Philosophy Discussion Forums

Consul wrote: ↑June 4th, 2020, 4:29 pm

Greta wrote: ↑June 4th, 2020, 6:29 am Thanks, I like the Heisenberg quote.
Do you see any philosophical significance in the difference between matter and energy is the view in current mainstream science? I don't know enough about it to say, myself.

Recommended reading: The Equivalence of Mass and Energy

The important point is still that when "one hears of Einstein’s equation entailing that matter can be converted into energy,…this constitutes an elementary category mistake." The Oxford Dictionary of Physics defines "energy" as "a measure of a system's ability to do work", and abilities are a kind of properties, which cannot exist without things having them.

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"Ask a physicist what physics is all about and he or she might reply that it’s something to do with the study of matter and energy. ‘Matter’ is dispensed with quite swiftly—it is stuff , substance, what things are made from. But ‘energy’ is a much more difficult idea.…"
(p. 1)

"In one sentence, energy is: the ceaseless jiggling motion, the endless straining at the leash, even in apparently empty space, the rest mass and the radiation, the curvature of space–time, the foreground activity, the background hum, the sine qua non."
(p. 360)

(Coopersmith, Jennifer. Energy: The Subtle Concept; The Discovery of Feynman's Blocks from Leibniz to Einstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.)
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Elementary? Maybe to a physicist. Given that no one understands what energy is or where it comes from, treating such notions as obvious is delusional.

There's a great deal of energetic "jiggling", as above, going on within matter when you zoom in. Also the notion of "rest mass" is a relative device, it is not reality., which is never at rest.

Also, let's consider the boundary between mass at so-called rest and radiation? At atomic scale, on the surface of matter, there is no clear distinction as the matter erodes. Given enough time, there will be no distinction. Matter is just clumped energy that will disaggregate back to energy (photons) in the heat death of the universe.

Greta wrote: ↑June 4th, 2020, 7:42 pmElementary? Maybe to a physicist. Given that no one understands what energy is or where it comes from, treating such notions as obvious is delusional.

There's a great deal of energetic "jiggling", as above, going on within matter when you zoom in. Also the notion of "rest mass" is a relative device, it is not reality., which is never at rest.

Also, let's consider the boundary between mass at so-called rest and radiation? At atomic scale, on the surface of matter, there is no clear distinction as the matter erodes. Given enough time, there will be no distinction. Matter is just clumped energy that will disaggregate back to energy (photons) in the heat death of the universe.

Whatever energy is, it's not a substance or a species of matter, but an attribute, a property, which cannot exist without something whose property it is. If elementary particles aren't really substances but complexes of physical properties (quantities), there must still be some other substance or substances functioning as the substratum/substrata of those quantity-clusters. Matter defined as the sum total of (mass-having) elementary particles may be ontologically reducible to bundles of physical quantities, including types of energy; but then there is still matter defined as materia prima, as the ultimate substratum and medium of physical existence. This Matter (capitalized so as to distinguish it from microphysical matter qua sum total of tiny particles or corpuscles) can alternatively be called the Aether. It's the one fundamental kind of physical stuff that fills our universe.

"(I assure readers that it is not the sort of aether that could have a current in it – the aether wind that Michelson and Morley famously failed to detect.)"

(Forrest, Peter. The Necessary Structure of the All-Pervading Aether. Frankfurt: Ontos, 2012. p. 1)

Consul wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 2:49 am

Greta wrote: ↑June 4th, 2020, 7:42 pmElementary? Maybe to a physicist. Given that no one understands what energy is or where it comes from, treating such notions as obvious is delusional.

There's a great deal of energetic "jiggling", as above, going on within matter when you zoom in. Also the notion of "rest mass" is a relative device, it is not reality., which is never at rest.

Also, let's consider the boundary between mass at so-called rest and radiation? At atomic scale, on the surface of matter, there is no clear distinction as the matter erodes. Given enough time, there will be no distinction. Matter is just clumped energy that will disaggregate back to energy (photons) in the heat death of the universe.

Whatever energy is, it's not a substance or a species of matter, but an attribute, a property, which cannot exist without something whose property it is. If elementary particles aren't really substances but complexes of physical properties (quantities), there must still be some other substance or substances functioning as the substratum/substrata of those quantity-clusters. Matter defined as the sum total of (mass-having) elementary particles may be ontologically reducible to bundles of physical quantities, including types of energy; but then there is still matter defined as materia prima, as the ultimate substratum and medium of physical existence. This Matter (capitalized so as to distinguish it from microphysical matter qua sum total of tiny particles or corpuscles) can alternatively be called the Aether. It's the one fundamental kind of physical stuff that fills our universe.

"(I assure readers that it is not the sort of aether that could have a current in it – the aether wind that Michelson and Morley famously failed to detect.)"

(Forrest, Peter. The Necessary Structure of the All-Pervading Aether. Frankfurt: Ontos, 2012. p. 1)

It does not make sense to me. What can an electron possibly be but energy?

viewtopic.php?p=343011#p343011

I think arguments about which things ontologically exist (whether energy exists separately from matter, etc) will continue indefinitely and fruitlessly unless they relate back to what it is useful to regard as existing for the purpose of creating a self-consistent description of what is observed. If that instrumentalist approach is not taken then people may as well be arguing over their personal tastes. They may as well be arguing as to whether chocolate tastes nice. Or they may as well be arguing over the definitions of words.

Steve3007 wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 10:29 am viewtopic.php?p=343011#p343011

I think arguments about which things ontologically exist (whether energy exists separately from matter, etc) will continue indefinitely and fruitlessly unless they relate back to what it is useful to regard as existing for the purpose of creating a self-consistent description of what is observed. If that instrumentalist approach is not taken then people may as well be arguing over their personal tastes. They may as well be arguing as to whether chocolate tastes nice. Or they may as well be arguing over the definitions of words.

I see this opposite of what you're saying.

If people want to claim that energy exists separately from matter as an ontological fact, they should have to show energy existing separately from matter observationally. If they can do that, then there's little to debate. If they can't, then the claim shouldn't be made.

The stories we create as instrumental tools are a different matter.

Terrapin Station wrote:I see this opposite of what you're saying.

If people want to claim that energy exists separately from matter as an ontological fact, they should have to show energy existing separately from matter observationally.

That doesn't appear to me to be the opposite of what I've said.

Greta wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 7:50 amIt does not make sense to me. What can an electron possibly be but energy?

A bit of matter, a tiny material substance.

Steve3007 wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 10:29 am viewtopic.php?p=343011#p343011I think arguments about which things ontologically exist (whether energy exists separately from matter, etc)…

To say that material objects have energy without being energy is not to say that there can be energyless material objects.
In his famous book Kraft und Stoff [Force and Stuff/Matter] (1855), Ludwig Büchner writes: "Keine Kraft ohne Stoff – kein Stoff ohne Kraft!" ["No force without stuff – no stuff without force!"] Correspondingly: No energy without matter – no matter without energy!

Steve3007 wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 11:51 am

Terrapin Station wrote:I see this opposite of what you're saying.

If people want to claim that energy exists separately from matter as an ontological fact, they should have to show energy existing separately from matter observationally.

That doesn't appear to me to be the opposite of what I've said.

I mean the opposite in that if we look at it strictly instrumentally, arguments about it never end. Whereas if we look at it in terms of whether it's really the case, it's pretty easily settled.

Consul wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 1:32 pm

Greta wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 7:50 amIt does not make sense to me. What can an electron possibly be but energy?

A bit of matter, a tiny material substance.

Then, what is matter? What actually is it? What is it made from?

Subatomic particles, especially point particles like electrons and quarks, are said to be irreducible. They are what they are, being irreducible. That is a supposition. If we had the technology to observe Planck scale physics, we may change our minds.

In the end, if hypotheses about the BB theory are correct, then we had a field of dark energy, replete with virtual particles that snap back into non-existence as soon as they appear. Energy. But, apparently, one such fluctuation in the fabric of reality did not pop back out of existence but continued to expand, becoming the universe. This, at the very least, suggests that matter is an emergent property of energy, but energy would be fundamental.

Greta wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 5:51 pmThen, what is matter? What actually is it? What is it made from?

Subatomic particles, especially point particles like electrons and quarks, are said to be irreducible. They are what they are, being irreducible. That is a supposition. If we had the technology to observe Planck scale physics, we may change our minds.

In the end, if hypotheses about the BB theory are correct, then we had a field of dark energy, replete with virtual particles that snap back into non-existence as soon as they appear. Energy. But, apparently, one such fluctuation in the fabric of reality did not pop back out of existence but continued to expand, becoming the universe. This, at the very least, suggests that matter is an emergent property of energy, but energy would be fundamental.

* It is not certain that the particles in the current standard model are really the ultimate elementary particles. For example, quarks might be composed of even smaller particles. What is more, it is not even certain that there is a fundamental level of literally atomic, i.e. mereologically simple, particles, because matter might be atomless gunk, being divisible ad infinitum. If there are simple ultimate particles, they are either zero-dimensional (point-particles) or minimally three-dimensional. Interestingly…

"The physicists are strangely silent, or guarded, on the question of the radius of elementary particles, focused as they are on their mass, motion, charge and spin, perhaps because radius plays little to no role in fixing the behavior of particles."
—Colin McGinn (Basic Structures of Reality, 2011, p. 50)

My opinion is that there aren't really any unextended point-particles, and that treating particles as such is nothing but a mathematical idealization.

Note that mereological simplicity doesn't entail zero-dimensionality! A simple, noncomposite elementary particle can have a nonzero volume.

* You cannot have a physical field such as an energy field without any substantial substratum. For a physical field is not a substance itself but a spatiotemporal collection or distribution of determinate physical quantities belonging to some determinable physical quantity such as energy or mass; and no quantity (or quality) is a substance-independent entity, its of-ness being part of its essence. That is, where there is a quantity (or quality) there must be something (else) whose quantity (or quality) it is, to which it adheres or in which it inheres as an attribute or property of it. There cannot be any free-floating energy fields.

* The Big Bang may have been nothing but a local energetic event in some preexisting, eternal Aether or Prime Matter (Urmaterie [ur-matter] or Weltmaterie [world-matter] in German) that is the substratum&medium of all physical fields.

Consul wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 7:06 pm* You cannot have a physical field such as an energy field without any substantial substratum. For a physical field is not a substance itself but a spatiotemporal collection or distribution of determinate physical quantities belonging to some determinable physical quantity such as energy or mass…

More precisely, what I describe above are classical fields, because quantum fields are another kind of fields, there being an essential difference between classical fields and quantum fields. Mathematically, both kinds of fields are well defined and understood. Ontologically and physically, classical fields are well understood too, but quantum fields are not. For in quantum-field theory the quantum-field values assigned to spacetime points are not determinate, definite values of physical quantities but only expectation values for physical quantities that express the probability of measuring some actual value somewhere. Now the ontological question is: Are such probability fields (probabilistic quantum fields) really out there in the physical world, or are they just physically useful mathematical fictions? Since physics is the science of physical reality and its nature, this question is of utmost importance.

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"But is a systematic association of certain mathematical terms with all points in space-time really enough to establish a field theory in a proper physical sense? Is it not essential for a physical field theory that some kind of real physical properties are allocated to space-time points? This requirement seems not fulfilled in QFT, however. Teller argues that the expression quantum field is only justified on a “perverse reading” of the notion of a field, since no definite physical values whatsoever are assigned to space-time points. Instead, quantum field operators represent the whole spectrum of possible values so that they rather have the status of observables (Teller: “determinables”) or general solutions. Only a specific configuration, i.e. an ascription of definite values to the field observables at all points in space, can count as a proper physical field."

Quantum Field Theory: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quan ... ld-theory/
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Consul -

Fair enough, I wasn't clear on what you could mean.
But when you say 'immaterial substance', I don't see that you're saying anything more than a particular way experiential states can manifest? That's my main query really. Adding the word 'substance' doesn't change that.

It's part of the very ontological concept of a state that states are states of something (different from themselves). Well, if there are higher-order states, the entities they are states of are states themselves; but I'm talking about first-order states, which are states of nonstates, of things (objects/substances) or stuffs (materials).

Alrighty! This is the basis your argument relies on then?


Because if you're not relying on experience reducing to a material substrate here, there's an obvious problem using this conceptualised framing to describe what is itself inherently a state!


The experiential sense of being a self is an experiential state. Not something else, not an 'immaterial substance', an experiential state. It's just the nature of experience.




Adjust your ontology so it matches reality, rather than tying yourself in knots to try to make reality fit your preferred framing!


(Unless you believe in an immaterial substance like a soul, which 'has experiences' but exists independant of them. Which I know you don't).

Consul wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 7:06 pm

Greta wrote: ↑June 5th, 2020, 5:51 pmThen, what is matter? What actually is it? What is it made from?

Subatomic particles, especially point particles like electrons and quarks, are said to be irreducible. They are what they are, being irreducible. That is a supposition. If we had the technology to observe Planck scale physics, we may change our minds.

In the end, if hypotheses about the BB theory are correct, then we had a field of dark energy, replete with virtual particles that snap back into non-existence as soon as they appear. Energy. But, apparently, one such fluctuation in the fabric of reality did not pop back out of existence but continued to expand, becoming the universe. This, at the very least, suggests that matter is an emergent property of energy, but energy would be fundamental.

* It is not certain that the particles in the current standard model are really the ultimate elementary particles. For example, quarks might be composed of even smaller particles. What is more, it is not even certain that there is a fundamental level of literally atomic, i.e. mereologically simple, particles, because matter might be atomless gunk, being divisible ad infinitum. If there are simple ultimate particles, they are either zero-dimensional (point-particles) or minimally three-dimensional. Interestingly…

"The physicists are strangely silent, or guarded, on the question of the radius of elementary particles, focused as they are on their mass, motion, charge and spin, perhaps because radius plays little to no role in fixing the behavior of particles."
—Colin McGinn (Basic Structures of Reality, 2011, p. 50)

My opinion is that there aren't really any unextended point-particles, and that treating particles as such is nothing but a mathematical idealization.

Note that mereological simplicity doesn't entail zero-dimensionality! A simple, noncomposite elementary particle can have a nonzero volume.

* You cannot have a physical field such as an energy field without any substantial substratum. For a physical field is not a substance itself but a spatiotemporal collection or distribution of determinate physical quantities belonging to some determinable physical quantity such as energy or mass; and no quantity (or quality) is a substance-independent entity, its of-ness being part of its essence. That is, where there is a quantity (or quality) there must be something (else) whose quantity (or quality) it is, to which it adheres or in which it inheres as an attribute or property of it. There cannot be any free-floating energy fields.

* The Big Bang may have been nothing but a local energetic event in some preexisting, eternal Aether or Prime Matter (Urmaterie [ur-matter] or Weltmaterie [world-matter] in German) that is the substratum&medium of all physical fields.

The idea of fields and substratum is an odd one, and possibly more perceptual than actual.

Greta wrote: ↑June 6th, 2020, 3:10 amThe idea of fields and substratum is an odd one, and possibly more perceptual than actual.

No, on the contrary, it's the idea of free-floating, substrate-independent properties (qualities, quantities) which is "odd"!

(By the way, I think quantities are measurable and numerically representable qualities.)

Wait a minute, what about trope ontology as a monocategorial basic ontology, which doesn't postulate any substrata in addition to tropes, so that physical fields could consist of such free-floating tropes?

Robert Garcia has introduced a useful distinction between two types of tropes: modifying tropes (modifiers) vs. modular tropes (modules).

If particular modes are modifiers, it's plainly ontologically incoherent to postulate substrateless modes, i.e. modes unhad by any objects or substances, since where there is a modifier there must be something modified by it; and if they are modules, they turn out to be "little thin mini-substances" (Peter Simons), i.e. objects with only one property, in which case trope ontology is just the good old substance-attribute ontology in disguise.

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"The characterization of modes as ontologically dependent derives from the insight that it is impossible for there to be ways things are without there being things that are those ways."

(Stuart, Matthew. Locke's Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 10)

"Properties are ways things are. The mass or charge of an electron is a way the electron is (in this case, a way that any electron is). Relations are ways things stand to each other.
If a property is a way that a thing is, then this brings the property into very intimate connection with the thing, but without destroying the distinction between them. One can see the point of thinking of instantiation as a fundamental connection, a tie or nexus closer than mere relation. Nor will one be much tempted by the idea of an uninstantiated property. A way that things are could hardly exist on its own.
Again, one will not be tempted by the idea that the way a thing stands to other things, a relation, could exist on its own, independent of the things. (Not that the idea was ever very tempting! It is easier to substantialize properties than relations.)"

(Armstrong, D. M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. pp. 96-7)
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