Kenny

DNFTT!

[ January 03, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

In true form, you have left off the point:

I stand by it and note yet again that you are doing nothing more here than continuing to evade it, using the same tactics I quite correctly pointed out to you prior and you have not counter-refuted by demonstrating that I am wrong.

I count this last post of yours as yet another concession through redirection.

Belief is not the issue nor even the topic; supporting that belief is.

As stated before, if you're not capable of supporting your assertions then simply be honest and admit it, rather than attempt further evasion.

Kenny

As a final response to Koy, I will simply allow the charge that my failure to respond to him is an attempt to evade the issues he raises to be refuted by the fact of my willingness to engage in extensive dialogs on this thread and elsewhere with those who disagree with me but show respect and civility in doing so as well the fact that I have sought to clarify my views to such persons as much as possible when clarification was asked for. As I believe that fruitful philosophical dialogs require a minimal tone of respect and civility which Koy seems unwilling to grant, I do not believe such fruitful dialogs with him are possible and thus see no purpose or enjoyment in engaging him in any sort of dialog. Consequently, I will simply ignore Koy from this point on.

God Bless,
Kenny

Koyaanisqatsi

Spoken like a true tinplate demagogue.

If you had simply addressed the arguments directly instead of resorting to these ridiculous, holier-than-thou evasion tactics then there would have been a discussion.

A discussion takes two, Kenny; not you picking and choosing points you think you can address through arguments from assumed authority that consist of nothing more than unsupportable declaratives.

It is obvious to me that my observations are dead on target and that you are indeed incapable of directly addressing any of my arguments on a point-by-point basis, so rather than being a mensch and either conceding or admitting that blatant fact, you've decided to pout like a child.

You're right, I do not have any respect for anyone who doesn't have the integrity and the honesty to concede when they are wrong and that their arguments are unsupportable when it has been conclusively demonstrated to be the case again and again and again and gone unrefuted every single time.

I would say that this transparent, pious evasion tactic is beneath you, but then I'm still reeling from your conflated, disingenuous <a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000348" target="_blank">official complaint</a> against me.

Your childish response, both here and there, is proof enough that I was correct in my assessment and justified in my approach.

I would appreciate any other posters here who have actually been following this thead to click on the above link and add your commentary (pro or con; unlike some, I can take it) and encourage any of you to take up the legitimate arguments I have made against Kenny's posts so that he doesn't get away with this evasion from whining.

Thanks.

[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

theophilus

This is a GREAT explanation. I'm going to keep this for reference.
Thanks.

theophilus

Another great discourse.
Would this be the place to ask for a definition of time?

Kenny

Well, Theophilus, you just had to go and ask the hard question didn’t you? Thanks for your kind words, BTW. Since I do not assign time any real sort of metaphysical primacy, but view it simply as an artifact of causal relationships, I am content to give it a completely operational definition, and define it in terms of how it is measured. Perhaps a good definition, from a physics standpoint, would be: If a beam of light travels in a vacuum a distance x, in a particular reference frame, the time it takes this beam to travel in that reference frame is defined as x/c where c is the speed of light.

This may seem like cheating since all this definition does is reference a standard for how time is measured without seeking to characterize what it is in a metaphysical sense, but, like I said, since I believe that time is simply a measure of how things are related to each other, I do not see it has having a primary metaphysical status to begin with. Think about trying to define what a meter is, for instance. Prior to its more modern definition in terms of the speed of light, a meter was defined relative to the length of a standard bar somewhere (in England, I think) under certain conditions at a certain temperature, humidity, etc. To say something was a meter, then, was to say that it was approximately the same length as that bar. A meter, then, is entirely a relational term of description. Is a meter a meaningful and useful term for describing relationships between things –certainly. Does a meter have any metaphysical status beyond being a description for how things are related to other things such that it could be defined in a way that characterizes the “essence” of what it is to be a meter – no. I believe the same is true of time.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Apikorus

It seems that a more appropriate comparison would be between the meter and the second, rather than between the meter and time itself. Furthermore, the definition of time in terms of distance traveled by a light beam passes the buck: what is distance? (One answer: the time spent by a light beam in traveling from A to B is the geodesic distance between A and B in units of 1/c :-) )

Time itself is not an arbitrary convention. Indeed, the fact that there is but one time dimension (at least in most sensible spacetimes) but several spatial dimensions seems to distinguish the time coordinate, and in a way which demands a less glib description than simply "the way things are related to each other".

While the linear argumentation of mathematical proofs suggests a vague analogy with time itself (with time more or less being the coordinate which increases as one proceeds down the page), it seems to me that it is merely the exposition of the proof which proceeds monotonically, and that the analogy to time is in fact a poor one. Most mathematical proofs involve the establishment of several lemmas, and it is the confluence of various truths which allows one to make progress. The order in which they are proven may in fact simply reflect personal preference, and there is often no sense in saying that Lemma A "precedes" Lemma B or vice versa.

To me, logical relationships are more akin to a discrete, multiply connected, directed structure like a graph, rather than to a differentiable structure like a space-time manifold.

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

Kenny

My “meter” analogy was simply intended to illustrate the notion that there are some properties which can only be defined relationally; I was not trying to draw an analogy between a meter and time beyond that.

True, we can spacialize time or we can temporize space. In terms of measurement, we can define one in terms of the other and it seems arbitrary which we define in terms of which. Most people seem to have an easier time spacializing time than they do temporizing space, however.

I suspect that the differentiation between time and space reflects differences in the types of relationships involved. Perhaps what we measure as time primarily emerges as an artifact of causal relationships whereas space emerges from some other sort of set of logical relationships (and seeing how time and space can be exchanged with one another to a degree when transforming between reference frames, perhaps there is some overlap between these sets). Perhaps a theory of Quantum Gravity will provide more insight into these mysteries. Then again, perhaps not. Physics is limited to that which is quantitative; the world has qualitative aspects as well. Perhaps the sort of relationships involved in the emergence of time and space involve certain qualitative aspects which mathematical theories will never be able to fully capture – right now, I’m content to remain an agnostic on that question.

In saying that I believe time primarily reflects logical relationships, I was not attempting to draw analogy between the emergence of temporal sequences and mathematical proofs. I do believe that causal relationships primarily reflect (or, perhaps even reduce to) chains of explanation, which in turn involve asymmetric entailments between propositions. In terms of formal symbolic logic, the order of entailment between propositions does matter (p-&gt;q is not the same as q-&gt;p). I believe this approaches our basic intuitions concerning causality in that when we say that A causes B, we mean that B happens because of A, rather than A happening because of B.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]

*I just noticed -- this is post number 666



[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Apikorus

I prefer the analogy I proffered, where logical relationships are viewed as a discrete directed graph, rather than a differentiable structure. That formal logical proofs proceed serially is more a manifestation of our own embedding in spacetime. Surely, though, the mind of a great mathematician, like the mind of a great chess player, is processing in parallel to a large extent.

When it comes to states of physical reality, I am rather skeptical of the utility (or even the sensibility) of the "principle of sufficient reason" you invoked earlier on in the thread. For starters, defining a state of physical reality is tricky. Is such a state (call it A) specified by the ket vector of the wave functional of the universe at a given time? (I mean not the HH wave functional of the space-time metric, but rather the pedestrian quantum field theoretic functional of all matter and gauge boson fields at a given instant of time.) With what precision is it specified? Even classically, it seems to me that the only sensible definition of causality in the physical world is the one inherited from relativity, namely that an event A is caused (I prefer "influenced") by all events within its backward light cone. If we adopt the free-for-all of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, with disconnected branches of reality being spawned at every instant, it seems we can make a mess out of causality.

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>