Since almost nobody answered my question of his/her idea about the importance of considering the universe in which we are living to be objective or subjective, I am not planning to go into the details. However, just to clarify my viewpoint on this particular subject I’ll go briefly through it.

Taking the Daemon as a way to explain the possibility of existence of an omnipotent god can be easily falsified by its consecutive paradoxes. However, the question of the universe being a simulation of a computational device with limited power is yet to be addressed.

It is indeed a defining assumption both in philosophy and science. The philosophical arguments are way easier in this sense, so I just bring two scientific examples to show the difference:

This one contains a little bit of philosophy too. The question is whether the computer which is simulating our virtual reality is a deterministic computational machine or a probabilistic one? This is important, because we have free will only if the computer is probabilistic!

The second question is this: Are the laws of nature subject to change? Roughly speaking, our presumption is that the laws of nature are constant and we are making our laws of physical sciences more accurate to get closer and closer to the natural laws. If the laws of nature are subject to slight changes, what would be the new definition of the incompleteness of the science.

Hundreds of other scientific and philosophical questions could be asked. However, the greatest dilemma is whether we can have access to the daemon’s mind or not.

Those of you who think the idea behind the movies such as The Matrix and eXisteZ are so original should read the Descartes‘ Evil Deamon. The question reduces to this: Is there a possibility that everything we see is just a set of subjective concepts which do not necessarily have any objective counterparts? i.e. We and the world around us are something like a virtual reality in a super powerful computer or We are just the thoughts of a crazy daemon?

One odd answer to that is this: Does it really make any difference? Cuz even in that case we can find the laws of physics of the daemon’s mind and live our lives as we do in an objective universe! In this case, this idea seems to be just a change in name, say from objective to subjective!

I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with the statement above. I’m just curious to know about your ideas…

Let’s have a physico-philosophical quiz for today! The first part will be so simple, especially if you are a physicist, but the second part needs a little more care!

The two postulates of the special theory of relativity are as follows:

Postulate 1: The laws of physics are the same in any inertial reference frame.

Postulate 2: The speed of light (or any other massless particle) in vacuum is the same an all inertial frames of reference and is independent of the motion of the source.

As you see both of them are talking about inertial reference frames. And if you don’t believe that the Earth rests on the back of an elephant, which stands on the back of a tortoise, then another choice is to believe that it orbits around the sun!!! If so, you must accept that it does have a centripetal acceleration, and hence is not an inertial reference frame…

Question number one: Do we have to conclude that the theory of relativity doesn’t work for us who live on the Earth?!!!

Question number two:  In the theory of relativity we don’t have the absolute space! We also know that fixed stars are not really fixed! Define inertial frame of reference, before you come up with a definition of the special theory of relativity!

This entry and its proceeding one will be two of the most interesting posts I’ll ever publish in my weblog. The reason is that these posts aim to clarify the crucial criteria, one needs to consider when he wants to decide between becoming a scientist or a philosopher when he is young; say in the age between 18 and 22. Nevertheless, despite my career in science, these criteria have never become clear enough even for me! Here I have asked Amyr Anvary, a friend in philosophy side, to write an article describing why he is more interested in philosophy. In the next post I’ll explain the reasons I preferred science for myself.

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I have always been more drawn to Philosophy than Science. That is because I find philosophical cognition more authentic and genuine. in order to explain my viewpoint and this make this post easier to read I decided to talk about what I think Philosophy is (Part One), discuss Science in contrast with Philosophy (Part Two) and name two reasons why I think scientific cognition is neither complete nor satisfying (Part Three) separately.
1.
Although people usually define Philosophy by its ‘subjects of concern’, I am more comfortable with my own definition (which is of course a work in progress). Philosophy is a unique way of talking about potentially everything using reason and intuition and coming to a result with which one can rest satisfied. I purposefully use the word ‘talking’ –and not thinking or study- because I believe Philosophy is a form of discourse. This does not necessarily mean that a philosopher is talking -directly or indirectly- to someone. What I want to imply is that Philosophy is a language-dependant phenomena and it happens with motives of communication. The uniqueness that I pointed out in my definition of Philosophy is because of doubt. Same as Science and unlike engineering, Doubt is a crucial method in Philosophy and since you don`t have a ‘unified reality’ -in a philosophical sense- to measure yourself with, doubt plays a more important role in Philosophy than Science.
2.
Science and Philosophy have more in common. They are both concerned with understanding of Nature, the difference is that in order to understand Nature Science tries to understand how it works but Philosophy takes a more ‘ontological’ approach. Meaning that while the main objective of Science is to understand Nature, Philosophy tries to use what is so far grasped about Nature and talk about concepts like existence and reality. Especially in recent decades Philosophy has been influenced by Science more than ever. Philosophical ideas also play a big role in evolution of Science; since many of scientific assumptions are backed up by huge philosophical backgrounds. Let us discuss this further.
Any scientific cognition takes place in a well defined consistent and arguably complete axiomatic system. Meaning there are fundamental and mostly philosophical concepts on which our further definitions and theories depend. How are these propositions, which we label as axioms or assumptions, philosophical? To answer this let me point out the difference between two kinds of axiomatic systems. In a mathematical axiomatic system such as Euclidean Geometry or Group theory axioms are interchangeable with other proposition within the system. These axioms have been selected from a bunch of basic propositions because they contain all the information we need in order to define the structure of our system. They can be replaced by other propositions. Galois came up with most of fundamental definitions and statements of Group theory without even formalizing axioms of Groups. But in Newtonian mechanics, for example, existence of space without quantification is assumed. ‘Existence of space without quantification’ is a statement which cannot be replaced by any proposition within the Classical Mechanics. Beside axioms, in a scientific axiomatic system, some other propositions are assumed (consciously or not). Even though this sort of assumptions might look like physical statements but they are backed up by many controversial philosophical ideas, some of these assumptions include determinism, causality and existence of mathematical discipline beneath any physical phenomena. Any scientific revolution happens exactly by challenging these philosophical assumptions. That is why I think any scientific cognition evolves in a world provided by philosophical ideas.
3.1
How is reducing a phenomenon to mathematical formulae providing us with some sort of satisfying cognition? Science has proved to be successfully able to predict and use Natural phenomena. But how is this helping us understanding Nature?
3.2
In 17th century René Descartes used the term res extensa (thinking subject) in opposite of res cogitans (read physical reality); although his intentions were towards discussing individualism somewhere along the way he formalized something much deeper and more profound, by separating the thinking subject and the physical reality, Philosophy and Science became two separate entities and went their separate ways. As a result Science became incapable of knowing itself and even scientifically understanding itself. This is the main reason behind the creation of some schools of Philosophy such as epistemology or phenomenology.

Some of you guys know that I was in IISSQI08 for the last two weeks. For me, this summer school was a great achievement in two ways: first, taking part in some fantastic lectures on quantum computing given by eminent international professors and secondly, having brilliant conversations with these lecturers and some new friends. One of these conversations was with David Gross who is a positivist physicist.

The conversation started just after his talk. He finished the talk by explaining the GHZ experiment and the Bell’s inequality to conclude that nature cannot have a deterministic AND local description.

Sina: It can only show that nonlocality cannot have a classical description. What if someday we had a local and deterministic physical theory which is not classical?

David: Like what? Look… This would be a classical theory and since you think classically you are not able to realize it! I can accept if somebody brings a physical theory that is deterministic (X)OR local. But it can’t be both deterministic AND local!

(At that time I couldn’t remember the Multiverse theory to bring an example. Actually, I by myself am not yet convinced by this theory. However it could be a good example of non-classical local and deterministic theory)

Sina: Assuming you are right, so the theory of everything won’t give us any better result than unification of the four forces! It is still indeterministic and is not able to describe the reality of nature!

David: This is the same mistake that Einstein did! You think that e physical theory must satisfy these conditions to be a complete description of reality. However, I believe that the nature is essentially not deterministic and a theory which claims to describe everything must be indeterministic too. Although classical mechanics is working well in classical sizes, but it is an approximation of the reality and it is not true to be considered as theory that is capable of making precise predictions.

Sina: Do you also believe that classical propositional logic is also imprecise?

David: You are entering a dangerous field, ha-ha… No! Why should I say such a thing?

Sina: Because of the intuition one can get from observing the relationship between physics and mathematics. Everything in physics has a counterpart in mathematics and vice versa! It can be seen in the relationship between physics and mathematics. Just like non-Euclidean geometry and relativity!

David: It was a great example. Here is where no one has an answer! No one knows why! But it doesn’t mean that we are allowed to build such a relationship. A counter example is that you deal with finite numbers in physics but you have infinity in mathematics.

Sina: There are some physicists who believe the universe in infinite. On the other hand there are mathematicians (intuitionistic logicians) who do not believe in infinity!

David: But you can image the largest length in a finite world while the largest number does not make sense in mathematics!

Sina: OK! Then if our universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics and in this theory there shouldn’t be any assignment to any object that is not yet measured, how do you answer this paradox: A star is born out of reach of any conscious observer. Two thousand years later, when we see the light we analyze it and find out that the star was born 2000 years ago, when nobody saw it!

David: This is the state of the star at time t=0

So the state of the system at this time is

Then at t=1 is

Finally at t=2000 you get

There is a superposition of you when you saw the star and the other you. One who is able to measure you from beyond your system will see you in one of these states with a certain probability and the other state in another probability!

The observer must stand out of the system.

Sina: But when I saw the light I realized that the star was born when I couldn’t see!

David: Physical theory doesn’t answer the questions like “when things happened”. It just gives predictions about the nature. You want to know: what really happened?! However, I want to know: what will I observe? I would be very happy if someone could answer the first question, but I believe that no one will do that! So I prefer to choose the second question.
There are people on your side. If you want to choose the first question I suggest you read David Deutsch’s book: The Fabric of Reality.

(I took his advice and just ordered the book from Amazon)

Once a friend (Mehrdad) was complaining that the theory of formal languages that we are forced to study in university is just bullshit! My only comment at that time was what is bullshit is the curriculum! I suggested that if the lecturer could start from the first, where natural languages become to existence and how they are related to our thoughts, then the course would be quite amazing! Now I am preparing a series of posts concerning the theory of language and then I will move to formal languages. Just to mention: I am not a linguist and I’m not planning to put my nose in their aQsQs! These posts are just for discussion and may be subject to many technical mistakes.

There are many scholars who believe that language precedes thoughts. They bring examples: Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same configuration. On the other hand, other scientists, including Elizabeth Spelke who has done an experiment showing that children learn to think independently about objects before they learn language, think in other way.

Whether the former group is right or the latter, anybody speaking in any language has a language of thought, i.e. a system of representations that is physically realized in the brain of thinkers and has a combinatorial syntax (and semantics) such that operations on representations are causally sensitive only to the syntactic properties of representations. The question I am asking is “What is the relationship between language and language of thought?” This can be a question for both of these two groups.

Just to mention: as Wittgenstein argues, many problems arise from philosophers’ misuse of language. I’ve taken his advice and wrote the paragraph above to unify our language. So from now we are dealing with the relationship between “language” and a system of the syntax and semantics of our thought, called “language of thught”.

In an earlier post, I opposed the common definitions of Mathematics and Physics. I claimed that the best definition possible is that Mathematics is a subjective projection of reality on science and Physics is the objective on. The similar discussion could be held here: Language is a projection of objects, into spoken, written, heard, read and gestural forms, to express and convey our meaning (even for an internal conversation). And language of thought is a projection of the same object on our mind and perception. Our problem just lies on the matter of classification and labeling objects. Imagine a circle and a square. In order you identified the objects, you label it in mind or expression. So these are two forms of the same thing. Even the first time you see a thing, you label it in your mind and the next time you recall it. Later, you put a word for it, so you label it in another way. We are not in a situation to judge about how we can think without language, because we do have a language and we aso think. However, scientists have done many researches, revealing that animals are capable of thinking about many objects that they have no way to express them. Nevertheless, language helps you organize and document your thoughts, convey them to the other people and is capable of assisting your memory. So any development in language or mental reasoning will make the other stronger.

Conclusion:

      1. Language and language of thought are two independent representations of a same thing.

      2. Language and language of thought make each other powerful and this is the greatest advantage of human race over beasts.

I start this post by asking the question: “Can we give a complete explanation of a continuous system without disturbing it?” Imagine you want to explain a cat for a little scientist. You may probably say that cat is a carnivorous animal, having sharp teeth and paws. You may say something about its size and sound and so… But would it be complete? So what about its DNA, central nervous system structure, immune system, etc.? There are infinite different kinds of information which you need to spot in you explanation in order to make it complete. Every definition has a level of abstraction so you can never give a complete explanation of any system. Consider a continuous system. You can only give a discrete explanation. So you’ll lose some infinitely small values. I wonder if any method exists in which we can use a system without any definition. For example in stead of any explanation, you give the cat directly to the little scientist. He would be able to extract any information which he needs…