Recent content by Ernies

Photons: An astronomer says that some photons he has just detected were emitted from a star 100million light-years away. Does this mean anything in your terms? Does it make sense to ask what they were doing in the intervening time? Does it make sense to ask where they were? If not, why not...

The examples you give illustrate my point. 1. 'the area of a gallon' is an example of the property 'area' being totally inapplicable to the 'gallon': it is a logical impossibility. 2. I do not understand 'It just doesn't compute'. What computation? Or is this some patois for ' It doesn't...

As I said half the argument is about terminology. At least you have stated your disagreement with the normal use of ontology clearly. When you say "R is is unmeasurable" do you mean simply that the word 'area' is not applicable to R? Are you defining 'measure zero' as the end of an unending...

Yes, Indeed! Non-cotton-candy! I was aware of the basic thesis, but so many people are not. But you must remember what I said, I was trying to keep it to the simplest possible exposition. Thanks fo putting it in the open. Ernies

All the arguments seem to be --- as I earlier remarked ---- descending to disagreements on terminology and in particular ontology. This, in the Oxford companion to Philosophy, is described as concerning (among other things) 'the nature of existence and the categorial structure of reality'. If...

I like Paul Davies ideas in general. Have you read the book he edited of BBC broadcasts in which about half a dozen eminent physicists gave their interpretations of QM? All except one said "There is only one interpretation of QM". Trouble is they were all different. I have no objections to...

But in an earlier post he said "I have never claimed that an explanation is the same as a description..." and on the other "An explanation is simply an interpretation or description ...". Now surely these two sentences cannot be put together in a way consistent with the later post which in...

1.The primary meaning of 'free', in several dictionaries at least, is "able to act at will; not under compulsion or restraint". It does not restrict it to 'external' constraint or deterministic external function. 2. All other uses are either a subset of this or mere analogies, which would of...

My point about gluons is that the forces involved vary directly in some sort of power law--not inversely, as for other particles---with separation distance. I really don't see how that can be accommodated in your argument.Yet again, I cannot see how anything without edges can either 'flip' or...

Why distinguish the charged particle as a solid object (i.e. the tent-pole)? They behave like waves too, under the right conditions, swapping their apparent qualities just like photons. If charge is a fundamental dimension of the universe, how about parity, spin, and all the other qm...

'Deterministically free' is the best example of oxymoron I have heard in years . ROFL. Your later explanation seems to me totally incompatible with the earlier words. May you remain happy in your freely chosen illusion. Ernies p.s. look up the derivation of oxymoron.

pat said:Classically, we are used to equate "correlation between events" and "causality". In quantum mechanics, this link is broken. There may be correlation without a cause/effect relationship.[end of quote]. Is the assertion that the link is always broken? If it is, what is the sense in...

Please don't be offended: but I think you mean Turing machine, named after the famous Alan Turing, not "Touring machine".

I see Farsight's reason for such an attempt, but I think his argument does not work. It treats space (or spacetime) as a substratum through which the "wavicle" passes, whether as a bullet or a warp or something we haven't yet thought of. This really is back to the old "ether". I'm afraid I...