Re: path-dependence: a philosophical issue concerning time

Justintruth <truth.justin@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Justintruth<truth.jus...@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > I think the point of
the theory is *precisely* that it does exist as a > real dimension
independent of thought.

The theory is general relativity which based on several experiments
including the operation of GPS satellites claims to be more than "just
an idea in ones head". There are several experiments that confirm it.
(Recently there have been some experiments that have called it into
question and so there are unresolved issues but no one in science
doubts that it is "about" the real world and not just a mental
construct)

All this is complicated ;-(. One complication is that my question was in
connection with theories about the past, while relativity is about the
present.

Let me address first the latter situation, and you let me know where we
part company. A theory is a mental construction that emerges from the
evidence and correponds in some way with reality. That is, it consists
of statements that have truth value because they satisfy a critia of
truthfulness, such as successful prediction. While theory is constrained
by experience of the world to acquire properties that are analogous to
the world, it remains a mental construct. A model plane is like a real
plain, but no one claims it is a real plane. Are we agreed so far?

My problem, however, had to do with time, with "objects" of thought that
no longer exist. As above, one looks at the evidence (traces of the
past) to infer some truth about the past. The problem here is that how
can our statements about the past correspond to an objective reality if
that reality no longer exists? The object exists only in memory, only as
traces. You never see the past, but only these traces. So there's no
existing object the corresponds to our statements about it.

How can we get around this? One way is to assume that our inferences
drawn from the traces is about a reality that happens to be
inaccessible. In multiple world theory, one can imagine that there are
many world, but in principle they are inaccessible from our world. That
is, not all realities are actual. Because it is not actual, we can't act
upon the past to validate a theory, but there are other ways to justify
a theory, such as to predict the existence of new traces for it, or
coherentism, whether the theory is heuristic, etc. What are excluded are
any validations that require acting on the object of though, such as
instrumentalism and utilitarianism.

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).

I may have misunderstood you initially on this. When you say the theory
"was in fact reality" do you simply mean that the theory corresponds
with reality? The two papers you cite seem to support this statement.

For example the theory holds that there is no such thing as "the
present" meaning a set of events that are happening now for all
observers. Rather the present is relative to the frame of reference on
which you are measuring. This is not just a measurement issue. The
theory literally says that two events that occur now for me will occur
latter and earlier for another observer traveling relative to me.
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as "the present" in this
theory. There are only relative presents.

I thought this was the standard view. In the presentation of my
question, I obviously presumed the present was real, but I well know
that the concept is contested, and some would dismiss its reality along
with past and future. I ignored this because a) the problems I deal are
those of daily life, not cosmology, and b) I see the present in any case
as a process that does not sit on a time line.

1. It seems that the reality of unobservables is today the scientific
consensus, but this is not quite what you challenge. In your view,
the issue is not whether then can be real, but whether we can
validate their existence empirically?

Yes. And not whether we can verify them empirically from a practical
point of view but whether we can in principle.

Or, to put more simply, to verify the existence of something
non-empirical by empirical means is contradictory.

I have a problem with any scientific proposal that does not produce
conclusions about what will happen in experiments

What do you do, then, with something like the theory of the Big Bang?
You can infer things about it that you infer from its empirical
consequences, such as background radiation, but all your experiments are
performed on the cosmos as it presently is (looking at the background
radiation), not how it was.

suspect the representation of cosmic origins starts with potency (the
perfect vacuum), in which anything is possible, but there is no
actualization.

I suggest that you try thinking through the other way around. Start
with the given of experience and you can then show how its nature
leads the conclusion that things exist and their history etc. Trying
to base things on something other than experience is basically basing
them on the groundless. About the universe prior to when it had a
radius smaller than Plank's length all statements are speculative.

I fear we are speaking in circles. There's no question of observing the
universe when it was Plank length ;-), not just because it would be
unobservable, it also because that situation no longer exists. You
"start with the given of experience" not of the the Plank length
universe, but a direct experience of its consequences, its traces in the
present. Or do I misunderstand your intent? Or are you saying that any
theory concerning cosmic origins should be dismissed out of hand?

I think you should look at what "path dependence" means in an
empirical sense. Can you conceive of a world (experience) in which
path dependence occurs and can you conceive of a world in which is
doesn't occur. If you can the the question is are there differences in
the world that are observable? If not then is one assumption simpler
than the other. Here is my cut:

But you ignore my point. You can't "experience" path dependence because
all you can experience is memory. Development is (generally?) like a
Markov chain that forgets the past. That is, the potential for a future
exists in the present. So we can use an example of where the path of a
process leading to the present influences the present independently of
any effects it has on the present. Obviously, this is a nonesense
request. We _explain_ in terms of a remembered past, but that past no
longer exists, and if the only effect of the past is what exists in the
present, why do we complicate things by positing an ideal reconstruction
and treat it as it were causal independently of its effect in the
present. How about an example? That might help.

For example I imagine a universe that basically admits no experience
except color. That color changes but the change does not appear to
have any pattern. That is path independent. Now I conceive of the
world I live in and find that the experience I have has structure to
it. There are "things" in it. For example I note that if I shoot my
computer screen with a .38 then I experience it not functioning. I do
this for several screens and then come up with a theory that predicts
that firing the .38 will crash the screen that I am looking at. I
complete that one last experiment in front of you and then conclude
that the universe is "path dependent" because what happens corresponds
to a model in which bullets traveling on a path that intersects my
screen will destroy it.

OK, maybe we have an example. We have a universe defined as a radiation
of light at variable frequencies. Now we stick outselves into that
universe at a moment in time. What do we see? We see one color. It is
only memory or emprirical traces that suggest other colors are possible
and one existed. I have acquired truthful knowledge of the history of
the universe. But that truth is inferred from traces from the past, not
because I can actually see the past or act upon it,

That is a real difference with respect to the color world.

To respond to your comment, my question is, how can something exist
not in the present? I don't know what it means to say, it is what
was.

Can you honestly say that you don't know what I mean by "it is what
was". Here is an example. "Obama was elected. That is true." I believe
that you can understand that. No?

I'm not trying to be difficult or dense. "Omaba was elected" is a true
statement because it corresponds with what you hold in memory. Your
statement "it is what was" seems to say that the statement is itself
reality, not that its an analog of reality in thought. Statements and
reality are two entirely different things, and we only inquire as to
whether they might have some resemblence, as in correspondence theory.

It may be a true statement to say that something was, and it may
persists as an effect on my memory, but does that make it real in the
present?

Not necessarily. You must also admit that your memory is unimpaired
but the assumption that it is impaired (in the usual case) is more
complicated than that it isn't. (We are talking on the normal "gross"
level like "I remember that Obama was elected"

Your example not much help. You remember the event, and while your
memory may be true in that it corresponds with reality, they are not the
same. You boil down a very complicated process into a simple statement
of fact. However, your "normal gross level" runs the danger that we
universalize practices and knowledge that work well enough for us in
daily life into the world of science and into domains that are
significantly different from the scope of daily life. In daily life, I
think of the yesterday as having existed, but I'm really saying that I
have a memory of yesterday, its traces deposited in my brain.

Yes but this explanation should reflect the reality of your
experience. To doubt that there is a past and that it is what it was
is not the answer.

I don't doubt there _was_ a past, but do doubt the past exists in the
present except though the deposition of empirical effects. That is, to
doubt the past is ambivalent.

You just need to understand that your notion of being is where the
problem is. For you to be is to be somewhere now as opposed to
currently having been. That is the problem of your concept. You limit
being to objective existence in the present or else you deny that the
present has a past.

No, again, I don't doubt the past existed, just doubt its existence in
the present. My notion of being may indeed be a problem, for I'm not at
all sure that being means other than actuality.

But experience is temporal.

Why do you say that and what does it mean? My experience of now is
taking place now. I can't experience yesterday now. All I have is a very
imperfect memory.

But the question is, is the motion in the present (which
theoretically I don't suppose can be because motion can't exist in an
instant of time, which the present is), or does this present proton
have a kinetic energy vector? You may be right, but you need a better
argument.

The argument is in the calculus. The current velocity is a limit of a
series of appearances in the past and the future. Limit in the
mathematical vice philosophical sense. Do you really believe that the
speed of a car is not real? That is it is a "mental concept"? That is
a strange and complex way of thinking.

But calculus is part of the problem ;-( . If we break things down into a
succession of infinitely small changes, we have the illusion of process,
but not its reality. It is still a sequence of static states. A movie
gives the illusion of change because of the limitations of our
perceptual appratus, but it is really a series of static states.

Velocity is a value we assign to rate of change in position, but this is
based on a reconstruction of past positions. At any moment of time
there's no velocity because there is only one position at present.

Actually that is precisely how they know how long they were (within
some accuracy and precision of course as with all measurement) by
measuring the length of their remains.

My point was that your are not out there measuring dinosaurs, but bones
that happen to survive into the present. Short of some fancy tricks, you
can never measure the length of a dinosaur, because you don't have
access to any dinosaurs to measure. You have to infer their length based
on their traces today.

I agree with that but I think that will in the end or at least after
thinking about it long enough a meaning of existence that will admit
that past is what was and that the specifics of what was can be found
out to some extent contingently by examining the record of it in the
present.

But I'm not questioning this. The past is whats it was and cannot be
other than what it was. The only specifics I can know about it is to
examine traces that the past that happen to survive into the present.

Your car is a car because you carry in your mind a definition of car.

I do not think that this is true. I have defined it as a car because
it is one. Try defining it as a chicken!

I guess here we seriously part our ways. You appear to embrace objective
idealism. That is, a car is a car quite independently of human
consciousness. If this is your position, all I can say is that it
represents a metaphysical position that I and most scientists don't
accept. Why is another issue, but helpful would be knowing for sure you
accept objective idealism.

No idea what "Being" is, or can only guess.

I would suggest "Being and Nothingness" by Sartre, "Being and Time" by
Heideggar, Aristotles metaphysics. Husserl's Ideas. Progress can be
made. This is really the central point one must understand the meaning
of being to get out of these conumdrums.

Been there; done that. What I've been saying, hopefully, takes Sartre
and Heidegger into account (not so much Aristotle and Husserl).

The hypotheses are under-determined by the evidence. Do you mean
tested by "checked"? If so, there's very little room for an empirical
test of a historical hypothesis. I can think of one or two, but they
are not of general use.

Some hypotheses are under-determined. Gettysburg occured. To say that
it did not is to violate Ocham's razor or just miss all the evidence.

I think I'd still be inclined to say that _hypotheses_ are
underdetermined. I'd agree with Peirce on this. While common sense says
that a battle did take place at Gerrysburg, all we are saying is that
the evidence is overwhelming that it took place. Putting aside the issue
of authority, you still have to look at documents and make an inference
from the evidence. The idea that the data speaks for itself died with
positivism. Even von Ranke, who said we should write history "wie es
eigentlich gewesen" had no trouble imposing his a priori conceptual
schemes on the historical record, such as the centrality of the state
institution.

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



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