Well, the exact calculations I don't have. You need to calculate the bound state of three massless preons interacting by a color gauge. For 3 bound quarks thats only done approximately. On discrete space. But you can basically use the Lagrangian of QCD, with modifications. The muon just has a larger spatial extent, because it's an excitation. The electron is on that scale still point like.

The electron is on that scale still point like. — Haglund

Is it actually a point or also a region of excitation?

And either way, that gets us into the issue of how you can pack three degrees of freedom into such a small space and not arrive at a triad of 200 GeV particles due to momentum uncertainty.

Preon theory looks to be all epicycles to me at the moment. But I’m interested if you can offer more motivation.

And either way, that gets us into the issue of how you can pack three degrees of freedom into such a small space and not arrive at a triad of 200 GeV particles due to momentum uncertainty. — apokrisis

That's the mass paradox. This is only the case for massive particles. This was given as a counter. But massless particles don't have momentum. Only pure kinetic energy. Explaining the relation between energy and mass.

In a proton, a neutron, electron, and neutrino, there are equal amounts of preons and anti preons. 12 of each. No asymmetry. Only the combination. If there is a mirror universe "on the other side" it can be righthanded. Symmetry again!

In the superstrong field that binds them, the energy is lowered.

Is it actually a point or also a region of excitation? — apokrisis

It's the lowest energy state of three -1/3 charged preons. If true...

The problem: why should preons and antipreons arrange in protons, neutrons, electrons, and neutrinos only? Here chirality must kick in.

So, the idea here would be that of intellectual intuition; that in virtue of being the noumenal we can somehow directly know it's nature. The possibility cannot be ruled out, but even if such direct knowing were possible; there could be no discursive "knowing that we know — Janus

I think that is close to what Jacques Maritain meant by the 'intuition of being'.

So, it seems that what you are looking for is that experience of illumination — Janus

I'm long past expecting anything like that to happen to me, but I still believe that it is central to metaphysics proper.

Ironically, Kant's unknowable noumena are the very kind of knowledge that philosophers specialize in : speculation & conjecture into the unknown, and objectively unknowable, mysteries that are not amenable to scientific exploration — Gnomon

Not at all. The later Kant was completely dismissive of speculative metaphysics. I won't try and explain what is meant by the philosophical term noumenon but it's not a catch-all term for spooky woo-woo.

I'm long past expecting anything like that to happen to me, but I still believe that it is central to metaphysics proper. — Wayfarer

That's true of me also; but I think it is good to remain open to the possibility. In my view, "metaphysics proper" would not be some set of true propositions, but would consist in metaphors that allude to the experience of illuminated certainty, or if it is preferable because less presumptuous, illuminated lack of doubt..

:up:

The noumenal is not. The very term ‘noumenal’ is a ‘phenomenal’ (both technically and literally!).

Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is the way to refer to the absence of something somewhere not nothing nowhere (because that is meaningless drivel much like ‘potato on yellow under the is and but of it one two trousers’)

Encyclopedia entries on 'noumena' in Kant 1, 2, and 3.

Etymology - The Greek word nooúmenon is the neuter middle-passive present participle of noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word noûs, an Attic contracted form of νόος nóos[a] "perception, understanding, mind." A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought".

It is generally opposed in Kant to 'phenomena' meaning 'that which appears'. So a simple explanation would be in terms of the distinction between 'what appears' (phenomenon) and 'what truly is' (noumenon). It is another iteration of the age-old philosophical distinction of reality and appearance.

Read more. I don’t have my copy at hand to literally type in the exact passage. I’ve done so MANY times before.

The bit with ‘negative sense only’. Noumenon in the ‘positive sense’ is … well, to refer to it we can only do ‘negatively’. That is the point.

So I think what's been lost sight of is precisely the intuition of the domain of unconditional, the realm of necessary truths (arguably, the noumenal realm). — Wayfarer

As I said in my earlier post, the only sense of "necessary" which can be validated is the sense of "needed for...", as a good, for whatever purpose. The sense of "necessary" which many people propose, a necessity which is independent of the wants and needs of human beings, and supports common determinism cannot be validated. The closest we can get to such a "necessity" is the Will of God.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/682932

I think the proper limits to curvature are the infinitely small radius, and the infinitely large radius. The infinitely large radius cannot appear as a two dimensional line because a radius is the property of a circle. Therefore both the maximum curve and the minimum curve, maintain their status as 2 dimensional, and neither gets reduced to a one dimensional figure.

A 2d torus has negative Gaussian curvature on the inside, positive on the outside, and zero in between. Because its embedding in 3d. But in 4d it has zero curvature, like a 2d cylinder. — Haglund

As I explained to apokrisis, you cannot add another dimension without adding another feature. If you add another feature, then the figure is not the same figure. For example, a one dimensional line is not the same as a two dimensional plane, and a two dimensional circle is not the same as a three dimensional sphere. So it doesn't make any sense to talk about the same object in 2d, 3d, and 4d, that's a fundamental category mistake.

Or did I say the larger picture sees flatness as poised between the opposing extremes of hyperbolic and hyperspheric curvature? And that is why the value of pi might vary between 2 and infinity, with 3.14… being the special case where the Gaussian world would intersect the Euclidean one? — apokrisis

Do you not see the unintelligible (incoherent) result of your category mistake? By giving the the one dimensional plane a presence as a two dimensional figure (or two dimensional plane a presence as a three dimensional object), you produce the possibility that pi could be anything. But pi, by definition, is essentially a statement of the relationship between a one dimensional object, (the diameter), and a two dimensional object, (the circumference). Notice that this is said to be an irrational ratio, and it is irrational because the two distinct dimensions are fundamentally incommensurable. This is verified by taking two lines supposedly equidistant in two distinct dimensions, and attempting to establish a relation between them, the result is a similar irrational ratio, the square root of two.

So when you you take the two dimensional flat plane, and try to give it a presence in a three dimensional geometrical construct (or bring a one dimensional line, into a two dimensional geometry), you incorporate that fundamental incommensurability into your geometrical system. The result is that pi itself, which is by its definition, a mathematical description of the relationship between a one dimensional figure and a two dimensional figure, becomes meaningless, as you describe. So you do not actually get rid of the boundary between the distinct dimensions, which you cannot do because of the basic incommensurability, you simply incorporate that element of unintelligibility deeper into your geometry, by hiding it.

One might, exercising the uttermost caution, conjecture that the phenomena are the outside appearances, and the noumena antithesis thereof, the inside story. Appearances, as we all have come to learn, can deceive, and the question intrudes, in the name of truth and justice: should we look for a more fruitful synthesis of both? Is a synthetic trinity, instead of the quite disappointing dual of the thesis and antithesis, what's desired?

As I explained to apokrisis, you cannot add another dimension without adding another feature. If you add another feature, then the figure is not the same figure. For example, a one dimensional line is not the same as a two dimensional plane, and a two dimensional circle is not the same as a three dimensional sphere. So it doesn't make any sense to talk about the same object in 2d, 3d, and 4d, that's a fundamental category mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover

Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic property, which can be measured inside the curved space. For example, on a 2d sphere, initial parallel lines, after parsllel transporting them, can cross. Or triangles have different angle sums.

Bear in mind that the Cosmos exists to serve the second law and thus its aim is to maximise entropy. So even without the inherent quantum uncertainty, the Cosmos is committed to the production of uncertainty at every turn. — apokrisis

Come on apokrisis. This statement says that the cosmos was created with the purpose of maximizing entropy. That means that it was created intentionally, with that goal. But if God wanted a universe with maximum entropy, He would have just created it that way. Wouldn't that have been much easier for Him anyway?

As Haglund correctly points out, the second law of thermodynamics is simply a way that we describe things. And, I might add that it is fundamentally mistaken to apply the laws of thermodynamics to the universe (as a whole). This is because these laws are designed to be applicable only to systems, and we have no principles whereby we can conceptualize the universe as a system. Within any system, there is a quantity of energy which is lost to that system, over time. Much of that energy actually escapes the system, as heat loss from friction for example. How would we account for energy which escapes the system, if the universe was a system?

↪Haglund All elementary particles are composite in some sense even in the Standard Model view. Quarks mix like neutrinos. — apokrisis

This issue is due to the fundamental design of how we conceive of a physical object. The problem is a feature of the mathematical definition, one might say. An object is divisible. Because of that it is impossible to get to the bottom of "particles", because they will be divisible. So it is required that we choose something other than "particles" to be at the bottom, if we want a true understanding, and this is where fields are pertinent. The problem though is that fields are only understood through the appearance of "particles", and this is due to the limited observational capacities of the human being. As a result, the only real access we have toward understanding the true fundamentals, is through establishing the correct relationship between the particle and the field. But the field must be constructed on principles other than the appearance of particles, because that construction already presupposes a specific relationship.

If you call the mainstream trend of thought a fantasy, then they are right to treat you like a crackpot. — apokrisis

Well, how would we ever find out when the mainstream trend of thought was wrong, if everyone had that attitude? We'd be stuck in the ancient "mainstream" of thousands of years ago, thinking that the sun "comes up", in the morning, and "goes down" in the evening.

Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic property, which can be measured inside the curved space. For example, on a 2d sphere, initial parallel lines, after parsllel transporting them, can cross. Or triangles have different angle sums. — Haglund

For the reasons I explained, "2d sphere" is incoherent.

A 1d sphere is a circle. A 2d sphere is like a 2d shell. If you travel in it you come back where you started. Our universe is a 3d sphere.

I think what is required, is to first remove all reference to dimensions. It is this idea of distinct dimensions which causes the problem. Suppose we start with a non-dimensional point. From that one point, we could make lines, with angular relations to each other, and specified lengths. Connecting all the ends of the lines, would produce the outline of a spatial object (what we now know as a 3d object). The more lines one makes (theoretically an infinity of such lines is possible), the more accurately the spatial object is defined, if the specifications are made correctly.

To transpose a construction like this, into the physical world, to actually represent a real physical object, would require determining the spatial relations between any internal point of an object, and the boundaries of its perimeter. But from this perspective there is no need to assume any dimensions, (you might understand it as infinite dimensions). There is just a relationship between a non-spatial point of reference (point of location), which is somewhat arbitrarily placed in the spatial world, but only arbitrary to the extent that the required relations may be determined.

Apokrisis, I believe prefers vague boundaries, and this assumption would confound any such geometry. And that is a very difficult issue, because as we know, various objects interfere with the boundaries of each other, overlapping, and existing in the same space, at the same time. I believe the idea of "infinitesimals" is what validates vague boundaries, and I think this idea is very counter-productive toward a true understanding of physical reality.

There is just a relationship between a non-spatial point of reference (point of location), which is somewhat arbitrarily placed in the spatial world, but only arbitrary to the extent that the required relations may be determined. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sounds like affine space, without an origin.

I see what you mean, I think. But what if your space changes it's metric? Your shapes would change. If you draw lines and shapes on a thin piece of stretchable rubber, don't the shapes change form? If they keep their shape, the distances between the shapes will change, like the distance between static galaxies in the universe grows.

Incidentally which book deals with this topic in a comprehensive manner? I have read one by Henry Allison, but It left me wanting more. The article linked here by Wayfarer is also good, though I'd prefer a book on Kant's response to Hume.

Anyone have a suggestion here?

but which tells us nothing about the world in-itself or its meaning.

But Wittgenstein would never put it like this. The world-in-itself? This is Husserl talk. Tractatus-Witt would say this is just nonsense. The world is the totality of facts, not of things; and facts are in "logical space" and logic does not permit talk like world in itself.

So, I have a deep confusion about why philosophy sees this disconnection between logical necessity and physical causation. It seems to me computer science relies on the connection between the two - microprocessors basically comprise chains of logic gates to effect physical outputs. And more broadly, the link between logical necessity and physical causation seems fundamental to science generally, and even to navigating everday life. — Wayfarer

But if you are in Witt's world, causality is going to be understood as a logical concept. An odd idea, if you ask me: Kant on this is apodicticity: I cannot even imagine my cup moving by itself. It is intuitive, not logical; but logic is intuitively received, yes, but it is qualitatively different in the intuition.

One can think of noumena any way he sees fit, as long as he makes sense of it, if only to himself. Still, if originating in a specific domain, and concerning a specific iteration, probably best to stick with it, rather than mix them up. As my ol’ buddy Dexter Holland used to say, you gotta keep ‘em separated.

“....But there is one advantage, which can be made both comprehensible and interesting to even the dullest and most reluctant student of such transcendental investigations, namely this: That the understanding occupied merely with its empirical use, which does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may get along very well, but cannot accomplish one thing, namely, determining for itself the boundaries of its use and knowing what may lie within and what without its whole sphere; for to this end the deep inquiries that we have undertaken are requisite. But if the un­derstanding cannot distinguish whether certain questions lie within its horizon or not, then it is never sure of its claims and its possession, but must always reckon on many embarrassing corrections when it continually oversteps the boundaries of its territory (as is unavoidable) and loses itself in delusion and deceptions.

But right at the outset here there is an ambiguity, which can occasion great misunderstanding: Since the understanding, when it calls an ob­ject in a relation mere phenomenon, simultaneously makes for itself, beyond this relation, another representation of an object in itself and hence also represents itself as being able to make concepts of such an object, and since the understanding offers nothing other than the cate­gories through which the object in this latter sense must at least be able to be thought, it is thereby misled into taking the entirely undeter­mined concept of a being of understanding, as a something in general outside of our sensibility, for a determinate concept of a being that we could cognize through the understanding in some way....”
(CPR A238/B297, in Guyer/Wood)

Noumena: that which comes from understanding while it’s twiddling its cognition-generating thumbs, waiting to do what it was actually meant to do.

Their answer, in essence, is that science doesn't know what natural laws are. — Wayfarer

Yes. Physicists just take Laws & Constants for granted, without further explanation. For pragmatic purposes, it's not necessary to delve into metaphysics, because they don't need to know "why" in order to know "how". Yet, philosophers, and some Cosmologists, don't limit their focus to practical problems. Instead, they feel free to speculate on impractical imaginary adventures in the Great Beyond : beyond the limits of physics, that is. Hence, such unverifiable conjectures as Many Worlds & Eternal Inflation. And Paul Davies impractical venture : The Goldilocks Enigma : Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?

Ironically, the physicist's pragmatic ("just the facts ma'am") attitude is similar to the Buddha's reluctance to ask or answer indeterminate questions. It's not that the scientists don't care about the answers to meta-physical questions (e.g. why?), but perhaps because they fear that they won't like the answers. Both Buddha & Physicists were disgusted with the traditional mis-directed answers of popular religions : "invisible spirits/gods did it". So, they tried to avoid any hints of supernatural (meta-physical) forces at play. :cool:

The unanswered questions :
The Buddha always told his disciples not to waste their time and energy in metaphysical speculation. Whenever he was asked a metaphysical question, he remained silent. Instead, he directed his disciples toward practical efforts. . . . .
The Buddha said that the seeking the answers to these types of questions will not help one on the spiritual path.
https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/The_unanswered_questions

So the conviction that the realm of contingency is the only real realm is the basis of the fundamental confusion (dare we say ignorance) of technocratic culture. — Wayfarer

Before the expanding-cosmos evidence convinced scientists that our universe is not eternal, as presumed --- but contingent upon some mysterious pre-bang law-making & energy-creating force --- it was easy to just assume that Reality is an eternal cycle, with inherent (defacto) unquestionable absolute laws & forces & substances. A story without beginning or end.

Now, they are not so sure, but still resistant to any suggestion that a spooky outside force was involved. That's why I view the Enformationism thesis as a bridge between physics & meta-physics, twixt nature & super-nature. The essential "substance" of material reality is also the essence of mental ideality : merely various forms of the same fundamental malleable stuff. Perhaps, in the age of Information technology, the notion of a pre-BB "enformer" is not quite so spooky. :gasp:

(I suppose this can easily be construed as theist apologetics, but it doesn't have to be. I'm agnostic about the reality of a Biblical God. But there's a broader metaphysical conception that subsumes many different, specific cultural forms.) — Wayfarer

I too am agnostic about anything outside of the Actual contingent realm we know & love. But, as an amateur philosopher, I enjoy speculating in the realm of Potential meta-physical Ideality. It allows me to ask the questions that the Buddha avoided, without falling back into the traditional doctrinal webs of theism and polytheism. I prefer to fall forward into the unknown realm of Possibilities : what might be. :nerd:

"Ironically, Kant's unknowable noumena are the very kind of knowledge that philosophers specialize in : speculation & conjecture into the unknown, and objectively unknowable, mysteries that are not amenable to scientific exploration" — Gnomon

Not at all. The later Kant was completely dismissive of speculative metaphysics. I won't try and explain what is meant by the philosophical term noumenon but it's not a catch-all term for spooky woo-woo. — Wayfarer

Ha! The joke's on him. Kant is now classified as a German Idealist, who trafficked in transcendental notions & a priori concepts. I assume the "metaphysics" he rejected was the same Catholic Scholastic doctrines, that the Logical Positive Realists on this forum ridicule as "spooky woo-woo". His own forays into theoretical reasoning, tried to have it both ways : practical Reason and impractical theorizing. But hay! That's what philosophy is all about. So, the alternative to speculative Metaphysics is empirical Physics. But you have to get your hands dirty doing physical experiments. :wink:

Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics :
Thus, Kant’s criticism of metaphysics simultaneously involves denying the pure use of theoretical reason as an instrument for knowledge of transcendent objects, and defending reason’s ideas as projections or goals that have some significant role to play in the overall project of knowledge acquisition.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/

The Leibnizian metaphysics, the object of Kant's attack, is criticized for assuming that the human mind can arrive by pure thought at truths about entities ...
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Immanuel-Kant/Period-of-the-three-Critiques

It's the lowest energy state of three -1/3 charged preons. — Haglund

There are specific and general problems with preons as far as I can see.

You said that preons explained the g-2 result. But that turns out to be just a curve fitting exercise. If one believes in preons, one can believe in exotic preon composites like W8 and arrange the contributions to fit whatever dipole moment is measured.

Leptoquark folk will be doing the same. And leptoquarks are getting the big push this year to give LHC something plausible to chase. Yet also leptoquarks seem well motivated in the context of the Standard Miodel.

So your enthusiasm for preons already makes you overstate your case here. A more modest argument in favour of them would be more convincing, less of a turn off.

Then you brush off the technical issue that the smaller the region of confinement, the more massive the degrees of freedom become.

There is no clear motivation given for how preons are confined. I'm seeing superstrong EM, gravity, and metagluons being offered as binding mechanisms. And then the cancellation schemes to get rid of mass created by confinement are even more hand-waving as far as I can see ... on a quick skim of the literature I admit.

Finally there is the broad argument to be had that a search for ever smaller atoms of matter is simply an outdated approach.

What I like about preons is that it fits the general S-matrix spirit of drilling down to talk of fundamental degrees of freedom rather than fundamental particles. This makes all fermions a zoo of composites.

But then QFT seems to be telling us that particles are glued together combinations of degrees of freedom. Every possible combo has some probability of being manifested from the "everythingness" of the quantum vacuum. It then becomes a Darwinian contest to find what best survives as the matter that has relevance in the cooling~spreading heat sink that is the Big Bang cosmos.

So protons and electrons are the kind of crud that exist because they are the hardest combinations to dissolve away. Most of the combinations just don't wind up with interesting interactions.

Thus the metaphysics is the opposite of atomism. Rather than searching for the simplest possible elements of matter - some palette of preons to combine - the causality flows in the other direction. Unlimited quantum possibility eventually shakes itself down into a reasonably complex crud of protons, neutrons and electrons. Much else gets produced, but it is too unstable, too simple, too lacking in interactions, too whatever, to count as the basic construction material that is the Standard Model of effective low energy particles.

So preons are appealing in many ways. It is nice they could explain particle generations using the analogy of atomic orbitals. It is fun that they might make U(1) fundamental and present at the Planck scale, while making SU(2) redundant - when Standard Model and leptoquarks make its seem the most central gauge group with its complex number magic.

But that is also a reminder that physics is so much groping in the dark that some kind of maths can be whipped up to justify any intuitive picture. There is an industry of post-grads churning out scenarios that curve fit the available data, and which will get pulled out by Cern or whoever when they want the cash to fund their next generation collider.

That preons might be even half-believable should be held up as a reason to be even more cautious about going overboard with whatever line the experimentalists are pushing in the current year.

Yet still, one wants to pick a line through the maze. At the moment, I more team leptoquarks than team preons. And more team topological order than team tiny atoms. :grin:

By giving the the one dimensional plane a presence as a two dimensional figure (or two dimensional plane a presence as a three dimensional object), you produce the possibility that pi could be anything. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's only you who insists on seeing the embedding dimension that the intrinsic curvature of differential geometry has long done away with.

So you are tilting at windmills as usual.

But if God wanted a universe with maximum entropy, He would have just created it that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. So another excellent argument against theism?

Within any system, there is a quantity of energy which is lost to that system, over time. Much of that energy actually escapes the system, as heat loss from friction for example. How would we account for energy which escapes the system, if the universe was a system? — Metaphysician Undercover

The Universe is the heat sink. It expands and thus cools. Heat is lost into the space that gets made.

We'd be stuck in the ancient "mainstream" of thousands of years ago, thinking that the sun "comes up", in the morning, and "goes down" in the evening. — Metaphysician Undercover

And that "gods" created it all.

If one believes in preons, one can believe in exotic preon composites like W8 and arrange the contributions to fit whatever dipole moment is measured — apokrisis

No. That can't be done. The combination has to be colorless. And there are two kinds of them.

Every particle process can be explained. Proton decay is easy. The basic group is SU(3)XSU(3)XU(1).

OK. Time to produce some references to the particular preon theory you are describing.

ahem....philosophy forum..... :angry: