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... This particular dualism has been bugging me for a while. Reality has many properties. Why pick mass and energy as being the two most basic? In fact, I'm not even really sure that they are "properties". They're really just more like convenient (and conventional) categories into which bunches of properties can be grouped, based on the nature of our experiences. I think there are better candidates for "fundamental properties" - assuming, of course, that we can make really good sense of the word 'property' in the first place.
such as qualitative and quantitative?
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 05-23-2018 at 08:13 PM..
1. i agree that "nothingness" is a field of potential. when consciousness acts (through thought and feeling and desire and speech and action) then the potential is shaped into actual. "the end is embedded in the beginning." the end (actual) is embedded in the beginning (potential) and the beginning is "nothingness"
consciousness uses free will to make choices---whether they are "conscious" choices someone makes intentionally or "unconscious" choices that someone is not aware of such as unexamined beliefs---and these choices are what bring something from potential to actual.
i want to tie this back to an earlier point Gaylen made, because both address the process of "something" emerging from "nothing." above it is framed in terms of "potential / nothingness" and "actual / something."
in the post below it is framed as the distinction between "quantitative" and "qualitative."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
.... Atoms - as quantitatively conceived by current physics - are not capable of qualitative experience. There is, so to speak, no way for them to (so to speak) "flow out of the bucket" (i.e., to transition from quantitative to qualitative). We need a paradigm shift so that we can conceive of atoms in a new way - ...
it is through the use of free will, your local conscious awareness making choices and acting----how you choose to use your thought, feeling, desire, yearning, intention, focus, attention, speech, action---that causes the change of state from potential to actual, that brings forth the "something" from the "nothing."
qualitative experience only and ever exists from your own local point of view, from your own local perceptions, local to you. your perspective, your perceptions, your local view is always and only ever qualitative experience. the essence of you Gaylen never was and never will be an "atom incapable of qualitative experience." the essence of you Gaylen generated and generates everything you interact with on a daily basis. out of the "nothingness" potential, you bring forth the "something" actual that is your daily life.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 05-23-2018 at 09:03 PM..
....I think it is as simple as this: I love puzzles and this is, arguably, the greatest puzzle of all. And what probably makes me obsessive about it is this feeling (perhaps a somewhat delusional feeling?) that an exciting reasonably plausible theory is "just around the corner" and when we get a grip on it, the insights into our existence will be amazing. And, what I also find exciting is that the theory will probably not be the "final end" of anything but, rather, the doorway to whole new puzzles. I want to see some major movement on this within my lifetime, but I'm 60 years old, so we better hurry!
In any case, the journey is a blast for me. There is hardly anything I'd rather do than explore the seemingly infinite realm of the "final frontier" - which, as I said, is probably not so much the closing of a door, but something more like the opening of a bunch of new ones.
if you rely on "others" to move you forward in this area, it does not happen. you are the determinant, you and only you. what do you identify is the barrier for you? who or what do you look to, to provide "insights into your existence" for you?
the doors never end, that is correct, a very apt analogy.
again i ask you what is stopping you from walking through them now?
why do you make someone else or something else the authority for you in this area?
you are the arbiter. it's your growth, that falls to you, not others.
... "Being quantitative" is being qualitative in a certain way. ...
except no, you just said that "atoms are not capable of qualitative experience."
and i agree. atoms do not have free will to make choices. what atoms do is respond to instructions from those who do have free will and make choices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
... If we, somehow, managed to make a choice in some pre-birth existence to do X during our lifetime, then the act of seemingly making that choice in our physical life is not really a "choice" - it is just a pre-programmed act carried out on the basis of some prior choice that we are no longer consciously aware of. On the other hand, if the choice during our physical lifetime is, in fact, a free choice, then the choice made during our pre-birth stage was simply an earlier choice that might or might not lead to a particular action later on. Basically like buying a plane ticket because you have chosen to go to Italy, but later changing your mind and deciding not to go. Earlier choices can set the stage for later free choices, but they can't actually pre-determine them....
your pre-birth choices set up scenarios, things you will face in your lifetime. however they do not pre-determine what you will actually choose to do when you actually encounter that scenario during your lifetime. pre birth choices set up what you will face, not what you will do when you face it. you use your free will to make a free choice to decide what to actually do during your life time when you walk through the scenario...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
Maybe there is a God who, as it were, pre-thinks all of our thoughts for us and thus knows, thanks to his infinite knowledge, exactly why I thought of fuzzy banana at that exact moment. But if so, then my "choice" to think of something that I was not thinking about earlier was not actually a free choice on my part. If God already knew that I was going to think of fuzzy bananas, then my moment of choice was free for God, but not free for me. For God to know, in advance, then it must already be a "done deal" in advance because, otherwise, it is just a guess. And if it is just a guess then, in principle, it sometimes has to be wrong because a "guess" that cannot, in principle, be wrong, is not a "guess" at all, it is knowledge.
My claim is that even if there is a God, then God cannot know, in advance, what he will think about tomorrow. And, if I have free will, then God could not have known a year ago that I would think of fuzzy bananas at this exact moment today. A free choice has to be free in the moment of choosing. Otherwise, the "choice" is just a pre-programmed automatic act based on some earlier choice (made by me, or made by God). But, again, notice the intrinsic not-knowing nature of free choice - and of all conscious experience - the nothingness - the unconsciousness - intrinsic to the very nature of consciousness itself. If free will exists - as I believe that it does - then consciousness has to be rooted in unconsciousness....
God does not pre-think anything for you. your pre-birth self (essence of you) does not pre-think your thoughts for you. The whole point of free will is to recognize and use your free choice in every place in your daily life (in examining and choosing your thought, speech, action, feelings, beliefs, attention, intention, focus, desire, yearning). Your choices are not pre-programmed, you choose them in the here and now.
Of course free will exists. That is what distinguishes humans, having free will to make choices. the essence of you has free will. the rock does not. the water in the bucket does not. the atom does not.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 05-23-2018 at 11:04 PM..
...When I talk about an unconscious "self-organizing qualitative chaos" I am simply trying to flesh out, in speculative, science-friendly and logic-friendly terms, the nature of the unavoidable unconsciousness that goes hand-in-hand with conscious experience.
chaos does not organize itself.
you organize it.
the essence of you, using your free will to make choices, organizes the chaos.
you "program" the chaos of nothingness into becoming the something that is your daily life. you "instruct" the potential and it becomes your actual daily life.
I can see that my use of relativistic mass (to differentiate it from the classical mass that Einstein's theory radically altered) simply misdirected you to what I had determined was your preferred view of energy as that required to do work. I used the rest mass equation BECAUSE of the confusion that inevitably arises from the kinetic view. I am interested in the ontological implications NOT the USE or WORK implications.
Only the ontological implications reveal clues to the composition of reality. Your preference for "matter" over "field" is derivative of your conditioning to a physical materialist existence. You ignore your real existence (as a thinking experiencing consciousness) because you are dragged by your body into believing you only exist at the material level of existence. Your body is NOT the locus of your thinking experiencing essence but you are trapped into believing it by your lifetime of conditioning as a physical being.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matadora
I'm not talking about the USE or WORK implications. Kinetic energy is related to work. Quantum Theory is not focused on the kinetic energy. In fact from what I've been reading is that in quantum field theory, mass (which is the fundamental frequency of a ripple in a quantum field, i.e. of a quantum, or “particle”) is an effect that you would ascribe to potential energy. All energy in quantum field theory is either kinetic or potential, and mass certainly isn’t in the kinetic energy parts of the equations, so that leaves potential. But from what I've been researching, it’s sufficiently different from the types of potential energy that I encountered in undergraduate college texts.
I think you are still confusing the two terms.
Let's review:
**Particle Physicists only use the first interpretation**
Interpretation 1. E = mc² is true only for an object that isn’t moving. For an object that is moving, E is greater than mc². Energy and mass are not at all the same thing; an object’s energy can change when its motion changes, but its mass never changes. This notion of mass is sometimes called “rest mass” (since it’s related to the energy stored in the object when it is “at rest”) or “invariant mass” (since it doesn’t change when it is moving.)
This is the mass you were discussing.
Interpretation 2. E = mc² is always true, for both stationary and moving objects. This can be viewed as saying energy and mass are essentially the same thing. [Recall that in interpretation 1, they are not at all the same thing.] Since the energy of a moving object is larger than when it is stationary, that means, similarly, that its mass is larger when it is moving than when it is stationary. This notion of mass is sometimes called “relativistic mass”, in honor of Einstein’s revolutionary notions of relativity. "Relativistic mass" is simply energy in disguise. E/c2. "Relativistic mass" depends upon how fast an object is moving; however invariant mass/rest mass is the same whether an object is moving or not. Invariant mass does not change with the speed of an object and it's what particle physicists call mass.
First I have no preference over anything you just stated. In fact I prefer objective truths over making up Magical Alternatives based on outdated science.
I don't think this in the least.
I have never been conditioned by anything that states this.
I have lost all confidence in my communication abilities because I would swear that we are not remotely in disagreement but you seem to think we are. FIELD IS all that exists and holding onto "particle" (or mass) conceptions is counterproductive. With a few minor alterations, I could have written this:
Quote:
Not Everything is Matter or Energy, By a Long Shot
Today, if one wants to talk about the world in the context of our modern viewpoint, one can speak first and foremost of the “fields and their particles.” It is the fields that are the basic ingredients of the world, in today’s widely dominant paradigm. We view fields as more fundamental than particles because you can’t have an elementary particle without a field, but you can have a field without any particles. [I still owe you a proper article about fields and particles; it’s high on the list of needed contributions to this website.] However, it happens that every known field has a known particle, except possibly the Higgs field (whose particle is not yet certain to exist, though [as of the time of writing, spring 2012] there are significant experimental hints.)
What do “fields and particles” have to do with “matter and energy”? Not much. Some fields and particles are what you would call “matter”, but which ones are matter, and which ones aren’t, depends on which definition of “matter” you are using. Meanwhile, all fields and particles can have energy; but none of them are energy.
Matt Strassler - Particle Physicist
Matter is the manifestation of aggregated energy within the unified field at low enough spherical standing wave frequency levels to be measured as mass. Particles are the manifestation of packets of energy within the unified field at frequency levels too high to measure any mass - massless quanta. Obviously, quantum field theory deals with particles and so it does not use mass because they cannot measure any such thing. That is why particle physics is high energy physics. The obvious inference from these facts is that a unified field is the basic substrate for reality and different manifestations of energy within the unified field are all that exist within that substrate.
I have lost all confidence in my communication abilities because I would swear that we are not remotely in disagreement but you seem to think we are. FIELD IS all that exists and holding onto "particle" (or mass) conceptions is counterproductive. With a few minor alterations, I could have written this:
I disagree that you could have written what he wrote because he acknowledges particles within the fields and he acknowledges that matter is made up of stable particles that can be measured and have mass.
In his quote he states: "However, it happens that every known field has a known particle, except possibly the Higgs field (whose particle is not yet certain to exist, though [as of the time of writing, spring 2012] there are significant experimental hints.)" And now we know the Higgs particle exists and a Noble Prize was awarded for it's discovery in 2013! Go particle physicists GO!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Matter is the manifestation of aggregated energy within the unified field at low enough spherical standing wave frequency levels to be measured as mass.
Do you have any sources for this because particle physics does not agree with this claim.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Particles are the manifestation of packets of energy within the unified field at frequency levels too high to measure any mass - massless quanta. Obviously, quantum field theory deals with particles and so it does not use mass because they cannot measure any such thing.
Mystic your understanding on particle physics is lacking. Of course they know the mass of the particles they are working with in particle physics. There is no way to have made the discoveries in particle physics if the masses of the particles were not known.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
That is why particle physics is high energy physics.
Particle physics (also high energy physics) is the branch of physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute ***matter*** and radiation.
Quote:
Matter particles
All matter around us is made of elementary particles, the building blocks of matter. These particles occur in two basic types called quarks and leptons.
Each group consists of six particles, which are related in pairs, or “generations”.
The lightest and most stable particles make up the first generation, whereas the heavier and less stable particles belong to the second and third generations. All stable matter in the universe is made from particles that belong to the first generation; any heavier particles quickly decay to the next most stable level.
The six quarks are paired in the three generations – the “up quark” and the “down quark” form the first generation, followed by the “charm quark” and “strange quark”, then the “top quark” and “bottom (or beauty) quark”. Quarks also come in three different “colours” and only mix in such ways as to form colourless objects.
The six leptons are similarly arranged in three generations – the “electron” and the “electron neutrino”, the “muon” and the “muon neutrino”, and the “tau” and the “tau neutrino”.
The electron, the muon and the tau all have an electric charge and a sizeable mass, whereas the neutrinos are electrically neutral and have very little mass.
I don't know where you are getting that we can't measure the mass of particles...we can and do measure the mass of particles...it's fundamental to particle physics research.
How is the mass of a particle determined?
Quote:
When a charged particle travels faster than light does through a given medium, it emits Cherenkov radiation at an angle that depends on its velocity. The particle's velocity can be calculated from this angle. Velocity can then be combined with a measure of the particle's momentum to determine its mass, and therefore its identity.
Mystic when you use the interpretation of mass that ALL particle physicists use today which demonstrates that not all things are energy, and that mass and energy are different properties of an object you see that matter does exist. I know you want to believe you are nothing but energy...but you are in fact matter.
It didn't hit me until the other night, but a couple of Mystic's posts are what I call 'analogous science'. Indeed, it's what he has called it, though he denies that he ever did. It's like he uses science that he first claims supports his beliefs, and then when it is shown that it is not science at all but wrongheaded, it becomes an analogy (1) indicating a real science unknown to anyone else - other than Mystic, of course.
What this is, of course is starting with a foggy godfaith and fiddling science, history and everything else to look like it supports it. 'Philosophy' (that is, confused waffle) is a favourite of theist apologists.
Once you realise this, then the confusing aspect of his posts (which is to say, all of it) becomes clear and you have 'sussed' him.
(1) I think it was this post that suddenly tipped me off
QUOTE=MysticPhD;51983737]I can see that my use of relativistic mass (to differentiate it from the classical mass that Einstein's theory radically altered) simply misdirected you to what I had determined was your preferred view of energy as that required to do work. I used the rest mass equation BECAUSE of the confusion that inevitably arises from the kinetic view. I am interested in the ontological implications NOT the USE or WORK implications.
Only the ontological implications reveal clues to the composition of reality. Your preference for "matter" over "field" is derivative of your conditioning to a physical materialist existence. You ignore your real existence (as a thinking experiencing consciousness) because you are dragged by your body into believing you only exist at the material level of existence. Your body is NOT the locus of your thinking experiencing essence but you are trapped into believing it by your lifetime of conditioning as a physical being.[/quote]
2. you're not actually saying that "qualitative experiences" have actual weight are you? that thought and information and feelings and perceptions and kindness and joy and integrity and courage have actual physical weight, you're not actually suggesting that are you? that is cause for alarm if you are.
If I am correct in claiming that qualia are essentially physical then, yes, there is a sense in which feelings have mass. (For the record: I like words like "weight" and "heft" for the sake of fun metaphorical/poetic usage, but technically it is mass that I'm talking about. Hopefully ya'll know the difference, so I'm not contributing to the cognitive delinquency of the non-science nerds amongst us!) I'm not saying that the qualitative aspects of experiences have to contribute actual mass to the universe - in fact, I suspect that they don't - but am saying that they might have mass and, if so, then qualia could account for some of the "missing mass" of the universe. It's a long shot; mostly just fun speculation for times when I'm wearing my science fiction writer's hat. I mentioned it because MPhD has been trying to draw a connection between dark matter/energy and the nature of consciousness, and I don't think he is a total nutcase for doing so, even though the ideas are vague and highly speculative at the moment.
Quote:
3. but your consciousness IS local. You only ever see your view of things, you only ever perceive your qualitative experiences. It doesn't get any more local than that.
For any given moment of conscious experience, the perspective of experience at the moment is certainly local because the perspective is determined by the physically embodied being who is serving as the mechanism by which Reality is having experiences at that moment.
If I am correct in claiming that subjective qualitative experiences essentially are "what it's like to be" Reality experiencing itself via this or that particular physical process, then of course every moment of experience will feel "local" because the embodied process that constitutes "having the experience" is a finite, spatio-temporally limited physical process. "Local perspective" comes with the territory, so to speak, of being a physical process. And my claim is that Reality only has experiences at all via particular physical processes.
But my corollary claim is that qualia are essentially universals - meaning that more than just one physical process can instantiate any given certain type of feeling. You and I cannot have the one-and-same particular toothache (because you cannot be the physical process that I am, and vice versa), but our numerically distinct toothaches can be qualitatively identical. In other words, one type of feeling in two different places.
(BTW: Since the days of Plato, philosophers have made a distinction between "universals" and "particulars". The philosophical meaning of "universal" = something that can be instantiated in more than one moment in spacetime (in contrast to a "particular" in the "universal vs. particular" dichotomy, where "particular" = something that cannot be multiply instantiated in more than one place at a given time, due the logic of identity: Only X can be the particular X that it is.)
So, if qualia are universals, and the "feeling of being me" is qualitative, then it follows that "the feeling of being me" can be multiply instantiated, just like the feeling of "what it is like to have this particular toothache" can be multiply instantiated. That's why I say that "Self is a universal." It doesn't mean "Self is omnipresent" or "eternal" or any such thing. It just means that the "feeling of being me" can be multiply instantiated. But each and every time this feeling is instantiated, it is instantiated as what it is like to be this particular physical process that I am, here and now in this particular context. So, obviously, it feel "local" but, in line with the Buddhist view, this "feeling of being local" is, so some extent, an illusion generated by the particularity of each individual moment of conscious awareness. There is (according to me) no "what it's like to be" a universal disembodied Self. There are only particular manifestations of what it is like to be particular embodied beings.
And a side note: I don't doubt that people have mystical experiences that they interpret as being "what it is like to be the Universal Self" or variations on that idea. There are neurological requirements for having the feeling of being a particular person as existing in some sense separately from the objects in the environment, and these neurological requirements can be tinkered with in such a way that one feels "at one" with the world, etc., but I remain skeptical about the idea that this is incontestable evidence of our ability to literally experience "what it's like to be a Universal Disembodied Self." This skepticism is grounded in some very complex discussions relating neuroscience to spiritual or "oceanic" feelings, etc. I'm not rejecting the idea that there is, nevertheless, some deep wisdom and truth in the "I am One with Reality" type of experience; I'm just cautious about interpreting this experience too simplistically. A lot of subtle, but ontologically important distinctions can be too easily overlooked when interpreting the meanings of these experiences.
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