Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: moggin@nando.net (moggin)
Date: 29 Oct 1996 04:09:31 GMT
meron@cars3.uchicago.edu (Mati):
> > >> [...] So, you see, this concept of "wrong" as used by moggin is
> > >> not only mot in use in science, it is also not accepted in general
> > >> usage. So, where is it valid?
Anton Hutticher :
> I do seem to have missed your answer to matis question. Where *is*
> your concept of "wrong" valid.
Mati was misrepresenting me.
moggin:
> > I answered all the questions you put to me, in some cases
> > twice. I'm sorry if you don't consider the answers satisfactory.
> > I don't think much of your comments, either. That's where things
> > end up.
Anton:
> I did consider them evasions, but in light of Silkes difficulty
> in understanding what generalization means to a scientist, maybe
> they were bona fide. Well, lets try it again:
I didn't notice any difficulty on Silke's part.
> old post:
Anton
> >You did not answer - as far as I know - the question posed earlier
> >in the thread ( I think by Silke Weineck): In essence it was: If a
> >conductor says:"The bus will arrive at 20h 45min" and the bus
> >arrives at 20h 44min 59.9sec, was he right or wrong. (Numbers
> >slightly improved).
moggin:
> If the conductor is Newton, we need to add some details. Say
> you're riding on his bus. As you drive along, he announces the time
> that you'll arrive at each stop. The bus reaches the first one within
> a second of the time he announced it would be there. It gets to the
> second stop within a minute of the time he announced. When it reaches
> the third stop, it's five minutes late. At the fourth stop, it's ten
> minutes behind. Several stops after that, it's running an hour behind
> the conductor's announcements. Then several hours. And so forth, as
> it proceeds across country, until it's off by days, weeks, and months.
> Is the conductor right or wrong? You could say he's right in
> a "limited domain," or that he produces "useful approximations within
> certain limits" (that is, the area of the first four or five stops).
> But in general, his announcements can only be described as inaccurate.
> They begin with a small inaccuracy, dismissable from a practical point
> of view, which grows steadily as the bus travels along. And that says
> something -- namely, that the theory he's using to produce the times
> he announces is false.
Anton:
> >I infer from your paragraphs above that you use "right" in the sense of
> >"exactly right" and "wrong" as "wrong to the slightest degree" or
> >"not exactly right". Only then it makes sense to say that " there's
> >no domain where Newton is "right" -- just a range where the errors
> >his theory generates are small enough to limit their practical
> >consequences", because in science this is exactly the range where
> >Newton is right.
moggin:
> You misspelled "engineering."
> end old post
> and you didn´t answer the question.
Bullshit.
> As to the above: Is the bus driver right or wrong when he says:
> "The bus will arrive at 20h 45min" and the bus arrives at
> 20h 44min 59.9sec. Thats the question, not : "what shall we do, if
> he deviates increasingly from the announced date".
Why should _that_ be the question?
moggin:
> > Obviously you missed my reply to Mati's question, but it
> > was brief, so I'll repeat it here: I said, "A better question is,
> > how is that an honest account of my position?"
Anton:
> So this is all your answer.
It's a good one.
moggin:
> > I have the same question about your most recent reply to
> > Silke, where you go on and on about my satanic qualities. I just
> > don't recognize myself in your descriptions. The kindest thing I
> > can say is that you're arguing with a strawman.
Anton:
> Not exactly:
At best. Do we have to go through it point by point?
I am arguing with someone who said:
> a) Newton was wrong. As wrong as Ptolemy
Also as right as Ptolemy -- try and remember that part.
> If it so happens that all theories are wrong, well,
> they're wrong then
And your objection to any of this is...what, exactly? You seem
to have left that out.
> and, when asked what wrong meant in the specific example of a single
> announcement of a bus driver proceeded to waffle on something else.
We were discussing Newton, were we not? I made the analogy more
applicable. You have yet to reply, even though you made me repeat it
for you.
Anton:
[...]
> Putting it to you that
> you use wrong in a different way from almost everyone else, especially
> those in the "science" camp, seems not to have influenced you in
> any way.
Because you haven't put it in a way that's remotely convincing.
-- moggin
Subject: Re: Sophistry 103 (was: I know that!)
From: zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 29 Oct 1996 04:58:37 GMT
brian artese writes:
BA:
>>>... I don't need to answer Bealer and Levin. I've got "Cogito ergo
>>>sum" right here; as a premise and a conclusion supposedly derived from
>>>that premise, it claims to be self-sustaining. That's why you've got it
>>>in your signature field, right? It's an argument unto itself, and an
>>>easily deflatable one at that.
MZ:
>>Once again, this approach is inadequate. Descartes explicitly states
>>in his replies to the Objections that "when we become aware that we
>>are thinking things, this is a primary notion not derived from any
>>syllogism" (AT VII 140). Hence to divide the cogito into premisses
>>and conclusion is inconsistent with its author's account of its
>>nature.
BA:
>Okay -- let's look at this account: "When we become aware that we are
>thinking things, this is a primary notion not derived from any
>syllogism." The discovery takes place at the moment "we become aware
>that we are thinking things." To keep it in line with the cogito,
>let's change the plural subject to a singular one: 'when I become
>aware that I am thinking things'. Well, look at that! This 'I' that
>has been disovered 'thinking' has already been posited as thing that
>is 'aware'! Again, "X exists, therefore X exists." Nifty.
As a result of not having paid sufficient attention to the text I
cited, you are confusing an explanation of a proposition with the
grounds of its proof.
BA:
>>>I never said that what's laugable about your God is the presumption of his
>>>(its) cognition or volition. What's laughable about this "being" is its
>>>supposed ahistoricity and its naive totalizing function. Has there ever
>>>been empirical evidence of any ahistorical thing, or for any
>>>ultimate totality? Nope.
MZ:
>>Has there ever been empirical evidence of mass, or energy, or force,
>>or spacetime, or the continuum, or any other ahistorical Platonic
>>universal? Certainly there has.
BA:
>Uh, no. There has been empirical evidence of Queen Elizabeth and
>trans-continental migration in the Americas, but there has never been
>'evidence' of mass. What would such evidence look like? "This
>instrument reacts to rocks, and we've agreed to call that reaction
>'mass' Look, the instrument is reacting to *a particular rock*!
>Therefore, mass exists." Are you claiming that the rock and the
>'mass' have the same existential status? Are you seriously asking me
>to believe that particular objects and man-made categories 'exist' in
>the same way?
The evidence of Queen Elizabeth is a measure of resilience in certain
quarters of the universe. The evidence of her mass is the resistance
of these quarters to acceleration. I have no idea what you might mean
by "existential status". It is a widely accepted view in contemporary
philosophy that entities exist if and only if our best efforts to
explain the universe imply their existence. On this criterion, the
existence of mass is far better corroborated than the existence of any
physical particular.
MZ:
>>The manifest success of scientific
>>theories that intimately depend on these explanatory concepts is
>>evidence enough to sustain the inference of their existence. Can you
>>conceive of any empirical evidence to the contrary? I doubt it.
BA:
>The 'manifest success' of scientific theories depend first and
>foremost on money, material resources and a political establishment
>sympathetic to the science industry. These material products *never*
>rely on any theory that has not already been tested in a material
>environment. The actual material result of those tests almost never
>correspond to the original theory. The theory has to then be modified
>to conform to the material result of the test.
There is no need to quibble about the economic dependence of
scientific progress, which is quite beside the point being argued.
Setting it aside, I am not sure what it is that you wish to question.
My point of departure is the commonplace observation that science
successfully explains the world around us. This explanation depends
far more intimately on positing universals like mass, number, gene,
and so on, than it does on hypothesizing the existence of any concrete
particular. The social conditions that make this explanation possible
are something else altogether, in so far as they do not form part of
the explanandum or enter into the content of the explanans.
BA:
>The naive assertion that pure abstraction is the 'source' of material
>production is a fiction often perpetrated by scientists. They know
>very well that the 'material successes' of science depend almost
>entirely on data gleaned from the *results* of actual, material
>experimentation. Your 'explanatory concepts' are post facto. And if
>you look at the history of science, there has *never* been a theory
>that was not based upon some previously observed material phenomenon.
>Your argument, however, requires us to believe that the abstraction
>comes *first*, the reality later. This fiction is peddled
>successfully to the children in our grade schools, but cannot hold
>water here.
Your understanding of science is very limited indeed. For example,
the men who discovered the principles of classical mechanics, from
Galileo to Lagrange, derived its formulation from a handful of
extremal principles they regarded as known a priori and obtaining of
the same degree of necessity as the axioms of arithmetic. Empirical
corroboration always came after the fact.
MZ:
>>As regards the naivety of totalizing, consider applying your epithets at
>>home. What have Gorgias or Heidegger or Derrida given us to compare with
>>the legacy of Aristotle and Galileo and Descartes and Einstein? And what
>>could be more naively, corrosively totalizing than consistent skepticism?
BA:
>For one thing, they've given us the means to penetrate the snake-oil
>rhetoric of science.
So science employs rhetoric; that might be hot news to anyone who
never read Aristotle. At this point however, I would like to explore
your tropes. If science peddles snake-oil, who will sell us the true
pharmakon?
MZ:
>>>>Moreover, Descartes' ontological argument, like his proof of dualism,
>>>>can be readily translated into the mathematical formalism of symbolic
>>>>logic.
BA:
>>>Yes, I recognize that mathematics as a man-made abstraction can readily
>>>yield 'proofs' of other man-made abstractions.
MZ:
>>Please explain the process of man-made abstraction. Wherein consists
>>the facticity of the number 2? What sort of fabric is it made of,
>>and what kind of glue holds it together?
BA:
>The fabric is the page upon which the number two is written -- but you
>need ink to complete the product. Signifiers are real things.
You are conflating the number and the numeral. By your account, some
number must lack a successor, for want of its ever having been written
down. There go the axioms of arithmetic.
BA:
>>>I've read Derrida and plenty of his French cronies, and I've never come
>>>across any reference to Goedel. I suspect they don't give a shit. I hope
>>>I can come to terms with that...
MZ:
>>Your suspicion is unfounded in fact. See Deleuze, _La condition
>>postmoderne_.
BA:
>I stand corrected.
This conversation appears to be getting somewhere.
BA:
>>>You seem to think that continental philosophy waits breathlessly for the
>>>next batch of crumpled papers that your favorite mathematicians,
>>>symbolists and metaphysicians have handed over upon emerging from their
>>>locked rooms. The Frenchies are much more interested in, say, history,
>>>philosophy and literature -- and especially in the history *of* these
>>>(yes, there is a history of history: a history of how history has been
>>>written in different eras) -- all of which are mediated entirely through
>>>*language* (except, of course, when they have to talk about the
>>>metaphysicians who ignore any kind of history). Mathematics is,
>>>comparatively, of little importance.
MZ:
>>Your trend meter is badly in need of calibration. Strangely enough,
>>metahistory no longer enjoys the status it had a decade ago. Blame
>>it on the fall of the Evil Empire or on the pernicious influence of
>>Hollywood, but academics are churning out narrative history as they
>>have not done since the heyday of Michelet and Ranke. To take one
>>example, Maurice Lever recently sold his grand biography of Sade to
>>the studios for over a million dollars. Does Hayden White stand a
>>chance of getting a quarter for the movie rights to the _Tropics of
>>Discourse_? Face it -- the writings of your ideological brethren
>>exhibit all the vivacity and charisma of Bob Dole on triple Valium.
BA:
>Very true about the general trend -- although it doesn't really argue
>against my less ambitious comment about contemporary French thought.
>The French, in my opinion, have little aptitude for narration.
Yeah, all those XIXth century historians and novelists must have been
secretly employing Belgian ghostwriters.
MZ:
>>In any event, mathematics is of paramount importance to anyone
>>wishing to understand Platonism. And I am told that purporting to
>>refute something you cannot understand is an egregious breach of
>>etiquette.
BA:
>I suspect I understand any philosophical movement as well as you do,
>and I certainly don't require your number-crunching for any of it.
Never mind the apparent progress of this conversation -- I seem to be
growing in stature, from being dwarfed by the redoubtable Mr Turnip to
being recognized as your presumptive intellectual equal! But before
we get overwhelmed by the proceedings of our mutual admiration
society, consider the following. Given that so much of modern
philosophy turns on the epistemological status of mathematics and the
natural sciences, how do you propose to achieve an understanding of
its movements without being able to evaluate claims such as the one I
advanced above in re the metaphysics and epistemology of classical
dynamics?
BA:
>>>It's not up to *me* to account for this transcendental 'meaning' that can
>>>never be articulated! If you propose the existence of such a beast, *you*
>>>have to account for it. What we are *given*, in the empirical world, are
>>>signifiers and mute objects that don't have a name until we give them one
>>>-- that is, until we assign them a signifier. So where's this signified,
>>>this 'meaning' that is supposedly in exact correspondence with the
>>>signifier, but is not the signifier itself?
MZ:
>>Nowhere in particular - the same place as mass or charge or number.
BA:
>Wow -- so tell me where I can find the device to measure meaning or
>'the signified'. If it's the same as mass and charge, the signified
>must be a constant, and therefore there must be a device that has
>*revealed it as such*, just as there have been devices to reveal the
>consistency of mass and charge.
Your idiosyncratic usage of `constant' notwithstanding, the question
is a good one. While at present there exists no broadly accepted
theory of linguistic meaning, its mathematical laws have been worked
out since the XVIIth century onwards. The most fundamental semantic
law is that of the extension varying inversely with the intension
(a.k.a. comprehension in the Port-Royal terminology). Since then,
several alternatives for formal criteria of meaning identity have
been worked out by Alonzo Church.
BA:
>>>The 'meaning' of the word 'puppy' cannot *be* that puppy I see over there.
>>> That puppy over there is not a 'meaning', not a universal, it's a
>>>particular thing, a referent. A particular referent, which is always
>>>located in space and time, is not the same thing as a signified or a
>>>'meaning.' That particular thing can be said to *partake* of a
>>>universal, to partake of a category. Another word for category is
>>>'label'; the label we're talking about is entirely represented by -- and
>>>has no existence apart from -- the *word* 'puppy'. There is no signified,
>>>no Platonic form, no third thing in addition to (1) the signifier, and (2)
>>>that particular referent over there. There is no 'meaning' independent of
>>>the signifier.
MZ:
>>Since the child might as well have asked me for a unicorn or a round
>>square, the object of his desire is not identifiable with any actual
>>or even possible concrete particular.
BA:
>Yes... but my argument doesn't claim that a signifier requires an
>existential correspondent. I brought referents into the picture
>because Russell wanted me to account for them.
A sign is what it is only in so far as it stands for something else.
That, and the possibility of vacuous extension, is the reason why
Saussure and other theorists of the sign from the Stoics and Port-
Royal to Frege and Church, have inferred stratification of meaning
into lekton and tynchanon, intension and extension, sense and
denotation, or concept and object.
MZ:
>>To account adequately for the discussion of wants and needs,
>>universals are indispensable.
BA:
>? I never claimed that universals were dispensable. The extract you
>quoted above, in fact, indicated that universals were a huge part of
>language.
But the perturbations of air that comprise the child's utterance of
his request do not amount to any universal. So in what sense are
universals "a huge part of language"?
MZ:
>>Note also that mute or unarticulated
>>strivings rule out the possibility of reducing these universals to
>>their verbal expression and vitiate Derrida's charge that "en
>>dernière instance, la différence entre le signifié et le
>>signifiant _n'est rien_".
BA:
>? Just because a signifier is mute or unarticulated doesn't mean it's
>anything more than a potential signifier.
But a mute or unarticulated striving is no less actual for failing to
find its expression with a signifier. Or are you incapable of keeping
a secret?
MZ:
>>Besides, the argument works just as well
>>with a proper name of a particular puppy as it does with the common
>>name of the young canis familiaris.
BA:
>Please be more clear about your referents! Which argument are you
>talking about, yours or mine? In either case, I don't see how this
>distincion between a name and a genus argues against what I'm saying.
It doesn't -- I misread a part of your objection as relying on a
particular-universal distinction between yonder puppy and his
puppyhood.
MZ:
>>Actually, it turns out that if your explanation of signification is
>>to incorporate the logical standard of demonstrative reasoning, its
>>restriction to signifiers cannot be sustained. The reason for that
>>is that any sort of proof theory depends on a criterion of type-
>>identity between sign-tokens, which cannot be a particular by
>>definition.
BA:
>Well, yes -- since 'proof theories' require all objects to be
>identified with a type, they automatically reject the existential or
>historical world from their domain. But this is no more than saying
>"In the world of universals, universals are indispensable." This is
>similar to your previous claim that the material products of science
>arise from abstractions rather than other materials.
The point is that science depends on the reproducibility of its
proofs, which in turn depends on the subsumption of tokens under a
common type.
MZ:
>>If meaning is a signifier[-token] that
>>hasn't happened yet, you have posited a thing that doesn't exist.
BA:
>Yes. But you forget that I said 'If you must use the word
>"meaning"...' as an addendum to the comment that you really only need
>the term 'singifier'. I just threw that in to mollify those uneasy
>with discarding the term 'meaning.'
So make up your mind about your posits. Can you say anything truly
about that, which does not exist?
MZ:
>>That the world could come to an abrupt end after I produce but before
>>you interpret this text, does not imply that my production is
>>potentially bereft of meaning.
BA:
>Again: your articulation only has 'meaning' when you or somebody else
>either paraphrases it ('interprets it', as you say) or re-articulates
>it. If the world ended right after you spoke then it *wouldn't* have
>any meaning beyond your interpretation because there would be nobody
>around to paraphrase it. Your use of the term 'potentially' is not
>helpful because we're trying to establish what does happen, not what
>could happen. And notice your reliance on issues about 'the future'
>when thinking about meaning -- it corresponds exactly with what I'm
>saying about signification necessarily involving deferral over time.
This is a predictable response from a deconstructionist. According to
you, Linear A no longer has any meaning. Then why are those benighted
linguists clamoring to interpret it?
BA:
>>>What allows you to talk about "states of mind"? Have you seen them?
>>>Or are, once again, just positing them into existence?
MZ:
>>Not at all. I am INFERRING their existence from their apparent
>>indispensability in psychological explanation. If you want to argue
>>that mass is a social construct, the onus is on you to prove that
>>mechanical explanation can proceed on the basis of, and reduced to,
>>contingent and arbitrary social conventions. Mutatis mutandis, the
>>same goes for wants and needs, sights and sounds, affects and
>>beliefs, and other cognitive, conative, and perceptual categories.
BA:
>You're equating mass with 'states of mind'. Need I say more? When a
>certain measuring device 'moves', we say it's measuring mass because
>the device itself has been calibrated to correspond to another device
>that measures mass. But when a third device measures electrical
>impulses from the brain, the only inference you can make is that the
>brain emits electrical impulses.
>
>Any babbling about some totality called 'the mind' which hovers over
>and above these impulses is purely a product of your fantasy.
You are being wilfully obtuse. Physical measurement presupposes a
metric and operates by reduction of similarity and dissimilarity of
concrete objects or events to identity and distinctness of attributes
abstracted therefrom. In other words, you already need to be a
Platonist in order to measure any physical quantities. And since you
accept the probative force of physical measurement in establishing the
existence of the quantity being measured, the onus is on you to
explain why you fail to do so in case of abstract entities as
manifested in concrete particulars, or states of mind as manifested in
behavior.
Here is a classic example of the latter. John leaps to his death
from the bell tower because of his unrequited love for Mary. The
explanatory value of this statement need not depend on John's verbal
expression of his love. It is perfectly legitimate to infer his
motives from the way he manifested them unintentionally, without
meaning to communicate them to anyone else. Indeed, we understand
human action only in so far as we can impute motives to the agent.
And understanding your peers is necessary for survival. If you have
managed to make it into adulthood, your success is entirely due to
unconscious logocentrism.
MZ:
>>Besides, you are the one carrying on "what we are *given*, in the
>>empirical world." Here is a newsflash: what we are given are not
>>"signifiers and mute objects", but the contents of thought and
>>perception, from whose deliverances the existence and presence of
>>material objects must be inferred.
BA:
>Ah yes, 'contents *of* thought and perception' -- already positing two
>totalities which encompass these particular 'contents.' What allows
>you to posit these totalities *in addition* to the given phenomena
>that you're calling 'contents'? More than that, what allows you to
>posit this metaphysical predicament in which we're encased in a bubble
>of subjectivity that always-already separates us from 'material
>objects'? Are you an Ayn Randian?
No, and neither am I a Scientologist nor a Hare Krishna. So what the
hell are these phenomena you keep mentioning, and wherein consists
their givenness?
MZ:
>>We posit any number of entities on the basis of observation. My
>>latest practical posit is that of one Brian Artese, a rational animal
>>to whom I impute the ability to grasp the meaning of the theses you
>>are advancing. Am I jumping to conclusions? You tell me.
BA:
>Just because you know to attach a particular name to a particular body
>(in this case, a particular cyber-signature), that does not mean that
>you've located a 'mind' or a 'presence'. You've located a body that
>writes and speaks.
What body would that be? To date, my evidence for Brian Artese qua
thinking thing is much stronger than that for him qua extended thing.
For that matter, what makes you so certain of having located any
physical body whatsoever?
MZ:
>>As far as reason is concerned,
>>the order of temporal succession makes no difference in the validity
>>of an argument.
BA:
>? We're not talking about the validity of an argument, we're talking
>about the manifestation of signifiers.
No, we are talking about understanding an argument. It is your
contention that such understanding must be mediated by, and proceeds
coevally with, the manifestation of signifiers. I see no reason to
believe that.
MZ:
>>As far as empirical data goes, there is plenty of
>>evidence that the textual units of expressed meaning can be more or
>>less arbitrarily expanded or constricted according to the receiver's
>>cognitive and perceptual abilities, as happens e.g. during speed
>>reading. So neither the order of signifiers nor their succession
>>appear to be germane to comprehension.
BA:
>? I never claimed that a *particular* order or succession was
>required. I only claimed that all signifiers must present themselves
>in succession, one after another. Even if you transcribe the last
>word of this sentence, and then the first, and then the ninth, and
>then the third, and then the fifth -- you still must do so one after
>another, in succession.
Linear transcription is your idea, not mine. Speed readers allegedly
grasp text in two dimensions at once. Frege's concept writing is
non-linear, and so are certain pictograms and iconic signs. Surely
it is at least conceptually possible simultaneously to apprehend
signifiers in any number of dimensions.
MZ:
>>I do write more carefully; try reading on the same level. I meant the
>>faculty of understanding that is not essentially temporal. The key point
>>here is that your implicit presupposition of essential dependence requires
>>proof, since the logical content of understanding is not so dependent.
BA:
>?? Wait a minute -- one minute you say that essence and universals are
>indispensable, then you say I need to prove you're relying essentials.
>I'm not trying to avoid whatever point you're trying to make here, but
>I really don't understand it.
You seem to be making a generalization from the temporal nature of
some kinds of understanding to the Kantian claim of temporality being
involved in all understanding. I argue against it. What's so
difficult?
MZ:
>>>>Like I said, I would not expect the notion of being responsible for
>>>>your own beliefs to be areeable to you. Rationalism is a question
>>>>of cognitive norms, of which parrhesia is the first and foremost.
BA:
>>>It's like a religious guy telling someone else that he's incapable of
>>>telling the truth because he's not of the faith. (In fact, it *is* a
>>>religious guy, and that's exactly what he's telling me!)
MZ:
>>I am telling you that your profession of faith is logically inconsistent
>>with belief in a standard of truth. If you are incapable of telling the
>>difference between logic and religion, so much the worse for you.
MZ:
>>It seems reasonable to assume that material gratification would
>>supplant truth-telling in those who implicitly or explicitly reject
>>the possibility of aiming at telling the truth.
BA:
>What 'profession of faith' have I made? Don't project your
>essentialism on me -- I don't need to make a gesture of 'faith' toward
>some hidden everlasting truth in order to validate my sincerity. Such
>gestures are a means by which 'realists' like yourself attempt to make
>themselves and others believe that you're shooting for the 'right'
>target. My truths are contextual, as are any honest man's. My
>criteria for good faith have nothing to do with your theology.
Surely it is possible to be sincere, as in accurately conveying your
beliefs of the moment, without being truthful, as in concerning
yourself with the factual accuracy of your statements. In this
connection, it is curious that you should make your truths dependent
on their context. Would this context vary with your feelings in the
relevant matters?
MZ:
>>One of the things
>>that came out most clearly in the Sokal controversy is the concern of
>>the social constructionists for their shrinking budgets.
BA:
>Yeah, hopefully everyone will wake up to the truth that humanities
>departments are wallowing in federal grants and corporate handouts,
>while the science industry can hardly scrape together the cash to wash
>the windows at Dow Chemical.
>
>What were you saying about honesty?
It is well known that the ferocity of squabbles does not correlate
with the size of stakes. And cross-disciplinary exhortations to hang
together so as not to be hanged separately were heard far and wide
from the pomo side of the "science wars".
BA:
>>>>>The cogito is not a logical inference? Then what is that "therefore"
>>>>>doing in there?
MZ:
>>>>Just read the book. It's all explained there in black and white.
BA:
>>>I have read it, and I don't remember him explaining how 'ergo' could
>>>signify anything other than 'a logical conclusion follows from this
>>>premise.'
MZ:
>>See above.
BA:
>I have, and I still haven't read anything that explains how 'ergo'
>does not imply a logical inference.
Look up the passage in question.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
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Subject: Re: A photon - what is it really ?
From: Mendor of Zalutron
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 00:15:02 -0600
Daniel E. Platt wrote:
>
> In article <3272C9FD.6613@starbase.deepspace.nine.mil>, Quark writes:
> |> magnus.lidgren wrote:
> |> >
> |> > Trying to educate myself within the subject - A photon - what is it really ? .
> |> > Thanks to all those initiated, sharing their wisdom by responding to this issue !
> |> >
> |>
(...)
> |> However, when each of them were to be used, and not to be
> |> used, and the circumstances under which they were valid or not valid
> |> were not well defined, and thus did not provide a complete description
> |> of electromagnetic radiation in general due to the inexact properties of
> |> definition and a failure to define exactly under what conditions the
> |> various descriptions would apply. Ther propagation of light through a
> |> transparent media is a classic example of when the old 'basic photon
> |> theory' of light would break down and be invalid.
>
> Maxwell's equations did very well in describing electromagnetic fields...
(More ancient history concerning quantum mechanics)
>
> The exact description of that lumpiness is to say that only certain
> discrete energy densities may be carried by light at any one particular
> frequency. This is a very peculiar statement of the ``particulate'' nature
> of light. It isn't at all like lumps of sand or marbles. Rather, it is
> a statement that the amplitude of the waves of any one particular frequency
> can only take on discrete values.
The truth of the matter is that this statement is inaccurate. Whenever
light interacts with matter, it transfers energy to and takes energy
from the matter in discrete amounts based on the frequency. The
amplitude of light is not, however, limited to discrete amplitudes. It
still can engage in constructive and destructive interference in all the
varying gradations that it does, it is only that when energy is
transferred to the matter that it is done so in discrete amounts. The
amplitude of the wave is the probability that transfer will occur at any
point along the curve. When you calculate a wave function, you will
normalize it in order to make sure that there will be a general
conservation of energy along the curve from beginning to end, however,
that does not mean that you cannot have continuous gradations of curve
amplitude. That only changes probabilities within the schroedinger
wave.
>
> To some extent, even electrons don't act like marbles. You have electron
> amplitudes in various modes, and you can only have amplitude values that
> reflect the Pauli exclusion principle. All in all, the meaning of ``particle''
> has come to be redefined in terms of the descritization of field amplitudes
> rather than in terms of a simple marble counting mechanism.
>
Under those definitions of a particle you would still have the problem
of constructive and destructive interference. Whether the 'field
amplitude' would take on one incremental value or the next higher one
would end up still a matter of probabilities when the transfer were to
occur. Somewhere, you would still have to take into effect the energies
associated with intermittant probability between the states, otherwise,
the addition and subtraction of different wavefronts would not be
possible.
(a discussion of the 'divisibility of quanta' - admittably a question
of semantics, but interesting) ...
>
> Minority parts? To some extent, this depends on how you define it.
> ...
> |> >
> |> I should remind you that basic ancient wave theory for light as derived
> |> in the nineteenth century was able to predict even the speed of light as
> |> it traveled through a non-vacuous media. It was related to the
> |> permitivity and permeability of the media (ie, the general
> |> susceptibility of the material to electricity and magnetism), and it
> |> used the same general equations as those used to predict the speed of
> |> light in a vacuum.
>
> This is actually a little more complicated. Photons travel at the speed
> of light. As photons get absorbed and re-radiated, and as the phases
> of the photons get added back into the whole, the effect of the phase
> shift is to retard the effective total wave. It is the nature of the
> formulation that you really cannot tell whether or which photons are
> destroyed. Rather, you count amplitudes and cross-sections for various
> scattering events, and describe the macroscopic susceptability and
> permeability in terms of those.
>
The problem with this formulation, however, is that you fail to
distinguish that the wave cannot be necessarily affected by single
quantum events on their own. The entire schrodinger field, with all the
continuous range of probabilities, and not incremental quantum events,
are what would determine the propogation of light as it would transfer
itself through the transparent medium. If this were not the case, the
wave would eventually divide into several wavecrests, each dependant on
specific numbers of quantum transfers that would have occured to slow
the wave as it moved throughout the transparent medium. Because the
wavecrest does not divide into many wavecrests corresponding with n
numbers of quantum transitions needed to slow the light wave down, it
shows that interaction is occuring with an entire schrodinger field, and
is not due to incremental quantum events.
> |>
> |> > Q3. As I understand it, Quantum mechanics states that when a photon makes
> |> > its way through a glass body, it is absorbed and (a new?) (re?)-emitted a number of
> |> > times before it passes through. Every time "the photon" actually is a "real" photon it
> |> > travels at c speed and during "the absorption period" "it" stands still ??
> |> >
> |> > Majority opinion was that the photon goes through repeated absorbtions
> |> > and re-emissions (in the forward direction) thus delaying "its" passage
> |> > through the glass in correlation with the index of refraction for glass.
>
> You can make a Huygen's construction of photon propagation in vacuum, destroying
> a photon at each point, and re-radiating a wave front to get a complete
> construction of a free plane wave. Further, you cannot tell the difference
> between the two results mathematically or by any constructable experiment.
> The photons that were destroyed or created have no real identity within the
> ``collective'' (to borrow a borg-like idea). In this sense, its hard to
> really answer how often and in what ways it is absorbed and reradiated by
> a medium.
>
Admittably true, but then how would it differ from a continuous wave?
> |> >
> |> > Q4.If a photon is truly absorbed by the media glass, in what way does "it"
> |> > know (as it then has ceased to exist ?) what direction to take when
> |> > emitted again and how does it know what frequency to recover?? Is all
> |> > information, needed to guide the "new" photon to the right path and frequency,
> |> > delivered from the "old" photon to the glass atoms during absorption and
> |> > present in the glass atoms while "the photon" is in "absorpted mode".??
> |> >
> |> > Majority opinion was that "true" absorption could not have happened, re-emission would
> |> > then have random direction. Where the information about direction was situated when
>
> Re-radiation is not independent of the incident photon's direction, wavelength,
> and other characteristics. That is, the amplitude of scattered light depends
> on the direction it is scattered in with respect to the incident source.
>
> It is in the context that a photon gets scattered all over with different
> amplitudes in different directions that the question of the probabilistic
> nature of a photon as particle emerges. It was partly this element that
> Einstein's derivation of the black-body spectrum from his photo-electric
> hypothesis by means of stimulated emission caused Einstein so much vexation:
> he was the first to recognize that this quantization stuff had to have
> a probabilistic character, because there was the problem of getting
> half-a-lump emitted -- you could only interpret this statistically or
> probabilistically. Needless to say, the idea of stimulated emission
> was important in developing the idea of lasers from the stimulated emission
> of photons from matter where many of the constituents were in meta-stable
> or states, a statistical ``inversion.''
>
With regard to the 'random direction', I stand corrected, and will defer
to O'brian in these matters.
> |> > not carried by the photon was more an open question. Perhaps one photon on its way
> |> > could guide another while this was emitted , (not quite clear, this issue). Recovering
> |> > frequency, however, could be possible through the specific amount of energy delivered
> |> > to electrons, going from one lower shell to a higher and then back again.
> |> >
> |>
> |> As you can see, many of the humans of this time period could not figure
> |> out whether the photon was absorbed or not. Basic quantum mechanics
> |> would state that a particle would situate itself as a probability
> |> distribution within the schrodinger wave, and would interact with the
> |> glass at specified points and then be re-emitted at random directions.
> |> This is precicely what occurs when you have non-transparent glass, but
> |> that is not the question being considered. I should also remind you
> |> that transparancy occurs when there are no energy levels being
> |> interacted with, thus you do not have a sort of laser effect going on.
>
> Not quite -- or rather sort of. What you have is elastic scattering,
> with momentum transfer but no energy absorption. What you see is some
> direction-dependent probability that photons will be scattered in various
> directions that depends on the momentum transfer. The tolerance of
> momentum transfer is related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
> through the mechanism of trying to localize a wave (via the Schwartz
> inequality applied to Fourier transforms). I've always felt this
> made the meaning of the Heisenberg uncertainty princple more clear.
>
> |>
> |> For a good description of what goes on with respect to light in a
> |> transparent medium and the question of particle and wave descriptors, it
> |> is a good idea to remember what the mathematical expressions 'particle'
> |> and 'wave' mean to begin with. When one has a phenomenon where you have
> |> continuous free space, where each location in that space will affect the
> |> surrounding medium, you have what in mathematics is called a 'continuous
> |> function', and can build such properties as 'coherence' in a periodic
> |> spatial function such as a wave. I should remind you that the spatial
> |> location of 'potential quantum transitions' or 'photons' is confined
> |> within the spatial characteristics of the schrodinger wave (or light
> |> wave in general). In other words, if you have a node in a schrodinger
> |> wave, at that location there is 0 probability, and there are still
> |> probability constraints as defined by that wave. I should also remind
> |> you what is meant by a particle. A particle in general can be said to
> |> be a phenomenon that is defined as localized within a specific region of
> |> space. In some ways like the 'point' on a Cartesian coordinate system,
> |> though still capable of taking up space. Many relations of 'parts to
> |> the whole' and 'points to the curve' were devised by ones like Newton,
> |> who were even further back in human history. When you have the light
> |> wave interacting with relatively localized phenomenon like specific
> |> atoms and their orbitals, you have basic photon interaction. When you
> |> have refraction and the slowing down of light in glass, the entire
> |> schrodinger wave interacts with the glass to produce effects that reduce
> |> down to those calculated in the nineteenth century for electromagnetism
> |> and glass, because the entire schrodinger field will act much in the way
> |> that an 'electromagnetic field' was calculated to then. In some ways
> |> the phenomenon might be described as a 'virtual photon' interacting with
> |> the glass and then being reabsorbed by the wavefront as it would pass
> |> through the medium. I should remind you that it does not do so in the
> |> 'random photon' fashion as described by basic particle mechanics, also,
> |> each portion of schroding field interacts with the glass in an even
> |> fashion. If it did not, the wave front would quickly get 'chopped up'
> |> as it would move through the glass and we would not be able to see a
> |> viable image as it would travel out the other side of the transparent
> |> material. It is the whole schrodinger field that interacts. In theory
> |> you could define it in terms of 'virtual photons' so long as you would
> |> remember that they were behaving in coherence with each other, but then
> |> they would not be engaging in the probabilistic fashion that we would
> |> generally associate with photons. In general, when you consider light
> |> as it moves through a transparent medium you are dealing with
> |> interactions that are more macroscalar with respect to the light wave,
> |> and thus deal with the whole schodinger wave, and thus use equations
> |> that reduce to maxwell's equations, rather than localized phenomenon
> |> with respect to the wave, in which case the phenomonon would be
> |> photonic.
>
> Maxwell's equations describe the transmission of light very well, which
> includes the spatial and termporal characteristics of photons; what it
> does poorly is describe the interaction of light with matter (paraphrasing
> a quote from Born and Wolf's famous optics text). Whether you have to count
> states in statistics or the absorption of photons in the photo-electric
> effect, at some point you have to recognize the discrete character of the
> electromagnetic wave's amplitude. This discrete character is the so-called
> ``particle'' character of light (far different from what Newton would have
> had in mind). Further, this discrete character follows from specific
> empirical observations that required DESCRIPTION; testable consequences
> follow, whose testing has always come up supported. In other words, the
> description relates disparate phenomena in a way that is internally consistent
> -- as in the photoelectric effect and black-body radiation.
>
Admittably so, but that is not the phenomenon being considered. The
question is, are individual photons being interacted with, or is the
entire probability distribution field being interacted with. Can there
be interactions with fields that contain only a 'partial' particle?
When one normalizes a function, one does it 'for all space', ie, over
the entire universe. However, when one is dealing with phenomenon in
reality, one is dealing with phenomenon that is more spatially
confined. The question is as to whether quantum transitions or
'particles' are localized descriptors of the effects of a general
(schrodinger) probability distribution field, or whether it is not
possible for a field to interact as probability changes without the
transfer of quanta. I am not sure that you things such as constructive
and destructive interference for 'low particle density' phenomenon would
be possible if it were the latter.
> Dan
>
> |>
> |> For more information dealing with the ancient mysteries concerning light
> |> I suggest you read 'Scientific American - The Ancient Quandries
> |> Concerning Descriptors for Quantum Phenomenon', June, 2075.
> |>
> |> Maybe someday you humans might even be able to fix my replicators.
> |>
> |> Quark - for the finest in the Bajoran system, or anywhere.
> |>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Daniel E. Platt platt@watson.ibm.com
> The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------