Physics is.. sort of broken right now (cosmology and particle physics at any rat — Seppo

Then it needs a fix.

As Koelmans says, — apokrisis

WTF is Koelmans? Sounds Dutch: The cool man.

@Seppo is suddenly very quiet! Now why should that be?

You have clashing brane theories that make use of string theory’s higher dimensionality — apokrisis

I said, the prevailing view. Branes and pyrotechnics dont offer a good explanation to confine matter (except gravitons) on a brane.

only if you have a few billion years to run the trial... — Michael Zwingli

Not true.

At / below the Planck radius, "before the BB" makes no sense to speculate about; — 180 Proof

Why not?

But mathematical physics is certainly not dogmatic about these kinds of things. — apokrisis

Mathematical physics no. Physicists yes.

All this stuff about symmetry breaking. From the moment I learned it had donuts, no, doubts about this. When already the Higgs mechanism is non-existent (modern day phlogiston) then what about the other two?

I've criticized you for the (frankly rather ridiculous) things you've said. Not for any items of personal trivia. And as a self-admitted crackpot (points for honesty btw), I'm just not interested in what you've got to say any more, on this or really any other topic. Not because you're wrong, necessarily, I just don't care. Life's too short to bother with crackpots, even if broken clocks are still right once in a while.

Sorry/not sorry.

Finally a reply! But as crackpot tells jackpot that it doesnt wanna dance no more, I leave crackpot and letit be! No sorry.

I just don't care — Seppo

Then you miss out on the revelation of the century! The universe has spoken to me! In the language of Nature which I describe by math, the easy part.

No woo required. — 180 Proof

Who said anything about "woo"?. What I said was :
"Both sides assume without evidence, that some-thing existed before our space-time era began. But one imagines that what-is-is-what-was. While the other envisions that what-was-is-what-will-be. ???" Now which side is pitching "woo"? Are you just being contrarian? :smile:

"Both sides" of what? I can't follow you, G. My mention of "woo" is explicated in the post you reference (first paragraph).

The real woo is an infinite 4d open torus with Planck-sized mouth. Placed in an infinite 5d flat space. 3D spacetime fluctuating wildly at the mouth (for you Seppo; I know exactly why you're not interested...).

So we discover there is this broken symmetry at the root of things. It is not unreasonable to wind that back to the symmetry state that marks its beginning. — apokrisis

Of course, I was putting words in Planck's mouth to illustrate the philosophical problem of the abrupt beginning of our space-time world from an initial state of infinity-eternity, that we are not able to penetrate with our physical science. Not to be deterred, we still attempt to go beyond that physical limit, with meta-physical imagination. And such speculation is posited by some famous serious scientists. Yet contrarians refer to some of those conjectures as "woo" (in a non-Shakesperean sense), while the other shot-in-the-dark guesses are "justified" scientific inference from limited information.

Anyway, I just read a section of a book, written by Astronomer/Physicist John Barrow, on "classical cosmology". There, he noted : "prior to the Planck time 10^-43 seconds we know nothing of the state of space and time nor even if such familiar entities existed". He goes on to say, "during this fleeting era (10^-43 to 10^-35 seconds) there is a complete symmetry between all these interactions (fundamental forces) . . . . complete symmetry between matter and antimatter". [my emphasis] So, according to the scientist's BB theory inferences from current conditions to Planck time conditions, the Singularity was symmetrically balanced.

Which raises the question for both materialist physicists and non-materialist meta-physicists, "what caused that sudden symmetry break . . . that instant imbalance?" Anything we say about that pre-Planck era is inherently speculative, and based on certain assumptions. The pertinent presumptions here are A- "matter (particles) is fundamental", or B- "mind (reason ; law) is fundamental. Neither side of this debate knows what it's talking about, in scientific terms. But as philosophical inferences, they are both worthy of serious consideration. IMHO. Scientists tend to prefer a physical scenario, such as the Quantum Fluctuation hypothesis (due to random Chance). And some Philosophers prefer to consider a non-random lawful scenario, such as Aristotle's First Cause/Prime Mover (a deity of "pure form"). Which acts via teleological Intention. Admittedly, the latter is not an empirical scientific theory, but then neither is the imaginary Quantum Fluctuation scenario. So, why not give due consideration to both propositions? :cool:


"The Swerve" refers to a key conception in the ancient atomistic theories according to which atoms moving through the void are subject to clinamen: while falling straight through the void, they are sometimes subject to a slight, unpredictable swerve.
__reference to De Rerum Natura, by Lucretius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swerve
Note : the poetic invention of a sudden unexpected change in course foreshadowed modern "Quantum Fluctuation" proposals to explain how acausal randomness can be a creative disruption of Chaos to produce an orderly organized world.

35 seconds) there is a complete symmetry between all these interactions (fundamental forces) . . . . complete symmetry between matter and antimatter". — Gnomon

Prishon says: No symmetry between interaction! Symmetry break based on wrong assumption. Higgsy mechanism no exist! Matter antimatter are equal and were always equal. Also now! Anti rishons on othere side of 4d open torus! Anti quarki and anti lepton on other side. Quarki and lepton contain same anti as normal. On other side of open torus Prishon sees anti quarki and anti leptoni. But on both sides equal number both.

Which raises the question for both materialist physicists and non-materialist meta-physicists, "what caused that sudden symmetry break . . . that instant imbalance?" — Gnomon

The Universe was also expanding and cooling at an exponential rate while in that vanilla unbroken state - according to the simplest extrapolations. So the Universe just had to cross a threshold where the unified conditions finally broke in the usual phase transition way. Or not so usual if this breaking also released an inflationary spurt.

Admittedly, the latter is not an empirical scientific theory, but then neither is the imaginary Quantum Fluctuation scenario. So, why not give due consideration to both propositions? :cool: — Gnomon

But GR and QM are empirical. Phase transitions are empirical. Everything back to the Planck event horizon has at least an evidenced basis that constrains its speculations.

Even versions of teleology are empirical to the degree that quantum nonlocality and retrocausality are accepted as a thing - Jack Sarfatti offering an example of such a line of thought here.

So the reason to take one side seriously is that there is good evidence for its starting assumptions.

Which raises the question for both materialist physicists and non-materialist meta-physicists, "what caused that sudden symmetry break . . . that instant imbalance?" — Gnomon

An expanding and cooling space of fluctuations will at some point cross a threshold where the fluctuations cease to rule as correlated actions start to take over. The simple example is steam condensing into water. So order emerges as all the hot particles become regulated by some larger collective state. Lawfulness appears. It is almost as if a divine hand intervened … not. :razz:

So in general, once you have a Planckian world with the ingredients of spacetime and energy density, the future is baked into that material package. The puzzle - the need for new physics - lies in how to account for that starting point.

My own points here is about taking the emergence of spacetime and energy density seriously and looking for some kind of naked symmetry breaking story which produces that initial division itself. Don’t just keep shoving that basic step further back in “time” to some other “place” that has “infinite” energy to expend. The next step for cosmology has to be the one that breaks down the very notion of dimensionality and gives it an emergent explanation.

This is why loop quantum gravity was a promising approach. Many different versions were at least suggesting that naked 1D fluctuations - an action without a space to give it direction - could still knit together a web of correlations. A quantum foam would find its own emergent order that cooled its chaos. There was evidence for the speculation in terms of running computer simulations of the maths being proposed.

Materialist approaches also can claim to know what are the known unknowns. The key to unlocking progress is figuring out the grand unified symmetry that describes the Plankscale initial conditions - the one that unifies the Standard Model’s hierarchy of known symmetry breakings.

So the materialists have a pretty well defined project ahead of them. The issue of what came “before” the Big Bang is interesting. But there are big gaps to fill in the story of what the initial symmetry state looked like first.

Scientists tend to prefer a physical scenario, such as the Quantum Fluctuation hypothesis (due to random Chance). And some Philosophers prefer to consider a non-random lawful scenario, such as Aristotle's First Cause/Prime Mover (a deity of "pure form"). Which acts via teleological Intention. — Gnomon

My own approach is influenced by Peircean systems logic. And that would argue that the initial conditions were a vagueness - a “realm” where the principle of non-contradiction had yet to even apply.

So law and fluctuation would have been indistinguishable to the degree that both were present. They would have “existed” as just the latent possibility of such a division.

And this is what the reciprocal structure of the Planck constants tell us. At the beginning of the Big Bang, fluctuations had the Planck temperature and so were as big as the spacetime world they were happening in. The buckling effect of the hot contents was equal to the confining impact of its would-be container. There would thus be both law and chance in balanced existence, but right on top of each other in sharing the same scale, and so not yet actually distinguishable as two divided aspects of the one larger reality.

The Big Bang is the birth of the division and growth in scale that increasingly locates chance to the local scale of being, and law to the global scale of being.

This is why the Universe seems so perfectly divided in its era of Newtonian classicality. There is a rule by global law. And that allows the writing of prescriptive equations into which any "chance" measurement can be inserted as a local variable.

Chance is so constrained that you can count it as entropy, or distinguishable microstates. The only real fluctuation is quantum, and that has been tamed by decoherence now. Just as law has been pushed so far towards its global limit that it appears to transcend our Universe (becoming written in the mind of God so far as many materialists are concerned :smirk: ), so too chance has been pushed to the edge of the cosmological picture - and thus led to pathologies of extrapolation such as the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory.

So yes. We can boil it down to metaphysical first principles like the dialectical opposition of law and chance. But then we want to avoid the chicken and egg debates about which came first, or which is the ground to the other. That is the kind of causal logic that sets up the two sides of the one story as disjunct monisms. Both good old fashioned materialism and good old fashioned theist woo (or idealism) are logically in error because of their shared reductionism.

It is written into the Planck constant derived equations that describe spacetime and energy density that the logic is dialectical or reciprocal. Local chance and global law are themselves the two sides of reality that had to co-arise as a unity of opposites, a symmetry breaking that was self-organising. You have the triad that is the h that scales pure fluctuation or energetic curvature, the G that scales any deviations from global flatness, and then the c that is the scalefactor for their ever expanding and cooling trajectory towards their respective asymptotic limits.

This kind of logic ought to be very familiar for anyone who has studied ancient Greek metaphysics, or even Eastern approaches like Taoism and Pratītyasamutpāda. In more recent Western tradition, we have Hegel and Peirce.

But as it happens, even a central loops thinker like Rovelli can write an enthusiastic book about Anaximander as the first scientist ... and miss the essential metaphysical point ... of what Anaximander meant by ... apokrisis, or "separating out".

↪Gnomon
"Both sides" of what? I can't follow you, G. My mention of "woo" is explicated in the post you reference (first paragraph). — 180 Proof

I'm not sure. I'm not taking sides. But I'm referring to whatever alternatives you have in mind when categorizing the Science versus Woo controversy. It's all philosophy to me. :grin:

Prishon says: No symmetry between interaction! Symmetry break based on wrong assumption. Higgsy mechanism no exist! Matter antimatter are equal and were always equal. Also now! Anti rishons on othere side of 4d open torus! Anti quarki and anti lepton on other side. Quarki and lepton contain same anti as normal. On other side of open torus Prishon sees anti quarki and anti leptoni. But on both sides equal number both. — Prishon

Exactly! :wink:

Exactly! :wink: — Gnomon

Prishon say: rightydididili! :smile:

So the Universe just had to cross a threshold where the unified conditions finally broke in the usual phase transition way. Or not so usual if this breaking also released an inflationary spurt. — apokrisis

Sorry, if I confused you. I was asking a philosophical "why" question, not a scientific "how" question.

As a philosophical layman, I tend to take the more holistic cosmological perspective of "Emergence", instead of the analytical reductive scientific view of "Phase Transitions". :nerd:

Phase Transition :
Phase transitions occur when the thermodynamic free energy of a system is non-analytic for some choice of thermodynamic variables
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_transition

Evolutionary Emergence :
* As a supplement to the mainstream materialistic (scientific) theory of Causation, EnFormAction is intended to be an evocative label for a well-known, but somewhat mysterious, feature of physics : the Emergent process of Phase Change (or state transitions) from one kind (stable form) of matter to another. These sequential emanations take the structural pattern of a logical hierarchy : from solids, to liquids, to gases, and thence to plasma, or vice-versa. But they don't follow the usual rules of direct contact causation.
* Expand that notion to a Cosmological perspective, and we can identify a more general classification of stratified phase-like emergences : from Physics (energy), to Chemistry (atoms), to Biology (life), to Psychology (minds), to Sociology (global minds). Current theories attribute this undeniable stairstep progession to random accidents, sorted by “natural selection” (a code word for “evaluations” of fitness for the next phase) that in retrospect appear to be teleological, tending toward more cooperation of inter-relationships and entanglements between parts on the same level of emergence. Some AI enthusiasts even envision the ultimate evolution of a Cosmic Mind, informed by all lower level phases.
* Zoom back down to the sub-atomic level, and we find another set of "upward" emergences. From the universal Quantum Field of statistical possibilities, "virtual particles" or "wavicles" mysteriously appear from nowhere as almost real particles of matter, such as Bosons & Leptons. Those minimal particles of matter are bound together by strange forces into the paradoxical state of matter called "entanglement". They also tend to cluster into the dynamic structures we call Atoms, as-if foreordained to snap-fit into designated roles in the smallest whole systems. From that barely-real phase of reality, atoms assemble into molecules and thence into larger aggregations of matter. After each emergence, those integrated systems display complex patterns of information, and new physical properties . . . eventually even mental qualities never before seen in the mechanical material world.
http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html

PS__ 180 Proof's answer to the topical question was "there is no why?". If that is the case, why are we discussing the BB on a philosophical forum instead of a scientific forum?

... the universe is eternal: we live in a universe of universes, which has always been and always will be, in some manner — Manuel

I'll drink on this too! Only, I dont think there are universes in universes. Maybe they appear in series. One big bang sending it all to infinity. Then a new one, sending it behind the one before. Etcetera ab minus infinitum ad plus infinitum.

So yes. We can boil it down to metaphysical first principles like the dialectical opposition of law and chance. But then we want to avoid the chicken and egg debates about which came first, or which is the ground to the other. That is the kind of causal logic that sets up the two sides of the one story as disjunct monisms. Both good old fashioned materialism and good old fashioned theist woo (or idealism) are logically in error because of their shared reductionism. — apokrisis

I'm not qualified to discuss some of the technical issues you raise concerning Big Bang theory. But, I can grok your notion of a "dialectical opposition of law and chance". I see that creative dialectic in Darwin's concept of Evolution : Randomness generates diversity, and Selection (apokrisis -- choose, sort out, decide) winnows down the multiplicity to the "fittest" few. Randomness is a series of unrelated accidents, while Selection chooses only those accidents that have something in common : fitness for a niche in Nature. But post-Darwin scientists, with a reductionist worldview, tended to put their emphasis on the chaotic unregulated aspects, and took for granted the orderly regulatory function of Natural Selection. But, from a more holistic perspective, NS seems to be essentially a "law of Nature".

In the June-July issue of Philosophy Now magazine, Ray Tallis notes that the laws of Nature seem to be more than just "habits" or "regularities", and act like directional agents for the path forward of evolution. He raises the "dubious notion" of natural laws as "being agencies in themselves". He presents the metaphor of a horse, which in a state of nature acts upon its own internal urges and needs : eating grass, propagating the species, and escaping predators. But a horse with a human rider, behaves completely differently. It is under the control of an external agent, who has needs and goals that may often be in opposition to those internal motives.

He discusses linear "natural necessity" as compared with some unpredictable irregular patterns of natural behavior. The "necessity" view says that "the laws of nature do not shape what happens, but are simply the shape of what happens". In that case, "the laws of nature . . . come to look less like explanations than descriptions". They are mere regularities, instead of regulators. This would mean that "the natural world is not the obedient servant of a legislative master", as implied by the original meaning of a top-down Royal Mandate intrinsic to the word "Law".

Tallis disagrees with the "that's just the way it is" implication that the predictability of nature. that scientists rely on, is a mere time-worn groove in stone. Instead, he says, "necessity is verbal, logical, or theological, as such, it has no place in grown-up philosophy of science". Ironically, while the laws of Nature are reliable, the laws of Science are continually being revised as our understanding deepens and matures : to wit -- predictable Newtonian Laws as superceded by unpredictable Quantum behaviors. Which he sums up as, "there has been a gap between the habits of nature (which do not change) and the laws of science (which do)".

And that brings him back to his original topic : "the compatibility of law-like nature, with the exercise of freedom by human agents". Within the scope of Nature, we have the steady, but non-progressive cycles of the horse, which continues to behave as its ancestors did millions of years ago. On the other hand, we have the relentless, but unpredictable progression of human Culture, riding the horse, with a will of its own. By imposing its will, human nature gains the freedom from natural laws, that allow it to become a guiding agency astride the horse. Thus a Metaphysical Principle rules over the Physical Habits of Nature. Which raises the "dubious" question of who or what was the Lawmaker, Regulator, Selector, Agent, Rider for the powerful Big Bang horse. Is that too woo to be true? :smile:

By imposing its will, human nature gains the freedom from natural laws, that allow it to become a guiding agency astride the horse. Thus a Metaphysical Principle rules over the Physical Habits of Nature. Which raises the "dubious" question of who or what was the Lawmaker, Regulator, Selector, Agent, Rider for the powerful Big Bang horse. Is that too woo to be true? :smile: — Gnomon

Aren’t you just re-mystifying the view that Tallis wants to de-mystify?

The Big Bang falls within his description of Natural Habits. Regularity is emergent as symmetries are broken and the general cooling-expansion of the Universe prevents its ever returning to its less organised past.

The quark-gluon soup was a moment of featureless hot generality. It was followed by symmetry breakings that created a world organised by the strong, weak and EM force, that has Newtonian masses moving at slower than c, and so on. The laws of particle physics, then eventually elemental chemistry and code-regulated biology, eventually emerged.

The Universe kept cooling-expanding and further ever-more specified levels of “law” emerged like a rocky shoreline with the tide going out.

So everything is unified as a tale of dissipative structure, Chance becomes increasingly constrained in its forms.

But at the same time, chance is becoming increasingly specific in its form.

The quark-gluon soup becomes a collection of broken-out different forces and particles. You get the possibility of protons and electrons, thus atoms, and thus chemistry as a higher level of dissipative structure.

So from the generality of vanilla chaos, we get the specific randomness of chemistry on the surface of the earth. We have dissipative structures like geothermal ocean floor vents that are where life can gets its own metabolic start.

Thus a planet like Earth is already both severely constrained by an accumulation of cosmic constraints, and yet also left with matchingly definite local degrees of freedom. It is already a highly complex system just with its plate tectonics and atmospheric weather systems.

And then life and mind arise as another level of code-based causality - one both constrained and enabled by that accumulation of physics, chemistry and planetary geology. We have to obey the second law of thermodynamics, but we can also accumulate free energy to spend how we like.

Science simply becomes a way of looking at that situation through the eyes of a culture that wants to understand its reality in terms of the causal levers it can pull, the buttons it can push, to control the material possibilities we find in the world.

So where is the woo? The Universe is organised by thermodynamics. That results in pockets of complexity like a planet. Code-based dissipative structure like life arises within entropy gradients like a thermal vent, and then a photosynthetic flux. Eventually that life becomes organised by higher levels of code such as neurons, words and numbers. It develops a “selfish” point of view that imagines itself as the technological lord of creation.

Big deal. :razz:

Aren’t you just re-mystifying the view that Tallis wants to de-mystify?

The Big Bang falls within his description of Natural Habits. Regularity is emergent as symmetries are broken and the general cooling-expansion of the Universe prevents its ever returning to its less organised past. — apokrisis

Although he doesn't make it explicit in the article, Tallis seems to be raising the same old questions that many scientists would put-down to "Mysticism", or even worse, "feckless Philosophy". Having noted that [natural] "laws somehow act upon the 'stuff' of nature from outside it", and that [natural] "laws are a 'quasi-agency'", he seems to be poking his nose into fundamental mysteries. "Outside of nature" is what many call "super-natural". I was merely going along for the ride on the horse that Tallis was directing.

Speaking of "outside nature", how could the Big Bang -- the first stage of an ongoing series -- be labelled a "habit"? Are you implying that it was just another routine step in an eternal cycle of repetitions? For most cosmologists, the BB is the beginning of what we now call "Nature". And anything prior to that, such as habitual regularities would be pure speculation, on super-natural questions. Of course, some of those cosmologists can't help such conjectures, even when it gets them into "woo" territory.

If the universe is prevented, by Entropy, from "ever returning" to it's initial state, that means it's a one-way trip. And not cyclical, as some would have it. In football lingo, "it's one and done". In that case, what might have preceded that auspicious, for us humans, beginning is a legitimate -- not mystical -- philosophical question. It's not a scientific question though, because it cannot be dis-proven empirically. But, since the BB was indeed a "big deal" for those of us who ask "why" questions, trying to de-mystify the provenance of the BB is an act of Wisdom, not necessarily a slippery-slope to Woo.

If our world is defined by its context, the circumstances that led to the BB need to be defined in some way, before we can claim to have a complete philosophical worldview. Of course, some people have religious or political motives, rather than philosophical or scientific reasons for asking such questions. But, by reflexively labeling all such "before the beginning" questions as Woo or Weirdness, would tar many serious scientists and philosophers with the same brush as the "religious nuts" and "wacko weirdos".

That's why I don't accept the "woo" label for my inquiries. Instead, I see it as Science-With-Both-Eyes-Open. Your left eyes informs the analytical & reductive right brain, while the right eye views the world through the filter of the intuitive & holistic left brain. Together, we get a stereoscopic 3D worldview. But with one eye closed, we are blind to half of Reality . . . and may label the missing parts as "woo", or worse. :smile:



Provenance : the beginning of something's existence; something's origin.

Philosophy :
Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." In a broad sense, philosophy is an activity people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships to the world and to each other.
https://philosophy.fsu.edu/undergraduate-study/why-philosophy/What-is-Philosophy

Context : the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

"The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms." - Socrates?

↪180 Proof That's why I don't accept the "woo" label for my inquiries. Instead, I see it as Science-With-Both-Eyes-Open. Your left eyes informs the analytical & reductive right brain, while the right eye views the world through the filter of the intuitive & holistic left brain. Together, we get a stereoscopic 3D worldview. But with one eye closed, we are blind to half of Reality . . . — Gnomon

Looking at the sun "With-Both-Eyes-Open" will completely blind you. Remember, the old skalds tell us, Odin sacrificed an eye for wisdom. "The right eye" represents our cognitive biases (i.e. subjectivity, introspection, dreaming), which when "open" doesn't see reality at all, but rather sees mostly our own self-flattering (folk psychological / epistemological) projections instead. Reality, in fact, sublimely exceeds both our perceptions and our conceptions; only the proverbial tip of the iceberg – which we exist clinging to! – is all we are ever not "blind" to. It's an 'illusion of knowledge' to assume – make believe – we can ever, or that we have, access to "the whole of reality" (i.e. to see over the encompassing horizon) – whatever that means: the part necessarily cannot contain, or encompass, the whole to which it belongs; and assuming otherwise, which is the perennialist vice, Gnomon, is the mother of all woo-woo.

Having noted that [natural] "laws somehow act upon the 'stuff' of nature from outside it", and that [natural] "laws are a 'quasi-agency'", he seems to be poking his nose into fundamental mysteries. — Gnomon

He was pointing out how this way of speaking retains a transcendental framing that doesn’t make causal sense.

The error of thought is in thinking that the material world is essentially passive stuff that needs to be made to move. That then raises the question of how particles get moved by “laws”.

But if you switch to a constraints-based perspective - a Peircean metaphysics of habits - then the presumption is that nature starts “in motion” and becomes organised by globally emergent patterns. Temperature falls and “laws”, or the constraints of symmetry breaking, get locked in.

Speaking of "outside nature", how could the Big Bang -- the first stage of an ongoing series -- be labelled a "habit"? Are you implying that it was just another routine step in an eternal cycle of repetitions? — Gnomon

The start would be the least habitual possible state of being. It would thus be the most chaotic, the most vague, and the most symmetric state of being.

This we can know just by rewinding the way things are. The Planckscale gives us this answer. At the Planck temperature and energy density, fluctuations are the same size as the world that is meant to contain them. And talking of a time “before” such a state is like asking about a state more circular than a circle. Time only begins once energy fluctuations become smaller than the spacetime that contains them. It is only with cooling-expanding does the possibility of change, difference and history become a reality worth mentioning.

If the universe is prevented, by Entropy, from "ever returning" to it's initial state, that means it's a one-way trip. — Gnomon

You mean, the future is the Heat Death? Well, duh.

But, since the BB was indeed a "big deal" for those of us who ask "why" questions, trying to de-mystify the provenance of the BB is an act of Wisdom, not necessarily a slippery-slope to Woo. — Gnomon

But you can only argue this way by rejecting the alternative that Tallis writes about. As I say, if you presume matter is passive and at rest, then a transcendent hand is needed to get it moving. But if instead you presume matter starts free and restless - just a fluctuation - then organisation will emerge simply because fluctuations will all start to interact and collectively fall into constrained patterns. A history of accidents will accumulate in the same way randomly falling raindrops will start to carve the habit of a river in a landscape.

Have you simply misunderstood Tallis here? You are taking the view he critiques.

But, by reflexively labeling all such "before the beginning" questions as Woo or Weirdness, would tar many serious scientists and philosophers with the same brush as the "religious nuts" and "wacko weirdos". — Gnomon

You are quite right that many physicists just talk about the laws of nature as if they were written in the mind of God. Many are indeed believers in creators. Many believe in a time before the Big Bang. Many believe in all sorts of things consistent with transcendental causality.

I agree they are dealing in woo to the extent they remain mired in such an ontology.

In reading a lot of this thread, it strikes me that the many competing theoretical physics models of how the Big Bang might have occured are not particularly useful for answering this question in the sense it is often asked.

Swerve and symmetry breaking as causal explanations don't get at the more essential question: why is there something rather than nothing? From whence all this matter and energy? Or, as important of a question, why does it behave the way it does?

It's unclear to me if physics can give us an answer on this. Physics is the study of relationships between physical forces, but how can it study why those relationships are what they are?

The problem with setting up the existence of matter and energy, or their fundemental behaviors as "brute facts," is twofold.

1. Many things we once considered brute facts have turned out to be explained by even more fundemental forces and particles. The onion keeps being peeled back. A lack of ability to progress in explanation does not mean there is no deeper explanation.

2. This answer is highly unsatisfactory, and explanations of theoretical models with varying levels of empirical support and claims of predictive power all amount to so much window dressing on "I don't know, it is what it is."

Of course, the entire question also seems to presuppose some sort of "God's Eye View" through which all truth corresponds to facts of being. I am not so sure this sort of correspondence epistemology actually makes any sense. On the one hand, it seems beset by the skepticism that has hung like a cloud over modern philosophy, "how can I be sure of anything except for my internal states," and on the other it takes a view of knowledge as somehow pure and ahistorical, when it appears that knowledge is more something that evolved and changes forms over time.

Looking at the sun "With-Both-Eyes-Open" will completely blind you. — 180 Proof

Ha! Ever the contrarian. Another point of wisdom is "don't look directly at the sun, with one eye or two."
:smile:

He was pointing out how this way of speaking retains a transcendental framing that doesn’t make causal sense. — apokrisis

In the first paragraph of Tallis' article, entitled “The Laws of Nature”, he says : “. . . to apply that knowledge {about states of matter] outside of the laboratories in support of our agency [free will], are perhaps the most striking expressions of the way in which humans transcend the material world”. He doesn't specifically address the question of “causal sense”. But he seems to be in favor of “transcendental framing” of the FreeWill question, which he has addressed in previous articles and books. In which he concludes that "freewill is not an illusion", i.e not "woo". His framing of the freewill question seems to me to be inherently transcendental.

Transcendental Freedom :
What is more, the Existential Intuition opens up the sense of transcendent objects that are, by analogy with the embodied self, more than what the self experiences of them. ___Tallis
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-can-i-possibly-be-free

The start would be the least habitual possible state of being. — apokrisis

So, you agree that the ultimate source of “habitual” [regular, reliable] behaviors, rather than acquired in the process of evolution, could inferred as laws of nature [necessities] that predate the Bang. By that I mean, if-then instructions for system operation that were programmed into the seed (Singularity) of the Big Bang?

You mean, the future is the Heat Death? Well, duh. — apokrisis

That “duh, everybody knows about heat death” conclusion came as a surprise to Einstein, who assumed a stable and eternal universe in his calculations. And only when faced with contrary evidence, was forced to rename his Cosmological Constant as what we now know as Dark Energy.

But you can only argue this way by rejecting the alternative that Tallis writes about. . . . Have you simply misunderstood Tallis here? You are taking the view he critiques. — apokrisis

The alternative you refer to may be where he looks at an alternative to the notion of mandated laws, “the laws of nature do not shape what happens but are simply the shape of what happens" (e.g. a river formed by accidents). To me, that “explanation” is what he is arguing against -- saying “they come to look less like explanations than descriptions". In other words, describing the effect is not the same as explaining the cause.

You are quite right that many physicists just talk about the laws of nature as if they were written in the mind of God. . . . .I agree they are dealing in woo to the extent they remain mired in such an ontology. — apokrisis

I suspect that those physicists, such as Isaac Newton, who called the necessities of nature “laws”, would not agree with your label of “woo”, for anything that does not comport with your own ontology. They were not being “anti-realist”, but describing reality in terms that everyone could understand. Those who prefer to call those dependable regularities “habits” are implying that they could have been otherwise. But how would they know that, except by re-running the program of evolution several times to see if each execution followed the same basic path. All we know for sure is that Nature seems to be constrained by built-in limitations. So, if you imagine a reality with different constraints you will be dealing with imaginary “woo”, rather than with Reality as we know it. :cool: