Am I the discoverer of the effects of greenhouse gases on the environment, or am I the one who best shapes public policy to curtail emissions? — Todd Martin

The former quite obviously needs an extensive science background, and the latter needs to be very conversant with politics, governmental processes, and social psychology. All above and beyond the abilities to reason and write well about past generations of philosophers.

I think it is a tough path to take these days, and I don't envy those professionals who do. It would be more than I could accomplish. Math, by itself, was hard enough.

Motion without time? Look at a photograph. Think of the universe as a dynamical system, forever changing. Time is a way of perceiving change. A tiny iteration of a process in space could be interpreted as a tiny step in time. No change = no time.

Just a thought. :roll: My attempts at philosophy are shallow.

Acolytes are expected to develop indifference to the discomforts of heat and cold . . . — Harold Stewart

I was once told by a practitioner that there were several dogs beneath the thin floor of their meditation building that kept up a racket. They were told to get used to it. :smile:

It's unfortunate there is no one on the forum who has had the Zen epiphany, described in various ways. I did Zen meditation for about a year sixty years ago, but dropped out of the practice. A friend has been doing Zen for over thirty years and he describes the sudden enlightenment as a very stunning, even jarring moment. He then describes his mental state as "empty awareness" - and I argue that since he is seemingly aware of the state it cannot be empty. He also argues it is not a "mental state".

I suspect an actual Zen practitioner would be chuckling at all the philosophical positions in this conversation.

BBC: "Zen is not a philosophy or a religion. Zen tries to free the mind from the slavery of words and the constriction of logic."

Think: Deep Sleep

There are a countably infinity of Turing machines hence a countable infinity of computable numbers, hence a bijection between the natural numbers and the noncomputable numbers. — fishfry

Sorry. Am I missing something here?

I think philosophers should talk about the "big stuff". But that stuff is prone to be very technical, requiring knowledge that takes patience and study to accrue. Of course philosophers should talk about the intricate issues of physics - provided they have deep understanding of the subject. Of course philosophers should address complicated issues in economics - provided they are economists. We don't live in the Athens of 500BC.

I think what I really like about the Dialogues of Plato is just that they take a bite at stuff that is NOT the kind of things like laws of physics, stuff like friendship, love, how to run a state — Ansiktsburk

A political philosopher needs a background in PolSci. Some denominational ministers are quite good at friendship and love - in that sense they are philosophers. And, of course, amateur philosophers can talk all they want about anything. Sometimes people listen.

One of the unsolved problems in science is the so-called Theory Of Everything (TOE). While I'm not clear on the details and hopefully that doesn't matter , , , — TheMadFool

I'm sure the details are insignificant, so proceed with your investigation of reality! Bully show! :smile:

If it is just drawing from things that already exist? — Darkneos

Can you identify Dora Maar from Picasso's portrait?

This is a painting (drawing) of a thing that already exists. Suppose that thing was a photo of Maar. Would Picasso's portrait be considered a copy then?

{ } is a subset of A, { } has N as an element. So A = {x, y, N} — TheMadFool

Since N is an element of A, it is something: an element of A. :worry:

Ergo, Nothing is impossible. That's why there's something. — TheMadFool

I'm so glad you have proven this to your satisfaction. It shows that something is nothing to worry about. Thank you. :up:

Nothing = The empty set = { } — TheMadFool

The empty set is not nothing. But it contains nothing. At least in naive set theory. :nerd:

It is nothing, but it can become everything. — leo

Very pleasing and Zen-like. A koan? :up:

In the pre-universe either something comes from nothing or there was an eternal and immaterial (no-thing) first existant. It is so simple. — val p miranda

You seem to be thinking of the hypothetical pre-universe as something that we can reason about, as if the logic of our world can be applied to what might be completely alien to us.

I don't see it as a valid question, more like a waste of time. — Darkneos

Ditto. Like discussing an afterlife.

For this theory of reality being a simulation to fly, it's necessary that the program that codes the simulation be finite for if not the program can't be completed/finished let alone executed on a computer. — TheMadFool

Why? You seem to assume that whatever meta-reality "programs" our reality is subject to the same laws and processes that occur in our world. Perhaps our notion of time does not exist there, nor the physical laws of our universe. In that case your argument concerning the irrationals is meaningless. Just a thought. :chin:

↪jgill
There is a common confusion between intention and intentionality, just as there is between potential and potentiality. The former has content, the latter is indeterminate: better understood as a faculty rather than a capacity. — Possibility

OK. Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense. :smile:

Intentionality is a predictive distribution of effort and attention - it requires consciousness, but one need not be conscious of it — Possibility

SEP: "In philosophy, intentionality is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs" . . . " ‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher’s word: ever since it was introduced into philosophy by Franz Brentano in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it has been used to refer to the puzzles of representation, all of which lie at the interface between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language". . . "Consciousness and intentionality can seem to pervade much or all of mental life—perhaps they somehow account for what it is to have a mind; at any rate they seem to be important, broad aspects of it. But achieving a general understanding of either is an enormous challenge. Part of this lies in figuring out how they are related."

OK. This is technical jargon for philosophers. Not how I might have defined it.

Science has become more and more compartmentalized and specialized to a degree that the language of science is not easily accessible or comprehensible to the otherwise generally well educated. — magritte

How true. Up until the late 1800s, magazines like Nature and its predecessors had articles about discoveries in mathematics that were by and large intelligible to normal, well-educated readers. These days new ideas in the subject are usually too specialized for even mathematicians not working in those specific areas to understand.

An act is not recognised as ‘creative’ until an abstract thinker attributes intentionality - but the act still happens — Possibility

Not necessarily, if I am interpreting what you are saying correctly. My own experience in mathematics belies this statement. I have had ideas pop into my head without having primed myself by thinking about a subject; the ideas then have been recognized as creative - but without intentionality.

You seemed to have this misconception too. Probably you still do, considering your repeated snarky remarks, instead of actually putting forward arguments — leo

Sorry if I offended you, but all such arguments seem trivial, so why present them? Of course creativity is not always a good thing, nor destruction inherently bad. Was the creation of nerve gas or ISIS a good thing or a bad thing? Was the destruction of concentration camps or the Nazi Regime or a dangerous bridge good or bad? Notions of good or bad depend upon context and perspective.

Destruction being inseparable from creation is a more debatable issue IMO.

This isn't a diagram of how much emphasis any particular human society contingently puts on the different subjects, but of the inherent relationships between the different subjects — Pfhorrest

I can see a path from construction to geometry and back again in your diagram. But the image of the diagram infers (to me) philosophy is the bedrock of all activities. Is this your message? Or, if you mean to imply that philosophical conversations occur in all activities perhaps philosophy doesn't even belong in the illustration since it is pervasive. Communication, reflection, speculation - these bring people together from various disciplines rather than formal philosophy.

A social science is normally not considered a physical science. Oxford Dictionary on physical sciences: "the sciences concerned with the study of inanimate natural objects, including physics, chemistry, astronomy, and related subjects." If you didn't have ethical sciences I would say just "sciences".

So "coming before" simply refers to the existence of a certain piece of biological or mental machinery, which I would not consider creativity itself. Similarly, the ability to solve problems becomes "problem solving" before the act of problem solving.


"think in the abstract and form images of realities that are not present"

And "thinking in the abstract" doesn't necessarily lead to an act of creativity. I speculate that mostly it does not and is merely unproductive daydreaming. Am I thinking in the abstract when I contemplate mathematics? Does "abstract" mean non-physical? Am I thinking in the abstract when I imagine vanishing abruptly and re-appearing somewhere else? "images of realities" is pretty broad I guess.

What we create isn't always positive, and what we destroy isn't always negative. — leo

And this is your original thesis? I'm amazed someone hasn't thought of it before. :roll:

Does creativity come before the act? — Brett

Existing in some sort of abstract Platonic fashion? I would say, no. And you and others might say, yes. It's an argument devoid of substance IMO.

It’s an adaptation of the Quadrivium’s . . . — Pfhorrest

"A medieval university curriculum involving the “mathematical arts” of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music." (Wiki)

Generally, social science is not considered a physical science. Look it up.

And your diagram accords philosophy an enviable position among virtually all human activities. At a time in the past that might have had merit, but I don't see it these days. Sorry, but it seems conceited and way out of proportion. And the mathematical world now is far too complicated to be encapsulated so trivially in your diagram.

But I am not a philosopher, and others hereabouts will have opinions supporting your views I suspect. That's OK.

Since when is social science a physical science? And your division of mathematics is naive.

Creativity itself has no purpose. But those who create usually do.

Change is both a creation and a destruction, creation of what comes to be and destruction of what ceases to be. So it would be misguided to use change as a synonym for destruction. — leo

I mentioned earlier that having an idea and writing it down can be an act of creation without destruction, and you replied that I destroyed a piece of paper in the process or destroyed a world in which the idea had not existed. All of which seems pedantic and is more than a little absurd. Perhaps you can demonstrate how your creation/destruction interplay applied uniformly to everything is of any value whatsoever.

You might also want to take a look at topology — TheMadFool

You mean a coffee cup being "destroyed" to become a doughnut? :chin:

This subject comes up among mathematicians when they are feeling a bit philosophical. A half century ago my late advisor simply stated there is nothing new in mathematics. I have found this to be debatable although many math people think it's not worth the effort. Most new and creative ideas in my profession arise, sometimes marginally, from previous notions, however they may be disguised in novel terms.

As an example, a functional integral is a concept that might have been difficult to explain to Eudoxus, who in 370BC devised a method of exhaustion to find volumes and areas. Archimedes then adopted this concept. But not until the 17th century did the foundations of modern calculus appear in works of Fermat and others. And Newton and Leibniz might have had trouble in understanding this abstraction of integration.

And then there are modern subjects that use normal language to describe what is being mathematically conjured, like category theory and schema. These areas of study arise from processes of abstraction and generalization.

From a personal perspective, I've recently defined and studied something I call a hybrid path line, which bears similarity to path lines from fluid dynamics or dynamical systems, but is different. It's of no consequence, a mere plaything, but illustrates how one concept leads to another. :cool:

Reflection or speculation, but with a bit of pomp and ceremony. :cool:

The point is that destruction isn’t inherently bad, contrary to popular belief. Maybe you need to overcome that belief too — leo

The word "destruction" has a negative connotation. Try using the word "change" instead. Just a thought.

I hope my participation in this thread doesn't inconvenience or distress you too much. — fishfry

Of course it doesn't. Your posts are uniformly excellent.

I don't see a point in continuing this conversation. — SophistiCat

That's all I meant.

As does yours. Mine moved us eight hours ahead! Now look where we are. :worry:

When did science relinquish logic from its tool box — Metaphysician Undercover

When it became apparent that lightening strikes were not Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Olympus.

There is no halting problem concerning this thread.

You say you created something because you focus on what comes to be, the field of mathematics that includes this "form". If you focus on what ceased to be, the field of mathematics without that "form", you would say you destroyed something. But really you both created and destroyed something — leo

I see why I didn't pursue philosophy in school . . . :roll:

If I said that I would be content enough if nothing happened after physical death . . . — TiredThinker

Be content now. After you pass the word will have no meaning.

I read recently that Dark Energy might be the aether resurrected, or simply what we know as the Vacuum of space. Where science inches ahead, philosophers go boldly. :nerd:

Russell is clearly wrong. This paradox is now clearly fixed. Can we move on in a unified manner? — Philosopher19

Yes. Off the first page of TPF. :roll:

I am a scientist — Sir Philo Sophia

Having made that statement you are obliged to supply details. — jgill

???

Guess you may not be a professional scientist. No big deal. :roll: