Recent content by droog

But surely we can't just "transform away" something like Heisenberg Uncertainty. I'm still missing something incredibly simple here.

I'm very confused. Energy can be expressed as: h.C/wavelength So, in Planck units, the energy of the plank mass could be written h-bar.C/Lp h-bar is in units of m^2 S ^-1 and C is in m s^-1 In plank units h-bar=Lp^2 Tp^-1 and C=Lp/Tp So h-bar.c/Lp=Lp^2. T^-1.Lp.T^-1.Lp^-1 = C^2...

I knew it would be a philosophical question ;) Admitting randomness in the form of thermal noise is only pushing the problem back (albeit a virtually infinite way) if we consider the universe as a whole to be deterministic. I bet there's a dozen threads here regarding determinism and no...

Is it true to say "computers only do what we tell them to"? If we write any program and we know all the inputs then surely we ought to be able to predict the outputs so long as we know all initial states (including the seed in any pseudo random generator as well as the generator taps). If we...

OK thanks. So what was the purpose of the example I wonder? I'm sure it was given to show more than just the equivalence of mass and energy. The proposition related to the cancellation of mass/energy within the totality of the universe on account of the "negative energy" contributed by the...

I seem to recall reading an analogy describing the total mass/energy of a jack-in-the-box. This said that a compressed spring insided a box would "weigh" more than the same when relaxed (albeit immeasurable small). This makes sense given the equivalence of energy and mass. But what if the spring...

These five points have all been raised by an anti-materialist. I am interested in well-reasoned responses that restore a material basis to the World. I accept that this might not be possible but I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that the points raised here arise from a...

How can the materialistic viewpoint be defended from the following attacks: 1) Local interactions vs. spooky action at a distance: Action at a distance suggests non-material interaction. 2) Descriptive laws vs. prescriptive laws: Prescriptive laws are non-material entities, and this is a...

Curse my carelessness! That's exactly what I meant to write. Irrespective of the two types of media you mention, media is nonetheless required to express the information. This is my whole point: no media - no information. I don't think we are going to break out of this loop by placing...

Mentality has the same relation to mind as software has to hardware. It seems to me that software is supervenient on hardware. Despite a number of counterexamples that various people have tried to present, sufficient examination always reveals a need for a material structure to support patterns...

Hold on, there's a mysterious loop here. Surely it shouldn't be quite so easy to jump out of it like that? Cybernetic wisdom aside, it's only natural for the Platonic and Physical worlds to follow on from there -- but that's true if we break out of the loop in any other way! And I don't see...

Thanks Paul. As I read it you are accepting the transformation of concepts from the Platonic realm into realities. But in (2)The laws of physics are stated to be propositions but if they were not fully independent then how can they be interpreted? It seems to me that we would arrive at a totally...

1)According to Paul Davies, most physicists who work on fundamental physics believe the laws of physics have some independent existence to the universe 2)The laws of physics are propositions if they exist independently to the universe 3)Propositions are semantic-based structures 4)We are...

Thank you MF. This epistemic horizon that you speak of is clearly an impediment to anyone seeking to dispel dualism and other metaphysical concepts born out of philosophy. Do you have any words of comfort for the material realists out there?

I think this idea is presented in Lee SMolin's bookThe Life of the Cosmos . He argues that natural selection accounts for the apparent fine-tuning of the physical constants leading to carbon based life because such constants also lead to the formation of universes having a large numbers of black...