If fundamental reality wasn't consistent with what? Life? If fundamental reality wasn't consistent with life life couldnt exist? Profound! — Janus

The speed of light is a physical constant, part of a fundamental reality, and has been found to be consistently 299,792,458 m/s.

If the speed of light, together with all the other physical constants, exhibited no consistency and continually changed, one day 350,000,000 m/s and the next day 250,000,000 m/s, it seems to me that life would not be possible.

I don't know the answer to your question. I don't know what fundamental reality is consistent with.

What do you think fundamental reality is consistent with?

If the speed of light, together with all the other physical constants, exhibited no consistency and continually changed, one day 350,000,000 m/s and the next day 250,000,000 m/s, it seems to me that life would not be possible. — RussellA

You mean if there were no constants then no stability including life would be possible? If so I agree. That seems obvious. I think using the word consistency here clouds the issue. For me the word suggests one thing being in conformity with or non-contrary with or non-antithetical to something else and its use would thereby be better restricted to matters of logic.

I don't know the answer to your question. I don't know what fundamental reality is consistent with.

What do you think fundamental reality is consistent with? — RussellA

In accordance with what I say above I think the idea of consistency loses its meaning in that context, both because fundamental reality is presumably not something conceptual and because there is no second thing for it to be consistent with even if it were conceptual.

In accordance with what I say above I think the idea of consistency loses its meaning in that context, both because fundamental reality is presumably not something conceptual and because there is no second thing for it to be consistent with even if it were conceptual. — Janus

Though we must have the concept of a fundamental reality, otherwise we couldn't be talking about it.

Presumably, our concept of a fundamental reality, in order to have any value, must be consistent with our observations.

I think the idea of consistency loses its meaning in that context, both because fundamental reality is presumably not something conceptual and because there is no second thing for it to be consistent with even if it were conceptual. — Janus

consistency, I think it is defined by me and others in this post as: consistent with our models. I called it a one-way system. This is what I mean by that: in most cases, if you test your models, the result that comes back from fundamental reality, most often agrees with those models. Most rocket launches are successful. In the cases this is not true, we assume our models need adjustment, not that reality has become unstable. So it is not a "hard" property, it is our general experience that fundamental reality is stable.

The speed of light is a physical constant, part of a fundamental reality — RussellA

I believe the speed of light is also a concept. It involves time and distance, these are already very much determined by the human conceptual view of reality.

In physics, the deeper you go it the theoretic aspects, speed of light becomes an almost transcendantal topic and looses its hard meaning. Maybe seen that way it does no harm to call it fundamental reality.

In practice, I think it has little consequence if you call "all the particles in the universe" the fundamental reality. For the same reason, that is an almost transcedental way of looking at the universe.

I believe the speed of light is also a concept. — Carlo Roosen

Yes. The only thing I know for certain are my experiences of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. I happen to believe that these experiences have been caused by something external to my mind, something I call "the world".

Therefore, every idea I have about what exists in this "world" is an inference from my experiences.

So yes, any idea that I may have about the speed of light can never be any more than what I have inferred from my experiences, and being an inference may not only be of a completely different nature to the something in the world that caused my experience but may also be wrong.

Though we must have the concept of a fundamental reality, otherwise we couldn't be talking about it.

Presumably, our concept of a fundamental reality, in order to have any value, must be consistent with our observations. — RussellA

Right of course we have a concept we call "fundamental reality". My point was that if there is such a thing as a fundamental reality it is not a concept.

I agree that if we are going to attempt to give an account of what fundamental reality might be that it should be consistent with our best science.

This is what I mean by that: in most cases, if you test your models, the result that comes back from fundamental reality, most often agrees with those models. — Carlo Roosen

Should we think of the data that comes from our testing as showing us something about fundamental reality or reality as we experience and understand it? The problem is that the term 'fundamental reality' is not definitve.

You talk about contradiction. I have a few more for you here. The example of "future" was given and you stated that the future is "unknown" but not "unknowable". And fundamental reality clearly is "unknowable". I disputed that by saying that the future is not a fixed point in time, but a concept for everything after the present moment, which is a moving point on the time axis. Thus, the future is as unknowable as fundamental reality.

I thought about it a bit more, and realized that "fundamental reality" and "future", in fact, are exactly the same thing! Talking about contradiction, "fundamental reality" is in the space/state dimension, and "future" in the time dimension. And I claim they are the same thing! Now we can have a discussion...

The contradiction is not unexpected. It is the point that our conceptual thinking is not capable of capturing the truth. It is the point where we have to say: thoughts no longer apply here. It is like the symbol of infinity in (highschool) Mathematics, it is not allowed to enter this in a formula, it wil lead to contradictions. If you want to see an example, I can show you. [edit, I just read you are a math tutor so this isn't needed. Also, division by zero is a better example, and I started a little discussion in the Lounge]

So, "fundamental reality" and "future" are exactly the same thing? For example, a spaceship lands in your backyard. Before it happened, it was both "in the future" and in "fundamental reality". Two abstract terms that only mean that we can expect a stream of surprises from that corner.

After the spaceship has landed, we can try to understand it. Aha, it was a toy rocket from our neigbor. Or, indeed, they were aliens coming to say hello. It becomes conceptual reality as well as history.

This is how fundamental reality / future gets to us, as a series of surprises, discoveries, inventions, accidents etc. The current moment is like a border between that and the conceptual reality / history. Even when we see something but don't know what it is, the moment we actually DO realize what it is, is when this piece of knowledge crosses the border.

I hope you can find something to relate to this explanation! I know, it is not a standard view, and you don't have to agree. But it is my personal view and I like to hear your response.