Re: Its My Job to Understand Gravity

From: Patrick Reany (reany_at_asu.edu)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: 21 Jul 2004 10:50:16 -0700

macromitch@internetCDS.com (Mitchell) wrote in message news:<9c3da975.0407201835.6c4b4eed@posting.google.com>...
> reany@asu.edu (Patrick Reany) wrote in message news:<844a1b64.0407201157.32f7712d@posting.google.com>...
> > macromitch@internetCDS.com (Mitchell) wrote in message news:<9c3da975.0407192238.79fae7af@posting.google.com>...
> > > In a few words:
> > > Changing speed changes your space-time metric.
> > > Gravity is a changing space-time metric.
> > >
> > > Mitch Raemsch
> > > -- Light Falls - All The Way --
> >
> > There is no absolute understanding of anything in physics.
> >
> > Patrick
>
> Balogne Patrick.
> It is known of as principle.

What is know as principle? The Balogne Principle?

> Understanding itself is absolute. It comes from God.
> Understand: to stand under - God

A meaningless dogma of your personal belief system? Care to prove your
claim? BTW, I'm NOT trying to speak for God, but for humans.

>
> You are misguided Patrick.

It's not misguided to demand proof of positive claims. You're
misguided for not demanding proof of your own positive claims. Neither
did you offer any to us.

> If you don't believe me then show me where I am wrong - in principle -
> that thing you say doesn't exist.

Wrong. You claim something exists (your "positive claim"), it's YOUR
burden to prove it. My proof is below.

> Modern physics is more imagination than it is understanding.
> It is starving for real understanding.
> Do you have a problem with what I am saying?

Of course I do. You throw around vague terms as though they mean
something, such as the term "real understanding." How can you expect
to attain Truth if you refuse to clarify the language you will place
your "truths" within?

> Mitch Raemsch
> -- Light Falls --

All theories that work are ipso facto explanations, thus providing
"understanding," contingent on the subjective and arbitrary formal
points of view that the theory stands upon. To prove absolute
understanding requires one to prove at a minimum an absolute formal
point of view. Go for it!

The truth is that you haven't the slightest idea yet what "absolute
understanding" looks like, so how will you recognize it when you find
it? You need to work out a cognetic system (a system of operational
rules that distinguishes classes of "understanding") that sets down
the ground rules first before you start to look! Without such rules,
how would you know if you ever succeed at your goal?

What is meant by (rational) understanding? Rational understanding
comes in at least two forms: "causal" and "relational" -- both of
which are in the form of deductive systems. Causal is too simple to
need explanation. Let's look at relational. To understand why Plato
denounced rhetoric so strongly, one needs to know the relation
rhetoric had to his view of the True. Rhetoric was the child of the
Sophists who taught the subjective, relative Good in contradistinction
to Plato's Absolute Truths and the dialectic as the sole means of
attaining them. To understand fallacious arguments, you have to
understand the relationship between necessary and nonnecessary
arguments. To understand the war between Quine and Carnap you have to
understand the relationship between Quine's dogma that philosophy is a
search for synthetic truths, resolavble by the scientific method, and
Carnap's Principle of Tolerance which allows for not only an
analytic-synthetic distinction but also for a multitude of research
programs, of which the scientific program is only one. To understand
why realists claim that my instrumentalist philosophy of science is
"pessimistic," you have to understand the relationship between the
realist's dogma that True theories are possible and the
instrumentalist's view that such a claim is meaningless without an
objective method to verify such a claim. There is no practical
difference between a theory that's always "correct" and a theory
that's True. To understand why Daniel Weston can't figure why my
question to prove that a hydrogen atom exists is NOT ontological
idealism on my part, you have to understand the relationship between
epistemic and ontolgic arguments.

Irrational understanding explicitly employs a "just because"
justification, i.e., it contains arbitrary elements. For example,
Sally asks why the minimum age for a president of the US is 35 years
old, and receives the answer that the Founding Fathers thought that 35
years old is a good compromise between youthful vigor on the one hand
and wisdom and experience (say) on the other hand. Then Sally ask,
"Why not 34 or 36 years old, then?" Answer: "Just because."

Let X be something to be understood "rationally." Let T be a theory
that "explains" X, that is, in which X is a conclusion of the
postulates of T. Conclusions being reached by a process of deduction.
That is, X is a true statement of T, but not a postulate of T. T
cannot explain its own postulates.

Now, maybe you can see where I'm going. Since the ulitmate finite
answer WHY we choose any set of postulates of a theory is "just
because," you can see why all of science is "irrational." That's why
the Rationalists resort to intuition for their justifications. In any
case, the irrationality of science is why it cannot meaningfully
produce True theories.

Patrick

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