Space II ...

The lines of debate has historically been drawn between those who think of space as a container which holds objects and those who think of space as nothing but the relation between objects. The major difference being that the former hypothesizes an ontological entity, a background entity, for objects while the latter does not.

Our Western tradition uses the word space both ways and the division of meaning is as old as our history. The Hebrew Genesis uses the term space, in the Creation, as more of a placeholder. The Greek notion of Cosmos is more about the relations between things. Outside of Cosmos is Chaos, which is unformed, but doesn't appear to exist in space. (Note - this is the hypothesis of a logical or, in some myths, temporal predecessor to things ... another kind of frame, another kind of ontological claim.)
I'll talk more on the history of notions relating to space later. For now i just want to setup the major dichotomy.

So ... ask yourself this this question ... at the origin of the history of things ... let us say one quantum particle came into existence first. What is your view of space and time at that moment of creation? Is the particle in space and time, is the particle co-existent with space and time, or are space and time meaningless concepts at this point?

My instinct says the last is the best description. I understand the pull of wanting a logical background as well as a logical precedent ... but i am going to stop short of postulating entities such as "space" or "creating agency".


Well enough ... but now let us step forward in time to the Absolutist-Relationalist debate at the time of Newton and Leibniz. How does it match-up with the thought experiment above?

I do not think very well.

One could certainly agree with me on the single quantum particle but then say, anyway, that space and time make sense as entities now (in the 17th century). The parallel i would draw would be with gravity (universal or no). The concept of gravity would be meaningless to a single quantum particle, but it is not meaningless to a universe of objects composed of quantum particles (not that we would be talking quantum talk in the 17th century ... we would be saying "atom", but meaning a very similar thing, the Democratis definition, in regards to this argument).
So, just as Universal Gravity may be a legitimate deduction from the interaction of things at a cosmic scale, so to may space and time be deducible and meaningful ... and one may treat them as "fields" in which things occur, just like gravity, even if the existence of these fields are not meant as ontological prior (to things) postulates.

And this is what i take to be the Newtonian move. He integrates them into his Laws of Motion (specifically to inertia). They are hypothesized as absolute, as a starting point, but they are amendable if the universe tells us differently as we play with it some more.
Newton, in this reading, really is not part of the relationalist-absolutist debate ... though his entities sound absolutist and he is often associated with that side of the debate.

More on this later, too.

A couple posts ago I noted Newton's statement "I do not feign hypotheses" ... and then here talk about a Newtonian hypothesis. Newton did pose frameworks as questioning devices ... for example ... he starts off with the hypothesis that planets move in circular (not elliptical) orbits, and then uses the deviations from that hypothesis to look for further forces in play ... and it is a highly succesful move. I am proposing the notion of space/time in Newton along a similar ground ... but no further factors were discovered in his time, or the next 200 years, that put much emphasis on the question. (Where-as he already knew the circular orbit hypothesis was wrong but was proposing it merely as a tool to be refined.)

Real world side note ...

... working in the winery it becomes quickly apparent that ancient men probably did not have to be too bright to "invent" glue. Anything you do with fruit, superglue attaches to all the equipment.

Literature post ...

Kawabata has been set aside for now. My mind seems to have been taken over by a novel called "The Elementary Particles" by the current french writer Michel Houellebecq.

The question of "why" is certainly legitimate in this case. I never quite know what to say about contemporary literature. I find the characters abysmal. I am always bogged down by the feeling that the author is trying to "expose" what a certain kind of people are really like, behind the scenes. That is ... their characters are manifestations of their belief that people can't really sincerely disagree with them and be both honest and intelligent. [DeLilo's "White Noise" comes so much to my mind when i say this.]
But it more than just one or two authors, it is all of them i have read. Their characters lack all sincerity. Only when they write about crazy people do they really do justice to human minds.

I'm sure there are many good contemporary writers. I have delved into but a small portion, and usually because someone says that i "just have to read this". That usually means the author will charicature and laugh at the viewpoints with which i disagree. Straw men and "proof by fiction" ... two pet peeves of mine.
For every topic out there where i have a strong disagreement with others, where the country is spilt between 40-60 and 50-50 ... there are very smart and sincere proponents of the diametric (to mine) idea. I would much rather engage that ... give me Umberto Eco taking madmen seriously to some yahoo taking pot shots at New Age or Christianity or what-not in the most adolescent of passages.

We hated our wrestling coach back a Drake U. for scheduling the Division III tournaments and for having mutliple duels against the worst of D-I teams like Valparaiso. We wanted to wrestle Iowa and Oklahoma State, all the time.
Nothing has changed in my mind when it seeks opponents.

Anyway ... after all that ... this Houellebecq novel is supposed to be very depressing, very Celine ... and it is trying. It is sincere in its intent. {How many times have i used the word "sincere" in this post, i must be having an Existentialist evening.} It you like books like Camus' "Stranger" then this text comes recommended. I'm guessing it is the mix of pessimism and science that sent the woman who suggested it to do said suggesting.

Do i seem like a pessimistic scientist? Just because i call myself that, and maybe throw in nihilism too, doesn't mean its remotely true.


What else ...
... ah yes, Lord Jim. I never wrote my final thoughts there. I liked it. It may be my favorite Conrad novel. The ambiguiuty of the authenticity of the story is striking, and Conrad does a good job of keeping in our minds that the narrator is just a perspective teller, and in this case, perhaps he is trying to convert the dead to be "one of them" as we see intellectuals, especially metaphysicians, do so often when they interpret hisotry.
Bravo !


... back to it,

Space ...

I am finding it difficult to find a good/concise starting point for a discussion of the concept of space from Newton to Kant as that concept relates to notions of the "absolute".
It takes a robust concept of space to start, and where to begin with that? In the beginning? (Literally, the earliest use of the word in the Western tradition is in Genesis.)

[I was mocking someone for the improper use of "literal" earlier today ... and i think i may have just violated the definition myself.]


Anyway ... i continue to think on it. The subject has not been forgotten.
If one were to want to "problematize" physics, just understanding the history of the conception of space would be an excellent starting point.

Newton quote ...

"I do not feign hypotheses."

myths ...

Certain myths really raise my ire. The picture of Newton under an apple tree, getting bonked on the head, and suddenly having the notion of universal gravity is one of the major ones, but there are many. Pretty much any history of science you might remember from high school probably qualifies.

One that has popped-up in several conversation in the last few months, annunciated by different quite intelligent individuals, deals with the history of the number zero. There seems to be this notion that out number zero as we use it came exclusively from Arabic Islam. Unlike Newton, at least there is some truth to the statement, but i have trouble understanding where the blanket claim arises.
I do recall myself hearing the claim as an undergrad, but within a limited context (of commercial history) in which the claim is most correct.

I want to talk a little about the history of zero, but first i need to cover some history of mathematical systems, and also there must be a quick discussion on the number zero itself as we use the term. We'll do that last piece first.

There are at least 3 mutually exclusive uses we have for zero: the natural number or null set, the placeholder in writing numbers such as "103" so we can tell it from "13", and as a tool in base 10 arithmetic. You can have the earlier notions without having the latter notion, and indeed that is the case in the history of the use of zero.
It is that last notion, as a tool for arithmetic, that the Arabic world brought us the concept of zero.

We also want to consider mathematical practices real quick. The western history (Greek and Rome) is geometry based, not arithmetic based. Well ... let me restate that ... commerce used a form of simple arithmetic, but the fields we would call math and natural science were geometry based. Even as late as Galileo, Descartes and Newton the main work is done in geometry ... pick up and thumb through a copy of Newton's "Principia" ... you'll not see algebraic "flute music", you'll see geometric proofs.
Newton knew algebra, and used if for quick calculations, but he did the proofs in geometry so that they would be trusted (at least until the birth of differentials ... but that is another story).
The Indo-Arabic world, however, was arithmetic based. Still, the areas of commerce, math and astrology did not quite use the same arithmatic methods, but they at least similar ... unlike ancient Greece where the merchants would have no clue as to what the mathmeticians math meant. (Okay, that is probably stated too strongly.)
Anyway ... so the main notion here is that the concept of zero as placeholder and later as arithmatic tool was only invented in the Indo-Arabic world because it was imbedded in the math system of the Greco-Roman world, that is, it did not have to be invented, it was always there.

So ...
... the three uses of zero.

First, as a natural number representing the null set, all cultures had the concept. Many non-primate creatures even easily demonstate that they understand that taking one thing away when you have one thing means there is no thing left. It is hard to say when the notion was first unnunciated, but it seems strongly imbedded in all cultures we have uncovered.

Second, and here we can actually talk about some real history, is the use of zero as a placeholder in writing down numbers. The Sumerians used no such concept, but the Babylonians did. Those in commerce did not, and, a little suprsingly, the mathemeticians did not. It was the astrologers that started the trend. Of course ... they had to predict things and so they needed precision and without placeholders the meanings of the number columns before you was ambiguous. So first they used spaces to mark the place holders, but due to hand writing that was still ambiguous, and later they used a symbol to represent a placeholder just like we do. They were still calculating like merchants, they were not using zero to calculate, but it was in their math. The invention of zero in this sense occured in Babylon before 700 BC and was standerdized around 400 BC.
They were still using base-6 math, i suppose that should be noted.

The use of zero in arithmatic, that is, modern arithmetic, probably started in Hindu India by around 650 AD. The Islamic Arab conquest of that culture later brought the notion and system to the Arab world, and it was eventually transfered to the western world from our contacts with Islam. Zero, in this sense, is almost a short-hand way of saying that we got the base-10 column arithmetic that we use from the Arabic world ... and that is much closer to being correct.

I don't know exactly where the column arithmetic started, though apparently the Hindus used it by 650 AD and it was standard fair in India and the Arab world two to four hundred years later.


That is what i know.


I think it would be interesting to know two more pieces of information ... maybe i'll do some research on it.

1) When and where did merchants, mathemeticians and scientists all begin using the same number system ... or at least sometimes all used it. I would imagine it started in the Arab world and spread to Europe. The invention of algebra would have to be a big part of this. One had to use geometry to mimic the physical world for science up until algebra was "trusted" for this task, which is as late as Leibniz/Newton and the next couple generations.
In short, the notion of "one math" for all these disparate activities ... where/when did it begin?

The proof of the equivalency of algebrai and geometry is a 1700s phenomenon.


2) When/where did arithmetic gain the powers of algebrai as we think of algebrai? The left to right notation "3 + 4 = ?" IS algebrai, sure, but the concept of actually using "x" and the like as constants in an equation ... i do not know when that started.

Current literature ...

I have started Kawabata's "Snow Country".

I like a lot of world literature, but Japanese is one of my favorites. Mishima, Soseki and Akutagawa are my favorites there-in ... but i am always finding something new, especially in the short story world. It is minimalist in the way i most love minimalism ... tied to the sense but ambiguous enough for the reader to be empowered.

Basho is also very nice, but in a different kind of way, obviously.

Arthur Danto

The Nation has a short interview with my favorite Phil of Art philosopher ...

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050829&s=danto

Found this quote ...

The "Critique of Pure Reason" is a continual sermon against the use of the category of thought beyond the limits of actual experience.
- Hermann von Helmholtz


True?

Sure, we would have to discuss how the categories influence our experience ... that two way street.
It sums up a lot of my critique of ethics, along the lines of N. Caputo's "Against Ethics". Once one starts letting the un-grounded category/concept do the work, things get dangerous. We have to tell the axe-wielding lunatic at the door where to find his innocent target.

Funny ... the mind behind the Critique is the same that came to that conclusion (about the importance of truth).

Aias writes again ...

The Choirs Announce Beatrice

---------------------------------

So-subtly-non-angelic lips sing
the siren's call
that i shall never forget their voices
that i shall never want to

Amore

Sent angels sing beautiful
stern love
commanding, and my soul's warming
and i shall never want

But i distrust both choirs

Credo: God is quiet
I seek His silent symphony

Lakoff ...

"Where Mathematics Comes From" ... George Lakoff / Rafael E. Nunez

I've talked about this text in several places. I have to admit, however, that my only real draw to the text is that we (myself and the authors) have a common starting point, which happens to lie outside the mainstream, and a common task.

Starting point (in my words, not their's): The truths of mathematics apply to the physical world for the reason that the most elementary mathematical concepts are "learned" about the world. They ARE science.
(When i say "learned" here, i caveat, so as not to avoid directly in conflict with everything i just posted on Natalie's site, i am including the evolutionary refinements of a species. Creatures "learned" genetically to subtize about the world. I mean that very metaphorically.)

Common task (again in my words): To extend these most basic scientific facts (that we call simple arithmetic) to cover all (non- deviant/alternative) math and logic up to Kurt Goedel, and therefore to cover the science that uses said math.


That said, reading the text "Where Mathematics Comes From" immediately throws me back in memory to my days of studying Hegelian Dialectical Structure (of the world) charts. It takes very little reading of such things by a minimalist like myself to say, "this can't possibly be even close to correct".
Note - that is merely an intuition, not an argument.
I don't mean to imply that Lakoff/Nunez are merely engaged in Hegelian type metaphysics ... what i hope to get across is the feeling i had while reading the text ... the closest i had to it previously was very directly in Hegel.
Its not just the complication of the structure. In my computational theory classes digging through Goedel, Peano, Kleene, etc i often felt lost in the structures, had trouble comprehending the reasons for their philosophical moves, and the like, but it never felt derived ... that is the word, derived ... those structures.
These Lokoff structures, taken at face value, seem derived.

Even so, i still found them interesting. They point out, intentionally so, exactly what the human brain would need to know in order to accomplish X, Y or Z. The lists of what is necessary to know to accomplish certain thoughts, and the lists of what would need to be accepted metaphors in the brain ... they are staggering. It is good to point them out.

In my heart, though, i think it will turn out to be far more simple than it looks. Most tasks the brain does, i believe, are like that. They look complex, but often they are just the meshing of many simpler mechanisms butressed by a newer part of the brain that can create, form, hold and use symbols (what Lakoff and Nunez prefer to call metaphors).

Metaphors ... yes ... we must remember that Lakoff has a grander theory into which this effort is tying and his concept of the conceptual metaphor as a framing device is very important.



And the moral of that is ...
"Kleeneliness is next to Goedeliness"
... okay, no it isn't.
But i just recalled that phrase from somewhere and i felt the need to include it.
Its funny.
So laugh.
Laugh, damn you!

Return to "Lord Jim"

Not Yoda ...

"This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so, and again he want to be so ... He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil - and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow - so fine as he can never be ..."

- Joseph Conrad's character Stein


... and the moral of that is ... it is really not a very quatable book. It is not "Zorba the Greek". It IS solid Conrad, though, and that's a good thing.

Posting elsewhere this week ...

My work this week has all been posted as responses on Natalie's blog under the "Outside Discourse" debate.

Available at these fine outlets ... (pardon the pun)
http://molecularphilosopher.blogspot.com/

a point ...

(Accidently typed "a pint" there, for those into Freudian style slips.)

The point of the Roman bridges is this ...

If you were going to design a structure that was going to stand for 2000 years the primary force with which you would be concerned is stress.

Roman science had no such force in its ontological committments.

Obviously the Romans had accounted for it, or the bridges would have fallen down (all the way, and probably quickly).

And the moral of that is ...

The physical theory of that people can not account for the success of one of their primary feats, Roman Architecture.

And the question becomes ...

What, then, is doing the work? In what manner did the engineers understand and convey to future generations the embedded knowledge of stress.


Well ... somehow. Fine for the Romans.
But what about us?
Do we have any reason to believe that our best physical theories are "doing the work" when it comes to our finest accomplishments (say, space endevours)?

Newton and his Principia seem to me to be the best argument that maybe our physical theory is different. But more on that later.

Kant's position, some generations after Newton, when it was really beginning to look like a special kind of revolution ... Kant was in an intellectual and historical position to spell out, or at least point the way, to what was going on.

Hypothesis ... if Kant talking about Newton does not give us a mechanism for believing that our physical theory really does do some work, then it is unlikely that other investigations will yield a better result. That is, on the surface, this is our best shot.

" I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything. "

- Chuck Palahniuk

changes

synthetic a priori

I'll quiblle about the definition all day ... but at the end of the day it still comes down to how some sense of such things are possible.

The Euler Characteristic of a sphere is 2. Its very simple to see, to prove.
But why?
Deep Impact hits the asteroid. Roman Empire bridges still standing. The state of play is ... we believe such knowledge must be real, in the sense that knowledge can be such.

It is very difficult to parse Kant in a manner that does not give the answer that evolutionary theory (or the proper design theory) gives.
I continue to try, though, to delve for something new. It is a struggle, and so it takes time.

I feel bad for not postin, but it takes time.


Somewhere at the root of things i feel that only engineering accounts for the advances ... and i am not convinced that there can be an epistemological accounting for engineering ... for induction. Maybe "normal engineering" ... but "revolutionary engineering"?

It seems to me likely that human beings are unable to account for their highest accomplishments.


Hence, nihilism.

Current literature ...

My current literature selection is Conrad's "Lord Jim."
A solid work. I like Conrad. I rarely quote him, though.

I certainly would not like to read very many novels couched as long conversations, but it is an interesting structure for a one off.

truths ...

I have said it before. I'm sure I'll say it again. Truth is easy. It can be accomplished merely by the form of hypothesis.

Question 1:
What causes some phenomenon "B" to occur.

Hypothesis:
There exists some mechanism "X" which causes "B".

Outside of the very rare case of the uncaused cause, this form of reasoning will always hold true. The Aristoteleon Scholastics were masters of the form. "Why does opium produce sleepiness? It has dormative virtues." What is a dormative virtue? The element in something that causes sleepiness.
Most cases are not so bodly circular as this, but few explanations do little more. Especially the "big" explanations are little more. The Freudian unconscious comes to mind ... why did John do X, Y or Z? We invoke the unconscious. What is the Freudian unconscious? Oh, that thing which causes humans to do things.
The Uncaused Cause, the Prime Being ... more of the same. At least Christianity has the honesty to cut straight to the chase. There is one cause of everything, and we'll just do away with the immediate level explanations.
Most people have a level or two of complexity where the explanation refers to something else. All forms of reductionism fall into this category ... all "Bs" are really just "Cs". "All politics is just an expression of power." What is power? The freedom to act. What is freedom? Eventually the snake circles around to bite its own tale, or, at some point the "grounding principle" is just defined that way.

What is important to note is that these explanations are not wrong. They are just not useful. Opium does cause sleepiness because it has a element in it that causes sleepiness. We humans do act this way or that because there are mechanisms in us that cause us to act this way or that (or if you prefer a "soul" grounded explanation, there is a mechanism in the Ultimate that causes us to act this way or that).

In the words of George Smith, this type of explanation is just "fooling ourselves".

But is there any other kind of explanation?

Newton - Leibniz - Absolute Time

We'll start with the concept of absolute time as i think that is easier to explain.

What is important to understand in the Newton-Leibniz debate about absolute time is that Leibniz did not refute Newton's conception, he was refuting the commanly understood meaning of Absolute Time at the time. Newton had, however, redefined the term.

Newton realized that if phrases such as "sweep out equal amounts of space in equal amounts of time" were going to be meaningful, space and time were going to have to be defined as constants and, really, he doesn't mean much more than that we he speaks of them as absolutes.

The general meaning of absolute space and time at that time would be for everything to have a fixed coordinate on a grid, bit in space and in time. Leibniz attacked this conception as meaningless and he used the notion of the Identity of Indiscernables to make this attack. Time, to Leibniz, was just the sequence, there were no coordinate points. He would say something like ... imagine two universes in time with everything the same except in one of these universes everything happens 10 seconds before the it does in the other. Well, since there is no way to tell these universes apart the concept of Absolute Time as something like extension with coordinates is meaningless.

Newton had zero problems with this argument. That is simplay not what he meant by Absolute Time.

Newton tied his concept of Absolute Time to his physical laws, namely, to inertia. The definition goes something like this. Two bodies are moving through space with the same velocity. In the same amount of time (sequences) they will always move the same distance. If a force is applied to one of the bodies to speed it up, that body will now always cover more space in the same amount of time (sequences).
Time is here also just the sequences. The absolute sense of time is that these sequences occur at a standard rate. Further, this is true if the objects are side by side, across the universe from one another, or even a trillion time sequences removed from one another.
Now ... absolute time is still problematic from our point today even thus defined, but it was not considered problematic. Kant would have accepted it 80 years later and both the Newtonian and Leibnizian camps would have accepted the concept (though they would probably have called it by different names) at Kant's time.

When Kant moved from one camp to the other, then, really, he was just changing his definition of absolute time from the old Cartesian notion to the notion tied directly to Newton's Laws of Motion.

For someone to attack this idea of absolute time, then, they must say that one of Newton's Laws of Motion is wrong (inertia) or they must add one or more Laws of Motion that have an affect on the defition. (The later being the case of what Einstein did do.)

So ... that is the state of play of the concept of Absolute Time as thought of by Kant at his time. I'll handle space separately as it is more problematic. Newton's Absolute Space, however, is going to derive from the same impetus ... the defining of space by tieing it to the Laws of Motion.

Kant I b

I feel the need to emphasize that there are no ontological claims being made as of yet (in the Kant post below). Well no, "no" claims is the wrong wording. It is just not the standard claim.

I mentioned blue and the Universal blue-ness, that i am only claiming a mechanism for seeing blue must exist, and am not making any ontological claims about what "blue" is.

Similarly ... the basic proofs of a gorunding, of a godhead, may sound similar but are making stronger ontological claims. The argument that if there is change, cause/effect, there must be a Prime Mover to start the chain, or if there is any being (mass noun) at all, there must be a Prime Being as a ground for it ... and etc through the proofs of God.
In each of these cases there is a thing out there, an existence, that makes the phenomenon in question possible.
I am staying on the "other side", on the inside, in my claim. To encounter being, there needs be a mechanism by which we encounter being. To see change in the world, there must be a mechanism by which we experience the cheange.
I'd say the move i'm making is closer to the Cartesian "cogito as immanent being" argument ... but again ... whithout the claim of a robust thing, only a mechanism. Closer to "I think, (therefore) there is thinking" than "I think, (therefore) I am".
[Descartes specifically did not want the cogito argument to be a deduction, but rather an immanent knowledge. He used "therefore" to clarify the grammar, but really he meant no usage of it as a logical operator.]

So that is the state of play ... the only ontological claim being the thinnest, a functionalist, a mechanism, and nothing more at this point.

I will discuss Newton, Leibniz and Kant and they will mean more, but i do not.

Kant I

Space as transcendental Idea ...

I am drawn back to the idea (pardon the pun) of space as used by Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason. Along with his use of time, there, it is a special concept in Kant's mature philosophy. [Using the term "concept" here in the general sense of the term, not in Kant's technical sense.]

The space "out there" which science can investigate and in which we encounter everyday life, this really is not what Kant has in mind by the notion of space as a transcendant idea. Kant was familiar with the ideas at the time on space "out there" and in his younger days took the Leibniz-ian view there-of. In the decade preceeding The Critique, though, he switched to a more Newtonian view.

[At the time the Newtonian and Leibnizian camps pretty much defined the scientific debate on space and time.]

The notion of space as a transcendant idea turns space into a special kind of predicate, that is, a predicate with a special status. Special status? "Being" is often considered such a predicate. I won't go into why right now on that one, but for those familiar with the concept that is the notion i am pushing. It is different for space, but still special.
The argument goes very roughly ... for there to be differentiations in space, per se, we must have an internal capacity to see space as we encounter it in the worls ... and time. And Kant is going to refer to this grouding, this framework, as the space and time that are transcendant.

As just stated, though, that sounds pretty much like a Platonic Idea or Russelian Universal. But i see the claim as slightly different. Where-as a Universalist theory would claim that for something to be blue, there must be blue-ness ... this is more akin to a phenomenalism claim which might state that for blue to be perceived there must be a mechanism for seeing blue. The latter does not address the question of how the thing itself is blue, Universals theory may be the answer [though we think that unlikely], but that part of the question is left open. It is a question of the necessity of a mechanism for perceiving blue.

The claim is that there necessarily is a mechanism for encountering space (and time) in humans (and probably also other conscious creatures). And necessarily, for Kant, this mechanism must be prior to experience as experience is what takes place in the space and time we study in science, space and time per se.
So, Kant believes the space and time that is transcendant is a priori.

(Per earlier posts ... that is why the claim is that this is outside discourse.)


So ... i want to talk more about what this space and time might be. Kant chooses to use the words space and time by i find the appelation to be arbitrary at this point. Right now there is just something, some mechanism, that allows us to experience space and time per se. I see no reason to call it space and time too, even if we tag it the transcendant notion.
I will call it Mechanism X for now.
Perhaps we'll change that after a little more work on the Newton - Leibniz debate.

Keep in mind that the longterm question is whether there are mechanisms outside discourse/language, and whether these mechanisms, if they exist, are useful for grounding scientific knowledge in an interesting (non tataulogous and non circular) manner.
How can we escape the the notion that the mechanisms of the brain used to experience knowledge will have to be discoveries of science, which are certainly not a priori in nature (pardon the pun, again)? ... or can we not?
Hypothesis: certainly not certainly, but perhaps there is reason for pause and reflection.

Cosmology ...

Scientific cosmology is more metaphysics than science. It is metaphysics under a tight rule set, more akin to the metaphysics of analytic philosophy than to the metaphysics of spirituality, but it is no better.

I see no reasonable way to choose between systems of metaphysics. Those with tighter rule sets can disqualify themselves by violating their own rules (internal consistency), but that is about all.

A Hymn for Late Summer

"There are words etched deep inside me
i am still afraid to recite.

Adonai,
must everyone be able to read them?"

- Aias Grimmelshausen

outside discourse (ii)

Some email replies to me about "Outside Discourse" have noted how neo-Kantian the setup sounds ... these nomological tendencies, and math and logic ... how do they differ from Transcendental Ideas.

The path that led me here is very similar to Kants ... the path that leads through Newton and Hume. Kant famously claims that Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber. Kant was very well versed in Newton before coming upon Hume. I found Hume first and Newton later, so for me it has been a matter of how far Newton can take us, and Kant has the original best hypothesis of "all the way".

At core, though, I am far more Humean than Kantian. I am highly influenced by Kant but only as an exempler of a notion with which i do not agree.

The key phrase is "synthetic a priori" ... are such observations possible. Kant says yes. Hume says no. I take Kant's claim seriously. The "Ideas" he picks out as being synthetic a priori i do consider to be special cases ok knowledge ... the most interesting cases of knowledge. They are just not a priori in any strong metaphysical sense.

Kant needs the synthetic a priori to metaphysically ground science. I am happy to leave science ungrounded, but the notion of the limits of science fascinate me, and the pursuit of those limits have led me to the same notions (at least modern interpretations of them ... eg. no longer things like Newtonian space-time and a significant difference in theory of perception/cognition) of Kant's Ideas ... but not to ground anything, but rather, to see the edge of the thing, the limit to re-use that word again.

The most contentious part of the move in the circles (analytic philosophy) that i travel is placing math and logic back into the emperical world. Kant (and many later big names, Wittgenstein and Kurt Goedel included, in some senses) classed these as "analytic a priori".
I throw out the notion of analytic pretty much altogether. All real (always a loaded word, of course) knowledge is synthetic. What, then, kind of knowledge are the kinds we call analytic ... the basic truths of math, geometry, logic? I tie this question directly to the truths of "science at its best" and believe there to be a common thread.

Did that answer the questions?

Paul Johnson ...

An interesting essay by Paul Johnson ...
... http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article.asp?aid=11906035_1

Okay, a bit rah-rah for America at the end, but the historical section focussing on al-Husseini and the attack on early Zionists and also on Arab collaboraters with those Jews is interesting.


When one looks at the origin of the modern Islamic extremist terrorism movement, there can be little doubt that our troops in their Holy Lands (especially the Saudi pennisula) played a large part in their recruiting and organization building in the 90s.
It does not follow, however, that pulling those troops out now would reverse the attacks. I do not think it would. While the "infidels are in Mecca" is a well used recruiting tag, the goals of thos doing the recruiting are far deeper. At a minimum ... the end of the existence of the state of Israel. The attacks will continue against those who support Israel in any way ... militarily, economically or even geo-politically. (That last is for Egypt or any other Arab nation that might even recognize the sat of Israel.) By extension, even those that support these "Westernized" Arab governements are also targets.
Objectives have a way of increasing with successes as well. If the extreme Islamists were to continue to build power bases and maybe even take over a couple governments ... i think by then the objectives would have creeped all the way to the protection of Islamic minority rights in the West, especially Spain, France, Germany and UK. (The kidnapping of the French reporter over the French ruling against the wearing of headscarves [any overt religious clothing] to school being an example.)

In short ... i don't know that there is a "turning back" bar a complete move to isolationism including economic. Such a move is not feasible, really, but even if we could do it ... probably not advisible.

What then to do?
I don't know.

The worst years of such insurgencies tend to wane after a few generations ... weather the storm may just be the best solution. Eventually a new generation will rebel against the notion that such fights for Islam are the "highest good" or even "the cool thing to do". It never goes away, but it can be marginalized as we have marginalized the KKK here in the US and as the IRA became marginalized in the UK.

We should move our troops from the Saudi penninsula when we can ... maybe a small base in Kuwait and/or Iraq (if Iraq allows such a thing). With our naval and air control of the gulf I don't know that we really need "boots on the ground" much in that region. A good airbase and military training center in a stable region of Iraq might be part of a "Marshall Plan" there. I don't think we need it, though ... though the training center could slowly, maybe, Westernize the Iraqi force. Its arguable that that plan has helped some in Centra and South America (via the School of Americas) ... but then again ... a large number of demons have also graduated from that school with "new" skills.
Teaching the notions a a professional force that serves a civilian governement is the key piece of knowledge that, repeated long enough, may have done some good. OR ... the ebb and flow just happens to be turned in the better direction right now and will turn back again, training or no.

Hard to say.

{{{ Added note - When i speak of "creeping objectives" in this sense i do not mean to draw a parallel with "Dominoe THeory" or social "Slippery Slope" theories ... the creeping objective has a long military-political history, often disastrous to those who partake. Going into Somalia the military was very concerned that the mission to deliver food would slowly ratchet up into one to deliver peace and stability and eventually a nation building excercise. Despite their efforts to resist changing the objectives to something grander, more noble, still it happened. Its a psychological theory as much as anything ... success breeds the notion of more success, "we fixed one thing easily, and we are here, so lets fix X, Y and Z too." Suddenly you are embroiled in a level 3 Low-Intensity Conflict in SE Asia. }}}