deal with the problem described in (2) above concerning the impossibility of the Uncaused Cause to act accidentally.
This becomes a pseudo-problem if the premise is false.
2) The Universe is not really an entity (as I understand it??) but a word we use to describe the collection of all entities- and among all the entities, the Law of Cause and Effect is upheld.
An entity is that which you perceive and which can exist by itself.
The sum of everything, whether it is a universe of multiverse or something else--exists. It is what it is. It cannot be otherwise. Its components can be recombined, but any such recombination is made possible by the nature of the constituents.
We cannot perceive the sum of everything, but we know there must be such a thing. This has consequences for your contention about "knowable".
Oh, and replace "Universe" with "Sum of Everything". "Universe" has a very specific meaning in physics.
I am also familiar with the objection that goes as follows: "Since the Universe is everything that exists, it is irrational to wonder about something outside of the Universe since it would not be in the class of everything that exists". This seems rather silly-- obviously Theists are not saying that God does not exist since He created the Universe. They are simply using "universe" to mean everything else in existence which is not the Uncaused Cause.
Ok.
Description of this Uncaused Cause (Or my picture of it):
This ultimate person must be the ultimate embodiment of all rational virtues and perfections. I imagine He would be the ultimate embodiment of Rand's view of humanity (a very "Galt-like God"). He must value above all that which is most valuable (Himself) and be obsessed with Himself. He must do all that He does for the sole purpose of enjoying Himself. In this sense He would be similar to Aristotle's "self-reflecting God" except Aristotle falsely concluded that such a God could never contemplate/create anything lower than Himself-- I would argue that He could contemplate and create things lower than Himself as a means of reflecting upon and enjoying Himself.
I could go into more detail...but that should suffice for now in order to assure you that I am not attempting to make an irrational leap from logic to mysticism.
"Person"? "embodiment"? Lots of claims without backing.
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This concept appears everywhere in Objectivist litterature but I can´t find a definition for it from any Objectivists.
So could you help me understand it better?
I understand what an attribute is. It´s an entity viewed from a certain perspective. It´s an existent which can´t exist by itself but as an aspect of an entity. Now this is pretty much the working definition I´ve been using when reading the word "characteristic" but I´m starting to realize it´s used for a reason, i.e it isn´t a precise synonym for "attribute", so what does it mean?
Several works ago, I started compiling every appearance of "characteristic" in Rand's works. So far, I've only gotten through "concept formation" in ITOE before I lost interest to more pressing matters.
Then I paraphrased the contexts of those appearances.
Here's what I figured out based on the chapter on "Concept Formation":
- Characteristics can be used to isolate units.
- Definitions specify and retain the distinctive characteristics.
- Existents can have the same characteristics in different measures or degree.
- Differentiations are made in terms of characteristics possessing a common unit of measurement.
- Distinguishing characteristics represent a specified category of measurements.
- Concepts of adverbs are formed by specifying a characteristic and omitting measurements of the action and of the netities involved--e.g. "rapidly" which may be applied to "walking", "swimming", "speaking".
Would you be willing to do something similar for chapter 3 and chapter 4?
I think we can help each other out.
- Characteristics can be used to isolate units.
Harriman on the Crisis in Physics
in Physics and Mathematics
Posted
One other thing:
I am not sure what Harriman means when he claims that Einstein made physics observer-dependent.
Copernicus once said that the laws of the universe are the same everywhere. Einstein integrated this idea with Galilean relativity to develop the principle of general covariance: The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference. This suggests to me that coordinate system transformations are a way to ensure that the laws remain applicable REGARDLESS of the observer's state of motion.