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Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

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Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#51

Post by mannykannot »

jerf wrote: post #16

I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incomp…

Fair enough, though it's at least equally so for the intuitions of Bergson et. al.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#52

Post by CreateAccntAgn »

robertlagrant wrote: post #12

> Bergson emphasised the cultural and technological context in which Einstein formulated relativity and argued that a theory of time that relies on clocks but doesn’t understand their history and significance, is incomplete This is hard to get on board with. A theory of time is incomplete without a history of clocks? Have I misunderstood?

It is incomplete in that it cannot replace older ideas of time in all contexts. It is perfectly valid/complete for use in scientific contexts. But the general population's use the idea of time for other purposes as well where Einsteins purely Relativistic formulation cannot be a stand in replacement is how I read it.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#53

Post by lisper »

spookthesunset wrote: post #37
lisper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? What is the nature of consciousness? What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Why any of this exists at all? What is the purpose of this existence? Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. … science is not a bo…

Those are all very good questions, and I can't do them justice in an HN comment. But here's a first cut:

> How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified?

Read David Deutsch "The Fabric of Reality" chapter 7.

> What is the nature of consciousness?

Read Daniel Dennett, "Consciousness Explained".

> What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing.

Read Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene" (and, if you want to get deep into these weeds, "The Extended Phenotype").

> Why any of this exists at all?

What makes you think that any of this does exist at all?

> What is the purpose of this existence?

What makes you think that this existence has a purpose?

> Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical.

Read "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod. (The Selfish Gene addresses this as well.)

> science is not a book of facts.

That's true.

> It is merely a process for testing a hypothesis.

No, it's not "merely" that. It is a process for producing good explanations that account for observations. That turns out to be tremendously powerful.

> It is not a replacement for philosophy, it is underpinned by philosophy.

No, it isn't. The existence of philosophy (and philosophers!) can be explained by science.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#54

Post by username332211 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #37
lisper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what?

How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? What is the nature of consciousness? What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Why any of this exists at all? What is the purpose of this existence? Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. … science is not a bo…

On your last question ethics in particular is rather interesting. I think it's the field where the decline of philosophy is most obvious.

Ethics is supposed to answer real-life questions, like "How do I live a moral life?".

Yet philosophical movements, that actually tired to answer such questions, like the stoics and the epicureans are long gone. When you read on the actual writings of contemporary philosophers you'd see impossible moral standards - "It takes 5 dollars to save a starving African child, a night out with friends is the equivalent to abandoning a bus of drowning children to their deaths"[1]

It's impossible to live by such philosophy, except for those that think of themselves as some sort of creature of pure evil who cares nothing of right and wrong.

Because philosophy is useless as a guidance to life, right and wrong are now decided by the encyclical, the fatwa and the resolutions at the party congress, depending on your religion.

[1] https://daily-philosophy.com/peter-singers-drowning-child/

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#55

Post by whatshisface »

jerf wrote: post #16

I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incomp…

There could be a Newtonian speed limit if there was a drag force with a vertical asymptote in v through the medium that filled space.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#56

Post by borlanco »

dventimi wrote: post #36
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because even if you have experimental results in your favor, you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments. And you can't derive epistemology from experiments. Logical positivism tried to do this, and failed. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required t…

Explain "believe."

"Believe" means you are willing to consider some results as premises for your next deduction.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#57

Post by whatshisface »

username332211 wrote: post #54
spookthesunset wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? What is the nature of consciousness? What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Why any of this exists at all? What is the purpose of this existence? Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. … science is not a bo…

On your last question ethics in particular is rather interesting. I think it's the field where the decline of philosophy is most obvious. Ethics is supposed to answer real-life questions, like "How do I live a moral life?". Yet philosophical movements, that actually tired to answer such questions, like the stoics and the epicureans are long gone. When you read on the actual writings of contemporary philosophers you'd…

Maybe living impassively at the top of a rich world hegemony while children are starving is wrong but we are too used to it to notice.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#58

Post by mannykannot »

> Q: In one of your talks you mention that the correct way to understand Einstein’s revolution is not as a theoretical, but as a technological revolution. Can you explain what you mean by that?

> A: ...A very interesting question is why and how Einstein’s work was able to shed its mundane origins and parade itself as theoretical, cosmological and universal.

The "mundane origins" here are Einstein's uses of the mostly then-relatively-new technologies of clocks, trains, bullets and rulers. I feel that the view Canales is setting out here is a mistaken reading of the history, and that Einstein was addressing "theoretical, cosmological and universal" concepts from the beginning, only referring to mundane entities for pedagogical purposes. By the late 1880's it was becoming clear that some of the further implications of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory were at odds with cosmological assumptions, a tension made more pointed by Michelson and Morley's 1887 aether-wind experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#History

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#59

Post by whatshisface »

mannykannot wrote: post #58

> Q: In one of your talks you mention that the correct way to understand Einstein’s revolution is not as a theoretical, but as a technological revolution. Can you explain what you mean by that? > A: ...A very interesting question is why and how Einstein’s work was able to shed its mundane origins and parade itself as theoretical, cosmological and universal. The "mundane origins" here are Einstein's uses of the mostly…

Science doesn't have a conflict with philosophy, knowledge in any form has a conflict with people who can write an entire book without learning anything about their subject.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#60

Post by whatshisface »

ajuc wrote: post #29
uptheroots wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy can approach many questions that currently feel out of the realm of science

And say nothing of value about them, but sound smart while they do it ;)

Actual philosophers are not as bad at the false answers thing as some people who rise to public attention, instead they serve the useful purpose of making people realize their preconceived notions about their own thoughts and their relationship to reality are not as sound as they may have thought, by virtue of the many different ways others have self-consistently answered the same questions.

I think you'll need some sense of metaphysics and epistemology and maybe even ethics to function, most people have one (they know what they think the word "reality," means, they can distinguish between thoughts and observations, they wouldn't kill unless they were seriously threatened) but when that is extended into a "let me tell you how the world works" thing it becomes philosophy done bad, which can only be resisted by knowing philosophy done right (the impassive if frustrating collection of a lot of possible solutions). It is a universal human trait to want to answer these questions, even the so-called "rationalists" have a web page with a list of doctrines. The only way to do it wrong is to come up with one answer and think that it is the answer because it's the only answer you know and that is what learning philosophy is for.

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