Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Whitedragon]

If we take a notion of something that doesn't exist, example, no matter or energy might have existed in zero-t conditions, can we say that the E =mc^2 is zero for E and m, or are we prohibited from assigning a number value to something that doesn't exist, and what would this mean for c?

We say that t is zero in zero t. By this argument, does it mean time exists, but just has a different property? If time does not exist, how can we assign a value to it, since the enigma of zero hasn't quite been solved.

To assign a number value, we must first have something to assign it to. If the thing we try to assign it to if non-existent, the assignment will fail. Non-existent things don't exist, and so their attributes cannot exist as they can't have any. And so on.

As for E = mc^2, if m is zero, E is zero, and this says nothing at all about c, one way or the other. If time is stopped (as opposed to 'stuck' at zero), then there can be no velocity, and c is meaningless.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "zero-t".

By zero-t I refer to the cosmological notion as "before" the big bang. What can we expect in how c will behave in zero-t? if there is no matter or energy as well as no space, would c not be different in that it is not hampered to a finite value in the absence of E and m?

If there is no matter or energy as well as no space, then c is meaningless. Without 'space', there is no physical volume, so there can be no movement (velocity) within that non-existent 'space', so c is undefined.

If zero-t is 'before time', then all bets are off. What would that even mean?

I guess the next logical question is, was there something other than E and m in zero-t? We stated that non-existence cannot have number values assigned. So if we assign zero to t, c, m, and E, that means we're dealing with existential physics, denoting existance pardoxes in that zero means these elements must exist since we've assigned values to them, albeit in different states or essence.

Lastly, would abstract objects and possibility spaces exist in zero-t? If so, is consciousness also an abstract object or relating to abstract objects? Can existence in itself be an abstract object.

Einsteinian physics prefers to look at things in the universe as spacetime entities. I.e. they have three physical dimensions — length, breadth, and height — and one time dimension. Your "zero-t" thought-experiment removes the time dimension entirely; time is non-existent.

So the three physical dimensions might still exist (?), but the lack of time causes some significant changes in the way our imagined universe works. Because there cannot be a sequence of events of any sort — there is no time to separate the events — all events will happen simultaneously, or they won't happen at all. Or am I stopping too soon in this chain of reasoning? Can an 'event' actually 'happen' in a timeless universe? After all, an 'event' conventionally occurs at a fixed and given point in time?

This universe is static. There can be no change, no dynamic process of any sort. Whatever state this universe is created in, is retained. I wanted to say "retained forever", but of course that would be meaningless, as "forever" is a direct reference to time, which doesn't exist here. As I said: "significant changes".

You ask if there could be "something other than" E and m in zero-t? What sort of 'something' do you think there might/could be? Energy and mass have no time component, so they can presumably exist in this strange pretend-universe. The physical dimensions still seem to exist, we imagine. So are you wondering about something physical, that might exist alongside E and m, or something else?

Finally, you refer to paradoxes, but I think a better description might be "errors". The contradictions you note might well be consequences of an initial assumption that was badly mistaken, and not a paradox at all.

Thank you for the helpful information,

Can we consider zero-t as an empty set?

[The Beast]

A more realistic schema is one that assigns the Higgs field to the entirety of the Universe. Since is not time dependent it may be inside a human being or inside the brain. Particles may move as ideas in and out. I could hypothesize that the Higgs is activated by the energy producing brain. The particles reacting to structures and methods produce ideas. Emotional ideas may have specific particles and even interoception may have its own particle. So, I am thinking of a human being as an energy transforming object or as a Universe in itself. It has the capacity to create another Universe.
Zero set may have dimensions set as zero. That is the dimensions included in the set. Time, mass, how many dimensions can we set to zero? How about the unknown dimensions?

[Whitedragon]

A more realistic schema is one that assigns the Higgs field to the entirety of the Universe. Since is not time dependent it may be inside a human being or inside the brain. Particles may move as ideas in and out. I could hypothesize that the Higgs is activated by the energy producing brain. The particles reacting to structures and methods produce ideas. Emotional ideas may have specific particles and even interoception may have its own particle. So, I am thinking of a human being as an energy transforming object or as a Universe in itself. It has the capacity to create another Universe.
Zero set may have dimensions set as zero. That is the dimensions included in the set. Time, mass, how many dimensions can we set to zero? How about the unknown dimensions?

Thanks, indeed,

What "creates" possibility spaces and abstract objects for that matter? Perhaps zero set can still be zero despite of containing something other than matter, energy and perhaps space, or different dimensions need not occupy space?

Perhaps coining something zero, simply denotes it still exists, but in a different state?

From what I know of possibility spaces apart from the material is that we cannot have a thought of something that has not been assigned a possibility space, this would be true non-existence, I think.

[GrayArea]

To Greyarea

Thanks,

Can we then say that m and E do exist in zero-t, but in or as a diffrent state or as something else?

Sabine Hossenfelder says that energy and matter form out of nothing as a universe expands, this is curious. I'm willing to entertain ideas of how nothing, if it is nothing, spawns something.

Just in a pure philosophical sense—I don't think "nothing" can spawn "something". I think it's "something" that spawns "something", just because that is literally what "something" is.

And as for your other questions, I am not a physicist, therefore I am unable to answer them without gaining more knowledge of the field first.

[Whitedragon]

To Greyarea

Thanks,

Can we then say that m and E do exist in zero-t, but in or as a diffrent state or as something else?

Sabine Hossenfelder says that energy and matter form out of nothing as a universe expands, this is curious. I'm willing to entertain ideas of how nothing, if it is nothing, spawns something.

Just in a pure philosophical sense—I don't think "nothing" can spawn "something". I think it's "something" that spawns "something", just because that is literally what "something" is.

And as for your other questions, I am not a physicist, therefore I am unable to answer them without gaining more knowledge of the field first.

Hope you will stick with us regardless. Thanks

[GrayArea]

To Greyarea

Thanks,

Can we then say that m and E do exist in zero-t, but in or as a diffrent state or as something else?

Sabine Hossenfelder says that energy and matter form out of nothing as a universe expands, this is curious. I'm willing to entertain ideas of how nothing, if it is nothing, spawns something.

Just in a pure philosophical sense—I don't think "nothing" can spawn "something". I think it's "something" that spawns "something", just because that is literally what "something" is.

And as for your other questions, I am not a physicist, therefore I am unable to answer them without gaining more knowledge of the field first.

Or to phrase it in a more accurate way, even to "spawn something" is itself considered "something". So there is no process of any sorts when it comes to the existence of "something" from nothing. It's not something that happens over time because it is beyond time. "Something" just IS. It doesn't "become".

Think of it this way: The concept of "nothing" and "something" are just themselves. Nothing more.
Nothing is nothing and something is something.

We cannot and should not drag these fundamental concepts into a scientific framework where "this causes that because whatever" and so on, because they are beyond such things, as they are not dependent on or related to anything else, unlike all other scientific concepts.

[Whitedragon]

To Greyarea

Thanks,

Can we then say that m and E do exist in zero-t, but in or as a diffrent state or as something else?

Sabine Hossenfelder says that energy and matter form out of nothing as a universe expands, this is curious. I'm willing to entertain ideas of how nothing, if it is nothing, spawns something.

Just in a pure philosophical sense—I don't think "nothing" can spawn "something". I think it's "something" that spawns "something", just because that is literally what "something" is.

And as for your other questions, I am not a physicist, therefore I am unable to answer them without gaining more knowledge of the field first.

Or to phrase it in a more accurate way, even to "spawn something" is itself considered "something". So there is no process of any sorts when it comes to the existence of "something" from nothing. It's not something that happens over time because it is beyond time. "Something" just IS. It doesn't "become".

Think of it this way: The concept of "nothing" and "something" are just themselves. Nothing more.
Nothing is nothing and something is something.

We cannot and should not drag these fundamental concepts into a scientific framework where "this causes that because whatever" and so on, because they are beyond such things, as they are not dependent on or related to anything else, unlike all other scientific concepts.

I might agree with most of that,

The fact that we can think of the concept nothing means it's something, we measure one against the other. Perhaps nothing was nothing when there was nothing, because there was no temporal peeping through a looking glass as it were. Hence, nothing is a possibility spaces, considered, measured against something material.

If there was a true gap in the galaxy of pure nothingness, it's state would be revealed by the surrounding stars, hence that nothingness becomes something by comparison and perception

Likewise zero t can be zero, or m and E can be zero, in that it exists from our comparative perception,whereas. I wonder if zero-t is part of the eternalistic universe.

[The Beast]

The intuition of space that is the perception of space could form an idea as well. There is the Universe and the human as objects. The human is delimited by the skin and the Universe by the surface of last scattering. A human is within the Universe. It is hard to imagine particles crossing the surface of last scattering, so I hypothesized that we exist between the surface of last scattering and the Higgs field. What goes past the surface of last scattering might be radiation into a space with its own dimensions and possible multiverses. Particles exist as massless/timeless energies separated by the Higgs field. Is it the same space? It seems to me that space is the constant and in our Universe is the spacetime.

[Good_Egg]

Can we consider zero-t as an empty set?

In classical logic, statements are either True or False, with no alternative value available.

So what is the status of a statement like "all the dogs on the village are entirely black" when there are no dogs in the village ? I.e. when the set referred to is empty ?

Stop me if I get this wrong, but I seem to recall that any All statement ("All members of an empty set are...") is considered True.

Because the opposite is "Some dogs in the village are not entirely black" which is clearly False. Because there are no non-black dogs in the village (or any other sort).

"Some" thus asserts existence, whereas "All" doesn't.

So that if in some ancient Greek brainteaser, one villager tells you that all the dogs in the village are entirely black and another tells you that all the dogs in the village are entirely white, then you know that no dog can be entirely black and entirely white, and therefore deduce that the village contains no dog.

Thus, to the extent that physics is making statements about all the particles in the universe, all such statements are true at the instant of the Big Bang, when the universe contains no particles.

At t=0, all particles have mass and all particles have no mass, and all their mass is convertible to energy at a rate of E=M x C-squared, and at a rate of E= M x C-cubed, and is not convertible to energy at all. Which sounds contradictory, but in that contradiction we affirm the absence of any particles.

[The Beast]

Helium. The law of the preservation of energy still very valuable. It is that t=0 might have been different for different objects. Unless, you are a creationist, t=0 for a human is complicated as we are as old as the BB and beyond. One observable dimension is temperature preceding all known dimensions. In the human set we could insert temperature as the first parameter for its existence. A very small window. And what kind of gravity was there? For sure an unknown force as gravity requires mass. In the paradigm of the BB we have an object x of Universal size and a last scattering surface the size of at least 4x. Electromagnetic radiation being attenuated by the equilibrium forces. Perhaps this we call t was then a different t but still existed in the recording of change as mass was being created. Then at some point all was mass… t= 0 not likely but in some neatly packed hypothesis as to be or not to be of a relativistic momentum. For example, photons have zero rest mass but contribute to the gravitational field.

[3017Metaphysician]

If we take a notion of something that doesn't exist, example, no matter or energy might have existed in zero-t conditions, can we say that the E =mc^2 is zero for E and m, or are we prohibited from asigning a number value to something that doesn't exist, and what would this mean for c?

We say that t is zero in zero t. By this argument, does it mean time exists, but just has a different property? If time does not exist, how can we assign a value to it, since the enigma of zero hasn't quite been solved.

WD!

Awesome question and great thread IMO.

Using the logic of language (as GA so well pointed out), can we say then, that 'nothing' is really not no-thing at all. But rather, it's a logically possible some-thing instead? It seems that because there is something, there can never be nothing. And if there is nothing, it's either logically possible it could change into something else, or there actually exists nothing at all. A static no-thing (which we can never know). But that only begs a bunch of other questions including what is a some-thing that's considered static or abstract, and what is considered to be dynamic. Like the human concepts of time and eternity. The other interesting questions could also be, is the concept of zero a similar kind of place-holder(?). And is every-thing really in a state of becoming as apposed to a static state of being?

Anyway, in the logic of language, It can be said existence is kind of like saying: there exists at least one true proposition. It is logically impossible for there to exist no true propositions. Hence, they exist out of logical necessity. And that would imply a sense of static existence.

Too, as TB suggests, is the Higgs field a no-thing or a some-thing?

I also like your thoughts about abstract's....thank you again for this wonderful thread WD!

[Consul]

"Some" thus asserts existence, whereas "All" doesn't.

It's a bad idea to call "some" the existential quantifier and to deprive it thereby of its ontological neutrality. It had better be called the particular quantifier (as opposed to the universal quantifier "all") and be regarded as ontologically neutral in itself, such that "Some superheroes lack supernatural powers" (e.g. Batman) doesn't mean "There are/exist superheroes who lack supernatural powers" but simply "At least one superhero lacks supernatural powers"—without thereby implying that superheroes exist. Instead of the existential quantifier "Ex" a special existence predicate "E!" should be used, which can be used in combination with the particular quantifier to define the existential quantifier and to make ontologically non-neutral statements:

ExFx =def Px(E!x & Fx) ("For some (at least one) x, x exists and is F." / "Some existents are F." / "At least one existent is F.")


QUOTE:
"It is my contention that the so-called existential quantifier has no more to do with existence than the universal quantifier and that neither some nor all have anything to do with existence."

(Grossmann, Reinhardt. Ontological Reduction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. p. 77)

"Take the formula ‘for some x, x is F and x exists’, and take this to translate ‘Fs exist’. The point here is that the prefix ‘for some x’ does not itself carry existential import; it simply conveys how many things are being said to be thus and so. Now I claim that this formula conveys the sense of the existential statement, and it expresses existence predicatively. What the prefix does is indicate the quantity of Fs in question—it says that some are; it is left up to the predicate ‘exists’ to express existence. The word ‘some’ by itself is existentially neutral, on this view, much as ‘all’ is usually taken to be—and I would say the same for ‘most’, ‘many’, ‘a few’, as they occur in statements of existence, as in ‘most superheroes exist’."

(McGinn, Colin. Logical Properties: Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000. pp. 32-3)
:QUOTE

[3017Metaphysician]

A more realistic schema is one that assigns the Higgs field to the entirety of the Universe. Since is not time dependent it may be inside a human being or inside the brain. Particles may move as ideas in and out. I could hypothesize that the Higgs is activated by the energy producing brain. The particles reacting to structures and methods produce ideas. Emotional ideas may have specific particles and even interoception may have its own particle. So, I am thinking of a human being as an energy transforming object or as a Universe in itself. It has the capacity to create another Universe.
Zero set may have dimensions set as zero. That is the dimensions included in the set. Time, mass, how many dimensions can we set to zero? How about the unknown dimensions?

Thanks, indeed,

What "creates" possibility spaces and abstract objects for that matter? Perhaps zero set can still be zero despite of containing something other than matter, energy and perhaps space, or different dimensions need not occupy space?

Perhaps coining something zero, simply denotes it still exists, but in a different state?

WD!

Are you thinking about an analogical law of conservation there?

From what I know of possibility spaces apart from the material is that we cannot have a thought of something that has not been assigned a possibility space, this would be true non-existence, I think.

[3017Metaphysician]

Can we create a universe?

Sure. If there is enough love.

TB!

I wonder if both the concepts of love, and the concepts of math, have anything in common. Aren't they both considered abstract metaphysical things-in-themselves? Too, do they hold some sort of universal truth value? I'm thinking the answers are yes and yes...

[The Beast]

metaphysician

I wonder if both the concepts of love, and the concepts of math, have anything in common... I'm thinking the answers are yes and yes...

What is love? In the Universal sense it is the energy of a random collision into existence. Love is the living beauty, union and harmony that is to the experience of the senses. A creative metaphysical force shaping reality. Love works with quantifiable nomenclature in physics and chemistry. In humans it is the distinctive characteristic achieved by a method of mind. Human love attempts to copy the Universal mechanism constructing beauty, union, and harmony. In the words of Keats: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness” A human intuition in the method of love assigns the dimension of forever... I also heard timeless.