Re: Clarification of Terms (was RE: What We Can Know About the World)

From: John M <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:00:30 -0700 (PDT)

I salute Lee's new subject designation.

I believe if we are up to identifying concepts with
common sense content as well, we should not restrict
ourselves into the model-distinctions of (any) physics
but generalize the meanings beyond such restrictions.
Of course: I am no physicist. My apologies.

To Russel's 4 coordinates of (any?) event: how come
the occurrence (event!) of a 'good idea' in my mind -
(mind: not a thing, not a place, not time-restricted)
should have t,x,y,z coordinates?

Naively yours

John Mikes

--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden> wrote:

> Russell submits the following as clarifications:
>
> > An event is a particular set of coordinates
> (t,x,y,z) in 4D
> > spacetime. This is how it is used in GR, anyway.
> >
> > An observer moment is a set of constraints, or
> equivalently
> > information known about the world (obviously at a
> moment of time).
> > It [the observer moment] corresponds the the
> "state" vector \psi
> > of quantum mechanics.
>
> and Stephen inquires
>
> > Hi Russell,
> > A possibly related question. Given your
> definition of events and OMs,
> > does it not seem that they complement each other,
> assuming that events have
> > more quatities associated, such as
> 4-momentum-energy?
>
> Well, Russell did also say that OMs and events
> seemed to him about as
> alike as chalk and cheese. It's starting to look
> that way:
>
> I quote Hal:
>
> Calling them [causal patterns] "observer
> moments" seems
> to be a bit of a stretch, given the enormous
> number of
> orders of magnitude difference between what we
> would
> normally recognize as a conscious OM and one of
> these
> trivial ones [e.g. a 302-neuron nematode OM].
>
> So, alas, it seems that the firmly established
> meanings of
> "event" and "observer moment" can't really be said
> to be at
> all the same thing. (Folks like Russell and Hal have
> been
> using the term "OM" for years and years, and "event"
> has
> a pretty standard meaning in physics.) Observer
> moments have
> to do with something conscious (and, evidently,
> pretty complex).
> And of course, as Hal wrote later on, consciousness
> exists on
> a gray scale.
>
> Lee
>
> P.S. In normal physics an event, as Russell says, is
> associated
> with coordinates. Nonetheless I, for one, had always
> supposed
> that indeed something was happening there, e.g., a
> photon was
> emitted. Well, in familiar physics we may also say
> that in the
> usual three-space there is quantum activity at each
> point. This,
> at least for me, makes the terms a little more
> meaningful.
>
>
Received on Sun Jul 31 2005 - 17:05:14 PDT