KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Commentary 42 (to R15 by Muller, to C37 by John Mikes)

MATHEMATICAL PINK ELEPHANTS
by Claude Rifat
13 July 2001, posted 28 August 2001

re. C37{8} by Mikes

« … Our language, our thoughts are space-time based conceptual ideas, unless paradoxical. The atemporality of a change or a causal connection disturbs a wording, even thinking. Even the time-reversal in QM is mostly unnatural and one has to 'force' the mind to accept its use. We simply CANNOT think in reversing cause and effect. I am sorry to state that this is my problem as well. 'Metaphysical' may be anything outside one's 'physical' system belief, which will be put as uncertain below. »

[Claude Rifat]

I think QM looks "unnatural" merely because we did not learn to visualise a microreality made of intertwined waves,instead of "objects". If you replace everything by waves,then you can reconstruct a vision which becomes natural.

Muller R15 [2]

[ The question for me is here : what do such difficulties mean ? We make up concepts like time. "Time" grasps (describes, and can be used to quantify) the flow of experience, which is more or less straightforward. Causes cause effects among other things because they are earlier, one state of affairs causes another which ensues from it, or into which it develops. A notion of time-reversal-in-itself is "unnatural" because it contradicts the function of a self-made mental tool as we have made it. It is like claiming that a sewing machine is an airplane, or that 2+2=5 : it does not work because we have defined the numbers so that 2+2=4 (ie, if you count on your fingers that is how it agreed that is named). ]

[Claude Rifat]

Time-reversal is a mathematical pink elephant. If we replace micro-objects by waves and spherical resonances, as proposed by Milo Wolff and Ross Tessien, it immediately eliminates this pink elephant and many others !

Muller [3]

[ Some events can be described by the same formalism backward in time as forward, e.g., in Feynman diagrams. This does not mean that experience flows backward, but that such

[Claude Rifat]

I agree with you. Mathematicians have built a "reality" full of mathematical pink elephants because the abstract tools they use remove spatiality from their constructed "logical" models.

[Muller]

events can be served by the same conceptual tool, ie., handling them as though they happened in either direction, which may sometimes facilitate things - but evidently it can also cause conceptual problems.

[Claude Rifat]

Obviously because all these concepts are sequentialised abstractions. Reality is neither abstract nor sequential. It is concrete and non-sequential.

Muller [4]

[ A definition of time reversal I found is "The operation of replacing time t by time -t. The symmetry of time reversal is known as T invariance. As with CP violation T violation occurs in weak interactions of kaon decays." (Harris) ] [5] [ In my understanding this refers to a human operation, not to something happening in or by itself.

[Claude Rifat]

Yes.

Muller

It means being able to describe an event the same way backward as forward along a created time axis. This is clearly not possible for most events, such as a glass falling from a table and spilling its contents on the floor while breaking. You can film this and then play the film backward, but you know that this is a trick, and in addition, the second event is the opposite of the first one, not the same. The surprising thing, if anything, is not that there is 'time-symmetry-breaking', but that some sub-atomic events can actually be described with the same formalism in both directions, in a T invariant manner. ]

[Claude Rifat]

I reference the works of Prof. Milo Wolff and Ross Tessien on these topics. Prof. Milo Wolff explains very clearly, for example, why mathematicians, such as Feynmann, invented such fanciful satements as "a positron can be seen as an electron going back in time". This is pure mathematical illusion and delusion, mathematical pink elephants, because such a statement contradicts all the knowledge we have accumulated on the universe at higher levels of organisation (for this concept of level of organisation, I reference the readers to the works of my late friend Dr. Henri Laborit).

Muller [7]

[ Concerning {22-23} I am still not certain whether or not JM assumes a basic (i.e., ontological) subject-object split (à la Descartes for instance). In my estimation this question is fundamental and needs to be clarified, if one wants a useful discussion : because MIR-belief is an immediate consequence of such primary s/o split assumption.

[Claude Rifat]

The models of Wolff and Tessien of the microcosm clearly demonstrate that the parmenidean split between object and subject is a fallacy.

The Greeks did not know that reality was made of waves. Thus they conceived of local "atoms", subjects and objects, etc.

Muller

So far as I can determine, he does. For instance {23}, "the jury is out : a choice between a supernatural creating force and a category mismatch" (he refers to the creation of something from nothing). The mentioned choice seems to be between two explanations for a mind-independent (and thus mind-less) world origin, though other interpretations may be possible for creationism. This seems to imply an (MIR-ontological) is-ness status for that world, excluding subjective experience (which one would then presumably secondarily try to explain in objective terms, like everything else.) ]

Muller [9]

Considering that "we" (i.e., Archimedes, Fermat, Descartes, et al.) invented coordinates and dimensions in order to handle the extension aspect of experience, it is intriguing to contemplate how six dimensions can roll up. ]

[Claude Rifat]

As far as I am concerned, I think that reality is 4 d and that higher dimensions are merely mathematical pink elephants.

Muller [12]

[ {38} is therefore not clear to me. In my opinion Chalmers asked the wrong question. Instead of asking 'how does experience arise from matter', which leads into a dead end because it doesn't, we can usefully study, for instance, how self-and object-structures arise within SE. ]

[Claude Rifat]

It gets to the definition of what is "matter". When matter is described as semi-local waves, bathing in an ocean of non-local waves, instead of local "atoms", then the question of Chalmers has no more any meaning.

--------------------------------

Claude Rifat