Re: path-dependence: a philosophical issue concerning time

......But this objective history or space time
manifold is a mental construct that hopefully has truth value in
relation to the what happened past and supports effective
action. However, just because we posit a time line in thought and it is
useful does not necessarily mean that it exists as a real dimension
independent of thought.

I think the point of the theory is *precisely* that it does exist as a
real dimension independent of thought. In fact when the theory was
first pondered it was a question whether in fact it was more than a
mere construct but then as the result of several experiments they
determined that in fact the theory, including the manifold nature of
space, was in fact in reality. (Recent experiments now are beginning
to question this). To me theoretical physics is worthless unless
married with experimental physics and that ties it to reality out side
of ones head.

there's
more to reality than can be observed.

Yes, but not more than can on principle be observed. (Here
"observation" means that as a result of positing the existence of
something, and of positing its effects, I can derive some phenomena
that is experiencable. If the posited object has absolutely no
potential effect on what is observed then it is not real physically. I
can posit many such realities but absent a way to confirm their
presence... Ocham's razor.


One of my starting points was that, while the past once existed, it does
not exist in the present, and so any trajectories in space-time are
reconstructions in thought that cannot refer to a real process that is
indepedent of thought.

You say "the past does not exist in the present". This is true in the
sense that it is no longer present. But that does not mean that it
does not exist. It exists as past. It *is* what was. That what was is
in fact what was means that in fact the past exists now as the past. I
believe that you are equivocating objective existence with existence,
or else present existence with existence, and possibly also you
believe that anything that does not exist right now must exist only in
one's thoughts. That is not true. You also equivocate direct
observation with observation. I can observe the past through the
record it leaves. I can observe the record and hence observe the past.
All observation is done in the present but is available in the future
as a past observation on which I can base my conclusions.


You seem to say that such a model can be tested
empirically, but that suggestion raises all kinds of difficulties, and I
suspect only proves that past events once existed rather than that the
trajectory is real (in the sense of Alexander's Dictum that it is
causal).

I suggest that the calculus which substantiates quantities that are
directly dependent on the trajectories and exist in the present at the
moment of the present invalidates your conclusion. For example a
proton moving left at 100 miles an hour is different that a proton
moving right at 100 miles an hour. They differ "now" in velocity.
Their "instantaneous" velocity is a given vector. Velocity is a
quantity in the present that is totally based on the past and in fact
on the future. It is a property determined by the past and future that
completely exists in the present. The caclulus provides a rigorous
method of calculating the velocities. If I think as you suggest, then
the notion of velocity itself would only be a mental construct. I
think the notion of "record" might un-axel wrap the concepts. By means
of records I can create a theory that allows me to determine
quantities that were, are, or will be in effect. Because these
quantities are observable I can set up experiments and verify the
theory.


A classic discussion is that of Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and the
Methodology of Scientific Research Programs", in Imre Lakatos and Alan
Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1970),
pp. 91-196. It is a good read and informative, despite its being old
fashioned neo-empiricist.

Thanks for the reference.


if you imply that nothing is real if
not in principle observable, then you are distancing yourself from
traditional scientific thinking and even current philosophy of science,
which has become realist (unobservables are real).

Tachyons might indeed be viewed skeptically because they are
problematic, but how about gluons? They have never been observed nor are
likely ever to be. Nevertheless, there seem to be good reason to infer
their existence.

What I mean is that the "good reason to infer their existence" must be
either 1) an observation or 2) the fact that assuming their existence
decreases the number of assumptions I need to make. Gluons allow one
to predict many of the configurations of matter that are observed and
provide simplicity with quantum chromodynamics. If they were not
posited another more complicated assumption must be made with respect
to interactions between quarks. At a minimum one would have to explain
why this interaction was different than all others in that it lacked
an exchange particle.

Tachyons should be viewed skeptically because assuming they exist does
not explain anything observable.

But you are raising a question in the philosophy of
modality, and that is not not to be undertaken lightly (the more you
think about it, the less you know ;-).

Actually I do not believe that the more you think about existence the
less you know. There is real progress that is made in studying it. It
is not studied enough and that has consequences in our culture.


I don't want to get hung up on this, but isn't the stability
(persistence) of your car in the lot simply an artifact of your daily
life? That is, the car will persist for a few hundred years until it
rots away. In cosmological time, it hardly persists at all; for a child,
it may have always existed; for you, you'll sell it in three years. The
feeling today is that change is essential to all being, and persistence
is due to special and temporary circumstances that need explanation,
such as offered by the causal theory of persistence.

I am not talking about the car aging. I am saying that the very being
of the car is a kind of stability in the essent.


If this stability were to break down, if experience were to be altered
such that I go out and there is no longer a car and then I turn and
there is no building out of which I came and then etc etc then the
basis for objective modeling would be eliminated. In this way the
basis of objectivity is a real aspect of the world and is based on a
kind of stability in its appearance.

Yes, your daily life depends on the appearence of there being some
stability in your world. But that, after all, is subjective, not an
ontological statement.

It is not subjective. It is real. My car is real. It is not
ontological because it is not a statement about being as being. It is
a statement about being as a car. (Its an automotive statement! ;) )
But the fact that it is an essential statement and not an ontological
one does not mean that it is describing something that is not real.
Again my car is real.


Well, yes, but is Heisenberg indeterminancy putting the question to
stability or is it putting the question to objective existence? I
suspect you mean the latter, for in this case, the observer becomes part
of the object under observation.

I think that Heisenberg indeterminacy is a consequence of wave packets
and is not determined by measurement. Its just that it cannot be
violated by observation. The wave/particle nature of reality results
in the uncertainty principle. It is inherent in the nature of wave
mechanics. The Fourier transform of a pure sine wave is a Dirac delta
function and vice versa and everything in between. A sign wave has
infinite extension and a Dirac delta function has a single location.
Can't get away from it.

The world is "unstable" or "unobjective" in the naive sense of a thing
at very small scales.

While I'm inclined to represent the macro
world in terms of the actualization of probability distributions, I
believe I would be wrong to extend features peculiar to the quantum
world into the macro world.

Why? Those features are really there.

....my point is
that non-causal explanations (self-causation) is not at all ridiculous
today.

I think that it is ridiculous to say that anything except Being is
self caused. Even the claim that Being is self caused needs a very
profound (unusual) understanding of meaning and its result - it is not
so much self caused as meaning that "it is".

Yes, Bergson has taken a deserved beating for his vitalism, but
it seems that the basic idea that all things are essentially processes
is quite respectible today. I see this as arising from two presumed
facts: all system are in principle open to a degree; the universe as a
whole is decreasing in entropy.

I am not sure that the universe is decreasing in entropy. The standard
thermodynamic model says the universe is closed and therefore entropy
increases. I also believe that entropy itself deals only with
arrangements and structures which are not fundamental with respect to
reality.

....it is pointed out that much
actual science does not aim at prediction, particularly in the
evolutionary sciences.

This is just not true. Evolutionary science is based in observation of
the fossil record. It makes predictions about what will be found under
what conditions. If the observations go the wrong way the predictions
are wrong. Evolutionary theories allow one to predict the result of
digs.

While weathermen do predict the weather on TV,
that's not the point of meteorology; it it were, it would be a shabby
science indeed for weathermen can only predict a few days, and often
they are wrong. The dismal record of their predictions does not
invalidate the science of meteorology.

No, but there would be no meteorology if one could not predict
anything. Meteorolgy is a way of taking the record of past weather and
using it to predict future storms. In fact there is sound reason for
the lack of long term predictability and if it turned out that storms
behaved non chaotically then the theories would need to be reworked.
Meteorology is predictive and you can see it on the morning news.
Perhaps you could try to say that history is an example of a non-
predictive science. But the problem is that historians are continually
checking their ideas about what happened with the record and so it
ends up not being true.

Agreed, common sense may not lead us closer to truth. However, when you
say a view is "correct", what do you mean? No one claims that any
current view is absolutely true, although hopefully closer to the truth
than older theories. As Peirce pointed out long ago, we approach but
never reach objective truth, but proceed by successive one-sided
approximations. If correct means an absolute correspondence between what
we have in our head and the world independent of conscousness, then of
course, you would be right to be skeptical. But to say that our partial,
imperfect, and one-sided "truth" are simply and entirely false because
they are not absolutely or completely true gets us into hot water
indeed.

I am not saying that.

Cheers.
.

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