Posted by
Günther Greindl on
Nov 22, 2007; 12:48am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FRIAM-and-causality-tp525252p525298.html
Hi,
>> Ok - but the gooey glob is also only a description - we can extend the
> I CANNOT extend the gooey glob to contain the whole universe. And I
> doubt that you can, either. [grin] But, I don't know that for sure.
OK, point for you ;-) What I meant is the distinction epistemological
problem vs reality.
> I'm not being entirely facetious, here. Partial ordering is a
> consequence of locality. And locality seems fundamental to what we
> understand about the universe (which is why entanglement is so freaky to
> us).
I thought it through and you are right - total ordering is bogus. What I
probably meant (intuitively) is not a total ordering, but a partial
ordering where every element has a supremum/infimum - a lattice (I
think; but that requires two operations, and we only want one
(ordering)); at least something where you can draw a Hasse diagram (with
the events).
Or do you believe/mean that from localty follows the weakest form of
partial ordering - that is that _no_ form of hierarchy can be imposed
upon certain events.
> So, I suspect "the universe" is actually an ill-formed and
> delusional concept, perhaps even meaningless. Nothing is universal.
> Everything is local.
So you probably won't even support sup/inf hierarchy, I gather; I'm no
Relativity pundit - do you think that follows from SR or is it a
philosophical view?
>> I guess the problem boils back down to the question of a deterministic
>> universe or an indeterministic one.
>
> I don't see it that way. I see it as boiling back to the question of
> universality versus locality.
Agreed (see above)
> Such distinctions do NOT require one to consider [in]determinism. But,
> they do require one to consider historical accumulation and canalization
> of causes, i.e. where and how ignorance (particularly of "negligible"
> influences e.g. events very FAR away in space or time) affects causality.
Ok, I see what you mean - but just to be careful with terminology: I
guess you mean "affects the process under investigation causally" and
not "affects causality" (last two words above paragraph)
Former interpretation: we agree. Latter interpretation: we should
discuss ;-))
Cheers,
G?nther
--
G?nther Greindl
Department of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/Blog:
http://dao.complexitystudies.org/Site:
http://www.complexitystudies.org