What can we know of reality?

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by Rade

This is what I know of reality--but I would be interesting in hearing what the OP author [Doctordick] knows of reality. For example, does he know he exists ?

Rade, you just don't read what I write do you. The question is not “What DO we know of reality?” (or should I say what you think you know of reality) but rather “What CAN we know of reality?”, a completely different issue.

I am truly sorry that you have such trouble understanding what I say. If I knew how to improve matters, I would.

Originally Posted by Rade

Therefore the answer to the OP question reduces to an axiom not open to discussion---reality exists and you (we, I) know it.

And exactly how do you know that your world view isn't just an incompetent illusion?

Have fun -- Dick

[Rade]

Doctordick, yes, I agree there is a big difference between "can" we know and "do" we know "reality". And the solution is very simple. If you would read again what I presented you will see that I deal only with what humans in general "can" know--but I then ask what you in specific "do" know. The only thing you (or me, or they) "can" know about reality is that "reality exists". The only thing you "do" know about reality is that you are real--you exist (recall the argument of Descarte--I am). So we find an axiomatic dialectic entanglement between the "can" and "do" process of knowing reality (they evolve hand in hand). I think your OP question is thus answered.

[Doctordick]

In early July of this year, due to the apparent lack of interest in this thread together with the fact that I had run into into a bright interested party on the “physicsforums.com” (a Mr. Anssi Hyytiäinen), I essentially let the thread slide out of my interest. At the time, Qfwfq had expressed some interest so I sent him a private note indicating where this conversation was continuing. I received no response from him so I have no knowledge of either his current interest nor whether he did indeed continue to follow the discussion; however, I do notice that the original thread is still quite near the top of the “Philosophy of Science” forum which seems to indicate not much interest in the subject of philosophy of science to begin with though quite a few seem to have viewed my thread.

I sent Tormod and Qfwfq a private message concerning the fact that Anssi and I can no longer continue our conversation there as I have been “banned for ever” from posting on physicsformus.com for the crime of “posting crackpottery” (a charge I would certainly deny). I wanted them to know that I would not post here if they were seriously bothered by the possibility that my thoughts were worthy of censorship. I asked if it would be acceptable to them for Anssi and I to continue our conversation here as most forums seem to lack a decent LaTex implementation. It has been five days since I asked and I have received no response. That being the case, I will simply post an answer to Anssi as if permission were given. What I am presenting is no more than a simple (though quite long and complex) logical analysis of the problem facing any intelligent entity placed unprepared into an undefined universe.

If anyone wishes to pick up on the conversation, I suggest they glance at the following posts I made to Anssi essentially covering the material the two of us have discussed which has not been discussed here. These posts are to the physicsforums thread, “Is time just an illusion?”

Post #462 - The relationship between shift symmetry and differentials with respect with that shift.
Post #464 - Converting the differential with respect to the shift to a sum of partials with respect to the arguments.
Post #466 - An explanation of some of the details in post #464.
Post #468 - Using the power of adding “invalid ontological elements to establish a rule.
Post #471 - Using the accumulated deduced relationships to write down a coherent constraining equation.
Post #477 - A fairly succinct summary of the presentation up to this point with emphasis on “invalid ontological elements”.
Post #478 - A continuation of post #477
Post #510 - Clarification of several subtle points somewhat overlooked by Anssi.
Post #515 - A little more clarification for Anssi.
Post #520 - An attempt to get Anssi back to the central thrust of the presentation (some important issues).
Post #528 - Anssi's final post, after which the thread was locked.

I opened another thread in order to answer Anssi and made a reference to “having been caught by the thought police”. That post was deleted and I was permanently banned from posting. The following is essentially the answer to Anssi's questions

Originally Posted by Anssi

To summarize where I'm at;
I understand the addition of invalid ontological elements, in order to:

- make the number of elements the same in each "present".
- make sure there are no identical present (to make "t" retrievable).
- make sure there are no identical presents even if any given single ontological element was removed from any given present (to make sure a missing element could be retrieved from the table if we were given all but one element)

(Btw, since each tau was associated with a specific X, they together constituted a "single element", i.e. a "missing element" always refers to a "x & tau"-pair... Right? Thought I'd say it out loud since this can cause confusion)

Absolutely correct.

Originally Posted by Anssi

Then, a function "f" was defined, as the function which outputs the missing element when input with any given "present" missing any given element. Seen as a vector function:
{An equation which the new LaTex software apparently won't generate if it is inside a quote}

(I don't know what "X hat" and "tau hat" mean, and so I couldn't figure out what the middle part of that equation says)

The equation referenced above is:

That's a common notation used in analytical geometry; “x hat” denotes a unit vector in the x direction and “tau hat” likewise denotes a unit vector in the tau direction. Thus is a vector pointing from the origin to the point .

Originally Posted by Anssi

Then, a function F was defined, as the difference between the missing index and the result of the function "f". I.e;

{Again, LaTex failure inside the quote}

(Perhaps I asked this before but forgot; what does equiv mean there exactly?)

The missing equation:

It depends on the context but it is either “equivalent” or “identical to”.

Originally Posted by Anssi

Would it be correct to say that F is a function which "tests" every element of a "present" with some function f? Or is it more proper to just say it is "any function which returns 0 when its input with a full present"?

Neither really. All I am saying here is that, if a mechanism exists to recover any specific (x,tau) point in the ”what is”, is “what is” table (which includes all invalid ontological elements necessary to the explanation expressed by the table), then that mechanism itself can be used to define a function who's roots are exactly the entries in the table. It is essentially a proof that there exists a "rule" function F who's roots define the table.

Originally Posted by Anssi

And here I start to struggle little bit more. I'm note sure how does the above turn into:

{Same problem!}

I understood this is just one of many functions that satisfies the requirements for F, and since we have chosen it as F, it will have an effect on what labels we put on the ontological elements. To quote you:
"It is thus a fact that the equation will constrain all labels to be different and any specific collection of labels can be reproduced by the simple act of adding “invalid ontological elements” until all the wrong answers are eliminated."

What I don't understand is the latter part of that sentence. Perhaps I have misunderstood something, but maybe you could just explain in more detail, how is it that it reproduces a specific collection?

The missing equation in the quote is:

Yes, I think you have misunderstood. The real issue here is that the sum over Dirac delta functions (set equal to zero) is completely equivalent to the English statement “no two points appear twice” as, if any two points in a (x,tau) plane do appear twice, the contribution from the term where i and j represent those two terms is positive infinity; in which case, the sum certainly isn't zero.

You have to keep your eye on the details here; F=0 is the rule which controls what entries in the ”what is”, is “what is” table are allowed. What we must assume exists (those invalid ontological elements) depends on what rule we choose. Likewise, what rule we choose (what F function our explanation requires) depends upon what we assume exists; these are interdependent factors which are part of our explanation. They are not set by those valid ontological elements embedded within that table. Remember, we are free to create any “invalid” ontological elements we wish; so long as both valid and invalid ontological elements obey the same “rule” embodied in our explanation).

I have simply plucked the rule out of thin air. (Oh, I have some good reasons which arose in my head over forty years ago, but that's actually immaterial here.) Having plucked the rule out of air, the only real question which remains is, what invalid ontological elements does the rule require? The only way to answer that question is to examine the “valid” ontological elements (which you should remember was defined to be “reality”) and come up with the proper “invalid” ontological elements which make that rule (that no two valid ontological elements can appear twice) yield exactly the results of our experiments (what appears to us to be reality).

The only thing my proof does is point out that there always exists a set of “invalid” ontological elements which will indeed constrain the “valid” ontological elements to exactly what ever they happen to be. Look at an (x, tau) plane. Paint all the points referring to actual “valid” ontological elements white. Then paint the rest of the plane black. If the invalid ontological elements are taken to be the black points, the rule, no two ontological elements appear twice, clearly constrains the valid ontological elements to exactly what they are (none of the black points can be references to valid ontological elements).

Now, one thing you must remember here. The invalid ontological elements don't have to be the entire plane minus the valid ontological elements. Those valid ontological elements constitute what we actually know of reality (what our explanation is to explain) and that knowledge might include some uncertainty. In that case, some of the black points should be omitted. This is why I originally stated the process in the form “... by the simple act of adding “invalid ontological elements” until all the wrong answers are eliminated”. No black point can be a “valid” ontological element as, if it were, the rule, no two valid ontological elements appear twice, would remove what could be a valid ontological element from the set allowed by the rule.

Originally Posted by Anssi

Then we get to the probability function. Thank you for the helpful information about "complex conjugate". I understand the need of squaring psi, but I don't know what the psi itself was to accomplish. I went back to the old posts, but all I can find is the idea of seeing any result of any function as a vector. (I do remember the stuff about squaring and re-normalizing)

Consequently, I cannot figure out what you mean by;

Perhaps you could explain that to me in more detail?

is an equation which must be obeyed by psi under the rule that no two ontological element references can appear twice: i.e., psi must be zero if the sum over Dirac delta functions is not zero. I don't think it can be put any clearer than that.

Hope I have clarified things a bit -- Dick

[AnssiH]

Before I get to reply to the previous message, I think I should spend some time explaining the context of the discussion and comment the lock-up of the PF thread. I don't want people to mis-interpret the context of the discussion, as evidently (and frequently) happened in PF.

Simply put, the discussion is about:
Logical constraints that any model/theory/worldview must conform to if they are internally coherent
(i.e. when they do not contain logical self-contradictions)

These logical constraints are NOT leading us towards any specific ontology. If anything, they indicate that many sorts of ontologies can always be built without sacrificing the internal coherence of our worldviews (i.e. they would be "semantically different" but "logically the same")

We are NOT discussing any specific theory. We are discussing the "general structure of theories".

This is simply a logical structure that is either unequivocally valid or invalid (it either contains a self-contradiction or it doesn't). And its validity or invalidity says absolutely nothing about what exists in reality. It just says something about the relationships between chosen ontological elements and their behaviour in any self-coherent model.

Also, a large issue with the discussion is about how to represent these constraints with as little ambiguity as possible. There would be many ways to express the issue, and the chosen expression form is mathematics (this means you need to know or study some mathematical concepts).

Note that the reason that was given for the lock-up of the PF thread was that "personal theories were being discussed". It is clear that a mis-interpretation occurred since the discussion was not about a theory at all.

To add insult to injury, the discussion is essentially and critically related to map/territory relationship (and General Semantics), and it was basically deemed as "crackpottery" at the philosophy section of PF. I can only assume that there are moderators who are not familiar with any philosophy, and they simply mis-interpreted the thread as a discussion about specific ontology.

---
Let me further clarify this issue from couple of different perspectives.

Ontological perspective

It is often tacitly assumed that physics is in attempt to find the true ontology of reality, in that if we came across another advanced civilization, they would share our view of how atoms are and what are their parts and how they behave. This is so assumed because it is not readily recognized that the atomic models is just one arbitrary way to understand the behaviours that we observe, and it is to an extent and arbitrary accident that we use the concepts that we do to understand the world.

The models that some other advanced civilization uses could be orthogonally different in many ways from ours. They might not have any conception of such a thing as an "atom", for example. But still their model could yield the same observable predictions as ours.

Note that good models become the framework where further models build on. That is to say, we use the pre-existing models in our further questioning of reality. For example, being able to probe the structure of the proton depended on having a good model for "electron" first. When you "bombard" a "proton" with "electrons", the experiments can be interpreted in meaningful ways only by having some prior models and conceptions of reality.

Martin Heidegger has said:
"Modern physics is not experimental physics because it uses experimental devices on its questioning of nature. Rather the reverse is true. Because physics, already a pure theory, requests nature to manifest itself in terms of predictable forces, it sets up the experiments precisely for the sole purpose of asking how (and whether) nature follows the scheme prescribed by science"

Martin Krieger has noted in "Doing Physics" that "atoms are like little factories with walls". I.e. we know what goes in, and we observe what goes out. We have some conception of WHAT was it that went in, and WHAT was it that came out, and we build a model of what happened inside. How this is done is that we try to change as few "degrees of freedom" as possible, and see how it affects the output. How we conceive "degrees of freedom", is completely up to current models.

Steven Weinberg has commented "you may use any degrees of freedom you like to describe a physical system, but if you use the wrong ones, you'll be sorry". (because the situation becomes horribly complicated to unravel)

Andrew Pickering has argued in his book "Constructing Quarks", that "the reality of quarks was the upshot of particle physicist' practice, and not the reverse" I.e. that quarks only exist in the sense that we have built such models where observable phenomena is explained by them. Protons behave as if they contain three quarks, but different models can explain the same behaviour.

William Poundstone has said:
"Scientists must be wary of nonprojectable terms. Quarks are hypothetical entities said to reside deep inside protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles. Quarks are counterfactual: Not only has an isolated quark never been observed, but (under most theories) an isolated quark is impossible. Quarks are what a proton WOULD split into, IF it could be split, which it CAN'T... ...some wonder if [the supposed properties of quarks] may be artificial complications of simple reality we do not yet understand. Possibly someday someone will hit on how things really are, and we will realize that our current physics is a strained way of describing this reality... the answer is not in the sky, but in our heads"

It should be noted that success breeds success. Once a theory turns out to be good for explaining the known or most of the known phenomena, it tends to push out rival theories. This is what happened with geocentric model. This is what happened with Newton's model of light particles, which pushed out wave-models. Later a wave theory pushed out the particle theory. Now again a particle theory has pushed out the wave theory. Are photons real now, on the virtue that our current best model works with such concepts? Or are they just part of a convenient description of reality that we are holding in our head?

We are in grave danger of forgetting that models are *models*, not reality. I am alarmed that even the philosophy section of physics forums appears to be blind to this issue. Even though this is exactly what Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), Alfred Korzybski ("the map is not the territory") and certainly Immanuel Kant (noumena) have commented about and are famous for. And there is pretty good brief account of all this on John Gribbin's "Schrödinger's Kittens", from page 188 onwards.
---

Epistemological perspective
Think about the problem of trying to understand the definition of a Danish word, by reading it from a dictionary written in Danish. Just like in physics "the experiments can be interpreted in meaningful ways only by having some prior models and conceptions of reality", here the definition can be interpreted in meaningful ways only by having some prior conceptions of the Danish words used to give the definition.

If you don't know a word of Danish to begin with, you could make some guessess and assumptions and slowly try to come and understand danish. But you could not at any point have a 100% confidence level to your assumptions, you would at most only know that they yield sensical interpretation of the whole dictionary. In the extreme case, at your first conversation with a real Dane, you might realize all your assumptions were incorrect, they just happened to yield a meaningful interpretation (self-coherent but wrong) of that one book.

That is not too different from learning the language as a kid (except that the brain has got much more data to base the assumptions on). In principle, you can never have a 100% confidence level on your understanding of your own native language. Let me put it this way; When the brain is building a worldview, it needs to make a lot of assumptions about the meaning of the words, and judge the correctedness of these assumptions based on the interpretations they yield later on. I'm sure we have all had the experience of hearing something completely non-sensical, and then realizing it was because our assumption about the meaning of some word was completely topsy-turvy.

Furthermore, how is it that the human cortex interprets some sensory data as "words" or "sounds" at all? To get closer to the bottom of this, think about how is it that any patterns that are flowing into the cortex can become interpreted as the visions, sounds, scents, touch, orientation. Or how the patterns from artificial sensory systems become interpreted as meaningful perceptions. If the meanings of the patterns are initially completely unknown, any assumptions that are made about the meaning of such and such patterns are judged by how they make the interpretation of the consequent patterns meaningful. And the worldview (which is what "holds the meanings of the patterns") that gets built just needs to be logically internally coherent (=it cannot contain self-contradiction if it is to be taken as "valid"), and it needs to yield meaningful interpretation of that "unknown data".

Especially note that "patterns" and "cortex" are obviously themself concepts that exist inside the worldview that gets built about reality, and when they are used as semantical concepts to discuss how we build semantical concepts, we are merely discussing from inside of an internally-coherent worldview; we made a self-fulfilling prophecy much like "we know God exists because it says so in the bible, and the bible is the truth because it was written by God himself" (just the self-fulfilling prophecies that are our worldviews (and make our knowledge seem rational) usually contain so many logical steps that it is not easy to recognize the "circles of truths")

If you understand the above, you can pretty much understand how Kant was not on crack after all.
---

So, referring to both ontological and epistemological perspective, we could say that in our worldview we have broken the reality into "sensible parts", i.e. we see "entities" (objects, space, time, radiation, sounds etc...) around us. Since we have done this, we can attach appropriate properties to these "entities" (according to our observations), and so we can make predictions about any systems that are composed of these "entities". We could break reality into any set of "things" as long as the attached properties are appropriate, but we tend to try to go with the set that yields the simplest "properties" to these "things" (because it is easier to understand reality and draw predictions that way).

Doctordick's procedure is basically about how to make logical assumptions about any unknown data. Or rather how to express the constraints that exist between the chosen "entities" and their associated behaviour (in any self-coherent model). Once more, it is about logical possibilities in our descriptions of nature, not so much about a specific ontological reality of nature.

I think any rational person can understand the issues above if they just spend the time reading what was being said, instead of concerning themselves with correcting single sentences here and there that can be always understood ambiguously and out of context.

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

Neither really. All I am saying here is that, if a mechanism exists to recover any specific (x,tau) point in the ”what is”, is “what is” table (which includes all invalid ontological elements necessary to the explanation expressed by the table), then that mechanism itself can be used to define a function who's roots are exactly the entries in the table. It is essentially a proof that there exists a "rule" function F who's roots define the table.

Okay, and I wish to solve one more ambiguity that caused some headache.

Even though you express the proof as:

...it does NOT mean that a specific function needs to employ that mechanism (difference between missing element and "f"):

(Or rather a mechanism where you'd take the sum over every possible "f"-recovery and expect it to be 0... I could't figure out how to express that in math

But instead, the F just needs to be:

I suppose this is so, because the specific F...

...does not seem to employ such "difference between f and missing element" mechanism in any sense.

So now I think I am starting to understand what the point was with that "dirac delta function F". I suppose most specific F=0 functions would not include all the points as ontological elements.

.

is an equation which must be obeyed by psi under the rule that no two ontological element references can appear twice: i.e., psi must be zero if the sum over Dirac delta functions is not zero. I don't think it can be put any clearer than that.

And (psi) was defined as:
A function which yields a non-zero probability only for the correct points to valid ontological elements. So it would be zero by definition if the set was incorrect. And consequently that equation you gave looks valid to me.

-Anssi

[Turtle]

Hi Doc! And Happy Birthday as well. Very nice to see you have an astute new friend interested in your philosophy discussions.

Welcome to Hypography AnssiH. I have enjoyed reading your post.

I do have a question in all this for both of you now, and that is what part -if any- does the physiology of the brain play in what we can know?

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Hi Doc! And Happy Birthday as well. Very nice to see you have an astute new friend interested in your philosophy discussions.

Thanks for your thoughts. I have always been quite surprised by your lack of interest considering your great interest in the patterns collections of numbers can create.

Originally Posted by Turtle

I do have a question in all this for both of you now, and that is what part -if any- does the physiology of the brain play in what we can know?

I am afraid you miss the entire thrust of my argument; but don't feel bad as it seems to be outside everyone's comprehension. Only Paul Martin (you can find him on physicsforums also) and Anssi Hyytiäinen seem to have grasped an idea of what I am talking about. Anssi struck the nail on the head with this comment:

Originally Posted by AnssiH

Simply put, the discussion is about:
Logical constraints that any model/theory/world-view must conform to if they are internally coherent
(i.e. when they do not contain logical self-contradictions)

What I am presenting is a very straight forward but complex deduction with far reaching consequences. My problem is that I cannot get anyone to stick to the issues of significance for anything but a short time. When you are trying to explain something from dead scratch (and any “model/theory/world-view” is an explanation of some sort) you must begin with “nothing” defined. When you say, “what part -if any- does the physiology of the brain play”, you are presuming the idea (in essence a model of something), “the physiology of the brain” is a real defined component of a flaw free explanation. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but certainly the assumption that it must be valid component of your world-view has no place in the type of logical deduction I am laying out.

What difference does the physiology of your brain make? It still has to solve the same problem: i.e., come up with an explanation of its existence sans self contradiction. (Note that any self contradictory explanation fails as an explanation.)

Anssi, I will get back to you later today. I have some things I have to get done and I want to put some thought into my response. There are a number of subtle issues which must be clearly understood before my fundamental equation can actually be seen as truly universal. Once we get past that, I will lay out the first solution I discovered.

Have fun -- Dick

[Qfwfq]

Welcome to Hypography Anssi!

Unfortunately I can't afford much time to follow your great input, whether here or elsewhere, I certainly agree that it is a valid philosophical discussion and I hope you will be helpful in analysing the basis of Dick's fundamental equation. Meantime, I must also fully agree with:

Originally Posted by AnssiH

These logical constraints are NOT leading us towards any specific ontology. If anything, they indicate that many sorts of ontologies can always be built without sacrificing the internal coherence of our worldviews (i.e. they would be "semantically different" but "logically the same")

...and points after it, it's a good statement of the modern view of math and formal systems and the fact that they are valid regardless of reality, which may be described in different equivalent ways.

What we call reality is, of course, what we perceive through our senses and hence take for granted is reality but actually is only the realm of phenomena. We get to the point where we ca only distinguish between descriptions that do and those that don't match up with phenomena.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

...it's a good statement of the modern view of math and formal systems and the fact that they are valid regardless of reality, which may be described in different equivalent ways.

What we call reality is, of course, what we perceive through our senses and hence take for granted is reality but actually is only the realm of phenomena. We get to the point where we ca only distinguish between descriptions that do and those that don't match up with phenomena.

...which leads to the conclusion that you can have consistent formal systems, and you can have "reality" but never in the twain shall they meet: any mapping between "perceived reality" and a "formal system" requires assumptions and therefore lies outside the realm defined by our eminent and irascible doctor.

This of course would lead to an answer to this thread's title of "nothing," thus begging the question--asked many times previously in this thread--what are the "profound implications" if there are an infinite number of possible models whose relationship to "reality" is entirely subjective?

I can see a justification for sociopathic behavior coming out of this, but little else. So I will take my feeble little mind and shut up for now. To quote Mr. Turtle, "carry on."

Models my reality but no one else's,
Buffy

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Doctordick

Thanks for your thoughts [Turtle]. I have always been quite surprised by your lack of interest considering your great interest in the patterns collections of numbers can create.

My pleasure Doc. Please don't mistake my lack of replies for a lack of interest. As you have alluded to my math threads, your interest is implied and I note with some irony how frequently you reply to them.

Originally Posted by DoctorD

I am afraid you miss the entire thrust of my argument; but don't feel bad as it seems to be outside everyone's comprehension. Only Paul Martin (you can find him on physicsforums also) and Anssi Hyytiäinen seem to have grasped an idea of what I am talking about. Anssi struck the nail on the head with this comment:
What I am presenting is a very straight forward but complex deduction with far reaching consequences. My problem is that I cannot get anyone to stick to the issues of significance for anything but a short time. When you are trying to explain something from dead scratch (and any “model/theory/world-view” is an explanation of some sort) you must begin with “nothing” defined. When you say, “what part -if any- does the physiology of the brain play”, you are presuming the idea (in essence a model of something), “the physiology of the brain” is a real defined component of a flaw free explanation. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but certainly the assumption that it must be valid component of your world-view has no place in the type of logical deduction I am laying out.

I'm looking forward to reading your ongoing discussion with Anssi in order to improve my comprehension. My mention of physiology did not imply 'flaw-free' anything, but perhaps if I explain what prompted it. We often hear that the brain has some number of neurons with some number of connections, and that the connections change as we learn over time. Inasmuch as your equation(s) has a time component and constrains associations/interconnections, I wondered if the same limits of the brain further constrain your limits. In other words, could we know more of what your equation constrains if we had larger brains and/or more time? Or is it that "we" have nothing to do with it, and the question is really "what can be known about reality?"

Feel free to reply or not; I'll be over here in the corner reading.