...continuing....
For an example of the physics 'underlying reality':
see
http://www.scieng.flinders.edu.au/cpes/people/cahill_r/processphysics.html
take a look at all the papers and follow the references. The theoretical trail leads to Prigogine and his far from equilibrium physics but based on a structured noise model of entropy. In time the model goes as far back as Heraclitus. Yes...the ancient greeks have been here already..situation normal!
My model for phenomenality fits the entire class of physics of which Chaill's work is an example (all based on noise). Note that ontological and process physics start to look like each other (merge) at the deep layers. As you travel the route of knowledge to greater spatiotemporal scales ontological descriptions become more useful and the noise based process descriptions less.
BUT note their status: BOTH sides of the knowledge model are metaphysics. _About_ the physics. The inaccessible noise that makes it all we cannot ever directly access or fully know: there's your 'physics'. Everything we do is 'about' that, but not _actually_ it. Even if we accidentally perfectly modelled it, we still haven't 'seen it' and we will always be able to configure doubt. (Hume has a say here!).
However, we can 'know it' to an arbitrarily accurate level by doing science under the auspices of the two-sided knowledge framework. Somewhat ironic, really. All physicists, in being made of the universe they describe .ie. made of the physics of the universe, can only ever do METAphysics. Models of actuality. Humility needed. Hubris? Ascriptions? Leave at the door please... :-)
The payback from a dose of humility? We get to explain phenomenality and open the door on the other 50% of decriptive physics (or, as I said...simply recognise that we are already doing it.....horse has already bolted)
Also note that you will find Cahill essentially marginalised as simply an alternative that predicts all the same stuff that existing physics predicts. Poor Prof Cahill. He doesn't realise that the key to his model is that it can _explain_ (in the formal sense of the word) phenomenality (and all other natural processes) , whereas ontological physics can't. It describes. Very usefully but only that.
Prof Cahill thinks it's "in place of" when it is actually a complementary side to a more complete explanatory framework. He thinks he is in conflict with existing science when he and existing science are not talking about the same thing! This is actually a cultural/political prediction of my model.
Those poor blighters on the side of 'underlying physics' will always be perceived as 'also rans' until everyone realises that they are on the other side of phenomenality, not even tallking about the same theorem set.
Also note that it is the task of process physics to not only explain phenomenality itself, but to provide the framework which explains how the natural world's behaviour is amenable to mathematical generalisations (by collapsing the real world into behaviour providing a virtual calculus of the context, so that abstract maths of non-existent domains becomes a useful approximate description). herein lies the 'unreasonable effectiveness' of methematics. Not unreasonable after all!
Note also that the whole ontological QM/RELATIVITY mismatch issue becomes a waste of time under the two sided model. The link between them won't be found in traditional ontological physics except in some amazing and impractical descriptive mathematical nightmare that will describe be completely devoid of explanatory WHY. The reality underneath makes the issue simply become non-existent. As Cahill seems to have done to some extent.
I commend the two sided model for epistemology to you all for consideration....let it sink in a bit.... imagine your phenomenality as a mirror. Underlying physics literally (and I mean literally) constructs, in real-time, a mirror with the image already in it. If you do normal ontological science you are describing the behaviour of the image in the mirror. When you do process based science you are looking at how the mirror is made. Both descriptions automatically result from the existence of the mirror. The complete picture is not present unless you addrress both points of view.
The historical mistake made here is also plain and comes from KANT. Kant said there are phenomena (appearances) and noumena (underlying nature of reality). KANT said you cant ever know the noumena. <not quite right....!>
DESCARTES went out of his way to invent a mind-stuff to explain phemomenality...NOT NEEDED.
In this way the underlying nature of reality was discarded into the weeds of 'metaphysics'..... which is where it would remain until now.
When you make the phenomena out of the noumena _literally, physically_ you simply don't need any mind-stuff. KANT was partly right in that there is a form of unknowlability and partly wrong in that a kind of knowability arises when the phenomena are made out of the noumena. I can see him in his grave... DOH! A victim of an assumption.
I need a real challenge to this model. Saying 'according to philosophical Xism you are wrong or 'I think this or I think that' won't cut it. My model makes empirical predictions of brain matter: shape, position, orientation of neurons, glia (astrocytes) and the types/densities of ion channel layouts thereon (soma). I seem to be finding what I expect. I can predict the nature of the morphological differences between peripheral/sensory neurons and central/phenomenal neurons, for example.
So if you have any alternatives...please provide the plan for empirical verification of your model. Without particle accelerators if possible!
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When I got to the end of my proposal I looked for a fundamental property of the natural word to characterise what was going on. A property of the natural world that necessitated/enabled phenomenality. As usual (especially in the maths) it is an implicit law. I don't know if it's real, but I can donate it to the list for consideration and it's really really simple to the point of being dumb-sounding. It was all that was left. I've never actually written it down before as it seemed a little trite.... anyway here goes....
"It is a fundamental property of the natural world that at all scales, in all cirumstances, that phenomenality is simply the perspective view of the rest of the universe from the position of being that portion of the universe under consideration"
I think that about does it. It means that as soon as you situate, you have a perspective view. Thats all it is. Proto-Phenomenality thus pervades the universe. The whole question then changes to one of visibility! Think. Is the existence of an electron 'about' anything? NO. It's an electron. Whatever process the universe provides to generate and sustain and electron is not 'about' anything, it is the process itself. You can then look at the whole of the natural world and do the same thought experiment. You then look at brain material. It is DEFINITELY 'like something' to 'be' that. There IS a perspective view. You then investigate how that may be. You then begin to understand how brain matter can do that. That's what I did.
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Maybe you folks can dream up a better version of the fundamental theorem. That's the essence of whats left to play with, however....as far as I can tell.
In parting for the moment: A final extract from one of my papers:
"The multiple levels of irony in this situation are truly remarkable. As an author the whole idea of being in the position of delivering such a message is bizarre enough. It would be a great relief for this particular messenger to be ‘shot’ in a very compelling scientific fashion with supporting evidence. The message itself is almost like some sort of cartoon: that fifty percent of an entire macro-discipline is missing? How can that be? On balance, however, this is not as disconcerting as being made aware of unjustified quasi-religious or perhaps teleological behaviour possibly responsible for delays in scientific advances. That to address the issue merely takes an attitudinal shift is additional irony. But the final insult is that the change is merely to do what science arguably should have been doing in the first place: being scientific about itself!"
Think about it. Some poor fellow eventually had to come out of the woodwork with a story like this. I never planned it to be me. But...well.....life's funny, eh?
Knock yourselves out tearing it to bits or get with the program. It's all yours. Let the games begin!
cheers,
colin hales
Received on Thu Aug 04 2005 - 00:56:41 PDT