[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/sci/ - Science & Math

Search:


View post   

>> No.2670187 [View]
File: 10 KB, 182x277, TLP.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2670187

Why not read the book it came from (pic related) to see if the author has anything to say about what it means? Or to see if you even have the quotation right?*

Or read another book by the same author to see if he later thought it was true (Philosophical Investigations)?

Or read something intelligent by people who have studied the idea? http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/

Why would you think one sentence out of context should mean anything at all?

*"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world [not "life"]."

>> No.2665062 [View]

>>2665014
This. The first computer (ENIAC) was developed with war money--not only the hardware technology, but the math and the circuit design, which were much more expensive.

It is true that Bell Labs and other privately-held research enterprises made enormous contributions to technological development, but those days are long past. Today, to take drug development for example, even though 90% of the costs of developing new drugs are paid by NIH (the whole basic science component), drug companies are increasingly reluctant even to underwrite the last 10%, and drug companies are the most profitable corporations there are.

Significant scientific research is the classic example of a public good--it benefits everyone, but it doesn't benefit any private entity enough to justify their taking it on.

>> No.2664272 [View]

Do you think that relativity and quantum theories as we think of them now will turn out to be essentially mutually consistent in the end, or is one (or both) going to have to be changed so much that we end up basically saying that it turned out to be wrong (just "wrong" like Newtonian mechanics, not wrong like Aristotle)?

>> No.2661731 [View]

>>2661681
>Unfortunately
Yes, it does seem a shame....
Take it easy, teach.

>> No.2661567 [View]

>>2661531
Well, yeah, up is the direction outwards from the center of the earth, while north and east are directions along the surface.

I do thank you for taking the time to work with me. You're given me material for thought and you've been patient. Obviously I don't have the background to appreciate your arguments fully. And I do recognize that time is not really the intuitively understood "thing" by that name, at least because of the failure of simultaneity to meet intuitive standards. But recall that what got me started was my reluctance to see 3D objects as shadows of 4D objects where one of the 4 was time. I'm happy to think of slices of worms, but they don't blow my mind.

>> No.2661519 [View]

>>2661469
That seems to entail that phenomenological facts also distinguish time from space.

>> No.2661504 [View]

>>2661452
Again, I'm pretty slow here, but "time is x, space is not x," if meaningful and true (admittedly a big if!), does seem to show a difference between time and space, regardless of the value of x.

As for singling out one set of timelike vectors as being "forward," without singling out any quantity we could call "time," I never said time was a quantity. If one of the 4 spacetime dimensions is forward, and the others are not, then that seems good enough for me to say that time is not a spatial dimension (which was my admittedly naive argument).

>> No.2661432 [View]

>>2661418
Hmm. So why say there are 3 spacelike dimensions and 1 timelike dimension in our universe? Is it arbitrary?

>> No.2661419 [View]

>>2661369
Yes, of course you're right about diagonal movement. Duh.

BUT--to the first point. If three dimensions (call them the spatial dimensions) stand in different relations relative to another dimension (call it time) than they stand to each other, then that other dimension is different. Thus I see no problem in using "time" to show the difference between time and the spatial dimensions. But I'm weak on this.

Let me try another tack: thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics stand in one relation to the temporal dimension than to the spatial dimensions, because of entropy. So time stands apart from the spatial dimensions.

>> No.2661332 [View]

>>2661267
Dude you are freaking me out. It is true that movement is change in position relative to time, but it is also true that an object can return to its prior position in space while it cannot return to its prior "position" in time. (At least, in my simple understanding it is true...I wish I had an inertial frame of reference around sometimes as it would make things easier.) That is, an object cannot return to its prior position in spacetime, but that's entirely due to the time dimension.

Taking your second point: if you apply a 3D dimensional metric to some region of space, then the change in any one dimension with respect to any other dimension is always 0, because the dimensions are (presumably) orthogonal. However, the change in any spatial dimension relative to t can be positive or negative.

>> No.2661269 [View]

>>2661250
I guess... I mean, supposedly physicists have no problem with higher-dimensional theories of space...they're "curled up" or something like that which is why we can't detect them...but my poor little imagination can hardly get started with them. But you go ahead and blow other folks' minds, you rascal you.

>> No.2661249 [View]

>>2661233
I'm kind of slow, but I don't understand what you're doing with the deltas. An object can move back and forth along a line in space. It cannot move back and forth along an interval in time.

And while it is true that -t can appear in an equation, I understand that only to mean that one is subtracting the time, e.g., the time interval for one process minus the time interval for another process is a shorter time interval. You can subtract times, but that is not the same as moving backwards in time.

>> No.2661235 [View]

Nothing is not a thing. The surface grammar of language misleads you. There is no "state of inexistence."

It is not possible for nothing to exist. Consider: if nothing existed, then there would be 0 things. But then the number of things there were would be 0. But then there would be 0. So there would be one thing. But then there would be 1. And so on. It is a necessary truth that an infinite number of things exist, namely the numbers.

>> No.2661221 [View]

>>2661193
It's spacelike, which means that the math for space works for it, but it's not space. For one thing, movement along it only goes in one direction.

>> No.2661177 [View]

I have trouble entertaining this question because, while taking time to be the 4th dimension makes the math work in modern physics, it's still time. It's not a spatial dimension.

>> No.2660838 [View]

A function symbol acts on terms to yield complex terms. For example, the function f(x) acts on term t to yield term f(t).

A predicate symbol acts on terms to yield sentences. For example, the predicate F(x) acts on the term t to yield the statement F(t).

In math, "squared" (^2) is a function, and yields variables or constants when applied to variables or constants.

In math, "equals" (=) is a predicate, and yields statements when positioned between two terms.

>> No.2660452 [View]

If you can't tell the difference between pleasure and happiness, then you have problems to start with. But certainly there are different and incommensurable kinds of pleasure. Most of the common so-called bodily pleasures are nothing more than the perception of a restoration of the body's natural or healthy state. Social status is another matter is it involves another element of the mind which is not generally even aligned with the state of the body. But there are other kinds of pleasure as well, such as the pleasure of knowing.

>> No.2659722 [View]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon

>> No.2659319 [View]

>>2659306
Those mouth-breathers can't argue for shit.

>> No.2659310 [View]

...continuing
>>2659304
... continuing:
The question "how do we know if the colors we see are the same colors others see?" has received serious philosophical treatment. See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/index.html..

It is the sad fate of philosophers to be criticized harshly by people who never take the time to learn if their criticisms have been answered. It is THESE people who commit the sin that they ascribe to philosophers, of bullshitting, or making things up, of being subjective, of pursuing pointless discussion. They prove themselves worthy of all the criticism that they hurl at philosophers.

>> No.2659304 [View]

>>2656857
If anyone cares (which I doubt): this is nonsense. This person knows very little about contemporary philosophy. To wit:

Living a good life and the point of life ARE topics in analytic philosophy. See http://philosophybites.com/the_meaning_of_life/

Much continental philosophy is rigorous and difficult, such as Merleu-Ponty and Foucault.

Ethics is a major field in analytic philosophy. See http://philpapers.org/rec/NAGTVF if you want to see rigor that is not an exercise in futility.

to be continued....

>> No.2659269 [View]

>>2659223
Philosophical writing is no more literary than scientific writing. Pick up the Journal of Philosophy if you think I'm wrong.

>> No.2659262 [View]

>>2659258
...continuing
Now, in that analysis, the term x, which we recognize as a variable, appears prominently, although there is no obvious variable in the sentence "you've never seen a unicorn." So, Russell proposed, beneath the surface meaning of a sentence lies a deeper meaning, the real meaning, the logical meaning. And this meaning will normally involve variables. But variables, linguistically, are like pronouns, such as "it": they don't refer on their own, but only through an assignment (such as an interpretation, i.e. a model), or through quantification (to become components of such meaningful terms as "anything" and "everything").

Thus, Russell quite intelligently and fruitfully asked the question, "What does "it" mean?" There is much more to say about this, but note that if you confine your explanations to psychological or behavioral data, you're never going to get anywhere. This is a question of the logical analysis of language.

>> No.2659258 [View]

>>2656788
I don't know if anyone cares about why there's a joke about Russell asking what "it" means, but if you do:

Russell was the first philosopher to base his theories on the logical analysis of language. He knew the new logic from Frege far before it was widely spread even through math. (Mathfags will know that his Principia was the height of the "logicist" movement.)

Among other applications, Russell explained through his theory of descriptions (c. 1905) how it is possible to (seemingly) refer to non-existent beings, such as by saying "you've never seen a unicorn" when the term "unicorn" doesn't refer to anything. This was important because at the time, ontological theories ascribed a sort of semi-existence to imaginary, fictional, or mythical entities. He was having none of that because he wanted science restricted to what really exists.

Russell used the language of first-order logic to analyze such statements as "you've never seen a unicorn" in such a way that they are true without requiring fictional reference. Thus: (for all x)(if you have seen x then x is not a unicorn).

to be continued...

Navigation
View posts[+24][+48][+96]