Hi, >> Ok - but the gooey glob is also only a description - we can extend the > I CANNOT extend the gooey glob to contain the whole universe. And I > doubt that you can, either. [grin] But, I don't know that for sure.
OK, point for you ;-) What I meant is the distinction epistemological problem vs reality. > I'm not being entirely facetious, here. Partial ordering is a > consequence of locality. And locality seems fundamental to what we > understand about the universe (which is why entanglement is so freaky to > us). I thought it through and you are right - total ordering is bogus. What I probably meant (intuitively) is not a total ordering, but a partial ordering where every element has a supremum/infimum - a lattice (I think; but that requires two operations, and we only want one (ordering)); at least something where you can draw a Hasse diagram (with the events). Or do you believe/mean that from localty follows the weakest form of partial ordering - that is that _no_ form of hierarchy can be imposed upon certain events. > So, I suspect "the universe" is actually an ill-formed and > delusional concept, perhaps even meaningless. Nothing is universal. > Everything is local. So you probably won't even support sup/inf hierarchy, I gather; I'm no Relativity pundit - do you think that follows from SR or is it a philosophical view? >> I guess the problem boils back down to the question of a deterministic >> universe or an indeterministic one. > > I don't see it that way. I see it as boiling back to the question of > universality versus locality. Agreed (see above) > Such distinctions do NOT require one to consider [in]determinism. But, > they do require one to consider historical accumulation and canalization > of causes, i.e. where and how ignorance (particularly of "negligible" > influences e.g. events very FAR away in space or time) affects causality. Ok, I see what you mean - but just to be careful with terminology: I guess you mean "affects the process under investigation causally" and not "affects causality" (last two words above paragraph) Former interpretation: we agree. Latter interpretation: we should discuss ;-)) Cheers, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
