This is a special note addressed to those who seek to uphold some modern science ideas against Objectivism, like Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, because I think they have some confusions involved in their understanding of the dispute between physics and rational philosophy, of which Dan Edge is one proponent. First of all, no Objectivist is denying the effects of Relativity or QM, they are not denying the facts or claiming that such effects cannot happen in reality. If that is what you are thinking, then you need to check that premise. What they are saying is that these effects **cannot occur causlessly and that it cannot be the nature of space that it can warp or the nature of sub-atomic particles that they just act weird and we have to accept that as a fact.** What they are saying is that when one comes across an apparent contradiction when it comes to causlessly acting entities that one ought to study the facts more carefully to discover what the cause is for the observations and not just say we have an equation, it is predictive, and we dont care to investigate further, which is the claim in modern physics when they say there are no hidden variables in QM. Second, we can observe reality and its nature directly with our senses, and by doing this we come up with the philosophical laws of nature, such as every effect has a cause or each entity is what it is and acts the way it does due to the fact that it is what it is. So, if one wants to discover why gravity and QM are the way they are, then one needs to further study the facts rationally, account for the causes, and then, if necessary, reformulate the mathematics to take that new information into account. It is not a question of either physics or philosophy being superior, its an issue of taking all that you know and integrating it in a non-contradictory manner, and I can assure you that Relativity and QM have their contradictions that need to be worked out. We have to go by the facts as we understand them, and the idea that an electron can be everywhere at once completely contradicts our direct observations of the nature of existence, so that cannot be the correct explanation for some of these effects. appliedphilosophyonline/causality_in_observation_identity_given.htm
Posted on: Sat, 17 May 2014 22:02:50 +0000